Why COVID-19 is not the end of the world

The four-horse judgments

You would be forgiven if you thought that we are in the middle of the final seven-year tribulation period with the panic sweeping the world at the moment with lock-downs, border closures, panic buying, mysterious masking tape crosses as you stand in line and seeing myriads of people around with face masks.  It certainly does have an apocalyptic feel at the moment.  Revelation 6:1-8 talks about the four demonic horsemen and the first four seals that are opened.  These four seal judgments are personified by four riders on different colour heavenly horses each giving rise to a series of events that occur on the earth.  These first four judgments are paralleled in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  They describe these four horsemen in a different way.  The parallels are striking but Jesus is talking to his disciples and describes this time as the beginning of birth pains in verse 8.  The four judgments can be summed by four keywords in this passage as follows:  deception, wars, famines, and disease.  In Revelation the horses in order are a white horse (deception), red horse (violence and war), black horse (famine), and pale horse (pestilence and plague).¹  The first four seal judgments have the power to kill ¼ of the earth’s population.  The fourth horse kills by means of plagues or sickness or maybe even a virus-type event.  At current estimates of the world’s population, that means nearly 2 billion people would die from these four “horse” judgments.  To put things into perspective with this current virus crisis, we are nowhere near that kind of level of disaster.  As of 22nd March 2020, there have been 13,000 deaths² due to the Coronavirus which is serious enough and a tragedy in itself.  But during the seven-year period of tribulation, the death count will be much, much higher.  My take on this is that this virus crisis is a wake-up call to us all just how precariously things in the world are balanced.  We shouldn’t take our lifestyle, finances, and relationships for granted.

How do we know when the end of the world has arrived?

So how do we know when the end of the world has arrived?  Many people give different reasons why they think that COVID-19 is not the end of the world.  Atheists will say it is when the sun expires in billions of years and becomes a red giant and swallows up all the inner planets.  Some Christians believe that the Book of Revelation was merely a letter to the first century church and is not futuristic in its outlook.  Other Christians closer to the mark say it all begins when believers in Christ are raptured and this will not happen until a new Jewish temple is rebuilt on the existing so-called “temple mount”.

The rebuilding of the Jewish Temple

The first two thoughts are way off-beam as I believe that we have to see the book of Revelation as being futuristic.  This means taking a pre-millennial literal view that there is going to be a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on the earth in the future.  However, I don’t think that the start of the last 7 year period is dependent on a Jewish temple being rebuilt or the rapture of believers.  If you look at Rev. 11:1 where this temple view interpretation is based, it says that the two witnesses go and measure the temple of God and count the worshippers there.  The thinking is that the temple of God which they measure is pre-existing but that is not necessarily so.  In the Bible Translator’s Handbook, it says,  “the purpose of this measuring is to measure off the area and the people. Measure means to gauge the size of something or survey something to determine its size or boundaries.“   The measuring occurs at the beginning of the 1260 day ministry of the two witnesses to survey the true temple area which has been lost over the last two millennia.  The true temple mount was located over the old city of David where the freshwater source of the Gihon Spring has been found.  Hezekiah’s 533 m long tunnel is a concrete piece of immovable evidence of where the original temple stood.  I would think that the two witnesses would know this and would survey the exact area where the Old Testament sacrificial system would need to be recommenced.  The beginning of the end is not a virus but the recommencement of the Jewish sacrifices as outlined in Daniel 9:27.  Listen to my Daniel series.  Furthermore, we would see the commencement of the ministry of the two witnesses at this starting point, one of which is a modern-day type of Elijah.  Those concerned that there must be a pre-existing temple building for the sacrifices and the temple measurement to take place need not be concerned.  Buildings can be constructed extremely quickly if need be and it’s interesting to note with the rebuilding of the temple after the Jews were allowed to return to the land, the first thing that they rebuilt was the sacrificial altar and then the temple was built around it on the exact same spot as the original Solomon’s temple.  I don’t think anything would be different for the rebuilding and the recommencement for the third temple and sacrifices.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, we don’t need to worry about this current crisis as being the end of the world but I believe it is a wake-up call that the end is getting nearer.  Soon enough this crisis will pass even though many more deaths are inevitable.  So what are we looking for?  Two end-time witnesses will start the end times clock ticking probably at Sh’mini Atzeret 2029.  Just like John the Baptist started preaching and urging repentance I think we will see more of the same, this time in downtown central Jerusalem, not the Judean wilderness.  

Watch Jerusalem!  Don’t worry about a physical building – that will come soon enough.  And don’t expect a pre-trib rapture to occur at this time.  Just like we are not exempt from viruses at this time, we won’t be exempt from the beginning of birth pains or further trouble until we are called to escape and flee to the wilderness as the woman of Revelation 12 at the mid-point of the last seven year period.  I believe that the Bible points to the rapture being a post-tribulational event which you can read more about in the blog, “The eagle has landed!“