What we can learn
about the nature of God from Revelations 6 is that his means of judgment are
consistent throughout the scriptures. Ezekiel
14:21 let us know what the means of those judgments are "For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: How much
worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem my four dreadful
judgments--sword and famine and wild beasts and plague--to kill its men and
their animals!” While we are working to understand the nature of God and
his plan for mankind let us take time to consider these judgments as they
relate to our time. In today’s blog
I will only have time to consider the first judgment, war or the sword.
The sword means war. Proverbs 16:7 says, “When a man's ways are
pleasing to the LORD, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him.”
If it is true for the individual it is true for the nation. When nations are required to send their young
men, and now their young women, to war to war there is a judgment that is occurring.
This true even when the war is just! Never
was any war ever more justified than World War II. The war would have never been fought if
France and England had a forgiving attitude toward Germany after World War
I. The policies that rebuilt Germany in
1947 could have been implemented in 1920.
Winston Churchill warned that the absence of compassion toward Germany
would lead to their developing a military machine. Un-forgiveness gave rise to
Hitler. 120,000,000 million lost lives as
a result. War is the child of the devil not God. The
Lord is not absent from the process of War.
He sent his own people from the Exodus desert to the Promised Land with
instructions in warfare. This was done because of the Canaanites wickedness not
Israel’s righteousness. Revelations 6: 1-2 reads,
“I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living
creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there
before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on
conquest.”
This verse can be confusing because the
changes in personality are quick. The
Lamb opening the seal is Jesus the rider on the white horse however is the
devil. He is an antichrist wearing the
garments of a savior. David Guzik from the Blueletterbible.com is my go to guy
on difficult passages, quoting from his commentary. “Some - perhaps they take their interpretive
clues more from cowboy movies than from the Bible - believe the rider on the white
horse is Jesus. Jesus does return on a white horse in Revelation 19:11-16. But
this is a satanic dictator who imitates Jesus.”
What follows this satanic dictator is the judgment of war.
“When the Lamb
opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse
came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him
was given a large sword.” Revelations 6:3-4
War effects
or pervades everything. The loss of life
is clear. War destroys what takes years,
sometimes centuries, to build. War takes
resources used for producing things and shifts them to things that
destroy. War often destroys the mortality
of those in the field of battle.
America is at war now.
We are at war in part because we supported an evil man, Saddam Hussien,
to gain and maintain power over his own people in diabolical means. We are at war in part because as a nation we
are addicted to illicit substances.
Therefore poppy seeds are grown to produce heroin in Afghanistan instead
of food. We are at war in part because
we consume so much energy as a nation that we cannot support that consumption. There
are certainly other reasons as well.
The primary reason we are at war is because the Prince of
Peace is not governing the manner in which we conduct our affairs as a
nation. If peace were our agenda we
would not support diabolical dictators but we would find alliances with men and
women of wisdom and understanding. They
are there in the Middle East, even now.
If Jesus ruled the hearts of men and women in our country
they would not be drawn to heroin. It is a drug the kills productivity and
creativity, and makes its users slaves.
If the Prince of Peace governed our affairs we would take
dominion over the earth by using its own power to meet our energy needs and not
rape oil fields in the Middles East or the coal fields of the Appalachian Mountains. (The coal industry employers fewer and fewer
people while taking more and more coal at higher profits with more
environmental damage than ever) Its Mountains would produce more energy with
wind farms while employing more people.
Instead we go to war over oil.
We go to war because a rider on a white
horse posing as the prince of peace is increasingly governing the hearts and
the minds of the people of our nation. Satan rides out “bent on conquest.” We as believers need to be wiser than ever,
more involved than ever, and more prayerful than ever. Remember Jesus tarries or waits so that none
will be lost. As the day of his coming
grows ever near let us remember that he is slow to anger. Let us occupy until
he comes and “demolish
arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to
make it obedient to
Christ.” 2
Corinthians 10:5
No comments:
Post a Comment