ForthSeal
 
 
The Fourth Seal
The Empire in Crisis 235-284 A.D.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death [pestilence], and with the beasts of the earth. Rev 6:8

The chaos of civil war and the crushing economic oppression prefigured by the second and third seals weakened the empire to the point where it could no longer defend its borders.

Suddenly, at the death of Alexander Severus in 235, the empire was invaded on all sides. The Goths poured over the Danube, the Franks and Alemanni crossed the Rhine and the Persians disrupted the East. The Roman Empire had never been beset by such an array of foreign enemies.


Four Sore Judgments
The Empire Suffers a Progression of Woes
When I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence. Ez 14:21

John Wesley in his notes on Rev 6:8 observed that "War brings on scarcity, and scarcity pestilence, and pestilence by depopulating the country leaves the few survivors an easier prey to wild beasts. And thus these judgments make way one for another in the order wherein they are here represented".

Rome almost fell under the weight of these cascading judgments. Famine ravaged the empire creating immense social crisis and fear. Then pestilence came as the result of scanty and unwholesome food. From A.D. 250 to 265, a plague raged without interruption in every province and city, and almost in every family in the Roman Empire. For some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome, and many towns were entirely depopulated.

As a result of the ghastly depopulation of the empire, wild beasts began to attack the remaining population.

The Pale Horse
An Era of Unprecedented Mortality
"The ruined Empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution." Gibbon

Expositors have no difficulty with the symbol of the pale horse. All agree it signifies death. The Greek word "chlorus" means greenish or pale. E.B. Elliot mentions that Constantine's father who lived in this period was called Chlorus for his paleness.

The early church historian Eusebius, writing of this period, said, "Death waged a desolating war with two weapons, FAMINE and PESTILENCE ... Men, wasted away to mere skeletons."

Gibbon wrote that as many as half of the inhabitants of the empire perished at this time while Niebuhr makes a more conservative estimate of about one third.

Not only was the population decimated but the empire itself appeared about to perish. However, two capable soldier-emperors, Claudius II and Aurelian turned the tide.

The Four Parts of the Earth
Diocletian Creates a Tetrarchy
And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth. Rev 6:8

The Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 284-305) put an end to this disastrous era. In 285, he divided the empire into four parts creating a "Tetrarchy" or "Rule by Four".

Many expositors agree with Jerome that the expression "the fourth part" should read "the four parts of the earth" and thus the prophecy prefigured this division.

To support this, it is mentioned that in Rev 8:8-10, the expression "third parts" is uniformly interpreted to signify the fact that the empire fell in three parts. (Goths, Arabs, Turks)

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