Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Next on Light on the Hill, we'll observe what happens when a totalitarian ruler is in charge, and it's not pretty. You have a totalitarian ruler. He brings in war. After war comes into play, it's economic failure and collapse, it's famine, all of that. Then after that, the end result is death.

By the way, this is what it's going to look like when Christians aren't in this world and the final Antichrist becomes a totalitarian ruler. Imagine. Imagine how ugly that's going to be.

Hello, and thank you for joining us for Light on the Hill. Pastor James Kaddis will be in Revelation chapter 6. We'll be learning about the first four seal judgments, what is commonly referred to as the horsemen of the apocalypse. It's during this time that the final Antichrist will come onto the scene, and as we'll learn today, he is very much a totalitarian ruler. He's the rider of the white horse. Here's Pastor James with more.

James Kaddis: Look at what it says in verse 1 of Revelation chapter 6. It says, "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals." By the way, these were the seals that are being opened, or the seals that we talked about last week. If you don't remember that, I would highly recommend you go over the Bible study that I went. It's free, available online, and I would take a listen to it. But he opens up one of the seals and I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of four beasts saying, "Come and see."

Very interesting to think about this, the dynamic that's taking place right now, that John is watching. He sees this very first beast that says, "Come on, take a look." And I saw and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.

By the way, it is interesting because he often times is conflated with the white horse that exists at the end of Revelation, and this is not the same rider. The rider of the white horse here is the devil, in essence. This is the Antichrist. Understand that. This is the person who is going to live on this earth and be possessed by the devil to do the most demonic work that has ever existed in human history and will ever exist. So we are talking about the Antichrist.

This is a person who is seeking to replace God. Understand that. He is looking at removing any reference of God in the minds and the hearts of the people around him and he himself to become God. We find out that eventually that's true in Revelation 13, where he sets himself up in the temple and he actually demands to be worshipped.

So much so that in Revelation chapter 14, we have angels that are begging the people that are on the earth, "Do not take this mark. If you take the mark, you have no hope. You're gone." And yet people are in line still to take the mark. Kind of a scary thing when you think about it. Not scary for us because we won't even be around when that actually happens. But look at some of the descriptors that we get concerning this guy. Look at what it says about him.

Number one, it says that he sat, the one that sat on he had a bow and a crown was given to him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer. Did you notice he had a bow but he didn't have an arrow? Did you notice that? And did you also notice that it was given to him? That's what it says here, that it was given to him a crown, which means he's a ruler, which means he is an influential ruler, a powerful ruler.

The Bible says that he has a bow but he doesn't have an arrow, which means he will scare people into full and complete submission with his words, not technically deploying the weapon that would cause people to comply. In many cases, it won't be through fear. In many cases, as a matter of fact, a majority of the cases, it's going to be through flattery. It's going to be through, "I can give you the hope that you've been looking for."

Remember, the Jews in essence during this time period think that this is their Messiah. They're going to realize very quickly, right at the Revelation chapter 13 mark, that this wasn't the Messiah and that it was a terrible mistake what they did, and they're going to repent of what they did and they're going to become some of the most extraordinary people on earth at that time. They're going to be the evangelists of the world and some really interesting things are going to happen.

But he's given a crown, this guy. So that means he's a ruler and he has a bow, but he does not have an arrow. If you think about that, what does the Bible say? He goes forth conquering and to conquer. He's a totalitarian ruler. He pretty much rules everything. By the way, we learn about this in the last days. We're going to learn a lot more about this as we get on with Revelation and continue to study Revelation, but there will be a confederation of nations that comes out of Europe, which is already forming right now.

People don't really think about this, but we have a confederation of nations that are already forming in Europe, and within that confederation, you know what they're going to do? They're all going to yield their power to one person. That's what they're going to do. They're going to yield their power to one person, and that one person is going to rule furiously. So this is how this guy rules. He is the ruler, he's the rider of the white horse. He is a totalitarian ruler. He is the Antichrist.

Now, look what happens. Verse 3, "And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, 'Come and see.'" So the seal opens, the second beast says, "Come and see." But who is this beast? Look what it says. Verse 4, "And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him that he sat thereon to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another, and there was given unto him a great sword." Think about it. He takes peace from the earth. What do Christians do? Christians bring peace.

I keep telling this to people, and people often times have such a difficult time understanding this. People think that peace means the absence of conflict. But in reality, you have to have conflict in order to be able to maintain peace. If you think about the way that the terminology is being utilized here, the Bible says that the rider of this red horse will take away peace. So in essence, what's going to happen is there is going to be a removal of peace and everything that goes on with peace, which means there will be full-scale war. This final Antichrist comes in, he brings in war, but these are the wars that end all wars. These are the worst of the wars.

Then you've got the rider of the black horse. Watch what this says and this is very, very interesting. Look at what it says in verse 5. It says, "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.'"

Think about this. What happens? This is the rider of the black horse. When you have war come into play, then you have terrible famine in the land. Not only do you have famine in the land, but you have economic collapse, economic failure. What this is describing, by the way, is rapid inflation. That's what this is describing.

Think about this for a second. According to this, what it's going to take to buy a loaf of bread. For you to buy a loaf of bread—which by the way, bread has been on the increase, the price of bread has been on the increase. I used to remember when I could go to the grocery store and I could buy a loaf of Home Pride, if it's on sale you could buy two for $2.50. You could buy a loaf of bread for $1.25 or for a dollar.

My dad used to laugh at me when I used to complain about the prices going to $2 or $3, which now they're $5, so that same loaf of bread. My dad used to laugh at me and he'd say, "James, in the '70s, in the 1970s, we could take $5 and with $5 you could buy steak, you could buy chicken, you could buy tons of bread and all kinds of other things that went with that, and you would complain about how much money you had actually spent in the early '70s when I first came into this country." This is my dad would tell me this all the time. I'd be like, "Yeah, whatever, you're exaggerating."

Well, you start looking at all of the inflationary mechanisms that have been deployed throughout the context of history from the 1970s, you begin to realize my dad wasn't exaggerating. He wasn't wrong. He was not wrong. Think about how inflation has worked. Can I just draw for you a local picture of what inflation has looked like in the last year and a half? Forget year and a half. Let's just say three years. In 2020, I want you to understand this. If you had $100,000 in the bank and you've done nothing with that money, which if you have done nothing with that money, I'm so sorry, but that's pretty ignorant, pretty foolish. But let's just say in 2020 you had $100,000 in the bank.

Let me just draw for you a very grim picture. That $100,000 that you had in the bank in 2020, today, right now in this moment, has the buying power of roughly $40,000. I'm not joking. That is not an exaggeration. I'm not playing around. Now so many people say, "Well, no, we haven't seen evidence of inflation like that." Well, the reason why people are saying we haven't seen evidence of inflation like that is because they are taking the inflationary indexers, that continue to show where inflation is taking place and they've changed those terms because they're taking an index and what they're doing with this index is they're saying in this index exist eggs and bread and cheese, the kind of things that people buy every day, and now they're removing all of those things and they're putting in aluminum.

They're throwing in things like aluminum, they're putting in the type of metals that people don't buy at all, where there's still a little bit of inflation but not much. And that's why we're living in a world today in the United States of America where you used to go and buy a sheet of plywood—folks, I'm not lying when I tell you this—you could buy a sheet of plywood in 2020 or 2019, this is not an exaggeration, for $10. And at one point that same sheet of plywood is $90. It's not an exaggeration. At one point it got that high.

But you know what happens when inflation skyrockets, especially under a totalitarian ruler and especially during the time that war exists? There's always a ruling class that's preserved. It says here, "Don't touch the oil and the wine." By the way, let's talk about what a loaf of bread is going to cost in that day. What a loaf of bread is going to cost in that day is going to be anywhere from $150 to $500. Think about that for a second. Think about that.

It is going to be anywhere from a day's wage to up to three days' wages in order to buy a single loaf of bread. Think about that. And what it talks about, not touching the oil and the wine, what it basically speaks of is speaks of the fact that there will be a ruling class that will benefit from the war and all the things that are going on.

Have you ever heard of people like Soros? Have you ever heard of these wicked people like all of these individuals that are tied into the World Economic Forum? Have you heard of the Clintons? Have you heard of all of these different people that we're talking about? All of these people are growing financially. Do you know that Nikki Haley, a few years ago, didn't even have a dime to her name? She had nothing to her name.

But what is she? She's a complete warmonger. Now she's worth hundreds of millions of dollars because when you have totalitarian rule that comes into place and you begin to bring all of this other stuff in—you bring war into the picture—you begin to see economic failure in the countries in which war is propagated, but you always see the ruling class get more powerful. You always see them get more wealthy. You always see them get more rich. That's exactly what happens.

And folks, it's kind of crazy when you think about it. It's kind of crazy when you start looking at these men who have done all of these evil things who are completely untouchable. That's exactly what this is talking about. When you have a totalitarian ruler that comes into play, he brings in war, and after that war becomes economic collapse, and in that economic collapse, you have the ruling class that stays preserved. And it's very, very real, and that's what we're going to see happening even in the days of this final Antichrist.

Look at what it goes on to say, and this is perhaps the most tragic portion of this reading. And I just have to tell you, it's just sad. Look at what the Bible continues to say here. Verse 7, "And 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 the power was given unto him—notice this—over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth."

By the way, it is interesting. The reason why a quarter of the world's population dies isn't necessarily the direct effects or directly the war that they may have been in the midst of. It's the effects of all of it. Famine comes as a result. Plague comes as a result. All these crazy things that happen as a result of war. People are dying left and right. It's very, very sad.

By the way, so many of the most wicked creations that we see in society were the result of a ruling class of people post a massive world war effort. Folks, it's not a surprise that the very person who inspired Hitler to do what Hitler did—who is the very person who has put into effect all the abortions in this country and the things that have gone on around the world—really came into prominence and power after World War I. Think about that for a second. War brings these things into fruition.

This whole neo-Malthusian mindset that is existed amongst the ruling class ever since has been responsible for a lot of deaths. By the way, when I bring up that 300 million worldwide deaths in the last 150 years, I'm not counting the abortions. Because if I were to count the abortions—which are in essence an effect of exactly all of the things that we've been talking about—that number is skyrocketing. That number is rapidly approaching 500 to 700 million. Think about that for a second. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible picture.

Some people say, "Well, James, wait, wait, wait. We always hear that the numbers around 60 million that have died from abortion." No, actually, that number is probably closer to 85 to 90 million, and that is this country alone, that's not worldwide. That's just America, that's not worldwide. Folks, that's the pattern.

You have a totalitarian ruler. He brings in war. After war comes into play, it's economic failure and collapse, it's famine, all of that. Then after that, the end result is death. By the way, this is what it's going to look like when Christians aren't in this world and the final Antichrist becomes a totalitarian ruler. Imagine. Imagine how ugly that's going to be.

You should also be thankful for something. The fact that you are being used by God to be the preserving influence. How are Christians being preservers? Well, number one, they're filled with the Spirit of God, which means they won't tolerate many of the things that they see going on around them. But number two, the way they become the preserving influence is they speak up. They stand in the midst of wickedness going on around them.

I think it's important to note, and we should probably talk about this because we're watching history repeat itself. I keep saying this. History is repeating itself. We are in a place right now where anti-Semitic sentiment has grown at a more rapid pace than it did in World War II Germany. It's that more extreme, way more extreme than it was even back then. And we should really be alarmed by this.

Hitler feared one type of person. He didn't fear any other. He didn't fear military strengths. He didn't fear there was lots of people that he did not fear, but there was one type of person that he feared and he feared them the most and he went out of his way to destroy their lives the fastest and to go as far as he could with completely wiping them off the map. And that was people like Bonhoeffer, men who loved God, who were willing to take a stand in the name of Christ in order to fight the wickedness that was going on around him.

And the thing that I would tell you is this, folks: we can rejoice in the fact that we will not be here for what I just read. Thank God. Can we say amen to that? Yeah, amen. Thank God we won't be here for that. But I can tell you this right now: in the meantime, we have an obligation to be the preserving influences in this world and that means fight like we've never fought before. Fight the good fight. Do the work that God has called you to do. Be aware. Open up your eyes. Educate yourself in these things.

I can tell you one of my favorite things to do as I close up this book, this Bible, besides teaching the Bible and engaging, one of my favorite things to do is to look around for some of the young people in our church. And I'm going to tell you something about our young people. I'm going to give you a piece of insight that maybe they might not even realize about themselves.

If you want to get their attention, you're not going to do it by trying to be cool. Can I just promise you that? I'm never going to get our young people's attention—when I say young people, I'm talking about kids in their 20s and under—you're not going to get their attention by trying to be cool because you'll never be cool. I promise you that. It's something I've learned very quickly.

You're never going to be cool and I don't even understand these kids. I look at some of these kids and I just wonder what the heck color is the sky in your world? That's what I think. There's nothing I can relate to with these kids, not one thing. But here is the thing: if you want to learn to minister to these kids, you really want to learn to understand what they do—and it's one of the things I love doing more than anything as a pastor—sit down and talk to them about the things that most people say is crazy to even talk about. Honestly.

Have a conversation with these kids about what a lot of people are calling conspiracies today. Seriously. Work through it with them. Talk to them about it. You want to know why? Because that whole generation is doing what? They're pursuing truth. They're wanting to find out truth.

And there's a reason why the enemy is working harder to destroy that generation and the elderly faster than any group of people that he seeks to destroy. He wants to destroy the babies, he wants to destroy the elderly, and he wants to destroy the generation that are truth seekers. Why? Because when you destroy those, you can completely take over a society and flatten it.

Engage, guys. Start hunting for the truth. Start looking for reality. Start having these discussions with people. Start sitting down and bringing the Bible into these discussions. Start talking about these things. When they come up to you and say, "Hey man, look, I heard this, I saw this in the news. Is this a real thing? Could this really be the case?" and you say, "Yeah, let me tell you why. The Bible says it would happen."

Learn to understand it, that you would engage in that battle because it's very real. Folks, I'm going to just say this right now and I've been saying it for a long time: we're running out of time. We are on borrowed time. And God's gift to us is the fact that he's allowed us to exist as long as we have to tell people about the hope that's in front of us. Do not walk away from that opportunity. Why? Because Christ could come in any moment.

We see it given to us right here. This is how it works. By the way, now you know why I hate totalitarian rule so much. Now you know why I speak up so loudly, because the Bible tells us what that looks like and what it ends up becoming. It's real. It's true. And it's happening every day. So let's fight the good fight.

Father in heaven, we just thank you, Lord, for your word. We thank you for all the things that you communicate to us in your word and through your word. And Lord, we pray for wisdom and inspiration and understanding, Lord, that can only come from walking with you. Fill us with your spirit, Lord. Give us your discernment, Lord. Teach us your word and help us to understand what it is you're saying to us from day to day. So Father, we love you and we thank you. Go before us and fill us with your spirit now, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill. He'll be right back with more. As we go through the study of Revelation, there may come a time when you miss a message or would just like to hear a program again. If so, visit lightonthehillradio.com and click on Radio or listen through our app. We have a Light on the Hill app available for iPhone and Android users. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

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As we're going through Revelation, this is a great time to mention Pastor James's new book entitled The Last Book. It will share what you need to know about Revelation, the rapture, and the end times. This guide to Revelation is part one of two, and you can order it today at lightonthehillradio.com or at Amazon.

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Pastor James is back with us now. Today you reminded us that Christians are the preserving influence in the world. That means we're to speak up and take a stand against the evil that exists here. What are some practical ways we can do that at a time when very few are doing so?

James Kaddis: I think perhaps one of the most important practical aspects of this is to be informed what's going on. You have to understand what's happening in the political realm. You have to allow yourself to be educated with the new rules, laws that people are trying to write, the things that politicians are saying. Why? Because God calls us as believers to engage in these political issues.

It's one part of a multifaceted set of issues that we have to tackle. So perhaps the most profound part of all of this centers around developing a foundation of knowledge and awareness about the things that are happening and then understanding your biblical worldview that you might be able to address them practically.

And one of the things that you can do that will help you to do that is to listen to people who address those things on a regular basis, especially those that are in the ministry. I think of Pastor Jack Hibbs, for example, as a great example of that. I know I engage in it on a regular basis. You can go to my YouTube channel and learn more about that. But there's a lot of practical tools that are out there available to help you become equipped to stand up for these things. And here's the thing: speak up. It's really important.

Guest (Male): Amen. Thanks, Pastor James. Tomorrow on Light on the Hill, hear all about God's coming judgment as our study in Revelation chapter 6 resumes with Pastor James Kaddis. Here's a preview.

James Kaddis: I have talked to many people who say that they believe that God is real and that they believe that God is true, but they want to continue to live their unrighteous lifestyle and they know that if the church gets raptured, then they know that what they have to do is just not take the mark of the beast. There's a couple of things I want to mention here before we get any deeper into this discussion, and that is it's not going to be as easy as you think to fight what you understand or know to be evil.

First of all, most people who are living on the earth at that time are going to be completely deceived and are actually going to believe taking the mark of the beast is a righteous thing to do. It's a good thing to do. As a matter of fact, they're going to be so convinced that it is the right thing to do that in Revelation chapter 14, the Bible tells us that there will be an angel that will actually out loud be yelling to everybody, "Hey, don't do this. If you do this, you go die."

He's making himself very, very clear, and yet people choose to do it. They don't care what God has to say about whether or not they're going to die because they're so convinced that they need to take the mark of the beast. And I also should mention this, and that is the fact that if you are willing to not take things seriously right now, what makes you think when it gets so desperate that the deception, the delusion that is sent down—that God allows to be sent down by his own power and his own will—is going to be not strong enough to get you to wake up and to see what's going on?

Guest (Male): That's coming up next time, and this program is listener-supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill online at lightonthehillradio.com.