Luke 21:9

“And when you shall hear of wars and tumults, be not terrified, for these things must necessarily come about first, but the end is not immediately.”

He then emphasises that as well as messiahs and deliverers there would also occur wars and ‘tumults' (or ‘civil wars', compare James 3:16. See Isaiah 19:2). But He makes clear that such things must be expected in view of what man is, and that they must therefore not be terrified by them into thinking that the end of the world was approaching. In Old Testament prophecy war is regularly indicated as resulting in and from ‘the Day of the Lord' (the time when the Lord acts decisively), but it is always difficult in the prophets to separate these from the wars constantly prophesied there, and they prophesied local as well as far off ‘days of the Lord'. In the New Testament ‘the last days' were introduced by the coming of Christ, and His death and resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:16). Thus all that it really prophesies is war, war, war, which, with lulls, will rise and fall in intensity until the consummation.

These events are depicted in Revelation 6:3 in terms of a horseman on a red horse, and the greater detail of this is now outlined.