The four horses of the Apocalypse present a picture of this existence.
The four horses represent life on this world. Every time a man gets on a white horse to "fix the world"... the other horses follow, Warfare, Famine and Death right behind. Always.
Caesar, Ivan the Terrible, Henry VIII, Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Lenin, Bush and now Trump. They all get on that White Horse to ride. Authority is given them like a cheap crown. And a bow. They are let loose to prove themselves.
The end is always the same. It is to the detriment of humanity.
But the second White Horse is no fake. It is Christ Himself. He rides in a righteous war. His angels ride behind, not three horses, but uncountable, all righteous. His crown is not a fake. His appointment is real and at the cost of his own blood, of which he is sprinkled.
The sky is darkened, the Earth quakes. As it was when the Christ died, it is again when He comes. It is the sign of the Son of Man.
This is the Apocalypse.
I like that. Another similar interpretation (but less apocalyptic, if ironically) is that the 4 Horsemen represent 4 archetypal phases of life: the young man, the old man, the sick man, and the dead man. These also align with the Tetramorph and the 4 angels standing before God with the head of a man, the head of a bull, the head of a lion, and the head of an eagle. And from there it aligns with Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, and the 4 elements of water, earth, fire and air. In storytelling, it aligns with the transition in a hero's dramatic arc from an Innocent/Orphan to a Wanderer to a Warrior to a Martyr/Magician.
At first, you're reckless, you're riding high but somewhat aimlessly, you're "young, dumb and full o' cum". This is the pale horse with a rider with a sword protruding from his mouth, and the dissonance between that and Jesus Christ is kind of ironic. An older man is a bit more rational, weighing things in the balances. You become wiser but you also become sick and eventually die. But the cycle of life continues with the next generation, who get on their pale horse and do it all over again.
