“ 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.”
Revelation 6:2
So right away, at
the first seal we are already talking about the rising up of the anti-Christ or
the office of the anti-Christ. How can we tell that this rider is the
anti-Christ? Well there is a line that gives him away; he is compared to
another white rider later on in Revelation.
“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who
sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes
war.” Revelation 19:11
Revelation 19 will
later describe this rider as the Word of God who we already know according to
John 1 is Jesus Christ. We will come back to Revelation 19 later on, but for
now just note that the white rider of Revelation 6:2 is not our Lord Jesus, but
he douse resemble Him in many ways. For starters he will ride a white horse, meaning
he will give the appearance of purity, it will seem like he is without sin or
will want people to believe he is without sin.
This rider wears a
crown, a symbol of authority. This crown, this authority will be given to him,
he is given authority which is not normally his. He will have a bow. This took
me a bit of extra research, but the Greek word used is toxon[i] which is a simple bow made with the simple material from the root
word tikto which means to produce in travail or laborious work. In other words
this rider will do hard work, which makes sense because he is going to want
people to exalt him. He is going to want the people to see his good works so
that they will glorify him. Through this hard work, and simple nature, the
people will glorify him. He will have a false humility, not as though he were
humbled by God but as though he humbled himself.
He will ride out conquering
and to conquer. Meaning he will get victory. Do not let this disturb you,
Revelation douse say that the beast of the sea will be given authority for a
time. In Revelation 6:2 he hasn’t gained that full authority yet, but he will
by the time of the time of the seventh trumpet in Revelation 11, and I will
discuss more of the beast at that time. For now it is my goal to share that I believe
that the first seal is the first rider preparing the way for the anti-Christ.
Before I discuss
some suspects as to who this first rider is in the world around us may be,
there are some other things of note in scripture that tell us more about the character
of this rider. Daniel 7 clarifies a bit
of who the beast is, and the horns of the beast. There will be ten horns, and
then another horn shall rise after them and subdue three other horns. It is this horn, who is on the beast and is a
part of the beast, that shall be given a mouth to speak blasphemies and the
saints shall be given into his hand. So the end times anti-Christ will be
unlike any that held the office before him, it is this horn that will unite the
world. “It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.
And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation.”Revelation
13:7
So that being said let’s
look at some potential suspects, people, principalities and powers who are
preparing the way for this rider or may very well be this rider.
LDS Jesus
On the surface the
LDS church appears to have all the right answers. They teach good family values,
that Jesus saved us from sin, that we must be humble before God, and that you
must allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in your day to day life. When you meet
a member of the LDS faith you will probably walk away with a generally good
impression of them. But the bible tells us to question every spirit.
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits,
whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the
world. 2 By this you know the
Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that
does not confess that[a] Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which
you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.” 1 John
4:1-3
Now, you need to
know, so that you will not be deceived by the false teachings of this church
who they teach Jesus to be. According to LDS doctrine Jesus is the literal son
of God along with Satan all the angles and all of us here on earth.[ii] They believe that in the pre-life[iii] God had spirit children, his begotten son was Jesus. Satan and
Jesus both had a plan for salvation, the plan of Lucifer was to force everyone
to worship God, and the plan of Jesus was free will. God accepted the plan of
Jesus and rejected the plan of the devil. A third of Gods spirit children were
cast to the earth with Satan and became demons.
You need to know
all this so that when a Mormon tells you they follow the teachings of Jesus,
this is the Jesus of whom they speak. I have found nothing in the bible to
support this, and indeed even their own web site agrees that very little is
expressed in the bible to support this belief and that you have to look to the
Book of Mormon to understand the fullness of Gods plan.
Now, from what I
just shared it is easy to see how the Jesus of the LDS church looks a lot like
the Jesus of the bible. Do not be deceived, the bible says “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. Here is something
to ponder. If Jesus were not God, than it would be blasphemy to worship Him. If
Jesus were not God than Jesus would be an idol, He would be of man. If you
worship Jesus than you have to acknowledge that Jesus is God, not just the
offspring of God but the Creator of Heaven and Earth, Alpha and Omega,
Beginning and the End.
“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that
are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.”
Colossians 1:16
There
is another danger to the LDS belief system, one that sounds pleasant to the
ears. They teach that there are three degrees of heaven; all people will go to
one of these three heavens with the exception of the sons of perdition.[iv] It is this plan that few go to hell, or in the LDS doctrine Outer
Darkness.
Why
is this belief important to the anti-Christ? There has been a movement in
religion, a belief that all paths lead to heaven. This is a feel good belief, a
love doctrine with absolutely no true biblical backing. In fact scripture tells
us the exact opposite.
““Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to
destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because[a] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to
life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
If there is life on
the broad path Jesus would have told us so. But instead He tells us that the
broad path leads to destruction. Mormons
aren’t the only ones teaching this by the way. Catholics, main stream Muslims, Judaism,
and many protestant faiths as well have begun to embrace this idea that God
will allow you as an un-repented sinner into the kingdom of heaven. This is all paving the way for the
anti-Christ to come in, it’s setting the stage for a one world religion in
which the Serpent and the Beast of the sea are the primary focus of worship.
There is much more
to be said about this movement, but I will talk about it more when I talk about
the Beast of Revelations. For now put this in the back of your mind so that you
will not be deceived when a false prophet tries to tell you about the broadness
of God’s love.
I will stop here
for now. When I started this part of the blog I did not realize how deep God
was going to take me. There is much more to be said about many other principalities
and powers. So the next blog will be part 2 of the white rider.
In the mean time be
strengthened, study Gods word and testing every spirit rightly dividing the
Word of Truth so that false prophets cannot deceive you.
