Revelation 13

Revelation — Steve Gregg

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Revelation 13

RevelationSteve Gregg

In this talk, Steve Gregg discusses Revelation chapter 13 and its famous depiction of beasts. The common interpretation that the beasts represent the Antichrist is popularized in Christian movies and novels, but Gregg notes that the Bible itself does not use the term "Antichrist" in the same sense. He identifies political and religious imagery in the chapter, which refers to the end of the sacrificial system rather than a setting in the temple. Gregg also mentions dispensationists who associate the beast in Revelation 13 with the "man of lawlessness" mentioned by Paul in 2nd Thessalonians 2.

Transcript

Today we're looking at Revelation chapter 13, the famous chapter about the beasts. We often think of the beast as a main character of Revelation, and it is, but actually there are two beasts in this chapter. And there have been many, obviously, speculations about the identity of the beast.

We will have to see if we can sort through the options and find an answer from Scripture itself. Let me read the whole chapter. It doesn't take long to read the whole chapter, and it's necessary.

Ordinarily, I would just read the first part, the first ten verses, which are about the first beast, and hold off to talk about the second. But the problem is the first beast's identity is concealed in some of the things that are said in the latter half of the chapter. After we are introduced to the second beast, we get back some information about the first, which we need to take into our consideration right from the beginning when we're trying to identify who the beast is or what the beast is.

Then I stood on the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard. His feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion.

And the dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.

So they worshipped the dragon who gave authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like the beast who is able to make war with him? And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months. Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. And it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.

And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear.

He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity. He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men.

And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image of the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on the right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.

Now, the beasts, what are they? Who are they? When are they? Of course, the most popular view that's popularized in Christian movies and popular novels and things like that, and fiction, prophecy fiction and so forth in the popular evangelical culture, is that the beast is called the Antichrist. Now, the word Antichrist is not found anywhere in the book of Revelation, and therefore the beast is not referred to by that name. Actually, the word Antichrist isn't found either in the book of Daniel, in the Olivet Discourse, in any of the epistles of Paul, nor in the book of Revelation.

The only place the word Antichrist is found is in the short epistles of John. First John mentions the Antichrist twice, and Second John once. And in First John, we simply are told that whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ, the same is Antichrist.

So anyone who denies Jesus being the Christ is Antichrist, and therefore Antichrist is generic, not reference to an individual. So the Bible nowhere speaks, never uses the term Antichrist to speak of one particular individual. Nonetheless, if this beast is persecuting the saints and blaspheming God and His tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven, then he certainly would be against Christ, and therefore could qualify as Antichrist, but to call the beast the Antichrist is misleading.

It's to use the word Antichrist in a sense that the Bible never uses it. It's better simply to go with what it says here, the beast. Now, in the popular parlance, the beast is a future Antichrist who will arise in the tribulation period, and will continue for three and a half years to be a menace to the world, and especially to the Christians.

The Antichrist's career has been mapped out for us in many popular novels and movies, none of which follow the Bible very closely, and most of which is entirely speculation. Nonetheless, I think even among non-Christians, the idea of a future beast or future Antichrist, and the number 666, is a fairly common concept in our culture of a future big brother type of leader, somebody who's a dictator, a tyrant, who rules over the whole world politically. And the second beast is generally understood to be a religious leader because in the later references to this second beast in Revelation, he is always referred to as the false prophet.

Here, we don't have the expression false prophet used. It's just another beast. But we do find him referred to as the false prophet.

For example, in chapter 16, verse 13, it says, And I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. And likewise, in chapter 19, at the end of the book, in verse 20, it says, Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet, who worked signs in his presence. So it's very clear the false prophet is the same one as the second beast because we are told in chapter 13, verse 13, well, actually the whole section here, but in the presence or in the sight of the first beast, verse 14, this second beast deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to in the sight of the beast.

So this second beast is the one called the false prophet who works signs in the presence of the first beast. Likewise, in chapter 20 of Revelation, in verse 10, it says, The devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are. So three times this second beast is called the false prophet.

Being a prophet suggests religious in nature. And the beast himself, the first beast, is almost always regarded to be a political figure. So we have a political and a religious imagery here.

So one of the most popular scenarios for the dispensational view is that after the church is raptured, if one believes in a pre-tribulation rapture, or even if one believes in the mid-tribulation rapture, this beast, this political leader, will rise. Many people say he will rise out of a ten-nation confederacy in Europe. Where do they get that? Well, there's no reference to a ten-nation confederacy in Europe.

However, this beast does have ten horns. And we are told in chapter 17, verse 12, And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. So ten kings, ten horns.

Many believe this is to be associated with the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in Daniel chapter 2. The head of gold, a chest of silver, a belly of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of a mixture of iron and clay. And many have suggested that the feet represent a revived Roman Empire in the end times. And since it's a human image, it is assumed that it has ten toes.

And therefore the ten toes are thought to be the ten nations, represented here by the ten horns, that make up a last days confederacy in Europe, in the end times. What many call a revived Roman Empire. This is the popular view of the dispensationalists.

On their view, the Antichrist makes a covenant, actually at the beginning of the tribulation, a seven-year pact with Israel, which allows them to rebuild their temple. But in the middle of that seven years, in the middle of the tribulation, he breaks his promise. And then he shows himself to be the monster that he really is.

And he persecutes the Jews. He sets up an image of himself in the temple, which some people identify as the abomination of desolation. I'm assuming that anyone who's been an evangelical for very long, and has read books or heard preachers on the radio, is familiar with most of what I've just described.

None of it is in the Bible. There's no reference to an Antichrist making a seven-year covenant with anybody. There's no reference to an Antichrist setting up an image of himself in the temple, ever.

No reference in the Bible at all to that. Now, where do they get that? The idea of a seven-year covenant comes from Daniel chapter 9 and the 70 weeks of Daniel. We will not be looking at that tonight.

We don't have time. But in the 70 weeks of Daniel, each week is seven years. And after 69 weeks, the Messiah is cut off.

And then it says, the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. But then it says, and he will make a covenant, or confirm the covenant with many for one week, meaning seven years. But in the midst of the week, he should cause the sacrifice and offerings to cease.

This he, in Daniel 9, is thought to be the Antichrist by dispensational teachers. However, there is no reference to the Antichrist anywhere else in that chapter. Therefore, it would seem strange for the word he, a pronoun, to refer to somebody who has never been mentioned previously.

He usually refers back to an antecedent noun. And the antecedent noun in Daniel 9 is the Messiah. One only has to look and see.

There is no reference to an Antichrist in Daniel 9. But there is, prior to this word he, twice in the previous two verses, the Messiah is mentioned. Therefore, the most natural understanding is the Messiah makes the covenant with many for seven years, which would be at the beginning of his ministry. But it says, in the midst of the week, that is after three and a half years, he brings an end to the sacrificial system.

That Jesus did, of course, when he died. His death brought an end to the sacrificial system. And therefore, in the midst of the week, he caused the sacrifice and offerings to cease.

That is, as a legitimate means of worshiping God. Now, therefore, there is no reference to an Antichrist in Daniel 9. The only covenant of seven years mentioned is the one that the Messiah makes in Daniel 9. And what about this idea of setting up an image of himself in the temple, rebuilt temple? Well, this is what the dispensations say is what causes the sacrifices and offerings to cease. They believe the Antichrist has made the covenant for seven years, and in the middle of that week, three and a half years, he causes the sacrificial practices to stop by defiling the temple as Antiochus Epiphanes did in 168 BC.

Antiochus Epiphanes, you know, sacrificed a pig in the temple in Jerusalem, defiling it, and that brought an end temporarily to the sacrificial system until the Jews could overthrow Antiochus and rededicate the temple, which is what Hanukkah is all about. But the point is, there is no reference in the Bible to the beast setting up an image of himself in the temple. So where do they get that? There are two verses, two places, one in 2 Thessalonians 2 and one in this chapter that they merge, although it's not obvious that the two chapters are talking about the same person, nor about the same subject.

In this chapter, we read the second beast causes an image of the first beast to be made in verse 15. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the first beast, which he made in verse 14, and to require all people to worship the image of the beast. So okay, we have got an image of the beast, and everybody's supposed to worship him, but there's no reference to a temple, there's no reference to Jerusalem, there's no reference to anything like that.

We've got an image, for all we know it might be in New York City or Rome or Zimbabwe, we don't know where the image is, but the image is created and everyone has to worship it. There's no reference to Jerusalem or the temple. However, if you turn over to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, we have Paul's discussion about somebody that he refers to as the son of perdition and the man of lawlessness.

Now, dispensationists identify this character with the antichrist also. That is, dispensationists believe that the man of lawlessness that Paul talks about in 2 Thessalonians 2 is also the first beast of Revelation 13. There's no obvious warrant for this identification.

Both of them are bad, and I guess that they have in common, and therefore one could say that, but there's really nothing in 2 Thessalonians that ties the man of lawlessness with the beast of Revelation. And in my opinion, they are not identical, but on the assumption that they are. It is said about the man of lawlessness that it says in verse 4, he opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

It is this verse combined with chapter 13 and verse 14 of Revelation that causes people to say he's going to put an image of himself in the temple. You've got an image, sure, in chapter 13 of Revelation. No temple, though.

Here you have a temple, but no image. Here the man of sin sits himself in the temple of God. No image is mentioned.

Furthermore, this mention of the temple of God need not imply that there is going to be a rebuilt Jewish temple. This idea that the Jews are going to rebuild the temple, and they're going to do so with the permission of a future Antichrist, and then he's going to betray them by putting his image in the temple, is all a fabrication, come up with that kind of six verses on miscellaneous subjects into different places in a timeline that makes sense to some people. It made sense to me for many years.

I taught it myself. That's why I'm able to teach it now, although I don't believe it. But I know it like the back of my hand.

I taught it for many years. That's what dispensationalists teach, and I was a dispensationalist for many years. But what happens, I decided to ask myself whether there was a biblical basis for any of these things, and when I looked for the actual basis, I was shocked to find how much assumption was being made, and things were added.

For example, like I said, 2 Thessalonians doesn't mention anything about an image. It mentions a man sitting in the temple. No image is ever mentioned as being in a temple in the New Testament.

However, we should understand too that when Paul uses the expression temple of God, he is not referring to a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Paul uses the expression temple of God in two other places. He does not refer to the temple in Jerusalem when he uses that expression.

Paul never referred to the Jewish temple as the temple of God, but he did refer to the temple of God elsewhere. 1 Corinthians, for example, chapter 3, 1 Corinthians 3, 16, he says, Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Who's you? Plural, the church. He also said of the church in verse 9, We are God's fellow workers.

You, the church, are God's field. You are God's building. What kind of building? A temple.

The church is being built up of living stones into a holy temple in the Lord, Paul said in Ephesians 2. And here he says, You, the church, are the temple of God. That's the same phrase he uses in 2 Thessalonians. Then in 2 Corinthians, chapter 6, he says in verse 16, What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God.

Now when he says the temple of God, he means you, the church. What does the temple of God have in agreement with idols? You are the temple of God. You're the temple of the living God, the church.

So three times in Paul's writings he uses the term temple of God. Twice he clearly identifies the temple of God as the church. The other time he does not say whether it's the church or something else.

But it's already Paul's established usage to refer to the church as the temple of God. And therefore to say that man of sin sits in the temple of God, coming from Paul as it does, would more likely mean he sits in the church than in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, which never is called a temple of God, and is never predicted to be rebuilt. Not in the New Testament, it is not.

So, all the things we've been told, when you go looking for them in the Bible, are extremely difficult or impossible to find. In fact, the very suggestion that this beast is a future entity arising in the end times is extremely hard to justify, especially in view of the fact that John told his readers that he's writing about things that must shortly come to pass. Of course, we did decide, at least I did in my teaching, I've shared with you, that chapters 11, 12, and 13, which contain references to this period of 42 months, or 1260 days, frequently repeated in those three chapters, that that refers to things through the entire age of the church.

We deduced that partly from the fact that chapter 11 of Revelation, verse 2, said that the Gentiles will tread Jerusalem underfoot for 42 months. That's the same length of time the beast blasphemes here. Revelation 11, 2. But we also cross-referenced that with Luke 21, 23, where Jesus said Jerusalem will be trodden underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So that the 42 months appears to be shorthand for, and symbolic for, the times of the Gentiles, however long those may last. My suggestion, and we won't go over it again, not the reasons again, we've done that more than once already in this series, I believe the 42 months, so-called three-and-a-half years, is a symbolic number. And what it refers to, symbolically, is the period from AD 70, when the temple, in fact, was destroyed, until the end of the world, when the seventh trumpet sounds, and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

That's my thesis, which you are welcome to reject in favor of a better one, if you have one. But that is my position, and therefore the beast who blasphemes for 42 months would be some entity that endures the entire period of time, that we're calling the church age, or the times of the Gentiles, as Jesus referred to it. This means that I don't agree with preterists on this either, although, as you know, I'm a partial preterist with reference to Revelation.

I believe parts of the book of Revelation are about things that happened in AD 70. In fact, I think the majority of the book is on that subject. But the section in the middle that we're looking at now, I believe, is an exception, and is looking at the longer view from AD 70 to the end of the world, and looking at features of that.

So I don't, like some people do, identify the beast with some character in the first century. I sort of do, but not exactly. Now if that sounds waffly, let me give you what I'm saying here.

Let's look at the beast and see who he is, and we can tell you why I take the view I do. Chapter 13 begins, Then I stood on the sand of the sea. Now that's the King James and the New King James say, I. The Alexandrian text says, he, meaning the dragon who was last mentioned, who in chapter 12 verse 17 had gone to make war with the woman and the rest of her seed, who have the testimony of Jesus and who keep the commandments of God, that he, the dragon, stood on the sand of the sea and apparently beckoned this creature out of the sea to be an ally in his war against the saints.

He beckons two allies, one from the sea, which is the first beast, the other from the land, which is the second beast, as verse 11 says, I then saw another beast coming up out of the earth. So, you've got a beast from the sea and a beast from the earth. These are allies of the dragon.

They are thrown into the lake of fire together. The three of them have three evil spirits like frogs coming out of their mouths and they work together in concert. So we have the dragon and his two tools that he uses.

One of them the first beast, one the second beast. The first one political and the second one religious. But who are they or what are they? Now we have some clues given to us by the fact that the beast that comes out of the sea here has seven heads and ten horns.

Later we will be told in chapter 17 that the seven heads are seven hills upon which the harlot sits and that they are also seven kings, which is confusing because the seven heads do double duty as symbols of kings and of hills. But then, or mountains it says, seven mountains not hills. And then the ten horns, they're ten kings.

So you've got 17 kings all together here mixed together in this beast. Sounds like it's not just one governmental system but many. But he goes on to say in verse 2, The beast which I saw was like a leopard.

His feet were like the feet of a bear. His mouth like the mouth of a lion. Now these three beasts, a bear, a leopard and a lion, and one with ten horns are seen as separate beasts in Daniel chapter 7 and they come out of the sea also like this beast does.

If you look at Daniel chapter 7, the beginning of that chapter, Daniel 7, 1 says, In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, four winds of the heaven were stirring on the great sea.

Now it's interesting because back in Revelation 7, 1, before the 144,000 were sealed, it says, there was a command given to the four angels of the four winds to not blow on the sea or on the land or anything else, not to stir things up yet until the 144,000 had been sealed on their foreheads. Now, verse 3, and the four great beasts came up out of the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion.

In verse 5, suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear. In verse 6, after this I looked and there was another, like a leopard. In verse 7, after this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong, had huge iron teeth, it was devouring, et cetera, et cetera, and at the end of verse 7 it says he had ten horns.

So we've got four different beasts. One's like a lion, one's like a bear, one's like a leopard, and one has ten horns. This beast in Revelation has all the features.

He's like a leopard, he's got feet like a bear, a mouth like a lion, and he's got ten horns. And throw into that seven heads too. This beast is symbolic as are Daniel's beasts.

But for what? Daniel's beasts, as we know, as we read on in the chapter 7 of Daniel, are seven empires, I mean four empires, excuse me, in Daniel 7. Four successive empires. The first is Babylon. The second is generally believed by evangelical scholars as Media-Persia, which conquered the Babylonian Empire.

The third is the Grecian Empire under Alexander the Great, which conquered the Persian Empire. And then the fourth is the Roman Empire. So these four beasts are four empires, Gentile empires.

As they come out of the sea, the sea seems to represent the Gentile world. So this beast looks like it's kind of the composite of all of them. And as such, I'm going to suggest that it represents any government, any Gentile nation, any political system, which embodies or is an embodiment of the dragon, Satan, and persecutes the church at any time during the 42 months.

We remember when we first saw the dragon in chapter 12, we were told that the dragon was fiery red, had seven heads and ten horns. This is chapter 12, verse 3. The dragon who is Satan has seven heads and ten horns in the vision and is red. This beast is also red.

We're not told that in chapter 13, but we are told that in chapter 17, in verse 3. The same beast is described, Revelation 17, 3. He carried me away in the spirit to a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet, that's red, beast, which is full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. This beast is the same color, same number of heads, same number of horns as the dragon. He's just the dragon with skin on.

He's the dragon incarnated in a political system. To suggest the beast in Revelation is a man is rather strange because, first of all, none of the beasts in Daniel are a man. They're all systems.

And this beast seems to be a combination of all the systems, therefore representing, it would seem, governments in general at any time that the devil incarnates himself to persecute the church. There have been many. I believe that there are some today, of course.

I believe that throughout the entire church age, there are governments that persecute the church. As we speak, the Chinese and the North Korean governments still persecute the church. Communist governments did in general in the 20th century.

Muslim governments often persecute the church. In the Middle Ages, many times the Papal States persecuted people like Wycliffe and Huss and Luther and others who wanted to follow the Scripture instead of following the Papal Church. And the states were under the control of the Popes and so forth, and so they persecuted the Waldensies and the Hussites and the others who were actually Christians.

Actually, the saints of the time got persecuted by these countries. In John's day, the Roman Empire did, and one Roman emperor in particular, I believe, who was Nero. Now, when we find the number of the beast mentioned in 666, I believe this is an allusion to Nero.

I've mentioned this before. He wants his readers to understand who the beast is that they will be dealing with. In verse 18, he says, Here's wisdom, let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast.

It's the number of a man. He assumes that his readers, if they're clever, will be able to identify the beast from this number. It obviously was somebody contemporary with themselves, or else how could they expect to be wise enough to calculate? I mean, if it was Henry Kissinger or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or any of the many people who have been suggested to be the Antichrist in our time, how would John's readers know how to calculate the number to get those names, you know? Obviously, John assumes that the beast that is being identified by this number is contemporary with his readers, and if they're smart, they can figure out who he's talking about.

Now, I believe the only figure, the only political leader in the first century that can reasonably have his name calculated out to 666 is Nero, Caesar Nero, and these words are translated into Hebrew. The Hebrew letters calculate or add up to 666. There have been many people in history in modern times that people have taken the letters of their names and found them to mean 666, but those don't live at the right time in history for this.

This beast, whose number is 666, is living in the time of John and his listeners so they could figure out who he is, and the only person on the historical scene that this could fit that I'm aware of from any commentaries I've read is Caesar Nero, and I believe it is him. I believe at the time of writing, the manifestation of the beast, the incarnation of Satan in a political system, was in Nero and his government. At other times, other persons in other governments are the current manifestation.

The beast is a concept. The beast is the idea of the devil using governmental power, demonically inspired, satanically empowered to fight against the saints, that is against the church, to be part of the devil's warfare against the church. Nero was the man.

He was the emperor at the time of this writing, I believe, and therefore, he wanted his readers to identify who they're up against, and we would have to identify by other features than the number 666 because Mr. 666 isn't living today. But this beast, it says, had a head that was mortally wounded, but he lived. Now this imagery, the idea of a head wound, a mortal head wound, but the beast lives, has sometimes given rise to the notion in popular fiction that the antichrist will be subject to an assassination attempt to receive a shot in the head, a bullet in the skull.

This made a lot of people think at one time that John F. Kennedy was the antichrist. I remember after John Kennedy was killed, many prophecy teachers suggested that he's not really dead, or if he is, he's going to come back, and it would have marveled because he's received a fatal head wound, and he'll come back. I know that the Left Behind novels, although I have not read them, I've heard they have an antichrist figure who gets, I guess, assassinated or shot, and he recovers, and everyone marvels at that.

This is the typical dispensational scenario. The beast is an individual man. He gets shot in the head.

He comes back to life. Everyone marvels and worships him. However, that doesn't really fit what the imagery here is.

We don't have any beasts dying here and coming back. We have a beast that has seven heads. One of the heads gets a mortal head wound, but it's got six good heads left.

It doesn't die. There's no death of the beast in this. As a matter of fact, it specifically says at the end of verse 14 that the beast, it says he's the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived, not by a bullet, apparently, but by a sword.

But though he was wounded, he lived on. He didn't die. Why would he? He only lost one of his seven heads.

There's six more good heads to go. So the beast isn't an individual man who gets a head wound. It's a concept that one government goes down, but there's plenty of them where that came from.

The devil raises up a government to persecute the saints. That government has its career, and then it eventually passes into history. It disappears, but the beast never goes away.

The beast reappears. It's got many more heads to go. And I believe the number seven is symbolic.

It's a symbolic number for perfection or completeness. The complete number of kings, the complete number of governments that will ever persecute the church is represented by these ten horns, and any of them might die, but it leaves plenty left where that came from. So this is the way I understand that imagery myself.

Now he blasphemes, and it says in verse 7, it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. The overcoming of the saints, I believe, is no doubt at the end of his career because that resembles chapter 11 and the two witnesses who I identified as the church. And in chapter 11, verse 7, it says, Now when they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit... Now, he's the same beast, I believe, who makes war here with them.

He makes war with them, and he overcomes them. Okay, so a beast fighting against the church, able to overcome them briefly at the end of church history. But not permanently because they rise from the dead and are ascended into heaven in the rapture, eventually.

But the beast becomes the object of worship to everybody in the world, except those who worship Christ. And that's what we read in verse 8. All who dwell on the earth will worship him whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If you're not a follower of Christ, in other words, if you're not in his book of life, if you're not worshiping Jesus, you're worshiping the state, whether you know it or not.

Now, most people in modern times don't bow down to images of the state like they did in Roman times, but people do still have their loyalty primarily to the state. I mean, patriotism is the religion of people who have no other religion. How do I know that? Because they will die for the state.

Many people would never die for Jesus, but they'd die for the country. In fact, it's considered to be heroic. In fact, even the churches are very proud of people who go out and fight and die for the country.

And perhaps they'd be just as happy with someone who goes out and fights and dies on the mission field. But it's interesting that we make heroes of people who go and fight for the country. And the country is what? The country is the state.

Now, of course, the country is us, the citizens, too. And that's why we're so happy that there's some people out there defending us. No wonder.

I mean, we can't really be blamed for being happy that there's someone out defending us from bad people. The Bible says God has ordained the state to do that. But in Revelation, the state that God has ordained becomes an object of worship and a tool of Satan in competition with Christ.

And we see this, for example, by the fact that ultimately people are given a number on their forehead or their hand, which is mimicking the Roman practice, which can be well established. I heard preachers say this for years before I looked it up to make sure it was right. I got tired of trusting preachers when they told me, well, in the Roman days, they did this or that.

I think, well, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I'm going to check that out. I've learned not to trust preachers.

And I would encourage you not to trust them either. You can do your own research about this. I did that.

I looked it up. You can find plenty of verification of this on the Internet from historical, secular things about the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire, a slave who ran away and was captured again and was returned to his master would be branded on his forehead or on his hand with like the owner's brand or name, like cattle are branded.

The forehead and the hand were particularly the parts of the body of choice because they are the parts least likely to be concealed in public. The hand is rarely covered in public and the forehead likewise. Therefore, at a glance, these people could be identified as slaves and of whose slaves they were by the brand upon them.

That's the imagery used here. The beast, his servants, his slaves, as it were, bear his brand on their head and on their hand. And that is in contrast with, if you look at chapter 14, verse 1, chapter 14, verse 1 says, Then I looked, and behold, a lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000, having his father's name written on their foreheads.

These ones were sealed. They received the seal of God on their forehead back in chapter 7. And now it's said to be the name of their father, the name of the lamb's fathers on their forehead. So you've got all people have somebody's name on them.

You've got to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you've got to serve somebody. You're somebody's slave.

You either have the devil's brand on you or you've got God's brand on you because you're somebody's servant. Now, this is figurative, of course, because Christians don't literally have tattoos on their heads or computer chips under the skin or anything like that that have the father's name on them. Although people try to make this some kind of a modern technological thing, you probably have heard people say that the Bible teaches there's going to be a one-world monetary system without money, going to be a cashless society.

That's been said as long as there's been dispensations, I suppose. Where do they get that? Well, those who don't have the mark of the beast, we're told, cannot buy or sell. And that's the whole case for a cashless society that's ever been found in the Bible.

Those who do not take the mark of the beast cannot buy or sell. Now, futurists often, dispensationalists usually, believe that this mark of the beast is literally something put on your body which is used for business transactions, for purchases and such. And it replaces cash.

When I was a teenager, the prophecy teacher said it's a laser tattoo. It'll be a credit number laser tattooed onto your hand or forehead so when you go to a store, instead of using money or even a credit card, you just scan your hand under the blacklight and it'll debit your account. So it's just like using a credit card but it's built in.

Well, in those days, laser tattoos were high-tech. Nowadays, nobody talks about laser tattoos or blacklights. That was hippie stuff, blacklights.

But nowadays, we've got sexier technology. We've got computer chips that can be put under the skin or on the forehead. So every few days, I receive someone forwarding me something in the email about how this is being planned already.

There's this RFD, is it RFD they call it? Chips that are radio frequency or something or another. Anyway, these chips, they say it's got to go under your hand or your forehead because that's the best place for something, recharging the battery or something like that. And they're going to use that.

How they're going to use a chip, it's not entirely clear. I guess scanning? And they always give examples of how there's this company in Florida that is already giving such chips to animals, pets, and so forth because it helps you locate them. And they're going to put all our medical records on a chip and put it on us.

And this is the Mark of the Beast. Well, so far, I don't see any comparisons between that and the Mark of the Beast except the claim that it will be on the hand or the forehead. And the Mark of the Beast is not about your medical records.

The Mark of the Beast is not about locating you when you get lost. The Mark of the Beast is not even necessarily about purchasing things with a credit number. It is true that those who don't have the Mark of the Beast cannot buy or sell, but it does not mean because they need that mark for the transactions to go through the bank.

It can easily mean that they cannot buy or sell. That's a specimen of persecution that they are, if they don't conform to the world and to the beast, people will persecute them, ostracize them, boycott them, and this has happened many times in the world. Many times in especially oppressive states, which were anti-Christian, there were actually laws made against doing business with Christians, selling or buying from them.

Actually, the Popes put out some papal bulls in the Middle Ages against the Waldensians. The Waldensians were evangelical Christians who didn't go along with the Popes. And there were actual papal bulls that forbade people to buy or sell anything with them.

It's a form of persecution. It's a form of boycott. Now, some might say, but why would that particular thing be mentioned if it's not about, you know, cashlessness? Well, you know, several times, people who die for the Lord are referred to in Revelation.

They're always referred to as having been beheaded. And yet, not all people who die for the Lord are beheaded. A lot of people were beheaded by the Romans, the Christians, who were killed by the Romans.

Some of them were beheaded. Some were fed to lions. Some were, you know, killed other ways.

But they're always the ones beheaded for the Gospel. This is simply shorthand for saying martyred. It's like taking one example of how people are martyred and having it stand for all kinds of martyrdom.

Anyone who's beheaded for Christ, you know, has certain things said about them. Well, what about the person who was stabbed or burned or fed to lions? What, he doesn't get the same privilege as someone beheaded? Obviously, that's nonsense. The ones who are beheaded simply stand for people who are martyred.

The ones who are persecuted by boycott simply stand for the larger category of general ostracism and boycott and persecution of them as a class because they don't conform to what the rest of the world is agreeing to, namely the mark of the beast. But what is the mark of the beast then? Well, it's on the hand and the forehead. What does that tell us? Well, if you look at Deuteronomy chapter 6, it says in verse 6 and following through verse 9, And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Now, when it says the law shall be bound to your hands as a sign on your hand and between your eyes, on your forehead in other words, Jewish people, some Jewish people have taken this quite literally. They've made what they call phylacteries, a little leather box or pouch, and they put little scroll pieces, little scriptures written on paper or parchment, and they put them in these little pouches and they bind them with strings around their head. Maybe you've seen this in pictures of Israeli Jews.

Some of them have the phylacteries like a cylindrical little thing coming out from the front of their head and a strap around it. They're binding the law to their forehead between their eyes. They have scraps of the law there.

They do it on their hands, too. That's what phylacteries are. But I don't believe that this is what God had in mind.

That's rather a wooden literalism of bind the law to your hands as a sign and between your eyes. I think it's more reasonable to assume that what he's saying is I want your hands and your full attention to be on my law. I want your hands to govern your works, your hands are your works, between your eyes where you'll see it on your thoughts, that your thoughts and your actions, your thoughts and your works will be governed by my laws, and that'll be a sign to people when they see you acting and thinking like me, like God.

When you see that my words and my revelation of my law are governing the way you think and the way you act, that will be a sign to people. And I believe that when the beast's mark is on the hand of the forehead, it has a similar meaning. These people think and act like the beast.

Christians don't. They think like their father. They have their father's name on their forehead.

And just as a brand of a master on a slave's forehead would immediately give away whose slave he was, so the behavior and thoughts of Christians should give away immediately whose servant they are. And likewise, those who serve the beast, their thoughts and their actions differ significantly from those of the believers, and that gives them way too. In other words, when people see how you act and how you think, they should know instantly whose servant you are.

If you look at Romans 6, in verse 15, Paul asks this question then answers it. Romans 6, 15, he says, What then? Shall we sin because we're not under the law but under grace? Certainly not. He says, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves.

Whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness. Now he says, You're either obeying sin or you're obeying righteousness, and whoever you're obeying is your master. Whoever you yield yourself to, that's the person you're that servant of that person.

Anyone can tell whose servant you are. What do you mean, can we sin because we're under grace? Are you under grace or are you under sin? Who are you serving? Are your actions sinful? Then you're serving sin. You're not under grace.

You're under sin. You're a slave of sin. You can tell by who you're obeying.

Who's your master, he says. And so also, in this picturesque way, using imagery which I think the Roman world would understand, perhaps more intuitively than we would, Revelation is saying, There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are the servants of God.

These have God's name on their forehead. And then there are those who are the servants of the system, the satanic system. Their loyalty is to the beast.

Now we're later going to find that the woman, who I would identify with Jerusalem, most people do not, but I think the woman who's the harlot is Jerusalem, is riding on the beast. Now you might think, well, the Romans and the Jews, they didn't have a cozy relationship. They hated each other.

Well, that may be true, but when it came to choosing between Jesus and the Romans, the Jews of his time said, We have no king but Caesar. Pilate said, Shall I crucify your king? This is the king of the Jews. They said, We don't have any king except Caesar.

He's our king. Well, they hated Caesar just as much as they hated Jesus, but maybe not quite as much. They'd rather avow Caesar as their king than Jesus.

And this is the Jews who hated Caesar. So, I mean, when it comes down to it, you have to serve somebody. You're gonna have someone who's gonna be your king.

Your ultimate loyalty is gonna be to one party or another, and it's either Jesus or it's gonna be really pretty much the state in all likelihood. And so people, their behavior, their thoughts are like a mark. It's like a giveaway whose servant they are, like a servant with a mark on his forehead walking through the streets of Rome.

At a glance, people could see who his master was. It's like it's advertised all over his face. It's written all over his face and his hands.

And so also who your master is is written all over your face and your hands. That is, it's written in the way, the thoughts you express and the way you behave. And I believe that this is the contrast that we see at the end of chapter 13 and the beginning of 14.

Now, what about that second beast? We'll just quickly talk about the second beast. There is a contrast, of course, between the first beast and the second. And as I said, the second beast is later referred to as the false prophet.

Now, a prophet is a religious person, a religious spokesman. There were true prophets, obviously, both in the Old and New Testament, and there are today. But there were also false prophets, the prophets of Baal.

There are prophets of all the false gods. And there were people who were falsely prophets of Yahweh. They spoke in the name of Yahweh, but they weren't really, he hadn't sent them, and they ran without being authorized.

They were false prophets. Now, the Old Testament never uses the expression false prophet. It just uses the word prophet, but you often read about prophets in the Old Testament that are indeed false.

They just don't call them false prophets. They say a prophet came and said this, or a prophet of Baal, or a prophet of the gods, or other gods. We can tell they're false by the fact that they're lying, or that they represent the wrong god, but they're simply called prophets.

And then there's prophets of Yahweh that speak the truth. But they're religious. They're religious leaders.

But in the Old Testament, all nations had their national gods, and therefore the kings always had prophets on their staff. Prophets and kings were basically working together. There was a state religion.

And to be loyal to the king required being loyal to the king's god as well, the king's religion. That's why Jezebel, when she made Baal worship the official religion of Israel, she went out and killed all the prophets that she could find of Yahweh. It was illegal not to worship Baal.

Now, the priests and the prophets of the state religion enforce it. And I believe that just as the first beast represents political power manifested whenever and wherever it may be, when Satan is energizing it, Satan is using it, inspiring it. Although God ordained governments to do the right thing, governments almost invariably, unless something holds them back, like a conscience, they invariably become agents of Satan and do satanic things.

Now, you don't very often find a government with a conscience, so more often than not, God's minister becomes Satan's minister and eventually begins to persecute Christians and other people who are dissenters to the status quo. But not only is there the state power, which is the sword, there is the state religion. That is, religious loyalty is a factor, too.

I believe that the second beast represents false religion wedded to the state, which gives the state, as it were, its divine right to rule in the sight of the people. Now, I said that in Romans chapter 12, Paul did say that the state is ordained by God, but that doesn't mean the state has a divine right to do whatever it wants to do. And that's what states usually commandeer to themselves.

Put a man in power, and if there isn't something like a constitution preventing it, he's going to become an absolute autocrat. Why? Because he can. Because he can.

He controls the armies. You know, if one of the generals comes up and kills him and takes his place, whoever controls the armies can be the boss. And so the state's power is one of force.

But some states actually have the hearts of their people on their side. They don't have to force them with the sword because the people are inclined to worship them, inclined to think their country is the greatest country. Think of how it was with Hitler's youth and the Third Reich, how many people in Germany thought the German state is God's chosen people.

And, you know, to advance the cause of the German race and the German state and the German Fuhrer was worth killing off Jews, Gypsies, Christians, whatever gets in the way. Whatever the Fuhrer says is bad, we've got to get rid of those people. And it was like a religious fervor for the Fuhrer.

So also most governments, certainly pagan governments, have had state religions, cults of the emperor. Many of the emperors required that people worship them. And they had, you know, the priests of their countries requiring it, requiring people to worship them.

And so this second beast, it has two horns like a lamb, which of course the lamb in Revelation being Christ suggests that this beast mimics or is a counterfeit for Christ or for Christianity. Christ is the one that is followed by those who are the true followers. That's what it says in chapter 14 about the 144,000.

In verse 4 it says they follow the lamb wherever he goes. But this guy looks a little like a lamb too. He's got horns like a lamb.

But when he speaks he doesn't sound like a lamb. He sounds like a dragon. Sounds like the devil.

Reminds me of the Aesop's Fable where a donkey found a lion's skin. And somehow he managed to put the lion's skin on top of himself and walk around and got a lot of respect that donkeys don't usually get because at first glance everyone thought he was a lion. And all the creatures that used to mock him as a donkey now are giving him a wide berth and deferring to him and treating him like the king.

He's feeling pretty good. He's feeling his oats, you might say. He decided to let out a roar of triumph.

But as soon as he did he sounded like a donkey again and everyone knew that he wasn't a lion. He looked like a lion but he talked like a donkey because inside that's what he really was. He had a costume on.

Jesus said beware of false prophets. Why? He says they have sheep's clothing on but inwardly they are ravening wolves. This false prophet has sheep's horns on.

He's dressed up like a sheep. He's got lamb's horns on him. But inside he's a ravening wolf or more like a dragon.

When he speaks it makes it clear what's really in there. And you can discern by what they say. You know, Moses gave a test in Deuteronomy 13 how to know a false prophet.

And it was interesting because it corresponds so much to this particular false prophet That is, if people would follow Deuteronomy 13 they would never be deceived by this particular false prophet in Revelation 13 because Deuteronomy 13 says if there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and he gives you a sign or a wonder now we haven't dwelt on it yet, we will but this false prophet in Revelation 13 gives signs and wonders. He works wonders and miracles in the sight of the first beast and everyone marvels. Well, here's a false prophet or a prophet who gives you a sign or a wonder.

Deuteronomy 13 verse 2 says and that sign or wonder comes to pass. So this is a real... it really works. He gives you a sign and it really happens.

Okay, looks like he's the real deal, right? Of which he spoke to you saying let us go after other gods which you have not known and let us serve them. Oh, he's speaking like a dragon. He calls himself a prophet.

He does signs and wonders such as a real prophet might be able to do but when he talks something else comes out. He's saying let's go worship other gods, not Yahweh. And we're told in verse 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

So false religion often has many things about it that resemble true real faith, real Christianity, real religion, the real worship of God. Sometimes religions seem to have divine power associated with them. There are miracles worked in Hinduism and in Buddhism and in voodoo and in many other false religions.

I say miracles. It could be magic. It's something supernatural.

It's demonic. But the point is it impresses the people who can't explain the supernatural any other way than it must be God or the gods or something. And they don't realize it could be demons.

These beasts are more acting in the power of Satan. And it says of this particular second beast in Revelation 13 and 13 he performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. That's what the two witnesses were able to do.

So he's mimicking the supernatural power of the church. And then we have this. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived.

And he was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast. That the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. So one of the signs that he can do is create an image of the beast and give it life.

Make it seem to have spirit. Give a spiritual dimension to the political system. Imbue it with a religious spiritual essence.

That being patriotic is the same thing as being spiritual or being religious in this mindset. Basically, the deification of the state. It says he makes an image of the beast.

That means he makes an idol out of the state. Many people have made an idol of the state. They will sacrifice for the state, but they will never sacrifice for God or for Christ.

They'd sacrifice their children, send them off to war, but they won't send them to the mission field. Making sacrifices for the state you wouldn't make for God suggests that you've made an idol of the state. You put it above God, what is that? What an idol.

And then, basically, to enable the state through the state religion to enforce worship of the state as if to give the image life. We've got to remember, Revelation's got a lot of sensational imagery here that has spiritual meanings behind it. If you take this literally, then you're a dispensationalist and you're welcome to, but I personally don't think that taking any of this literally is what is intended.

We've got imagery from Daniel, we've got imagery from other parts of the Bible, from Deuteronomy, and so forth, and I think that we're supposed to get an idea, not get a picture, and say this is a picture of what's going to happen. It's rather a description of how the state has its religious branch, its false religions, that cause and encourage devotion to the state, and they make the state into an idol to be worshipped, and almost like a living thing, a living God, to be worshipped, giving life, giving breath, giving spirit to the institution so that people don't think it's incongruous to pretty much put the state in the place of God. And so, at any time, and in any place, Satan may be using false religions and their adherence to states that are anti-Christian to help him in his war against the saints.

Remember, at the end of Chapter 12, the dragon was furious with the woman and went to make war with her, and when Chapter 12 ended, the war was going on. And Chapter 13, of course, there's no chapter divisions in the original, it just, we have, as he's warring against the woman, he calls up these confederates, the two beasts. Satan uses state power and false religious power in his warfare against the church.

The state power is the power of the sword. The religious beast is the power of deception. And these are the two things that the churches had to face from the very beginning.

Persecution of the sword and heresy. We saw that earlier, too, when the dragon spewed water out of his mouth in Chapter 12 and verse 15, out of the dragon's mouth comes deception, a flood of deception, heresies. But the church survives it.

But some don't. Some individuals don't. The true church survives.

The true church remains faithful to Christ. He's still their king. They say, we must obey God rather than men.

You see, the early church, as you may know, when ordered to burn incense as an act of worship to the Caesars, would not do so. And that's why they were fed to the lions. That's why they were burned.

They would not deify the state, which everybody else was doing. And everyone could see the Christians were different. And that caused them to be ostracized.

They were not, you know, admired for being different. They were feared, held in suspicion. When there were natural disasters, the Roman authorities said it was the Christians that caused it because they had angered the gods by not worshipping the gods.

When Rome was burned, almost certainly by Nero himself, he said the Christians did it. The Christians became the brunt and the scapegoat for just about everything that went wrong and therefore were persecuted. And that has continued to be the case.

We have lived in a very unusual time in the past 200 years where a nation was established on the idea of religious liberty, where, first of all, Christians could not or were not supposed to be able to be persecuted for their faith. Furthermore, it was a country that was very largely influenced by Christian founders and Christian thinkers, so that we have lived in a very charmed bubble in this part of the world. And many other parts of the world have gone the way that America did following America, but then now they're going back again, and America's going back again, too.

Maybe we've had our day. Maybe we had our opportunity to sort of be free from the beast for a little while, the only people in history who ever were, and only for a short time. We've gotten spoiled.

Now if persecution comes, I've heard people say, you know, if there's not a pre-tribulation rapture, I don't know if I want to be a Christian. Ever heard anyone say that? I've heard people say that more than once. When I say I don't believe in pre-trib rapture, they say, well, I don't want to be a Christian then if there's no pre-trib rapture.

My answer is, well, probably you're not a Christian then. Maybe you got your wish. You don't want to be a Christian, you're not.

If you won't lay down your life, Jesus said, you aren't His disciple. If you don't come to me and hate your father, mother, wife, children, and your own life, also you cannot be my disciple. If you don't take up your cross and follow me, you can't be my disciple.

Well, if you're not willing to suffer for Christ, then you're not taking up any cross, you're not hating your life, you're not doing what Jesus said that takes to be a disciple, you're not a disciple. Being a Christian always meant being willing to die for your faith, and for most times in history, in most places, and including many at this time, that's exactly what people know it costs them. They count that cost because where they live, that's what happens, or at least that Christians are in danger of having happen to them.

And we have lived in a world, a part of the world, and a part of history that's been very unusual in that respect, that we've actually had some unusual freedoms. You may have heard there's some of those being taken away as we speak. Just a few months ago, a man, a father, homeschooling dad in Arizona, was put in jail for 60 days because he held meetings in his home, Christian meetings.

He wasn't bothering anybody else. The meetings were not noisy. He had several acres, I believe, and people parked on his property, not on the streets.

There was nothing about his meetings that interfered with any of his neighbors. And because he was having Christian meetings worshipping God, he was put in jail. That's been in the news a fair bit.

And it's just the most recent of many. I've heard of cases like that since the 70s. But the government is not in favor of Jesus, unless you have people in the government who are themselves Christians.

And that hasn't been the case probably for a very long time in this country. I'm not sure if any of our presidents in the past two centuries are Christians. I don't know.

I know John Adams was a Christian. If you go way back, go way back and think there were a few Christians in there, and maybe there have been some in modern times that I'm not aware of because I don't know the religious convictions of each of these. But from what I understand, to get into the presidency, you kind of have to make some compromises that Christians usually, if they have consciences, don't do.

That's what Chuck Colson said, and he was pretty up there in the Nixon administration. Colson said, you can't really become a president without lying, without compromising. You pretty much have to be ruthless.

You have to not be merciful. You really can't be a very good Christian, he said, and really become a president. It's just the way the system is.

So even here, where the persecution is not great, or has not been in recent times, it still isn't a Christian state. And if we think it is, we're just probably trying to lull ourselves to sleep and think it's going to be okay after all. But the beast in Scripture is, I believe, still alive today in different forms.

You'll certainly find him if you go to North Korea, or China, or Cuba, or any Muslim country, or probably many other kinds of countries too. And you might even find him here, you know? If not so much now, maybe not too long from now. In any case, he has given power and authority to make war against the saints, and that's what he's doing.

He's an arm of Satan's warfare against the church. He's the political arm. There's also a religious arm.

And that's what John sees here, I believe. And this then brings us to the end of the portion of Revelation that I would call the little book, which was introduced to us in chapter 10. We will read no more in Revelation about this three and a half years.

It was first mentioned in chapter 11. It continued to be mentioned through chapters 12 and 13, and now that season is apparently done. And when we turn back to chapter 14, in my opinion, we're looking back now at the main theme of the book.

We've jumped outside the parenthesis in the middle back into the main subject matter, which has to do with the judgment of God on apostate Jerusalem in AD 70. And I will, of course, defend that thesis as we come to the proper places next time.