The Mark of the Beast — Danny Bond

The Second Beast and the False Prophet

We studied last time in the first few verses of chapter 13, verses 1 through 10, this amazing vision John had of this monster coming out of the sea. Basically, in the first few verses, the first 10 verses, you have the power structure, the power base of nations and leaders out from which comes the Antichrist to rule the world.

Why is it described as a monstrous beast? Because the Antichrist is a monstrous beast of an individual. That is why he incarnates everything that is satanic. Now, in verse 11, I saw another beast. Coming up out of the earth, he had two horns like a lamb and he 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 whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs so that he even makes fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

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.

So just in case you were wondering last time if we really were talking about a man, there's another verse right there wounded by the sword and lived talking about a human being here, not just the government.

Verse 15, he was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast. And 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, 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 that no one might buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom, let him who has understanding, calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.

His number is what is it? Six, six, six. This passage deals in particular with the ultimate false prophet who will deceive the world, the ultimate false prophet. He is a man described as a beast here in John's vision, but he is a man whose sole purpose.

Is to call the world to worship the Antichrist, that is his sole purpose in life. This man is going to have winsome power of speech, he's going to have power to call down fire from heaven. And he is going to be reaching out to that thing within every human being that longs for a transcendent answer to the problems that are within some kind of a supernatural, transcendent answer to come from without us to within us to help us.

He's going to speak to that. See, man is incurably a worshiper. God has made him that way. So man living without God has a great empty void inside, so the false prophet will be able to deceive the unbelieving world, why?

Because of the power of religion over men's minds, religion. That is why Satan spends the bulk of his effort on religion, false prophets, false teachings. That is where the bulk of Satan's efforts are.

And then, of course, efforts to lead you into miscellaneous sins. But the bulk of his effort is in religion, false teaching and false prophets. Now, this false prophet, then, is an amazing individual.

The False Prophet's Person and Satanic Message

I want to talk about his person, his power and his program. And then ultimately, just at the end, his punishment from God. Let's begin with his person. He writes in verse 11. Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth who had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.

We have here in verse 11 is simply this another satanic man. When you read another beast, another satanic man, beastly, as I said, because so driven by the power of Satan coming out of the earth. And because you have another satanic man, what you get with that is another satanic mouthpiece, if I could put it that way.

Satan has another mouth to speak through. He spoke, we read in verse 11, like a dragon. Who is the dragon? Satan. We studied that already in chapter 12, spoke like a dragon. So this man is going to be an amazing individual.

Can you hold your place here in Revelation and turn to Second Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 14, and talking about these things? It helps to remember where Satan came from and what he's able to do. Second Corinthians 1114.

He spoke with the power of Satan. Second Corinthians 1114. Paul is writing to a church that is being defiled by false prophets that have infiltrated the church after he pioneered it and left. So he is wanting to help them and free them from all of this, so he gets around to the work of Satan through people.

And in Second Corinthians 1114, he says, and no wonder for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness.

He's saying these people that are deceiving you in your church, claiming to be righteous. That's not a big thing because that's how Satan works. That is how he works in churches. They always come claiming to be righteous leaders.

That is a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing. When Jesus used that phrase, a wolf in sheep's clothing, he was basically saying, describing what a shepherd looks like when he's taking care of the sheep. And his effective teaching was this false prophets come looking like real shepherds in the church.

And why are they so influential? Because Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and so do his ministers. However, God's going to get them in the end. Verse 15, whose end will be according to their works.

I'm so glad my end is going to be according to the grace of God and Jesus Christ and the forgiveness he's granted me. And I'm going to be rewarded for the things that the Holy Spirit has done through me in this life.

And that's the farthest thing you could ever find from being dealt with, according to my works, my works are enough to damn me to hell forever. Aside from Jesus Christ, they will be judged according to their works without Christ.

Ooh, that's a scary, terrible, eternal thing. So in verse 11, when you read that he spoke like the dragon, he has sort of an angelic ability to communicate that's mesmerizing and he gets that power directly from Satan.

So what you end up with is a satanic man, a satanic mouthpiece and the ultimate persuasive religious leader, the ultimate persuasive religious leader. His function at this time in man's history is to direct the worship.

Follow this thought, because it's huge to direct the worship of all mankind, direct the worship of all mankind. So the Antichrist will conquer the world and he will be the great military and political might that runs the world globally.

Antichrist, put it this way in your mind, Antichrist is all about military and political might. The false prophet who becomes his assistant is all about religious deception. That appears to be right. Religious deception that appears to be right.

So is the ultimate persuasive religious leader in the world. You know, it is amazing to me. Here's the Antichrist with all this political war machine power and politics and all of that. And here is at his side suddenly this false prophet with all this power religiously and supernatural power.

And I realize this is not new. We tend to read this and think, whoa, there's something brand new coming that's going to happen on Earth. It's never happened before. No, no, no. This is not brand new. This is the way Satan works.

Satan's Repeated Political and Religious Strategy

Paul spoke in his writings and he said, we are not ignorant of the strategies of Satan, and that is why he was so often so victorious. We do well to know what the word of God says about these things, so we can be often victorious in our battles.

Victorious, first of all, in your mind. The battle is won ultimately in your thinking, in your heart. Let me ask you a question. When Moses came to Pharaoh and he said, let my people go. Moses was demanding that Pharaoh release all of his workforce, basically all the slaves.

Now, that is a gigantic political government issue. I want you to release all of your workforce and let them go with me and leave and never come back. Now, when Pharaoh was faced with that, which was a huge political problem, as you might imagine, did he handle it alone or did he call in some religious assistants?

He called in some religious assistants, and I even know their names, Janice and Jambres. Janice and Jambres is mentioned in Second Timothy, chapter three, verse eight. Second Timothy, chapter three, verse eight, just as a reference for you.

They're the ones that imitated the things that Moses did. So, yeah, the political leader with the religious assistant, when Balak, the king of Moab, wanted to conquer the children of Israel, he did not seek to do it himself.

He brought in a false prophet by the name of, you know, Balaam. And Balaam there helped Balak to destroy Israel. Numbers, chapter 22 through 24. So always you have this approach that the devil uses. This is not new.

And I just that's it. That's the only point I want you to see. This is not new. So that in seeing it's not new and seeing it in the Bible over and over, it just helps you all that much more to throw your arms around your mind around it and go, yes, this is true and it's going to happen just like it happened before.

The Global Scope of the End-Time Alliance

Now, just so happens that this particular combination is the most powerful. This is Satan's greatest political, religious combination that he will ever have. Revelation 13, 12, he says he exercises all the authority, the false prophet of the first beast in his presence.

What an interesting statement in his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast. Now, the difference between this and all of Satan's previous works is that it has a sweeping global aspect to it.

That's it. And that's a huge difference. This is the grand finale. So you have the satanic man who becomes a satanic mouthpiece, who is the ultimate religious leader driven by this angelic, satanic light and ability.

He is the one who will unite all the religions of the world to work together. And the amazing thing about it is that we are seeing the way for this paved already in our day. Satan is skilled in the art of conditioning.

He gets you used to one thing and then you're sort of desensitized to it and then he gets you used to something else and it is all toward the ultimate end that he wants to bring about. He likes to sail with the wind.

You might say he is the ultimate hitchhiker. He likes to go with what's already happening because he traffics in deception. So what he does is before he's going to bring about some great deception, he bring in a little, a little one, a little one here, a little one there, a little one here, a little one there.

We live at a time in man's history where there is such a thing now as national days of prayer. Did you ever stop to think about national days of prayer? On national days of prayer, all faiths stop bickering with one another to pray together for whatever the issues are that are at hand.

Now, that may seem at first glance to be a wonderful thing. Well, Jesus Christ said, there's only one way to God and I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life. And the Bible says there's one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus.

And that is the only way. And those are the only prayers God hears the prayers offered through the God, man, the savior of the world, Jesus Christ. The Bible says he does not hear the prayer of the wicked.

And that is a way of saying he does not hear the prayer of those who do not love him. And there are many false religions. So when we see a national day of prayer and all faiths stop to pray together, people on the job get together and pray.

That is simply paving the way for a one world religion. It's coming. Ecumenical movements are all around us, World Council of Churches, all of that. There's a time we live in a time in the church and this is around the world where suddenly.

Doctrinal Compromise and Unbiblical Unity

The great issues of the great doctrines of the Bible are no longer important. What is important is that we just all love each other. I think very rarely do people stop to realize that there's such a thing as a love that's unbiblical.

And an unbiblical love market is not love. So when you say toss out the doctrine, toss out the Bible, toss out all that preaching, toss out rightly dividing the word, we just all need to love each other.

It's impossible because it's an unbiblical love. It is an unbiblical love at that point, because love, according to the Bible, has the parameters of all the details of the Bible. The world is being conditioned to just get away from the Bible little by little, embrace all faiths together to pray together.

And so that the false prophet is going to take advantage of that. Think of this. This is mind boggling. He is also going to be backed and supported by what I would call post rapture, false Christianity.

Post rapture, false Christianity. These people are going to come by the multitudes to get behind him. These people are all over the world. See, when the rapture of the church occurs, there's going to be churches all around planet Earth packed out the next Sunday.

It's a scary thought, isn't it? That is a scary thought. You know why? Because those are Bible churches and Bible churches cannot be biblical churches. That's a contradiction of terms. A Bible is church cannot be a biblical church.

So when you have a Bible is church and you don't have sin taught, you don't have repentance taught, you don't have any of the big issues of salvation taught. But let's just all love each other and bandy about a few scriptures.

And have a positive day at church. That is all going to leave so many people unsaved. Sitting in church, thinking they're going to heaven because they go to church. Do you know that in Matthew chapter seven, Jesus is talking about when he comes back and he's judging the righteous and the unrighteous and the people will come before him and they will say, he said, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, all the passion.

Oh, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name and that in your name? He's going to say to them, Jesus said this. He will say in that day, I never at any time, not now, not ever knew you. It's actually sweeps all the way back into eternity past when I think about it, election and all those other issues.

You thought you knew me. I know you have never known me. The people that say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this and that and the other thing are going to be so shocked because they're going to be positive.

The reason they say, Lord, Lord, is there positive they're going to heaven? They're going to find out right then they're not. That makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. People thinking they're going to heaven to stand before the Lord, say, Lord, I did this and that and they can name it all off and they're going to find out.

No, I am not your Lord. You're not going to my heaven. Depart from me forever. So many of the churches that we have around today are cultivating Lord, Lord, people. They are greenhouses for Lord, Lord, people.

My heart absolutely agonizes and breaks for those people. And my heart is full of indignation for the shepherds, so-called the leaders that would allow God's people to remain ignorant of everything in the Bible about God and leave so many of them unsaved because it is the preaching of the gospel in its fullness that brings a person to salvation.

It generates faith in the heart. It pierces the darkness. You cannot be saved any other way so that the day after the rapture, churches all over the world are going to be filled with people that think they're going to heaven because they go to church.

So there will be a worldwide explanation of why all these other people disappeared. And then they're going to rally behind this unbelievably winsome, charismatic individual, the false prophet. They will be first in line to help him unite all faiths and have a one world religion.

Bibleless Churches and the Coming One-World Religion

Let me just say this and believe me, I'm holding back a lot because I came from where some of the greatest influences in this Bible, this church thing thing is a good word for it started. I am vehemently against it because a Bible is church is an unbiblical church and an unbiblical church is not a church.

And a man of God who does not study the word of God to the point of exhaustion every single week can never be a man of God, because without the word of God, you cannot be a man of God. So you have people leading these places that are not men of God.

They don't love the word of God. And by example, they teach the people that come there not to love the word of God either. When you're told that the door don't bring your Bible here, you should get in your car and burn rubber and never look back.

Because these are the places that are cultivating the people that are paving the way for the false prophet to make a one world religion. And they're going to love it. They're going to love it. They're going to love it so much because they're going to be offered a religion that has no need of repentance from sin.

They're going to love it so much that the worldwide multitudes will get behind this individual and they will have a devotion that is so great it will be worth not dying for. It will be worth killing for.

Their devotion to the false prophet and says in Revelation 13, 12, they will worship the beast. Their devotion to the Antichrist will be so great it will be worth killing for. Think about that. The scribes and the Pharisees and the religious leaders at the time of Jesus Christ rallied the people in the crowd when he was standing before Pilate to shout crucify him, crucify him, crucify him, kill him, kill him, kill him.

They were so devoted their devotion was worth killing for. You look in the book of Acts and you see right away the same kind of devotion. They kill Stephen and then they go on killing and trying to kill Paul through the whole book.

It's a devotion worth killing for. All of those examples are just a foretaste of what's going to happen when the end, when the false prophet leads the world in this united religion to worship the Antichrist.

This person, he's going to be an amazing individual, the greatest deceiving religious leader the world has ever known. That's his person. Let's go to his power. He has a spellbinding ability to cause people to worship the Antichrist.

The False Prophet's Power and Religious Persuasion

You see that in 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, which is the Antichrist, whose deadly wound was healed.

So at the right moment, he will turn all faith to the Antichrist. Have you ever heard that explanation of paths to God as a wheel with spokes in it? If you if you've been involved in Eastern religion and your quest for God at all, you hear it all the time.

It's it's presented to you like this. There are many paths to God. It's like a wheel on a bicycle. If you look at the wheel on a bicycle, it has many spokes. Did you ever notice they all lead to the center, to the hub?

Well, the hub is like God and the spokes are like paths. And just as all spokes on a wheel, the wheel round lead to the hub at the center, all paths the world round lead to God. And then you say in response, then what is the determining criteria to get to the hub by your spoke?

Oh, everybody knows that sincerity. Sincerity, my brain short circuits when I hear that he's going to say all paths lead to God. That's why we have national days of prayer. We've been doing this for years and now it's time to formally unite and they're going to do it.

He's going to say, you know, we've all been sort of uniting already and we've had different names for our God. But it's the same God in the end. And it's time we'd stop calling him all the different names.

And since we're uniting, it's time we call him by just one name. So let's unite around his name, because you see, the name is a huge issue here. Let's drop all the labels and take the Antichrist label and whatever his name is, it's woven into the economy, the buying and selling.

It's right here. Look at verse 16 and 17. He causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on their right hand or their foreheads. And then no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of the name, the mark, the name or combine it, the number of the name.

So at the center of everything in the end is the name. So the whole world worships this individual drop all the other names for God. He's our God. His name is everything. And then it's woven into how you buy and sell things.

The Mark, Technology, and Economic Control

And now we come to the part of revelation that is the most curious to so many people. Everybody loves to talk about the mark of the beast. This would get anybody's attention. What's going to happen is for a while, first three and a half years of the last seven years on earth, the false prophet will be cultivating the one world religion.

And then the Antichrist will be solving the problems of the world, being the most winsome, wonderful, powerful, political, military, mighty leader. And then suddenly, right in the middle, in the last three and a half years, they're going to unite and merge.

They will merge into the worship of the Antichrist. It's all going to come together right there. So this man with this ability to bring men to worship the Antichrist, he's going to have signs and wonders to back him up.

Look at verse 13. He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. Does that sound familiar to you? That was Elijah's trademark in the Old Testament.

It's one of God's trademarks in the Old Testament. If, in fact, Elijah, the prophet, is one of the two witnesses, we already read they're going to be calling down fire from heaven. They have power to do that, the two witnesses.

Then this man is going to be able to mimic what they do. Satan is a mimic. And so he will have the ability to do great signs and call down fire from heaven to convince people. Then he's going to be able to convince men on earth to worship an idol of the Antichrist.

So he drives them out from the edges, ever closer and closer and closer to the center till they worship the Antichrist. And then one step further, he drives them to worship an idol. Verse 14, 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 of the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived.

John Phillips had some great words to say here. He said the dynamic appeal of the false prophet will lie in his skill in combining political expediency with religious passion. His arguments will be subtle, convincing, appealing.

His oratory will be hypnotic. He will be able to move the masses to tears or whip them into a frenzy. He will control the communication media of the world and will skillfully organize mass publicity to promote his ends.

He will manage the truth with guile beyond words, bending it, twisting it, distorting it. He will mold world thought. And shape human opinion like so much potter's clay, end quote, that's great insight, mold world thought.

We already see that around us all the time through the technology we have today. So his power and his person, let's look at his program, his program involves this idolatrous image of the Antichrist. Verse 15, this is so heavy.

He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast and the image of the beast that he should both notice, speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. So all those who turn to Jesus Christ at this point in time will be hunted and killed when this time comes.

That he is granted power, verse 15, 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. This is the time, Jesus said, when you see this happen, start running if you're a believer at this time.

The Abomination of Desolation and Persecution

In Daniel 11, 31. Daniel writes and forces will be mustered by him, they shall defile the sanctuary fortress, then they shall take away the daily sacrifice and place there the abomination of desolation.

And then Daniel 11, 32, those who do wickedly against the covenant, he shall corrupt with flattery. I love this statement, but the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.

It will be the worst of times and the best of times, the worst manifestation of Satan's power and the greatest manifestation of God's turn to Matthew 24 in your Bible. Matthew 24, 15. Jesus was preaching on this.

He's also talking about his the time of his second coming and how you will know it's very close. Matthew 24, 15. He said, therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation, which is the temple in Israel.

On the Temple Mount rebuilt. Inside the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant would be, if they found it. That will be taken out and into the Holy of Holies will be put this idol. Of the Antichrist, it will be given the power to have breath, to come to life and to speak and then to have the power to aid in hunting down and killing Christians from that point, all the refuse to worship him and the Antichrist, that he is an idol of that will be right in the Jews temple in Jerusalem.

That's the abomination of desolation. So Jesus said, when you see verse 15 of Matthew 24, the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel, the prophet standing in the holy place, whoever reads, let him understand if you're out at that time and you see it happen, understand what's going on and then do this for 16.

Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. What are those that are pregnant with and those nursing babies in those days? Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath, for then there will be great tribulation such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time.

No, nor ever shall be. And unless it's going to be so bad, unless those days were shortened, verse 22, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened for the sake of God's plan, those days will be shortened.

Why? Because the Antichrist will seek to hunt down and kill every believing Israelite when they reject him, setting himself up in their temple to hunt down and kill every believing Israelite. Why? Because the ones that are believing that live are going to go into the thousand year reign of Christ on the earth.

And that will be his kingdom with Israel. He will sit on the throne of David. He will fulfill all the prophecies he gave to them throughout the Old Testament. That will happen. That must happen. Satan's way of trying to stop it would be to kill them all.

Unless these days were shortened, they'd all be killed and it wouldn't work. So God steps in, he shortens the time and his plan is carried out right on time in his way. So that's what Jesus is referring to there.

Speculation About the Image and Human Cloning

Now, before we move on to quickly talk about the mark of the beast in Revelation, back in chapter 13, what do you think that idol is going to be like? In the temple that they set up, who is an idol in the image of the Antichrist, he's given the power to breathe.

Then he has the ability to speak, then he has the ability to get up and cause people to be hunted down and killed. What kind of an image do you get in your mind? Let me ask you a question. Does a robot breathe?

No. Does your typical idol breathe? No. Thought occurred to me yesterday. OK, we may be dealing with a human clone here, heavy, heavy, so that the false prophet and the Antichrist, they're going to have access to all of the highest forms of technology and cloning is not new.

Today, I went to an Internet site called. Human cloning dot org, the British Medical Association, here's just one little morsel I brought for you, the British Medical Association said was quoted as saying public hostility to the human reproductive cloning may be based on an illogical and transient fear of a new technology.

Those are the people that are for cloning human beings. Very possible that what you get in the Holy of Holies is a clone of the Antichrist. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? That would not have made any sense until now.

Look, a revelation is becoming clearer and clearer as days go by. It's got to the mark of the Antichrist. In verse 16, he causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on their right hand or their foreheads.

They know when they buy or sell, except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Do you realize that what happens is there is a rollover from just deception to worshiping the Antichrist to another motivation which will be the chief motivation?

The chief motivation to worship the Antichrist is going to become survival of life. You cannot buy and sell and live if you don't take his mark. Survival of life. Take his mark and worship him or die.

And you will be hunted down very quickly. You're being watched already driving on the freeway. In England, if you're speeding on the freeway, nobody pulls you over. You just get it in the mail, a letter with your ticket and your picture, and you can't get away.

And it's all done by cameras. When people lose their dog these days, they just track them down by the chip that's been injected into their ear or some part of their body. There's all the information about them.

I was in another country not long ago, and I put my debit card into the ATM machine in the morning. And the machine said to me, good morning, Dan Bond, like in German, Germany, Guten Morgen, Dan Bond.

It's like, how are you? Man, you don't know me. How do you know me? And if you know so much about me, it's like, then can I help you? It said, can I do anything else for you? I thought, yeah, cappuccino would be great.

But I walked away thinking, how does it know me? Because everything about you is on that little strip on the back of the card, everything about you. It's so thin, it's actually just almost spray painted on there, for lack of a better phrase.

And this is a time period in the world where everybody's into being inked, right? Tattoos all over, everywhere. And nobody's going to have a problem with one more, especially if it's like the ultimate cool tattoo.

Hey, did you get George yet? Mark of the Beast? Check it out. This is beyond Barbour on my bicep, man. Don't you love how everybody's so original with their tattoos? Don't get me going on that. So it's nothing to have something injected into you.

The way it can be scanned, you know, they scan your stuff at the market. It's nothing. The technology is there to inject you with something like a barcode, the information, the strip on the back of your debit card, your credit card, and track you from 24 ,000 miles in space, anywhere on earth, at any second.

That's nothing. That technology is already there. Bibleless churches are already here. Everything is in place for the Antichrist, for the false prophet, the technology for the mark. And if they want to scan you to buy and sell, they can do it from 24 ,000 miles an hour space.

So that's all there. You see, the thing that is amazing to me is that as we live and walk with God, we're seeing our Bibles become more and more clear, not more and more fuzzy. This is all true. And God is so loving.

He's put it all down in such detail. The ultimate motivation to take the mark of the Antichrist is going to be survival, because you will not be able to buy or sell. It's going to then ultimately be fear.