The Beast & His Future World Empire

Transcript

GR 2044
06/17/2018
The Beast and His Future World Empire
Revelation 17:6-13
Gil Rugh

What an exciting portion of the word of God. Sometimes as I study, what God has said about the future, it seems like we are living in the preliminary times. Certainly if Paul wrote to the Romans almost 2,000 years ago and said, “now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed.” Think how much nearer we are, to what God has promised, the coming of Jesus Christ to gather us to Himself, and the unfolding of the events that are recorded in the Book of Revelation. I remind you, Jesus said as He began this letter that there is blessing on those who read, those who hear and those who understand. Now this was a book given for the instruction and benefit of His churches, and sadly many people remain in the dark, even believers about the Book of Revelation. When God gave it as the conclusion, the final, capstone of His word to us, and it pulls things together in such a beautiful and clear way.

We’re in chapter 17 and in chapters 17 and 18 we come to the climax of this world system under the authority and control of the devil. Now that is under the ultimate control of God, that as Satan told Christ in the temptation, “all the kingdoms of the world are mine, they have been given to me.” Because of sin, God has planned that Satan should have authority and control in the world. He is in constant conflict with God and the plan of God, moving all the world toward the climatic conclusion of this world system where he is creating the ultimate counterfeit to what God has prophesied and promised in His word, a kingdom that encompasses the world ruled by one man. A man supernaturally raised from the dead but that man, as we’re talking about in Revelation chapter 17, is not Jesus Christ. He does not come to earth to rule until chapter 19. His kingdom is established in chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation but here we have Satan’s final attempt before the coming of Christ to create a counterfeit alternative.

We’ve looked into the first part of Revelation chapter 17 where we got an overview of the vision given to John, and he “saw a woman,” verse 3 “sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.” He describes this woman and we talked about these verses down through verse 7. Then we looked at some of the characteristics of the Babylonian religious system and this woman sitting on the scarlet beast, represents the apostate fallen godless religious system, and all the religious systems of the world that will ultimately come to focus in this final form of world religion.

You understand, there is only one true and living God. There is only one Savior. There is only one way of access to the true and living God. “Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me.’” That means every other religious system, every other form of worship, is the worship of the devil. I know we’re not supposed to criticize other people’s religion, other people’s worship, but that’s the fact of God’s word. In fact, He says it’s the worship of demons, and it’s guided by the teaching and doctrine of demons, so here we have the culmination of it.

Verse 6, this woman is “drunk with the blood of the saints,” the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. That relentless persecution of God’s people, as Satan attempts to destroy the Jews, because they are the nation God has chosen for Himself and then believers from all nations. It is in God’s grace they have come to trust Him and today the Church. Well now, verse seven; “the angel said to me, ‘Why do you wonder?’ Now you can imagine John is in awe, and the angel says, ‘Why do you wonder, at this?’ ‘I will tell you the mystery.’” I am going to explain this to you, and a mystery in the New Testament is something you cannot understand apart from revelation from God. It doesn’t matter if you have three doctor’s degrees. Apart from the revelation of God and the work of His Spirit with that revelation in your life, you’re in a world of confusion, so John is going to be enlightened here and through John, we are.

So, I will tell you the mystery of the woman, so that woman sitting on the beast, I tell you of the beast that carries her, which has seven heads and ten horns. What we have here is--I’m going to explain to you how this has all come together, the world religious systems, the world’s commercial and political systems and give clarity to it, and we’re going to have repeat. What God does is graciously with progressive revelation, progressively make clear more and more of His plan and purposes.

I’ve explained it sometimes, it’s like you took the pieces of a puzzle, and you dumped them out, and you have many pieces of a detailed puzzle. You start to put it together, and you put pieces together here and then you get others and you say, “oh, these fit together.” You have some sections put together, spread out here and you’re waiting for the right pieces to enable you to put them together. Then you realize, oh this piece, this section here belongs over here, and this section here belongs over there. That’s the way often in the Old Testament prophets, you have revelation given, and prophecies given, but they’re not always put in order. We don’t have clear the connection. Remember the first coming and second coming of Christ. Peter wrote and said the prophets who wrote that couldn’t put together how He could suffer and die and rule and reign but now we know.

We know with the passing of time and later revelation, oh, He’s come a first time to suffer and die and later, so the order has become clear that was not clear when Isaiah wrote (for example) hundreds of years before Christ. This is what’s happening now. This is the final putting together, if you will, of the pieces of God’s prophetic plan. Without the Book of Revelation, you don’t have clarity. Now revelation doesn’t change anything that was given before. It puts in some of the pieces that we needed and gives us the order, in which they will unfold, so there’s a clarity that was not there before. Important today though, this does not change anything that happened before and we’re going to be reviewing that again.

So, verse eight as we begin the explanation. “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come out of the abyss and go to destruction,” well that’s the beast, verse 3 that the woman is sitting on. It has seven heads and ten horns. Who is this beast? What is this beast? Well, it’s the beast that was, and is not, and is about to come out of the abyss. Now keep in mind, John is being carried into the future to see what is going to happen in the future, so this is not something in his day that was, and is, and will not be, who will go to destruction. This is what is in the future. That beast we saw back in chapter 13. You want to turn back there; we saw the same beast in verse 1 of chapter 13. A beast “coming out of the sea having ten horns and seven heads,” so the same picture being given.

Then you see in verse 3, “I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain. His fatal wound was healed. The whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast,” and we noted, this beast refers to a king and a kingdom, and they’re used interchangeably. I keep reminding you but it’s important. For example, in our country we talk about what the President did. We talk about what the United States did or how the United States is going to deal with this and we sometimes say, how the president….we use them interchangeably because the king represents the kingdom that he rules over. The president over the country and so on, so this beast is both a form of empire, and is going to be the revived Roman Empire as we talked about ultimately, and also the man who rules it.

I think that we have here a supernatural action, as we talked about when we did chapter 13, where this man is slain, and then brought back to life, and that causes the world to be amazed by him. They will come to worship him.

Come down in verse 12 while we’re here of chapter 13. This is a second beast that is a religious person. He “makes the earth and those who dwell on it to worship the first beast whose fatal wound was healed,” so this ruler will become the object of worship. Down in verse 14, “he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which were given to him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who has had the wound of the sword and has come to life.” Then amazingly verse 15, “it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast,” so the image would even speak, and cause as many as do not worship that image—I have to put up your favorite chart.

This chart, if you’ve been here more than one Sunday, you’ve seen it. This gives you the overall timeline of God’s program as given in the Book of Daniel, the number of years, and there’s a break in that number of years. You see it starts in 444 B.C. and the first 69 periods of 7 years each, 483 years come to a conclusion just before the crucifixion of Christ. Then Christ is crucified, after that 69th week but the 70th week is put on a pause, a hold, and the church age comes in, that colored period. Then comes the rapture of the church that concludes the church age, and there’s a signing of an agreement. We’ll see that shortly. That starts that 70th week, and that 70th week is divided into two, 3½-year periods, that seven-year period. Now I’m mentioning that because these events of the death of this beast, his resurrection and the putting of the image in the temple, and it comes to life, occur right in the middle of that seven-year period, where that dividing line is.

So, we’re getting an overview as we pull things that have been revealed before together, and fill in some of the different pieces. We know it’s right in the middle, because we’re told at the end of verse 6 of chapter 12 we’re in a period when we have 1,260 days, which is 3½ years in the prophetic calendar. Come down into chapter 13. This beast who’s come to life is now to be worshiped. He’ll have authority to act for 42 months, that’s 3½ years, so we’re getting things now that have been revealed brought together, and how they unfold during this seven-year period. What leads up to that, so when you come back to chapter 17, and verse 8 he talks about “the beast you saw, was and is not and is about to come out of the abyss and go to destruction.”

He’s picking up what’s already been revealed in chapter 13, and he’ll add to that now and make it clearer, explaining what has not been explained before, so that now it fits together with a clarity it did not have before, so in Revelation 17 verse 8 that’s the beast. “Those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast that he was and is not and will come.” It’s amazing, when you think about it. There’s a man who is going to be killed, slain in chapter 13. We noted that’s the same word used of Christ. He’s the Lamb that was slain, the same Greek word, and now he comes to life.

Who can give life but God, and so we must worship him and besides they made an image of him and set it up in the temple and that image has come to life, its acting, it’s moving and so on. So we’re told those whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, are going to wonder. We talked about this, come back to chapter 13 verse 8. “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.” We’re not going to take time to go into detail on this teaching of Scripture, sometimes called the doctrine of election, but before the foundation of the world—the foundation of the world would be back at Genesis 1 before God created anything. He had a book of life and He put names in there, and those names in there have been down to today.

Perhaps you’re here because your name is one of those names. Perhaps you haven’t trusted Him yet and that’s why He brought you today so you could hear and respond to the truth of Christ as Savior and believe in Him and realize your name was there. These names were written early. We think, well that just doesn’t seem right, what about others. From among fallen sinful humanity, God has intervened to bring some to Himself. What about those whose names are not there? They don’t want to be saved. What if my name’s not there? Do you want to trust Christ as your Savior, have your sins forgiven and go to heaven? No, I’m not really interested. Well I guess your name’s not there, so it’s God’s sovereignty.

You won’t be able to tell God, well You didn’t put my name there. I told you if you call on Me, you could come. You didn’t want to come. I didn’t put your name there and its God’s grace that any of us have come. That’s why the Book of Ephesians says we “will be trophies of God’s grace for all eternity,” because the fact that you’re saved, that I’m saved, is not a testimony we are less sinful, less vile, less rebels against God. No, it’s a sign that God’s grace, reached out to us in our sinful condition, so that’s what he’s talking about, the names. We’ll talk more about the book of life when we get to chapter 20 because let me tell you, anyone whose name is not in the book of life is going to be cast into the fires of hell for eternity, serious, serious business.

Those whose names are not written in that book will wonder when they see the beast. They’re amazed that he was and is not and will come. Jesus Christ was crucified, died, buried, raised from the dead but the world wasn’t amazed. In fact, even those living during that time denied it, paid the soldiers guarding the tomb money to tell a lie about what happened to His body. But you know Satan is the god of this world and those who follow Satan serve him and worship him. When this man is raised, the whole world will be united in one world religion. Come back to the Book of 2 Thessalonians, these are passages we’ve been to, but they all tie together.

Second Thessalonians chapter 2, speaking about this man, here he’s called the “man of lawlessness,” in Revelation he’s called the “beast.” He’s the same person, lawlessness is his characteristic, he’s in complete rebellion against God. Verse 8 of 2 Thessalonians 2, then “that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming.” This man will be alive on earth and ruling when Jesus Christ returns to earth to establish His kingdom. We’ll see that when we get to chapter 19 of Revelation. Note this is the one, whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power, signs, and false wonders. With all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.

This man will be satanically empowered and some might project well what really happens is he’s killed and then Satan, moves into his body to control it. Maybe, maybe so, we know he’ll be empowered because he comes out of the abyss. The abyss is where the hold of demons is, so with houses all worked out it is secondary to the fact of what happens. He’s alive, he’s functioning, the image of this man whether it’s a demon that indwells that image and gives it all the appearance of life, the impact on the world is the same, and the world will be amazed. You’ll note verse 9 that His coming is “in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power, signs and wonders.” You know, the limitation on Satan is God, it is the One who is all-powerful.

Now remember we just mentioned to you that Satan said God had given him authority over all the kingdoms of the world. That takes some power and wisdom, to control and move. When God gave His approval, Satan could cause the wind to blow and cause a house to fall on Job’s children and kill them all. With God’s permission, he could cause devastating illness, to overtake Job and make every breath misery for him.

Don’t underestimate the power of the devil, and the power of what God has prepared; you want false worship you want to serve the devil, I give you the devil. Remember Romans 1, when they chose to reject God and His revelation, He gave them over to their sinful desires. Here’s the ultimate climax and realization of that. You want to worship what is to you a divine being but not Me? You want to worship a god but not Me? Well then you can worship the god of this world and God gives Satan the power and the freedom now, to bring a greater deception on the world. It’s so great, Jesus said in talking about this time, “if it were but for God’s care, even the elect would be deceived.”

I mean stop and think, what would you think if you saw a man raised from the dead? What would you think if you saw an image of silver and gold, or whatever that’s been made, set up, and all of a sudden, it begins to move about, and do things? Even as a Christian, you’d be thinking, maybe there is something to this. Maybe, Jesus said if possible the very elect, but it’s not possible, so none of those who truly are in the book of life, none of the elect will become worshipers of the devil, of the beast, will not receive his mark. That seems to be clear, so come back. This is the time of the demonstration of Satan’s power in its greatest fullness.

They’ll wonder when they see this beast. Here is the “mind, which has wisdom,” verse 9 of Revelation 17. God intends for us, the “beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." We as God’s people are to have minds of wisdom. We are intended to understand this. It is a tragedy of the work of the devil in influencing the church, even believing churches, that they ignore the Book of Revelation. They’re confused by it or they think we oughtn’t to get involved too much in prophecy. We want to have the mind of God. “Here’s the mind which has wisdom.” Now here comes the interpretation. “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.” Now some people take that right away they run to Rome. Rome is said to be the city built on seven hills, so this is talking about Rome. I don’t think so, we have to keep reading.

You know sometimes you’re telling your kids something and they know what you’re going to say so they tell you. You say, no, wait let me finish. Sometimes that happens in a marriage but that’s a side issue too. “Here’s a mind, which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits and they are seven kings,” so the mountains represent the same thing as kings. The mountains are kings and when you go back to Old Testament prophecy, Daniel chapter 2 and other places, a mountain symbolizes a kingdom. When Christ comes to earth in Daniel chapter 2 and that prophecy and establishes His kingdom, it grows into a great mountain. Isaiah has the same kind of analogy in his prophecies.

The seven heads are seven mountains, they are seven kings, so we have mountains, we have heads, we have mountains we have kings. The heads represent kings or kingdoms. The mountains represent kingdoms. The kings represent the kingdoms they rule over, so they’re all the same thing, so that’s the angel explaining so you’re not running off, looking for what the heads represent. What do the kings represent, what do the heads—they’re just different symbols that represent the same thing. There are seven of each.

There are “seven kings, five have fallen, one is one is yet to come.” We’re going to go back to the Book of Daniel again so if you’d go back there. I understand and know this is great repeat. Let me tell you if you really have grasp it. What I do when I’m trying to work through something, I’ll sometimes, and I share this with you, I’ll go into my study or room. I’ll sit down and I’ll try to explain it, so if you really think you’re getting a grasp of revelation, one of the ways to do it is when you go home sit down, you don’t have to tell it to your husband, or wife or kids. They may not want to hear it again but go in and just talk out-loud, and pretend somebody is sitting there listening to you and you’re explaining to them what Revelations means here.

I remember A. Wilder-Smith. He was a scientist with three earned doctor’s degrees from three different countries. He said, “I have people say to me, ‘Oh, I know but I can’t explain it.’ He says ‘you really don’t know until you can explain it.’” I never forgot that. I was a seminary student when he was speaking. It’s a good test for you. As we work through Revelation, sit down and explain it, just talk out-loud in that room. Somebody wants to ask you, “what does Revelation 17 mean” and you sit there. You might walk in on me some day if Marilyn will let you in, and you snuck down into my study, and there’s Gil talking to himself. Nobody’s in there but I’m explaining this passage.

All right, did you get to Daniel chapter 2? I didn’t, okay here’s Daniel. Put up, if you would, the Empire scene by Daniel. We’ve been through this but it’s the background. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. He couldn’t figure it out. God had to give revelation to Daniel. Remember, mysteries have to be revealed here, so Daniel in verse 36 of Daniel 2 tells Nebuchadnezzar what his dream was.

Now I’ll tell you the interpretation. You start with Babylon. What Nebuchadnezzar saw was this image of a man, each part of the image was a different metal and each part of the image with a different metal represented a different empire. He started with the empire that was in existence, while Daniel was speaking with Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, so he says to Nebuchadnezzar. “You are the head of gold,” verse 37. “You are the king to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength the glory.” At the end of verse 38, “you are the head of gold,” so you can see the empire and the king can be used interchangeably. Then he goes on to the subsequent—we’re not going to go through these we’ve been through them a number of times. The next empire is Medo-Persia, the next empire is Greece the next empire is Rome.

The fourth kingdom verse 40 “strong as iron.” Then you’ll note, there are “feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay partly of iron.” Verse 42, “as the toes of the feet” and how many toes do you have on a normal image of a man? Ten. It doesn’t say ten but he’s talking about the toes. Everything else has been a normal image, we take it, it is ten and later Revelation indicates that. The toes and the feet are partly iron partly pottery. You’ll note this is part of the Roman Empire, because it picks up the iron that represents Rome, so that’s why we talk about a coming revived Roman Empire because the toes are yet future.

Remember Old Testament prophecy; remember that chart that colored period. That’s not in there. You see this colored period on here, that tan area. That does not appear anywhere in Old Testament prophecy, so Old Testament prophecy jumps from the resurrection of Christ and events around that to events following the rapture of the church, so we jump, Daniel brings us up to here. That’s where Daniel’s prophecy—then he jumps down to here, so he does not see the Church Age. It wasn’t God’s plan to reveal it, so between verse 40 and verse 41 we have the Church Age, basically after the Roman Empire. You don’t continue on but the Old Testament really doesn’t go into any details after that, the death of Christ and the resurrection, so keep that in mind when we’re reading here. People get confused. At a later revelation, God hadn’t revealed the Church, so He’s just revealing to Daniel what happens for Israel. You go right from the death and resurrection of Christ to the seven years as they complete the 70th week.

All right, you’ll note the toes of the feet are partly iron and partly of clay. You’re going to have that mixture. Let me read you something I found in the news. These are ten toes and we’re going to talk about this final form of the kingdom with ten. I downloaded something that was forwarded to me on the internet from a news website. I believe this came from Bloomberg News. This was here a week or two ago, June 7 and I just wrote down a section of it. This is a quote from Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, talking about the world has been thrown into confusion with the activities of the President of the United States, so he says we need a new world order, and Europe has to take a different look at itself, and think about reconstituting itself, and what she says could be done. A rotating group, of about ten member states, could work in order to speak with one European voice, on the global stage.

Now it’s just interesting to me, Daniel’s writing twenty-five hundred years ago. He’s talking about a final form of the Roman Empire being ten toes which, as we’ll see, represents ten kings or kingdoms, ten nations. Here one of the leaders of what would have been part of the old Roman Empire says a rotating group of about ten member states could work in order to speak with one European voice on the global stage. I’m not saying that’s a fulfillment of this prophecy but by the same token I find it fascinating just to watch the news and see what could be going on. Israel’s back in the land. Europe wants to be one united country able to function independently on its own. We can no longer depend on the United States and so on. We must establish ourselves, and our independence, maybe we could be organized in such a way we could have ten. Well I don’t know that that’s going to be it, but I can tell you someday it will come about that way.

Just a point of interest. We know it’s not happened in the past. Some people fail to appreciate that God gave progressive revelation, so they read this, and you come down to verse 44 and it says “in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, so they say, well we had the Roman Empire. The ten toes on the feet, it must be ten Roman Emperors of the time of the Roman Empire, and so then, in the days of those kings, God sets up a kingdom. So we must be talking about a spiritual kingdom that Christ set up in the hearts of people, when He came the first time, so now we take this because this is what—just take it as it comes. It didn’t say there’s a break.

This is the problem, if you don’t understand progressive revelation. God’s not going to change anything but later revelation gives further information, and now later in the New Testament He’ll tell us there’s a break. We get an indication of it, come over to chapter seven, and you’ll see on the chart we have the same information with a different picture. You had the head of gold to represent Babylon in chapter 2. In chapter 7, it’s a lion. Instead of silver to represent Persia you have a bear, and it’s fitting because Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan king, saw the empires of the world, and they’re beautiful, they’re striking.

Daniel sees them from God’s perspective. There ravenous animals that tear each other apart but you see it’s the same image when you come to chapter 7, and we have the four animals. Then you come down to verse seven, you have the fourth beast. It’s “dreadful and terrible and it’s like the iron,” it destroyed everything. It’s more powerful than any of the previous kingdoms are. This beast destroys all the other previous kingdoms. “While I was contemplating the horns,” it had ten horns at the end of verse seven, so you see again that they’re part of that fourth beast. In chapter 2, it was the iron that continued into the toes. Here it’s the beast, the fourth beast but it has ten horns, and “while I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them, three of the first were pulled out it becomes great and powerful.”

Now we’ve added another little thing. It doesn’t change anything from chapter 2, but chapter 2 didn’t tell you about another step in there, “the little horn,” but everything else is the same, so you see how an additional revelation can add a piece that helps to clarify. Then, you have the kingdom, so the same order but there’s another piece in there that was missing. It’s like you have the puzzle and you know, you can’t get that one piece that goes in. Where’d it go? Then God comes along and says there’s a little horn here now that fits in there, so He hasn’t changed anything else. This is important; some people think later revelation changes the earlier revelation. It never does, it can add to it, it can clarify it, but it does not change it, so you’ll see here we have the same.

Come over to chapter 9 verse 24. “Seventy sevens,” translated weeks but they’re weeks of years as we’ve seen. A total of 490 years “have been declared for your people” that’s why the church is not included in Old Testament prophecy. We’re concentrating on Israel. God doesn’t make anything about the Church known in the Old Testament, so He gave the starting point and we have that on that chart we look at all the time. Then verse 26 “after 62 weeks” which was after 7 weeks, so a total of 69 weeks, “Messiah will be cut off,” that’s His crucifixion. You’ll note it’s after the 69th week, 483 years. He has nothing, so He doesn’t establish a kingdom. He doesn’t take rule of the world, and the people of “the prince who is to come,” will destroy the city and the sanctuary. It doesn’t say the prince who is to come will destroy I, but the people of the prince who is to come. Who destroyed the city and the sanctuary in 70 A.D.? The Romans, I think that’s an indication the coming prince will be a Roman.

Verse 27, “he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week.” That’s what we’re talking about, this last seven-year period. In the middle of the week, he’ll put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering and we’ve seen this in our study of Revelation with chapter 11, the temple’s going to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. The sacrificial system is going to be reinstituted, we’ve seen that in our study in Revelation, all on the basis of this covenant with this man representing the revived Roman Empire, this ten nation confederacy, even though he’s a minor figure. He’ll represent them in signing the agreement, but in the middle of those seven years, everything changes. What changed?

There was a battle, he was killed, he was raised from the dead.
He’s ready to assume total control, and so he becomes the dominant figure with the agreement as we’ll see of the others in that ten-nation confederacy. He becomes world ruler, the object, the only object of worship that’s allowed in the world and the world’s in agreement. You know you realize everybody but born again Christians are in agreement. We say we will worship no one, nothing else but the true and living God. The unbeliever will worship anyone and anything but the true and living God, so when Satan gives them the best and perfect counterfeit, their hearts are joined in oneness. They are all slaves of the devil. They are all joined in false worship. This just gives us unity in that, the only problem for the world are believers.

This is where we are going, so this is where we are in the picture as you come back to Revelation 17. He’s going to talk about the seven heads are seven mountains, seven kings, five have fallen. These are the seven empires you have on here. Daniel started with Babylon, number three and we’ve talked about this. What John does is go back to the empires before Babylon that impacted Israel. The bible is only concerned with the nations that impact Israel. What about China? Israel is the pupil of God’s eye and the nations that intersect with Israel are the ones the bible talks about. So what’s the first nation to impact Israel? Where did it, Israel, become a nation? They went down into Egypt as the family of Jacob, about seventy people, they come out a nation of 2 million and Egypt enslaved them.

The second empire to intersect with them then was Assyria. What did Assyria do? It took the ten northern tribes into captivity. Then we come to Babylon, so we pick up where Daniel started, but John’s gone back to the beginning of Israel’s history because now God’s putting all these together and you see the connection, so what’s he say in verse 10 of chapter 17? “There are seven kings, five have fallen,” so the first five on this list. These five kingdoms have passed out of existence; they’ve lost power. “One is,” that’s number six, Rome as John writes, the present ruling empire was Rome. “The other has not yet come, and when he comes, he must remain a little while,” so there’s a coming empire. We saw it already in Daniel in chapter 7, ten nations. Verse 11, “the beast, which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven.”

Remember, out of the ten horns comes a little horn, so these flow out of one another and that’s why we’ve made them subsets of number six, Rome, because they’re all in separately connected with Rome and the Scripture of prophetic revelation. They are either toes that have the iron in them that came from the Roman Empire or they’re horns on the beast, which is the fourth and so the connection is here, so you have eight. The beast, which was and is not is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven because he came out of the seventh.

Remember there were ten horns and then a little horn came up among them, displaced three and he becomes the dominant power, so this seven-year period. We saw this happens in the middle because when this beast comes to power, this final form of satanic empire, he has forty-two months to go, so we know we’re in the middle, and the ten-nation confederacy doesn’t cease to exist.

Look, verse 12, “the ten horns, which you saw are ten kings, which have not yet received a kingdom,” and they haven’t yet until today. This is yet future, we haven’t entered into that seventieth week, that last seven-year period, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour, so he is part of them from the beginning. That’s why he can sign the agreement representing them. They are one empire with ten pieces, but they have “the strength of iron and the brittleness of pottery,” as we were told in Daniel chapter 2, so they come to power together.

During that first 3½ years the woman up in verse 3 of chapter 17 is riding the beast that religious dimension, is a powerful influence, a controlling influence, because what does the devil want most? Worship where we’ve been back to the time of his fall. He wants to replace God and have the worship that belongs to God alone, so for the first 3½ years he has this woman, this religious system that is the dominant influence in this ten-nation confederacy. Since it has the strength of iron but the brittleness of pottery that religious dimension can help bind it together, but it’s all preparing the way. When you get to the middle and this little horn, as he was described, this head is killed and then miraculously raised to life; we don’t need the religious system anymore.

So verse 13, these ten and they have authority with the beast for one hour. That one hour just means a short time. I mean think about it. All the history of the world and its rebellion against God has now come down to one seven-year period. Now the thousands of years of earth’s history, if you were going to try to chart that out and put one seven-year period into that, that’s just a brief time so it’s like it’s nothing. This man, his influence and even supreme power can all be summarized in this one seven-year period. That’s where it is and that brings everything together, all of Satan’s efforts.

We were back to Genesis chapter 10 and 11, and joining the world together in one united people, focused in one city, with one center of worship, and as that was scattered by God when He divided the languages. All down thru these empires of history and all the religious system, we’ve all come down now. It’s compressed in this one seven-year period and these ten kings, this united federated kingdom have one purpose, verse 13. They give their power and authority to the beast. They do not cease to exist but they are happy now to be servants of this one ruler, because that’s what the devil wants.

You remember the satanic trinity. Satan wants to replace God the Father. Here’s his counterfeit Christ, the false prophet is the counterfeit Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit, Jesus said will direct worship to Me, so what’s the false prophet doing in Revelation 13, directing worship to the resurrected Antichrist. You finally have Satan having been put together, on a worldwide scale, his counterfeit trinity. He tried it with Christ in the temptation when Christ came to earth. Let’s take a shortcut. I can give you all the kingdoms of the world if you’ll fall down and worship me, but no, so here it comes together.

They have one purpose. They give their power and authority to the beast and we’re not going to go into the last verses but you know what they’ll join in doing; they’ll destroy the false worship system, the woman riding the beast, because that can’t be allowed anymore because there’s only one worship system in the world. You know the devil has to be satisfied with divided religions but his goal is to have one universal religion because what will happen when Christ comes to reign?

It will all be one religion one worship system, one focus of worship. That’s where He is moving. Amazing that God has unfolded in such detail. How sad it is that many, even believers, ignore the Book of Revelation, when God said, I’ll give blessing on those who read it, those who hear it, those who pay attention. Obey it, live in light of it. How sad that we would be living in a world—I don’t know how close we to the return of Christ for the Church. The thing, you know, I can’t prophesy. Will it be today? Will it be tomorrow? How quickly could things happen?

Look at how quickly things have changed in the world in the last year and in many of your lifetimes. We’ve had the European Union come into existence after World War II. My dad went off to war in World War II and Europe’s being destroyed and now we’re talking about a Europe that can come together and rival the United States and not need them. Perhaps even have ten rotating nations that could and in that same article said we could have one that could have some veto power and even suggested the one. We’re living in a day, Israel’s in the land. I don’t know but I will read the Scripture and see what’s going to happen and what’s going on.

If Paul could tell the Romans, now is your redemption nearer than when you first believed, how much nearer are we now than they and this is meant to be a motivation. We live in light of the return of the Lord. We live in expectation of the return of the Lord and we have a message of salvation to the lost. You know you don’t want to miss it. When God closes the door, it may not reopen. You can be a young person raised in this church and think, well maybe I’ll trust Christ sometime, get a little older. Maybe you will. I hope so if you haven’t, but maybe you won’t.

Adults, the same, well maybe I will. I’ll give it some thought; you’ve given me something to think about, maybe. God says “today is the day of salvation.” Now is the opportunity. God, is He any more gracious than this? If you go to hell, it’s on you. “Whosoever, will call upon the name of the Lord, will be saved. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order that whosoever believes in Him, will not perish but have everlasting life.” If you go to hell, whose fault is it? God provided a Savior. You said I’ll think about it and the time passed. Why would you not trust Him today, and for those of us who have, are we living in light of these truths?

You know Peter says we ought to be remembering and reminding ourselves. All these things will be burned up. When we get done with Revelation all the things associated with this life, this earth will be renovated by fire. We can get mired down, caught up. Distracted that’s why the Book of Revelation is important for the churches. We understand what God is doing. We know His plan. We know what matters and we want to be faithful.

Let’s pray together: Thank You Lord for the riches of Your word. We are in awe that You are a God who does care about us that has intervened to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Provided the Savior, the One who could take our place, die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, so that in holiness and righteousness You could declare forgiven, cleansed righteous because of the finished work of Christ. Thank you for so great salvation. Lord, you know us as we sit here. You know the heart of each one, young and old. You know where we are our relationship with You. Pray the Spirit might bring conviction to each heart that You might be honored in Christ’s name. Amen