'Last Generation'
Rev 6:5-6 When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come and see." So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine."
Black horse – complete darkness, this will be during the time of great confusion worldwide.
A pair of balance – suggests fairness or unfairness, partiality, injustice, imbalance.
A denarius for a quart of wheat
A denarius for three quarts of barley
A denarius was a day's pay then
A day's pay to one is so low that it is insufficient to feed the family but on the contrary, it could be excessive (great imbalance in income). This will also be the time when money has lost its value and is trading at a portion its original value. A day's pay which was plentiful but overnight it is worth only a quart of wheat (great depreciation of money). At the same time, we will begin to see the great disparity of income between the rich and the poor nations.
Hurt not the oil (Israel)
and wine (Christians are the new wine).
During this financial crisis, almost all countries will be affected but Israel (oil) and Christian nations or the West (wine) will not be affected.
This 3rd Seal again did not affect the temple, Jerusalem nor Israel and therefore our Lord did not mention it in Matthew 24.
In mid 1990, there was great confusion when IT experts predicted the fear of the Y2K bug, that if computers were non-Y2K compliant, this may send out wrong signals to possibly set off nuclear arsenals hence destroying this world. Billions of dollars were spent by government agencies and big companies trying to prevent the Y2K bug from destroying their plants, operations, factories, etc.
This caused great confusions, fears, hopelessness, worries among the people. At the same time, many Christians were expecting the Lord to come back by the end of the millennium and this gave the non-believers greater insecurities and fears resulting in many accepting His saving grace.
In 1997, the stock market collapsed but within a few days; Israel, Christian nations and a few other nations recovered. South America, Africa and Asia were badly hit. This was later called the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Malaysia too was badly hit with the ringgit dropping to new lows daily forcing the Prime Minister to anchor it to the US dollar.
All these affected nations suffered great financial setbacks, but the West prospered causing the rich to be richer. Since then the imbalance of income has become wider and wider with the poor still earning US$2–3/day but the rich have grown from multi-millionaires in 1997 to billionaires in 2007 and are now multi-billionaires. This gap of imbalance of individual income is getting greater and greater and nothing can arrest it.
How great is His wisdom especially the way God described this Third Seal – during the darkest period on earth with threats of world destructions by Y2K bugs, then came the Asian Financial Crisis causing currency depreciation to many but blessings to Israel and Christian nations.
I believe the Third Seal was opened in 1997 during the Asian Financial Crisis hitting especially the third world countries but blessing the Christian nations to help others so that they will glorify the Father, but unfortunately this was not so. Since Y2K, Christians have become very covetous and worldly resulting in the gap between the income of the rich and the poor to widen greatly.
