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Living Hope SDA Church

Chris Holland

The Fatal Flaw of Herd Mentality

Words of life, words of hope, words that guide us home.

Song was composed by Barbara Lynn DeShazo.

She wrote the song wanting to emphasize the divine origin and spiritual benefits of God's Word.

When I was preparing this sermon I knew that this was the song that I wanted.

And thank you to Wesley because I knew he was the 1 I wanted to sing it.

That is because these ancient words Lead us to the 1 who will guide us all the way to our heavenly home.

I want to encourage you to have your Bible today.

So pull out that Bible and if you don't have a paper copy, then pull out your phone or use the Bible that is there in the pew for you.

Today we are going to explore Revelation 13.

And why is it difficult to resist herd mentality?

And most importantly, what principles can you implement in your own life to avoid falling into the temptation of herd mentality?

Heavenly Father, as we gather here for worship and we open your word, we know we cannot understand unless the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth.

And so I pray that Lord, through your Holy Spirit, you would lead us into all truth and that it would not just merely be an intellectual experience, but rather Lord, it would change me and it would change those that are hearing.

Help me to speak the things that you desire for me to speak and help me to not speak those things that you do not want spoken.

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to open them to Revelation 13.

The book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, chapter 13, which is almost in the middle of the book of Revelation.

There in Revelation chapter 13, the Bible says beginning in verse 1, then I stood on the sand of the sea and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having 7 heads and 10 horns, and on his horns 10 crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name.

Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion.

The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority.

And I saw 1 of his heads, as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world marveled and followed the beast." Chapter 13 is written as a part of a whole story that really begins in chapter 12.

Revelation 12 presents the history of the great conflict, the great cosmic battle, the great controversy between good and evil.

And in connection with Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 helps us to understand the origin of evil.

By the way, it is the number 1 question and the number 1 impediment of faith for Generation Z and the millennial generation.

If God is so good, why is there so much evil in the world?

It is evidence to us that God has raised up this movement for such a time as this to answer that grand cosmic question.

Revelation 12 in summary is about an angel, a good angel that God created that became evil through his own choices.

He rebelled against God and he brought rebellion into heaven and the Bible says that there was war in heaven.

Lucifer, the good angel, transformed to Satan, the arch deceiver.

His deception was so great that he actually drew 1 third of the entirety of the angels.

And if we view the book of Daniel as a mathematical equation of 10, 000 times 10, 000 and 1, 000 times 1, 000, and we multiply that all together for those that are in mathematics, that means the population of angels is well into the trillions.

The Bible says he was cast out of heaven, Satan along with a third of the angels.

And here on earth, unfortunately, humanity joined the rebellion when Adam and Eve failed to trust God and placed their trust elsewhere.

But God's great desire is to save humanity and be reconciled.

And he implemented a plan which the Bible says existed before the very foundation of the earth.

And so God sent his 1 and only unique son.

Chapter 12 continues to outline the reality.

It gives us the symbol of the dragon, Lucifer, Satan, the arch deceiver.

But that dragon working through the Roman Empire to unleash his attack against God's people.

First, Rome attempted to kill Jesus when in Bethlehem all children under the age of 2 were executed.

But Satan was successful when he had the Roman Empire execute Jesus by putting him on a cross.

But that is not the end of the story because God is greater than the plans of Satan.

3 days later the Son rose from the dead And He granted to His church to take the message of the good news of salvation through Him to all the world.

And so Satan unleashed his attack against the church to prevent that from happening.

However, history records that Satan's battle plan was ineffective.

Because the more the church was persecuted, the more the church grew.

The ancient historian Tertullian writes that the blood of the martyrs was as seed to the church.

There are stories from the Circus Maximus, the place for the games in Rome, where Christians would be executed.

And as Christians were being executed, people in the crowds would make decisions to follow Jesus and join them in their martyrdom.

There are a variety of estimates, but the most conservative estimates is that by the third century, there were over 1000000 believers.

And then Revelation chapter 12 concludes with verse 17, and the dragon was enraged with the woman and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

However, the word went is a very poorly translated word.

In the Greek it is literally the word to go away or to depart.

But when you make war, it doesn't make sense to depart.

In a moment of battle strategy, the devil came to the realization that his frontal assault upon the church through persecution was failing.

And he pursued that new battle plan against God's people, the remnant as they are called, the faithful ones who look like the original, whose faith is defined by their obedience to God's 10 commandments, and are guided by the testimony of Jesus.

How is it that Satan would change his battle plan?

This is where we pick up the story in verse 1 of chapter 13.

And I need to tell you, while this sermon is not primarily about identifying the marks of this beast power and the later beast power, I do need to identify the power to help us understand.

So if what I've just shared about Revelation 12 and what I'm about to share about Revelation 13 is something that you've not known about or you want more information about and you'd like to study, you can email us at info at hopelives365.com and we'll be happy to have somebody share resources with you.

But in Revelation 13 is the introduction of Satan's new master battle plan.

He capitalizes on the rise of 2 powers, the beast that rises from the sea and the beast that rises from the land.

Along with the dragon, these 3 entities now form the unholy Trinity alliance.

And as we return to the passage, the passage says, I stood on the sand of the sea and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea having 7 heads and 10 horns and on his horns 10 crowns and on his heads a blasphemous name.

Immediately your mind should drift to another passage.

Open your Bibles to Daniel the seventh chapter.

Keep your thumb in Revelation 13, but there in Daniel chapter 7, we are introduced to all of these creatures that John now sees.

In Daniel chapter 7, beginning in verse 2.

I saw in my visions by night and behold the 4 winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea and 4 great beasts came up from the sea each different from the other.

The first was like a lion who had eagles wings, skipping down to verse 5.

And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear.

It was raised up on 1 side and had 3 ribs in its mouth, skipping down to verse 6.

After this I looked and there was another like a leopard, which had on its back 4 wings of a bird, and skipping down to verse 7.

And this I saw in the night visions a fourth beast, dreadful, terrible, exceedingly strong." These beasts of Daniel 7 represent the world empires at the time.

The empires, the lion of Babylon, the bear of Medo-Persia, the leopard of Greece, and the indescribable beast, Rome, pagan Rome.

Here in Revelation 13, this conglomerate beast represents a power that captured the attributes of the previous empires and assimilated it into itself.

Verses 4 through 7 introduce words like blasphemy and worship.

While the beast powers of Daniel 7 were political powers, this power introduced in Revelation 13 seems to have a mix of politics and religion.

This religio-political power, throughout the centuries of Protestant history, this beast power has been identified with the papacy.

Now the focus of this study is not on that identification, but rather on the choices.

Often when we read Revelation 13, we get caught up with the identification, and that is important.

But what is even more important is how will we withstand the battle that is to come?

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The Fatal Flaw of Herd Mentality

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