Some years ago one could hear the exclamation, “Let the good times roll!” and then begin to get ready for a party. Now, not so much. People are seeing their retirement funds, if they have any, overcome by inflation that is denied by the government.

Constant promotions on television and radio that buying gold or silver as a hedge is the way to go. But if the basic means of exchange, the money system, has fallen apart, who will take your antique gold coin for a loaf of bread? What can you get for cash back in change?

Some people deny the truth of Bible prophecy, but a close look at current events and news reports, shadows of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Revelation 6 are evidence of the rapidly approaching realities. Those four horsemen represent four major areas of devastation coming upon the earth and its inhabitants:

The white horse appears with a rider carrying a bow but no arrows, presumably a man of peace. But he “comes conquering and to conquer.” The white horse reminds me of that advertising campaign of some years ago that pitted the guys with white hats against those wearing black hats, as the “good guys” against the “bad guys.”

It begins to take on the likeness of our United States, where it has been required that soldiers go on guard duty without bullets for their weapons, even in hostile areas. Political correctness policies render protection requirements meaningless, as recent White House break-ins, for example, reveal.

So-called “peace agreement” formats are one-sided and politically motivated to gloss over real issues and deny realities. Only a false peace will come of such negotiations, not a permanent one. The supposed agreement with Iran to not produce nuclear weapon capability only delays any action until Iran can accomplish its plans. Hidden behind those smiles and reassurances is the age-old commitment to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, followed by those western nations which do not bow down to Allah.

If one reads further into chapter 17 of Revelation, he will see how this white horse rider eliminates his opposition, taking control (conquering) the whole world under his leadership and becoming the eighth head of that seven-headed beast which will have become visible as the One World Government. Appropriately, it also says he will go into perdition, and we find out in chapter 19 that “perdition” is the lake of fire!

The rider on the red horse brings warfare like no one has ever seen before. The evil that is seen spreading from the Middle East’s newest threat called an Islamist State, ISIS, with beheadings now in mid-America has been promised by that growing force, and it does not appear that Western entities are willing to take them seriously. Certainly not so with the current leadership in America’s White House so reluctant to affirm their existence nor their threat.

It is quite likely that Israel, having its “ear closer to the ground,” because of the reality of closer proximity with its enemies, may be the only one which dares to destroy those capabilities of Iran, ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas, but the rider on that red horse will not be Israel’s Prime Minister. The Scriptures picture Russia joining with Iran (Persia) and others of the Islamic faction coming upon Israel (Ezekiel 38-39). However, how will that first rider accomplish his conquering, except by warfare?

The rider on the black horse portrays the economic chaos that has been predicted in the news reports that a collapse of the American dollar, now the world’s dominant currency, is imminent. Shortages of food and water, and no negotiable currency with which to buy it, if there is any available, will abound.

I was recently shopping late one evening in a super market where the employees were moving goods into the aisles and restocking shelves for the next day’s shoppers. I asked one of them, who seemed to be in charge, “If truckers were shut down and no goods could get here, how long would all these things in the store last?” He replied, “Probably three-to-four days.”  And I thought, ‘And it won’t clear through the cash registers, either!’

Some years ago the global warming guru, Al Gore, was guest speaker at the annual convention of the Future Farmers of America in Philadelphia where he “encouraged” young farmers-to-be, to get out of farming because in a few short years America’s food supply would all be imported. (A mother who attended the affair with her son and his classmates reported this to me.)

And more recently, an northeastern Congresswoman promoted a bill that would make it a crime for any citizen to have a backyard garden plot. (It was reported that her husband was employed by a major seed company.) The longing for power and control in the hands of a few is a diabolical motivation existing since those early days in the Garden of Eden.

Finally, the rider on the pale horse is one who dishes out death in abundance. Thinking of the results of what those other horses and their riders will have brought upon the people of the earth, it seems possible that all of the riders arrive at the same time. In their shadows, right now, death and destruction are rampant around the world. Warfare, pestilences, major storms on land and sea, earthquakes, tornados, volcanos, all are bringing a rising death toll. The future for earth dwellers looks bleak, for sure.

There is a possibility that the first rider, who is on the white horse, turns out to be the same rider on all the horses, for he is described as one who conquers and continues to conquer, as we see him doing in the later chapters. All these seals are opened by “the Lamb who was slain,” while the trumpets are sounded and the bowls of judgment are carried out by angels. The impression made is that as a seal is opened, it is accomplished, and the next one is done and over with, etc. It appears that this section is an overview of the judgments of God that are spelled out in the trumpet and bowl judgments.

There are those who believe that Christians will have to endure some or all of the seven years of the Tribulation. If this is a preview we are beginning to experience now on this planet, then those years ahead will not be any kind of picnic. As you read the book of Revelation, after those four horsemen show up, the fury of destruction and devastation only gets continually worse.

Apparently God is showing those who think they have a better plan of running things than God can how incapable they really are.

Based on the facts of biblical truth that believers, in whom dwells the one called “He who resists,” will have been removed from the earth, and that man of sinfulness faces no opposition, there is no limit to  what atrocities might occur. Especially will it be so, when the judgments of God begin to force his hand and back him into a corner. His motivating spirit, Satan himself, is described in Revelation 12 as a “great, fiery red dragon” whose anger rages against the Jewish people and the whole world.

These days are beginning to be like the early morning hours of a new day when the shadows of darkness begin to recede and light begins to show in the eastern sky. Reality is stripping away the façade of deception with this administration. Almost every week there is some new defiance of the United States Constitution with the most flimsy of justifications for the lawless actions.

What is so astounding is that those who should be the “watchers on the wall” seem to be as limp as dishrags in any kind of cooperative effort to block the obvious, but subtle, push toward a dictatorship.

If that seems to be approaching heresy, remember that Henry Kissinger stated that Barack Obama “has been primed to lead us into a New World Order,” and there can be no such thing—meaning, in full disclosure, one world government–if the United States remains as a sovereign nation. Actually, there can be no independent sovereign nations. Those who are watching can see the shadows begin to fade away from the awful truth that the global elite have set in motion.

But wait! Don’t forget God! He is sovereign over the whole universe, and circumstances do not move Him—He moves circumstances, and He moves nations to do His bidding, to fulfill His plan for the ages.

In the days of Moses it was God’s desire that the Jewish people would leave the bondage of Egypt and return to their Promised Land, now known as the land of Israel. And that is what He did, but their rebellion caused them to be scattered among the nations of the world. In these last days, He has been calling His chosen people, those physical descendants of Abraham, back to that Promised Land.

Many have returned, but many more are still enthralled with the “leeks and garlics” of their economic bondage of their respective cultures—thinking mainly of those Jews in the western world. So the Lord will be bringing pressure to bear upon those in a time which He has called the “time of Jacob’s trouble“ (Jeremiah 30:7), the seven years of Tribulation that focuses on the Jewish people to bring them to recognize Jesus as their true Messiah.

“But you, Beloved,” (as Paul would say), will not be a part of that series of activities, traumas, catastrophes, and judgments, for you will be taken out of the way that the evilness of mankind can reach its full potential and measure so that God’s condemnation of evil will have its full exposure. Paul has written this, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:

“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. 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.”

And with full and complete enthusiasm, we who believe can exclaim, “Amen. So be it!”

With all the turmoil of the Christmas season, feverish hurry to get those last-minute gifts purchased and in the mail, it’s a wonder that more traffic accidents occur than are reported. And all of that hustle and bustle seems to bring a lot of people to a “basket case” condition. Forget the fact that it is the season to herald the coming of the Prince of Peace, just getting through it all with some measure of stability becomes a reasonably sensible goal.

But there are basket cases that are filled with hope and promise.

Basket cases figure into the story of this season of praise and rejoicing since that time when God looked down upon His chosen people, the Hebrews, who were in bondage to the Egyptian king. They had been there for over four hundred years, counting the time when Joseph first came there as a slave captive, and it was God’s time for deliverance. The new Pharaoh had observed that the Hebrews were very prolific and their numbers were becoming overwhelming, so he issued a dictate that all male children born in that camp were to be killed.

One Hebrew woman did not obey that order, and when her son was born she prepared a waterproof basket, placed her new son in it and turned it loose in the river. (Only an all-knowing God could arrange these details!) The Pharaoh’s daughter, later bathing nearby, discovered the child in the basket, retrieved it and claimed the boy as her own. He was given the name, Moses, and his mother, strangely so, offered herself to the daughter as a willing nursemaid for the baby.

From here you know the story–this basket case became God’s method of deliverance of the Hebrew nation from its bondage and on its way to the Promised Land which God had promised Abraham so long before. Even with its rocky start, God did not pull ahead of them but drew them forward as they were ready to believe and follow His leading.

Moses had to become a mature man, be accepted by the people as their leader, as well as being prepared for the task, himself. That took eighty years of the life of Moses, then close to forty more years with their wandering in the wilderness. When that part was finished, Moses was out of the leadership, and Joshua took over, to cross the Jordan and conquer the inhabitants of the Promised Land.

As it was said of a later Prophet, in the likeness of Moses, the Israelites had to “learn obedience by the things which they suffered.” This whole scenario seems to smack of the journey of faith that a new believer in the gospel of grace, today, enters into when he first accepts Christ and becomes a new creation in Him.

The likeness of this “basket case” scenario to another one years later seems to bear out the testimony of the Scriptures that not only the law of Moses but the whole portrayal of the Israeli history in the Old Testament is a foreshadowing “type” of that future life of faith that would be experienced by those who would believe in a Savior whose Spirit would indwell them and turn their hearts to fully seek the Lord.

This Moses of old was specific in his forward looking prediction of that one who was to come:

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the Lord your God….” (Deuteronomy 18:15a).
Enter Now a Second Basket Case

Not unlike Moses, who came out of the bulrushes of the Nile, out of obscurity, there would be one who also would come forth quietly into the stream of human history, bearing hope and promise of freedom from bondage, the bondage of sin and the fear of death. The prophet Micah foretold that event and its location:

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2).

And Isaiah also had foretold of that event about the same time as Micah, saying:

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

Then, years later, Paul wrote this:

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

And when that time was approaching, the angel Gabriel visited a young Hebrew virgin girl named, Mary, who was betrothed to a man named Joseph, and told her of God’s plan. She was to be the mother of the only Son that God, the Father, would ever personally beget. And it would be by a unique working of  the Spirit of God, not in the same physical experience that normal human reproduction is accomplished.

This One was to be the only begotten Son of God! All the way back to the Garden of Eden God had never let the fallen nature of mankind through Adam have any part in His provision of redemption for that fallen human race. And this was certainly not an instance of violation of that premise. Later, Paul would write a statement that clearly expressed God’s mind on the matter:

“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

As a testimony of God’s omnipotence, circumstances came about that an edict was issued by the taxing authorities that all inhabitants had to return to their city of birth to be taxed. Thus, Joseph and Mary returned from Galilee to the city of Bethlehem, where Jesus was to be born. And so it was.

Joseph and Mary returned to Bethlehem, the city of David, their predecessor, to be taxed, and she was heavy with child. It came time for the child’s birth and afterward He was laid in a manger. It was an animal feeding trough, a type of “basket,” would you believe it! God sent that second Prophet, like Moses, to lead His people out of bondage, only they were looking for a king in glorious splendor, not a baby in a “basket” once again.

And just as it was at the time of Moses, the King of Judea issued an executive order. When the Kings of the East arrived about two years after Jesus was born, and asked about seeing the new King of the Jews whose star they had seen, King Herod ordered all boys of two years old and under killed. He feared competition and possibly the wrath of the Caesar in Rome.

But God warned Joseph in a dream, and they escaped to Egypt for safety until the passing of Herod. (Is this a pattern that has since been repeated in the massive killings of innocent children in the womb by abortion, some 55 million now in the United States, that perhaps precedes the coming return of the Lord?)

Later, John wrote this:

“He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-13).

The lasting relationship of this Savior with His people was to be totally of God, nothing of the flesh, the physical contributions of the heritage of Adam, that first one who had separated mankind from God in the Garden by his disobedience.

John also wrote of this Living Messenger of God, in that same place, the next verse:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

I understand that the word “dwelt” in the verse above is from the word “tabernacle” in the Greek and thus, would relate to the Feast of Tabernacles, which portrays His second coming at the end of the age. The standard gestation period for the development of a baby from conception to birth is approximately 280 days.

Therefore, if Jesus had been conceived on December 25, instead of being born on that day, and most people realize it is not known that He was born then, the day of birth would be around the end of September or early October, by any calendar, Gentile or Hebrew. And that is when the Feast of Tabernacles shows up on the annual Hebrew time table. That scenario seems to fit God’s pattern of unfolding His plan of the ages with control and design than one of haphazard inconsistency.

But what difference does it make, you may ask. It’s just that seems to have done things according to an appointed, as He says at times and brings situations forward with pinpointed accuracy. Note the exactness of the unfolding of the first 69 of Daniel’s 70-weeks prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27) and the exactness of the timing of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday and the parallel activities of that Passover celebration. Nevertheless, the fixed date of December 25th serves mankind very well.

His Eternal Purpose Begins to Unfold

Even though He was astounding the priests and scribes in the Temple at twelve years of age, it was not until He was about thirty years old that He came to the Synagogue on a Sabbath, asked for a scroll, and read from Isaiah, this:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me
to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of theLord” (Luke 4:18-19).

Then He closed the book, handed it back, and as the people looked in wonderment, said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Thus began His public ministry that would bring Him within about three years to a cruel death on a Roman cross between two thieves. Even in His death He drew with Him one of the thieves who had honored Him, saying to the thief, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

It was noted by Paul, who had his own experience of escape from danger in a basket (2 Corinthians 11:32-33), that the wisdom of God is foolishness to mankind (1 Corinthians 1:18, 21), but He began with babes in baskets to reach the world with the good news of the gospel:

“Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength,because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger” (Psalm 8:2).

It was Peter, that likeable, so human-like disciple, who said:

“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

And one day, at the sound of that name, Jesus Christ, all people everywhere shall proclaim Him LORD:

“Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).