The four horsemen portray the four major sources of tribulation in mortality: unrighteous dominion, contention, famine, and disease/death.

Through experiencing these tribulations we can learn to be like God. He rules by persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness and meekness, love unfeigned. By kindness and pure knowledge, without hypocrisy and without guile. In this world we experience all the opposites of these virtues. Satan runs things by force, by impatience, by cruelty, greed, ignorance, hypocrisy, and hatred. We needed to experience and overcome these things so we could appreciate the opposite. We learn to know the sweet from the bitter.