Apocalyptic Horsemen (Wars & Plaugues)

Apologetics Sacred Scripture
#1

I’m not one who likes to take biblical scriptural passages out of context like fundamentalist and resort to picking an argument no matter how intriguing someone tries to make a conversation.

Even as a young kid I heard my grand-mother and my own mother say often that in someplace in the Bible it said that in End Times the People of the Yellow Race would Rule the World after a Great War.

Never once could I ever find any place in Scripture that made me think this might be true.

However; today we hear of Political Powers in the World with the G-20 nations in their conquests speak about coming together and building (“The New World Order”).

In the Apocalypse Chapter 9: Verse 14-18 Douay Rheims version we read as follows…

**14 Saying to the sixth Angel, who had the trumpet: Loose the four Angels, who are bound in the great river Euphrates.

15 And the four Angels were loosed, who were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, to kill the third part of men.

16 And the number of the army of horsemen was twenty thousand times ten thousand. And I heard the number of them.

17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision: and they that sat on them, had breastplates of fire, and hyacinth, and brimstone, and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions: and from their mouths proceeded fire, and smoke, and brimstone.

18 And by these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.**

In particular take note of verse 16 where it speaks of an army of horsemen was twenty thousand times ten thousand

What army in the world today has a number of men totalling twenty thousand times ten thousand ?

Only one such army in today’s 21st century exist. China !!! with 2.2 million strong.

In Haydock’s Catholic Commentary haydock1859.tripod.com/id295.html

it states:

Ver. 16. Twenty thousand times ten thousand, or two hundred millions. Such an immense multitude cannot be accounted for, but by supposing a great part of it to consist of the infernal beings in human form, as it is doubtful whether there be that number of men capable of bearing arms upon the whole globe of the earth

Doubtful? Such armies of men of this size exist in the world today.

Curious. What does anyone else make out of this?

Peace
Chris

#2

My only response is:

Crud. We are doomed. :banghead:

On a more serious level, I wouldn’t worry too much yet. After all, the book of revelation says that happens after 1/4 of the world’s people die. That hasn’t happened yet, so we are probably ok.

#3

I thought this Catholic Apologetic did a good job explaining the global situation today in relation to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
catholicintl.com/articles/The_Real_Reason_for_the_Economic_Crisis.pdf

#4

The Book of Revelation was placed at the end of the Bible for a reason. Those who put it there assumed that the reader read and understood everything else in the Bible that comes before it. I wouldn’t be so quick to jump on any intepreation of Revelation which does so in the absence of the rest of the Bible.

"At the appointed time the king of the south shall come to grips with him, but the king of the north shall overwhelm him with chariots and horsemen and a great fleet, passing through the countries like a flood. (Daniel 11:40)

I’d suggest reading, studying and understanding the Book of Daniel in the context of the entirety of scripture before we start peeking under rocks for Chineese armies and looking for answers in one sentance of Haydock’s Catholic Commentary.

-Tim-

#6

I remember my Mom reading this one to me around '91 or '92. She was really big into end-time prophecies, but they all kind of blur together. :wink: I figured my own personal “end times” would arrive before the end of the world actually did, but she was pretty convinced they were far more imminent.

If memory serves, I want to say there was some sort of a visionary? And she had a vision where an Asiatic people (“a yellow people with cruel [and slanted??] eyes” or something like that?) were going door-to-door and invading the homes of a (Caucasian?) nation to subjugate the people who lived there.

That’s about the only part that I remember 20 years later. Google doesn’t give me anything based on those snippets. But I’m sure it was far more worrying/plausible to generations that grew up with the Korean and Vietnam Wars, plus all the Communist/Cold War/let’s-build-nuclear-bomb-shelters-in-the-backyard stuff to worry about.

#9

Also, a calvary is a small percentage of an army. Imagine the size of the army itself. I believe it is a symbolic number of overwhelming size. If the calvary is exactly double the size of the number who attend to the Lamb in (Rev 5:11) they are vastly outnumbered.

#10

Chris

One of the best books for understanding The Book of Revelations is The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth by Scott Hahn. Scott Hahn does not present a boogeyman version of Revelations that like those so popular with Protestants and Hollywood, rather he analyzes Revelations in the context of the liturgy of the mass and present Revelations as a book of beauty and hope. Thanks to select Protestants and Hollywood most people think that the definition of “Apocalypse” is some terrible ending of the world but it’s real meaning of “unveiling”. Thus Scott Hahn writes the following:

This is what was unveiled in the Book of Revelations: the union of heaven and earth, consummated in the Holy eucharist… St. Paul describes the Chruch as the bride of Christ and Revelations unveils the bride.

Beautiful!

Ran

#11

You have the right to think that there’s something fishy about it. :mad:

#12

I haven’t been on CAF for several years but googled the “yellow race” prophecy and this thread popped up. So here I am again. This is an interesting topic in that it’s so widespread. The first time I heard it was from my mother when I was a kid in the 50’s or 60’s. She didn’t get it from nuns or a Catholic source, though. Her grandfather, who was something of a hermit and visionary according to family lore, believed it, claimed the Bible said it. This was backwoods Arkansas in the '30’s; primitive, little education and thoroughly Protestant. He was self- educated, didn’t go to school but was religious. he may have heard it in church or from an itinerant preacher or maybe even from his parents. Or he might really have gotten some sense of it on his own. I wish I’d asked my mother a lot more questions!

#13

Perhaps your grandmother and mother misunderstood the three sons of Noah to be the fathers of three races: Ham, the black race; Shem, the white race; and Japheth, the yellow race. One of the sons of Japheth was Magog (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:5). In the final battle in Revelation 20:8, a very large number from Gog and Magog gather to do battle against the saints.