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Spirit Lake SDA Church

Joe Reeves

Religious Tyranny Rising

We're going to be studying the Bible this morning from Revelation 13.

We're going to be looking at the image to the beast and looking at where we are in the timeline of prophetic Insight and prophecy.

So I'm going to share some challenging things this morning.

We're going to look at some of what's happening.

I'll be quoting from some pastors in America and what churches are saying in America right today.

We will be checking ourselves at the development of what has been prophesied from the book of Revelation and looking at what some of our pioneers said about it, including Ellen White and the book Great Controversy.

I need a double portion, inviting you to bow your heads as I pray here from the front.

Heavenly Father, we've given ourselves to you already today, and we need a special Holy Spirit power as we study the Bible, and that we can be prepared to be among those who keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus when you come back soon.

There are many today that are talking about tyranny and many Christians that are talking more about Revelation 13.

And these passages, these verses that Adventists have been preaching for, for 170 years and writing about, Others have some things to say about these verses as well.

And it seems that perhaps today there are more people paying attention to Revelation 13 than before.

There are, in these verses, described a certain tyranny that develops in this world before Jesus comes back.

And a Beast in Bible prophecy represents what?

We know that from Daniel 7 and verse 17 and 23.

And so, in our prophetic messages, we have been able to follow in the footsteps of the Reformers that have gone before us and identifying the first beast of Revelation 13 to point to the church during the Dark Ages and beyond the Catholic hierarchy that persecuted and caused 1260 days or years of persecution, bringing us to the second beast of Revelation 13, which as America developed there was different thinking about what this second beast was.

But we begin writing since May 1851 that the second beast is the United States in prophecy and that history will be repeated.

And so that's what we want to look at today.

Most of us here are familiar with this passage, and as we 0 in, I'm noticing as I'm listening to pastors in America talk about this passage that many of them skip and go to the last part of the section which we identify with very closely today, especially after COVID and the tightening of the arm of the state and seeing certain mandates or laws and things passed that have compromised motives and causes behind them.

And so when people see this restriction described, there is a lot of resonation today.

Because no doubt, tools that would be used to fulfill the climax of this prophecy are tools that are getting sharpened today.

And so when we go into Revelation 13 and we see there in verse 15, and commentators are reading this, He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast.

You have your Bibles open, Revelation 13.

He was granted to give breath to 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 to be killed.

There is the ultimate punishment but it says he causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no 1 may buy or sell except 1 who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.

And so, part of the whole equation isn't just the ultimate punishment, but it's also things that lead up to it.

It's economic restrictions, buying and selling, and all the cluster of things, no doubt, that go around that as the rope is tightened when tyranny is enacted in our own land.

But what I notice is that many skip these verses at the beginning which are so essential to our understanding.

Up in verse 13 and 14, and actually I'll start in verse 11, which I do not have on the screen, but you have in your Bibles.

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had 2 horns like a lamb, and spoke like a dragon, and he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast.

Now the first beast enacted the world's worst tyranny in the last 2, 000 years.

It lasted for over 1, 000 years and when we examine history we notice that there are 2 broad categories of tyranny.

And it's important to remember, coming off of the 20th century, because most of the tyranny we have experienced in the last 230 years in this world has been secular tyranny.

There are 2 kinds of tyranny in the world.

There's Secular tyranny and there is religious tyranny.

Now more people have died from secular tyranny in the last 230 years from secular tyranny that began in the French Revolution and was passed on to its daughter communism.

And that has spread in all kinds of different continents and various times and places where God's children have suffered immensely at this atheistic tyranny that is hostile to all religion.

But within the sweep of the last 2, 000 years, the greater tyranny has been religious tyranny.

We have seen it recently, most of all with extreme Islam and Muslim in various places.

The United States has been challenged with that dilemma and we've sent our Air Force and Navy and Army to various places to deal with the religious tyranny of extreme Islam.

But unfortunately, the worst tyranny, religious tyranny, in the last 2, 000 years has not been Islam but has been Christianity.

The dark side of Christianity, when there was a union of church and state as there began in the fourth century and developed and became very strong.

Laws were passed, there's a joining of church and state.

And they persecuted pagans, but the worst persecutions by any historian's standard in the 6th century during the time of Justinian was not their persecution of other religions and pagans and Islams.

Their worst persecution focused on other Christians, unfortunately.

So the Aryans in the 6th century received terrible persecution.

And any, all along those centuries that refused the mass, to partake of the mass, that were copying the scriptures, or translating them, or spreading them, and sharing them.

Many were led to the stake, many were thrown over the cliff, and there were many dark pages of religious tyranny that developed.

And so when I read here in verse 12, that he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, it's saying that you need to know your history because history is going to be repeated in the last days.

And those scenes between the starting in the 4th century and especially the 6th and continued for 1260 years, that history will be repeated in the last days.

And so we can know already from the very beginning of the narrative and it will be repeated multiple times that the tyranny prophesied in our Bibles in the last days is not going to be a secular atheistic tyranny that is hostile to all religion, but it's going to come from the other side when we least expect it, and it is going to be a religious tyranny that will include Christians against Christians and those kinds of things.

I preach on this right now because I want us to come back to our Bibles, I want us to think about it, I want us to examine ourselves, and it's easy to forget when we are getting pelted from many different sides.

And it says in verse 12, verse 13, he performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast.

Telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived.

And so, these miracles that are being worked.

Now let me ask you, who would it be that is working these miracles?

It's already been established in the first few verses that this is a repetition of religious tyranny.

And it is confirmed when you know that this tyranny is backed by supernatural phenomena.

This image to The beast here that is described here is not formed by atheists.

These are healers that are working miracles.

This image of the beast is formed by Christians just like you and me.

And so these signs, it's not only the miracles, but it's also the fire coming down from heaven.

Now there's a few stories of fire from heaven in scripture.

There's a story of Elijah when there's a contest over worship.

In the New Testament you have the story of Pentecost.

That fire also came in answer to prayer, just as the fire came down on Mount Carmel for Elijah.

Any fire in the Bible that comes down from heaven comes down in answer to prayer.

These are people who are praying and praying earnestly, but it's false prayers and it's a false answer and it's a false spirit that comes from the wrong side.

And so this fire that came down in Acts 2, and it landed on the heads of the apostles when the Holy Spirit came down and empowered them for the work.

But this fire is a false outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

It is an answer to fasting and praying by Christians.

It is an answer of a heart searching that leads people astray.

And so It says it's the image to the beast.

That means it's not the beast itself, but a replica or a copy or an image of the beast.

In other words, what happened with the beast before is going to happen with this church and state in America in the last days.

We should pay attention to what the Pope is saying when he recently visited Canada and what the papacy is doing.

But primarily in this scenario, there's going to be a coming together of the 2, but there's going to be an image.

There's going to be a certain degree of separation because it's not going to be the beast.

Religious Tyranny Rising

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