Heath was kind enough to bring my portable microphone this morning, so I'll be able to move around again this morning. I'm very happy for that. Thank you. So this morning, we are going to continue on in Revelation chapter 13, picking up where we left off last week. But before we start, let's go to the moon in prayer. Father, we do praise you this morning for another beautiful morning. Father, we look at your creation. And in so many different states, we see your beauty. revealed. Father, we see that you have created things well with goodness and with order, with fruitfulness. Father, we see your glory and your mercy and your grace expressed in a morning like this. And so, Father, we see those things in echoing creation. But Father, we want to see more. And that's why we gather this morning, because you have revealed your glory in a greater, a deeper way in Christ. And so Father, as we gather this morning, that's when we want to set our eyes on is to see the glory of Christ and to rejoice in that together, to bow and worship together, and together to run after Christ. And Father, that's why we sit under your Word this morning. It's because we need to be instructed. We need to be guided. Father, we need our emotions to be built up in the right ways. We need our hearts' desires to be set right. And so Father, we come to your word to train us in those things, to teach us rightly about Christ. So Father, I pray that as we come to your word this morning, that that would happen, that through the power of your spirit, that you would be renewing our hearts to feel rightly about Christ and rightly about this world. And Father, that you would be renewing our eyes to see rightly, to see rightly your truth and your word and see rightly the world around us. Father, as I come to preach your word, Father, I pray that you would give me wisdom and discernment. Father, that you would guard my words and make them only things that are true and glorious to Christ, things that are beneficial to those who are here listening. Father, I pray that as Peter commands, that my words would be, though, as I am speaking, the very oracles of God. Father, I pray that this time would be an honor to Christ and to the Church. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So this morning, as we come back to Revelation 13, I want to take a step back, as we always do, and remind ourselves where we've been so far in Revelation. And so we start with our summary statement. As we looked at the whole of the book of Revelation, this is what I think the message of Revelation is. So we start with the teaching point of Revelation. The Revelation of John is a Christocentric book. It centers on Christ. Its view is Christ. a book that shows the pattern of this world from Christ's first coming to his second coming. And so the topic of Revelation is what is going to happen from when Christ ascended to his father to when Christ returns to claim his kingdom. And then there's an opening of our eyes and a teaching point of the book that John wants us to see the spiritual realities around us. So he's going to look at the world and he's going to say, this is what the world truly is. He wants us to see the spiritual realities around us and therefore to recognize the dangers that face us. But in the face of all that, to know that God is going to win. That's the ultimate result of the book of Revelation, is that God wins. In the face of all these dangers, God wins. And so Revelation has an exhortation to call. Revelation calls us then first to wisdom, to look at our world brightly and understand what's going on around us. Then it calls us to perseverance. It says that the world will be our enemy. Many terrible things are going to happen from Christ's first coming to his second coming, but we persevere. We continue to follow Christ. And then finally, it calls us to worship, to look at what's going on in the world, but not get our eyes taken off of Christ, to see that he is worthy of worship, and to see that the entire pattern of this world is culminating to our final day, when all of the cosmos will join together in worship, and we look forward to that day. And so, so far in Revelation, we've seen several things. We start with the prologue. Christ himself comes and visits John, and he tells him that he has a message for the church, and he reveals himself in glory and in power, walking among the seven lampstands, saying, He is the one who is the protector and the curator of the church, and he has a message for his church. And so he starts with a message to the church, seven letters to seven churches. We saw at the heart of each of those letters was a danger that was facing the church. But in the face of that danger, Jesus, through John, calls us to first keep our eyes on Christ, to listen to his promise, and to follow his command. And so we went through those seven dangers and saw what the seven letters were about. But if the goal was to keep our eyes on Christ amidst the dangers of this world, then the first interlude of Revelation calls us to see the glory of God and the glory of Christ in the throne room of heaven. So in Revelation 4 and 5, we saw God sitting on his throne, the great creator, sovereign over all things. And then in Revelation 5, We saw the lamb appear, the lion of the tribe of Judah in great glory comes, the announcement that he is conquered, but he was the lamb that had been slain, the dichotomy at the center of the book of Revelation. The lion that conquered still looks like a slain lamb, and that's how it appears in this world so often. But then the slain lamb, the lion that conquered was worthy to take the seven seals, to reveal the plan of God for the future. And so the lamb takes the seven seals, and he starts to break the seals, and we have the second seven of the book of Revelation. We have the seven seals, something that showed us the pattern, the general pattern of this world going forward. So we saw that this world would be full of plague, and death, and war, and lack of peace as we go through history. But in the face of all that, God is not absent. Instead, he's hearing the cry of the saints, and he's promising that he will visit their enemies with judgment. And so we see the interlude of the seven seals is that God is not absolute. Even in the midst of the terrors and troubles of this world, 144,000 are sealed, 12 times 12 times 1,000, a full number, a full number times a great number. And so it follows it up with, yes, it is a great multitude, emphatically from every tribe and tongue and language and nation, standing before the throne, coming back to chapter five, where we left off, that they're gathered together before the throne to worship God and to worship the Lamb. But then we come to another seven. We had the seven trumpets. And so we have seven angels with seven trumpets came to blow their trumpets. And we saw a lot of parallels between the seven trumpets and the seven seals, but the difference was this. There was one quarter of the earth affected in the seven seals, and a third of the earth was affected in the seven trumpets. And so we thought about the fact that, yes, the general pattern of this world will be full of war, and lacking peace, and plague, and death. But that's not going to be static across all of history. Instead, it's going to be like birth pains that slowly get stronger and stronger as history goes on, that judgment of God is going to be falling on this earth. But then we come to, again, the interlude. We saw the two witnesses of Revelation. So what is the church going to do? What is the church's response as the judgments of God continue to fall on this world? We said that the church continues to faithfully witness to the gospel of Christ. And the church will be protected as long as her mission continues. The church will be protected and will continue to proclaim the gospel. But at the end, the message of the seven trumpets is that the world will not repent. And the lack of repentance of the world ends up defeating the two witnesses. They're put to death, but that doesn't last long. And they're raised back up to life by God. And then we started the fourth seven, the central seven last week, with the saga of the woman and the dragon. That's where we pick up this week. And so that's where we've been going, and I just want to remind ourselves that the woman and the dragon is a seven. This is some of the things we talked about last week. We have seven stories in a row that are split up just like the other sevens. And so we talked about the first two stories last week. We saw the woman and the dragon. We thought about the dragon being Satan, the woman being the people of God, carrying the promise of a child that would be born. And the child eventually was born, and the dragon became its enemy. But the dragon was defeated and cast down to Earth. And so now we're ready for the second two stories. We're going to see the dragon come to Earth and what happens. We'll see a first beast and then a second beast, and that's what we're going to talk about this morning. But I just want to go back to last week again in a moment. We'll remind ourselves what we talked about. We said that this story was an allegory, or we said it's a story or a poem or a picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning. We said the purpose of allegory is this. Well, we have all these characters, which we talked about last week, and we said the purpose was this, that we're to tell a rich story that makes us feel a certain way. So it's to take us out of the world that we're in and put us into a different world so that we can start to feel new things. And then as we feel those things and then see their meaning, then to say that's how we ought to feel about the world around us, that's how we ought to take what we're understanding here and apply it to what is actually being taught about. And so we see the dragon and the prince and the damsel in distress a dangerous beast and a second beast, angelic messengers, as we go through this story. We looked at the first day last week, and so now we're ready for the first beast and the second beast. And so as we turn to open our Bibles, I actually wanna start back in the last verse that we left off on. So I'm gonna read from Revelation 12, verse 17, and then go forward through chapter 13. So if you have your Bibles, feel free to open them and follow along, or I'll have the text up here on the screen. Starting in Revelation 12, 17. Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads. with 10 diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it, the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed. And the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshipped the dragon for he had given his authority to the beast. And they worshipped the beast saying, who is like the beast and who can fight against it? And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words. And it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also, it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them, and authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world and the book of life of the land who was slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes. If anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword he must be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. Then I saw another beast rising up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the beast whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people. And by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast, it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also, it causes all. both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or on the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark that is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man, and his number is 666. So as we go through the passage this morning, there's obviously a lot to talk about in our passage this morning. As we go through our passage this morning, this is my proposition, my main point, is that the Dragon's War against the Church will be waged with identifiable weapons. The dragon's war against the church will be waged with identifiable weapons. So the church needs to recognize these weapons and be ready to respond rightfully. And so even in my proposition, you're going to see a baseline understanding that I have of this passage is that this passage is not for a distant future event, but is for the present. In fact, as we look at this, there's no mark that would ever call us to look at this as a future event. We ended with the dragon came down and stood on the sands of the sea. The sun was carried up to God. The dragon was cast out of heaven and came down to the sands of the sea. And then a beast came out of the sea. This would have been John saying, this is happening now. This is what happened when Christ ascended to heaven and cast Satan down. And so we're talking about the here and now. We're supposed to understand this to be for the age of the church for us here now as we look at this passage. And so I'm going to look at each of the beasts. We'll have a first point, which will be looking at the first beast. And we'll see the first beast represents imperial power and the first weapon that the dragon wages against the church. And then we'll see a second beast. A second beast rises up that complements the first beast and calls the world to cultic worship. and the dragon wields that against the church as well. And then we'll see a third point, we'll think about the beasts in us. We're gonna say the dragon is still present in our world, this dragon is still active around us and we need to recognize what is going on as we look at what is around us. And so we'll start with our first point, we'll look at the first beast and we'll see that imperial power is wielded against the church. So this will be Revelation 13 verses one through 10. It said, and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it, the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed. And the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast. And they worshipped the beast, saying, who is like the beast, and who can fight against it? And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all who dwell on earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world and the book of the life of the lamb who is slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes. If anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword he must be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. So as we look at the first beast, I want to start by looking at Revelation 13, one through two. We have this first beast come, and we have a description of the first beast, but we'll get to the description in a second. First, I want to think about what is the first beast doing? And so the first beast rises up out of the sea, and then we have this description, and it says that we have this description, but to it the dragon gave his power. and his throne, and great authority. So this beast comes, and the beast is going to wield the very authority and power of the dragon. And so as I want to stop and think about that for a second and say, we identified the dragon last week, the accuser of the brethren, Satan, the ancient serpent, has come down to earth in great fury and great wrath. And as he gives the beast his power, we need to recognize that Satan does have real power in this world. He does have real authority. He does reign on a throne in this world. In fact, we can go to other passages in scripture like Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2 says this, and you, it's talking to the believers in Ephesus, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you once walked. And he says this, when you walked in sin, this is what you were doing. You were following the prince of the power of the air. He said, you belong to that prince. You belong to that kingdom. And that kingdom wields real power and held you enslaved, the spirit that is now at work in those who are disobedient, among whom we all once lived in the passions of earth and flesh, carrying out its sinful desires, the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. And so as we enter into Revelation 13, we need to first remember the dragon has real power. The dragon has real power. It's not some fairy tale that we talk about, but an active enemy that wields actual real power in this world and hates the church. And so as we read through Revelation 13, we need to recognize we have an enemy. We go back to last week and say we have a real enemy that wants to crush the church. And so we come back to Revelation 13 verses 1 through 2. And so we have this beast rise up out of the sea, and to it the dragon gave his power, his throne, and great authority. But I want to come back and look at this beast because there's some descriptions given about this beast that rises up out of the sea. And the first description I want to look at is the first description. And so, I skipped that part, sorry. The beast is now how the dragon will wage war. Because now this beast rises up out of the sea. The dragon stands on the shore of the sea, but the dragon is giving over to the beast his authority, his power, and his throne. This is how I'm going to operate in this world going forward. But then we have a description. This beast is said to have ten horns and seven heads. and 10 diadems on its horns. And so that's the first description we're given of this beast. Like I said, when John is writing this Revelation, this apocalyptic literature, he's not doing it in the absence of references. This is always going to have a reference somewhere. And so this reference is actually just a reference to the last chapter. So we go back to Revelation 12, verse 3, and we see this. This is the description of the dragon. It said, and another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads. and ten horns, and on its head, seven diadems." And so, not exactly the same, but a very close description. They both have seven heads and ten horns, and then we can argue about how many crowns they wear. The dragon apparently wears seven crowns, and the beast apparently wears ten crowns. I'm not sure that that has really very much importance. But the important thing here is that the beast represents the dragon well. When the beast rises up and takes the dragon's authority and the dragon's power, he's going to come and he's going to represent the dragon's desires and the dragon's wishes very well. And so we need to be watching out for this beast. This beast is going to carry the power of the dragon and represent the dragon's will. But that's not the only description we have of the beast. The beast actually has several descriptions. We started with he had 10 horns on his seven heads with 10 diadems. But then it keeps going. And so as we keep going through the passage, we see it has 10 horns, 7 heads, 10 diadems. But then it said, and the beast I saw was like a leopard, and its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it, the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. So we have a fourfold description. It says, first, we start with the 10 horns of the beast. And then we say the beast is like a leopard. And then we say the beast is like a bear. And then we see the beast is like a lion. These aren't references just randomly taken. We actually see that these references come straight from Daniel 7. In fact, Revelation, the whole saga of the woman and the dragon, but especially Revelation 13, could be thought of as an extended exposition of Daniel 7. John goes back to Daniel 7 and says, this is the time. We're coming back to Daniel 7 and say, this time is now. Let's go back and look at what Daniel 7 said. And so I want to look at those four descriptions, the ten horns, the leopard, the bear, and the lion. So we come to Daniel 7. I'll just read verses 3 through 7 again. We read the whole passage this morning. In Daniel 7, Daniel saw a similar vision. It said, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. Then as I looked, its wings were plucked off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man. And the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth and it was told, arise, devour much flesh. After this, I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back, and the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this, I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the other beasts that was before it. And it had ten horns." So we go through this and we say, oh, whoa, whoa. Just a second, those are the same four descriptions we see in Revelation 13. In fact, they're in the same order, just exactly reversed. In Revelation 13, we have ten horns, like a leopard, like a bear, like a lion. In Daniel 7, we have like a lion, like a bear, like a leopard, and then ten horns. And so we're obviously meant to come back to Daniel 7 and think about Daniel 7 for a little bit. So as we enter into Daniel 7, we see that Daniel is seeing a vision of four great empires that will arise between Daniel's time and the time of the Messiah, the time of the one who would come and bring righteousness to pass and raise others to life. And so that's the story of the whole book of Daniel, but especially of Daniel 7, as he sees these four great empires. And so we start with the first empire. The lion was Babylon. And it was lifted up and given a mind like a man. Actually, going back to the story of Nebuchadnezzar, who was cast down like a beast, but then given up and raised up like a man again. And then we have a second beast, a bear, a bear that was raised up on one side. calling us to see the Medes and the Persians. The Medes were the first empire that raised up. But then the Persians took it over. And then the Persians took over Babylon and most of the known world. And so the second empire was Persia. And then we have a third empire rise, a leopard. And this leopard has four wings like a bird, and it has four heads. The wings like a bird, and the leopard itself represented speed. We see the empire of Alexander the Great come and conquer the entire world, greater than any other empire had ever done in one generation. In fact, in only a few years, because Alexander died pretty young. But then Alexander died, and his kingdom was split into four parts, the four heads of the leopard. And then finally, so we have Greece. And then finally, we have a beast that's different. A beast that's strong, a beast that is filled with iron teeth. And it's during the time of this beast that the end comes. But from Daniel's perspective, he's coming a long time before Christ, and he's looking for the end of the promises. And so I think in Daniel, the end is representing when Christ comes and affects salvation. And so we come to the Roman Empire and say, this is now. When the Romans show up, be prepared for a messiah to appear, for everlasting righteousness to be brought in, for many to be raised up for life. But at the end of the book, it says, seal it up, because now is not yet the time. He's looking forward hundreds of years into the future, but he says this fourth beast is Rome. And so we can go through Daniel 7 and actually make really good identifications here. In fact, these identifications are so clear that some people would look at Daniel and say Daniel couldn't have been written back at the time that it said it was written because the prophecies are too clear. I would obviously not agree with that. But the prophecies are incredibly clear. We can see that these four empires happened right in a row. And so with that in mind, we've seen these four empires that are going to arise until the coming of the Christ. And we see these same descriptions happen in Revelation 13, but there's a massive difference. In Daniel 7, there were four beasts. There was a lion, there was a bear, there was a leopard, and there was a beast with ten horns. In Revelation 13, there is one beast. I saw a beast rising up out of the sea with ten horns. It was like a leopard. It was like a bear. It was like a lion. So what are we supposed to see when we see this? I think what John is doing is looking back at Daniel and he's saying, in Daniel we see four beasts, four empires rise up. But John says, you know what? of the same beast. Those four beasts weren't four separate beasts. They were all iterations of the same spirit. They were all iterations of the same thing, and that beast still exists. With the end of the Romans, we don't see the end of the beast because every empire that is ever going to arise is going to be a new iteration of that beast. And so we could say something like this. The first beast represents the imperial power of this world. I use imperial because we're talking about the empires of the past. I'm going to redefine that in a few minutes. But the imperial power of this world that exalts itself in place of Christ. And then we can take it and say every worldly power, every kingdom that arises, whether it calls itself an empire or whatever it might call itself, everything that arises to wield that power is merely one more iteration of the beast. John looks back and he says, yeah, there were four beasts, but they all belonged to the same spirit. And that spirit still exists. That beast still exists. There are still empires, governments, kingdoms of this world that wage war against the saints. And so that's what I'm going to identify as the first beast, is the imperial power, the kingdoms of this world, the governments of this world that oppose the people of Christ. And we see that this isn't a new concept. In fact, we come back to Jesus when he was on his time on earth. What does the devil offer him? He offers him three things to try to dissuade him from his mission. But the final thing he comes to offer him is all the kingdoms of the world. He says, those all belong to me. They're all my domain. They're all representations of me. And so he says to him, I showed him all the kingdoms of this world and said, I will give these all to you if you will fall down and worship me. They belong to me, I can give them to you if you just turn away from your mission and join me. But Jesus, as we know, turned him down. He said, no, I will only worship the Lord your God and serve him. And so Jesus walks away, Satan holds on to his kingdoms, but then we come back to Revelation 13. The sun is victorious, the dragon is defeated, the dragon is cast down to earth, and he says, what do I got? I got those kingdoms that Christ didn't take. And I'm going to wield those against the church. OK, so we have the kingdoms of this world that are the first beast, the kingdoms that are controlled by the dragon, the first beast that wages war against the church. But we have several more things told us about this beast. First, we come to Revelation 13, 5 through 8. It says, the beast was given a mouth, uttering haughty and blasphemous words. We look at the ancient empires, and we see this so clearly, that kings would rise up, emperors would rise up, and they would take on titles that should only belong to God himself, even calling themselves God and demanding temples and worship to themselves. And we can even look at other cultures and say, yeah, we see that. We see the Chinese rise up and have an almost imperial godlike figure in charge of their kingdom, or the Russians, or whatever kingdom we might look at. But then we take a step back and say, that's how every kingdom of this world is. Every kingdom of this world is exerting power and taking on authority that belongs to God himself. And so the beast represents this authority and utters blasphemous things against God. So, and it exercises authority. It was allowed to exercise authority, but only for 42 months. And so we see that the kingdoms of this world do exercise real authority. They have real power to enforce what they desire. But we come back to that 42 months to three and a half years, the time between the time that says that beast will exercise authority from the time of Christ to the time of Christ. That's where we are right now, where the beast has authority over this world. And again, utters blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name as dwelling those who dwell in heaven. But then we see another thing. The beast exists to make war on the saints. The beast exists to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And so the dragon has set up this beast, this power that he wields in the world. And he says, with this, I will go and hunt down the church. With this, I will conquer the church and defeat the church. And we can see it so clearly everywhere else. We see it in China as they try to squash the church, or in Korea, or in Russia, or whatever kingdom that you might hold up. Or we can look through all the history of the world and say, kingdoms and powers have arisen. And what has every one of them ended up doing except try to squash the church? But as has been promised in Revelation, they were never successful. But that is the purpose of the beast, to wage war against the church. But not only is it to wage war against the church, it also has authority given to it over every tribe and tongue and language and nation. It says every kingdom, every power that arises to wield this power is going to be a representation of the beast and there will be nowhere to escape from it. There is no escape from the beast. There is no kingdom or place where the beast is not what is in control. And because of that, all who dwell on earth will worship it. We're going to think about that a lot more, especially as we get to the second beast, because we're going to come to worship as we get to the second beast. But the world isn't going to be mad about the beast. The world is going to love the beast, even worship the beast, run after the beast, and embrace the beast. That is, the world, except the believers, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world, and the book of life, the lamb who is slain. And so we have that the entire world is subject to the beast and runs after the beast and embraces the beast. And the beast exists to make one of the saints. And so we've seen the purpose of the beast. We've seen what the beast is. We've seen the purpose of the beast. But there's another great truth woven in these words. Because every time we see what the beast is going to do, we see a passive tense. So we see first the beast is the enemy of God and the enemy of the saints and rules the whole world. But we see, and the beast was given a mouth covering haughty and blasphemous things. It was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months. It was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation. This beast does not hold its own power. This beast, though it be the enemy of God and the enemy of God's people with its passion to destroy the church, it's not all-powerful. It still exists under the control of God. It does not have its own authority. It is subservient. And so the beast is under God's authority, and it's only because God has willed it that the beast exercises real power in this world. The dragon called out the beast, and the dragon thinks he still has some power, even though he's been defeated. But Revelation says, no, it doesn't. It only has power because God has given it to it. Now that isn't to say that it doesn't have power because God has allowed it to happen this way. God has allowed it to utter blasphemous things. God has allowed it to exercise authority. God has allowed it to make war on the saints because that is his purpose and his plan. But it's all under God's control. So take heart, yes, you have a great enemy, a great enemy that you cannot escape from because it rules every kingdom and language and nation on the earth. But God is still in control. But then we skipped over something, something relatively weird, as though the rest of this passage wasn't weird. But we come back to Revelation 3, verses 3 through 4, and we have one more description of the beast, or one more thing that the beast is going to do. So we come back to Revelation 3, 3 through 4, and it says, one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast. And they worship the beast saying, who is like the beast? And who can fight against it? So this actually calls for a history lesson. Because John is writing at a certain period in time. And he's trying to give us a really clear idea of what the beast is. He wants us to see clearly and understand, what am I talking about? I've seen a vision from God, I want to portray it to you, and so let me tell you about this. And so he's actually going back to what's going on around him right now. He's existing in one iteration of the beast, which happened to be the last beast of the Old Testament, the first beast of the New Testament, the great Roman Empire. And he says, yes, the great Roman Empire is the beast, and I'm going to show it to you. So we go and look at the timeline of the Roman Empire. We go back and we have, well, I'm going to start with Nero. Nero, a very well-known emperor, reigned for about 14, 15 years. And he was actually a great empire, kind of went emperor. He kind of went crazy at the end, and he lost his control because he went crazy. But in general, he was recognized as a great emperor. And because of his greatness, he actually took the cult of the Roman emperor and turned it into a cult of himself. So for ages, The Eastern peoples of the world, and even the Roman Empire, had deified dead kings. The kings that had died, the emperors that had died, you'd go and worship them. But Nero said, even though I'm alive, I demand worship now. I am God Almighty on Earth, and you will worship me. And because of that, there was widespread persecution of Christians. And so we know the stories of the burning of Rome, the Christians kicked out of Rome, and the stories of the lions thrown into a lion's den and burned to death. the auditoriums, all those things are stories from the time of Nero. There was this time of great persecution and the church was in great straits trying to find a place safe from persecution. The beast was alive and active and hunting them down. But then Nero, he started to lose control. And there started to be revolutions on the east and on the west of his empire. One of those revolutions happened to be in Judea, which we'll come back to in a few minutes. But especially the revelations on the west, up and around London in Spain, actually ended up doing him in. There was another emperor that was raised up. And Nero was going crazy. And he ended up committing suicide. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't hold control. And he was finding out that he was not a god. And he ended up killing himself. He couldn't handle it. And then all of a sudden, persecution just vanished. And the Roman Empire just about fell apart. And so we had another empire. Our emperor raised up Galba, but it only reigned for about three months. And then we had Otho, who reigned for about six months. And then we had Vitellius, who only reigned for a couple months. And the Roman Empire started to evolve, and the legions started going to war with each other. And the empire just about went away. And the Christians must have thought, our great enemy has fallen. Rejoice. But it wasn't to be. It wasn't to be that way. And so that's called the Year of the Four Emperors. It's actually so well known in history that there's a name we give to this, this great period of turmoil when the Roman Empire almost fell. But then another emperor was raised up, Vespasian. Vespasian, you might not have heard of him, but you've probably heard of his son Titus. So Vespasian rises up in 69, stabilizes the emperor, and he sends his son Titus to go deal with a local rebellion that's going on in Jerusalem. Because he's trying to stabilize all these rebellions that's going on around the empire. He's trying to bring stability back to the empire. And so we have the fall of Jerusalem right after Vespasian is raised up, sends his son Titus, Caesar's Jerusalem, Jerusalem falls, everything that happened in 70 AD. And so the empire rescues itself. It doesn't fall. But things don't get quite as bad for a little bit. Vespasian has a long reign, and then Titus, his son, comes back to Rome and takes up the throne. Titus and Vespasian had some differences in opinion, but they got along pretty well, and so Titus takes it over. Titus died young, though, but not because of any intrigue. He just got sick and died. And then his brother, Domitian, took the throne. And so we'd gone from this period of widespread persecution of Christians. The empire almost fell apart. It looked as though it was dying. But then it was rescued. And then Domitian comes up and he says, you know what? I am God Almighty on Earth. I am the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and all owe me worship. And so he reinstituted not only the cult of the dead emperors, but his own cult and said, worship me. And so we had a return of what was. There was widespread emperor worship, in fact, enforced emperor worship. and widespread persecution of the Christians. And so we come back and we talk about the beast. The beast, the great empires of the world, wielding power against the saints, making war against them. And then the beast almost died. Christians would have been rejoicing, and the world would have said, well, what's going on? There is no stability anymore. But then the beast rescued itself. And what did it lead to except a renewed worship of the beast and a renewed persecution of the Christians? One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed. And so we have this time that's gone on and we see that John is actually way out here in the time of Domitian. He's looking back and saying what had happened with Nero is happening again. And his point is this, something like this. He says the beast will come and we'll have times of great power. where it's actively persecuting the church. And then there'll be times of turmoil, times of lack of peace, times when the beast doesn't seem to have everything in control, and it almost seems like it's dying. But don't take heart then. That's not how victory is going to be won. The beast will always come back. Whether it's through a renewed Roman Empire or a completely other power, the beast will always come back. It may look like it has mortal wounds, but you will never escape it. And the world will continue to worship the dragon and worship the beast. And so mortal wound, Nero committed suicide, the empire almost fell apart. The wound was healed, the empire was re-stabilized. They worshiped the beast once again as Domitian reinstitutes the curse. And so the first beast ends with a call. Actually, this is a great passage because it tells us what the application is. It says this, if anyone has an ear, let him hear. A call to listen, to say, pay attention. These things are important for you right now. Let him hear. If anyone is to be taken captive to captivity, he goes. John's saying you don't have power against this beast. You individually, you as a church on earth, don't have power against this beast. This beast has been allowed to have great authority and great power. And so if that beast wants to take you captive, you're going to be taken captive. In fact, if the beast wants to is going to come. Don't think there's some place that you can outrun persecution or hide from it or somehow make it through life and think that everything is going to be fine. Persecution will come if the beast hates you. And so the call is this. It says, here's the application, here's the call. The call is for endurance and for faith. I'm actually not going to talk about that much now. We're going to come back to that at the end when we do some application. But it's going to tell us what our call is. It's endurance and faith in the midst of the reign of the beast. So with that, I'm going to close our first point. and turn to our second point. We've seen that there is imperial power in the kingdoms of this world that wield real power and come to destroy the church. But then we have a second beast raised up, and we're going to see that the second beast has to do with cultic worship. So we're going to come to Revelation 13, verses 11 through 18. It said, then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence. and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people. And by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast, it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast. so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also, it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or on the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. But the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man, and his number is 666. So we only go from weird to weirder as we go through the saga of the dragon. We have another second beast rise up out of the earth. And so I want to come back to look at Revelation 13, 11 through 14. And so I wasn't supposed to highlight that yet, so we'll get to that in a second. I want to start with this. I saw another beast rising up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb. We've already seen this image already in Revelation. We saw it appear in Revelation 5. We have a lion of the tribe of Judah, a conqueror that comes forth. But then John looks and says, it looks like a lamb that had been slain. This second beast is a false pretender, somebody who looks as though he should be a messiah-like figure, something that demands worship like Christ demands worship. But though it looked like a lamb, it really spoke like a dragon. It's a pretender, it's a false, it's actually going to be called later in Revelation, a false prophet. Something that caused the world to worship but not worship Christ, to worship the dragon instead. And then it's going to exercise all the authority of the first beast, and it's present, and it makes the inhabitants of the earth worship the first beast. So the first beast and the second beast go together. The second beast comes up and calls for worship. To say authority is not enough. Imperial power is not enough. We're not merely going to reign with a rod of iron. I'm going to demand allegiance. I'm going to demand worship. I'm going to demand conformity. You must come and align yourself with the beast. And so to do so, the second beast is a mockery of the Lamb, and the second beast institutes a false religion and mockery of the Lamb. something to worship instead of the worship of the lamb. And to do so, it performs great signs, even making fire come down from earth, from heaven to earth in front of people. Another symbol we've already seen in Revelation, we saw when we saw the two witnesses calling down fire from heaven and saw that that's a reference back to the prophets, back to Elijah that he's called down fire from heaven to destroy the guards that were coming to capture him. And we thought about the fact that Derek represents God's protection, that he will protect his people like he protected the prophets of old. They will fulfill their mission and they will not be conquered until they fulfill their mission. but the beast claims that same sort of power. He's given a power that awes the people of the earth, and he's given a deception, and that's what the core of this is, it's deception. He's given a powerful deception, as Thessalonians would say, or as Matthew 24 would say, he's given a powerful deception to deceive all the peoples of the world, so that even if it were possible, the elect would be deceived. And so there's going to be great stories and great wonders done. We're going to see things that seem to be absolutely true and call for our worship. And we have to be careful and watch for those things. And so, at the end, it deceives those who dwell on earth. Again, going back, those who dwell on earth are those who have not been written in the Lamb's book of life. And it tells them to make an image of the beast. So the second beast come, and he says, we're going to institute worship. We're going to call for conformity, and it's going to fuel the power of the first beast. The second beast and the first beast are going to go together. There's going to be an allegiance, a conformity, a worship in this world that fuels the power of the first beast, that calls the world not only to obey, but to bow down and to worship the first beast. And so we come to Revelation 13, 15 through 18, and it says, and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast. And so it's given this power to say, I'm gonna bring this image of the beast to life. I, again, don't think that it means necessarily it's actually gonna be going around bringing idols to life, but it brings the worship, the cult of the first beast, and gives it life, it gives it power, it gives it authority, because here's the outcome of giving life to the beast. It's gonna cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. And so the second beast comes and calls for worship, and calls for worship specifically of the first beast. And those who won't, it gives life to the first beast so that first beast can come and with impunity slay those who won't worship it. To say, you know what? Not only are you enemies of the state, but you're enemies of the people. You don't worship the right things. You are wrong, and it's right for me to kill you. And so he's given power to slay those who will not worship the first beast. And so we see this happen, actually, in the time of John. This is about 50 years after John actually had been employing these quotes. But we have a remnant of an ancient letter. There's a governor of Asia Minor, and it's about where John was right now, that wrote to Emperor Trajan and had some questions. He said, I have a Christian problem. I want to know what to do with it. So he asked a question. And this is what he said he's doing with the problem right now. He says, meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I've observed the following procedure. I interrogated them to see if they were Christians. Those who confessed, I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment. And those who persisted, I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness, and inflexible obstinacy, those surely deserved to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly, but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome. So Governor Plinney said, you know what? I have this Christian problem. I'm going to go and find out if they're Christians, and if so, I'm going to execute them. This is Emperor Trajan's reply. We see this happening in the first beast that existed then. Emperor Trajan says back, you observe proper procedure, my dear Plinney. That's a good thing. Go kill the Christians. In sifting the case of those who had been denounced to you as Christians, for it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out. But if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished. With this reservation, and here's the emphasis, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really approves it, that is, by worshiping our gods, even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall take pardon through repentance. And so the emperor Trajan says this. Christians, you're right, go kill them. If you find out they're Christians, go kill them. They aren't worshiping us. But when you find out they're Christians, they're willing to at least go and worship our gods. Wipe it all away. They're willing to worship our gods. They're really part of us. They're fine. So that's going to be the difference. So during the time of the Romans, this would happen, not constantly, but periods, whether empire-wide or locally. But we can go back across the history of the Old Testament and see this happen over and over again. We just read in Daniel 3, 4 through 7, it said, the herald, the herald of King Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed aloud, you are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. King Nebuchadnezzar was not fine with merely ruling the known world. He was not okay with merely exercising power over the peoples of the earth. He demanded another step. He said, worship. Worship or die. And then we know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who said no. So we come back to Revelation 13, 15 through 18 and say this is what the second beast will do over and over again. But then we get the really weird part of our passage. Also, it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both slave and free, to be marked on the right hand or on the forehead. And the purpose of this mark, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. We have the infamous mark of the beast listed in there. And so we have this beast. He comes up and he demands worship of the world. Worship the first beast or die. And then I'm going to mark you. You're either going to worship the beast or not worship the beast. And I'll stamp you on the forehead and mark you on the hand to tell whether you worship this beast. And again, this is allegory. We're not necessarily meant to take this literally. And so we have this being marked on the right hand or on the forehead, something people have argued about for centuries, about what is this mark of the beast going to be. But actually what I think is it's not actually meaning some sort of like tattoo or mark or stamp or something like that. We can actually go back to Deuteronomy and say these are words out of Deuteronomy. The Old Testament always interprets revelation. And so in the great call of the Hebrew people, the center of the Hebrew religion was this. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You are to worship God and you to remember what he said. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And this is what it says. They're so important, this is how you should feel about it. You shall bind them as signs on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eye. you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates." Now, the Jewish people who missed Christ and wanted to run after law and legalism actually took this seriously and started hanging phylacteries on their garments and putting packages of scripture. But that's not the call of Deuteronomy 6. The call of Deuteronomy 6 is to identify with this so closely as though it were stamped on your forehead and your hand was made of the Word of God. Make it so much yours that you can't walk into your house without seeing Make it in your heart so much that you can't run away from it. It's not meant to be an actual sign on the forehead or on the hand, but an identification, a loyalty to this word. And so when we come back to Revelation 13, 15 through 18, it says the beast does the same thing. The word of God calls for an intense loyalty as though it were written on our forehead or stamped on our hands. The beast says, no, I demand loyalty to my religion. And so we'd say that this image on the forehead or on the hand is a declaration of loyalty to say, no, you must come bow down. You must show me that you side with me. You must conform to what I desire. If you do not, you'll be pushed out of society. You won't be allowed to buy or sell. You'll probably actually be killed, as we saw earlier. And so no one can buy or sell unless he has that mark. But then he says, this calls for wisdom. This calls for wisdom. We're going to come back to that, because that's going to be our application again. This passage is great. It just tells us what the application is. But he says this, let the one who understands calculate the number of the beast. For it is the number of man, and his number is 666. So we have this mark of the beast, the 666, again, been argued about for ages. What is this mark of the beast, the number 666? I want to make some observations about what this means. And the first is going to be a general one. I want to say, what is this number of the beast? It actually says what it is. It is the number of a man. It is the number of a man. But actually, the Greek doesn't have the word a there. We might better read this as it is the number of man. It is a number belonging to man. It represents what man is or what man has become. And so we come back to the numbers of Revelation. We say if seven represents perfection, then six represents missing the mark. You didn't get there. It's imperfect. It's fallen short. It's full of deviousness and deception and corruption. It's not complete. So if we come to 666, We have a fullness of incompletion, complete imperfection. In fact, we have a trinity, something I haven't mentioned so far. We have a trinity being held up in opposition to God. If we have God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, then on this side we have the dragon and the first beast and the second beast calling for an entire different sort of worship and a different sort of power. Trinity says I'm seven, seven, seven. I am complete perfection in every way. Then this Trinity is six, six, six. It is full of every imperfection. It's not representing God, it's representing itself. And so that's the big great picture of what six, six, six means. Not that there will be a number six, six, six tattooed on people, but rather that it will be a mark of imperfection, less than what God is, away from the things of God. But then we're told a second thing. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast. And so this is an interesting thing. Some of you might be familiar with this. But the ancient world was obsessed with numbers. And they would do all sorts of calculations. They would put words together and they'd turn into numbers. Actually, if you've used Roman numerals, You've practiced this. They used their letters and made them worth numbers. So an X is worth 10, a V is worth 5, an I is worth 1. And then you could go through and give a value to every number. And then if you had a name, you could calculate out the value of that name. And so it says, this is the number. What I'm calculating, it's 666. So people, again, argue about this back and forth. But I think there's a really, really strong candidate for what he's talking about. 666 is the number. numerical value of Caesar Nero in Hebrew. So we've already had Nero come up once. Nero was the first iteration of the beast that was coming and persecuting Christians. He died, the beast had a mortal wound, but he came back in the Emperor Domitian to come and persecute Christians again. He said, this is what the worship of the world is going to look like. It's going to look like what happened under Emperor Nero. And now, he's writing a very political book, and he's being really careful because he doesn't want it all just to be burned. He doesn't mention Domitian. He mentions the guy from 50 years ago that nobody liked now because he got conquered and stuff. But he says, it's like that, and look at what's happening around you right now. And then he holds it up for all of history and says, look at what happened with Nero. He called for worship. Where are you right now? What are you being called to worship like Nero? But the reason I think this is such a strong identification is there's actually a textual variant. But it's a very early textual variant from the first century, where some scribe was going through there, writing down Revelation 13, and got to the number, and he saw 666. And this scribe, he knew exactly what it meant, because everybody back then knew what it meant. He knew that it meant Nero, but he was having trouble making the numbers add up. He's like, I don't get it. I know that 666 is a representation of Nero, but when I add it up, it only comes up to 616. And so when he copied the text, he got rid of 666 and put 616. It turns out if you take Caesar Nero in Latin, it only adds up to 616, because it has an extra letter in Hebrew that's worth 50. And so the copyist, knowing what it was supposed to meant, but not doing his schematria very well, and not doing the calculation very well, came up with a different number because he knew that that's what it meant. And so we actually have two textual variants. We can tell that the first one is older, and actually by the third century, the people had realized, oh, there's two textual variants. The 666 is much older, but the reason is this. The copyist knew it was Nero. And he was trying to figure out, how do I get this to add up to who I know it's supposed to be talking about? And so I say that's a really, really strong identification of what 666 is about. Go back and look at what happened with Nero. He called for his own worship. And he ended up dying. The beast will not live forever. But this is what it's going to look like in every new iteration of this second beast. And so what is the number of the beast? I'd say something like this. the number of the beast, the mark of the beast, isn't going to be some mark we take upon our body. It's not going to be some hidden thing like, oh, you know, people talk about credit cards or whatever ridiculous conspiracy theory they talk about that can list them all off. It's not going to be like that. There's going to be a clear decision that comes to everyone's lifetime to either worship the power and practices of this world, to come and bow down to the power of the first beast, or to stand with Christ and say, I worship Christ. It's not going to be hidden. It's going to be clear. It's going to be like the time of Nero when they were called to pour out a libation on the emperor's image and say, I worship Nero as Lord and God. Or you can say, no, I can't do that because I worship Christ as Lord. And so the Great Testament of the New Testament is Christ is Lord with the underlying thing, not Nero, not the emperor. And so there's going to be a clear decision either to worship the beast or to worship Christ. So we've gone through the first beast, the second beast, now we're ready to make some application. It turns out the application here is really easy. The dragon is still active in our world. And the dragon still uses the power of the beasts. And so we had two beasts. We had a first beast. The dragon in Revelation used two beasts. The first beast was the power of the kingdoms of this world. The authority of the governments that reign over us. And it says, over and over again, you'll see this happen, as they will turn against the church, try to hunt them down, and try to stamp them out. And then we had a second beast, the deception of colitic worship. Over and over again, in these kingdoms, there'll be things that you were called to worship, things that fuel the power of the first beat, that call you to bow down and say, the government is king, Caesar is God. And we're going to be called not only to obey, but to worship. I'm going to say both of these weapons are still wielded by the dragon. Things haven't changed. We aren't some special sort of people that have no dragon and no beast over us. The powers of the kingdom of this world still oppose God the king and persecute his kingdom. And the world still exalts false religions and demands conformity in worship. Not merely in what we would call false religions, but rather in worshiping the things the world loves and desires, things that fuel the authority of the first beast. And so I want to make five applications, five things I want to talk about as we go through this. What does this mean for us today? What does it mean for the church of old time, but especially for us sitting here today? The first is this, we must be ready to endure because the first beast will hunt us down and kill us. We must be ready to endure, because that's the promise. The first beast will hunt us down and kill us. Revelation 13, nine through 10, it says, here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints, because if anyone is to be taken to captivity, he will go. Our call is to faithfulness regardless of the cost. To say the beast will hunt us down, the beast will kill us. Make a decision now before you're called before his throne. before you're called to make that decision publicly. Count the cost now and be ready to follow Christ. So the application is something like Luke 14. Jesus is telling a parable. It says, no great crowds accompanied him. And he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, He cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. There will be sacrifice. The beast will come after you to destroy you. And so do this, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. Look now while you have the chance. Decide now, I'm going to worship Christ and not worship the beast. I'm going to have my eyes open so when they call me to sacrifice what I would say Christ would call me to do, I'm not going to do it. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, it is not able to finish it. All who see him begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish. So we come back and say, or call us to faithfulness regardless of the cost. Count the cost now. Because, and I'm not speaking as a prophet. I don't believe that I have any spirit of a prophet. I'm not making any promise. Even may God make my words fall flat. But as I look at our world, I agree with Jeremy. I see it coming. The beast is gaining more and more power in our society. So now is the time to count the cost. To say, when the time comes and the beast calls for my worship, I'm going to be ready to say no, and I'm going to be ready to be thrown in prison or die because of that. Because it's coming. I believe it's coming. But I want to make a caveat. This is a super political book. If you get through Revelation, you can't fail to see that John is writing against the Roman Empire. The kingdom that is over us is evil and corrupt. It represents all that is opposed to God. And so we can start to think of this as a revolutionary book. It is very much not a revolutionary book. And so important, our call is not to fight against or defeat the beast. Our call is not to fight against or defeat the beast. The beast has power. You're not going to win. Fighting against it is going to be futile. You'll just end up getting killed faster. Instead, our call is to faithfully endure. So as we call for a great political book, the governments around us are evil. It's not a call to overthrow the governments, it's a call to die. None of the teaching about the beast should lead to an anti-government position or a revolutionary bent. We resist not by fighting, but by obeying Christ and dying. That's the call of the book of Revelation, is obey even when it means death, not to fight when you think things are going wrong. And so we could kind of list three options relating to our government. We could join the beast and say, you know what? The beast is great. I'm going to follow after the beast wholeheartedly. And on the full opposite side of the spectrum, we can fight the beast and say, the beast is doing a lot of wrong things. I don't like what the beast is doing. I'm going to take up arms. I'm going to actively resist and try to set up my own government. Not realizing you're just setting up another iteration of the beast. I'd say both of those. are wrong. Those aren't how we take revelation and apply it. Instead, we do a third option. Resist the beast by obeying Christ. We say, when Christ calls us to do something, we're going to do it. We're actually going to be really radical. We're going to look at the beast and say, you're evil and wrong, and I hate everything you stand for, and yet I'm going to obey you anytime that I can. I'm going to submit to you anytime that I can. I'm only not going to when Christ calls me to do something exactly opposite of you. And my rebellion is going to look a lot different than any other rebellion that happens in this world because I'll obey and then happily die doing that. And that's the right option. Resist the beast by obeying Christ. And we see what this looks like. We saw Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They stood before the image, and they didn't bow down. And we come to Daniel 6. Daniel got to do this as well. He said, all the presidents of the kingdom and prefects and satraps and the counselors and the governors all agree that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes petition to any god or man for 30 days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the death lines. Once again, as happens over and over again, the beast demanded worship. Pray to me, not to your gods. What did Daniel do? When Daniel knew that the document would be signed, he went to his house, where he had windows in his upper chamber, and they were open towards Jerusalem. He wasn't bashful about it. He did it before an open window. He said, I'm going to disobey. He got down on his knees, and he did it a lot, three times a day. And he prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously. And then when they came for him, he went to the lion's den. And just as with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he was rescued by God. And so we see examples of this all over scripture. We don't fight. Daniel didn't try to take up arms and claim the empire for himself. He just said, you know what? I'm going to keep obeying God. Even in everybody's vision, I'm going to publicly disobey the government so that I will keep obeying my God. So first, we must be ready to endure, because the first beast will hunt us down and kill us. Second, and this is, so we've been dealing with the first beast. I want to take another application out of the first beast, not the one called for in the passage, but one that I think is important for us. We need to be careful not to enter into alliance with the beast, believing that it could be our ally. Because I look back at the history of our country, and I think we were lulled into a false understanding that we were different, that somehow our government wasn't the beast. that our kingdom wasn't a part of all the kingdoms and tribes and languages and nation of this world. And somehow we thought that we could jump in and be part of this and have God's kingdom formed on earth. But Revelation doesn't hold any hope for that. Revelation says the beast has every kingdom and tribe and language and nation. There will be nowhere to run. The beast will always be against Christians. And so it's really dangerous to try to make an alliance with the beast, to put any hope that our government could be made right, that somehow our government could represent God well. Our government belongs to the beast. It's not a call to overthrow the government, just a call to see it for what it is. Don't put your hope there, and don't try to run after that goal. That's not a goal that will come to pass. That goal will keep you joined to the beast and call you to worship it in other ways. And so we have to be careful not to enter into an alliance with the beast. It's our enemy. We have to remember it's our enemy. and react rightly towards it. And by that, I don't mean that you can't be politically active or say, I think these things are better or these things are worse. Those are fine things. But be careful where you're thinking about the beast. The beast is evil. The beast will come to kill you. Don't make alliances with it. But then third, we must, moving into the second beast, We must be careful to identify the false worship that the world demands of us. We need to be careful to identify the false worship that the world demands of us. And in our world, there are so many examples. When we come here, we see this calls for wisdom. John said, stop for a second and think about this. Under Nero, they were not only called to obey, they were called to worship. Under Domitian, they were not only called to obey, they were called to worship. Under Trajan, they were not only called to obey, they were called to worship. Under Nebuchadnezzar, they were not only called to obey, they were called to worship. Do you think that you're any different? He says, no, this calls for wisdom. What does your culture want you to conform to? What does your culture want you to buy into? What does your culture want you to bow down to and worship? You need to identify those things. This calls for wisdom. And so what things can we look at in our world? And this is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but we're going to look at these things and see all these things are things that our world calls us to worship right now. And actually, we see that all the power of the first peace. They call us to bow our knee to our government as God and King and to follow after it. So we could say we look at our world around us and they celebrate sexual deviancy and make that a thing of worship. You either join the LGBTQ agenda or you're thrust out of society. You cannot buy or sell whether you're rich or great, slave or free. We don't care. If you're not on our side, you're thrust out. We could look at freedom of self even at the cost of murder, abortion. Say, either you're with us or you're against us. If you're against us, you're not part of our society. Be kicked out. Freedom from God-ordained gender roles. The transgendered movement or the egalitarian movement, an older one, but still going strong. Say, you're either with us or against us. You can be either completely old-fashioned and not belonging to modern society, or you can submit to these things. Increasingly, we see a call for submission to government as savior. We see this call to worship our government, to fall down. It was subtle at first, but we saw that we had a crisis come up and called it for shutdown of the church, and then increasingly coming and calling us to worship. And though it was subtle at first, it's gotten more and more blatant as time goes on, even coming and making candles to Fauci and coming and worshiping him. It may be a joke to some degree, but really they're just admitting what they're actually doing and saying, come and worship. Bow down to the government. Or exaltation of race as both sin and gospel. Sin is not an offense against God. It's a, well, you belong to the wrong race of oppressors. And gospel is to belong to the right race of non-oppressors, the critical race. Again, not an exhaustive list. We can start to list all more things on this list. We can kind of generally sum up the wokeness of this world, the things that the world wants us to join into, to say, these are great things. And if you don't say those, you're going to be cast out of society. We have to be really careful. Are we going to worship those things? Are we going to stand up and say, no, we worship Christ? And so we must be careful to identify false worship, to identify what is the world calling us to bow down to and say, no, we bow down to Christ. Then four, once we've identified it, we must refuse to worship. We must refuse to participate in the world's worship and remain faithful to Christ, even at the cost of our lives. Because it says, the second beast will give breath to the first beast, and as it gets stronger and stronger, at first it will start to kick you out of society and say, You know what, you're not part of us. You're not part of good company. You're not going to be in central society. Then they're going to push you far enough out that you're not going to be able to buy or sell because you don't agree with us. You're not part of our group. You don't come down and bow down to the LGBTQ agenda or whatever other agenda might be going on in our world. And eventually, they'll come and kill you because you don't agree with them. And so we have to be ready now again. Not only am I going to be ready to disobey when the government says something that goes against Christ, I'm gonna stand and say, no, I'm not gonna bow down in worship either. I don't agree. I don't want to follow after that. So we must refuse to participate in the world's worship and remain faithful to Christ. And so we might sum it up, you know, sum up something like this. We must love not our lives. I'm sorry, we must love our lives. I don't think I quoted that right. We must love not our lives, even unto death. There we go. Wrong application on the screen. We must not love our lives even unto death. There we go. Which is what we ended up with last week. That's why the call from last week was so important. We're going to have the dragons come down to earth in great fury and great wrath. He says this is going to be the hallmark call over all the history of the ages from Christ to Christ is this. Love Christ. not the world, love Christ, not your lives. So I heard a great voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of our Christ have come. He has won, he has conquered, for the accuser of our brothers has been turned down. He accuses them day and night before God, and they have conquered him. The believers, the church, those called by God, have conquered the dragon. How? By the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. By basing their lives completely and fully, identifying with that gospel and with that king. And this is the negative, for they loved not even their lives unto death. You're going to have a choice. You can choose to worship the beast and follow its desires. You can worship Christ and follow his desires. We've had a weird aberration for a couple hundred years where it had a mirage of seeming like that wasn't true. But it's quickly falling apart around us. We're seeing the beast is still powerful, and that day is going to come. And so we have to be ready now to say, I don't love my life. I love Christ. I'm ready to give this all up so that I can follow Christ. So kids, two questions for this morning. What two weapons does the dragon wield against the church? So we have two weapons. We have, first, the power of the kingdoms of this world. They belong to him. He's their ruler. And the deception of false worship, a call to conformity, a call to value what the word values. So those are the two weapons the dragon continually wield against the church. But then how does the church fight back? How does the church defeat the dragon? The same from last week, by loving Christ through faithful obedience, by rejecting the demands of the beast, persecution comes. With that, we'll close with the word of prayer. Father, we're thankful for the warnings that you've given us. Father, the clear instruction you've given us in Scripture that we do have an enemy. Father, that seems like a terrible statement. Father, I found great joy in that this week. Father, that it's not up to me, it's not up to us to that you are sovereign, that the beast only does what you allow it to do, and that we have no responsibility to conquer it or to defeat it, only to keep following you. But Father, I also pray as we look at these things. Father, I know how weak I am, how weak we all are, how much we still do find the love of the things of this world, the love of our life. a greater vision of Christ, a greater love of Christ, a greater desire for Christ, that we'd be pushing those things out. That Father, when that day comes, we would be able to look the beast in the eye and say, no, we don't. Father, I pray that that would be a glory to Christ on that day. Father, that you would sustain us through that day. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Let's open it up if there's any questions or comments or other discussion to be had. Thank you for your in-depth research, your read-in presentation. So I have a question for not just you, but for those of you who work for someone else, of which I used to work for someone else. If you show up Monday for work, or whatever day, and your supervisor says to you, you know, that cross on your desk, we found offensive. We talked about religion. We talked about living for Christ. You'll be put to the test at that point. So the question is not just your life, but it's your livelihood. And so each person, and in my case, it's seven for a person. I just don't have a good analysis of that, but it will happen, I'm sure. When you use the term resist, what does that look like? The willingness to, OK, input that away. I guess I don't work here anymore. Or maybe you wear a piece for a woman that wears a necklace. We ask you to take that off while you're at work. How does that sit with you? No, I think that's a great point. And actually, I meant to say that. Actually, I meant to read another passage, which I just realized I didn't. But no, that's exactly right. We talk about the ultimate test of, well, it might cost your life. But right now, we're seeing it around us right now. It might cost you the respect of polite society. Or it might cost you a job, or it might cost you. It may cost you many things. It's not always the ultimate cost. But we'd better be ready. If you can't meet the small demands, you'll never be able to meet the big demands. So I think you're right on point is, yeah, we have to think through those things. And then it does get complicated. There's gray areas of, well, am I respecting my employer and not disobeying Christ, and I can do that? Versus am I denying Christ and hiding my identity with Christ? Boy, that gets into a lot of gray area. But we all have to think through that and say, I'd better define some sort of line somewhere. Because otherwise, it's always going to look gray. And I'm going to keep taking this step, and this step, and this step, into going and bowing down to the beast to keep going in this world. And it seems that this book culture that you refer to, it's not just a matter of what to worship. It's also an issue of what not to worship. Absolutely. And so the question becomes, can you be a follower of Christ and still be part of the world culture? If you are, how do you reconcile that? How does a Christian reconcile the fact that abortion is OK with you? Now, it's not mine to judge, but a lot of people would have to, you would think they do have to do a whole lot of soul-searching that the LGBTQXYZ is okay, or the gender, or the, confusing. Yes, absolutely. And sometimes those things seem like really far-off things, except we look around our world, and so many churches and so many Christians have completely capitulated to those things. somehow have reconciled that they can still follow Christ, I think we need to look at those things now and say, no, those things are completely out of line with Christ, and we can't go along with them. It doesn't mean we have to fight them all the time, it doesn't mean that we have to take up arms and war against it, but we definitely are gonna be joining, we're gonna be resisting by obedience to Christ, yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you coming. I can't think of a single area where I disagree with you on. I want to add one thing. When it talks about the mark on the forehead and on the hand, I think there could be way too much speculation about what that's going to look like. I think you're dead on. I think the revelation gets a clearer picture of exactly what that means. Earlier when it says that, You know, until all the saints' heads are marked, it's an identification of who you belong to. And you can't hide in this world. You either belong to Christ, or you belong to the world. We always talk about how there's so many different religions, but there's really only two. There's the worship of the one true God, and there's paganism. and worship of everything else. And so we have to be careful, as a church, who are we showing that we belong to? Do we belong to the world, or do we belong to Christ? And in a way, we see everywhere around us that even those who claim the name of Christ have, for years, began to identify more with this world than with Christ involved. And so I think the call that comes to mind, I think, is what Paul emphasizes to the Church of Corinth as being, make sure of your own calling and election on a daily basis. When you have that time of confession before God, are you identifying with this world? Are you making compromises and saying, well, I know God says this is wrong, but this is what I needed. I don't know if you remember what I said in Revelation earlier, but when the letters from the churches, there was a specific one where if you didn't belong to the guilds, you couldn't work. And each one of those deals had their own God. If you would not worship that God, you couldn't work. And so just like Gary said, there may come a time where you're either asked to deny Christ, and then you can work, or... And I've never been able to do that, and so I can't imagine the strength that that must take, but I know that God will give us the strength to endure, not before, but in the moment that we're called to lead. No, I think that's right. And I actually like your last point. It comes back to what Christ said, is that don't worry about what you'll say when you're called before emperors or governors. You'll be given strength in the moment. The call right now is to count the cost and say, I'm ready to do that, not worrying about how is that going to happen. But no, I think about that a lot, working at the university. can imagine a day when I'm not allowed to work there anymore. And it's happening faster and faster. I don't savor that idea, but there may be a day when either I agree with these things or not. And yeah, you have to think about that. Yeah? So in my mind, this fits together. That doesn't mean it fits together everywhere. But as we talk about the story of Daniel's friends, the name Hananiah means Yahweh is great. The name Mishael means who is what God is. And Azariah means Yahweh has helped. And yet, when we tell the story and we talk about what they did to stand for God, even we take their identity from them, just like they try to take their identity by changing their name. We do the same thing. Where is our identity? It's not in the name. It's in what they did. It's how they acted. not what, not the name they were giving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought the reading of the letters between those governors was very interesting. What these guys were talking about, you know, about whether we're doing it on standards. It just sounded interesting that the governors noticed an obvious difference Yeah, absolutely. The world can tell who Christians are, even if Christians have a hard time sometimes. Anything else? Yeah. In the application part, if I understand it correctly, you said we should take the attitude that we should submit to the government wherever we can. And then later on in the points where we should resist, you listed the COVID issue. at one of those points. And right now, right here, there are lots of federal employees and soldiers that have about three weeks remaining to make a decision whether to quit their job or be let go or submit. How, you know, this feels a little bit garish coming here, how do you anticipate that looking? Yeah, I don't know. And I'll give that's a complicated question. And I've counseled actually quite a few people on that. And this is where those gray areas come in. Is getting a vaccine wrong? No, by no means. So could you get a vaccine and be perfectly happy? Yes. And that's been kind of my general, although I'm seeing that as a first step, it just continues to ask more and more. And so there's a wisdom in saying, well, I don't know where this is going. Kenilow Bay right now. Sure, I don't think anything right now is calling me to disobey Christ. And so that comes to that, I'm going to submit wherever I can, but when it crosses the line, I'm not going to. And so personally, I have no care whether anyone gets vaccinated or does anything. But if people who come and ask me, OK, I'm a government employee, Councilman, we're at a step where that's not wrong yet. We're feeling that it's running that way fast. And the government continues to take more. And if you buy into it wholeheartedly and start judging others based on what things they're wearing or what things they're not wearing or how they're reacting to the issue, you've dove in way too far and you're joining the world's worship. Is the requirement for a vaccine that wide? Personally, I don't think so. I respect what other people think. But you're right, you have to start thinking about those things and say, okay, there's a line somewhere. We're edging closer to it. We're edging closer to it all the time. Have we crossed it? Personally, I don't think so. But yeah. Anything else? Thanks Matthew. So as we.