Chapter 11, verses three through 12. Yes, I know this is redundant. This is what we studied last week, but we're looking at something else in the middle of it. All right, verse three. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks, standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and he devoureth their enemies. And if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut up heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy, and have power over waters, to turn them to blood, to smite all the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them, and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom in the Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they, of the people, in kindreds, and tongues, and nations, shall see their dead bodies three and a half days, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a half, the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon all them which saw them." Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word. I thank You for what You have provided for us and preserved for us, Lord God. I thank You for the prophecies that You have given to us, Lord God, and we are focusing on those now as we look to the end-time things and Lord, there are heavy things in here, there are deep things, there are things that, as a believer, I know I'm not gonna have to face, but I know there is a world around us that anyone who is lost will have to face, Father. And I ask that you would help us to understand this tonight, Lord God, so that we are burdened with those who will stand through this, Lord God, and that we'll do all we can to prevent it. Thank you for everything. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, we begin to think about what's going on here, and in our notes it just says, I think, aside the beast, right? So we have kind of another topic to approach before we get to the seventh trumpet. We see several things going on during this one kind of time period, and we don't know that they're all happening exactly at this period of time when the sixth trumpet sounds. Seemingly they will be expanding for a while because we know that the prophets, as we studied last week, they are alive for about three and a half years and prophesying and witnessing and proclaiming the gospel. And so there are several plagues going on while they are upon the earth. There are things that are happening during that time. And so we saw that, but we also see, as we read through this text, something that we didn't have time to get to last week, and that's going to take the entirety of the time tonight, and that is this thing of the beast. And so in verse 7, It says, and when they had finished their testimony, speaking of the two witnesses, then it says, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them. And so we're looking tonight at the beast. This is the first mention of the beast in the book of Revelation. First place it's brought up, so it seems like as good of place as any to go ahead and study it, especially since we just studied the two witnesses and the beast is going to be the one that makes war upon them and kills them. So most of our information that we find about the beast is found in chapter 13. We'll look there in just a little bit. But this one verse, it tells us a little bit about the beast. It doesn't tell us a lot, but it does tell us enough to know that we need to study the beast. And especially when we get to chapter 13, we're going to study all that. is done through this thing of the beast. And so we're going to break it down and look at it again. This isn't because we're going to be here. The beast right now is in the bottomless pit. The beast is not affecting us right now. And the Bible says, I think in chapter 17, the beast which was, and then at the time of John's writing, he says, and is not, and will be. So, there was a time when the beast had some effect on the world, then put in the bottomless pit, and will be released again during the tribulation period. And so, it's not affecting us right now, but there will be an effect upon civilization at the time of the rapture, sometime during the tribulation period, and this beast will have, as we'll see in chapter 13, a three and a half year reign as well. 42 months is what it says about the beast, okay? So, What can we know about the beast? I don't really know how to break this down so we're just kind of breaking it down logically in my head and you can I'll try to help you follow my train of logic. What can we know about the beast so we can study it so we see the impact it's going to have on the world so that it also burdens us to be better soul winners because that's the real implication here, right? If the Bible's telling us about it, you think there's two major implications. One is it should burden us as believers to do all we can to get people to not be influenced by the beast when the future comes. The other thing that I find very fascinating is how I wonder this makes Satan feel, right? Because Satan has the Bible. He can read the Bible if he desires to do so. And I believe he would know it. He knows that he's going to have a time of influence. He knows he's going to be able to influence this beast. We're going to see the relation there in just a little bit. And yet he also knows his end is coming. And you think about that and the desperation that will be in Satan during the tribulation period, his last kind of hurrah when he's going to try to drive as many people from God as possible. He wants to do all he can to send them all to hell. We should want to stand on Christ's side and do all we can do to see people saved so that they won't ever stand before that. And so we should really let this motivate us. But what can we see about this beast? The first thing we see is the beast seems to be a specific individual. Now, as you read about the beast and you read especially other people's writings about the beast, you read a whole lot. There's a lot of opinions. Pretty much everyone seems to be on board with that the description of the beast is metaphorical in nature. That's seemingly mostly universally accepted. However, given that we don't fully understand exactly what God is trying to describe in some of these places, I suppose, as I think it's probably not, it could be the case that the beast actually is a literal beast that has seven heads and ten crowns. That could very well be the case. I don't think so, and we'll explain why. But, again, I'm not planning on being there, and I haven't been there, and I'm just going to assume that that's not the case, but it could be. But, Revelation 11, verse 7, it makes one thing clear that I think puts it on the side of an individual as in a being, at least with personality, as opposed to a group. Because a lot of people, I think the majority of people, believe when it speaks of the beast, they believe it is a nation or a series of nations that are doing things. But there's a lot of individual characteristics that we will see, and then we'll see the implications of nations on top of that later on. But, again, verse 7 says that the beast will, it says, shall make war against them. You think about who makes decisions, it's an individual, right? We think about our country, and yes, we have Congress, and yes, we have the Senate, and yes, we have all these things. If we want to go to war, though, the president, for 48 hours, can invade anybody in the world he wants, and for 60 days, he can bring full-out war before he has to either have Congress approve of the war or bring them all home. So in theory, President Trump could fly into Iran tonight, he could wipe the whole thing out as long as he could get it done in 60 days, come back and never have to ask permission of anyone. That's the War Powers Act if you're curious about that. That's the way it works in most countries though. Most countries is the supreme leader of the country, I shouldn't use the word supreme leader when we're talking about Iran tonight, but that's what we're gonna say, the highest ruler in any country has the right to make war as they will. There's got to be a person that can choose to make war. Otherwise, when something bad happens, trying to get however many people to agree to do something can be very problematic. If Canada decided to invade us tonight, We would want to be able to respond instantly. We don't want to say, oh, well, we have to convene Congress, and then we have to convene the Senate. Oh, let's wait and see if the Supreme Court's going to be OK with this. You know, by then, they would have made it like four feet into Minnesota, right? So I should have picked a better, I shouldn't be picking on other countries tonight. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I'll try to keep it apolitical from now on. So I just, I lost myself now. The beast shall make war. So you think about who's making war, the beast is, right? He's got these two witnesses and they're causing havoc in his eyes. They are seeing people, one for the cause of Christ and he doesn't like it. And the beast is like, we're gonna kill them, right? So you can see kind of personality just on a very high level thinking about it. It'd be hard for, and a lot of people believe the beast is the Roman nation revived. That seems to be one of the biggest thoughts about who the beast is. It would be hard for, you know, we get the Senate together and we declare war on these two individuals. Doesn't that sound silly? I mean, you think about somebody declaring war on just a couple of people. I mean, again, we can think of the Ayatollah, right? He would be one that would did that, right? He's tried to put assassination orders on President Trump and on Prime Minister Netanyahu. Like, I don't like those two guys, let's kill them. It's something an individual would do. It's something an individual personality would seek to do. So that's just one thing we see. That helps us to see that the beast is likely an individual. But now let's go over to chapter 13 and we'll see some more things that I think will help make this a little more clear. Verses 1 through 3 of chapter 13 says this, it says, And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, And upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads, as it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast. Okay, so we see some detail here. Now we see there's a beast, and it's got seven heads, and it's got ten horns, and it's got a body like a leopard with legs like a bear, and it's got the mouth of a lion. It doesn't tell us what the heads look like. It just says the mouths of a lion. I suppose each one of the seven heads has that. I don't know. And one of the heads was wounded, and the wound was healed. And you read this, And you can see why instant thought is, oh, this is a nation, right? This is Rome, this is something else. You can kind of get that, like it's 10 individual leaders, and I think we'll get to see how it affects 10 individual leaders, but I wanna kind of help you to understand why I think it's not just that, there is an actual being behind that. So you think about that. Now, if you will turn over to Daniel in chapter seven with me, Daniel chapter seven. And here, this is not talking about the beast of the New Testament, but we have a vision of a beast, and then we have an interpretation of what the beast means, and I think we can draw some parallels from that that will help give us some indication about the beast that we see there in the book of Revelation. So, Daniel 7, verse 2. Now into verse eight, we'll read some descriptions of the beast. It says, Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven strove upon the great sea, and four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. So we have four beasts now. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings, and I beheld the wings thereof, I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked. And it was lifted up from the earth and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it. And behold, another beast, second like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it, between the teeth of it." I always find that fascinating in the description thereof, but we're not thinking about this prophecy in that way tonight. and they said unto it arise devour much flesh verse six after this i beheld and lo another like a leopard which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl and then it says this the beast had also four heads and dominion was given to it verse seven after this i saw in the night visions and behold a fourth beast dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly and it had great iron teeth it devoured and break in pieces it stamped in It stamped the residue with its feet, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots, and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouse speaking great things." Now, jump down to verse 17. And it says this, these great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. Okay, so, again, we're just trying to make some parallels here to draw some information out of it. Note the fourth beast had four heads, or the third beast had four heads, and the fourth beast had 10 horns. And then we see in verse 17 that these are four, kings which are coming up out of the earth." And then verse 24, if you go down there, it says, "...and the ten horns that came out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise, and another shall rise after them, and he shall be diverse from the last, and shall subdue three kings." Okay, so we start to see here that beasts, at least in the few examples we have, are emblematic of a leader. So, each one of these beasts represents a king, and if the king or if the beast had multiple heads or if the beast had multiple horns, those likewise represent individual leaders of the main body of the beast, if that makes sense. And so, It seems then, following this pattern, that the beast would be the leader and the seven heads would be kings and the ten horns would likely be kings as well, or the seven heads would be nations and the ten horns would be ten kings among those nations. Again, no exact description is given, but that's kind of what you're seeing. You're seeing the beast has the personhood, the control over the head, right? And the heads, each one of those, each seven of those may be a nation, and each ten of the horns may be a king. And so the one is controlling the others, or said the other way around, the ten kings are subservient to the main body of the beast, and the beast being something that has its own personality and that directs. And we're going to keep working there, and we're going to see how that works more and more. That's kind of the high-level thought. That's where we're starting out at, okay? Somebody has a question along the way, raise your hand, but keep in mind, we've got a lot to get through, and I may cover some of that before we get there. So, we see that, first of all, the beast, the broad indications are that the beast has personality. Now, I want to think about this idea, second, of the beast ascending out of the bottomless pit. It tells us that, again, in our text in Revelation 11, verse 7, and it says, shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them." So we know where this beast came from. This beast comes from the bottomless pit. If you recall, we have discussed the bottomless pit a little bit. We discussed how it is not the place of eternal damnation by God for all who reject him. That's hell. That's what we also know as the lake of fire. The bottomless pit is a place where God holds evil spirits in a place of torment until the final judgment or until God is going to release them and use them for another purpose. So in Revelation, in chapter 9, we saw on the fifth trumpet that God is going to release the locusts out of there. Remember the locusts that had the crazy heads and tails and that went about biting and harming people, only causing pain for five months. And so we move forward a couple of chapters, and now we have a indication that the beast ascendeth out of the bottomless pit. Now, here's a question that we don't have an answer to. Is the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit the same that was the king over the locusts of chapter nine? Because in Revelation 9, verse 11, it says, and they had a king over them, speaking of the locusts, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. And the reason that we think it could be, or some people think it could be, is because that name Apollyon or Abaddon, it means destroyer. And so, was this the king that comes up out of there? It could be. We don't know. I tend to think it's not. I tend to think it's an angel of God that's leading them to do his, God's destroying and God's building a bidding. But at the same time, it really could be God. God never says he is telling them to do this. It says he's opening it and releasing them to do this. So it could be that Satan is, the beast here is leading out these locusts to inflict this harm upon the earth for these five months. I think that's probably less likely, just because we see that he's called the angel of the bottomless pit, and we think about some of the other things we know, like if this was Satan, he would have been winged, whereas this angel would not have, and there's some other nuances there that probably I'm just thinking out loud and shouldn't talk about right now. But anyway. So what, though, if this king went out with the locusts, he has a bodily form? That seems unlikely, unless God had him to have a bodily form for whatever purpose, but that seems less than likely, because we only see that when God is having an angel show himself to someone for a specific purpose, perhaps in leading these locusts for just a little while. So again, we're thinking about these beings, these spirits, and they would be spirit, they're not flesh, they don't have a body about them. This beast comes and reigns, though, and he has a physical form. We know that. We'll see in just a little bit. They're making images of him, right? They're making carvings or golden or whatever they're doing, golden images, whatever they're making. They're making something that is representative of him. So he has some sort of bodily appearance. And so we can think about what that might be. And we don't know because it is left unclear. I think the best guess would be that he will inhabit the body of a man. Now, you think back to the New Testament, and you can think of many times when Christ went out healing people, doing what? Casting devils out of people, right? We think of the man who said, my name is Legion, because he had many devils within him. And we think of other times when he did it over and over and over again. Even Paul, he cast out devils out of people. And so it is clear that an evil spirit can possess a man. Right? An evil spirit can possess a person who is an ungodly person. Now, we know if we are saved, we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and the devil or devils have no ability to possess us. They can oppress us, but they cannot possess us. And so, we see examples of that in the New Testament. And we know that that can happen. And to me, that's the most logical thing that makes sense. This spirit ascends out of the bottomless pit, probably takes over the physical body of a person, and then ascends to some sort of power, a very high position of power in the world. And so we see that it is, what we know for sure is the beast ascends out of the bottomless pit, meaning the beast is an evil spirit of sorts, and that he is allowed to take some sort of, physical appearance to where people can see him. Again, the most logical would be that he would possess a person. All right, does that make sense to everybody? All right, anybody, questions or comments at this point? All right, we'll just keep digging then. All right, now you go on to verse four of chapter 13, and I know we're doing a lot of turning tonight, Revelation chapter four and verse 13, and we start to see that though the beast is a being with a intellect and acts in a personhood form, right, I'm not saying he's human because he's a spirit, though he may possess a human. So he's got the capabilities of thinking and reasoning and acting. But verse 4 tells us that he is subject to the dragon. So verse 4 says, And they worshipped the dragon, again Revelation chapter 13 verse 4, And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast. And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him? So people during the tribulation period, they're gonna worship this beast, but it's only because the beast has been given power from the dragon. So this leads to the question, who's the dragon, right? And you find that in chapter 12, and we're not doing a full review of chapter 12, but we'll look a little bit at that. And verses three and four of chapter 12 though, it tells us about the dragon. It says, And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And so this prophecy comes right after a prophecy, or I guess a, I guess a prophetical backward-looking telling of Israel, right? So it says, and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed in the sun, the moon, and under her feet, and upon her head were a crown of 12 stars. What does that remind you of? Should remind you of Joseph, when Joseph had his dream about his brothers and his mom and dad bowing down to him, right? The sun, the moon, and the stars, and 11 stars bowed down to him. You'll find that in Genesis chapter 37, verse nine. And now you read kind of John seeing this, and so a a backwards-looking prophecy, which we would just know as history, but you see it in kind of prophetical terms in that it's the sun, moon, and stars. And so you see Israel is being considered there, verse 2. She's going to be great with child. It's a picture of Christ coming, and you'll read more about that later in the chapter. But then right there at verses 3 and 4, you see Satan. the great red dragon. We know it's Satan because as you go down to verse nine, it says, and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. Alright, so we've looked previously that this verse indicates that a third of the angels likely went with Satan when he left heaven. You see in Jude chapter 1 and verse 6 where it tells us that the angels which kept not their first estate but left their own habitation and then that God hath reserved an everlasting change under darkness unto the day to the judgment of the great day and so All of that to say, who is this dragon? This dragon is referring back to chapter 12, where the first time the dragon was spoken of is found. And we find that that dragon is one that hates God. The dragon is one that wants to kill Christ, as you will find later on in chapter 12. That dragon then, we get to verse nine, is Satan and the devil. We know that's who it is. And so, now we think about our text and about this beast, and we are told that the dragon had control or had power over the beast. Which is interesting, right? The dragon gave him his power and his authority, and great authority, it says. And the dragon is Satan. Now, this, of course, raises interesting symbology as you continue to think about it. Because does Satan appear as a dragon with seven heads and ten horns? Remember, that's what it said about the beast. We think about the beasts there in the book of Daniel. Was that how Satan appears? Again, we're thinking, again, just kind of comparing apples and apples, drawing principles. No, what do we know about how Satan appears? Well, 2 Corinthians 11, 14 says, and no marvel for Satan himself is transformed into what? an angel of light, right? So he doesn't appear like a dragon with seven heads and 10 horns. If we saw that, we would go running, right? We would be terrified of that. But that's not how Satan acts. He does not act through force. He doesn't engage in full frontal attacks against us. No, he often appears as an angel of light. Isaiah tells us a little bit more about Satan. Chapter 14 and verse 12 says this, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High, yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit. So now we're thinking about Satan. This is how he got cast out of heaven in his pride. He lifted himself up. He wanted to be like God. He wanted to take God's position. Then we see that God says, nope, I'm God, you're not. And he casts him out of heaven. Then we know he begins to influence in the earth. And verse 16 says this about his influence in the earth. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, that made the worlds as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners? That doesn't sound like a dragon with seven heads and 10 horns, does it? People are gonna see Satan in the end days in judgment when the great white throne of judgment happens, right? When all of those who are lost, all of those who rejected God are being judged. During the great white throne judgment, we're gonna look on him and people are gonna be like, that's him? In sight, he's not gonna be very impressive, right? He's not very threatening to look upon. And yet, he wields great power. He is such that when people will see him revealed, they're not going to feel much fear and understand that's where the pain in the world came from. And yet, if Satan looked like the dragon that he really is, we'd all be terrified. And so, what does the appearance as a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns tell us. Revelation 17, again, it walks us through another scarlet beast, which is fascinating. And it's talking about great Hortums there. And that beast is scarlet and covered in color and has seven heads and 10 horns. We're not going to read all of that again. But it says those seven heads are seven mountains. And it tells us that they are seven kings upon the mountains. And the eighth head is an eighth beast. And the eighth is an eighth king. I'll be able to speak right here eventually. Again, you see this kind of another picture of Satan and how he works. Now there's seven heads and they represent seven mountains or seven nations or seven areas, seven broad swaths of land, we might say. And each one of those has a head that is a king or a ruler. And so we see once again that Satan is going to act through men as they are set up as rulers in various ways. And that tells us again something about the beast. We see that Satan uses who he is and what he is to influence the beast and who he is and how he acts. Does that make sense? So, we're seeing in both cases, Satan, when he is exercising his sphere of control, he is setting up men to do his bidding, and the beast likewise, as the beast takes the scene during the tribulation period, he is going to begin to set up rulers in different areas so that they submit to him and he is the source of power. They're looking to him. They're all looking to one, and he is the one that is following evil to the extent he can, but really he's following Satan's plan, and Satan's pointing him to further evil. So, we think about that, and we think more. What else about this beast? Well, the next thing we see about the beast is that the beast is against all that is of God. And you continue down in your text and you see in verses five through seven, and it says, and there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies and power was given unto him to continue 40 and two months. And he opened his mouth and blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. All right, so now we see that the beast is subject to Satan. Satan gives him power. Satan's sole desire is to have as many people reject Christ as possible. Satan wants to do everything he can to draw people away from the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants to oppress them. He wants it to work out in sin in their lives. He wants them to do everything that goes against God because he hates God. And now as the judgment of earth is coming upon us for what we deserve during the tribulation period, God is imposing his divine judgment and he is allowing sinful things on earth to fully mature. And so now sin's own destructive consequences begin to be made known. Right, everybody here, the vast majority of people left on earth, they are left without a lot of godly influence. They are starting to do unspeakable things one to another. We've seen before they're gonna be doing violence to each other. There's gonna be a lot of hate. There's gonna be a lot of oppression. I imagine slavery will be reinstituted. There will begin to be pagan worship at a very high level. People will be proclaiming themselves to be gods more than likely. As we have seen, the spirit of antichrist is very high. And you start to think about what that's going to be like. Not only is it going to happen in small factions, we see here that the beast is going to get everybody to engage in this pagan style of worship. And now you think about how immoral the world is going to be, how awful the world's going to start to become? I imagine one of the great civilizations that had a tyrannical form of government. I mean, we can think of Hitler, obviously, as an easy example. We can think of Mussolini. We can think of Mao Zedong. We can think of Ivan the Terrible. We can think of, even Henry VIII had some pretty dark days, right? We can think of a lot of these oppressive rulers and It seems like anytime there is one, godliness goes out, though they may claim something to be a religion or they may claim something in the name of Christianity or whatever. But then they begin instituting all sorts of perverseness, right? And they start engaging often in the killing of those who disagree with them. They begin imprisoning those who don't think like them. They begin bringing into servitude others of them. They make them in bondage. And then they tax them very heavily. They use them. They mistreat them. And it's just atrocity after atrocity, so much so that the burdens get so heavy upon the people that eventually the people rise up. They're like, no, we can't do this anymore. This isn't how it's supposed to be. We're going to rebel. We're going to, you know, and some of them, we're going to leave and go to America. We're going to rebel that way and we'll fight against the British. Others of them, there's going to be a civil war within the country. We're going to stop this. It's not going to be like this anymore. But imagine living in one of those countries. Imagine the oppression and what it would be like to know that if I do the things that I think should be done, my life could be taken away. And that's gonna be the whole world, right? I mean, look again, verse seven, and it was given unto him to make power, or to make war with the saints and to overcome them. But then it says, and power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. The beast has consolidated power. Yes, he seemingly has 10 leaders or seven leaders throughout the world, however it's working, but they're all looking to him and he's making the decisions. And now we have this tyrannical government that spans the entire world. There's going to be nothing enjoyable about living on the earth at this time. I mean, you set aside all of the plagues, right? Set aside the seven seals and the seven trumpets and the seven vials and all the things that God is actively doing to us for judgment, just allowing Satan an unfettered rule as he props up this beast. It's going to be awful to live here. It's going to be repressive. It's going to be depressing. It's going to be miserable. And there's gonna be no escape. And you think about that going on, you get to verse 11, and you see the beast is supported by another beast. This beast comes up out of the earth, seeming like it's probably a natural born man that just wants to support what this beast that has perhaps been possessed by a spirit, right? And so in verse 11, it says, and I beheld and another beast coming up out of the earth, And he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound by a sword and did live. and he had power to give life unto the image of the beast and that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. So now we got the beast with seven heads and ten horns and we got the central ruling agent of the world who only wants to do evil. He's got his seven kings or ten kings, however many there are out there, and they are ruling very tyrannically as well, all looking to him. And now it's like I don't know how else to say this other than like Hitler gets Goebbels, if you're familiar with World War II history, right? There's this very evil beast that comes up with him and says, well, let's join forces and I'm going to be the SS or something along those lines, right? You think about things like that. And you imagine, I guess that would have been Hitler for the SS, right? But you think about these different guys and how they would go to Hitler and they just wanted to fit in good, so they were willing to do as much evil, if not more evil than Hitler was. And now we have this second beast who wants to prop up the first beast. And what does he begin to do? He begins to perform miracles. Right? And so, why miracles? Well, because God allows Satan to be the prince of the power of the air, and he allows him to have powers over some of these things, and God has taken his hand off the earth, and while people may be getting saved, God's spirit is not here the way it once was, and so God is going to allow people to be deceived, and Satan is going to enable this beast to be able to do miracles, and he is gonna call down fire from heaven and perform other miracles, and they're gonna do it all in the name of religion. I mean, seemingly that's the case. Why else would they do miracles if not to draw somebody to a religious purpose? And so, their form of paganism is going to get stronger. This beast may be like the chief priest perhaps for the beast or something along those lines. The chief enforcer, something else, I don't know. And then he's going to come along and he's going to say, now everybody make an image of beast number one. And they're going to do it. They're going to make this beast. And then look what happens. The second beast has the power to make the image of the first beast come alive. And so you're going to see a lot of people who are deceived. Right? Why is this happening? Because Satan wants to prevent people from turning to Jesus. Satan wants all people to go to hell. And even during this tribulation period, now God is doing plague after plague, right? He is sending down these horrific plagues and people are starting to turn to Christ. Right? And so then we get to, I think it was the fifth of the seals, and all of a sudden we see martyrdom come. They're going to start killing the saints, those people who are getting saved again, now that people are getting saved again on the earth. And then more plagues are going to come, and you'll see that some of the plagues coming upon the earth now are such that they can only be supernatural. Again, you think about the locusts, and you think about the horse riders, and how they are going throughout the earth, and they are plaguing people, they are harming people. killing a third of people, doing all the things they are doing. And it seems really hard to imagine that more people are not getting saved. And so Satan now, again, I'm just guessing here, this doesn't say this, but this seems like what's going on, is going to insert himself more actively and is going to pretend to be God by allowing fire to be called down from heaven and performing other great miracles so that people say there must be a God and it's gotta be the beast. and they make an image of him. Now this image comes to life and more people are gonna say, it's easy to do what I see than to live by faith. It's easier for me to follow the beast because I see the miracle that he's done. I see the fire that he's called down from heaven. Yes, the oppressive regime doesn't seem right in my head, but I see the signs. I see the miracles. I see the power. I see these things with my own eyes. And while I hear this small group of Christians saying, no, it's all about Jesus Christ, and while I understand within me, because Romans 1 tells us we will understand that there is a God and that he is real and that this is wrong, my eyes are taking me away from what my conscience is telling me. And it's just going to be another tool that's going to make it harder and harder and harder for people to get saved. And we think about that. And that's what we know about the beast. There's not a lot else. That should burden us. Well, maybe if that person doesn't get saved here, maybe they'll get saved in the tribulation period. The truth is, if they don't get saved here, it's going to be very hard for them to get saved during the tribulation period. If they don't get saved here, they're going to be killed at a very rapid rate. We talked about last week how it's going to go from billions and billions are going to be reduced at a time. A quarter of the population, a third of the population, people are going to be dying. Bad things are going to be happening. There's going to be war. There's going to be a lot. They're just going to be trying to survive in a lot of ways because there's going to be such famine in the world. And now we see this beast coming in and doing everything that he can just to stop people from turning to Jesus Christ. We need to let this burden us. There's people that know nothing of the gospel, and they need Jesus Christ. I think about Monday night, I took my kids out camping. We went up to Martin Dyes Junior State Park, if you don't know where that is, about three hours, two and a half hours northeast of here, over by Louisiana. And we went fishing. Monday night, and we're just fishing there, and some guy walks up, and I'm like, all right, this must be my opportunity to witness to somebody today. So, captive audience, we're on a bridge. Either he can leave or he can listen, right? So, he's got two options. So, anyway, we started talking, had a good discussion, raised as a Catholic, and then he got into, he goes to a general Christian church there in the city of Jasper, and I was like, do you know you're on your way to heaven? Well, I think so. I was like, just I don't go to non-denominational churches. Tell me how you know you're on your way to heaven. Well, I'm a good person and just kind of what you would expect. I believe in God. I pray every day. I said, can I just break it down to you for a while and just walk you through the gospel? Just simple. and as clear as I can." She's like, yeah, sure, I'd love to hear it. I just walk him through, kind of like we talked about Sunday morning, John, just about Nicodemus having a spiritual birthday. We need to put our faith in Christ and repent of our sins. And it's not just this, oh God, I messed up today. He said, no, I'm trusting you, God, to cover all of my sins, past, present, and future. I'm putting my faith in Jesus Christ and that his blood will cover all of my sins. And I repent of my sins and I want that. And it's faith that Christ will do this for you and he will change you. And, you know, it was about an hour-long discussion, and he's like, I've never heard it like that before. And I just think about somebody being raised in a Catholic church, and I know Catholic have wrong doctrines, but then going to a non-denominational church, and being in church all of his life, he was probably about my age, probably about 40 years old, somewhere in that neighborhood, and he had never heard a clear presentation of the gospel. He's like, I want to think about this. He didn't get saved right then. I'm praying that he will. His name's Carlos. Pray for him. How many people is Satan fooling like that? And it's hard now in a religious society for a person to get saved. Imagine if the rapture happens tonight. In a society that's anything but religious. In a society that is dominated by Satan and his beast and the second beast. People might get saved and they might, and there will be some that will get saved. We know that. The Bible tells us that. There'll be a lot that will. But we can't rely on that. We need to tell people about Jesus today. They need Him. If they don't hear from us, who are they going to hear plainly and clearly from? We have the truth that we need to share. Let's pray and then we'll move on.