Matthew 24, part 1 - Watch out for deception

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The first 6 Seals give the background for Matthew 24

The 6 Seals in Revelation Chapter 6 enable us to understand Matthew 24.

The first seven verses of Revelation Chapter 6 reveal the spiritual warfare that has been going on during the 2000 years of the seven church ages of the Christian church. Each Seal consists of two verses and refers to two church ages.

Four beasts are mentioned around the throne of God in Revelation Chapter 4.

REVELATION 4:7   And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

These beasts are the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the true believers that protect the church during the different circumstances of the seven church ages. Each beast looks after two ages.

The eagle looks after our age, the seventh age. That will become two ages only if we return back to the first church age beliefs. The last age being restored to the beliefs of the first age is critical to God's Plan.

This restoration back to the apostolic beliefs is the great mystery of God that the churches know nothing about.

But it was revealed by the seventh angel, William Branham from America.

REVELATION 6:1   And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

Verse 1 is a single Thunder that unleashes the Spirit of the Lion. God's Spirit guided Paul and the apostles to lay the foundation for the church ages and helped those Christians who tried to maintain those standards. The second verse describes the main error of those two ages. The rise of the Roman Catholic church and the succession of Popes that were crowned and elevated as the church leaders or dictators to enslave the people in the trap of religious church-going deception.

REVELATION 6:2   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.

REVELATION 6:3   And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

:4   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.

Verse 3 describes the Ox-beast of labour and sacrifice. Tens of millions of Christians were killed in the Dark Ages.

Verse 4 describes the political involvement of the Popes. Kingdoms used their armed forces to destroy the Pope's enemies.

There is no mention of any good being done because the truth was being lost after the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 forced the churches to accept the unscriptural Trinity doctrine.

REVELATION 6:5   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.

:6   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.

Verse 5 describes the Man-beast that blessed human scholarship. Men began to oppose the massive Catholic church. The King James Version of the Bible was translated by 47 scholars who were inspired to choose the correct manuscripts as well as the correct interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek words.

Verse 6 sees the selling of bread, the Word of God, for profit. Indulgences were sold to forgive sins. A dark horse of demonology inspired church money-making and corruption.

But church age 5 restored salvation by faith alone which was a severe blow to the Catholic church.  Church age 6 restored holiness and the outreach of missionaries.

The bread and the wine. The Word of God was translated into English to spread around the world as the King James Bible. The wine was the stimulation of revelation as the truth of the Bible began to be restored.

These were the first two ages of restoration after the Dark Ages. So the good that they restored is mentioned.

Then comes an ominous silence concerning any good being done in the fourth Seal which is our modern church age.

Our age gets the truth but then distorts it to suit human opinions.

The fourth Seal in Verse 7 refers to the 7th church age, the church "of the Laodiceans".

The Laodiceans make up their own church worship, which God ignores as He makes no mention of it.

Our dangerous delusion. We think that God is impressed with our ideas and church traditions.

Message-believers have fraudulently changed the "voice of the seventh angel" which is the "voice of the fourth beast" into the "Voice of God". That is religious deception as "Voice of God" is never referred to in the New Testament.

In the fourth Seal, God refers only to the Eagle Spirit of insight into the understanding of Bible mysteries in verse 7.

REVELATION 6:7   And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

Then comes the horror of great Tribulation.

:8    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 end-time Christians are supposed to have a revelation of written Scripture that restores them back to the apostolic foundations of the first church age. But God then says nothing good about our last age. He immediately jumps to the 3½ years of great Tribulation where Death enters when Life leaves as the Bride is caught up to Heaven.

Verse 8 reveals a new system, the time of great Tribulation.  So God sees the seventh church age as Tribulation-fodder. That is the future fate of the modern-day church.

The end-time churches disregard the vital importance of the revelation of deep Bible mysteries. They put their faith and energy into unscriptural drum-beat-music entertainment. Many wave their hands in the air just like the crowds who attend a rock-n-roll or disco concert. There are 45000 different denominational and church traditions. Not to mention over 100 different versions of the English Bible. A complete spiritual swamp.

61-0415E  THE  UNCERTAIN  SOUND

And any young people that

can stand in a building with their hands up and all this carrying on of rock-and-roll and stuff, and beatniks, it's insanity. It's dangerous.

They've gone; the mental faculties has broke down. Remember, the tree of knowledge only goes so far and it swings backward.

65-0711  ASHAMED

Way back in the jungles of Africa, on safari hunters, they had to take high-powered radios to hear Elvis Presley, Pat Boone,

and them guys with that rock-and-roll and twist.

And the natives, trying to see them act along,

jerking their head and acting like that,

the natives stood and looked at him. But, you see, they're not Americans like Pat Boone, and Elvis Presley, and Ricky Nelson, and them guys are. They're not Judases of that type, but they're... See, it's a spirit.

And the spirit is not only in America, it has spread itself out over the world, to bring them to the battle of Armageddon.

They act like that, whether they are... Whatever nation they come from, Africa, India, wherever it is, that vulgar and stuff has spread all over the earth, by just one man starting it.

Caught up in the overwhelming flood of our superficial information-age with its 10-second sound bites, they lack interest in God's great end-time Plan of getting back to the first church age.

God wants to enable us to fit all the different Scriptures together. That way we can understand and be in awe of God's deep insights and marvel at His high-level ways of thinking. This clearer insight into Scripture will guide us as to how we must prepare for the Lord's Coming. But the churches are indifferent, preferring their own man-made ways of serving and worshiping God.

Each church tries to be the best and put the other churches in its shade.

The sunlight gets darkened by human shadows as self-important men get elevated.

Competitive Christianity is just Churchianity.

The beast with seven heads that rises from the sea

God's Spirit manifests as four Beasts (Powers) or Living Creatures around His throne. Each Beast represents an attribute of God's Spirit that He used to guide and control the church through four different eras. God had to oppose the subtle and devious antichrist's changing and mutating spirits, which are revealed as a horse rider.

This is the same horse rider that inspired Pharaoh to oppose Moses.

EXODUS 15:1Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously:

the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

Pharaoh's men drove chariots. They did not ride on horses.

EXODUS 14:25   And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily:

"The horse and rider" represented the antichrist spirits that inspired Pharaoh not to believe God's Word and to try to enslave and kill those who did.

In contrast, God's Spirit inspired Moses to lead the Jews out of Pharaoh's religious system. God got Moses to believe His Word and write the first five Books of the Bible.

We must be aware that there is this spiritual war going on. Pharaoh was just a figurehead for Satan.

PSALM 136:15But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea: for his mercy endureth for ever.

All looked well. The Egyptians were dead, but the Devil who inspired them was not dead.

John later saw these evil antichrist spirits mutating and rising up out of the sea of restless nations in Europe as the pagan Roman Empire.
REVELATION 13:1And I stood upon the sand of the sea,

and saw a beast rise up out of the sea,

having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

The antichrist spirits now emerged as a beast in pursuit of power over mankind.

The barbarians in AD 476 would finally destroy the unmatched brutality of the pagan Roman Empire and their greedy, grasping taxes as they stamped everybody into submission.  But pagan Rome's devastating cruelty and unmatched power would resurrect back to life as the Roman Catholic Church.

The name of blasphemy is the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost which is claimed to be the name of the Trinity God. The Trinity very effectively caused the churches to lose the name of God. One God in three persons means that you cannot find one name for God.

Satan opposed Moses, who led the first exodus, bringing the Jews out of Egypt to believe the written Word of the first five Books of the Bible that Moses wrote.

Then in the first Seal, Satan was opposing the second exodus as Christianity came out of Judaism by believing the written Word of  Saint Paul and the apostles who wrote the New Testament.

The fourth Seal sees the Bride leaving the church in the Third Exodus as they begin to understand the written Bible and line up with what Paul and the apostles taught.

Just as Pharaoh tried to kill the Jews, Satan inspired the Roman emperors to kill about 3 million Christians between AD 64 and AD 312.

Then Christians, in the second Seal, forsook Scripture for human traditions, politics, pagan rituals and beliefs, and clever Greek philosophy which makes people brilliant in their defense of error.

The third Seal showed the reformers like Luther and Wesley who partially brought the churches back on track with the written Word of God despite the errors that remained in the churches. Luther taught them salvation by faith. Wesley taught them holiness and outreach which led to the great missionary age.

The fourth Seal is critical to us today because that is the Seal that describes our current seventh church age. This is the church age that Jesus puts the most emphasis upon because church error comes to its peak.

This is the third exodus where the Bible-believing Bride of Christ comes out of the denominational churches and the non-denominational churches.

These churches remain wrapped up in man-made traditions and doctrines that are not written in the Bible.

This age ends in the 3½ years of great Tribulation as Death rides in on a pale corpse-colored horse.

So the spiritual journey starts. We need to hold onto Scripture because all warfare is rough going.

REVELATION 4:6And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Four beasts were around the throne to protect and inspire the Christian church during its different stages while the Devil, like an insidious virus, kept mutating and changing his tactics and beliefs.

The First  Seal is Religious deception

Let us take a slightly deeper look at church history so that we can better understand Matthew Chapter 24.

When a specialist is trying to diagnose your problems, he always asks for your medical history.

The present is just the culmination of past forces and ambitions.

If we know the past better, we can more easily see where we are now.

REVELATION 6:1And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder,

one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 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.

Verses 1 and 2  represent the church ages 1 and 2 which lasted from the Day of Pentecost in AD 33 to about AD 312 when Emperor Constantine stopped killing Christians and made Christianity an official religion of the Roman empire.

There is a Lion-beast for Truth represented by Saint Paul and the apostles who laid out the True Word of the Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ.

This was God's antidote to error. He inoculated the early church with the True Word of God.

At first, Christians stayed with these New Testament doctrines of the apostles.

One aspect of this spiritual warfare was that many Christians had the urge to stay with Jewish beliefs and be impressed with Jewish leaders.

REVELATION 2:9I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich ) and I know

the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not,

but are the synagogue of Satan.

This is written to the second church age of Smyrna, which comes from myrrh, a bitter herb used to embalm the dead. This symbolized the savage persecutions of Christians by the Roman emperors. This verse indicates that leaders who were Jewish still had a big influence. It took the Christians a long time before they finally stopped trying to obey Jewish Law and rituals. Many kept relying for their salvation on the works of the Law.

It is so easy to listen to a dominant leader who says things that are not Scriptural.

Savage persecution helped to keep the churches on track. But by the end of the second church age, around AD 312 when the Roman emperor Constantine stopped persecuting them, they then began drifting further off the mark.

Hardship and difficulty make us better Christians.

There had been 10 brutal persecutions since emperor Nero began killing Christians in AD 64  after he burned down Rome and blamed the Christians. By AD 312, about 3 million Christians had been killed. Christians, out of sheer gratitude, accepted Constantine as the human guiding genius of the church and happily followed his politically inspired religious agenda as they moved away from Scripture, adopting words like Trinity, Christmas, Good Friday, and Pontiff. Human leadership was established as Constantine endowed the Bishop of Rome, Sylvester, with a fortune in money and the beautiful Lateran palace which helped to establish the Bishop of Rome as the head of the western churches.

Thus the enemy came in as a white (religious) horse (a powerful system) that had a rider with a bow but no mention of an arrow.

So he was bluffing. A religious deceiver to spread error.

The bowman did not rely on a natural arrow. He was more successful with his lies.

JEREMIAH 9: 8Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit:

This antichrist rider was the religious spirit that built up the powerful Roman Catholic Church system that conquered Christianity until eventually Pope Nicholas 1 (858 – 867), a very able and autocratic man, became so elevated that he was crowned and the Pope’s authority became absolute.

The succession of Popes claimed their authority from Saint Peter.

The antichrist spirits were established in the first two church ages but this religious error of accepting a man as the head of the church, with his personal ideas,  continued to ride on down through all the church's ages. The errors of the Roman church kept changing and mutating,  adding in new ideas and doctrines like purgatory, indulgences, holy water, mass, the sprinkling of babies, confirmation, praying to Mary and the dead saints, statues of the saints, denominations, mother church, etc.   All these mutations are still with us today and more mutations keep appearing.

The Second Seal is the church gaining Political Power

REVELATION 6:3And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

:4And 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.

Verses 3 and 4 represent church ages 3 and 4 which started around AD 312 and spanned the Dark Ages that ended around 1520 when Luther began his Reformation. This was a long era of about 1200 years. The young calf had plenty of time to grow into an ox. An ox has no seed of life, just colossal strength.

The Christian church did not improve in the Dark Ages but degenerated into superstition, political rivalries, brutal inquisitions, and awful unjust wars like the Crusades. The Crusades produced massacres, rapes, and looting of the Jews who lived on the road to Palestine. In addition, they raped, robbed, and murdered the actual Muslim inhabitants who lived in Palestine. These provoked a fury that still remains to this day. Those atrocities are still giving Islamist extremists their lust for revenge on the West, even though America had not yet been discovered at the time of the Crusades. The human desire for revenge is easily warped.

But the true Christian believers, who tried to be Scriptural, had to be exceptionally strong to survive and keep going in those long Dark Ages when they were endlessly hunted down by armies who obeyed the Popes. The Christians toiled on in the most difficult conditions and were slaughtered, like oxen, in their millions. This Seal revealed the influence of the Roman emperor’s military and political power as it united with the Roman Catholic Church.

Constantine punished religious dissenters severely. He backed the Bishop of Rome and thus military force built up the power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Leo 1 (440 – 461) accepted the Babylonian pagan title of Pontiff. He also claimed the right to kill heretics. This policy eventually resulted in the massacre of tens of millions of dissenters before the killing spree finally ended around 1648 after the terrible Thirty Year's War that wrecked Germany. The Spanish Inquisition was an infamous chapter in this dismal religious flood of torture and death.

The vicious and destructive war for the liberation of Italy (AD 533 - 554) from the non-Trinitarian Ostrogoths by the armies of the Roman emperor Justinian, wrecked North Africa and Italy to put the Trinitarian Pope back in charge at Rome. This policy left Rome in ruins and Italy devastated. Plague and famine followed and Europe went into the cold, dark, and dirty Dark Ages, thanks to this religious warfare.

This was the Ox age. An ox is a beast of burden that gets slaughtered at the end of its life as its meat is too valuable to waste. True Christians labored on through the Dark Ages, suffering torture and death. The Holy Spirit gave them the fortitude of an ox. They worked hard for God in those ignorant times and faced their deaths bravely.

Religious deception had blended with political and military power during these two ages. These combined spirits then ride on down through the remaining church ages. The church was thoroughly married to politics and pagan beliefs. Think Easter eggs. Think 25 December. Think Trinity. Cardinal. Sign of the cross. Rosary. Lent. Holy water. Triple crown or tiara that the Popes wore for over 600 years, etc.  None of these words are in the Bible.

The Third Seal is Big Business demonology in the church

REVELATION 6:5And 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.

:6And 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.

Verses 5 and 6 represent church age 5, which saw Martin Luther’s call to salvation by faith alone, and church age 6 which saw John Wesley preach holiness and brotherly love to those outside the church. His influence led to the golden missionary age. Missionaries believed that the church was a club that existed for the benefit of non-members and they spent their lives trying to get the benefits of salvation and holiness to extend around the world.

This was the age of the Man-beast.

Human wisdom and learning enabled the reformers to see through many of the Roman Catholic errors. But human learning was limited in terms of spiritual revelation. There were still many mysteries in Scripture that were not revealed. What was the original sin? What is the Name of God? After all Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are titles. How do predestination and free will both operate together? Churches became Calvinist if they focused on predestination in Luther's age or Armenian if they focused on free will in Wesley's age.

But human wisdom was also inspired by God to produce the King James Version of the Bible which is the only perfectly accurate and infallible Bible. Our Absolute.

The 1769 Version of the King James Bible is the Voice of God.

64-0206  GOD'S  PROVIDED  WAY  FOR  THIS  DAY

 "My sheep hear My Voice, a stranger they won't follow."

Lord, Your Voice is the Word.

63-0630   THE  THIRD  EXODUS

for they can hear plainly the God's Voice, calling, through His Word

...  Listen to the Bible, the Voice of God

calling to you in this day.

Human culture also flourished under this Man-beast, Shakespeare in literature, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci in art, Bach and Beethoven in music, Isaac Newton in mathematics and physics.

This is when the black horse of demonology rode in.

The Roman Church used a spiritual famine by weighing out a measure of wheat for a penny, which was the wage for a day's labour, to buy wheat or barley for bread. This represented the church selling the Word of God. The Catholic countries remained poor while the church wallowed in luxury. People were kept away from Scripture and salvation in Christ alone. They sold the Bread of life by making money out of religion with their indulgences whereby you bought forgiveness for your sins and you also had to pay to release souls from purgatory.

The Sistine Chapel and St Peter's church in the Vatican were built from the money that was raised by selling indulgences. Religion became big business, very lucrative. No wonder Jesus got so angry with the money lenders in the Temple. Making money out of religion is demonic.

The Roman Church emphasized their man-made rituals and traditions, depriving people of a true understanding of Scripture and salvation. Demonology is the spirit that opposes the Word of God. The Roman Catholic Church launched the counter-Reformation to oppose Luther's reformation.  Luther taught that souls were saved by repenting of their sins and accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. The counter-Reformation resulted in much vicious killing of  Protestants. The Catholic-Protestant Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 saw Germany devastated and one-third of the Germans dead.

Today there is still a big indifference towards being strictly Scriptural as people regard this as being unnecessary. They want you to rather believe what the church says. Or believe whatever the people want to believe.

Believe what the pastor says.

(Despite the fact that the pastors disagree amongst themselves).

They feel that there is no need to prove your belief from the Bible. That is mainly because people know so little about the Bible which is now classified as the most widely owned and un-read Book in the world.

Today Christians do not seem to be able to prove much of what they believe from Scripture.

Bible-illiteracy is growing in the churches.

Ask a Christian why he goes to church on a Sunday.  Their usual reply is that it is the Lord's day or the Sabbath day. Neither of these answers is correct, according to Scripture. So they feel that they are doing the right thing, but they do it for the wrong reasons. Rather ironic.

But Protestants also had their harsh moments. Servetus, a Spanish doctor, opposed the Trinity because so many statements that are used to describe the Trinity are unscriptural. "One God in 3 Persons". "Second Person of the Godhead". "Jesus is in the Godhead". "Father and Son are co-equal". "Father and Son are of the same substance", etc.

Jean Calvin, the great Protestant reformer in Switzerland, could not answer the criticisms of Servetus but he solved the problem by burning Servetus at the stake. It is no wonder that Protestants kept on believing in the Trinity.

The Fourth Seal is the uniting of errors to produce Death

The 4th Seal. All three of the major errors unite in the end-time church.

REVELATION 6:7And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8 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 7^th church age is described by Verse 7— an Eagle age. The Wright brothers in America did the first airplane flight in 1903. They flew 120 meters in 12 seconds.

Then the seventh church age started around the year 1906 when the Pentecostal revival began in America at Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was restored and like an eagle, the people were swept up into the supernatural dimension of Holy Ghost power. Humans had invented the aircraft and so were also able to fly higher.  Then in 1947, an angel appeared to William Branham in America and he began to reveal the mysteries of God’s Word. The eagle has incredible eyesight, so God granted insight to the church, a much better focus, and a clearer picture or revelation of the mysteries in Scripture.

America took the spiritual leadership with the Pentecostal movement and brother Branham's revelation of Scripture. In the natural, America also achieved dominance in the air with their aircraft and rockets, including two planes that dropped atom bombs to end World War 2.

The American Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969 in a lunar lander called the "Eagle".

By 2021, only Americans had landed on the moon. It was a sign of the times. In 6 moon landings, 12 men walked on the moon. 24 men flew to the moon, as not every moon flight landed on the moon.  6, 12, 24 describe our time.

24 hours in a day. 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. 6 hours of the morning and 6 hours of the afternoon.

So the moon landings were a sign of the times. Time for the seventh church age is starting to run out. The Coming of the Lord is getting closer. The moon represents the church that reflects the sunlight to the earth during the 12 hours of darkness.

Thus the last church age is the Eagle age of flight. The flying Eagle gets a bird's eye view of God's great salvation Plan for humanity as well as the revelation of Satan's counter-attacks.

On earth, we see a raging river as an impossible barrier.

But from God's point of view, the flying eagle is not too worried about crossing a raging river. If we can see our age through God's eyes, then we will realize that all obstacles can be overcome despite our human limitations.

DEUTERONOMY 32:11   As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:

If God, as the Great Eagle, carries us on His wings then we will leap over any wall or barrier.

That is the promise to our eagle-age. The age ends as we have to leap out of space and time when we change into immortal bodies, to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

Prove what you believe from the Bible.

REVELATION 10:7But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

Revelation 10:7 sees a messenger reveal the mystery of God. The Trinity is not God. Jesus Christ is God. God's Name is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are three of God's titles.

The Trinity God has no name. You cannot find one name for 3 Persons.

God's Name is Jesus Christ.

The mysteries of original sin, the mark of the beast, serpent seed, the seven church ages, etc. are all laid out and explained at the end-time.

The key idea is to use the messenger's quotes to reveal Scripture.

You cannot use the quotes to replace Scripture.

The end-time church is supposed to go back to the first church age teachings of Saint Paul and the apostles.

Doctrinal beliefs have to run through the Old Testament and the New Testament.

No man, not even the end-time messenger is allowed to say anything that does not line up with the Bible. If a man leads us through the pages of the Bible then we are following the Bible, not the man.

Seven is the number of completion. Seven days complete a week.

Then comes verse 8. Eight means a new system. Great Tribulation hits. This is going to be something very new. There has never been such a time of trouble.

The Sixth Seal actually deals with the 3.5 years of great Tribulation.

The main reason God sent the end-time messenger is for us to escape these years of great Tribulation. Those who do not go back to base their beliefs on Scripture will, despite their sincerity, end up in great Tribulation. The Fourth Seal covers the seventh church age which will not really end for the foolish or fooled virgins because it moves into and becomes the 3.5 years of great Tribulation, where they will be killed.

Look at this diagram representing the Seven Seals. Revelation Chapter 7 is the gap between Seal 6 (Revelation Chapter 6) and Seal 7 (Revelation 8:1). This creates a picture of a pyramid that is waiting for its Capstone, the Coming of the Lord.

The Bride gets caught up to Heaven at the end of verse 7 in the fourth Seal.

Then the saved foolish or fooled virgins go into great Tribulation to get purged of their wrong beliefs.

The Jews who are killed for their faith during the seven church ages and go to Heaven are the fifth Seal.

We need the clear Scriptural insight of the Eagle-spirit in order to rise up and meet the Lord Jesus in the air when He Comes.

The seventh church age will only end for the Bride of Christ when she gets a new immortal body and leaves this earth to go to the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.

I THESSALONIANS 4:17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds,

to meet the Lord in the air:

and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The Fourth Seal is the most crucial Seal for us because it is the only Seal that today's Christians are living in.

We have a choice. Get back to the Bible and the early church or perish in great Tribulation.

This is the Eagle cry from above. The eagle’s amazing eyes mean we have to have a clear insight into the mysteries of God that the churches overlook because they lack a deeper insight.

For instance, why did Jesus write in the ground with His finger when He pardoned the adulteress?

Why did He write twice in the ground?

Only the Gospel of John refers to this event. Why?

Why were there 12 baskets and 7 baskets of rejected bread-scraps left over when He fed the multitudes?

Jesus expected the disciples to understand the significance of the number of baskets of rejected scraps.
MATTHEW 16:9    Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand,

and how many baskets ye took up?

:10    Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand,

and how many baskets ye took up?

When Jesus returns He will expect us to understand the finer points of Scripture. Everything has a deeper meaning.

But the modern, saved Christians in the church are the sleeping virgins. Blissfully and complacently ignorant and much in need of a wake-up call.

Why was Jesus so impressed with a Gentile woman, whom He called a dog, when she wanted crumbs from the children’s table?

In two of the Gospels, we see two angels at the empty tomb. In the other two Gospels, we see only one angel. Why the difference? Why did the two Gospels not mention the second angel? What are they trying to tell us?

If we cannot get a deeper understanding of these events, but just try to explain them away, or worse still if we regard these questions as unimportant, then we only have the education of the Man-beast, which is the learning of human wisdom. But not the insight of the Eagle-beast that was promised at the end time. In other words, we have missed what is important for the end of the seventh church age.

Salvation is not the issue here. Obviously, we must be saved. Holiness and the Holy Ghost baptism are not the issues. These are also essential to all Christians.

What is at stake now is an understanding of the Bible Truth.

If we believe an error we have been fooled. If we cannot get a deeper insight into Scripture then we have also been fooled by our leaders who confined us to their ignorance.

But our biggest error is when we oppose the revealed truth in order to be loyal to our church errors.

Church leaders act as a lid and a limitation on their people.

This deception will be knocked out of Christians by the sheer horror of the years of great Tribulation.

No Christian who goes into great Tribulation and gets killed in that awful satanic orgy of death will have any more interest in human leadership or in his own opinion, ever again.

So in verse 8, "Death" rides into great Tribulation on the unscriptural big-money-church-political system to institute an industrial-scale massacre unequaled by any tyrant in history.

Human leadership produces its greatest genius, a merchant of death.

All the evil spirits that have ridden down through the church ages now unite to produce a super world-governing church.

Satan’s final killing machine.

Why will Christians be in this death zone? Because they stopped establishing the Truth purely from Scripture.

They are too busy to learn the Bible. That required too much hard work. They are too complacent to check their beliefs with Scripture because they are too arrogant to believe that they could be wrong. They ignore people who try to correct them.

They are scared to disagree with their pastors because they find safety in numbers. (They actually think there is safety in their blunders). They feel cozy and comfortable with their human-inspired church traditions and in human leadership. That saves them from having to think for themselves. So in the years of great Tribulation, they will get their ultimate human leader…the antichrist Pope.

Verse 7 of the 4^th seal is vital.

REVELATION 6:7   And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

The voice of the seventh angel in Revelation 10:7.

REVELATION 10:7   But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

So the voice of the fourth beast is the same as the voice of the seventh angel or messenger.

Both refer to the recorded sermons of brother Branham between 1947 and 1965.

The 7^th church age receives a prophet to warn us of the judgment that is coming and to teach us the Truth from the Bible so that we can escape the wrath to come.

We have to take brother Branham's teachings and prove them from Scripture.

The Bride checks the message of William Branham with the Bible.

65-0725   THE  ANOINTED  ONES  AT  THE  END  TIME
So we'll know, to prove this, back and forth, by the Word; not by some man's idea, some theory.
I don't care who he is; any other man, myself or anybody else,

"If he speaks not according to the law and the prophets, there is no Light in him."

See? That's what the Bible said. "Let every man's word be a lie, and Mine be true,"

regardless who it is.

63-1110  HE  THAT  IS  IN  YOU

Believe all the Message. Believe That. If it isn't,

if it isn't written in the Bible, then don't you believe it.

Then we are not following him, we are following the Bible.

No Christian must follow a man. We are only following Christ when we believe and obey the Scripture.

The Fifth Seal reveals the Jewish martyrs

The 5th Seal. These are the Jewish martyrs killed during the 2000 years of the 7 church ages.

Then the fourth Seal takes the church world into the 3.5 years of great Tribulation.

This places the emphasis on the Jews because the Jews will come back to the Gospel during this time of great Tribulation.

The Fifth Seal sees the persecution of the Jews that began with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 under the pagan Roman general Titus.    About 1100000 Jews died in this siege. The Temple was destroyed. The city was sacked.

This was a local tribulation to the Jews.

Then the Fifth Seal traces the Jews through their 2000 years of history in which they have become the nation with the longest history of persecution. Then came the pre-Tribulation of Hitler’s awful death camps in World War 2.

This was a shocking preview of the future 3½ years of great Tribulation.

The Holocaust, the Tribulation of those days, so horrified the world that they briefly felt sorry for the Jews and voted them a homeland in Palestine in 1947.

They are now in their God-given place where the Messiah will come to them in the time of great Tribulation.

1947. God began to return the Jews to Israel.

1947. Brother Branham began to reveal the mysteries of Scripture.

The Sixth Seal is the final years of great Tribulation

Great Tribulation will last for three and a half years.

The Sixth Seal describes this horrific great Tribulation. It is a complete interruption of nature. An unbelievably vicious, sadistic, and ingenious Pope will rule the world. It is a time that is frankly too ghastly to contemplate.

During this great Tribulation, the 144000 Jews are led back to Jesus as their Messiah by two prophets, Moses and Elijah, who survive thanks to their access to extreme supernatural power.

The fourth Seal is half for the Gentile Bride (Revelation 6: 7) and a half for the foolish virgins and the Jews in the 3½ years of great Tribulation (Revelation 6:8).

The yellow-brown colour of the pyramid, drawn below, represents great Tribulation.

The blue represents the Jews who are killed just for being Jews during the 7 church ages and then finally in the time of great Tribulation.

The 7 Trumpets call the Jews back to Israel and the seven Vials are God's judgment against the sinful world.

The next pyramid represents the 3½ years of great Tribulation.

The front face represents the foolish virgin churches going to their deaths. They are killed during the horror of the 7 Judgement Vials.

The side face in blue represents the two-thirds of the Jews that must die before the final 0ne third survives.

The 7th Seal is the total mystery Coming of the Lord

The Coming of the Lord is the greatest mystery in the universe.

Everyone stands silent in the face of this great mystery.

The seventh seal is the Coming of the Lord. All we know about it is silence. So it is a total mystery that will remain unknown.

When God is silent, then it is best that we also keep our mouths shut.

We know nothing about this Seal as it is a symbol of the Coming of the Lord.

REVELATION 8:1And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

Matthew 24 deals with the Jews and with church history

So Matthew Chapter 24 tells us of the Jews and their history from the initial local tribulation when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 because they had rejected their Messiah.  This was followed by their tragic 2000 years of persecution which ends up in the 3½ years of great Tribulation when they will come back to the Messiah.

Then the scene switches to the church.

A brief history of how deceptive error came into the Christian church is given at the start of this study.

This is important because it is the error in the churches that is taking the world towards the ghastly great Tribulation.

Then, at great length,  Jesus explains how the end-time church, which is in the first half of the fourth seal (Revelation 6:7), must prepare to escape from great Tribulation. That should be our main concern today.

Being Scripturally accurate is essential if we are to survive.

Every part has to work well if a rocket is to be launched into space.

All our beliefs must be Scriptural if we are to ascend to meet the Lord in the air.

The end-time church obviously needs salvation, holiness, and the Holy Spirit baptism that the reformers restored.

Now, in addition, we also need an accurate understanding of Truth to combat the Devil’s big Lie, which is competitive, denominational Churchianity with its human leaders and unscriptural beliefs.

Jesus was angry when He whipped the money-lenders and money-makers out of the Temple as they were people who made money out of religion. Judas sold out Truth for money. This was a foreshadow of the end-time where Christianity has become a Big Business.

In the wealthy mega-churches, Christians today seek a profit, not a prophet.

$ in the Old Testament was a symbol of salvation, Moses holding up a bronze serpent on a staff to heal the Jews who had been bitten by poisonous snakes.

Today the churches believe that salvation lies in more money, the American dollar $.

The Temple was doomed when Jesus left it and departed

Matthew Chapter 24:1

MATTHEW 24 : 1And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

The mistake of the disciples was to be impressed with human achievement. We are easily awestruck by something big that people have done.

They missed the point that Jesus had left the Temple.

He "went out" and "departed". A double emphasis of Jesus leaving.

Jesus departing meant that the Temple was doomed to be destroyed by the pagan Roman Empire.

In the seventh church age of the Laodiceans, Jesus stands outside the church. Having left the church, the church is doomed to be destroyed by the final antichrist Roman Pope in the  3½ years of great Tribulation.

Jesus is the Word. When the Word departed, the Holy Spirit was soon to tear the Temple veil and depart too.

Without the Word, the magnificent human-built structure of the Temple was doomed.

Ironically, the Temple had been restored to its glory by Herod, the mortal enemy of Jesus who tried to kill Him when He was about 2 years old.

Then the Jewish leaders of the Temple finally achieved Herod's aim when they succeeded in killing Jesus.

The disciples admired the outer show built by an evil man, a child-killer.

In the last church age, it is the children who turn back to the apostolic fathers, and the whole spectacular modern church system is designed to stop this from happening.

A sign of the times is the tens of millions of babies that have been killed by abortions.

Pharaoh killed babies when the Jews left Egypt. Herod killed babies when Jesus came to take the church out of Judaism.

Doctors kill babies when the Bride has to leave the church.

The first church age apostles were the spiritual fathers of the church and we end-time Christians are the spiritual children.

Pastors effectively kill the end-time spiritual children, today's Christians, by not allowing them to be completely Scriptural in their beliefs as this dooms them to being thrown into great Tribulation where they will be killed.

Notice how church leaders criticize parts of the King James Bible which is supposed to be our Absolute.

MALACHI 4:5   Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

The prophet will come before the terrible events of great Tribulation start.

MALACHI 4:6
And he shall turn ... the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

The curse is the lingering radiation of the atomic bomb or the more modern nuclear bombs.

Today we admire the beautiful building of St Peter's church.

We forget that this was built with two and a half thousand cartloads of stones from the Colosseum where the first church-age Christians, during the Lion age, were killed by lions. The Colosseum was built by Roman Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus who funded it from the wealth of the Jerusalem Temple that they looted when Titus destroyed it.

Titus then took 90000 Jews as slaves from Jerusalem to Rome and forced them to build the Colosseum.

We foolishly admire the impressive outer show of St Peter's church and ignore the fact that the Word of God is not preached there. Have you ever heard a Pope publicly say that we must repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ? That is what Peter said in Acts 2: 38.

ACTS 2:38Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

And the Catholics claim Peter as their first Pope. They claim Popes are infallible. That means Peter was not wrong. So why does the Pope not believe what Saint Peter preached?

MATTHEW 24:2And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

This illustrates the folly of human works.

Whatever man builds can only last a while. Admiring the physical just means we are ignorant of God’s Big Picture.

The disciples were admiring a building but the very building they were admiring was soon to be destroyed about 37 years later.

In that beautiful building, the Jewish leaders would condemn Christ.

Today we admire our church systems that have moved away from the Bible. These systems are also not going to last long.

Why do we so admire big buildings today?

They mostly conceal a very corrupt, atheistic, and materialistic civilization that God is so unimpressed with that He is going to destroy it in the 3½ years of great Tribulation that finally ends in the battle of Armageddon.

So we must learn to focus on the spiritual. Only where the revealed Word of God is will there be anything that is worthwhile. Everything else is potential atomic bomb fodder. There are enough atomic and nuclear bombs today to cause huge destruction and loss of life. They can destroy much of humanity.

In order to escape, we must seek Truth, not comfort and convenience.