Copyright 2026 Michael A. Brown
‘They were given power over a fourth of the earth…’ (Rev. 6:8)
I am often perplexed as to why so many end-times teachers, when they teach about the fourth seal in Revelation 6:7-8, say that this means that a quarter of the world’s population will be killed off (by the four dreadful judgements of the Lord, cf. Ezek. 6:11-12, 7:15, 14:21). Perhaps they do not read the text simply as it is written, or perhaps they are simply ‘copying and pasting’ what other people have said without actually thinking for themselves, and so the error continues and spreads...
What does it actually say? It says that these four judgements will come upon a quarter of the earth, i.e. upon a quarter of its inhabitable land mass. When other verses in Revelation refer specifically to people, they state this plainly (e.g. Rev. 8:10,13; 9:4-6). So the words of Revelation 6:8 seem to be a geographical reference to a quarter of the world’s inhabitable land mass, rather than to a quarter of its population.
That this does not necessarily equate to a quarter of the actual world population is simply a matter of checking population densities. If the quarter referred to included, for example, Russia, Siberia, India, China and other parts of south east Asia, then the population that suffered under these four great judgements would certainly be greater than one quarter of the world’s population (in fact, it would be about 44%). However, if, again for example, it included the Americas in total, then the population affected would be much less than one quarter (in fact, about 13%).
However, I would certainly grant that, in the specific area affected by these four judgements, many, if not most, of the population of that area would perish, but it does not necessarily mean a total wipe-out of human life.
No comments:
Post a Comment