Online preacher Paul Begley, who regularly posts apocalyptic prophecies from his home in West Lafayette, Indiana, has made a shocking new claim that the Red Horse mentioned in the biblical Book of Revelation is a direct symbol for the Taliban.
In a live stream beset with technical hitches, the self-styled prophet claimed that while we have heard before of “wars and rumours of wars” this is definitely the beginning of the end of the world.
“We just walked off and handed the keys [to Afghanistan] to the Taliban,” Begley said, adding that while ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with a helicopter crammed with millions of US dollars in cash, he had been unable to take all of the country’s wealth which therefore fell into the hands of the Taliban.
He listed some of the most notorious dictators of the past, from Adolf Hitler to Pol Pot, but “never before”, he claimed, had any of the “radical extremists” had control of a country.
Clearly forgetting that Hezbollah, Hamas, and ISIS had at some time or other controlled huge amounts of territory and that Hitler, Stalin, Castro and many of the other figures he mentioned were the de facto heads of state of their respective countries, Begley nevertheless alleged that the Taliban control of Afghanistan is a historical first.
The fact the Taliban had seized control of the Afghan government back in 1996 also seems to have slipped the doom-mongering pastor’s mind.
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Blaming Barack Obama for the group’s success, he said America would be a prime target for the forces of evil, along with Europe and in particular Israel.
He quoted liberally from the Book of Revelation, which outlines the general timeline of the End of the World, and said that the triumph of the Taliban was symbolised in St John’s writings as the opening of the first of the seven seals.
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Claiming that while we don’t know who the Antichrist is, he will already be here on Earth and doing his work, Begley said that War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, stood for the Taliban.
He signed off by urging viewers to sign up for his Patreon, where he would be displaying photographs of a real live alien.
Begley previously claimed that the end of the world would take place on 21 December 2020.
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He based his prophecy on a mash-mash of astrology, astronomy, and ancient Mayan writings.
However he later backed away from his definite date, merely saying that “the end is near, I’m just gonna tell you right now, the end is near. Now, well, people wanna know what day, what hour, what year?…” but he stopped short of giving a new date.
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More recently, Pastor Begley has declined to be specific about the exact schedule for the End Times, instead hinting that he believed in Sir Isaac Newton’s theory that the beginning of the end could be in 2060 and that it might take 20 or 30 years to play out in its entirety.
It is quite a while to wait, so you may as well find a hobby. Begley relaxes by making country music albums and advertising retirement investments.
He’s also written a handful of books: RFID Mark of the Beast, Zombie Apocalypse, Jerusalem Jihad, Hosea Prophecy, and the catchily-titled Texas Blood Lake.