In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Revelation chapter 13. We've come that far, and there's an interesting thing that goes on behind the scenes here. This morning, I don't want to just teach through the text. I don't want to expositionally, as it were, expound on what God is saying, but there's something deeper here, and I want you to see it this morning. Let's pray, and we'll dive right into our study.

We're going to do the first 10 verses because we're introduced to a figure that's going to come on the scene. In fact, he's probably alive and well somewhere on the planet Earth today. That will be the ultimate religious leader that's ever led any religious system in the world. We are moving toward a one-world system. That's why I want to give you a little bit of instruction before we pray. The reason why our President Trump is so hated is you have to understand he's the fly in the ointment for globalism, a one-world government.

We know in the last days a one-world government—we'll see that this morning—will form in which the Antichrist will rule the world along with his false prophet because they serve the god of this world, Satan. That's what we've been introduced to in chapter 12 and chapter 13. Chapter 12, we were introduced to the dragon, Satan, and his plan throughout the ages is to destroy God's people so that the Messiah, the Savior of the world, couldn't come.

We'll get a review on that, and then in the first 10 verses, if you're a note-taker, in chapter 13, we're introduced to the Antichrist, and then the rest of chapter 13, we're going to be introduced next week to the false prophet. This unholy trinity is a replacement for the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to deceive the world. The whole world, we're going to see this morning, that their names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life. If your name is not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, it's easy to get it put there.

You have to come and bow your heart before the lordship of Jesus Christ and confess that you're a sinner and that He is the only Savior and give your life to Him. Then He writes your name in the Lamb's Book of Life indelibly. Your name was written in the book of life when you were born. You erased it when you became of the age of accountability and sin. Now it needs to be written back in, but not just the book of life, the Lamb's Book of Life.

When Jesus comes to judge this world, the books are going to be opened, and the very first book that is opened is the Lamb's Book of Life. If your name is found written there, the Bible says that you won't be judged, that Jesus took the judgment for you. What He did on Calvary's cross when He literally—God became a human being—suffered and died, He paid the penalty for your sin. He offers His righteousness to those who come to Him. He imputes it to you, and then He justifies you through what He has done, not through what you have done.

Every religion in the world today, and there's 4,200 of them, are all based on your performance, what you need to do. Christianity is the only system in the world where we acknowledge we can do nothing about our sinful condition. Something from outside us has to come to us because we were conceived in sin, we were born in transgression. We were messed up when we came into this world. We were so messed up that we couldn't fix our mess, but Jesus came to do that.

The enemy wants you always to put yourself in a position or in a system or in some kind of way that leads you from the truth of who God is and tries to give you a religious system that you can trust in, but it's a false conversion. You need to be born of the spirit, Jesus said. How many are born of the spirit this morning? You know that your righteousness is not based on your performance.

That's what's before us this morning, just a little preview. Let's pray and we'll dive right in. Father, we thank You this morning for Your word. The tendency always in the human heart is to want to be religious because our pride wants us to think that we did it, that we, through our efforts, through our works, through our deeds, through our humanitarian kind of self-sacrificing work, that somehow we have earned a right standing before God. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are this morning saved by grace, the Bible declares. That word for grace means favor, God's favor toward us against anything that we could ever merit. Favor against merit. We are saved by grace through faith as we put our trust in God's word and what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us on Calvary's cross. As we put our faith and trust in that, as we put our faith and trust that Jesus was the eternal word, the second person of the Godhead who took on human form, God incarnate.

He lived a sinless life as He was conceived of the Spirit and born of a virgin. He died on Calvary's cross a substitutionary death in our place. He was buried, He rose again the third day, He's ascended to the Father, He's offered His blood on the tabernacle that is in heaven. All who put their trust in that, like He said in the Old Testament, "When I see the blood, then My judgment will pass over you."

All who put their faith in what Christ has done are born of the Spirit. That's the church that Jesus is coming for. Father, speak to us this morning because it's not about being religious. In fact, You tell us when You return, many will say to You, "Lord, Lord, haven't I done all of these things in Your name?" Yet Your response will be, "Depart from Me, you worker of iniquity, I never knew you." It wasn't about religion or what you did; it was about Me and what I have done for you. But you were too proud to bow your knee and come to the cross broken and contrite and receive the gift of eternal life.

Father, we thank You this morning it's a gift. Having once received the gift, You tell us the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. When we become Your children, You're never going to tell us pack our bags, change our name, and get out of here. No, You'll tell us go wait in the room and I'll be there in a minute. Many of us have been waiting in the room a lot of times, but Lord, You love us thus You correct us. Speak to us this morning, we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus we ask. And all God's kids would say: Amen.

We just got to back up to chapter 12 and chapter 13, introducing to us something very interesting. In fact, chapter 12, as we looked at it, we saw there that from the beginning of time, as Satan had tried to raise his throne above the throne of the most high God. Isaiah chapter 14 says, "How art thou fallen, O son of the morning, how art thou fallen, Satan, from heaven," who tried to raise your throne—pride—above the throne of the most high.

We know that when he came to Earth, as the rabbis of old have said, because of his jealousy of you, how God loves you, he corrupted mankind. He did it through pride as he tempted Eve. All the while throughout the ages, he's had one purpose in mind: to destroy the Messiah. Before Noah's flood, he polluted the gene pool, or tried to, by having the fallen angels have sexual relations with the daughters of men so there was no pure human being that God could incarnate to bring about a Savior.

Romans 5 says—listen carefully—by one man sin came into the world: Adam. Then it's just, and God would be justified that through another man, Christ Jesus, the God-man, sin could be taken out of the world and the penalty of it. Satan tried then, through the flood, but God found Noah, his three sons, and their three wives to be righteous and saved them and started the whole human race over.

God chooses Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees to become God's people, who will become the nation of Israel, the Hebrew people that the Messiah would come through. Then all through the ages from that moment on, Satan, through different empires, through different kings, through different methods and means, has always tried to destroy God's people to keep the Messiah from coming. Even when the Messiah was born, we read that through Herod he tried to destroy Jesus at two years old. In fact, he killed all of the babies two years old and under, you can read it there in John, trying to destroy the Messiah.

Satan has always tried, the enemy of God and the enemy of your soul. By the way, you have an enemy. To destroy the means and the mechanism and the man by which God would bring salvation to a fallen world and redeem you back into relationship with the Father. Even when the Holy Spirit moves upon people to draw them to Christ, he will divert that to a religious system. There are 4,200 religious systems in the world today, but only one of them is true. Only one of them has answered the most important question.

That's what we're here to answer this morning. The most important question ever asked a human being is what Jesus asked Peter: "Who do men say that I am?" It all falls and rises on the answer to that question. I was out at Ananda when I had my heating and air company. We got the contract to do all the service work out there. My service techs were busy, so I just strapped on my bags and I went on out there. I'm fixing this guy's air conditioning, so I went into the room to check the airflow and he has this shrine there.

It has all the gurus, one after another, and he could name them all. At the end, he had a picture of Jesus. I looked at it in amazement. I said, "You know, you have all of these Eastern gurus, all of these religious masters, these what you call ascended masters, but you have Jesus there." He says, "Yes, we believe Jesus to be a great prophet. He's one of the ascended masters." I said, "Do you know what Jesus said?" I said, "Let me go get my Bible."

I went and got my Bible out of the work van, came back in, and I said, "Do you know what Jesus says about the rest of these people? He calls them liars and deceivers because He says of Himself, 'I am the only way.'" It's in the emphatic in the Greek. The only way, the only truth, and the only life. No man goes to the Father or will ever be given the gift of eternal life but by Me. I am the door. I am the way.

I said, "So He says all the rest of these are liars." I had him read it, and he goes, "Oh, I didn't know that." I said, "That's the problem. The god of this world, Satan, wants you to be religious." Like Paul said when he was in Athens, I said to the man, "I perceive that you're most religious, that there's a sincerity about you. You're seeking something. This is why you have this shrine in this room, because you know there's something lacking in your life and you're seeking something. I'm here to tell you, and this is why I'm here today, not to fix your air conditioner but to fix your heart. There's a deceiver, and he's deceived you into believing that all religions are the same, many ways to God, when the man you have sitting right there in that picture is telling you all the rest of these are liars and that you have to give your life to Him."

Jesus asked the question, and I had to answer that 50 years ago. I went to that Bible study, you know my testimony, stoned, on my way home to commit suicide. A chain of events happened, and next thing I know, I'm in a car headed to a Bible study. Can you imagine? God sobered me up and I knew at that moment, when I heard the gospel for the first time, it was the truth. I had a decision to make. Am I going to serve myself and continue down this path of destruction or am I going to bow my heart's knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ, the King of glory, the rightful King, the only Lord, the only true God?

I'm glad I made the right decision. Aren't you? Well, this is what's before us this morning because we're in one of those parenthetical pauses now. Chapter 12, 13, and 14, at least through verse 20 of chapter 14. At the end of chapter 11, we have the scene where all the kingdoms of this world come under the authority of the King of Kings. Literally, the end of chapter 11 brings us to the end of the book of Revelation, and then we have these parenthetical pauses where He comes back and gives us more information until we get to chapter 19 where we have the record of what it is going to look like when we return with Christ to set up His millennial reign.

I will tell you this morning, if you're not a believer, God is speaking to your heart. You better listen. If you don't listen and all of a sudden you read in the newspaper or hear on the Fox News—I don't think CNN would even cover it—but Fox News might say, "Hey, there's billions of people missing. Space aliens must have come and taken them from the planet because they couldn't get it together." No, Jesus came for His bride, and we're home. Get one of those packets on the way out so you know what to do when you're still stuck here.

In chapter 12, it's interesting, it says that Satan finally is kicked out of heaven because he's there day and night accusing us before the Father. Then the warning is, "Woe to the inhabitors." The word for inhabiter in chapter 12 is those that have settled down and made this world their home. This is not our home; we're just passing through because Satan has come to you now. He's been kicked out of heaven and he's coming now, this great red dragon that persecuted the woman we saw in earlier parts of chapter 12, which is Israel who gives birth to the Messiah.

He persecutes her, he's kicked out of heaven, he's come to the earth now in the tribulation period, and it says woe to the inhabiters of the earth as we ended up last week because Satan has come down to you and he has great wrath. He is upset because he knows that his time is short. When he arrives here, he's going to try to reproduce, as it were.

Now we're going to see there's many different names that have been given to him by different of the apostles speaking of this man of sin. In fact, three times, actually four times, in the first 10 verses he's going to be called the Beast by John. Six times through all of chapter 13, he's called the Beast. That's a good name for him, the Beast. Paul calls him the Son of Perdition. Daniel says he's the little horn, he's the man of lawlessness. Others in the Bible call him the wicked one, the violent man, the spoiler.

We were introduced last week to him as the dragon. John calls him the Antichrist. Please make note of this because when we think of anti, we think of against Christ. That's not the word in the Greek. That's the closest English word that the New King and Old King James Bible could put it in translation in modern English, but it literally means counterfeit, instead of Christ. He will be a counterfeit.

There are 4,200 counterfeits in this world. I'll give you examples of just a few in America that are very popular. In the Roman Catholic Church—not the Catholic Church, because we're all Catholic, Catholic means universal. Even the name of the Roman Catholic Church is an oxymoron because it's saying Rome universal. The Roman Catholic Church believes that what Jesus did on the cross, although they believe in the right Christ, wasn't enough. You have to come to a priest and confess your sins.

The wafer and the cup every Sunday that you take it literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus because they re-crucify Him over and over for the sins of the world. That's why in the Catholic Church they still have Jesus on the cross. We believe what Hebrews tells us in chapter 14: by one sacrifice, He perfected forever those He made holy, and your sins and your iniquities He remembers no more. We serve a risen Savior who's already entered into the heavens, He's already offered His blood in the tabernacle in heaven, and those who put their faith in that are saved.

The Roman Catholic Church has instituted that transubstantiation and communion so they can control you. So if you don't do what they say, they just withhold communion from you and you're no longer saved, as though they had the authority to save you. There's only one who has the authority to save and condemn, and that's Christ. So it's a false religious system.

You go to the Mormons and listen, I'm not here to bash anybody, but the Mormons believe that the Jesus of the Bible is the brother of Lucifer. He's a created being. He's not almighty God. The Jehovah's Witnesses—I studied with them for a long time. They kicked me out. I was just talking to Josh before the service. Here I am, I'm messed up and I think what I need to do is get right, and so I'll go to church. Well, I went to the Jehovah's Witness church. I was chasing a skirt, I grant you, there was a gal there that I liked, but they kicked me out because I was reading and saying, "That's not what it's saying. Read ahead."

I wasn't even saved and I knew enough to know what they were saying wasn't true. I said, "You're trying to tell me that the Jesus of the Bible is actually Michael the Archangel? Why doesn't the Bible just say that?" Finally, I got thrown out. They literally embarrassed me in a Bible study and ushered me to the door and said, "Don't come back. We won't call you, don't call us." Now I look back and think, "Thank You, Jesus. You kept me. You guarded me."

The false spiritual system in the Vedanta City, this new age. You are Christ. The Christ consciousness is in you. Every false religion challenges who Jesus is. That's why when Peter said, "You are Yeshua Messiah, You're the Christ, You're the Messiah, You're the Son of God, You're the Savior of the world," Jesus said to him, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed that to you but My Father which is in heaven."

We have this false system. That's why John says the spirit of Antichrist has already gone out into the world. The spirit that is the counterfeit Christ, the counterfeit way to salvation, the counterfeit hope. Listen, Satan always offers a counterfeit. Even to us who are born again, the counterfeit is, if you'll do this sinful thing, you'll be happy and have pleasure. Oh, don't listen to God. Even though we're born again, he still comes at us, doesn't he?

But we're here to understand something that God is revealing to us in this parenthetical pause, that we've been in a battle from the moment God created human beings and Satan was jealous of our relationship with the Father. He sought to destroy us, and when he got us to fall into a sinful way through Adam and Eve, and sin brought in death and death has reigned to every human being, then he's trying to keep you from the only cure to that sin so you could come back to eternal life, and that is in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God, the one who came in human form, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, rose again the third day, ascended to the Father, and gave to all those who will come to Him this gift of eternal life and grace for the forgiveness of your sins. That's the only way to heaven. There is no other way.

Satan will offer you a counterfeit. He'll get you to believe because we're so stinking proud as human beings that you can earn it. "I can be good enough for God to like me again." No, you can't. Let me ask you this, just to make the point. How many sinned this morning? Yeah. Some of you came in here, I know, I can see it on your faces, you were arguing with your wife on the way to church and you walk in the door and I say, "How are you doing, brother?" "I'm doing just great." No, you're not, you're a liar. Tell me you just got in a fight with your wife and that you're in pride and you need to go home and repent. That's what I want to hear from you men and ladies. Be honest.

By the works of the law, the Bible declares, no man shall be found just. You can't do it. But there's a holy one, a just one that made you that. But Satan is always trying to tempt, always trying to lead away, distract. So we got the picture of who this great red dragon is, who has come to kill and destroy the star and the moon, the sun, which is Israel, to destroy the Messiah. When he's kicked out of heaven, as we read there last week, now chapter 13, we're introduced to the Antichrist, the instead of Christ.

Watch what it says. "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast." Like I said, four times in the first 10 verses, he's called the beast. Paul calls him the son of perdition. Daniel says he's the little horn, he's the man of lawlessness. Others in the Bible call him the wicked one, the violent man, the spoiler. We were introduced last week to him as the dragon. John calls him the Antichrist. There are many titles by which he goes, but all of them are that he is a deceiver, he is the accuser of the brother.

The god of this world hates you. Do you know that? He hates you. He cannot stand that you have, as a born-again, spirit-filled, blood-bought Christian, a relationship with the Father through the Son and through that work of the Spirit. In fact, he so hates you, the Bible says he's come to steal from you, he's come to kill you, and he's come to destroy you. He almost had me because after all of the immoral activity and drug abuse and alcohol had wrecked and ruined my life, he told me the only way out from the pain was to end my life.

That night, that's what I was going to do. Before that night was over, it was like the Lord said, "This is far as you go and you go no more," and He revealed His Son to me, ripped open my heart. I've often thought back these 50 years just how close I was to stepping into eternity without the Savior in my heart, without the blood applied to my life, without being born again, without my name written in the book of life, and one day would have to stand before the wrath of God. It shocks me how close I was. I tremble, I marvel.

Now when the church is gone and this war in heaven takes place and Lucifer is finally thrust out of heaven by Michael, he comes to the earth and there's great deception that's going to go on for those seven years. When Jesus was asked the question by His disciples, "What will be the signs of the end of the world and Your coming?" the very first thing that Jesus mentions is deception. "Many will come and say that I come in the name of Christ and will deceive many."

We're going to see this morning you only are deceived because you don't know the truth and you don't love the truth. That's why here at Gold Country Calvary Chapel, we teach you the whole Bible. We don't preach at you. We don't care how you dress when you come here as long as it's decent. We don't care how you wear your hair. We don't have any kind of regulations, but the one thing we do require is you bring your Bible and that we study it to lay that foundation underneath us so that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You will know the truth so that when the counterfeit shows up, you can go, "I ain't buying that."

You know how you know when Satan's lying? I was going to say like a certain party, but I can't do that because I'd get kicked off YouTube when I do that. His lips move. He's the father of lies. We find three times in the Bible him lying. Do you know he's recorded three times in the Bible lying? The first time is to Eve about God. The second time is to Job; he's lying to God about Job. "The only reason he serves You is because You bless him." And the last time we find him written in the Bible, he's trying to deceive and lie to Jesus. He's a liar and he'll lie to you. That's why you need to know the truth.

So he's kicked out of heaven, so his system now is set up here on earth for that last seven years. Satan has come to the earth. Woe to the inhabiters. This counterfeit Christ, he shows up, as it were, from the sea having seven heads. If he showed up looking like this, nobody would follow him. But these are—and we'll see the spiritual application—having seven heads, 10 horns, and upon his 10 horns, 10 crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

Now when we get to chapter 17, and you can just turn there ahead of time, we're going to see we get more instruction on who this is. In verse 10 of chapter 17, John says, "And there are seven kingdoms." Now he's telling us what the seven heads represent back in chapter 13. They represent seven kingdoms. You know what a kingdom is. We've had seven kingdoms that have perverted the truth of God and tried to destroy God's people and try to put an end to the coming of the Messiah.

I give those to you real quickly and then we'll come back and look at it. Egypt tried to destroy God's people and put God's people Israel in bondage so that the Messiah couldn't come. Then when Egypt passed from the scene, the Assyrians took the 10 northern tribes and tried to destroy them. That's why we say today the 10 lost tribes. Well, they're not lost to God.

Then Babylon came with its mystery religion and took away the two southern tribes and tried to destroy them. Then the Medo-Persians tried to destroy, and then Greece with its philosophy, ideology, and its plethora of gods tried to destroy and so corrupt again as it were the world with false religious systems that it drowned it out. Then came Rome.

So he's going to tell us there are seven kingdoms; five are fallen. Egypt is gone, Assyria is gone, Babylon's gone, Medo-Persia's gone, Greece is gone. Those are the five. He said one is or one still remains: Rome. Do you understand that the Roman Empire never was defeated? In 476 AD, it kind of just faded away. But listen, we still in America live under a Roman system of government. Did you know that with senators and not an emperor but a president with lots of power vested in his office? We still go to the arena, to the coliseums, and sometimes it's the lions against the saints.

No, listen, we are the revived Roman Empire. Then it says one is yet to come, that one-world government where Antichrist rules and he'll rule for three and a half years as the emperor of the world. This will take place after Russia and her hordes, as we study in Ezekiel 38 and 39, attack Israel. We're on the verge of all of that. When the dust settles and the smoke clears from that because millions and billions of people are going to be dead, the world will be thrust into war.

Daniel says he's a man of peace, and when he comes to the scene, he's going to make a covenant with Israel to settle down, build your temple. He's going to make a covenant with Islam: "You need to calm down." And the whole world will come under his authority as the leader, and it lasts for three and a half years. He's even of the eighth because after three and a half years, he goes into the rebuilt temple—not the millennial temple but the tribulation temple—he defiles it. Israel's eyes are opened and they realize that he's the Antichrist and not the true Savior, and then he begins to rule the world with a rod of iron.

This is what he's saying: seven kingdoms and then the 10 horns are 10 kings. We've been talking about that from Psalm 83. When Arab Spring started back in 2011 and 2012, the Lord showed me Psalm 83 because it's written by a seer and a prophet, Asaph. He's talking about the last days, these 10 kingdoms that will surround Israel in the last days and call for its destruction, that became radicalized with Islam. Islam by its very nature is a hater. It is Antichrist. It is a false religious system that is against the true Christ, is against the people of God, the Jews, and against the hidden ones, the Christians. We're the "big Satan" and Israel's the "little Satan." It's again another one of these counterfeit systems.

So we're introduced now in chapter 13 to this false prophet that's going to show up in the last days: seven heads, 10 horns, names of blasphemy. "And the beast which I saw was like a leopard"—he's going to be swift—"and he had the feet of a bear"—strong—"and his mouth as the mouth of a lion, and the dragon, that is Satan, gave him his power." This man will literally be—like Jesus was a man that was indwelt by God, He was the God-man.

The best description of Jesus is that He was completely human with undiminished deity. He was the incarnation of God in human form. Well, this man who comes upon the scene will be the incarnation of Satan, a man completely possessed of Satan. So the dragon will give him his power, will give him his throne, his lesser throne, and great authority. "And I saw as one of the heads"—now if you're in the tribulation and a leader comes up and all of a sudden he's wounded and it's a death wound and he rises again from the dead, it ain't Jesus. It's the "instead of Christ."

"And I saw his head as though it were wounded to death, and the deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast." Now Zechariah tells us about this. This is what Zechariah says in chapter 11, another prophet that writes profusely about the end days. He says this in chapter 11, verse 16 and 17: "For lo," God speaking, "I will raise up a shepherd in the land which shall not visit those that be cut off." This is not going to be a true shepherd; this is going to be a false shepherd. In fact, he's going to call him a worthless shepherd, an idle shepherd. "Neither shall he seek the young, nor heal that which is broken, nor feed that which standeth still, but he shall eat the flesh and the fat and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the idle shepherd that leaveth the flock. The sword shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye. His arm shall be clean dried up and his right eye shall be utterly darkened."

Zechariah is seeing this, and he's going to feign, he's going to fake this because he's trying to again be a counterfeit to the true Christ. He will receive a wound. It will look as though he were dead, and it will look as though he rose from the dead. Through this deception—and listen carefully, can I read you something from Second Thessalonians real quick before we go any further? Paul sees this. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, we'll begin our reading in verse 7: "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work." What is the mystery of iniquity? Counterfeit. Counterfeit salvation, counterfeit religion, counterfeit Christ.

The word for iniquity is something that twists you from the truth. It's already at work from Egypt all the way through Assyria, Babylon, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, even to this day with the new age spirituality. It's always twisting the truth. It's always distorting it. John will say that the spirit of Antichrist is already gone out into the world. There is this great deception and delusion.

So he says, "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he now that letteth or restraineth will restrain until he's taken out of the way." What is restraining all-out wickedness? It's the church. What did Jesus say you and I were? We're the salt of the earth. Salt keeps meat from putrefying. You're the light of the world. You expose this darkness. That's what we do. That's why we can tell you this morning we're not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. To the Jew first and then to the Christian. It is the power. It's what saves.

By the way, the power of the gospel is not in the messenger; it's in the message. God's word won't return void. What started my whole journey to the Lord was Dwayne Burke at White Hall gas station, 1975, looked at me while I filled my car and said, "Mike, I kind of knew him from high school, wasn't a friend, kind of an acquaintance. He said, 'Mike, Jesus has something better for you than what you're experiencing.' He could see I was already stoned on my way to a party. 'And you ought to give your life to Christ.'"

Well, that cut. That haunted. That stirred. It burned. It went on for months. So that night when I was going to end my life, I prayed, "If there's a God in heaven, I don't know. I don't think I'm an atheist, maybe an agnostic, I'm not sure." But before the night was over, the God of heaven revealed Himself to me.

People say, "How do you know?" I know. "Well, but can you prove it?" You're looking at it. Those who knew me before and after, you're looking at the evidence of a new life. Living testimonies because you're not the same. If you get religion, you could be the same. But if you're born of the spirit, you'll never be the same because you are a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things have passed away, behold, all things—it was amazing how I started hating the things I used to love and started loving the things I used to hate. It just transformed.

So he says, "Now we restrain, only then shall the wicked one be revealed when the church is removed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. Even him, listen carefully, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders." When he shows up, he's going to look like he is God. He's going to perform miracles. Then it says this: "And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish."

It's going to tell us why they're perishing: "Because there's a causation to it, because they received not the love of the truth." They didn't know this. Most of your modern churches will tell you, "Leave this home. We don't study doctrine here because doctrine is divisive." There's churches in this town that will tell you that. I would agree with them: it is divisive. It separates sheep from goats, wheat from tares, saved from unsaved. You can't know you're saved unless you know this book: how you're saved, soteriology. You can't know who God is and how He loves you without theology. You don't know who Christ our Savior is without Christology. Without pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit, you don't know anything. You can't understand who you are as the church without ecclesiology or eschatology where you're going.

The Bible is written in doctrinal, systematic, theological terms. That's why we study it. We don't teach from the Bible; we teach the Bible because we know deception only comes to those who do not love the truth. Well, it goes on and said that they might be saved. For this cause, God shall send a strong delusion to them that they should believe a lie. Why? That they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks unto God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit and through truth.

We're living in a time of the remnant church. Jesus said as we started this, when He wrote to the seven letters to the seven churches, "I have a few even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments." The Bible says that narrow is the road and few there be that find it that leads to heaven, but broad is the road and wide is the gate that leads to destruction.

So again, as we're going through these chapters, the question has to be before us: who do Jesus say that I am? Is He Michael the Archangel? Is He brother of Lucifer? Is He a good prophet? Is He a guru? Or is He who He said He was? The Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Because this deception is coming.

And so we're told that when he comes, he's going to perform these lying signs and wonders. And then it says, "And they worshipped the dragon that gave power unto the beast, and they worshipped the beast saying, 'Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war against him?'" because he just killed the two prophets. Three and a half days later, they rose up and ascended into heaven.

Then it goes on to say—now watch carefully—"And it was given unto him." Satan has no power that God doesn't allow him to exercise. I want you to get in your head today Satan is not Jesus' equal, he's not God's equal. He's a created being like you and I, and the only authority and power and influence he has is what God allows him to have. "It was given unto him a mouth speaking great things, blasphemies, and power was given unto him"—here it is again—"to continue the last three and a half years." He's going to show up on the scene.

Then it says, "And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, and he blasphemed God's name, the authority." You know, the Bible says there's only one name given among men whereby you must be saved, and that's the name of Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to let you in on a little something this morning. Whether you accept that now or don't, whether you believe it or don't believe it, it doesn't affect the truth of God's word. It doesn't affect who Jesus Christ is. He is still the King of Kings, He's still the Lord of Lords. It doesn't affect who almighty God is or who the Holy Spirit is because I'll let you in on a little something. One day, no matter what you believe now, you're going to bow and every tongue is going to confess.

I'm so glad I get to do it now, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of His Father. Your belief system doesn't change that, but your belief system can change you, just like it changed me. There's only one true and living God. Everything else is a lie, it's deception, it's a counterfeit, and it's a waste of time and energy.

Three things that are so important to me that I found out when I got saved. Prayer: I found out that because I was born again, I now have access back to my Father to talk with Him and to lay out my burdens and needs to Him, and He hears. The second thing was the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, that strength that God promised. I'll let you in a little clue: I was an introvert before I was saved. I didn't like people. I didn't do people well. I really didn't.

And one night as a missionary from Corinth came to speak at the church, I knew that I was called to ministry. But I said, "Lord, You know I don't like being around people, and I think that ministry involves people, doesn't it? Is there a ministry that doesn't involve people? I'll do that." And He changed me. Tracy asked me, "How do you go up there and talk?" I can't talk about anything else, but I have such an intimate relationship with the Father through my prayer life and through that relationship that it's not hard for me to stand up here in the power of the Holy Spirit and tell you about Jesus.

And then the word that exposes every lie. That's all associated with His name. He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God and against His name, the authority, and against His tabernacle in heaven, the place where Jesus put His blood for our forgiveness, and them that dwell in heaven. He's still cursing you when you get to heaven, church. Now he can't accuse you before the Father anymore because he's been kicked out and you're home, but he's still raising—can you imagine?

"And it was given unto him to make war with the saints." This is not the church. Nine books of the Old Testament call Israel saints. The church, that part of the saints, are gone. This is Israel, the saints. Because we're told that we're more than overcomers. We were praying, the people involved in ministry on Sunday morning, and one of the guys said, "Lord, I thank You that I'm more than an overcomer." And again, that the superlatives of God—what is more than an overcomer? If you're an overcomer, you've overcome. But you're more. No weapon formed against you will prosper. The gates of hell won't prevail against you, not the church. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in this world.

The weapons of our warfare as the church are mighty in God to the pulling down of the strongholds of the wicked one. We've been given the exousia of His name and the power of His Spirit and the authority of His word. The church doesn't leave here in defeat because we're more than conquerors, whatever that is.

But those of Israel that are here during this time because it's Jacob's trouble, it says that Satan will make war against the saints and he will overcome them. And power was given him again—it had to be given—over all the kindreds and tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. Listen, I don't think it's going to be a hard thing to get him to get you, if you're still here and not saved, to take the mark of the beast because there's going to be such a deception that finally all the wrappings will come off of Satan and the Antichrist and the false prophet, and he's going to demand what he's always wanted: that humanity would worship him.

And those people that are left here will be so deceived that they will willingly take the mark of the beast—we'll talk about that later, 666—and sell their soul for eternity into Satan's control. You know, Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 1 that you were chosen from the foundations of the world that one day you would stand before God perfect in love, that you are a chosen.

In fact, he goes on in chapter 1 and tells us the seven things we have from God, and one of them is that you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise until the day of redemption. We got nothing to worry about. Man, that spirit of Antichrist is out there deceiving people. I looked a lady in the eye, she was one of the news—got a new person working the counter at B&C, and after she rang me out, I said, "Listen, I got something I need to tell you, most important thing you're going to hear all day." That's how I start it. Because when I say that, they go, "Oh, like what?" Everybody does that to look at you, "Oh, like what? Most important thing I'm going to hear all day? What could it be?"

And I look her right in the eye and I said, "Jesus Christ loves you. And God the Father sent Him to die to pay for your sins that you could have relationship with the one who made you." And she looked at me and said, "You believe that, don't you?" I sure do. I'm not saying it because it's a duty, I'm not saying it because it's some religious thing I need to do. I'm telling you because I've experienced it.

And He stands ready like the prodigal father to welcome you home. Doesn't matter if you lived your life out there with the pigs. I lived my life with the pigs. I slopped with the pigs. And one day I woke up and thought, "Man, if this is all there is, it's not worth living." And so I thought I could become a wolf and huff and puff instead of a pig and I tried religion and I huffed and puffed and it didn't make me any better. I couldn't blow any houses down. I couldn't get rid of the drugs and the alcohol and the immorality. I couldn't get rid of any of it. I tried.

And I didn't even know where that morality came from. What is it in human beings that knows right from wrong? Do you know your whole body reacts to a lie? Because something deep in your soul and spirit knows it's wrong. This morning, you know whether you receive it or not, I'm telling you the truth. And you either love the truth and receive the truth or you be damned because you rejected it. It's your choice.

And I said to her, "Sister"—she goes, "Well, why would you call me sister?" Because I hope you will become one, part of the family. You can be part of the family. Guy showed up yesterday from—had to deliver a package from the new guy. I like to get the new ones. This guy came from the Postal Service, it wasn't Amazon or UPS or FedEx, and he steps out and I say, "Hey, sir!" and I went over there very politely and said, "Can I help you with the package?" "Well, no, I got to kind of put them on the porch because I got to take a photograph of them." I said, "Well, I can still help you put them on the porch." "No, no, I'll take care of it." He set them on the porch, took his picture, when he came back, same thing.

"Listen, man, I got something to tell you. It's the most important thing." He was Middle Eastern, probably Arab or maybe Jew, I'm not real sure. Middle Eastern look. I said, "I got the most important thing you're going to hear today." He goes, "What's that?" I said, "Jesus loves you. God sent His Son, conceived of the Spirit, born of the Spirit." And he let me tell the whole thing: conceived of the Spirit, born of the Spirit, and he was glued. Lived a sinless life, died substitutionary, rose again the third day and offers you the gift of eternal life because He loves you.

And I could see he was emotionally being affected. The Spirit was stirring. He goes, "That is the best thing I've heard today." I said, "Well, brother," and then again, he looked at me and I said, "Brother, have a good day. Watch out, man, there's some crazies out there." He goes, "Boy, don't I know it." And I'll be praying for you. I got to order something again that has to come to—I don't know how you determine who ships it, but I'm just going to order some dumb—a rubber duck or something that has to come through the mail so that guy has to show up in my house again. What do you guys need that they could send me so I could talk to him again? Sharks! Okay, I'll order a rubber shark from this guy.

And then I'm going to tell him, "Listen, if you come to Christ, let me pray with you. Don't come to our church because these people are nuts. They're nuts for Jesus." Then he says this, let's end this. "And if any man hath an ear"—notice carefully when Jesus ended the seven letters to the seven churches, He said, "If any man hath a hear—if any man hath an ear, let him hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches." Church is gone. He just says, "If you have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword."

And then He lays this on those tribulation people that are coming out. "Here is the patience." That word is hupomone in the Greek. It means to stand fast under the most violent of circumstances. "Here is the patience of the faith of the saints." Listen, you will be rewarded. It's never going to be more easier to serve Jesus and give your life to Him than it is today. Even in this room this morning, because you're among friends who want that for you, who love you.

But when the church is gone, it's going to get tough. In fact, the Bible says it's going to cost you your life as a testimony for Jesus if you can get that far because a lot of terrible things happen before that. And it told us in the last chapter that those who come out of the tribulation overcame Satan and his deception by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life unto death. I'm telling you right now, the spirit of Antichrist is already at work. Deception is afoot. 4,200 false religious systems in the world today, but only one is true. How do we know that? Because Jesus asked the question, and it has to be answered because that is the starting point. "Who do men say that I am?" You're the Christ. You're the God-man. You're Emmanuel, God with us. You are the Lamb of God. You are the Savior of the world. You're the one promised back in Genesis with the fall of man that your—the seed of the woman. Women don't have seed. Did you know that? Men have seed. But something miraculous He says is going to happen: she's going to conceive of the Holy Spirit, and the seed of the woman will crush Satan's head and bruise His heel in the process.

I'm telling you this morning, do not be deceived. There's only one way. There's only one truth. There's only one who can give you eternal life, and that's Christ Jesus. The Christ Jesus of the Bible, the Christ Jesus who is the eternal word, the second person of the Godhead, God eternally in the form of the eternal word who took on human form, who suffered and died in your stead and rose again the third day and offered His blood to the Father for the cleansing of your sins before heaven. He was the man that was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin. That's the Jesus I'm talking about. The Jesus that defeated the enemy.

And when He was in hell, He stole from him the keys. He robbed—He robbed Satan of what he had taken from Eve, the keys of death, hell, and the grave. And He offers to you this morning, if you can but believe, it's by faith. He offers you this morning the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. But I will tell you, there is a deceiver and he's lying to you right now if you're not a Christian. He's a liar, he's the father of lies. He's telling you this is a bunch of hooey.

You know, I had a friend that knew me well in high school, and three or four years had passed by since I was saved. I ran into him, I started witnessing to him, and he goes, "Well, how do I know it's true?" Again, I said—almost said his name, I don't want to do that—I said, "Brother, you knew me before, didn't you?" "Yeah. I've been hearing about you." I said, "I'm the evidence. I'm the proof. Because if Jesus could save me and change me, He can change anybody, even you." Amen?

I'm like Paul. Paul said the reason the Lord saved me and stood me up, because Paul said if He could save me, He could save anybody. Amen. The proof is a changed life, and you cannot argue with that. You can argue with everything else, theology, but you can't argue with a changed life. "Oh," and they said, "you'll be back." No, I won't. Listen, I'm done drinking sewer water. I tasted something much better.

And one by one, I got to lead my friends to the Lord. You know what led them to the Lord? My testimony. You know what led my father to the Lord 17 years later? My testimony. "You're different. How'd you do it?" I didn't. "Well, how'd you change?" I couldn't. "Well, what happened to you?" Jesus. The Holy Spirit. A new birth. Blood-washed. Redeemed. Gave me a new mind and a new heart, a new worldview, a new life. That's how.

And then I found out from my dad that somebody years ago in some church back in Arkansas told him if he didn't accept Christ that moment, that day, that Lord would have nothing to do with him. My dad looked at me—first time I ever saw my dad cry—said, "Well, why would He have you and not me? What?" He said, "It's too late for me." I said, "I can prove it's not, Dad." "Well, how can you prove that?" The thief on the cross. You can't get any later than that. He said, "Would Jesus have me?" And I said, "Absolutely." And I prayed with my dad. I never saw my dad cry before.

Then he wore me out. I couldn't get him enough books to read. I would come down to visit him and he had a tablet full of questions. You know, I tell you it's weird. It is weird when the roles are reversed and now you're the moral compass to your father instead of your father being the moral compass to you. That was just weird. For seven years I got the pastor until he went to be with the Lord. Got to lead my mom to the Lord.

Your best testimony is not what you say. It's how you live. And I don't need the drugs, I don't need the alcohol, I don't need the opinion of men. I have an opinion that matters. And I don't need your stinking religion, I got Jesus. I got the Holy Spirit. I got the—the—truth. That's why we're non-denominational here. I would like to change the name of our church someday to "The People of the Book." I think that's a much better name. That's what the early church was called: the people of the book of truth because this keeps us from being deceived. Amen. Amen.

Well, let's stand this morning. Let's have the worship team come. We're going to sing a last song. And listen, a message like this requires an opportunity, does it not? And I'm just going to say to you this morning straight up, no bowing heads, no closing eyes, nobody sneaks into the kingdom. I told you that night I got saved when that guy that was teaching the Bible study in the house when—when he gave an invitation, I just jumped up from my seat and ran at him. Nobody told me to come forward. I just thought whatever's happening is up there in the front, and I can still remember—his name was—he was a missionary called Brother Arbenzou, and his eyes were this big around as I came out of my seat in this large living room right at him. I think he thought I was going to tackle him.

And I fell in a heap of tears and I just remember praying, "Jesus, if You would have a mess like me, I have messed my life up. I am ruined. I came here stoned. You sobered me up. I'm not worth anything. I am worthless. I'm a throwaway. I'm going to throw my life away tonight. But if You would have me, if You could do anything with it, You can have all of me." I never struggled with giving Jesus all my life because I knew at that moment I was already a throwaway.

And you know what I remembered when I stood up for the first time? I remember thinking to myself, "Wow." I can even remember this. It felt like for the first time in my life, I stood straight up. It literally physically felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And the first thing I experienced was hope and peace. And that's what Jesus offers. Religion can't give it to you. A world will steal it from you. People will lie to you. Satan will lie to you, they'll deceive you.

But Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. So if you're here this morning and you don't have that and you want it, just step out of your seat and come forward. We're going to sing a song and then we're going to pray with you, just like they did for me. And I guarantee if you are sincere, your life will be forever changed. Oh, it's a slow process, but you will never be the same. You will be ruined for this world. Look at me! If you would have known me 50 years ago, you would have laughed if someone had told you, "Well, that guy's going to be a pastor someday." You would have laughed, you would have laughed so hard you would have broken a rib. And I would have joined you.

But what God can do. We ought to sing a song here, what He's done. We just need to sing a song. Someone ought to write a song what He's done because I can tell you what He did for me, and I'm not religious. People say, "Well, you used to wear Levis, why do you wear slacks now? You getting religious?" No, no, no, they're cheaper. I can buy three pairs of these for one pair of Levis. I'm frugal. That's the deal. It's not because I'm trying to get—they're just cheaper.

So Father, my prayer for this world today and there's such deception going on. The spirit of truth would speak to the hearts of men and women and reveal Your truth to them that they might come to know You and be born of Your spirit, washed in Your blood, name written in the book of life, and that they would be part of the family of God so that when You come, they would go with You to our Father's house. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.