ukraine and putin's mad ride on the four horses of the apocalypse

“…The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
​(Micah 6.6, 8)
​

ukraine and putin's mad ride on the four horses of the apocalypse
​april 4, 2022

The passage from Ecclesiastes that is found at the head of this and many other posts has come often to my mind over the past weeks as I have observed the madness that is flooding Ukraine and spilling out into our living rooms through news reports. There is another passage, no less insightful or true, it seems to me, that has also repeatedly come to mind.
 
“This is the world,
brutal and cruel, that Troy tried to withstand.
Cruelty wins in the end.
Our little clearings of civilization may seem real,
but mindless wilderness always lurks,
may take its time,
but in the end overwhelms all our pretensions to decency.
We revert to beastliness. (Seneca, Trojan Women, Lines 985-990)
 
It is difficult to not feel the sad truth of Seneca’s assessment of the mortal condition.
 
In a series of tweets, I sent the following out.
 
With the atrocious images flowing out of Ukraine showing the systematic war crimes that Putin’s army has and is committing, I have to assume that Putin knows that he can never leave “mother Russia” again. Never.  No amount of disinformation will be able to change what the world now knows with certainty: Putin is a war criminal. Putin must now know that to leave Russia for any reason is to be arrested as a war criminal. 
 
He must now know that there will be no more arrogantly strutting around with world leaders or any more hope of renewing a G-8 coalition that includes him, for fear of certain arrest. 
 
He must now know that he will never again jet around the world in one of his or his oligarch buddy’s private luxury jets, for fear of arrest upon landing. 
 
He must now know that he will never again step foot on any one of however many mega yachts he has stolen from the Russian people, for fear of arrest. 
 
He must surely now know that he will never again enter another of the however many penthouses or mansions that he owns in any one of several swank locations on the globe, for fear of arrest. 
 
He must now know that even if he can manage to get to any of those billions of dollars he has stolen and stashed away, he will never spend one cent of it outside a devastated Russian economy. 
 
He must now know, finally, that he is a prisoner in his country. His life will never be the same. His world has changed forever.
 
He must now understand all this. This makes him very, very dangerous. The question is, how many other lives is he prepared to change and ruin? The other question is, is there anyone bold and calculating enough to remove him from power, turn him over to international courts, and/or end his pathetic life?
 
To better understand what Putin is, what he is about, what he represents, and how utterly dangerous he is to global peace, to human life and existence, I have reposted a series of five homilies I wrote some time ago on “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” It can be found on the “Just Society” page of this site.
 
Moroni testified, “I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.”[1] This is really saying something. But John, the Revelator, were he to so speak might say something like, “I have seen all of you, from the dawn of time to the last gasping breaths of mortals upon the earth.”
 
The Revelator saw Putin. But not only Putin. What he sees in Putin is not unique. Putin is but one of many, many lunatics in world history who have madly chosen to climb up on the back of the wild horses of John’s apocalypse and wildly ride across the world stage.
 
In the past six weeks, we have witnessed Putin’s wild ride. We have watched as he has galloped across Ukraine first on the white horse, then on the red, then the black, and finally, through reports of war crimes coming from Ukraine, on the pale horse. The scale of his wild ride is still confined to Ukraine. It has not become global. But, it grows more likely with each passing day that his mad ride on the four wild horses will become more encompassing; the arena become larger; the battle grounds expanded.
 
We are told to pray for peace. Very well. But, now is not simply a time to pray for peace. We are quickly getting well past that point. We must begin to pray for an end to Putin’s madness; a stop to his mad ride on the four horses of John’s apocalypse, even if it be by the arm of God Himself.
 
“Avenging God, YHWH,
   avenging God, reveal yourself.
Rise up, Ruler of the world…
 
[May he ] send the same calamity upon them that they sent upon others,
   and bring an end to them with the same evil they perpetrated on others;
      Yahweh, our God, will certainly bring an end to them.”[2]
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
 
 
[1] Mormon 8.35
[2] Psalm 94.1-2, 23, author’s translation.