Our Father, once again, we count it a
privilege to be able to open your Word,
to give our minds and our hearts to
it.
We thank you for that revelation of your
plan and purpose that you have given to
us in the Scriptures.
We pray that as we study, we might
understand that program that one day we'll see
Jesus Christ enthroned as King of Kings and
Lord of Lords.
We thank you that we will be privileged
to share the glory of his reign.
We pray that as we look into this
portion that is before us tonight, the Spirit
of God may give us insights into what
is written, and may we apply these truths
to our experience as we wait for the
coming of the Lord of Glory.
For it's in his name we pray, Amen.
We are coming in a study tonight to
the 13th chapter of the book of the
Revelation.
In the 11th chapter, the 15th verse, we
have a record of the second advent of
Jesus Christ back to this earth.
Now, that's not the rapture that takes place
before the tribulation.
That's the second advent when his feet touch
down upon the Mount of Olives, as predicted
in Zechariah 14.
John was told that he must prophesy again.
That's in chapter 10, verse 11.
Having taken us all the way through the
seven years of the tribulation period, he now
is going to go back and cover that
same seven-year period a second time.
But in the second trip through that begins
in chapter 12, he's not going to be
dealing with judgment as he had from chapters
4 through 11, but rather he's going to
be dealing with persons and movements and nations
that will play a significant role in those
last days.
And in chapter 12, we were introduced to
the nation Israel, represented by the woman that
brought forth a man-child.
We were introduced to Satan there in verse
3, represented by a great red dragon, and
then we saw a conflict between Satan and
the nation Israel from verses 13 to 17,
where Satan is attempting to exterminate every physical
descendant of Abraham so as to prevent the
institution of Christ's kingdom here on the earth.
For that kingdom was promised to Abraham's descendants,
and if Satan could exterminate all the Jewish
people, it would make God a liar and
would prevent the program of God to enthrone
Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord
of lords impossible.
Now we're coming into chapter 13, and in
this chapter we will be introduced to two
more characters who will play a very significant
role in these end-time events.
We nickname the first one described in verses
1 to 10 as Antichrist.
Antichrist is not a name used of this
individual in the book of the Revelation.
It is a nickname, but it is a
good one, because Antichrist can mean one of
two things.
It can mean one who is opposed to
Christ or one who comes as a substitute
for Christ, and both of those things are
true.
He is a false messiah who will try
to do for the world by Satan's power
all that Christ will do when Christ comes,
and he also is opposed to Jesus Christ.
He is Christ's enemy.
So while Scripture does not give him that
name, we use it frequently, and I think
it is legitimate.
So that's the first person we're going to
look at.
And then in verse 11 through verse 18,
there is a second person that is called
another beast, but in Revelation 19, the same
individual is called the false prophet, and so
we will use that term for him, since
that is a biblical term.
So we want to look tonight at something
of the person and work of these two
individuals that will play significant roles in the
years of the tribulation period.
Now, in chapter 13 and verse 1, John
saw a beast rise up out of the
sea.
Now, this is not a natural beast like
unto some beasts that you would see in
a zoo or in the wild.
It is a symbolic creature, because when John
describes the appearance of this beast in verse
2, it was like a leopard, his feet
were the feet of a bear, his mouth
as the mouth of a lion.
So this is a composite beast, or perhaps
we should say a mongrel beast.
And again, I'm emphasizing that this is symbolic,
because there is no such creature in nature
that is part leopard, part lion, and part
bear.
But I think I can see some wheels
moving behind those eyes that are looking at
me, because you are thinking of another passage
of scripture where you have a lion and
a bear and a leopard.
Am I right?
Right.
Where do we find?
Now, don't tell me someplace in the Old
Testament.
OK.
The seventh chapter of Daniel's prophecy, Daniel 7.
Now, will you turn with me back to
that for a few moments, because that passage
will give us important background to understand Revelation
13.
It so happens that I took a class
this afternoon at seminary through Daniel 7, so
I can shift my mind into neutral, my
tongue into high, and just get going.
OK.
Daniel is living after 70 years of the
Babylonian captivity.
Daniel must have been somewhere in his 90s,
because he lived through the 70 years of
Babylonian captivity.
He was a young man when he was
taken by Nebuchadnezzar, 605 B.C. So let's
say he was 20 when he was taken
captive, and 70 plus 20, according to my
old math, was 90.
Yet he still is in a very important,
influential, administrative role in the affairs of Babylon
and then later in Medo-Persia.
But Daniel was very much concerned about what
was going to happen to the nation Israel
from that point on.
He knew from Jeremiah's prophecy that the Babylonian
captivity was to be only 70 years in
duration, and Daniel knew that they were coming
to the end of that 70 years, and
it would be very natural for Daniel to
be pondering the question, What now?
And God gave him this dream and this
vision in which he revealed what the future
history of Israel would be until the Messiah
comes.
And to teach that, Daniel saw, verse 2,
four winds of heaven striving upon the great
sea, and four great beasts came up from
the sea, different one from another.
Now, these are not four of the same
kind, or four members of the same family.
They are different one from another, showing that
these four beasts represent four different things.
Again, these are symbolic creatures.
They are not natural beasts, because even in
your wildest imagination, you have never seen a
lion with eagle's wings.
But that was significant because a lion represents
royal authority or power, and the eagle's wings
represent the speed with which the eagle can
fly.
So if a had added to an eagle's
wings, it could move with unusual power and
rapidity.
Now, before we go any further, I want
you to look with me in verse 16
and 17, because I want you to see
that God did not leave us in doubt
as to the significance of these symbolisms.
It was explained.
Now, this is not my interpretation.
This is God's interpretation of what the symbolism
meant.
I'm looking in verse 16, "...I came near
unto one of them that stood by me,"
that is, the revealing angel, "...and asked him
the truth of all this.
So he told me, and made known the
interpretation of these things.
These great beasts," which are four, "...are four
kings which shall arise out of the earth."
The earth here would represent the Gentile nation.
Four kings and their kingdoms that would arise.
Now, that helps us when we go back
to verse 3 where we have the four
beasts.
They come up from the sea, and the
sea in prophecy is often used as a
symbol for a Gentile nation or for Gentile
nations, and the first was like this winged
lion.
Anyone living in Babylon would have known right
away what that represented, because Babylon had massive
walls some 60 feet high, and they were
perhaps 20 feet thick.
There were massive gates to enter those walls,
and around the gates set in those very
thick walls, the walls were lined with azure
blue tiles, and set into those tiles in
golden tiles was a figure of a winged
lion standing upright.
That winged lion was the mascot or the
symbol of Babylon, and if you go to
London and go to the British Museum or
go to the museum in Germany, you will
find these very tiles with the lions embedded
in them, reconstructed from the original tiles there
on display.
So that Babylon was the first of four
empires that in succession would rule over the
land and the people of Israel.
We go on to verse 5, the bear
that's higher on one side than the other,
and Babylon, as we would see in Daniel
chapter 5, was conquered by Darius the Mede
joined with Cyrus the Persian, and the Medes
and the Persians took over the political power
of Babylon and founded a succeeding empire represented
by that bear, and it's lopsided, higher on
one side, because the Persians soon overshadowed the
Medes.
So when you study history, you don't study
the ancient Medo-Persian empire, that's biblical, but
you just study about the Persian empire.
Then we come to the third beast, and
verse 6 is like a leopard, already one
of the fastest animals, but this leopard had
four wings of a fowl, emphasizing again the
unusual speed with which this animal could move.
And this leopard would represent Alexander from Macedonia,
who in a period of months conquered the
Persians and extended the empire from Macedonia, northern
Greece, all the way over to the Indus
River.
That would be over to include what is
now the nation of Iraq.
All that territory ruled over by Alexander.
An unusual thing about this leopard is that
it had four heads.
Alexander died in the drunken debauchery when he
was 33 years of age, unmarried and childless,
had no heir, so that his empire was
divided among four of his generals who perpetuated
the Greek empire.
Then we come to the fourth beast, and
that's in Daniel 7.
I'm going to ask you to do what
I asked the class to do this afternoon.
I want you to read verse 7 and
see if you notice anything that's different in
verse 7 than what we had in verses
4, 5 and 6.
It does
not describe its external appearance.
Notice that?
But what does it describe?
Its internal characteristics.
So it was dreadful and terrible and strong.
It devoured, it broke in pieces, it stamped
everything with its teeth.
So he is describing its power or its
internal characteristics rather than its external characteristics.
The only external characteristic he describes is that
it had ten horns.
Now, let's go to God's own interpretation of
the horns.
Look at verse 24 in Daniel 7.
The ten horns out of this fourth kingdom
are ten kings that shall arise.
The fourth empire would represent the Roman empire
that conquered Greece, took over all of its
political power and established the strongest power of
all the four.
But this empire would be marked by gradual
weakness and deterioration and division until eventually the
political power that had been centralized in Rome
would be divided out among many nations that
emerged out of the Roman empire.
Now, in the beginning of the fifth century
of our era, I think it was in
416, hordes from central and northern Europe, the
Goths, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, united
and came down and sacked Rome.
But those conquerors did not take over the
political power and establish a succeeding empire.
Rather, the political power that had been united
in Rome was divided out among many separate
identifiable nations.
So, the nations like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal,
France, Belgium, Ireland, Great Britain had their national
origin in the overthrow of the united Roman
empire so that for some 1,500 years
we have been living in the ten-horned
state of this fourth empire.
You see, the Roman empire was never succeeded
by another empire that occupied the land of
Israel and subjugated the Jewish people to it.
So that we have these four empires that,
in succession, will occupy the land of Israel
and subjugate the people of Israel to its
authority.
Now, why don't we go into all that?
Back to Revelation 13.
Here we have a beast rising up out
of the sea.
Do you notice that's the same as Revelation
7?
An identifying thing about this beast is that
it has ten horns.
Now, what does that tell you?
Is that the lion?
Is that the bear?
Is that the leopard?
It has to be the fourth beast, doesn't
it, of Daniel 7.
Now, I want you to look at verse
2.
As this beast is described externally, what do
you see?
I hear some whispering.
It had the other three beasts in it.
It was part leopard, part bear and part
lion.
So what does that mean?
This fourth beast had incorporated into it the
political power of the people, the laws, the
customs of the three previous empires.
So Rome, the fourth empire, was a composite,
a mongrel empire taking over the territory of
Greece and of Persia and Babylon to form
the greatest, the most extensive, the most powerful
of all the empires.
So what do we have here in Revelation
13?
It picks up where Daniel 7 left off
and is going to talk to us about
an individual who will become the head of
the final form of the Roman Empire.
Now, I ought to do one more thing
in Daniel 7, and that is have you
look at verse 8.
As Daniel looked at these ten horns and
he told us represented ten kingdoms that weren't
in existence in his day but would come
into existence, he says, there came up among
these ten another little horn.
Another little horn.
Now, if the ten horns represent ten kingdoms,
what would you conclude this little horn would
represent?
Another kingdom.
But instead of being strong and powerful and
conquering everything, it's called a little horn.
What does that suggest?
Weakness, someone of little influence, insignificant, nobody paid
much attention.
But this little horn doesn't stay little, because
there in verse 8, he is given power
over three of the original ten.
Now, if he gets power over three of
the ten, those nations are going to start
paying attention to him, aren't they?
So, we are looking for the emergence of
an individual who will consolidate under his authority
nations that originated through the division of the
old Roman Empire.
Now, I'm tempted to go back into Daniel
chapter 2 and verse 43.
So, I say, get started and just go
running all over.
In verse 43, Daniel is talking about the
fourth empire, the Roman Empire, that it was
characterized by iron mixed with clay, that is
weakness.
That image had ten toes.
Then talking about those ten toes in verse
43, and I'm going to read this differently
than you'll find it in your text, just
believe me, this is what Daniel is saying.
These ten shall attempt to unite themselves according
to the plans of men, but these ten
shall not cleave one to another.
Now, you students of European history, what is
European history?
A record of the attempt by one individual
or one nation to subdue all of Europe
under his authority.
It's an attempt by military power to put
the Roman Empire back as it was at
its zenith.
Charlemagne, in the year 800, went to Rome
and had himself crowned Emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire, but nothing came of it.
Come back into more modern history.
Not your history, but more modern history.
What did Napoleon try to do?
You don't remember that, do you?
Well, Napoleon tried to subjugate all the nations
of Europe under his authority, put back the
old Roman Empire.
Now, coming a little closer, some of you
can remember what did Hitler try to do
World War II?
Put all of Europe together under his authority.
But Daniel 2.43 says all those things
would be doomed to failure, that those nations
would never be put back together until we
reached what we refer to as the last
days or in the tribulation period.
Now, it will be the goal of this
individual that we're talking about in Revelation 13
to see the nations that arose out of
the old Roman Empire reunited under his control
to reconstitute or rebuild the old Roman Empire.
Now, we're talking about an individual here in
chapter 13 that Daniel in 7.8 calls
the little horn.
Daniel 8, this one is called the king
of fierce countenance.
In Daniel 9, he's called the prince that
shall come.
Daniel 11, he's called the king that does
according to his own will.
In Daniel 12, he's called the abomination of
desolation.
So that from 7.8 to the end
of Daniel, Daniel is focusing his attention on
the person and the work of this individual
that we have nicknamed Antichrist, and John is
picking up just where Daniel left off, and
he's telling us that in the tribulation period
this individual will emerge from among the nations
that originated in the breakup of the old
Roman Empire, and his goal will be to
reunite those nations under his authority in defiance
of God.
Now, where will Antichrist get his power?
Well, it isn't because he's smarter than Napoleon
or Hitler, but look at verse 2, "...the
dragon gave him his power, and his seat
of throne, and great authority."
Go back in chapter 12, where the symbolism
of the dragon is explained.
The great dragon is that old serpent called
the devil and Satan, so that Antichrist will
be the instrument that Antichrist uses to set
up a false kingdom here on the earth
to which nations submit their authority.
It is an imitation of the rule of
Christ when Christ returns to the earth a
second time, and this individual does not come
to power by military conquest.
I want to emphasize that.
How did Cyrus and Darius, the Persian and
the Mede, come to power?
By defeating Babylon.
How did Alexander come to power?
Defeating Persia.
How did Caesar come to power?
By defeating Greece.
We would think from past history that Antichrist
would launch a great military campaign and conquer
the nations that arose out of the old
Roman Empire and subdue them to his authority.
That would defeat Satan's purpose, because Satan's purpose
is to convince the world that this individual
is the world's Savior, the world's Messiah.
That's why he is referred to as a
false Christ.
Now, when Jesus Christ comes back to this
earth the second time, what name will he
bear?
King of kings.
That's true.
I'm thinking of Isaiah 9.6. What kind
of a kingdom will Christ introduce?
Kingdom of war?
Kingdom of peace.
He is coming as the Prince of Peace,
as Isaiah 9.6 says, and that's when
men will beat their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks, because he is
coming to bring the world peace.
Now, if Antichrist gained political power by war,
you see, Satan could never offer him to
the world as a substitute for Christ and
say to the world, you don't need Jesus
Christ, here's the one who can solve the
world's problems.
If I could take a peek ahead to
what we'll see in Revelation 7.13, Antichrist
will be elected or appointed or invited to
become head of these ten nations, because 17
.13 says, "...these ten nations that emerged out
of the Roman Empire shall give their power,
their authority unto the beast."
Now, there's an awful temptation to put a
hypothesis in here.
Have you been following what's going on in
Western Europe?
Our attention is focused on Eastern Europe, and
nobody can believe what we're seeing happen.
The dissolution of the Russian Empire and the
independence granted to Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary
and Yugoslavia and all these countries.
Unimaginable.
But let me tell you something.
My attention isn't on Eastern Europe.
My attention is on Western Europe.
See, Eastern Europe is not a part of
this prophecy.
Eastern Europe was not a part of that
ten-nation confederacy.
Eastern Europe was never dominated by Rome so
that they would be brought in into the
restored Roman Empire.
They were outside of it.
Does the year 1992 mean anything to you?
1992 fits the goal of the 12 nations
that are now in the EEC, European Economic
Community, to have one political sphere.
Europe.
No longer France and Spain and Italy and
Greece, etc., etc.
Just Europe.
They expect to have the country united politically.
As I've mentioned with some of you, June
15th last, while I was in Spain, these
12 nations elected 511 members of the European
Parliament.
The Parliament is constituted.
They are merging economically, preparing for a single
currency, eliminating passports to go from one country
to another.
As of January 1st, just a month ago,
Spain and France eliminated their borders so there's
no longer a need for a passport or
going through customs or anything else to go
from one country to another.
Now, what's that preparing for?
Well, you have a Parliament made up of
now 12 nations.
You have to have an election to constitute
or centralize authority in some individual so that
the government can function.
Now, I'm not saying that all this prophecy
is going to be fulfilled by 92, but
what I am seeing is that the groundwork
is being laid for the fulfillment of these
prophecies, and it will be by satanic manipulation
that these nations will forget their age-long
hatreds and animosities and fears and suspicions, and
will not just become an alliance of 12
nations, but a single Europe under one head.
Makes me think that the end is drawing
very, very near.
Now, that's just a little aside.
Let's get back to what John is telling
us about this individual.
One of his heads he saw as it
were wounded to death.
Now, you notice it says, as it were.
It doesn't say dead, but it appeared to
be dead.
And all the world wondered after the beast.
Now, the beast is the head of this
10-nation confederacy.
Remember the time President Kennedy was shot, I
got a lot of phone calls and letters
from all over the country asking if I
thought Kennedy could be the one referred to
in Revelation 13-3, who had the wound,
and they were questioning whether he might be
resurrected to be this individual.
Well, you see, it doesn't say that an
individual was dead, but as it were, a
resemblance of death.
But the beast here is not referring to
an individual but these 10 nations.
Now, since the Roman Empire has existed in
a divided state for over 1500 years, what
prospect would you say there was to bring
them all back together in a united confederacy?
Impossible.
Who would ever want to bet on odds
like that?
So that, I take it, it was the
Roman Empire that received the death wound when
they were overthrown, and it appeared from history
they would never be brought back together again.
But you will notice that while the Roman
Empire looked to be dead because of the
division, it continued in that divided state.
It wasn't really dead.
Now, the political power of the head of
this confederacy of nations.
I'm dropping down, but let me take it
in verse 4.
The coalition of nations united under Antichrist appears
to be invincible, more powerful than any other
group of nations.
They told me when I was in Spain
this summer that when the 12 nations unite,
as they expect to do in 92, the
population would be over 350 million, greater than
the population of the U.S. population.
The gross national product would exceed the GNP
of the United States and Canada.
Now, what does that mean?
Well, our GNP is already behind Japan, so
the GNP of this coalition will be greater
than Japan or the United States, so what's
it doing to us?
Pushing us further and further behind.
And I think that's what's inferred in verse
4.
Who is like the beast?
Who's able to make war with him?
Who can resist him?
Because politically, economically, he will be more powerful,
or head of a more powerful coalition than
any other nation.
The next thing we notice about him in
verse 5.
He is the adversary of God.
He has a mouth speaking great things in
blasphemy.
Now, blasphemy in scripture is rebellion against God.
That's what blasphemy is.
So this one is saying, I'm greater than
God, God is subject to my authority, God
can't tell me what to do, and the
extent of his power is given in verse
5, 42 months, which is 3 1⁄2 years,
so that he will exercise this authority for
the last 3 1⁄2 years of the tribulation
period.
Now, I'm going to verse 7, given on
him to make war with a saint.
The saint is a reference to the nation
Israel, introduced to us in chapter 12.
He becomes the persecutor of Israel.
And we saw in chapter 12, verse 13,
that Satan in his attempt to exterminate all
the Jews will cause Antichrist to unleash the
greatest persecution against Israel that that nation has
ever experienced.
He's the enemy of Israel.
Now, another thing in verse 7.
Power was given him over all kindreds and
tongues and nations.
In the book of the Revelation, that phrase
refers to universal power, worldwide power.
So I put it this way.
The one who began insignificantly as the little
horn will be given power over three.
Revelation 17, 13, he will be elected head
of the ten, but then the final step
in his rise to power is that he
will institute a one-world government in which
all the nations of the earth will submit
to his authority.
Now, again, I see the Satanic activity because
when Jesus Christ returns to the earth a
second time, what will be the boundaries of
his reign?
Sea to sea and shore to shore.
He will rule over all kindreds and tongues
and peoples and nations.
What's Satan doing?
Bringing about that false one-world government, an
imitation of the reign of Christ, so Satan
can say this man has brought you peace
when all nations are subject to his authority.
There can't be war.
He has the solution to all the world's
political problems.
Now, this individual is elected as head of
the ten-nation confederacy at the beginning of
the tribulation period, so that he will rule
as head of the ten-nation confederacy for
three-and-a-half years, and then in
the middle of the tribulation period, he extends
his rule from the ten nations to the
one-world government.
And that's the reference to the 42 months
there in verse 5.
Now, this has been referring to his political
power down to verse 7.
But when we come to verse 8, I
notice a second sphere in which he exercises
absolute authority.
Look at verse 8.
You tell me what that sphere is.
You're afraid of your own voices.
I heard spiritual.
All right.
That's all right.
All that dwell upon the earth shall worship
him.
What realm is that?
Religious realm.
That was the word I was after.
He will exercise authority in the religious realm.
Put in here 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 3,
4.
He, as God, sits in temple showing himself
that he is God, so that he demands
not only obedience in the political realm, but
in the religious realm as well.
Now, I can't get so far afield as
to go into it in chapter 17 tonight,
but in due course we'll get to it,
and we will see how this Antichrist will
terminate every organized religion and to compel obedience
to himself in the religious realm.
Now, if you're thinking, and I'm assuming that
you are, I've no reason to doubt it,
you would wonder what will cause all the
peoples of the world to recognize this individual
as God.
And that's when we are introduced to a
ministry of this second beast in verse 11,
that in Revelation 19 is called the false
prophet.
What was the ministry of a prophet in
the Old Testament?
It brought God's message to God's people.
He was God's representative before man.
This second beast appears as a prophet, but
not of the prophet, a prophet of the
God of heaven, but a prophet of this
one who has had himself proclaimed God.
It says that this second beast, he doesn't
have ten horns like the first beast, but
he has two horns like a lamb, and
the lamb is associated with sacrifice throughout the
Old Testament.
So, it's emphasizing that he is moving in
the religious realm.
Verse 12, the second beast gets power from
the same one who gave the first beast
his power.
He exercises the power of the first beast
before him.
And back in verse 2, it was the
dragon that empowered the first beast, so the
dragon, or Satan, is empowering this false prophet.
Now, what's the ministry of the false prophet?
Verse 12, he causeth the earth and them
that dwell therein to worship the first beast.
He sets Antichrist up as God.
And how does he persuade the world that
Antichrist is God?
It isn't by his sermons, by his words,
but he performs miracles.
Satan has power to perform miracles, do supernatural
works.
Remember he did that when Moses performed miracles
to prove that he was God's prophet?
The high priest of Pharaoh duplicated many of
the miracles to say, our gods are as
powerful as your gods.
But then those priests were embarrassed because there
were many of the miracles that God caused
Moses to perform that Satan didn't give the
power to the priests of Egypt to perform.
But, verse 13, this false prophet does great
wonders.
He makes fire come down from heaven and
the earth in the sight of men.
Why fire from heaven?
Remember any prophet who did that?
Elijah did.
That fire demonstrated that the God of Elijah
was the true God, and he was the
true prophet.
To drop down a little bit further, verse
14, he deceives them that dwell on the
earth by means of those miracles which he
had power to do in the sight of
the beast.
The miracles are not designed to prove that
the false prophet is worthy of worship, but
that the Antichrist is worthy of worship.
He says to them that dwell on the
earth that they should make an image of
the beast which had the wound by a
sword and live.
Now, this is some physical reproduction of Antichrist.
And then this false prophet had power to
give life to the image of the beast,
so the image of the beast should both
speak, or that that image should speak.
Now, please don't ask me to explain how
I did it.
This is a satanic deception.
This is not giving life to a lifeless
image.
God alone is the Creator.
Satan cannot create life.
That's why when the religious leaders asked Jesus
for some proof that he was the Son
of God that they couldn't deny, he said,
I'll give you the sign of Jonah, which
was his resurrection.
Why was his resurrection a definitive proof of
his person?
They said, you do your miracles by Satan's
power.
But Satan is not a Creator.
He cannot originate life, and resurrection is the
work of creation.
And what we find here is that the
false prophet is trying to duplicate the miracle
of the resurrection of Jesus and cause a
lifeless image to come alive so that it
appears by deception that Antichrist has originated out
of that lifeless image.
Do you get the picture?
It's an amazing deception.
The result of this miracle is that he
causes the world to worship the beast, and
verse 15, as many as would not worship,
the image of the beast should be killed.
Now, this is not exactly religious liberty.
You worship or you die.
So he has absolute authority in the political
realm, he has absolute authority in the religious
realm.
He is king, he is God.
You see what a deception that is?
Because when Jesus Christ comes to reign, what
will he be?
God on a throne, an imitation of the
work of Christ.
Then there's a third thing, and that's in
verses 16 and 17.
He causes all small and great, rich and
poor, free and bond, to receive a mark
in the right hand or in their forehead,
that no man might buy or sell, save
he had the mark of the name of
the beast or the number of his name.
Now, you notice that what we are dealing
with in these two verses is in the
economic realm, buying and selling.
What's available and what the price is.
It's a regimented economy.
Or can I put it this way?
The one who's head of a one-world
government and the one-world religion will institute
a one-world economy.
Why will he do that?
Because according to Revelation 6, the world's economy
is so out of line that it takes
all that a man could earn working from
sunup to sundown to put the simplest meal
on the table of his family.
That's the announcement, you remember?
A measure of wheat for a day's wage,
three measures of barley for a day's wage.
Don't even consider purchasing the oil and the
wine, which were considered staples.
The measure of wheat was the amount of
grain that a housewife would pound into flour
to bake bread for a family for one
day.
A whole day's wage just for that bread.
And barley was normally used as cattle food.
It was so coarse, and only the very
poorest would have baked bread out of barley.
But the economy will be such, since you
can get three days of bread for one
day's labor, people would be reduced to consuming
that which was normally set aside for cattle.
And oil and olive oil, wine, just prohibitively
expensive.
Don't even think about buying.
Now, that says to me the economy is
totally out of control.
Now, how can Antichrist persuade the world he
has the solution to all the world's problems,
and that he is the world's Messiah, if
he can't feed the hungry and take care
of those in need?
So he will try to do what Christ
will do in bringing prosperity and plenty, removing
famine and want by regimenting the economy.
And everyone will have to submit to his
economic system in order to be able to
buy or sell.
Now, you'd be surprised at how many letters
I get asking something to the effect, do
I think it's wrong for a person to
go through a checkout line at the grocery
store where they pass your products across a
scanner and have it rung up on a
computer, and they somehow identify that with a
mark of the beast?
Well, people can go haywire.
The story was going around a while ago,
you probably heard it, that in Brussels, the
head of the United Nations, they had a
gigantic computer that had every person in the
world on that computer by number.
You heard that?
Did it?
And the name of that computer was the
Beast.
And people read this chapter in the light
of that and tried to bring us into
the computer age and all the rest of
it.
We had a graduate student, doctoral student from
Brussels who was going home for the summer.
We asked him to check it out.
He had a lot of friends who worked
in that headquarters there in Brussels.
When he mentioned it, they just laughed at
it and said, we use a lot of
computers here, but there's no such thing as
that.
Well, there's so much fruitless speculation about prophecy
that really brings the whole study of prophecy
into ill repute.
But what I see here is that in
order to imitate the reign of Christ, this
individual will have authority in the political realm,
in the religious realm, in the economic realm.
It will be a well-ordered, arranged system,
but the goal is to prevent the reign
of Christ, persuade the world they don't need
Jesus Christ, that he can solve all the
world's problems.
To me, this is a delightful chapter, an
exciting chapter.
And I can't help but feel that we're
seeing the stage being set for the appearance
of just such a person as this, when
nations that originated out of the old Roman
Empire are voluntarily uniting, forming a single political
unit, eradicating their borders, electing members to a
parliament, 511 of them.
And the next step will be to elect
or invite one man to exercise authority over
the ten, or over these nations.
Now, I don't necessarily conclude the first individual
elected will be antichrist.
You could have conceivably a number of men
elected for a one-year, a two-year,
a four-year office, because it isn't the
election of this individual that starts the seven
years of tribulation period, but according to Daniel
9, when such an elected one makes a
covenant with the nation Israel to guarantee their
security and their peace, that act will identify
him as the antichrist.
How long it will be before all this
is fulfilled, I don't have the slightest clue.
How long does it have to be?
I'd say very, very short.
I think the stage is getting set.
So we can say with John as he
closes the book of the Revelation, even so
come, Lord Jesus, now is our salvation nearer
than when we believe.
Thank you, Father, for giving us the privilege
of looking in your word how rich it
is, how satisfying it is, how exciting it
is.
We pray the Spirit of God shall enable
us to understand that which we have seen
in your word tonight, not simply to satisfy
our curiosity or to excite us at the
prospect of the coming of our Lord, but
to use these truths that conform us to
your Son.
It's in his name we pray, Amen.