Black Horse

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying "A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!" Rev 6:5,6

This horse brings famine on the earth. We are not told what causes the famine, but the results are made very clear. The Greek measure, translated here as a quart, was a "choinix". It was the daily ration for a soldier in active service. The coin mentioned is a denarius, which was the equivalent of a day’s wages. John saw a famine so severe, that a daily ration of wheat will cost a day’s wages. Barley was a little cheaper as it was considered to be of poorer quality. The situation will be so severe that ordinary people will need all that they can earn to buy food.

The wealthy will not be affected. Luxury items like oil and wine are not to be damaged. They are not essentials but will be more readily available. The real shortage will be for basic food items.

Zechariah tells us that the black horses move towards the north. The European nations to the north of Israel came out of the old Soviet Union.  Most people do not realise that these nations are experiencing terrible poverty.  The collapse of communism did not bring prosperity, but tipped these nations into acute poverty.  The Black Horseman is currently at work in all of these nations, including Russia itself.

Russia itself is in the midst of medical and social disaster. Old diseases like diptheria and new ones like AIDS are decimating the population. Hunger is widespread. The population is declining by nearly a million per year. Some experts are forecasting that by 2050 the population of Russia will have declined by 50 million to about 95 million.

Russia’s health problems range from alcoholism to tuberculosis, but increasing rates of HIV infection are accelerating Russia’s demographic crisis. 

Sexually transmitted diseases are also growing rapidly. Syphilis infection rates in Russia are among the world’s highest. The death rate from syphilis has increased 44-fold since the Soviet collapse. The infection rate is now a disturbing 234 per 100,000 people.

These diseases and others are crushing what is left of Russia’s health care system, which in turn accelerates the demographic decline. The mortality rate of Russian women who die in childbirth has increased to 44 per 100,000 people, 2.5 times the European average.

Russia’s suicide rate is now 40 per 100,000, one of the highest in the world. The number of registered alcoholics in Russia has doubled since 1992 to reach 2.2 million. More than 110,000 of these alcoholics are aged 12-16.

Roughly 50 percent of Moscow’s residents live below the poverty line.  Almost one-third of Muscovites of draft age – the healthiest portion of the population – have been deemed ineligible for the draft for health reasons. This poverty is the work of the black horseman. (much of this information comes from www.stratfor.com).

The black horseman has also been at work in eastern Europe. The collapse of Communism did not bring prosperity to the countries that came out of the old Soviet Union. Fifty years of Soviet rule left their economies dependent upon Russia. All of the CIS states are almost totally dependent upon Russia as an export market. Since the August 1998 financial crisis, Russia has cut back drastically on imports both from the West and from the other CIS states, substituting them with local goods. Inter-CIS trade has dropped by more than 50 percent since 1997. The situation east of the so-called Belgian curtain (a line that skirts the former Soviet border, excepting the slightly more prosperous Baltics) is dire, especially in rural areas.

Rural Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine have seen a collapse in living standards since 1991. Ukraine has some of the best farmland in the world, (freshly ploughed the soil is jet black), but it exports pitifully little produce. Belarus, the richest of the CIS (states apart from Russia) has a per capita income less than one-fifth that of Portugal, the EU’s poorest member. Moldova, the worst case, now has GDP which is only a little more than 10 percent of what it was at the beginning of the decade.

Eastern Europe’s villages seem to have returned to the 19^th century. Across the region large areas of land have been reduced to a kind of medieval strip-farming, with slices of field just large enough to support a family, but not large enough to compete in any market. Villages have reverted to survivalism. Pathetically, the symbol of post-communism is the hoe, the cheapest farming tool available. Tractors have been replaced by rows of people bent double in the sun.

Malnutrition is rife. Villages eat less food and of lower quality; the consumption of meat has halved. The incidence of tuberculosis and hepatitis has doubled in the region. Life expectancies have been reduced by five to ten years. Illiteracy in the poorer villages has tripled.

In the cities, the situation for most people is not much better. Unemployment levels are high, and those in work often do not get paid. Food is expensive and poor quality and sickness and disease is rampant. For the wealthy few, however, things have never been better. The "Oligarchs", who seized control of the state controlled businesses as they were privatised, have become enormously rich. With the removal of trade barriers, they have been able to move their wealth to the West and have access to western consumer goods.

Reading a description of the situation in Eastern Europe in the "Economist" (23 September 2000), I was reminded of the Black Horse. The poor have to work all day just to get enough to eat, but for the rich, the wine and oil flow freely. The situation is no better in the Central Asian republics or in the Caucasus nations.

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