36: World News & Prophecy - Revelation 6:1-7

[McNeely]We are ready to get into chapter 6 of Revelation and the opening of the seals. And this is a well-known, very famous part of the book of Revelation. It begins to open up the seals that we read about in chapter 5—God sitting on the throne with a scroll in His right hand, and Christ being the one, only one worthy, worthy as the Lamb, to open those seals and the scroll.

And that’s the subject then of essentially the remainder of Revelation, at least from chapter 6 through chapter 19, as we see all of this unfurled upon the scene. I’m going to put this particular slide up on the monitor. I hope you can make it out. I should have made a copy of this for you. Actually, I’m going to give you—and I’ll do it in the next class—I have a Rubik’s Cube image of the seals, the trumpets, and the trumpet plagues of Revelation. And it puts it all together in a unique way.

This is very—what we’re getting into in this part of Revelation, kind of the core of it—are three sets of sevens. What we’re going to see is we’re going to deal with seven seals. Remember a scroll, the Lamb worthy to loose the seals. There are seven of them. The seventh seal is composed of what are called seven trumpet plagues. Okay, seven trumpets. So the seventh seal then opens up seven more trumpets. The seventh trumpet opens up seven last plagues. So there’s three sets of seven in this. And they’re all dramatic. They’re all God’s judgments upon the earth and upon the nations in this last episode of human history.

So we have seven seals. The seventh seal has seven trumpet plagues. And the seventh trumpet has seven last plagues. Three sets of seven. And that’s a rough outline of the story flow of Revelation. In the next class, and for those of you watching, we’ll put that up as part of the resource material that we have there regarding all of this.

Now, there’s a linear flow to this. First seal, second seal, third seal. But there’s also, I think—and this is part of what I gave in the introduction—I think part of understanding this, as we see them opened and poured out in sequential events, there seems to be that some of these tend to fall back or fold over on one another. And we’re going to have a number of inset chapters as we flow through this as well. The next chapter, seven, is an inset chapter. And what you understand, an inset chapter, is the story flow is interrupted.

And we see another scene and another story. Now, where does this fit? Well, this inset is taking place in the midst of these as well. There’s going to be another inset chapter that talks about the beast. The beast is around during all this time as well. And what we read about it as an inset chapter will apply to the time setting when all of these are being unleashed as well. So that’s why I say that there are events that are concurrent or folding back on one another.

And perhaps even some of these may run in a concurrent fashion when it all finally happens. I do think that the seven last plagues happen in a very quick, short period of time because of their intensity. We’ll see when we get there, the earth would—you know, all human life would be destroyed if they were drug out over months or even two years.

And we’ll see that when we read them. The whole ecological cycle would destroy all life if it were allowed to continue for any length of time. And so what you’re dealing with here is an intense judgment upon the earth and upon human culture and human society at the tail end of human experience that will be unlike anything that has ever happened before.

You have to go back to Daniel 12:1 where it says: “At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).

So a time of trouble unlike any that has ever been seen before. This is where we are as these seals begin to unfold the plan of God and the purpose of God in this.

Now, to go back to an earlier lecture I think we did back when we were going through Daniel, the different schools of interpretation of Daniel or Revelation. We’re obviously in a premillennial setting, our approach to the prophecies of the Bible and particularly Revelation. And we look at these events here as future. Alright, so we’re looking at them as they’re yet to happen.

And that we take them as real and literal, not metaphorical, not symbolic, nor do we take them as historic. There’s a school of theological thought that the book of Revelation is only historic for a century and fulfilled all at that time. I’ve talked to scholars—that’s their view. It’s all historical. There’s no prophetic nature to it. There’s no futuristic approach. So there are those ideas that are out there. Ours is obviously more—it is futuristic.

We look at this as happening in the future. We’re a premillennial approach, just to use that term there in that as it comes. Now there are certain things, and we’ll see this in the first four of these seals, that talk about false religion, war, famine, and pestilence. Those things have always been a part of human history. There’s been false religion from the beginning.

There have been wars from the beginning. There have been famines and pestilence. But the first four seals, which are those four, are shown to be opened by God at a particular point, and the intensity of them is not a part of—will come to a point, as Daniel's verse says, to create a time unlike any previously, a time of Jacob's trouble, a time of the ending tribulation upon the earth. And those conditions of deception, of human conflict, of famine and pestilence will rise to a level unknown in history and have such dramatic impact as is described.

Now these first four seals that are opened here have to do with what are sometimes called the four—in the literature they’re called four—they are four horsemen, but they are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they’re called. And of course, the first four seals—Apocalypse is just another name for Revelation, the Apocalypse. But they’re four horsemen, and this is how they’re commonly seen. Let me show you a short clip of a reenactment that we did on this, if you could turn the lights off back there, for a Beyond Today program some 10 years ago.

"Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, ‘Come and see.’ And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come and see.’ Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword. When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come and see.’ So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.’ When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and see.’ So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth” (Revelation 6:1–8).

Okay. We actually did, I think, four different programs, Beyond Today programs, one each on those four horsemen. And so you can watch those at your convenience. They’re all on the web. That was probably one of the better reenactments that we ever did on Beyond Today. We’ve done a number of them through the years. But the rider was James Myers, Mr. Myers’ eldest son, and his horse, which we commandeered—or borrowed—and used them. And with our staff, our media staff, they worked all night one night to get that done with the scenery and everything. So they did a very good job, and I think it helps to illustrate what we are talking about.

So commonly they’re called the Four Horsemen of Revelation, these first four seals. Again—false religion, war, famine, and pestilence. We have a booklet that goes along with this called The Horsemen of Revelation. And I wrote that some 10 or more years ago. It needs to be updated, but it’s on our website. The way we put it through the book, we call it just The Horsemen of Revelation. Why? Because there’s more than four. Commonly they’re called the Four Horsemen. But there’s a fifth horseman. Who’s the fifth horseman in Revelation? It’s Christ. Revelation 19—Christ appears when the heavens open on a white horse and the armies of heaven behind Him. So there’s technically five. And we felt, well, we’re not going to say four, and so we just say The Horsemen in the booklet.

And on Beyond Today we did a fifth program to focus on the fifth horseman, which is the most important one—Christ, who comes to save mankind at His second coming from the effect of those first four and the evil and destruction that they bring out. So I understood from that perspective it takes a more complete view. But, you know, commonly you’ll hear about the Four Horsemen.

You know, just another aside—some years back, I think this is the 1920s—college football in America. The Notre Dame football team had a particularly good—was having a good year. And there were four outstanding players that, you know, Notre Dame was just romping over everybody. And somebody staged a picture of these four football players from Notre Dame on four horses. And they were all kind of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame at the time, because of that particularly successful Notre Dame season. And they popularized, again, the idea of four horsemen riding—in that case in a football gridiron competition.

So you’ll see that periodically about, you know, the ride of the horsemen or the Four Apocalypse or whatever. It has—you’ll find that recurring throughout a lot of the literature because of this. So I’m not going to—let me call attention to just a few aspects of this, these first four, as we go through this. It’s been read more or less through this reenactment.

But the first one is a white horse. And again, look at verse 1—four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder. Thunder, lightning, earthquakes play a dominant role in the book of Revelation. And you shouldn’t just read over that. Periodically, we will read that, pause, and realize that this is again the throne of God. These are all emanating from God’s throne, whether it’s a voice or an action. Nothing is done at a low-key level on that level of God’s existence. He speaks like thunder.

And, you know, I like to go out on my porch when we get a thunderstorm rolling through and just stand there and listen. Watch the lightning, but listen to the—especially when you get a good night of thunder. And I just, you know, think about these verses. Think about the voice of God. And, you know, to me it’s a good experience. So, marvel, stand in awe of these natural phenomenon, and recognize that God is described this way here. And it’s a very loud voice, which means we should pay attention, which means it should impact our life. We should not take it lightly. We all know that if somebody speaks to us in a raised voice or a thunderous voice, there’s something serious going on. We better listen. If it’s our parents, especially, we better listen. But, you know, there’s drama there. There’s something important.

So this first one is that of a white horse with a bow, a crown, and he goes out to conquer. Well understood to be false religion. Now, the parallel passage to all of this is in Matthew 24. So you should turn over there and note that Christ’s Olivet Prophecy, which is what Matthew 24 is all about, is a parallel to this.

In Matthew 24:1, “Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.” All right. Remember, this is in the setting of the temple, and John is called up to heaven to receive a vision. And we saw back in Isaiah 6 that the robe of God filled the whole temple. This temple that stood in Jerusalem was only a figure or a shadow of the heavenly.

And it’s in the shadow of it that Jesus sat down with His disciples, and He said, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). And as He sat on the Mount of Olives in verse 3, “the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?’” (Matthew 24:3).

And so this is on the Mount of Olives, and this is what is called the Olivet Prophecy of Christ. And what He then tells them that are signs parallel what we’re reading in Revelation 6. So however you mark up your Bible and connect all of that, you want to do that.

Christ answered in Matthew 24:4, “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4–5). And so this parallels this first horseman, or the first seal of Revelation 6, of a rider on a white horse that comes with a bow and a crown. But as Jesus said, many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many.

Now, the first horseman of Revelation 6 is not Christ. In Revelation 19, Christ comes, and He too is on a white horse, but He doesn’t have a bow. What does He have? Anybody know?

What does He have in His hand?

Well, you would have been right. He has a sword—not a bow with an arrow. All right? So it’s not the same. It’s not the same. Sometimes people confuse the two.

This is a false Christ. This is false religion, which is what Jesus said back in Matthew 24:5: “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.”

I am a Christian, or I have a Christian church. And this is in, you know, 31 AD. 30, 31 AD. And this is Christ saying, there will be a false version of what I teach come. Now, this is repeated in other places in the New Testament—warnings about false teachers, false prophets. Peter talks about them. Paul talks about them. Christ here sets the stage.

He knew what would happen. They’ve already come. Now, keep in mind, I’ve been telling you about the emperor Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire, who is called Savior—soter, the Greek word for Savior. He was also—he was already proclaimed as the Savior of Rome and of the world order before that, you know, as Christ was born as the true Savior. We read in Acts 13 the other day, where Paul gives this sermon in Antioch of Pisidia, and he refers more than once there to Christ as Savior. And he’s doing that in the shadow of this temple to Augustus in that city of Antioch, where Augustus was worshiped as the Savior of Rome, the Savior of all world order—set up as a deception, a counterfeit, even before Christ was born.

Satan has worked his plan quite meticulously through his history and his servants.

And so that has just continued. And as we study Revelation, we talk about the beast and a false prophet and all in chapter 13, chapter 17. We will see then this final manifestation of it that comes out of the 2,000-year Christian—false Christian—version of Christ, which He warned about here in verse 4 of Matthew 24. And the story of the Christianity that developed after the first century, largely, beginning in the first century, but then afterwards, after the timing of the writing of what we have in Scriptures, was a departure from the faith that finally became enthroned in the fourth century with the church councils that began—the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople, the Council of Laodicea.

When I take tours to the city, the site of the city of Laodicea, where there was a church council—I believe it was in the 340s AD after Nicaea. Nicaea was 325. So some 20, 25 years later was the Council of Laodicea, which even went further to cast doubt and to attack those who kept the Sabbath and the Holy Days. And there’s an actual plaque on a site of a Byzantine church in the city of Laodicea today that lists the some 40-odd more canons or decrees of the Council of Laodicea.

And I always point it out to the people that are with me on the tour, what they say. They say, “Do not judaize with those that keep the Sabbath or the festivals.” This is how far these church councils went to stamp out the truth. So the deception began early, rolled through the centuries, became institutionalized in what we would call Nicene Christianity. Nicene Christianity. Let me take a riff on that for a moment.

What would you think Nicene Christianity is describing?

Nicene refers to a place called Nicaea, which was in Asia Minor up near Constantinople. And Nicaea had the first church council in the year 325 AD, called by the emperor Constantine. The year 325 is a significant marker in church history because what develops from this is typically called Nicene Christianity, where a lot of the false teaching that had replaced the truth, that had been developing over the first, let’s say, nearly 300 years of the church experience from the time of Acts 2 to 325—that becomes institutionalized.

The Council of Nicaea talked about Easter and the Sabbath. I mentioned Laodicea. And so with Constantine becoming the first Christian emperor, he gives his name and his stamp of approval to this. And what you have to understand is essentially then this is something that I sometimes tell people who want to know about, well, who are you, the United Church of God, your belief? And one way to do it in language that a theologian, a scholar can relate to is to say, well, look, essentially we reject everything… We reject Nicene Christianity. Nicene Christianity, which would be essentially everything from 325 to the present. The Council of Nicaea came out with a creed that was revised in the year 381 at the Council of Constantinople. We talked about this when we were going through the Trinity teaching. But in Orthodox Christianity today, and those that are really serious about their Christian faith, every week they will recite the Nicene Creed. They may not understand what they’re saying, but it’s become a rote part of a confession of faith. And the current version is completely Trinitarian, which we would not obviously want to have anything to do with.

But this whole development of what we call Nicene Christianity institutionalized this false Christ, this false Christian version of Christianity Jesus warned about.

And so I said to people, well, I’m not a Nicene Christian. And that, at least in a scholar’s mind, gives them a little bit of a frame of reference. They would then say, “Oh, you’re a primitive Christian.” And I say, well, I don’t use that term, but yeah, you’re getting a little bit closer.

In that, primitive Christianity refers to, let’s say, prime Christianity, i.e. what Christ taught and the disciples taught and what we read about in the New Testament.

They call, there’s a term for that, primitive Christianity. But it’s a little closer to what that—so sometimes you got to know how to talk to people and express what you believe as you give your answer for the hope that is within you, at least understand a little bit of their language so that you can carry on a conversation where you convey understanding. And if you would say to somebody, well, what I believe and do, keeping the Sabbath, the Holy Days, non-Trinitarian, I have nothing to do with Nicene Christianity. And of course, that’s going to separate you, just like that, from everybody else because they are Nicene. What is today is Nicene Christianity.

But it is a Christianity based on false teaching, which is what you’re learning as you go through your courses here at ABC. So that’s the first seal. Second seal is a red horse that takes peace from the earth, it kills people, and there was given to him a great sword—war.

There’s always been war from the time of Cain and Abel. And all the battles we read about, wars we read about in the New Testament, and also in secular history. What is being described here, when these seals open, there’ll be a time of deception unlike any other. Christ talks about, in Matthew, later in Matthew 24, He talks about deception that could deceive even the very elect, the people of God. And so this deception mounts and even intensifies at the time of the end, even though we’ve always had it. War will do the same, and we’ll talk about that as we go through Revelation. And so that’s the second horse.

Verse 6 then, of Revelation 6: “When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” A black horse with a pair of scales. And in the midst of the four living creatures, a voice saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, don’t harm the oil and the wine.’”(Revelation 6:6) This is famine. Again, there have always been famines in human history. Even as we were reading in Acts 11, or was it chapter 10, where Agabus comes to Antioch and foretells a famine in Judea, to which the church in Antioch sent a relief package down to the church in Jerusalem. There have always been famines, and there have been some big ones.

There have been famines caused by a lack of rain. There have been famines caused in history by governmental engineering, where a government policy was deliberate to starve out and kill hundreds of thousands of their own people. There have been famines that have been done by—because of war, the effect of war in an entire region.

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union at that time, engineered a famine in Russia. And it was aimed at a group of people that he wanted to kill. He didn’t want them around. Because they were against him. He was one of the horrible, really horrible men of that period of time. So famine can be engineered. We’ve had some modern famines in parts of Africa that are just because of government malfeasance. And then sometimes because of drought as well, in the horn of Africa and some of those nations there.

What is being described here, with the price of a quart of wheat being a denarius. In the Roman world, a denarius was about 15 cents, maybe a little bit more with inflation today. But a person would receive a denarius for a day’s work at that time. That doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but costs were comparative. And so he would be able to buy some wheat, or… and he might have enough for one meal with that amount. And he’d have to go back and work the next day for another denarius, for enough wheat for another meal. If he bought barley—barley was a cheaper grain than wheat—he might get two or three meals out of a denarius’ worth of barley. All right? And the wheat would make the better bread. You could use barley to do something with it as well.

If you put this scenario in language that fits us today, here’s what’s being described. A denarius, or the amount of money that would be earned, would be enough to buy you a loaf of bread, but nothing to put on it. No chicken, no turkey, you know, nothing. No mayonnaise, no pickles, no cheese, no mayo, nothing. All right? So you’ve got a body, a loaf of bread. And it wouldn’t be your really good quality 16-bricks bread from one of our better bakeries here in town, or whatever. It would be a cheaper loaf of white bread, Wonder Bread, or whatever it might be, okay? I don’t eat Wonder Bread. Maybe you do, but I don’t.

That’s famine conditions. That’s not a whole lot. Life would be reduced to its barest necessity, and this is what’s being described. Now, famine often comes as a result of war. War often comes as a result of false religion or religious strife. History, especially in Europe, through the Middle Ages, the wars were religious in nature—Catholics against Protestants.

And so this is history. But the war—you know, false religion leads to strife, war leads to famine, and war can lead to pestilence, which is the fourth seal. Verse 7: “When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and see;’ So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades, or the grave, followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth” (Revelation 6:6–8).

Now, if you look at chapter 24 of Matthew again—I forgot to do this with the previous two—but look at verse 6. After Christ talks about religious deception, verse 6 He says, “You will hear wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” So here’s the second seal of Revelation 6, verse 6 of Matthew 24. “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.” Period. And so there’s where the second seal of Revelation 6 comes in.

Interestingly, back in Matthew 24:7, “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.” That word for nation is ethnos, and it has to do with the ethnicity, which is your basic grouping of a people—Polish, German, Lithuanian, Irish. Catholic—whatever it might be. Not Catholic, Catholic is a religious distinction. But the ethnicity, the nationality. And that strife at even the most basic level, almost tribal strife between people.

Greater global war will involve multiple nations lined up against a group of other nations. World War II—we had Germany, Italy, and Japan as what were called the Axis powers, and they were fighting France, America, and Great Britain. Then later, Russia, after they came into—they were attacked by Hitler. He turned on them, and then Russia, those were called the Allied powers. But global war tends to group multiple nations against another grouping of nations.

But we also see in history, and a lot in more recent times, ethnic strife that fits into this description of nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom.

And the condition of war then, that continues to rise at the time of the end and intensify. And again, we will read about this. There’s a great deal of examination in one sense.

There have always been wars, but what is described will be a time of conflict unlike any of the other, and the subsequent passages in Revelation, especially in chapter 16, where out of the mouth of the beast and the false prophet become these demonic forces, the ability to draw upon the forces of the world to bring together a final conflict at Armageddon. And again, a final lineup of nations at that time.

So there’s an intensity that builds through these. And the same then would be said of, going back to Matthew 24:7, then it says, “There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.” And so you have then the third and fourth seal mentioned there in verse 7, along with earthquakes, which will be described in Revelation as well.

But the famines and pestilences relate directly to the third and fourth horseman of chapter 6.

Now, Jesus concludes at verse 8 of Matthew 24, that “all these are the beginning of sorrows.”

You haven’t seen anything yet, He’s saying. Wait till you get a load of this. And then more comes, which He goes on to describe, which also correspond with what we see in Revelation 6. I’m going to stop right there at Matthew 24:8. “These are the beginning of sorrows.” It seems that these four seals, these four horsemen that ride, as they intensify, they signal a beginning of a time of trouble or sorrow, a time of a beginning.

Now, we have covered in Daniel—remember back in chapter 11 and at verse 40, where it says that “the king of the South will push at the king of the North, and the king of the North retaliates by coming into the region of the king of the South.” And we covered that at that time. And at the time I told you that Daniel 11:40 is a trigger of events of the time of the end.

We haven’t seen that happen yet. Sometimes people want to say, well, where are we in Bible prophecy? Where are we as we approach the time of the end? You’ve got to know your timeline that Daniel and Revelation tell us. And that’s at the crux of it right there. Daniel 11:40 is a trigger. The king of the South pushes at the king of the North. And there is a unique event with a retaliation and forces that arise and develop that trigger then what is described not only in Daniel 11 on into Daniel 12. Remember that was one continuous prophecy. We’ve read Daniel 12:1 now today.

And now with these first four seals that Christ here says are the beginning of sorrows at verse 8 of Matthew 24. So stay with me here for a minute.

We’ve got a beginning point, a beginning of sorrows. Daniel 11:40, I call it a trigger.

We haven’t seen that happen yet. But a rise of deception, religious deception, an intensity of war—Daniel 11:40 fits that. And then you throw into the mix famine and pestilence that begin to pop up or to arise in various parts, creating great concern, focus, and even death.

But this is the beginning of sorrows. Now we’ll talk about in the next class what follows after this with the fifth and sixth seal. But I just want to set this here and leave it here today in this class at this particular point. Because again, we get fixated sometimes. When is Christ going to return? Where are we in Bible prophecy? What does this event mean? And we should be watching. I’ve been teaching you that all along here. We should be alert. We should be aware.

Your urgency doesn’t come from headlines, remember? Your urgency comes from the Bible, God’s Spirit. That’s where your urgency comes from. Not because you’re watching some world scene or world condition, which I do every day. And I’ve been trying to teach you, you should be able to pay a bit more attention than you do to what’s going on in the world. But my urgency and yours should come from the Bible, from the words of Christ, from the words of Ezekiel, from the words of Paul. Be awake. Be alert. Don’t go to sleep.

Don’t be like the five virgins that didn’t have enough oil.

Live your life almost like leaning into the wind. Aware. Alert.

Depositing into your 401 and your IRA, preparing for your future, but reading your Bible and recognizing, hey, it could come like a thief in the night. Or, God forbid, our life could come to an end. And we’re sealed then, we pray, for the resurrection. We don’t have to worry about Babylon and watching for all of these things. But if our eyes are on God, then we have the right sense of urgency. And it’s balanced, it’s proportionate, and it’s in the right way.

While at the same time, we keep our eye on what’s going on in the world today, and we don’t get caught off guard. And I do think that that’s what the Bible—Christ is saying, the example of Daniel affirms it—that we should seek to be wise and understanding of all of these matters so that we are not caught off guard.

We have lived through a famine—no, I’m sorry, a pestilence in recent years, the pandemic, the coronavirus.

It’s come and gone. But I will tell you, five years ago at this moment, as I’m speaking right now, we were kind of hearing about this. You were wherever you were. If you were paying attention, you were younger then. But then your school got shut down. Your church couldn’t meet.

Everything changed, literally, right? Had to start wearing those masks. And we went through all of this. The world did change. I mean, we actually changed. We were ready to go to press with an issue of Beyond Today magazine. And then it shut down. Literally overnight we decided—we had a late night phone call, our staff—we said, we’ve got to do a whole new issue. And so the, I think, March-April issue of 2020 was done from scratch after shutdown happened. We realized we were in a world pandemic and we had to talk about that. So we did. But we’re out of it. We can go to Disney World now.

What have we learned? I personally think that that was a dress rehearsal for what Scripture talks about here in the plagues and the pestilence here. A dress rehearsal that we should learn from, just how quickly things can change. I don’t know how it impacted you being five years younger in your life, but I know that being isolated from school, from church, from people, started doing crazy things with people, creating anxiety, depression.

We’re still dealing with the after effect of that in our world today, especially among younger people your age. So the effect lingers. Take that up to another level and you’re into what is being described here, and we should learn from that.

Next class, we’ll start with the fifth seal and go forward with that. But we’re getting into the depth of Revelation at this time, so we’ll pick that up in the next class. Okay.