Bible Guys Classics: Revelation - End Times Part 2

Hey, Jeff, what I left the mark left the beast?

That was shameless. Today we're going to be covering the

mark of the beast.

Okay, he's Chriss and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible Guides.

H I wonder if any other preacher out there introduces

the mark of the Beast in that fashion?

Probably not, Probably not.

It just it happens. I didn't even know what you

were going to do in that moment.

I know, I know, you just hit me. You never

do no, we never do no, we don't. We just

we go off the seat, you know, fly by the

seat of our pants.

So hey, uh, and our listeners can tell.

For sure, they can for sure. So uh.

Desiree has given us a show sheet and this segment

for today.

She's asking the question. She said, we switched things up last.

Time, so now we're back to normal. So Jeff, here's

the question. What made Jeff happy this week?

Oh wow? So last week they asked what did Chris?

What makes Chris?

And that made me happy?

Well, I was gonna say the answer was the fact

that they asked you.

Yes, because Chris is not always angry conjurary to popular belief.

So this week, man a life. We I grilled one

of the best Rabbi steaks I've had in five years.

Yeah, well, that's what definitely make you happy. It was

wonderful because those who don't know you, you are a g master.

Of grilling man and so U and I did it

over some hardwood, so it was smoky, and I had

some I had black pepper, kosher salt, and granulated garlic

on it. That was it, and man, alive, it was

just perfect. It was charrege just right when you get

a rib by right, you know, it's so good. So

we had that and some potato salad and some really

really good baked beans and it was just one of

those perfect little meals that you know. We had the

family gathered around and it was great. Yeah.

Yeah, kids, your kids, when they grew up and all

move out of the house, they're going to realize that,

you know, that's a pretty good privilege to have dad

say here you go, I made this for you.

Yeah. Yeah, because you know, two of my sons are

out of the house now, and every time they do

come back to visit, it's like, hey, Dad, fire up

the grill, right, Yeah, it's they put in their orders

before they arrive. They do.

That's great.

Yeah, my son would be like, hey, Dad, when are

we going to have that salmon again? Or whatever?

So that's really funny.

So yeah, that made me happy. It was fun. Anytime

you can grill, it's a good good day.

Well good, I'm glad it made you happy.

Yeah. So, hey, we are in the now into the

people in the events, right, and again we're not doing

a ton of order, and we're certainly not going verse

by verse through the Book of Revelation. We're going big

idea by big eyed throughout what the Bible teaching on

the prophetic things, particularly with regard to the New Testament teachings.

But here we are. We just finished up with talking

about the woman and the dragon and the baby, the

woman being Israel, Jesus being the child, the dragon obviously

being Satan, this huge spiritual battle that was happening, the

fact that God protected Israel, the good fact that God

protected the Sun and then threw down Satan. Right, all

those things happened. Well, now Satan's angry and hateful. He

hates this, and so he's always been working against Christ.

And so there are many times in the New Testament

the Bible talks about anti Christs, and that's anybody who

works against Jesus, right, he's anti Jesus. But now in

the Book of Revelation, there's this guy that we call

the anti Christ. The Bible often calls the beast. He's

just the beast, right, or also Paul will call him

the man of life alless and it's the same person,

this Antichrist. So let's just read in Revelation chapter thirteen.

It says, then the beast was allowed to speak great

blasphemies against God, and he was given authority to do

whatever he wanted to for forty two months, that's the

other three and a half years, and he spoke terrible

words of blasphemy against God, slandering his name and his temple,

that is, those who live in heaven. And the Beast

was allowed to wage war against God's holy people and

to conquer them. And he was given authority to rule

over every tribe and people and language and nation. So

this beast rises up, this Antichrist is in the last

three and a half years, becomes evident that he is

the ruler of the world. He takes over Israel, and

then he dominates every group of people, every language on

the entire planet.

Yeah, and these are the three and a half years

that aren't very fun, right. These are rough, Yeah, these

are really rough. And here's the thing about it. Even

though that there's a reason why it's called tribulation, again,

the words in this passage are still comforting even in

the mets of the worst tribulation, because it says he

was allowed, which means that God's in control. That only

what happens is what God allows. And so even though

it may not be good, and it may not be fun,

and it's actually quite terrible, the bottom line is is

God wins in the end. God conquers in the end.

We know that the beast is going to get chained

up and thrown into the lake of fire.

We know that God wins.

And so even through the trying times, God's in control.

And so even though that this is a crazy, crazy

thought about humanity and end times, it still does apply

to today because even in the most trying times in

our lives, God is still in control. So God is

not on the throne right now. Whatever it is that

you're going through, whatever it is that you're dealing with,

circumstances that you cannot control that seem to be thrust

upon you, and you are just worried and stressed and

wondering what's going to happen. Just know that God is

in control of everything. There is nothing beyond his power.

So if we.

Continue to serve him, trust him, prey to him, it

may not end up like we want to.

But just know that God's always the one that we

should run to.

That's right. So in Second Thessalonians, chapter two, Paul says,

for that day will not come until there is a

great rebellion against God, and the man of lawlessness is revealed,

the one who brings destruction, and he will exalt himself

and defy everything that people call God and every object

of worship, and he will even sit in the temple

of God, claiming that he himself is God. This is

he's just He sets himself up as the God of

the planet, and the people are following him by the way, right,

So everything that people call God, he's pretending like he's God.

He's set himself up as worship, but the world is

following after him. It says, there's a great rebellion against God.

It's not just this guy, it's the whole world. That's

following after this guy. And now we've seen in the

past politicians who've had such massive, excited, almost rabid fan

base that those politicians get away with almost anything, and

the fan base still follows them. Right, So in this situation,

he sets himself up as God and goes and sits

in the temple and declares he's God, and the whole

world goes yay, right yeah, because they're defying God. And

then in Second Thessalonians too, you move down to seven

through ten, it says, for this lawlessness is already at

work secretly, and it will remain secret until the one

who is holding it back steps out of the way.

Many people believe that's the Holy Spirit is holding back

this evil. But after Revelation chapter three, there's no mention

in the Holy Spirit, no mention in the church, no

mention anything else after that point. And this is when

the world gets starts to come off the hinges. So

that's one of the references, is why people believe that

it's a pre tribulation rapture. We're not dying on that hill.

I'm just telling you. That's why people would say that,

then the man of lawlessness will be revealed but the

Lord Jesus will kill him with the breath of his

mouth and destroy him by the splendor of his coming.

This man will come to do the work of Satan

with counterfeit power and signs and even miracles, and he'll

use every kind of evil deception to fool those on

their way to destruction because they refuse to love and

accept the truth that would save them. Right, We're going

to talk in just a moment about the mark of

the Beast in sixty sixty six, which is because of

him what he uses his power. But he also brings

up another supporting character that comes in and reinforces him,

called the false prophet. Right, and these two guys together

it is kind of like the president and vice president

doing some pretty crazy stuff.

Yeah, and again, this is the last three and a

half years of the tribulation, and during this time, you know, again,

it's just one of those things where if you're a

Christian and you believe in Jesus Christ, then it is

it is okay to tell people that if as long

as God is on your side, there's no reason to

still be afraid. But for those who are not prepared,

I would just say, man, yeah, good luck, to you

in these three and a half years.

Can be rough. You know. It's that phrase until the

one who is holding it back steps out of the way.

That thought is just how are the Holy Spirit right?

And the fact, you know, we read about this spiritual

war happening between the dragon and the king right, and

this war that's happening around us all the time we're

oblivious to. We're busy trying to race from here to

there and get make a little bit of money and

pay for a vacation, and get our kids through school right,

navigate the doctor's appointments, all that kind So that's what

we do. We spend a time at that with a

little bit awareness that we need God's help, so we

pray sometimes. But there's this NonStop spiritual war happening in

the spiritual realm that becomes more and more evident on

this planet in the physical realm once the Holy Spirit

steps out of the way. So you think the world's

bad today, the Holy Spirit still here. But the Holy

Spirit is works in and through God's people, right, So

it's us, we're the ones that are standing along with

the Holy Spirit. He uses us to speak up, he

uses us to speak out, he uses us to lean

in and to bring light in the darkness. That's what

he wants us to do, to walk in the light

as he is in the light, and we bring light

to the darkness. You are the light of the world,

Jesus said, right, So don't hide it under a bushel. Instead,

let it shine. He says, you're the salt of the earth.

And the Holy Spirit uses God's people because the Bible

says we're his temple. Right. But then at this time,

the Holy Spirit goes, fine, you're on your own. The

Christians are going on, and so the world is on

their own. And from that point on, Satan just goes

wild and he raises up this politician that the whole

world follows this leader, this world dictator, that the whole

world follows not just as a good leader, but as

a god. And dude, how defiant are you of your

of the Creator when you choose a living man in

front of you to be your God?

Right Nikolai remember him?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

From the books.

Hey, So when I lived in Atlanta for ten years,

most of the time that I was there, I was

a pastor of high school students. And in the South,

they thought that Halloween was you know, evil, you know,

so all the Christians down there, they just didn't embrace

any kind of Halloween. So if you were part of

a church, especially a conservative church, you know, you weren't

necessarily allowed to embrace anything that came with trick or

treating or anything like this. And so consequently, there was

a church down the street called Metro Heights Baptist Church

and they had a thing that they had called tribulation Trail.

Have you seen these, Yeah, I've seen things like them. Yeah.

Yeah.

So they basically had a bunch of woods in the

back and they decided to go crazy and like you know,

put like wrecked planes and wrecked buses, and they carved

out this massive part of the woods and you know

with horses and you know, seals and trumpets and all

those kind of things and all this technology. And basically

what they did was they had buses of people come

and I bet you they every Halloween ish time they

probably had I don't know, twenty thousand people from all

around go through the tribulation trail. But basically, you joined

this crowd of people and it started with you know,

the beginning, and it went all the way, you know,

from the rapture all the way to the end, and

somewhere along the way you were pressure to take.

The mark of the Beast. And as we're about to.

Get into this, I'm telling you that the scariest part

of the tribulation trail was they would walk up and

they had this stamp that they put on your hand,

and then you had to go under a neon light

and said sixty sixty six on your hand and people

are just screaming take it, take the mark, and then you're.

Like, no, no, I won't take it. I'm telling you

it was unbelievable and it was just crazy.

Well, so there's two things that happen under the authority

of the Beast. One there's this guy called the False

Prophet who he sets up to take over all the

global religions and the whole world comes to one global religion.

And then he also takes over all the economics of

the planet. There's one global economy, and that's through the mark.

So let me read these two passages. In Revelation chapter thirteen,

verses twelve through fifteen. It says the False Prophet exercised

all the authority of the first Beast, and he required

all the earth and it's people to worship the first Beast.

But then the first Beast gets assassinated and then rises

from the dead, right whose fatal wound had been healed.

He did astounding miracles, even making the fire flash down

to Earth from the sky while everyone was watching. And

with all the miracles he was allowed to perform on

behalf of the first Beast, he deceived all the people

who belonged to this world. He ordered the people to

make a great statue of the first Beast who was

fatally wounded and then came back to life. And he

was then permitted to give life to this statue so

that it could speak. Then the statue of the Beast

commanded that anyone refusing to worship it must die. So

he sets up this this global religion, and then you

know it's he was permitted to give life to the

statue so it could speak. But we can make things

speak through all kinds of technology, now right, you know

what I mean. So it might have been you know,

you take a very simple person like John who could

not fathom the things he was seeing. You know, it

could be just that he was able to make AI

could have made this robot speak right, that's what it

could be, and that it would have some form of

intelligence that it's pretty astounding.

Right.

Then then you go onto the mark of the Beast

in Relationship thirteen, verse sixteen through eighteen. So it's a

false prophet working for the Beast or the Antichrist. And

then the mark of the Beast says he required everyone

small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to

be given a mark on the right hand or on

the forehead, and no one could buy or sell anything

without that mark, which was either the name of the

Beast or the number representing his name. Wisdom is needed here.

Let the one with understanding solve the meeting of the

number of the Beast, for it is the number of

a man. His number is six six six.

There it is. That's where we get it.

So, dude, that number six six six, So numbers really

matter in the book Revelation. We're not going to spend

a ton of time on this.

Throughout the whole.

Bible, actually throughout the whole Bible, but particularly I mean,

it just comes up over and over again, the idea

of that the number seven usually represents God, right, the

number six usually represents man. In a little while we're

gonna talk about one hundred and forty four thousand, twelve

is the number of completeness, and twelve times twelve or

twelve thousand times twelve thousand, one hundred and four four

thousand complete all of the followers of Christ. You're just

going down the line. All these things. Numbers really really matter.

And so this one, the number sixty sixty six, represents

the person of the beast. And somehow you're only going

to be able to do business transactions with a mark

in your hand or in your forehead. And you know,

in old days when you only could do business with

coins and dollar bills, that was kind of confusing. But

now you know, I use my phone, double push the

button on the side, and pay for everything with my phone.

You know what if we just embedded it and we

were able to swipe our hands and scan it whatever,

you know, somebody scan your head. There you go. Right

right now, Elon Musk is working on the neurolinks to

be able to connect computers to our brains. Even now,

right we have tracking chips, there's all those kind of things.

Today this makes way more sense to us even than

when John was writing it. What John was writing about

was not possible in his day, right, apart from a miracle,

But it's completely possible in our day. How did the

guy two thousand years ago write about a global religion

with some kind of statue that could speak.

Well, the whole and the whole world sees one event.

Yeah, the whole world sees an event on a phone

or on something on a screen. The whole world has

a god or is worshiping one religion with some kind

of statue that can speak. And the whole world can

only do business with a technology that requires something embedded

in your body. Well, we can see, we can imagine

all those things being true just a few years down

the road, right, It's pretty amazing. But people get really

excited because they read that verse that says, you.

Know, wisdom is required, you must figure it out, solve

the meaning of the number of the beast.

So so many people get super excited. And if you

watch too long on religious television, there's gonna be somebody's

going to tell you they know the beast.

By the way the best, I'm thirty, I'm thirty one

years in and being a pastor, and I've heard no

less than at least one hundred different versions.

Wouldn't you say, oh, yeah, yeah, proof of what the

mark of the beast is or who the Antichrist is.

Yes, so people, Yeah, I'm referring just to the mark

of the beast.

Yeah yeah, yeah, me too. I would guess you're probably right, Yeah,

one hundred. Probably maybe not that high.

But if it's not one hundred, it's really close.

I would guess. Yeah. I've heard so many people try

to tell or prove what the mark of the beast is.

So Peo. By the way, there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with trying to figure it out, because

the scripture says use wisdom.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So people spend way more time trying

to figure out the mark of the beast than trying

to lead their friends to Jesus. And that's what makes

me nervous, right, right, So Jesus has none of your business.

Go get filled with the Holy spirit. Tell all your friends, right,

that's what he says. But this passage says, hey, you know,

use some wisdom. Maybe if if you're wise, you understand

what six sixty six means. Well, we do know. We

know that seven it represents God. We know twelve represents completeness.

We know six represents man, so this is the king

of men. That that's what this is talking about. But

people will get really slick with numbers. So a while

back I got up and I got really funny with

numbers and proved the Urban Meyer, the former coach of

the Ohio State Buckeyes, was the Antichrist. Right, you've used

the fancy math, but let me do this one. I'll

prove to you that the Disney Corporation is the Antichrist.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah sure. So here you go.

There's ten letters in Walt Disney W A L T

D I S N E Y. That equals ten. And

then if you add to that the ten letters of

Donald Duck d O N A L D d U

c K, that equals twenty. But then you add to

that the one hundred and one Dalmatians, that's one twenty one.

But substract the seven Dwarfs and the three ugly stepsisters

and then multiply at times M I, C K, E Y,

and that equals six sixty six.

There it is.

There you go, dude, I proved it.

But isn't that what they do? Isn't that what they do?

They talk fast they grab all these obscure facts and weird,

loosely connected things. Sure, the three Ugly Stepsisters and the

seven dwarfs and one hundred and one Dalmatians, they're all connected. Sure,

I guess it just doesn't mean anything. And a lot

of times people will grab at straws to try to

piece together these little proofs, and then there's the fancy

math and then it comes up. So all I would

say is, don't cut out get caught up playing with words.

Yeah.

And here's here's another thing that I would say I've

always appreciated over the years, somebody is saying like, hey,

it could be.

This, yeah, as opposed to definitely this.

Don't fight me on this. The Holy Spirit told me.

I feel like the Holy Spirit has impressed upon my heart.

Yeah.

See, I've enjoyed conversations where people come up and say,

you know what, there's a theory and it's an interesting theory.

It's something to think about, something to be aware about it.

You know that's aware of Yeah, yeah, or you know, hey,

let's let's let's let's be on guard even right like

those are like, man, those are great discussions. But somebody

again who comes up and says I want to prove

to you.

You know.

And by the way, there are probably people who heard that,

and because they hate the Disney Corporation so much.

They're like, that's true.

Well, that's why I did.

That's so so I referenced people.

I referenced QR codes. I referenced cashless society. I don't

ever use cash. I use a reference that I referenced neuralinks,

their neuralink research. I referenced AI. Right. Hey, it's fun

to look at all the things that could possibly We

referenced cell phones and screens being everywhere in global news happening,

and TikTok and all those things to make we can

imagine how most of the things that happen in the

book Revelation could happen. And that's fun to look at.

But when you get somebody who's going to tell you

the Holy Spirit spoke to them and gave them the

secret enlightenment that nobody else has, well, then I'm just

telling you, probably they're making it up and they're they're

obsessing about the wrong things. So, you know, joking around

with all these things, you can prove just about anything

with MathMagic and obscure facts and piecing together these loose

straws and these loose pieces. But don't get so caught

up playing with words that you lose focus on the

ultimate fact that Jesus is coming again, that he wins,

and that everybody who's on his side and with him

will have eternal life. But those who are not, and

they align themselves with the things of the world, will

face ultimate defeat. And so we've got a job to

do while we're here on Earth. And it's not just

to spend all of our time trying to figure out

six sixty six. It's telling everybody about Jesus.

Yeah, well that's great.

Well that's a good place to wrap up, and we're

going to pick it up on Monday as we continue

to walk through the events of Revelation.

Yeah, on Monday, we're going to talk about the visible

return of Christ. This is when it all goes down.

This is the beginning battle of Army aged and all

those things begin to happen here.

So next week, hopefully we'll see you then on the Bible.

Guys,