THE BOOK OF REVELATION // Session 17: The Looming World Famine and the Final World War

[Music] hey friends welcome back to the maranatha global bible study on the book of revelation my name is dalton thomas here in the golan heights the title of this session is the looming world famine and the final world war not a very rosy title but a very important session today we're going to be looking at the third and the fourth seal judgments in revelation chapter 6. if you haven't been if you're just joining us now either on the fai app or on youtube or some other platform where you may have found this and this is your first session we've been going through the book of revelation after the release of our film ballads of the revelation which is available only on the fai app so make sure to go watch that before i get into it if you're new to fai there's tens of thousands of you who are watching these videos each week and there's lots of new people getting connected to the maranatha message which is incredibly encouraging before we jump into revelation chapter 6 just wanted to make a quick note of clarification fai is not a bible teaching ministry per se though we teach the bible we are a discipleship ministry among unreached and unengaged specifically in the middle east specifically with a focus on the muslim world most of what we do day to day 24 7 365 is focused on advancing the gospel in the midst of empty harvest fields where there are no laborers we're actively and aggressively attempting to follow the pattern of the apostle paul in romans 15 to lay foundations where there are none if this is something that you care about there's a really cool way that you can get involved that's actually sounds stupid but it's actually very very powerful we thought well what if 10 of everyone that uses the fai app gave five dollars a month that would cover our operating budget and would allow us to advance aggressively in what we're doing in the middle east laying foundations where there are none if you'd like to see what that looks like i encourage you to go watch our film the frontier or sheep among wolves one and two or better friends than mountains our documentaries show how the resources are used and what we do on the ground you can give easily on the app five dollars sounds stupid but it's very powerful because the cool thing is with it uh enough people doing it the impact of it is massive so you don't need to be a multi-millionaire to have an impact in the middle east five dollars a month actually does that i know it sounds like a gimmick but it's actually not and i'm i'm so encouraged to say that as of yesterday i think our team let me know that we hit the one percent mark one percent of all of our app users are now five dollar monthly supporters which is just staggering to me i'm so encouraged by that so if you are among the one percent thank you thank you thank you on behalf of the fbi family laboring in the middle east thank you and if you're not one of the one percent consider jumping in and bumping it up to two percent so enough on that uh thank you guys again thank you so much for investing into great commission initiatives in the middle east it's just mind-blowing to us with that said we're going to jump into a very weighty weighty passage today in revelation chapter 6 we're going to go through verse 5 6 7 8. only four verses but there's a lot in there and that we're going to talk about some of some passages that are connected to these but we're attempting as much as possible to just go line upon line word by word phrase by phrase which is our style of teaching that we love and we hope that it it is a blessing and an edification to you now before we do let's let's consider the title here for a moment the looming world famine and the final world war i'm taking these phrases looming world famine because the third seal judgment event in revelation chapter 6 is revolves around economic collapse but this economic collapse causes starvation food shortage and a massive massive catastrophe globally that results in famine the next event that we see is very very heavy it will be the largest death toll of any event in human history up to that point this one single event it will be the most catastrophic singular event and i say even it's not going to happen at 2pm on a tuesday it's going to be a drawn-out event like world war ii was but it's going to the impact of this thing will be the most human life destroying event in world history it will eclipse the flood it will eclipse world war one it will eclipse world war ii it's going to make all of those crises look very very small you may say dalton that's that's that's crazy if if we take the bible seriously if we take the bible at its word and we don't try to twist it or manipulate it or play with it just let it mean what it says then we are forced to conclude that the fourth judgment event in the book of revelation will be the greatest catastrophe the earth has ever known up to that point now there will be another series of judgment events that are going to eclipse this one but this sets in motion the greatest hour of human suffering the earth has ever known or will ever know it will be unequaled and it will be age ending now at this point you may say dalton why don't you guys do bible teachings on say the love of god or the book of philippians what's the deal why are you focusing on revelation in things like famines and world wars that's kind of kooky isn't it there's let's before we get into this i just want to address four reasons why i think it's imperative and i'll go through these quickly because i know you're watching this and you're wanting to get to many of you are just like dalton get past the intro just get to the text i feel like it's important to put this out there for people who are maybe looking at this going what's the deal i mean fai come on guys just focus on the great commission focus on the love of god focus on the goodness of the father or you know an epistle maybe or a gospel why an emphasis on eschatology or the end of the age and particularly the heavier darker stuff in the eschatological prophecies what's the deal four reasons why i think you should care about it one is because it's in the bible we don't we don't get the right we don't have the right to just pick and choose what we want out of the bible we need to eat the whole thing we need to eat the whole lamb so to speak we need to look at the entire bible or we're being number one we're being intellectually dishonest because we're we're saying that we honor the word of god yet we refuse to consider parts of the word of god that's not only intellectually dishonest it means that you're actually an immature believer because you're refusing to submit to the authority of god in your life by taking in and ingesting his whole word now revelation is not any more important than say the gospel of matthew the whole bible is relevant and important but there is something about these eschatological passages that are all over the bible by the way that we need to take seriously and i think the fact that we don't take it seriously and haven't taken it seriously and marginalized it in the body of christ has created very negative fruit very bad bitter fruit in the body of christ because it's assumed that if you focus on this stuff you're gonna get weird and it's gonna produce negative fruit it's actually the opposite if you focus on eschatology you're actually going to be forced into deeper areas of discipleship and love and trust and worship and obedience than if you avoid it i can guarantee you that the second reason why we're looking at this is because jesus commanded us not only to watch and to study these things but he also commanded us to know the generation that these things would happen in which is counter intuitive to what most people have been taught by their pastors we've heard it said from the pulpit over and over again no one knows the day or the hour therefore you can't know and as we've hammered in series and sessions in the past i won't go into it now but in matthew 24 when jesus said no one knows the day or the hour he wasn't saying that to dismiss us from knowing he was saying it to command us to know the next verse interprets that verse jesus says as it was in the days of noah so shall be when the son of man comes they were eating drinking giving in marriage and they did not know until the flood came and took them away meaning not knowing is a negative thing jesus commanded us to watch and to know the season when it comes now yes you're not going to know what day on the calendar to mark the return of the lord but you're commanded to know the generation in which it happens because the signs are clear so we're studying this because we're commanded by jesus to study the signs of the times it's essential we have to the third reason why i think it's important to study eschatology is because of historical patterns the end of the age scenario is not going to be an anomaly it's gonna be it's gonna fit within the long course of history with patterns of history that have unfolded that look a lot like series of judgments in the past what do i mean by that well the days of noah jesus said as it was in the days of noah so shall it be when the son of man comes when we look at numbered judgment events and plagues we're looking at the exodus we're looking at the exodus story in the plagues of egypt we're looking at jeremiah's generation we're looking at babylonian military invasion economic collapse a battle over jerusalem famine crisis war bloodshed and i could go on and on where you could go to isaiah's generation which is 100 years before that it's the same thing you could go to malachi's generation the same thing you could go to the apostle paul's generation you could say the same thing there has been a recapitulating cycle of historical seasons of visitations of god in judgment to accomplish specific purposes the end of the age scenario is not like this weird fringe kooky thing that's disconnected from redemptive history it's a part of the pattern of history itself and the fourth reason why i think it matters there's a hundred reasons but i'm just picking four just to emphasize this the fourth reason why we want to look at revelation chapter six and take it seriously is because obedience matters obedience matters what do i mean by that it's not enough to just know that judgments are coming okay the essential imperative on our lives is to obey the commands of jesus in light of them i'll give you an example a lot of people say this to me see dalton i just want to love god i don't need to focus on this end time judgment stuff i just want to i just want to love god now if you said now take that phrase and insert it into all the historical moments of history before leading up to this you know noah i don't know about this whole flood thing it's a little bit too extreme i'm just going to love god guys you can love god but not obey the commands to get on the ark you die you know moses i i i get the whole plague thing but you know what i don't putting blood on my doorpost or my firstborn child is going to die look i'm just going to love god it's kind of weird what you're commanding us to do i'm not going to obey i'm just going to love god your child dies in the final plague you could go to jeremiah's generation jeremiah look this whole thing with a babylonian invasion i'm just going to love god you die in exile and deportation if you don't obey jeremiah's preaching so the point is this guys it's not enough to just know the events are coming we need to know the specific commands of jesus associated with the judgment events this is a massive part of eschatology is the commands of jesus in that hour when these events are unfolding okay enough of intro we're gonna jump right into it again i apologize for those of you who are like dalton stop the preliminaries just get to it but i think this is very important because a lot of people i want to help arm you with responses when people come to you and say hey it's just it's unnecessary it's too much we don't need to focus on this we just want to love god guys it's not loving god that's actually loving yourself and putting yourself in a position of lordship over the lord himself by choosing to ignore a massive part of the bible okay so let's look at this starting in verse five we're going to look at the third and the fourth seal judgment events seal number one is breaking forth the rise of the antichrist in this false peace that emerges on the earth the second seal is the war that breaks out after he emerges it says that peace is taken from the earth we see a massive season of violence and warfare the third seal is what we're looking at now and they relate we looked a little bit at the third seal in the last session but now we're going to look at not so much the economic impact but on the food impact it says this when he opened the third seal i heard the third living creature say come and see meaning he's commanding us to come and behold to approach and draw near to behold the meaning of this so i looked and behold i saw a black horse now the first four seal judgments are horses and they're different colors so we have a white horse then we have a red horse is the second one then the third one is going to be a black horse hugh sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand okay scales you have the thing you have thing here you have a thing here and it weighs and you that's this is economics okay this is first century economic symbolism when you see scales you may think you know now we see scales and we think oh that's the symbol for you know just the justice system or uh the supreme court kind of thing this image communicates economics because this is how you would pay you'd put things on and the weight this is how you would you would determine with gold or silver or what the thing is that you're buying you had a pair of scales in his hand i heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say this a quart of wheat for a dinaris so they're weighing wheat food for a dinaris and three quarts of barley for a denarius and do not harm the oil and the wine interestingly do not hold harm the oil and the wine so we could say this the the this third judgment event so the rise of the antichrist takes place in the first seal the second seal is the war that breaks out now in every world war or significant military crisis in the world in human history the rise of a aggressive military leader that results in war and military advance and military aggression always always always has an economic impact which always has an impact on food it always does food security will always become the logical progression in a military conflict and we could see this in the rise of isis for example we were living in iraq and watching a big deal was what do you do with food the supply roads are cut off both in mosul for example and outside mosul the roads are cut inside the cat to go into the caliphate now there's ways of smuggling but people inside the caliphate are trying to figure out how to feed their families because you no longer have open trade with with the outside and people outside the area occupied by this demonic army are also struggling with food shortages because the airport has to shut down because now there's a military occupation happening there's people in flight the stores are closed because the business owner of the grocery store had to flee and run for his life and his family's in another part of the country now where do you get your food from and now the people who are shipping food in from around the world can't come then they don't want to come they don't want to do business there because of the mounting military conflict so business pulls out for example in erbil erbil is the capital of northern iraq the kurdish area of iraq and erbil was booming it was on course to becoming like a dubai before isis hit and it was just booming you could see all these skyscrapers beginning to be built and then isis comes on the scene and international investment dries up overnight everyone withdraws and no one knows where to go buy fuel for their cars and the grocery stores start getting pillaged where do you get food here's a very important dynamic that we need to understand that when the end of the age scenario happens there is going to be a massive massive food shortage and it's going to be a massive famine that's going to grip the whole world now at this point you should you know many of you are like oh i'm going to close my laptop and close my phone i'm going to go buy some non-perishable food and start storing up i'm not going to get into prep stuff here right now because i think most of it is kind of a kooky because let's be honest guys you know to survive 42 months uh amidst this massive military conflict we need to be doing a whole lot more uh critical thinking than just going and buying a bunch of cans of beans okay now i think it's good no matter where you are in the world to have some food on hand so that you could if something if something did happen you had the ability to provide for your family for a period of time but i'll say at the outset of this the the imperative meaning the thing that we're we must do in light of these judgment events i'll say this at the beginning is not store up food i'm not saying you shouldn't store up food but what i am saying is this is that the the points of obedience are going to be much more uh they're going to require more of you than just being selfish and hoarding food meaning jesus is not setting this in motion so that you can store up food and that you can survive this thing he's trying to do things through this judgment event so again i'm not saying store food or don't store food what i'm saying is don't get distracted by practical preparation that you actually did get disconnected from the demands of jesus in discipleship and following him and i think that's one of the reasons why people just don't take seriously a lot of end times preaching is because it's so practical and selfish it's not anchored in discipleship it's not anchored in worship it's not anchored in obedience it's actually anchored in selfishness how you how i can survive the coming crisis not how i can be a faithful witness how i can be conformed into the image of jesus how i can serve the people around me and how i can be a tool in his hand to exalt him in the days of his judgments on the earth there's two totally different paradigms again i'm not saying you shouldn't store up food what i'm saying is this when this hits the burden on my life and on your life is to be faithful witnesses and is to overcome by the blood of the lamb the word of our testimony and not loving our lives unto death revelation 12 11 doesn't say they overcame because they stored up enough food and they had enough fuel tanks and ammunition to survive the time of jacob's trouble that's not what the bible says we need to define overcoming in terms of other than just surviving and having food to eat now i want to have food tea in the tribulation but i don't want to survive the tribulation thinking that i'm obeying jesus because i have a stockpile of food and i get to the end of the tribulation i meet the lord and he says i never knew you depart from me and that's really the burden on us in all of these things is are we just understanding the events to practically prepare for the events or are we viewing the events in light of the commands of jesus the demands of jesus over our lives in this hour we'll talk more about the mysteology of the book of revelation in our next session which is going to be a very important one so let's talk about what this means for a moment here a denarius was with the commentaries you pick up any commentary and all the commentaries will agree on this that a denarius at that time was equivalent to the wages for one day of work like kind of like minimum wage like the normal this is kind of what people make a denarius is like one day's worth of of work now a quart of wheat if you know wheat you know your measurement system a quart of wheat my wife is just making waffles for our kids this morning and i was looking at the measuring cups and i was knowing that i was about to be teaching on this and just thinking through the measurement uh of the of you know my wife is um she's got flour and she's making stuff and she's measuring it and i was going wow that's crazy a quart okay a quart of wheat is the amount that one man could eat for one day on a minimum a minimal diet like a super minimal diet so what the text is saying here is this a day's worth of wages will be enough for you to basically just survive on just wheat a quart of wheat like that's just like scraping survival level like you know it's just enough to keep your belly from uh eating itself really and then you dying so economic impact is that your money is not going to go as far your work your labor and a lot of work is going to be canceled out in these days because of the military conflict taking place so because of the military context globally there in the economic collapse is going to happen it's going to have a massive like the great depression in the united states at the in the 1930s we have this dynamic where there's money is not going as far or you could see this in communist countries after world war ii we see the impact of money used to buy this much and now you have a wheel barrel full of money and you're going to get one loaf of bread that's what this this imagery is communicating of this black horse the economic crisis will to sum it up will cause one one person's earning power to be reduced to working all day to afford food for one person for one day which means you could break this down the math of this is is fluctuates depending on what country you're from if you're in brazil or you're in uh canada or you're in new zealand this is gonna be different but this basically means that you know the commentaries will be different on this of what it what it represents in specific figures because the economic it's hard to you know compare the economics because you have to take it and contextualize it for your location but let's just generally ballpark it and say this it represents 10 to 20 times less buying power than the world today meaning today you work somewhere you can buy food but you can also put money in your gas tank you can also maybe save some of it you can maybe go to a coffee shop you can go to the movies you can there's things you can do with your way your daily waste it's not just surviving now some of you may be in tight financial positions you're saying man i'm just struggling to put food on the table for my family that's real but guys that's this is not that's not this this is a world war that causes economic collapse that causes money to be devalued and work to be devalued to where your work doesn't mean you have enough as much money as you used to have which means you can't eat as much as you used to be able to eat the whole dynamic of food shortage is something that i think i want to say this carefully here so that it's not doesn't sound uh insensitive to the dynamic of famine and starvation but i think it's important to put it in this context is that this is a judgment event the same jesus that fed the 5 000 in the book of john is going to cause a global famine before the return of his son the good father sitting on the throne is going to administrate and oversee and execute this the son who's tearing the scroll tearing the seals from the scroll is going to be executing these judgment events on the earth this is not the devil doing this this is not sinful men ultimately doing this is the devil involved yes is the sin of man going to be a key component in this whole drama yes absolutely however ultimately jesus tears the seal from the scroll and loses this judgment and initiates the going forth of the black horse what we're looking at in the third seal judgment is the collapse of the world banking system the collapse of the global economies and a starvation gripping not just the global south but gripping the west in gripping the most uh prosperous and developed countries in the world today it's going to be something that is just going to be staggering to watch as this unfolds because we have images of starvation laying hold of parts of the world in the wake of world war ii and the rubble of the fighting you know both in the pacific theater of war and the european theater of war we we've seen the impact of the rise of these tyrants that results in a world war that results in an economic collapse that results in famine i think world war ii is probably our greatest example of what this is going to look like you have a demonic dictator leader who hates the jews rises up and goes forth and creates a false peace through military aggression and as the third reich begins to exercise its power in europe what took place after that is you had economic collapse and you had food shortage as you had a massive refugee crisis breaking out across the most sophisticated and developed part of the world at that time who'd have thunk that that would have happened in in germany of all places the most sophisticated cultured country in the world arguably at that time and that is where this whole thing broke out i think that's a very good example of how just how real these events are because i think a lot of times people look get lost in the imagery and they think it's not very it's not real this is real it's really going to happen and it's really going to look like the events in world war ii it's really going to have similar dynamics okay let's move on to the the next judgment event in verse 7. when he opened the fourth seal i heard the voice of a 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 or hell followed with him and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth to kill with the sword with hunger with death and by the beasts of the earth crazy we need to break this down word by work because there's so much in here so we see the fourth horse is a pale horse the actual literal translation of the words used here is pale green or like ash so it's basically the color of a dead body if you've seen a dead body this is the description looks like a rotting decaying corpse this horse the color of this horse and it's rider now what's interesting about this one is it says the rider went horse went forth the name of him who sat on it was death and hell followed with him so death is riding the horse it says and hell is following him it's a very interesting imagery john says i saw a pale green like dead body color horse with a rider on the horse and the name of the writer's name was death and hell was with him following him which is a very important um uh just the grammar and structure of it's important it actually points to something very specific here it's not just a useless phrase it means something death is what happens to our physical bodies right our body gets to the end of its lifespan and it dies okay so death is on the horse so it means physical bodies stopping to live and they go to the grave right they're buried in the ground or they rot in the open air depending on the context of the death it says this that hades or hell follows behind or is with him now hades or hell is a temporary location reality place before it's thrown into the lake of fire at the end of the thousand-year reign okay the bible speaks very clearly about the distinction between hell and the lake of fire hell is not an eternal reality hell is a temporary reality it's a prison essentially that is prepared to be thrown into the lake of fire this is very crass language but think about it as a cage that's going to be dumped into the ocean that's what hell is we say you know go to hell or someone says i don't want to go to hell what you're talking about is i don't want to go to the temporary location that will one day be thrown into the lake of fire of god's wrath now there's a lot of debate about this right now and is super not cool and not vogue and not hip to talk about hell it's kind of widely accepted now to just reject the idea of eternal punishment in one way or the other but the bible is very clear about this and if you take the bible seriously just take the whole thing seriously don't try to play games with it eternal punishment it's not something that i'm i love the idea of it it's if you love the idea of eternal punishment i think there's something wrong with you that said it's in the bible and it's an integral part of the gospel the day of the wrath of god is a real reality and when it says that the fourth judgment event is death being released on the earth and hell is falling behind it means this the destination of those who are dying in this judgment event is not in the presence of the lord it's in a temporary holding pattern before that holding pattern is immersed into the lake of fire at the end of the age very very heavy sobering reality especially when we move further into this passage itself this i mean this is just staggering look at this power was given to them power was given to death and hell from who who has power like that who's the one who's granting power and authority god is god is this raises some massive theological questions but it's very essential to just take it as it reads power you could say well maybe that's the devil in the antichrist because it says in revelation 13 17 and other passages that the devil is giving his power and authority the antichrist and that's what's happening here yes the antichrist is involved in this yes the devil's involved in this but again god is the one doing this jesus is the one releasing these judgments power was given to them over a fourth of the earth death and hell are given a fourth of the earth or to say in another way a fourth of the earth's population 25 of the earth's population is given to death and to hell in the fourth judgment event in the book of revelation look at the description of how death is going to play out in the fourth seal to kill with the sword military conflict with hunger which is starvation it means people a quarter of the earth's population are going to be killed in military conflict and in the starvation that grips the earth because of the military conflict it says with death and you go wait a minute hold on that's kind of weird why would you say that death according to earth's population is given over to death by death what's that mean it means that death for all kinds of different reasons pandemics plagues and i'm not talking like pandemics like covet 19 which is will literally be a bygone forgotten thing that no one's even going to think was we're going to look back at it and go i can't believe that that thought that was severe we thought that was heavy we thought that that was like a big event world event it's going to look like nothing and when this grips the earth think about this guys do the math 25 of the earth's population is going to die in military conflict and starvation and the impact of just crazy different kinds of deaths that are going to break out at that time meaning radiation terminal illnesses pandemics you know it's like uh you know these new there's there's multiple places in the world where there's been nuclear incidents and the population was riddled with all kinds of diseases from it look the world has nuclear capabilities today those nuclear capabilities doesn't necessarily mean that you know let's say iran is going to nuke israel but what it could mean is that's a that's a possibility but the point is these places where we have nuclear capabilities are going to be jeopardized like think about the one in japan the nuclear reactor in japan an earthquake breaks it and now this whole area is at risk because the nuclear capabilities of this place are now being literally shaken by the earth now that's a whole other dynamic the earth is going to be quaking in these days and earthquakes are going to affect the nuclear capabilities of the world so when it says it that death is swallowing up people by death it means that there's going to be all kinds of crazy forms of people dying during this time that are going to be just absolutely shocking to even consider what it's speaking of is pandemics it's speaking of plagues that break out and again i'm not talking about we've we now associate that word with covid19 but an actual pandemic like back in the day when you'd you know uh husband and wife they have eight kids and the pandemic would hit and the mother and four of the kids are wiped out in a week half the family's wiped out you know the stories of the plagues the different plagues that have hit europe or south america north america over the last few centuries that wipe out massive percentages of the population actual pandemics here's a weird one it says this and by the beasts of the earth what the beasts of the earth a couple things the beasts of the earth killing people in the fourth seal sounds kind of funny and goofy and you're like does that mean like the zoo is gonna get overrun and lions are gonna be out it means a couple things i i i think as best as i understand the involvement in this here's my understanding of this but let me read a passage to you real quick from ezekiel chapter 14. ezekiel 14 21 how much more shall it be when i send my four severe judgments on jerusalem the sword the famine the wild beasts and the pestilence to cut off man and beast from jerusalem so these four plagues in ezekiel 14 are the same things or sorry four judgments these four my he calls them my four severe judgments god god says these four things sword and famine and beasts these things are my severe judgments this isn't like my top four in my like the four main things in seasons of judgment that i release on the earth this is specific to jerusalem and the generation of ezekiel but the same dynamics are going to be taking place on a global level when the fourth seal is torn so the wild beast thing you go what what's the deal with the wild beasts couple things one if people are hungry animals are hungry too the animals globally are going to be out and about scrounging looking for food which is going to be very very dangerous and because of the because of the danger globally people are not going to be thinking about wildlife the way that they do right now in developed nations they're going to be thinking of think much more primitive things like how do i survive and how do i make it through the winter or make it through the summer how do we find clean water you're not necessarily thinking about what to do with dangerous animals what to do with forestation lots of dynamics today that are just normal for maintaining a relationship between humans and animals these dynamics are going to be disturbed in this generation significantly so part of it is hungry animals the other part of it is pandemics and plagues meaning animals are going to carry diseases and spread them i'll give you an example when isis took control of certain parts of iraq there was massive forces mobilized of shia fighters shia muslim fighters that were fighting the sunni isis fighters and the way that these militias hashtabi they go by lots of different names but the way that these shia militias were able to take back territory in particularly in the desert areas of iraq was by basically just sending so many people in to fight and to get mowed down that they just overwhelmed isis with just sheer manpower it was just kind of viking style like just send them in and you would just watch kids go in and just get mowed down i mean the iraqi administrative defense didn't won't even release the full numbers of how many people were killed in the liberation campaign to take places back take places like ramadi and fallujah and mosul tikrit these were tons of people were killed taking these cities back from isis like it's staggering the death toll of isis on uh iraqi men who were had to fight to take their areas back well and one of not one of in many places like ramadi for example where there were these catastrophic battles that took place there were so many dead bodies what happened is you had flies and insects and birds and animals and all kinds of different beasts of the field eating the bodies that are out rotting in the sun okay next thing you know those flies are flying around they fly over to baghdad they fly over to erbil and kirkuk and people are now getting boils and sores on their bodies because of the rotting flesh that was eaten by a fly that's now spreading it among the flies and flying through the air now when we're looking at a death toll of 25 percent of the earth's population okay it says a quarter of the earth if you have four apples and you take one apple away you're left with three apples right here's a staggering thing i'll just insert this here now it says in revelation chapter nine in one of the trumpet judgment events which we'll get to it says that a third of the earth's population is killed which means this if in the seal judgments a quarter of the earth's population is killed and in the trumpet judgments a third of the earth's population is killed what that means then guys is that in a 42-month period 50 of the earth's population will be wiped off the face of the earth and swallowed up in death and hell 50 of the earth let's crunch the numbers here 10 billion billion people live on the earth is 2.5 billion people eliminated it's just staggering to think about i i just want to pause there and let this sing think about this imagine it you know this will be 50 to 100 times the death toll of world war ii it says this in zechariah 13 that two-thirds of the population of israel will be eliminated will perish during this final world conflict two-thirds of israel fifty percent of the world's population absolutely staggering now we're running out of time here um i was going to go to revelation chapter 17. i'll encourage you to just read over it we're going to get there obviously it's going to take some time when we work our way through the book verse by verse but there's a very important dynamic here that i just want you to be aware of revelation chapter 17 verse 15. the angel said to me the waters that you saw we're not going to get into all the imagery right now but i just want to get to one point the waters that you saw were the prostitute of the great the great harlot the harlot babylon is seated are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages the ten horns that you saw they and the beast the antichrist will hate the prostitute or the harlot they will make her desolate and naked and devour her flesh and burn her with fire for god has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast until the words of god are fulfilled and the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth what what does this mean what does this have to do with revelation chapter 6 revelation 17 is painting for us in very vivid detail the dynamics that are taking place behind the scene that result in these judgment events or these dynamics on the earth what we see here is that the beast the antichrist and the the nations that are aligned with him allied with him 10 nations in particular will hate the harlot babylon now the harlot babylon is a it's a massive subject and we're not going to get into the details of it right now but we'll say this at the harlot babylon one of the hallmark features of what the this end time harlow babylon is is a global economic system it's not just that but it has economic dimensions associated with it like if you read through revelation 17 18 which is the longest prophecy in the bible by the way one of the main things that you're going to see over and over again is the incredible wealth of the harlot babylon that's one dynamic the other dynamics the antichrist will hate the harlot babylon so the false peace is going to be shattered when the antichrist attacks not only jerusalem but he's also going to attack the harlot babylon and burn her with fire it's an interesting dynamic at the end of the age that hasn't doesn't get much attention because we kind of think about you know the antichrist is the only bad guy going on well you also have the harlot babylon dynamic going on and they're at odds which means there's world war there's economic collapse there's famine and there's death because there's an aggression on the part of the antichrist and his conglomeration of nations that are dealing decimating blows to the heart of babylon it's a very very uh significant part of understanding the lay of the land the landscape of this generation of history i'm going to close with this i just want to read a passage because all of this is so heavy i want to leave this on kind of a devotional note isaiah 26 isaiah was much like us living in a generation that was preceding the judgment heavy judgment events and in isaiah chapter 26 is a very very beautiful passage here but a very relevant one it says this the path of the righteous is level verse 7 and you make level the way of the righteous in the path of your judgments oh lord we wait for you from the path of your judgments lord we wait for you your name and remembrance the memory of you the name your name and the memory of you are the desire of our souls this is the posture of the human heart as god intends it on the eve of his judgments being released that we wait for him that we long for him and that we cherish and adore his name and the memory of him verse 9 is so beautiful my soul yearns for you in the night my spirit within me earnestly seeks you for when your judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness i end on this why are these judgment events so severe why is it so intense because god is going to once and for all in an unequaled way establish righteousness in the earth he's going into open war and open conflict with all rebellion all sin all wickedness all evil he's openly going to confront human depravity he's openly going to confront the rage of satan and put his influence and his authority to an end he's actually going to throw satan and powers and principalities and rulers of their out of positions of influence and authority that they currently have in unseen realms and force them into a humiliating destruction at the end of the age when they will be thrown into hades and hell and they will be thrown into the lake of fire hell was prepared for the devil and his angels and it will be thrown into the lake of fire along with all who follow him this whole scenario at the end of the age is about drawing a line in the sand about who do you serve who do you worship and where do you want to spend endless ages do you want to be washed in the blood of the lamb and therefore when he passes through you in judgment through us and judge me he'll pass over us in his mercy or do you want to drink the fullness of the fury of the justice and the wrath of god against human depravity and sin at the end of the day the book of revelation is ultimately about thundering the simple message of the gospel of the kingdom through the blood of jesus there is a way of escape there is a way of mercy through atonement where he will pay the penalty for your sins so that for endless ages instead of experiencing the conscious consciously and in your body experiencing the lake of fire you'll actually experience the greatest joys and ecstasy and glory imaginable because you'll be in the presence of the fountain and the author of pleasure and life himself i close with this maybe you're listening to this because you love jesus and you love his ways and you've followed him faithfully for years and this isn't something you necessarily need to hear right now maybe some of you are watching this because you don't know what's happening in the world and you just found this video on youtube and you don't necessarily know what you believe about jesus or eternity and maybe some of you are think you're believers but in the end the lord's gonna say i never knew you depart from me into the lake of fire because we've been so caught up with things in the bible but we never knew god himself and we never submitted to his leadership i don't care what you've done in your life i don't care what you're facing right now the most important thing in your life is this question have you been bought with the blood of the lamb have you been adopted into the covenant family have you been born of the spirit have you been saved from the wrath to come to answer that question yes is to know him saying yes to that is to have eternal life what is eternal life it's to know him it's to know the lord as your master your savior your lord your king your judge your redeemer your covenant making covenant keeping husband the list goes on and on of all that he is i thank you for watching this and next week we'll jump into a very very significant event the fifth seal looking at the issue of martyrdom the role of martyrdom in the book of revelation and the the dynamics that persecution will play in the generation of the lord's turn thank you for watching this bless you and maranatha

Channel: FAI STUDIOS

Views: 172,335

Rating: 4.7879148 out of 5

Keywords: Dalton Thomas, FAI, FAI Studios, end-times, end times, eschatology, Turkish antichrist, antichrist, Middle East beast, Joel Richardson, islamic antichrist, pretribulation rapture, rapture, Amir Tsarfati, Behold Israel ministries, frontier alliance international, sheep among wolves, return of Jesus, beast empire, revelation 13, harlot babylon, great tribulation, bible study, maranatha global bible study, Donald trump, make America great again, covid19, christian, mark of the beast

Id: Z0aOX2sY_64

Length: 53min 45sec (3225 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021