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Who Are the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Revelation 6:1-17 Compass Church Life Group Lessons November #1

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Who Are the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Revelation 6:1-17 Compass Church Life Group Lessons November #1 Who Are The 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse? Revelation 6:1-17 Compass Church Life Group Lessons November #1 1. The 4 horsemen is a term common in our culture for bad things coming. Let’s read the original source for this term and do so carefully for comprehension. Read the passage at least 2 times and underline key words. • Where do the horsemen come from? Whose authority are they under? • What does each do? White horse Red horse Black horse Pale horse (Rem. Clint’s movie) • Sum up in your own words the message of this chapter. • What is the implication for YOU as you live this week? On a scale of 1 to 10 how much does that affect you during the week? 2. Consider this quote from the sermon: Dosteovsky is one of the greatest novelists in history. In The Brothers Karamozov he creates a character who is determined to prove atheism is true and Christianity is a lie. Ivan is his name. He keeps a notebook in which he records every evil, every suffering, every tragedy he hears of. This notebook of evil and suffering is his proof against God. Either God does not exist, or if He does exist, He is cruel and indifferent and unloving because He does not put an end to evil. Of course, the message of this Book is that at The End of time God will put an end to evil. But in the MEANTIME, before the End of Time, the Christian life looked like a LOSER’S LIFE. It certainly did when Domitian was emperor. He threw more than 40,000 Christians to the lions and gladiators. Their crime? Being Christians. Christians were wobbling. Many were thinking: Jesus may be on the throne in heaven, but Satan is running things on earth. The Book of Revelation is Jesus’ answer. Remember that the title of this book is given in the opening sentence in chapter 1. The title is The Apocalypse Of Jesus Christ. Apocalypse = unveiling, pulling back the curtain. In chapter 6 the Lamb is on the throne and He breaks 7 seals on the scroll that pull back the curtain on what will happen in the future. Yes, evil does horrible things in the meantime, but don’t blame Jesus. It is like having a house that you rent out. Without your permission the renters throw wild parties. Lots of drugs and alcohol and some women are raped and maybe someone is shot. And they tear your house up. Beautiful things are WRECKED. Likewise, people tear up the earth and the environment for profit or careless littering. We are merely guests on earth but we tear the earth up as if it is a rental house. Jesus told the story of the landlord coming back and kicking people out. That’s what you do. You say “Out of my house” and you start to renovate it so it’s better than the original. That’s what happens at the end of time. The landlord, Jesus, comes back and evil will be kicked out of this world and it will be renovated. • Underline the most important sentence and say why. • Summarize the illustration of renting out your house. What is the point? How might that illustration be useful to explaining to someone why not to blame God for bad things? (He has made us STEWARDS of His planet. He is letting us stay on His earth which we did not build and do not own.) 3. Consider this quote. Read it several times for comprehension. In 95AD Christians thought things could not get worse and maybe some of us are thinking that in 2020. But Jesus pulls back the curtain on the future and says that as the end of time draws near, things will get a lot worse than we have ever seen before in history. The 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse symbolize what happens when Jesus is rejected and people go their own way. When Jesus is rejected there is no longer any resistance to our sin nature of selfishness and rage and revenge and greed and the result is bad things are done and people suffer. The 4 horsemen describe how bad it gets. The 1st horse is white and the rider has a bow and a crown. This horse symbolizes evil disguising itself as good and beneficent. This rider deceives people. He gains power over people and the world by deception. He is the anti-Christ. We will hear more about him in this Book but for now he is simply anti-Christian. Not anti all religion, just anti-Christianity because Satan hates Jesus. He will be a political leader who comes to power through lies and then spreads evil and suffering. The 2nd horse is red and the rider has a giant sword. Red symbolizes blood. Civil strife in nations is created by this rider. In marriages, between races, and between nations. Division is the work of the this 2nd horseman. This is part of what is happening in America today. RACISM, RIOTS, murder, division. You can hear the hoofbeats of the 2nd horse of the Apocalypse. The 3rd horseman rides a black horse and he is holding a scale used to weigh wheat. This horse symbolizes famine caused by wars. Times are so hard and the famine so severe that it takes a full day’s pay to buy enough wheat for 1 person which means that families are hungry. But the rich can buy luxuries like wine. The 3rd horse symbolizes inequality and greed and the indifference of wealthy people to the plight of the poor. They buy wine and luxuries while people go hungry The 4th horse of the Apocalypse is pale in color. This time the rider has a name - - Death. And Hades follows him. That is not hell. Hades in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead. The grave. And the horrible thing is that one quarter of the earth’s population is killed. The horse is a pale color because corpses are pale. The 4th horseman of the Apocalypse leaves corpses everywhere. Did you know that in the last 10 years of the 20th century more than 6,000,000 died as a result of wars and 1.5 million were children. All the children shot and killed in Chicago and Atlanta in the past 2 months is pure evil at work. You can hear the hoofbeat of the 4th horse coming. When the 5th seal on the future is opened by Jesus. John sees an altar in heaven. John says; “And I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the testimony they had maintained for Jesus.” (Revelation 6:9) These are Christians who have been martyred by Rome. Why are their souls under the altar? Because in the Old Testament when animals were sacrificed as an offering to God, their blood was thrown under the altar. John is saying that the death of these Christians for Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice they could make for Him. The big question is will Christians be spared the tribulation of the end of time. I wish I could say yes. A few summers ago I was studying Judaism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one day I asked the rabbi professor a question. He replied, “What do you want to be true?” I was stunned. I said, “It’s not what I want to be true but what is true whether I want it to be or not.” He just laughed. Too many choose to believe what they want to be true, not what God says is true. I know that New York Time bestsellers universally tell us that we will not go through the tribulation. Books like Left Behind. Their authors make millions because we want what they say to be true. But talk to Christians in the 3rd world like Africa and tell them that they will not go through the tribulation and they will go “Huh? What?” Talk to the families of 1.5 million Armenians slaughtered by Muslims in Turkey in the early 1900’s. The list is LONG of tribulations Christians have suffered. All through history this has been so. Why would we expect the End of History to be any different? • Summarize as best you can what this quote is arguing (Remember that Christians are on the planet when the horsemen come) • Who is under the altar and why? • What is the point of my story of studying at Hebrew University? • How does that apply to the End of Time and the thorny issue of whether Christians avoid the Tribulation or go through it? 4. This is a most important quote. It asks a very deep question. So what are the implications of the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse and the seals that are open to the future? 1st, “You only live once” is a lie. Everyone lives twice. There is eternal life. Everyone lives twice, either in heaven or the other place if you insist on rejecting Jesus as Savior and Lord. But everyone lives twice one way or another. This is a graph of your life. Your earth life is a tiny dot compared to eternal life that is forever and without end. Earth life is merely a tiny dot. Maybe 60 or 70 or even 90 years. A mere dot compared to forever. It is amazing that some Christians hardly ever think of heaven where life is always as God meant it to be and forever.
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