Revelation Six - When The Four Horsemen Ride
Barrels of ink have been spilled over countless attempts to explain Revelation 6, and I have yet to find a single one that makes sense. Even my own efforts in years past have left a lot to be desired. So as I try once more to bring comprehension to the incomprehensible, you should expect me to be no more successful than anyone else. The only difference is that I will raise points that maybe you haven’t seen before. I will try not to bludgeon you with carefully crafted presuppositions. Well at least, not more than once… ———————————— Keep this ministry alive with a donation. And, read my two books: If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on Twitter. ———————————— Revelation 6-7: The Seven Seals And The Redemption Of IsraelLaying Out Revelation – Part 4We’ve already been through The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in rather great detail. For those of you who would like a deeper look, go here: Those represent the first four seals opened by Jesus in Revelation 6. So far, bad theory and worse eschatology are the best that we can do to explain those four horsemen. I can’t even claim that my own attempt is any better – except that I wrote it, which means that it’s gotta be good, right? (ahem) However, there are a few observations that we can make with a great degree of certainty: These ‘horsemen’ act in the physical realm. The White Horseman represents the physical conquest of territory. The Red Horseman represents the physical violence and the taking away of physical peace from the earth. The Black Horseman represents the physical problem of scarcity. The Pale Horseman brings physical death to the world. Yes, there is a spiritual element to all of this, but the point of it is physical. Conquest, violence, scarcity and death are coming. Or… are they already here? Seal OneWhen did the First Seal open? Or, has it? When John wrote Revelation in AD 95, the Praetorian Guard was beginning to take over Rome. They were the first ‘Deep State’. If you didn’t have support of the Praetorians, you didn’t get to be emperor, and if you made them mad… you didn’t last very long. Sound familiar? The murky underworld of intelligence services, bureaucratic elites and political generals got their big start with the assassination of Domitian in AD 96. From that point on, the names might have changed, but the goals didn’t. You can get rid of the people running the Deep State, but you’ll never get rid of Deep State itself. That’s one of many possible explanations for the opening of the First Seal. There are others, and I think that we have the luxury of getting the first two seals wrong. The Second Seal is an example. Seal TwoWhat does that ride of the Red Horse mean? Was it the rise of incessant war that swept Europe and Asia after the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam? Or, was it the oil-powered machinery of death that shocked the generals of World War I, with casualty rates exceeding anything that they had ever seen? Or, maybe we’re talking about the wave of bloody revolutions that swept the world in the 1800s, killing millions and traumatizing whole populations? Or, is it something worse that we have yet to see? Just remember that more people have died of violence over the past century, than during any other age of mankind. Think about that. Seal ThreeHowever, when we get to Seal Three, our room for doubt declines dramatically. There have been moments in time when cruel scarcity afflicted various parts of the world. Every generation faced that, from the moment our ancestors took their first step out of Noah’s Ark. But, the threats that we face today, have never been this deadly. We have never had eight billion people on planet Earth. Never have all of us been so dependent upon natural gas, to produce the nitrogen fertilizers that allow us to have enough food to eat. Never have we been so dependent upon the transportation fuels produced by a handful of companies. Never have so many been threatened by the madness of so few – who are willing to see billions die for their insane agendas. We’ll know when Seal Three is broken. Oh yes. We’ll see it with our own eyes. None of us will enjoy what we see and experience. Seal FourUnfortunately, the scarcity and hunger of Seal Three will be followed by the starvation and death of Seal Four. We have seen plagues rip through civilization in the past – the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, The Spanish Flu, etc. But, when billions don’t have enough to eat, immune systems collapse and deadly plagues sweep through. When Seal Four is broken, pandemics will rip through the Third World. Dense population centers like Kinshasa, Karachi, Mumbai, Cairo and others will collapse. Predators will move in, taking over parts of cities that hadn’t seen wolves, leopards or wild boar in centuries. For the first time in over a 100 years, many will become vulnerable to rapacious wildlife. What is described under Seal Four has never happened, ever. But, it is all too visible to those of us who understand where food comes from, and how it gets to our table. There is no precedent for what we face, right now. And, we are completely ignorant of that fact. Seal FiveAll of that is relatively straightforward. Our only real challenge to interpreting what is said, is understanding the timing and the scale of what will happen. Seal Five is much more difficult. I believe that this seal represents terrible persecution. Unfortunately, when bad times come, everyone wants a scapegoat – someone to blame for all the troubles of the world. And, those who seek to hold on to power will quickly point to vulnerable minorities. So as we see the calamities of Seal Four sweep the world, we should not be surprised when mankind does what it has always done – murder God’s people.
This isn’t the time of the Antichrist. It’s not the Great Tribulation. It’s just plain old, murderous persecution on a scale that we haven’t seen before. We’ve been lucky to have such a long moment of freedom from persecution. That time will be over, when Seal Five is opened. It will be the bad old days on steroids. Oh, one more thing. You might not know this, but… …Christians are suffering and dying for their faith every day – right now – more than at any other time in history. Let that sink in. Seal SixNow we get to the six verses that have stumped everyone (myself included) for 1900 years – Seal Six. Every time that I would read Revelation 6:12-17, my head would explode. How is it possible for something so incredible to follow events that are so mundane? So… understandable? Seals One through Five were relatively easy to understand. They are physical events in a spiritual context. Conquest, violence, scarcity, famine, pestilence, death and persecution have happened before, and we understand them. But, this? It just doesn’t fit. Except for the fact that it does, if we understand the Redemption of Israel, and the events that were prophesied to occur at that moment. The Redemption of IsraelI’ve spent more than a quarter of my life in Jerusalem, seeking Israel’s Return to God, and that has always motivated me towards looking for proof of their redemption. But as the world hurtles towards a rendezvous with Judgment, we seem to have no place to put the prophecies that specifically describe the Israel’s Return. When will Jacob Return to God? Deep down, I knew that God would fulfill those prophecies before the Antichrist appeared. There was no way that we were going to ‘fit’ this moment of great redemption into that tiny slice of time that we call the Great Tribulation. It’s just not possible, and everyone knows it (but won’t talk about it). Well, fast-forward a decade or so, and move with me – at least your frame of reference – to an island off the coast of China. Taiwan. God had dragged Mrs. Little and I to Taipei to do evangelism among college students. It was wonderful, but there was a problem. I discovered that our civilization was struggling more and more to find the resources that we needed, to meet the demands of a hungry planet. At the same time, madness was sweeping through our society and our system of politics. The world was turning upside down, and it didn’t make sense. Then, I saw something worse. A quiet plasma physicist with an interest in solar physics was pouring over the data from the Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler was looking for planets, but Professor Kazunari Shibata of Kyoto University was looking for superflares. And, he found them. In fact, Dr. Shibata found enough superflares coming from stars like our own sun, that he realized that it was a certainty that a superflare will one day hit earth. It was only a matter of time. Furthermore, there is no way that our current civilization could survive such an event. We would be instantly thrown back to the stone age. We would recover, but not before billions died. Worse, the Bible actually describes this event, and I documented both the science and prophecy of an eventual superflare/micronova in my book: Ezekiel’s Fire When I finished the fifth edition of that book, I decided to try and nail down the timing of Israel’s Redemption. The Bible is clear that Ezekiel’s Fire must happen when salvation returns to Israel. There can be no question of this, but there’s no way that I wanted to go through such calamity. So, I dug into the Bible, hoping to find a silver lining – even a fig leaf – that would allow me to show that Ezekiel’s Fire happens AFTER the Antichrist. Unfortunately, I received a book’s worth of confirmation, along with the realization that the coming of Gog and Magog occurs at Seal Six: When Gog Comes With all my heart, I wish that When Gog Comes was not true. But, the evidence in the Bible leaves us with no alternative. So, here is something that is vital for you to understand: The Redemption of Israel must come before the Antichrist arrives. The Redemption of Israel will happen at the same time that our civilization is ‘assassinated’. That’s right. Assassinated. When we get to the Beast in Revelation 13, we’ll see the head that was ‘wounded unto death’. God will use Ezekiel’s Fire to wound that seventh head. But, we’ll talk about that later. Right now, we need to stick with Israel’s Redemption. You literally cannot have 12 thousand men sealed in their foreheads, from each of the 12 tribes, without the Redemption of Israel. So the Return of the Israel to God either happens BEFORE Seal Six, or it happens AT Seal Six. There is no way that it can happen after Seal Seven. And, since the description of the events of Seal Six are exactly what Ezekiel 39, Isaiah 30 and Zechariah 12 and 13 describe, we are forced to accept the obvious. The breaking of Seal Six is the time when Israel finally accepts her Messiah. I spent decades in ignorance of this, so I won’t blame anyone if they can’t see it. It was almost too earth-shattering for me, and I’ve had time to internalize it. Just do yourself a favor and check the facts before throwing out what I’ve said here. The Good NewsThe good news is that the Antichrist is a very long way away. God is going to give the people of Israel enough time to grow spiritually. They will be cut off from the corrupt pastors that would seek to subvert their new life in Christ. Their enemies will be completely destroyed, and there will be peace in the Land of Israel for the first time in 2000 years. The part of our society that embraces the terrible sins that choke our lives will be forced to stop their evil and turn their attention to survival. (All those men flouncing about in women’s clothing will need to find real jobs.) Satan will revive our corrupt civilization, but not until God has completed what He promised. As always, I’m getting ahead of myself. Again, we’ll get into the rise of The Beast in chapter 13. Chapter 7Chapter 7 pulls us out of the physical realm, straight into the spiritual. It speaks of four angels that hold the four winds, and that are commanded to not hurt any part of the earth until after the 12 thousand servants of God, from the 12 tribes of Israel are sealed in their foreheads. Are there only 144 thousand servants of God on earth at this time? I don’t think so. We have evidence in chapter 12 that there are more that serve God, than just Israel. So, I’m thinking that these are spiritual leaders selected by God who are Jews, and who have a special calling from God. More than that, we cannot say. Then our view changes to a place in heaven, where an uncountable multitude is gathered. They have white robes, hold palm branches and stand before the Throne. Is this after the First Resurrection? No, it is not. Otherwise, we would see the 144 thousand standing there as well. So, who are these people? Those who have suffered great tribulation and washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. Should you and I suffer great tribulation and die before Seal Six is opened, we will be there. Yes, I know that this puts a monkey wrench in our notions about the First Resurrection, the Rapture and all that, but no one really understands any of this, anyway. Seriously, get a grip. Arguing over ‘soul sleep’ and where we are after we die is foolish. Avoid those who seek to make an issue over such things. That’s it for Revelation 6 and 7. I’ve tried to keep this as general as possible, but the concepts are so pivotal that it was hard to be concise. For even more of that ‘pivotal detail’, go here: Gog in Revelation Why Israel Must Be Saved BEFORE The Great Tribulation That’s a lot to digest if you haven’t seen it before, but I think that you will benefit from the attempt. This has been a lifelong struggle, so I understand what you are facing when you take up the challenge of understanding these six seals of Revelation 6 and 7. Lord willing, next week, we will see Seal Seven broken and the scroll opening… I truly hope that you’ll be ready for this A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. – Proverbs 22:3 |
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