Rev No.15 66 - The Mark of the Beast

Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for joining us today, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Praise the Lord, Jesus the Son, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him.

Revelation chapter 13. As the pastor has already said, a very solemn chapter. Let's listen very carefully and attentively to this chapter.

Revelation chapter 13. And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea, and I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear, and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.

The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. Men worshipped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast. They also worshipped the beast and asked, Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him? The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies, and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.

He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place, and those who live in heaven. He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. He was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation.

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast, all whose names have not been written in the Book of Life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. He who has an ear, let him hear. If anyone is to go into captivity, he will go.

If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. Then I saw another beast coming out of the earth.

He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men.

Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number.

His number is 666. Father, we thank you for the perfections of our Lord Jesus, a lamb slain before the foundation of the world, a spotless lamb. We thank you for the majesty of the Christ.

They nail a perfect man, the only perfect man, to the tree. They lift him up to die, and all the hosts of hell might well have thought that that was the end, God's plan for redemption completely frustrated. But we thank you for the mystery of your grace, that from the death and the resurrection of that man there is power to save to the uttermost, the most unique, dynamic in the whole world, to meet the ordinary requirements of people like ourselves.

Help us to esteem the value of that shed blood, recognizing that every precious drop brought us a million years. Help us, Father, now as we look into this most intriguing and most difficult passage of your word, to grasp something of the truths that you're trying to convey in this symbolic language. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

Please have your Bibles open at Revelation and chapter 13. And keep one hand on that page and turn back to 2 Thessalonians in chapter 2. And here is Paul writing in exactly the same sort of intensity, and in some ways in a difficult manner, because he's trying to convey the most somber and yet important things. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 7, For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.

And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those that are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

Back again to Revelation chapter 13. I wonder if you're aware, you should be, it's been mentioned on so many occasions over the decades from this pulpit that there is a biblical philosophy of history. That means to say history is not capricious.

It's not a question of God having manufactured a condition of society and then he withdraws and has nothing to do with it. Neither is it the case that man comes along by a fluke of some evolutionary process. Someone has quipped, and it's a good quip, that history is his story.

It is the story of God. As one of our older hymns in Hymns of Faith says, God is working his purposes out as year succeeds to year. Nothing is more important than that you and I in these confused days recognize this every time we listen to radio or TV news broadcast or pick up our newspapers.

God is in control. But how do you understand this world? Well, the Bible will tell you some astonishing things about this world. And sometimes when we read the Bible, we don't take it with the seriousness that we ought to.

For instance, it tells us in the epistle of John, of all epistles, written by a man with a loving heart, towards the end of his epistle and in the 19th verse of the 5th chapter of his first letter, we know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. Do you believe that? That's what the Bible says. The whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Listen to the apostle Paul. He's talking about his role as an evangelist as he penetrates the globe, disseminating the great and glorious gospel of Jesus. And he appeals in his letter to the Ephesians and in the final verses, he appeals to them for their prayers and he gives the warning prior to his request for intercession in the 10th verse of chapter 6. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might put on the full armor of God.

For what reason? Well, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Why, Paul? What's the problem? Well, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. The whole world lieth in the hands of the evil one, spiritual invisible forces in the heavenly realms.

Well, does the man mean this? Do you take some water and do you dilute it? Do you do what Durham, the bishop thereof, has just done this last week and told us what we knew already, that he doesn't believe in the second coming of Jesus and we ask him the question, well, why repeat the apostles' creed every day in your cathedral? Do you deal in a cavalier fashion with scripture? Do you recognize that this is the word of God? Why is it that I have this large pulpit Bible on this lectern? Well, the reason is this, that this Bible we recognize as being God's revelation to men and women. Here is contained his truth. And we elevate this Bible, because this is what we believe it is, to a position above human reason, because human reason is very fallible.

The word of God is not fallible. And when the Bible speaks about the conditions in our world, then it is our belief that we ought to take what the Bible has to say in a literal fashion, when it is speaking in non-symbolic language. And so it presents us with a world view, this world being permeated with the powers of evil, with the influences of evil.

Now, you either believe this or you don't. If you do, then at least you have some explanation as to some of the obscene things that are happening, even in the 20th century, in our own lifetime, in these last few months. If you don't accept the biblical view, then you've got a problem.

Try and understand it. Try and do what the BBC did on, I think it was on Friday night, in their Newsnight program, very late in the evening. They were investigating the horrors of torture.

How is it that men in the 20th century torment one another in the most sophisticated, exquisite way? Why do we do these things? What are the reasons for this madness that sometimes just seems to control men and women? Answer these questions. We need an answer. And if you can't find your answer in psychiatry, if you can't find your answer in modern philosophy, if you can't find it in liberal theology, then come with us to this book.

For here, we believe, there is the only statement that makes sense as to why we find our world in the condition in which it is in today. When our blessed Lord came on Earth, He was immediately in problems. You remember how when He was born on this planet, there was a plan devised to eliminate Him immediately.

Herod had this scheme to eliminate all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem. Our Lord now moves to manhood and we find Him stepping into, shall we say, the public gaze as He's immersed in water by John the Baptist. And within a few hours of that, the devil releases his assaults against Him.

We call them the temptations. And throughout the whole of the ministry of our Lord Jesus, the devil approaches and then backs away and approaches and backs away. You see it sometimes in the demonic activity.

Men come along across the path of Jesus and he identifies the power that is possessing them as being none other than the power of the evil one. And when our Lord is on the cross of Calvary, He interprets this as Satan's darkest hour. You see, He has this biblical back cloth, this biblical worldview, and He doesn't qualify it at all.

He acknowledges the fact that though the rights are usurper's rights, this world is in the hands of the evil one. But He lays claim to this world because basically it is the Lord's. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

And He has come to establish His claim. And between His first coming and the second coming, there is a period of tremendous difficulty and struggle between the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil. And the consummation of that struggle will be the return of Jesus Christ when He shall come not incognito as a child in Bethlehem's manger, but He shall come conspicuous to all and every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father and every vestige of evil shall be eliminated from this universe.

Now that in a nutshell is the biblical philosophy of the history of this world. You either accept it or you reject it. If you accept it, then you see a great and glorious future.

There'll be heartache between the two comings for the church, as I shall establish in a moment or two. But at least there is an explanation. You don't go around in confusion.

Neither do you go around wishing for some utopia that can never be without the intervention of God. So, my friends, I bring you again to this passage of Scripture, this so difficult one which speaks to us about the powers of evil that are rampant in our world today. Now, as we have approached this book of Revelation, we have on many an occasion borne out so clearly and so powerfully by my colleague Tim Saunders, whose tapes especially I do recommend for you to get hold of and listen to if you haven't already heard what he's had to say.

But you have discovered from him and from me that this book is full of symbolism and the symbolism is very often numerical. You will know that there is the symbol of four, which is the symbol of the earth, the four corners of the world, the four winds of the earth. The number four stands for the earth.

Number seven, the symbol of perfection. God makes the heavens and the earth in six days. On the seventh day he rests.

And it is widely expressed, is it not, that seven is the symbol of perfection, though most people don't even know the biblical significance as to the origin of that. You will know that the number 12 or the number 24 has significance in the book of Revelation. There were 12 patriarchs, there were 12 apostles.

12 times 12 gives you 144. Multiply that by 10 and the perfect cube of 10, you've got 1,000 which will give you 144,000, which is a perfect number which speaks of the redeemed of God. Not literally, but in symbolism, this vast number of people who have been won for his eternal purposes both in the Old Testament era and in the New Testament era.

But in this chapter you come across the number six. Six is one short of perfection. One of my problems with modern psychiatry and indeed modern philosophy is that neither discipline has an adequate view of man.

You say, what do you mean? Well, man was born in the image of God. The Mormon church takes it to an extreme and lands itself in heresy when it says that man is God. But there is something God-like in his potential, in her potential.

God will be glorified in this earth by the man and the woman that he has made. It's what the theologians call the imago dei, the image of God. And when Jesus came into this world, he released his shed blood on the cross of Calvary so that the sins that pollute your life might be forgiven and that original glory that Adam had might be returned to you so that as a redeemed, blood-bought man or woman, you can live your life for the honor and the glory of God.

God will be glorified in humanity. That is his express concern. When our blessed Lord is on earth, he sometimes came across the poor, demented, demonized person.

What is a demonized individual? Well, he or she, that unfortunate wretch, represents a person who the devil has tried to infiltrate. One of the things that he could not stand is God becoming flesh, incarnating himself in Jesus Christ, the God-man. And what he has sought to do since the fall is to incarnate himself in a man, the lawless man, who will raise his fist of abuse against this God and endeavor to frustrate his purposes so that man shall be for the glory of the evil one and not for the glory of God.

Six is the number of man, one short of perfection, but with a great deal of potential wrapped up within him. Now, this whole business of the number 666 as the number of man has given birth to films, to novels. By the time of the Reformation, there were at least 100 theories as to what the number 666 actually stood for in terms of one person.

So you have to be very careful almost at the outset of coming into Revelation chapter 13 of feeling that somehow in the 1990s you have been able to isolate the full meaning of all that is contained within this scripture. But I can give you some pointers. You last saw the Apostle John on the seashore of Patmos.

He's standing out and looking towards the horizon. Sometimes the sea is very turbulent. The Jews always felt that the sea was dangerous.

That's why they never had a navy. And as John, verse 1, the last verse of the 12th chapter, stands on the shore of the sea, he witnesses a beast coming out of the sea. And later on he will see another beast, the 11th verse, I saw one coming out of the earth.

And both these beasts represent trouble for mankind. Let's try to earth just for a moment or two what the Apostle means by the sea. If you were to go, and there's no need for you to turn, you can jot it down if you're making notes.

If you were to go to the prophecy of Isaiah and through to the 57th chapter and the 20th verse, you read these words concerning the sea and using the language in a metaphorical sense. It speaks of the dilemma of human beings like you and me. The wicked, Isaiah 57, 20, are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.

There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked. Let us see what will come out of the sea of humanity. For there could well be a Florence Nightingale.

There could well be an Edith Cavell. There could well be a Mother Teresa. But there could be a Nero.

There could be a Caligula. There could be a Mussolini. There could be a Hitler.

And the chances are that from the sea of humanity, from this godless ocean, there will come those who evidence the power of the dragon of whom we read in the 12th chapter, Satan himself. This first beast that comes out of the sea, the Apostle John tells us, resembles the imagery of Daniel chapter 7. The beast I saw resembled a leopard but had feet like those of a bear, a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.

There isn't time, but if you had recourse to Daniel 7, you would find there the predictions of one world government toppled by another world government, each seeking to outbid the previous one for godlessness and for cruelty. I think this first beast that John sees in this remarkable vision stands not for Antichrist per se, but the spirit of anti-Christianity manifested throughout the history of the Christian church. Listen to the Apostle John once again, this gentle creature, if ever there was, a loving follower of our Lord Jesus.

Surely it was John. And he tells us, not now in the last chapter of the first epistle that bears his name, but he tells us in the second chapter that there have been many antichrists who have come into and gone out from our world. 1 John chapter 2 and verse 16.

For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boastings of what he has done comes not from the Father, but from the world. And he goes on to talk about in the 18th verse, dear children, this is the last hour and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour and so forth.

Right at the beginning of the history of the Christian church, there were those who were anti-Jesus. He who is not with me is against me. The spirit of opposition to Jesus.

And don't you see, between his two comings, there has always been opposition. Sometimes it's intensified itself, sometimes it's personalised itself. And our blessed Lord and Saviour had us to understand that prior to his second coming, the evil that there is in the world will become that much more concentrated and will house itself, so to speak.

Certainly in one particular organisation and I think in one particular individual. When we read of this evil world government that has always been the climate in which the history of the Christian church has been fleshed out, we read of his speech. Look, will you, at the fifth verse.

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words. Look at the sixth verse. He opened his mouth to blaspheme God.

It's an interesting fact, isn't it, that blasphemy is now no longer an indictable offence in the United Kingdom. One more piece of brilliant legislation that we've written in the statute books of Parliament which are utterly opposed to the reveal will of God. Not just the speech but also the influence of this world government is here highlighted in these verses.

Look at the third. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have a fatal wound but the wound had been healed. I'll comment on that in a moment.

The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. Verse seven, he was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them and he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation, etc. Sometimes it has seemed in world history, as far as the Christian church is concerned, that it is up against such opposition that it can never withstand.

And this beast, it represents that world hostility. And you say, well if this is so, as we see it emerge from the sea with its ten crowns and its horn speaking for sovereignty, speaking for kingship, speaking for strength, why is it that it says in verse three that one of the heads had a fatal wound which was healed? Have you ever thought of the extraordinary progression of the Christian church immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit? One of the greatest problems that the devil had, almost second to the difficulty he had with our Lord Jesus, was the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. This man was remarkably turned in his convictions and he becomes a great, extraordinary ambassador of God, founding churches around the world, till it's said in the 17th chapter of the book of Acts that these Christian people have turned the world upside down, as though the anti-Christian beast was wounded, as though there would be no ability of the powers of evil to resist the powers of the gospel.

But you know full well the story of Nero, the kickback of the Roman Emperor, the attempt to eradicate the world in those days of Christianity. The beast was wounded, fatally wounded, but almost aping the death of our Lord, fatally wounded on the cross and brought back to life again. There's a resurgence of strength and power.

And down the corridors of history you see this anti-Christian government in the world, pouncing on the redeemed community. Read the Dark Ages. Men and women, read history.

Many of you are unable to understand the present because you have little grasp of the past. Read about what they did to the Christians in this country. Read about what happens in China to this very day.

Read about what this evil power is able to do. To the extent that at times it is seen from the earlier verses, the 7th verse, that even the church would not be able to cope. He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them.

And there were times, you read in Revelation, as it describes the opening of the Christian story, when it appeared that the triumph of evil over good would be complete. But any seeming triumph is just an illusion. The ones who finally conquer are those who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Even the martyrs in heaven, they wait for the day of the consummation of all things. You remember their prayers as they say before the throne, How long, how long, blessed Lord, before you go down there and clean the whole place out? For the apparent victory of the beast of anti-Christian forces is, as I describe it, just apparent. There may be at times almost a fatalism within the church.

Verse 10, If anyone is to go into captivity, let him go into captivity. If anyone is to be killed with a sword, let him be killed with a sword. It seems as though these forces of evil cannot be checked at all.

And therefore the message comes to the persecuted church down the ages. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. But this beast with speech that's intoxicating and influence that seems all powerful is on a short leash.

We are told that he only has power for 42 months. Verse 5, 42 months, three and a half years. The symbolism we have worked out before, it is that description of the period between the first coming of our blessed Lord and Savior and his second coming.

For Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth its successive journeys run. He will work out his purposes. Now, John having shown us something of the hostility that the church of Jesus Christ will have to go through is now going to show us, as he is shown, and point us to another beast, verse 11, coming out of the earth that has even greater, more intimate association with men than the first beast had.

Thus, it's out of the earth as opposed to out of the sea. And here is one who is like the first beast but not quite the same. He had two horns like a lamb, verse 11, but he spoke like a dragon.

He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast. Two horns? Like a lamb? Who is the lamb in the book of Revelation? That's an easy question. Unto him who hath loved us and washed us with his own blood, our blessed Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world.

He is the Lamb. He is the Redeemer. Now, what is Satan? He is none other than one who would masquerade as the Lamb, masquerade as the Savior of the world.

And here you have got the intensive activity of the evil one described in this symbolic language. He comes along to fool. He comes along to dupe.

He has miraculous abilities, verse 13, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Aren't you aware that there is an increasing movement in our world to delude ordinary people like you and me? That's always been the case, as I've indicated. But I think there is reason in the final part of the 20th century to say that that movement is now much more intense and much more personalized.

I refer to the New Age movement. I refer to some of the cults. I refer to the obsession that our country has with astrology and magic and superstition.

Now, again, the problem with some of you, dear friends, and I say this lovingly, the problem with some of you is that you don't read sufficiently enough about what is going on in our society, in our schools, in our colleges, in our universities. I was reading one of the most extraordinary books that I've ever come across. It's written by a man called Tom Willis.

He's my age. I've never met him. I thought he was just a secular journalist.

He has written a book called The Man of Lawlessness. He's a journalist. He used to work for the Daily Telegraph and then for The Observer.

And in his book, I didn't even realize that he had any Christian convictions at all until I came to the end chapter. He sets out a logical argument to indicate that the whole of our media in the West is impregnated with the spirit of evil. I'm talking about a highly intelligent man who can give you a chapter and verse for all he has to say, who was held before the press council because he went into print as saying that the whole of the video industry in our country is rotten to the core.

And they tried to get the Daily Telegraph or the Sunday Observer, I forget which paper, carried his article to rescind it. And he so skillfully defended his case that his charge was sustained and that of the firm behind videos, the British Video Association, was dismissed. There is a tendency, there is a temptation to masquerade more under the guise of good and righteousness.

And the only way that one can interpret this these days is as being the last kick of the devil. There's a heightening of supernatural activity. Verse 13 speaks of this in this chapter.

There's rivalry. The image of God that should be set up in man. There is an attempt to set it up in terms of bringing honor and glory to the evil force of this world, to Satan himself.

There is the possibility of restrictive trade practices. In the Roman Empire this was the case. And you must take these words immediately and apply them to the Roman Emperor.

The Roman Empire, the early Christians there, they had the pro-consuls were in cahoots with the priests. They brought statues of Nero, of the emperors, into their locality. They forced the Christians to bow down.

Unless you bowed down to this beast, you couldn't trade. You couldn't have any social intercourse at all. Now that's the obvious meaning, the immediate meaning of this passage.

But there is a longer meaning. You can see it in the broader sweep. Here are hostile forces.

Here is an anti-God society, an anti-God world. And it would seem that when the man of lawlessness to whom the apostle Paul makes reference in Thessalonians, when he is identified, he who speaks with a forked tongue, he who masquerades as a religious person and yet is diabolical, will have such power and will have such authority that ordinary trade, ordinary commerce, ordinary ways of going about your business will not be allowed unless you have the mark of him upon you. They used to mark cattle.

They used to mark slaves. And if you think that that was just the unsophistication of the ancient world, they did it to Jews. They did it to Jews in Dachau.

I shall never forget standing by the gas chambers in Dachau and thinking what my generation did to innocent people. And across the gas ovens, in the French language, in bold letters, Ne jamais, never again. Yet poison gas was delivered to the Iraqis who had it in store for the Jews.

Tell me I'm exaggerating and answer my fundamental argument in terms of the hostility and the obscenity that there is around today in our world. The possibility is not in any way a figment of one's imagination. It's not a reading into scripture but a reading out of scripture that the devil has been waiting for someone that he can incarnate as the Lord Jesus, as the incarnation of God on this earth.

And Thessalonians tells you that he who lets, the one who has all power, will at the end of time, God himself, allow this crass manifestation of evil in our world. And then our Savior will come and destroy him by the breath of his mouth. So the most important thing for you and for me this morning hour to ensure is that we are sealed, not with the mark of the beast, be that understood in some psychological way or in some physical way, but rather that we are sealed, as Revelation 6 will tell you, with our Lord Jesus Christ measured by the love of God expressed to the world through his death at the cross of Calvary.

For there are only two categories of people in our world. There are those, verse 8, whose names have been written in the book of life, who belong to the Lamb, who are sealed by him. Or there are those who find themselves vulnerable too by their own choice, by their own tendency to the force of evil as it comes in the form of an anti-Christian government and as it is headed up through a confederation and then through one man who bears the number 666.

My time has gone, more than gone, and I should really spend further explanations so that I engage in further explanations of this. But you have sufficient to go on, to take this chapter and to read it for yourself. How do you understand our world? The biblical back cloth of the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil.

I put it to you that that's the only logical way that you can understand it. Then what must a thinking man, what must a thinking woman do in these days? It is to come to the God who created the world, who spoke to our world through nature and through his own Son, and to confess his Son as Lord and Saviour and to work for him and for the good of the Gospel until the time comes at the end of the 42nd month when this Jesus shall return and expunge from this world every vestige of evil, lawlessness, godlessness. Are you sure? That you're sealed by him, the wisest thing that you can do.

Let's pray. Father, we bow our heads in your presence. With no great relish have we looked into this chapter and there's a lot that should be said that couldn't within the compass of 35 minutes or so.

But help us to appreciate that this chapter speaks not of the ultimate triumph of evil over good, but the ultimate consummation of the purposes of your Son. Bless us in tossed world with all the manifestations of evil that come from out of the sea of humanity, restrain, great God, until your Gospel is penetrated down to the meekest, humblest tribe so that everyone from people groups in our world have heard. And then to you, great God, bring back your Son and restore this world to its original condition.

Seal us with your Spirit, affirm us in the faith and keep us rejoicing amidst all the turmoil in the knowledge of this that our salvation is secure and help us to live our lives in the interest of others, bringing them physical and spiritual relief until the King comes back and all the people of God said, Amen.