There are no stronger warnings in Scripture than those found cautioning against the Mark of the Beast. One thing is certain: if God makes such dire warnings we can be confident that the Mark is something we can understand and avoid!

<p>There are no stronger warnings in Scripture than those found cautioning against the Mark of the Beast. One thing is certain: if God makes such dire warnings we can be confident that the Mark is something we can understand and avoid!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Unlocking Prophecy

Chester Clark

1- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 1

2- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 2

3- Revelation’s Greatest Climax

4- Lamb on the Altar, Lion on the Throne

5- The Hero of Revelation’s Seals

6- A Game of Thrones and Revelation’s Answer to Evil

7- Revelation’s Ultimate Message

8- Humanity, Morality, and Society

9- Revelation’s Call to Worship

10- The Beast’s Greatest Conspiracy

11- How to Escape the Seven Last Plagues

12- The Certain, Unavoidable Identity of the Antichrist

13- Making a New Start

14- Facing Death Unafraid

15- Good News About Hell

16- Messages from Beyond the Stars

17- Prophecy Predicts a People

18- The Best is Yet to Come!

19. Daniel’s Worst Nightmare

20. Daniel 9 and Jesus

21. Daniel 9 and the Rapture

22. Revelation’s First Beast

23. The Seal of God

24. The Mark of the Beast

Father in heaven, we thank you that we can study your Word once again.

We thank you for the chance we have to to learn and to grow.

We thank you for the opportunity to open its pages.

And Father, tonight we just want to know your truth.

We want to know Jesus better and we believe that He is the way, the truth, and the life and the more we understand the truth of your word, the more we understand Jesus.

So tonight I just pray that as we cover this important topic, that you would help us, that you would guide us, that you would be with our hearts and with our minds.

All right, The Mark of the Beast and 666.

Probably there are very few topics in Bible prophecy that have more, that people find more intriguing or more interesting than The Mark of the Beast and 666.

So tonight we have a title that I would have been tempted to use early on in this series.

Maybe a lot of people would have come out to hear what I was gonna say about it, right?

But my thought is that in order to understand The Mark of the Beast and 666, we really need to spend some good, solid time studying the prophecies that precede them.

In fact, I believe that it's sort of foolhardy to get into Revelation without studying Daniel, without spending time in Daniel.

The foundation is there And that's where we understand how Bible prophecy works.

From Daniel, I can conclusively, I believe, argue for the prism, the hermeneutic of historicism, as I've talked about on a number of occasions.

From Revelation, you can't really prove that because you don't have the vision and then the interpretation side-by-side to see how the prophecies are supposed to work.

And so if we start in Revelation first, we're in sort of in deep water.

A lot of people can read it and get different things.

And so This is why I try to spend some time developing what Daniel has been talking about.

Remember last night we were talking about how God wants to write his law in our hearts.

And this is to me 1 of my favorite parts of Bible prophecy is Understanding how it impacts me.

It's not so interesting to me to learn what world governments are going to do.

I mean, that's important, I guess, to know, or else God wouldn't have said it.

But what's important and interesting to me is to know how does it affect me, right?

Is there something I should do responsibly?

I believe that God put these prophecies there so that we might know how to live in the last days.

I believe the message we find in Revelation is meant for those of us who are living in the last days.

I believe the book of Daniel's meant for those of us living in the last days.

And it's not just so that we can be smarter than the people around us and know what's about to happen, it's so that God and us can have a special relationship, that we can walk with Him closer than if we didn't know these things.

And so God says, look, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.

I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

He says it again in chapter 10 of Hebrews.

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord.

I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds I will write them.

That this isn't something that I have to do for myself.

This is something I cooperate because I let God do it, right?

I'm willing, I choose to obey and to follow, but it's a miracle I must depend upon Him to do.

I must allow Him to do this miracle in my life.

And we looked last night at how as God writes that law in our hearts, there's 1 particular facet of the 10 Commandments that perhaps uniquely and particularly could be considered the seal or the test of obedience and to see whether or not we are his.

This isn't, remember, for us to go around judging other people.

It's for us to see how am I with my savior.

If we are, then we ought to be wanting to be very close to Jesus.

We ought to be wanting to have His law written in our hearts.

Now, we remember that there were a number of characteristics from the first beast of Revelation, chapter 13.

It had 7 heads and 10 horns and crowns on the horns.

The dragon gave him his power seat and great authority.

You remember it was part lion and part leopard and part bear and the dragon had given him those other qualities and powers.

There's another beast that rises in Revelation 13.

We're going to look at that tonight so get your Bibles ready.

We're going to begin reading here as the previous beast, the first beast, which remember receives a deadly wound.

France intended to make an utter end, a forever end of the church and its superstitions and its rites and its ceremonies and its powers and its desire to rule not only spiritually but also civilly.

And France gave the papacy this mortal wound as the Bible describes it, a deadly wound or a mortal wound, and yet that mortal wound would be healed, right?

We know that would happen, but notice with me, we're gonna start in verse 10.

He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity.

He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword.

Here is the patience and faith of the saints." Now, I believe this is pointing us to the time that this first beast of Revelation 13 receives a deadly wound.

He who has been a persecutor is now persecuted, right?

He who has led into captivity is now put into captivity.

And then verse 11, then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had 2 horns like a lamb and spoke like a what?

Now here you have a very interesting combination of a beast coming up out of the earth who has 2 horns like a what?

I mean, you don't think of a lamb as 1, you know, how many of you have seen lambs out there in the pasture stocking?

It wasn't 2 horns of a sheep, it was 2 horns of a lamb.

And so here the Bible gives us something that we haven't seen before.

None of the other beasts that have emerged have been young animals.

They've all been lions with 4 heads, or I'm sorry, leopards with 4 heads, or lions with eagle's wings, or they've never been, at least Daniel didn't describe it, and I think these things matter.

Daniel didn't describe them as a lion cub out there, or a leopard kitten, or whatever they call them.

So I think this is a very unique situation that takes place here.

He has 2 horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon.

Now it becomes very interesting when you read verse 12.

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.

That composite amalgamated beast of Revelation chapter 13, the first few verses.

Remember, this is Rome after it's divided into 10 horns because the crowns are now on the horns, not on the heads, right?

It's speaking blasphemy, it's persecuting, It lasts for 42 months, which is the same as 1260 days or 3 1⁄2 years in a Jewish calendar.

It has to be Rome, and it's not Rome in the imperial Rome, it's Rome as in the Holy Roman Empire or the Church of Rome.

Now once again, I may sound a little bit like a broken record, but I want to make sure that nobody misunderstands what I'm saying here.

Series

Unlocking Prophecy

24. The Mark of the Beast

Transcript

Description

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Sponsor

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Creation- Genesis as the Foundation

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Sound Doctrine