November 19, 2025

I was born nearly two years before we entered World War II, when a bottomless cup of coffee cost a nickel, and gasoline cost 18 cents a gallon. And when the war ended in 1945, I had yet to taste ice cream, to sip a Coke, or eat a candy bar. Sugar was the first food rationed, and the last removed from the ration board’s list of restricted foods.

But those were the least of the problems facing my generation, for we would reach adulthood with the specter of nuclear war hanging over our heads. And while no plane then existed that could make the one-way flight of 4,680 miles from Moscow to my home town, our elementary school classes, like those of schools across America, were interrupted by air-raid drills, and we were taught to duck and cover. Besides, why would little Poughkeepsie be a target? New York City was closer. (In my 2005 book, You Can Triumph Over Terror, there are photos of our large family fallout shelter under construction.)

In spite of the fact that my mother’s two beloved brothers served in the military—the youngest in the Pacific, and the oldest in the OSS—she tried to keep our innocent minds free of any knowledge of their involvement, much less the events occurring world wide. And that wasn’t easy, because newspapers, magazines, and radio stations constantly published updates on the wars, while Hollywood churned out a steady stream of movies that dealt with every aspect of war, from spying, to blood and guts combat, on land, sea, and in the air.

But she tried. When one uncle gave Bob and me little wooden rifles at Christmas, toys guns that made an annoying rat-a-tat noise when we turned the little crank that served as a trigger. We loved them, but those little toy guns disappeared overnight. Mom didn’t even like us listening to the songs of the various military services, but I had no trouble learning them all, including the song of the Army Air Corp (now the United States Air Force).

The song did not appeal to my over protective mother, and I suspect that the boast to “…live in fame or go down in flame,” lost its glamour when the fliers, who initially flew inferior airplanes, found themselves faced by seasoned Germans and Japanese pilots, especially considering the fact that over 52,000 American fliers and crewmen lost their lives in combat.

A year after the war ended, when I was only six years old, England’s indomitable wartime leader, Winston Churchill, delivered a speech in which he declared,“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” coining a phrase that would be repeated innumerable times over the next thirty years. An “Iron Curtain” had descended that kept millions enslaved and hungry by Communism. George Orwell, in his book, Animal Farm, exposed the central and ironic lie of communism. It is supposed to be the great leveler that makes all equal, but it simply enslaves the multitudes to the will of a few. So Orwell wrote, “some animals are more equal than others.”

The communists argued that the Berlin wall was necessary to keep westerners out, but in fact, it was built to keep the people of East Germany from escaping to freedom. That wall symbolized Communism’s failure, and it stood from more than 30 years, until Ronald Reagan stood beside it and said, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall.”

So while our mother kept us away from the big old floor model Zenith radio when the war news came on each evening, she was unable to keep us unsullied by reality. Hollywood grew rich on taxpayer’s money, producing countless propaganda films that served to boost morale, sell war bonds, and inspire young men (and later, young women) to visit their local recruiters and demonstrate their patriotism by joining one of the services. And even if our parents avoided taking us to watch war films, there were always the Movietone newsreels shown between the “double features,” two movies played back to back, and the children’s ticket price was only ten cents, as was a box of popcorn.

And those movies were badly needed because, after Pearl Harbor, morale had sunk as deep as the battleships of our Pacific fleet. In fact, across the southwest Pacific, the United States suffered the worst surrenders in our nation’s history, with over 160,000 men ordered to lay down their arms. And just four days after the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler—whose Blitzkrieg lightning warfare had driven the Anglo-French army into the North Sea, and whose armies occupied all of Western Europe—declared war on the United States. We were suddenly at war with the Axis powers, and the Second World War was a reality.

There were many war movies, and their production didn’t end with VJ-Day. Decades after the war ended, Hollywood was still marketing a variety of war movies, many actually motivated by the left to discourage Americans from opposing the spread of Communism. Many were actually anti-war movies, and a number were produced during the Vietnam war, bending the minds and crippling the will of the American people. Their producers were sometimes attacked as enemies of America, men who used their freedom of speech to promote ideas that would ultimately destroy all freedom of speech. And it’s obvious that their “progressive” descendants are far more influential today than they were eighty years ago, for we have Communists openly running for and winning public office.

Some of us remember the shocking realism of “Saving Private Ryan,” and the horrors of the Holocaust depicted in “Schindler’s List.” But perhaps more telling than Oscar Schindler’s secret story of heroism was a mini-series based on a two books written by Herman Wouk, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

All of these movies, pro and con, are stark and realistic; but they cannot truly capture the essence of war, the sights, sounds, or stench, much less the depths to which men will go in their mad desire for wealth and power, nor the satanically inspired depravity which did immeasurable harm to our world, and even now taints it, as is evidenced by the rise of socialism and the re-emergence of anti-Semitism.

These movies tended to glamorize life-threatening situations that civilians and warriors alike experienced, from Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” to Matt Damon in “Saving Private Ryan.” And while we rightly honor the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for love of country, there are no winners in war. Even those venal souls who never wore a uniform, but exploited circumstances to profit politically or financially, deluded themselves. They compromised their integrity and honor, and are destined to lose the most important thing of all, their own souls.

And were it not for the spiritual values of the largely Christian U.S.A, and the willing sacrifices of those who won that war, it’s unlikely that a single republic or democracy would survive today.Americans certainly weren’t the only ones, but they crossed the Atlantic to fight for other nations. They stood in the gap. Sadly, it appears to be a different world today; the “greatest generation” is gone; and with it, “Mom and apple pie,” an expression that identified the core beliefs of the people of the United States; we’ve seen those cherished values diluted and even perverted by immigrants who fled oppression in their own lands to secure the benefits of our constitutional freedom, but brought their failed culture with them.

Television and motion pictures have undermined the ideal of self-sacrifice for our friends, family, and nation, and left us with anti-heroes. And their content not only reflects, but shapes the opinions of Americans who are too quick to surrender the freedoms and the principles that made America great.

And yet, as dark as those movies are, and as much as they reveal man’s sinful humanity to man, yet no book or movie can begin to encompass the scope of the horrors yet to come, as described in The Revelation of Jesus Christ. And even that glorious book simply skims over the unimaginable suffering, and merely describes the characters and events as they will unfold, and perhaps have already begun to unfold..

Until now, wars were fostered by evil people living out their lives, unwitting dupes of Satan, people who readily followed the Napoleons, Hitlers, and Stalins who were all types of antichrist.

Until now, the Lord has held back the darkness in order to provide every human being with the opportunity to say, “Yea” or “Nay” to Jesus Christ, God’s gift of salvation. But soon God will say, “Enough!” and the opportunity to be saved will be withdrawn. The Holy Spirit—who convinces everyone of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment, will be removed—so that people will not be have access to the wisdom, knowledge, and power to call on the name of Jesus. And men who do not know God will call on the mountains to fall on them because they will lack the wisdom, knowledge and grace to call on the name of Jesus Christ. And our righteous God will prove he is also our just God, by doling out punishment for sin, as well as rewarding the faithful service of the born again,

The Revelation describes God’s judgments on the human race at the end of this age, an end which appears to be rapidly approaching. It covers a mere seven years, and reveals the rise of the antichrist. The first three-and-a-half years provide the illusion that all may be well, just as the German people prospered under Hitler while they became inured and even supportive of the enslavement and wholesale slaughter of Jews, Christians, the mentally retarded, physically impaired, and anyone that didn’t fit the madman’s definition of the Aryan race.

And God’s harsh judgment on such as those who committed such evil will come in waves, starting with the breaking of the seals by the only worthy one. As John records:

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne…stood a lamb as it had been slain…and he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.

Revelation 5:6

This is John’s vision of the risen Christ taking the book of the Revelation from the hand of his Father. And when he took the book, every being in the throne room of God, as well as millions of angels, worshiped him.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”

Revelation 5:12

But the sounds of worship were soon replaced by the sounds of thunder as the Lamb opened one of the seals that bound the book, and one of the beasts told John, “Come and see. (Rev 6:1).

So this “preview of coming attractions” begins, for Jesus Christ will open seven seal judgments, seven trumpet judgments, and seven vial judgments in succession, each one worse than the last. And during this succession of horrendous judgments, we will be introduced to the indescribably evil characters that somehow twist the truth and beguile the lost souls in order to promote the perverted goals of Satan, until the Lord finally casts them into hell.

So intrigued are the people of this world with the first four seal judgments—each depicting four men on four different color horses, with each given the power and mission to do vast harm to the world—that Hollywood even produced a film entitled, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

See first a white horse, ridden by a man with a bow in hand and a crown of gold, who was told to go forth conquering and to conquer (Rev. 6:2).

And the second seal is broken, and the second rider straddles a red horse, and the rider has power to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another, and he was given a great sword.

When I hear of men driving vehicles into crowds of strangers, throwing acid in the faces of innocent women, setting people afire, pushing them under subway trains, and slashing them with knives, it’s pretty easy to believe that the second seal has already been broken. And the rise of a religious cult that promises paradise to those who murder any of its skeptics certainly demonstrates that the love of many has waxed cold. Consider how Christians are being slaughtered every year.

But let’s move on. Christ opens the third seal, and we see the situation worsen, but the third beast seems nonplussed as he says to John, “Come and see.”

And I beheld, and lo a black horse: and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

Revelation 6:5

The scale symbolizes the weighing of small amounts of food at exorbitant prices that results when crops fail and famine prevails. It’s a condition that accompanies wars, when farmers can’t til their fields, when they are forced to take up arms, and their fields lie fallow. So, if there is any food available, it’s weighed carefully and priced well above the means of most people, and starvation will be rampant. Of course, here in the United States, much of the farm land has been bought up by Chinese Communists, and other tracts by billionaires who have unusual ideas about how that land should be used. I’m sure they will tell you that they have your best interests at heart.

What happens? One example is how Hitler proved he cared nothing for the German people, but indicated that hs prefer the entire nation to be leveled by Allied bombers rather than surrender. And then the madman commanded that old men and teenagers fight to the last man, but he committed suicide, aand his subordinates finally surrendered. Then the starvation began. The Marshall Plan would bring food to the starving peoples of the world, but the demand was overwhelming. Women across Europe would sell their virtue for a Hershey bar or a few cigarettes.

I had a prof in Bible college who was a child in Germany during the war. He told us that his mother would hug him to her, and press her fists into his stomach to assuage his hunger pains while he tried to fall asleep. And he told how, when he searched along the railroad tracks for a piece of coal to heat their room, that he risked being shot by soldiers for pillaging.

Okay. The Lord has broken three seals; four to go, followed by two more sets of judgments. So another beast said to John, “Come and see.”

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

Revelation 6:5-6

I recently read of voracious sea creatures coming up from the depths of the ocean, appearing on beaches, animals never before seen by scientists, hideous things that kill our sea food. And some sort of ticks coming up from Mexico that threaten the survival of our cattle herds. And ticks that infect men with Lyme disease, and the likelihood of recurrent infection for the remainder of their lives. Not to speak of horrors of man made viruses like Covid 19, another gift from our friends, the Chinese Communists. Are these also a “preview of coming attractions.”

This I do know!

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.”

Revelation 1:7

And the Lord says to we who are saved:

“Fear not, I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.”

Revelation 1:17-18

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”

Rev 2:7; 11; 17; 19; 3:6; 13; and 22.

*In my 2005 book, You Can Triumph Over Terror, I have photos of the construction of the large bomb shelter my family built in response to what came to be known as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Copyright 2025, Frank Becker

File: 19 NOV 25, The Four Horsemen.odt