The Four Horsemen-The Pale Horse

“And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.  And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

The rider on the white horse will come to conquer.  The rider on the red horse is to take peace from the earth and kill with the sword.  The rider of the black horse brings economic disaster, famine, and the end of prosperity as we know it.  As Jesus opened the fourth seal, John was called by the fourth beast, perhaps the one who was like an eagle, to “come and see”.  By this time, I imagine that John was overwhelmed by what he had witnessed at the opening of the first three seals, but I also imagine he was eager to continue watching as the scenes kept unfolding before his eyes.  A simple analogy would be how we react to a good movie or a good book.  We watch or read eagerly to see how the story ends.  I suppose John hoped for a happy ending, and it will be for all those who belong to Christ.

As the opening of the seals progressed, things had gone from not so bad to bad to worse, and the fourth revelation continued to illustrate an extremely deteriorating scene of chaos and destruction.  As John watched the fourth scene unfold, he saw another horse and rider.  This horse was described as pale.  The Greek word from which “pale” is translated is “chloros” from which we get the term chlorophyll, the chemical responsible for the green color of leaves.  This pale horse was actually a green-yellow color, a sickly kind of color, representing death.  If you have ever had a bruise, it eventually turns a greenish-yellow color due to  hemoglobin, the red compound of blood cells, breaking down, turning into biliverdin, a yellowish pigment found in bile.

The rider was given the name of “Death” and his companions coming along after him were named “Hell”.  Death and Hell were given the power to destroy 25 per cent of the earth’s population by the sword, that is, through warfare, by hunger from the continuing famine, and by other means, most likely crime in a lawless society.  Disease will wipe out many, and wild beasts will roam the streets looking for prey because they will have been driven from the forests for lack of food.  My guess is that weapons, like guns and knives, will have been confiscated by the antichrist, leaving people with no means to protect themselves against his army nor against the wild beasts.  In other words, gun control will be a major policy of the administration of the antichrist.  These prophecies are beginning to sound all too familiar.  The antichrist will make his own laws and have plenty of followers who will carry them out.  Many will “go along to get along”, but that won’t insure that those who do will be spared the sword.  The last figure that I heard for an estimate of the world’s population was 7.8 billion people.  Twenty-five percent of 7.8 billion is almost two billion people!

The statistics are pretty grim concerning death: one out of one dies.  I saw an episode of The Andy Griffith Show in which Aunt Bea came into the sheriff’s office and wasn’t feeling well.  Barney was attempting to make her comfortable when Andy came in.  He enquired as to her health.  She said that she had experienced a shock.  One of the ladies that she knew had passed away.  Andy remarked that he didn’t think that the lady was a close friend of Aunt Bea as he wondered why she was so upset.  Aunt Bea said, “No, we are not close, but she is the same age as me.”  Andy said, “Well, that doesn’t mean anything.”  Then Barney spoke up quietly with an honest, but not very diplomatic remark, “Well, we all gotta’ go sometime.”  Andy then gave Barney “the look”.  Now, while Barney was certainly insensitive to Aunt Bea’s feelings, he was right: we all will die sometime.

Folks, generally speaking, do not like to think about death.  Some people never think about it.  However, when you experience the loss of close relatives and friends, you begin to think about dying quite often.  Yes, these bodies will return to the dust of the earth from which they came, but the soul will not die because it came directly from the breath of God (Genesis 2:7).  My former pastor has said that everyone who has ever been born is still alive somewhere.  Our final destination where our souls will live eternally depends on what we did with Christ, whether we received Him as Lord and Savior or whether we decided to fend for ourselves.  My advice is don’t try to fend for yourselves.  Repent and trust Christ, and then your future will be secure.