FAMINE

So you think you know what famine is. You have seen the pictures, how thin they are. They look so..... so..... well you know what I mean. I mean... well can't they do something to look just a little better, after all, being hungry is no excuse to let yourself go like those people have ... well you know what I mean. All those bugs and fly's on them and they just don't care. They don't even try to brush them off.

Its not all that bad being hungry. Why, I even went without eating for a day or two myself. It wasn't half bad. It did get little rough once when I walked past a restaurant and smelled that roast beef cooking, why I even had visions of piles of potatoes and gravy. Now that was hard to pass up but if I can go without eating for a few days then they can too. Besides, what are they trying to do, make me feel guilty or something. I sent a dollar to help, that's enough.

While there are some people in this country that are really hungry, there hasn't been any lately that came anywhere near to what real hunger is. Not like those stick people in Africa. Not like the descriptions of hunger in the bible.

Those people are not fasting for the fun of it, and certainly not by choice. You think that if you give up an extra donut that you are really going hungry. The people in this country do not have the slightest concept of what famine is.

It is not having any food at all!! How would you like to sit down to your normal dinner and then only take one bite every two or three days. It wouldn't be very long before you wouldn't be brushing away the fly's either, you wouldn't have the strength

In Revelation chapter 6 verses 5 and 6 tells us that when the third seal is broken on the scroll, that a third rider is sent out as judgment on the earth. This rider is given authority to kill with famine (starvation). He is riding a black horse which indicates death. He is carrying scales which speak of a careful rationing of food.

Normally, a 'penny' (a Roman denarius, a days wages in Palestine in Jesus' day, Mt.20:2) would buy eight measures of wheat or twenty-four of barley. During this famine condition, the same wage will buy only one measure of wheat or three of barley.

In other words, there will be only one-eighth of the normal supply of food. That the wine and oil will not be hurt evidently means that luxury food items will not be in short supply, but of course most people will not be able to afford them.

Wars usually bring shortages of food, but this will be on a scale never before seen by man. This will be world wide. How bad can it get?

Let us look at history. At the famine that accompanied the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, Famine and its accompanying visitation of pestilence ravaged the crowded population within the walls.

In Lamentations 2:11, children will faint or collapse in the street.

In Lamentations 2:12 and 4:4, children will cry for food and drink, there will not be any mothers milk for the new born, The mothers will not have even enough food for their bodies to produce milk.

In Lamentations 2:21, both the young and old will die and be left where they drop on the ground in the streets, no one will care or have the strength to move or bury them.

In Lamentations 4:3, mothers will abandon their children. They will be turned out to live or die on their own.

In Lamentations 4:5, the people will dig through animal manure for the undigested bits of grain for their own food.

In Lamentations 4:7-8, they will look like skeletons. Remember the pictures of people in some of the nations of Africa in the early 1990's and now, or pictures of survivors from Hitler's death camps of the 1940's? Remember the ribs that show, the stick arms and legs, almost like you could see right through them.

In Lamentations 4:10, and 2 Kings 6:28-29, they cook and eat their own children.

In Ezek. 5:10, parents will eat their own children and children will eat their parents. Cannibalism has come to light quite a few times in this century, And I don't mean the ritual cannibalism that some African and Polynesian tribes practiced, but rather the eating of human flesh to stay alive. People stick their nose up at a lot of different foods, like rats, bugs, insects, ..... that is until they really get hungry.

In 2 Kings 6:25, for those who have money, one ass's head sold for 80 pieces of silver or about 2 1/2 months pay and 1/2 pint of bird droppings sold for 5 days pay. What did they do with bird droppings? Why they ate it of course, it was all the food they could get, remember picking through the animal manure in Lamentations? Along with the famine comes pestilence (Ezek. 5:12; 1 Chr. 21:12).

As bad as the famines are above, the one in Revelation will be worse than these and will be world wide. Be aware that on opening the first four seals, 1/4 of the worlds population will be killed. That will be one person in four, every fourth man, woman, and child in the world will die. Rev. 6:8 And with the sounding of the 6th trumpet there will be 1/3 of the remaining population will die. That means that within three to four years, a total of 1/2 of the population of the Earth will die. And that is, if you look around you now, 1/2 of everyone that you see will be killed during the first part of the tribulation period. Rev. 9:15,18 There will yet be those who die for refusing the mark of the Beast, for refusing to worship the Image of the Beast, and this number is an unknown. Rev. 7:9, 14

The only Famine that our country knows, is the Famine of God's Word in our hearts. And our fellow country men are deliberately starving themselves to death. They would rather starve than to feed on His Word. May God have mercy on their souls.

The End