Sunday, 12 August 2012

THE REVELATION OF THE SEVEN SEALS - THIRD ESEAL


THE THIRD SEAL - The Black Horse Rider
REVELATION 6:5-6

“ And when he had 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] thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”
The THIRD SEAL revealed the coming of a BLACK HORSE RIDER. Satan was not contented with just persecuting the Christians, here he changed his horse again from Red to Black. Introducing a new way of squeezing the lives of Christians during the succeeding ages - The Sardisean and the Philadelphian Ages.

"BLACK" is a color which signified the "greed and abuse" of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church began charging money for novenas, and charging money to get souls out of Purgatory, when there's no such thing as a Purgatory in the Bible. The Roman pope began to sell "indulgences" to rich individuals, offering positions in the church in exchange with properties, gold and land. These symbolized the "PAIR OF BALANCES" that the Black Horse Rider was holding in his hand.

The Roman church began acquiring properties from the people in exchange for spiritual favors. The whole thing explains the phrase "
A MEASURE OF WHEAT FOR A PENNY, and three measures of barley for a penny". The Roman church started to weigh the goods that she can get from the people and made salvation an expensive "commodity". They turned religion into a big business and were teaching creeds and dogmas out of man's ideas instead of the pure Bible. They taught that people can only be saved by "works" and "obedience" to the tenets of the Catholic church, rather than by believing by faith in the Word.
The wealthier of them found it a happy situation when Pope Leo X allowed them to buy indulgences for sins not yet committed so that they with ease of conscience could plan their awful crimes and then proceed to carry them out, knowing that the pope had already remitted their sins. The Word of God was kept from them, so who was to know the truth! Since truth comes only from the Word, the people were shut up in a dungeon of the Roman Church, awaiting death, and after death the judgment. But the great whore, drunk with the blood of martyrs and with no thought of the judgment, reeled savagely on to kill men with both spiritual and physical death.
Yet in this age, God's people cannot be defeated. God raised up again the standards of the true Christians by giving them out the spirit of a "MAN". "Man" is gifted with "wisdom and knowledge". Man is "smart". And so, this age started the AGE of the "REFORMERS". It was the “Age of Reformation”. An OPEN DOOR was set by God before the Christians in this age to evangelize the whole world with the truth of the Bible. Revelation 3:8 states:"Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my Name."
This was also the time when "separation of church and state" was finally enacted as a law. It made the way for the reformation of the church by men who were filled with the Holy Ghost. This was also the age when the "Printing Press" was invented in Germany by a man known as Gutenberg. It made way for Bibles to printed again which made way for the truth to come out.

This age was the age of Martin Luther, a Catholic priest who protested the Roman Catholic Church by exposing the abuses of the papacy and its false teachings through his "95 thesis". He spearheaded the printing of the Bibles in this age. He introduced the doctrine of "justification", teaching the people that "the just shall live by faith".

This age was also the age of John Wesley, who introduced 'sanctification" or "holiness" to the church of the living God. Other well-known evangelists that appeared in this "MAN" age were Knox, Calvin, Moody, Sankey, Finney, along many others. These men blasted out the injustices of the Catholic Church and exposed the follies of their teachings. Truly, "touch not my anointed" was the message which God has for the DEVIL. The verses "hurt not the oil and the wine has a spiritual connotation - "Oil" signifies the "anointing" of the Holy Spirit which God gave these reformers, while "wine" signified the "stimulation of revelation" which these men experienced in knowing and delivering the truth for their age.

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