Four Disastrous Acts Of Judgment....March of 2023
“For thus says the Lord GOD: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast!"
The above verse....Ezekiel 14:21....is from the ESV. Whatever translation you go to it will be the same....four judgments. Jeremiah put it this way concerning those from Judah who rather than staying....
"So the men who set their mind to go to Egypt to reside there will die by the sword, by famine and by pestilence." Ezek. 42:17
Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah repeat these four judgments a few times....death and the sword and pestilence and famine....but we are more familiar with how the Apostle John described it in Revelation.....with the opening of the seal judgments.....the four horses....white and red and black and pale....and their riders.
Prophecies...warnings like this....to the evangelical....are too often the stuff that fairy tails are made of. We do not come right out and deny God's judgments....and we can actually take them seriously.....but they are for sometime in the future....and therefore not taken as seriously as God intends them to be.
So I am in this post....trying to wake us up....once again....as I've done in other posts....in an attempt to make God's warnings to us real. I want to do so by posing a hypothetical.....but a hypothetical that might in fact be happening right now
Are we in what the Bible describes as....the Tribulation....right now? That would wake you up would it not? Everyone reading this would immediately reject that possibility....because prophecy teachers have told us exactly how the tribulation starts. The problem is that they cannot possibly know this for sure. The result of all this being that we are in effect....as if sleeping....it's life as usual.....pass the potatoes....and let's eat before the big game starts!
The sword is war.....we know that. We know what famine means....and we know what death is....but how does pestilence come into it as far as the four horses of the apocalypse is concerned? My own theological tradition tends to believe that the rider on the white horse is Jesus Himself....coming to take charge of what is about to happen. Maybe this is it....but I do not see it....this theory does not fit into God's continuing warnings of four very literal judgments.
Try this on for size. The rider on the white horse is given a crown....not a sword....and not a set of scales....a crown. As I type this....the world had just experienced the greatest disaster since World War II....the coronavirus pandemic....'corona' obviously meaning....'crown.' So what about the bow. We generally think that this is a man coming to power by proclaiming peace....because arrows are not mentioned....just a bow. This is a stretch by any means. Consider this....in these words from a previous post....
"The ancient Greek fighters would put poison on their arrows. They called this....toxikon pharmakon....the archery drug. The evolution of this whole thing has given us the word....toxic. Oxford's Word of the Year for 2018....before the pandemic....was....toxic. According to the Oxford website....'the Latin word itself....(toxicus)....came from the Greek term....toxon....meaning....bow.' So....coronavirus revolves around the word....crown....and the word....bow....basically means poison."
If we are in the tribulation right now....then it would probably have started in either late 2019 or early 2020. The mid-point of the seven years would be roughly mid-2023. War would be next in line. Does anyone read any talk of war in the near future in the news? As to when the other two horses would come.....we do not know. Speculation is fine. That is in fact what we are to do....but we do not want to speculate as if we know for sure....for we surely....do not.
