NEVER MORE WAR
What pain drives men to suffer the pangs of war… too, send their best and brightest to stand before the sword… too, bleed red the earth. Where comes this driving force and its counsel to war… to war, in our streets and back yards, too war in our living rooms, where our children sit reading of the glory of man. Shall we not suffer long for such a reproach before God; too, drive our swords into the very heart of our brothers?
Where comes this silent killer to steal their innocence of youth, to reap the tears of our daughters… and harvest the strength of our men… War is not Civil, so why call it civil war… War is not kind, nor benevolent, it asks not whom it takes… it is death unleashed, a pale horse, let loose upon a ripe field… It is a torrent, an unholy wind come to harvest our better nature. Why then do we boast of it, making heroes of our dead, building monuments to its cruelty?
Some would counsel it as a solution to the current divisions in our nation… others would embrace it as an expedient release for their fear and anger… while more calculate the profit in it. Many, a fool has engaged in the futility of war… were death is always victorious and peace soon finds itself once more at war… a never-ending cycle of man’s inhumanity toward his brother.
Let us find another route to settle our disputes… a better way to enjoy the fruit of the spirit and mankind's labor. For war knows only the bitter cold of the grave and the empty dreams of the dead. Let us no more counsel War… put it asunder, never more to call upon the bugles song, never more to hear the bark of cannon echo or the cry of men as they lay dying upon the blood-soaked Earth of their father’s heritage…never more, war.
By: Ronald A. Nelson
COL. US Army (ret.)
Let us solemnly consider the call to arms... let not fear counsel you nor anger become an ally. The next war will not be fought in foreign lands, it will not be vicariously viewed from your living rooms.... it will fill your halls and front yard with the violence of death unleashed... the Pale Horse of the apocalypse will run bridal deep in the blood of men... and it will all be performed in full technicolor before the eyes of our children and grandchildren. Death will be no stranger and every depravity know to mankind will stock our families... Civil War... brother against brother is the worst of wars... pray it never finds a place in our current or future history.
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Some very interesting facts regarding the PALE HORSE ... and the current plague and disease bring death to millions...
Revelation 6:8
Characteristically, the apostle John describes the fourth horse and rider using a paucity of verbiage: The horse is "pale," the rider's name is "Death," and "Hades" follows him. This is the extent of the biblical description, yet even so, these provide us with sufficient clues to deduce a cogent interpretation.
First, the horse's coat is a unique and otherworldly pale. The Greek word is chlooros, which we recognize as the origin of such English words as "chlorine," "chloroform," and "chlorophyll." It technically refers to a greenish-yellow color found in nature in the pale green of just-sprouted grass or new leaves (see Mark 6:39; Revelation 8:7; 9:4; these are chlooros' only other occurrences in the New Testament).
Secular Greek writers, however, did not confine chlooros just to sprouting plants. In The Iliad, Homer describes fearful men's faces with this term, suggesting a pallid, ashen color, and in other instances, it is the pale golden color of honey or the gray bark of an olive tree. Sophocles writes that it is the color of sand, while Thucydides applies it to the skin color of those suffering from plague.
It is this last description that is probably John's intended meaning; the color of the horse reminded him of the pale, greenish-gray color of a corpse or decaying flesh. The Phillips translation renders chlooros as "sickly green in color"; the New English and the Revised English Bibles, as "sickly pale"; the New Jerusalem Bible, as "deathly pale"; and the New Living Translation, as "pale green like a corpse." The fourth horse sports a coat only producers of horror movies would love!
Upon the back of this gruesome beast sits one whose name is "Death." This is another unique feature of this horseman, as none of the others receives a name. The Greek word is the normal word for "death," thánatos, suggesting on the surface a generic application of the term. However, this would be jumping to a conclusion, for the term is probably meant to be understood more specifically as "pestilence" or "disease."
The evidence for this meaning here derives primarily from the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. In several places, the Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew word deber, meaning "pestilence" or "disease," as thánatos. For instance, in Exodus 5:3, Moses and Aaron tell Pharaoh, "Please let us go three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence [Hebrew deber; Greek thánatos] or with the sword." This combination of translations also occurs in the fifth plague, that of the murrain or cattle disease: God tells Moses to inform Pharaoh, "There will be a very severe pestilence" (Exodus 9:3; see also verse 15). In a later instance, God warns Judah through Jeremiah, "I will send . . . pestilence among them, till they are consumed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers" (Jeremiah 24:10).
The most convincing piece of evidence for thánatos meaning "pestilence" in this passage comes from the mouth of our Savior in the Olivet Prophecy, as He describes the events leading up to His return. He prophesies to His disciples, "And there will be famines [third seal or horseman], pestilences [fourth seal or horseman], and earthquakes in various places" (Matthew 24:7). He does not use thánatos but loimós, which literally means "pestilence" or "disease." Once Jesus Himself weighs in, there is no argument. The pale rider brings death by disease.