In 96 A.D. the Apostle John, having been taken forward in time in a vision, watches as the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ) opens the third seal of the book written by Daniel the prophet generations earlier while the Jews were enslaved in Babylon because of their rebellion against God.  John has been commanded to record the entire vision in writing so that future generations would have access to it.  The vision Jesus is showing him has been long in coming.  Originally given to the Prophet Daniel, this look into the future was designed to reveal to a future generation why the world in which they would living came to be.  The vision would also reveal to them where they are on God’s historical time-line.  God’s people living in that generation would know that their Messiah was soon to arrive.  Though they would not know the exact time of His arrival, they would recognize that the times of the Gentiles, when heathen ruled the world, was coming to an end and that the millennium, when God and His saints would rule the world, was about to begin.

Upon writing what God had shown him in vision and sealing it, Daniel told God that he did not understand its meaning.  God explained that it was not for him to understand what he had “seen,” recorded and sealed, but that in the last days He would unseal the book.  At that future time men would understand the vision and would proclaim its meaning to God’s true saints.  Others, hearing the same message, would dismiss God’s Words.

Generations later John is watching the seals of that book being opened.  He was seeing scenes which men would ponder, try to interpret and speculate about for many centuries to come.  However, like Daniel before him, John was being shown the future in the form of symbols.  By using symbols God was telling John that the time for understanding his and Daniel’s futuristic books was still to come.  Some 1800 years would pass before the Almighty would reveal the meaning of the symbols found in the book called The Apocalypse–the revelation.  When that time came He revealed the mystery of the symbols to one man–an American advertising executive named Herbert W. Armstrong.  The time was the mid-1930’s.  Ironically, the Lord had chosen to reveal the contents of Daniel and Revelation to a carnal, self-centered, ego-driven man during the worst decade the world had ever experienced–the Great Depression which, as had all disasters that had come before it, had been brought on by mankind’s wickedness.  Incredible light was being revealed during a period of extreme darkness.  Let us now allow John to tell us what God was revealing to him as he watched His Lamb continue to reveal the future of mankind.

In Revelation 6:5,6 John writes that when the Lamb opened the third seal a black horse appeared, and upon it sat a man holding a pair of balances in his hand.  Then a voice was heard proclaiming that a time of food shortage–famine–was on the way.  Famine is normally caused by the lack of rain which is necessary for vegetation to grow.  Drought rids an area of vegetables and fruits as well as meat in that animals produce meat by eating the vegetation.  Starvation is the end result of famine.  Famine is sometimes caused by war.  During a time of war people cannot grow crops to eat and feed their animals for fear of being killed.  As a result people starve and animals die.

By the time the Lamb opened the third seal the white horse rider (false Christianity) and red horse rider (war) have been galloping across the earth’s surface since being loosed by the removal of the first and second seals.  They will continue their respective rides together until the Second Advent.  The loosing of the black horse rider–famine–on false religion-plagued and war-ravaged mankind, would cause the deaths of millions of people throughout the world during the last days her final era which began on the Day of Pentecost 31 A.D. with the founding of the New Testament Church.

History reveals that famine has been responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings, not to mention animals.  When a horse and its rider invade men’s lives, sin–rebellion against God’s Law/Word (1 Jn. 3:4)–is inevitably the reason.  Let us study some of the more deadly famines that have plagued mankind throughout history.  The Chalisa famine claimed upwards of 11,000,000 souls.  Two Chinese famines took approximately 70,000,000 more lives.  In ancient Sumeria, tyrannical governments took the lives of many people by cutting off their water supply, thereby preventing them from irrigating the land which was necessary to grow crops.  The Irish Potato Famine caused the population of Ireland to diminish by 25 percent due to starvation and emigration.  Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Josef Stalin’s Holdoomor killed as many people as died during World War II (66,000,000).

In these modern times approximately 30,000 people die from malnutrition every day, two-thirds of them are children.  In this sense we are our children’s keepers.  Innocent children die by the millions because the adults of the world choose to obey Satan rather than God.  Being hard of head and stiff of neck, man simply refuses to bow to his Maker.  Because of this the horsemen continue to ride.

An incredible irony relative to famine is revealed in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 where the Lord promises to bless those who obey Him with “rain in due season.”  But, some respond, billions of people throughout history have never heard of God and Jesus Christ because they have no access to the Holy Bible.  They suffer along with, and to the same extent, as those who do have access to God’s Word but refuse to obey it.  This truth elicits the question: Isn’t God punishing the Biblically ignorant unjustly?  To hear God’s answer to that legitimate question let us turn to the Book of Romans, chapter one verses 18-20 where He, through the Apostle Paul, tells us that HE PUNISHES ALL MEN WHO SIN, including those who have no knowledge of Him or His Word because: “that which may be known about God is MANIFESTED IN THEM, for God has SHOWN IT (knowledge of Him) TO THEM (all men) and it is clearly seen, being UNDERSTOOD BY THE THINGS THAT HE HAS MADE (everything in the universe), including His eternal power and Godhead.  THEY (ALL MEN) ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.”  God gives to human beings knowledge of His existence and power in the same way that He gives newborn children the knowledge to suck.  Without this innate “knowleged,” a child would soon starve to death.  Knowledge of God and a sense of right and wrong are inborn in man.  This is proved by the fact that people who have never heard of the Biblical God fear, worship and obey gods of some kind.  Historically, people have feared and worshiped such things as rock formations, the sun, the planets, animals, dead ancestors, reptiles, fish, etc.  MAN INNATELY KNOWS THAT THERE IS SOME ENTITY THAT IS GREATER THAN HIMSELF WHO RULES THE WORLD IN WHICH HE LIVES.  HE KNOWS THAT THIS ENTITY HAS RULES OF BEHAVIOR THAT HE MUST OBEY.  MAN KNOWS RIGHT FROM WRONG.  GOD SENDS THE HORSEMEN BECAUSE MAN CHOOSES THE WRONG.  L.J.