In this paper, the explicit finite difference method (FDM) is used to study the variable order nonlinear fractional wave equation. The fractional derivative is described in the Riesz sense. Special attention is given to study the stability analysis and the convergence of the proposed method. Numerical test examples are presented to show the efficiency of the proposed numerical scheme.MSC 2010 : 26A33, 65K10, 65G99, 35E99 Key Words and Phrases: variable order fractional calculus, nonlinear fractional wave equation, explicit finite difference method, convergence and stability analysis