Revelation: Part 39

When anyone anywhere responds to this knowledge, by having a desire to know this God, God will move heaven and earth to get the message to them.

I hope this is not boring to you. Is it? You know, I really, I really think you’ve got to have a scriptural background to understand all of this, okay? And I hope I’m not being too dry here.

All right. Now verse 35. And some of those who have insight will fall in order to refine, purge and make them pure, until the time of the end. Because it is still to come at the appointed time.

All right, now here’s this long line of history, the first 34 verses. And it sums up the treatment of past history there. When he wrote it, it was still future. But most of this has been fulfilled up -well, all of it was fulfilled up to verse 35.

And in verse 35 he says, but at the time of the end, there are certain things that are appointed. And then there is another one of those big, giant historical parenthesis. And it leaps from the time back there to the end time. Now, look at verse 36.

Then, in other words, after this leap of time, then the king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every God, and speak monstrous things against the God of gods. And he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done. It’s interesting some of the translations in the other passages here.

Put it this way. Then the king shall do according to his own will, he shall exalt and magnify himself above every God, and shall speak blasphemies against the God of gods. That is the true God. And shall prosper until the wrath has been accomplished, for what has been determined shall be done.

He shall regard neither the God of his fathers nor the desire of women. This is the New King James version I’m reading from. Nor regard any God, for he shall exalt himself above them all. But in their place, he shall honor a God of fortresses.

All right, now what is this telling us? You know, I’ve often thought how is the Antichrist going to establish a one-world religion? As we’ll see in chapter 17 and 18, he does. How in the world is he going to get muslims and buddhists, and, you know, all of the episcopalians and presbyterians.

What I’m trying to say is all of those who are in Church, but really didn’t believe. Whatever denomination it is because it doesn’t matter what denomination you are. It’s whether you personally believe that Jesus Christ died in your place, and you’ve received the gift of pardon as a gift and asked him to come into your life and take it over. Now, there are a lot of people in Church that just haven’t had that personal commitment and experience.

Well, that will be part of all this. But the point is I’ve often wondered how -you know, look at the muslims with their traditions and everything. Man, they don’t want to compromise anything. Confucianism and, you know, what’s that religion of Mary glover patterson eddy?

Christian science. All these people got these religious history and traditions and things like that. How is he gonna get everybody to do this? Well, he is going to come in and it says he’s not going to regard any gods.

Not the God of gods, the true God, nor any God, false gods. But instead it says he is going to honor a God of fortresses. Now, what this -what this word in Hebrew really is talking about is forces. And it’s usually used with military forces.

He’s going to use a God who has great force. He’s going to worship a God and introduce the worship of a God who has great force, and especially, able to put down military power. Any kind. In verse 38, but in their place he shall honor a God of forces, a God which his fathers did not know.

He shall honor with gold and silver and precious stones and pleasant things. And he will act against the strongest fortresses. And that word means in a sense, the strongest military powers. By means of a foreign God.

And this word means alien. We’re really being set up for all of this. The conditions have been being set up. It started in the 1960s.

I was on the college campuses the whole decade in the 1960s, working with college students. And I was in campus crusade for Christ. I was working at ucla and I was the head of the west coast so I was at berkeley a lot and so forth. I still remember between 1960 and 1964 a great swinging of a pendulum.

Because, you know, before that, you talk to the average college student, he was an empiricist. He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t hear, touch, taste, smell, whatever. And, you know, the thing that was in vogue on the college campus, was to be a skeptic and not really believe in much of anything that’s supernatural, can’t be proven by science. But as you draw upon 1964, all of a sudden all over the country, in the classrooms, among the hippies, there were those that were turning to the occult and believing in supernatural things.

Even the most doubtful professors were beginning to turn that way. And that kept swinging until now hollywood makes films about supernatural type of phenomena all the time, don’t they? It’s commonplace today. Things you see now, for the last ten years, would have been laughed at four decades ago.

But not now. You see, the mindset of the world at large, I’m talking about the secular world, has really been changed. And it’s no accident. The word Satan means slanderer, and the devil means deceiver.

Well, he’s great at deceiving. He’s been setting the world up to accept supernatural things. There’s also something else that’s been going on. Now, don’t put me with george noory or some of those others that kind of get spooky on ufos and so forth.

But there are sightings of unidentified flying objects that have been validated by men who are professionals who had no motive to try to fool anybody. There were many pilots and so forth, who have seen unidentified flying objects making movements that are beyond anything we know about on this earth. And I believe they’re real. But I believe they come from a different source than what most people do.

And I believe that’s part of a setup, too. You see, do you remember when Jesus was enduring his temptations? Remember the three temptations that Jesus was put to when he was just starting his ministry? In one of those it says Satan took him up on a high mountaintop and in a moment of time, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.

Do you realize what power that took? You see, he didn’t show him the misery, he showed him the glory of all the kingdoms of the world. And he says all of this I will give you if you’ll fall down and worship me. For it has been given to me and I can give it to whom I please.

Who gave it to him? Adam. But the important point is this. It showed us the enormous power to materialize things that Satan had.

And that was just a little bit of what he can do. But the Bible predicted that as we drew near those final seven years, that God’s restraint of Satan would be drawn back gradually. And then when those seven years start, all restraint is taken off. But we live in the days when a lot of that restraint has been removed.

That’s why this is not the same America most of us grew up in, is it? Well, it’s the same thing all over the world. You see, the mystery of lawlessness is already coming in. It’s talked about in 2 Thessalonians 2.

And it’s preparing the way for the man of lawlessness. And so when it says that the Antichrist and the false prophet are going to perform things and take over the whole world, and they’re going to do it with the help of an alien God, and this -you know, this is after the Antichrist of Rome has already put away the God of gods, the true God, and all other gods, and now he says this is the God. How’s he gonna convince people? Well, I could write a good screenplay for that.

One of those ufos just has to land. And a person come out of it and say, I’m the one that started all of this and I’ve come back to lead you and the human race to its greatest age of development and knowledge and awareness. And it says it’s with the help of this one that he’ll conquer everything. So it could well happen.

And what I’m seeing here is something new to me. But it’s beginning -you know, the nearer we get to that time, the Holy Spirit said we would begin to understand more and more. Something like this, I believe, will be the scenario that the Antichrist is gonna use. And he will finally declare himself to be God.

And it says he will take his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. That’s one of the two historical events that God said to look for, because it immediately precedes the starting of the Day of the Lord, which begins with that first seven years called the Tribulation. And, you see, then it says that this Antichrist, I’m talking about 2 Thessalonians 2, it says but this Antichrist, this man of lawlessness, cannot be revealed until what? The restrainer is taken out of the way.

Then that lawless one will be revealed. Well, the restrainer is the Holy Spirit. So we see two things here. Number one, the seven-year Tribulation can’t start until the man of lawlessness is unveiled.

And the apostasy, which means the complete rejection of all things about God. Those two events take place before the seven years can start. But the man of lawlessness cannot be unveiled until the Holy Spirit is taken out of the way. So that tells me there will be a slight gap between when he snatches you and I out of here in the Rapture.

And there has to be a time for the Antichrist to be unveiled to get political power base so that he can sign an agreement with Israel as per Daniel 9, guaranteeing their security. So it’s a slight gap of time after the Church is gone, and before the seven years begins because he has to make that covenant with Israel guaranteeing their security. Got the picture? I think we’re very close.

I don’t know the day or the hour, but I believe that we’re absolutely in the general time of the fulfillment of all these things. And I’ve only touched the surface. Please read these Scriptures that I gave you. Read the whole chapter of Daniel 7, chapter 8, at least the latter part of chapter 11.

It gives the battle plan, by the way, for the war of Armageddon in verses 40 through 45. It gives the exact battle plan, how it’s gonna go. And then read 2 Thessalonians 2, and 1 John 4:1-4. And I will read this to close.

It says this. From the new American standard. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Now this means that everyone that confesses that Jesus stepped out of heaven, came down, and took upon himself a human nature, in order to die for our sins. Then he died in our place to purchase a pardon, and then he was resurrected and his offer of salvation is to give you a free pardon if you will admit that you’re a sinner and receive it.

All right, that is the spirit of God. You can’t go around teaching that if the spirit of God is not in you. Now, he says on the other hand, verse 3, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist.

All right, now that’s the only time the Scripture, it uses the word Antichrist. You know that? We’ve been talking about this guy all along, but here it gives him a name. He’s called a man of lawlessness.

He’s called a little horn. He’s called the king at the end and so forth. But this is the first time it uses the word Antichrist. And it says and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You see, even back in his time, the spirit of the Antichrist was here. And the mystery of lawlessness was already at work. But it would keep working and working until just before the Antichrist is revealed and it would be preparing the world to be deceived.

And we certainly see that. The spirit of the Antichrist has prepared the way for the Antichrist. And so this is the comfort that I want you to take with you. It says, verse 4, you are from God, little children, and have overcome them.

Because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. And they are from the world, therefore, they speak as from the world and the world listens to them. That’s why we’ve got people that come around claiming to be christian ministers, claiming to be christian theologians, talking about the lost tomb of Jesus and how he really married Mary Magdalene and had a child named judah. The spirit of the Antichrist.

And if you noticed how every Christmas, every Easter now, we’ve got a new theory that they trot out. Man, let’s see, how long has it been now? Over 40 years ago I studied that in the graduate school of theology. Those are old things that have been dusted off and shown to be false centuries ago.

But Satan feels, well, I’ve got a new audience and they’re a lot more gullible, so I’ll try them all out again.

But greater is he who is in you than he who is in this world. The Holy Spirit dwells in every believer and he is in you and you need not be afraid. He will guide you. Depend upon him.

He will show you the Scriptures. He will bring to mind things that you need, if you just depend on him. Now, I have conversations with the Holy Spirit all day long. And I’m not mentally nuts.

Well,…

But he has me in his hand anyway. And, you know, if you depend on the Holy Spirit, he’s gonna take care of you. But that’s what it’s talking about when it says, that the man of lawlessness shall be restrained until the restrainer is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one shall be revealed.

And you see, you can’t take the restrainer out of the world unless you take out the containers in which he lives. You and me. And so when the restraint is all gone, we’re gone, thank God. I don’t want to be around here when he’s not restraining anything anymore.

But I hope you can see by what we’ve studied tonight, and all of this was just a little background to go into Revelation 13 next week. I hope you can see that there’s a great wealth of prophecy, that all built up to this time. And that we have a good description of the sort of person this guy is gonna be. There are all kinds of words used to describe his character and his characteristics in the verses I read you tonight.

Think about them this week. Read those passages several times. And you’ll begin to see what kind of a guy is going to take over the world very soon. One an Israelite.

The other a Roman. It has to be a Roman because Daniel 9:27 says, or 26, I should say, it says the people of the prince who shall come in the future shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end will be with a flood of war. All right.

The people who destroyed the temple and the sanctuary, 70 A.D., Romans. The Roman tenth legion, which was one of the proudest. Romans. Not mercenaries, they were Romans.

And it says the prince has to come out of the same people that destroyed the city and the temple in 70 A.D. So whoever the Antichrist is, he has to be a Roman. And I have a theory.

Not about who he is, but about something else. Because — I’ll bring it to you next week.

Let’s pray. Father, thank you in Jesus’ name, for your word. There’s no wonder on earth like the Word of God. It is truly the eighth wonder of the world and the greatest wonder of the world.

And we thank you that you loved us enough to give us your word of heaven to be able to sit here and study and read and have a compass about where we’re going. Lord, just make sure that everyone has come to accept the gift of pardon that Jesus died in his or her place to make free to us. In Jesus’ name, amen.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary. And he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

As I prepared for this week’s program, I was again struck by the speed with which events are moving into the scenario the prophets predicted for the end times. I believe we’re there. People on the street are talking about what all of these things mean. Folks that wouldn’t darken the door of a Church or pick up a Bible, are now very curious.

This may be our greatest opportunity, maybe even our last opportunity, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ before we’re silenced by political correctness. The message that God has given me is more important now than it’s ever been. For the Church and for the nation.