Segment VII
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The Meaning of
“Faith in Christ” Distorted
Because “faith in
Christ” has been transformed
into “presumptions about
Christ,” Jesus will set the
record straight with the testimony of
martyrs. Many pastors are teaching
fables as truth, and many people have
deceived themselves into thinking
that God is pleased with their
actions when the opposite is true.
(See Isaiah 1-4 for a review of this
ever-persistent problem.) The fruit
of religious presumption is
decadence. The devil’s
deceptions are clever. He is a master
of gradualism. He induces
intellectual games that lead to
compromises because he knows that sin
has consequences. For example,
Americans have been wrestling with
the abortion issue for thirty-five
years and the Unites States is just
as divided today on the subject as
when the controversy started. The
funny thing about this controversy is
that hardly anyone is addressing the
sinful, immoral behavior that
produces unwanted babies. Why is
there so much silence about sexual
promiscuity? The devil knows that
once an immoral couple conceives,
tough choices are ahead. Something
has to be done with the fruit of
promiscuity. Therefore, the
controversy moves away from the cause
of the problem to dealing with the
consequences of sinful behavior, and there
are no human solutions to the problem
of sin!
Biblical faith means a
complete surrender to God’s will
– to go, to be, and to do all
that He asks at any cost. This
is the faith that Jesus lived by
(Luke 22:42; Hebrews 5:7) and during
the Great Tribulation; this faith
will cost many saints their lives.
There is no wiggle room on this. The
saints will be bitterly persecuted
for forty-two months. (Revelation
13:5) The Bible clearly predicts this
persecution, but millions of people
have presumptively chosen to believe
in a pre-tribulation rapture,
expecting to avoid suffering and
martyrdom.
An intellectual assent
to truth cannot withstand the
purifying fires of persecution. Jesus
willingly went to His death because
of the faith He exercised in His
Father each day. When Jesus arrived
at the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked
the Father to remove the cup of
martyrdom from His lips, but it was
the will of the Father that Jesus
die. (John 3:16) Similarly, many
martyrs will submit to death because
it is the will of Jesus that they do
so. Jesus has put the saints on
notice of this coming extremity
saying, “If anyone is to go
into captivity, into captivity he
will go. If anyone is to be killed
with the sword, with the sword he
will be killed. This calls for
patient endurance and faithfulness on
the part of the saints.” (Revelation
13:10)
In the later study on
the trumpets, you will see that Jesus
breaks the fifth seal on or about the
time of the sixth trumpet.
(Revelation 9:14,15) Therefore, the
martyrdom of the fifth seal will
begin approximately 1,040 days into
the Great Tribulation. Ultimately,
one-third of the saints will be
slaughtered because of the Word of
God and the testimony they maintain.
Please examine the chart above and
the one below carefully, Consider the
vertical alignment of the events
listed in the charts. In the chart
above, you can observe the
relationships that exist between the
six seals, which operate in pairs. In
the chart below, you can see how the
wrath of the fourth seal is
implemented by the destruction caused
by the first four trumpets.
A Composite
View of Revelation’s Timing
·The judgment of the
dead continues during the Great
Tribulation. This is necessary
because many will not live long
enough to be sealed or receive the
mark of the beast.
(The first four
trumpets include a series of horrific
events. Before the first trumpet, an
earthquake literally shakes the
entire globe. Then, a hail of
meteoric firestorms will burn up a
third of all the trees and al the
green grass, followed by two horrific
asteroid impacts and a great darkness
caused, perhaps, by hundreds of
volcanic eruptions.) Twenty-five
percent of Earth will perish during
the first four trumpets. The fifth
trumpet marks the appearing of the
devil masquerading as Almighty God,
and after five months of tormenting
wicked people who are willing to
worship him, the sixth trumpet
sounds. When the sixth trumpet
sounds, the devil’s forces will
be allowed to kill one-third of the
worlds’ population so that he
can establish total dominion over
Earth. (Revelation 9:15) Notice on
the chart above how the fifth seal is
broken immediately after the sixth
trumpet sounds. When the slaughter of
the fifth seal is finished,
Earth’s population will be
reduced to about 50% of what it was
before the Great Tribulation began.
The Identity of the
Altar
“…I saw
under the altar the souls of those
who had been slain because of the
Word of God and the testimony they
had maintained.” When the
fifth seal was broken, John saw the
souls of martyrs located under the
altar. This language speaks volumes
if you already understand the
prerequisite doctrine of parallel
temples. The altar mentioned in the
fifth seal refers to the bronze Altar
of Burnt Offering. You may recall,
this altar was located in the
courtyard of the temple (Exodus
40:6), while the golden Altar of
Incense was located inside the
tabernacle, near the veil. (Exodus
40:5; Leviticus 16:12) Since the
golden Altar of Incense is
specifically mentioned in Revelation
8:3, this has led some people to
assume the altar mentioned in the
fifth seal is also the golden Altar
of Incense. We can discover the true
identity of this altar by comparing
the heavenly altar with the altars
used in the earthy temple. (Hebrews
8:1-5) Notice this text: “Present
your burnt offerings on the altar of
the Lord your God, both the meat and
the blood. The blood of your
sacrifices must be poured beside the
altar of the Lord your God, but you
may eat the meat.” (Deuteronomy
12:27, See also Leviticus 5:9; 8:15.)
This text indicates that the blood of
animal sacrifices was poured into a
container beneath the Altar of Burnt
Offering in the earthy temple. Once
this point is understood, the
parallel becomes obvious.
The souls of the
martyrs are under the Altar of Burnt
Offering in Heaven. They are located
in Heaven because they represent
human beings sacrificed for
the cause of Christ. The Bible says
they were slain because of their
faithfulness to the Word of God and
the testimony they maintained.
Remember the campaign to translate
and distribute the Bible after the
second seal was broken (the large
sword, the sword of truth, placed in
the rider’s right hand). Do you
remember our study of the second seal
about how the translation and
distribution of the Bible would cause
men to kill one another? The breaking
of the fifth seal will be the
fulfilling of the second seal. The
Bible says these souls under the
altar were slain because of the Word
of God. During the Great Tribulation,
God will have a people who stand on
the Bible and the Bible alone as the
Word of God. A time is coming when
all people who obey the Word of God
(Abel the faithful) will be regarded
as enemies of God (Cain the
presumptuous). In the same way, the
Crisis Government (Babylon) will
regard the saints as enemies and
later, Lucifer, who will be
masquerading as Almighty God, will
insist on their death. Jesus warned
His disciples, “All this I
have told you so that you will not go
astray. They will put you out of the
synagogue; in fact, a time is coming
when anyone who kills you will think
he is offering a service to God. They
will do such things because they have
not known the Father or me. I have
told you this, so that when the time
comes you will remember that I warned
you. I did not tell you this at first
because I was with you.” (John
16:1-4)
Who Has Greater Guilt?
The fifth seal is a
problem for people who believe in a
pre-tribulation rapture. Advocates of
a pre-tribulation rapture believe
that they are worthy of escaping the
suffering of the Great Tribulation,
because they “believed in
Christ” before the Great
Tribulation began. This is foolish.
James wrote, “You believe
that there is one God. Good! Even the
demons believe that – and
shutter.” (James 2:19)
Believing in God is one thing;
obeying God at any cost is another.
Currently, a large majority of the
world rejects the authority of
Christ, as well as His teachings, and
Earth’s population is exploding
faster than the gospel can travel.
Billions of people on Earth have not
had a chance to thoughtfully consider
the gospel of Christ. They cannot
consider it because they are immersed
in barriers of culture, language,
religious arrogance, and ignorance.
Should these people be punished for
42 months with suffering and
martyrdom while the ruptured saints
are playing harps in Heaven? How can
Jesus torment the heathen (meaning
all of the “unsaved”) with
a Great Tribulation, when proclaiming
and demonstrating the gospel to the
heathen is the responsibility of
Christians? (Matthew 28:19,20) Who
has the greater guilt: The pagans who
did not or could not hear the gospel
because Christians did not come to
their village, or Christians who
chose a fine paying job instead of
traveling to remote villages to share
the gospel? The “great
escape” (as some call the
pre-tribulation rapture) is plausible
when presumption has displaced faith
in Christ. If Jesus, our Lord and
Master, came to Earth to suffer and
die for us, should His servants do
less for Him? Jesus said, “Remember
the words I spoke to you: ‘No
servant is greater than his
master.’ If they persecuted me,
they will persecute you also. They
will treat you this way because of my
name, for they do not know the One
who sent me.” (John
15:20,21)
Saints as Sacrifices
John was shown the
souls of martyrs under the Altar of
Burnt Offering in Heaven because they
are sacrificial martyrs. Before I can
address what this statement means, I
have to explain a few items. First,
the doctrine of soul sleep becomes
highly important once again in our
study on Revelation. The souls of all
the dead people are dead –
awaiting either the first
resurrection or the second. (John
6:39, 40; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18;
Revelation 20:5) The souls of Abel,
Stephen, Paul, and millions of other
martyrs are not located under
the Altar of Burnt Offering in Heaven
now. Dead souls are not in Hell,
either. Furthermore, the souls of
those martyred during the fifth seal
are not to be confused with people
who have been martyred for the cause
of Christ through the ages. The souls
under the Altar represent people who
will die for Jesus after the
fifth seal is broken.
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