by Christine Miller | Nothing New Press
The Greek word translated “pale” means a sickly pallor, when referring to persons. (The First Four Seals, 96-300 AD, pg. 27.)
Strong’s G5515 : chloros. adj. (a) green, Mk. 6:39; Rv 8:7; (b) pale, pallid; fig., the color of Death’s horse, Rv 6:8.
Jay P. Green, The New Englishman’s Greek Concordance and Lexicon, p. 919.
Pallid : “deficient in color : wan; lacking sparkle or liveliness.”
Webster’s Dictionary.
The weakness of the state spread to the military, and the weakness of the military encouraged barbarian invasions and revolts in the further provinces of the Empire (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 26).
“Such turmoil ruined the Roman army. The Northern barbarians were quick to realize the helplessness of the Empire. They crossed the frontiers almost without opposition and penetrated far into Greece and Italy; in the West they overran Gaul and Spain, and some of them even crossed to Africa.”
James Robinson and James Breasted, History of Europe: Ancient and Medieval, p. 263.
And behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a balance in his hand. I heard a voice in the middle of the four living creatures saying, “A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choenix of barley for a denarius! Don’t damage the oil and the wine! Rev 6:5b-6.
The Greek word “choenix” was a dry measure (almost equivalent to a quart); one of wheat was a daily ration for one man. A day’s wage for one man was a denarius (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 26).
Strong’s G5518 : a chœnix, n.f. a dry measure for grain, nearly a quart.
Jay Green, The New Englishman’s Greek Concordance and Lexicon, p. 919.
Thayer adds, “or as much as would support a man of moderate appetite for a day.”
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 669.
“While making food scarce, do not make it so much so that a chœnix (about a day’s provision of wheat, variously estimated at two or three pints) shall not be obtainable ‘for a penny’ (denarius, eight and a half pence of our money, probably the day’s wages of a laborer). … Ordinarily, from sixteen to twenty measures were given for a denarius. [Barley was] the cheaper and less nutritious grain, bought by the laborer who could not buy enough wheat for his family with his day’s wages, a denarius …”
Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown’s Commentary on Revelation Ch. 6.
The Christians, who were blamed for the troubles of the past century, were furiously persecuted … (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 28).
Diocletian’s intent in pursuing the persecution of the Christians was to eliminate them entirely, as most non-Christian Romans blamed them for the troubles of the last century. (The Fifth Seal: 303-313 AD, pg. 32.)
“Notwithstanding the efforts of the heathens to exterminate the Christians, and abolish their mode of faith, yet they increased so greatly as to become formidable by their numbers … and particularly excited the hatred of Galerius, the adopted son of Diocletian, who, stimulated by his mother, a bigoted pagan, persuaded the emperor to commence a persecution. It accordingly began on the 23rd of February, A.D. 303, that being the day on which the Terminalia were celebrated, and on which, as the pagans boasted, they hoped to put a termination to Christianity.”
John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, p. 53.
“In A.D. 250 the most violent persecution the church had yet faced was instigated by the emperor Decius (249-251). A general from the Danubian frontier, Decius was determined to have no nonsense from the Christians. In his eyes, they were the enemies of the empire. Their atheism was responsible for the many troubles in the realm.”
Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, pp. 74-75, emphasis added.
“The common people also, with their polytheistic ideas, abhorred the believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of the gods. They readily gave credit to the slanderous rumors of all sorts of abominations … practiced by the Christians at their religious assemblies and love-feasts, and regarded the frequent public calamities of that age as punishments justly inflicted by the angry gods for the disregard of their worship.”
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, p. 43.
See also Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, pp. 37-45, for the full discussion of Rome’s policy toward religions in general and Christianity in particular, and the causes of Christian persecution.
[The wars with the barbarians affected the population in almost every province, thus death by the sword.] … The entire … reigns of Valerian and his son (AD 254 to 268) … was one uninterrupted series of disorders and disasters. (The First Four Seals, pg. 28).
“Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. … But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the Barbarians, were entirely depopulated.”
Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, “Emperors Decius, Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part IV.