The Third Seal

By Ashley R. Clarkson
1 August, 2002

"And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand." - Revelation 6:5

A famine of Biblical proportions

Where there is war, there is famine. The two are indisputably linked together. There is always the destruction of property, the feeding of massive armies, refugees and of course the labourers themselves being called off to war. The Tribulation will be no different.

The two World Wars are excellent examples of the effects of war on food distribution. In both wars, the mobilisation of men who would normally be working the fields or manning factories that produced foods for consumption meant that it was more difficult to feed the population. Particularly when food must go in a first priority to the soldiers who are fighting, as they will win the war, not so much the ones at home. Add in the factors of collatoral damage (that is, civilian deaths and destruction of farms and food preparation centres) and you have a recipe for major food shortages. Having laid this information on the table, let us look at the scriptures.

The Third Horseman

"And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." - Revelation 6:5-6

At first glance this passage appears cryptic, but let us break it down further. Firstly we must note the colour of the horse - as with the two previous horsemen this is symbolic. Black is a colour long linked with three things - famine and plague, and the usual end result - death. Secondly, notice the balances in the hand of a rider. Balances were often used for comparisons such as exchanges of money, or for measuring exchanges of items for other goods. Next we are given a price for wheat and barley, and told that the prices for oil and wine should not be touched.

Back in the days (the times of John, who penned the book of Revelation) the staple diet for any average person was wheat, or for the poor, it was barley. The measure of wheat, or three measures for barley, was the minimum sustenanance that was required per person per day to survive. A penny, whilst not representing an awfully large sum these days, was a reasonable sum of money back then, probably representing the average earnings of an average worker for one day. What this suggests about the Tribulation is bad news for those of us who do not earn large sums of money in a day, or are not part of the top 1% of the population who are rich. The rarity of food and the demand placed on it by warring armies means that while demand is decreasing in some respects through deaths, it is decreasing in supply on a far more rapid scale. Those who have ever taken an economics course will know immediately what the result of such an action is - for those with less of an idea of what I am saying, suffice to say that prices will shoot through the roof like a skyrocket through a paper sheet. This means that suddenly the husband...pardon my political incorrectness...the worker of the family will not be able to use his/her earnings in a manner to feed more than him/herself. The horrifying images of famine and deaths we see so often on the news from Africa will suddenly hit the Western World, with very similar results.

For the poor at least, times are getting desperate. For the rich among us, times will be hard, but they will not feel the immediate pinch. Notice how the prices for oil and wine are not being touched - these are the foods of the rich, and suggest that while the rest of the world starves, the rich will be able to survive for a short while on their superior buying power. This will not however, last forever, as we learn in James:

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days." - James 5:1-3

In other words, rapid inflation due to the sudden increase in prices will destroy the savings of the rich, similar to how many German families lost their savings during the great inflationary pressures of 1923 and 1924. Left without their treasures which they have stored away, they will end up in the same predicament as their poorer neighbours, scratching to survive in the rubbles of a once proud Earth.