Letters to the Churches Part 12

Okay, we are going to get started on our study. Yeah, we're studying today. And let's see here. I'll check. First thing I need to check to see if Bruce Burns is in the list. Okay, if Bruce Burns is here, it's like, oh run away, run away.

Okay, I don't see him presently. Okay, all right. Which means we're gonna... You have to assess the situation. Am I going to have a normal Bible study? Or are we doing... Or is there a good chance that we're doing one of those topic of the moment kind of studies?

We are flexible either way. I actually do not loathe the second type at all. I do find that they are helpful for people. Let's pray and we will get started. Oh holy and most merciful God, you have taught us the way of your commandments.

So we implore you to pour out your grace, your Holy Spirit into our hearts. Cause it to bear fruit in us, being ever mindful of your mercies and your laws. That we may also always be directed to your will and daily increase in love toward you and one another.

Enable us through your spirit to resist all evil and to live godly lives. Help us to follow the example of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to walk in his steps until we shall possess the kingdom that has been prepared for us in heaven through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Okay, give me one second here. All right, let's check questions. So let's see here. Goodwin, let's see, praying for Tori. Hi everyone, please would you pray for my daughter Tori who is driving solo across country to Michigan today?

It's her first major highway solo trip. Well, let's pray for her now. Let's not talk about it in theory. Let's put this into practice. Lord Jesus, we pray for Tori. We ask that as she is traveling across the country in a road trip that you would protect her.

The world that we live in is not a safe world and so we ask that your holy angels will be with her. We pray that you would give her wisdom and guidance as she travels and that you would help her to arrive safely at her destination in Michigan.

All this we ask in Jesus name, amen. All right, thanks pastor regarding Christ as the rock. It really helped me regarding Matthew 16. Yeah, I know, it does have implications regarding Matthew 16. So, you know, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.

And what was the rock? It was Peter's confession. Who is the rock? Christ. Okay, and if you think that anybody else is the rock, then you have stones in your head. Yeah, a little biblical humor that's not quite up to snuff, but you get the idea here.

Revelation as a Book for the Whole Church Age

Okay, so what we're gonna do today, we're gonna continue with our study of the book of Revelation. And I think if I do this properly, today we will finally, once and for all, reveal what is the mark of the beast.

It's not what you think. So is it RFID? Let me kind of start off, you know, we're not quite to that section yet in Revelation 13, but let me ask you this question. So, Christians in China, are they protected by the Chinese government?

No, they're not. Okay, what do they have to do? They have to hide that they are marked in the name of God. They have to conceal their faith. They have to blend in. If you are an atheist, party member, in good standing, does the Chinese government protect you?

Yeah. Okay, it does. Okay, let's travel to another part of the world, shall we? Saudi Arabia. Does the Saudi government exist to protect Christians? Nope. What do Christians have to do there? Kind of blend in.

Very, very discreet. So, in other words, let me ask this question, do Christians in China and in Saudi Arabia, and we'll throw in Pakistan and other places, do they have the right to buy and sell? Not exactly.

They don't. As long as they keep their faith under wraps, are not caught engaging in evangelism, don't even be caught with a Bible. You don't want the Gideon Society sending you a big box saying, Merry Christmas, right?

I said that for Don's sake. So, I would say that the Gideons, probably, if they're going to be sending Bibles to either countries of that nature, that things have to be done very... Okay, and they have to be discreet.

Yeah, they have to be discreet. So, all of that being said, you can already kind of see the direction that we're heading to. And we'll back up a little bit in the text when we get to the Mark of the Beast and consider the fact that before the Mark of the Beast is mentioned, the Christians are sealed.

They're sealed, alright? And I'm not talking... Okay, yeah, that's one of my favorite jokes in one of those claymation things. Oh, look, Christmas seals. And those of you who have no idea what that's even a reference to, I feel bad for you because you're too young.

I feel so bad for myself that I'm old enough to know what a Christmas seal is. Anyway, do they still have Christmas seals? Do they even exist anymore? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So, what... So, here's what we'll do.

We'll engage in the hermeneutical spiral, make sure we grab our context and consider some things here. And then we'll look at how this is all kind of playing out then. So, because when you understand that this is a book that was not written for the last generation of Christians, this was a book written for all generations of Christians from Christ's ascension to his return.

And the theme, again, is patient endurance. That's the theme. Because have you ever noticed that it would really be nice if after you were baptized, you know, that the angels showed up and said, it's time for you to go to heaven.

And you were able to hug your loved ones and say goodbye to them. And we'll see you shortly as soon as you're baptized and you confess. You'll note that being a Christian here, it feels like, God, where have you gone?

And why do all these people hate me? You know, that it's a very, very scary proposition because we walk by faith and not by sight. And so, this is a book that frames, again, this concept of patient endurance.

And oh, and by the way, we are in terrible warfare with this demented, multi-headed dragon who really wants to destroy the church. And Christ has made it clear that when it comes to, if the dragon gets the upper hand, if the beast rises and you're going to lose your life, don't put up a fight.

That's, you know, it's a privilege to be a martyr. It's a weird way of thinking. We overcome evil with good. And the beast is such a volatile system, such a volatile thing. And its whole purpose is for the, the reason it exists, it's not about snuffing out human freedom.

The whole reason why the beast exists is for the purpose of destroying the church and quieting the gospel, slowing the spread of the good news of Christ. It is not a mistake, then, that all the tyrannical systems that we can point to in memory and in existence presently, it seems like the one thing they all have in common is their supreme hatred of Christianity.

But the thing is, is that those same impulses exist today in all of the nations of the world. And here in the United States, you know, being, you know, a citizen of the States, you can point to things where you sit there and go, it really does seem like there are political forces that have it out for Christians.

That if they had their druthers, if they had, like, unlimited power, no ability to check them, that they would really wreak a lot of havoc in the church. And pieces of it that kind of show you the, you know, the nature of it, and that it is alive and well.

You know, I think back to the Obama administration when, you know, that couple refused to bake a cake for a gay couple that wanted, you know, that was going to have a wedding. Because weddings for homosexuals was not a thing until the Obama administration.

And now it's become the new orthodoxy. And anybody who opposes it is anathema. And you'll note that there are some religious systems and denominations that are pseudo-christian that assure us that this is what God would want, and are teaching us to obey the state in its desire to squash people who believe the scriptures, and cannot in good conscience endorse and condone and bless sin.

So we sit there and go, so it's alive and well here, now. Yeah. I think the Roman Catholic Church would sooner shut down a lot of their hospitals than have to fund abortion, or even provide abortions.

Yeah. So, you know, and I'm really not up on the latest news. I keep hearing rumblings that the present Pope is considering resigning. Is that true? Frankie the Hippie Pope's going to resign. Okay. All right.

So, all that being said, so consider then again the two mega weapons of the beast. And these rise up, and we noted last week as we were looking at Daniel chapter 7, that there was a fourth beast that rose up.

All right. And this is where you have to consider the prototypes here. So there were these four beasts that rise up, and the fourth beast was so ominous that Daniel couldn't even describe it. He only described it as having teeth of iron.

All right. And so it has teeth of iron, and many scholars will say that it has its initial, and you have to say it this way, it has its initial fulfillment in the Roman Empire because that is the empire where Christ is born under.

Christ is born under the reign not of Caligula, he's born under the reign of Caesar Augustus. That is the like high water mark of the Roman Empire, even greater than Julius Caesar. Augustus, you know, he had a very long reign, and, you know, I pointed out in my Christmas Eve sermon, Augustus, you know, is referring to the fact that he's the great one.

He's the great one, and he was considered a living God on earth. So as we consider that, you know, so Christ then, so the Roman Empire becomes the prototype, if you would then, of the beast. Not the ultimate fulfillment of it, but the idea then is that you look at how Rome then, as Christianity gets up and running, Christianity is immediately made illegal.

Christians are persecuted, martyred, they are driven underground, and the thing is that it is violent against Christianity, and there are times when the violence against Christianity hits like a fever pitch, you know, so that, you know, you have books like Fox's Book of Martyrs, or if you have ever read Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, let's just say that the Romans at certain times became quite ingenious in the tortures that they would invent for Christians.

I remind people that Nero, you know, he liked to have garden parties at night, and this was before electricity, and so he came up with a great way of illuminating his nighttime, summertime garden parties.

He would cover Christians in pitch, put them up on a pole, and light them on fire, you know, and so that Christians then could fulfill what Christ said, you are the light of the world. That's kind of a sick way of thinking about it, but you'll note then that that becomes the prototype, and that in the beast that we see rising up out of the sea then, that it has all the different elements of all the different governmental systems that even preceded the Roman Empire.

So, you know, in the Roman Empire, before the Roman Empire, you have the rise of true democracy in the form that we saw in Greece. Before that, you had the Persian Empire, and then Babylon, and so you see these in the prototypes in Daniel chapter 7, but this thing that comes up, it's like got all of them smashed together.

It doesn't matter what your particular flavor of governmental system that you prefer is. Do you prefer a democratic monarchy, you know, like we see in the in the United Kingdom? Do you prefer a republic like the United States?

Or are you more akin to some kind of a religious theocracy? Or do you prefer some kind of a totalitarian state? It doesn't matter. The beast can adapt to all of them. That's the point. And the thing is, is that the beast is active already in every nation, every government that exists on planet Earth.

This is not merely talking about some kind of penultimate or ultimate expression here. This is calling for patience in our time now. So again, consider this thing. So I saw a beast rising out of the sea, ten horns, seven heads, ten diadems on its horns, and blasphemous names on its head.

So this is not talking about the dragon. This is talking about the beast. So this is a multi-headed beast, and it has blasphemous names on its head. What does it mean to blaspheme? To blaspheme is to kind of mock God.

Mock God in his authority. Mock God in his person, his glory, even his word. And so you'll note that this exists to this day. I always find it quite fascinating that because of all the different streams that I kind of collected into one particular app for kind of keeping an eye on what's going on in the religious world around the world, always around Christmas time, all the blasphemers come out in spades.

And so I was cracking up, but only cracking up because I've seen it so many times, and it's so predictable, that major newspapers in the States and in the UK and in Australia ran op-ed pieces telling people that Jesus was born to a multi-ethnic family, and that he was economically repressed, and that his birth is the thing that signals the end of patriarchy and stuff like this.

And I read some of these articles and going, ah, the blasphemies of the beast are at work. And all of this is in the form of political commentary. But that's really what we're looking at here. So when we read stories like this and you sit there and go, that's just utter blasphemy.

Right! Okay, that's how the beast works. Everything is designed to undermine, everything is designed to diminish the authority of God and his word. And so, you know, when I was growing up, actually after I'd grown up and I was in the university, I mean, that was when the Jesus Seminar was up and running.

And that thing made headlines, top headlines. Time magazine, Newsweek. Does anyone read, is Newsweek still a thing? Yes. Okay, just checking because, you know, so much has changed because of the digital world.

You have to check to see if certain publications are still a thing. But the idea then is that it's as if the political commentators in the world were celebrating the fact that, ah, we could finally say now with certainty, because Jesus' seminar, that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead.

He didn't really cleanse the lepers. He didn't really give sight to the blind. And people take solace in this. In the generation before that, you had what was called the Theothonatos movement. You think, what?

The Theothonatos movement. If you haven't heard about this thing, this was a big thing in the early 60s. And the Theothonatos movement ran through Christianity and gave the world solace. And Theothonatos means God is dead.

And one of the arch enemies of Christianity, he was all the rage and got all the press and media at the time. A philosopher by the name of J .J. Althyser. J .J. Althyser is from Emory University. It was one of those things that even Billy Graham at the time made comments about the Theothonatos movement and whether or not this was something worth latching on to.

In the early part of the 2000s, in the early and mid part of the 2000s, you had the rise of the emergent church, which was the first visible form of Christianity, I'm putting that in air quotes, that was embracing post-modernity and the deconstructionist philosophies of people who for real have their philosophical heritage from Nazis.

Very strange stuff. And what were they always doing? Attacking, attacking, attacking, attacking the Word of God. You had the rise of women like Nadia Bowles Webber. People looking at her going, well she's a pastor, she's a pastor.

And you'll note that all these things, all of these expressions, what did they end up doing? They erode biblical Christianity and as a result of eroding biblical Christianity as an institution, the country itself or whatever countries are impacted by this stuff, they slip closer and closer and closer to outright leftist ideology and what's leading the way is these false expressions of Christianity.

It's a very fascinating thing. So when you consider that, you sit there and go, wait we're not looking for something to come, we should be looking around us and figuring out what's here. And the thing, it's always been here.

That's the thing. When you recognize that this has always been here from the time of Christ's ascension, then you sit there and go, well what's my marching orders in the midst of being surrounded like this?

Because this thing could go hostile really bad and kill a bunch of people really quickly. Well yeah, what's your job? Preach Christ and if it decides it's going to kill you, yield yourself to it. Because you are not the equal of the beast.

I'm not the equal of the beast. The only one who is the superior of the beast, who can bring the beast to nothing, is Christ. And so we recognize that it has a function. So I saw the beast, it was like a leopard, feet like a bear's, its mouth was a lion's.

You'll note that this is a reverse order from Daniel chapter 7 of the beast that we saw. And to it the dragon gave his authority and his throne and his great authority. And one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.

Now I would note that there are some in the church fathers who see this mortal wound as somehow an allusion back to the fact that Christ crushed the head of the serpent. And so I think there's a pious way of looking at this.

And then the commentators that I read, if you want to do more study on this yourself, in fact I think we have a copy of the book, give me one second here, I'm gonna head over to the Kongsvinger library, it's like 10 feet away, I'll be right back.

There's a Christmas tree in the way. So if you're interested in reading a lay-level commentary in the book of Revelation that picks up on these same themes, this is the book, it's called Concordia Popular Commentary, Revelation by Louis Brighton, well worth the read.

And it'll just save you all the pain of having to read Greek words. So if Greek is one of those foreign languages to you and you don't know Koine, and the Koine of Revelation is wild, it's just grammatically bizarre, but super easy to translate.

It's like one of those impressionist paintings, you know, is it broad strokes, quick, you know, terse say. But again, Concordia Popular Commentary, if you want to read more on this, I think add this to your library, it would be well worth it to kind of help in that regard.

And then those of you here at Kongsvinger, this is in our library, you can check it out. In fact, I'll pass it around, check it out. Okay, so moving on, one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound.

Now this, you'll note then that, you know, has Stalin died? Yeah, and despite the fact that they've done a really good job of preserving, using really weird methods, the body of Lenin, he's still not breathing, right?

But you'll note that communism is on the rise again, right? Yeah, it's like, and in bad places too, like, you know, Minnesota, you know, it's a bad place. So communism is on the rise again. And so you'll note here that just when you think that we've gotten rid of, you know, one of the heads of the beast, don't worry, it'll come back to life.

And so you'll note that the dragon has made the beast quite resilient. It's a self-healing network. And it doesn't matter what your governmental system is, it's just that when we see the rise of Bolshevik communism, that thing is doctrinally dead set against Christianity and will not allow it to exist out in the open.

Yeah, so if you're thinking here, well, we got rid of Hitler, we got rid of Stalin, we got rid of, Reagan beat the communists. Don't worry, as a historian, I would say, I would say I dabble in history.

I have a minor in history from Concordia. So as somebody who dabbles in history, I would remind people that there was a rat line set up after World War II. And in the Roman Catholic Church participated in it, we have proof of that, where the some of the top Nazi officers of Hitler's regime, they were able to, they were helped to escape Germany and they fled to Argentina.

Is it any wonder that Argentina became an overtly fascist nation, you know, for a while. It was openly fascist for a while. And those seeds that were planted there have spread to the Universities of America and other places like that.

So you ever sit there and go, why is it that Millennials are eating this stuff up and they're so leftist in their political orientation? Because the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, they took high teaching positions in universities around Western civilization and they've replanted those seeds and now the weeds have popped up and they're ready to bear fruit.

So that's the reason. So I said, I thought we killed this thing. No, you can't. They're not as equal to the beast, man. All right, so they worshiped the dragon. So out of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound.

This mortal wound was healed. The whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. Way to go, beast! Yeah, beast! You know, you just see people rooting for the beast like they root for a football team.

All right, and so they worshiped the dragon for he had given his authority to the beast and they worshiped the beast saying, who is like the beast? Who can fight against it? And if you say, I can, those are famous last words.

You know, only to be matched by here, hold my beer. Okay, so they're just really foolish words to say. All right, so then the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words. It was allowed to exercise authority.

How long? 42 months. That's the same as the three and a half years. Time, time, and half a time. It's the same amount of time. So this, and by the way, the beast has existed since the Roman Empire. That was the first iteration of it.

Now there's multiple iterations of the beast. They're all interconnected. It's multi-headed, all under the control and the schemes and the dominion of the dragon created for the purpose of silencing and destroying the church.

That's its mission. Everybody then has to be subjugated under it because that's the only way that you can have any hope of success of putting down the Gospels, take everybody's freedom away, require everybody to worship the beast.

Anybody who is not in total doctrinal submission to the beast, they don't have a right to exist. The beast is not going to protect them. The beast is going to kill them, right? That's the point. So it was given a mouth to uttering haughty, blasphemous words.

It was allowed to exercise authority. It opens its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming His name, His dwelling, that is those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints to conquer them and authority was given it over every tribe, people, language, and nation.

And all who dwell on the earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life, of the life of the Lamb who was slain, if anyone has an ear, let him hear.

We heard these words in those letters that Jesus had written to the different churches. So anyone, listen, pay attention to this stuff. This is, this is, everything is under control. Jesus understands, yeah, yep, you, you might die.

He who has an ear to hear, let him hear. None is like the beast. You can't wage war against this thing. You're not the match of the devil, Christ is. So if anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes.

If anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword he must be slain. Are there Christians being martyred today? Yep. Today. I'm not sure how that happened. Hold on a second here. That's what I wanted to hear.

Yeah, is that, is this Matt? There we go. All right, okay. There we go. All right, so if anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes. All right, so here's the call for endurance and faith of the saints.

But I was supposed to be living my best life now. No, you're not. No, you're not. Okay. But, but, but, but, but, don't worry, man. Christ is in control. And you're gonna note that this then falls under what we would call the permissive will of God.

This is how it is to be so now. And then you'll note this becomes another, another reason why Christ is such a rock of offense. Because there are people who really believe what's the point of having a Savior if believing in Jesus doesn't result in me having perfect health, great wealth, and a life of influence, affluence, and power.

Problem is, is that those are all the doctrines of the beast. Those are all the doctrines of the dragon. All right. Christ, Christ doesn't say you can have your best life now. He says this calls for patient endurance.

If you're gonna die, you're gonna die. Nope. All right. Yo, I know. Yeah. And the thing is, the fact that they would have that kind of fear about him knows that they recognize that they're doing wrong.

And they're believing wrong, too. Just saying, you know. Why do the nation's rage and the people's plot in vain against God's Holy One? You know. Why? So we continue. Now here's beast number two. This one we're gonna have to note here.

That the first iteration of beast number two, in chapter 13, this is the second beast. And then chapter 16, it becomes the false prophet. And then in chapter 19, this becomes the the whore of Babylon.

So it's the same thing depicted three different ways. All right. So it's the whore of Babylon. It's the false prophet. So the second beast is false religion that outwardly mimics, intentionally, all of the trappings that would make you think that it is of Christ.

But it speaks with the voice of the devil, with the dragon. So remember the devil masquerades as an angel of light. His agents come to us as wolves in sheep's clothing. And so here's where we've got to pay attention to, and this is it's in this context, that the 666 shows up.

All right. So then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. Little lambies go baa. They don't go brrr. Okay. So just keep that in mind. All right.

That's the first sign that something's wrong. Okay. If you have a fire-breathing sheep, that's a bad thing. Okay. So note this. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed.

So you're going to note then that these false expressions of Christianity, they come to us dressed up like a sheep, but inwardly we got the voice of the dragon. Pay attention to the words. Its purpose is to get you to worship the first beast.

Now you'll note then that biblical Christianity must be persecuted because it refuses to recognize any human state as the ultimate authority over humans. Christ is the King of Kings and he is the Lord of Lords.

In all of the atheists and I would even argue of even religious expressions of the beast, because I think that Sharia law is a religious expression of the beast, there is no higher authority than the government.

In Sharia, Allah is the highest authority, but the Sharia government set up is all under the auspices and the command of Allah. And so you'll note that in Sharia, that's a theocratic expression of the beast and there is no distinction between church and state.

There's no distinction. The state and the church, and I'm using church in the way we would understand it as Christians here. You know, talking about a religious institution though in that case, there is no separation.

They are one and the same. They embroiled together. They are meshed, intermingled in such a way that there's no way to do it. And so you'll note then that all of these things, the designations, get you to worship the beast.

And by worshiping the beast by proxy, because the dragon is the one animating the beast, you're worshiping the dragon. And Christians have this really, really bad habit of like reigning on people's parades and saying to sovereigns, you are not the ultimate sovereign.

And as a result of it, Christians have this really bad habit of being killed for reminding earthly rulers that they are under a ruler. That they are not the ultimate authority. Don, that's a good question.

So the question is, would I consider that also be to be the issue with like Western European nations where people are required to pay taxes and they go to the state-run Lutheran churches. I do see that as kind of a similar issue.

And in our day, how would you describe state-run Lutheran churches in Germany and in Sweden and the Netherlands and places like that? Well, not in the Netherlands, but Sweden, Norway, and other places.

Are they bastions of confessional biblical orthodoxy? No, they're not. They are cesspools of ultra-left political philosophy. And then you think of the Holy Roman Empire, right? And we're gonna put holy in air quotes.

There were, like you pointed out, there were torture chambers set up to accommodate Protestant guests. So it's a good way to put it. Yeah, so pointing out that the priests under that thing, that they had official governmental roles and could determine somebody's ability to immigrate.

That's huge. That's crazy. I can honestly tell you that as a pastor, I can't see in the scripture that part of my job as the pastor of a Kungs of Inger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, don't you know, that part of my responsibility is to be a governmental agent determining who is worthy or not worthy, qualified or not qualified, to cross the border into North Dakota.

Okay, that is a total confusion of the right and the left-hand kingdom. And then you'll note then that these false expressions of Christianity, which are really the whole point of the second beast, is that what it ends up doing is putting God behind the beast rather than the devil.

And people say, well, my pastor says abortion's okay. My pastor says that God wants me to give up my white privilege and wants me to get woke. Okay, that's weird. And so you'll note then that when the church deviates from its mission, and rather than hearing the voice of Christ, you are instead hearing the voice of the dragon, even though your pastor says he's a Christian, there's a cross in the building that they haven't voted to get rid of yet.

You know, give it time. But you get the idea that, and so great examples of this. In our time, I would look at the apostasy of the Episcopal Church. Catherine Jeffords Shorey, this is a woman who absolutely, openly anathematized the idea of individual salvation, says it was from the devil.

And in her leftist agenda, it's just paved the way perfectly for Episcopalians around the world to unite behind whatever it is that's coming down the leftist track currently. And then same thing then with the ELCA.

I mean, there's folks here who can remember the formation of the ELCA. And Congs of Inger Lutheran Church jumped ship. It's not in the ELCA because they can see where that was going to go. You know, it's absolutely terrifying.

There's stories that, they're not stories, they're histories, you know, not too far from here of an ELCA pastor in a rural congregation who had a homosexual affair with one of the wives of one of the couples that was attending the church, busted that marriage up and she's still in the pulpit.

And that's not too far from here. You're sitting there going, what good is that church? Whose voice is being heard in that congregation? Christ's or the Dragon's? It doesn't matter if she wears a clerical collar, wears vestments, or if they have an altar, right?

It doesn't matter. The trappings don't determine who's in charge. What determines who's in charge is whose voice do you hear? Christ's or the Dragon's, right? So, and you'll note then that all of these false religions end up steering you in a really bad way, you know, politically, where they make it appear like, well, the thing God wants me to do is obey and worship the beast.

Okay, now it performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of the people. Now, we've got to pay attention. This beast then has multiple manifestations also, and I would argue that the NAR is an expression of the beast.

And I would note, you careful political observers out there, the NAR had its hooks in Trump the whole time. His great political, sorry, religious advisor was who? Paula Wyatt, all right? And who was on his A-list of religious leaders to come and be allowed to visit the White House, as well as, you know, had positions of prominence when, like, the embassy moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

Ken Copeland, Jesse Duplantis, you know, wingnuts and wackerdoodles galore, all right? So, I would note that I always watched with cringe-worthy awe, you know, as I watched Trump being advised and prayed over by his religious leaders.

And I thought, I wouldn't let those people touch me, even if they were wearing his bestest suits, okay? And I was suited up in three or four of them because I'd be afraid that, you know, fire would fall from heaven and smote them.

I like that word, smote. I probably misused it. Anyway, I don't think I properly used that in a sentence. Anyway, anyway, so God would do some good holy fire smiting, but that's coming in the end. But keep in mind, you know, the Trump, you know, the hooks of the second beast were into him deep.

Whether you want to acknowledge that or not, that's just a fact. And so, yeah, I can't say that what's coming down the track is going to be any better. Anyway, it's in the religious sense, it's just all a mess.

Yeah, he does, he does. Patience and endurance, Michael. Patience and endurance. It was God help us, God help us, all right? And so, you'll note that the dragon then has given power to this other beast, so that at some point, it's even able to perform great signs.

And the one that's mentioned here is the ability to call down fire from heaven. That was a miracle that Elijah, that was performed by God with Elijah. And so, you know, even Christ warns us in Matthew 24 that as we get closer to the actual end, that the false Christ and false prophets that would arise would be able to perform magos, great signs and wonders.

So keep in mind, a sign or a wonder is not proof of the truth or veracity or God's blessing on any particular teacher or movement outside of the biblical era, all right? Because always and again, signs and wonders are for the purpose of validating somebody's ministry or message.

Now, I'll give you one that a lot of people don't think of in these terms, but early on in the days of fighting for the faith, I found that I received some of the strongest resistance to fighting for the faith when I first got started.