Wednesday Bible Study: The fourth seal

 

Rev 6:8  And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. 

Rom 8:1  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

I have to put these two verses together, to give you the full picture of the conclusion of the first four seal judgments.  Romans 8:1 in light of Revelation 6:8 is the greatest proof for the rapture- There is to be no condemnation of those who trust in Jesus.  I want to give you this, if you get nothing else from this, in very elemental terms.  Hades- Greek Hell- follows the deaths that come from these four horsemen.  EVERYONE WHO DIES THIS DEATH GOES TO HELL.  

Now, as the Tribulation- the "week of years" before the end- goes on, some will be given chances.  There will be 144,000 Jewish evangelists.  There will be the miraculous two witnesses who many believe are Elijah and Moses.  And there will be a mighty angel that proclaims one last chance.  But not for this judgment.

A quarter of mankind.  We don't know how many that will be, what with the believers removed, how much larger the population will be at the time, etc.  If we went by what the population of the earth is right now, it would make for 2 BILLION deaths.  To get a grasp on that, consider:  All the wars of the 20th century combined killed an estimated 187 million.  That is 9 percent of 2 billion.  All the famines of the 20th century took another 70 million- another 3.5 percent.   At the current rate of all deaths per year, this would be about 35 years worth of deaths all crammed into one spot in time.

There are four causes of these deaths- war, famine, sickness, and wild beasts.  500 million each?  Brian Martin in 1983 estimated 500 million could die from radiation in a nuclear war, so maybe.  Think on this:  What kind of world is it when animals can kill 500 million people?  You can only get over a million deaths by animal per year if you count mosquitoes passing on malaria.

This horseman is called by the Living Creature with the face "like an eagle flying".  Eagles soar to the highest parts of the sky; Isaiah explains to us that Hell is in the opposite direction:

Isa 14:9  Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. 

Isa 14:10  All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? 

Isa 14:11  Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. 

Isa 14:12  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! 

And weaken the nations he has- through his Anti-Christ, his wars, his human-created famine... and it only gets worse.   Unless of course, Romans 8:1 lives in you.