All of these things that are happening are happening at the command of God. It was God who allowed the false peace. It is God who starts the wars. I don't know how it happens, but just when everybody's sort of breathing in the air of euphoria, war is going to start to break out and it's going to escalate all over every place. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In a world of widespread tragedy and strife, it's hard to imagine that there ever could be a time of worldwide peace this side of heaven. And yet for a time, there will be a sort of worldwide harmony. And yet it's merely a brief stop on the path toward ultimate judgment. You could say it's simply the beginning of the end.
That happens to be the title of John MacArthur's current study here on Grace to You, The Beginning of the End. It's a compelling look at world history. That is, history that's yet to happen. But these events will happen, and learning what God's Word says about them does more than simply satisfy curiosity. It compels you to warn those in danger of the wrath to come.
So mark your place in Revelation 6 as John begins the lesson. Revelation chapter six is A very important scripture, and one which will speak to us profoundly and even shockingly as we. Go through it. Man's world faces an inevitable death. Sin is taking a fearsome toll that ultimately ends up in the judgment of God.
Every dimension of our culture, every dimension of our society is escalating on the downslide, being devastated by depravity, more and more given over to lust and pride, and self-indulgence, immorality, and rejection of God and Christ and the truth of Scripture. And thus, man is sentenced, his whole world is sentenced, to divine wrath. Man will drink the cup of wrath to the fullest. As one writer said some years ago, the dust of death is on us. We have had our little moment in the sun and we have botched it.
Doom may be very near. We may be very close to the final frantic antics of a dying man.
Okay. Jeremiah the prophet, you'll remember, looked at the coming period of God's judgment in reference to Israel. And what they would have to face when he wrote, Alas, for that day is great, there is none like it. And it is the time of Jacob's trouble, Jeremiah 30 and verse 7. The Jews are going to face the inevitability of God's wrath, those who have rejected their Messiah.
Isaiah, on the other hand, looked also at the final wrath and saw it not so much from the perspective of the Jews. But in chapter 34 of Isaiah, he looked at it with reference to the Gentiles. In verse 1, Draw near, O nations, to hear and listen, O peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, and the world and all that springs from it. He's engulfing all of humanity.
For the Lord's indignation is against all the nations, and his wrath against all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over to slaughter.
So their slain will be thrown out, their corpses will give off their stench, the mountains will be drenched with their blood, and all the hosts of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll. All their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine or as one withers from a fig tree. For my sword is satiated in heaven. Behold, it shall descend for judgment upon Edom and upon the people whom I have devoted to destruction. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood.
It is sated with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Moving from what will happen in Edom to the wider world of final judgment, the prophet Isaiah looks at the ultimate doom and destruction of humanity. And so we hear from the prophets of old, and not just in those passages, they're merely emblematic, that there will come a final day of judgment. For the Jews, it will be the time of Jacob's trouble, and for the Gentiles, it will be the slaughter of the world.
And so when we look at our world, we have to realize that it is headed to doomsday. In fact, we feel like we can hear sometimes the choking of a dying world, the final gasps, as it were. In this chapter, Revelation chapter 6. We are literally transported to the future. The experience of opening the seven sealed scroll Was not only visible to John in his vision, but is now made known to us because God wanted him to write it down.
Remember now, there's a little scroll in the scenario here. It is Mentioned back in chapter 5 as being in the hand of God. And then, of course, it is taken out of the hand of God by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And here in chapter 6, verse 1 says he begins to break the seals. It was rolled a little bit and sealed on the edges, rolled a little bit and sealed.
And all of those were to keep it from ever being known or read or revealed until the appropriate time, which Here is revealed to us and ultimately will be in actuality unrolled. As it unrolls, the events of God's wrath unfold.
Now, contrary to what some people have thought in looking at prophecy, the first of these horsemen brings a time period of peace and prosperity. We saw that last time. Yeah. But the following three are deadly forces. The first one, you remember, was peace.
All over the world, peace becomes the issue. And we told you that that is certainly the mood of the day, isn't it? World peace, global peace, and peace will be crowned king. And peace will be conquering and come to conquer even more. A series of triumphs leading to a golden age of prosperity with the promise that more prosperity and more peace is to come.
All of this, of course, is deceptive and it's a false security. As we saw even in Matthew 4, 24, 4, and 5, Jesus said, Don't let people deceive you with this. It is a deceptive peace that doesn't last long. Why? The prophets have always said there is no peace for the wicked.
False teachers say, peace, peace, but there is no peace.
Now that leads us then to the second seal. Following the piece, and we don't know the exact timetable, but it's not going to be very long. Because into the first half, you have to have these other three riders occur.
So if it's only three and a half years, you can know that the world peace isn't going to last very long. John is still in heaven as you come to verses 3 and 4, transported there at the beginning of the vision in chapter 4, verse 1. But the visions are now depicting events happening on earth. The next beginning birth pain that will increase in intensity toward the final event of God's wrath and the coming of Jesus Christ can clearly be understood if you just look at verses 3 and 4. And when he had broke, or when he broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, Come.
And another, a red horse, went out, and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth. That, by the way, is another reason we know the first rider is peace, because the second one takes peace. And that men should slay one another, and a great sword was given to him. In a word, the second rider is not peace, the second rider is war. War.
Worldwide war.
Now that shouldn't surprise us because in Matthew 24, Jesus said, following the deceptiveness of peace, chapter 24, verses 4 and 5, he immediately says, you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. And then in verse 7, he says, nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. That's going to be the next in the flow in the sequence of precursors to the final day of the Lord. Here, the story gets ugly. Here, the story gets ugly and stays that way until Christ establishes his kingdom.
Now, let's look at the details. Verse 3. He broke the second seal. The capital H on He indicates you're talking about the lamb, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the rightful heir. And he breaks the second seal, which unrolls another section of the scroll, which describes the events that are going on in this second phase of God's unfolding judgment.
I heard immediately the second living creature. John never reads anything. It's as if when you unroll the scroll, whatever is written there is acted out. It becomes a visible drama. And the second living creature, the second living one, cherub, says, Come.
And again, the same exact scenario: the angel around God's throne, described for us in chapter 4, verses 6 to 9, as one of the four living ones, summons the next rider as the sovereign Lord breaks the seal and judgment unfolds. There is an immediate response by the rider in verse 4, and another, a red horse. Went out.
Now, I don't want to take the time to do it, but if you want an interesting study, just look in your concordance for the word horse and trace it through the Old Testament. You'll find that whether you're reading Job 39 or Proverbs 21 or Psalm 76 or in Jeremiah 6, Isaiah 43, Zachariah 9, Zachariah 10, horses are associated with triumph, with majesty, with power, with might, with force. We even find them later on in the book of Revelation, quite unusual horses. In chapter 19 and verse 11, here comes the Lord in his second coming on a white horse. And then down in verse 14, the armies which are in heaven, namely believers, are also clothed in fine linen, white and clean, following him on white horses.
Now, it's questionable whether those are literal horses. Certainly, they are symbolic of triumph. They are symbolic of power, and majesty, and force.
Now, this force that is coming, you'll notice it's red as opposed to white, and red like fire and red like blood speaks of the Holocaust of war. War in its most frightening and devastating form. We know it's war because it says he takes peace from the earth, men slay each other, and a great sword was given to him. We also know it's war because it parallels what Jesus said about war and rumors of wars and nation rising against nation. God then sends as a judgment on the short-lived peace, the false peace, immediate war.
You will notice then, it also says, a red horse went out, and to him who sat on it, it was granted by whom? By God. Please remember this because it's a very important point. All of these things that are happening are happening at the command of God. Some people will try to tell you that this is not the wrath of God.
Because they will say, We want to make sure that we are delivered from the wrath of God as Christians, but we also want Christians to go through the tribulation, so we can't call this the wrath of God. And it has been called a number of things, sometimes the wrath of men, sometimes the wrath of Satan. There's only one thing you can call it biblically, and that is the wrath of God. It comes from the throne, in the little scroll, in the hand of God, and is executed by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is God's unfolding wrath.
It is God who has granted this red horse the authority and the power to move and bring war. It was God who allowed the false peace. It is God who starts the wars. God allows it. As we read in Matthew 24, they're going to involve nations all over the earth.
Nation will rise against nation, kingdom will rise against kingdom. I don't know how it happens, but just when everybody's sort of breathing in the air of euphoria, war is going to start to break out and it's going to escalate all over every place. In Mark chapter 13. We read in verses 7 and 8, And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don't be frightened, those things must take place. That's not yet the end.
This is still in the birth pangs in the beginning of this period. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don't be frightened. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. That's the beginning, Mark 13:8 says, of birth pangs, and he reiterates precisely what our Lord. said also in The Gospel of Matthew.
Then in Luke 21, just a note, in case you're wanting comparative passages, you find the same thing. Verse 9: And when you hear of wars and disturbances, don't be terrified. These things must take place first, but the end doesn't follow immediately. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there's more to come, and we'll see what the more is.
Now, this force of war that comes has three features. Feature number one, to take peace from the earth. Verse 4: To take peace from the earth.
Sometime early in the first three and a half years, in the birth pangs, in the beginning, world peace turns into war. That initiated. Peace. that counterfeit Prosperity. Comes to a fast end.
And notice, please, it says to take peace from the earth. That means it's global. War is going to break out everywhere. The whole earth is going to lose its peace. Secondly, men are going to slay one another.
Violent slaughter begins to take place all over the world. And we don't know the specifics of that except to say just exactly what the scripture says: there will be a slaughter all over the earth. By the way, this war runs pretty much through the whole rest of the tribulation. Certainly runs past the midpoint and on well into the second half. The slaughter runs on beyond this as well.
It starts early. It goes on for a long time. The third feature: a great sword was given to him, a Machira Megalay. This Machairah is the word that is used for the soldier's sword, the one they carried into battle. It also is used often for the assassin's weapon.
It depicts war and assassination and rebellion and revolt and massacre, deadly force involving slaughter and death. That is the intent of the Megala Machira, the great. Sword, and that is the sword that was used by the soldiers as well as the assassins. The ones not so much the long broadsword, but the deadly one they carried, the Machairah, the shorter one, like the assassin's dagger, mostly, although it can also refer that word can to other kinds of swords. At this particular time, whatever positive things have been going on in the world come to a screeching halt.
Read Jeremiah 25 if you get a chance from verses 15 on, and you will see something of the unfolding of this horrible war.
Now, Antichrist will be a key player in this as he was a key player in the global peace. We know that from Daniel 8, 24. We don't exactly know what his role is going to be at this time, but we know he's going to get involved in it. Daniel 8:24 says this regarding Antichrist: He will destroy to an extraordinary degree, He will destroy mighty men and the holy people.
Now, you remember, he is the one who orchestrated a peace treaty with Israel, according to Daniel, right? He made a covenant with them. He probably will be the instrument of world peace. But when war starts to break out all over everywhere, to contain his power and to maintain his authority, he's going to have to turn to war. He slaughters many, including Jews.
and Christians. He may not initiate the wars. He may be attempting to resolve them. Toward the midpoint. Then he does his foul deed of abomination.
And that is Part of, only part of, the Holocaust that He creates. Just look for a moment at Daniel 11. I don't want to go on without at least giving you a touch. Of the scenario that Antichrist gets into. In Daniel chapter 11, verse 36, it says that this Antichrist, called the king who will do as he pleases, or the willful king.
The Antichrist will exalt and magnify himself above every God. He becomes a world dictator. He speaks monstrous things against the God of gods, Daniel 11:36. He will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done. God allows this profane man to become sovereign and a dictator, to speak against God.
To rise to power. He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers. He is irreligious. He shows no regard for the desire of women.
Now, that could be a reference to the desire of women being a phrase the Jews used to speak of the Messiah. That is a possibility that he has no regard for the true Messiah, the true Christ. Perhaps a better possibility is when it says he does not have the desire of women, it indicates that he is a homosexual. Not an unimaginable thing in our world. He will not show regard for any other God.
He will magnify himself above all of them. He will honor a God of fortresses. That's a God of might. A God whom his fathers didn't know. He will honor him with gold, silver, costly stones, and treasures.
He will be extremely wealthy to finance his wars. He will take action against the strongest of fortresses with the help of a foreign god. He will give great honor to those who acknowledge him, and he will cause them to rule over the many and will parcel out land for a price. He has his foes and his allies, and he starts to fight here and there and gain his allies for the wars. You can see him engaging in a massive war effort.
And it all is all over the world surrounding Israel. Initially, he's supposed to protect Israel, and apparently, he does protect Israel. When this all begins, they make a covenant with him and he protects them while this worldwide war is unfolding and escalating, and he's trying to position himself as the world dictator and the great power. And the slaughter is going on, and he continues to protect Israel until the midpoint, and then he does what he does in desecrating the temple and starts to move to slaughter Israel. No doubt the Antichrist comes in peaceably.
Probably solves some problems in the Middle East and even worldwide global problems. He becomes the protector of Israel with whom he makes a covenant. He heads up the revived Roman Empire, probably a European confederacy, the revived Roman Empire having occupied Europe. He will come as some great leader out of Europe. Israel is under his protective umbrella and under the protective umbrella of the Western Confederacy, the European power.
An Antichrist will rule the world, and then the world and all of its uprisings will be quelled and squashed. Then verse 40 says, And at the end time.
Now this is probably on into the second half, just to show you the full range of his warring, on into the end of the second half, the time of the end, likely the Great Tribulation, the last half of that seven years. The king of the south will collide with him.
Now, we don't know who the king of the south is, but if you go south from the land of Israel, you're in Egypt. And it would not be too hard to believe that Egypt would come against. The Antichrist. It would not be too hard to believe that Egypt would come against him since he has now established his throne where? In Israel.
In Jerusalem. It's where he set himself up as God to be worshipped by the whole world. That's a strategic place, you know, in the world because it's the very crossroads of the whole world: Asia, Africa, Europe. And he's attacked by the king of the south. Literally, the Hebrew text says to push like a goat, like putting your horns down and coming at an attack.
Probably the king of the south is not identified only as Egypt because it's the whole of the south. The whole Muslim world of Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Africa. The alliance that comes against him comes from that part of the world. An African army of some kind moves against the Antichrist who is not only ruling the world but has set up his throne as God in the city of Jerusalem. Also, you will note in verse 40 That the king of the north will storm against him.
Chariots and horsemen, and many ships, and of course, the modern equivalent of all of that. Here comes the king of the north. Who is that?
Well, some believe it is Russia. There's still every reason to think it might be because it talks about it being in the north, and that is north. It is also reasonable to assume that it could be another Arab conspiracy. You say, why is it called the King of the North? Because every conqueror who comes into the land of Palestine and its history comes from the north, because you can't get there from the east.
The west is water, the south is occupied already. The place to come from is the north because If you're in the south, everything east is below Jerusalem and below Israel, and trying to scale all of that and come up from underneath is very difficult. Coming down from the top is the way every enemy has always come, even to this very time. They come down from the north. And so, whatever these armies are, here is Antichrist.
He's trying to control war all over the place. He abominates in the temple. He sets that up. We move into the second half. War is still going on all over the globe.
And now the world is turning on him. The king of the south comes, the king of the north comes. He will also It says enter. The beautiful land. And many countries will fall.
But these will be rescued out of his hand, Edom and Moab, and the foremost of the sons of Ammon. Then he will stretch out his hand against other countries, and the land of Egypt will not escape. By the way, the northern power seems to be utterly defeated. Antichrist wins. He then goes on to Conquer other countries, overflow, pass through them.
The beautiful land has reference to Palestine, Israel. He conquers all of that land, of course, all the other lands. Verse 42: he stretches out his hand against other countries, the land of Egypt won't escape.
So he's defeated the two kings. The two armies. He moves into the glorious land of Israel. This is the. Perhaps this is the place where he does the abomination.
We don't really know. Maybe this is the midpoint. It's hard to be sure about that. Maybe it's already happened by the time this happens. How would what reason would the South have to push that way and the North to push that way if he hadn't always already established his power in that location?
So it's hard to know. But he has desecrated the temple. He has set himself up as God. If you want to read about it, read Revelation 13:7. He holds the Middle East in his hands, all of its resources.
He is the sovereign, invincible God in his own mind. He consumes the harlot church, the false religion that is remaining in the world, according to Revelation 17. He has a partner called the false prophet who calls the whole world to worship him. And it's in that position we find him in verse 42 as he moves out from that to conquer other places, continue to overthrow other countries. There is an unending bloodletting going on, Edom, Moab, Ammon.
Frankly, that's barren wasteland, and he leaves it there. Doesn't do that. Instead of moving southeast, moves southwest, as the indication of the text is. He gains control over the hidden treasures of gold and silver. The precious things of Egypt, Libyans, Ethiopians will follow at his heels.
Then in verse 44, rumors from the east and the north will disturb him, and he'll go forth with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many. The rumors from the east could be the army of 200 million. You remember in the book of Revelation, that army of 200 million that moves coming from the east, from the north again, another conspiracy. And he moves with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many. He is a powerful, powerful force.
He'll pitch the tent of his royal pavilion between the seas. That's the med and the dead. And if you put your tent between those places, you're in the land of Israel. He puts his place of power in the very holy mountain of Zion. And yet, He will come to his end.
He'll meet his match. He thinks he's conquered the world. As the kids today say, not. It isn't going to happen. Because the Lord is going to come.
So, wars start in the beginning and they stretch through, and at some point, the abomination of desolation and all of this war keeps escalating until Christ comes back. to conquer him. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, describing events that will indicate history has reached the beginning of the end. That's also the title of John's current study here on Grace to You.
Now, maybe you think that studying biblical prophecy is intimidating. Maybe it's best studied by pastors and scholars, but understanding and benefiting from prophecy, particularly the book of Revelation, is important and it's within reach for each of us. To help you quickly get up to speed with that amazing book, John has written a booklet called A Jet Tour Through Revelation. It's called Jet Tour because it gives a broad, high-altitude view of the entire book of Revelation in really an easy-to-read format. It really can help unlock the doors of understanding this most important portion of God's Word.
So we'll send you a free copy of A Jet Tour Through Revelation. All you need to do is let us know you want one. Call us or go to our website. Either place, you can request your free booklet today. Our web address is gty.org or let us know you'd like a copy when you call during regular business hours.
80055GRACE. Again, John's booklet titled A Jet Tour Through Revelation is free for the asking. Just let us know you want one when you call 80055Grace or when you go online to gty.org. That's our website, gty.org. And while you're there, make sure you catch up on any articles that you may have missed on the Grace TU blog.
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Now, for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and be back tomorrow as John looks at what else the future holds. Just how bad things will get before the end. and how you can find true peace from knowing what's ahead. John will continue his study called The Beginning of the End with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth.
One verse at a time. on Grace to You.
