Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We are on episode 259, the Book of Revelation, chapter 6. Terms like the church age, the horsemen, the tribulation era, the seals, they’re all topics that we find in the Bible, but nowhere are they more profound and esoteric than in this book. So, let’s continue. Are you ready? Here we go.

Revelation chapter 6, the horsemen are coming. When governments seal documents, it just makes many people more curious about what may be in them. After the Kennedy assassination, which happened when I was a boy, the government sealed all the documents related to their investigations for 75 years. How convenient. That seemed fishy, since that would keep the information under wraps till everyone who had been involved was long dead. Or take the government’s investigations into so-called UFOs, which are classified, and one president after another has declined to unseal them.

I just saw an article on CNN.com asking, Why haven’t the government files on aliens and UFOs been released as President Trump has repeatedly promised? Hmm, good question. Inquiring minds like mine want to know what’s in those files. As I write this, America is in an undeclared war, along with our ally Israel, against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Round-the-clock updates are being uploaded to the internet, to news sites, social media sites, and not just by CNN or the U.S. government, by regular people in Iran and all over the Middle East who have smartphones and are documenting this raging conflict. Some people are terrified where it could lead.

And some, in my view, self-proclaimed prophecy experts are positively giddy that the conflict might be the opening salvos of the tribulation era told about in Revelation, which occurs at the end of this age. I saw one preacher so excited at the possibility a stray missile might hit the Arab mosque atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount area, clearing the way for the third temple to be built there, he was practically beside himself. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of scoffers who can hardly contain their amusement over the idea anything going on today could be tied to anything in the ancient prophecies of the Bible. I’ve seen several gleefully mocking the idea.

They point out that evangelicals have one prophecy guru after another and one best-selling Christian author after another confidently telling for the last 50 years or so, wide-eyed audience that so-and-so is the Antichrist and this peace treaty and that multinational organization are the fulfillment of this, that, and the other thing in Revelation. We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to stick to the big ideas presented in Revelation and not try to sensationalize with a lot of speculation. You can have fun doing that after you’ve listened to me, once you understand the framework of John’s visions. But I’m going to do my best to show restraint because, let’s face it, far too much of what’s been written on and spoken by the prophecy gurus has proven wrong, and much of what was focused on in the past now seems quaint in light of the world we’re now living in.

But I’ll admit to you, my gut feeling is that we may well be in the season of the last days, that this era I’ve been calling the church age could well be wrapping up very soon. And before we’re done, I might even give you some reasons I believe that. But I’ll tell you straight, it’s a gut feeling. It’s based on maybe some apparent convergence of things going on in our world today. But I’m very aware that those of us who believe the Bible, take it seriously, can be influenced by confirmation bias. The timing of Jesus’ return is one mystery God is holding very close to His vest.

So I’m going to stay focused on explaining the big ideas in Revelation. Let you draw your own conclusions as to whether the puzzle pieces might be coming together in our generation, whether the dawn of the tribulation era, which would mean, in my understanding, if it’s correct, that the rapture of the church and the resolution of history on our planet are perhaps close. Margie, in our introduction to this writing, listed briefly some different ways Revelation has been interpreted over the years. But I don’t have any qualms at all in saying I feel certain the correct approach to interpreting Revelation chapter 6 and following is futuristically. These chapters are prophetic visions. As chapter 5 closes and chapter 6 opens, the one who John realizes is Jesus is given the scroll with the seven seals.

These aren’t like our government’s long-sealed documents of past secrets. After the letters to the churches and after the voice like a trumpet called John up to heaven, he’s told to write what he’s shown that will take place hereafter, the things to come. Then he’s shown all kinds of amazing, often terrifying things, many of which, frankly, are unprecedented in human history, things that could not have happened in the past, and they are clearly presented as the things which will lead up to the second coming of Jesus Christ. Since mention is made of these things happening in a short span of time, and a specific number of months and days during which some of them will occur is told us, these are the things which must be happening close to the second coming of Jesus, so things at the very end of this age.

Remember, at the end of chapter 5, everyone in heaven acknowledged Jesus alone possessed the right to open the scroll, whose contents reveal what is going to happen next in the world. And each time one of the seals is broken, something new is revealed. The way I understand it, what’s revealed in chapter 6 is a panoramic overview summary of the events which will take place throughout the tribulation era. Again, this is a seven-year period that follows the rapture of the church, but precedes the second coming of Christ to establish His kingdom. It’s not that each seal represents one year of the seven. These things will be happening one after the other, often on top of each other.

We know the length is seven years, by the way, both from a prophecy in Daniel chapter 9, as well as the fact that later in Revelation we learn about something dramatic that happens at the midpoint of the tribulation, and are told it will from then be 42 more months until the end. 42 months is three and a half years. Wait, let me get my calculator. Three and a half years plus three and a half years, seven years. Not surprisingly, the events revealed by the seals being broken closely parallel the events Jesus said would precede His second coming in the Olivet Discourse, in fact, are almost identical. We covered that in episodes 43, 154, and episode 237. So, if you haven’t already, and this subject interests you, make a point of going back to those three.

But let’s get into Revelation 6 now and listen to what happens when Jesus starts breaking the seals on the scroll and John is shown an overview of the tribulation time. I’ll be reading from the New International Version. I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, Come. I looked, and there before me was a white horse. Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. One of the seraphim called the living creatures who attend God the Father, summon someone else.

Come, they say, and John sees then a person appear as a conqueror on a white horse. He’s wearing a victor’s crown and carrying a bow. Probably significant that John says the crown has been given to him. This is someone with great power during the tribulation, but power ceded to him by others. He is best understood to be the one we call Antichrist. In one of Daniel’s visions, he’s referred to as the prince who is to come.

In both Daniel 7 and Revelation 17, this man is given power by other rulers in the last days. He will be someone others respect, trust, and hope in, who has the charisma and clout, they hope, to bring peace and security to the world. Again, in the vision recorded in Daniel 9, he’s described as making a covenant, a treaty of peace among nations that’s supposed to last seven years. So when the first seal is broken, we’re introduced to the number one villain in this book. He’s known by several titles in the Bible, but Antichrist seems to have stuck. That’s what we’ll call him.

Literally, it means in the place of Christ, because he will be hailed as a Messiah then by some, someone who can bring peace to the world, they hope, but who turns out to be a false Messiah, in fact a man indwelt by Satan who causes tremendous trouble on the earth. We get the sense of what’s coming from his first appearance here because as he rides in looking like a conquering hero on the white horse, the background noise is rumbling thunder, the sounds that warn of a coming storm. We’ll learn much more about Antichrist as Revelation unfolds. When the second seal is broken, John heard the second living creature say, Come. Then another horse appears, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other.

To him was given a large sword, John says. The situation early in the tribulation era will be one of many military conflicts, wars and rumors of more wars, as Jesus put it. This is why the Antichrist is given by other world leaders so much power, it seems. There will be so many wars and the threat of global existential conflicts that the leaders of many nations will hand over their power to this man who seems strong enough to install peace. Just this past week, I read about something called the Board of Peace, an international group made up of the leaders of many countries that President Trump is trying to put together. Or, of course, we’ve had for some time now organizations like NATO, whose stated purpose is to ensure the peace.

Some kind of confederation like that will emerge with the stated goal of ensuring peace and security. And will hand over control to the man who, in reality, is Antichrist. In one of Daniel’s visions, ten horns, a symbol he uses for power, are given over to one horn. That’s Daniel chapter 7. And remember, it’s when everyone is saying, Peace and security, that’s the watchword on everyone’s lips, then is when sudden destruction will fall on them, Paul wrote about this in 1 Thessalonians 5. All the wars around the world will produce other dangerous side effects too, of the kind that constant conflicts produce.

Food and other necessities start becoming scarce as production is interrupted and supply chains are broken, and that’s what leads to what John sees when the third seal is broken. When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come, and I looked, and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hands. Then I heard what sounded like the voice among the four living creatures, and it was saying, Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, and six pounds of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and wine. What John saw is the kind of scale used then for weighing out food and other commodities at a marketplace. He heard a desperate-sounding voice saying that basic things like grain to make bread or cereal are becoming unaffordable, and whatever you do, don’t damage the oil and wine, even more scarce products.

Just the bare essentials will become unaffordable luxuries. Can you imagine a day’s worth of wages, say 150 bucks in our terms, only buying a box of cereal or one loaf of bread? If you can even find any on the shelves that are not already empty. We got a very small taste of this during the COVID epidemic, if you remember a few years back. That’s when I learned the term supply chain for the first time. I never thought about it before.

All the things that have to come together to bring food to my table, to my fridge. Things have to be produced, proceeded to be shipped, then stocked, then sold by merchants. So some had temporary shortages then. Prices for things just jumped way up, but it was just an inconvenience, fortunately, that lasted for us several months. But during the tribulation, this will be big and an ongoing problem. The black horse symbolizes suffering and death, outcomes in a world where severe shortages are leading to famine and starvation.

When the fourth seal is broken, John is shown just how devastating the wars and these side effects become. He sees a pale green horse, and its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him, he says, a place of the dead people. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by the sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. Pale green is a sick color for a horse or a person. The wars, famine, and disease, he says, will wipe out a quarter of the earth’s population. This is probably just during the first half of the tribulation, a time when even the beasts of the earth start turning against people, their normal fear of man apparently overcome by their own starvation.

And I can’t help but think rats when I hear the word plague. Rats spread disease and can thrive when all else around them is dying. During the worst several years period in modern times, the World War II era, it’s estimated about 75 million people perished as a result of the wars in Europe and Asia. And the resulting famines and the disease, 75 million. But that was less than 5% of the world’s population at the time. John hears that 25%, a quarter of the world’s population, will perish during this part of the tribulation.

Was this even possible before the kind of destruction capable now in a world full of weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. But realize, at the breaking of these seals so far, this is all just describing what man can do to man once the influence of Christians in the world is removed and the restraint of the Holy Spirit, normally kind of maintaining things, is taken out of the way, how quickly and totally things will spiral out of control in that time. When the fifth seal is broken, John sees and hears something different. Listen. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

They called out in a loud voice, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood? Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little while longer. These are the souls of God’s people now in heaven who were martyred during the tribulation. As we’ve previously said, large numbers of people will turn to Christ during that awful time, both Jews and Gentiles, but it will be at great personal risk. The government of the Antichrist will create such a climate that God’s people then will be seen as enemies of the state and enemies of the rest of the world’s citizens, much like Christians were during the early centuries of the Roman Empire. In the Old Testament system, in the tabernacle or temple, the blood of the sacrifices was poured out under the altar.

These are tribulation believers John is seeing whose lives were poured out as a different kind of sacrifice to God, people who, under the severest pressure, were still faithful to Him even to the point of death. At a certain point, midway into the seven years, we learn again from Daniel that the Antichrist will break his seven-year covenant of peace and turn against the Jewish people with a fury. And Jesus said in His Olivet discourse, when that happens, essentially those in Jerusalem run for the hills. Anyone and anything associated with God then or with Christ then will become the stated enemies of that regime. And there will be many martyrs like these souls John is seeing and hearing in heaven. They are crying out to God for vengeance against the Antichrist and against his minions.

But God says the time for that is not quite yet. In fact, more will be martyred, but their time is coming. Be patient. It would be difficult to paint a more terrifying scene than the words John uses to describe what happens at the opening of the sixth seal. I watched then as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake.

The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to the earth like figs dropping from a fig tree when shaken by the wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks in the mountains. And they called to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it? As I said before, what happened before this was the worst that can result of man turning against man once the influences that now restrain evil are gone.

But at the midpoint of the tribulation, the dynamic changes. The final three and a half years are called the Great Tribulation and the Day of God’s Wrath. Cosmic disturbances will kick this off of such a frightful nature, even the great men of the earth will buckle in fear. They will know at this point that divine reckoning has indeed come, something they’ve scoffed at as an imaginary threat. What happens to and on the earth at that point are not things that can be explained away naturally. They know this is God coming down.

It sounds like the tectonic plates will shift, causing massive earthquakes across the globe. Islands will just disappear. Mountains be displaced. Volcanic ash will fill the sky, causing heavy, hazy darkness, and the moon will turn red. Drastic changes in the earth’s atmosphere will cause the skies we’ve always known it to just disappear. An unprecedented meteor and asteroid showers will strike the earth.

There will be no scoffers among men then, no laughing off the idea of a holy God intervening to address evil and unbelief, only a giant collective uh-oh. The realization that the time of judgment the Bible thumpers warned us about is real, and it’s now upon us, and there is no way of escaping it. These seals breaking one after the other John is shown, and he describes to us in the best words a first-century man could, a panorama of what takes place during the tribulation years. Maybe this is not a good comparison, but I thought how it’s similar to Jesus’ hours on the cross. The first half of that experience was the worst that men could do to him. But when the world turned dark at noon, the second half of that experience was the wrath of God against sin falling on him.

Of course, the outcomes are opposite, but the course of events similar. There are two obvious but very important applications from all this. One is that judgment on evil and unbelief are coming. As Paul wrote, the day of the Lord will come, and like a thief in the night, these things will befall the earth suddenly, and the only wise thing to do is to be sure you are ready beforehand. The ark of safety is in our relationship to the Savior. Accept Christ and turn your life toward Him while it is still called today, as the author of Hebrews kept telling us.

He’s the only one who can save anyone from the wrath to come. The second application is for those of us who say we believe the Bible, that it’s God’s Word and all that. Do we really take its warning seriously? If so, we should be sharing the gospel, the only message of salvation, with everyone we care about while we have the freedom and still have the opportunity to do it. Whether my gut feeling about how close this all is is accurate or not, one thing should be becoming very apparent looking around our world. The dream of those who imagined science and technology and social evolution and education would save the world have been proven wrong, don’t you think?

Does the more advanced we become, the world only seems to be becoming more evil, more dangerous, more rebellious toward God, and more ripe for judgment. The horsemen are coming. Thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. It’s been so incredible, and I’ve been so excited about hearing Pastor Paul’s approach to the Book of Revelation.

And I, for one, have not been disappointed. We’d love to hear your opinion about this and other episodes. And I will continue to ask you for your help in sharing all we do with everyone you can. SharetheWord.org. Send a link. Send an email.

Send a voicemail. Tell them that the horsemen are coming. Don’t wait. We really don’t know how much time we have left. Let them know about Jesus. Thanks again for listening.