ONE FOURTH, GONE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Revelation 6:7-8

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

You may have heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They have been portrayed in movies and art work for some time now and many people don’t know that they are associated with biblical prophecy regarding the end times, specifically in Revelation, chapter six.

Over the past three messages, we have looked at the first three of these four horsemen and you’ll recall they are distinguished by the color of their horse which in turn symbolizes the judgment they will bring on the earth. Additionally, you’ll remember that they are dispatched in a set sequence associated with Jesus breaking the first four seals on the scroll He takes from God’s right hand in Heaven’s throne room.

First, the white horse was sent off, falsely representing peace when its true intent was conquest and conquering.

Next, there was the red horse, armed with a sword to initiate war and bloodshed on earth with people bent on killing one another.

In yesterday’s message, we looked at the third horse, black in color representing starvation and death that would come from a global famine. Basic food needs would be highly inflated, causing a large segment of the world’s population to not be able to afford to eat.

And this brings us to today’s message and the fourth horse and rider. Look again at verses 7 and 8 of Revelation, chapter 6:

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Here we learn that when Jesus breaks the fourth seal, death will come to one fourth of the world’s population. To give you an idea of what that would look like in present times, the global population is estimated to be over 8 billion people. And so if Jesus was to pop that fourth seal in proximity to where we are now, more than two billion people would perish, a loss of almost unfathomable magnitude.

This horse is pale in color, a shade that matches the ashen skin tone that comes when a person dies and we read where this pale horse and rider are followed closely by Hades, which is simply representative of the grave. Certainly, the population in that grave will be immense.

How will these 2 billion-plus deaths occur?

The scriptures tell us that the pale horse and rider will bring death in four different ways, two of which, famine and sword, we’ve already seen unleashed via the red and black horses. In addition to this, we read where a plague will come, bringing fatal disease to a segment of that fourth of the earth, and if the other three weren’t bad enough, there will be killings happen at the hands of “the wild beasts of the earth”.

Add these up and it’s going to be a dark and tragic day for one quarter of the world’s population when that fourth seal is broken by Jesus.

What comes next because we know there are three seals remaining and the four horsemen have been set loose?

We’ll look at the breaking of the fifth seal and its associated outcome in tomorrow’s message.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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