Revelation 6:7-8

Revelation 6:7: “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 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, and with the beasts of the earth.”

This is just a side-note, but it’s interesting that the second seal commented upon by the second beast, the third seal by the third beast, and the fourth seal by the fourth beast. It’s just something curious.

In these verses we see a “pale horse”, which I understand can also be translated as a “pale green horse”. Some have claimed that the rider is Islam, but the verse tells us that the rider is actually Death. Death rides forth and kills a quarter of the planet’s population, “with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth”.

It is horrifying to stop and realize that even though we are still in the early stages of the Tribulation, a quarter of mankind has already been killed. At today’s population that represents almost two billion people! It is an astonishing thing; death on that scale hasn’t been seen since the Flood. Even World War II only killed tens of millions! There has never been a conflict in all of recorded history that has killed billions.

This brings up an important point. There are some people who believe in a pre-wrath Rapture, which teaches that the Rapture will take place around the middle of the Tribulation. They claim that the Church will be delivered only from God’s wrath, and that His wrath doesn’t really begin until the midpoint of the Tribulation when the Antichrist enters the Temple and declares Himself to be God. The problem with this view is that the time of God’s wrath begins as soon as the Tribulation starts! In fact, Revelation 6:17 says that the day of God’s wrath has already begun, and the Tribulation has just barely gotten started. This puts an end to the mid-Tribulation rapture theory. The wrath starts at the beginning of the Tribulation, not its midpoint.

To recap, this is what we have so far: at the beginning of the Tribulation the Antichrist will launch a war against other countries, and the entire world will become engulfed in a world war. A terrible famine will break out and a quarter of the world’s population will die. And the Tribulation has only just begun.