SABBATH

God's Gift to Us

Commentary: The Pale Horse (2020)

#1530c

Given 22-Feb-20; 12 minutes

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description: The Pale Horse (the 4th seal of Revelation 6) symbolizing disease and death prophesied to kill a quarter of the world's population. Reliable statistics now indicate that the number of deaths from infection with the Corona virus (Covid-19) are increasing exponentially every week. The Chinese government is destroying corpses in crematoriums seven days a week because there are far too many to bury. Today, Wuhan's streets are empty, its port empty, commerce at a standstill. Tragically, this deadly virus, which the Wuhan Institute of Virology cultivated as a biological weapon, accidentally escaped from a supposedly secure lab, killing people by the thousands. If such an incredible curse could result from an accident in a laboratory, we can only imagine the result when hostile governments deploy these cultivated viruses as weapons. In the Corona Virus, we are seeing the emerging reality of the prophesied Fourth Horseman, riding his pale, green horse.


transcript:

I want us to begin in Revelation 6. I'm going to just quote this for you. You do not have to turn there; it is pretty familiar. In Revelation 6, we have the opening of the seals, the seven-sealed scroll:

Revelation 6:7-8 When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, "Come and see." So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades [that is, the grave] followed with him…

I want give you an update on the coronavirus epidemic. This information that I am going to give you came from News, Nuggets, and Insights by Tom Kerry. He is a minister of the Church of God Ministries International. So, the numbers I’ll be showing you come from their research.

The coronavirus is declared a global health emergency by The World Health Organization (WHO). I want you to notice how fast this virus is spreading. It was confirmed that the virus had infected more 4,600, with 107 deaths, since early last month. Then on Tuesday morning, February 4, there were 20,526 confirmed cases worldwide and 426 deaths. On Tuesday, February 11—one week later—the death toll rose to 1,016 and 42,346 confirmed cases worldwide. In one week, it more than doubled in deaths and confirmed cases. On Tuesday, February 18, the death toll rose to 1,868, with 72,436 confirmed cases worldwide The problem is that we don’t know how accurate these numbers really are.

I'm going to read to you from an article by a woman that I think probably has a little more credibility. It comes from the program “America Out Loud." It was written by Ilana Freedman. She is an intelligence analyst. This is dated February 11, 2020. I think it’s very important that you hear what this lady has to say on this topic. But first let me give you a bit of her background:

Ilana Freedman is a veteran intelligence analyst and advisor in intelligence-led counter-terrorism solutions. Trained in Israel, where she lived and worked for sixteen years. She returned to the U.S., and served as CEO of Gerard Group International in Massachusetts until 2009. Since then, Ilana has been an independent consultant, working with major corporations and government agencies on security issues. Her global network of specialists and field assets provides an ongoing resource of critical, real-time intelligence and domain expertise. Ilana is the author of many articles on the terrorist threat to America and the West, and four books on Islamic terrorism.

Her article is titled, “There is No Way to Overestimate the Calamity in China Today!” I'm going to be quoting from her article; bear with me, because I am going to be covering a good bit of it.

It might not have been so bad if the Chinese had been honest from the beginning. But they couldn’t be honest about it, because it would have meant owning up to the secret bio-weapons project that they had been hatching against the rest of the world and that had “escaped” from their lab. So instead of sharing data about the sudden epidemic and maybe getting the help they needed to contain it, they hid it.

The stories coming from China over the past weeks have ranged from wishful thinking to pure fiction, while the rest of the world holds its breath waiting for a new pandemic to strike. There is no way to overestimate the calamity that is occurring in China today, the number of people there who have been infected or killed by the novel coronavirus, or the threat that the rest of the world is facing now because of China’s systematic carelessness and active repression of vital information.

They covered it up, and they arrested anyone who revealed that a coronavirus—now known as 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019 nCoV [they now have a new name; I believe it is COVID-19]—was now killing their own people by the thousands. Even now, when the entire world is facing a pandemic, China still only admits to hundreds of confirmed deaths and thousands of infected people, when the numbers are likely to be exponentially higher.

The Chinese government said the virus came from an open-air meat market in the city of Wuhan in central China. Wuhan was a city of eleven million people [a huge city], and appeared to be the epicenter of the virus. The Chinese government closed the market and implied that the situation was under control. But it wasn’t!

People were falling in the streets and dying where they fell. The hospitals were jammed with people seeking medical help, people were being ordered to stay at home, to limit contact with other people, even forced to ‘self-quarantine’, and finally the city was shut and no one could go in or out. But it was far too late for that. The virus was spreading far beyond their ability to contain it.

But it didn’t come from a meat market. In reality, according to my sources, the virus actually “escaped” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Level-4 biohazard lab as the result of an accident in the laboratory. And more than that, China had been weaponizing the virus, making it more virulent, more easily spread, faster to mutate, and potentially more lethal.

As of February 5, China’s National Health Commission reported that 28,018 cases of the virus have been confirmed and 563 people have died in the country. Since then, another 3,694 new cases have been confirmed as well as 73 additional deaths, with most of them in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. That is according to the Chinese government.

Those numbers are alarming enough, but they don’t make sense. And here’s why:

  • The government began burning the bodies because there were too many to bury, and trucks filled with body bags were seen driving through the city, while the crematoria began working non-stop, day and night, seven days a week; while a pall of smoke hangs over Wuhan;
  • People have been silenced by the government for releasing information and photographs to the public, something the Chinese government called “misinformation”. Among those harassed by the government was Dr. Li Wenliang, the first doctor to warn about the virus, who himself became a victim of it last week, after blowing the whistle on its dangers [makes you wonder whether he died from the virus or not];
  • Videos popped up of people being dragged from their homes by police, only to disappear;
  • The once vibrant cities of China that were humming 24-hours a day, cities like Shanghai, are now silent, the streets are empty. Even the port is empty. One resident of Wuhan wrote, “Wuhan is like a ghost city at night. There are only ghost-like ambulances transporting patients. This is heart-breaking to see. Hope my hometown can recover soon”.
  • Industry is shut down. The factories are silent and empty. Commerce is at a standstill.

The irony is that in developing a secret project to create such a powerful and toxic virus with which to attack an enemy, they have inadvertently turned it on themselves and will likely kill [listen to this:] millions of their own people before this is over.

So, here are some more realistic numbers:

The latest estimates from first-hand accounts are that as many as 50,000 people in Wuhan alone have already died from this epidemic, and that there are 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in China. [Remember, this is now out into the rest of the world. I have heard news now that there are cases reported in the United States, France, Japan, Africa, and other places.]

One estimate of the damage to the Chinese people is that the mortality rate will ultimately prove to be anywhere from 35% to 65%.

That's a big difference from what we are hearing on the news, isn't it?

I want to go back to Revelation 6 as I begin to close this commentary. I am going to quote from Herbert Armstrong's article, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse":

The word "pale" is translated from the Greek word chloros. It is the same root word from which we derive the term "chlorophyll" (a substance which helps make leafy plants green). It means, in Biblical usage, a pale-green, the sickly yellowish-green color of disease.

I remember when I went deep-sea fishing one time—one time only. I got a little bit sick. I did not throw up or anything, but I got sick from heat—I'm fair-skinned; I was burning. I was going to go downstairs and get out of the sun for a little bit. I got about halfway down the stairs of the cabin, and the stench hit me. I looked down, and there were [seasick] bodies laying everywhere. Straight ahead of me, I could see a bench, on which a man was laying on his belly. He held his head up, and all I remember was this yellowish-green look about him, and his eyes were hollow. I thought, "I'm not going down there," so I turned and got out of there. But I understand; every time I hear of "yellowish-green," I think of him.

Continuing:

Here is how the word chloro is rendered in various modern Bible translations: "a pale-green horse" (Beck), "an ashen horse" (The New American Standard Bible), "a horse sickly pale" (The New English Bible), "a horse sickly green" (Phillips), "a pale-colored horse" (Weymouth), "an ashy pale horse" (The Amplified Bible), and a "livid horse" (Rotherham).

Jesus Christ, the Revelator, fills in the most correct word to interpret the meaning of this pale green horse: "... and there shall be... PESTILENCES... " (Matthew 24:7). Pestilences are, by definition, disease epidemics of world proportion—pandemics!

Brethren, I brought this to you today as a reminder that the fulfillment of these four horsemen is real. You’ll notice that the rider of this pale horse is death! It goes on to warn us that one fourth of the earth will die!

Be ready, be prepared, for time is short!

CLF/aws/dcg