For centuries, we have wrestled with the Book of Revelation. Some have thrown out the book altogether. Others have redefined what it said to suite their own ends. Even those with good intentions have had great difficulty in understanding the events described.
Unfortunately, we also have seminaries that have taught our pastors that it is okay to twist and reshape what the Bible says as much as they wish. Instead of submitting to the words of God, we have forced the words of God to submit to us.
We have lost our humility before God and have become proud of our theologians and their theology. This is a terrible thing and has led to great corruption in our churches.
For that reason, if the only thing that you receive from this discussion is a renewed commitment to submit to God and His Words, I say mission accomplished.
We must regain a humble spirit and a desire to submit to God’s words. And, I consider Revelation to be a real test of whether we are ready to do that.
Remember also that there is a terrible curse (Rev 22:18-19) upon those who add or take away from the words of Revelation. If Revelation does not say something that you think that it should say, you should stop yourself from adding the words that you wish to see. If Revelation says something that you do not wish for it to say, woe unto any who would dare to take those words away.
For centuries we have invited the curse of God upon ourselves and our churches. It is time to end our rebellion and submit to what Revelation says. And, this commitment should not end with this book, but should encompass the whole Bible itself.
So, let us renew our commitment to God and examine one of the most significant books of the Bible.
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Table of Contents
Laying Out Revelation Part 2
Revelation 1-3 – A Blessing, A Conundrum, And Seven Churches
Laying Out Revelation – Part 3
Revelation 4-5 – The Throne, The Lamb And The Scroll
Laying Out Revelation – Part 4
Revelation 6-8:1 – The Seven Seals And The Redemption Of Israel
Laying Out Revelation – Part 5
Revelation 8-11 – The Seven Trumpets, The Little Book and the Two Witnesses
Laying Out Revelation – Part 6
Revelation 12-14 – The Woman, The Beast And The Resurrection
Laying Out Revelation – Part 7
Revelation 15-19 – The Bowls, Babylon and Armageddon
Laying Out Revelation – Part 8
Revelation 20-22 – The Millennium, New Jerusalem And A Warning
Laying Out Revelation – Part 9
A Revelation Summary And Conclusion
Introduction
I have come to believe that the wisdom of Charles Haddon Spurgeon lay in not just what he said, but also in what he did not say. Our pastors and Bible teachers have lost the art of humble reflection. Unlike Spurgeon, the voices from our pulpits make claims that they cannot back up with proof, and it’s time to stop doing that.
Especially, with the Book of Revelation.
Remember that there is a curse upon all who mishandle this book:
18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:18-19 (NKJV)
We need to take this to heart for all the books of the Bible – but this one, especially so.
So, how is the Book of Revelation organized?
The Eleven Sections of Revelation:
Revelation 1-3: Intro and Letter to the Seven Churches
Revelation 4-5: The Throne in Heaven, The Lamb and the Scroll
Revelation 6-8:1 – The Seven Seals Broken and the Scroll is Released
Revelation 8-11: The Seven Trumpets, The Little Book and the Two Witnesses
Revelation 12-14: The Woman, The Beast And The Resurrection
Revelation 15-19: The Bowls, Babylon and Armageddon
Revelation 20-22: The Millennium, New Jerusalem And A Warning
NOTE: The chapter divisions were NOT inspired by God, but were inserted into the Bible by a Roman Catholic Priest in the 13th century.
Now, one of the biggest questions that we will answer is one of chronology. It is actually the simplest question to answer but the hardest to grasp. The Book of Revelation is completely chronological wherever there are an orderly series of events described.
However, there are parenthetical chapters that add clarity to these events but they can look backward or forward. This has caused some readers to make sometimes bizarre conclusions about certain events described.
Remember that we will always have difficulty understanding what’s coming, until a certain point when all will be revealed:
20 The anger of Jehovah shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it perfectly.
– Jeremiah 23:20, ASV
24 The fierce anger of Jehovah shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it.
– Jeremiah 30:24, ASV
TRANSLATION NOTE: the Hebrew word for ‘ye shall understand’ in both verses is תתבוננו (pronounced: teet-bohn-noo). It’s a more complex verb than you find in modern Hebrew, but the root of that word is בינה (bee-nah), which means understanding, wisdom and comprehension. And, this is why the ASV translates those two verses better than the KJV or other translations.
There are many things in Revelation that we will not understand. And, that is perfectly okay. It’s what God intended. But, we are still required to ponder what it says and seek understanding until the time comes when God reveals what has been obscured.
Remember also that the Book of Revelation does not stand alone. God has also spoken through many prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, and those words have added a lot of context to what we will see.
Part 2 | Revelation 1-3
A Blessing, A Conundrum, And Seven Churches
Revelation 1-3: Intro and Letter to the Seven Churches
This is where we run into our very first problem, along with our first blessing. And, as much as we want that blessing, that problem is an unsettling conundrum, which is why most pastors won’t talk very much about the Book of Revelation.
No one wants to get the Book of Revelation wrong.
However, events in our world appear to be accelerating towards something that looks an awful lot like what John the Apostle wrote. So, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring this book.
The first three verses present us with a challenge:
1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.
– Revelation 1:1-3 NKJV
Historical records tell us that John wrote Revelation in AD 95 or 96. Those who say otherwise are ignoring a vast amount of evidence from Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215), Eusebius (AD 260-339), Irenaeus (AD 130-202), Victorinus of Pettau (AD ?-304), and Jerome (A.D. 340-420). If you need proof, start here and here.
It wasn’t Nero who put John on Patmos. It was Domitian. When Domitian was assassinated in September of AD 96, the Roman Senate freed everyone imprisoned by Domitian. This meant that John was able to return to Ephesus where he was reported to have died in AD 98.
So, what does this ‘shortly’ and ‘for the time is near’ mean?
I don’t know.
I have my speculations. We all have those, but speculations are not facts. They aren’t truth. And, there are many things in the Bible that are unexplained, but that shouldn’t matter to us. We must be careful to not claim that our speculations are truth.
Here are a few possible explanations:
- The White Horse – When the first Seal is broken, and the first horse rides out, we don’t know who that is, or when it happens. But, it is possible that this rider has been riding for almost 2000 years. Remember that the Roman way of governance has taken over the world. For instance, the image in Daniel 2 and the Fourth Beast in Daniel 7 seem to confirm this.
- The RCC Rising – When Revelation was written, the church at Rome was already beginning to the lay the foundation for the Roman Catholic Church. This Great Whore figures prominently in the Book of Revelation, and it started rising right about this time. And, you will notice that the church at Rome was not named among the seven churches in chapters two and three.
- The Two Beasts – The Beast that rises out of the sea in chapter 13 and the one that rises out of the bottomless pit in chapter 17, don’t rise just when the Antichrist comes. No, those beasts will have been around for a while. Does their rise begin ‘shortly’?
- The Seven Churches – The events described to them would certainly come to pass ‘shortly’. The Lord even said so.
- Something COMPLETELY different. There could be a completely different reason why these things must begin ‘shortly’. We won’t really begin to understand properly until Seal Three, or maybe even Seal Six.
Again, these are speculations and should NOT be considered fact. I get things wrong all the time, so I only offer these thoughts to help you avoid stumbling over the words ‘shortly’ and ‘for the time is near’. As events progress, we will have a better understanding of what happens in Revelation and when it happens.
Just be careful to make sure that none of your theories come into conflict with what the New Testament says or what the Hebrew Scriptures say. Foolish men and women have destroyed themselves and others by speculating over certain verses, twisting the rest of the Bible to fit their speculations and then claiming it all as fact.
Peter, speaking of Paul said this:
as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
– 2 Peter 3:16 (NKJV)
There are countless heresies out there that were created by foolish speculation. And I hope that we can put a stop to such abominations. And, we start by saying that it’s okay to not understand what the Bible means when it says something difficult.
Are you with me in this?
Good. Let’s move on.
A Note On What Is Prophecy And What Is Not
Before moving forward, we need to clarify how we know a passage is prophetic or not.
Every prophecy in the Bible is either introduced with prophetic language, or has a verse somewhere else that describes it as a prophecy. If we do not find such prophetic language in a chapter or verse, then we cannot claim that they are prophecies.
For instance, Psalm 83 has no prophetic language in it, and there are no verses that refer to Psalm 83 as a prophecy. Therefore, the book on Psalm 83 by Bill Salus is in complete error. He should be ashamed of himself for writing such a fable.
The Seven Churches
In Revelation 1, John is told to do this in verse 19:
Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;
Yes, that’s right. Revelation is divided into two parts – the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter. Chapters one, two and three are about things which are. They are not symbolic of the ‘ages’ over the past two millennia. They are the things which are. Shun those who say otherwise.
We only get to the things which shall be hereafter, when we start chapter four.
There are only two verses with prophetic language that I can find in the chapters two and three. The first one is addressed to Smyrna:
Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
– Revelation 2:10 (KJV)
Unfortunately, we have very little information on how and when Smyrna suffered their tribulation. However, Domitian was already persecuting Christians as John was writing this. And, zealous allies of Domitian, could very well have exceeded their orders to persecute the church even more than what he decreed. Again, even this prophetic tidbit is not a Last Days prophecy, since it is a part of what God said is the things which are.
The second verse with prophetic language attached to it is this one to the church at Philadelphia:
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
– Revelation 3:10 (KJV)
We actually have a record of such an ‘hour of temptation’. This would have been the the Antonine Plague that may have begun Eastern China in AD 151 and reached the Roman Empire in AD 165. This plague swept through the empire and then outwards towards any group that had contact with Rome. This pandemic killed between five and ten million people within the Roman Empire over the course of 15 years, and untold millions outside the empire. Again, this is still about the things which are.
There are other verses in these two chapters that have predictive language. But, none of them seem prophetic. Ephesus was told that their candlestick would be removed if they didn’t repent. Pergamos was told to repent or Christ would fight against them with the sword of His mouth. In Thyatira a woman named Jezebel and her followers would be given great tribulation, and her children would be killed if they didn’t repent.
However, are any of those references prophetic for our time?
Do they have the prophetic language that we are looking for?
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. And, I believe that we should be careful to not claim that the words spoken to these churches are end times prophecy. Remember that John was not just writing about prophecy, but also about ‘the things which are’.
It should be pretty clear that Chapters Two and Three are about ‘the things which are’.
In fact, if you want confirmation of that, just read the last part of Revelation 4:1.
“…which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.“
Sorry, but that’s a clear separation. John had just been told about the present in chapters two and three. From chapter four onward, he will be told about things to come.
So, these were real churches. They had real struggles and real problems. They are not symbolic. They are not metaphors. They do not represent periods of time during the past 2000 years. Whoever keeps saying stuff like that, needs to stop.
However, these churches act as examples. I grew up in a loveless church like Ephesus. I have attended compromising churches that were a bit like Pergamos. I have been in far too many lukewarm churches like the Laodiceans. And, I have to travel two and a half hours to a church in Kaohsiung each Sunday – because the churches here in Tainan is are either corrupt like the church of Thyatira, dead like the church of Sardis, or speak Chinese only (and I love Mrs. Little too much to make her translate for me).
I am grateful to have been a part of churches like the one in Philadelphia.
What I have not been a part of, is a persecuted church, like Smyrna. Unfortunately, as our current civilization declines, persecution will come. Churches in Asia and Africa are already suffering terribly. Our time cannot be too far away.
Why Rome Is Not Mentioned
By the way, did you notice that Jesus did not speak to the Church of Rome?
Let that sink in.
Think of that as our first clue to the identity of the Great Whore who rides the Beast. There is a reason why the rider of the Beast is called a harlot. It means that there was righteousness found in her at one time, but she gave up that righteousness to commit fornication.
Paul spoke of the church at Rome as righteous in Romans 1, verse eight:
“First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.”
The church at Rome was faithful, but some 50 years later, it appears that it was no longer. Now, this is not complete proof that the Church of Rome was no longer faithful. A lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Just because something isn’t mentioned, doesn’t mean that something is no longer existing. But, I believe that this point is worth remembering as we move further into this book.
When Jesus said that these things begin shortly, I believe that they did, and that the Roman Church was already becoming the Great Prostitute that would commit fornication with kingdoms and empires as she does today. The history of her fornication is undeniable.
Just remember the blessing of Revelation 1:3…
Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it…
So, be blessed as we continue through the Book of Revelation.
Part 3 | Revelation 4-5
The Throne, The Lamb And The Scroll
Revelation 4-5: The Throne in Heaven, The Lamb and the Scroll
The Beginning Of The Things Which Shall Be Hereafter
Chapters four and five begin the prophetic portion of Revelation, and they give us more questions and plenty of opportunity for confident mistakes.
Who is sitting on the throne?
Who are the 24 elders?
What is the name of this scroll and what does it look like?
What are the Seven Spirits?
And, why did Jesus need to sacrifice Himself to open the Scroll?
What is in this scroll and why is it so important?
The safest, most accurate answer to these questions is always, “I don’t know.” But, there are a few things that we can say.
Remember that John is ‘in the spirit’. This isn’t a dream. And, I’m not quite sure that you could call it a ‘vision’. Visions are highly symbolic, and while John’s experience has symbolism, there are many extremely literal elements to it. So, when a voice tells him to “Come up here!” he does.
Revelation 4 – The Throne
We are immediately introduced to a throne and One who sits on that throne. His appearance is like jasper and sardius. We’re reasonably certain about the color of sardius, which is a deep red. Jasper is a little more difficult. Today we consider this color to be an earthy red. But two thousand years ago, it may have been a semi-transparent crystal with different hues.
One thing is clear, though. The One on the throne does NOT have the appearance that Jesus had, when He spoke to John in chapter one:
“…clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire;…”
– Revelation 1:13-14 (NKJV)
So, does this mean that this must be God the Father?
Well, not for that reason. Jesus will appear again in chapter five, as a lamb that was slain. So, we know that His form changes according to the circumstances. However, chapter five will show us something that will seem to indicate that this is The Father because the Lamb takes the Scroll from the hand of the One on the throne – which would seem to confirm that this is God the Father.
We next see 24 elders with crowns, sitting on thrones. And, we are not sure who they are. You’ll notice that John doesn’t recognize any of them, which might not mean anything if our appearance is changed when we get our glorified bodies. And, I don’t really want to guess who these are.
However, we might have a clue about who 12 of these elders are, when Jesus said this to His disciples:
So Jesus said to them, “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
– Matthew 19:28 (NKJV)
Was Jesus saying that they would be 12 of these 24 elders?
I would assume that the answer would be ‘Yes’, but the lack of recognition by John would seem to indicate that their appearance had changed and that he would also be one of the elders that he does not recognize.
The next confusing imagery is the seven lamps of fire that burn before the throne of God:
…Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
– Revelation 4:5b (NKJV)
In Revelation 1, the seven lamps are seven churches. But, the lamps of fire in heaven are seven spirits, and we have a couple other references to seven spirits:
John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,
– Revelation 1:4 (NKJV)
And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
– Revelation 5:6 (NKJV)
And since those seven eyes are also the Seven Spirits, here is another connection:
For behold, the stone
That I have laid before Joshua:
Upon the stone are seven eyes.
Behold, I will engrave its inscription,’
Says the Lord of hosts,
‘And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
– Zechariah 3:9 (NKJV)
Here is what those seven eyes are described as doing:
For who has despised the day of small things?
For these seven rejoice to see
The plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
They are the eyes of the Lord,
Which scan to and fro throughout the whole earth.”
– Zechariah 4:10 (NKJV)
However, anyone who confidently claims that they know with certainty what/who these eyes are, is either a fool or trying to sell you something.
After that, we have the four creatures that are quite unusual:
The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.
– Revelation 4:7 (NKJV)
And, they are remarkably similar to the description in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10. However, Ezekiel calls them cherubim – more accurately כרבים (pronounced kroo-veem).
Why is it that Bible translators mess up even the most basic Hebrew names?
However, since everyone knows what cherubim are, we’ll stick with that spelling – even though it’s wrong. Now, where was I? Oh yes…
These cherubim have a number of jobs that we’ll see later in Revelation, but the most important one is praising God. Of all the things that we do in our church services, singing praise to God should be at the top of our list. And, it is discouraging to see how corrupt some of our ‘praise songs’ have become.
Revelation 5
Chapter Five opens with a scroll in the hand of the One sitting on the Throne. That scroll is described as having seven seals.
Why Seven Seals?
There are seven events that must happen before the scroll is opened.
Many keep trying to add context to this, but that’s very foolish. There is a scroll. It has seven seals. And, since John did not add any modifiers to this scroll – other than that it was written on both sides – this scroll is… wait for it …a scroll.
That means that it did not look like this:
NOT how scrolls are made or sealed – EVER.
Never has there ever been a scroll sealed like that, and John would have mentioned it, if it had been. Remember that he is communicating with us exactly what he saw – and made sure to point out anything unusual about what he was seeing.
For instance, look at verse one of chapter five:
1 And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. (NKJV)
The scroll that John saw undoubtedly looked a lot like the one above. And, from his description, he could see writing on the outside of the scroll and on the inside. And, there were seven seals keeping it closed.
It is also possible that he might have seen the scroll like this:
But, he would have to have assumed that there was writing on the inside, in addition to the writing that he saw on the outside. Or, maybe he was revealing what he would see once the scroll was opened.
Is it possible to open either of these scrolls without all of the seals being broken?
No, of course not.
Claiming that the scroll opened a bit after each seal was removed is a very, very foolish error. It is literally adding to what Revelation says, since there is no proof that this scroll opens until after the seventh seal is broken. And, it also shows an ignorance of what the name of this scroll is – what it is called – but I’m getting ahead of myself.
In verses two and three, an angel stands up and asks if there was anyone who could open that scroll. And when no one could be found to open the scroll, John began weeping in verse four.
Why was John weeping so piteously?
Because if that scroll does not open, there will be no First Resurrection. God will not have been victorious over Satan. The righteous would have been defeated.
Well, we could read the rest of the Book of Revelation to find out what is contained in that scroll. And, we will do that. But, there is one other place where I believe that we could find out the name of this scroll:
But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth. (No one upholds me against these, except Michael your prince.
– Daniel 10:21 (NKJV)
Translation Note: The words ‘Scripture of Truth’ is actually כתב אמת (k’tav eh-met), or ‘writing of truth’. I’m splitting hairs a bit here since ‘scripture’ means ‘writing’, but I think that the understanding is more clear when you say ‘writing’.
What follows after Daniel 10:21, is also included in the Book of Revelation after the scroll is freed from its seals in Revelation 8:1. We see the Antichrist (Daniel 11:21-45). And, we see the Great Tribulation and the First Resurrection (Daniel 12:1-3). Daniel is even told how long this terrible period will be (Daniel 12:7,11-12) – three and a half years. I’m just not sure that I quite understand the extra 45 days that Daniel talks about.
Now, here is the verse that confirms in my mind the identity of the scroll in Revelation 5. A man in white linen says this to Daniel:
And he said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
– Daniel 12:9 (NKJV)
It sounds like the ‘man in white linen’ is Jesus. And, it also sounds like He is the One who seals this Writing of Truth, or maybe it is God the Father who seals this scroll, since it is in His hand in Revelation. And, through the sacrifice of the Cross, Jesus was able to open this Writing of Truth so that the victory over Satan and Death would be complete.
NOTE: Just be be clear, we cannot be absolutely certain that the scroll with Seven Seals is the same as described in Daniel. Just because they seem like a perfect match does not mean that they are the same scroll. It’s hard to believe that they aren’t, but let’s be cautious to label our claims carefully. Even though the evidence is strong, it is still an assumption.
The rest of Revelation 5 glorifies our Lord and Savior, the Lamb who was slain that we might have eternal life. May we always rejoice in what God did for us, in sending His Son to pay for our sins that we would live forever in the world to come.
Again, what is in this scroll?
All the events described by John in Revelation 8 through 22.
But, the seals have not been removed yet, so let’s talk about that next.
Part 4 | Revelation 6-8:1
The Seven Seals And The Redemption Of Israel
(click image or this text for a larger image)
Revelation 6-8:1 – The Seven Seals Broken and the Scroll Opens
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 over the years have left a lot to be desired.
So as I once more try 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. And, I will try not to bludgeon you with carefully crafted presuppositions.
Since these four horses and their riders represent the most immediate danger to our lives and our civilization, we will spend extra time on them:
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.
However, there are a few observations that we can make with a great degree of certainty. And, this first one is most important of all:
These ‘horsemen’ act in the physical realm.
The White Horseman represents some form of 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 represents physical death in the world.
Yes, there is a spiritual element to all of this, since the opening of these seals in heaven causes these horses to ride. But, the effects are physical. Conquest, violence, scarcity and death are coming. Or… are they already here?
A Specific Order
Also, there is a reason why the White Horse goes first, followed by the Red, then the Black and finally the Pale Horse, ridden by Death.
Why do these horsemen ride out in that particular order?
What purpose do these horsemen fulfill?
Are we in a position to know?
If not, when would we know?
These are interesting questions that are worth asking, as long as we understand that the truth might be different than what we see, right now.
A Few Theories
There have been a lot of theories proposed about the Ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Dispensationalists claim that the White Horse is the Antichrist, and that we’ll all be raptured before he rides. Others claim that it has already happened, or that it’s just allegory – fantastic literature written for the amusement of scholarly scholars.
I devoutly wish that one of those claims was true, because I am horrified by what is rolling down upon us. The terrible suffering and then death of five billion people is something that I wish we could avoid, but I’m afraid that it is completely and utterly inevitable.
Why?
Ultimately, the reason will be that we are short-sighted, sinful and foolish.
The longer reason will be the implosion of our ability to feed eight billion people. This collapse began long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has now accelerated due to the key position held by Ukraine and Russia in the export of food and fertilizer. Countries that must import food to feed their people will starve when they can’t meet the prices that grain exporters will demand.
Towards the beginning of this catastrophe, wealthy countries will have enough to eat, while the poor will starve. Eventually, as the process accelerates, the poorest countries will be torn apart by angry parents who cannot feed their starving children, and then the wealthier countries will suffer from discontent. As this collapse in food production continues, famine-related diseases will sweep through poor countries as immune systems fail due to hunger.
All of this could have been avoided, but we chose to ignore the obvious.
What is so obvious?
Natural gas is in decline, and we refused – or are unable – to find an alternative way to manufacture the nitrogen fertilizer that we use. Without natural gas, we cannot create enough fertilizer that would help farmers grow enough food to feed eight billion people. And, in the hundred years since we discovered the Haber Process, we have not found a better way of creating fertilizer.
Without enough natural gas to feed the Haber Process, our civilization cannot survive the way it is now. And, I think that this is the primary reason why the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride out in the order described. But, it’s complicated, so let’s look at the First Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Seal One
Let’s read the opening of the first seal.
1. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
– Revelation 6:1-2 (KJV)
Something very unusual is being communicated here. The rider has a crown, which connotes authority, and a bow – which is usually an ambush weapon or one that is used by archers behind a shield wall of swordsmen. And, with both authority and a bow, this rider conquers much if not all the earth.
Why the bow and the crown?
I believe that God is saying something about the nature of how this rider conquers the world. It seems that this conquest will be far more subtle than that of a sword or spear.
When 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. So, let’s take a look at a few more possibilities.
Energy
I’ve spent the last 11 years yelling about what will happen when our access to petroleum is lost. We came very, very close to collapse in 2006, but were saved by a costly intervention called fracking. Without hydraulic fracturing, we would not have nearly enough transportation fuel to run our economies, and all our governments would have sent us to war to grab what was left.
Oil Wars
We fought two world wars and several regional ones for the control of oil, and it stands to reason that we will continue to fight for access to oil. And yes, World War I and World War II were about oil. So were both Iraq wars, the war in Libya and even the current Syrian civil war. Leaders at the time claimed other reasons for going to war, but you should already know that we never get the real reasons until after the shooting stops.
Are these wars the Ride of the White Horse?
The Bow
The fact that he is given a bow might indicate that this is the case. After all, if Revelation were to be written today, that ‘bow’ in the hands of the first horseman would have been a rifle. 1942 marked the last, successful cavalry charge using the traditional saber, when 600 Italians routed a Soviet force of 2000 men. It was the last time that a cavalry saber would win a battle.
But, what is that crown?
What conquest is happening when the First Seal opens?
All the bloodiest wars in human history were fought with rifle and artillery – in Biblical usage, the bow. But, the imagery of the ‘crown’ and of ‘conquering’, makes us pause and narrow our focus.
Is this the rise of the UN?
Organizations like NATO?
Is this something that will come in the future?
Many claim that it’s one or all of the above, but I think that we should keep looking.
Conquering By Rifle
The communists conquered Eastern Europe and Asia with guns. America conquered South America, Western Europe and the Middle East with guns. Africa is being torn apart with guns. But, we can’t be sure that this is what those two verses are talking about.
Will this ride of the White Horse be the rise of the Ten Kings without a kingdom?
We can’t be sure. But, focusing on all that, is missing the point about human nature:
Those who hunger for power will grab at any chance for more.
As our access to energy and food becomes more and more difficult, the bonds of civilization will begin to weaken. This will present a great opportunity for the powerful to grab even more power.
Threat Of Nuclear War
A nuclear missile could be considered to be the greatest ‘bow’ every made.
As an example, look at the current war in Ukraine. That was an attempted power grab that failed. Putin controlled the energy supply to the most powerful countries in the EU and felt that this powerful lever would allow him to launch a decapitation strike on the leadership of Ukraine and add strategic real estate to the Russian Federation – real estate that also included lots of oil under the ground.
Putin miscalculated and did great damage to his own military, as well as the murder of thousands – eventually millions – of civilians. And now that he faces the possibility of catastrophic failure, Putin has pulled out the threat of nuclear war – which leads me to ask this question:
Is the threat of nuclear war via ICBM or tactical missiles the ultimate ‘bow’ that will allow him and others to conquer the world?
I live in Taiwan, about a mile from one of the planned invasion points that China will use when they attempt to invade this island. One of the many plans that the Chinese Communist Party will follow, is the use of nuclear weapons – either through direct strike on the island, or through high altitude nuclear EMP.
I and my 23 million neighbors would die, but China would gain control of the Taiwan Strait, a strategic choke point for trade going to and from Korea, Japan and even the United States.
Remember that most of China’s oil and lots of their coal, must go through the Taiwan Strait to reach the major ports of Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Dalian, Shandong, Tianjin, Qingdao and Yingkou. Block those ports, and China collapses.
The murder of 23 million Taiwanese and yours-truly, would be nothing to them. The only reason why they haven’t done it already, is the knowledge of what the rest of the world would do, if they did that.
Seriously, that’s the only reason.
The Chinese Communist Party is the most amoral and psychopathic government that ever existed. No one has done more evil, for so little reason than the Chinese government. But, I digress.
If the White Horse has not already begun its ride of conquest through our civilization, then I submit that it must ride soon.
Why?
Because the availability of food in Third World countries is on the verge of collapse. When that happens violence will sweep the globe. And THAT will look a lot like the ride of the Red Horse.
Seal Two
The Second Seal Opens
Here is what Revelation says about the Ride of the Red Horse:
3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
– Revelation 6:3-4 (KJV)
From what Revelation 6 seems to be saying, this will be a worldwide event. The violence that begins in the Third World will also sweep across our own cities, and governments will engage in even more tyranny to keep the peace. The cycle of violence and tyranny will be breathtaking, and I do not look forward to it. But, we have quite a few questions that might point us in a different direct.
What 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, will the teaching of grievance and hatred in our schools boil over into violence in our streets?
Or, will sectarian violence that is already sweeping Asia, reach Europe and the Americas?
Or, is it something worse that we have yet to see?
Also, here’s another important thought:
Notice how the possible explanations for the White Horse are similar to the Red Horse?
It’s a little hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Having said that, none of them actually stop riding when the next one rides out. Again, the Ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have supernatural origins, but natural effects. Everything that we see them do can be traced back to something natural, even though the Hand of God set it all in motion. This is especially true for the Rider of the Red Horse
When violence sweeps the earth, we will see some very basic and natural reasons for why it will be happening. However, history shows that the news media will get those reasons wrong. So, don’t be surprised when they describe the next Arab Spring as a desire for freedom.
So, let’s take a look at violence. And, here’s a tidbit that most people haven’t realized:
Did you know that more people have died of violence over the past century, than during any other age of mankind?
Let that sink in.
The 2011 Egyptian Revolution
It was a January 25, 2011. A beautiful Tuesday in Cairo and also Egypt’s National Police Appreciation Day. Unfortunately, the average Egyptian wasn’t feeling very appreciative. Cities were seething with anxiety, fear and frustration over their inability to feed themselves and their children. And, rising malnutrition was the perfect environment for the Muslim Brotherhood to foment discontent and then an uprising.
How did such a situation come to pass?
In 2010, Egypt was being forced to eliminate all subsidies on food and energy. For millions of Egyptians, this meant being unable to eat. It meant stunted growth and stunted development for their children. As the simmering resentment reached boiling point, the government reacted with repression, sending out the police to beat up protestors.
By the time January rolled around, the Egyptians had had enough. So on January 25th, those with nothing to lose… lost it. And that’s how the latest Egyptian revolution began in 2011.
It wasn’t about democracy.
It was about food.
The Haber Process And Hunger
We are now facing a similar situation but on a far more global scale. At the beginning of 2022, long before the war in Ukraine started, European fertilizer manufacturers were warning that they would have to shut down operations if the price of natural gas kept going up. It did keep going up, and plants had to close operations.
Why is natural gas so important for fertilizer production?
Without it, you cannot make the nitrogen component that every fertilizer needs. And, all of that is due to a process that was invented by Fritz Haber in 1909. Up to that point in time, getting enough nitrogen into the soil to grow enough wheat was getting to be a serious problem. The population of the world in 1900 was 1.6 billion and they were struggling to harvest enough food to feed a growing population. And, the military needed nitrogen to make bombs and bullets.
With enough nitrogen, the average farm can produce four times more wheat. But, until Haber came along, nitrogen was expensive. You needed to mine bird guano in tropical islands to get enough, but you could only get what the explosives industry didn’t need. Bombs and bullets would always trump wheat and barley.
Carl Bosch was able to industrialize the Haber Process in 1910. By 1914, BASF was able to produce 20 metric tons of nitrogen a day. And, you’ll never guess what happened that year:
That’s right, the discovery that quadrupled wheat production, also made it possible for Germany to build enough bullets and bombs to invade Belgium, France and Russia. We humans are a special kind of stupid.
The Haber Process made it possible to feed billions of people and kill millions in truly massive wars.
Here’s a great video that will give you more insight:
The Man Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions
But wait, I haven’t explained the natural gas connection. The Haber Process takes methane, which is CH4, grabs those four hydrogen atoms and combines them with the Nitrogen found in the air (N2) to create Ammonia (NH3). From there, fertilizer manufacturers combine Ammonia with Phosphorus and Potassium. (Those wanting to make things go boom, add NH3 to a different process.)
Okay, now that we understand why natural gas is so important for the production of fertilizer, which allows us to produce enough food to feed eight billion people…
…what was the problem again?
Right. Not enough natural gas.
As I said before, we were having trouble getting enough natural gas to feed the fertilizer companies. And, that was BEFORE the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Who is the #1 supplier of natural gas to Europe?
Russia.
Who was a major supplier of fertilizer to the world?
Russia.
Who were major suppliers of wheat to Third World countries?
Russia and Ukraine
What is going to happen to those Third World countries that don’t get enough food to feed their children?
Violence and Mayhem.
It will be 2011 Egypt multiplied by a hundred.
The only question is timing and whether other producers can step in with increased production. Fertilizer manufacturers have been warning about the need for more natural gas for years, and we haven’t been paying attention. Now that the Ukraine war has cut off gas supplies from Russia, the world is now listening. So far, we have been able to squeak through.
But, what happens later, when we still don’t have enough natural gas to supply fertilizer companies?
Peak Gas And Peak Stupid
Here’s another problem that I’ve been yelling about for years:
When do we reach the limit in natural gas production?
Right now, we have enough because of hydraulic fracturing – aka, Fracking. But, there’s a limit to how much fracking we can do, and where. Europe and Britain have banned fracking, because of powerful environmental groups.
Will governments wake up in time, to allow more natural gas production?
Probably not.
My favorite quote on this comes from Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the US during the ’50s:
Again, this is more proof that humanity is stupid. (Sinful, too.)
It’s hard to predict how much damage government incompetence will do to our food supply. But, if current headlines are any indication, there will be catastrophe in the future. This means that a day will come when fertilizer prices are going to go sky high. Then, farmers in Third World countries won’t be able to buy enough, to grow the food that they need.
The Sri Lanka Example
Hungry peasants will then demand that their leaders do something. When they can’t, the people will riot in the streets and tear down their governments. Here, take a look at what has already happened in Sri Lanka:
2022 Sri Lankan protests – Wikipedia
What to know about the upheaval in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka riots: how the tiny Indian Ocean island nation got into such a mess
Oh, and you’ll never guess why Sri Lankans were rioting in the streets. Oh wait, you probably will:
The morons running Sri Lanka, banned fertilizer so that they could ‘go organic’.
Yes. Morons. Running Sri Lanka. They literally made the dumbest decision that you could possibly make:
Reducing food production by 75%
Overnight, Sri Lanka went from being a rice exporter, to a rice importer.
That’s what happens when you let the Rajapaksa family run your country. They didn’t have a clue about what it takes to produce food, and they thought that organic farming would be a great way to make a name for themselves. What they didn’t know is that organic farming doesn’t produce as much food, and requires different techniques and conditions – techniques and conditions that Sri Lankan farmers didn’t have. The Rajapaksas were morons, and Sri Lanka paid a terrible price for that.
Unfortunately, Europe and North America are run by the same kind of morons. Canada under Great Hair Trudeau has put pressure on farmers to reduce fertilizer use. European countries are forcing farmers to do the same, while also destroying dairy production. And, American elites are promoting the wonders of eating insects.
We’re doomed.
More specifically, the Third World is doomed.
First World countries have the ability to pay more for their food and survive. This means that all the pain and suffering will be put on those who can’t afford higher food prices – Africa and most of Asia.
So to sum it up, a lack of natural gas and government incompetence in Western Countries will cause riots and even revolutions in Third World Countries. But, there’s one more wrinkle.
Enter The Muslim Brotherhood
Remember the 2011 uprising in Egypt?
Part of the reason why it got so violent, so fast is precisely due to the agitation and organizational power of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are masters at the art of insurgency and have had almost a century of practice. All the most dreaded terrorist groups come from them: ISIS, Al Qaeda, the PLO and Hamas. They all have their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Oh, and just in case you might mistake them for a peaceful organization, here is their symbol:
Those are, of course, peaceful swords that would only be used for peaceful violence and peaceful murder and peaceful mayhem. And, you’ll find such delightfully peaceful atrocities throughout Africa and Asia. And those who are well organized will jump at the chance to take power.
Massive amounts of money from wealthy mosques in the West and rich oil sheikhs in the Middle East have flowed into Islamic terror groups in Africa and Asia. And, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they have been quietly organizing for the right moment in time, when they can use hunger and discontent to wash the streets in blood as they overthrow their governments. And, if Europe isn’t careful, that violence will spill over into their countries as well.
Peter Zeihan And The Death Of Globalism
This will be a horrifying mess. Millions will die. And a large part of the reason for all of that will be the morons who are in charge of our world. Yes, I know that some will mutter about how this was all intentional, but let me remind you of something very, very important:
Globalists cannot have their globalism without world trade.
And, the ride of the Red Horse will crush their ability to buy and sell across the globe. As violence grows around the world, trade will collapse, and the source of wealth for many globalists will also be destroyed.
Peter Zeihan seems to understand a lot of this and has spoken generally on this topic, here:
Energy at the End of the World Seminar – Peter Zeihan
End of the World: How the Global Order is Collapsing | Peter Zeihan
Peter Zeihan: The end of the old world order, and what happens next
I am not nearly as indifferent as Peter Zeihan appears to be, to the suffering that the world is about to go through. Nor do I feel that the violence will just be limited to the Third World, even though I have made that the focus of what I’ve written here.
We have already seen what happens when certain parts of society were expecting more, but got less. The politics of discontent will blossom into the kinds of violence that have already swept through the US, France, Britain, Holland and even Sweden. Whatever grievance a group will have, will be amplified when the world economy collapses.
Seal Three
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.
Here is what the Book of Revelation says about this moment in time:
5 When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.”
– Revelation 6:5-6 (NKJV)
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 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.
Thankfully, we’ve been able to delay the moment when the Black Horse rides, but delay is the best that we can do. And, the reason for that, will be all about what we talked about previously – energy.
When we hit the limit to how much we can produce, our economy will collapse, and our civilization will begin to die. Terrible scarcity is not new. It seems as if every generation has faced it at one time or another. But, the threats that we face today, have never been this deadly.
Peak Energy
We have a term for what we are facing, Peak Energy.
Back in the 1950s, M. King Hubbert realized that we had a problem. Oil fields were declining at a rather fast rate, and it looked like that rate was predictable. So, Dr. Hubbert took his observations and developed a model to forecast US oil production. That model predicted a peak in US oil production in the early ’70s. And, that is exactly what happened.
Dr. Hubbert then expanded his model to try and forecast global oil production. He predicted that oil would peak in 1995. However, he did say that manipulations by Arab oil companies might shift the peak out to 2005.
Here’s a clip of M. King Hubbert describing global oil production in 1975:
Then in 1998, two petroleum geologists, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, took another look at Hubbert’s Peak and updated his model. According to their calculations the peak in oil production would happen in 2005. And, right on schedule, the volume of oil production began falling in late 2005.
This decrease in oil production led to a dramatic increase in gasoline prices in 2006, which precipitated the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. I had just just returned to US from Israel in late 2006, and remember looking at the price of gas as I was filling up my car.
I knew immediately that there was no way that the US economy could survive such a high price of gasoline. And, sure enough, it didn’t. However, there was one thing that saved our civilization:
We call it ‘fracking’ and it is an expensive technology that was invented in 1947. We knew that it worked. We knew where we could make it work. But, we also knew that it was a terrible way to produce crude oil. However, when the price of oil gets high enough, it becomes an economically viable way to produce oil. So, we tried it.
In the first few years, investors lost a lot of money, until fracking companies learned how to use fracking efficiently. We have now expanded the use of fracking into other countries boosting oil production around the world. But, there’s a problem.
There’s No Tomorrow
Just because we found more ways to extract oil from the ground, it doesn’t mean that Peak Oil is dead. It is very, very much alive and ready to destroy our civilization if we aren’t careful. And recent history suggests that we are not careful at all.
Here is the video that explains the core problem best:
There’s No Tomorrow (limits to growth & the future)
Why Energy Matters
Go back in time and look at how many farmers we needed to produce enough food for ourselves. By the late 1700s, 90% of America’s population was directly involved in farming. By the late 1800s, we were able to reduce that to half with better farming techniques. Once the tractor was invented, and then fertilizer, the number of people needed to produce our food declined rapidly.
How many Americans today are directly involved in farming today?
About 2%.
Most of the reason for that is oil. Without it, we can’t fuel the tractors that plant and harvest. Without it, we can’t transport our food. Without it, we can’t get to where our food is stored. Without it, we can’t get to the jobs that help pay for it. Without oil, we’re toast.
The problem is that we don’t know when oil will peak. We just know that it will. And, I find it to be very strange that very few are talking about when oil production will reach maximum. Even if you believe in the abiogenic fantasy about oil, there’s no way that oil can replenish at the rate that it is being consumed.
Peak Fertilizer
Then, there’s another problem of monumental concern that I referred to before – peak fertilizer. We are able to feed eight billion people because Fritz Haber discovered an easy way to grab hydrogen from natural gas (methane) and create ammonia. We call it the Haber Process, and without the ammonia it produces, we can only supply enough food to maybe feed three billion people.
This is why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was such terrible blow to those tracking fertilizer supply. Even before the start of the invasion in February 24th, 2022, we knew that we had a serious problem. Fertilizer companies weren’t getting enough natural gas at the right price to continue operating. So, they were having to shut down. This means that the time is much closer when you will work all day to earn just enough to eat.
The problem with the ride of this black horse, is that it will be far too short.
Why?
Because scarcity will soon become mass death, which will be the next horse to ride. But, we will talk about the ride of the Pale Horse, later.
Energy Is Life
My favorite slogan about all of this, is:
Energy is life.
Plants take energy from the sun and produce food. We consume food to give us the energy to live and work. So, not only is energy life, but it’s literally everything. But, it’s hard to think about everything, especially when life is so precious.
So yes, energy is life. And, when energy declines, life declines.
The slogan ‘energy is life’ was coined by Doomberg. He is one of the most astute commentators on energy, commerce and the state of our society. And because we don’t have very many alternatives to oil and natural gas, our civilization is doomed.
Nuclear Power
The one alternative that we do have, is the one that almost no one wants. But, some governments have begun to wake up to the desperate need for energy that only nuclear power plants can provide, as access to fossil fuels becomes difficult.
But, will the world react fast enough to keep scarcity at bay?
I doubt it. By the time that energy becomes an obvious problem to everyone, it will be too late to start the years-long process of building nuclear power plants and mines for uranium ore.
We saw this coming a long time ago, but our governments refused to pay attention.
Exponential Growth
M. King Hubbert actually saw the inevitability of this crisis, when he said this:
Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non growth.
— M. King Hubbert, “Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History”
He wanted to save our civilization by keeping it from growing and went off the rails in his effort to find a way out of the catastrophe that lies in our future. And, like most non-Christians, he advocated the crushing of freedom.
Never let a scientist try to solve your problems. You’ll only get more, and his solutions will probably kill you. But, Hubbert was still right about exponential growth.
There have always been limits to how much of anything you can produce. And, when you hit those limits, nations go to war and people die. This is human history writ large. And, you literally cannot have a civilization if people are killing their neighbors – such as what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
I am hoping that what’s coming can be delayed as much a possible, but I’m not optimistic. Our leaders are not just ignoring the problem, they’re making it worse. So, we are accelerating into the opening of this Third Seal.
After that, Death will begin his ride on that Pale Horse (which is actually green).
Seal Four
Unfortunately, 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.
Here’s the passage that concerns us:
7 When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” 8 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.
– Revelation 6:7-8 (NKJV)
When Seal Four is broken, pandemics will rip through the part of the world that will have suffered the greatest amount of hunger – 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.
A Green Death
The Pale Horse is actually green. The original Greek for pale in Revelation 6:8 is chloros (χλωρος) and it literally just means green – as in chlorophyll green. So, it’s a green horse, not pale. But, everyone knows about the Pale Horse, so we’ll keep it pale in the title. But, whatever color you call it…
…it’s really, really bad.
Death rides that horse through a quarter of the world, killing with violence, hunger, disease and wild animals. The question is…
What quarter of the world will this be?
And what will it be like for the rest of us?
Does he kill a quarter of everyone on earth?
No.
He has authority over a quarter of the earth to fulfill his assigned task. But, it doesn’t say that he kills everyone in that one quarter of the earth. But, the number of people who die might be equal or surpass a quarter of the world’s population. Depending on what quarter of the earth he is given to ride, it is easy to see two billion people dying in the worst way possible.
Africa is extremely vulnerable, and it represents 20% of Earth’s land mass. And, that continent is deeply dependent upon food imports. And, much of Asia is also very food insecure. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Do you remember what we talked about previously?
Right. The Black Horse.
That horse is scarcity. It represents having to work a whole day to get enough food to eat. It means that everything will be very, very expensive. That is an extremely fragile state for the world to be in, and you could imagine what would happen if things got worse than that.
It would be Death.
Energy Is Life
Remember that without fossil fuels – specifically natural gas and oil – we cannot make enough fertilizer to grow our crops or provide enough fuel for tractors to plant and harvest enough food to feed our current population. It’s just not possible. In fact, our planet cannot support more than three billion people using the farming techniques that we used before the discovery of the Haber Process. The ability to create nitrogen fertilizer and the invention of the farm tractor, makes it possible to feed eight billion people. If our access to energy collapses, billions will die.
The problem is that our sources of energy are not limitless. And with more and more people demanding a larger and larger share of the energy that we produce… eventually, we’ll run out of road and go over the cliff. And no, I haven’t joined the climate morons or the save-the-wales luddites. We’re talking real science and real engineering.
Any competent petroleum geologist will tell you that we’ll run out of oil and natural gas at some point in the future. When you ask them when that will happen you’ll get fuzzy answers. Ask them when we hit the peak in energy production, and they’ll change the subject.
The good news is that we were wrong about when we would hit peak oil.
The bad news is that we weren’t all that wrong.
The only reason why we survived the oilpocalypse of 2005 and 2006, is that we threw massive amounts of money at hydraulic fracturing and hydraulic fracturing research. That titanic effort saved our bacon, but we can’t be sure how much extra time that bought us. Fracked wells die pretty quickly, and we have to keep drilling and drilling and drilling to keep up oil production. And too many politicians want to stop that.
Enter The Insane
How can politicians be so completely insane?
Because climate hysteria helped get them elected.
Far too many politicians, in far too many advanced countries are doing their very best stamp out oil and gas production as quickly as possible. They have already denied leasing permits and stopped the building of key infrastructure like the Keystone pipeline from Canada. That’s utterly insane, but at least America isn’t Germany.
Why Germany?
Well, they decided that destroying their economy was a good idea.
Germany created a massive industrial juggernaut fueled by natural gas and oil from Russia. Then they decided to also shut down their nuclear reactors, even when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Germany’s response?
Lignite coal. The dirty kind.
Burning dirty coal will keep some of their industry going, but not enough. We are already hearing reports of German manufacturing heading out of Germany as quickly as possible. Their economy will never recover from this, and it is all due to very, very foolish government policies. The economic center of the EU will now shift to France, who did not shut down their nuclear power plants, even though they have been badly maintained.
Such insanity is part of the reason why it’s going to be hard to predict the end of our ability to produce energy. Crazy is in charge of Europe and North America, and it might destroy us long before we dive into the energy abyss.
The Pakistan Example
Let’s look at an example of how Germany’s madness affected a third world country – Pakistan.
When Germany shut down the last of her six nuclear power plants, they knew that they would need a lot of natural gas to make sure that Germans didn’t freeze during the winter. So, they bought up all the natural gas that they could find.
Pakistan helps power its electric grid with power plants that use natural gas. And, Germany bought the natural gas that Pakistan needed.
The result?
Rolling blackouts that did severe damage to Pakistan’s economy.
The same thing will happen when the Black Horse rides and then when the Pale Horse rides. The wealthy countries will buy up everything that they need for themselves, and the poorest countries will starve, die of disease and be ripped apart by violence.
The foolish Germans already have enough blood on their hands, but they added more by their insane shutdown of six nuclear power plants. And, the Germans aren’t the only fools. The US, Britain, Taiwan, and a host of others have insane groups fighting against nuclear power.
Anti-Nuclear Madness
However, if we could build enough nuclear power plants, and build them fast enough, (like China is doing), we might see a delay in the ride of the third and fourth horsemen. I know that sounds a bit crazy, but the access to energy was the reason for World War I and II, two invasions of Iraq, the current war in Ukraine and the civil wars in Ethiopia and Syria. And while there are other elements to those wars, the central point was – and shall always be – energy. And, as our access to fossil fuels gets harder and harder, it would be logical to switch over to nuclear power. But, we are so insanely fearful of nuclear energy, that many would rather see our civilization die, than build nuclear power plants.
If you think that I’m wrong, consider Germany’s hysterical rejection of nuclear power. The Green Party (Die Grünen) was running the German government when they shut down those six nuclear power plants, and they are fanatically anti-nuclear. Fission reactors are Satan to them, and they would rather burn really dirty coal, take resources from the Third World and destroy Germany’s economy rather than go to ‘The Dark Side’ – nuclear power. Even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced them to reduce importing oil and natural gas, these mad Germans are still intent on destroying nuclear power, the only viable alternative.
Unfortunately, Germany isn’t the only victim of anti-nuclear hysteria. Here in Taiwan, we are completely dependent upon fossil fuels and have only three nuclear power plants running, with a fourth snared in so much red tape that it will never be completed.
Why?
Fukushima.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear power station to blow its top. There was only one cancer death from that nuclear incident, but everyone still became instantly terrified of nuclear power. Japan went as far as to close power stations across the country. And, this meant that they had to get their power from coal, oil and natural gas, increasing the speed with which those limited resources were being drained.
Nuclear is making something of a comeback, but it will be years before we will ever have enough power plants to make up for what we are losing. So, even though I see declining energy resources driving us toward the ride of the Four Horsemen, madness will probably be an even bigger reason for their ride. We have insane governments beholden to hysterical anti-nuclear activists, and this will not end well.
For years, I thought that our civilization would end when the oil wells ran dry. But now, I’m not so sure. It seems that our own insanity will do that for us. But, I’ve taken you off the track, so let’s get back to talking about the ride of Death on his green horse.
Back To Death
Again, remember that western technologies like the Haber Process and advanced ship building have allowed the Third World to import fertilizer and food at extremely cheap prices. In fact, food from the West was so cheap that many farmers couldn’t compete, giving up their farms and moving to Delhi, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi, Chongging, Lagos and Kinshasa, turning them into some of the largest cities on earth.
What happens when the cost of natural gas gets so high that manufacturers must increase fertilizer prices or go out of business?
What happens when farmers in the West produce less food, because nitrogen, phosphates and herbicides got too expensive?
Will the the Wealthy West starve?
OF COURSE NOT!
You and I will have enough to eat. The Third World will not. This means that Africa and southern Asia will starve. The rich never starve. That’s a job for peasants, and lots of them will die terribly from hunger. But, hunger isn’t the only way that people will be killed when Death rides through. We still have violence, animals and disease to look at.
Why Disease?
There’s a huge reason why disease is included here. When people starve, they become vulnerable to starvation-related diseases. But, Revelation 6:8 doesn’t say disease or plague. It says ‘death’ – in the original Greek, thanato (θανάτῳ). And, ‘thanato’ is not disease, even though it is the right interpretation.
Why should we interpret the word ‘death’ as ‘plague’ or ‘disease’?
Look at how the rider of the Green Horse kills:
- sword
- hunger
- beasts of the earth
- death
If the other means of death are physical in verse eight, then the ‘death’ referred to will be physical, too. And, this is precisely why the ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, and RSV translate ‘thanato’ into disease and pestilence.
However, it was wrong for them to do that – especially with the ESV, which proclaims itself to be a scholarly translation. Translators should not change words in the Bible like this – especially, the Book of Revelation.
TRANSLATION NOTE: The ESV has a specially egregious history of twisting the Bible. What they did to Genesis 3:16 in their 2016 version is so awful that it must have been a deliberate act of corruption. No Hebrew scholar would ever translate אל (pronounced: ‘ehl’) as ‘contrary to’. But, Crossway decided to do it anyway because they decided that תשוקתך (pronounced: Teh-shoo-kah-tekh) which means ‘your longing’ or ‘your passion’ was somehow negative. Even when Hebrew scholars voiced their outrage over this, Crossway still refused to change it. Do not read a Bible translation that has been deliberately corrupted this badly.
The alternative assumption is that their scholarship is so bad, they cannot be trusted to translate the most basic elements of Hebrew.
Feel free to consider them either corrupt or pathetic. There’s no third alternative, and it ultimately doesn’t matter which it is. Dump your ESV and read a better translation like the NKJV or even the KJV.
But, back to ‘disease’. I said earlier that countries without enough food will ‘become vulnerable to starvation-related diseases’, here’s why:
Our immune systems shut down.
When we don’t have enough to eat, our bodies consume fat reserves and muscle protein before shutting down other systems in the body. Fertility, lactation, blood-sugar levels, and mental processes all start shutting down when you starve. Eventually, when there’s nothing less important shut off, our bodies choose the immune system next. This is where starvation-induced disease starts to sweep malnourished areas of the world. And since starving people won’t have the ability to maintain good sanitation, horrible pandemics will sweep the Third World.
Violence And Animals
To make things worse, those with guns will take what food is left from those who cannot defend themselves. And, as famine weakens social structures and depopulates large areas of land, wild animals will move in, searching for food.
We already saw what wild animals did in cities around the world that were locked down during the most recent pandemic. Because people no longer walked the streets, animals expanded their territory. Most news organizations wrote glowing reports of how wonderful it was to see wild animals in the cities:
Coronavirus: Wild animals enjoy freedom of a quieter world – BBC
Wild animals are reclaiming cities and streets during coronavirus lockdown- NyPost
However, as adorable as these articles sound, this was not a good sign of things to come. When lions, tigers and bears lose their fear of humanity and start looking at us as just another source of nutrition, many will die.
Again, what were the key points of Seal Four?
“…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.” (Revelation 6:8)
The ride of Scarcity (the Black Horse) will set the stage for Death and Hell to sweep through a quarter of the world. Those already living at the edge of starvation, will have no choice but to die by violence, hunger, disease or wild animals. The survivors will often be those willing to kill the weak to get what they need.
A lack of energy will be a core reason, but the madness of our own governments and institutions will play a big role. We chose badly when we allowed churches, schools and entertainment to create a society that would elect such awful leadership. But, even that ignores the biggest problem of all.
Sin.
We built our civilization upon a foundation of fornication, avarice and greed. We banned God from our schools, our laws and our lives, and we forgot the eternal price for that. And to make things even worse, when Death rides his green horse, we will force the weakest to suffer and die.
The rich always have enough to eat…
…and will take food from the poor when they feel a little hunger.
The Four Horsemen Summary
We have traced the course chosen for the Four Horsemen of Revelation 6. They come in specific order for specific reasons. And, we would only have begun to understand that order and those reasons now. Of course, that’s assuming that we clearly see what’s happening. I could be wrong. It won’t be the first time.
Because the events predicted appear to be natural, we should not assume that they are supernatural. The timing is from God, but the events themselves are physical. And, as someone who has been watching our struggle to supply enough energy to our growing civilization, I can see the collapse in energy supply as playing a key role in the ride of these horsemen.
The White Horse
The White Horse rides first and represents the growth of empire. The energy wars of the past century would seem to fit perfectly with his Ride. We can also look further back and see the Roman system of governance that has spread across the world reaching such far-flung places as Japan and Taiwan. Even such corrupt systems as Russia and China give lip-service to the Roman ideals of ‘representative government’ – even if it is a sham.
So, has the White Horse begun its ride?
I can’t say for sure, but I believe so.
We might see an even stronger imperial system rise, as fear grows in the hearts of world leaders. As the ties that hold us together start to weaken, nations might seek to unify even more strongly as disaster becomes easier and easier to see.
The Red Horse
Unfortunately, greed and foolishness will do great damage, so whatever our leaders choose to do, we can be certain that it will backfire terribly. History is full of presidents and kings doing the wrong thing at the absolutely worst time.
History teaches us that men and
nations behave wisely once they
have exhausted all other
alternatives.– Abba Eban
At the same time, the threat of disaster will grow as each year passes by. Oil and natural gas will continue to be more and more difficult to obtain. Ore grades for coal and uranium will continue to decline. And, the hysteria over ‘the climate’ will only become more shrill as ‘renewable’ energy sources fail to live up to their hype.
As the competition for energy increases, our economic condition will worsen. This will cause anger and violence in the streets. It will cause nations to go to war with each other, to protect what they have, or take what they need.
Also, don’t forget that there are movements that would love to take advantage of any discontent to increase their power. The Muslim Brotherhood did that during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt. We should expect similar efforts by other groups that agitate for revolution.
The Black Horse
Of all the horses, I have understood the Black Horse best and feared it the most. Scarcity is the destroyer of nations and empires. It brought down Rome, and it brought down every empire that replaced it. And, as energy resources continue their decline, everything that we need to survive will become so scarce that having enough food to eat, will consume all of our time and energy.
Remember that without oil-based fuels, farmers can’t run the tractors that plant and harvest the food that we need. Without oil-based fuel, trains and trucks can’t get the food transported to where it needs to go. Without electricity, the factories that process and package our food, can’t operate. And, without natural gas, we can’t make the fertilizer that farmers need to feed eight billion people.
That last one, fertilizer, is particularly awful. Without the Haber Process that creates nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas, we can only feed three billion people. The thought of five billion people starving to death is horrifying.
The Pale Horse
It’s not pale. It’s green. But, I’m not sure that the color matters, since it’s utterly and completely awful. The Black Horse introduced scarcity, and famine will follow right behind it. And with famine, we get famine-related diseases. We’ll also see violence as those with weapons take from those who are defenseless. Then, as areas of the world depopulate, animals will take over and prey upon the survivors.
The major famines of the past two hundred years were usually man-made. This will also be ‘man made’ in the sense that we should have been able to anticipate this event, and maybe do something about it.
We could have done things differently. We could have been less short-sighted. We could have invested more in nuclear energy. We could have put our money into better farming methods that required fewer chemicals. We could have encouraged more small towns that were more self-sufficient, instead of packing the cities with billions of people. But, even these improvements might not have done more than temporarily stave off the ride of these horsemen.
Our Sin Is The Cause
Our biggest failure is our rejection of God. Because of our sin, we are doomed to experience what the four horsemen will bring.
Worse, we have defiled ourselves with every sin imaginable. We chose Sodom and Gomorrah. We became selfish and violent. We became dishonest and deceitful.
We could have probably avoided the worst of what’s coming, if we Christians hadn’t corrupted ourselves.
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
– 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV)
And maybe there will be those who do humble themselves before God, seek Him and repent of their wickedness. Those Christians who do so, will stand a better chance of survival than those who do not.
Ultimately, our job isn’t to prolong a self-indulgent life, but to commit ourselves to serving God to the best of the ability that He has given us. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And then, love your neighbor as you love yourself. (Matthew 24:37-40)
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
– Romans 8:28 (NKJV)
Seal Five
That was a lot to go through. But I took extra space for that because we are facing all this right now. My hope is that we pull ourselves back from the brink, but I’m not optimistic. Furthermore, those four horsemen are fairly easy to understand. Our only real challenge to interpretation, is figuring out the timing and the scale of what will happen.
However, 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 Three and Four sweep the world, we should not be surprised when mankind does what it has always done – murder God’s people.
9 When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.
– Revelation 6:9-11 (NKJV)
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 had such a long moment of freedom from persecution. That time will be over, when the Seals are 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 Six
Now 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?
Until now, it just didn’t fit.
Over the past few years, I’ve discovered what we were missing, and it helped put the one thing that we must understand – the Redemption of Israel, and the events that were prophesied to occur at that moment. But before going on, let’s look at the text:
12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
– Revelation 6:12-17 (KJV)
Is This The Second Coming?
Let’s get something out of the way first. Many have looked at those last two verses and said that this proves that this is the Second Coming of Christ, where Our Lord will lead His armies to earth to destroy the Antichrist and all who took the Mark of the Beast. But, they conveniently forget who is actually speaking the words of verses 16 and 17:
Those who are not saved.
For a brief moment in time, they will recognize that everything that the Bible said about the Last Days was true, and was on its way. They will know that judgment was coming.
Did any of God’s people or the angels say anything here?
No.
Did Jesus speak of this as His Return?
No.
Do we actually see the armies of God descending to earth here?
No.
I have a pretty firm rule that has served me well for many years:
If the Bible doesn’t say it, you shouldn’t.
I think that applies here, especially with what we see later. There is just no way that the opening of Seal Six is THE END. We even see words spoken by an angel in Chapter 7 that prove that this cannot possibly be THE END.
1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
2 And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,
3 Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
– Revelation 7:1-3 (KJV)
This angel is asking those angels holding the Seven Trumpets to hold off, to give him extra time. Enough time for 144 thousand Israelis to reach a sufficient level of spiritual maturity to be servants of God and then be sealed in their foreheads. That’s a significant amount of time. I would say that this would take at least decades.
How long did it take you to be spiritually mature?
All of this coincides with something that I’ve spoken of for a very long time – the Redemption of Israel.
The Redemption of Israel
I’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). But, I still didn’t understand Seal Six.
Well, a decade later and a move to an island off the coast of China – Taiwan – things began to change. 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 a superflare would 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 this superflare/micronova in my book:
Ezekiel’s Fire
https://ezekielsfire.com
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 appears to occur at Seal Six:
When Gog Comes
https://whengogcomes.com
(It also meant that I had to update Ezekiel’s Fire to its sixth edition.)
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 with a killing wound. 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 most probable conclusion possible:
The breaking of Seal Six is almost certainly when Israel finally accepts her Messiah.
If it isn’t, our situation will be far worse, for we will suffer a superflare/micronova more than once. And, I would hate to go through that twice. I mean, it’s possible, so we can’t discount it. But wow, that would be really, really bad.
If you’ve read my book Ezekiel’s Fire, you’ll know what I mean, but let me explain it a bit for those who haven’t. Here are the first three verses of Seal Six:
12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
– Revelation 6:12-14 (KJV)
That is EXACTLY what you would expect from a superflare/micronova of the kind spoken of by Isaiah 30:25-26.
25 And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
– Isaiah 30:25-26 (KJV)
The difference is time. Isaiah is speaking of the brief moment of a small nova event, which could only last for a short amount of time. If it lasted for more than a short time, it would torch earth and rip away her atmosphere.
Within hours of the beginning of the solar event, the massive amount of material blasted out from the sun would cool off and turn into dust – which would darken the sun and turn the Moon blood red. And, as all that dust moved outward, the stars at night would disappear just like a massive cloud front moving through at night. And, clumps of dust hitting earth’s atmosphere would become ‘shooting stars’ as they burned up in the air.
And that earthquake?
It will destroy every city around the world. Nothing of any size will be left standing. Not just two thirds in Israel will die. Two thirds EVERYWHERE will die – at least those in cities and for those without access to drinkable water.
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, even though I’ve had time to internalize it. Just do yourself a favor and check out what I’ve said in Ezekiel’s Fire. It’s free. If you can prove me wrong, you’ll make me very happy.
The Good News
The 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. (We even have confirmation of that in the next chapter.) 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 7
In Chapter 7, we are still a part of the opening of Seal Six. But, this chapter 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 each the 12 tribes of Israel are sealed in their foreheads.
Will there only be 144 thousand servants of God on earth at this time?
No way.
We have evidence in chapter 12 that there are far more that serve God, than just Israel. So, I’m thinking that these are spiritually mature men, selected by God, who are Christian Jews, and who have a special calling from God. We also have reference to a group of virgin men that are also 144 thousand, and have the Father’s name sealed upon their foreheads. That reference is in Revelation 14, and the resemblance is uncanny.
Are they the same group?
Since it doesn’t specifically say that they are the same group, we can’t say with complete certainty. But, I think that we can be 99.9% sure. (Or, something like that.)
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.
9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
– Revelation 7:9 (KJV)
Is this the same group that we saw when Seal Five was opened?
No, it is not.
Here is the explanation of who they are:
13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?
14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
– Revelation 7:13-14 (KJV)
Remember that Seal Five describes a group of people “under the altar, the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.” That’s not the same as the far larger group that seem to not have been slain for their faith in Christ, even though they did suffer trial and tribulation.
Is this after the First Resurrection?
Does it SAY that this is after the First Resurrection?
Nope.
So, who are these people?
Again, those who have suffered great tribulation and washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. Just think about what we will have gone through during the six seals and the thousands of years that preceded them. That’s a lot of trial and tribulation.
How many trials and tribulations have you had in your own life?
Live long enough, and I can guarantee that you will go through great difficulty. And, if your faith in God does not fail, and you die in Christ – you will be there. And, I hope to be with you. Yes, I know that this puts a monkey wrench in our notions about the First Resurrection, the Rapture and where we go when we die, 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
https://ezekielsfire.com/12-gog-in-revelation.html
Why Israel Must Be Saved BEFORE The Great Tribulation
https://whengogcomes.com/10-why-israel-saved-before-great-tribulation.html
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 for myself, so I understand what you are facing when you take up the challenge of understanding these six seals of Revelation 6 and 7.
Next, everything gets even more interesting in Revelation 8, when Seal Seven is broken and the scroll is free to open.
Part 5 | Revelation 8-11
The Seven Trumpets, The Little Book and the Two Witnesses
(click image or this text for a larger image)
Revelation 8-11: The Seven Trumpets, The Little Book and the Two Witnesses
Seal Seven is broken, the Scroll is freed from its seals, and the miraculous begins – the Seven Trumpets. This means that we will have more questions than answers.
Again, those who firmly claim to have the answers are either deluded or trying to sell you something. Never pay attention to such people. It is time to stop playing games with the Word of God.
As we talk about each of the Seven Trumpets, we’ll also see the Little Book that John eats and the Two Witnesses. AND the three creatures that have seven heads and ten horns.
So, let’s talk about all that.
Chapter 8 starts out with the breaking of Seal Seven, and I believe that Stephen Langton – the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1227 – was wrong to put that in Chapter 8. It actually belongs in Chapter 7.
Oh?
You didn’t know that the chapter divisions were an invention by a Roman Catholic Priest?
Well, now you know.
However, chapter divisions are more useful than not, so we accept them even though we try to remember that some of them shouldn’t be where they are. And, we’ll try to give Stephen as much benefit of the doubt as we can, even though I’d love the chance to yell at him for some of his more egregious errors.
Now, where were we? Oh yes… Chapter Eight.
Chapter Eight – Seal Seven Broken
Two Important Assumptions
When Jesus breaks the final Seal, it is reasonable to assume that the book opens. However, as reasonable as that is, it’s still an assumption. It’s also an assumption that the sealed Book of Truth described in Daniel 10-12 is also this scroll. I can only say that it makes sense that this is where the Scroll opens and that the name of this scroll is the Book of Truth. The events in Daniel 10-12 faithfully coincide with key events in Revelation, and it is a book that was also sealed until the time of the end.
However, assumptions like this can be wrong. I leave it to you to decide whether my assumptions are right. Always be careful to understand the difference between the Word of God and our assumptions about the Word of God. Too few of us understand the difference.
Silence in heaven
So, now that the Scroll has been unsealed, there is silence in heaven for half an hour. And yes, it’s just a half of a time segment of our day. It might be a bit longer than 30 minutes, but it is not days, months, years, centuries or millennia.
Then, Seven Angels appear, and they are given Seven Trumpets. They wait patiently for something else to happen before they can begin:
The offering of our prayers
Every prayer that you have made will be offered up before God. Everything that you spoke to God about… all of your requests, your repentance, your cries for help …they will be remembered before God, on the altar in heaven. And then, the censor that had the incense that was offered with our prayers is then filled with fire from the altar and cast to Earth. All that those on earth will see of this will be noises, thunders, lightnings and yet another earthquake. But, those of us who survive to this point in time will probably understand. Probably.
Trumpet One – Vegetation
When the First Trumpet sounds, hail and fire and blood rain down upon Earth. That blood isn’t something the color of blood – like iron oxide. No, it’s blood.
This is an absolute indication that we’ve left behind any and all ‘ordinary’ explanations for the physical events of the previous two chapters. We are firmly in the miraculous, and it will burn up a third of the trees and all of the grass.
Trumpet Two – Seas
Then, when the Second Trumpet sounds, a great burning mountain is thrown into the sea. A third of the sea becomes blood. A third of the creatures in the sea die. And, a third of the ships in the sea are destroyed.
This mountain sounds like a volcano. But, that’s where we stop with any idea of a natural explanation. The word for blood there is literally the same word that we use for the study of blood diseases. Haima – αἷμα – is at the root for that class of medicine that deals with blood disease – hematology.
That’s real blood. That’s not an ‘algae bloom’. It’s not iron oxide. It’s blood. And, it gums up everything so badly that even the ships of the sea can’t pass through it, and are destroyed if they try.
Trumpet Three – Waters
When Trumpet Three is sounded, a star falls from the sky and poisons a third of the earth’s fresh water supply causing more people to die. Almost all of your bible translations will call the star ‘Wormwood’. A couple translations say ‘bitterness’. Neither of those is correct.
The name of the star is Ἄψινθος – Apsinthos. And, we don’t know where that word comes from. Some think that it isn’t exactly Greek. However, there is a plant that is connected with this word – Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood. It has medicinal properties, but you can be sure that nothing ‘medicinal’ is happening here.
Instead of calling it Wormwood, we should probably stick to the original Greek: Apsinthos. But, that would confuse people, so we’re stuck with this tradition of using the Old English name that the KJV translators used.
Trumpet Four – Heavens
Then, when Trumpet Four is sounded, we have something that seems like a partial repeat of what happens in Seal Seven. Only this time, a third of the sun is obscured, a third of the stars and a third of the moon.
Is that a dust cloud that orbits Earth?
Orbits the sun?
Not sure.
And the word for smiting the sun, moon and stars is a strange one – ἐπλήγη (epligi). The only time that word – or any derivation of it – is used, is here in Revelation 8:12. It is nowhere else in the Bible, which I find interesting.
By the way, if you want to see examples of other stars ejecting massive clouds of dust, just take a look at what Betelgeuse did a few years ago:
Betelgeuse is recovering from blowing its top
https://earthsky.org/space/betelgeuse-recovering-from-outburst-dimming/
Mystery solved? Dust cloud caused Betelgeuse star’s weird dimming, study finds
https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-star-weird-dimming-dust-cloud
Mystery Solved: Dust Cloud Led to Betelgeuse’s ‘Great Dimming’
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/mystery-solved-dust-cloud-led-betelgeuses-great-dimming
Unfortunately, the Astronomers have been slow to look at the evidence that stars like our own have been doing this. Dr. Kazunari Shibata of Kyoto University found plenty of hard evidence of what our sun can do, but astronomers have been reluctant to look at the data.
Why?
Because scientists are just like you and me. They don’t look at things that they do not want to see.
The Angel That Cries Woe!
The last verse of Chapter 8, verse 13, shows us something strange and ominous. An angel flies through the air, proclaiming woe to those left on the earth. When the last three trumpets sound, things will be far worse than we have seen so far.
By the way, ask yourself when we see evidence that the Great Tribulation of the Antichrist has begun. I’ll talk about that, later.
Chapter Nine
Chapter 9 gives us the next two trumpets, and they are deeply miraculous. We had elements of the physical in the previous four trumpets, but locusts from the Bottomless Pit and four angels bound in the Euphrates are truly mind-blowing.
Trumpet Five – Locusts from Bottomless Pit
When Trumpet Five is sounded, a star falls to earth and is given a key that opens the Bottomless Pit.
This means that this pit has an entrance somewhere on Earth. And, that Bottomless Pit has an angel that rules over it, called אבדון (ah-va-dohn). Avadon is a Hebrew word that is used five times in Job, Psalms and Proverbs, and it means destruction. This bottomless pit releases enough smoke to obscure the sun and a huge mass of locusts with the power to torment mankind.
The curious thing is that these locusts are not allowed to torment anyone who had been sealed by God in their forehead. That would seem to refer to the 144 thousand sealed in Revelation 7. And, I think that this is a safe assumption to make. (Just remember that it’s an assumption!)
What about the other Christians who were not sealed?
I don’t know, but I can speculate.
Later, we will get to the evidence of other Christians who are defying the Antichrist, some of whom flee into the wilderness. I assume that there are far more than 144 thousand of such people, so I am also assuming that God protects them from these locusts.
How?
Maybe the job of the 12 thousand from each tribe of Israel is to protect their fellow Christians from these locusts. Since the Bible does not say much about what these men do, I would think that the protection of fellow believers from these flying scorpions would be one of those tasks.
Again, notice that I am making assumptions here.
Oh, and one more thing. Men will want to die, but can’t. They will attempt to commit suicide, but they won’t die. All of which, is beyond my comprehension. Please ignore the foolish speculations that many have made about why men and women will seek to kill themselves and will be unable to.
And here’s another curious thought:
Did you notice that they aren’t targeting people who have the Mark of the Beast?
Right. The Mark of the Beast hasn’t appeared yet.
Trumpet Six – Four Angels Bound in River Euphrates Released
Then comes the second Woe. When Trumpet Six sounds, four angels bound in the Euphrates River will be released, and their job is to kill a third of mankind. They do this by sending out an army of 200 million horsemen who kill with fire, smoke and brimstone.
Then, after seeing the terrible locusts, the inability to die, and a third of mankind killed by these fantastic horsemen…
…the world still refuses to repent.
20 But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
– Revelation 9:20-21 (NKJV)
One of the most amazing – yet predictable – things about humanity, is that they will reject God, even when they cannot avoid seeing Him. This is much like the Children of Israel, during the exodus from Egypt, who saw all the utterly fantastic miracles that God performed – and still rebelled against Him.
If you think that we Christians are immune to rebellion against God, think again. We should fear our own willingness to defy God and forsake His commandments. I’ve seen far too many Christians do this, so do not think that you cannot. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and I don’t see a lot of fear among our fellow believers.
And, let me ask you again:
Have we seen the Antichrist, the Mark of the Beast and the worship of the Beast?
No, we haven’t seen any of that yet.
Chapter 10 – Mighty Angel With Little Book
Then, there’s something of an ‘intermission’. A huge angel comes down to earth, with a little book that is open, in his hand. He cries out something, and seven thunders say something in response. And, whatever those seven thunders said, John was not allowed to write down.
What is it that these Seven Thunders said that God does not want us to know?
And yes, there are many things that God does NOT want you to know. The Bible isn’t just a book of knowledge and instruction. It’s also a book of mysteries, mysteries that many have used to destroy themselves.
One of those mysteries is called the ‘mystery of God’, and that mystery will be finished as the great angel proclaims in verse 7.
When is this ‘mystery of God’ finished?
When Trumpet Seven sounds.
The other thing that this great angel proclaims is that there would be ‘delay no longer’, which means that there HAS been a delay. For two thousand years, we have been waiting for the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation, the prophecies proclaimed by Jesus and the words of God proclaimed by the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. That is quite a delay, but it was necessary to make sure that every element was fulfilled in its time and place. And if you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been saying over the years, there are quite a few of those left.
Then a voice tells John to take the little book that is open in the hand of the great angel. When John asks the angel for the book, the angel tells him to eat it. When John complies, the angel then says:
“You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.” (verse 10)
Why would this angel say that after John consumes that little book?
Is the rest of the Book of Revelation in that book?
Is this the same scroll that Jesus unsealed in Revelation 6, 7 and 8?
Is this the Book of Truth described in Daniel 10-12?
We only have speculations here. If anyone says otherwise, they are either a fool or trying to sell you something. But, I will point out that the events of Revelation 12 and afterwards do dovetail with Daniel 10-12. So, it’s possible to assume that the answer is ‘yes’ to all those questions.
Chapter 11 – Two Witnesses And Trumpet Seven
Chapter 11 then dumps a huge amount of imagery on us, and each word picture needs to be tweezed apart and examined. So, let’s do that.
The Temple
John is given a measuring stick to measure the temple of God, the altar and those who worship there. But, he is told to not measure the court area outside of the temple that is reserved for the Gentiles.
Wait.
Which temple?
The one that is described in heaven?
Later in this chapter, after Trumpet Seven sounds, the temple of God in heaven opens, and I believe that this is the temple being referred to. But, the idea that there would be a ‘court of the gentiles’ is confusing.
And, why is the temple closed until Chapter 11?
The Holy City
John is told the reason why the ‘court of the gentiles’ is left unmeasured – because the gentiles will tread the holy city ‘underfoot’ for 42 months. Since forty two months is three and a half years, that sounds exactly like the takeover of Jerusalem by the Antichrist in Daniel 11.
(We’ll see Israel flee Jerusalem in the next chapter.)
Now, why is Jerusalem called ‘holy’?
It’s certainly not holy now, and it hasn’t been so for 2000 years – maybe longer. So, there is something that happens to make that city ‘holy’. And, there’s only one thing that I can think of, that would make Jerusalem holy again:
The Return of Jacob to God.
I talk about the timing of that event here:
When Gog Comes
https://whengogcomes.com
And, the circumstances surrounding it, here:
Ezekiel’s Fire
https://ezekielsfire.com
Jerusalem cannot be ‘holy’ without the Redemption of Israel. And no, it won’t have a temple that sacrifices animals. But, it will have a center of worship that will operate around the clock, seven days a week. I talk about that, here:
The Antichrist In Daniel
https://whengogcomes.com/05-the-antichrist-in-daniel.html
The Two Witnesses
Two Witnesses will stand in Jerusalem, wearing sackcloth and prophesying for 1260 days (42 months – 3.5 years). They are also the Two Olive Trees and the Two Lampstands that are in the throne room of heaven and stand before God. They breathe fire that kills anyone who tries to harm them. They cause drought, turn water into blood and strike the earth with as many plagues as they wish.
When their job is finished, the beast that ascends out of the Bottomless Pit will fight against them and kill them. Revelation 17 talks about a beast that appears to match the description of this one.
BY THE WAY #1: THREE SEVEN HEADED CREATURES
However, this raises a question that we will also come back to later:
Are there three seven-headed creatures with ten horns?
- There’s the beast that rises out of the sea that has seven heads and ten horns – Chapter 13. Each head has a blasphemous name. It’s body is like a leopard with feet like a bear and a mouth like a lion. It’s not a dragon. And because of the animal attributes (that are also found in Daniel 7), it would not appear to be either red or scarlet. (But, that’s an assumption)
- Satan is described as a fiery red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns – Chapter 12. But, Satan is thrown out of heaven and does not rise from the bottomless pit.
- Then there’s a scarlet beast being ridden by the Great Whore, that has seven heads and ten horns – Chapter 17. This beast doesn’t rise out of the sea or fall from heaven. It ascends out of the Bottomless Pit. And, the Greek word for the ‘red’ of the red dragon is not the same Greek word as the scarlet of this beast. Scarlet and red are different.
I must assume that the scarlet beast ridden by the Great Whore is the one that kills these two witnesses, because it is the only one that rises out of the Bottomless Pit.
BY THE WAY #2: THAT BOTTOMLESS PIT
How can the Scarlet Beast rise out of the Bottomless Pit without an angel opening it with that special key from Revelation 9:1. This raises a point about what Paul said here:
6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.
– 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8 (NKJV)
I don’t think that we can claim a connection here. Many have assumed that the ‘restrainer’ is the Holy Spirit. And, that is very convincing.
Does the Holy Spirit hold this key to the Bottomless Pit?
Is this restrainer that door to the Bottomless Pit?
Or, is it more likely that we are trying to make connections that God did not intend for us to make?
(I vote for that last one.)
(Now, back to the Two Witnesses)
The Beast from the Bottomless Pit – that I assume is the scarlet one ridden by the Roman Catholic Church… (aka, The Great Whore) …kills the Two Witnesses. Now, I cannot say without absolute 100% certainty that the rider of this beast is the RCC, but I think that I can be 99.999999% sure. And, it makes me think that the Catholics are behind – in some way – the killing of these Two Witnesses.
The Roman Catholics have lots of experience with murdering Christians.
Anyway, their bodies are just left to lie in the street for three and a half days. Everyone will see them dead – either by video or photograph. And that indicates a return of some kind of technology that is global. And, if you think that it’s strange that I would mention this, allow me to refer you again to my book that describes how our high tech world will be crushed by the events of Seal Six:
Ezekiel’s Fire
https://ezekielsfire.com
When Gog And Magog attack Israel, it will be decades before enough technology returns to allow people around our globe to see the dead bodies of these Two Witnesses.
Oh, and why is Jerusalem called ‘Sodom and Egypt’ at this time?
If you read the account of how the Antichrist takes over Jerusalem, Daniel 11, you’ll understand that as holy as Jerusalem will be after the Redemption of Israel, there will always be Satanic wolves who will rise up and try to take over the church. Just look at what has happened to the Southern Baptist Convention. And when the righteous followers of God flee the Antichrist as Jesus told us to do, those who are left will certainly turn Jerusalem into Sodom and Egypt.
After the Two Witnesses have been dead for three and a half days, they return to life and are called back up to heaven. Then an earthquake happens, destroying a tenth of Jerusalem – killing seven thousand people. And that brings up an interesting point.
More than a million people live in Jerusalem today. I would think that more than 7000 would die if a tenth of Jerusalem was destroyed today. So, Jerusalem will be dramatically smaller than it is now, but we expected this. Zechariah 13:8 said that two thirds of everyone living in Israel would die when the time of Israel’s Redemption comes, and it’s clear from Revelation 11:13 that this has happened. (Later, in the next chapter, we’ll talk about how half the city had been depopulated already.)
Oh, and those who survive this earthquake…
What do they do?
“…the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven.” (verse 13)
Not the rest of the world.
The rest of Jerusalem.
This means that there are still Israeli Christians in Jerusalem, that worship God and do not take the Mark of the Beast – but were not able to flee in time to escape the takeover of the Antichrist. No one who takes the Mark of the Beast will give glory to the God of heaven.
Oh, and this begs the question:
Is this where we see our first evidence of the Antichrist?
Yes. This is where we see our first evidence of the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation.
(More on that later.)
When those who see the Abomination of Desolation set up, Israeli Christians will run away into the wilderness. But, the Two Witnesses will stay behind in opposition to Satan and the Antichrist.
Finally, The Seventh Trumpet Sounds
Then, Trumpet Seven sounds, but the verse previous to that says this:
“The second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.” (verse 14)
For us, it will not be a ‘woe’. It will be a joyous occasion. But, for the world, their power is taken. There will be lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail. The bowl judgments will come, and also Armageddon. All of that will happen AFTER the Trumpet Seven sounds.
TRANSLATION NOTE: The NKJV uses the word ‘bowl’ for each container that holds the seven last plagues. The Greek word is φιάλη (pronounced fee-ah-leh). That Greek word is the origin for our modern word, vial. Having said that, the phiale is described as… “flat vessel, dish, flat bowl for drinking or sacrificing” (from here). I was going to yell at the NKJV for getting it wrong, until I saw that a φιάλη really is a bowl. (oops)
Bowls.
NOT fancy glass bottles with elegant little stoppers.
When the KJV was published 400 years ago, vial might have meant ‘bowl’. But, it certainly doesn’t mean that now.
Even though Armageddon hasn’t happened yet, and even though there are seven bowls that will be poured out, the last five verses provide a note of finality:
15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” 16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying:
“We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
The One who is and who was and who is to come,
Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.
18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints,
And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth.”
19 Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
– Revelation 11:15-19 (NKJV)
Basically, when the Trumpet Seven sounds, it’s all over. Done. Finished. Only a few details are left, such as the Seven Bowls, the First Resurrection, the Rapture, Armageddon, the killing of the Beast and everyone who has the Mark of the Beast. The Millennium. The New Heaven and New Earth. Those details. Okay, so that’s a lot, but still… the important part is finished.
WAIT: When does the Great Tribulation of the Antichrist Begin?
There has been a lot of yelling and hand-waving over when the Antichrist begins his reign of terror. The Book of Revelation isn’t exactly precise on that. However, the rise of the Two Witnesses coincides with the reign of the Antichrist, and they are described as beginning their ministry during Trumpet Six. In the next section of Revelation, we will also see the flight of the woman into the wilderness for three and a half years in Chapter 12. That coincides with what Jesus says when He tells those of us in Judea to flee in Matthew 24. And THAT would seem to coincide with what Zechariah 14:2 says here:
2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
– Zechariah 14:2 (ESV)
The KJV says captivity instead of exile, but this is deeply incorrect. The Hebrew word גולה (pronounced go-lah) does NOT mean imprisonment. It means exile. And, we will literally see the woman of Revelation 12 flee into exile for three and a half years in the wilderness.
When Jesus spoke of the Abomination of Desolation, He was referring to Daniel 11:31. What follows after that is a clear description of reign of terror by the Antichrist. Daniel 12:11-12 also speaks of this time as three and a half years, plus a little extra.
Putting this all together seems to make it clear that the Great Tribulation of the Antichrist begins at Trumpet Six.
Yes, I know that this goes against the stories told to use by well-intentioned pastors and theologians. But, if you stick to just what the Bible says, you don’t have a lot of choice about your conclusions.
Does the Antichrist begin his rise long before this?
Of course.
The Antichrist doesn’t just spring into being out of thin air. You can read about the process of his rise (and fall) in Daniel 11:21-45. And, we’ll see the Beast system being revived when it’s seventh head has been killed. So, there’s a lot for the Antichrist to do, before he begins the Great Tribulation.
Basically, civilization needs to come back from the dead.
So, without a shadow of a doubt, the Great Tribulation must at least begin no later than Trumpet Six. And yes, I know that it sounds strange to think of the first four or five trumpets sounding BEFORE the Great Tribulation of the Antichrist starts. But, unless someone can point to a chapter and verse that says otherwise, we cannot claim that the First Trumpet marks the beginning of the Great Tribulation.
Yes, I know about all the commentators that say otherwise, but they’re either the same people who gave us the fable of a pretrib rapture, or they are the guys who say that we’re in the millennium or that all of this is ‘apocalyptic literature’ that doesn’t matter. Don’t listen to people like that.
By the way…
How can the Great Whore ride the Scarlet Beast that rises out of the Bottomless Pit, if it hasn’t opened yet?
Am I making this too complicated?
The Chronology Breaks In The Next Chapter…
Now, up to this point, everything has been completely chronological. The next chapter breaks this chronological progression and turns us back to the flight of Israel into the wilderness for three and a half years.
Part 6 | Revelation 12-14
The Woman, The Beast And The Resurrection
(click image or this text for a larger image)
Revelation 12-14: The Woman, The Beast And The Resurrection
In these three chapters, we’ll show the first coming of Christ, a war in heaven, proof of a post-tribulation rapture, the rise of The Beast and the First Resurrection – the one that you want to be a part of.
However, these chapters also provide opportunities to stumble, if you choose to. And yes, stumbling is a choice. Every time we pick up the Bible, we are given an opportunity to submit to the words of God, or choose the path of darkness. Too many of us have chosen darkness, so let’s try not to do that.
Again, this is where the Book of Revelation breaks from the chronological order of chapters 5-11. Chapters 12 and 13 go back into that timeline and expand upon important events – even events preceding Revelation. However, chapter 14 describes events that happen later. So, keep that in mind as we dive into these chapters.
Revelation 12
Chapter 12 describes a woman with 12 stars giving birth to Messiah and then having to flee to a place of safety.
Why?
Or maybe…
WHEN?
First, let’s answer WHO.
The woman with 12 stars who gives birth to Messiah is clearly Israel. This is not the Church. This can be no one other than Israel, as in ‘the 12 tribes of’. Those who claim otherwise need their heads examined.
That red dragon with seven heads and ten horns is Satan. And, he tries to destroy Messiah when He is born. However, he gets it all upside down and fails to stop Jesus from entering the world and sacrificing Himself for our sins.
Unfortunately, Satan does manage to cast down a third of the angels – stars. I’m not sure how Satan can do this, or the entire meaning of this. All that we have are speculations
Does this represent Satan’s ability to persuade a third of the angels to take his side?
Then, there is war in heaven. Michael and the rest of the angels fight against Satan and his angels. Michael and his angels are victorious, and Satan and his angels are forced out of heaven and cast down to earth.
When did this war happen?
How long did it take for Michael and the angels to defeat Satan?
More importantly…
When did this war END?
Because of verse 10, we now get to argue over the Kingdom of God. That’s why the timing here might be important. Or not.
Here’s the verse:
Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
– Revelation 12:10 (NKJV)
When did the Kingdom of God come?
Well, if you are a follower of Christ, then you are a member of this kingdom already. In this sense, the Kingdom of God has already come. In fact, in every way that matters, the war has already been won. It’s just that the process hasn’t been completed, which is why the next verse says this:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death (v 11)
Who is this ‘they’?
‘Our Brethren’ in verse 10. That’s us. We are also in verse 11. And, we are victorious by what Jesus did, by the testimony we give… and …by one thing more:
We do not love our lives unto death.
Those who hold to a pretribulation rapture have forgotten how Satan is defeated. They have forgotten that the war is not over until Satan has been cast into the bottomless pit. God isn’t going to take us out of the way of trouble. Our job is to be in the midst of trouble, in the midst of Great Tribulation, to play our part in the ending of this war.
I find it ironic that so many have forgotten the basics of our faith.
Wait. I didn’t answer the question of when the war in heaven ended. Verse 13 tells us when we will know that it has happened:
Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. (v13)
When Satan goes after Israel, that’s when we’ll know that he has been cast out of heaven and down to earth. And, we’ll have confirmation that this is the case because she flees into the wilderness for a…
(wait for it)
…time, times and a half of a time
Where have we heard this before?
Ooops. I skipped over it. My bad. It’s the same moment as this verse:
Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days. (v6)
How long is 1260 days?
Right about a time, times and a half of a time – three and a half years.
How long is the Great Tribulation?
Three and a half years.
An amazing coincidence, right?
Oh, and what happens when Satan is unsuccessful in killing the woman who flees into the wilderness?
…and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (v17)
That’s even more proof that a pretribulation rapture is not a thing. Christians are alive and resisting Satan, while Israel flees into the wilderness. And, if you want a more detailed description of the events in question, read Daniel 11:21-45. That’s the rise and fall of the Antichrist.
Again, please remember that the chapter divisions were imposed by a Roman Catholic Priest, 800 years ago. There should be no chapter division between Daniel 11 and Daniel 12.
By the way, did you notice that the Antichrist can’t stop the woman?
That’s right. He doesn’t have an air force. I find that to be very interesting and a very big hint that Ezekiel’s Fire is exactly what it seems to be. The other positive thought is that this lack of ability might indicate that there are other places on the planet that might be safe from the Antichrist. We can’t say that with ANY certainty whatsoever, but it is a thought.
Here’s another thought that is probably wrong. And yes, let me emphasize that – PROBABLY WRONG.
What if the earlier trumpets cause destruction of parts of the earth to create a barrier against the Antichrist?
This might protect groups of Christians from the Antichrist, since he would not be able to pass through those areas that were affected. Again, that is pure speculation, and you should not treat that idea seriously. I certainly don’t – even though I kinda like it.
Revelation 13
Chapter 13 revisits the time of persecution in chapter 12, but this time talks about the rise of The Beast. This one also has seven heads and ten horns. But, instead of a dragon, it is described as a leopard with feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, with one of its heads being mortally wounded.
This beast is different. It doesn’t fall from heaven, like the Red Dragon. It doesn’t rise from the Bottomless Pit, like the Beast that is ridden by the Great Whore. No, this beast rises from the sea.
What other beasts have risen from the sea?
Go to Daniel 7 and look at the four beasts. Each of those beasts rises from the sea. Furthermore, each of them shares one characteristic with this Beast in Revelation 13.
The first was like a lion. (The Beast has a mouth like a lion.)
The second was like a bear. (The Beast has feet like a bear.)
The third was like a leopard. (The Beast is like a leopard.)
The fourth had ten horns. (The Beast has ten horns.)
Furthermore, we know that one of those horns on the Fourth Beast is the Antichrist. And, when you read through Daniel 7, you can see that it is a close match to what is said in Revelation.
What does this tell us about The Beast?
First, it tells us that The Beast is alive today. It doesn’t just spring into being during the Last Days. This Beast has been at work, all around us, from the time of Babylon – if not before. And, the power and authority that this beast comes from Satan.
Where is The Beast today?
Everywhere. It has literally conquered the globe. And, everyone has adopted the culture and style of The Beast. Think this through with me.
Whenever an empire was at its prime, what did the people do who wished to be like that empire?
They dressed like the citizens of that empire. Their money. Their architecture. Their system of laws. Their entertainment… were all borrowed from the empire of the day.
When Rome was ascendant, everyone wanted to be Roman.
When America was ascendant, everyone wanted to be American.
Notice how many people wear ties. What a ridiculous piece of cloth to wear. But, everyone does it.
Why?
Because that’s what Europeans and Americans do.
Is the tie a mark of The Beast?
I’m prepared to believe it, ‘cuz I hate wearing them. Stupid, useless pieces of cloth tied around our necks and then draped down the front of our shirts. What a moronic custom. But no, they are not the Mark of the Beast, even though it is a kind of symbol of its reach.
Look at military uniforms. EVERY military around the world has adopted American standards. Some have tried to rebel against this norm, but with limited success.
But, is this really about America?
What is the ‘classic’ architectural style in the US and Europe?
Roman.
What is the language of science and law?
Roman.
What is the system of governance that we all claim?
Roman.
Yes, there’s a lot of Greek mixed in. After all, the Romans got a lot of THEIR culture from the Greeks – which is the leopard in Daniel 7. But, when you want to conquer the world, you turn to the Romans.
We even like to use a bit of Latin to describe it:
Divide et Impera
(pronounced: Dee vee day ett Eem pare ah)
In English: ‘divide and rule’
Now, who gives authority to The Beast?
Satan. The Dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
When was this authority given to the Beast?
Well, we have a clue in Luke when Satan tempted Jesus the second time:
5 Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.”
– Luke 4:5-7 (NKJV)
Remember that The Beast has been around for a long time. However, we are most interested in that part of The Beast that is Roman – more specifically the part that began with the rise of the Praetorian Guard, which took over the Roman Empire. And, we can see the fingerprints of Satan all over Europe – the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Hitler, etc. They all looked to Rome for their inspiration, even when they were directly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church that tried to control them.
They even adopted the name Caesar for their rulers. The king of Germany was the Kaiser. The King of Russia was a Czar. And Napoleon wanted a bit of Caesar for himself, for his own attempt at empire. Just look at the Fourth Beast of Daniel 7, or the feet and toes of the image in Daniel 2 (Daniel 2:33, 40-43), which is the debased part of the Fourth Kingdom.
Whichever time frame you consider to be the most applicable, we are still talking about Rome and the kingdoms and empires that followed after her. And, the Seventh Head that is killed and then revived to become the Eighth, that will be the kingdom ruled by the Antichrist.
The Euro-American Beast
We have room to argue over how we got here. We just don’t have a lot of room to disagree over where we are. And, for those of us who had hopes that America was that bright shining city on a hill, I have bad news for you:
America is a part of The Beast.
Look at what America and the European powers have done over the past centuries. There is no place on earth that has not been broken and crushed by the Anglo-European powers.
Here is what the ‘Fourth Kingdom’ is described as in the image that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed:
40 And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. 41 Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. 43 As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay.
– Daniel 2:40-43 (NKJV)
And no, the great powers of Europe and America did NOT ‘adhere to one another’.
Then, we have a retelling of this, but with four beasts that rise out of the sea in Daniel 7. And, as with the passage above, we see some similarities:
7 “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. 8 I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words.
…
19 “Then I wished to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful, with its teeth of iron and its nails of bronze, which devoured, broke in pieces, and trampled the residue with its feet; 20 and the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn which came up, before which three fell, namely, that horn which had eyes and a mouth which spoke pompous words, whose appearance was greater than his fellows.
21 “I was watching; and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, 22 until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.
23 “Thus he said:
‘The fourth beast shall be
A fourth kingdom on earth,
Which shall be different from all other kingdoms,
And shall devour the whole earth,
Trample it and break it in pieces.
24 The ten horns are ten kings
Who shall arise from this kingdom.
And another shall rise after them;
He shall be different from the first ones,
And shall subdue three kings.
25 He shall speak pompous words against the Most High,
Shall persecute the saints of the Most High,
And shall intend to change times and law.
Then the saints shall be given into his hand
For a time and times and half a time.
– Daniel 7:7-8, 19-25 (NKJV)
In both chapters, Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, is there a fifth kingdom?
No, there is not. Therefore, we are that fourth kingdom.
For those of you who know a bit of world history:
Is there a single civilization that has not been broken in pieces by Europeans and Americans?
Look at all the ‘great civilizations’. Not a single one has survived the rise of Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, America and Russia. Every square inch of this planet has been trampled and conquered by these countries. As I try to think about who hasn’t been broken in pieces by the Euro-American powers, I can’t think of any.
The closest ‘kingdom’ to avoid being blasted to bits might be Turkey. But, Turkey is the result of Britain and France blasting to bits the Ottoman Empire. So, I’m not sure that Turkey counts. And, China has been conquered several times.
Do you know where the idea of Communism comes from?
Britain and the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ in France. Then, the Germans made it worse by giving it to Russia, who then infected China with it. What a mess.
The point is that you and I are living in the Beast System already. We just haven’t had the ‘little horn’ – the Antichrist – rise up and take power… yet.
The Mortal Wound
Now, verse three says this:
And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. (v 3)
Here’s the question:
What is this ‘mortal wound’?
Many have said that this is the assassination of the person we call the Antichrist. And, I call foul on that one. Yes, I understand that the Antichrist leads the final kingdom and that he would naturally represent the Seventh Head that is killed before being revived to become the Eighth Head. (See Revelation 17:11) However, notice that the horns are kings. The heads are… different.
Where can we see how this Seventh Head is killed and then revived?
It’s right here:
Ezekiel’s Fire
https://ezekielsfire.com
It’s also (hopefully) the opening of Seal Six.
The verse that you specifically need to see is this one:
25 There will be on every high mountain
And on every high hill
Rivers and streams of waters,
In the day of the great slaughter,
When the towers fall.
26 Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun,
And the light of the sun will be sevenfold,
As the light of seven days,
In the day that the Lord binds up the bruise of His people
And heals the stroke of their wound.
– Isaiah 30:25-26 (NKJV)
There’s literally no way that our civilization can survive a solar flare/nova-event and global earthquake as big as that. It’s just not possible. Every city of any size will be destroyed. No electricity. No running water. No food distribution. No transportation. No computers. No fuel. No energy. Nothing.
Seal Six and the Redemption of Israel knocks everything down – just as the prophets described.
And, I keep saying ‘hopefully’, because I don’t want it to happen TWICE. Seriously, once is enough.
Your Smart Phone And The Number Of The Beast
But, Satan brings it back to life. It won’t be as vigorous or quite as advanced as the one that we have now – which is why the Antichrist must use a tattoo on your right hand or forehead to identify you as his follower – instead of your smartphone. And yes, your smartphone tells the current Beast System everything that it needs to know about you.
If the Antichrist were to rise and take over today, he would not need to tattoo your right hand or forehead. That’s because your cell phone already identifies who you are, where you are, what you like, what you believe, and what you don’t like. Each cell phone around the world has a unique ID given to it when it was manufactured. That ID is called the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. And, if you are actually using your phone, it will also have an IMSI – International Mobile Subscription Identifier.
It would be very, very easy for the Antichrist to make sure that you are worshiping him, by tracking your IMEI and IMSI. Already, in China, those numbers are used to track people that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like – and keep them from buying, selling or moving around. In fact, if you are a CCP member, they can keep track of whether you are doing enough worship… err …reading of CCP propaganda each day.
The CCP doesn’t need a mark on the hand or forehead to track their people. They do all that through smartphone. And, the Antichrist would do the same, if smartphones were still around.
So, Seal Six destroys all those smartphones, and the infrastructure needed to run them. But, that’s not all.
Again, notice that the Antichrist doesn’t have an air force, or at least not much of one.
It’s just more proof that it will take time for Satan to bring his civilization back to life. And, he will launch his reconquest of the world before he even has air support. That’s fascinating to think about.
However long it takes for The Dragon to raise civilization back to something high tech, It will be enough time for a newly Christian Israel to grow in spiritual maturity so that they can survive what the Antichrist will seek to do to them.
Once the Seventh Head is fully revived, it is given authority to continue 42 months.
How long is 42 months?
Let’s see…
42 divided by 12 is…
ah yes. Three and a half years.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
The Great Tribulation is three and a half years. Not seven. Three and a half.
Satan gives power and authority to this beast, and it blasphemes God and murders all who follow Christ. And, this chapter says something very interesting:
“Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” (v 10)
We will be in desperate need of the patience and faith. This time will be unimaginably hard.
The Prophet Of The Beast
Then, we see another beast rise in Revelation 13:11-18. He’s a prophet who makes an image of The Beast, causes fire to fall from heaven and makes everyone take the Mark of the Beast.
Is this the Antichrist?
What this guy does is something that certainly sounds very Antichrist-ish. But, it sounds like this lesser beast – having two horns like a lamb but speaking as a dragon – isn’t the leader. This bit has always been a puzzle. But, I’m sure that we’ll understand when we get there – at least, those of us who are still alive. Just remember that we see the actions of the Antichrist in quite a bit of detail in Daniel 11:21-45.
Also, think about that image. He needs to make it – probably lots of them – before it can be placed in Jerusalem. So, this prophet of the Beast must rise before Jerusalem is captured. He is the one who must set up the network of market places that would require you to have the mark and worship the image of the beast.
As someone who has studied how businesses work – I have an MBA – and how international trade works, I can tell you that this would be a truly mammoth undertaking. It would take access to energy, natural resources, manufacturing and a host of other essentials. A lot of that could be scavenged from the rubble of our current civilization, but it would still be a mind-boggling effort. And, it would be extremely impressive.
In fact, the number one reason why so many would want to take the number of the Beast and worship him is to have access to all that delicious civilization that was being rebuilt. To those who were not Christian, it would be worth selling your soul to the devil.
The Number Of the Beast
Then, Revelation 13 ends with this last verse:
Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.
– Revelation 13:18 (NKJV)
For decades, foolish teachers have been finding ways to calculate this number to be Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and any number of famous people. Please stop doing that. It’s embarrassing. And stop listening to people who insist that they know how the number of the Beast is calculated.
Again, stop it.
It’s not helping.
Nor is the Mark of the Beast a chip implanted under your skin. That technology just doesn’t work. I know that some companies have experimented with it, but it isn’t a secure technology. All that I would need to do to impersonate you is take a scanner, read the codes on that chip, program my own to respond like yours, and break into any secure area that you have access to. Or, buy and sell as if I were you.
And yes, I know about cryptography keys and PKI. I worked in that industry. You can get around those barriers with more ease than you think. Very few actually know how insecure our networks are.
No, this will be a visible MARK. It will visibly identify you to everyone as a worshiper of the Beast and someone who can buy and sell without restriction. And, you must consciously and voluntarily take it for yourself.
For some reason, the Mark of the Beast cannot be forced upon you. Otherwise, the Antichrist would not be chopping off heads of those who refuse.
Again, stop listening to the hysterical proclamations of this or that ‘watchman’, telling you that the Mark is some implant. Ignore ANYONE who tells you that.
Revelation 14
Revelation 12 and 13 are a retelling of important parts of previous chapters. This next chapter, Revelation 14 is different. It looks forward to events on the timeline that we have not gotten to yet. So, let’s look at this next chapter.
The 144 Thousand
Chapter 14 shows us the Lamb. But instead of sitting on the throne in heaven, He is standing on Mount Zion with the 144 thousand.
Are these the 12 thousand from each tribe that were sealed in their foreheads in Revelation 7?
I don’t think that we can say with absolute certainty. But, it’s hard to ignore what looks like a pretty strong connection. Both groups have something put on their foreheads. The group in chapter 7 are referred to as sealed in their foreheads, while the group in chapter 14 are described as having the name of God the Father written on their foreheads.
I’m not prepared to see a difference between a seal and the written name of God. I see it as the same thing. Having said that, it’s still not explicitly said that these two groups are the same. I’m assuming that they are the same, while acknowledging that I could be wrong.
Now, let’s get back to that reference about Mount Zion.
Why Mount Zion?
Well, that’s the location of Jerusalem. And, we know that Jerusalem (specifically the Mount of Olives) is the precise location where Jesus returns to Earth.
Does anyone remember where Jesus Returns to first?
From the New Testament, we see this in Acts:
9 Now when [Jesus] had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
– Acts 1:9-11 (NKJV)
That was on the Mount of Olives. And the two angels that spoke to the Disciples were absolutely correct that Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives, in the same way that He left – with one difference:
4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives,
Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it toward the south.
5 Then you shall flee through My mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall flee As you fled from the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus the Lord my God will come, And all the saints with You.
– Zechariah 14:4-5 (NKJV)
Did you see the difference?
Right. The feet of Jesus will be on the Mount of Olives, and it will split right down the middle, creating a huge valley. Oh, and there’s one more thing that Zechariah says:
“And all the saints with You.”
That sounds like those 144 Thousand that Revelation 14 is referring to. And furthermore, Zechariah shows us that this is where the conquest of Earth by Jesus begins. It starts at Jerusalem, spreading north to the Jezreel Valley (Armageddon) and then out into the rest of the world. In later chapters, we’ll see what needs to take place before the conquest of Earth can continue.
Final Warning By Three Angels
Then, three angels fly through the sky, giving one last warning to the people of Earth. The first calls everyone to worship God, because the final hour has come. The second angel proclaims the fall of the great city Babylon. The third angel tells everyone that all who worship the beast and receives The Mark will be tormented in Hell forever.
Then, yet again, it repeats a curious phrase:
“Here is the patience of the saints”
The Resurrection And Rapture
Then we see the First Resurrection and the Rapture. And, it is exactly as Jesus described:
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
– Matthew 24:29-31 (NKJV)
Also as Paul describes here:
16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NKJV)
Revelation describes it this way:
14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.
– Revelation 14:14-16 (NKJV)
Jesus is shown, sitting on a cloud, with a sickle in His hand. He then reaps the harvest of the earth, all who were followers of God – whether dead or still alive. This is the moment of the First Resurrection and the Rapture. Revelation will revisit this moment later.
This moment will be Daniel 12:2. It will be Matthew 13:24-30, 47-50. Matthew 18:21-34. Matthew 22:11-13. Matthew 25:14-29, 31-46.
Armageddon And The Grapes Of Wrath
Now contrast the reaping of the righteous with this next one. This time it is an angel who has a sharp sickle, and he is called to reap the ‘vine of the earth’. And, here is how that is described:
19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.
– Revelation 14:19-20 (NKJV)
That’s the Battle of Armageddon. That’s the death of all who take the Mark of the Beast.
Who is left?
Those who did not take the Mark of the Beast, or worship The Beast, but were also not followers of Christ.
And yes, there are those who will be unable to take The Mark. Taking the Mark of the Beast must be a conscious decision. It cannot be forced upon you. For instance, someone in a coma cannot take the Mark of the Beast – nor can anyone too young to make such a conscious decision. Also, those Israeli Christians who fled into the wilderness… their children would not be taking the Mark, but would not be in the Rapture if they did not choose to follow Jesus. Also, since the Antichrist cannot get to the Israeli Christians who flee into the wilderness, there might be other isolated spots with people that the Antichrist also might not be able to get to.
We have confirmation of this in Zechariah 14:
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
– Zechariah 14:16 (NKJV)
Those who claim that EVERYONE dies when Jesus Returns, are deeply incorrect. And, I am surprised that so many persist in repeating this foolish idea. We will revisit this issue when we talk about the Millennium in Revelation 20.
The Timeline Redux
Remember that when we started these three chapters, the timeline of Revelation took a break with chapter 12. Chapters 5 to 11 are in chronological order. They follow one after the other, and that timeline is not broken until we get to Revelation 12. Revelation 12 and 13 give us an opportunity for God to clarify key events that happen before and during chapters 5-11.
Revelation 14, however, is forward-looking. It describes events that are not a part of chapters 5 through 11. For instance, the Battle of Armageddon doesn’t happen until Revelation 19, which means that the reaping of the Grapes of Wrath is much later in the timeline – after the Seven Bowls of the Wrath of God are poured out.
The timeline that stopped with Revelation 11 restarts with Revelation 15.
Part 7 | Revelation 15-19
The Bowls, Babylon and Armageddon
(click image or this text for a larger image)
Revelation 15-19: The Bowls, Babylon and Armageddon
Here we restart the chronological order that stopped in Revelation 11, when the Seventh Trumpet was blown. In this section, we see the wrath of God poured out of bowls, the identity and fall of Babylon, Armageddon and our goal – the First Resurrection and the Rapture.
As always, there is a lot to get wrong, so we’ll try not to do that as we attempt to correct the errors that have afflicted our interpretation of this book for almost 2000 years.
Here are the five chapters that further the timeline of Revelation, picking up where Revelation 11 stopped:
- Revelation 15 – Prelude to the Bowls of Wrath
- Revelation 16 – Seven Angels pour out the Seven Bowls
- Revelation 17 – Description and Identity of the Beast Rider
- Revelation 18 – The Fall of Babylon
- Revelation 19 – The Battle of Armageddon
All of that is in chronological order, and a lot to talk about. Probably too much. But, there’s some interesting stuff in here.
Just remember that we’ve already been dealt with the hardest part to understand. Unlocking the mystery of Seal Six has already allowed us to identify who the Woman is, when the Beast and the Antichrist arrive, and the timing of the First Resurrection which closely precedes the Rapture. Everything else that follows is quite easy to figure out, if we are willing to do so.
Revelation 15 – Prelude to the Bowls of Wrath
As we take up where Revelation 11 left off, remember that Trumpet Seven has sounded, and the Kingdom has been proclaimed. The 24 elders fall down in worship and praise of Jesus and proclaiming the judgment and reward of His people. The Temple in heaven has opened and the ark in the holiest of holies is revealed. All of that immediately precedes the beginning of chapter 15.
Our first image is that of seven glorious angels who will pour out the Wrath of God upon the Earth. And their appearance precedes our next conundrum.
A Picture Of The Tribulation Saints
It’s this verse:
And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God.
– Revelation 15:2 (NKJV)
These are those Christians who died during the reign of terror by the Antichrist. They were murdered for their faith, and we now see them in heaven.
Wait.
Did we miss the Resurrection?
No, we did not.
So, how could these tribulation saints be in heaven?
Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us everything that happens when we die. And some of what the Bible says appears to contradict other descriptions of life after death. Jesus spoke of Abraham’s bosom. Daniel 12 speaks of ‘those who sleep in the dust’. And here we have a sea of glass where those in Christ are gathered after they had been murdered by the Antichrist.
Have they received their reward?
Nope. They haven’t. But, they ARE in a place of peace and tranquility while they await their final reward.
Just in Revelation alone we see three descriptions of peaceful places of waiting. We saw one after the opening of Seal Five. We saw another after the opening of Seal Six. And now, we have this third description.
That place of waiting seems to be the one thing that we can claim to be true about what happens immediately after we die. We go to a place of waiting. And, I’m not sure that we would feel the passage of time as we do now. Or, maybe that we won’t care very much about that passage of time.
It will certainly be a place of rest, at least for those who died while in a covenant relationship with God. Those who die without being members of The Kingdom, will exist in a place that is supremely unpleasant. See the description of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31.
The Temple Opens – Redux
Next we either see a retelling of the Temple opening in heaven, or maybe it’s another part that opens. And again, we see the seven angels in verse 1, reintroduced as they exit the Temple. These angels are described as ‘having the seven plagues’ before they are given the bowls of the wrath of God.
Do they have the plagues and use the Wrath of God to rain their plagues down upon those who follow the Antichrist?
Sounds like it, but it looks like we don’t have a completely clear picture.
Once the Seven Angels are given the Seven Bowls of the Wrath of God, by one of the four creatures that stand before the Throne of God… The Temple is filled with smoke from the glory of God, and no one will enter the Temple until the bowls are poured out, which is Chapter 16.
Revelation 16 – Seven Angels Pour Out The Seven Bowls
Here is where the Seven Plagues afflict the followers of The Beast:
Bowl One – Foul and Loathsome Sores.
Bowl Two – The Sea Turns to Blood and everything living in it, dies.
Bowl Three – Rivers and Springs turn to blood.
Bowl Four – The Sun scorches men with fire.
Bowl Five – Darkness and Pain for the Kingdom of the Beast.
Bowl Six – Euphrates dries up, and the Kings of the earth are gathered.
Bowl Seven – The Greatest Earthquake, massive hail and Babylon to be judged.
All of these bowls seem to be poured out in relatively quick order. There is enough time between each bowl for the followers of the Antichrist to feel and respond to each of these plagues. But seemingly, not more than a few days each. Enough time for them to blaspheme God instead of repenting.
Has the Resurrection and Rapture happened yet?
Nope. These bowls are being poured out while many of us are still on earth. But, you can bet that we are being completely protected from this time of suffering and wrath. Yes, I know that we don’t like the idea of being around when the bowls are poured out, but we do not set the script. God does.
Here’s the verse that shows us that we are still on earth:
“Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”
– Revelation 16:15 (NKJV)
That is Jesus speaking. Even though the Sixth Bowl has been poured out, and we’re almost to the end, Our Lord stills warns those of us still alive to hold on to righteousness. You can imagine those of us still alive at that time, struggling on with the last of our strength almost ready to give up – because it has all been so hard. But, God tells us to persevere for the final bit of time that is left on the clock.
The Great City
One thing that puzzles me a bit is the reference to The Great City. It’s mentioned here, after the Seventh Bowl is poured out:
Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.
– Revelation 16:19 (NKJV)
Normally, when there are two descriptions like this, you should assume that they are two different entities. If that assumption is true, then our further assumption would be that this ‘great city’ is Jerusalem, and that would appear to be when these two verses occur in Zechariah 14:
4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it toward the south.
5 Then you shall flee through My mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall flee As you fled from the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus the Lord my God will come, And all the saints with You.
– Zechariah 14:4-5 (NKJV)
If you’ve ever been to Jerusalem, you’ll know that the Mount of Olives is right up against the Old City. If it splits in two like that, Jerusalem would easily break into three parts. That is not hard to see at all. But, if Zechariah 14 is connected to Revelation 16 in this way, it’s more proof that the Resurrection and Rapture still hasn’t happened in the timeline that God has laid out in Revelation.
It means that we are still here, in Jerusalem, and still needing to flee.
When does the Rapture and Resurrection happen?
Well, remember Resurrection and Rapture happens when Jesus reaps the earth in Revelation 14:14-16. This does not happen until AFTER Babylon has fallen. We still need to move forward in the timeline before we see the Resurrection and Rapture.
The other question is about the ‘greatness’ of Jerusalem. I love Jerusalem more than any other place on this planet. It’s an amazing place, but I would never call it ‘the great city’ – since it really isn’t all that big. But, there are many things that must happen before the Antichrist takes the stage, and it does look like Jerusalem could become a Great City before the Antichrist rises.
TRANSLATION NOTE: Most translations get Zechariah 14:2 wrong, which distorts our view of what is happening here. Half the city of Jerusalem goes into EXILE not CAPTIVITY. There is gigantic difference, and I am puzzled by why so many translators have such a poor understanding of Hebrew.
Revelation 17 – Description and Identity of the Beast Rider
Since the fall of Babylon happens when Bowl Seven is poured out, the vision of Revelation switches to a look at who and what Babylon is. She is referred to as a ‘great harlot’ who sits on many waters, and has committed fornication with the kings of the earth, and how the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with her fornication.
It’s NOT The Jewish People
A rather vile person decided that it would be clever to offer me some ‘food for thought’, trying to claim that this Harlot was the Woman of Revelation 12 who fled into the wilderness. Trying to claim that the Jews were the Harlot is a foul, evil and vile thing to say.
There is no way that the Jews could be this Harlot. First of all, this whore is represented by an ancient city, and the Jews have not had one of those before 1967. Nor do the Jews have this on their collective forehead:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.
Nor are the Jews drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.
Does Jerusalem reign over the Kings of the Earth?
Absolutely not. I lived there for 15 years. There’s no way that Jerusalem reigns over ANYONE, let alone the Kings of the Earth. Seriously, take a good hard look at Israeli politics and then think about how Jerusalem has been pushed around for more than 55 years.
Israel is the punching bag of the world. Everyone loves to take a whack at the Jewish state, and I’ve had to sit an watch it happen. For anyone to add insult to the injury suffered by the Jewish people, I would have to look at such hardness of heart and doubt their salvation.
How can you be so evil and so deluded and still be saved?
Even now, as I edit this, Israel is being pressured by Washington to turn back on communications, turn the water back on and limit their attempts to destroy Hamas. If Jerusalem ruled the world, then none of that pressure would work against Israel. There is a curse upon all who curse the Jews.
Mystery, Babylon – The Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church would love for you to believe that the Jews are at the heart of every problem. The RCC has been trying to pin the blame on them for 2000 years and have been at the root of the pogroms that murdered so many Jews – along with so many Christians.
Rome has drunk the blood of Christians that they have murdered. Millions upon millions of Christ followers have been tortured to death. And Rome’s harlot daughters took up this foul practice in the name of ‘righteousness’. The Lutherans were some of the worst, but they had competition from the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the myriad versions of the Greek Orthodox church.
The only thing more vile than the Roman Catholic Church, is The Beast that she rides. There is literally nothing that Rome has not done to gain favor and power all over the world. And, in her final and greatest betrayal, she will participate with the Antichrist in the massacre of those who follow Christ.
The ironic part of this lies in the word ‘harlot’. Prostitutes are not born that way. It is something that they become. They were once pure young women, who – one day – choose darkness. And that is a perfect picture of the Roman Catholic Church.
At one time, Rome was home to one of the early churches. Paul wrote the Book of Romans to the church there, and praised them for how their great faith was known throughout the world. Paul did evangelism in Rome. But, Paul was murdered at or before AD 67, by Nero – who committed suicide later that year.
By the time that AD 96 came, the Roman church was no longer considered one of the early churches. You will notice that Rome is not mentioned by Jesus, as one of the Seven Churches in Revelation 1, 2 and 3. There’s a reason for that.
Again, think about why Rome is not mentioned in chapters one, two or three of Revelation.
Rome had a great beginning, but she corrupted herself. She became a harlot and a murderer. She allied herself with Satan and The Beast. And her vileness is so much worse because she had such a good beginning.
Please remember that there is a curse upon all who seek to change the meaning of the Book of Revelation. That curse is especially true for those who seek to deflect the blame that the Roman Catholic Church so richly deserves. If you have done this, now is the time to repent of that.
Can Roman Catholics Be Saved?
As vile and evil as the Roman Catholic Church is, the Bible appears to indicate that some members of that foul monstrosity have salvation. It is hard to believe that this is possible, but since God said it… I will believe it.
In the next chapter we’ll see the cry of a voice that says, “Come out of her, my people…”, so I will never say that there cannot be Christians within the Roman Catholic Church. But, at the same time, it is also true to say that the Roman Catholic Church is not Christian.
They do not follow Christ. Their teachings are against the Bible. They twisted the Bible itself and added heresy upon heresy to their system of belief. Their idolatry is obscene. Their greed, beyond compare. Their lust for power, unending. And, their foul teachings are at the heart of many errors taught in our churches, today.
But again, if God says that He has people inside the Roman Catholic Church, I will not speak against that.
However, don’t expect me to accept you as Christian, if you choose to join Babylon.
The Beast That Rome Rides
I have speculated that there are three seven-headed creatures described in Revelation:
- The fiery red Dragon that falls from heaven.
- The leopard/bear/lion Beast that rises from the sea.
- The scarlet Beast that rises from the Bottomless Pit.
That third one is ridden by the Roman Catholic Church, and its description is an awful lot like that of the Beast that rises out of the sea – Revelation 13. That second beast that rose out of the sea was not given a color when it was described, and it might be possible for this beast to have its origins in Bottomless Pit.
Is the Second Beast also the Scarlet Beast?
However, this question is more perplexing than important. It really doesn’t matter if there are two or three beasts. It’s what they symbolize that matters. And, there’s a specific challenge related to understanding this scarlet beast:
9 “Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. 10 There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. 11 The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.
12 “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. 13 These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast. 14 These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.”
– Revelation 17:9-14 (NKJV)
That sounds like the Beast System that we’ve been looking for, and it looks a lot like that beast rising out the sea in Revelation 13. But, notice that phrase in verse 9:
Here is the mind which has wisdom…
There’s an ironic twist to this story that I find interesting:
The Scarlet Beast and The Harlot both have roots in the same place – Rome.
Yes, I know that Daniel spoke of the Leopard (Greece), the Bear (Persia) and the Lion (Babylonia). But, that fourth beast – the one with ten horns – that’s definitely Rome. And all who sprouted from Rome, have carried on the Roman tradition – all the while, hating the Roman Catholic Church.
Revelation 17 ends with a description of how much those ten horns hate the harlot. They will be driven by God to take everything from her, eat her flesh and then burn her with fire.
How Does The Rome Ride The Beast?
Since we have a 2000 year perspective on this story, we can ask how Rome has been so successful. So, I have a few thoughts:
Intelligence Networks – The Roman Catholic Church has been described as having better intelligence gathering than the CIA. Many point the finger at the Jesuits, but this would have been true long before that ‘order’ was created. For centuries, Rome sat at the center of a web of information coming in from every diocese, from all over the world.
Soft Power – When you command the belief and obedience of all the peasants and most of the nobility, you can push around the king. There’s a limit to how far you can go, and Rome overstepped those limits often. But, the amount of ‘soft power’ in the hands of the RCC was truly incredible.
Money – All those tithes flowing into Rome could buy a lot. Civil wars. Revolutions. Crusades. Disinformation campaigns. All of that and more were easily bought by the Pope.
The historical fact of Roman treachery is beyond obvious. They helped get the Nazis out of Europe when Germany lost World War II. They fomented rebellions throughout the world. They made common cause with the Chinese Communist Party, Islam, the Mafia and a host of foul entities. Rome is the author of the Pretrib Rapture Theory, Preterism and every kind of heresy.
We could go on and on, but it would be a distraction from the point. We know how evil the Roman Catholic Church is. This passage in Revelation is just making it extra clear.
Rome rides The Beast, and they will help the Antichrist murder as many Christians as they can.
And then… the Antichrist will murder Rome. A truly ironic and justified fate.
Revelation 18 – The Fall of Babylon
The destruction of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church is emphasized in Revelation 18. And, it happens after bowl seven is poured out and before the Battle of Armageddon.
Think about that timing.
The Roman Catholic Church is alive and well throughout the reign of the Antichrist. They aid the Antichrist in the murder of those who will not take The Mark. They prostitute themselves to the Antichrist, and the Antichrist kills her. And, the description of it is like the use of nuclear weapons.
Does Rome get nuked?
It certainly sounds like it. But, it’s also true that there are many ways to destroy a city in this way. The fire bombing of Dresden during World War II would be one of many examples.
Just remember that in the next chapter we see the smoke of the burning of Mystery Babylon rising forever.
Revelation 19 – The Battle of Armageddon
TRANSLATION NOTE – Now, before going on, I have a beef with Bible Translators of Revelation 19. They keep saying ‘Alleluia’ instead of Halleluyah. Yes, I know that Ancient Greek doesn’t have a good ‘h’ sound, but we still know what the word that the angels are saying. It’s not Greek. It’s Hebrew. And, It’s Halleluyah – or, Praise Yehovah.
(And yes, I’m writing ‘halleluyah’ and not ‘hallelujah’. There’s no ‘j’ in Hebrew. I get mad at dictionaries, too.)
For those of you who have been waiting for the moment in the Revelation timeline, when the Rapture happens, Revelation 19 is when it happens. Of course, this isn’t the first time that the Resurrection and Rapture are indicated in Revelation. We saw the Resurrection and Rapture, here:
14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.
– Revelation 14:14-16 (NKJV)
But, Revelation 14 is not a timeline chapter. It merely introduces the events that will occur in the timeline chapters that follow. But, one thing that Revelation 14 helps us see, is that the reaping of the righteous – the Resurrection and Rapture – happens BEFORE the reaping of the unrighteous when the Battle of Armageddon occurs.
Furthermore, Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians about the physical characteristics of the Resurrection and Rapture – meeting the Lord in the air:
Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:17 (NKJV)
So, when do we see this in Revelation 19?
Just before verse 11.
Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves. The first part of chapter 19 describes the preparation of something that we also look forward to:
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb
So, let’s go to the beginning.
The first five verses describe the great joy and the praises towards God for the complete obliteration of the Roman Catholic Church – the Great Harlot. The smoke of her burning will rise forever, and you can bet that it will be a permanent fixture even during the millennium. It will be like a smoking volcano, where the smoke never ends and just rises into the air, forever. It would probably be a major tourist attraction during the 1000 year reign of Christ.
One Last Reason Why Jerusalem CANNOT Be Mystery Babylon
It’s hard to believe that we are forced to drag out every bit of evidence to neutralize the antisemitism among us. I have been fighting this evil for decades, and there are few things more vile than an antisemite who claims to be a Christian. They have trampled upon the words of God, and will suffer for eternity. But, since there are those who consume this ugly poison, I keep opposing this evil wherever I can.
So, here’s one more reason why Jerusalem cannot be Mystery Babylon:
1 After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! 2 For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.” 3 Again they said, “Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!”
– Revelation 19:1-3 (NKJV)
This happens BEFORE Jesus comes to earth. This happens BEFORE Armageddon. To further prove my point, here is what happens AFTER Mystery Babylon is destroyed:
3 Then the Lord will go forth
And fight against those nations,
As He fights in the day of battle.
4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives,
Which faces Jerusalem on the east.
And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two,
From east to west,
Making a very large valley;
Half of the mountain shall move toward the north
And half of it toward the south.
– Zechariah 14:3-4 (NKJV)
10 All the land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be raised up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin’s Gate to the place of the First Gate and the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses.
11 The people shall dwell in it;
And no longer shall there be utter destruction,
But Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.
– Zechariah 14:10-11 (NKJV)
16 And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. 17 And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no rain.
– Zechariah 14:16-17 (NKJV)
As Jesus rescues Jerusalem, splitting the Mount of Olives in half – Mystery Babylon is ALREADY burning. As Jesus rules from Jerusalem for a thousand years, Mystery Babylon will still be burning, because Revelation says in chapter 19, verse 3:
“Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!”
If anyone who has been tricked into believing the evil lie that Jerusalem is Mystery Babylon, refer them to Revelation 19 and Zechariah 14. If they refuse to listen, then they have chosen the path of darkness, and you should have nothing to do with them. And yes, this is something worth breaking fellowship over.
Never have fellowship with those who trample the words of God spoken by the prophets and spoken in the Book of Revelation.
The Marriage and Marriage Supper
After that joyous occasion, verses six through nine praise God and describe the preparations for the marriage supper of the Lamb, along with the Lamb’s wife who has made herself ready. All of this is a description of preparation. Not the event itself. Let’s be careful about that.
Another thing that we need to be careful about is to make sure that we do not take this ‘marriage’ out of context. I have seen people produce imagery about this that verges on the obscene and blasphemous. Jesus will not have a sexual relationship with this bride. That is not what is being communicated here, so people need to back off from some of the imagery that they are encouraging.
When Jesus spoke of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, was He being literal?
OF COURSE NOT.
The same thing applies here. Stop adding sexuality to the symbolism in this chapter.
(You’re welcome.)
Then, in verse 10, we see the Resurrection and Rapture. Oh wait… no it doesn’t. It’s where we would expect it to be, and it’s where we think that it happens. But instead, we see a shocked yelp from the person explaining things, when John falls to the ground and worships him.
Apparently, the person talking to John is a ‘fellow servant’ who has the testimony of Jesus Christ. This leads me to wonder at who this could be. Very curious.
From verse eleven onward, we have the Battle of Armageddon and that second ‘reaping of the earth’ that we already saw in Revelation 14 – the Grapes of Wrath. Everyone who took the Mark of the Beast and who worshiped the Beast, gets killed.
Who is left?
There are those who cannot take the Mark and are unable to worship the Beast. For instance, the children of those who fled into the Wilderness in Revelation 12. Many will not accept Christ, but will not have opportunity to take the Mark or worship the Beast.
When you read Daniel 11, you see that the Antichrist has resistance. Egypt attacks him, and Revelation 12 indicates that others will continue to resist him. And, we cannot claim that all who resist the Antichrist are Christians. And, all of that is what we know.
We could speculate further that there could be pockets of humanity throughout the world that are cut off from civilization, that might not even know that the Antichrist has arisen. I’m not willing to do too much speculation here other than to help illustrate why there will be unsaved, un-Raptured people who remain on earth.
Zechariah 14 makes it clear that there are survivors of the Great Tribulation and Armageddon.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
– Zechariah 14:16 (NKJV)
There are foolish theologians who have written painfully awful commentaries on the Bible, claiming that no one survives Armageddon and that the Millennium is populated only by the Resurrected and Raptured. That is complete and utter nonsense, and all who say such should be shouted down and have their commentaries burned. And, any who would preach their nonsense should be shouted down and thrown out of their pulpits.
The time for foolishness is over.
Christians who do not know the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, should not be allowed to influence our conversations on eschatology. As important as the Book of Revelation is, the revelations of the prophets are equally important. They provide vital context to what Revelation cannot talk about. And, I am truly disgusted by those who refuse to learn from the Hebrew Scriptures.
It verges on heresy, and that needs to stop.
Next, we’ll talk about the Millennium, the Final Judgment, the New Heaven and New Earth and the curse upon all who mishandle the Book of Revelation.
Part 8 | Revelation 20-22
The Millennium, New Jerusalem And A Warning
Revelation 20-22: The Millennium, New Jerusalem And A Warning
Satan is bound and Jesus rules and reigns with His saints for a thousand years. Then Satan is loosed and deceives the world AGAIN, leading to a final battle. After that, a second resurrection occurs, and all who are not found in the Book of Life are thrown into the Lake of Fire.
A new heaven and a new earth appears, along with a city called New Jerusalem. This city is a giant cube 1500 miles (~2400 km.) wide and tall. It’s called the Bride of the Lamb.
There’s also a dire warning that we must pay attention to.
Let’s dig in…
Remember that this overview is not attempting to comment on every element of Revelation. All that we want to do is see the structure of this book and shed light on some of the more difficult to understand passages. What is left out should be self-explanatory.
And yes, there are some fascinating questions in the last three chapters of Revelation!
These three chapters give is the best glimpse of what we all are hoping for – eternal life with Christ. All the suffering of this life will be totally eclipsed by the joy that we will have, forever. Those of us who hold on to the end, will be well rewarded. But, there’s an even more important message that should give us pause as we consider these things.
The Final Warning
Let me start with the most important part of this chapter:
18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book;
19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:18-19 (NKJV)
I truly hope that I have not added or taken away anything from the Book of Revelation. Those two verses are some of the most frightening in the Bible, and our fellow Christians are not taking this warning to heart.
Too many have added and taken away from the Book of Revelation, and the price for that will be terrible. It would be better to say “I don’t know” than to force Revelation to conform to what you want it to say. But, let’s leave that discussion for later and begin this final section of Revelation with chapter 20.
Revelation 20
This might be the most perplexing of all the chapters in Revelation. And there have been many foolish teachers who have confidently proclaimed understanding of this passage. And in doing so, have been cursed by God.
Why is Satan bound for a thousand years?
Why is there a Millennium, when God could easily take us straight to the New Heaven and New Earth?
Before you jump in with an explanation, you should know that you’re giving us pure supposition. That’s a dangerous thing to do with the Bible, and especially so with Revelation. There is no such thing as a ‘sanctified imagination’.
Only a fool would think otherwise.
(And, I’ve known a lot of fools.)
Anyway, the first section of this chapter is the binding of Satan in the Bottomless Pit. No mention of his angels is given. It’s just Satan. And, part of his binding is a seal that is placed upon his forehead. And, it’s as if there’s a 1000 year timer on his binding, when the timer finishes it says…
“…But after these things he must be released for a little while.”
– Revelation 20:3b (NKJV)
Why must Satan be released for a little while?
And yes, the words, “I don’t know” are appropriate here. We don’t know. I suspect that it’s wrapped up in the reason why there is sin in the world, and why God the Son had to come to earth to save us from Hell. I’m completely grateful for what God has done for us, but there’s a mystery involved that will not be explained until we get to Life Eternal.
Those Who Reign With Christ
The wording of verses four, five and six are a bit confusing. In verse four, thrones are set up, and people are sitting on them.
Are these the 24 thrones that we saw in Revelation 4:4 and 11:16?
Maybe. But, I’m not sure that we can claim that Revelation 20 is speaking of the same thrones.
Then, verse four continues, and says that those who did not worship the Beast and were beheaded for Christ, will reign with our Lord for a thousand years. And, it’s confusing since it seems to imply that only those who died during the Great Tribulation will rule and reign with Christ.
I certainly cannot argue against that.
I’m not sure how EVERYONE who was a follower of God would be able to rule and reign with Christ during the Millennium. I’m assuming that there would be a billions in heaven.
How could earth hold that many ‘rulers’?
I really don’t know.
The confusion continues with verse five, when it says:
But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
– Revelation 20:5 (NKJV)
If you follow the ‘lack of evidence’ narrative, you will assume here that only those who rule and reign with Christ… and only those who died at the hands of the Antichrist …will be in the First Resurrection. And, when we read verse six:
Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.
– Revelation 20:6 (NKJV)
This is why we do not ignore the rest of the Bible, when reading Revelation. For instance, Paul says this here:
16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NKJV)
And, we also remember the Resurrection after the Great Tribulation in Daniel 12:
1 “At that time Michael shall stand up, The great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people; And there shall be a time of trouble, Such as never was since there was a nation, Even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, Every one who is found written in the book.
2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt.
3 Those who are wise shall shine Like the brightness of the firmament, And those who turn many to righteousness Like the stars forever and ever.
– Daniel 12:1-3 (NKJV)
So, everyone who is saved, is in the First Resurrection. Everyone. (Even those who weren’t very good Christians and earn everlasting contempt.) That’s billions of people. And, I’ll show a little later that we could be talking about more than 10 billion people.
Again, can billions rule and reign with Christ on Earth for a thousand years?
Anything is possible. I mean, our new, sanctified bodies will never die or suffer hunger. We wouldn’t take up much space, and we already have eight billion on earth and growing. But, it’s still hard to see how the Millennium would work if all of us were ruling and reigning at the same time. Non-Christians like the JWs claim that they KNOW, and they destroyed themselves with their foolishness. Do not follow their example.
The Bible tells us that there are mysteries that we are forbidden to know and understand. And, I suspect that we are dealing with some of that forbidden knowledge here.
Then, in verses seven through ten, Satan is released. And yet again, the unsaved who lived through the Millennium, saw Christ and those of us who rule with Him… and are deceived yet again.
Yet another face-palm moment for humanity in the Bible.
God help us. We humans are stupid. Dumber than a box of rocks. And, maybe the purpose of the Millennium is to prove that we are complete morons without Christ.
Think of this as an example of why you should NEVER use human logic when approaching the Bible. That’s how Satan gets his hooks into you, and he will pull you under if you are not careful. I have watched it happen, and you do not want to play that game.
Human Logic = Utter Stupidity
Who Lives During The Millennium
As I have mentioned several times already, many seem to think that there will be no ‘unsaved’ people who survive the Seals, the Trumpets, the Plagues and Armageddon. They can’t think of any reason why someone would be unable to take The Mark.
Remember that we are not just talking about a tattoo. We are talking about worship. And, there are some who do not have the means to ‘buy or sell’.
Who could these be?
Children too young to take The Mark.
Those subsistence farmers and/or hunter-gatherers who are cut off from civilization by the great disasters that plague the earth before the Antichrist arrives.
The children of the Woman in Revelation 12. Those who are not saved among those who flee will go into the Millennium.
Did you notice that they cannot force The Mark on you?
So, there should be plenty of people to populate the Millennium, see Jesus rule and reign upon Earth and then get deceived by Satan. There is no reason for us to insert our own foolish ideas into this prophecy about the Millennium.
Then, remember Zechariah 14. It talks about those who survive, who were not saved, and go into the Millennium. Rejecting the words of God spoken by the prophets is a sin, so please believe what Zechariah 14 says.
Great White Throne Judgment
In verses eleven through fifteen, we have the Great White Throne judgement and more opportunities for confusion. And trust me when I say that there are many fools who love to wrestle with such things. You should not. And, the questions that I ask here cannot be answered with authority.
Again, anyone who says otherwise is a fool.
So, here are a few questions that cannot be answered:
Does ANYONE written in the Book of Life appear here?
Wouldn’t they have ALREADY been resurrected?
If not, then why is it opened?
What is the Sea that gives up its dead?
How is it different from Death and Hell (Hades) which give up their dead?
Why does Death and Hades get thrown into the Lake of Fire, but the dead from the Sea does not seem to be?
Many foolish pastors have stepped forward and proclaimed that they KNOW the answer to these questions. Yes, we might have some thoughts on what the answers might be, but to proclaim with confidence is the truest kind of foolishness – something that Satan would love for you to have.
It’s not wrong to speculate. I’ve done a lot of that already. But, please make sure that you understand the difference between fact and supposition. We should rest upon the facts given to us, and trust God for that which we cannot understand.
Revelation 21
In one sense, this is the most visually fantastic chapter in the Bible. New heavens. New earth. A vast shining cube of a city. There will no longer be oceans or seas. But, most amazing of all…
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.
– Revelation 21:4 (NKJV)
By contrast, these are those who do not make it into heaven:
But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
– Revelation 21:8 (NKJV)
Those who are too cowardly to pay the price for faith in Christ, will not make it into heaven. Those who would deny Christ to save their worthless lives, will spend an eternity in the Lake of Fire. The same goes for all the rest in that list.
Now, later on, we will contrast that list with a different category of people – those who are in outer darkness, outside the New Jerusalem. They will have weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but will not be suffering as those in the Lake of Fire.
The Bride of Christ
Then, we are introduced to the Bride of Christ that descends from heaven. Those who wish to speak of the Bride of Christ need to understand the dimensions:
The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal.
– Revelation 21:16 (NKJV)
So, how many furlongs are in a mile? (A kilometer?)
Eight. (Or 4.97 in a km)
Okay, so let’s do some calculations. Twelve thousand divided by eight is…
One thousand five hundred miles!
This means that this city is 1500 miles high, or a little over 2400 kilometers tall. By contrast, Low Earth Orbit is only 1200 miles high or 2000 kilometers.
To put it another way, it will be close to the size of our Moon.
Now, how many people could you fit in this vast city?
Well, let’s assume that each of us would need to live in grand style, and I would assume that we wouldn’t need a space bigger than a cube that is one kilometer tall, wide and deep for each of us.
How many kilometer cubes would fit in this city?
Well, let’s calculate it:
2400 x 2400 x 2400 = 13.8 billion cubes
You could fit almost 14 billion people in The New Jerusalem with lots and lots of room for everything.
Does this mean that there will have been 14 billion followers of God over the past 6000+ years?
Maybe so. Could be. After all, there are more people coming to faith in Christ each day, than ever in the history of Creation. And, at the same time, more are dying for their faith every year, than we have ever seen. And, if you remember that Revelation 7:9 spoke of a people without number, and 14 billion sounds awfully innumerable.
So yeah, 14 billion is possible. (And, it could be lots more.)
Now, here is another bunch of questions:
Why are there 12 gates?
Would we be going in and out of these gates?
What would we be doing that would make us want to do that?
Also, there’s a wall that is 144 cubits high. We don’t know which cubit John would have been referring to, so I’m just going to say that it’s 20 inches long. That’s only about 240 feet high. Compared to the size of New Jerusalem, that’s almost nothing.
Why would there need to be a wall?
But, there’s another question. There are 12 foundations for this wall around New Jerusalem. One foundation for each Apostle.
Who is the 12th?
Is it Matthias who was chosen by lot to take the position of the 12th Apostle that Judas Iscariot fell from? (Acts 1:26)
Or, is it Paul, who was chosen by Christ to be His Apostle?
I do not know the answer to that question. But, I suspect that it’s Paul who is the 12th. We’ll see.
Now, before moving on to the last chapter let me address again something that many have gone way too far with. WAAAAAY too far.
The Bride Of Christ Defined
I have seen some Christians sexualize the concept of the ‘Bride of Christ’. Most of the symbolism in the Bible refers to God’s people as being invited to the wedding feast, not to a sexual union with Jesus. Furthermore, the references to ‘betrothal’ are far less well-defined, than what we see here in Revelation 21.
If you want to see the clearest definition of who the Bride of Christ is, read Revelation 21.
You don’t need to discard the idea that the Church is in such a covenant relationship with Christ, that it is as strong as a marriage agreement. That does not conflict with what Revelation 21 says. But, to sexualize this allegory in the ways that I have seen some do is horrifying. In fact, some of what I’ve seen is so bad, that there’s no way that the person creating such imagery is a Christian.
Revelation 22
Revelation 22 opens with a description of a river of the water of life and the Tree of Life. The river flows out from the Throne and the Tree of Life seems to straddle the river, being described as “In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river”. This tree will have 12 fruits, but it will be the leaves of this tree that heal the nations. Interesting.
Then it speaks of what seems to be a special class of servants that serve Jesus at the throne, that they have the name of God on their foreheads…
…are these the 12 thousand from each tribe that are sealed in Revelation 7?
We can’t be sure, but I would think that the answer is yes. But, you should not quote me on that. Or anyone else for that matter.
Jesus then says that He is coming quickly. Many have gotten themselves in trouble by defining that word by their own flawed understanding – the Preterists, for instance. We should defer to God and His definition of what ‘quickly’ means, and so far ‘quickly’ means at least 1900+ years. I think that there is more time for us to wait, but when the process of His Return begins… it will be very quick.
Outer Darkness
Now, this chapter offers us another puzzle that might explain why there are gates:
14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. 15 But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.
– Revelation 22:14-15 (NKJV)
You don’t need to be a Christian for more than five minutes to understand that there is a Heaven and a Hell. And, I think that we have a pretty good idea of who goes where. For myself, I’m hoping to see all of you in heaven. But, there is this third place that Revelation 22 seems to refer to:
Outer Darkness
Jesus refers to this place in two parables in Matthew (Matthew 22:1-14 and Matthew 25:14-30), and Jude refers to apostates who are reserved to the “the blackness of darkness forever”.
Is the area outside the New Jerusalem this Outer Darkness?
And, notice how both parables in Matthew identify those who were sent into outer darkness:
They are either at the wedding feast without a garment or they are an unprofitable servant.
Whereas in other parables, such as the one with the goats, they are thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is NOT Outer Darkness.
The difference seems to be that those in outer darkness are those who accepted Christ, but were disobedient and lost their reward.
Were their names written in the Book of Life and then blotted out? (Revelation 3:5)
I would assume that having your name blotted out of the Book of Life would send you to the Lake of Fire. But, maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe it sends you to outer darkness.
But, whatever the answer to these questions, we should all do our best to avoid doing anything that would deny us our place in the New Jerusalem. Far too many of us are sexually immoral and loving lies. We need to stop that before it is too late.
The Final Warning
This brings us back to that Final Warning that is the biggest reason why I have written this overview of the Book of Revelation:
18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:18-19 (NKJV)
I have spent a lot of time in various eschatology forums and they are full of those who are cursed by God for doing what He warned us not to do. They are adding and taking away from Revelation, and it is a horrible thing to see.
Worse, when you provide evidence that demonstrates that they are in error, they twist Revelation even more to protect their foolish notions. There will be no pretrib rapture. There WILL be the redemption of Israel long before the Antichrist arrives. Preterism is a lie from the Roman Catholic Church. There will be a physical, on-earth Millennium after the Antichrist is defeated. We are not in the Millennium, and it is not a ‘symbol’.
It is time to stop the lies and start embracing the truth.
Part 9 | A Revelation Summary And Conclusion
We raced through all 22 chapters of Revelation, and I truly hope that we avoided the curse in chapter 22. We saw patterns. We drew some conclusions. But most of all, we raised questions. In fact, we have more questions than anything else. However, one thing should be extremely clear to everyone:
There is an order and chronology to Revelation.
Those who seek to upset the timeline and insert a different order to this book, are inviting the wrath of God upon themselves. I hope to avoid that for myself, and I’ve made it my goal to help you avoid it as well.
So, let’s summarize what we saw…
The Book of Revelation has challenged Christians around the world for over 1,900 years. Most who made confident claims about what this book meant, have almost always been proven wrong. Those who get it right, do so by claiming only what can be proven and leaving what cannot to those future generations that will be able to.
Are we that ‘final generation’ that will be able understand what Revelation and the prophets are telling us?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I spent a large part of my Christian life thinking that we were in that Last Generation that would see the fulfillment of most – if not all – of the prophecies about the Last Days. Fast forward 40+ years, and things did not turn out as expected. I praise God for that, so I’m not complaining. But, it should be clear to everyone that none of us have a great track record in the study of the Last Days (aka, eschatology).
It’s time to get back on track and lay out what we can say with certainty, and what we cannot. We have spent far too much time listening to scoundrels proclaim lies that scratch our itching ears, and that needs to stop. Let’s put an end to the lies and stick to the facts of the truth.
Remember that the wrath of God is upon all who refuse to do so. (Rev 22:18-19)
Revelation 1-3 – A Blessing, A Conundrum, And Seven Churches
The first three chapters introduced us to seven churches as well as the question of when this vision was given to John the Apostle.
Did you notice which churches were not mentioned?
Right. Jerusalem and Rome.
Since John would have had this vision in AD 96 (or 95), there would have been no church in Jerusalem to write to. Jerusalem was gone. Erased from the map, literally.
But, what about Rome?
There was still a church in Rome. There were still Christians in Rome. Several decades earlier, Paul had written to the church at Rome, so the lack of Rome is curious… except when you realize that the church at Rome was already turning into the Harlot that would ride the Beast. And, if you look carefully at what Clement I was writing, you’ll see why Rome would have been considered dead already.
For all intents and purposes, the popes began with Clement, and he was a ‘pope’, while John was writing Revelation. The Harlot begins with Clement, and his demand that Christians give unquestioning obedience to their bishops was the beginning of popery.
Dividing Revelation Properly
Also remember that Revelation spoke to John about ‘things which are’, and ‘things which shall be’.
Those who persist in proclaiming each church as a prophetic reference to periods of time of the church age, are ignoring what the Bible specifically said. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are not End Times Prophecies. We only start talking about prophecies of the Last Days with chapter four, which says so specifically.
Again, those who say otherwise are inviting a curse upon their life.
Revelation 4-5: The Throne, The Lamb And The Scroll
Chapters four and five show us the throne in heaven, the Lamb that was slain in payment for our sins and the scroll with Seven Seals. And, our first question is about the Seven Eyes of the Lamb.
These appear to be the Seven Spirits who appear to be “…the eyes of the Lord, which scan to and fro throughout the whole earth. (Zech 4:10). And no, I don’t understand that. However, they might be the Watchers referred to in Daniel (4:17), but I would never proclaim something like that with any certainty.
However, our first real controversy comes when we see the Scroll with Seven Seals. And, I’m amazed at how willing people are to twist this scroll out of all proportion. It’s appalling.
Did the scroll look like this?
There is no possible way that the scroll in Revelation looked like that. Scrolls were never constructed and sealed like this. And, if the Scroll appeared this way, John would have said so.
Did it look like this?
That’s better, but no. It did NOT look like this. The Scroll in Revelation is not a Sefer Torah, or one of the books of the Bible. It’s a sealed scroll, and it would not have had ‘rollers’ (those wooden pins with knobs at each end).
It would have looked more like this:
Or, it would look like this:
It wouldn’t have looked quite so tattered and there should be writing on the outside (or ‘back’) of the scroll. John also would have needed to be able to see the interior of the scroll, because he described it as being written on the front and back.
The point is that the seals must all be opened before the scroll can be opened.
Revelation 6-7: The Seven Seals And The Redemption Of Israel
Ultimately, the biggest stumbling block for eschatology as a whole, is Revelation 6 and specifically, Seal Six. If you can understand Seal Six, everything falls into place. But, since people do not understand the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, they have no chance of doing so.
Instead of accepting the clear chronology of the Seven Seals, foolish teachers have inserted a gap that is described nowhere in the Bible. In fact, they’ve cooked up elaborate stories to explain how the man on the White Horse in the Antichrist and Seal Six is Armageddon.
None of that is true. None of it. It’s a lie.
So, what are the Seven Seals?
They are the prelude to Last Days. They set the stage. And, they could last for a very long time.
Here is the order of the Seven Seals:
(click image for larger version)
And yes, Seal Six and Ezekiel’s Fire happen at the same time. There is an element of supposition to that claim, but if Seal Six is NOT Ezekiel’s Fire, then it must happen years – maybe centuries – before Seal Six is opened. Civilization is completely knocked down when Ezekiel’s Fire happens, and it will take a lot of time for it to be rebuilt. And to be extra clear, civilization is knocked down when Seal Six is opened too.
How many times will civilization be knocked down before the Antichrist rises?
I say just once, but you can think up as many as you like. I’m just not able to see how closely Seal Six matches Ezekiel’s Fire and not think that there’s a connection.
Just remember that Seal Six and Ezekiel’s Fire speak of Israel’s Redemption. Daniel 11 makes it clear that it must happen long before the Antichrist arrives.
Is there ANY mention of the Antichrist with these Seven Seals?
No.
For further context read:
Why Israel Must Be Saved BEFORE The Great Tribulation
https://whengogcomes.com/10-why-israel-saved-before-great-tribulation.html
Revelation 8-11: The Seven Trumpets, The Little Book and the Two Witnesses
The Seventh Seal opens in Chapter Eight, and the Seven Trumpets begin to sound. Those Seven Trumpets do not finish until Chapter Eleven.
When does the Antichrist appear?
Trumpet Six.
It will take time for the Antichrist to rise and then take power. He would certainly be around or during earlier trumpets. Depending on how long each trumpet takes to sound, his rise to power could start long before the first trumpet sounds. But, he doesn’t appear to become the Antichrist until Trumpet Six.
Why Trumpet Six?
Because the Two Witnesses prophesy for three and a half years, against the Beast and against the Antichrist. They are only killed near the end of the reign of the Antichrist. That time frame is far too much of a ‘coincidence’ to ignore.
Look at all that happens BEFORE the Antichrist takes over. Hail, fire, blood, Wormwood, Sun smitten, horrible locusts, all before the Antichrist proclaims himself. During his reign, 200 million horsemen kill a 1/3 of men. Yet, no on repents, everyone still accepts the Antichrist and all refuse to obey God.
Wow. Humans are a special kind of stupid.
However, once Trumpet Seven sounds, it’s all over except for the Bowls and the Last Battle.
Revelation 12-14: The Woman, The Beast And The Resurrection
This is an interlude where chapters 12 and 13 add context to previous chapters and chapter 14 adds detail to the events surrounding the Battle of Armageddon.
(Click image to enlarge)
Chapter 12 describes Israel flying into the wilderness, as the Antichrist conquers Jerusalem. This is added detail to what happens in Trumpet Six (or, maybe the end of Trumpet Five?). This appears to mark the beginning of the rule of the Antichrist, even though he must engage in constant war to subdue those who resist.
Chapter 13 shows us a Beast rising from the Sea. This combines the four beasts of Daniel 7 into one beast, with one extra difference – the seventh head has been killed/wounded-to-death.
What would destroy the Seventh Head of the Beast?
The massive, civilization-killing solar storm and global earthquake of Seal Six.
The events of Seal Six are exactly like what we see in Ezekiel’s Fire. And, such a solar event and earthquake would destroy our civilization. The prophets are very clear about what happens, and it dovetails perfectly the description of Revelation 6:12-17. Again, for more on this, read Ezekiel’s Fire.
By the way, does this mean that we are probably living during the time of the Seventh Head of the Beast, before it is killed?
I believe so, but we’ve all been wrong before.
As in… wrong for over a thousand years.
Remember that this Beast has been in existence for millennia. It reflects what Daniel described with the great image from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2) and the Four Beasts (Daniel 7). This would mean that The Beast is about 2600 years old.
So, look around you. We are already living within The Beast. We just don’t have the Antichrist, who will lead The Beast one final time.
Chapter 14 shows us the 144 thousand who follow Jesus everywhere that He goes. There is a final warning from three angels that fly across the sky, and then we have a discussion of Resurrection and Rapture (the Harvest) and Armageddon, along with reaping of the Grapes of Wrath.
Revelation 15-19: The Bowls, Babylon and Armageddon
By the way, has the Resurrection and Rapture happened yet?
Nope.
Chapter 14 is not a timeline chapter. But, it is pointing towards the timeline chapter, Revelation 19.
Remember when Jesus said that He was coming in the clouds? (Matthew 24:29-31)
Yeah. Revelation 19 is when He comes in the Clouds.
But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Here are the five chapters that pick up the timeline of Revelation, where Revelation 11 stopped:
- Revelation 15 – Prelude to the Bowls of Wrath
- Revelation 16 – Seven Angels pour out the Seven Bowls
- Revelation 17 – Description and Identity of the Beast Rider
- Revelation 18 – The Fall of Babylon
- Revelation 19 – The Battle of Armageddon
All of that is in chronological order.
Did you notice that the Bowls of the Wrath of God are poured out BEFORE Babylon is destroyed?
Anyway, here are The Seven Bowls
The Seven Bowls of the Wrath of God – Revelation 16
(Click image to enlarge)
In Revelation 17, we see the Beast Rider described. She’s the Great Whore, and unless an even greater harlot is to rise, we are stuck with the Roman Catholic Church as the one who rides The Beast, as well as being in alliance with Satan.
Did you remember that the Church of Rome was not named by Jesus in the first three chapters of Revelation?
Yeah, that’s significant.
Literally no one had such righteous beginnings, yet prostituted herself to so many kingdoms and peoples. And, she had already begun to do so with their first ‘pope’, Clement I, while John was writing the Book of Revelation. I don’t think that the significance of this can be ignored.
The Roman Catholic Church is in alliance with Satan.
Let that sink in.
Then in Revelation 18, The Beast destroys the Roman Catholic Church. We don’t quite know how The Beast does this, but a Thermonuclear Bomb would do the job easily, or a nice big rock from space. Remember also that the smoke of her burning rises forever.
Did you notice that we haven’t reached the Battle of Armageddon yet?
Right. The Beast destroys its ally, the Roman Catholic Church, BEFORE the Battle of Armageddon.
Revelation 19 gives us the Battle of Armageddon, where all the armies of the world come to the Jezreel Valley to fight God. The thought of that boggles the mind, but Satan’s deceptions will get you to do some pretty crazy things. (The Roman Catholic Church is Exhibit A.)
Revelation 20-22: The Millennium, New Jerusalem And A Warning
In Revelation 20, Satan is bound for a thousand years, and God’s people will rule and reign with Christ for a thousand years.
Who will they reign over?
Those who were not followers of Christ during the Great Tribulation, but had not taken The Mark of the Beast.
It is common for people to claim that such a thing is impossible, but God knows how to make this happen. But, this shouldn’t be all that hard to figure out.
Remember that the Mark of the Beast cannot be placed upon someone who does not actively wish for it. You’ll notice that the Antichrist cannot force Christians to take it. This means that someone who is too young will not be able to take it.
Also, since the Antichrist seems to have difficulty getting to some places – like the wilderness that the Woman flees to in Revelation 12 – there might be locations that The Mark does not reach. All of these possibilities provide a better explanation than those who seek to twist the Millennium to their own ends.
It’s really time to stop doing that.
After the thousand years are up, Satan is released and humanity is deceived yet again. It will be the ultimate facepalm moment and the final proof that we are all morons without Christ. Humanity will have a thousand years of proof that God is everything that He said that He was, and will still throw it all away for a few Satanic promises.
We really are that stupid.
Then, Revelation 20 ends with the 2nd Resurrection, the Great White Throne judgment and those who were not found in the Book of Life being casting into Hell, .
Revelation 21 describes the creation of a New Heaven and New Earth with a New Jerusalem who is also called The Bride of the Lamb.
Wait. New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ?
Yes.
So, who are we?
We are the ones invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It always confused me when pastors would want to emphasize that the Church is the Bride of Christ, while at the same time we were the ones invited to the ‘marriage supper’.
How could we be both?
Because we are mixing metaphors, and we should stop that.
Throughout the Bible we see God speaking of a betrothal to His people. And, the marriage contract is the strongest agreement between people that can be made in the Bible. And, the symbolism of adultery and harlotry that break such a relationship is also very powerful.
The Children of Israel did it.
Our fellow Christians are doing it.
It’s an evil thing, and God will judge us for it – just as He judged Israel for their unfaithfulness. But, none of that important symbolism changes what we see in Revelation 21:
We are not the Bride of Christ.
New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ.
Oh, and how big is New Jerusalem?
It’s one thousand, five hundred miles tall and one thousand, five hundred miles wide. Almost as big as our Moon.
Having said that, if New Jerusalem was put inside the Moon, the corners would stick out, since the diameter of the Moon (~3500 km) is less than the distance between opposing corners (4,157 km.) of the New Jerusalem. So, don’t go around thinking that New Jerusalem is being hidden inside the Moon. It wouldn’t fit.
Also, Revelation 21 shows us where ‘outer darkness’ is. It’s the area outside New Jerusalem. It’s not Hell, but it’s also a place that you don’t want to live in. You want to live in New Jerusalem.
If you are doing ANYTHING that would place you in Outer Darkness, outside New Jerusalem, now is the time to stop, repent of that and ask God to forgive you. If you don’t know what you might be doing, now would be a good time to pray that God would show you.
I want us all to be residents of that fantastic city that will be our inheritance if we persevere.
However, this brings us to the one reason why I have spent so much time writing about all of this.
The Final Warning
The Final Warning is the biggest reason why I have written this overview of the Book of Revelation:
18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:18-19 (NKJV)
I have spent a lot of time in various eschatology forums, and they are full of those who are cursed by God for doing what He warned us not to do. They are adding and taking away from Revelation, and it is a horrible thing to see.
Do not.
…I repeat…
DO NOT add or take away from Revelation.
It would be better to say that you do not know what Revelation means, than to proudly proclaim an error that destroys you. There are things that we can say are true about Revelation with a great degree of confidence, but there are many more things that we cannot. Yet, many foolish pastors don’t seem to understand this.
Oh, and when you find brothers and sisters in Christ adding or taking away from Revelation, warn them. That goes for me. If I have added or taken away from Revelation, you need to prove it to me. I’ve been as careful as I can to avoid this, and I pray that I have been successful.
Conclusion
The timeline of Revelation does not jump around. It moves forward. One section completes before the next section starts, and then that third section completes before we see the end.
Here is the most basic order of events:
Seals -> Trumpets -> Bowls
(Click image to enlarge)
That’s the order of events. There is no overlap. There is no going back and forth between the three. The Trumpets do not begin until AFTER all the Seals have been removed. None of the bowls are poured out until after the Seventh Trumpet has sounded. And, all Seven Bowls must be poured out before Mystery Babylon is destroyed, and only after Babylon falls will Armageddon begin.
There is no exception to this progression. None.
Here is another look at this progression:
The Revelation Chapter Timeline
(Click image to enlarge)
These are the timeline chapters:
Revelation 6-9 -> Revelation 11 -> Revelation 16 -> Revelation 18-22
Again, there is no overlap. There is no jumping back and forth between these timeline chapters. If you attempt to claim that the fulfillment of an event in an earlier chapter happens after a later timeline chapter, you are adding and twisting the Book of Revelation. Don’t do that.
To make it more clear for some who don’t understand what I’m talking about:
Seal Six in Revelation Six is fulfilled BEFORE the Trumpets and BEFORE the Bowls.
Jesus does NOT Return in Revelation 6.
He does NOT Return before Revelation 16.
Period.
And, this brings us to one more timeline revelation:
You Are Here
(Click image to enlarge)
There are years, probably decades – maybe even centuries – before the Great Tribulation. The Redemption of Israel must come long before the Antichrist rises. And, there might be years – even decades – before Israel returns to God. There are far too many foolish teachers saying otherwise, and they need to stop.
Yes, bad times are coming. I’ve been warning about those. But, the Children of Jacob must Return to God before the Antichrist comes. Of course, Gog and Magog and Ezekiel’s Fire will happen at the beginning of Israel’s Redemption, and it will be really, really bad. Not many of us will survive that. (Just remember to stay out of big cities when Gog and Magog descend upon Israel.)
Oh, and what will the Redemption of Israel be like?
They will be Christians, following Christ. There won’t be sacrifices for sin. There won’t be a Third Temple. But, there will be millions of Israelis worshiping God, in the Body of Christ. And, the center of that worship will be at Jerusalem. There will be offerings of praise to God twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, every year – until the Antichrist comes and puts a stop to it.
Why is this so hard for so many to figure out?
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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