WHO CAN CARRY THE GLORY? & THE PALE HORSE
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This is a two-part sermon: (1) Who Can Carry The Glory? (2) The Pale Horse.
WHO CAN CARRY THE GLORY?
Part 2 – THE PALE HORSE
Sunday, February 3, 2019, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Our Church has heard me say many times. “We will never corporately carry Revival, the Harvest, and the Glory until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:13)
That is my life scripture and my first calling. It is the cost of a Corporate Body of Believers revealing Christ and His Kingdom to the generations on the earth.
You have heard my hammer come down multiple times cautioning our congregation, “No one is allowed to get offended, or cause offense.” The leadership of this Church has been through many seasons, many conferences, many who have fallen away, gone into rebellion or just follow their own life plan. Of course, not everyone who left our ranks was due to falling away. Many moved with their jobs; the Lord sent them out; or their lives changed. The leadership of this church also knows those who are immature will try to divide, create strife, stir strife, stir trouble, and/or cause trouble. These are naysayers, those who get their feelings hurt ---usually because they don’t get the attention, their way---murmur-ers, complainers, primi-donnas, selfish ambition, wolves trying to draw disciples unto themselves, etc. etc.
The work of a Church is to disciple people into Godliness and the ways of Jesus through the Gospel of Jesus Christ that they may know Life, Love, Prosperity, Peace, Righteousness, and Joy unspeakable on earth as it is in Heaven. We are to save the lost, and teach faith to the weak. This is the work of the gospel ministry.
I continue to read, The Winds of God by Harold A Goss which is his experiences in the Pentecostal Outpouring from 1903-1914. I continue to be struck by the separation, sanctification, sacrifice, consecration and holiness of the leaders of this visitation of the LORD upon the earth.
The Holy Spirit’s outpouring of Salvation, Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Healing, Miracles, Signs and Wonders upon a city and the people of that city was contingent upon the purity of the walk and heart of the leaders. If there was any sin in the camp, just as it was in the Book of Acts, the sin was revealed by the Holy Spirit. Those who were guilty, were given an opportunity to repent, but then they were sent back to their homes or back to headquarters to evaluate their calling and willingness to put their shoulder to the plow, and not turn back.
The abuse of the legalism of the Church-under-the-law is not to be compared to the joy these dear saints experienced; not because man required it of them; or their leaders demanded it of them; but they joyfully and happily separated themselves for the work of the ministry for the race that was sat before them and the awesome outpouring of the Holy Spirit in great power in their midst.
Heb. 12:1: Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Acts 20:24: None of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
I will mention two of the stories told by Brother Goss before I bring the message on the Pale Horse.
He spoke of large tent meeting around 1912, a native African minister was the preacher and His gifts were so outstanding that great crowds were in attendance. One night after the singing had begun, he entered the tent, went straight to the platform and knelt in prayer, praying aloud for two specific people who were present in the audience who were committing a sin which had been dealt with by a pastor in the city that day.
He prayed with tenderness and great pity for these two, through prophecy, the Lord dealt with the disgrace they had brought upon themselves and upon their distant families, and upon the work of God in general.
The power of God was so strong, even the idlers around the tent, and the more vicious ones from the fringes of the dark, gathered silently and stood solidly packed around the tent, seeming scarcely to breathe.
The minister told them that their own once-whitened-garments had become so covered with pin-point dots of wrong reasoning and practices; that their robes had now turned to a grimy gray. Having allowed so many of these tiny wrongs in their lives, they were soon following a dirty gray spirit instead of the dazzling white purity of Christ. This substitute spirit had led them into the sin in which they now found themselves.
The short story is the minister prayed with them with so much compassion, the great audience fell to sobbing with them. They repent and the next day Bro. Goss gave them train-fare to their respective towns.
He said, “As our membership grew, there was a fellowship amongst us, a love which supported each other in prayer and by advice, but to our own Master we stood or fell. Spirit-filled people were swift to detect any falling away.”
2 Thes. 2:3: Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition.
We are surely in a time of “a falling away.” As a pastor, I observe and watch. It is usually one step down at a time, until rebellion and selfish desires have pulled Christians into full blown backsliding.
We have surely entered into a prophetic sign of the times with the murder of full term babies approved by New York and other states following.
Who would know than in America a culture would exist where the life of frogs, bugs, birds, etc., have more value than the life of a helpless infant?
There must again be a people who walk before the LORD in His Righteousness, through His Holy Blood, in worship, awe, and love of God more than we love our own selfish lusts and fanciful desires. If the Overcoming church does not arise, the judgment on our nation is sure.
After prayer on Wednesday night, when I walked in the door of my house, the thought came to me,
The Pale Horse of death is riding over New York.
The famous four horsemen of the apocalypse are presented to us one by one in Revelation chapter 6. The appearance of the horsemen marks the beginning of birth pains which herald the winding up of the age (Mk. 13:8). By faith, I believe the four horsemen are celestial agents of God’s government. Horses symbolize dominance and strength. In Zechariah 6:3, the four chariot horses are identified by the angel as the four spirits of the heavens. Here the word for “spirits” is “winds.” The function of the four chariot horses is to go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth; walk to and fro in all the earth…In their going forth…they have given my Spirit rest. In Zechariah we have red horses, white horses, black horses, and bay horses.
Though the four horseman of the apocalypse are white, red, black, and pale (green), God’s spirit is operating in the horses and horseman and their function is more sinister by far. The Messianic games begin with the usual race in four colors. But it is not the usual race; it is the apocalyptic death-race.
In the study of the Book of Revelation, we discovered that “exousia”(1) is given to Satan and his chain of command until the cup of iniquity is full.
The Wrath of the Lamb and the Wrath of God will destroy all that is evil and exalts itself against God.
It is God’s book that is being opened and it is His supernatural government that is being revealed. Only Christ has the authority to open the seals of God’s book. Only Christ has the authority to release the judgments sealed therein. Since no one under the earth, over the earth, in the earth, or in heaven except for the Lamb can even touch the book, then Satan has no access to the judgments.
It is my Faith statement that these are judgments from God which punishes those who abuse and refuse the everlasting gospel and Israel. .
Rev. 6:3-4: “And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and there was given unto him a great sword.
The word for red means “fiery red”. The rider is described by C. S. Lovett as the “prince of war”. The mission of the rider is to sow strife and slaughter on earth---civil war this time rather than foreign invasion. We clearly see this Red Horse spirit riding now in the nations of the earth, in our own nation as the battle between Christianity and the spirit of antichrist accelerates.
Rev. 6:5-6: “And when he has opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see you do not hurt the oil and the wine.”
The black horse signifies famine. One judgment seldom comes alone; the judgment of war naturally draws after it that of famine. The famine of bread is a terrible judgment. The price of food is inflated to roughly ten to fourteen times the normal price. Scarcity following in the wake of war generates nearly famine prices. A quart of wheat was the bare minimum for a man per day. A day’s wages would also buy him three quarts of the less nutritious barley for his family. The coin described here is the Denarius. According to this scripture the Denair will be devalued. According to the parable of Mt. 20:2, this was a laborer’s daily wage in Palestine in A.D. 30. On February 2, 2019, we see the black horse riding in Venezuela, Syria, Nigeria, Yemen and other war torn nations.
At the same time, the Lord places limits on this horseman, ordering him not to damage the vineyards or the olive orchards. Grain grows on the surface, but grapes and olive trees have deep roots. It appears this devastation is not to go below the surface of the earth, a definite limitation.
We can also identify the oil and the wine as the Holy Spirit filled saints.
Rev. 6: 7-8: “When he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
The pale horse was a livid, corpse-like color translated as green. Two riders are named. The Holy Writ states one horse with two riders. Where the dead bodies fell in the wars, famines, and plagues of the first four seals, there the beasts will be gathered.
This is not world wide tribulation because only ¼ of the earth is to be struck with these judgments.
Since Christ was envisioned by John as taking the scroll in A.D. 30, it is not surprising to find a rather close correlation between the first six seals and the forecast of the immediate future which were fulfilled within a generation. However, it is also prophetic of God’s Spirit moving today as well as down through the centuries in times of war, famine, plagues and death.
Rev. 6: 9-11: “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held; and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.”
The sin of New York and the sin of the Church are here in view. How have we come so far from the purity of Christ, that we the people allow the murder of full term babies? Babies have souls.
The soul is the mind will and emotions. The word for soul here is “psyche” and means the breath of life; the seat of the feelings, desires, affections, aversions (our heart), etc; the soul as an essence which differs from the body and Is not dissolved by death (distinguished from other parts of the body).
The souls of the martyrs are crying out continually from the altar for the Lord to avenge their blood for their faithfulness to the Word of God and the testimony which they held.
Dake writes “the soul and spirit, or the inner man, has a form and shape exactly like the outer man and fits into the body even to the outer skin. This is based upon the fact that the soul is that part which feels and the spirit is that which knows.”
This week Rush Limbaugh stated that the reason the people in New York were rejoicing over the murder of helpless babies was because of their hatred for Christianity and Israel. These babies then are martyrs for the same reason John was on Patmos, “For the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.” They were asked to wait a little longer until the number was completed. The persecution launched in A.D. 64, must run its course. When the full tale of the martyrs is made up, the prayers of the saints on the altar fall in judgment on the earth (8:5).
Rev. 6: 12-14: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.”
A great earthquake is a recurrent sign of divine visitation in the bible (Ex. 19:18; Zech. 14:4; Mt. 27:51). For the darkening of the heavenly bodies on the day of the Lord, Isa. 12:10; Ez. 32:7; Jl. 2:10; 3:15.
Joel 2:31 was quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost as part of the prophecy fulfilled at that time. Acts 2:20: “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come…”
The falling of the stars to the earth metaphorically means the collapse of established authority. (Mark 13:25) ‘And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.”
In the natural, I believe the entire universe will be shaken. Catastrophic movement occurs world-wide as a great earthquake dislocates mountain ranges. The earth is racked with convulsions. The seas don’t know where they belong. The islands, which are mountain tops, disappear. This awesome earthquake merely foreshadows a far greater one ahead (16:18).
Changes occur in the skies as well; the sun is darkened, the moon turns blood-red and the sky recedes. All these events are described in Old Testament prophecies (more than 60 of them) as signs that herald the coming Day of the Lord.
A complete convulsion of heaven and earth is implied; the use of such language to describe political upheaval is also well established in biblical prophecy. The picture of chaos-come-again in Jeremiah 4: 23-26, describes the desolation caused by foreign invaders.
Rev. 6: 15-17: ‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
John elaborates the picture by enumerating the successive ranks of men, from kings to every slave and every free man, who seek refuge on the day of wrath. They called to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us.
This wrath is the retribution which must operate in a moral universe such as God’s universe is. It is a response of His holiness to persistent and impenitent wickedness. It is indeed His strange work (Isa. 28:21) to which He girds Himself slowly and reluctantly, in contrast to His proper and congenial work of mercy.
Where His mercy is decisively repudiated, men are left to the consequences of their freely chosen course. If here the wrath of God is also the wrath of the Lamb, it is because that wrath is not detached from the cross; indeed, it is best understood in the light of the cross.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from N.K.J.V. and K.J.V. (See Bible Study Notes Revelation 6 – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 2012) – www.eastgateministries.com
1849. exousia ex-oo-see'-ah from 1832 (in the sense of ability); privilege, i.e. (subjectively) force, capacity, competency, freedom, or (objectively) mastery (concretely, magistrate, superhuman, potentate, token of control), delegated influence:--authority, jurisdiction, liberty, power, right, strength.