The Pale Horse is actually green. The original Greek for pale in Revelation 6:8 is chloros (χλωρος) and it literally just means green – as in chlorophyll green. So, it’s a green horse, not pale. But, everyone knows about the Pale Horse, so we’ll keep it pale in the title. But, whatever color you call it…
…it’s really, really bad.
Death rides that horse through a quarter of the world, killing with violence, hunger, disease and wild animals. The question is…
What quarter of the world will this be?
And what will it be like for the rest of us?
Let’s dig into that.
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The Four Horsemen, Part Four
The Pale Horse
Here’s the passage that concerns us:
7 When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” 8 So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.
– Revelation 6:7-8 (NKJV)
So, Death rides a green horse and kills with sword, hunger, death and ‘beasts of the earth’. And, he rides through a quarter of the earth.
Does he kill a quarter of everyone on earth?
No.
He has authority over a quarter of the earth to fulfill his assigned task. But, it doesn’t say that he kills everyone in that one quarter of the earth. But, the number of people who die might be equal or surpass a quarter of the world’s population. Depending on what quarter of the earth he is given to ride, it is easy to see two billion people dying in the worst way possible.
Africa is extremely vulnerable, and it represents 20% of Earth’s land mass. And, that continent is deeply dependent upon food imports. And, much of Asia is also very food insecure. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Do you remember what we talked about last time?
Right. The Black Horse.
That horse is scarcity. It represents having to work a whole day to get enough food to eat. It means that everything will be very, very expensive. That is an extremely fragile state for the world to be in, and you could imagine what would happen if things got worse than that.
It would be Death.
Energy Is Life
Remember that without fossil fuels – specifically natural gas and oil – we cannot make enough fertilizer to grow our crops or provide enough fuel for tractors to plant and harvest enough food to feed our current population. It’s just not possible. In fact, our planet cannot support more than three billion people using the farming techniques that we used before the discovery of the Haber Process. The ability to create nitrogen fertilizer and the invention of the farm tractor, makes it possible to feed eight billion people. If our access to energy collapses, billions will die.
The problem is that our sources of energy are not limitless. And with more and more people demanding a larger and larger share of the energy that we produce… eventually, we’ll run out of road and go over the cliff. And no, I haven’t joined the climate morons or the save-the-wales luddites. We’re talking real science and real engineering.
Any competent petroleum geologist will tell you that we’ll run out of oil and natural gas at some point in the future. When you ask them when that will happen you’ll get fuzzy answers. Ask them when we hit the peak in energy production, and they’ll change the subject.
The good news is that we were wrong about when we would hit peak oil.
The bad news is that we weren’t all that wrong.
The only reason why we survived the oilpocalypse of 2005 and 2006, is that we threw massive amounts of money at hydraulic fracturing and hydraulic fracturing research. That titanic effort saved our bacon, but we can’t be sure how much extra time that bought us. Fracked wells die pretty quickly, and we have to keep drilling and drilling and drilling to keep up oil production. And Joe Biden wants to stop that.
Enter The Insane
How can the Biden administration be so completely insane?
Because climate hysteria helped get him elected.
Joe Biden and every politician like him will do their very best stamp out oil and gas production in the US as quickly as possible. They have already denied leasing permits and stopped the building of key infrastructure like the Keystone pipeline from Canada. That’s utterly insane, but at least America isn’t Germany.
Why Germany?
Well, they decided that destroying their economy was a good idea.
Germany created a massive industrial juggernaut fueled by natural gas and oil from Russia. They also shut down their nuclear reactors and were about to close their last three, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Germany’s response?
Lignite coal. The dirty kind.
Burning dirty coal will keep some of their industry going, but not enough. We are already hearing reports of German manufacturing heading out of Germany as quickly as possible. Their economy will never recover from this, and it is all due to very, very foolish government policies. The economic center of the EU will now shift to France, who did not shut down all their nuclear power plants, even though they have been badly maintained.
Such insanity is part of the reason why it’s going to be hard to predict the end of our ability to produce energy. Crazy runs Europe and North America, and it might destroy us long before we dive into the energy abyss.
Anti-Nuclear Madness
However, if we could build enough nuclear power plants, and build them fast enough, (like China is doing), we might see a delay in the ride of the Four Horsemen. I know that sounds a bit crazy, but the access to energy was the reason for World War I and II, two invasions of Iraq, the current war in Ukraine and the civil wars in Ethiopia and Syria. And while there are other elements to those wars, the central point was – and shall always be – energy. And, as our access to fossil fuels gets harder and harder, it would be logical to switch over to nuclear power. But, we are so insanely fearful of nuclear energy, that many would rather our civilization die, than build nuclear power plants.
If you think that I’m wrong, consider Germany’s hysterical rejection of nuclear power. The Green Party (Die Grünen) currently runs the German government, and they are fanatically anti-nuclear. Fission reactors are Darth Vader to them, and they would rather burn really dirty coal and destroy Germany’s economy rather than go to ‘The Dark Side’. Even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced them to stop importing oil and natural gas, these mad Germans are still intent on destroying nuclear power, the only viable alternative.
Unfortunately, Germany isn’t the only victim of anti-nuclear hysteria. Here in Taiwan, we are completely dependent upon fossil fuels and have only three nuclear power plants running, with a fourth snared in so much red tape that it will never be completed.
Why?
Fukushima.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear power station to blow its top. There was only one cancer death from that nuclear incident, but everyone still became instantly terrified of nuclear power. Japan went as far as to close power stations across the country. And, this meant that they had to get their power from coal, oil and natural gas, increasing the speed with which those limited resources were being drained.
Nuclear is making something of a comeback, but it will be years before we will ever have enough those power plants to make up for what we are losing. So, even though I see declining energy resources driving us toward the ride of the Four Horsemen, madness will probably be an even bigger reason for their ride. We have insane governments beholden to hysterical anti-nuclear activists, and this will not end well.
For years, I thought that our civilization would end when the oil wells ran dry. But now, I’m not so sure. It seems that our own insanity will do that for us. But, I’ve taken you off the track, so let’s get back to talking about the ride of Death on his green horse.
Back To Death
Again, remember that western technologies like the Haber Process and advanced ship building have allowed the Third World to import fertilizer and food at extremely cheap prices. In fact, food from the West was so cheap that many farmers couldn’t compete, giving up their farms and moving to Delhi, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi, Chongging, Lagos and Kinshasa, turning them into some of the largest cities on earth.
What happens when the cost of natural gas gets so high that manufacturers must increase fertilizer prices or go out of business?
What happens when farmers in the West produce less food, because nitrogen, phosphates and herbicides got too expensive?
Will the the Wealthy West starve?
OF COURSE NOT!
You and I will have enough to eat. The Third World will not. This means that Africa and southern Asia will starve. The rich never starve. That’s a job for peasants, and lots of them will die terribly from hunger. But, hunger isn’t the only way that people will be killed when Death rides through. We still have violence, animals and disease to look at.
Why Disease?
There’s a huge reason why disease is included here. When people starve, they become vulnerable to starvation-related diseases. But, Revelation 6:8 doesn’t say disease or plague. It says ‘death’ – in the original Greek, thanato (θανάτῳ). And, ‘thanato’ is not disease, even though it is the right interpretation.
Why should we interpret the word ‘death’ as ‘plague’ or ‘disease’?
Look at how the rider of the Green Horse kills:
- sword
- hunger
- beasts of the earth
- death
If the other means of death are physical in verse eight, then the ‘death’ referred to will be physical, too. And, this is precisely why the ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, and RSV translate ‘thanato’ into disease and pestilence.
However, it was wrong for them to do that – especially with the ESV, which proclaims itself to be a scholarly translation. Translators should not change words in the Bible like this – especially, the Book of Revelation.
TRANSLATION NOTE: The ESV has a specially egregious history of twisting the Bible. What they did to Genesis 3:16 is so awful that it must have been a deliberate act of corruption. No Hebrew scholar would translate אל (pronounced: ‘ehl’) as ‘contrary to’. Yet, they did it anyway, and have refused to change it. Do not read a Bible translation that has been deliberately corrupted this badly.
The alternative assumption is that their scholarship is so bad, they cannot be trusted to translate the most basic elements of Hebrew.
Feel free to consider them either corrupt or pathetic. There’s no third alternative, and it ultimately doesn’t matter which it is. Dump your ESV and read a better translation like the NKJV or even the KJV.
But, back to ‘disease’. I said earlier that ‘become vulnerable to starvation-related diseases’, here’s why:
Our immune systems shut down.
When we don’t have enough to eat, our bodies consume fat reserves and muscle protein before shutting down other systems in the body. Fertility, lactation, blood-sugar levels, and mental processes all start shutting down when you starve. Eventually, when there’s nothing less important shut off, our bodies choose the immune system next. This is where starvation-induced disease starts to sweep malnourished areas of the world. And since starving people won’t have the ability to maintain good sanitation, horrible pandemics will sweep the Third World.
Violence And Animals
To make things worse, those with guns will take what food is left from those who cannot defend themselves. And, as famine weakens social structures and depopulates large areas of land, wild animals will move in, searching for food.
We already saw what wild animals did in cities around the world that were locked down during the most recent pandemic. Because people no longer walked the streets, animals expanded their territory. Most news organizations wrote glowing reports of how wonderful it was to see wild animals in the cities:
Coronavirus: Wild animals enjoy freedom of a quieter world – BBC
Wild animals are reclaiming cities and streets during coronavirus lockdown- NyPost
However, as adorable as these articles sound, this was not a good sign of things to come. When lions, tigers and bears lose their fear of humanity and start looking at us as just another source of nutrition, many will die.
Conclusion
Again, what were the key points of Seal Four?
“…And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6:8)
The ride of Scarcity (the Black Horse) will set the stage for Death and Hell to sweep through a quarter of the world. Those already living at the edge of starvation, will have no choice but to die by violence, hunger, disease or wild animals. The survivors will often be those willing to kill the weak to get what they need.
A lack of energy will be a core reason, but the madness of our own governments and institutions will play a big role. We chose badly when we allowed churches, schools and entertainment to create a society that would elect such awful leadership. But, even that ignores the biggest problem of all.
Sin.
We built our civilization upon a foundation of fornication, avarice and greed. We banned God from our schools, our laws and our lives and forgot the eternal price for that. And to make things even worse, when Death rides his green horse, and we will force the weakest to suffer and die.
The rich always have enough to eat…
…and will take food from the poor when they feel a little hunger.
I truly hope that you’ll be ready for this
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. – Proverbs 22:3
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Keep this ministry alive with a donation.
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