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Muskegon SDA Church

Keys of Revelation

Kameron DeVasher

1. The Next World Superpower

2. Watch Out!

3. Did God Make the Devil?

4. God on Trial

5. Your Two Biggest Problems

6. Antichrist Evidence- Part 1

7. Antichrist Evidence- Part 2

8. Blood in God’s Tent

10-1. The Prayer God Interrupted

10-2. The Prayer God Interrupted

11. Sin Is A Four Letter Word

12. Satanic Amnesia

13. The Antichrist’s Accomplice

14. The Mark of the Beast

9. The Prophecy No One Understood

15. The Return of the King

16. The Day the Devil Dies

17. What Happens When I Die

18. The Good News About Hell

19. The Last Faithful Daughter

20. The Testimony of Jesus- Part A&B

21. Burying the Dead

22. Opening Lazarus’ Tomb

1 of the things we learned last evening, 1 of the things I personally find fascinating, and I hope that you do too, is that Jesus Christ is the 1 true original, the 1 true God, and yet there is this anti-Christ power that wants to stand in the place of God and counterfeits the truth of Christ.

And we've noticed that the ministry of Christ, remember, began when he came up out of the water and lasted for 3 and a half years, at the end of which he received a deadly wound, but his deadly wound was healed, and in his place he sends the Holy Spirit to draw all men to himself." Amen?

Now, we notice that the counterfeit Christ, the Antichrist, has a counterfeit, if you want to use the word ministry, his coming up out of the water, this of course prophetically, see, the coming up out of the water, time, times, and half a time, or 3 and a half prophetic years of ministry.

Then you have a reception of a deadly wound, then the deadly wound was healed, and then he has a power, the Antichrist's accomplice that we studied last evening, who would raise up at the end times to try to, instead of convicting the world, coercing the world into following The beast from the sea the Antichrist power So if you've come night after night, hopefully everything I just walked through you were familiar with If what I just told you right there was like Go back listen to the CDs take a look at the study guides and follow along.

But tonight we're going to build on our previous evening's message, the Antichrist's Accomplice, and we're going to see 1 last counterfeit that the Antichrist tries to pull over on the world in a message entitled, The Mark of the Beast.

But before we begin any study of God's word, what do we need to do first?

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for another day of life at all.

And thank you for bringing us safely here together.

And Lord, if there are those still on their way, give them the safety as well and efficiency to get here so that your message can be heard and received by all who have ears to hear.

And now Lord, as we turn to these precious pages of Scripture, these prophetic messages that you have for us tonight, help us to understand what the mark of the beast is.

And Lord, more than just understanding intellectually, help us to have a commitment not to receive the mark, but Lord, to be your people, come what may.

Bless us and keep us faithful, for we pray it in Jesus' name.

Of course, the entire series is entitled The Keys of Revelation, and definitely 1 of those key concepts is that there is a mark of the beast.

You might have even heard some rumors about it that, boy I tell you, let me give you a little example.

I was in the, this literally happened just a few weeks ago.

I was at the Secretary of State's office, the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I was in line for, I don't know, 234 years, it seemed like.

And when I get up to the front of the line, I'm registering a trailer or whatnot, and they hand me, you know, they have a random pile of plates, right, in the sequence and order, and I get a plate that has some letters and it has 3 numbers at the end.

The lady working at the desk pulls out the plate and she said, She said, I don't know about this, you know.

And I said, honestly, that would be, I would probably get a lot more attention because I'm actually a pastor and when I roll up in a church with 666 on I don't know what's gonna happen there and and she said maybe you should have another 1 it's like oh whatever you'd like so she wouldn't switch to back so I have 667 on my trailer at home But it is interesting that the kind of urban legends and old wives tales about this mark of the beast, oh the number 666, or you might have heard about barcodes, you know, some of you might have been like a little weary, oh there's a key tag this in these meetings, this is the mark of the beast on plastic.

You might have heard about biological chip implants and these kind of things or they're all gonna be They are gonna be watching us or they're gonna be watching me and we kind of have this paranoid state Is that what the Bible describes as the mark of the beast that there's gonna be a system?

Where everyone is laid down and injected with some sort of thing or tattooed with a mark or a barcode or a credit card.

Is that what the Bible is talking about, or is there something that we're not understanding?

Let's see what the scripture itself says.

Now before we get into the mark of the beast, I want to show you a second, or a different, or should I say, an original mark, but not of the beast, but a mark of God that's talked about in the book of Revelation.

Revelation chapter 7, we'll just start with verse 1.

Revelation chapter 7, starting with verse 1.

We read, after these things, I saw 4 angels standing at the 4 corners of the earth.

But they're obviously holding some purpose, but the language here is symbolic, right?

Holding the 4 winds of the earth that the wind should not blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.

So there's some destruction that's going to happen, but God is holding it at bay.

And the imagery here used is 4 angels holding back the 4 winds so it won't blow on the earth.

Then it says in verse 2, I saw another angel.

So you get the picture there are these 4 angels in the image here holding back these 4 winds of heaven so the earth is relatively calm, whatever destructive power of these winds that's going to blow is being held at bay.

And then he sees another angel, verse 2, ascending from the east, having the what?

And he cried with a loud voice to the 4 angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea.

So apparently when they let go there will be harm to the earth and the sea saying do not harm the earth the sea or the trees till we have what sealed the servants of our God on their what foreheads and what's fascinating to me when people pick up the book of Revelation or talk about end-time events or Bible prophecy, you hear about the mark of the beast.

But the mark of the beast is simply a counterfeit of God's original identifier, the seal of God.

So apparently God has a seal, and you're asking me, what is that?

Let's wait and see what the scripture says about this, right?

But there's the destruction that's coming, pictured as 4 angels holding like these 4 winds, but before that destruction is let loose, God says, I have a people that I want to identify as mine.

Put on their foreheads the seal of the living God.

Now I want to put that in your mind before we go to the mark of the beast because you'll notice that the mark of the beast is simply a counterfeit of the true seal of the living God because that's Satan's modus operandi.

He wants to counterfeit all that God does and all that he is.

And so it should be no surprise that if God has a true identifier, the seal of God, that there would be a counterfeit inside the book of Revelation, which brings us back now to last night's Revelation chapter 13 Let's go to Revelation chapter 13 and see the counterfeit To the seal of God Now we noticed just for quick review, Revelation chapter 13 describes 2 beasts.

The second 1 comes up out of the earth or the land, right?

Revelation chapter 17 told us what seas or waters means.

It means people, humanity, nations, tribes, tongues, people.

Where the earth then is a place of relative uninhabited land, a relatively new world, if you will, right?

And in Revelation chapter 13, it describes the time of this first beast, the beast out of the seas, rain, is 1, 260 years, tying in beautifully with what we saw in Daniel chapter 7, that there would be this little horn power, this anti-Christ power that lo and behold would come up out of the sea in Bible imagery and have a ministry, if you will, an activity time of 1260 years.

Of course, at the end of that 1260 years, it would receive a fatal wound.

We saw that both in Daniel and in Revelation 13 specifically.

But after that, in Revelation 13 it says that his deadly wound was what?

And that a second beast, this 1 coming up out of the earth, would rise at that time to help him do his bidding.

So we turn to Revelation 13 verse 11 looking at this second beast which again was the burden of our study last night just for review.

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth.

Of course we noted the interesting juxtaposition between lamb, which always represents Jesus Christ, and the dragon that always represents the devil, Satan.

And this power, though it will speak like a dragon, emerges as a very lamb-like in its horns.

It's 2, you know, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, if you will.

You free a country without a king and a church without a pope.

And he exercises all the authority of whom?

The first beast, and that's the beast that came from the sea, right?

In his presence, so at the same time as this 1 is operating, this 1 is operating for him, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to do what?

So the objective is to get worship not for itself but for the first beast, for the Antichrist power, Whose deadly wound was healed.

So after 1798, during that time, it would rise with a purpose to hold up and promote that first beast.

And it goes on to describe what the second beast, the beast from the earth, would do in order to get people to worship the first beast.

He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men.

Satan only has 2 weapons and only 1 of them works.

He has 2 weapons and only 1 of them works.

The first weapon, the only effective weapon that he has is deception.

But when that doesn't work, He takes off the gloves and that's it.

He's just gonna go for outright persecution.

But what you notice is every time God's people are persecuted, they stand up other it, or they die faithful and Satan loses his prey.

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Series

Keys of Revelation

14. The Mark of the Beast

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

ANCHOR School of Theology

1. Principles for the Study of Bible Prophecy- Part 1

58m

Should Christians Do Thai Chi?

3m

The Greatest Disruptions in History

21m

Judge Others and Why Jesus Said Don’t

45m

When Kings Fail

45m

Kingdom of Gentleness

59m

The United States of Addiction Winning America’s Chemical Civil War

52m

Sabbath School 4th Quarter 2023: God's Mission My Mission

03 God’s Call to Mission

19m

Accountability and the Judgment

52m

Eye Track

The Optometry Practice: Our Platform to Share Jesus

52m

Intensive: Gardening 101

6. Gardening 101: Winter Salads

49m

Look a Little Higher

34m

Sound Doctrine