Babylon - Part 3

The series of sermons on Babylon, this is part three. But before I get there, well, I just want to talk a little bit more here. The storming of the Capitol Building, the chaos, the confusion. You know, we have to remember that the word Babylon, the root meaning of Babylon means confusion. We might want to add chaos, chaos and confusion, and people lost their lives. One woman was shot as she was in the front line there, trying to break into the building, was shot. Now that officer, he's on what they call leave, administrative leave. Another police officer was beaten to death with some kind of an instrument. He didn't die immediately, but he died afterwards. Then what was it, two or three others died of something else. I don't know whether they had a heart attack or something. I don't know that, but they died. So we had death, destruction, chaos there. And I want to turn to a couple of scriptures here. Psalm 146 in verse 1. Psalm 146 in verse 1. And let's think about our leaders, whoever they are, wherever they are. But first of all, let's think about God, Psalm 46.1. Praise the Lord, Psalm 46.1. Praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Now, there is a contrast. Many times the Bible speaks in contrast. There's this God's way, and then there's that Satan's way, or the way of evil. So now let's go to verse 2, or verse 3. Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man. Now, in this case, son of man means son of mankind, or son of Adam, you know, descendant of Adam, or a son of humanity. Not the son of man, Jesus Christ, but a human being. Don't put your faith, don't put your trust in princes, or politicians, or leaders, nor in a son of man, and human being, in whom there is no help. In whom there is no help. So if we're looking to this political party to save the day, or that political party to save the day, frankly, we are going to be brokenhearted. Let's not put our trust in man. Now, over here in Isaiah, I've been thinking about Isaiah as I see what is happening to the country. Isaiah 1, verse 3. Isaiah 1 and verse 3. The ox knows its owner and the donkey is the donkey's master's crib, but Israel does not know, and my people do not consider. Alas, sinful nation, sinful nation, a people laid in or covered with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. Now, Carol was watching the news the other day. I wasn't watching it, but some prayer was being offered in Congress. I believe that's correct. I'm doing this from memory, but the so-called minister ended his prayer with, amen and a woman. Totally wrong. Totally wrong. Amen means so be it.

Or truly, truly, verily, verily, or so be it. So, we are, they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. Now, to continue on here, that's verses, go on here, verse 5. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick. Our government is sick. The whole head is sick. The whole heart faints. But it's not just the head that's sick, from the sole of the foot, even to the head, verse 6. There is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. When God sees America, this is what he sees. A sick person that is sick from the top to the bottom, full of wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. So, if America were a man, this is what this man would look like. Sick from head to foot.

They have not been clothed or bound up, nor soothed with ointment. In other words, they haven't tried to fix their sins by turning to God in repentance, but they pile sin upon top of sin.

Now, let's drop down to verse 10. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.

Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What does Sodom and Gomorrah stand for? It stands for homosexuality, which is becoming more and more—well, accepted is not even the right word—more and more demanded. Homosexuality is being demanded in this country.

So, then you have the so-called abortion rights, and that goes through my heart like a knife.

Abortion rights. What about the little baby in the tummy? Doesn't she or he have any rights? I've said so many times, women say they have rights over their bodies. What about that little woman that half of these little people are women in the womb? What about those little women? Why don't they have any rights? So, and then, but you know, who knows? Maybe the U.S. Supreme Court—and the way things are going, this will be utterly miraculous, to completely overturn Roe v. Wade, and yet I'm not by any means a lawyer, but I'm sure there's a whole lot of hurdles and roadblocks and so on for that to take place. But this world is in a mess. This country is in a mess. And Carol and I were watching the news, one of the news shows, just to see how many, you know, what in the world, what next? And they had a program or segment on talking to your little children about what happened this week. Or actually, they were actually interviewing pre-teens, maybe very young teenagers, and pre-teens. And how do you talk to young people?

That—how do our young people in the church process all of this? And it is a tough time for our young people, and I'm so appreciative, again, the Bible study from Mr. Tom Coulter about asking our children to turn their eyes to the Bible, to turn their eyes to the book, and to be taught from God. And I know our children are being slammed. I mean, slammed with all kind of evolutionary things. Carol and I love to watch nature shows, but sometimes it's okay. And we watch a nice nature show. Well, this bug evolved into this, and then that evolved into that, and evolved into—they use the word evolved again and again and again. And our young people are being slammed with the godless doctrine, the godless teaching of evolution. But to our young people, to our precious young people, Jeremiah 29 and verse 11, Jeremiah 29 and verse 11. And there's many scriptures that cover this topic, but this one really says it all, you might say. God speaking here, I know, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you.

And certainly God is thinking about our young people in the church. It really has you young people, teenagers, in mind. I know the thoughts that I think towards you, Jeremiah 29.

Says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

God is not up there in heaven just wanting to scold you every time you make a mistake, or every time you sin, he's not down there or up there just wanting to scold you and shame you. He's wanting to forgive you. Then you will call upon me, verse 12, and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. God is the greatest listener in the universe, young people, teenagers. He will listen to you. He wants to listen to you. Remember, teenagers, you know, the parable, I think it's Luke 15, of the prodigal son, okay? Prodigal son. Well, God is like the prodigal father. He's not like the prodigal son's brother. Now think about it. The prodigal son's brother was no help at all. Go back and read that. The prodigal son's brother was no help. He complained about, actually complained about his father's mercy and forgiveness, but God is the prodigal son's father, not the prodigal son's brother. Please keep that in mind.

And you will seek me, verse 13, and find me when you search for me with all your heart, and I will be found by you. And also, I'll just read part of Psalm 9-12. He does not forget the cry of the humble. God does not forget the cry of the humble.

So what issue teens that are you facing that you can't talk to God about? What trouble? What sin? What temptations are you facing that you can't talk to God about? That you can't just get on your knees in a private place somewhere by yourself and just pour out your heart to God? Pour out your heart to God? And there's nothing that God won't do for you. He will forgive. He will comfort you. He will help you. He will strengthen you. He will be there for you. So, I mean, and hopefully, and I'm confident of this, that you know, our teens, our pre-teens, and go to mom, and go to dad, and maybe you've got a big brother or a big sister. I have a big brother, and many times, he, any five years older, many times, he bailed me out and helped me. Now, we fought and argued too, not physically, well, pretty close sometimes, pretty close, okay? But we certainly argued a lot, but because we're brothers, I guess that's what brothers do, I don't know, but he's a big brother, and he bailed me out of some of my problems, my, you know, things you go through in life as a teenager, and, you know, just growing up, it was good to have a big brother, and hopefully, some of our teenagers and pre-teens have, you know, a big brother, a big sister who can help us, you know, mom and dad, they can help us.

Hopefully, our teens and pre-teens, or maybe more at this age would be the teens, perhaps, has a minister friend, maybe here in local congregation here, just speaking in Illinois, Mr. Osborne, Mr. Wells, myself, would love to help, would love to listen.

And there isn't anything we can't, you know, be shocked by. We know this is a terrible world, and our teenagers are facing terrible, terrible pressures, and, of course, the events in this past week certainly did not help as far as any kind of encouragement or thinking that this country is a stable country. But anyway, so teenagers, there's no problem God can't solve. There's no problem God cannot help you with, because God can help you. Your parents want to help you. Hopefully that big brother, big sister you've got there for you. And certainly the ministers, the deacons, we're here deaconesses for sure. We're here to serve. We're here to help.

We may not always have the answers, but we can certainly pray. So it is, in other words, we can pray for you. So I just want to take a little bit of time that in this horrible mass of Babylon confusion, there's God's church to help and to listen and to pray.

Okay, I just I wanted to spend a little bit of time on that.

And we want to go back now to the series on Babylon, and let me see what we can do here. If I can remember, okay, I got to go to share screen. And then I've got to go to right over here, I think. And we could double click that. And of course, it's not coming up.

Why it's not coming up here? It should be coming up. Oh, terrific. Well, maybe I'll do the old... Oh, hold on. Here it is. Okay, so, so just a little bit of a share screen here, the empires and the beasts of the Bible. And so here we have Daniel 2.

And just a review, just a bit of a review of where we've been so far. So Daniel 2, verse 1, in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. And then just dropping down to verse 31, and we'll read that.

You, O king, were watching. This was your dream. Daniel's telling him what his dream is. And behold, a great image. And this great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you, and its form was awesome. So this fella here is a pretty awesome, scary-looking guy. And its image's head was a fine gold, right there, gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs, bronze, and then its legs of iron, iron legs, and then his feet were partly of iron and partly of clay. And these are the four upcoming world empires. At least when I say the four empires, this would be, how can I explain this, coming out of the, you might say the Middle East, if I can put it that way.

There were big empires in nations such as China, in China, India, and so on. But the Bible's not dealing with those at this point. He has a plan for those nations as well. But as far as the four empires that were in Daniel, that this king saw, that basically the Middle East and then westward, we'll put it that way, the Middle East and westward, these are the four empires.

And so we have in four different sections. This is the dream the Nebuchadnezzar had, and remember the Chaldeans could not, they didn't know what to say, but Daniel not only told him what the dream was, but what it meant. Here we have another picture of the four empires. And so basically we know this. This here is the head of gold or Babylon or Nebuchadnezzar. Then there came the silver. That would be the Medo-Persian empire, which had its day.

And then you have bronze. You have the Greek empire, the mighty Greek empire, and basically Alexander the Great about 300 years prior to Christ. And as a very young man, he started out conquering the world, or again that part of the world. He was about 20, and he had it all conquered while he was in his early, early 30s. And wherever he would go, he would conquer. And he was a mighty man, a mighty warrior. And then Greece eventually just fell apart, and along comes Rome, the legs of iron. And then Rome absorbed all of these empires and more, and more.

So this is again what Nebuchadnezzar saw. So then what happened, or what will happen to this system of man? You know, what's going to happen to it? Well, you watch while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on his feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors.

The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found, and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Now, I was going to ask you a question. I will still ask the question. We already, we see the answer here.

We talked about the four superpowers already. I don't need to mention them again, but there's a fifth superpower, and what is the name of that fifth superpower? The name of that fifth superpower is the kingdom of God, and it is this stone. There's actually Jesus Christ that comes out of nowhere, so to speak, comes out of the sky, strikes the image, and crushes the image, smashes it to pieces, and becomes a great mountain, great government, and this great government of Jesus Christ will fill the whole earth.

It will fill the whole earth. Okay, so let's drop down now to the next slide, and we see this beast here, and let's go to Daniel chapter 7 and take a look at verse 7. Again, just to review here, we have these pictures, these drawings in our literature, and hopefully just a little bit of review here makes more sense out of what these pictures are. After this, now Daniel, Daniel sees this. This is his dream, and I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth, and it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had 10 horns.

Now this beast is the Roman Empire. It hadn't yet occurred in Daniel's time, but it would be coming, and I've read a little bit about Rome and the Roman Empire, and I really hate reading it. I really hate reading about it. It was so incredibly cruel. Now again, you might say all the empires are cruel, but really, the Roman Empire just tops it all in cruelty.

How can I say it loved cruelty? Well, just one example. We'll take crucifixion. The Romans learned it from, I believe it was the Phoenicians, I believe they were the ones where I remember, where I came up with the crazy, evil, terrible idea, but they perfected it. If you can perfect something. In other words, they made it last, I mean, they made the pain and the suffering last as long as possible. They planned it to not be a quick or even merciful death. They planned it to be the most long and hideous and wretched death possible. That's just the Roman Empire. Now, the lion, remember I said that the Roman Empire absorbed or gathered together these other kingdoms. So this monster here, this lion represents Babylon, and then the bear represents Medo-Persia, the second kingdom. The leopard with four heads, there's the leopard's spots, and then their foreheads, and that's Greece. That represents Greece. And when Alexander died, he didn't leave a will. He didn't say, I hereby bequeath my empire to somebody. He didn't leave a will, so four generals, well, they just split the kingdom, the empire, into four, into four kingdoms, and that's why the four heads of the leopard. And then it just began to disintegrate, and so Rome happily comes along and picks up the pieces. And so this giant head here, which to me looks like kind of like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The horns are certainly different because they represent different, but kind of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now, I shouldn't say Tyrannosaurus Rex. Let me back up. No, it was the other one, the Triceratops. The Triceratops. And maybe we've been to the Science Museum, and we see that dead-looking, you know, it's a model, but, you know, the Triceratops right there. And I'm told that Triceratops were vegetarians, herbivores, but this guy was no vegetarian. I mean, the artist draws the teeth, and it was a devouring, a devouring empire, and that's all Rome ever did. Let's go to Revelation 13 and verse 3, verses 1 and, verses 1, 2, and 3. And because we're going to see here a, well, let's just, let me just turn to Revelation 13 and Revelation the 13th chapter.

Then I stood at the sand of the sea, and now John, John sees this vision, and I saw a beast rising up out of sea. So we see the water here, and having seven heads, and you can count them, ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. This was a beast of blasphemy. And now the beast which I had, which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion, and the dragon, we know who the dragon was, Revelation 12 and verse 9. The great red dragon, Satan the devil. I won't turn to that scripture because I think you're pretty much familiar with that. And the dragon, over Satan the devil, gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. So this was a Satan-led empire. And when you look at what Rome did, well, yes, they built great roads, and yes, they had a male system. And because of, frankly, the roads and the male system, the gospel was preached in spite of us being Christians, and say the first century Christians living down here, a little speck. There's no speck here, but in the shadow of this monster, you know, in the shadow of this monster, we, Paul had roads he could walk on and preach the gospel. So did the other apostles. They had a male system where they could carry the male, you know, the male from the seven churches of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Myrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, and so on. So they had roads, they had bridges, which by the way, the roads and the bridges were built by the Roman soldiers when they weren't killing, they weren't killing people. They would build the roads and the bridges to keep in shape. And those stones, they'd pick up probably 40, 50, 60 pounds, and they kept muscular all the time while they weren't fighting. And so they were in good fighting form, you know, just all the time.

And this was a terrible, terrible beast. Now, verse 3 of Revelation 13, I saw one of its one of its heads as it had been mortally wounded, and its deadly wound was healed, and all the world marveled and followed, followed the beast. Now, this is a summary verse of a lot of historical happenings. Rome began to run out of steam. They got tired of conquering. They just got tired of it, and they started to decline. And even the soldiers, I was watching a documentary one time, even the soldiers got tired of fighting. And one way that they, I'm told, seems cruel to themselves, they had cut off their right thumb. Therefore, they couldn't hold, therefore, they couldn't hold their sword anymore. And therefore, they would be militarily exempt. They got sick of fighting. But basically, historians say 476 AD that Rome fell, and so it died, so to speak. Rome was overrun by barbarians. But notice again, verse 3, its deadly wound was healed. It was, its deadly wound was healed. And the mighty Roman Empire was to go through a period of seven revivals, seven revivals before the return of Christ. There have been six. There's one yet to come. And we're going to see this beast again. And I think relatively soon. I think relatively soon. Not tomorrow, not next week. I don't know the time, but it certainly seems to be getting closer, definitely getting closer and closer. So let's just skip down now to Revelation 1311. And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and spoke like a dragon. And this is the religious beast. This is the religious power coming out of Rome again. And maybe I've mentioned this before, but Revelation speaks of three beasts. Three beasts, okay? This is one beast. Beast number one. The system, okay? The system itself is called a, it's called the beast. The military ruler or the emperor or whatever they give itself a title to is a man who will be in control of this beast. And this man is also called the beast, the human beast. So the system is the beast, and the man who runs this, man that's alive, I'm sure alive on the earth probably today. Because I don't think we have another 60 or 70 years left before we see these things becoming to be fulfilled. So this being is a beast, and the man who, the military leader is going to be called the beast as well. And then the third beast is this religious beast. So I just want to, because you hear these beasts, the bible speech of the beast was taken with the false prophet and they're cast into the lake of fire. I think that's Revelation 19. I think that's Revelation 19.10. But anyway, okay, so we have those three beasts. Two human beings, a civil man, civil ruler, spiritual ruler, falsely spiritual ruler, and then the system itself. Okay, so again, this beast, this man that runs this show here, is a, will be the seventh in a line of emperors. And again, the first one, because we never had, I mentioned seven revivals of this, was Justinian. And then came Charlemagne, Napoleon Hitler, Mussolini, they all took part in following revivals.

And there's one more yet to come. One more yet to come. So, and again, we're going to see here, or we do see, that there is a religious beast as well. So let's go down now to, well, before we go to the next slide, let's drop down to verse 13. He, this beast that looks like a lamb, now Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God. So he's going to pretend to look like Jesus Christ, but he speaks like a dragon. So though he may try to look like Christ, he may try to pretend to be the Lamb of God, he really is the dragon, or speaks like the dragon. He's inspired by Satan. Verse 13, he performs great signs so he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. So he's going to be a great miracle-working monster as well. Now, let's leave off here and go to chapter 17, and here we have Revelation. We have another beast, and this is the end time, the end time Roman power, okay? The end time Roman power that is forming now, likely forming now, and we'll see where this EU takes us. We'll just see about that.

So Revelation 17, 3 and 4. So he carried me away into the wilderness, and I saw a woman, so you see the woman there, sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads, you can count them, ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, and the filthiness of her fornication, and on her forehead a name was written, Mystery Babylon. Here we go again. Mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots, and of the abominations of the earth. So we see this, this is the beast, it's the end time beast, but a different picture, okay? A different picture. This is a scarlet or purple scarlet beast, which was, by the way, the color that the later Roman emperors wore, that was their favorite color, scarlet, purple colors, and we see this again, this Roman, I think it looks sort of like a, you know, Tyrannosaurus Rex on steroids, but this is the end time beast, and very ferocious, but also is led by, in a way, led by this, this, at least the religious side, the religious part is depicted as this harlot, this mystery Babylon, the great, the mother of harlots, and of the abominations of the earth.

Okay? Now, so that is, that is her, or that is that system there. Now, I do want to give us, you know, go back to the hope part of it all, and I, and we'll, we're going to go back. We want to go, we want to rush to the end of the story, and then I want to back up a little bit, but in the days of these kings, because memory has to question what is the greatest superpower of all, and I've already said it's the kingdom of God, in the days of these kings, the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. And so, no matter how many dark days there are, and who was it called it, a dark day, I believe it was, I believe it was Martin, Mike Pence, called last Wednesday a dark day, but no matter how many dark days we have, let's keep Daniel, let's keep Daniel at verse 44 in mind. Okay, so just a brief overview that I had there, but let's get back now to Revelation 13, Revelation the 13th chapter, and I talked about the miracles that he's going to be performing. Verse 12, though, he exercises all the authority. This is Revelation 13, 12, 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. So we have here the false prophet forcing people to worship this empire, to worship this empire. And we know from, again, from history that the Roman empires, pardon me, the Roman emperors thought they were gods.

They thought they were gods, and therefore emperor worship. Worship the emperor, he's a god, and true Christians said, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to worship him. We worship God. But this time, this time is going to come again when the false religious system headquartered in Rome will be causing and using pressure to cause them to worship this evil beast. And again, he does call, he does perform great signs and makes even fire, verse 13, come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. This false prophet will have incredible powers. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and live. And and we have a we have a young people in our, again, in our audience, and we have a lot of people in our in our church audience that are going to live to see this. They're going to live through these times.

And there will be there will be an evil force that will want you to worship this system. He was granted power, verse 15, 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. Now, true Christians must not and cannot worship the image of the beast, because that's breaking the first commandment, I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other gods before me. That's the second commandment, they'll make an image. And the third commandment, don't bow down and worship that image. Okay, now verse 16 of Revelation 13. And he causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or in their forehead, 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.

So we see again this famous mark of the beast. Now, the system here again has its roots in Babylon, and it is quite interesting that in ancient Babylonian culture, slaves were branded, ouch, that would hurt, or tattooed with some kind of a mark. And that would be, again, either on the face or the back of the hand. This is in ancient Babylon. If you were a slave, you know, your hand, the back of your hand would have a tattoo or a brand, and that would be, that would show everybody in the society that you were a slave to Babylon. That's what that meant, and they put it on your forehead, face and hand. Now you are called a slave to Babylon.

And in the future, in the not so distant future, those who choose to become slaves to this modern Babylon will be, will have to receive the mark of the beast, the mark of the beast. Now, before we get to the mark of the beast, what should we put into our heads? What, what, God wants us to put something into our heads. He wants us to put something under our hands. So what is it? Well, we probably know. Let's turn back to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 8.

Deuteronomy 6 and verse 8. Okay.

Hero, we'll go to verse 4. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is the great, the great command. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you, when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, to remind our pre-teenagers, to remind our teenagers of God's way of life. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes or on your forehead. God's law shall be bound in our hand and be right up here in the head. You see, right up here in the mind. So this is, this is God. This is what we want to have.

So what do we bind? Of course we bind the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments are a sign of obedience to God. And I think I mentioned before, the hand has to do with either doing good or, you know, doing good or doing evil. You know, either we're honest or some people steal with their hands. So we can do good or evil with our hands, and we must do good. And we can think either evil or good with our minds, and we must think good. Now Exodus 31 and verse 12. Exodus 31 and verse 12.

And we'll go here. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak also to the children of Israel, saying, Surely, my Sabbath, you shall keep. For there is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Sanctify means set apart, make holy. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death. For whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest. Holy to the Lord, whoever does any work on it, on the Sabbath day he shall surely be put to death. Therefore, the children of Israel shall observe, shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual, perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made heaven, the heavens, and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. So the Sabbath is God's sign. It is a sign, he says here, it is a sign, verse 13, a sign between me and you throughout your generations.

And it truly is a sign. One of many, many stories we could tell about the Sabbath, but that was a teenager, a teenage girl, and she was working at, it was maybe Hardee's or one of, McDonald's Hardee's, something like that. And then she noticed that every Friday night some of her co-workers would disappear, gone. They would never be on, they would never show up for work. And then she also noticed that they would never work, not just Friday night, but Sabbath too. They were always gone. Now they'd be there Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, so on, but never Friday night and never on Saturday. So finally this young lady said, okay, guys, what are you doing? What's going on? Why don't you guys come here and work on Friday nights or Saturdays? And they told her, we go to church on this day. You do? Yes. We go to church on Saturday and we, you know, we keep it from, from sundown to sundown. Oh, really? Well, can I come to your church? Well, yeah, come on. So they invited her to church. Long story short, she became convinced that they were right. She got off for the Sabbath. And right now she is a, well, she's a minister's wife in the church. So it's just a story of how God's Sabbath is a sign between God and God's people. And she noticed, hey, what's going on here? Why are they getting Friday night off? And why are they getting Saturday off? And I had to work. Well, they were an example to her. Now, so again, and I just want to quote from the book of Revelation unveiled as to, we've seen God's sign. Okay, we've seen God's sign. And God's, this is a sign right here. This is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. So we remember in our head that it's the Sabbath, and we don't do any work with our hands. You know, we don't flip hamburgers and hearties or whatever on the Sabbath, or Bergen King or McDonald's. So just to quote now from the book of Revelation unveiled our little, our booklet on that. Many Bible students have pointed to God's seventh-day Sabbath as an identifying sign of His people, Exodus 31, and they see the mark of the beast as running counter to it. They believe, and I personally do myself, that forced observance of Sunday, which was a day originally dedicated to the worship of the Son, worshiping the Son as a God, instead of the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is involved. In other words, forced Sunday worship.

And that, I believe, and the Church has taught, is very likely the mark of the beast. Time will tell. It obviously has to do with disobedience, you know. Mark of the beast has to do with with disobedience.

And so this view was strengthened by the fact that other prophecies in the book of Revelation show a great counterfeit religious figure, and system will play a major role in leading people away from the true God and into Satan's hands at this time. So again, keep in mind that the forehead is a symbol for our thoughts, and those who accept the mark of the beast will be those who will give their thoughts and attitudes over to the beast. People tend to want to worship a hero. Well, they'll find their hero in this false system. Further, the right hand symbolizes actions. Those who accept the mark of the beast will be using their hands for evil actions, for doing the things that are contrary to God's law. We know that in breaking any of the Ten Commandments, the mind, the thoughts, the attitudes are involved, but again, many of breaking of the Ten Commandments involve our hands. Will we work on the Sabbath? Will we flip burgers on the Sabbath or not? Now, let's go back to Revelation 13. Revelation chapter 13.

Let's look at verse 18. Now, here is... Okay, so we talked about the mark of the beast, verse 16. He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark 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. So, what if they close stores on the Sabbath? So, you can't go out and buy and sell. So, they close the grocery stores on the Sabbath, but they keep it...

Sorry, they close the grocery stores on Sunday, but they keep them wide open on the Sabbath, inviting people. You can go shop on the Sabbath. It's okay. You want to eat? Don't you? Yeah, go ahead. You know, it's open on the Sabbath. We're going to close it on Sunday, but it's open on the Sabbath. Well, it'll be something like that. Well, I'm not a prophet, but there'll be people that'll be forced into this if they want to disobey God, if they don't have the faith to disobey God.

And here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. Now, again, going back to what the church is teaching. So, I do not know for sure what this number stands for. Some believe that if you count up the number value of the word Roman, if you put that number value of the word Roman, that that number value total 666. And that does make some sense, because we are talking about the Roman Empire. So, there seemed like there would be some connection between the mark of the beast, the number 666, and you know the Roman Empire. And, of course, it could be something more specific, and we will have to wait, and we will have to see. So, we know that 666 will be associated with the beast's name and the beast's evil activities. Well, I was hoping to get to not only the mark of the beast, but I was hoping to get, and I really want to get to the two witnesses today, but I've run out of time. We'll have to try this again another time. But, dear brethren, be thinking, because it is coming. It is coming. The mark of the beast is coming. The mark of the beast is a mark or a stamp of disobedience. It is a mark or a stamp. Now, it will involve a computer chip, will it involve some kind of a tattoo? You know, I don't know. I'm not going to say absolutely not, but the bottom line is it's going to picture and symbolize this obedience to God. And if you accept the, you know, if you accept the mark of the beast, you're going to be in trouble. That's all there is to it. Let's just look, for example, at Revelation 15, too, and I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast. Now, these people are God's people. God's people have victory over the beast, over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. These are God's people who have fought the fight, they've hung on to the faith, and they haven't just caved into this very popular system. It's a very easy system of shopping when you want to, and so on like that, but not holding the mark of the beast. People will be those who will not hold to the Sabbath. They will not hold God's laws. They'll choose the convenient way and the disobedient way, and they will have to pay a price for that. So let's make sure, brethren, that we hang on to the truth. I still want to talk to about the two witnesses, but I'll have to do that at a different time. We've already gone long enough, so God be with you all. Have a great rest of the Sabbath.