Revelation Chapter 6: 8-17

“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.  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?’  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.

“I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.  And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.  Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.

“And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’”

We just got a cat, a little kitten really. She is barely a handful. My wife Marny and my daughters Ocean and Saturn were all involved in the acquisition of this little ball of fur.  Many people have animals living in their homes. There used to be a show on Television called “Life After People.” I used to watch this, and it was fascinating. Of course, when they dealt with the subject of the pets having to fend for themselves in the area of food and how the former little cuddly pets became the real animals that they are, it was eye opening.

After I mentioned that the rider on the Pale horse would use the animals of the world to kill people, I was encouraged to Google feral dogs. One study by WHO shows that there are more than 200 million stray dogs worldwide. In the US, there are tens of millions of feral dogs. These dogs are responsible for the loss of sheep, cattle, and in some rare cases human life. Many of them live off of scavenging food from garbage and the like, but imagine the carnage that they can cause when paired with the millions of domesticated dogs now hungry and fending for themselves once the rapture happens and the worldwide food shortages begin to happen. The earth will become a very, very dangerous place to live.

Today we will look at two more of the seals as Jesus opens them. The first deals with martyrdom, and the second deals with space and some earthly and cosmic disturbances.

I cannot imagine the chaos on the earth during this time:

• The completely disillusioned people who could not wait for the Christians to go so they could bring in the ‘good times’ without God;
• The socialist elite who knew for a long time the chaos that would come by their hands, but they kept telling the masses— especially the youth, a big lie;
• And the ruling class that are now running a rapidly decaying system and trying to find a way to stabilize the ship.
• The worst aspects of people are coming out; murder, deception and mayhem are the norm, and no one is safe.

In the midst of this chaos, for a brief moment, the scene shifts to heaven and a scene at the altar of God in Heaven.

The Martyrs, Revelation 6: 8-11

When I grew up, the word Martyr was always associated with the death of Christians. The word Martyr means to be a witness, in particular a witness of the truth. There have been many religious people who have been killed over the years. But, a true martyr is one who was a witness for the truth in life and then was killed. There is no true martyrdom without the truth. Jesus, we are told in the scriptures, is the truth.

These martyrs were the faithful witnesses of Jesus down through the ages who had been killed because of the truth of Jesus and their refusal to back down from it. This is neither a prideful nor an arrogant thing, rather a simple stance on the venerable truth of the Scriptures. From all the studying I have done and reading from guys way smarter than me, these martyrs represent all the martyrs from the very beginning; those who have stood for the truth and have given their lives for it. A martyr must live publicly for the Lord and must be easily identifiable. One must live for and live out the truths of the Scriptures.

These folks ask God to avenge their blood. This was their right as His children to do, and they are warned that the time for vengeance is coming but that they have to be patient a bit longer.

You see, the first half of the Tribulation is not really God’s wrath, so to speak. It sure seems that way. But really what we are seeing is what happens to people when the restraining power of the Holy Spirit is removed and people are left to their own evil desires, and the true heart of man shows up.

The Bible tells us that the ‘heart of man’ is deceitfully wicked. Romans 3:10-21 tells us that we are wicked to the core, that even our words are like the poison of asps. But the world truly wants to believe that we are all good at the core, that there are just a few bad eggs, and if we can weed them out we will all be okay. But the Christian comes along, he or she opens the Bible and tells everyone that they are sinners – evil as the day is long, rotten to the core and deserving of Hell. And while some will gladly hear and repent, trusting in Jesus, the vast majority reject our message, reject Jesus and eventually kill us to prove how good they are.

As we rush headlong into the last days, there will be a more defined and determined line in the sand for ‘professing Christians.’ We will truly not be able to be undercover Christians any longer. I am reminded of John 19:38 when Joseph of Arimathea could no longer hide his love for Jesus, and he had to come out of the shadows to bury Jesus. When he did so, another ‘shadow worshipper,’ Nicodemus, surfaced to show his love for Jesus as well.

There comes a time when those who have stood by the sidelines have to get in the game; and there will be those pretenders who will show themselves to be frauds like Judas did. They will betray the truth and betray those that they once called brothers and sisters. They will try to bring in false doctrines and try to undermine the Biblical stands on things like Creation, Salvation, the Lordship of Jesus, the veracity of the Scriptures, Heaven and Hell, marriage, and on and on we can go.

Sooner or later the Holy Spirit will call you to stand up and stand out for Jesus. My fear is that – in North America, fundamentally the last bastion of freedom of speech – when the fall comes, it will be swift and immediate. We will wake up to no freedom of speech in very short order with the Bible, in particular, being made illegal. The proverbial line in the sand will be drawn, and we will not have eons of time to get accustomed to it. We will have to deal with it head-on.

In Canada we have a Prime Minister who is voraciously opposed to the Bible, and bolstered by a move in the USA, will sweep in even greater reforms than down south. We must live for the truth, we must practice the truth of the scriptures, and we must bear the consequences of obedience. No one asks to be a martyr; we simply live like one and let the chips fall where they may.

Falling Stars and Earthquakes, Revelation 6:12-14

We have had earthquakes over the years. In 2011 we saw what a serious earthquake can do. A 9.1 earthquake hit just off the coast of Japan and destroyed that nation for many months. The ensuing tsunami was 133 ft. tall; and in the end, the death toll was over 15,000 persons. To us this was a disaster. But the earthquake that is going to hit in the sixth seal will make this look like a mere hiccup – a practice run, if you will, for the real thing. In Zephaniah 1:14-16 we see this dire warning:

“The great day of the LORD is near; it is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; there the mighty men shall cry out. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers.”

And again, in Joel 2:10-11: “The sun and moon grow dark, and stars diminish their brightness… for the day of the LORD is great and terrible; who can endure it?”

The question ‘who can endure it’ is a rhetorical question; the answer is no one. We endured the earthquake in Japan, the country was rebuilt, commerce came back, and the event is just a blip in history. But this earthquake in the sixth seal is the mother of all earthquakes. One writer suggests that ‘all of the earthquake faults’ actually erupt all at once.

In just a few minutes of research, I was able to find out that the earth is a hotbed of faults. We are aware of the San Andreas Fault that stretches over 800 miles along the west coast of the US and into many of the Asian countries. The state of Alaska is one of the most earthquake-prone states; the Asian continent is rift with fault lines; and in parts of Africa, we have the western and eastern rift valleys. This is a valley that reaches as far as Lebanon, some 3,700 miles in length.

When these begin to erupt, the death toll will be unparalleled, and the destruction of the earth’s crust along with the nations and just about every boundary we know will cause immeasurable destruction. The very earth that the world’s peoples and governments worshipped instead of the Creator will become their greatest enemy.

One of the side effects of this series of earthquakes is that the gases released will partially block out the sun and the moon. When viewed, this looks red.

We have had a series of ‘blood moons’ over the past few years; and just a few nights ago, the moon over our home was a beautiful red as well. I will admit that I got caught up in the whole ‘red moon’ thing and read up on it for a time. I realized that a lot of ‘date setting’ was taking place or implied, and we were strictly forbidden from this practice.

Blocking out the sun will have side effects on the temperature of the earth. This will affect weather patterns, affect evaporation, affect people’s moods, and on and on we can go.

And, if the earthquakes were not enough, the stars begin to fall from the sky. Their falling is similar to the falling of ripe figs. These late figs grow on the tree without the protection of the leaves and are easily blown off the tree. This idea of the stars falling may refer to a meteor shower that strikes the earth. The sky will change and the atmosphere will be altered somehow.

The next one is near and dear to me. I was born in Barbados, a little island in the Caribbean. Here the Bible tells us that every island and every mountain were moved out of their place. Wow! Can you imagine Mount Everest moving or Australia, an island continent, moving from where it is? This is going to be catastrophic, and the end will leave us with a planet that cannot be navigated by air or sea. No one will know where anything is; all maps and GPS systems will be rendered obsolete forthwith.

The People React, Revelation 6:15-17

The people of the world come to face to face with the wrath of God. They understand that this is God’s handiwork, and they hide themselves in caves and in the rocks of the decaying mountains. They ask for the rocks to fall on them. The one thing they do not do is repent. I want to say that again: they hide, they cry out for death, BUT they refuse to repent. They know that God is God and they still refuse to repent. The hardness of men’s hearts is a scary thing to see.

I have just begun to read the book of Exodus for the umpteenth time, and we all know how Pharaoh simply refused to humble himself before the Living God. It took God killing all the firstborn of Egypt to get Pharaoh to release the Jews. And even then he pursued them to the Red Sea and died trying to get them back. The one thing Pharaoh did not do was repent and humble himself before the Holy God of Israel. He would rather die, see his sons die, and see his land ravished than repent.

The kings, the leaders, the rich men, the mighty men, and the free men would rather have died under an avalanche of rocks than repent and humble themselves under the Mighty hand of God. But they have no doubts that this is from God. That question has been asked and answered, and the resounding answer is— God is in control. God, not man, is the captain of this ship. All the schemes of the earth have come to nothing; and from here on out they are at God’s mercy. No one will be able to stand up to God, and they know it.

So many are like this today. We teach the truth of God’s great love; it is on the radio, the television, available on XM, Bibles can be had for free, and the Gospel is offered all over the world for free. Jesus, the Son of God, has given his life as a ransom for us sinners—the Holy dying for the sinner, God dying in the place of man and offering us the promise of salvation. Yet, so many reject Him and refuse to humble themselves. It is not for ignorance; simply these are acts of rebellion and the rejection of God’s free gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23).

Today is the day of salvation. Stop rejecting Jesus.

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

Revelation Chapter 6: 5-8

“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. 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.’ When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and see.’ 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: 5-8

Last week we began the look at the opening of the Seals. These seven seals, when opened, moved the judgment on the earth forward. For the most part, what we see here is man’s doing.

Yes, God is superintending everything that happens; we must never forget that. God oversees all that happens in our lives today. He does not cause evil or sin to happen, but He gauges the effects of these in our lives. I am certain that God protects us from our sinfulness way more than we can see. Many, if not all of us, can think of situations where we have made decisions by which we should be dead or at best seriously injured, but we survived unscathed. God, in His wonderful grace oversees every moment of our lives.

In our own life, my wife and I drive more than 70,000 kms per year on highways and bi-ways. We have driven from Ontario to Florida multiple times in snow, rain and storms; we have driven tired and irritated; we have run over stuff and had close calls, but in all these years God has preserved us both from ourselves and others. I drive about 160 kms back and forth to work each day, and God allows me to get home each day. I have seen some serious wrecks; but by the grace and kindness of God, none have involved me or come close to me. God is no less of an overseer in the things of the end times.

At the onset, man tries, as we mentioned last week, to create this utopia without the God of Heaven, a utopia without the Lord Jesus. And no sooner than it is set, the pieces begin to crumble. Sinful, evil man cannot maintain utopia for even a few years. The nature of men and women is evil to the very core; and left unchecked by the Holy Spirit, it will result in evil flowing over and acting out. We saw this in the second seal; murder and mayhem takes away the very temporary peace that exists after the rapture. From the leaders down to common man, murder is rampant and death lurks everywhere.

We are going to get to two other seals today, and at the end I will address a very serious issue in the Lord’s churches today – one that is scary and downright heartbreaking. I pray that you will bear with me through it all. We are going to get a bit dirty today; and by the grace and kindness of God, some of the things we discuss will be painful to some, eye-opening to some, sad to some, convicting to some, and maybe even angering to some. What I do not want is for you to be blasé about the truth; any kind of reaction can be pointed in the right direction, but no reaction is scary. First the seals:

Scarcity of Food, Revelation 6:5-6

I cannot imagine this in my mind. I have never known a time in my life where there was a lack of food. Sadly, I am overweight and need a bit of food scarcity. In Barbados where I grew up, there was food everywhere; it was and is a huge part of our culture. I went to many family dinners and birthday parties where the food was excellent. I was blessed to have a grandmother who made me a home-cooked meal every day for lunch when I was in school. Man, she could cook!

My mom was also a very good cook, and I grew up surrounded by wild fruit trees. We ate mangoes and oranges, and we could get sugar cane in season for free. As an island we were surrounded by the ocean, and fish was plentiful, so food was never an issue. I moved to North America; and in the 36 years I have been here, I have not known any shortage of food.

But not long into the Tribulation there will be a serious hit on the food supply. We are not told why there is a shortage, only that there is one. It is bad.

In our time, we can see the issues that are happening in Venezuela; they are enduring a serious shortage of food with the influx of socialism on the country. As mentioned before, I grew up in Barbados, not far from Venezuela. They were a very rich South American nation, and they often sent their children to Barbados to learn English. But socialism killed them, and their people are starving.

I do not know if socialism will be the cause of this Tribulation food shortage. Maybe the cause is hoarding by the Federal governments of the world. Maybe a lot of farmers are Christians; and in the aftereffects of the rapture, there is no one to produce food. We can go on and on. The fact of the matter is that there is a serious shortage. As with all shortages, the prices of the basics of life skyrocket. We are told in verse 6 that the price of a day’s provision of bread for ONE person is a denarius. A denarius is a day’s wage in the New Testament. In Matthew 20:1-2 we are shown this:

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the workers on one denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard.”

Today, the minimum wage here in Ontario is $14 per hour. A full-time worker is paid for 7.5 hrs. per day; the daily wage is $105 per day. Can you imagine paying over $100 for enough bread to feed one person, not a family?

The quart of wheat was the higher grade of wheat to make food, and a quart was enough to feed a man for a day. In Lamentations 4: 4, “The nursing infant’s tongue clings to the roof of his mouth from thirst. Little children beg for bread, but no one gives them any.”

It is a sad commentary on what life will be like in this time that we are talking about in Revelation 6:6. I have a young daughter; she comes to me and complains of hunger, and I get her some food. I cannot imagine having to hear her cry and not being able to get her anything. Now if one needs to feed a family, one can get the lower grade of food; three quarts of barley is enough to feed a family. One commentary points out that barley, at the time, was most commonly used to feed the animals. But as a good man or good father, you will do what you have to do to provide; and so barley it is.

Remember that all of your wages are used each day just to provide food. There will not be any leftovers, no extras; this is all you get, enough for the day. There is no money for housing, cell phones, cars, gasoline and the other things that we take for granted in life. No cars and no gasoline mean no jobs for many people.

I live 50 miles from my work, as does my wife. No money, no cars, no work. Many people will not even have money for a day’s supply of food, furthermore getting to work. The utopia that was created in the wake of the rapture is for all intents and purposes defunct. What kind of utopia has starving people? The answer is a manmade one.

In the last phrase of Revelation 6:6, it says “do not touch the oil and wine.”

Often, we are reminded that these are the foods of the rich; and this may be that the rich will not have the same kind of food shortages that the common man will have. Movies like “The Hunger Games” relay for us a general idea of what the world will look like, maybe not the games to the death. But the class structure – the haves and the have- nots – will be very separate. The socialist elites will always have lots of money and resources.

But one commentary pointed out that oil was used often in cooking; and wine at the time was used as a purifier for water. Oil and wine would have been essential needs for any family for cooking and maybe even for drinking to keep healthy. I was listening to a pastor from upstate New York talk last night on the radio, and they are under a ‘boil water’ rule because of widespread flooding that is draining the sewage into the lake that they get water from.

Things are going to be very, very bad for the people on earth – no food, no work, no clean water, no money, and very little in terms of joy.

The Power of Death, Revelation 6:7-8

I have buried a few people in my life – my dad, a brother, a grandmother, a grandfather, and countless people as a pastor. I have buried a stillborn child who was past the 24 weeks, and I have done funerals for the very old. Death still has a stigma; it is a stigma that is only tempered by the hope that we have in Jesus.

The apostle Paul, a man who saw himself and his fellow apostles and companions murdered by the Roman government, reminded us that we do not need to mourn as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We have a hope in Jesus that softens the pain of death. It is still hard to bury loved ones, but it is easier when we have a confidence in Jesus of the resurrection.

The people in the Tribulation will not have any hope at all. In these very early stages of the Tribulation that we are exploring, there is little to no comfort from the destruction that is happening. We see a rider come out, and he is riding a Pale horse. The Greek word from which we get Pale is chlorophyll. It denotes the pale ashen look of a decomposing body. This horseman has the power to kill. We are told in Revelation 6:8 that he will have the power to kill a fourth of the world, 25%. That is a lot of death.

According to the UN Foundation Blog, 151,600 people die each day. That is 54,576,000 persons each year. We think that is a lot; but in light of what is going to happen in the Tribulation, this is just a drop in the bucket. The Pale rider will be given permission by God to take the lives of 25% of the earth’s population.

According to “Population Matters” website, the current world population is 7.41 billion people. Let us be conservative and say that 2 billion are raptured. That would leave 5.41 billion, so the Pale horse’s rider will have the power to kill 1.35 billion people in a very short time. It would take us 18.5 years to reach 1 billion dead at the current death rate. The rider will kill this many in a matter of less than 3.5 years. This number does not account for those murdered or starving to death at the same time.

Notice that he has many tools at his disposal. He kills with hunger, the sword, with death and with wild animals. Right now, only one of the wild animals that do not have a natural fear of humans is Polar Bears. I learned that a week or so ago watching one of the National Geographic shows. But in this time, one of the tools of the man on the Pale horse will be wild animals. Maybe even domesticated animals will turn on their owners and kill them.

I cannot imagine the carnage on the earth. There is no way that the people can keep up with the death rate; there will be dead bodies everywhere. Homes, schools and streets will be littered with the dead. The stench of death will be everywhere. This is what happens when you reject Jesus. The stench of death will be everywhere—the rich and the poor will fall prey to this power. This is what happens when the restraining power of the Holy Spirit leaves and man is left on his own to fend for himself without the protection of God.

The Protection of the Lord’s Churches

I want to end today with a bit of good and some bad. Right now, you and I, people in the Lord’s churches who are saved and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, are a saving force on the earth. In us, the world has great protections that they do not even know that they have. Because we are still here, the Lord tempers His wrath on sin as we, the redeemed, live on earth.

Just this week, I was reading about Lot in Genesis 19:15-23. The angels that were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah could not do so until Lot was gone, and they did not destroy Zoar because Lot sought shelter there. God’s people are a protection to this world that they are not even aware of. They hate us and despise us, but we are the only reason that chaos does not reign supreme on the earth. However, that will change one day.

This morning I was listening to a preacher who was talking about a burden he had for the Lord’s churches – a fear really more than a burden – and that fear was that many of the Lord’s churches were filled with unsaved persons who were faithful church attendees. People who, as we are reminded in Matthew 7:21-23, think they are saved will come to Jesus and be astonished that they are refused entrance into Heaven. This is a sobering scripture. It is a scary scripture.

I have to go back often to the stadium in Barbados where one night 38 years ago I asked Jesus to be my Savior. Even now, I remember to greet Him and praise Him each day for his goodness and mercy. Jesus says that only those that do the will of His father are His. We are called to be FOLLOWERS of Jesus; the word is “imitators” of Jesus. We should have an honest desire to be like Jesus, to follow Him. We should love His Holy Word.

I strive to read through the Bible cover to cover as often as I can. We should be open and willing to share the Gospel with all who will listen, hand out a tract or do something to point others to Jesus. We should need prayer and desire to speak to the Lord often. We should seek to be obedient to the Lord. I learned this week that, when the word honour is used in the New Testament, that most often it is the root word for OBEY. You and I as saved people should have a desire to obey Jesus and His word. Obedience is the highest form of worship.

Look, we will not be sinless. Abraham; Isaac; Jacob; Job and, into the New Testament, all the apostles were not sinless men. Peter denied Jesus face to face; later in his ministry, he and Paul disputed over favoritism with the Jews versus the Gentiles. David and Samson were sinful men, and yet God calls them His servants in Hebrews 11:32. We should hate the sin in us, and we should be in constant confession to the Lord (1 John 1:8-9).

Jesus is our perfection; He is our sinless substitute; He took our place on the cross. But a lot of people have prayed the sinner’s prayer, yet have never been truly regenerated in and by Jesus. They appear to be alive, but they are dead. Church has become a habit with no more power than brushing their teeth.

Peter warns us to “make our calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10). Be sure that you are saved. Too late is coming very soon.

“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca