Is the black horseman saddling his horse?

The seals kick off the Tribulation judgments. The first four of these are horses representing the Antichrist, war, famine, and sickness/death. The third seal's rider, Famine on the Black Horse, is holding a pair of scales in his hand. Bread was weighed this way during famines in Old and New Testament times and we know from Revelation 6:6 that during the Tribulation a quart of wheat that would make one loaf of bread will cost a day's pay. The Black Horseman is indicative of famine.

Famine during any epoch is a slow-moving disaster. It does not arrive suddenly like a hailstorm or a tornado. It takes root and spreads slowly. Famine is a process, not an event. That got me thinking about when the prophesied judgment of global a famine would begin. Although God can cause a famine to start suddenly because He can do anything, He did say that there would be birth pangs and birth pangs are part of a process that begins at a time certain (Israel created overnight) and continues in intensity until the birth. So the nature of famines and the fact of the prophesied birth pangs mean that famine would likely begin before the Black Horse and then continue in intensity until prophetic fulfillment during the trib. Backing up from the Third Seal judgment, when would have the prophesied Black Horseman famine begun? No one knows, but an internet-circulating map did catch my eye.

The conspiracy theorists and rumor mill news adherents have been forwarding a certain agricultural map. (left). It is from the Farm Service Agency. When farmers have experienced a 30% loss of any one crop in a county it can trigger a disaster request to the federal Farm Service Agency office in the affected state. I began searching for the map in context in order to confirm identity and because I wanted to see what other parts of the US were experiencing declared agricultural disasters. I found nothing. I let it percolate in my head while I went on with business.

Then yesterday I was reading the New York Times article titled "Closing out a season farmers want to forget", and came across this: "Plagued with inclement weather, disease and complications from both, farms throughout Connecticut, New Jersey and New York generally suffered one of the worst, if not the worst, growing season in memory. Mr. Botticello estimated his overall crop loss this year at about 45 percent. It takes a 30 percent loss of any single crop in a county to trigger a disaster request from the federal Farm Service Agency office in an affected state. Losses are still being tallied, but most counties in New York and New Jersey have been declared agricultural disaster areas, and Connecticut is awaiting word from the federal government on the same declaration for nearly all of its counties."

All or nearly all of CT, NY, and NJ declared agricultural disasters. Oh, my. Combined with an e-mail I'd sent out to my subscribers on Oct 31 (subscribe here) regarding reports that Illinois soybean and corn crops "are at their lowest levels in four decades because of the state's record rainfall, according to the Illinois Agriculture Department's statistics. Just 33 percent of the state's soybean crop has been brought in. The state's records don't ever show the harvest so slow," I renewed my search at the FSA site for the situation of declared agricultural disaster nationwide.

Meanwhile, I had reported a few days ago that Wal-Mart marketing execs told a group of economists that families are not eating at the end of the month, and lining up at midnight, waiting for their direct deposited checks to clear so they can buy food. And this news just out moments ago, that "U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that at least 49 million Americans (14.6%) are food insecure, the highest number ever recorded. At least 5.7 percent of Americans had their eating patterns disrupted at times because they lacked money for food, the report finds."(Source: Twitter BNO)

I could not find a similar large-scale map showing the Midwest's declared disaster areas that I'd seen circulated so I did the only thing I knew how to do, count them manually. I looked at each state's listed declared disaster counties, and applied a percentage against total counties in that state. I did this for all 50 states and Washington DC. Then I did the math and found that 53% of American's counties have been declared an agricultural disaster since July 1.

Further, there were 5 states where 100% of its counties had been declared an agricultural disaster: OK, ME, CT, DE, AL. Four states had 95% plus counties declared disasters: NY, NJ, FL, WA. Some NY farmers are declaring up to a 45% loss. So the disaster may be deeper than 30% in any given state and likely is.

That's a lot of numbers and information to take in, but the upshot is that here in America:

1. Since July 1st, over half of all of American's counties have been declared an agricultural disaster,
2. Families are not eating,
3. Birth pangs and Tribulation promise worse famine to come.