Revelation 13:11-18

The book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 11 to 18. And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb. He spake as a dragon. And he exercised all the power of the first beast before him and caused the earth or the land and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast. His deadly wound was healed. He doeth great wonders so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means, by the means, of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth or on the land 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 under the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause it as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom let him, that hath understanding, count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 600, three score, and six. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. I was reminded recently of how much the idea of the mark of the beast still has effect upon people. Muturist has so, and I think, ingrained it in people’s minds that 666 frightens people. At the DCI clinic, the kidney patients are weighed prior to treatment to see how much water weight they have gained between treatments, because when kidneys are not functioning, normally, most people will gain water, and they have to take that off during the treatments. Well, the woman ahead of me stepped on the scale, and her weight came up in kilograms as 6.6.6.66. The nurse, was a dedicated Roman Catholic, didn’t want to write down that number, 666, as it was the mark of the beast. It was like it was a bad omen. I can’t write that down. So she made the woman take off her sweater and reweigh. So there wouldn’t be six. 6.6. See, so that’s what she opted to do because of her superstition associated with this number. The problem is that people don’t understand the contemporary nature of the book. That it’s about things which much shortly come to pass. Sure, you could be using various systems of computation, I think, make it possible for many people to fit under the the category of 666. If you, you can manipulate things. People have claimed as 666 is to be identified with the Pope or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler or Henry Kissinger or even Ronald Reagan, Gorpechev, so forth. However, you need a relevant solution. You need one that fits the time fame provided in Scripture, and Revelation 1 says, 3 says the time is in hand. Having shown that the The beast is the Roman Empire of John’s Day. When we looked at the first part of this chapter, it greatly reduces the candidates because he is ahead on the beast. So it has to be associated with the ancient Roman Empire of John’s Day. And as we saw, Caesar Nero, if you write his name in the Hebrew, Neuron Kaiso, are it ends up being 666 using the letters of the alphabet in that name as numbers. Remember in Rome and Latin, also in Latin, and Greek, and in Hebrew you have letters that are also used for numbers. We so use Roman numerals today, as you know. So with a proper understanding of the book of Revelation, there’s no real estate. reason to fear or look for a present fulfillment related to 666. And there’s no need to be on the lookout then for the beast to arise out of the sea again and force people to have his mark 666 on. Let me quickly review what we’ve talked about. We’ve talked about a description of the second beast. He’s also called elsewhere in the book of Revelation as the false prophet. In contrast to the first, beast he only has two horns instead of 10. So he has limited power. He’s lesser significance in power. He has the appearance of the lamb which suggests innocence, but he speaks with the roar of a dragon, which tells us that Satan is behind him. In this beast, you have a religious power. He’s called the false prophet, and he is in appearance as a lamb, which is a sacrificial animal. as you know. As a false prophet, he is a deceiver to draw the people away from the true worship of Christ to the worship of the beast, the first beast. We’ll call him the second beast, the false beast, the false prophet, and then so we can separate the two. He enforces the worship of the first beast. He works all sorts of lying wonders to persuade people to submit to the worship of the first beast. Now, we talked about this being the Caesar cult, and we talked about emperor worship. The Caesar cult’s promotion of emperor worship is what took place at this particular time. If the first beast is the Roman Empire, personified by the emperor, the false prophet then is readily identified. Because all the Caesar’s claim to be God’s deity, deity, if you would. and encouraged their own worship. As Caesar worship became more and more prominent, there became a cult that arose, known as the Caesar cult, which promoted his worship. So the chief purpose of this cult was to bring people to worship the beast. Refusal to worship the emperor was a sign of disloyalty of the state, and therefore was an act of treason. Now, a lot of people, adding enough to worship the beast. God was no big deal. It was a paul the theistic society, but for the Christian, who only held that the Lord should be truly worshipped, they couldn’t do this. Thus, there were difficulties and clashes. Now, the Caesar cult’s authority, the two horns on the Caesar cult, we said probably refer to the proconsul and the concilia. The pro-consul was the Roman governor of the region, which would enforce the worship of Caesar, of course. And the concilia was a body of the greatest authority composed of deputies sent from various towns or divisions of a province to erect images of the beast, temples to the beast, and basically alter us for his worship in everyday way, to bring everybody to the state religion. That’s what we have here. and then we talked about the miracles, and I’m not going to dwell on this, shouldn’t be surprised that Satan’s agents would use wonders, and you notice that Coles talks about them deceiving the people. We shouldn’t think that these miracles are actually necessarily real miracles. It can be tricks, false miracles, magic tricks, if you would, that these magicians would do, like the calling down a fire, from heaven. We referenced Elijah and how he warned the prophets of Bill, don’t put any fire under there and just blow on it and then, you know, cause the fire to start on Mount Carmel challenge. You know, I know how you’re operating. Don’t do that. And so, you know, they could do things of this nature to make it look like fire was called down from heaven. The actual idea of the beast speaking here and so forth, well, ventriloquism or speaking to. and even the idea of a hidden operating erator making parts of the image move or something like that could deceive people. So all these signs really for the purpose of deceiving the people so they worship the beast. So we see the Caesar cult in Emperor Worship. This brings us to the Caesar cult and the persecution of the saints that we find in verses 15 to 8. 18, which we want to look at today. Now the danger opposed to Christians by the Caesar called as Fauna verse 15. He had power to give life onto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. Here’s the serious nature of the problem. Christianity and the state religion were going to be hostile toward one another inevitably. Believers were diametrically appulsed to the worship of any other God. It certainly would not be involved in idol worship. You know, the first commandment, you’ll have no other gods before me, and the second one, don’t make any graven images. So both these things are being violated by the state religion. However, the Caesar cult would consider you a traitor, as we said. If you didn’t worship the emperor, and the Caesar cult was strongly entrenched in Asia, what we call Turkey today, where these seven churches were located. And it’s interesting if you read chapter 2, the church at Pergamos, in verses 12 and 13 of that, they were honored with the privilege of being the first to erect the temple in that area for the worship of Caesar. And if you look at that particular, section of scripture, this area became a master center for Caesar worship. And thus it’s called where Satan’s seat is, where he has entrenched power. And Pergermost appears so zealous to promote Caesar worship that its citizens had to submit or die. And so we read there of a martyrdom of a man named Antipus. Apparently, Antipus was dragged to the temple and slain as a public example to the citizens of Pergamos because he wouldn’t worship the beast. If this is the reason for Antipus’us’ death, it did not work. For Jesus commends the church, thou holdest fast my name and has not denied my faith. But you can see where this problem would come in. So the Christians at Pergamose refused to acknowledge. knowledge any except for Christ as Lord this gives us a glimpse now expand that throughout the Roman Empire and you begin to realize the danger this posed to Christians this is the danger posed to Christians by the Caesar called then we have the mark of the beast verses 16 and 17 and he calls all both small and great rich and poor free and bond to receive a mark in the right hand or in their foreheads and that no man might buy or sell see if he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Now, as I said, nearly everybody’s heard about the mark of the beast. You know, like I said, even people today are familiar with this idea. It’s usually portrayed as some tattoo, some branding on the body. Some have even talked about computer chips. being placed in people under the skin and so forth. They’ve speculated about this. Now we do know that certain religions have a mark on their followers. For instance, certain Hindus where a red mark on their forehead, you’ve probably seen that somewhere, testifying of their commitment to their particular faith. Whatever this mark of the beast is, we should see it as connected with the Roman Empire period and the worship of the emperor. No computer chips fit that category. But now, if you are obsessed with a physical mark, as most people are, they seem to forget that God also marks his people in the book of Revelation. It’s an invisible mark that’s only seen by God and angels, isn’t it? I want you to look at Revelation chapter 7, verse is 1 to 4. Here we read, and after these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth or the land, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor the sea, nor any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east having this seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and to sea, saying, hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And the number, and I heard the number of them which were sealed, and they were sealed 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel. You notice here that this indicates to us that the earth here, really speaks of the land that we’re focused upon and the judgment coming upon the land of Israel because these are the people who need to be sealed in particular. The Israelites. Now, when you think of a seal, we usually use, sometimes you see them seals today on the back of letters that people send. They put like a wax drippings on it, and then they use some kind of stamp or ringers with insignia on or something, and they seal, put a mark. on it, maybe identification mark, maybe you have a family crest or something of this nature. Here God says he’s going to seal the people of God, he’s going to seal them on their foreheads. You’re going to stamp them somehow here and mark them as his people so that when the judgment comes, his people aren’t harmed. Now look with me at chapter 9 and verse 4 of Revelation, and it was commanded them that they should not hurt, these are the the locusts that are let loose from the bottomless pit. And it was commanded then that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And then chapter 14 and verse 1. When I looked and lo, a lamb stood on Mount Zion with him 144,000, having his father’s name written in their foreheads. Now this time you notice it’s not the seal, but it’s called the father’s name. Either one is the same idea. But here we have a name on their foreheads, right? Sort of like what the beast’s situation is, with the mark of the beast. Chapter 22 and verse 4 is another reference we have to this marking. and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads. This is the righteous, of course, in paradise with the Lord. His name shall be in their foreheads. So either they’re sealed in some fashion with a mark somehow, or they have the name upon them. So God seals his servants who are people who belong to him who worship him. Right? So God took care to identify them to give them safety during the coming Holocaust that’s going to be poured out. This imagery is actually taken from the book of Ezekiel, chapter 9 and verses 4 to 6. Let’s look at that real quick. We’ll see where this idea seems to originate. Kill 9 and verses 4 to 6. And the Lord said unto him, go through, he sends his angel here, go through, his cherub actually, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done. in the midst thereof. And to others, he said in mine hearing, go you after him through the city, and smite. Let not your eyes spare, neither have ye pity, slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children and women, but come not near any man upon whom is the mark. Begin at my sanctuary, and they begin at the ancient men which were before the house. They began at the ancient men, which were you. So the same idea here is these marks or these seals were invisible the human beings, but they were certainly known by God and the angels who would know who the true people of God were. They were not physical marks, were they? were they tattoos? No. So Satan, in a sense, your copy’s God, doesn’t he? He’s going to mark. He wants his people marked, just as God has his people. But we begin to realize that these marks in a symbolic book, like the Book of Revelation, does not necessarily mean that they are literal, physical marks. It’s not as if people are walking around with 666 tattooed on their foreheads at this time. You’ll notice also that the mark of the beast could be on the forehead or it could be on the hand. The mark of God, you’ll notice, is exclusively on the forehead. It’s never on the hand that we see here, is it? God’s true people, the elect, do not serve him only with the hand outwardly, but also with the mind. Forehead references the mind. So that they are fully committed to his worship. I mean, doesn’t the Bible say we’re to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and so forth? Is God going to be happy if we just worship him with our lips? But our hearts are far from him? Is he going to say that? I’m not going to accept that. But you’ll notice the beast here will accept that. He will receive mere outward submission to his worship if you just did it with the hand. If you did it on willingly. If you did it just because you were compelled to do it, he’ll accept that. It’ll be okay. But there are so that some are fully committed. They have the forehead or they, you know, either one would work. But the beast, you see, is satisfied with less. I would suggest then that the mark of the beast is not a physical mark, but rather a willingness to submit yourself, subject yourself, to the worship of the emperor, whether just outwardly or wholeheartedly. And that marks you then as an enemy of God. As someone dedicated to the agent of Satan, the deified emperor. And this dooms your soul. For any who have the mark of the beast are doomed, according to Revelation 14, 9 through 11, they shall. So that there can be no compromise. Either you are marked as a worshiper of Christ, or you’re marked as a worshipper of the beast. one or the other. Unless we have the mark of the piece. Any questions before I go on on this? Yes. We’re God’s purchased people. We’re with the lamb. As Revelation 14 talks about, which would fit right in with that I get a concept as well. What I’m trying to do with this is say we don’t have to have people tattooed or branded or have computer chips. to be, have the mark of the beast. If you commit yourself to the worship of the beast, you’re marked as someone who is committed to emperor worship and the state religion. That’s what I want us to consider as we look at this. Since the other mark is not literal, but it seems to be invisible, then we don’t necessarily have to make this one literal or physical either. Roman citizens here were run into problems economically. And notice verse 17 if they don’t have the mark of the beast or anybody in the Roman Empire, doesn’t. That no man might buy or sell save either at the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. If you don’t have the mark of the beast, if you’re not devoted to the worship of the emperor, you couldn’t enter to the marketplace. If you did enter, you would be shunned. No one would buy or sell because you were looked upon as someone who is disloyal to the emperor, and no one would want to involve themselves with you. So they wouldn’t buy your goods. They would try to not sell you anything. Such boycotting of Christians was based upon a dread of offending the dominant Caesar called and the emperor himself and the Roman authorities. Now we do have historical evidence revealing that those who sacrificed to the Roman emperor and emperor or to Roman gods of this nature did receive a receipt from the officiating authority. So you could use this receipt to prove your loyalty to Rome. See, I worshipped the emperor. So you had sort of a visible token of the mark of the beast. You could get your receipt. I went to official worship place. I got my receipt. And these official certificates would allow you to buy or sell as a devoted follower of Nero. The person who has the number of his name is then someone who belongs personally to Caesar. You’re committed to him. He’s your king. Not Jesus Christ. Thus total control of the people of the empire was sought. Christians would hold fast to Christ’s name and have his name in their foreheads. But these reprobates would not. So Christians suffered economically. They would have to bear the cross of following Christ because they wouldn’t submit to the emperor worship. So we have the danger posed by the Christians by the Caesar called. We have the mark of the beast. We have the economic sanctions that would go against Christians. Let me close. If the beast and the false prophet were contemporary problems for John’s readers, any interpretation or revelation which places them in the future is completely misguided. People are too obsessed with this number 666 and they fail to realize or recognize the spiritual significance of what John is saying here. the anti-Christian state wants to control your actions, your hand. And if possible, you’re thinking, your mind. It may not be as blatant as the worship of the image of Caesar that we find here in the book of Revelation, but there is pressure today for Christians to bow before the all-powerful state and submit to all things it does. Whether it you know, regarding family size, with regarding a type of worship, with regard to morals, with regard to education. All these things. It has an agenda that it is promoting and make no mistake about it. The same problem exists today. The government has become increasingly hostile to Christians. Don’t miss this. Well, obsessing over the number 666 popping up somewhere. The danger is the state basically imposing its faith upon you and forcing you to comply with what is in opposition to Scripture. That’s the danger. That’s the danger they faced. We face the same. Any other thoughts or comments on this passage this morning? Yes. Indeed, state religion is something in various form. Our country was founded with the idea of separating church and state so that you could have freedom of religion. But increasingly, the state has imposed its beliefs upon the people under the guise of punishment, under the threat of punishment, I should say, because they want everybody to group think. They want everybody thinking in the same. direction and following their agenda. And Christians march to a different drummer. That’s all there is to it. We put Christ above the state. We ought to obey God rather than man. And they don’t like it. Anything else before we close today? Keith, would you close?