Turning Point - David Jeremiah

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
The tribulation being ushered in by the four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse makes for a riveting end times read, But
what does it mean for us here and now today?
On turning point, Doctor David Jeremiah tackles that question, sharing
several ways a modern believer might respond knowing what the
future holds. Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message,

(00:29):
the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Probably one of the most famous sayings of prophecy is
the saying that we're studying right now and that is
the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I know it's been
translated into some movie themes and other stories, but here's
what it means. As we study the Book of Revelation,
we find out what it's all about. Four horses, each

(00:53):
signifying a different kind of trauma that will take over
on planet Earth after the Lord Jesus comes for his
own and the tribulation begins. We'll have the opportunity to
talk about that again today as we open our bibles
to Revelation chapter six. Say, friends, we offer something very

(01:14):
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Speaker 3 (01:35):
Each day you'll.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Learn about and specify a new prophecy, and you will
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(01:59):
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as we pool our resources and make it happen. Now
Here is the second part of our lesson on the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Revelation, Chapter six, Verses one
through eight.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
This second period of the Tribulation, which follows the advent
of the Antichrist, is a time of the breaking out
of war in every aspect of it that we can comprehend,
and we are now seeing the foreshadowing of that in
the world in which you and I live, some of
you are going to ask the question, what do I
care about the Antichrist or war, or famine or death.

(02:43):
That's all in the seven years of tribulation, that's true.
But every event casts its shadow before it. And as
we see the escalation of these things in our world,
as we discern these things on the uprise and our
culture today, we certainly understand that the day of the
Lord rothnigh and Jesus Christ is coming back soon. General

(03:05):
Douglas MacArthur, in the book entitled Reminiscence published by McGraw hill,
wrote these words. He said, since the beginning of time,
men have sought peace, military alliances, balances of power, leagues
of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only
path to be by the way of crucible of war.
And the utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative.

(03:30):
Noted historian Arnold Toynbee reminds us of the relationship of
the red horse and the white horse. Listen carefully. By
forcing on mankind more and more legal weapons, and at
the same time making the world more and more independent economically,
technology has brought mankind to such a degree of distress

(03:51):
that we are ripe for the deifying of any new
Caesar who might succeed in giving the world unity and peace.
What does he say saying? He's saying because man is afraid,
Because man is afraid, that war is imminent. And I
hear more people talking today than ever before about the
fact that the world needs to come together. We need

(04:12):
to unify, We need to get somebody who can help
us solve our world problems together, and men and women.
That is the context in which the anti Christ will appear,
and he will have all the answers and all the resources,
and men will follow him and flock to him because
he will be the one who will save us from
worldwide destruction. War is a part of that. You see.

(04:34):
The message of Revelation chapter six is the same message
that Jesus gave in Matthew twenty four. And we're going
to look at that in just a moment. But notice
what he said. He said at the end of time,
at the beginning of the tribulation, at the beginning of sorrows.
Here's what we should expect. There will be wars and
rumors of wars. There will be great tribulations. Such has

(04:54):
not occurred since the beginning of the world until now,
no never shall and unless those days had been show,
no life will be saved. Jesus said that in the
end of time, at the beginning of the tribulation, there's
going to be wars and rumors of wars. I dare
you to look at any major section of the globe
today where there is not some kind of conflict or
war either going on or just about to start. All right,

(05:17):
let's go to the third seal. The first seal is
the white Horse or the Antichrist. As the scroll is unrolled,
we see that beginning at the tribulation period, we should
expect the Antichrist to appear. It's unrolled a little bit more.
The next seal is opened, and we see the red horse,
and that tells us there's going to be war. Now
we open the third seal. And as we opened the

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third seal, we see the black Horse Versus five and six.
And when he had opened the third seal, I heard
the third beast say, come and see. And I be
held in low a black horse, and he that sat
on him had a pair of balances in his hand,
and I heard a voice in the midst of the
four beasts, say a measure of wheat for a penny,
and three measures of barley for a penny, and sea

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thou hurt not the oil and the wine. The color
of black is often connected with famine. If you have time,
you can look at Jeremiah fourteen one in two and
Lamentations five to ten. You will see the connection clearly.
Famine and war usually go together, do they not. A

(06:21):
shortage of food will always drive up prices and force
the government to ration what is available. When the text
speaks of a penny, it is referring to the standard
daily wage for a laborer in Bible times. Now look
down at your bibles and notice what we're saying. We're
saying that a measure of wheat cost a penny. A

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penny was a day's wage. A measure of wheat was
about two pints of wheat. That was the very least
amount that was necessary to sustain one person for one day.
So what the text says was that in order to
get enough wheat just to stay alive yourself, well, if
you had to give up a whole day's wage, you

(07:03):
could only work enough in one day to feed yourself.
You could get a little bit more barley because that
was a cheaper grain. But in the Tribulation period, along
with the appearance of the Antichrist followed by war, famine
will appear and the globe will be wrenched with hunger
because there will not be enough food to go around.

(07:27):
In this time predicted for the early days of the
tribulation period, a man would have to work all day
just to get enough food to feed himself, and the
rich would be enjoying oil and wine. Notice the end
of the Texas says hurt, not the oil or the wine.
Oil and wine were the substances for the rich people. Apparently,
in this first famine only the poorer people are going

(07:47):
to be touched. The wealthy people won't be touched by
it all. They'll still have their oil in their wine.
They'll be doing fine. But the people who don't have
substance will be starved out. I remember hearing someone say
that during times of depress, it doesn't seem to touch
the wealthy, they just seem to get wealthier. Still, it's
the poorer people, the middle class people that are starved
out that are hurt. And of course, once again you

(08:09):
can see how this will provide the way for the Antichrist.
Do you remember what it says in Revelation thirteen seventeen.
Let me just read it to you. And no man
might buy or sell save he had the mark or
the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
You know what will happen. The beast will control the
world by the hunger of the world. I remember reading

(08:30):
a statement by Sidney J. Harris. He said, listen to this.
He said, an empty stomach is the worst political advisor
in the world. But an empty stomach is acting as
the secretary of State today for half the population of
the world. Hunger is a tremendous controlling thing. And the

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Antichrist will take the hunger of the world and use
it to manipulate the masses, which you see. The shadow
of the black horse is itself heavily across our path.
Even today, I stagger as I read the statistics of
world hunger. As we look at the world seen today,
we must realize that more than half of the world

(09:12):
goes to bed hungry every night. Malnutrition claims the life
of ten thousand people every day. In the United States,
we throw enough food into our garbage cans every day
to feed a family of six for a whole day
in India. The average American dog has a higher protein
diet than most of the people of the world. One

(09:33):
and one half million people are forever hungry. They experience
what Gandhi wants called the eternal compulsory fast. One need
only ponder the exploding population of our world to understand
why and how the prophecy of the black Horse will
surely come to pass. His shadow is lying heavy across

(09:56):
us at this time. Think about this for just a moment.
It took all all of the world's history from the
beginning of the world till eighteen fifty to produce the
first billion inhabitants on our globe. But it took less
than eighty years to pass the two billion mark in
nineteen thirty and only thirty one years to reach the

(10:17):
three billion mark in nineteen sixty one. It took just
fifteen years to add the fourth billion in nineteen seventy six.
If we continue to grow at the present rate, some
mathematician I read figured it out, in nine hundred years,
there will be sixty million billion people on the Earth,
or one hundred people for every square yard of earth,

(10:38):
land or sea. You have to know something's going to happen.
That's way off the chart. What this means in India
is forced sterilization to curb India's population. What it means
in our country is that the crisis has just begun
and it will continue to grow. I remember when we

(10:58):
went through the shortage gasoline, which was one of the
first things I could sense in my own life as
I watched what was happening. Wasn't enough of something we
always depended upon. You Remember the long lines at the
gas stations, Remember the fights as people butted in line
or it took more than they were supposed to. Remember
that that's just a little fore gleaming of what it
will be like in the tribulation when there's not enough

(11:19):
of everything to go around. Viewing the world's resources as
the gas tank on your car, they have passed the
half full point and they're moving toward empty. Let's look
at the fourth Seal. Notice verses seven and eight of
chapter six. The fourth seal opened. And when he had
opened the fourth Seal, I heard the voice of the

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fourth Beast say, come and see. And I looked in
behold a pale horse and his name that sat on
him was Death, and Hell followed with him, and power
was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,
to kill with sword and with hunger, and with death,
and with the beasts of the earth. John now sees
two people instead of one. All of the other horses

(12:01):
have one rider. Now he sees a writer on the
horse and somebody walking behind it, a companion. He sees
Death riding the pale horse, and Hades following him. Now
that phrase death and Hades appears three times in the
Book of Revelation. It's interesting to trace it through. For
in chapter one, in verse eighteen, we are told that

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Christ has the keys of Death and Hades. And then
in chapter twenty and verse fourteen we are told that
someday Death and Hades will be cast into Hell. And
then in chapter twenty and verse thirteen we learn a
little bit about what they are. I want to say
something to you. The writer on the pale horse and
the companion who walks after him, Death on the horse,

(12:44):
Hades walking after him. They have a coming appointment with destiny.
They may reign supreme during the tribulation, but one day
the Bible says Death and Hades will be cast into hell.
There is a future for death and hades. But now
watch what happens. One of the most dramatic of the
dozens of artistic representations of the Four Horsemen is a

(13:08):
nightmare vision of a modern Japanese artist, Fujita. Fujita painted
the fourth Horseman as a full skeleton, grinning fiendishly riding
on a full skeleton of a horse across a battlefield
that was strewn with skeletons, and the entire scene is
framed in chlorine green, a cloud of death. By the way,

(13:31):
the word pale in the text is the word from
which we get our word chlorine, so the word pale
means pale green. And the entire scene is framed in
this chlorine cloud of green. With Hiroshima and Nagasaki etched
into the Japanese mind, who could better portray the pale
horse than a Fujita, a Japanese artist. You see, after

(13:55):
the Antichrist comes war, and after war comes famine, and
after famine comes death, death of the body and death
of the soul. In the sense that we understand that,
please note that as these two ride forth on the
pale horse, they are armed with weapons of the sword,

(14:16):
and hunger, and pestilence and wild beasts. If you had
time to look with me in the Book of Ezekiel,
chapter fourteen and verse twenty one, these are called the
four sword judgments of the Lord. Let me read that
verse to you, Ezekiel, fourteen twenty one. For thus saith
the Lord God, how much more when I send my

(14:38):
four sword judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword and the famine,
and the noisome beast and the pestilence to cut off
from it man and beast. Now we have already seen
war and famine in this text on a global scene.
But now we are going to see war and famine
accompanied by pestilence and beasts. And historians tell us that

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the more people will die because of the combination of
those things, and have ever died in the history of
the world. Notice, war, famine, pestilence, and beasts. Let's talk
about the last two, since we've talked about the first two. Pestilence.
Pestilence is a word for epidemic. Let me tell you something.

(15:22):
And you read the scripture and you find out what
is planned for the globe. You read that one of
the things that's going to happen in the early part
of the tribulation is the world is going to be
infected with a pestilence that will take one fourth of
the entire population of the globe. That's what it says.
It's not hard to figure out how that could happen.
I am more afraid of that today than I have
ever been before. Are you. Let's notice that the fourth

(15:45):
thing not only death and famine and pestilence, but notice
it says, and with the pestilence in the end time
will be the beasts. It says, he will kill with
the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with
the beasts of the earth. Now what does that mean?
There are beasts that carry disease? Are there not? You see,

(16:06):
whenever there is famine and plague, there is always something else.
Go back and study history and you'll discover what it is.
I'm going to make some of you ladies sick, but
I'm going to read this anyway. The most destructive creature
in the world. You know what it is? The rat.
Let me tell you something about rats. This is all free.

(16:26):
You don't have to pay for this, all right? Did
you know that the rat is the greatest menace to
human health, and he is a menace to human health
and human food supplies. Did you know that a rat
comes in more than five hundred and fifty species. He's
found wherever man has found. Watch this now, A single

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pair of rats can produce three hundred and fifty million
descendants in three years. You say, how can that be possible.
They reproduce quickly, they reproduce at a very young age.
They just keep reproducing, and they just continue to multiply.
A single pair of rats can produce three hundred and

(17:09):
fifty million descendants in three years. And if we were
to exterminate ninety percent of the rat population in any
given area, it would replace itself in one year. Rats
carry thirty five different diseases. Their fleas carry bubonic plague,
which destroyed one third of the population of Europe in
the fourteenth century. Their fleas also carry typhus, which in

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four centuries has killed and estimated two hundred million people.
The rider on this fourth horse will reap a terrible
harvest from the earth, because he will have the sword
and the famine and pestilence and beasts. Write your own interpretation,
but whatever it is, it kills off twenty five percent
of the entire world's population, and later on the Book

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of Revelation, another third of the world's population is going
to be killed. Now you say, pastor Jeremiah, are you
sure you're right about this? Well, I want you to
take your Bible and turn with me to the Book
of Matthew Matthew chapter twenty four, and let me give
you the absolute divine interpretation of Revelation six. Jesus said
the same thing about the tribulation that John said, in

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exactly the same order. And so we know that the
interpretation of Revelation six is in keeping with Matthew twenty four.
Look at Matthew twenty four, and let's look at verses
four through eight. Well, let's go back to verse three.
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the
disciples came unto him privately, saying, tell us, when shall

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these things be? And what shall be the sign of
thy coming and the end of the world. And Jesus
answered and said to them, take heed that no man
deceive you, for many shall come in my name, saying
I am Christ, and shall deceive many. The white horse,
the anti Christ. There's the first horseman. You see it
and you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars.

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See that you be not troubled. That's the red horse,
the advent of war, and nations shall rise up against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines. There's
the Black Horse, and pestilence and earthquakes in diverse places
and death, and there's the Pale Horse. Now you want

(19:19):
to know something that's really frightening, read the next verse.
These are the beginning of sorrows. We're just getting warmed up, folks.
This is just the early stages of the tribulation. We're
not even in the Great Tribulation yet. This is just
the beginning. This is at the front end of the

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seven years when God comes down in his son Christ
to reclaim this earth by destroying everything that is here
and then gradually making it all over anew. And I
have to stop here, but I got to ask some
questions as we close. What does this mean to you?
What does it mean to me? You say, Pastor Jeremi,

(20:01):
It's great to know about this, but I'm not going
to be here. Well, I'll tell you what. I've never
been so thankful to be a pre trip as I
am amen. You say, what if you're wrong, Well, I'm not.
You know why I'm not because my Bible tells me

(20:22):
that when I got saved, I was saved from wrath.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are
in Christ Jesus. What I read here about the tribulation
is condemnation multiplied a hundred times over, and I'm not
ever going to see that. So the first response I
have just praise to God while all this is going

(20:42):
on down on earth, I'm back in chapter four and
five praising God. That's enough to make you shout if
nothing else will. By the way, folks, you're either in
chapter six or you're in chapter four and five. You're
in heaven with the Redeemed, or you're on earth. You
don't have much choice. There's no in between place. Praise.

(21:05):
First response, just praise to God for his provision for us.
He's gonna jerk us out of here before all of
that happens, and we'll be with him. Even though we'll
see the foreshadowing of it as we see now, even
though we may have some of the early stages of
it before it breaks loose and before the Antichrist appears,
we are gonna be with God. Praise his name for that. Secondly,

(21:29):
I not only have the response of praise, but I
have second response, and that's passion. I want to tell
you something, folks, Nobody I love can go through that. Nobody.
You say I don't want my family to go to hell.
I don't want your family to go to hell either.
I don't want him to go to the tribulation either,
because the tribulation is everything hell is, and then there's

(21:52):
hell past that. If we really believe what we were
reading in the scripture, we'd go out of here. Every
one of us is flaming bangelists. We put our arms
around friends and loved ones and family members and say, please,
let me tell you how you can escape the judgment
to come. Don't be in chapter six. Let me tell
you how you can get in chapters four and five.

(22:13):
Be up there with the rest of us when we're
praising God around the throne. Do you hear me? Then
there's a third response. First one is praise, second one
is passion. The third one is personal evaluation. Where are you,
my friend? Do you know this whole thing scares you?

(22:36):
We've talked about rats and death and famine, and war.
You say where in the world, It's in the Bible.
That's what the Bible says is going to happen in
the future. It's real. We didn't make it up. God
said it. And my friend, if you're not saved, and
the trumpet would sound this night and the dead in
Christ shall raise, we who are alive and remain will

(22:57):
be caught up together be with him. It's too late.
It's over. You are in the tribulation. You don't have
another chance. Because you heard the word of God clearly presented.
Your chances for salvation are over. Once the rapture comes,
you don't have another chance. Book of Hebrews, chapter two

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and verse three says, how shall we escape? If we
neglect so great salvation? There is no escape. And if
I were you, my friend, and I didn't know for
sure that I was a Christian, I'd hit the floor
on both knees and say, Lord God, come into my
heart and forgive me my sin, save me from the wrath.

(23:39):
To come, give me Jesus Christ in my heart. I
want to be in heaven when tribulation's on the earth. Amen.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
The gospel call is in every message in the Book
of Revelation. If you look deep enough, it is a
reminder that God loves you so much that even as
he pronounces judgment on the earth, holds out the wonderful
pardon that can be yours if you'll put your trust
in Him. By the way, Turning Point has produced four

(24:10):
study guides and a four volume CD message set for
the Book of Revelation. You can find out about that
at Davidjeremiah dot org. The four study guides really are
helpful as you're studying the Book of Revelation.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
They take you through.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Every verse, all the way from chapter one to the
last chapter in the book. And it takes four study
guides to do that. Because I preached on the Book
of Revelation for forty two straight Sunday nights and most
of the time from between forty five minutes in an hour.
So here's all that information in print and in audio presentation.

(24:46):
You can get it from David Jeremiah dot org. And
we'll see you right here tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community
Church and David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Your words of
encouragement are so appreciated. Right now, please write us at
Turning Point Po Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three. Visit our website at Davidjeremiah
dot org, Slash Radio, or call eight hundred ninety four

(25:18):
seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of David's
timely new book, Sixty Days of Prophecies, The Truth behind
Endtime Warnings. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also view over twelve hundred of doctor Jeremiah
sermons on any screen anytime you like on our Turning
Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount.

(25:42):
Visit Turningpoint plus dot org for details. This is David
Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series
Escape the Coming Night on Turning Point with Doctor David
Jeremiah