January 15, 2016
Apocalypse NOT! – part 1: Bread and Slaughter
I never said I was politically correct…
In the last post I began presenting my Biblical proof points for why I believe that the gap of time between the 6th Dispensation and the 7th Dispensation will consist not only of the seven-year period of apocalyptic judgment from God known as the Tribulation*, but also a “mini-dispensation” in which Satan will have the opportunity to finally put his Kingdom in place wherein he will be worshipped as God.
I also gave the traditional view of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (that they are either the first judgments of the Tribulation, or a high-level overview of the entire period).
But I contrasted that view with the Olivet Discourse – which describes events congruent to those ushered in by the Four horsemen.
However in that passage Jesus CLEARLY says that not only are these events NOT the Tribulation, they are meant to deceive people!
Which would mean that the Horsemen are NOT agents of God’s judgment – rather they are agents of Satan (Demonic entities)!
I will begin to show in this post that the specific deception is a false Apocalypse from Satan that will deceive the secular world into believing that the he is “God”, and his Antichrist is the “Messiah”.
How? By convincing the world that the false apocalypse he’s engineered is from Jesus and that the Antichrist is the savior!
The False Apocalypse will work!
The astounding part is that the Bible says this grand deception will be successful!
Not only because Satan will be given unprecedented leeway to unleash his evil machinations, But because God will intentionally and actively ensure that the world buys into Satan’s lies!
Those are two incredibly provocative ideas that we will explore in the next two posts.
The key to understanding what it means is to examine what happens when the seals on the scroll in Revelation 6 are broken.
The Bible clearly states that the Church is sealed by God with the Holy Spirit. I believe that the seven seals on the scroll correlate with the sealing of the church, and with the Church (and the Holy Spirit) absent after the Rapture, the seals (restraining force) are broken, allowing Satan to go all in on his plan.
The seals break, and all hell breaks loose
Lets take another look at the Four Horsemen through the lens of the Olivet Discourse
As I wrote in the last post, the breaking of each of the first four seals is accompanied by an order from the Cherubim to “go forth”.
In other words, these satanic horsemen are finally being freed to play their role in Satan’s plan – a plan they’ve been chomping at the bit (pun slightly intended) to execute for ages.
In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus refers to these events as “beginning of birth pangs”. So in keeping with the allegory, we should expect these events to follow the same pattern as maternal labor – beginning as foreshadowing and building in intensity and severity, culminating in unprecedented suffering right before the end (at least that’s how my wife described child birth – and I tend to believe it since she nearly broke all the bones in my hand with her grip during the process).
We’ll see how this plays out with each of the seals.
Beware the man in white
After the Rapture, Satan’s first step will be to get the career of the Antichrist going. The world will be looking for leadership in the crisis that will follow the “great disappearance”, and the Antichrist will eventually step into this role.
Remember that the verse in Revelation 6 implies that he STARTS a campaign of conquest, so as I wrote in an earlier post, it could take months or years before he reaches his apex where he is fully embraced as a messianic figure. That’s part of Satan’s plan – it’s been his plan all along.
In Matthew 24, Jesus said MANY will come along claiming to be Christ. Satan has been trying to deceive people by imitating Jesus (as is his nature), since the early days of Christianity.
As with the birth pangs model, his attempts have increased in intensity and effectiveness over the centuries (for the better part of a millennium and even to this day millions of people give reverence to men dressed in white who call themselves “Popes” and claim to be “God on earth”)
But the Antichrist will be the culmination – the ULTIMATE false Christ.
Note that he is given a crown and authority, as opposed to Jesus who earned both with his victory on the Cross.
Also the crown the Antichrist is given is a “stephanos” (which is a wreath-like “victory” crown often given at Greek athletic events) as opposed to the Diadem (the crown of royalty), which Jesus wears at the Second coming.
As we know, Satan usurped the authority over Earth, which God gave Adam. Satan offered Jesus that authority as a shortcut to circumvent the Cross. Jesus won the legal claim to the Earth at His resurrection, but until He makes that claim (which He will do before the 7th Dispensation begins), Satan is still the “god of this world”.
As such, Satan will offer (and the Antichrist will accept) that with which he attempted to tempt Jesus. Satan will give the Antichrist his proxy authority over the whole world.
We will do a detailed examination of this fascinating character in an upcoming post, but for now, suffice it to say that when all is said and done, Satan’s man will be seen as the singular figure who saved the world from the “apocalypse”.
He will bring the world back from the edge of social, economic, martial, and supernatural disaster. He will claim to be greater than anyone who has claimed to be “God” before him (including Jesus!).
He will demand total obeisance and will brook no dissent. In seven years, he will go from beloved benefactor to the most ruthless dictator in all of history.
But before all that happens, Satan needs to give the world something to be “saved” from…
The blood bath
The rider on the Red Horse is the first agent of chaos. Although the rider is commonly seen as “war”, that’s not exactly what the scripture says. The rider’s power is to cause men to kill one another, and while there may be an aspect of war, the word “kill” is “sphazo” in the Greek, which means to slaughter or butcher – primarily for an animal sacrifice ritual.
This seems to indicate mass and indiscriminate violence in some type of religious context. There has been slaughter throughout history in the name of one religion or another (as well as religions posing as Christianity).
We’ve seen this sort of thing quite a bit in recently as religious adherents butcher other people in the name of the Middle Eastern territorial demon-god known as “Allah” (who is probably the Prince of Persia mentioned in Daniel). It’s even possible that the demonic red rider is Allah (its also possible that this was the most politically incorrect paragraph ever written in this blog).
But instead of being sporadic as it is now, the pseudo-religious violence will be constant and pervasive across the globe.
People will be afraid to leave their homes for work, play, or necessities, lest they become victims of mass shootings, bombings, bludgeoning, or other sadistic mayhem. News broadcasts will be filled with the horrific images of violence and bloodshed.
The subsequent fear and panic will be unimaginable. A police state will likely be instituted to maintain control, and the calls for a solution to the “problem of religion” will be strong. In fact, its highly likely that all religious sects will be considered detrimental, followed by calls for a new “united religion”.
As an (admittedly disturbing) aside, I have to mention how the ritualistic aspect of the “sphazo” correlates with the gruesome blood lust historically associated with demons and Satanism.
Historic renderings and police blotters are filled with the macabre accounts of the aftermath of satanic rituals, and there is always evidence found of cruelty, sexual perversion…and blood.
For reasons I’m still trying to fully understand, human blood, especially “innocent blood” is very important and powerful to BOTH sides of the spiritual war (remember, it was Jesus’ BLOOD, that paid the price for the sins of the world and gave believers access to life).
Something about the shedding of blood causes the release of some type of spiritual power. Again I’m not completely sure of the mechanics, but I think its safe to say that a part of the reason for the sphazo is to further empower the bad guys through a gigantic, worldwide defacto ritual human blood sacrifice. (And if you think what I just wrote is creepy, wait until we get to the Pale Rider in the next post).
Another reason that black is “slimming”
The Black Rider is next on the scene, and while I agree that he represents famine, it will NOT be due to scarcity.
The fact that the rider carries a balance in his hand (the then contemporary symbol of commercial weights and measures) clearly indicates that this will be an economic crisis.
The idea that one serving of decent bread will cost an entire days wage looks a lot like hyperinflation! We’ve seen this happen in some South American countries and most famously in the Weimar Republic where currency was exponentially devalued.
With current international debt levels ridiculously unsustainable, most world currencies no longer having any intrinsic value, and economic solvency based on little more than consumer confidence and the whims of international banking cartels, hyperinflation is only an event away (like, say the mass vanishing of a bunch of people).
Furthermore, with our entire world financial systems completely interdependent, controlled, and virtual (electronically based), currency manipulation would be stunningly easy to enact.
The other reason that I don’t believe this is a famine of scarcity is the fact that “oil and wine” are not affected. These are luxury items that no one would bother producing in lieu of essential food items. It would seem that the elites (Mystics) of the banking cartels who have control of the economies will engineer hyperinflation on the average person while still maintaining their lives of luxury (again, the seeds of this kind of thing can be seen today).
The horror of mass starvation and the massive destruction of personal prosperity will undoubtedly result in a call for a new global economy with centralized government control over all financial institutions.
The worst is yet to come
Its looks like the first three horsemen represent a massive consolidation of secular power. But as I’ve said before, Satan doesn’t just want to be a ruler – he wants to be God. That requires a much more blatant supernatural component to the fake apocalypse. And it starts with the Fourth Horseman. We’ll take a look at him as well as the 5th seal in the next post. If you think things have been strange to this point, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
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*[NOTE – Yes, I’m fully aware that there is technically no such thing as a “7 year Tribulation” in the Bible, and that the “Great Tribulation” Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24 is actually 3 ½ years. However when I use the term “Tribulation” in this blog, I am referring to the entire 7 year period known as the “70th Week of Daniel”, the last half of which is the aforementioned Great Tribulation. Why? Because I don’t feel like typing out “the 70th Week of Daniel” over and over.]
