The Lamb opens the fourth seal and the fourth ‘living creature’—flying eagle—says: “Come!” Then the pale horse appears with its rider.
The pale colour ‘chloros’ is also translated as green,1 the colour of grass. The pale colour has to do with leprosy in Leviticus 13:49 and 14:32. And the rider has a name: ‘Death’, and death and the realm of the dead (Hades) follow him. The four horsemen ride out one after the other but also alongside each other. And these last three horsemen are given the power to afflict a quarter of the earth with death, war, hunger, pestilence, infectious diseases and the wild beasts of the earth.2 War leaves a trail of destruction behind it. War is followed by hunger as its first effect, followed by infectious diseases. One can also think of these ‘wild beasts of the earth’ as microscopically tiny ‘beasts’ like germs, bacteria, viruses and other ‘living’ causes of disease – the smallest living ‘wild’ animals. The Greek word ‘therion’ is also used for the ‘beast’ that comes up out of the sea of nations.3 How the plagues4 of the wild beasts, frogs, mosquitos, flies, locusts, pestilence and boils threatened the people of Egypt! These ‘plagues’ now takes place on a worldwide scale. The wages of sin is death5 and the great ‘death’ now commences—the one the Lord warned against in Leviticus 26.6 Whoever forsakes God must fear affliction upon affliction. When the ‘full measures’ are there nobody can stop the process of God’s wrath. Then the incredible patience of God has come to its limit.
Genesis 15:16 (NIV) for instance says: “In the fourth generation your descendants [Israel] will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” For over 400 years (!) apparently the people of Israel had to remain in Egypt suffering under the increasing pressure of slavery, before they could be set free by the Lord. Because the Lord had so much patience with the Amorites living in the Promised Land of Canaan despite their incredible sins like child-sacrifices, immoral sexual practices like temple-prostitution serving their demonic ‘gods’. He in His mercy gave the Amorites apparently enough time to repent and convert. But one-day: ‘enough is enough’. Then the judgment of God sets in and cannot be stopped anymore. This is not just true in regard of godless nations, there is also a limit in God’s patience with the wrong-doings of Israel. For instance in Ezekiel 5:5-12 the Lord says: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against My laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected My laws and has not followed My decrees. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed My decrees or kept My laws. You have not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I Myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents [cannibalism because of hunger]. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds [fulfilled by punishment: Babylonian Captivity 6th century BC]. Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because you have defiled My Sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I Myself will withdraw from you; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.”7
And yet there still is a deep significance of God’s love in these trials and tribulations, even in the opening of these seals and the riding out of these horses. Because the Gospel is still riding out with them. The preaching of the Gospel is accompanying them – the white rider on the white first horse. Jesus’ call is still going out: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”8 The warning trials and tribulations in war, hunger, pestilence and death are still happening to bring people to turn around, to repent and convert and to drive them into the arms of the only One who can save them, Jesus, the crucified One.9 There is still time for sinners to fall down on their knees, as tired sinners, at the foot of the cross, like Wagner, the composer, at the end of his life did – to the great dismay of his friend Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher. Richard Wagner went from full heathenism to a ‘mystical’, a true inner Christian faith, by bowing down before the cross of Jesus and surrendering all to Him. Friedrich Nietzsche taught the Übermensch’—the super race—where the Bible shows that that will be the ‘beast’, Anti-Christ and the final culture of ‘Babylon’. Producing ‘super-human’ beings?
Christ was not a ‘superman’. He was known as the least of men,10 but He became the Saviour and Redeemer and the coming King, powerful as the One and only true ‘Superman’! He is the first One of new, resurrected human beings, glowing of everlasting life, who will live forever and ever!
• The notion of the ‘Übermensch’, the Aryan super race, was deeply rooted in the Nazi’s “Third Reich” ideology in Germany. The notion of evolution with everything getter better and better all the time, was being taught at the German universities. This was coupled to the idea of racial superiority. Leading to the concept of ‘mankind’ evolving from primitive specimen of ‘Untermenschen’ to today’s Homo Sapiens. But now on to the next step! Let’s produce by science and technology a new type of ‘man’: ‘superman’’! It led to the urge to exterminate the ‘rats’ of human society, namely the Jews. They were considered to be ‘sub-human’ and a danger for the rest of mankind. But also the mentally weak, the crippled and disabled, and homosexuals as well as Christians faithful to the Bible had to be eradicated. Today some people fear that by ‘genetic engineering’ again attempts will be made to produce the next step on the evolutionary ladder of ‘man’: ‘superman’.
• Adolf Hitler already tried to do that by experiments in Lebensborn. ‘Lebensborn e.V.’ (literally: “Fount of Life”) was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the goal of raising the birth rate of Aryan children of persons classified as racially pure and healthy based on Nazi racial hygiene and health ideology. ‘Lebensborn’ provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of these children by likewise racially pure and healthy parents, particularly SS members and their families. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalised by the Nazis for disabled children, but strictly punished otherwise.’
• We know better than God’ was the title of a TV-documentary in the Netherlands, talking about gen-technologies, like reconstructing DNA. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is a long molecule that contains our unique genetic code. Like a recipe book it holds the instructions for making all the proteins in our bodies. So scientist think they can reconstruct the DNA, to ‘create’ a new and better kind of human beings. Frightening. Although such advances in technology have scored some positive results in fighting hereditary diseases.
Bible References:
1.Revelation 8:7, 9:4; Mark 6:39 2.Jeremiah 14:12; Ezekiel 14:21 and 5:11–17 3.Revelation 13:1 4.Exodus 7–10 5.Romans 6:23 6.Leviticus 26:14–26 7.Ezekiel 5:11 8.Matthew 11:28–29 9.1 Corinthians 2:2 10.Luke 9:48; Philippians 2:5–11
