Revelation 6

Sorry. I was trying to turn it off. That's Maximus Decimus Meridius, the man with the army of the north, or the Felix Legion, the true emperor Marcus Aurelius. One of the greatest movies ever. It is. That is the best holiday movie ever.

Well, happy Easter. Good to see everyone. Steve, do you want to say a word up here? Heavenly Father, we're thankful that.

We can come into your presence this morning, Lord, to be taught, to open your word, and thank you for the message we heard this morning, Lord, that you are our interceder, you are our mediator, and Lord, we just ask that you would be with Brother Mike as he opens the word for us.

I ask that our ears would be receptive, and we would be able to hear what Jesus said, and I pray. Amen. Amen.

The Opening Prayer and Reading of Revelation 6

You'll take your Bibles and open them up to Revelation, chapter 6, and we have reached another milestone, going to a new chapter. I'm going to read beginning in verse 1, chapter 6. Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, Come.

And I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. And when he broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, Come.

And another red horse went out, and to him who sat on it was granted to take peace from the earth, and when the men would slay one another, and a great sword was given to him. And when he broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, Come.

I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like the voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not damage the oil in the line.

And when the lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, Come. I looked, and behold, an ashen horse, and he who sat on it had the name of death, and Hades was following after him.

Authority was given to him over the fourth of the earth to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and by the wild beast of the earth. And when the lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained.

When they cried out with a loud voice saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging the blood, our blood on the earth for those who dwell on the earth? And there was given to each one of them a white robe, and they were told that they were to rest for a while longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren were to be killed even as they had been and would be completed also.

And I looked, and when he broke the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree cast its unripe figs, and when they were shaken by a great wind, and the sky was split apart like a scroll when it was rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of their place.

And then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks and the mountains, and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?

The Scroll as the Judgment of God

Well, we are getting into probably some of the most controversial parts. When we were in the throne room and the scene in heaven, there's not really a whole bunch of controversy. We're very aware of who the Lamb was, who was sitting on the throne, but now we're getting to a section to where there has been all over the spectrum of who these four horsemen are and the seals.

I remember as a kid sitting in church and the pastor of the church, I remember we were at Hyde Park Baptist Church over there on the west side, and he said, Hey, we're going to deal with the four horsemen next week.

So as a kid, when I say this, some of you men might remember, I was thinking, Man, he's going to talk about Ole and Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Ric Flair. Yeah, I was like, Woo! Needless to say, that's not what he was talking about.

So as a kid, I didn't know what the fuck, I mean, we're thinking of four horsemen, I'm thinking wrestling. Yeah, yeah. So that's what we were, I was thinking of as a kid, so I was sadly mistaken the next week, and he had charts and all kinds of stuff up on there.

So, as we get to these four horsemen, we're going to look at some different perspectives, because there are some of them that I think do have some validity in the time in which they, how some of the historicist people understood it, how even there are multiple preterist views.

You have a late-date preterist, an early-date preterist, and some of them, well, we'll get into that, maybe, if we've got time. We're not finishing the chapter today. I only know if we'll get out of the second seal.

So, it says here, I saw when the lamb broke one of the seven seals I heard with a four-living creature saying with a loud voice of thunder come. Now, I want to say, right from the beginning, does anybody remember how I understand the scroll?

What is the scroll? The scroll is the judgment of God. Remember, the throne room, the scene in heaven was God sitting upon his throne, and he had in his hand, he's the judge, he had in his hand a scroll.

Someone needed to be worthy to open that scroll. The lamb comes onto the scene, he is the one worthy to open the scroll, basically to execute the last will and testament of what's in it. So God being the judge, Jesus being the executioner of this will, is now going to hand down the sentence.

I don't know about y 'all, but we don't even know who the plaintiff is in this situation, and nor do we know who the one being prosecuted is, do we? Not yet. Now, I'm going to make an argument as we go through, because we're going to find out when we get to the fifth seal who some of what the plaintiff is.

The plaintiff, I believe, are the martyrs. I believe the plaintiff, the ones complaining to God, are the martyrs, because it says in the fifth seal when he opens it up, how long before you avenge our blood on the earth?

What did Jesus say on when he was rebuking the Pharisees in chapter 23, and then he goes on, he goes up to Matthew 23, and he goes up on the Mount of Olivet, and he begins to give the Olivet Discourse.

Do you remember what he said? He said, you are now filling up the measure of the prophets from all of righteous Abel to the son of Berechiah, Zachariah the son of Berechiah. He said, you're filling it up, and when you kill me, it's going to be full, and then you're going to get the judgment.

This is what I believe he is talking about, that the judgment of God primarily is dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem and its martyrs. Who put to death, we already said this for 27 weeks now, who put to death God's people in the first century primarily?

It was the Jews. It was not Rome. Rome didn't come along and start doing that, and just for a brief period of time with Nero, and then it wound up being the Jews again. The Jews would turn them over to Rome for being all kinds of things.

They would say they were incestuous, because they would call each other brother and sister. Be like me, Sibyl's my sister in Christ. He would say, well, wait a minute, he's sleeping with his sister, and then they would turn them over to be incestuous, and then they said they were cannibalistic, because when they would have what they would call the love feast, which would be the Eucharist or the Lord's table every day.

Remember, they had a table almost every night of the week in the early days of the church. They would come and they would eat. At some point, someone would stand up. This is my body. This is my blood.

They would say, look, they're cannibals, and they would turn them over and try to have them prosecuted for being cannibals and for incestuous relationship. Hey, as perverted as Rome was, Rome knew having sex with another family member was perverted, and it was wrong.

So, that's how they began to persecute God's people. That happened, that began after the time of Nero. So, we see this scroll that's fixing to be opened is going to be the judgments of God on those who killed the prophets and rejected the Messiah.

So, it says he opened up one of those seven seals and he heard the four living creatures saying with a loud voice, come. Now, I think the new King James and the King James say come and see. Am I correct?

Okay. That is a textual variant. That is, if you understand it as come and see, okay, the Textus Receptus is the only one that holds that, the TR, is the only one that holds that position. If it says come and see, well, then he's telling John, come look what I'm about to show you.

That really doesn't make sense when it's the four living creatures that are summoning these four, as they're opened up, these horses. So, I think the better, the Alexandrian text is a better understanding when he says, he opens that seal and he says come, it's the four living creatures that were around the throne, he is calling the judgment of God on these horses.

Remember, where are these seals being broken? In heaven. Where are these horses going to be coming from? They're going to be coming from heaven. And John's already watching it all. Sure. This is a vision.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he says, come and I look and behold a white horse and he who sat on it had a bow and he had a crown was given to him and he went out conquering and to conquer. Now, we're going to, here are basically the four perspectives of who this person is.

Is it visually impaired? We're losing it. Here. Do I need to put it over here? No, it's just the ink is so much better. Sorry. I had a darker one. Let me, let me oblige you, Mr. Smith. Well, the rest of them just didn't want to speak up.

I've got four to choose from now. Alright, let's see if this works. False Christ and then. How about those on the board there? No, don't. No, they mess up bad. There you go. We're not, we're not going to, we'll address who the armies are in a minute.

Okay. Now, you say, well, Mike, you've got these in the same place or the same thing. It's not. I want to explain why here in a minute. Antichrist. This is primarily, well, not primarily, uh, the futurist perspective.

Futurist perspective would say this white horse that's coming out of this seal is the antichrist. Do we have any biblical warrant for that? Is there any passage in scripture you can point to and say that the futurist perspective has validity?

Well, at least we can all agree on that. The only way you're going to come to it being the antichrist is you have to come to the conclusion that dispensational eschatology is the way to interpret the book of Revelation.

That is the only way. And you don't use a system to interpret scripture. You develop your system from your interpretation and you can search the scripture high and low, far and wide. Hey, the antichrist ain't even mentioned in the book of Revelation.

It's only mentioned twice in the New Testament and it is the writer of John that does mention it. And he talks about, hey, the spirit of antichrist has come, but the antichrist is coming. And what is the spirit of antichrist?

It's he who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. So this, okay. Now, could it be Christ? Okay. Okay. He says he conquers. You can look through just not from the argumentative, but you could also look that the same thing is used of the beast when he goes out.

He goes out, he is wearing crowns and he is going out conquering and to conquer. So some historicists have made the point that this is Christ because he goes out and conquers and because he is riding a white horse.

Okay. Do we see a, do we see a picture of Christ somewhere in the book of Revelation where he is riding a white horse? Certainly. Revelation 19, when he descends on that white charger and he's got his robe drenched with the blood of his enemies, he's got the diadems on his head, he's got a sword coming out of his mouth, his eyes are like a flame of fire, and he's got a tattoo on his leg that says king of kings and lord of lords.

That's awesome. Okay. That's awesome. So that's not an exegetical conclusion. That's called a parallel. Okay. It's a parallel, but the white horse that Jesus comes on is a war horse and he has a sword coming out of his mouth to dismiss judgment.

So the most of your Puritans, um, because they were historicists would say that that was Christ, but it's not an exegetical conclusion. Everybody know what I mean by exegetical? Okay. Scripture, interpreting scripture.

That's not how it's done. It's done based on a parallel. It's based on a parallel. That's it. No exegetical evidence for it. Hey, if that's the position that you hold, that's fine. Okay. But it doesn't, it doesn't meet the exegetical, letting scripture interpret scripture.

You're just going, look, I see this, I see this, there has to be the same, no different than saying, Hey, he's got a crown and he's going out conquering and conquer. Well, you can also say that too about the beast because he's going out conquering and conquering and he has a crown.

So just, you don't, we don't do it based on parallels. We do it based on exegesis. So, and if you're going to hold the historicist's view, what happens to the historicist's view? You remember, you run out, you run out of time and you run out of time with that interpretation at about 1860 and we can even back it up if you want to, to 1840 because of the great disappointment.

Okay. Cause that was when Jesus was supposed to come back based on their prophetic calendar. Now, false Christs. Do we have any biblical warrant to think that these could be false Christs? I would say yes.

If we understand what Jesus has already said in the Olivet discourse, which we would all agree at this point that he was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem because remember when they walked out on that last time that he ever set feet into the temple, as he walked out, his disciples says, check it out, Jesus, you see all of these buildings and Jesus gives them that ominous statement, not one stone will be left upon another.

And then they go across the, they go across from the Kidron Valley, you know how deep the Kidron Valley gets? You're talking about 450 foot drop down through the Kidron Valley. Jesus goes up to the top of the Mount of Olives, which is at 2 ,480 feet above sea level.

And then they look over to Jerusalem and he begins to tell them everything that's going to happen. As he does that, he, here's what, hey, don't take my word for it. Turn over to Matthew chapter 24. I'll start in verse one.

It says, and he came out from the temple and going away from his disciples, came up to the point of the temple buildings and he said to them, do you see these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.

And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately saying, tell us what will these, when, I'm sorry, when will these things happen? What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?

And here, look here. And Jesus answered and said to them, see to it that no one misleads you for many will come in my name saying I am the Christ. So, Jesus says there's going to be false Christs in this time.

You know, you think about your Old Testament, you may remember when the most false prophets arose? Right before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586. Right before. Hey, the priests, the prophets, all of them said, hey, God ain't going to destroy this place.

Peace, peace, there ain't no peace. And Jeremiah kept saying, man, if you don't turn, you're going to burn. I mean, Jeremiah's book is 38 chapters of doom and gloom. Then you've got four chapters of it that are somewhat encouraging.

You've got the promise of the new covenant. So, in the time of Jesus, right after Jesus, there he said there's going to be false Christs that are going to arise, they're going to come and they're going to mislead you.

I can't pronounce the dude's last name. He is a Jewish man. That's all I know. That's what it sounds like. He said from the time of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection to the destruction of Jerusalem.

So, let's say that 40-year period of time, depending on where you put it, whether it was 26 AD, 30, or 33. Okay, 40-year period roughly. None less than 16 false messiahs rose up. That's a lot. That's about one every two years.

Now, we do know from Scripture, there were at least three. In the book of Acts, when Andy and Bert were going through the book of Acts in the academy class, if you were reading with them, you would see them come up.

One was Thaddeus, one was another guy. I can't remember his name. But when they were, I think it's in chapter 21 of Acts, they were going to whip Paul. They stretched him out. They were fixing to beat the tar out of him.

And he asked him, hey, can you speak Greek? And he goes, well, wait a minute. You're not that crazy guy that led all those people out, part of the Sicario? Remember the Sicario was? That was the Jewish assassins.

You're not that guy that led those people out? The Egyptian that led them out to throw a revolt? And he said, no, that's not me. That was a false Christ. That was actually one that was trying to get them to overthrow Rome.

And there was two more in the book of Acts. You can read, I think it's around chapter five. So, were there false Christs at the time? Yes, a bunch. A bunch. Even at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, right before it, from 66 to 70, once the Jewish wars began to unfold, we know there were at least three more.

You had Simon the Zealot, not Simon the Zealot, that wound up being a follower of Christ, but Simon the Zealot, Eleazar, who was another, and John of Giskola. Those three men were part of the zealotries that came out and said, we're going to be the liberators of Jerusalem.

They rose up, they started the three-way civil war, which they held up in the temple, and all that. We'll get to that another time. So, it could be false Christ, okay? Could be. I held this position for quite some time, because I do believe that the book of Revelation is John's interpretation and exposition of the Olivet Discourse.

Remember, all three Gospels, the Synoptics, all have the Olivet Discourse. John does not, but John gets a more extensive rendition or exposition in his vision, how I understand it, in his book, the Revelation.

The White Horse as the Roman Armies and the Second Seal as Civil War

Okay, this is the position that I hold now, and I'm going to tell you why. Jesus also said, when you see all of the Olivet Discourse has had something along this line. When you see the armies coming around Jerusalem, you better get out of Dodge.

When you see the Rome, the armies of Rome surrounding you, it's time to go. So, I understand that the white horse that comes out of the first seal is the surrounding armies of Rome, okay? And, I can make the argument that that then sets up, in many ways, the next.

So, here, you have the surrounding armies of Rome. What does a siege do? Yeah, it basically cuts everything off. You can't have anything come in and out, right? So, now you have them, he says he had a bow.

That bow means, in all through Scripture, it's an instrument of war, a conquering military leader. Now, verse 3, the second seal. Here it is. And he broke the second seal, and I heard the second living creature saying, Come.

And another red horse went out, and to him was said on it, Was granted to take peace from the earth, and the men would slay one another, and a great sword was given to him. So, the white horse was a conquering.

This new horse that comes out of the second seal is going to be red. I don't think there's any interpreter that doesn't mean that each one of these has some correlation. The white always has to do with conquering.

Red having to do with bloodshed. This is going to be great bloodshed. It's pretty obvious, he says, him who sat on it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another. I don't see how you can come with any other conclusion other than this is absolute civil unrest.

Okay? When you're inside of a city or inside of a country, and you begin to kill one another, what is that called? Civil war. Civil war. What do we know about the time in which Jerusalem, Israel 67 to 70, what was taking place?

I just mentioned it. There was a three-way civil war that began up in Galilee, and it made its way down to Jerusalem, and the reason why it made its way down towards Jerusalem is as Vespasian, as he was the general at the time, as it started up in Galilee, which is where all the wild-eyed zealots were, as they began to make their fighting down, they tried to squash it before it got any further.

As it came down, those men began to make their way to the temple. Why would they want to go to the temple complex? Walls. Certainly a fortified, the biggest fortified city in Israel would have been what?

Jerusalem. What would have been the biggest fortified place in all of Judea? The temple. I mean, if you know what, even when Herod, he was a Edomite. He got money from Rome. He was actually put in place by Rome.

Okay? He was put in place by Rome. He could not be on the temple complex. He was not a Jew. He was an Edomite, but what he did do was get large amounts of money from Rome, and what he did is he then expanded all of the temple complex.

He expanded it from where it was at the time of, completely wiped down at the time of, right after Solomon's Temple, Zerubbabel comes along, remembering Haggai, Zechariah. They begin to, they rebuild the temple area, but they didn't expand its porticoes.

Well, Herod comes along, and he expands it with Roman money. He expands it 35 acres. 35 acres, and you can still see it today. You can look at the aerial shot of the temple mount, all that area where the Wailing Wall is out, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock is sitting today, all of that area is still 35 acres, and you can see it.

Herod did that. He basically raised up the temple. He was an absolute architect genius. He raised up the foundations of it with these giant 90-foot by 9-foot solid pieces of stone that he had quarried out and brought in.

Absolutely amazing. I've been walking under that. I've got pictures of, you can still see his stones where it was in the catacombs of that. It's amazing. All right, so that's what he has done. It's the highest point other than Mount of Olives, which was 2 ,600 feet, okay?

So you get to this place. You can see Rome coming. We can pick them off. God's not going to destroy His temple. Remember the same thing that was told in the time of Jeremiah? He's not going to destroy His temple.

We're His chosen people. We're da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. All right, same thing that they said in the time of Jeremiah. They're going to get there. They're going to hold up. But then when the siege begins to take place, they cut off food.

They cut off water. John Giskella and his men then begin to kill Jews that won't come to them. Hey, you're going to help us fight? Nope. He kills them. The bloodshed you can read in Josephus' Wars. There's six books, if I remember correctly, depending on which one you get.

You want to read the bloodshed that took place at the time of the siege of Jerusalem? Read the Jewish Wars, and you will see. He was an eyewitness. He was actually the liaison that would go in there to offer peace from Rome so that Rome did not have to wipe out Jerusalem.

Look, when Titus got there, Titus did not want to wipe the city out. Titus got there, offered peace, and because Josephus was a Jew, he used him to go into the temple complex to offer peace so they wouldn't desecrate the temple.

You see how kind Rome was trying to be? I'm not saying they were ruthless, but they were trying to not cause any more uproar. We'll let Josephus go in, let him offer peace, offer peace to Simon, Eleazar, and John.

Hey, look, if y 'all will quit fighting, we won't execute you. Let temple sacrifices begin, and we'll let the Jewish people in the state remain. But if you don't, you kill any more of our soldiers, we're going to have enough of it at some point.

And they were very benevolent in trying to squash it without destroying Jerusalem. But at some point, they didn't have enough of it, and we all know what happened in 70 AD. You fix to say something? No?

All right. So, you had civil unrest. God used civil unrest through the Old Testament to judge his own people at times, and to judge God's enemies, okay? God judged his enemies by turning them on one another.

You can, Andy taught through judges. When you get to Gideon, anybody remember what happened with Gideon? God confused the people. The enemies turned on one another, and they killed one another. Same thing happens in 1 Samuel, chapter 14.

He does it with Josaphat, too. Yeah. He does it with Josaphat. All right, here it is. They asked him. Actually, he says, send out the singers and the harp players. And they're like, huh? Go out there and play some harps?

They guys got swords, Lord. Can't you see? I don't think a harp's going to do anything. They go out there and play, and God turns them on one another. They turn on each other, and they kill each other.

And there are bodies everywhere. Matter of fact, when they turned on each other and it killed them in the Josaphat part, it said that they killed all the armies, killed one another to where the Jews didn't even have to do anything.

It killed it, and they slaughtered that. It took them three days to pick up the spoil, and they still couldn't have—they only took three days because they were running out of places to carry it. They didn't have anything else to take the spoil.

So they left after three days. So God turns the enemies of God. God will turn on them. So what's God doing? When we come to the destruction of Jerusalem, because they had killed Jesus, they had killed the martyrs, now Jerusalem and the Jewish state, per se, are they not God's enemies?

Are they not God's enemies? People don't want to hear it. Benjamin Netanyahu and all that over there, they're enemies of God. They are a secular state. The state over there gives abortions to whoever they want.

That's against Torah, okay?

So don't think that the Jewish state over there, somehow, they love God, too. No, no, no, no, no. They rejected the Son. They have rejected the Father. You cannot believe in Yahweh and reject his full fulfillment of that in Jesus Christ.

So they will slay one another. They're going to kill one another. And they're going to do it. Why? Because it says here he's going to give them a great sword. You could go through Josephus, Book 5, and you could read that the bloodshed on one another for, and we'll get to here in just a second.

I don't know if we'll get all the way through it. But because of the famine, the bloodshed, they had men and women that would swallow coins trying to leave the city. Gold coins. The zealots, knowing that they had swallowed, because people would tell on one another.

You can read this all in Josephus. They would swallow those gold coins. They would either hold them hostage until they died. And this is how it is in Josephus. And then they would plunder the feces to find the gold coins because of the amount of carnage in the city.

Or knowing that those men or women had swallowed a large amount of gold, they would slit their throat, cut their guts open, and remove it out of there. This is an eyewitness that records this. So the bloodshed was unreal.

They would, you would find, Josephus says that when the Romans went in, they would go through these upper rooms where they would try to get to high ground to hide from not only the Romans and the insurgents, but they would find women and children just starved to death and butchered from the zealots.

The Black Horse, Famine, and Covenant Curses

Verse 5.

And when he broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature that said, Look and behold, I'm sorry, saying, Come. I looked and behold a black horse. And he who sat on it had a pair of scales. And in his hand I heard something like the voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, A quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius.

And do not damage the oil or the wine. All right, so here it is now. We're seeing this black horse comes along. Black's going to represent famine. I mean, it's obviously this has something to do with inflation.

It has something to do with when you're weighing out barley and wheat, that means there's a huge problem. And when you're weighing it out for a quart of it for a day's wage, remember what a denarius was a day's wage.

So now you're looking at a particular time in history when you're going to have to work all day just to be able to try to find enough wheat to feed one person. One person. And this is the judgment of God on his people.

We've got to go here.

I won't take my word for it. Let the Scripture speak on its own. Go to Leviticus. We could also go to Deuteronomy. We're all probably more familiar with the Deuteronomy 27 -28 passage where you had the blessings and cursings.

Remember Mount Gerizim, Mount Gilboa. I'm sorry, Gerizim. What was the other one? Gerizim. And what was it?

Ebal.

That's it.

They were hollering the blessings on one side, cursings on another. We could go there because some of that is written here. But this is more extensive. That's why I went here. And we're not nearly as familiar with the Leviticus passes, but it is very, very detailed.

Chapter 26 of Leviticus, verse 14. This is what he says. If you do not obey me and you do not carry out these commandments, if instead you reject my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances so that not to carry out all my commandments and so you break my covenant, I will turn and will do this to you.

I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption, and fever, and will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pound away. Also, you will sow your seed uselessly for your enemies will eat it up. I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies and those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.

And also, after these things, you do not obey me. Listen to this. Then I will punish you seven times more. Well, how many times do we see seven in the book of Revelation? Look, we're going to see seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, and I'm even going to say the seven thunders when we get there because that's the ones he tells him to seal it up.