When he opened the third seal, I heard the third
living creature say, “Come and see.”
So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he
who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living
creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius,
and three quarts of barley for a denarius;
and do not harm the oil and the wine.”
—REVELATION 6:5–6
The vision John had while on the isle of Patmos describes the third rider of the Apocalypse. John sees a rider on a black horse, who is carrying a pair of scales allowing him to exactly weigh the wheat and barley he is selling for a denarius. John the Revelator is painting a portrait of a global famine.
A denarius was the equivalent of one day’s earnings for the average working man (Matthew 20:2). John is saying that a typical family will pay a full day’s wage for a quart of wheat. How long would a quart of wheat feed your family?
After you’ve spent your entire day’s salary for one day’s food ration, what must you do to pay for your housing and upkeep, for your clothing and medical expenses, or fuel—which alone will be worth its weight in gold?
During this time of famine the church of Jesus Christ will be in heaven sitting at the marriage supper of the Lamb as honored guests of the Master. But what about those who are left behind? What will they experience?
Americans are isolated from the famines the world is already experiencing. The World Hunger Organization reported that in 1996 up to 3.5 million people were the victims of famine in North Korea. In a six year span, between 1998 to 2004, the Democratic Republic of Congo reported the deaths of 3.8 million people due to famine.1
The American Red Cross, in their annual survey, estimated 17.2 million American households (1 out of 7) were “food insecure.”2
After a time of war (red horse) there is always a time of shortage; this time will be no different. The world, including America, is inching toward a time when we will no longer be able to produce the food it takes to feed our people.
The family farm in America is being systematically wiped out of existence. “According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from 6.8 million in 1935 to only about two million today.”3
Farming in America is now dominated by major oil companies and agribusiness conglomerates, making it impossible for the average farmer to compete. “According to Farm Aid, every week approximately 330 farmers leave their land for good. . . . A very large percentage of family farmers are in their fifties, sixties or seventies . . . only 6 percent of all farmers are under the age of thirty-five.”4 There is no “Joshua’s Generation” to carry on the American family farm.
Not only are major conglomerates driving the average farmer out of business . . . not only is farmland becoming a prime target for real estate investors . . . not only is the exponential trend of migration from rural to urban life a major factor partly because the next generation views farm life as nothing more than a twelve-hour-a-day sweat shop with little or no profit. But America now has wealthy foreign investors like China5 and Japan who already hold most of the US debt in the form of federal notes (treasury securities), purchasing large amounts of American farmland. As this book goes to print, China is trying to purchase the largest pork production enterprise in America. All the pork produced in this plant will go directly to China.
In addition, the IRS death tax, which can exceed 50 percent of a farm’s total value, is lurking in the wings hastening the inevitable demise of the American farm. For example, if your father owns a farm valued at one million dollars at the time of his death, the IRS will be on your doorstep demanding as much as 50 percent of the value of your deceased father’s property. You will be forced to sell the farm to raise the $500,000 to pay the IRS or lose your land.6
This ever-worsening crisis of foreign-owned American farmland will eventually lead to massive food shortages. America is slowly selling the source of our food (our land) due to the indifference of the next generation or due to the burden of paying massive death taxes. The famine is coming. It’s just a matter of time.
I was twelve years old when my grandfather, John Christopher Hagee, passed away. I can only remember seeing my grandfather twice in my lifetime. The first time was in 1948 at a Thanksgiving family reunion, and the second time was at his gravesite in a small town in Oklahoma in the summer of 1952.
While my father, his five surviving brothers, and Grandmother Hagee were hugging each other and saying their goodbyes after the burial, I started wandering through the small country cemetery. Almost immediately I noticed that many of the tombstones of both the elderly and the young cited their date of death as being in 1917.
As I rejoined my father, who was leaving the cemetery, I asked him, “What happened here in 1917?”
He replied, “In 1917 the swine flu swept through our town, and half of this town died in just a few months. I saw horse-drawn hearses carrying two bodies in one casket—a mother holding her baby, both dead with influenza.”
“Why didn’t these people get a shot?” I asked.
“There was no shot to get—no medicine would touch it. The strong lived and the weak died.”
Almost one hundred years have passed since that deadly flu epidemic, and the finest scientific minds in the world warn us that there are viruses that have mutated and are immune to any vaccine that we have created.
Nothing can stop a plague once it starts. It will be just as my father described with the epidemic of 1917—the strong will survive, and the weak will die.
Global scientists are warning the world of a potential pandemic flu outbreak, which usually strikes three to four times a century. Pandemic flu is a strain of flu virus that is capable of spreading rapidly from person to person worldwide. Because we now have metropolises with millions of people living in close proximity, the rate of infection can spread like a prairie fire driven by a fierce wind.
Just a few weeks ago, I was talking across the fence to my neighbor while working on my ranch. He served as a US congressman and now works in Washington, DC, studying the potential of a pandemic bird flu outbreak in America and around the world. My neighbor, who is not an alarmist but a well-reasoned man of outstanding intellect, made a statement that shocked me. He told me without hesitation, “Pastor, it’s not a matter of if; it’s only a matter of when we will have a major pandemic bird flu outbreak in America. When it does happen, gather all your family on your ranch and isolate yourselves for several months. That will be the price of survival.”
I shook my head as I said my good-byes and walked off toward my truck with Jesus’ words ringing in my ears: “There will be . . . pestilences” (Matthew 24:7).
When I got home I picked up the April 16–17, 2013, weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal and saw a picture of the Chinese killing chickens because of their deep concerns about a new avian flu strain. The CDC is concerned that this deadly bird flu virus could begin to spread from bird to human and then from human to human at any moment.
An outbreak of the H7N3 bird flu virus in western Mexico in 2012 led to the slaughter of more than 22 million hens, causing price increases in chicken and egg products.7
America is not immune to pestilence. A new strain of the H3N2 virus is spreading across the United States at a record-breaking speed. According to the Department of Health, the state of Missouri alone reported a nearly 2,000 percent increase in positive flu tests. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention had reports of this virus in forty-one states.8
In spite of our medical sophistication, there will be global pestilence.
God uses earthquakes to get the attention of those who are spiritually hard of hearing. God is saying, if you can’t see the signs in the heavens, if you refuse to recognize the obvious signs of prophecy fulfilled, let me shake the ground under your feet; let cities be swallowed, mountains leveled, and islands of the sea disappear.
God used an earthquake in the original “Jailhouse Rock.” The apostle Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for preaching the gospel. Rather than pout and whine over their persecution, they decided to sing praises to God in the midnight hour.
God shook the foundations of the earth with a “violent earthquake” to bring down prison walls and allow Paul and Silas to make a convert out of their jailer (Acts 16:25–28).
God used an earthquake on resurrection morning as the angel of God “rolled back the stone from the door [of the tomb], and sat on it” (Matthew 28:2). The stone was not removed to let Christ out but to let us in; the greatest news the world has ever heard came out of the graveyard—He lives!
God promises that all nations who battle against Jerusalem “will be punished by the LORD of hosts with thunder and earthquake and great noise” (Isaiah 29:6).
God forewarns planet earth that the greatest earthquake in human history is coming! John the Revelator describes it with these words:
There was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. . . . And the cities of the nations fell. . . . Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.
(REVELATION 16:18–20)
Can you imagine an earthquake so globally severe that the Rocky Mountains, Mount Everest, and Kilimanjaro are shaken until they become pebbles leveled to the ground? Can you visualize planet earth’s geography being transformed by an earthquake so great that major islands of the sea like Hawaii, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, and Great Britain will fall below sea level?
Most Americans are aware of the San Andreas Fault on the West Coast; one strong earthquake near this crevice and millions will experience massive and instant destruction. Can you visualize San Francisco falling into the Pacific Ocean with cities from San Diego to Sacramento ablaze from ruptured gas lines . . . destroyed freeways making the assistance of first responders impossible . . . countless thousands trapped in the rubble of collapsed high-rise apartments and office buildings? That’s only a glimpse of the immense destruction of a major earthquake that America’s finest geologists confirm as “the Big One is coming.”
Few are aware that the Army Corps of Engineers has identified a major fault running the full length of the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Canada. Experts are stating that one major earthquake could split America in half.9
The United States Geological Survey reports that global occurrences of earthquakes from 2008 through 2010 totaled 107,135 with 25,449 happening in America alone.
How great is our God? Far greater than the mind of man can imagine, and far greater than anything we’ve seen in the history of the world! He is crying out to us—the Big One is coming!
Jesus told His disciples that before He returns, lawlessness will abound (Matthew 24:12). We hear the words of the Jewish Rabbi speaking to His generation—words that could dominate the headlines of every media outlet in America tomorrow: “Anarchy in America.” Jesus painted the portrait of our nation in three words: “Lawlessness will abound” (Matthew 24:12).
The Bible identifies the Antichrist as “the lawless one,” and his claim to power and to deity is proved by signs produced through satanic power. He is received as a god on earth and as a ruler because of the blindness of the people who will follow him.
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.
(2 THESSALONIANS 2:8–11)
The Bible says the “spirit of the Antichrist” (1 John 4:3) is alive in the world today. Certainly we see the spirit of rebellion exploding in America. Anarchy is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority.”
The last verse in the book of Judges records, “In those days there was no king in Israel [no national leadership]; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25).
When authority goes out, anarchy comes in.
America has a lack of leadership within our government, and we are seeing anarchy on a national level never seen in our history.
Not long ago, protesters rioted in the streets of Wisconsin as unions fought for control of the government.10 The Occupy Wall Street mobs of Union Square in New York were the clear portrait of lawlessness in America. For example, “according to a memo written by the FBI’s New York field office in August 2011, bureau personnel met with officials from the New York Stock Exchange to discuss ‘the planned Anarchist protest titled “Occupy Wall Street,” ’ scheduled for September 17, 2011.”11
The protest appeared on anarchist websites and social network pages on the Internet, the memo said. “Numerous incidents have occurred in the past which show attempts by Anarchist groups to disrupt, influence, and/or shut down normal business operations of financial districts.”12
The world is upside down! Right and wrong are no longer absolute but relative to man’s personal opinion. Every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes. “If I think it’s right, that makes it right.” America has contextual morality and situational ethics. “If you don’t like the law, break it; if it makes you feel good . . . do it!” As a result, we have civil chaos.
Daily newscasts show angry mobs holding protest signs and screaming obscenities, demanding special entitlements. America has become a nation of polarizing groups, each with their own agenda and having no regard for the well-being of our country as a whole.
University students protest so violently that speakers with different opinions are driven from the podium and denied their basic right to freedom of speech while administrators stand by and surrender to the mob. When television cameras arrive, the mob grows bigger and more violent. The police are called in to do what the parents of these students refused to do ten years earlier.
There is little discipline in government, in school, in the home, or in most individuals. The rebellion against authority is also alive in the apostate church that has thrown discipline overboard and no longer mentions the necessity of submitting to spiritual and civil leadership.
The alternative to discipline is mayhem where the nation has become an asylum, and the inmates are in charge.
America has become so feeble, fearful, permissive, and promiscuous. The forces of evil are taking advantage of our spiritual decline and moral weakness by spreading havoc across our nation.
Thanks to a skewed court system, the offender gets more sympathy than the victim of his crime. Police officers are put on trial for doing their duty against a criminal with a rap sheet that reaches to the floor. Who’s the one who broke the law—the criminal or the policeman? Police officers are investigated while criminals write books that make them rich, famous, and features them on television talk shows.
The vicious crime wave in America today is not only wicked but demonic. When young men charge into schools and theaters with assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition to slaughter innocent men, women, and children at will, it’s evil and it’s demonic! These are no longer crimes, these are the hideous acts of heartless executioners.
There is no king in Israel (America or the world), and every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes. However men may justify it . . . and by whatever name they call it . . . it’s anarchy!
Recently, a student attending Florida Atlantic University was told by his instructor, Deandre Poole, to write the name of Jesus on a piece of paper, drop it on the ground, and stomp on it. When the student refused, academic charges were brought against him. A hold was placed on his academic records until a final decision was reached. His faith was under fire! Fox News exposed the story and they obtained a synopsis of the lesson taught by the instructor. When the story became public, Florida Atlantic University issued an apology.13
I wonder if the instructor would dare order one of his students to write the name of Muhammad on a piece of paper and stomp on it. Never! The outrage would get him fired, as a mob of irate campus protestors would demand an immediate resignation and complete apology. But in America, attacking Christians has become an art form. The spirit of anarchy rules our nation.
In our spiritual and moral collapse we have forgotten that the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. We have forgotten that life begins at conception and to destroy life in the womb of a mother is murder in the courts of heaven. We will face God in the judgment for the death of the unborn in our nation.
We have forgotten that there is a difference between a boy and a girl. “From the city of Fountain, Colorado, comes news of liberal parents who believe their little boy is actually a little girl on the ‘inside.’ ” The parents are insisting that their six-year-old son be allowed to attend classes dressed as a girl and that he be allowed to use the girl’s bathroom.14
When the school told the parents they would not permit their son to use the girl’s bathroom, the parents, with the help of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed a discrimination complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division.15
America is going in the wrong direction! Wake up, America! Remember what the Word of God says!
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD. (PSALM 33:12)
The wicked shall be turned into hell,
And all the nations that forget God. (PSALM 9:17)
Righteousness exalts a nation,
But sin is a reproach to any people. (PROVERBS 14:34)
After describing the lawlessness of the land, Jesus continued His Prophecy Conference with the Twelve by presenting the concept of the gospel of the kingdom.