The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

was a day's wages for the average man. This would in ordinary times buy eight quarts of
wheat, and a proportionate quantity of barley. This utterance implies great scarcity, indeed
famine, want. This is the symbol.
The fulfillment reveals a still further decline in the professed Church, and evidently refers
to those so-called teachers and bishops who, professing to be placed over the flock to feed
it, robbed the flock of spirituality and that which supported spiritual life. Discontinuing to
preach Christ and the Word, they substituted forms and ceremonies instead. There were
introduced at this time into the Church, formal fastings, celibacy, and asceticism as a socalled
means of sanctification. The development of these conditions was gradual
throughout the third century, and has continued ever since in the Romish Church and in
some others. We quote again from Lord's Old Roman World:
"It was not till the fourth century--when imperial persecution had stopped; when
Constantine [the Roman Emperor] was converted; when the church was allied with the
state; when the early faith was itself corrupted; when superstition and vain philosophy
had entered the ranks of the faithful; when bishops became courtiers; when churches
became both rich and splendid; . . . when monachists (monks) had established a false
principle of virtue, . . . that men of rank entered the Church. . . . The Church was not only
impregnated with the errors of Pagan philosophy, but it adopted many of the ceremonies
of oriental worship. . . . Communion tables became imposing altars typical of Jewish
sacrifices, and the relics of martyrs were preserved as sacred amulets. Monastic life also
ripened into a grand system of penance and expiatory rites. Armies of monks retired to
gloomy and isolated places, and abandoned themselves to rhapsodies and fastings and self
expiation. They were a dismal and fanatical set of men overlooking the practical aims of
life. . . . The Emperor decided points of faith."
Civil war, the symbol of the second seal, generally produces famine, that of the third; and
herein we see the close connection between both the symbol and the fulfillment of the
second and third seals.
If we are correct in our interpretation of the distinctive feature of the third living one--his
having a "face like a man"--as denoting intelligence, wisdom, it would represent that these
Divine qualities would need especially to be developed in the Lord's followers and
exercised in carrying forward the Divine purposes in this state of affairs in the professed
Church. All the real vital truths of Christianity had at this time been counterfeited by
Satanic influences to such an extent as to deceive nearly all of the professed Church,
indeed, nearly the whole world. It would, therefore, be only the exercise of Divine wisdom
on the part of Christ's true followers that would enable them to perceive the condition of
affairs, and to conduct themselves in harmony with the Divine purpose.
The fourth seal opened
"And when He opened the fourth seal, I heard the fourth living one saying, 'Come.' And I
saw, and behold! a pale horse, and one was sitting on him, whose name was death, and
hades followed after him; and there was given to him authority over the fourth part of the