"I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and 10 horns and upon his horns 10 crowns and upon his heads, the name of blasphemy" (Revelation 13:1). Verse 6, "And he opened His mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, to blaspheme His tabernacle and to blaspheme them that dwell in heaven, {7} And it was given unto him to make war with the holy people and to overcome them. And power was given to them over all tribes and tongues and nations."

Whatever this beast is, its powerful and blasphemous and violently opposed to the Jewish people. No, it's not Islamic. It's so tempting to think that, whenever you find some power that is anti-Christian or anti-Judaic or anti-Jewish, but Paul tells us that this great power exalts itself above all that is called God, and sits in the place of God and calls itself God.

No this beast can't be Islamic, if you understand how violently monotheistic Islam is, you would know that that's not possible, no power, claiming to be God other than Allah himself, could ever demand or command the respect and the following of the Islamic people. This beast is not Islamic.

Whatever it is, it gets its power from the devil and it's a part of the devil’s scheme to destroy the faithful people of God, Jewish and Christian. We suspect, that what all these prophecies we have been studying or trying to warn us is, that there is yet another Holocaust to come upon the people of God, the holy people, whether they be Jewish or whether they be Christian.

We are in the book of Revelation, the 13th chapter, where John introduces us to a vision of the antichrist. Chapters 12, 13 and 14 are called inset chapters by some, but in fact they fit right in place in the grand scheme of the book of Revelation. These chapters lay out the whole story of the opposition of the great Dragon to God, to His plan, and to His people. They need to be looked at in the whole, so if you find yourself a little confused as we make our way through these prophecies, write us a letter or give us a call and let us tell you how you can get the whole Revelation series. That way you can study it at your leisure and you can be right up to date and understand what it is we are trying to say.

Verse seven of Revelation 13 says this, "Unto him," that is, to the beast, "It was given to him to make war with the saints." That is with the holy ones or the holy people. "And to overcome them. And power was given to him over all tribes and tongues and nations."

Now Christian readers of Revelation are prone to take the word 'saints' a little too narrowly here. The Greek word literally means 'the holy' that is 'the holy ones.'

'Holy' means a people set apart. And depending on the context, it can mean Christians, that is, people in whom is the spirit of God, or it can mean Israelites, or can mean both.

Now one of the most frightening aspects of this prophecy, is the statement that "the beast will make war against the holy people and will overcome them." Now I would not normally think about 'war against the church.' I'm mean a church doesn't have weapons, the church is not out there with its great army of people with swords and shields and spears and M-16 rifles or anything of the sort. They don't have battalions and regiments for someone to make war against them, but nations do! The Jewish people in the nation of Israel do!.

This beast says that he will make war against them (verse 7), and will overcome them. I always hope when I hear that I'm going to have the devil making war on me that God is going to protect me, that He will put his angels about me, that He will come and fight for me and that in the end we will win against the devil. But here in this battle, this beast makes war against the holy people and overcomes them.

Now verse eight of Revelation 13 tells us this, "All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, (that is the beast), whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

Now keep in mind that the word 'worship' as its used here, is a Greek word for, 'to do obeisance before.' I think it literally means 'to kiss the hand toward in the senses,' it's a symbolic gesture as though, 'I kissed the hand or the ring of the one before whom I am bowing and doing obeisance,' it's not a loving worshipful adoration.

Normally when we speak of worshiping God, we are really talking about the adoration of God. The earth is not going to adore this power, but it is going to do obeisance before him. It's going to bow before him because they will either bow or die, and the people who were not willing to bow, who are willing to die, are those whose names are written in the 'book of life' of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

These are the only people who finally, will not submit to this great power. Now this is not to say that any of this is voluntary on the part of the people who do it, they really don't have any choice.

In verse nine, the prophet continues, "If any man have an ear, let him hear. {10} He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity, he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints."

What he is saying is this, "You are going to lose this battle, but the one that kills with the sword shall himself die and the one that leads you into captivity, will himself go into captivity, so be patient you holy people. Be patient you saints."

Now, in the book of Revelation, in chapter 13, there comes another awesome beast on the scene. {11} "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon."

Now for anyone who is going to teach the Scriptures and work with Christian people and be in churches and in campaigns with churches and so forth, this passage of Scripture has got to be very troubling, because it implies that this beast, and the word 'beast' is probably misleading, except that we are in vision. It's a nightmare type of scenario, but it is not going to look like a beast to you when it appears. It is not going to look like a lamb or a dragon, in fact, the idea of the two horns of a lamb speaking like a dragon are all symbolic and what it means is this, it implies that this one who comes, looks like 'The Lamb of God,' but speaks for the Devil.

Now maybe this should not be all that surprising in view of all the prophecies we have been reading in this series up to this point about deception. Satan the devil has deceived the whole world" (Revelation 12:9) and what better way to deceive the people than to pretend to speak for Christ, to gain their confidence, but to speak the subtle message of the Serpent.

Do you remember in the garden of Eden when Eve was there and wandering among the trees and came upon a serpent, hanging from one of the branches and the Serpent speaks to her and they carry on a conversation. This Serpent says, "You know, has God said that you should not eat of every tree of the garden," and so on the conversation went. It says in Genesis 3 verse 1, "That the serpent was more cunning than any of the beasts of the field." What could be more cunning than to pretend to be righteous, to pretend to speak for God, to use the words of Christ, to speak often correctly of Christ. To quote Him properly, but to have the subtlety, of a different agenda, a different approach, something you're trying to accomplish that's rather different from that Jesus would've accomplished.

Did you know that Paul warned that this would happen? In his second letter to the Corinthians in chapter 11 in verse 12, he is dealing here, with his policy, which was to try his best to separate himself from those false prophets that were to be found, he was very careful in Corinth to avoid taking any money from these people. He had people from Macedonia and elsewhere who sent him help all the time, but he got a job when he came to Corinth because he knew what kind of problems he faced there. He worked hard, worked with his hands.

He made a statement in second Corinthians 11 verse 12 as to why he did it, at least one of the reasons he did it. He said and I quote, "But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them, which desire occasion, that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we."

Rather awkward wording in the King James version, but what he is saying is this, "I do what I do, to take away the occasion, from those people, who say they work like I do. They can't take pride in what they do, in the way that I do, because their motives are different. They are working for money. I'm not."

He then goes on to say about these individuals in Second Corinthians in chapter 11 in verse 13, "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ."

All right, here we have it. There are people who pretend to be ministers of Christ, that to all outward appearances, they are, they certainly are widely accepted as such. And here I sit in the midst of a group of ministers and clergy and bishops and deacons and all kinds of people, who claim to be the servants of God, and I look around myself and I wonder, is the Dragon here? Is the false apostle here? Is the deceitful worker here? Are those people here who would pretend to be apostles or emissaries or preachers of Christ, but an actual factor advancing another agenda and do they know it?

Well, it is truly a disturbing thought, isn't it? To consider that, we could be misled by people who we have come to trust. And yet, if we know our Bibles very well at all, we have been warned repeatedly. Jesus warned us, that we would know them by their fruits, that you're not just to accept people's words, you look at what they do and how they live their lives, and what they're actually doing for you and for the church. You should be able to tell something by the things that they do.

Paul continued when he said this, he said, {13} "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.{14} And no marvel."

I'm sorry, I marveled a little bit about it, but Paul said that there shouldn't be a marvel, wake up.

I've talked to a few people in my time who claim to have seen an angel. One fellow said he saw it when he was standing out hitchhiking on the road side. One lady told me she saw an angel standing at the foot of her bed, and their descriptions were remarkably similar. But my question when I listen to them talk, was how did they know? How did they know it was an angel of light and not something rather different! How could you tell the difference between Satan and a demon on the one hand and an angel on the other?

Paul then continues to say in verse 14 of Second Corinthians in chapter 11, "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. {15} Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works."

Now you need to understand that the word 'minister' in the Greek here is actually the word for 'servant.' "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, therefore, it is no great thing if his 'servants' be transformed as the 'servants' of righteousness."

But all of us who are ministers, ought to take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror. Look at the amount of time we are spending in communion with God? Are we listening to the Bible? Or are we listening to something else? We must decide who are we really serving? Because there's somebody out there, who looks just like we do, who is serving another master. To me, this passage is one of the most disturbing things that Paul ever wrote. Are we foolish enough to believe that this was all over, in the first century? What do you think, that the devil has died, and he's changed his tactics, that he won't do now what he did then?

I want to tell you something you should think very deeply on. One of the great disservices the entertainment industry in this country has done to us, is in the portrayal of evil, they make it look evil! Now why should that be a disservice? Why should it be a disservice to portray evil as looking evil. Well, because the most dangerous evil of all, is the evil that does not appear to be evil.

I see these movies where you have this terrible evil force that slavers at the jaw, and the face is ugly and distorted, and it looks like evil, but your children need to understand, that the most dangerous evil on the face of this earth, can look as wholesome as anything you would ever see. So, don't get led down the garden path on this, and don't let yourself or your children look for evil, in a form that looks evil, because the Bible tells us, that the devil doesn't look like that, and you can't tell it by the way he looks.

Okay, the devil is out there. He has servants. They look like angels. How can you tell the difference? Well, this section of Revelation 13 is going to tell us what we cannot afford to trust.

So continuing with Revelation 13 and verse 12, "He," that is this second great beast that is come up, the one that looks like a lamb, but speaks for the dragon, "He exercises all the power of the first beast before him, and he causes the earth and them that dwell on the earth to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed."

Now this is kind of a strange circumstance where the second beast or creature or person or whatever it is, comes along and causes everyone to do obeisance to the first beast, and who exercises all the power that the first beast had. You know we have something like this in the fourth century. Prior to the fourth century the bishops of the Christian church, far and wide throughout the Roman Empire, were persecuted terribly. They were oftentimes, if they were discovered at least, they were arrested and shipped off to lead mines in Sardinia and allowed to die there, and their bodies thrown in the sewer to rot away.

It was no easy thing to be a bishop in Rome or Alexandria or Antioch in those early years. It was a dangerous form of life, their life expectancy was short, and the church was left to elect a successor, all too often.

Toward the beginning of the fourth century, something very strange happened. One day the Roman Emperor Constantine showed up on the doorstep of the Bishop of Rome and claimed to have had a religious experience, to have seen the sign of the cross, and was told that in that sign, he would conquer! Well conquer he did, and he also sort of, took the whole church under his wing and made it an extension of his own ego, and of who he was, and of what he was.

The church became elevated. It got strong. It came eventually to exercise enormous power, in fact, it actually exercised the power of the Roman Empire and used the secular arm to enforce its will, far and wide.

So here we have someone coming along, who is exercising all the power of the Roman Empire in an ecclesiastical way.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions, that what I'm presenting here is an anti-Catholic polemic, that I'm somehow against the Catholic Church, put that thought away. Not a few Roman Catholic theologians have deplored the corruption and that wealth and power brought to the Bishop of Rome. One of the most interesting books in this regard is Malik E Martin's book, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church." He tells a story far better than I could, about how often the time of the dowry of Constantine being laid upon the church, power and wealth being laid upon the church, that in the years and generations with different popes that followed, the corruption finally led to the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance polled through all that period of time, allowed staggering corruption to enter the church and never did anything about it.

Malik E. Martin, for your information, who wrote all this, is a Catholic and a Jesuit.

Now verse 13 of Revelation 13, "This second beast does great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven in the sight of men."

Why fire from heaven? Why not some other miracle? Well, calling down fire from heaven is really very important, what it does is, it brings to earth the typical sign of Elijah. Now if you know your Old Testament, you're going to know that there was a time when Elijah was sitting on a mountainside and they sent a platoon of infantry out to bring him in.

They said, "O Elijah, If you be a man of God come down!" and Elijah said in  2 Kings 1 verse 10, "Well, if I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven to consume you and your soldiers." And it did.

Also, this is the same Elijah that having mocked the priests of Baal (1 Kings 16:19-40), set up an altar and laid an offering before God and called down fire from heaven to consume the offering. So when you hear someone talking about calling down fire from heaven, he is either the one to come at the time of the end in the spirit and power of Elijah or he is a pretender of Elijah.

Remember the two witnesses of Revelation 11, who also bring down fire from heaven? They were of God. This one is not! Just like Pharaoh's magicians duplicated the miracles of Moses, the Lamb Dragon will duplicate all those miracles at the end time just like Elijah did!

So this second beast of Revelation 13 verse 13, does great wonders and makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, {14} And deceives them that dwell on the earth, by the means of those miracles which he had the power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by the sword, and did live. {15} And he had power to give life to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship or do obeisance to the image of the beast should be killed."

Well, if the beast is the Roman Empire, as many commentators think it is, and this religious leader, because he almost has to be a religious leader the way this is all worded. If it advocates the image or the model of the beast, then this suggests a religious manifestation of the Roman Empire. Now some have suggested that the Bishop of Rome after Constantine established the papacy along the lines of Imperial Rome, obeisance was demanded to the Vatican, sometimes enforced all the way to the death.

What is sometimes overlooked is, that for the most part, many of those who died were loyal Christians, in fact, loyal Catholics. Now it’s a terrible wrong to identify either one of these beasts with quote "The Roman Catholic Church." It's not even fair to identify with the Papacy, but there have been popes and anti-popes and much evil has been done by those in power, at times, not at all times, but certain individuals within that hierarchy, at times in history have done some incredibly evil and violent things.

How Will These Prophecies Play Out?

Now you know there's no way of knowing for sure how these prophecies will play out. I think it's very important for us to know that they are here, and to know what they say, and to avoid trying to write scenarios and hard script so that we will always say, "Well we have got that nailed down!" Because, just as sure as you do, you will be wrong.

But it's good to know because there are a lot of possibilities of things that might happen in the future, and you're not going to understand them or necessarily see them as fulfillments of prophecy, or not even see the hand of God at work in them, unless you know these things.

Now one of the great fears of Catholic thinkers is schism. There have been some terrible splits in the Catholic Church in the past. There has been two popes existing at the same time in different places and both of them disfellowshipped and excommunicated one another. They have called each other the Great Whore of Babylon as matter of fact. So the idea that there might yet be another terrible split in the church and the stress lines are all through the Roman Catholic Church as we speak. Perhaps even to the emergence of an antipope is not really that far-fetched. An antipope, speaking for the Dragon, is not an outlandish idea even to Catholics.

Verse 26 of Revelation 13, Now this great power, "Causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, {17} And no man could buy or sell, save he had that mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. {18} Here is wisdom. Let him that has understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred, threescore and six."

Or 666, the famous 666, the number of the beast.

Now what in the world is this mark and what is this number? Who is the man? What does it mean? This is as close to the center of the antichrist question, as I guess were going to get. First, I think it's important to consider what we know and don't know. It's commonly assumed I think by many people that this Mark is some sort of a rubberstamp that puts a mark or sign on the body. In other words, you can tell that "that guy has got the 'mark of the beast', look at that black spot on the back of his hand in the shape of ....", well, take your pick of what shape the thing might be.

So, people believe that seeing black helicopters going around with the number six somewhere in there identification numbers, that's really an indication of what's happening. Then there's the people who believe that it's going to be an implant, that there is going to be an implant put in your hand and so when you go to the store to buy you will pass your hand over the scanner and it will read that, and click it off your credit card somewhere. If you don't have this implant in your hand, well you won't be able to buy or sell and that's what the 'mark of the beast' is all about. Well, I don't think so.

I don't think so. The fact is that the 'mark of the beast' can't be a credit card or an implant in your head or in your hand that has to do with nothing but economics. I don't have a problem carrying around a credit card and passing it through scanners and whatever else it is, and what numbers are on it don't matter, even if the number had happened to be 666 because, I'm not worshiping an idol. I haven't turned my back on God. I haven't said that this leering idol in front of me here, is somehow my God, and I'll bow down and worship him, whose name is 666.

No, no, no, it isn't going to be something of that nature. It's going to be something that you voluntarily and willingly do, that has to do with the rejection of the true God, of the real God, and of His ways. It's going to have to do with the acceptance of another god, a false god.

The grand context makes it clear that this is something voluntarily received and if you have God's spirit, if you have God's own sign upon you, you are not going to do that!

Until next time, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, You are not going to do that because You were Born to Win!

This article was transcribed with

minor editing from a Born to Win Radio Program by: Ronald L. Dart

Titled: The Book of Revelation -Program #18

Transcribed by: bb 7-1-24

You can contact Ronald L. Dart Ministries at P.O. Box 560

Whitehouse, TX 75791

1-888-Bible- 44