Revelation 13 // So How Close Are We?

ready go we're in Revelation chapter 13 at the end of the chapter I just you know normally I'd do a Christmas study but I just want to do Revelation I just like this stuff so Revelation 13 we ended up towards the end of the chapter but I I kind of cut it off when we were talking about the mark of the beast and that's where we're at so let's start in verse 11 just to get some context and then we'll talk about a couple things verse 11 it says then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon and he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed he performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men and he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the Beast excuse me telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the Beast who was wounded by the sword and lived he was granted power to give breath to the image of the Beast that the image of the Beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the Beast to be killed he causes all both small and great rich and poor free and slave to receive a mark on the right hand or on their foreheads and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name here is wisdom let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it's the number of a man his number is 666 and so this is the famous passage about the mark of the beast you have this guy the the beast who comes up out of the earth and later on in the in the book of Revelation he's called the false prophet and so you have the Antichrist and you have his sidekick who is the false prophet and I don't mean to trivialize that but he is he is a guy who's come alongside this guy to promote him and we talked last week about the fact that that's kind of a a copy it's not kind of a copy it is a copy it's a copy of what the Holy Spirit does with Jesus the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth the Holy Spirit points us to Christ the Holy Spirit when he's dealing with unbelievers talks about their sin the sin of not giving their lives to Jesus of rejecting Christ and of the righteousness of Christ specifically and of the judgment to come the Holy Spirit's always pointing to Jesus whether he's working in the life of a believer or whether he's working in the life of an unbeliever and this guy is always pointing to the Antichrist promote he promoting him and trying to get people to worship him actually not trying making them he's making them worship him and so you you have this this situation you know last week we were talking about the idol that he puts up there's an image of the beast that he puts up and it says in the passage he's granted power to give breath to the image of the Beast that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the Beast to be killed and I just saw Christie I had a conversation with her after service last week and I'm coming up with all this stuff and so you know maybe it's some kind of computer thing could be AI you know it could be something like that that kind of stuff could be clones or or a clone as far as what the image of the Beast is and so I was talking about that and she came up and she goes could it be TV and I was like wait a minute because you're talking about a first-century guy John and he's seeing an image an image is like it's either it's either like an idol or a picture images when when you're talking about idols in ancient times it was one of those two things it's either a statue or a picture and you know some guy in the first century looking at a picture that talks and moves and you can tell that it's breathing and stuff maybe it's just TV could be that simple but I don't know I still like the clone thing so but I thought that I thought that was pretty interesting and in any case he sets up an image a likeness excuse me of the beast and he commands everybody to worship that image and then you have this whole thing with control and verse 16 he causes all both small and great rich and poor free and slave to receive a mark on the right hand or on their foreheads you can tell where somebody's at by what they do with their pocketbook you can tell where somebody's at by what they do with their with their wallet by what they do I should just say with their debit card nowadays you know you can tell where they're at and the reason for that is because a lot of times men's hearts are wrapped up in their Goods men's hearts are wrapped up in their wealth right and so jesus and in matthew chapter 6 talks about that whole thing and he talks about the fact that the wealth that we have is something that's corruptible it's something that's gonna go away and that we need to have our hearts in the right place and not you know where we need to have our hearts is focused on Jesus focused on the fact that he takes care of us he's the one who provides for us it's not our money right well the the enemy knows that too he knows how how people are bent and they're bent towards security they're bent towards self-reliance they're bent towards reliance upon you know just monetary wealth and that is where Satan attacks them he comes along and he uses the whole issue of finances to attack these people literally their their provision for themselves I think that there's a reason that God tells us I think actually I think that this is one of the reasons that God tells us not to trust in uncertain riches not to trust in Mammon it's the term that's used in the New Testament it's and its riches that's what Mammon means and again the reason is because the enemy can use that as a as a basically a pry bar to get into your life and to cause you to go in directions that are just ungodly and this is the ultimate example of that so he causes both all both small and great rich and poor free and slave to receive a mark on the right hand or on their foreheads and then excuse me again and then in describing this mark it talks about the number of the beast named and he says verse 18 let him who has understanding calculate the number of the be for it's the number of a man his number is six six six or 666 and that's what it is in in Greek 666 there are some translations that say that say 616 there there are some manuscripts that say that but guy named Irenaeus in the second century was a disciple of Polycarp also from the second century who was a disciple of John the guy who wrote the book of Revelation and in the second century that six one six that that number was being floated around by eat some guys called the Gnostics and Polycarp made it clear specifically to Irenaeus it's in his writings that John said it's 666 that's the number just you know for you Bible scholars you'll run into that every once in a while and so we have like a direct lineage from John to Polycarp to Irenaeus the number 666 right one of the things that people try to do with this is they try to identify who the Antichrist is going to be and usually what they're doing is they're trying to take a name and use that name transfer that name into Greek or into Latin or even into Hebrew because all of those languages don't use Arabic numerals they use the letters and so we're most familiar with Roman numerals so like an eye in a Roman numeral is a one and V is a five and and an X is a 10 and a C is a 100 right see notes that's a 100 and so m's or 1000 right and so you you have that and what they do is they transfer somebody's name and they take the letters that transfer it into Greek or Hebrew or Latin they take the letters and they come up with a number and in the time that I've been a Christian it's been lets see Henry Kissinger Ronald Reagan Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter was a good one I thought Jimmy Carter was the Antichrist when I heard you know I was a young Christian and I haven't told this story in a while but I was a young Christian it 1976 Jimmy Carter is running for president and there is a poster that came out that had Jimmy Carter with a beard on it and underneath it said JC saves that was like because I'm hearing about the Antichrist I don't know much and that kind of thing I'm going around ask my friends what's going on here and I couldn't you know I couldn't believe that they came up with that that whole line of promoting Jimmy Carter and I don't know if he signed off on that he was supposed to be a Christian if you know if somebody had put that put my name on a poster like that there would have been we would have had a big fat talk and people would have got fired I don't know that that happened with him but then you come along and it's a it's a 20 2008 election and Barack Obama he's the Messiah and all these people are doing this stuff and it just gets more and more intense and more and more crazy with this stuff in any case Jimmy Carter was was when Ronald Reagan was another actually my absolute favorite was Mikhail Gorbachev because I heard a guy one time say yeah you know he's the you take Mikhail Gorbachev's name and and you transfer it into Greek or whatever they did and it comes up with 666 plus he has a mark on his forehead he had a big birthmark on his forehead and they said that it looks like Europe so Russia is gonna take over Europe Mikhail Gorbachev and that's a goofy stuff that Christians can get into in any case you're not going to be able to know who the Antichrist is nobody's gonna be able to know this so anytime somebody comes up and goes I know who the Antichrist is or I was I was on a website and they've identified the Antichrist and you know he's King Marcos of Spain or you know people come up with all this stuff and I have no doubt that he's around right now I think he's around right now I probably I think he's probably been around for quite a while he cemented himself into a political position so that he can step in when all of this stuff starts coming down I have no doubt that he's around but the Bible says that he's not revealed until the restrainer 'he's taken out of the way with me over to second Thessalonians chapter 2 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 and in that passage this is a this is actually a really cool passage for last day's stuff or Antichrist stuff and also for rapture stuff because what had been happening actually Paul's writing a letter to the Thessalonians because they're worried and what they're worried about is being in the day of the Lord the day of the Lord is is a is a term that's used for a period of time that starts with the Tribulation Period goes all the way through the Millennial Kingdom so it's a thousand seven years long as far as I can pin down in the Bible and so all you have bunch of tribulation passages where it identifies the Great Tribulation is taking place in the day of the Lord and then you have a bunch of millennial passages where Jesus comes back and sets up his kingdom that identifies it as being in the day of the Lord and then finally you have second Peter in Chapter three that talks about the the fact that God is going to basically destroy the earth and the universe that we know and make a new one and it identifies that as taking place in the day of Lord and so it looks like that's the that's the endpoint of that but the the point that I'm making here is that when you're talking about the day of the Lord it doesn't start off with the good stuff with Jesus coming back and setting up his kingdom it starts off with the bad stuff with the whole tribulation period and some of the things that are coming up in it and so Paul apparently had told this to the Thessalonians is pretty interesting that they had such an education because he was only there for less than a month and they already knew a bunch of stuff about end times because Paul taught it to them that's a lesson you don't have to be an older believer to know the things of the end the Bible doesn't teach that we need to you know have some kind of certification before we can go to the book of Revelation or to the Book of Daniel that kind of thing it's understanding the fact that Jesus is coming back so Paul taught it to these guys and a lot of these people were believers for less than a month and he was teaching them about these things so look at verse 1 says now brethren concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him we ask you what's our gathering together to him what's that about that's the rapture okay so he's talking to him about the rapture he says not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit that's the idea of some kind of spiritual revelation that's either given to well they're always given to a man but spiritual revelation that's given to a person or to a teacher or by word or by letter as if from us and in the first century there were people who were impersonating apostles and so this happened to Paul and we have again situations most of the situations that we know about come from the second century so when I was talking about Gnostics before Gnostics were a class of people who claim to be Christian but they took basically grete Greek mysticism and they mixed it up with Christianity and they came up with something that was so far away from who Jesus is and and what the Bible teaches that it's just ridiculous and they would take the names of apostles and they tack them on to their letters and so when you hear about the Gospel of Thomas Thomas you know Thomas the disciple did not write the Gospel of Thomas the Gospel of Thomas doesn't appear until the the second century Thomas what I'm saying is Thomas was long dead before the Gospel of Thomas came out and all you got to do when you when you when you read about these things you'll read about the lost books of the Bible or the History Channel we'll talk about the lost books of the Bible and they make a big to-do about all these they're Gnostic documents they make a big to-do about all of these things and all you have to do to figure out where these things should be relegated is read them it's all you got to do because when you read them they're weirdos they're saying all kinds of weird things about Jesus they're saying all kinds of weird thing doesn't even get close to what the Bible says the last line and the Gospel of Thomas talks about Peter and the disciples being mad about Mary Magdalene that she was hanging around and Jesus says Jesus rebukes Peter and says that God is able to make her male in heaven and the reason that that that they would state that you know so that she can receive the same blessing as everybody else the reason that they would state that is because Gnostics didn't like women because Gnostics were into a whole philosophy where anything that was material was evil in fact the creator is evil because he made the material world they don't believe that he's God and so he's something less than God called a Demiurge and here I go you know I'm launching off into stuff you don't care about but anyway they have this whole philosophy that anything material is evil so you're sitting on a chair evil I'm standing on a stage evil I'm leaning against a podium it's material it's evil this is evil my body is evil so anything material is evil and anything that brings more material goods are more material into the world is evil guess what women do yeah they bring they bring in life you evil women and so the Gnostics have this this nasty attitude towards women it's why it's in there and so anybody who knows anything about Gnosticism sees this stuff and it's like Oh gnostic document gnostic document gnostic document and I've gone through and read most of these things and they're just nonsense yeah I'm Jesus killing little kids that kind of stuff Jesus is racing with a kid one time and he loses he gets mad and lightning comes down out of heaven and kills him that's you know that's Jesus that's what Jesus does you know all kinds of whacked-out stuff in any case they have these letters and so Paul says don't be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit or by word or by letter as if from us we didn't send you a letter that has to do with this as though the day of Christ had come and many times we're not used to that to that language the day of Christ if Christ is synonymous with with the day of the Lord and when it says had come it's it's it can be literally translated was present as if the day of reward is present and their issue is we're in the day of the Lord somebody told us we're in the day of the Lord well or is a Tribulation Period that's what it starts off with as well somebody's telling them this and Paul says in verse three let no one deceive you by any means for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed the son of perdition and his point is there is there has been no apostasy there's been no falling away and there has been no revelation of the man of sin that lets you know that when the day of the Lord comes those are some of the first things that you're going to be seeing and so we're already seeing an apostasy we're seeing a turning away of mainline denominations from biblical standards and it's it's in every arena that we can talk about every time we get up a you know get up to Christmas we got guys who are denying the virgin birth who say that there are evangelicals we got people who are denying what the scripture has to say about all kinds of situations homosexuality all kinds of junk and so there's always this constant fight to minimize what the Bible has to say to maximize what we feel like and to go a different direction than what God has called us to and you know we went through Timothy last week and talked about the the type of world that we're living in and it's exactly what was prophesied by by Paul to Timothy we're in the we're in the last days in the sense that we're coming up on this period of time and so when you're when you're talking about the Tribulation Period there's going to be an apostasy of the church and there's going to be the man of sin revealed the son of perdition so before that point he's not revealed after that point he is it goes on and says describes him who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he sits as God in the temple of God showing himself that He is God that right there is the abomination of desolation so there's a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem one of the things that we're looking for looking for the juice to rebuild the temple there's a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem this dude when he comes on the scene goes into the rebuilt temple it says halfway through the tribulation then he does this goes into the rebuilt temple goes in and sits down and proclaims himself to be God one of the things that you have with the temple is there was no place to sit in the temple all the priests constantly stood to minister you didn't sit inside the temple the only place to sit was the Ark of the Covenant that was called the mercy seat it was a picture of the throne of God and when it says he goes into the temple the the phrasing that's used in that passage indicates that he goes into what we call the Holy of Holies so you had the the temple building itself divided up into two parts the first part was the holy place where they had the menorah and they had the the table of showbread and the the altar of incense and then you have the veil and that veil was the thickness of your palm is what the Bible's are is what the Jews said at the time of Christ it was the thickness of your palm and then on the other side of the veil was the Holy of Holies and during the time of Solomon that's where the Ark of the Covenant was and so the only place to sit was a place that was set apart for the Ark of the Covenant it represented the throne of God this may be an indication that something's going on with the Ark of the Covenant because after the the Jews left for Babylon after they were deported to Babylon the Ark of the Covenant you don't hear about it anymore in the Bible and there's a there's a tradition that Jeremiah hid it that might be true or it might have been destroyed in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem but there's no mention of the Ark of the Covenant after the Babylonian captivity and there wasn't an Ark of the Covenant at the time of Jesus so you would go in that room there was nothing in that room it was just empty if he's going in and going into that room and he's sitting down he's sitting down on something and so that may be an indication that they find the Ark of the Covenant if they ever find that that's going to be wait that's gonna be way cool and they haven't found it yet Ron Wyatt didn't find it it's not under golgotha didn't get dripped on if you've heard that stuff how many have heard that stuff raise your hand yeah that's all that's all farce it's all nonsense didn't happen and so they haven't found you yet there are Jews rabbis who say that they know where it is but they've been saying that ever since I've been a Christian and nobody ever comes up with the goods and so they might they might know where it is but if they if they ever produce that thing that's gonna be a big fat deal so that might be an indication or he may just bring a chair in sit down on the chair or he may just go in and sit down on the stone that they put the Ark of the Covenant on that's that's according to tradition where they would put it in any case he goes in and sits down and he proclaims himself to be God you see how that symbolism would be there he's in the Holy of Holies the only seat in the Holy of Holies is the mercy seat that represents the throne of God he walks in he sits down proclaims himself to be God Messiah would never do that what tribe does Messiah come from Judah what tribe is allowed into the temple Levi yeah and so jesus never went into the temple he went into the temple complex but he never went into the temple and himself because he's from the tribe of Judah he would he's the one who set up the rules and so he wouldn't violate those things and especially in doing this kind of stuff so he does that he said he says verse five do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things there are a lot of Christians nowadays who've been Christian for 40 40 or 50 years who've never been told these things and again Paul told these things to the people who were less than a month old and the Lord he says and now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work only he who now restrains will do so until he's taken out of the way and what Paul saying there is we already have this whole movement towards this this appearing of the Antichrist they saw it back in the first century you see Paul talking about see John talking about it in first John chapter two you see this over and over you see you see Peter talking about it the whole issue of the Antichrist is something that's always been on the front burner as far as Satan's concern and the people of the church have always seen this stuff so you always got his man he saw it looks like he's always got somebody that can step into the place of the Antichrist and I like I said I believe that he does now - so we don't know who the Antichrist is because he's being restrained he can't be revealed until the restrainer is taken out of the way and so again verse seven it's already at work only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way and so who's the he there so some people have said government how much restraint this government put on anybody you know so you know especially Satan so some people have said it's government some people have said it - the church is the Church of he or she that's a she so it's not the church so who's the he that restrains you have to have somebody that's stronger than Satan to restrain the coming of the Antichrist so who would that be and you know again which what we're talking about one of the things that we have with the Holy Spirit is that he works in that way he's a restrainer of evil and so that most likely is who the restrainer is in that passage till he's taken out of the way when is the holy spirit gonna be taken out of the way and that's a rapture you know and one of the things that you need to remember about this hook this whole issue this whole teaching on this stuff is that the Holy Spirit's God he's everywhere at the same time and so in Acts chapter 2 the Holy Spirit comes doesn't he well how does he come if he's everywhere at the same time and that's what we're talking about and so I know that's a that's a little bit confusing the point is that the Holy Spirit is always there whether you're in the Old Testament he's in the first verses in the book of Genesis and so he's always there what you have when you get to the book of Acts is he steps out of the background so to speak upfront and now we have the Holy Spirit at work in the church and we've been in the age of the Holy Spirit ever since Acts chapter 2 he's been the one out front in the Old Testament who was the one out front in the Old Testament it was the father you know it's it was God the Father basically God just in in general and you have appearances of Jesus in the in the form of the angel of the Lord a kind of cameo appearances of Jesus in the form of the angel of the Lord and that's all those times when God is present with somebody people realize that they've been talking to God or whatever the Bible says that that's Jesus doing that and you have appearances of the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit does works in the Old Testament too when you get to the Gospels who stepped out front that's Jesus so now Jesus is in the forefront and you have cameo appearances of the Father and the Holy Spirit Jesus is getting baptized father speaking from heaven father does that a couple of different times fathers speaking from heaven and the Holy Spirit's coming down in the form of a dove and so you have Jesus out front during the gospel era and now we're in a period of time where the Holy Spirit is OUTFRONT when you go through the book of Acts and it talks about God being at work most often it will use the term the Holy Spirit over and over and so he's he's the one who is moving in that kind of way and so the Holy Spirit came in Acts chapter two upon the church that's the beginning of the church and there's going to come a time when he's taken out of the way in the same way that it came right he's still there but he steps back once again and so when the Holy Spirit's taken out we're gonna be left here and that's that's one of the deals with the rapture of the church if you're if you're gonna say that Christians have to go through the tribulation they're going through the tribulation without the power of the Spirit that we have in Acts chapter 2 all of a sudden God's removed the influence of the Holy Spirit at that point because when you get to the book of Revelation the Bible never teaches that we are overcome by Satan the Bible teaches that we can tread on serpents and that we can tread on scorpions and then all the power of the enemy is is something that that we can defeat that's what the Bible teaches that's what Jesus said all of a sudden you get to the book of Revelation the Antichrist comes along and he has power over the Saints to overcome them we just read this in Revelation chapter 13 so they're indication that you're in a different period of time than we are in the church and so when the hope when the restrainer is taken away the Holy Spirit's taken away you're taking away you know what that means you're never gonna know who this dude is until you get to heaven you'll be you know getting a bird's-eye view well it will be up in the in the you know up in the loft looking down you know that kind of thing that's when you're gonna know who the restrainer is and so again it says verse 8 and then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming this guy's destroyed at the second coming of Christ and so we see his his presentation happens at the beginning of the tribulation period the end of the church age we see his main work the abomination of desolation and we see his end and that's the destruction of the Antichrist at the coming of Christ and what Paul says is you're not seeing any of that you're not in the day of the Lord none of that's happening and so again it's a it's a great picture there so you know when when I you know when I hear about people and the whole 666 thing did I show you Barney the cute purple dinosaur yeah that's an example of that you can you can you can make almost anything come out to be the Antichrist Michelle didn't see it you got the slide Mike is it up there yeah so you take his name cue purple dinosaur change all the use two V's because the purple dinosaur extract all the Roman numerals to get 666 and I believe that with all my heart Barney is the Antichrist okay so yes okay shoot come on uh huh it's a it's a different there's still the work of the Holy Spirit but it's different it's like Old Testament yeah it looks like it looks like what happens is we go back to Old Testament times and that that whole thing you know the question was do these people have to live on the earth without the work of the Holy Spirit you know those passages that talk about the fact that God pours his Holy Spirit out on the Jews during that period of time and some of the passages that we have that deal with the power of the Holy Spirit are passages that were written to Israel during the time of the tribulation so when when Peter quotes from Joel chapter 2 in Acts chapter 2 when he quotes from that passage that's a tribulation passage and so he says this is what was written in the Prophet Joel you're your old men will see visions you're mount young men will dream dreams and on my hand on my servants and on my maid servants I'll pour out my spirit in those days and then it talks about there will be signs in the Sun and the moon and smoke and fire and you know although that's a tribulation passage and so that's an indication of the power of the Holy Spirit being poured out on the Jews during that time but it's something that's different than New Testament times yeah yeah yeah I I don't even know that I don't I don't know all the all the particulars of that I just all I know is that there's a difference between the two and so when we when we when we went through Daniel in Daniel chapter 9 there are four hundred and ninety years prophesied for the people of Israel four hundred and eighty-three to the coming of the Messiah and then after that there's his death the destruction of Jerusalem the dispersion of the Jews and in the last seven years this is the last seven years and so we're back to Old Testament times we're back to Jew times in in the Old Testament and so the major focus of the book of Revelation as far as one of the major focus okay I don't even know what the word is the the major folk well a major focus in the book of Revelation is the restoration of the Jewish nation and so God's reaching out to the Jews and that this is the last seven years of God dealing with the with the Jewish nation so it looks like we go back to that to that whole thing and the church is taken out so anyway interesting stuff in when you when you read about the church in the book of Revelation from chapter 6 on the only time that you see the church is in heaven that's the only time you see it and you don't you don't see it on the earth in fact in Revelation when you have believers mentioned they're separated it's Jews and Gentiles and so it's no longer a situation where you have we're one Church where you know it's like we're one in Christ and that whole thing there's neither Jew nor Gentile that kind of thing and it's it's really it's really pointed as you go through it so any any in any case what I wanted to get to was this whole mark of the beast thing and so we're not gonna first off we're not gonna know who the Antichrist is so just stop it but when you're when you're talking about the mark of the beast I like to go through and talk about how close we are so how close are we to the whole mark of the beast thing and first point I want to make is the whole thing with supercomputers you know the first PCs do you remember the first pcs I remember I remember when computers came out Apple at the very beginning right a hundred and twenty eight K was the memory storage 128 K it's like ridiculous we have we have a we have gigabytes of memory on our computers now it's just crazy and when you're when you're talking about there's RAM and ROM and and there's processor speeds and all this stuff and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bore you with that but the first piece of pcs were 128 K now there's more power and a laptop than in a mainframe from 20 years ago and a mainframe is like a a supercomputer with bank after bank of computers and so it's a it's like the way that computers are advancing is just crazy how quickly they're getting more powerful your smartphone the one you have on you right now is millions of times more powerful than all of NASA's combined computing in 1969 millions of times in your smartphone so these guys are going to the moon with computers they don't even compare with your smartphone at this time the iPhone 6 he'll put up a thing up in a second but the iPhone 6 uses an Apple designed 64-bit core this is a six what are we on now 11 did they just come out with 11 yeah so an iPhone 6 using that it uses an apple design 64-bit cortex a8 AR M architecture composed of approximately 1.6 billion transistors it operates at 1.4 gigahertz and can process instructions at a rate of approximately 1.2 instructions every cycle in each of its two cores that's 3 point 36 billion instructions per second put simply the iPhone 6 is clock is 32 thousand six hundred times faster than the best Apollo era computers and could perform instructions a hundred and twenty million times faster you wouldn't be wrong and saying an iPhone could be used to guide a hundred and twenty million Apollo era spacecraft to the moon all at the same time your iPhone the iPhone clearly beats even one of the most famous and a lot more recent supercomputers that ever existed IBM's 1997 deep blue supercomputer which beat Garry Kasparov in a historic chess showdown I remember this with this in mind one can only ah at the kind of computer power each of us holds at their fingertips never mind we use them for frivolous matters like candy crush imagine what you'll be holding in your hand or inside it 20 years from now this is from a secular articles from zme science from February of this last year and the guy says just imagine what you'll be holding in your hand or in it twenty years from now and so even this guy is talking about about some of the stuff that we've got going on with mark of the beast' kind of things it's so in any case imagine the power and today's supercomputers there they're going to be actually already they're able to easily track financial affairs of everyone on earth and you could again if you're talking about the computing power that you have in an iPhone you know 120 million operations like that you know this is this pretty intense in any case there's no problem with tracking everybody on the planet no problem with it and so we can do that now here's another thing that you have is the whole thing with small smart cards and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago so look at you look at your debit card if you got if you got a debit card you look at that and there's a little actually I got a I got a debit card and I've got a credit card let's see how many of these do I have how many mark of the beast cards do I have going on here nope I just got two I mean the die I'm in the Stone Age anyway they've got the they've got these little signal things on here it's like a little you know like a little radio wave thing and what that means is this is an RFID chip card and what that means is there's a radio frequency that's going out with a with a number of this card actually some of these cards I'm gonna talk about that in a minute but you can get up to a Meg of memory on these things and so it's got enough memory on it to put all the information that anybody needs to know about you and with these cards all you got to do is you go up to a you've got to have the right terminal but you just go up to a terminal wave it in front of it or tap it on the thing and it does a transaction for you and so the only difference between this and the mark of the beast is this right here now take it put it on your forehead in any case we've already got this you know the banking industry is specifically pressing for electronic funds transfer and so I I'm still old-school on a lot of areas I'm not old-school with my debit card if I never had to use cash again I would have no problem with that but the banking industry wants everything to be electronic and there's some reasons for that obviously you can have situations with electronic transfers where you can't do thievery as quickly the whole drug trade if everything was electronic would basically go out of business they'd have to be really really smart to get a to get away from those things most of the things that are happening in the drug trade happened through cash and is because it can't be tracked and what the banking industry would like to do is track everything and so we've got situations where all my bills are paid I I have a chase bank account I go on I went on there I listed my bills I haven't looked at them in six months because I have these these fund transfers whether they're writing a check or whether they're doing an electronic transfer I have these fund transfers to take care of my bills and I just make sure that it's gonna be over when we're talking about my electric bill I am over the top of my electric bill it's gonna start getting pretty even here when we get to January I'm gonna go have to look at it's so irritating I have to look I have a little look at my account that kind of thing and so we've already got this stuff going on my wife just told me that the bank's been sending notices that they're gonna get rid of my paper statements that's what I was talking about I'm old school and that stuff I like to have paper I want to see it I want to file it I want to know that it's there I know I want to know that it's not gonna what get wiped out you know if somebody presses the wrong button or something and so I'm like that but now they're gonna get rid of that and and so you got a situation where they're getting rid of any kind of paper trail in in that kind of incident so frankly it saves lots of money saves lots of trees - could be trees all over this planet right because we're not we're not cutting them up for paper anymore and so you we're gonna have that kind of thing smart cards are already popular in Europe in Sweden they have been using only 13 only 13% as percent of people actually I'm saying that wrong there's only been 13 percent of transactions in Sweden Network cash in 2018 and so they've gotten rid of almost all cash the only people who are using cash are the old folks because they don't trust that are I don't trust that old card right there you know and so they don't want to do it but they're trying to convince them to go in this direction like I like I was saying smart cards I probably needed to chase need to chase this down some more but last time I checked they can transfer by radio wave up to one Meg of memory like I was talking about before have you guys heard about the enhanced driver's licenses okay so that's coming up in 2020 and what that is is a national ID and so what they've been actually one of the problems that the United States has had with the American populace is that they that we don't want to have a national ID and so what they're doing is they're sneaking it in the back door basically and so they're getting all the states to do an enhanced driver's license and that's going to be allowed to be used as an alternative to a passport for international landed sea travel but not air travel to countries that recognize it the card includes machine readable RFID and barcode for automated identification of the card in its holder and so now we've got a national idea that's coming on online here in 2020 you go on and you go on an airplane they're not gonna let you on in October of 2020 unless you have this and so they're already telling me this I travel pretty routinely I get up there and they go you know you have to change your your driver's license and I go get back get away from me Satan mark of the beast' you have no more cash you have no muggers you have no more cash you can you can there's all there's all kinds of things that I think are really special about that I think it's really cool if it wasn't for the mark of the beast I wouldn't have a problem with a cashless society in a lot of arenas here's one problem though is that the the banks are looking at negative interest and did I talk about this last week yeah okay negative in okay negative interest is the idea that the bank charges you for keeping they're keeping your money so now what we've got is a situation where you take you put money in the bank they pay you that's what the interest is that you get they pay you to use your money that's that's what banks have done ever since the very beginning now they're talking about doing negative interest where they're keeping your funds and doing all this work with your funds and you know having to manage your funds and all that stuff and so they should charge you for that so now you're gonna start getting a charge the only way that's gonna work is if there is no cash because anybody that has a bank that says you know what I'm gonna charge you for keeping your money I would go down and get my money take it out put it in gold bury it in my backyard you know put it put it put the money under my mattress do something like that and obviously there's a there's a reason that banks want to go there they want to get richer and so again you you have this whole thing you have a thing called the maltose maltose this has been interesting it's been around for for a while now this is something that I brought up a couple different times but it's that they advertise it as a smart card getting smarter and you have manufacturers banding together on this whole thing and it's a system where you have one machine that reads all these different smart cards and here's an article from that actually or a snippet from our article it says this molto's is a multi application smart card operating system that enables a smart card to carry a variety of applications from chip-and-pin application for payment to on card biometric matching for secure ID and a passport molto's is an open standard whose development is overseen by the multo sconce or diem a body composed of companies which have an interest in the developer development of the OS and includes smart card and silicon manufacturers payment card schemes chip data preparation card management and personalization system providers and smart card solution providers there are more than 30 leading companies involved in the consortium hundreds of millions of molto smart cards have been issued by banks and governments all around the world for projects ranging from contactless payments in Internet authentication and loyalty to national identity with digital signature a passport with biometrics healthcare and military base and network access control and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about the EDL and and all of these things we're moving moving into this system and so I have readers on keyboards or disk drivers of PCs and it allows your come-come your computer to become a personal atm literally it can become an ATM and we already have this so when when my daughter was down in California if she wanted money have you guys heard of Zelly yeah and so I can get on my bank go to Zelly transfer money to my to my daughter all I have to have is her phone number and she goes and signs up and an immediate immediately transfers money into her bank account from my bank account and so I can do all this stuff from my phone I can do it for my computer I can I can have you know obviously we can do all these things on our computers where we will buy from companies far away you know the whole Amazon thing and all that stuff we've got this is going on and so when the Bible talks about using a number to buy and sell we're in the time that this can happen we're in the only time in history that this can happen and it's all coming out coming around right now next step looks like it's going to be implants in Sweden cash is almost extinct and people implant microchips in their hands to pay for things more than four thousand Swedes have gone the microchip as cash use fail fades and the government scrambles to figure out the effects on society and the economy half of Swedish banks no longer accept cash and so that's that's where we're at and Sweden is one of those bellwether places you know when you again when you're when you're looking at this this whole situation with a number it's basically you know a number with with a brain basically and if you had this going there's no theft there's no loss you have a secure idea secure ID you can have a situation where people can always know who you are and where you are and again already happening back in it back east they have this thing called mobile speed pass you drive up within five feet of a pump at a gas station and it gets ready for service the pump comes on when you dry it when you drive up next to it then you have biometrics that's an interesting thing too you have face recognition of your palm and so I can get on my bank by just touching my finger to the back of my phone you guys got this you guys do this I do all this stuff and so I touch my finger to my phone it opens it up and I I have a game here right now it's identified me and I don't have to put in a pin I don't have to do any of that stuff and it's the same thing with my bank I get on I get on to my bank app and I stick my finger on there it identifies me immediately and I could do whatever I need to do on my bank that's that's simple biometrics well there's gonna start doing this with your face they're already doing this in places with face recognition and eye recognition and and so again you have that I turn on my computer it looks at my face and tells me whether it's me or not sometimes it says I don't know who you are and then I have to put in a pin it depends on what I'm wearing if I'm wearing a hat it's all of a sudden confused who is that good-looking guy this mess around in any case there's a movement in many countries for a national registry and tracking system in China right now facial recognition is a huge deal they've got it all over China and it just makes all kinds of sense they're a communist country they want to control their populace and so we've got facebook they have facebook on steroids and so their Facebook and this is actually being promoted actually it's being being helped along by Facebook and Google these guys are doing things that are absolutely immoral you guys where you go over to China China's got a million Muslims in concentration camps right now they're there they're trying to actually you know they've got situations where they're taking criminals and they're harvesting them for organs and so the Chinese government is vile and they want control of their population and they're going to use this this whole thing with biometrics and they're using it with social media too they've got a social media program there right now that the people in China rank each other based on you know social interactions based on on business interactions this kind of stuff if they start ranking you as low you can't get on trains you can't buy a house you can't leave the country and part of that whole issue is whether or not you're a good Chinese citizen and that kind of stuff and so it's what the Communists didn't in Russia and they've been doing it in China for years but now they've got electronic measures that make it so much easier and so we've got there-there's scary stuff going on in China right now that has to do with this whole thing and again you you have you have that you had facial recognition in airports in the United States and people had a fit about it and they dropped it do you think that's going away that's not gonna go away that's gonna come right back and they keep coming at it and coming at it and coming at it and again you have this whole situation where again what they want to do is they want to control the populace and it always starts out we're trying to protect people I don't know if you've been paying attention to the news and some of the stuff that's been happening you know there's a whole thing with uh with Trump and the impeachment and all that stuff that's all wrapped around some stuff that happened with the FISA Court and I don't want to make this boring on this stuff but basically a FISA Court is a secret Court where the FBI and the Justice Department could take certain documentary evidence and get the OK from the United States to spy on people without presenting them with a warrant and it all came out of the 9/11 stuff with with terrorists taking down the Twin Towers in New York we got scared and what ended up happening was we gave up some of our liberties and when you do that what they said was gonna happen was they they were gonna they were gonna be judicious about it they were gonna make sure that everybody was above board and that is not what happened what ended up happening was the government used this secret court to spy on an elected official or a guy who's going to get elected to spy on him and that's what's coming out there are people who are about to get in real trouble with this stuff because they just did this because when you give the government power crazy people take over that's what always happens and so again you have this whole thing with biometrics we're about to come up into a period of time that's pretty scary and again you have this written about in Revelation chapter 13 this is control of the populace through economic and electronic means is what you have in Revelation chapter 13 really interesting really interesting yeah have you heard guys heard about the Amazon go stores they have these stores actually there's four in Seattle there's one in Chicago one in San Francisco and one in or excuse me there's four total one in Seattle Chicago San Francisco and New York and you walk in and when you have the app on your phone the Amazon Go app you walk in it identifies you it connects with your bank account you walk around you can take stuff off the shelf you can put it in your cart or in your bag and you can walk out and you don't have to talk to anybody and you don't you don't have to pay anything well you are paying but they're just taking it out of your bank account and you can just walk out with it if you go up to the shelf and you grab something and you go to walk out and you go you know what I probably shouldn't eat this cupcake and you turn around and take it back and you put it back on the shelf it automatically rear edge' stirs the product that you took off on the shelf it puts it back on its inventory and it will not charge you for it and so you have people walking into these Amica Amazon ghost stores yeah I would do this you know walk in take this I'll take this I'll take this I'll put it all in I don't have to stand in line I just walk out the door and one of the things that ended up having to happen was they had to put up a poster in the Seattle store saying no really you can just walk out because people would go and do this and they go they go up and they're like afraid to walk out the door because alarms are gonna go off or something like that and so again cashless society we're already there cashless society you know this whole thing with being able to control you through a number we're already there and it's just a matter of implementing these things why would they implement it and in this instance it's obviously for control but that's not what they're gonna tell you they're not gonna come up and say hey we want to control the whole populace there's going to be an element of patriotism involved in this whole thing there's gonna be an element of why would you want to hide from us what are you hiding that's gonna be involved in this whole thing and you're gonna have to have the the major population the major population centers of the world give up their freedoms to go here and why would they do that here's why they would do that there's already been two wars and half the planet is dead the first war was a religious war with a with the Muslims attacking the Jews and a quarter of the population got killed that's a reason and with with many of these basically governments that are there they're going crazy with this stuff you know the whole the whole situation with Iran and I don't even know if you guys know all this stuff Iran is a major funder of terrorism throughout the world do you know what they use money they use cash and so they they they subvert they don't go through electronic banking systems to do this stuff and so you've got you've got weapons and you've got material sitting in Lebanon on the northern border of Israel and it's all been paid in cash by the Iranians to attack Israel you have the same thing going on in Syria right at this moment they're not using electronic payments to do this stuff and so they can they can go under the radar so to speak and there's no way that the rest of the banking system can do anything with it it's why they wanted cash from the Obama government remember that that hold was a hundred and sixty billion dollars or something that they put they put in crates and load it on a plane and dumped off in Iran well what did they need cash for why don't they just do an electronic transfer and the Iranians didn't want an electronic transfer they want to cash and it's because of what they're gonna do with it and so when when you have a situation where half the world is dead because of this kind of nonsense they're gonna be people screaming for peace they're gonna want peace at any price and they're gonna be willing to give up you know give up their liberties as far as identification and as far as how they buy and sell and that kind of stuff and it's going to be connected with this homage and worship towards the Beast it's gonna it's it's gonna be a patriotic thing and again right now I talked to people about this stuff of it you know there have been certain things that I just don't want to get into as as far as cashless stuff and even things that go on with my bank I was talking to you about I pay my bills on my bank with my bank I don't have anybody doing electronic electronic transfers out of my account what I do is I have the bank write them a check and send it to them because I don't want anybody getting in my account when they when they say oh you know we'll give you a you know a certain amount off if you just give us routing number I never do that and it's because I'm paranoid you know I don't want people in my bank account I don't want people that I don't remember in my bank account I wanted to do something where I'm taking out eight bucks a month you know back in nineteen or nineteen ninety nine and they've been doing it every month since that point I don't realize that it's going on I don't want to do that stuff and so I'm kind of paranoid that way but when I when I talk with people about this kind of stuff and there's been been people that I've a you know that I've had conversations with about this who don't know a whole lot about this situation and they go well I don't really care if they know me I don't care if they have biometrics I don't care if they have facial recognition I never do anything wrong yes you do you follow Jesus that's wrong as far as many people in the government go they think it's wrong for you to follow Christ and these are the people that get the control it's it's really crazy you go you go to government meetings you go you go to council meetings you go to school board meetings there are crazy people there you guys they're crazy people there they have they have a worldview that is radically skewed and they got they've got big mouths and they're pushing it all the time with legislators and people who are in control they're in there all the time and you're just going to your job you're living your life you're walking with the Lord and you're gonna be the enemy that's what's going to happen during this time and they're gonna have the financial control and the point is that you will conform you will conform to this when this comes along when you get to Revelation chapter 14 we'll talk about it next week but in verses 9 through 11 it talks about the doom of the people who take the mark and it says there's no hope for you in fact the Bible talks about the fact that God is warning these people at the time that they don't take the mark if they take the mark the actually let's let's just read it 9 through 11 it says then a third angel followed them saying with a loud voice if anyone worships the Beast and image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God which has poured out full strength into the cup of his indicate indignation he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy Angels and in the presence of the Lamb the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever and they have no rest day or night who worship the beast in His image and whoever receives the mark of his name so there's a warning given to these people that they're not to take the mark there's a serious stuff when they begin worshiping the Beast and so you're gonna people are going to end up taking either the seal of the of Christ or the seal of the Antichrist and again you see that in Revelation 13:8 all who dwell on the earth will worship Him whose names have not been written in the book of life and of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world and again you have this so we're close we're close to this and everything that an antichrist could need could want to implement this stuff is already in place and you know I haven't talked about tattoos they they have RFID tattoos that they use with animals right now with cattle and so you can you you can have a scanner they've tattooed the neck of certain animals that's that's one of the places that they put tattoos on horses and cattle and that kind of stuff and it's invisible you don't have to see it but it sends out a radio frequency and you can identify at 40 feet away and so these guys go out riding on horses just point in a piece of equipment at these animals and it's an RFID thing we already have this with dogs and cats and implants and and that kind of thing so BAM here we are right in the middle of this stuff it's about to happen and so exactly what the Bible prophesied 2,000 years ago this is crazy specific prophecy exactly what the Bible prophesized in that passage 2,000 years ago is exactly what we can have right now and we're really close to it really close to it and only time in history so let's pray get you out of here thanks Lord again for your word thank you for the timeliness of it thank you for the the fact that even though we go through and we look at scary things like this and I probably flipped some people out here maybe not I don't know they're there you know we're pretty sophisticated here but in any case Lord this stuff can get really scary when we when we start thinking about these things what can be done with them and Lord you've said in your word that this is where it's got to go this is what's going to be happening and the thing that I like about this Lord is it you prophesied it you don't do anything unless you tell your servants the prophets it's exactly what you did you've told us this stuff and it's so we can be on guard we can be warned and we can be a warning to the people who around us coming up on Christmas again Lord we're going to get some opportunities to talk to family members and Lord if these people don't turn to you it's these people that are going to go through this and we're we just pray that you'd help us to see them the way that you do we know you love them and you want to spare them from this nonsense where we pray that you'd use us bless these guys just go with them and we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 32,252

Rating: 4.8099174 out of 5

Keywords: The End of the World in the bible, Truth, Jesus' Return, The rapture, the second coming, The book of Revelation, The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, The last book in the bible, The Bible, Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities, Steve Whinery, Gosphel, God, Biblical Prophecy, The End Times, End Of The World, The Millennial Kingdom, Revelation's meaning, Jesus

Id: pF3nAHSGweU

Length: 65min 20sec (3920 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020