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Bro. Bill Nichols
Did you say your son was 30 now? Well, I kind of expected that because Georgette is almost that old. No, that's good. I think I can tell it's on now. Okay, we're ready to roll. We are beginning chapter 6 of Revelation, and we're on partway through with verse 2.
I'm going to pick it up in the middle, and then we will offer a quick prayer, and then we'll begin. Behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow and a crown was given him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.
Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, and thank you for giving us your holy word that we might come together and study it. Thank you for giving us a place and giving us the Holy Spirit to guide us, providing your word and providing your son.
Bless us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. A couple of Sundays ago, we first looked at the question, who was the rider of the white horse? And in my own mind, I don't know about you, I came to the tentative conclusion that it was Antichrist.
Now, I want to tell you what a more prominent, way more prominent biblical scholar, one that I have great faith and trust in, said. This is John MacArthur. I'm just going to read what he said. John MacArthur suggests that it might be better not to try to identify the rider as an individual person.
Since the other three are not identified as such, but rather as a force. Here, the rider of the white horse, representing the illusion of peace, followed by the riders of the red, black, and pale horses, represent the realities of war, famine, and death.
So what he says is, it doesn't really matter who the rider of the white horse is. What matters is what they represent. The white horse and his rider represents the illusion of peace. The red, black, and pale horses represent realities of war, famine, and death.
Well, I have no real issue with that understanding. And it does eliminate the problem of trying to determine who the rider is. Furthermore, no commentator, so far as I know, makes any attempt to identify the rider of any of the other three horses.
You don't see a conflict about who the rider of the black horse is. Or who the rider of the red horse is. Or who the rider of the green horse is. Just the white one. So maybe we're chasing blindly after something that's not really important.
And that's something we always have to keep in mind as we go through. And I get sidetracked on issues. Maybe sometimes it's better to not chase those issues all the way to the end, because we'll never get there anyhow.
But here's what MacArthur said. But whatever or whoever these riders might be, they are empowered by Satan. Whatever the rider represents, it's empowered by Satan. But only at the will of God. Nothing that's happened here, nothing that happens throughout all of Revelation, is at the hands of anyone else other than God.
God is responsible for it all. And, you know, sometimes that's hard for us to deal with. Empowered by Satan to deceive. And as a result of that deception, there will come a period of unprecedented peace.
But it's a false peace. In the sense that by peace, many will be destroyed. Daniel warned us. If you'll turn to Daniel chapter 8, verse 25, we'll read just a little bit. And he is talking about what he has identified as the prince of the people that shall come.
Which we have tentatively identified as the Antichrist. And in any case, here's what Daniel says. And through his policy also, he shall cause craft. Now that craft is witchcraft or sorcery. To prosper in his hand.
And he shall magnify himself in his heart. And by peace, he shall destroy many. So this white horse representing the peace that is to come, is a peace that is false in the sense that by that peace, many will be destroyed.
By that peace, he shall destroy many. Peace and prosperity. Things that are always promised by Satan. But never delivered. That this will not be a real peace, but only an illusion of peace, should not be a surprise.
Jesus, when speaking to the Pharisees, said this in John chapter 8, verse 44. Not because he's speaking to the Pharisees necessarily, but because of what he said about the devil. Ye are of your father, the devil.
He's speaking to the Pharisees. And the lust of your father, the devil, you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth. Because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own.
For he is a liar, and the father of it. So we shouldn't be surprised that the peace that he promises is a false peace. So now we're going to come to the second seal. The false peace is now over. And the reality of war has begun.
The illusion. Peace, prosperity, and the abundant life. The reality, war, poverty, and death. Even the false peace brings the death of many. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, come and see.
Now the method is going to change. No longer is there going to be a false peace. Now there is going to be the reality of war. The illusion of peace is over. The reality of war has begun. And there went out another horse that was red.
And power was given to him. That set thereon to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another. And there was given unto him a great sword. Now we're going to identify, we're going to deal with three things here.
The fact that the horse was red. That power was given him to take peace from the earth. That they should kill one another. And that there was a great sword given to him. We're going to look at all of those details as we go through.
Red is the color of fire and the color of blood. And it depicts war. God's judgment descends and the short-lived illusion of peace, led by Antichrist, dissolves into a bloody war. And power was given to him.
Now did the rider of the red horse, or did the red horse, did the red horse have power? He had power because it was given to him. Who gave it to him? Okay, I'll accept Satan gave it to him. But really, who gave it to him?
God gave it to him. All that happens will be under God's sovereign control. He allowed the false peace to occur. Actually, I probably should say he caused the false peace to occur. And now he ends it and brings war to the earth.
Satan is the direct cause, but only as God allows him. Kind of like Satan and his dealing with Job. Satan was able to do a lot of things to Job, but only those things that the Lord allowed him to do. And we had a...
I did get the right person, didn't I? It is Job that I'm talking about, yes. And he only was allowed to do those things that the Lord allowed to happen to him. And it kept getting worse and worse. And finally, the only thing he didn't allow Satan to do was to kill Job.
I don't think he killed his wife either. But he certainly was not able to kill Job. But anything else he could do. God allowed the false peace, or caused it, and now he ends it and brings war to the earth.
Now, a lot of people teach that the judgments of the tribulation reflect the wrath of men and the wrath of God. That can't be so. Whose wrath does it reflect? The wrath of God. The judgments of the tribulation cannot reflect the wrath of men or the wrath of Satan.
They can only express God's wrath poured out on the world. It is God who holds the seventh scroll, and it is the Lamb who unrolls it. Now, it's not at all unusual that God would use Satan and demonically indwelt men to express his displeasure with the world.
That's the normal way he operates. In the Garden of Eden, he used Satan to tempt Adam. Now, his use of Satan and demonically indwelt men to express his displeasure has been his normal method of operation.
But that's going to change. It won't change with the opening of this seal, but it will change with the opening of the sixth seal. At the sixth seal, something different is going to happen. We'll get to the sixth seal probably next week.
But before we do that, I want to go back to Isaiah 45 and just reinforce what I've already said. Isaiah 45, starting at verse 5. This is the passage that I read my buddy at school. He was a person that took all of his Bible readings from either the American Standard Version or some newer version.
And he was shocked when I read this to him. I mean, I didn't read it to him directly. I read it to a group. And he was shocked, but he didn't express his shock then. But he called me in later and we talked about it.
And I looked it up, and there it was, just like I'm going to read it. And it wasn't like that in his book. How many of you have got a Bible other than the King James Version with you? Other than the King James Version?
Something different than the King James Version? Well, you won't be able to see what he saw, but you'll be able to see what I see. Starting at verse 5. I am the Lord, and there is none other. There is no God beside me.
I girded thee, though thou hast not known me. That thou may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me. I am the Lord. There is none other. There is none else. I form the light.
I create darkness. I make peace. I create evil. That's where his eyes widened. He didn't see that. In his Bible, I think it said chaos or disorder. But I form the light. I create darkness. I make peace.
I create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. Well, I decided to go back and do a word study of two words in this passage. Create and evil. I did a blue letter Bible study, and I hope it pops up here.
The word create is the Hebrew word bara. It means the following thing.
To create, it occurs.
It occurs 46 times. That's dyslexia. I'm trying to read it backward. It occurs 54 times in 46 verses. Sometimes it's translated different, but mostly it's translated create. The word in Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
That's the word. Later, it says God created the great whales. It says God created man. God created he him. Male and female, he created them. God rested on the seventh day from all of his work, which God created and made.
These are the generations of the heaven and earth, and they were created. I went all down the list, and every time the word created meant created by God. I don't want to go through all 46 times, but 46 times the word is created.
Then I did another word. Evil. Now let's see if I can get back to it quickly. Does that take me back? Am I still connected? Oh, yeah, there it is. Go forward one. Go down to evil. The evil is the Hebrew word ra.
It occurs 663 times. I'm going to tell you what it means. I'm not going to read every word. When I read them one time, I'm not going to repeat them. Bad, disagreeable, malignant, unpleasant, evil, giving pain, unhappiness, misery, displeasing, bad, worse, sad, unhappy, hurtful, vicious, evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity.
Evil, misery, distress, and injury. That's what the word evil means. Now, let's just go back and look at this verse again. I form the light, I create darkness, I make peace, and I create evil. God creates evil.
Well, what do you think about that? Do you think God really creates evil? He creates everything. Maybe if I wanted to argue with that a little bit, I might say it's not evil in his eyes. It's only evil in our eyes because we don't understand the extent of God's knowledge and ability.
Everything that God does is good. Everything that God does is good. Everything. Even the things that we think is evil. Even the things that we can't understand at all. Everything that God does is good.
God is good. Okay. So, yes. Light and darkness. Absolutely. And we don't have any problems. I say we. And I'm sure I can speak for everybody in this room. We don't have any problem with God creating good.
Light. Maybe hidden back in our minds somewhere. And I don't think for most of you, we do have a little bit of issue of him creating evil. But that's only because we think we know more than God knows.
It does. And that's because it's written for our eyes. You're absolutely right. If it were written for God's eyes, it wouldn't have to be written at all, would it? Yeah. There are things that we can look at.
We can say there is no way that any mortal person can understand this to be in any way good at all. And he did. And I wanted to deal with that. But that's... I think we're all pretty much... I think we're all in total agreement.
So, what was given him? Power. He was given power because God gave it to him. Power to do what? To take peace from the earth. The illusion is over. The reality has begun. War has begun, but not war all by itself.
War accompanied with individual violence. That they should kill one another. Now, part of war is killing one another. But this is going beyond just the killing of one another in war. This is the rapid violence that is going on throughout the world in addition to the war.
As bad as the worldwide war is, the individual carnage is worse. The carnage will be widespread. Such has not been seen since the day of Noah. But even worse than the corruption and violence is the general acceptance of corruption and violence as the new norm.
And that's where I think we are right now. And that's why I kind of, in some sense, agree with Brother David that we may even be in the tribulation period right now. If we're not, we're heading up to it at a breakneck speed.
Let's look at what Genesis said about the days of Noah. Now, what Genesis says in chapter 6, verse 13, is pretty simple. God said to Noah, The end of flesh has come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them.
And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. So why is the earth destroyed? One of the reasons is it's full of violence. I don't think that's the real reason it's destroyed. I think the real reason it's destroyed is for something different.
But a symptom of it is the violence that occurs. And more than that, well let me get to that later, is the violence. Now I'm going to go to a passage that I had problems dealing with for a long, long time.
And maybe you have too. Matthew 24, verse 38. I want to ask you a question after I read part of this. And my question is going to be, what's wrong with that? So here we go. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark.
And they knew not until the flood came and took them away. Now my question is, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage? Ma 'am, they were overlooking or failing to see the important thing.
Okay, I like that. Their life is just rocking on, doing what it's always done, and there is something that they should have seen that they didn't see. The problem was not in the eating and the drinking and the marrying and the giving in marriage.
It didn't even say they were overeating. It didn't even say they were gluttonous. It didn't say they were drinking to excess. It didn't say they were marrying 12 wives. It didn't say they were giving their daughters to 15 different people.
It just said eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage. Things that people do all the time. Nothing at all wrong with them. But then look at the last half right after that parenthesis. What do you call those things?
Semicolon. Semicolon. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be. The problem was they should have known that the Son of Man was coming. That's here. What they should have known was that the judgment was coming.
They should have known the judgment was coming. We should know. It says, and so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. This is later on. That phrase is for us later. Just like the days before the flood will be the days before the coming of the Son of Man.
They should have known and we should have known. They should have known that the judgment was coming. We should have known that the judgment is coming. And closely followed by that judgment that we're going to see, maybe.
Is the coming of the Son of Man. In spite of all that happens leading up to and continuing through the tribulation. The earth dwellers will not know nor care about the conditions of the earth. Nor even the coming of the Son of Man.
As long as the evil things do not directly affect them. But they should have known. And that's the problem. He goes on to say in this chapter. Then shall two be in the field. One shall be taken and the other left.
Two women shall be grinding at the mill. One shall be taken and the other left. Watch therefore for you know not what hour your Lord doth come. So we're on alert. We've been given a warning. A warning to do what?
Watch because we don't know when the Son of Man will come. In 1 Peter 3 .18 he says,. For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which he also went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water.
God was patient. Some people say 120 years. Some people say around 75 or 80 years that it took to build the ark. I don't know. But I do know this. From the time that Noah started building the ark until the flood came, people knew because Noah taught them.
And they didn't care. They just went on doing what they did. We're going to know too. And some of us will care. But some won't. They'll just keep on doing what they've been doing. The issue is the acceptance.
The issue is the new norm. Let's just look at what's happening in today's society. A desert tortoise is protected at the cost of billions of dollars, while millions of babies are being destroyed because they're inconvenient.
People engage in abominable sin, while those that condemn the sin are labeled as intolerant. Spirituality is embraced. But Christianity, the only working spirituality, is shunned. I say working. I don't mean that just because it's something we do.
It's the only pathway that works. That's all I'm saying. Spirituality, oh, we believe in all kinds of things. We believe in horoscopes. We believe in mystics. We believe in psychics. We believe in all kinds of things.
We have no trouble believing them. And the one thing that we could believe that would actually work, we don't believe. We shun it. Vulgarity is accepted, while God's Word is branded as hate speech. That didn't just happen yesterday.
Isaiah in chapter 5, verse 18, speaks to that. I can't help but see San Francisco in a gay pride parade when I read this. So I'm just going to lay that out there so you can see my vision as I'm reading this.
Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity and sin as it were with a cart rope. That say, let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it. And let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come that we might know it.
Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. That put darkness for light and light for darkness. That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.
Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink. Which justify the wicked for reward and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. That was in Isaiah's time.
And it is now. Good is called evil. Evil is called good. We embrace spirituality and we reject Christ. We reject the only thing that can possibly save us. And now we get to the third seal. And when he had opened the third seal I heard the beast say, come and see.
And I beheld and lo a black horse and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. Black denotes famine. The famine here in Revelation is probably linked to the worldwide war and the violence that is brought about by the red horse.
All the death and the violence and the war probably brought about famine. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley for a penny and see that thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
Now, so you understand. A penny was a typical day's wages for a man. Seems like not much to be paid but that's what they had to pay him. A penny was a typical day wage. A measure of wheat was the amount of wheat necessary to sustain one man one day.
So if I were working and I worked all day and I earned my penny I could get enough wheat for it to feed myself that day. And if I had somebody depending on me I'd have no wheat for them. Just me alone that's all I've got enough.
If I share it we both starve and maybe I do that. But it is a gross famine. One man could earn enough in one day to sustain one person. That's what it's saying. But the famine is unequal. One measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley.
I guess you can go to barley and eat three and get enough barley to feed you and two dependents. See not that thou hurt the oil and the wine. It's an unequal famine. The necessities for life are affected.
The non-essential items are not affected. It's like right now you see people that are earning millions of dollars and they say well maybe we should have a financial hardship to bring down the president.
Because if the economy fails the president will fail and that'll be bad. It doesn't affect me. I'm making millions of dollars. Oil and wine the non-essentials. No famine there. Plenty of that. The things necessary for life.
You just don't have them. And so now we get to the fourth seal. And when he had opened the fourth seal I heard a voice of the fourth beast say come and see. And I looked and beheld a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was death.
And hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over a fourth part of the earth to kill with a sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beast of the earth. Now it's interesting. The Greek word chloros is pale green.
The color of chlorine. In Leviticus the color of chlorine, the color of chlorine gas. It's a poisonous gas. Pale green. In Leviticus it was the color of leprosy. Death and hell. Two things. Death claims the body.
Hell claims the soul. John saw these enemies going forth to claim their prey. Armed with weapons. The sword. Hunger. Pestilence. Death by epidemic diseases. Wild beasts. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth.
The extent of the death and destruction wrought by war and famine is then quantified. Authority was given to death and Hades to destroy a fourth of the population of the earth. The population of the earth now is about six billion.
So that means about 1 .5 billion. That's a billion or million. Billion is what I meant to say. 1 .5 billion people destroyed at the opening of the fourth seal. Well, in these days of nuclear, chemical, biological weapons, it is entirely reasonable to expect that that number of deaths might occur as a result of this war.
And the diseases caused by it. And now we get to the fifth seal. And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.
Question. Slain during the tribulation or slain throughout all of history? What do you think? I think throughout all of history. Most of those to be slain during the tribulation have not yet been slain, even though 1 .5 million have been.
And they cried with a loud voice saying, These are the men under thee. These are the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
Now, that's not a very popular attribute of God, is it? Most modern churches readily accept that God is a loving God. But not as many accept the notion that God demands justice. While the Spirit reveals that God is loving, merciful, gracious, a savior of saints, there's one thing about Him that is unpopular today.
And what is that? That He is a God of vengeance against those who reject Him and the salvation of His Son. These martyrs base their appeal on two of God's attributes. Because God is holy, He must judge sin.
And because He is true, He must keep faithful to His word and keep His promises. The Bible is full of the vengeance of God. I'm just going to read one. Psalms 94 verse 1. O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself, lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth, render a reward to the proud.
Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they utter and speak hard things, and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves? The Spirit is full of references of God and His vengeance.
I could spend an hour just reading them, but I'm not going to. Verse 11. And white robes were given unto every one of them. And it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed, as they were, should be fulfilled.
We talked about these white robes last time. The white robes representing righteousness, but not righteousness of the saints, but righteousness of God which He gave them, or Jesus which He gave them. It's Jesus' righteousness that clothed these saints.
And what were they told? And it was said to them that they should rest for yet a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed, as they were, should be fulfilled.
I think it's interesting. The implication that all who were under the altar were preordained to be slain. Furthermore, they're an unspecified number yet to be slain. Now, as far as when the tribulation begins, I don't know the answer to that question.
It could be tomorrow. It could have been yesterday. It could be two weeks from now that the tribulation will begin. At least the first part of it. The false peace part. I can just see someone coming in and bringing everything together and creating that illusion of peace.
But I do know something. I know when it will end. It will not end until all of those saints that are ordained to be slain are slain. So it's got to be sometime. Next time, God willing, we will look at the opening of the sixth seal.
And I do have enough time to read the opening of the sixth seal and to tell you something kind of in a preview. And I beheld, this is 6 verse 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.
Now, a new phase is going to begin. Throughout the opening of the first five seals, God's wrath arrives by the agency of Satan and his minions. Sometimes God intervened directly, as in the parting of the Red Sea, and in the bringing of flood, the chase after the parting of the Dead Sea, the collapse of the sea on the Egyptians.
But the normal procedure for God's wrath since the fall has been through Satan's actions. After all, God put Adam in the garden and sent Satan to deceive him. Beginning with the opening of the sixth seal, everything changes.
Now God directly intervenes. Now it's God that's doing it. I'm going to say one more thing, and I'll probably say it again next time. The sun became black, and the moon became as blood. Some people say that this happened as a result of an eclipse.
An eclipse can make the sun go black. An eclipse can make the moon turn red. But if these two things are going to happen at the same time, the sun becoming black and the moon becoming red, you've got a problem.
It can't be explained by any physical means. There may be a means by which it is explainable. I don't know it, but here's what I know. For a solar eclipse, you've got this. The sun, solar eclipse, the earth, and the moon in between.
Sun, moon, earth in between. What did I say? Am I talking about the lunar eclipse or the solar eclipse? Solar eclipse. Sun, earth, moon in between. The shadow of the moon is on the earth. If we're in the shadow, the sun is blocked out.
Lunar eclipse. Sun, earth, moon. The moon moves into the shadow of the earth. For a lunar eclipse, the earth has to be between the sun and the moon. For a solar eclipse, the moon has to be between the earth and the sun.
It can't be both. It can be one. It can be the other. God can do it at the same time, but he won't do it through an eclipse. We'll talk about that next week. I'll make sure that for everybody in the larger group, because I expect we'll have more next time, that I'll say it right from the beginning.
You can have a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse at the same time because the cause of one is different than the cause of the other. Not only different, but precludes the cause of the other. It can't be between and on the other side at the same time.
Okay. We have about four or five minutes if you have something you want to add, discuss, or question. I think so. Yeah, and you're right. It doesn't say that it was given to them at that time. It says it were given to them.
So I think Brother David may have the answer to that. I certainly didn't have the answer to that. I feel comfortable in saying that the white robes represent righteousness, represent righteousness of Christ.
And we do know that when the righteous died in the Old Testament, they were sent into Abraham's bosom, not into Hades. I don't know if they were given the righteousness then, but there was a time that came when Jesus died, and his righteousness then wasn't.
But see, he's out of time. I don't know. I don't know if that makes any difference. I'm not trying to quibble. I just don't know. I think so. That's the unspecified number that are going to be killed after the pause in Chapter 7.
Without regard to time? In Daniel, it talks about great numbers of people that are killed. I don't know that that relates directly to your question. Yes. The coming tribulation is much worse than anything that's been before.
But now these are not just killed. These are the ones that are killed that are righteous. They're killed for the Word of God like these were. And I think that you're right in that they were killed as a result of the preaching, teaching of the 144 witnesses and others.
And most of the ones that they converted were killed immediately. But not them. Not a single one of them are lost. That's because they're sealed. And we'll get to that next time. And so I guess that answers your question.
That's one place that it was predicted. And the moon turning red too, right? Okay. Well, yeah. Well, red is just a slight glow. You can barely see it. And you wouldn't see it at all if there's anything else up there.
But, yeah. If it were enough to block the sun, it would be enough to block the light from the moon, and you wouldn't be able to see it either. And the moon then wouldn't turn red. You couldn't see the red.
Is that where this dust is coming from? Yes. Okay. I think we have overshot our time by a couple of minutes. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for this day, and thank You for all the many blessings.
Bless us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.