Revelation 6: The rider on the blood-crimson horse usually takes absent peace

By Mark Creech, Op-ed Contributor | Saturday, December 24, 2022

In accordance to a modern Pew Analysis Study, in the U.S., 39% of folks believe that “we are living in the finish occasions.” Most men and women in America, on the other hand, 58%, say that they don’t feel these are the world’s previous days.

On the other hand, any individual with even a scant know-how of Bible prophecy can effortlessly see globe background is going us nearer just about every working day to the return of Jesus Christ. How can we be sure this party will take place?

John F. Walvoord, previous president of Dallas Theological Seminary, solutions the dilemma, stating:

“Because around 50 % of the prophecies of the Bible have presently been fulfilled in a literal way, it offers a proper mental basis for assuming that prophecy nonetheless to be fulfilled will similarly have a literal fulfillment. At the very same time, it justifies the conclusion that the Bible is encouraged of the Holy Spirit and that prophecy goes much past any scheme of gentleman but is instead a revelation by God of that which is to come to move.”

Take into account thoroughly. If each and every prophecy relating to Jesus’ initial coming was fulfilled, could not we logically hope each prophecy concerning his second coming also to be fulfilled? Not a person prophecy of Scripture has ever been completely wrong. A lot of have previously been remarkably fulfilled. Some await fulfillment, but none has ever been revealed to be erroneous.

The e-book of Revelation is prophecy. The reserve gives a figurative landscape demonstrating all of history to the very last tick of the world’s clock. All those who seriously review the e book find its insights expose Christ, “who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 1:4). Its contents demonstrate what God has finished in Christ, what God is performing in Christ, and what he designs to do in Christ.”

We would all be sensible to know and heed its information.

In Revelation chapter 6, the apostle John is in Heaven. He has witnessed Jesus getting offered the title deed to the earth, which he redeemed for humanity after Adam, man’s representative, forfeited his position as Vice Regent about it. This title deed is a scroll with 7 seals, and when each individual seal of the scroll is broken, a new chapter in God’s strategy for the fruits of the end is disclosed.

When the very first seal was damaged, John stated he observed a rider on a white horse, topped for conquest with a bow and no arrow, which suggests a effective and persuasive ruler who will gain the nations by diplomacy. This imposter fronts as a messiah who provides peace and prosperity but is in league with the devil himself, and his tranquil reign is shorter-lived.

When the 2nd seal is broken by the Lamb of God (Christ), John says:

“I heard the next living being say, ‘Come!’ Then yet another horse appeared, a crimson 1. Its rider was given a mighty sword and the authority to take peace from the earth. And there was war and slaughter everywhere” (Revelation 6:3).

The next rider is mounted on a blood-purple horse.  In his hand is a “mighty sword” and the electricity to just take away peace from the globe. This horseman is war, murder, and horrible bloodshed.

Why is there so significantly war through humankind’s small existence? In his traditional book, The Christian Frame of mind Toward War, the late Reformed minister, and author Lorraine Boettner describes:

“’Whence arrive wars and whence occur fightings amongst you? Occur they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in your customers? Ye lust and have not: ye get rid of, and covet, and simply cannot get hold of: ye battle and war ye have not, simply because ye check with not.’” In these terms, James (4:1,2) gives us the divine appraisal of human character and the real leads to of wars. Lust, covetousness, inordinate adore of enjoyment, and the friendship of the entire world, he states, are at enmity with God.

“In an best environment, there would be no sin, and hence no war. But we do not reside in an great earth. We are residing in a earth of deep unrest, a environment into which sin has entered with devastating effect. Whilst it is not a preferred doctrine today … the Scriptures educate evidently and regularly that we are members of a fallen race. They educate that as a result of Adam’s sin, every single human being born into this planet enters it not in a normal but in an abnormal non secular affliction and that the major cause of quarrels amongst people today and wars among nations is unregenerate, sinful human mother nature. So long as men’s hearts are loaded with sin, it is vain to count on them to stay with each other in peace and harmony. War is only the outward symptom of a sickness that is a great deal far more deep-seated. And even though we rightly do all in our electrical power to handle the symptom, it is vain to count on any authentic or permanent cure right until the sickness alone has been introduced beneath control. God does not prohibit war due to the fact he does not prohibit the consequences of sin. War is not an isolated and independent non secular or religious challenge, but basically a component of the a lot better and extra central challenge of sin.”

It’s been calculated that out of the past 4,000 several years, people have been at peace with one particular another for only 268 decades. It is believed among 150 million to a billion folks have been killed in war. As many as 108 million had been slain in the 20th century on your own.

According to Isaac Davis, in an report released in 2015 titled, “The 239-12 months Timeline of America’s Involvement in Army Conflict,” Davis argues 4 details about America’s navy conflicts ought to be regarded as. He states:

“1. Choose any year since 1776, and there is about a 91% opportunity that The usa was involved in some war throughout that calendar year.

“2. No U.S. president genuinely qualifies as a peacetime president. In its place, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered ‘war presidents.’

“3. The U.S. has never ever long gone a decade with out war.

“4. The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Fantastic Depression.”

David concludes: “As the globe moves closer and nearer to an formal commencing to Earth War III … it is vital to realize that the U.S. point out and the American folks are only not equipped or conditioned to go after and realize peace.”

It is exceedingly unfortunate, and we may possibly not want to acknowledge it, but it seems war is part of humanity’s DNA.

The late W.A. Criswell, the previous pastor of the To start with Baptist Church of Dallas, details out there are two Greek text for “sword.” Just one is romphaia, the type of sword a soldier takes advantage of in battle. But another Greek phrase is machaira, which is like a brief dagger or a knife. Machaira is the Greek term translated as “sword” in Revelation 6:3.

“A machaira was the type of knife with which to lower the throat of an animal or a man. [The significance of this is] the pink horseman represents not only nation climbing towards nation and kingdom versus kingdom, but, additional virtually, the horrible slaughter of course preventing and get together combating, as in civil war,” writes Criswell, “The fighters ambush in the evening they assassinate in the day they murder at twilight and at noontime, and all people life in panic of his life. There is murder and bloodshed in all places. The red horseman bathes the earth in blood.”

There have constantly been wars, both equally major and insignificant. God has under no circumstances had to inflame people to eliminate every single other. Even so, as David Chilton contends in Days of Vengence, God only requirements to get his angels to stand down and peace will be taken absent. He writes:

“In a sinful environment, why are there not much more wars than there are? Why is there not more bloodshed? It is because there are restraints on man’s wickedness, on man’s independence to function out the regular implications of his hatred and insurrection. But if God gets rid of the restraints, man’s moral degeneracy is discovered in all of its ugliness.”

By way of the centuries, quite a few “Christs,” routinely perceived saviors, have risen to energy and brought about peace, prosperity, and opulence. But finally, like all charlatan leaders, their lies are uncovered and regulate begins to falter. Civil war breaks out, or worse even now, nations are plunged into bloody conflict. These situations foreshadow, portent, or encapsulate in miniature that great day of God’s coming wrath when he will take away all restraints and the “man of sin,” also named “the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3), the Antichrist is revealed.

The Antichrist is the deceptive rider on the white horse who comes and negotiates around the globe peace below his administration. The masses will flock to him. And soon just after that, the rider on the blood-crimson horse will journey, getting peace from the complete entire world, and the blood of the human race will run as under no circumstances ahead of.

In his wrath, God will say to the earth you rejected my Son, the Prince of Peace, so now you will be deprived of peace. You scourged his body with the blood-letting whip, the cat o’ nine tails. Damaged and bleeding, you stripped him bare and, in his humiliation, nailed him to a tree, Calvary’s Cross. Every person who has hardly ever been washed in his atoning blood for the forgiveness of their sins has his blood on their palms, and, as a result, the blood of all the earth shall be required for this injustice.

Won’t you repent of your sins and surrender to Christ, and be saved from the wrath to arrive?