The Ashen Horse: Pestilence and Death

[Revelation 6:7-8] “When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

The original Greek word for “ashen” or “pale green” (χλωρός/chloros) refers to a yellow-green or pale green color, from which the English word “chlorine” is derived. The rider of the ashen horse represents pestilence and death. Jesus himself prophesied that before his return, “there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences” (Luke 21:11).

Throughout human history, plagues have been a persistent shadow. The earliest recorded pandemic originated in Athens around 432 BC, then spread to Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, taking the lives of two-thirds of the population in those four countries. About 60 years after the Book of Revelation was written, the Antonine Plague broke out in the Roman Empire, killing an estimated 5 million people. In the mid-to-late 20th century, endemic, epidemic, and pandemic diseases caused the deaths of 10% to 90% of the population in infected regions.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, several plagues have erupted, the most familiar of which is the coronavirus disease of 2019. In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared it a “global pandemic.” Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to spread worldwide, with rising death tolls, increasing infections, and new variants posing fresh challenges to prevention. Humanity has suddenly discovered that this beautiful world is full of risks and that modern medicine is, at times, completely helpless. Therefore, we should not be attached to the world, for it is full of a deadly virus that no one can escape or be immune to: sin. While the world panics and trembles in the face of death, we should remember that the Lord who watches over the church holds “the keys of Death and Hades.”