The fourth horse and rider are about to emerge, following closely behind the second and third horsemen. (Remember, when the events of revelation begin to unfold, they will happen in rapid succession.)

When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. (6:7 NKJV)

When I first read this verse during my studies in prison, I said, “Come on, now. How could one-fourth of the world’s population, approximately one and a half billion people, be wiped out in such a short time by the beasts of the earth?”

In the Garden of Eden, God gave men and women dominion over the animal world: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’” (Gen. 1:26 NKJV).

Despite Adam and Eve’s decision to sin, man’s dominion over the animal kingdom has never been rescinded by God. Knowing this, I could not understand how the animals could suddenly become so dangerous to so much of mankind, as Revelation 6:7 states.

After all, if a herd of ravenous lions came rampaging down the streets of Chicago, with our many means of immobilizing them, we could minimize their destructive potential in a matter of hours, or days at the worst. If a herd of wild elephants invaded London, we could deal with that equally as well.

Yet the Scriptures clearly says that the animal kingdom will be a factor in decimating one-fourth of mankind.

As I frequently do when I find something in the Bible I cannot understand, I turned to the original Greek to see if I could glean some insights by studying the individual words in the verse. What I discovered was shocking!

The word translated death could also be translated as “plague or pestilence.”  The Living Bible translates it as “disease.”

For sometime I pondered the connection between diseases and animals. Then I began coming across new information linking the origins of deadly diseases, such as HIV—the virus that leads to the killer, AIDS—to monkeys.

There are at least 39 important diseases people catch directly from animals. There are at least 48 important diseases people get from the bite of bugs that bit an infected animal. And there are at least 42 important diseases that people get by ingesting or handling food or water contaminated with animal feces.

Some are as old as memory: rabies, bubonic plague, food poisoning. Others have only recently emerged: monkey pox, West Nile encephalitis, Legionnaires’ disease. And some, such as highly lethal bird flu, we fear even though they haven’t — yet — spread in humans.

Ebola Virus

It’s hard to think of a more horrible disease than Ebola hemorrhagic fever. Ebola virus is spread by contact with the blood or body fluids of an infected person. Does it come from animals? Probably. Monkeys and great apes get it — and people can get it from them when they butcher them for food. But monkeys die of Ebola, so they can’t be the ultimate host. Most researchers think there’s an animal out there harboring the virus. They just haven’t found it yet.

SARS

That SARS emerged in China’s Guangdong province seems sure. What’s not sure is where it came from. Some researchers think it may have come from an endangered animal known as a masked palm civet — like most exotic animals, a culinary delicacy in parts of China. Others find the evidence weak. Whether SARS evolved in animals or humans remains a matter of debate.

Influenza

One disease that’s definitely evolving in animals is influenza. And one place it’s evolving is none other than Guangdong, China, where animals are kept in close proximity to one another. Flu viruses tend to arise in ducks and geese. They spread to chickens and to pigs. Pigs can also get infected with human flu viruses, so they make a good mixing pot for new flu. When an animal or a person is infected with two different flu viruses, the viruses like to swap parts. Voilà! A new virus emerges.

Infectious disease specialists don’t wonder whether there will be a new worldwide flu epidemic. They only wonder when it will happen. There have been two recent close calls.  In 1997, lethal bird flu arose in the poultry markets of Hong Kong. People got infected and died, but the slaughter of millions of chickens stopped the virus before it learned how to spread from person to person. In 2001 and 2002, similarly bird flu viruses evolved in Hong Kong chickens. Fortunately, they didn’t spread to humans.

~Research from www.webmd.com Oct. 2010