Death, Hell, War, Famine Prevail during Fourth Seal

Revelation 6:7-8; During the fourth seal, from 1000 B.C. to the coming of our Lord, death rode roughshod through the nations of men, and hell was at his heels. Thus, the slain among the ungodly in this age of bloodshed—whether by sword or by famine or by pestilence or by wild beasts—were, at their death, cast down to hell. This is the millennium of those great kingdoms and nations whose wars and treacheries tormented and overran, again and again, the people whom Jehovah had chosen to bear his name. This is also the general era in which the Lord's own people warred among themselves and sent countless numbers of their own brethren to untimely graves.

Revelation 6:7-8; In 1095 B.C. Saul, the warrior-king, assumed the reins of power in Israel; it was in 1063 that David, a man of blood, slew Goliath and soon thereafter that he was recognized as king over all Israel. At Solomon's death in 975 B.C. the kingdom was divided with Israel and Judah for hundreds of years thereafter engaging in wars with each other and their neighboring kingdoms.

Revelation 6:7-8; In the early days of this seal, the mighty Assyrian empire held imperial sway over much of the "civilized" world and came again and again against the citizens of Canaan, taking the tribes and hosts of Israel into captivity some 760 years before Christ and again 40 or so years later.

Revelation 6:7-8; The Babylonian empire, known as the First World-Kingdom, sat in the spotlight of history from 605 to 538 B.C.; the Medo-Persian empire, as the Second World-Kingdom, ruled from 538 to 333 B.C.; it was in 332 that Alexander the Great conquered Persia; and in 60 B.C. that Julius Caesar formed the first triumvirate, with Imperial Rome rising to dominate the kingdoms of the world.

Revelation 6:7-8; It was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon who took Jerusalem and made Judah captive shortly after Lehi and his family and friends left for their promised land. And it was in the days of this empire that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were cast unharmed into the fiery furnace, and under the rule of the Medes and the Persians that Daniel found himself in the lion's den. It was in 536 B.C. that the exiled of Israel began to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple, and then, after half a millennium of war and trouble, it was 63 B.C. when Pompey subjugated Judea and the Roman yoke began to weigh as an unmerciful burden upon the necks of the Jews and later upon the followers of the lowly Nazarene. It was, of course, in 600 B.C. that Lehi left Jerusalem to father a mighty civilization in the Americas which, following the pattern of their old world kinsmen, soon divided into nations which opposed and slew their fellow American Hebrews in intra-Israelitish wars for hundreds of years.

Revelation 6:8; 8. Hell] See Revelation 20:11-15.

Revelation 6:8; To kill... with death] To slay with pestilence.