I’m pastor Paul Holt with a Bible factor update.
Venezuela and the Revelation economy.
Many assumptions are made about the Book of Revelation, about the things that are described there. Some people want to believe that much of what we read is just well, just symbols. There’s no substance there. Others believe everything is real and we have a tendency to identify many of the players as being heavenly when there’s also the possibility of them being earthly.
Take for instance the angels of each of the churches. It is possible that the angels that the Lord Jesus is speaking about are actual Heavenly Creatures but it is also possible because the word angel can mean messenger that they are human beings who well are messengers for God.
They could be the actual pastors of the seven churches of the Book of Revelation. But when we get to chapter 6 and we start to describe the four horsemen of the Apocalypse I don’t think we should assume anything. I don’t think we do ourselves any service by assuming that they’re all heavenly beings or that they are earthly people. The fact is that there’s a lot of room there and we really need to understand the economics of what we read in the Book of Revelation.
Take for instance the third seal when it is broken in verse 5 of Revelation 6, it says 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.
Now it has been understood by many commentators that the oil and the wine refer to wealth and the reason they are not hurt is well the elites, the very very wealthy during this period, well, they would remain wealthy.
And the fact is that most commentators do agree that this description of wheat and barley costing a denarius actually refer to the fact that it will take a day’s wage to buy a day’s worth of food and that basically people, the everyday people, will be starving.
Well, when we consider the country of Venezuela it is quite evident that the very wealthy in Venezuela are just working to save their own necks and are not looking out for the needs of their own people.
Last week Goldman Sachs acquired $2.8 billion worth of bonds issued by Venezuela’s state oil companies at just 31 cents on the dollar. Paying $865 million for the securities.
Now Venezuela is looking even more desperate offering $5 billion worth of bonds at 20 cents on the dollar, through a Chinese brokerage, according to The Wall Street Journal whose reporters have been tracking the country’s attempts to secure emergency cash.
Well this is the kind of financing that you see among the very desperate. And while the latest sale might raise a billion dollars in cash it will leave Venezuela on the hook for more than $11 billion in payments through the year 2036 and the hugely discounted bonds are so obscure that apparently they’re being sold through some sort of unusual off market arrangement, further underscoring just how risky this investment is.
So you have to ask the question how does Venezuela end up in this situation. Well certainly I would tackle the fact that they are a socialist country and that they built their nation on Marxist ideals and only survived and became wealthy at one point because they have some of the largest oil reserves in the world.
And Venezuela is quite addicted to credit and they have so much corruption, they have engaged in endless spending binges on weapons and gasoline subsidies and all sorts of crazy projects that just went bust.
But in recent years President Maduro has faithfully met the country’s debt service obligations to its paymasters in Manhattan and Beijing while sharply cutting back on imports of food medicine and other essentials.
Quite really this socialist government literally allowed the people to go hungry while keeping the fat cats fat both at home and abroad. And let’s face it this is devastating to the people of Venezuela. Well now they’re falling behind in their payments and things are getting really desperate and they want to keep, I should say the elitist want to keep, their well their oil and their wine.
They want to keep the things that make them appear wealthy and this has consequences. This is the Revelation economy.
Venezuela has embraced sin and decadence and then willing to enjoy wealth for its leadership but willing to allow its people to struggle for even a day’s worth of food.
I mean they’re having to deploy troops to violently control the people with water cannons and other things. And the fact is that the people are suffering while the elitists are enjoying the riches of life while they can.
Now it’s not just Venezuela. There are many other countries that are going through this and as I addressed last week it really is the goal of climate change legislation, health care legislation and really these socialist governments and communist governments around the world to subject their people to abject poverty while enjoying among a very few the luxuries of wealth created by those who must suffer to give them that wealth. This is in fact what we find in the Book of Revelation that people were not willing to repent of their sin.
They give themselves over to these kinds of totalitarian governments and not willing to put safeguards in place to well keep the government from well, destroying the country. Now we see this in very early stages in the United States.
We we always need to be on guard for the government having too much power to do these kinds of things to its people. We’ve seen it in the Soviet Union. We’ve seen it in Cuba.
This is in fact the Revelation economy and if we are not aware of what the Lord has warned us about if we just read the book of Revelation and see the mystical and magical stuff the spiritual and say wow there’s some sort of potion being poured out. Well when you read the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four horsemen have power given to them yes. But the fact is that they are not given some sort of magic.
And it’s not clear that when these seals are broken that these horsemen are coming from heaven or even that they’re coming from hell. The fact is we can create our own destruction. What have we unsealed what seals have been broken when we ignore God and choose our own way.
Fact is we must be careful, because if we just assume that the book of Revelation is all allegory and no substance well then we miss the point altogether.
I’m pastor Paul with a Bible factor update and you can find me at the Bible factor dot com
