The Great Commission
Though we are to be aware of events
that may signal Christ’s second coming,
we are to focus on the task Jesus gave us
when He ascended to heaven.
Here’s Gene:
The key word there is focus.
Because I think some Christians
lose their focus as to why we’re here.
What we’re supposed to be doing.
And the focus in the Great Commission,
as you know, is to:
Go, [therefore,] and make disciples of all nations...
That’s something that still is in process:
…baptizing them in the name of the Father
and [of] the Son and [of] the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe everything
I have commanded you. ...
Those were the final words of Jesus
to the apostles and, I believe, to us.
…[And] remember I am with you always,
[even] to the end of the age.
That is until the end of this present age.
And what we’re looking at
is what happens at the end of the age.
That is this time period of the day of grace
when God’s wrath begins to come on the earth.
Now very interesting, we’re going to
look at two evil personages, real people,
though they’re defined symbolically.
And this is what John saw:
[And] I saw a beast coming [up] out of the sea. ...
Now he’s going to be defined:
...He had 10 horns...
And again, there the horns probably refer to 10 kings:
…[and] seven heads.
[And] on his horns were 10 diadems,
and on his heads were blasphemous names.
The beast I saw was like a leopard…
Now you’ll notice that I’ve
highlighted here: leopard, bear's, and lion's.
And that’s fascinating because there you have
an interesting correlation with what Daniel saw.
When he saw the Babylonian Empire,
which related to Nebuchadnezzar like a lion.
You have the Medo-Persian Empire, the bear.
You have the Grecian Empire, the leopard.
And some believe that this evil person,
the beast coming out of the sea,
which we’ll see is the anti-Christ,
is going to be a combination of all of
these powerful individuals
who ruled in these previous empires.
And so it’s interesting terminology.
Again, when you’re interpreting Revelation,
one of the things you need to do
is go back to the Old Testament
particularly and see how
some of these words are used.
Why they are outlined in reverse order,
I’m not particularly sure
but that’s not the important detail.
The important thing is that there seems to be
a relationship to previous empires
that relate to this one individual
who’s going to emerge as a
very powerful individual. So we read:
…The beast I saw was like a leopard,
his feet were like a bear’s,
[and] his mouth was like a lion’s mouth.…
He just has the combination of all
of these individuals:
…The dragon gave him his power…
That is, who’s the dragon? Satan.
Some actually believe that
the anti-Christ will be Satan incarnate.
As Jesus was the incarnate God,
the anti-Christ will be the incarnation of Satan.
It’s something to think about.
Regardless, he was very evil.
And he was--his power came
directly from Satan.
And he had great authority.
And so we read on:
…They worshiped the dragon
[that is Satan]
because he gave authority to the beast.
And they worshiped the beast…
In other words, they worshiped
both Satan and this evil person.
Which, by the way, brings them together
as a possibility of being--
of the beast being the incarnate of Satan:
…saying, [as they worshiped the beast,
the anti-Christ] “Who is like the beast?
Who is able to wage war against him?”
A mouth was given to him
to speak boasts and blasphemies.
[And] he was also given authority
to act for [How long?] 42 months.
3½ years. There again you have the
time, times, and ½ a time.
And that’s significant. And that’s one reason why
I think that we need to understand
that probably this is a literal period of time.
So Satan, through the beast,
is going to really be active.
Incredibly active with all this power
during this 3½ years, which will be
the time of what is called the Great Tribulation:
Then [it says] I saw
another beast coming [up] out of the earth;
he had two horns like a lamb,
but he sounded like a dragon.
[And] he exercises all the authority
of the first beast on his behalf
and compels the earth and those
who live on it to worship the first beast,
whose fatal wound was healed.
He also performs great signs,
even causing fire to come down
from heaven to earth before people.
Later this individual is called the false prophet.
But here you have these two powerful individuals.
You have the anti-Christ.
You have right beside him the same--
you have the false prophet
with this incredible power.
Now, by the way, if you were reading this
or even perhaps you were John
and you're receiving this revelation.
You can see, living in the midst
of the Roman Empire, how this could be
referring, first of all, the first beast
who comes out of the sea
as being the Roman Empire.
Why? Because the Roman Empire at this time
controlled the whole civilized world.
And you certainly could read into this
that this is referring to the Roman emperor
when this beast comes out of the sea.
The provincial leaders in the other parts
of the Roman Empire were actually
encouraging emperor worship.
Which would be like the false prophets, as it were.
Multiple false prophets who were
actually saying: you’ve got to
worship the Roman emperor.
Just as the false prophet was saying: You’ve got to worship
the beast. You‘ve got to worship the anti-Christ.
So you could see how they could interpret that
as being literally fulfilled
at this particular time.
And Christians were being martyred.
Just as people were being martyred
during this time,
Christians were being martyred
for the cause of Christ
and being imprisoned.
And John was on the isle of Patmos.
He was exiled there because of his beliefs.
So you can see the possible correlations.
But the fact of the matter is, when you read
what these two individuals did.
When you read their power.
When you read all the things that happened,
these comparisons with the
Roman Empire are minimal.
Compared with what’s going to happen
in the future, to what some believe
will be a revived Roman Empire.
What we see here is without precedent.
And furthermore, no one has ever emerged
to support another one who could
work great signs and wonders
like the false prophet.
Literally calling down fire from heaven.
Probably that’s literal.
So if you read on:
[And] he requires everyone--
small and great, rich and poor, free and slave--
to be given a mark on his right hand
or on his forehead…
This is now the second beast
saying he has to have this mark:
…so that no one can buy or sell
unless he has the mark:
the beast’s name or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom:
The one who has understanding
must calculate the number of the beast
because it is the number of a man.
His number is 666.
Now at this point and time, I think
you have to understand something.
There are some people that spend
most of their time trying to figure out
who the beast is.
And prognosticate who he might be.
They’ve tried to do that for 2,000 years.
They’re always wrong.
They’ve always been wrong.
Does that mean we shouldn’t be alert?
We should be alert
but that should not be our focus.
And that’s the point of this Principle,
which I’ll develop a little bit later.
Now the fact is that what we
have described here certainly relates to
what Paul talked about in 2nd Thessalonians.
When he talked about this man of sin,
this lawless one.
And here he’s writing to Christians who are confused.
Who thought the day of the Lord
had already come. And day of the Lord
meaning when God comes--
Jesus comes to judge.
And so Paul writes
to them to put them at ease and he says:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our being gathered to Him: …
Which by the way, is an interesting mystery.
Because it says that we’re going to be
gathered unto Him and the question is:
When will that be?
Well see that takes you back to these various views
in terms of when the church will be removed
from the earth.
Paul doesn’t definitively answer that question.
But he does separate it out as being a time
when we as believers will be
gathered to Christ:
…we ask you, brothers [and sisters], not to be
easily upset in mind or troubled [about this],
either by a spirit
or by a message or by a letter as if from us,
alleging that the Day of the Lord has come. ...
And the day of the Lord is now, not just a day,
but this is the beginning of a time period
where the Bible describes the Day of the Lord
as a period of judgment:
…Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way.
For [that day] will not come
unless the apostasy comes first
and the man of lawlessness is revealed,
the son of destruction. ...
Here in the book of Revelation,
we see this man of lawlessness being revealed
as he emerges, as it were, symbolically
from the sea.
And what Paul is saying:
That man has not emerged.
So the day of the Lord could not have come.
Because he will not emerge until
the day of the Lord begins.
Now at that point and time,
you could say: We will never recognize
who this man of sin is
because we will be with the Lord--
if you believe that we will be removed
before the day of the Lord begins:
…He opposes [and he] exalts himself…
This is talking about the evil one:
…above every so-called god or object of worship,
so that he sits in God’s sanctuary,
publicizing that he himself is God.
Now that correlates with what
we just read in the book of Revelation.
About this beast that emerges from the sea.
And the other beast, the false prophet,
who emerges from [the sea or] the earth.
Now the interesting thing is that Daniel--
if you go back to Daniel. You will find
that Daniel, in his prophecies,
describes this evil person.
Calls him a king:
Then the king will do whatever he wants.
He will exalt and magnify himself
above every god,
and he will say outrageous things
against the God of gods.
He will be successful until the
time of wrath is completed,
because what has been decreed
will be accomplished.
He will not show regard for
the gods of his fathers,
the god longed for by women,
or for any other god, because
he will magnify himself above all.
That sounds like what Paul has written.
It also sounds like what John has recorded--
here that we just read
about the beast that emerged.
And that leads to a very interesting question:
How does Jesus’s final communication
with His disciples help us to have
a proper perspective regarding Bible prophecy?
Now this is a focus.
It doesn’t say we shouldn’t be interested in Bible prophecy.
Because the book of Revelation says
we should be interested.
But in Acts chapter 1,
when the apostles ask a question of Jesus
before He returned to heaven:
...they asked Him, “Lord,
at this time are You [going to restore]
the kingdom of Israel?” Jesus said:
You shouldn’t [be] try to answer that--
you shouldn't try to answer that question. Why?
…It is not for you to know the times or [the] periods
that the Father has set by His own authority.
But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come [up]on you,
[and] you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem,
in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.
That should be our focus.
Now does this mean we shouldn’t be alert
to the events? And that there will be
this time that is described here
in terms of the anti-Christ?
We should be alert to this.
But we shouldn’t be--as people have done
for 2,000 years--trying to identify him,
and publicizing who he is.
And that becomes an incredible
embarrassment to Christianity.
Because every time they have
prophesied that Hitler or Mussolini
or somebody else is the anti-Christ, they’re wrong.
And what does that say to the world?
It’s a stumbling block to the world.
That Christians don’t know
what they’re talking about.
So that’s why this Principle, I think,
is very important when you look at
what’s happening here in the book of Revelation,
in the light of the whole of the New Testament.
And when you read all the letters
that are written in the New Testament,
our focus is very clear:
Though we are to be aware of events
in our world that may signal the Second Coming,
we are to focus on the task Jesus gave us
when He ascended to heaven.
And that’s what I need to ask myself:
Do I have the right focus?
Interested in Bible prophecy? Yes.
Because much of the Bible is prophecy.
But what does Bible prophecy
emphasize for you and me?
Get with the program.
And keep your focus on Jesus
and carrying out the Great Commission
of our Lord Jesus.