Well, good evening to you, and if you'd like to open your Bibles up to the book of Revelation, chapter 13, we'll be looking at the last eight or nine verses there, verses 11 through 18. This can be found on page 1320 in the Pew Bibles. It's good to be in God's house. As I have worshiped here today, I'm thankful for those that the Lord is raising up. We're thankful for Pastor Martin, and then the training that he's given to our interns, Jason Thoman and Hao Liu. God is blessing us richly, and I'm just thankful for that this evening. Well, in God's mysterious providence, you probably couldn't have chosen a better year, 2020, to preach in the Book of Revelation. This is the year where we've seen a worldwide plague, and riots, murder hornets, locust swarms, and all kinds of things going on around the earth. And then I'm preaching tonight, and it's the week of Halloween, and I'm gonna be preaching on a beast, 666, so I just couldn't line up any better. I think I've got your attention, so it should be an exciting evening, so let's pay attention to the word of God here as we look at verses 11 through 18 from the book of Revelation. Here, the word of the Lord. And 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 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 a man, and his number is 666. Let's pray and ask for God's help this evening. Father, we are thankful to be in your house. in the temple of the living God where the Spirit of God dwells. And Father, we thank you that your Spirit gave John these visions and caused him to record them down for your church through the ages. And as we come this particular evening, we pray your Spirit would be especially present. helping to bring clarity from this passage and application into the life of your people in what is a dark and troubled generation. Hear our prayers this evening, Father, we ask through Christ our Lord. Amen. Well, it says here that John saw another beast rising from the earth And so we need to look at the context in order to understand what's going on here as we pick up this revelation from the apostle. Chapters 12 through 13 are really telling us the story of three creatures, three figures in this book. We have a dragon. We have the beast of the sea, and now tonight we're looking at this beast of the earth. Last time we looked at the blasphemous beast of the sea, and tonight this deceptive beast of the earth. Back in chapter 12, John has seen this dragon. which is Satan, after he had made war against the church, that he took a stand. And it says he was standing on the sand of the sea. That's chapter 12, verse 17. In so doing, Satan is seeking to mock Christ, to imitate Christ, because back in chapter 10, Jesus was standing with one foot on the sea and one foot on the land. And that's exactly what Satan is doing here. He's seeking to imitate, he's seeking to deceive people to follow him rather than Jesus Christ. As I mentioned at the first part of this chapter, we saw that great beast rising out of the sea with its seven heads and its ten horns. If you're here with us, you heard that it looks like that that was the emblem of the Roman Empire. As in its power and its desire to control and even have people be devoted and worship to it, it was persecuting the early church. Through all ages, Satan uses worldly rulers to demand of people the honor that only belongs to God. And to help in this, Satan now is going to bring forth another beast, the beast of the earth or the beast of the land, who's going to work in tandem to support this great beast of the sea. And as the dragon, the sea beast, and the earth beast join forces, some have termed this the unholy trinity, or the counterfeit trinity. Satan seeking to usurp the sun. the one whom God the Father has seated at His right hand and given Him all authority in heaven and on earth. And Satan is rising up and saying, no, I want that for me. And to accomplish this deception, he unleashes this other beast, which we'll see looks less dangerous, but is actually more so to the people of God. So tonight, hear the Word of God. Hear His servant. Like being around a dangerous animal, you need to be aware. Beware of this deceptive beast. Because he's closer, so much closer than you often think. And the way that we can be aware of him is in these two ways. Beware of the deceptive beast's false teachings and signs, And then beware of the deceptive beast's devotion to the false image. That's how we're going to look at it this evening. First, beware of the deceptive beast's false teachings and signs. Notice how this beast is described in verse 11. It had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon. Now, if you compare that to the other beast, that doesn't seem like anything you need to really be afraid of. I mean, the other beast was hideous. The other beast has seven heads, 10 horns coming out, which is gruesome enough to think about. But it's also described as being like a leopard. It has bear's feet and a lion's mouth. I mean, it's the whole deal, that beast, that we looked at the last time. But this one seems, I mean, how intimidating is a beast with lamb's horns? It just doesn't seem to be anything we need to worry about. But this beast is seeking to imitate, to draw people away from the true lamb, who this book has revealed to us, the lamb of God who's taken away the sins of the world, none other than our Lord. Jesus Christ. This beast, very simply, I will tell you. represents false teachers and prophets. That's what this beast is. John is seeing the false prophets, and I think back in the days of the early church, especially those among the Jews who were persecuting the church, trying to lead people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he's seeing them as they persecute the church in this way as this beast. You'll recall in the letters to the seven churches back in chapters 2 and 3, both to the church of Smyrna and to Philadelphia. He warned them about what he called the synagogues of Satan. Those gatherings, those false gatherings of people that look like a church, act like a church, but claim to follow the true God, but they're lying. They're deceitful. They're drawing people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you think about the whole of scriptures, they use similar imagery, similar terminology to picture for us, as the church, false prophets. Jesus did this. In Matthew 7, verse 15, He said this, Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are like ravenous wolves." And he said to beware of them. That's where I'm drawing the main application of the message tonight, from our own Lord's warning to us, to beware of these false prophets. False prophet looks like a sheep, but it is a wolf. It speaks like a dragon. It's a beast. and we need to beware of it. Other books of the Bible speak in this way. 2 Peter is a book really devoted to warning the church against false prophets, and there he's not very complimentary, let's say, in his description of them. He uses the idea of dogs, pigs, and other imagery like that to describe these beast-like false prophets. And in verse 12, it starts coming together when we see what this beast of the land, this beast of the earth is seeking to do. It says it exercises all the authority of the first beast and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed. It's seeking to call people to give their devotion, their allegiance. were the rulers of this world. And think about it. Think about the history of the New Testament. What group was there at the foot of the cross and before Herod saying that they had no other king but Caesar? In Acts chapter 12, what group was Herod seeking to please the king, seeking to please when he ordered that James the Apostle be killed? It was these rulers of the Jews, these religious leaders, the Pharisees, who, although they hated the rule and the thought of a foreign empire, foreign power over them, yet said that they would be allied with them if it helped them. and putting to death our Savior, and to persecuting those who followed him. And all through the book of Acts, that's the pair that we see fighting against the church. Jews pursuing after Paul and the others, bringing the message of the gospel, and calling upon the Roman governors to silence them. Again and again, we see this through the book of Acts. And it says here that this beast had a fatal wound that was inflicted on it, but it seemed to recover from it. Last time I described, this was the Gospel going forth. That sword of the Spirit that struck that great beast of the sea. And it looked like there in the early days as the Gospel went forth, And people were starting to say, no, there is only one king. His name is Jesus, not Caesar. It looked as if the gospel would triumph early in the Roman Empire. But the beast arose. And working with this other beast, striking back, aided by the deceptive beast's influence over people. And in verse 13, This deception is aided as this beast of the land performs signs. It says it even brings fire from heaven. He's Elijah-like, bringing judgment on the land to those who do not follow the beast. It is seeking to convince those on the earth to make an image of the beast of the sea. Jesus warned the church about this, Matthew 24, 24. And we see this again in the Bible. Our Bible study group was studying through Acts 13 recently. And as Paul and Barnabas are headed on their missionary journey, they come to the island of Cyprus. And they're starting to see the progress of the gospel, but then a man arises in opposition to them. His name is Bargesus, or Elemus. And the scriptures tell us that he was opposing the gospel, that he was performing false signs and wonders, and he was seeking to win the favor of the Roman proconsul. And you remember what Paul did by the power of the Spirit of God? He pronounced judgment on the man, and he was rendered blind. And you know why God brought that particular judgment on Elemas? It's to show what happens when you follow the false prophets. They are the blind leading the blind. Brothers and sisters, we are living in a day of many false teachers. I don't think we think enough about this in the good old United States of America. We are living in a day where cults roam freely throughout our land. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses abound. We even have states, whole states, where it's predominantly Mormon. That should grieve us. We live in a day where men like Benny Hinn and Paul Crouch and Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen pour forth their messages through our airwaves daily, and the masses follow them and send their money willingly to them. We live in a day when the mainline churches around us They are not just other Christians following God a little differently than we are. No, they are deceptively denying the basic truths of the faith, the substitutionary atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as J. Gresham Machen said about a century ago in his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism, liberalism isn't just a form of Christianity, it's a different religion. It's a different religion. And we have the Catholic Church around us, not only denying the basic tenets of the faith, but even this past week, it's had the leader, the Pope, blessing homosexual humans. And the false teachings just pour forth all the time. Remember in Revelation 12? How Satan was pictured as that dragon. It says that it was just a flood spewing out of his mouth, trying to sweep away the people of God. That flood is pouring out, and how easily people are deceived. Back in my ministry in Indiana, I was ministering to college students at a public university. And one young man that I had been interacting with about the gospel wrote me an email, all excited, because he had been in a church service that past Sunday. And he told me that as the pastor was preaching and warning them that judgment was coming and that Christ was about to return, that there was a trumpet from heaven that sounded, and everyone in the congregation heard it. And he was warning me. of this judgment that was to come. I asked to meet with him. I allowed him to tell more of his story. And then I said as gently but as strongly as I could to this young man, you know, I've seen your church. It's a big mega church in town. It's on TV. And do you realize that in the back there is a production room that could rival a Hollywood set? And I'm sure it's just a very easy thing for a technician back there to push a button and make trumpet sound. I don't know if Craig can do that for me or Andrew, but it would be really dramatic about right now. And you can see this young man's face fall. because he thought about what I was saying. It's sad to say, he just went back to following this man who was a false teacher. All around us, surrounding us, is the deceptive beast. And we need to beware. They can fervently sweat and pray over prayer cards. They can be on TV. They can have huge buildings with thousands of followers. They can be impressive, sharp-looking dudes who know how to strut their stuff. They can use the name of Jesus every other word. People think, sheep think, surely this is a man of God. And we have to say, no. They're heretics. They're false teachers. And you need to be aware. And you need to be aware and protected against these false teachers. I don't know if you saw that video that went around the news here just recently, where this guy was running along a mountain trail, and a cougar, a large cougar began to follow him and stalk him for quite some time, five or six minutes, this video goes on, until finally, He throws a rock at the cougar, and the cougar gets chased away. Brothers and sisters, Satan's a roaring lion. He's seeking someone to devour. And he uses false teachings to devour people. How do you protect yourself from that? Let me give you three applications here. First of all, examine thoroughly the scriptures that you're hearing taught. It's the Apostle Paul's teachings that he was preaching in Berea were examined by his hearers there at Act 1711. And they were commended because they searched those scriptures daily, eagerly, to see whether these things were so. And that was an apostle preaching. How much more do you need to be examining what you're hearing? What you're hearing tonight. What you're hearing on campus. What you're hearing on the airwave. What you're reading in a book. Make sure that is truly teaching you the Word of God. They are clever, the false teachers. They are very deceptive. And so you need to be in the Scriptures, examining, asking the Spirit of the Lord to help you to discern whether what you are hearing is true or not. Another application to make is know well your confession. One of the beauties of being in a confessional church is that the great doctrines of the faith are outlined clearly for us in the Westminster Confession of Faith. When's the last time you read it? Do you know it? You are promising when you become a member of this church to submit yourself to it, believe that it's founded on the word of God. It's there to help you, as the catechisms are, to help you discern, to know whether someone's being true or not when they're teaching you. You need those parameters, those guidelines. That's God's way of protecting you from going off into error. They're like the walls protecting a flock of sheep that shepherds would use. And then submit humbly. to godly elders. God has given the church elders who are supposed to be godly men to help protect you from falsehood. And sometimes you have questions, you've searched the scriptures, you can't tell whether this is true or not. You can't tell what the confession of faith is saying at any moment, perhaps, and that's okay. Because God has given you elders whose life should reflect truth. to come and discuss the teachings and the truth that you're hearing. These are God's ways of protecting us from this beast. And friends, we need protection because there's a greater danger. What he's trying to do, we have to beware of the deceptive beast's devotion to the false image. Note in verse 14, The deceptive beast deceives people to make an image to the beast of the sea. Even though it had looked dead at one moment, it's come back to life. Then it says it breathes life into the image, which speaks and causes those who do not worship it to be killed. It wants all to worship and to receive the mark of this beast, or they will lose their livelihood, as it says here. What's going on? Well, again, to understand the imagery, this allegory, we have to remember that Satan is seeking to counterfeit. He's seeking to set up something that's in counterfeit to what Jesus Christ has done. And when we think about it that way, I think it helps us to understand what's going on here. Remember that back in Revelation 7, verse 4, We're told there that the Father puts on the true church His mark. And as we study that, we saw that the mark of God's not some literal mark, but it's His electing favor and grace that God puts on those He vows to save and protect. If you're a believer, you are marked by God as His. And one of the ways the church represents that mark is through baptism, putting the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit on you, saying that you belong to God. And remember that those who have this mark, those that are in the church, they are to reflect the very image of Jesus Christ. Romans 8.29, those whom He thorn you, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. The church is to reflect to this world the image of Jesus Christ. He's the head, we're the body. People are to look at us and say, they belong to Christ. As a matter of fact, Christ is there in their midst. Just as the church is seen as one protected under the authority of Christ. So this beast wants his followers to believe they will be protected by him if they follow his authority. This helps us to understand that just as Christ gave life to his church through the Holy Spirit as they came to faith, so this beast is trying to say, I'll do the same for my followers. And what's being pictured here, this image, and those who are marked, that's the false church. Those who are giving pretense, and maybe even using the name of Christ, but don't belong to him. They belong to Satan. And I think I'm telling you the truth tonight, because I did read the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 25, paragraph five, which says this, The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error, and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there will be always a church on earth to worship God according to His will." And there we have it. There are two groups, ultimately, in this world. The true church of Jesus Christ, or its imitation, its wicked imitation, synagogues of Satan. And this is where it becomes so dangerous. because the synagogues of Satan ultimately want to cause the people in them to give their allegiance to that beast of the sea, to governments seeking power that does not belong to them. Throughout history, do you know what has been a great influence causing peoples of nations to become enslaved to oppressive and tyrannical governments? It's the false church. It's the false church. We're not only celebrating Halloween this week, or maybe not even celebrating Halloween this week, but many of us will be remembering that it's Reformation Day, the day when In Germany, in 1517, Luther put those 95 theses on the door and started a revolution, a reformation, a return back to the true faith. But think about what happened in that country where the reformation started a few centuries later. In the late 19th and 20th century, liberal theology arose. Men began, instead of submitting themselves to the Word of God, questioning the Word of God. And a deluge of ways of studying the Bible and renaming doctrines came to be in the land of Germany. And it was liberal theology that caused people to look for another Redeemer. than the one that the Reformation had pointed them back to in the person of Jesus Christ. And it was that liberal theology over a number of generations that caused the German people to be so weak in soul that they would bow in submission to a man named Adolf Hitler. Men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer cried out against this unbelieving theology He knew it was the state's deceptive power to enslave people to it through the church, as the false church and the state partnered together. Our brothers across the ocean in China would tell us the same. It's the false state church, the three-self church, working in tandem and controlled by the communist, atheistic government. that persecutes true believers. Sometimes this power can become so immense and so great that it leads us to hopefully what you're all wondering about is, okay, who's 666? Well, notice a few things about this name, this number, I should say. Whenever we see numbers in the book of Revelation, that there are numbers that are symbols. We've talked about how seven represents completeness. A lot of sevens in this book. Or thousands represent multitude. When we get to the number six, it's to take us back to the sixth day of creation where we remember that that's the day that man was created, but it's also the day that beasts were created. And we see with this number that John is being told that this number represents the name of the beast, and it also is the number of a man, verses 17 and 18. It's both the name of a beast and the number of a man. So that's one thing we notice. Secondly, these sixes in the Bible are often associated with apostasy, with men seeking to be worshiped rather than calling people to worship the true God. We have some biblical examples of this. Why is it that when the Word of God is describing King Solomon and how powerful he was becoming, that he was beginning to receive 666 talents of gold every year as he multiplied his wines, multiplied his chariots, and then immediately, the Scriptures tell us, that he turned to false idols and away from honoring God. Why is it that the Bible tells us in Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar's image, which you had to bow down before and worship or die, measured 60 cubits high and six across? This is God's way of marking what we need to be aware of. And then it says here that you are to calculate the number of the beast. And how we see this being done time and time again, you know, you find someone's name whose first, middle, and last name has six letters in it. Donald Trump, oh no, it doesn't work. But anyway, things like that, where people are taking some ruler's name and trying to identify that person with that name. Oh, I heard the bell ring. So I'm going to have to wait till, no I'm not. I'm going to finish here quickly. But many in church history believe that who's being referenced here is Nero, Caesar Nero, whose name If you put it in the Hebrew, which is why it says here, this calls for wisdom, let's calculate the number. John's being very discreet here, but many theologians throughout the church have identified this person as Nero, because when you take his Hebrew name, and the letters have numerical value, that when you add all that up, it becomes 666. And so many believe that the early church was given this instruction to warn them that this man, this wicked man, who kicked his pregnant wife to death, who sodomized his servants, and who had garden parties with burning Christians serving as his lamplight, would be fiercely bringing persecution to the early church. And the believers are being warned. Nero had a nickname, by the way. His nickname was simply The Beast. That's what they called him. I bring this before you tonight because you can take a culture You can let it be educated and ruled by an atheistic government for a few generations. A government that promises to take care of its citizens from womb to tomb as if it were God Himself. You can take that government, support it by powerful churches that tell people that they're evolved from animals, from beasts, And what do you think's gonna happen to a country like that? They'll start acting like those beasts, even as they fall prey to the beast. And we as God's people, we need to beware. We need to beware. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you that though you've used symbol and allegory, that you have given us your scriptures to help us to interpret it and understand it and apply it. And we pray, oh God, with all the false teaching going around, with many here hearing things, being tempted, that God, that you would preserve us. that you would protect us, that you would strengthen us for the days that lie ahead. We pray it through Christ our Lord. Amen.