Chapter Fifteen – The Black Horse—Famine
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This chapter will be one of the most distressing things you will ever read. But it is necessary.
Most people, including almost all in the Western world, have never been hungry. They have never experienced and have no real knowledge or comprehension of the lives of those who awaken every day to hunger pangs they took to bed with them the night before—and that are still present when they go back to bed the next night. Millions of human beings across the world spend their every waking hour trying to find more food. This could be for either themselves or their children. A lucky few eventually solve the problem permanently—but the majority never do, and in time pay the final price: starvation.
Famine—severe shortage of food—has stalked the planet for 6,000 years. Countless millions have died, their names lost to history.
To most in the Western world, famine is just a word. The same is true for hunger and starvation. If these terms are used at all, it is generally in glib phrases such as “I’m starving!” or “I’m famished!”—when the reality is that a full meal had been eaten only hours before.
Each day, many millions of shoppers across the United States casually walk into supercenter grocery stores. One section holds lush produce from around the world: lettuce from California, oranges from South Africa, avocados from Mexico, kiwis from New Zealand. In another section, there are perhaps 60 varieties of sliced bread, next to hot dog buns, bagels, breakfast biscuits and French baguettes. Down another aisle sit 17 brands of canned soup and a dozen kinds of olives in glass jars. The meat section stretches along a wall of the store, with many options such as ground beef and steaks, cuts of lamb, chicken and pork, as well as seafood. People browse comfortably, checking, weighing, picking and choosing among endless choices—what they expect will always be available to them.
These citizens do not think twice about the abundance and blessings contained in just one such store—and they are everywhere. They wander the aisles, make selections, routinely pay the bill and go home. After all, this is everyday life!
Bigger Picture
For most of the world, however, such a grocery store is a faraway dream. They live an entirely different reality. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP):
- “1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat—more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union.”
- “907 million people in developing countries alone are hungry.”
- “Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people.”
- More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women.
- “65 percent of the world’s hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.”
Those in industrialized countries are shielded from the harsh reality of life in these impoverished areas. But this chapter is not about starvation in distant, remote places. It is not the written equivalent of a heartrending documentary about drought in Africa or pictures of starving babies in a news magazine. It is about who will die from hunger among those you know and love. Your neighbors—spouses—children!
Recall again Christ’s list of end-time trends in Matthew 24:1-51 “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines…” (Mt 24:7).
We have seen that the famines mentioned here are connected to the black horse of Revelation. Let’s reread the passage for context: “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…say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see you hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev 6:5-6).
We also saw that false Christianity leads to war. In turn, armed conflict invariably brings famine, which begets disease.
But, again, to those in well-off nations, these words seem implausible—impossible. They believe life will go on happily forever. Yet famines are on the increase now, and the world is poised for a never-before-seen global food crisis. The scene in Revelation 6:1-17 will soon come to pass!
A Familiar Cycle
The order in which Christ presented conditions before His Return reflects a cycle of events that has always accompanied mankind’s civilizations: “Kingdom against kingdom”—war—with famine and pestilence on its heels.
According to the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), the horrors of armed conflict often give way to famine: “Wars triggered most of the great famines of the late twentieth century. War not only contributes to the creation of famine, but also poses huge challenges to famine relief operations.”
The organization explains that war “drives farmers from their land, disrupts markets, destroys stores of harvested foods, creates food shortages that drive prices above levels that low income families can pay, and disrupts the agricultural cycle.”
As Jesus foretold, the black horseman of famine always rides in the wake of the red horseman of war—and the world knows this!
Famine means starvation, which quickly wears out the human body. With a sustained low-calorie diet, physical effects begin to show first: Fat deposits begin to shrink, as do organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. Malnourishment damages the walls of the intestines, making absorption of nutrients more difficult and causing chronic diarrhea. More obvious outward signs also appear: The body begins to retain fluid and the stomach becomes distended, hair loses its luster, eyes sink, and skin becomes paper-like, dull and inelastic.
In the final stages of starvation, the body’s immune system fails, opening the door to disease, or the third condition mentioned in Matthew 24:7: pestilences.
These are the same conditions that Jesus said signal the end of this age. Yet how can one know these three disasters mean mankind has entered the last days? Have they not persistently plagued mankind throughout history?
Again, famine has always stalked the planet. And again, when stating, “there shall be famines,” Jesus could only have meant that they will grow worse in number, scope, duration and intensitythroughout the world. They will also appear in regions that have never before seen famine, or at least not on any similar scale. Even First World nations are scheduled to be affected.
But how can you be certain?
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