Who’s on the High Horse?
On February 5, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama made the following statement, clearly directed at the many Christian leaders gathered there:
“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Coming straight from ISIS talking points, this statement is shocking on many levels and warrants a response from those of us who (apparently unlike the President) have a personal relationship with Jesus. His pompous, condescending lecture about humility, delivered with a complete absence of this same virtue, was both ironic and offensive. Indeed, he was the one on the high horse that day, and where he seems to spend most days. We Christians are not on a high horse, Mr. President, we are on our knees at the foot of the cross, trusting only in Jesus’ shed blood as the sole basis for someday standing in the glorious presence of the Father.
But perhaps even more alarming were the comments given the following day by the President’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, at the Brookings Institution, where she unveiled the Administration’s 2015 national security strategy:
“Too often, what’s missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War. We cannot afford to be buffeted by alarmism or an instantaneous news cycle.”
The President’s remarks reflect a profound misunderstanding of the fundamental difference between Jesus, who commanded only that we love God and one another, and Mohammed, who explicitly called for and initiated Jihad as the means to enforce Islam. And the remarks of Ms. Rice (not Condoleeza, boy do we miss her now!) betray a strategy whereby the Administration continues to chant a mantra claiming that there is no global war between Islamic extremism and Western civilization.
Could it be that the President is still fighting the same anti-colonialism war against Western civilization that his father was fighting? Let’s leave that for the psychoanalysis of future historians, but instead our purpose here is to sound an alarm to all followers of Jesus. We must be on the alert and prepare for increasing persecution and tribulation here in the land to which our ancestors once fled. They created in America a unique place of refuge for living out the Gospel, guided only by our personal understanding of the Scriptures, free from the governmental tyranny and religious discrimination of Europe.
During the early centuries of the past millennium, Europe was eventually able to stop the onslaught of the first wave of Islamic extremism, which attacked from the south and the east. But modern-day air-travel and globalization mean that geography is no longer sufficient to provide the sanctuary we once enjoyed here in the US. September 11, 2001 made that clear.
In ISIS and Al Qaeda we see the rise of a more powerful and starkly evil form of Islamic extremism – united in a professed faith in Mohammed – and bent on the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. Interestingly, for students of Bible prophecy, ISIS is spreading outward from the upper Euphrates – the very point on the planet that John mentions (in Revelation) in association with sixth trumpet (Rev. 9:14) and the sixth bowl of wrath (Rev. 16:12). Both passages speak of massive, worldwide warfare – the death of a third of mankind (Rev. 9:15), an army of 200 million (Rev. 9:16), and a gathering of forces “for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty” (Rev. 16:14).
This all brings us back to the “high horse” that President Obama referenced. They are not necessarily “high,” but there are two “white” horses mentioned prominently in Revelation. The first (Rev. 6:2) carries an unidentified rider: “he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him; and he went out conquering, and to conquer.” The second white horse (Rev. 19:11-16) carries a rider who is plainly identified as none other than Jesus. But who is the rider on the first white horse? There is debate among Biblical scholars, but let’s accept one of the leading interpretations, that this refers to a “false Christ” – most likely Mohammed himself. Certainly he is a leading candidate for the role of introducing the series of increasingly destructive wars that spread across the planet in the pages of John’s Revelation. Islamic history teaches that Mohammed rode a white horse – that horse’s name? You guessed it, “Barack” (a common given name in Muslim families). Hmmm….
All “coincidences” aside, there is no question that the Bible teaches of increasing global tribulation before Jesus’ return. Jesus himself described this as a “great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.” One of the more specific warning signs that Jesus lists of this impending trouble is the presence of the “abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet” standing in the “holy place” (Matt. 24:15), where it “should not be” (Mark 13:14). What is this abomination? What greater abomination could there be in a place that is holy to the Jewish people than the presence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount?
At the end of his testimony, Daniel writes (Dan. 12:11) of being told by a man dressed in linen that: “from the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.” The question is, are these days or years? Apparently years, for Daniel also gave the time from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah as 69 weeks, which was fulfilled as weeks of years, not days. And it is years here as well, for construction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque began in 688 CE, exactly 1,290 years after the daily sacrifice was abolished, just before the Temple was destroyed.
And, again “coincidentally,” the year in which the building of this mosque was begun is exactly 1,260 years before the modern-day restoration of the nation Israel (1948 CE). This was to fulfill what was written by John (Rev. 11:1-2):
“Rise and measure the temple of god, and the altar, and those who worship in it. And leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles; and they will tread under the foot the holy city for forty-two months [1260 days].”
So we see that the days of which Jesus warned are upon us. It is a battle between two armies, each led by a rider on a white horse. But it is a war unlike any that has yet been fought by humanity. Extremist Islamists will continue to escalate their brutal war against anyone refusing to succumb to the teachings of their prophet. Christians and Jews will be especially targeted, but they will not be the only victims as this war continues to spread. As He promised, our Lord and Savior, Jesus, will eventually return to put an end to this war and all others. But the other rider will continue to wreak increasing havoc until that day.
Given the President’s comments, we end with a simple question: In this new global war, whose side is he on? Put another way, is he backing the wrong horse?