Revelation 6: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Part 18)

We started actually last week on Revelation 6, and I went through and showed that chapter 6-19 covers the events of a seven-year period. And I talked about the fact that there are vignettes interjected in the chronological order that explain the main events, the main people, the main actors that are the most important during this seven-year period. But I realized that I didn’t really establish to my satisfaction how we know this is a seven-year period. Now, God loves to divide things into different ages.

And the Bible looks at mankind’s history. This is kind of God’s outline of history. We’re over here. This is the age of grace.

This is the Church age. This is the age about which nothing was written in the Old Testament. The Church is in the age of grace, and the Church was never mentioned until Jesus mentioned it before his disciples in Matthew 16. Now, when this age ends, this age began with a miracle of the Holy Spirit being sent to dwell in every believer in Jesus Christ.

That was unique, that’s something that never happened before. Only select few were chosen to be given the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Prophet, kings, and so forth. And that was on a temporary basis.

That’s why David prayed after his great fall with bathsheba and engineering her husband being murdered and so forth. He prayed in Psalms 51, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. And he knew that that was a great treasure of his life that the Holy Spirit had actually dwelt in him. Today, to pray that same prayer would be an insult to God because God says that every person from the moment he or she beliefs in Jesus Christ is personal monthly indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

He dwells in every one of you who have trusted in him. And he does not take the Holy Spirit away. Even if we’re out of fellowship, he doesn’t take the Holy Spirit away. The Holy Spirit, it says in ephesians, it says, grieve not the Holy Spirit in whom you’ve been sealed until the day of redemption.

So you’re sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption, and that’s when you get your resurrection body. So you have the Holy Spirit. But it does say stop grieving the Holy Spirit. And the idea is, the Holy Spirit can be grieved by willful sin in your life, but he doesn’t leave.

Turn to Daniel 9:24-27. Now, I have done a lot of translating work on this passage, so it may sound a little different than what you have there, but believe me, it’s what the Hebrew says. It says, seventy sevens, or sabbatical years, for decreed for your people and your holy city. So the decree is concerning two things.

Your people, Israel, and your holy city, Jerusalem. And then he names six things that are to be accomplished within the scope of that allotment of time. Seventy sabbatical years, or 490 years. Then it says in verse 25, no one understand this: from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah, the prince, comes there will be seven sabbatical years and sixty-two sabbatical years, or sixty-two sevenses.

In the Hebrew, it’s just , seven sevens. And it’s referred – it’s in a context. Daniel 9 is in a context where Daniel was asking about what was going to be the future of Israel. And God had put them into Babylonian captivity because they had failed to keep seventy sabbatical years.

And that’s important to God. All the time that they became a nation, they failed to keep even one sabbatical year, and that means they were to sit down and they were not to plant their fields, they were not to do any work on every seventh year. And they were just to trust the Lord and spend their time learning about the Lord and praising the Lord and talking to each other about the Scripture and so forth. And God said, this will show your faith to the nations that I am real because I will take care of you though you don’t do anything for a whole year.

And that was very important to God because it was part of the reason he created this nation. They were basically created to be a witness to all of the other nations that were trying to push God ought of their memory. And so after 490 years of not doing that, God, just as he warned through the prophet Jeremiah, he snatched them up and took them to Babylon, and it says, as long as you’re in Babylon, the earth shall enjoy its sabbaths. For 70 years.

And so it’s in that context that this was given, so that’s why we know he – just as they failed to keep severity sabbatical years, he allots them another 70 sabbatical years to fulfill the reason for which they were created. You following me? Okay. Now, that’s the underlying premise of this prophecy, which is the greatest single prophecy in the Bible.

Now, he says that therefore understand from, and underline in my Bible, it said, there are some prepositions and conjunctions here that are extremely important, so I underline them. First from. And then until the Messiah. There will be seven sabbatical years and sixty-two sabbatical years.

Now you add that up in terms of the sabbatical years, it comes to 483 years. Sixty-nine sabbatical years. And then he says, after – underline that word after the sixty-two sabbatical years – which is the last section of that time period – Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and moats, but in times of trouble. And it says, after the sixty-two sevens, the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing.

All right. So that’s very important. From, until, after. All right.

From marks the beginning of the time clock starting of this allotted time. He said, from the decree that’s issued to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. That was given, we know exactly when it was given, by of Persia. And that started the allotment of time clicking, okay.

So exactly 483 years later, now, these are biblical years, 360 days, 173,880 days from the time of Persia issued that decree to not just allow them to rebuild the walls and the temple, but the city and the temple. And that’s why we know it wasn’t the other decrees, it was only the one that gave. All right. From that time, the 173,880 years later, Jesus marched into Jerusalem on a donkey, and for the first time allowed himself to be declared the Messiah, the son of David.

Before that, he wouldn’t allow anyone to do that. He did that because he knew that was the exact date Daniel had predicted the Messiah would come to be anointed. And it happened exactly precisely on the day that Daniel predicted it would occur. Now, critical to understand this is that it says in verse 26, after.

After what? After the Messiah, the prince, comes. So we go 173,880 days and then after that, two very important historical events would take place. The first, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing.

Cut off in Hebrew is an idiom for being put to death. Being executed. So it says that after that exact time period, the Messiah would be executed and have nothing. In other words, the things that were promised in the Old Testament about that would be taken away.

All right. Now, that happened one week after Jesus marched in and fulfilled the prophecy by coming in, as zachariah 9:9 said, he would come in riding on a donkey. Now, the second event is what’s very important. It says, after sixty-two suns, the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing, then the people of the prince who shall come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.

And the end will come like a flood; war will continue until the end; and desolations have been decreed. Okay. When was Jerusalem destroyed? 70 A.D.

All right. Well, that tells us something very important. If the time clock of allotted time kept running, it would have been over long before 70 A.D., wouldn’t it? So it tells us that the after means the clock was stopped.

And then these two events take place. One at least 37 years later. So it shows the clock was stopped and there’s a big gap between the Messiah being executed and having nothing and what we read in verse 27. Now, look in verse 27.

He will confirm a covenant with the many for one seven. See, there’s our lost sabbatical year. I wish the translators would just translate it the way it should be, that they say one week. But it means, you see, in the Hebrew calendar, they had weeks of days and weeks of years.

We go by decades. They went by sabbatical years and sabbatical weeks of days. But this is talking about sabbatical years. So when the Messiah came, Jesus came exactly on time.

This is why he burst into tears when he looked at Jerusalem as he was riding the donkey down into the city and he said to them, if only you had known on this your day, the things that were planned for you and now they’re hidden from your eyes and you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Now, we come to verse 27, and it says, he will confirm a covenant with the many for one seven. And this is part of this whole prophecy. They still have seven years allotted to them to finish the purposes for which God created them as a nation.

Now, they fulfilled many of them, but the one big purpose the Jews never – or the Israelites never completed, was to evangelize the world. And it says, that last week will begin when he, and I ask you, who is he? You see, you have to, in studying any, in any language, to find out who a – of whom a pronoun is speaking, you have to go back to the last person in context that’s named. Who is the last person in the context before this that was named?

The prince that would come. Right? See, I’m not pulling any rabbits out of the head. By the way, somebody – somebody had a wonderful sense of humor.

They gave me a bottle of wine that says “rabbit.” It was a rabbit vintage. And she said, since you like to chase rabbits, we thought you would love to chase this one.

And I did enjoy it.

All right. Now, back to business here. He will confirm a covenant with the many for one seven. Now, but in the middle of the final seven he will put an end to sacrifice and offering.

Now, what does that tell us? To put an end to sacrifice and offering, what do you got to have? Got it. You got it.

My, you’re good students.

Now, he will put an end to it, though. And then it says, and on a wing of the abomination will come the one that causes desolation. Now, that’s from the Hebrew. On the wing of an abomination, he will cause – will come the one, and that’s the prince who shall come, that causes desolation, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.

All right. Now, it divides up this final week here, this little period of time right there, but there’s probably more Scripture about that little period of time than any other single comparative period of time. Because what happens in those seven years is so important that we have tremendous members of prophecy about it. So here we have it.

First the Church, which is every living believer, is going to be snatched out of the world. Immediately, the Antichrist will be revealed. He’ll be unveiled. And he will immediately mesmerize the world.

I think there’s going to be – that the world is really going to be at a turbulent time, and they’re desperate to find some leader that can get them out of it, see. And that’s why I see so many things developing right now that I think are going to explode. Now, the good thing is, I read the end of the book, and we ain’t going to be here.

I sure hope you’re following me, because I’m throwing a lot of details at you. I hate to do that. But I know the Holy Spirit can teach us all. Look, he taught me.

That’s a miracle. Now, this here then is going to be the fulfillment of why God created Israel. They’re going to accomplish, what he called. And one of the other purposes, they are going to they are going to do in seven years what they haven’t done in their whole history.

They’re going to evangelize the whole world. Led by 144,000 Jewish billy grahams.

Because they are going to be specially anointed, specially gifted. We’ll see that when I get to chapter 7. And so I believe that it’s very, very important that we understand that that is one of the things they have not fulfilled and there to do it. The second reason is that God is going to use these terrible events that take place during that seven years to so drive the Israelites to despair that they’re going to finally look up and see who their real Messiah is.

And in zachariah 12:10 says they shall look on me who they have pierced and they shall mourn for me as one mourns for his only son. It’s all pre-written. And they will see the wounds that they will feel personally responsible for. And that there will be a tremendous number that will be brought to faith in Jesus as their Messiah during this time.

And all of them will become evangelists. Now, I want you to look at something else. I’m spending a lot of time on this because if you get this right at this point, you’ll understand the rest of the book of Revelation. But you’ve got to get it right.

Now, let’s confirm that this is going to be seven years. Look at Revelation 11. And look at verses 2 and 3. Now, there’s a lot going on in these verses, I’m not going to try to deal with everything, I don’t know what – I only want to pinpoint two points.

All right. In chapter 11:2. Leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles; and they will tread underfoot the holly city for – how long? Forty-two months.

How many years is that? Three and a half, all right. Then verse 3. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.

How many years is that? Three and a half 360-day years. So, you see, the 42 months when the Gentiles are going to tread Jerusalem underfoot is the second half of this week. The twelve hundred and sixty days that these prophets preach in Jerusalem will be the first half.

Now… I’m going to read something that is — has mystified interpreters of the prophecy for a long time. You don’t have to turn there, just mark it and read it later. I’ll read it to you.

Daniel 12:11-12. Here is a conclusion in the prophecies that Daniel was given. It says, from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. How blessed is he who keeps waiting and attains to the 1335 days!

What do you think that is? All right. Now, notice we’re talking about the second half of the Tribulation here. Because remember back in Daniel 9:27, it says that the Antichrist would cause sacrifice and sacrifices stop.

So he says here that from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be twelve hundred and ninety days. So why is thirty days added? I can only give you a sanctified guess. I believe that this is when Jesus comes back, the first thing he’s going to do, he said, he’s going to gather all Gentiles together.

And that’s in Matthew 25. And in Ezekiel 20, he says he’s going to gather all Israelites together. The Gentiles will be gathered in the valley just outside of Jerusalem. The Israelites are going to be gathered.

Now, we’re talking about survivors. We’re talking about those who survived this period. The Israelites are going to be gathered out by mount Sinai. And both are going to be judged.

The Gentiles in one place, the Israelites in another. See, it’s segregated, which is proof positive the Church is not there. Because if the Church were there, what would be the case? There’s no difference between a Jew and a Gentile.

All right. Now, I believe that it is the gathering of all of these people in the 30 days that is after that seven years takes place, when the Messiah Jesus comes back.

Thank you so much for standing with me as a watchman on the wall. I pray daily that he will reward your faithfulness and protect and prosper you in these difficult times. Thank you again for being a vital part of my team.