JUN 12 2022 | Seven: A Study of the Book of Revelation S1E2 | The Four Horsemen

Sea Change Church · JUN 12 2022 | Seven Ep 2 | The Four Horsemen
Revelation 6:1-8
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

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 When the lamb opened the second seal I heard a second living creature say Come And then another horse came out A fiery red one Its rider was given power To take peace from the earth And to make all people kill each other To him was given a large sword When the lamb opened the third seal I heard a living creature say Come And I looked And there before me was a black horse Its rider was holding a pair of scales In his hand And then I heard what sounded like a voice Among the four living creatures Saying two pounds of wheat For a day's wages Six pounds of barley For a day's wages And do not damage the oil in the wine When the lamb opened the fourth seal I heard a voice of the fourth living creature Say come And I looked And there before me was a pale horse Its rider was named Death And Hades was following close behind him They were given the power Over the fourth of the earth To kill by the sword Famine and plague And by the wild beasts of the earth This is the word of the Lord A li- A b- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- A- How tense was that, right?

It's like the beginning of Lord of the Rings. I just love it. So much going on in that passage. We are in the, actually, I think it says episode one. This is actually episode two. That's my bad on the notes. Episode two of the Revelation series started with the seven churches last year. We do a curriculum every year in our scripture, if you're not aware of that.

And we're back in the New Testament now. We did a gospel series after Easter. And then we move into, we have a Revelation series. We have the Acts, the Journeys of Paul that is coming up this summer. We do something on the Holy Spirit. And then we do our Christmas. And so there is a method to our spiritual madness here that we are doing. Let me just pray.

And we're going to jump into just a really fascinating passage that I think is supposed to give you a ton of hope and a ton of encouragement. Whether it doesn't seem like that, I think it is. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for your goodness and your grace. Be with us today as we look at your word. We love you. And we just praise you. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen. In this passage, you have the beginning of the tribulation period. You have the beginning of time where there are four living creatures. We'll talk about those living creatures in just a moment. The living creatures signal that it is time for the tribulation to begin. And they do so by saying, come. And four horses are released. And this is a seven-year period as we understand it.

And there are four horses that come, each representing something that must take place on the earth. The scripture says in Revelation, these are things that must take place for the redemption of our souls to happen. And so it's really important. And as believers, we have to understand that the things we read are things that must take place. You see these horses here.

On the left side, you have the white horse. That is the Antichrist. We'll talk about the white horse in a minute. And he has a crown. Second is a red horse. The red horse is a horse of war. He comes and causes people to kill one another. And then you have the black horse. Black horse is a horse of famine and pestilence. And he has scales in his hands.

His weapon is actually scales. And so you see also is it is inflation. One of the things you'll see, which is interesting, I actually think he should have been driving like a V8 Hummer, you know what I mean, a minute of gas pump, as opposed to like on a horse. But nonetheless, we have him on a horse. And then you have the pale horse, right? I never known what color a pale horse is.

He's obviously green because this picture says that he's green. He has a sickle in the picture, but he doesn't actually have a sickle in the scripture. That's actually non-scriptural because the thing that he has is himself, which is death. Death is the weapon. Now, as we look at this, one of the reasons I said this is meant to be encouraging, to look at scripture, is by reading the scripture, one of the things you're going to get from this particular passage is that everything that happens is under God's control.

Believers, myself included many times, have been fascinated by the book of Revelation. We're fascinated because it's interesting. It has lots of cool, interesting stories about dragons and all kinds of cool things that are there. Not that the red dragon in this particular case is cool, but if you read The Hobbit, that one's kind of cool, Shmaug.

And so you have all these things you've been fascinated by, but there also is a temptation to be afraid. Oh my goodness, I hope we're not here during the tribulation. All these things can happen, and we're at Satan's beck and call, and at his whims, and whatever he wants. It's actually not true at all. Satan has no power, as you'll see. The Antichrist has no power unless it's given to them by God.

One of the things you'll see in the first couple verses is it says, go to verse one if you would, or verse two. Yeah, verse two. Come, I looked, and there before me was a white horse. It'll symbolize peace. And its rider held a bow. You can circle bow, because all these things are necessary, and they have a meaning. And he was given a crown. It wasn't like he even had his own crown, right?

He was given a crown. Now, whether the four horsemen, I mean the four living creatures, you've got four horsemen, then you've got four living creatures. One of the things you'll see is that the horseman, the first horseman who was the Antichrist, as we'll see in a moment, doesn't even have his own crown. I mean, he's so inept as a conqueror, he doesn't even have a crown of his own.

It has to be given to him. Not only that, as you'll see as we look at the living creatures, he doesn't even get to come out on his own authority. And by the way, God doesn't even have time to waste his breath to call the Antichrist out. Actually, it's a living creature, who we'll see is a superior angel, who says, come. Don't you think God would be the one to say, hey, Antichrist, first horseman, you are released.

I am God, and you are released. God's busy, like, cleaning his garage or something. I don't know what God's doing, but he doesn't even take the time to give the authority to the Antichrist, the first horseman. You see that the first horseman is even under submission to one of the living creatures, to one of the angels in the scripture. So what I said, and you'll see it in the box, the entire tribulation is under God's control.

Satan and his minions, I intentionally used that because I like the movie, and I wanted to use the word minions, and I thought it diminished Satan a little bit, because I love diminishing Satan and his so-called power. I mean, granted, he has power, but compared to God, he has no power. If you're gonna put God in his power versus Satan, it wouldn't exist because you have the eternal versus something that's non-eternal, so it's actually non-existent.

He only has power because God allows him to have power, and we need to get a grasp of this as believers. We need to stop being afraid of, ooh, the devil behind it. No, you know, behind every bush and behind every door. If you live under the blood of Christ, and you live in obedience, God will, it says that he will give you protection. We don't just want the protection of grace.

We do have that protection, but you can also give yourself extra protection through obedience. God has, have you ever rescued from something, but you still had to suffer consequences because he rescued? You know, the nice thing is to be under his grace and to not have to be rescued from something that you created on your own volition, and so we are under his authority, and in the tribulation, in this passage, in all throughout history, God is in control.

So be aware of that as we read this. Let's look at verse one. We're gonna look at the four living creatures, first of all. I watched, because we learn a lot from the living creatures. I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Remember last week, we talked about the seven seals that were on the scroll. I had a scroll like this, and I showed that what I believe is that the seals were not one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, although an argument could be made for that, but there was a way, they used to send a message, where they would put one seal, and then as you opened it, they would have a second seal that would be here, and seven seals as you open, and each person had to open a seal so the first person of lesser importance could read what they needed to read.

It could go all the way up the chain of command to the seventh seal, and so whether it's broken sequentially one by one and released as it is read, or rather it's all broken one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, which doesn't make sense to me because how could he read it if he's only breaking one at a time and was he peeking through there with x-ray vision?

I have no idea. We see that it is under his control, and it says, I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals, and that was the beginning of the tribulation. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, come. Once again, four horsemen, four living creatures. The four living creatures of Revelation are special among the angelic beings.

They have a special job. They are the closest to the throne of God as we see in Scripture. In the Old Testament, in the prophetic literature, you see that they are the closest to the throne. Also, they exist to praise God forever before his throne. They hold golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Now that's in Revelation 5, 6 through 14.

Let's first of all talk about that they exist to praise God forever. I've talked to some of my atheist friends, and they say things like, oh, God is so insecure that he has to have all these people worship him to let him know that he has meaning. Not really. God is worthy of praise, and any being, living creature, and these living creatures represent all living creatures.

You'll see that in just a moment because they are represented by the way they look, they have a face of an angel or a lion or whatever, these all that represent all of living creatures will have to praise God if you are in his presence. We see that when Jesus is revealed, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. To worship God is living in truth, and it is impossible to be in God's presence to not be in truth.

And so the living beings, the living creatures, which are continually in his presence, continually praise him. What can we learn from the living creatures? Well, how's your praise throttle? How often do you praise God? Do you wake up in the morning, do you start with praise, or do you start with a text? When you wake up, or in the afternoon, do you praise God as you walk to your car and say, God, thank you that I can breathe.

Thank you. I don't know if you've ever had an injury. I remember once I had hurt my thumb, and I remember I couldn't open a door, and I was like, God, thank you for my thumb, my prodigious thumb. I really want to thank you for that. You know, when you lose something, sometimes you begin to praise. The angels, these cherubim, pray on a regular basis. These living creatures are praising, excuse me, on a regular basis.

The next thing they do is that they hold this incredible bowl that is filled with incense. And it says in Revelations 5 that this incense that they hold is the prayers of the saints. Have you ever been into someone's house, and you smell incense in the house? And have you ever had incense in your house? And so when you leave, you can actually smell the incense on your clothing.

If you want to know what God smells like, I think the scripture would tell us through this passage that he smells like the prayers of the saints. One of the cool things is whenever you pray, that prayer goes into, if it is prayed in the name of Christ and is within his will, that prayer goes into that bowl and is mixed with the prayers of Hannah, who prayed for a child, barren in front of the priest Eli.

It's there when the prayers of David, when he prayed to escape from his son Absalom. It's there with the prayers of Moses. It's there with the prayers of the plumber that came down to your house in the last few weeks who didn't tell you who was a believer, that was praying for his family or whatever it would be, and his prayers are in that bowl. Every prayer you pray goes into that bowl.

One of the prayers that we have every Tuesday, I pray this, I believe, every Tuesday I'm there. May I miss on occasion. I say, God, would you take all of the prayers that this church has prayed for the last hundred years and begin to release their answers because there are things that have been prayed that have not yet been answered. We pray for that. One of the things we found out recently is when we found the blueprints of the legacy building we want to build, we found old blueprints from 1958 that actually had the exact same type of building there in that picture.

We realized that 70 years ago, there was a congregation here in 1958 with approved plans that prayed. They wouldn't have approved plans from the, it says approved, stamped on them from 1958 if they would not have prayed for it as well. I believe they did. It's 70 years later, did they know that this congregation would be the one that would answer those prayers.

Once I was praying for a house with free rent to live in and I prayed for free rent and I forgot about that prayer and I remember I finally ended up working at Concordia University with my wife and they gave us free rent to work there and as I was walking to move in, I was holding a box that right when I crossed the threshold, I got this thought in my head, I didn't forget your prayer.

It's interesting when we pray, God never forgets your prayers. The living creatures not only are praising God all the time, they're holding the bulls of the prayers of the saints. We pray for those all the time. There are prayers that have been prayed in your lineage by believers that were in your family hundreds of years ago, maybe even thousands of years ago that are still being worked out, that are still being remembered and so the living creatures are in charge of prayer, of praise and prayer.

That should be an encouragement. In the midst of the tribulation, what do we see happening? We see praise and we see prayer and we see these creatures and we, even if we're living in the tribulation now or if we're not, we want to be people that are full of praise no matter what's happening and also full of prayer and so this is important, the first thing that we see with them.

The other it says that they are full of eyes. So as you look at the living creatures, it says they are said to be full of eyes in the front and behind and to look, and look to John like a lion, an ox, and an eagle in flight. and so when we look at that passage of John when he talks about the living creatures, it says, first of all, and you see this in Isaiah as well or Jeremiah, I forget which prophet it was when he talks about all the eyes.

What can we learn about the living creatures? One, they're not unaware. What are eyes for? Eyes there so that you can see. Not only do they have eyes in one direction, they're surrounded with eyes. They are aware. There is an awareness of what God is doing. They're not caught by surprise by the pale horse. You know, one of the four living creatures doesn't get spooked.

Oh, there's the pale horse. Oh my goodness. No, they are aware. There is an awareness. They're agile. They have wings. They have wings and so they can move and not only are they, they move, they don't move in a place where it's easy to be attacked. If you look at warfare, one of the things are with birds. Where are birds safer? They're safer in the air than they are on the ground and so we see that they're agile and they are protective and they are overseers.

As believers, we want to look at these living creatures because it does have the face of a man. So we see the four faces on there because God is representing all of creation, all of living beings together and we are seeing that they have this ability to oversee, to be aware, to be full of praise, to be full of prayer. These, and also have authority. They have authority to open doors in heaven and to close doors in heaven.

Scripture says that we have that as well. What you bind in heaven will be bound on earth and what you open in heaven will be opened on earth. I was talking to a friend of mine that we're both on the committee at one of the schools for the foundation and I said, we want, you know, one of the things I was thinking is together, we want to pray together. We want to begin to pray that God would open doors in the school for better mental health, for care for children, for the care of families.

We want to open doors and so they have authority. I will say when you walk in praise, when you walk in prayer, when you walk in awareness, when you walk in covering over people, when you walk in authority, you have the ability to open doors. Even if you're in high school, in college, even if you're a child, you have the ability to open doors because there is no child-sized portion of the Holy Spirit that is the living creatures.

The other thing that's really interesting is when you're having a conversation with someone who is from, let's say they're a friend of yours, I have some Jehovah Witnesses friends, who don't believe that Jesus is actually equal to God. They believe that he is a son of God, one of many sons of God. There's other people that believe that. I would say that was a heresy and that's not something that we as a traditional church believe.

You see one of the most interesting aspects of the four living creatures is that they demonstrate that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is equal to God himself. How do we know that? Because their worship of the Lamb in Revelations 5, 6 through 14, is clearly directed towards Jesus Christ. You see that in Revelations 5, 5 and in verses 9 through 10. And so the living creatures that are praising God all the time all around the throne of God, it says they are around the throne of God in Revelation, they also begin to praise the Lamb, which is Jesus.

They praise with an equality of praise and adoration not only to the throne of God, which is the Father, but also to the Lamb that was slain. And so we see Jesus. Now let's get to the four seals because the four seals are broken open. Excuse me, the four, excuse me, we have four seals that are broken. We're going to get to that grouping that to release the four horsemen of the judgment onto the earth.

So we're going to look at these four seals. First one happens in verse 2. Go to verse 2. After he says, after the living creature says, come, I looked and there before me was a white horse. Circle the word white. Its rider, circle the rider, because we're going to talk about who the rider is, held a bow, circle bow, and he was given a crown. I said that, and circle crown.

And then he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. Well, let's look at him first of all. First of all, we see that this white horse symbolizes peace. We see that a white horse means peace. If you rode into a city as a king back in the day, it was meant to bring peace. But he's bringing a false peace. Because not only is he wanting to have conquest, it says it twice there, if you looked in the Greek, he was meant to bring conquest, and he was also bent on bringing conquest.

So he rode as one to bring conquest, and then it says, and was bent on bringing conquest. So the Bible says it twice to show that his real intention is to take over and to come as a king. Now, Jesus also comes on a white horse, as you remember. And one of the reasons we know that the Antichrist is a man that is perhaps possessed by the devil or by a spirit is because he is an Antichrist.

He has to be like Christ to be an Antichrist. But there is a binary that he will go with. Jesus' binary was the dual nature of him being fully human and fully God. If you've ever seen one of these pictures and you've been to Rome or seen some of the pictures in an art class, you see them doing this. This means, when they do this, the church traditionally means, the two means the dual nature of Jesus.

He was fully human, he was fully God, but then also you have the Trinity here. We believe that the Antichrist will be fully human. It will be a human being, but he'll also be either possessed or really influenced by a demonic power or if not, Satan himself. Now, can Satan possess somebody? Well, we have an example of that in Scripture as well. At the Last Supper, Jesus offered Judas some bread and then after he did that, Judas, you know, with duplicity took the bread as a friend and it says that at that moment, Satan entered Judas.

He became possessed by Satan in that moment, a human being possessed by Satan in that moment. I believe that we're going to see the exact same thing happen when the first horseman is released. So we see that happen. Another interesting thing is when Satan, when Judas kisses Jesus in the garden, you actually have Satan kissing Jesus at that moment because he has inhabited Judas and then when he's done, he leaves him to his shame and his regret.

That's what Satan always does. Influences you, tempts you, gets involved in your life and then he leaves you and gives you shame and we know that Judas ends up hanging himself or dies in the field after that. So we see this first horseman. Now Jesus, I said, in Revelations 19, 11 through 16, this is not in your notes but I want to add it. You can write that down.

Revelations 19, 11 through 16 is when Jesus comes on the white horse and there are some correlations here. It says, I saw heaven open. We saw that before and behold a white horse. That's, you know, we see a white horse in the tribulation. This is later on. This is 15 chapters later. And he who sat on him was called faithful and true. So he's faithful and true.

He's not duplicitous. He's faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. So he is coming to make war. But he's also, well then is he lying? Why is he coming on a white horse? No. Because he also offers forgiveness to those that will turn during the tribulation. Some, as long as you're still alive, you can turn towards Jesus. So he's bringing, he's saying, hey, if you want to surrender, you can surrender so there is a chance at peace.

With the Antichrist and the first horse, there is no opportunity. He's not looking to bring peace. He's saying he's bringing peace, but there is no forgiveness. This is one of the issues I have with the major justice movements happening in the world right now is we want justice, but we want no forgiveness. We want justice, but there is no way back. If you make a mistake, you can shut up and sideline yourself.

That's as far back as you can get, but you can never be brought back into full community through the restoration of forgiveness. And so Jesus actually does that. It's why he's not duplicitous, but he is making war on the enemy and on death and on those that go against him. He had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed in a robe, dipped in blood.

There's that red. We're going to see a red horse here in just a minute. His name is called the Word of God, so he has a name. His name is not death. His name is the Word of God. Where do we see that? John 1. John 1. In the beginning was what? The Word. So we see that nature there that it's Jesus on the horse. The armies of heaven followed him. Now who is death being followed by?

The fourth horseman. He's being followed by Hades. Talk about Hades in a second. Jesus is being followed by the angels of heaven. It goes on. So go ahead and read it. Revelation 19, 11 through 16. So we see that this white horseman is the first one. He's a political figure. We know because he has a crown, but that crown is given to him. And he's willing to use death to accomplish his ends, and he's bent on conquest.

Now let's go to the second horseman, the red horseman. Go to verse 3. Then the lamb opened the second seal. So we have four seals that are being opened that represent four horses, and we have four living creatures. And when the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, Come. So once again, a separate living creature has the authority over this horse.

So God isn't even wasting his time. He's letting his helpers, his angelic beings, have the authority. This should give you encouragement to let you know that Satan can't do anything unless he's told he can do it. He is on a short leash. It might seem like a big leash. He's on a short leash. It says, I heard the second living say, Come. 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. Now one of the things you'll see is this horse represents war. And so war, often it represents the color blood. In the Bible, the red horse and the red represents blood. We see in that passage with Jesus in Revelation 19 a moment ago that Jesus' robe was the color of blood that represented his blood.

What's interesting, 75% of all the world's flags have the color red in it. That doesn't mean that that's a correlation that always means war. It's just interesting that that is a color of war and geopolitical conflict is the number one reason that people have died in the world. That's the number one reason of death in the world that has ever happened in regard to people being killed actually.

We see this rider also in Revelations 12. You see that the dragon is red. So you have that color. And then also the Red Sea where the Israelites went through but then the Egyptians were killed in the Red Sea. So Red is seen. It's really interesting but that's exactly what it means. And it means war. And it says its rider was what? Given power to take peace from the earth.

He couldn't do it on his own. He was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. Why? Because Satan does not have the power of life and death. He is full of death but he can actually not kill people. The only way people die of the four horsemen is Satan will create a famine but then they can't find food. But you never see where Satan touches somebody and they die because Satan doesn't have the power to kill people.

He doesn't have the power of life and death. That is only given to God. And so even this one who has war he has to use humans to do his bidding. So he takes peace from the world and he causes, it says, people to kill one another. He was given a sword but it seems that he was not the one that was doing the killing. Jesus on his own can do the killing and can do the raising from the dead as well.

Now the next one that's interesting is the third horseman. Go to verse 5. When the lamb opened the third seal I heard the third living creature say, come. And I looked and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hands. Now he doesn't have a weapon. The scales are actually the weapon. What do the scales do? Well the scales represent famine and inflation which is really, really interesting.

It says that the black in the Bible often represents lack. Do you think of the word black and lack? Black often represents a lack. There's an absence in a black, like in the black sky or a void. There is a lack and so what you see happening is a lack coming upon the earth. There is a famine that is happening that you see and famine and inflation in this passage it reads that they indicate that the price of grain is about ten times the price of normal and it also is that one day's wages a person can work all day and you'll get one serving just for one person.

That is what that math does when it talks about, you know, when it gives that idea in verse six where it says, excuse me, two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, six pounds of barley for a day's wages and do not damage the oil. So it's supposedly a very small amount for a day's wages of what you would get back in the day because there's been this incredible famine.

And then we have this final, show the picture again, we have the pale horse and the pale horse comes riding out this time. If you have your scripture, look in verse eight. I looked and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword. So they're not doing the killing.

The killing is being done because there is a civil, there is often, it is shown in this scripture that the red horse is war between nations. The black horse is meant, is understood to be a civil war within nations. But they are given people the authority or they encourage people to kill one another. They also kill through famine and through plague. And so you'll see those things are happening and by the wild beast of the earth.

Well, it's easy to look at this and say, we're obviously in the tribulation now. Well, let me, let me just stop you and say that there has never been, as I said last week, a group of believers who did not at some point in a generation, 40 to 60 to 80 years, believe that they were in the tribulation. Now, one of the things that we have a trump card, if you were going to have an argument with somebody from, that was under Mary, Queen of Scots, or perhaps in the 1666 plague and fire in London like I talked about last week or during World War II or under Diocletian, I think it was the third or fourth century in Rome.

If you were to have a conversation with a Christian of why we were in the tribulation versus why they were in the tribulation, the greatest trump card you would have to win that argument would be that Israel has reformed as a nation. The fact that Israel in 1948 became a nation again, imagine this, imagine calling together all of the Mayans from 500 years ago, 600 years, let's even go back further.

Let's go back to the Babylonians. Like actually, and then having a lineage where you could know who they are because you've kept a lineage of who they are like the Jews have done, and you actually have a nation reform that Babylon reforms again, or you take some ancient nation, or Carthage. Let's say Carthage. Carthage is one of my favorite ones. So you take Carthage.

Can you imagine Carthage getting nationhood again and nation states and having a people? It wouldn't happen because you can't put that back together. It actually did happen with Israel. And so, it is interesting that Israel has once again become a nation. I believe that's a major player. That doesn't mean we can't have another 2,000 years from this time, and I'm not going to go trying to figure out all the times, but that is interesting.

We do see right now that there has been a lot of promises of peace. There's been world leaders over the last 10 years that have promised peace and hope and joy and utopia, an earthly utopia. Recently had a war. You have a war where there's been famine because of the war. You have people talking about famine right now. You have death. You have plague. Now, granted, the plague that we saw, the COVID pandemic, was nowhere close to the 50% death rate of the bubonic plague that started in the 1300s.

So it's not even anywhere close. Could you possibly be in the end times? Could you be in the tribulation? You very well could have. But there's many other times that you very well could have as well. But the point is not that. Here's the point. God's in charge. Are you afraid? Jesus says, when you see these things, look up. Why? For your day of redemption is near.

Let's go back to the cherubim. The cherubim live in praise. They live in prayer. They live in authority. They live in awareness. They live with a spiritual agility where they move. Do you have those things? Or are you spiritually flabby? Are you out of shape? Do you not praise? Have you not made the word of God important in your life? Are you aware of what's happening spiritually in your city?

Are you aware of what's happening spiritually in your child's life? Are you aware of what's happening spiritually on the block that you live in? The living creatures are because they're aware because they fill their lives with praise. This is the message of today. The message of today is one of hope that God is in charge of everything and that nothing happens.

And even when something happens, I want to give you a really, really encouraging verse. If you go to the end of the scripture and you see where Jesus is talking about Hades, it says, sorry, go to verse six, verse eight. I looked in there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was death. And Hades followed close behind him. Now the name death in Greek is thanatos.

So if you've watched the Marvel movies, you've heard of Thanos. That is where the word comes from. Remember, he clicked his fingers and everything started. Death is thanatos. And he is not being followed by the angels like Jesus and the army. He's being followed by hell. And we know it's hell because it's the exact same word, Hades, that Jesus uses when he speaks to Peter.

Remember, he says to Peter this. And Peter promises, and Jesus promises to Peter, and I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. This is so interesting. He says, the gates of Hades, he says Hades will not overcome the church. It's interesting when the pale rider comes followed by the Hades behind him, so many believers could look at that and say, oh no, what's going to happen?

It's horrible. Here comes death with his little minions of Hades. And when Jesus specifically says in the scripture that I will build my church upon the rock of my truth, Peter had just confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord. That's the rock. People have tried to say Peter is the rock. I don't believe that. I believe that the truth that Peter spoke in that moment, that Jesus Christ is Lord, is the truth.

And on that rock he will build his church and the gates of Hades, which follow behind the pale rider, will not overcome it. This is meant to give you a spirit of victory. This message is meant to give you a spirit of hope. That you can be a person, whether you're in the apocalypse or whether you're not, whether it's a thousand years from now or whether it starts tomorrow or whether you're halfway through it at the moment, the way that we live should not change.

We want to be like the cherubim. We want to be people of praise. We want to be people of prayer. We want to be people that release and have spiritual agility, that have eyes that can see what God is doing in the world and have the ability to release and to release and bind things in the earth. That you can have spiritual authority. The Bible says you can have all those things.

You know, it says that the angels are a little bit lower than Christ, but they are supposed to be servants to humankind. Humans are the pinnacle of creation. You see, the living creatures have a lot of authority, but they've got nothing on you. Granted, in the moment, they're in front of the throne of God, but you will take their place. It says that Christians will judge the nations with Christ.

And now is the moment to live like this. Not to be afraid, oh, there's going to be famine. If those things happen, just like God did in Goshen. Goshen was a little area inside Egypt where when all the plagues happened to Egypt, where were the believers? They were in a little place called Goshen. Goshen didn't have any plagues in them. Do I think that we'll be affected by the plagues and persecutions?

Have Christians been killed and beheaded and all that all of the time? You'll see that in the very next scripture as we'll look at next week. All of the people, all the martyred saints are underneath the throne of God. They're crying out, do bad things happen to good people and to believers? Yes. But is God going to be sovereign over all of it? Is God going to be able to protect you and care for you through all of it?

Yes. So let's get our game on. Let's stand up and start making a difference. Let's start changing La Jolla. Let's start changing the workplace. Change your cubicle. Change the car you drive in and what happens in the spirit of your home. Let's begin to live like these cherubim because now is the moment whether the tribulation comes tomorrow, a thousand years, or last week.

Amen? Amen. Let's stand. I want to bless you. Never knew that the four horsemen were that encouraging, did you? Let's go. Everybody's like, oh yeah, this is amazing. Thank you. If you want to extend your hands, he says to Abraham, whoever you bless, I will bless. So if you want to bless people, God said he'd bless them. Lord Jesus, I want to bless these people, Lord Jesus.

I want to bless these people. I want to bless them with the prayers of the saints. God, that you would bless them. There's been so many prayers. Even hundreds of years ago, people in their family line have prayed. They've prayed for their posterity. And Lord God, we just pray over them right now that the prayers would be released. Prayers that they've even forgotten about will be released upon the heads and the hearts and the spirits of these that are here today.

That you bless them, God, with eyes that see. God, you give them awareness, spiritual agility, that they would just get in spiritual shape. God, that you would bless their hearts and you would give them fire, Lord God, that they understand that they overcome death, that they can bind and release in heaven, God, that they begin to rise up and begin to have, no longer walk on the ground, but have authority as they oversee and care and become spiritual protectors, God, of the young, of the elderly, of the oppressed, of the weak.

We pray these blessings over them and over this congregation that you expand it, God, out to the sea and beyond. And we just bless them and send them out now in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. We love you. If you need prayer, come forward. We got prayer. If you want to find out about our church,