Cling To The King: Discern Deception!

Morning King's Council Bible study. A few more of you have hopped on who weren't on the prayer call. Love seeing your faces, love hearing you speak. And I think I spent the last couple weeks kind of like talking for 57, 58 minutes and then opening it up. So I'm going to do my best to not do that today, give you guys more time. Because not just me, but we're all blessed when all of you wonderful, wise women and men of God have an opportunity to share. So with that said, we're gonna jump into Revelation chapter 13 today. And just to kind of recap chapter 12, we had spent a couple weeks in chapter 12 and that was even broken up when we got into Ezekiel 38 a bit and the, the war battle that has yet to take place in human history. But chapter 12 we saw really an explanation of God's redemptive, redemptive plan for humanity that we saw the woman who we identified as Israel. We saw a child. A child was Jesus. And from the beginning of time, right? Not just even creation, the beginning of time, God, who was omniscient, he knew that we would fall, but it didn't stop him from creating us. I'm grateful that we have free will. We have an opportunity to fall. Although that sounds kind of strange, right? We have an opportunity to really love with our free will. And love wouldn't be love at all if we're little robots and we didn't have a free will to, to actually love. And keep in mind that love is a decision, it's not an emotion. Despite what some chick flicks that I happen to like would, would tell you. It's a decision. It's sacrificial, it's unconditional. And you, you God commands us to love. And you can't command an emotion, right? You could command a decision now to love. So with that said, we're going to dive into Revelation chapter 13. And this is a chapter where the, the entire chapter 17 verses where we're going to be reading about the Antichrist and we're going to be reading about the false prophet to come. And there's reason why Scripture talks about this. There's reason why John has this revelation and within the entirety of the book of Revelation, just these different pictures and these different scenes that he sees. There's reason for it. But we're not to be too hung up on it at the same time. One, because if you're in agreement with a pre tribulation rapture, we're not going to be here and it could be where the Antichrist is on the scene. And I mean, it's possible the Rapture happens today and we have no idea who turns out to be the Antichrist. This, this one leader who rises up and just wins the hearts of humanity and essentially establishes a world peace, a one world government, one currency. It could happen within those first three and a half years. Is the Antichrist alive today on Earth? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I think about that kind of, it's kind of gnarly to think about. Is even the most evil men and women in history, right? Throughout the history of humanity, they were all babies at some point, right? They're all children. They, they were all cute. They were all. Just because all babies are cute, right? I guess not technically, not all of them are really cute, but all babies are cute, right? But they all had, well, probably a lot of them have parents that loved them and they were innocent, right? They were innocent. And then that innocence gets broken relatively quickly. And as a parent, you try to, you try to salvage and, and save your child's innocence. You want them to grow and you want them to mature and you want them to be aware of the things in the world, but you don't want those things to now corrupt your child, right? So for all you parents out there, it's the, the, the trickiest job on planet Earth because you want to continue to love and shield and protect, but you need to expose them to the realities of the world. So when they come time where you're not in a position to shield them and protect, they know the right decisions to make. So when it comes to the Antichrist, we know him as Antichrist. That's the term that's most commonly used, Antichrist. But Antichrist isn't the word that's most commonly used. Even throughout Scripture. In Revelation, he's not even called it the Antichrist. In Revelation, he's called the Beast. And John makes mention, the same writer of Revelation, John in First John and Second John makes mention of the Antichrist and calls him the Antichrist. He also mentions that many Antichrists have come, and that was 2,000 years ago already many Antichrist, little A have come and the, the Antichrist capital A is still to come. And he talks about in First John the spirit of Antichrist. So I, I think the, we'll go through this and that the application for us as the church and just as people in general is to be able to discern what's true and what's not true. Because deception only really works when there's A hint of truth to it, or it looks like truth. You would be able to peep out deception real easy if it looked nothing like the truth. So the enemy who we identified in chapter 12 as that fiery red dragon, he's the one who gives power to the Antichrist. He's the one who gives power to the false witness. And you know, the, the. The movies and, and the pictures in our heads of the devil with the pitchfork and, you know, the, the Antichrist being the, the. This evil monster, it. It's going to be far from that. It's going to be somebody who is convincing, somebody who's charming, who's char. Probably somebody who's good looking, who, who's appealing in. In every sense of the fashion. And that's because the devil is the angel of light, right? And the best way to deceive us is for it to look very closely like the. The real thing. So we'll get into this verse one here. And it says, then I stood on the sand of the sea. Of course, this is John speaking, and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns and honest ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. All right, so we'll, we'll start right there. Now we're going to see that the Antichrist he saw come out of the sea, the false prophet come from land. And we have to keep in mind that back in the day, the, the Jews, they regarded the sea as something that was untamed, right? The sea was wild. It was a frightening place. So c. Represented chaos, represented evil. It was an unknown. So for the Antichrist to come from the sea, it makes sense. Just the Jewish reader at the time would see this as a beast coming from the sea, where it's just this untamed, unknown, chaotic place. It makes sense. And there's other verses in scripture that would identify the sea in that regard. But we also see in Revelation, chapter 17 that the sea represents peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues, right? So this is somebody who comes forth from the sea, from the sea of humanity even. And he's going to take on the role of the leader. He's going to take on the role of a winner and leader of the world. So the idea of beast here. And again, he's identified in Revelation as beast. And I'll. I'll share some of the other names that he's called. We commonly know him as Antichrist. Even those who aren't in the church aren't in the word. They. They probably have heard of the term Antichrist, but beast is really the term in Revelation that's used to describe the Antichrist. He is not the dragon, right? This isn't the devil. He has some attributes of the devil, but he's distinctly different from the devil. He has seven heads and ten horns similar to the, that that fiery red dragon that we saw last chapter, the devil. And just think about this. The idea of seven heads, right? And we know the number seven is completeness, right? Not perfection, but completeness. Seven heads. So if, if we have a God, if we have Jesus who's, who's perfect and complete, he's a complete propitiation, right? The complete atonement for us. So keep, keep in mind that the number seven is it the Antichrist isn't just anti. As far as opposed to. But. And instead of. So there's going to be similar characteristics. We remember a few chapters back that, that rider on the white horse, right? The four horsemen of the Apocal, that, that that's the, the Antichrist. It's like. Wait a second. But it's a white horse. It's a white horse. Because he resembles Christ and he's trying to be Christ. Like deception only works if there's something to it that is somewhat true or looks at least looks like the truth. Now when it comes to these, these seven heads as well, keep in mind anything that has seven heads is probably going to be hard to kill. Just, just in general, anything that has seven heads is going to be hard to kill. And we're going to see here that this Antichrist is going to have a mortal wound on, on one of its heads. And we'll, we'll talk a little bit about what that could be and hear your thoughts on that as well. So as Antichrist is more of an instead of Christ, he is 100 opposed to, to Jesus Christ. But the way we are going to see him, if we even see him at all, as the church, right? Again, he can just, just come to power after the church is raptured in a very quick way, but he's going to imitate Christ. Some of the other names that, that the Antichrist, the beast is called in Scripture. In second Thessalonians he's the man of sin. In second Thessalonians he's also the Son of perdition. And keep in mind, that's what Jesus called Judas as well, right? The son of perdition. He's called the lawless one. He's called the little horn in Daniel 7. And we're going to See a little more in these coming verses. Just how just did the example and the foreshadowing in Daniel and the description in Daniel, how accurate it is when it comes to what John sees in Revelation. But he's. He's the king of fear, fierce countenance. He's the prince who's to come. He's the willful king, and he's the one who comes in his own name. Right. So John, like I said, he's the one who mentions Antichrist. The name Antichrist in, in the book of First John, he says it three times, and in Second John one time. But in First John chapter two, John mentions many antichrists have come with little a. Right. That's where he says, we're in the last hour. And this was 2,000 years ago. We're in the last hour. Many antichrists have come, but the Antichrist, Capital A, has yet to come. And he speaks also about the spirit of antichrist. So I just want to open it up right off the bat and ask you, like, what do you think it means that many antichrists have come and who would be a representative of one of those antichrists who have already been on the world scene and even that spirit of Antichrist, Sean Charles, Taze, Russell Rutherford, people who are really, really charismatic and gifted at carrying off believers. Millions of people have followed in the footsteps of Jehovah's Witnesses from their foundation. And that's just one of many, many cults. Yeah. Any. Anybody who's leader of a cult, Most cult leaders, they, they are gifted. Right. In one regard, but oftentimes, and this is why discernment so important, we're going to see that the false prophet and the Antichrist, that they're able to perform signs and wonders. Right. And even the false prophet is going to be able to call down fire from heaven, similar to Elijah in First Kings 18. So we may see something. So if any of us just waiting for a miracle to happen to know that's God, know that the devil can, can, cannot just perform miracles here, but through people where it looks like an act of God, but it's really an act of the devil. Jonathan.

Forgot that. Yeah. I think, do you think maybe an element of Genesis 6 all over again? But like in a, you know, like you were saying, I truly believe it's going to be an angel of light, more or less. Right. At least in first appearance. Not literally. Right. But you know, it's not going to be a demon with horns and red and tail and all that. But yeah, I Wonder if there's some kind of hybrid thing going on there.

Yeah, for sure, Joe.

So like one of the obvious ones, like I guess people would think about would be Hitler.

Right.

Obviously. Because just not only from what he's done, but who he's attacked.

Right.

You know, ever since going back to Genesis, like you and Jonathan said, you know, the devil knows that through the line of the Jewish, the Jewish bloodline, whatever, the Messiah will come. So from the beginning of time they've been trying to wipe, you know, Jewish people out in that bloodline. So I would obviously say go with him.

Mm, yeah, Gita.

Sorry, I was just gonna say that I think he comes in the form of people like he, you know, he presents counterfeit people to us as well that he want, he wants us to, you know, get involved with and stuff like that. I like what you said before. Like that, you know, he's usually, he could be charming, you know, even good looking. Like the Bible says that he's. He appears as a false angel of light. Right. So, and, and he knows, he knows what he's doing. So I think at this stage and in our life, in our world that he actually uses people and he works through people to be, you know, for artificial reasons.

Yeah. Amen. So this beast coming out of the sea has seven heads and, and ten horns. And there's ten horns. Associates this beast with Daniel seven, Daniel seven, Daniel nine, Daniel eleven. There's much to be said about the Antichrist. And actually in Daniel 7, 7 it says after this, in the night visions I saw. And behold the fourth beast. Dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth. It was devouring, breaking in pieces and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before. And it had 10 horns, right. And this vision that Daniel had seen in, in Daniel 7 he gets the vision of these beasts, right? And they represent world empires. And the first beast was a lion with eagle's wings. And that represented the Babylonian empire. And the second beast was a bear, right? And that represented. And one side of the bear was higher than the other. That was the Medo Persian empire where the, the Persians kind of, it was a combined empire. But then the took control. The. The third beast would be a leopard. And the leopard represented the, the Grecian Empire. And that was led by Alexander the Great. And it was a leopard with wings as well. And that represented how quickly Alexander the Great and that Greek empire just conquered the world. Matter of fact, Alexander the great was only 28 years old when Greece had conquered the world by the time, I think 32 or 33. He basically was bored and he drunk himself to death just because he had risen to power so quickly and there was like nobody else to defeat. And he died just drinking himself to death. So the horns represented this vision that Daniel had in Daniel chapter seven. And that fourth beast that I just read about from Daniel seven, it would be. It's a beast that you can't even describe, right? It's just this reprehensible monster and it had iron teeth. And what that empire represents is the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire had the longest lasting reign of any of those four empires. And the Roman Empire never was defeated. It just got so, so large and vast and it just kind of disbanded. But the, the Roman Empire based on the, not just the Daniel seven beast, but also in Daniel to the statue, right, or the picture that of the, in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar where the, the Roman empire had these 10 toes, right? And the 10 crowns that are part of this Roman Empire. All indications are that there's going to be a revived Roman Empire. Like what exactly will that look like? We don't know. Lots of Bible scholars and people who geek out to eschatology, you thought like the creation of the European Union. All right, that's it. And then, you know, the European Union surpassed 10 nations. Okay, maybe it's not it, but then we see, you know, a couple years back, like Great Britain withdrawing from it, but there's still like 20 something nations in that. So what is this 10 nation or 10 confederacy, revived Roman Empire going to look like? We don't know, but we just know that it's going to happen. And then out of those 10 horns, a little horn arose. Out of the 10 horns and that little horn, as I mentioned, one of the names of the Antichrist, that, that is the Antichrist, the one little horn amongst this ten nation confederacy, one person is going to rise up and be the leader of it all. So we could speculate, we could spend the rest of the time talking about who or what those nations are, when they will come to be. But ultimately this is all once the, once the tribulation happens. So I always say, hey, the rapture could happen today and tomorrow. Something in world history could change where all these pieces fall into place very quickly. Could the Antichrist be on this earth right now? Yes. Can it be somebody that we know? Yes. Could it be somebody who's. I mean, it could be somebody who was born yesterday. He's doing skin to skin Bonding with their mother, right? Some cute and innocent little baby. At this point point, we, we really have no idea. But the point of all this, this whole chapter and really everything when it comes to end time prophecy is one where to always be ready. But the deception that is to come, the deception that's already here 2000 years post Jesus, the deception that's on this earth and the deception that's going to get even crazier and wilder and more rampant. We need to know what truth is so we're not to fall to deception. I mentioned the description, right? This beast, he was like a leopard, his feet were like a bear, his mouth was like a lion, and the dragon gave him his power, his throne, in his authority. Again, all references to this, this vision of the beast that Daniel had in chapter seven. So when this Antichrist is a picture of, of all these things, it's like this is the culmination of all these different world empires that were just ruthless and savage. And this Antichrist is going to be a culmination of them all. And it's the dragon, right, who gives them his power. The, the beast takes the offer that Jesus refused to take in Matthew 4 when he was tempted in the wilderness, right? When, when the devil tempts Jesus and says, look at all this. I could give you all this. This is my domain. Like, he wasn't lying because he. He is the, the ruler of this earth. Now, God absolutely, ultimately is sovereign, but I don't think the Antichrist, you know, there's movies like the Omen where the, the Antichrist that is just, you know, the Antichrist as a little kid, right? I, I don't think it's necessarily the case. Judas Iscariot, at some point in his life, right, just decided to just give in to the temptations and the offer of the depth.