Through the Bible with Les Feldick

LESSON 3 * PART 1 * BOOK 11

REVELATION 6, CONTINUED

In our last program, we were into the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. After our last taping, I got home and picked up the mail and Time magazine was there. As I usually do, I turn to the last page where there is an essay of sorts. Here the writer was degrading the fact that from time immemorial the human race has always been looking forward to catastrophic events. An apocalypse of sorts. He was ridiculing the fact that after all it’s just human nature to look for evil things to come on the scene. He used various books that had been best sellers. So really I imagine that is how a lot of people feel. That we are just barking without any bite.

I have always been under the impression as I teach prophecy that I’m not going to be a sensationalist. We are not going to sensationalize, but teach the way we feel the Bible is putting all this right in front of us, so that for you and I who are believers, we can understand that we are not going to be here when all of this takes place. The Lord has graciously promised us that He has not appointed us to wrath, but rather to be saved out of it. But these are words of warning for those who never yet expressed salvation by faith in the Gospel, that is, by believing for your salvation that Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose from the dead as we find in I Corinthians 15:1-4.

We know, regardless what the scoffer may say, these things are coming on the earth. We are not saying it because it’s human nature to expect it. But only because the Word of God has laid it out so clearly that after almost 2000 years of God pouring out His Grace upon humanity, offering them salvation on a basis of faith plus nothing; after it has been walked underfoot and has been spurned and rejected for so long; God is still going to enter in with His wrath and vexation. We can’t take His Grace for granted forever.

The easiest way to understand Revelation is to take it on a chronological basis rather than chapter by chapter. Because the Book of Revelation does not unfold chronologically, you must skip back and forth, and the way you find out how these things fit is by watching the time factor. I’ll show that to you in the next lesson or so. How you can show from one aspect to a portion of the next whether we are dealing with the first half of the Tribulation, or the middle of the Tribulation, or the last half of the Tribulation. The timing is all in here, but you have to skip back and forth in order to pick it out. So we will try to carefully do that especially for those of you have never understood the Book of Revelation.

In verse 3 of Revelation Chapter 6, we come to the red horse. I’m going to be careful that some of the things I say today are strictly my own personal speculation, and when I digress from what the Word literally says I’ll try to make it clear that this is just my idea. It doesn’t have to mean anymore to you than anything else. But it may provoke some thinking on your part. I like to look at the red horse as a reference to the only military power on earth that has been known as red. And that is the red army of Russia. And so I like to think that I can tie the red horse of Revelation to Ezekiel 38. We like to emphasize all the things that take place at the beginning of the seven years. We will emphasize many things that take place in the middle of the seven years, and then another group of events that will take place at the end, and then we will fill in the details.

At the beginning, we see the Anti-christ signing the treaty with Israel. That is one of the first things. And that treaty, according to Daniel Chapter 9, will guarantee their borders for seven years. He is going to seemingly be everything that their Messiah had promised. Peace and prosperity, safety from their neighbors. So the moment the treaty is signed, God’s time clock starts ticking once again to complete that final seven years of prophecy. Shortly after the treaty is signed we are going to see the red horse, and I’m going to equate it with the Russian invasion, or the Gog and Magog of Ezekiel 38.

Before we go back to Ezekiel, let’s stop at Matthew 24 once again. Remember, this Chapter is totally dealing with the Tribulation. We studied up through verse 5 in our last lesson, so now in verse 6:

Matthew 24:6

“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” Now in verse 7, I think we see the red horse:

Matthew 24:7a

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:…”

I’ll stop there with the red horse. When we get to the next horse, the pale horse, we’ll come back and finish this verse. Now to Ezekiel 38 where we left off in our last lesson. This is a prophecy against Gog and Magog. I think almost everyone is agreed that Gog and Magog are the nations we now recognize as the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, etc. Let’s start with verse 2:

Ezekiel 38:2,3

“Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, And say, `Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:'”

Never lose sight of the fact that God is Sovereign. I know the point came up in our class last night. There are some things we can’t understand that God does. But it is not for us to question because He’s Sovereign. He is the all-knowing, and the Scripture tells us as plain as day, that His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are higher than ours. So we can’t always comprehend His ways of doing things. We must leave it in His hands and know that He never makes a mistake. Again, God is declaring prophetically, that the day is coming when He is going to bring this consortium of nations, headed up by the Russians. Now verse 4:

Ezekiel 38:4a

“And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army,…”

Like literally turning a horse, He will change their direction. Now this is my own personal view. All during the cold war, we know that our allied leaders were deathly afraid of a great Russian invasion of Western Europe. I know this to be true, because I have a friend who was a consultant to the military. He stopped by and saw me one day, after he had just come back from a consultant tour of Western Europe a few years ago. The red army was facing our forces there in East Germany and so forth. He said, “Les, the only thing I’m going to recommend to our authorities is that we had better get a neutron bomb ready and get it ready fast.” You know what a neutron bomb does, don’t you? It kills personnel, but not property as such. He said, “There would be no way to stop them unless we would use that sort of a weapon.”

So we know up until recently, Europe was constantly aware that the great Russian horde over there on that eastern border was in control, with no way to be stopped. But the Scripture says that I will turn thee back. And this is exactly what we have here. That all of a sudden, contrary to the world’s general thinking, the Russian forces will not concern themselves with Western Europe, because that will be the domain of the Anti-christ. That power has to be in place for the battle of Armageddon. Always remember that prophetically there are only three areas of the world that are involved in those last days of the Tribulation or the battle of Armageddon. And that is Western Europe, the Orient, and parts of Africa. There is nothing at the very end that concerns Russia, or the Western Hemisphere. There is nothing in prophecy that would involve those two great areas in that last great battle. Keep that in mind as we move on. God is going to turn the Russians away from Western Europe and bring them down into the Middle East. But not Russia alone.

I’ve pointed this out over the years. That here we have a consortium, especially before communism fell apart, that all of these nations listed here were either already communist or right on the verge of becoming so, and here they are in verse 5. These are the nations and the people that will come with the Russians. They will come down to the hills and mountains of Israel.

Ezekiel 38:5

“Persia (today we call it Iran), Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:”

Remember when you read these things, Ezekiel is using the language of his day. So this great mass of humanity is going to come down upon the Nation of Israel with all sorts of weapons.

Ezekiel 38:6a

“Gomer, and all his bands;…”

Almost all Bible scholars are agreed this is Eastern Europe. When General Patton was racing across Europe back in World War II, we thought he would be all the way to Warsaw before we knew it, but then the news came that he had stopped at the Elbe river for seemingly no reason. Their excuse was that he had run ahead of his logistics. But we found out later that was all agreed upon at Yalta. When Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Yalta, they divided Europe and, consequently, we had to stop at the Elbe river. But the Elbe river was for the most part the eastern border of the old Roman Empire. So that really divided, Germany just exactly where it needed to be divided in order for this Gomer to be set apart from that which was more or less Western European.

Now the other thing, when all of this division started to fall apart a few years ago, we all began to wonder about Ezekiel 38? And then, lo, I found an article hidden away in one of our newspapers, that Helmet Cole, the German President, or whatever his title is, had met with Gorbachev, who at that time was the Prime Minister of Russia. And even though communism was falling apart, they made an agreement that the East German Army would remain in the Warsaw pact for at least 4 more years. You don’t see that on the front page news. But you see what that said is that Gomer is still intact with his consortium of nations with Russia.

Now that four years still isn’t up. Whether that is true or not, I do not know. But I have to feel that the Warsaw pact militarily is still relatively intact. It’s still a viable military force. I do know from what I’ve read that the Russian army is east of the Ural Mountains. It’s poised there and it’s ready to move whenever the authorities tell it to. So if you think the Russian bear is dead and has rolled over, you’d better think again. It’s not dead. It’s certainly having a lot of economic problems, but it’s not off the scene. In fact, again I come back to Time magazine. Here again, just a few weeks ago, Time magazine had a little article that every single ballistic missile that Russian had several years ago are still in place; they’re still loaded; and they’re still pointed toward American targets.

It was alarming, and it said that our administration is alarmed. But there’s nothing that they can do about it. In fact, I feel that it’s more alarming than it was before Communism fell apart because now we don’t know who’s in control of the little black box. We have no way of knowing who can suddenly unleash those missiles on America. So we can’t get smug. Let’s move on down: Iran, Ethiopia, Lybia with them. Gomer, East Germany or Eastern Europe and all his bands. As we’re seeing in the news, these are all ethnic groups of people. Various tribes and what have you, that hate each other. In fact, I read a little news article again last night in Time magazine, that the reason the American powers that be, whether it’s the President and his administration or the military, realize that there’s not much that they can do because all these ethnic groups in east Europe hate each other with a passion. And whenever hate comes in like that, it’s a religiously based hate. In other words, they all have different ideas of religion. Never lose sight of that. Consequently, it’s a mixed bag. And we really don’t know how to go in and handle it. But somehow or other, these are all going to amalgamate when it’s time to come down into Israel. Then verse 6, and continuing on:

Ezekiel 38:6a

“Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah…”

That’s the nation of Turkey. Turkey up until now has never been in the Russian orbit, per se. But they are so close. In fact, when Communism fell after ruling Russia for 70 years, Turkey was one of the first sovereign states to make overtures to get back into a good fellowship relationship with Russia. So I don’t think it will take much for the nation of Turkey to all of a sudden come out of the Western influence and line herself up with the eastern nation. So watch this group of nations. We can’t put everything together specifically, but we do get a pretty good idea. So now verse 7:

Ezekiel 38:7

“Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.”

Ezekiel 38:8

“After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years (I always point out to my classes that Scripturally, the last days of Scripture are from Christ’s first Advent on. The last days of Scripture doesn’t necessarily mean the last seven years. But it’s been this last 1900 plus years that are considered the last days. But the latter days take you to the end times. That takes you, I think, into this final seven years. And that is the word that is used here. Now watch the language carefully) thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations,…”

What are we talking about? Present day Israel. Fifty years ago do you know that Israel was the land of Palestine? It was a no man’s land. No production, no farming, nothing. Since Israel is back in the land, everyone wants it. The production is unbelievable, both farm, agricultural, dairy and fruit farms. You name it and they have it. And where have these Jews come from? From almost every nation under heaven. And not only is the nation alive, but they have resurrected their dead language.