Epistles of Paul 12

As I was saying, in 2 Thessalonians, Paul addressed that concern that rose up after he wrote the first letter. This was a concern about Christ's coming. As I mentioned, in the first chapter, he thanked them for their faith and patience. And then he goes into the second chapter addressing this very concern. It is a very important chapter because there are a number of things that are mentioned in the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians. It is important for us to understand this. So, let's start reading in verse 1. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled. And so, here we have, in first place, he addresses concerning our gathering together to Christ. So, this is explaining that there will be a time when there will be a resurrection and we will be gathered together. This is also briefly described in Matthew 24, verse 27. So, let's look at Matthew 24, verse 27, which shows that Christ's coming. You'll come for His lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west. So, also be the coming of the Son of Man be. So, when He comes, every man, every people, every body will see it and it will be like lightning. Also, in verse 30 and 31, then the Son of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. So, Christ will come in the clouds or on the clouds of heaven and He'll come of great power and with great glory. And then He says, and He will send His angels in verse 31 with a great sound of a trumpet, which we know is the seventh trumpet when we read at other scriptures, like in 1 Thessalonians. And they will gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. So, Christ will gather His elect, as we know it's those that are resurrected first and then those that are still alive and they'll be changed to split beings. So, this is what Paul is referring to at our gathering together to Him in verse 1 of chapter 2.

And then in verse 2, he says, and not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled.

Shaken comes from a Greek word, which means like wind or agitated or thrown down or disorientated. Why? Because somebody came out with some idea or some concept or some word or by letter.

It says either by Spirit or by word or by letter, if from us.

As if from us. So, people would be writing, let's call it what we call today, fake letters. Letters as coming from the apostles, but they were not coming from the apostles, as though the day of Christ had come. So, they were saying, well, Christ has already come, or having some deviation from the truth. And so, he says, don't be soon shaken. Don't be led astray. So, you could have some people saying, well, I had a vision. I had a dream. God spoke to me in a vision. And they say things, in other words, either by some spirit or word, because maybe some people some people maybe innocently say things that are incorrect, maybe at the church potluck or something like that, and start creating doubts. So, we've got to be careful what we say that it is correct. Or by mail, as it says, like a letter in today could be an email that could be interpreted as a fake email or a phishing. Today, there's a thing called phishing that you receive an email, and it appears to come from that person. I received an email coming from myself, believe it or not, which I didn't write, saying things about me. And somebody else could have read an email like that as thinking that came from me, but it didn't. So, when I saw that, well, this is fake, you know, and things like that. So, we've got to be careful with these things, because it happens today. And then it was happening at the times of Paul, saying that Christ has come. And as we saw, people will have various ideas. If we go back to Matthew 24, for instance, in Matthew 24 verse 23, says, many will say, Look, ye is Christ. Look, there is Christ. Do not believe it. For false Christ and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. And then see that I've told you before, therefore, if they say to you, Look, Christ is in the desert, he's in the desert. Do not go out, or Look, he's in the inner rooms. Do not believe it. And then that's when he says, everybody will see when Christ comes, He'll come as lightning. So, as we go back here, reading in verse 2 and verse 3, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come, let no one deceive you by any means. So, they could do it by any means.

For that day will not come. So, what is that day? Well, that day is obviously, directly talking about Christ's coming. But quite often that day is also taught about the Lord's day. So, it could have, in this instance, also a duality of meaning of the Lord's day, or the day of the Lord. Now, what is the day of the Lord? The day of the Lord is what happens after the heavenly signs. Now, if you look at Joel chapter 2 verse 31, Joel chapter 2 verse 31, it says, the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. And that means those heavenly signs which represent the sixth seal. So, let me show you a little chart that I have shown you a number of times. But the sixth seal, yeah, we have the seven seals with these little red circular marks. And the sixth seal is the heavenly signs, which is in Revelation chapter 6. And towards the end of the latter part of chapter 6. And those are the heavenly signs. As we read then, yeah, in Joel chapter 2 verse 31 says, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. So, that is referring to these heavenly signs. And then it says, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. So, the day of the Lord, which is the seventh seal, which includes seven trumpets. The day of the Lord will only come after the heavenly signs. And as you can see, the heavenly signs come after a number of years into the great tribulation. So, it is important to understand this timeline so that people don't confuse you. And that's why it says, yeah, let no one be deceived you by any means, for that day will not come. So, what is that day? Obviously, as I mentioned, it's the day of Christ's coming, but it also could imply the day of the Lord. That is the day of that year of the seven trumpets. Now, it says things are going to happen before that day, which is the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition. So, if I go back to that chart that I showed you a moment ago, you can see that before the great tribulation, there'll be the time of the abomination of desolation. We read that from Daniel, and that means that the man of sin that false prophet is already revealed. And so, there would be an apostasy before, and there would be a man of sin revealed, and then the great tribulation. And then after the great tribulation is the heavenly signs, and then is the day of the Lord. So, going back to the section in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 3, it says, "'Let no one deceive you by any means. For that day,' implying could be the day of the Lord, "'will not come unless,' it's also interesting that the section, "'For that day will not come,' is in italics." So, basically, "'Let no one deceive you unless first this happens.'" So, it is important to see, well, it could be referring to Christ coming, it could be referring to the day of the Lord, but it says, before a lot of things are going to happen. As I showed you a moment ago in that set of milestones, there's got to be a falling away first, and the man of sun is going to be revealed. Now, let's talk a little bit about a falling away, because the Greek word there is more like a word like apostasy.

So, there is a duality of apostasy. Like the whole Bible, there is duality. So, as we look at the early church through the first, let's call it, the first 400 years of the early church, there was first an apostasy, and then there was an influence of the Roman emperors, followed then by the Roman church. So, there were like these two waves, first an internal apostasy, and then an external political pressure on the church that came later.

So, what we have in history, according to the story of the Christian Church by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut on page 41, it reads, For fifty years after St. Paul's life, a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look, and when the loss rises about 120 AD, with the writings of the earliest church fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that as in the days of Peter and Paul.

Let me put this now in simple, straightforward terms. From around about 70 AD, when the temple was destroyed, to about 120 AD, we have a period which these historians call it an age of shadows, a period in which a curtain hangs over the church that we can't see what happened in history quite clearly during that half a century, from about 70 AD to 120.

For 50 years, it's like everything was canceled, as we call it today. And then after those 50 years, around about 120, writings starting to appear, but then we see a church already deviating from the, let's call it, the apostolic church. The church, the beliefs, as the apostles were teaching, as the early primitive church was teaching.

So what do we have is, during the times of the apostles, there was this attack to the church with an apostasy, with a desire to deviate the church from the truth. And a great portion of that attack was internal. That's why we read in the letters of Paul, he's continuously fighting or debating or defending the truth against people that were pushing the truth in one or two directions.

Either those that had a background of Judaism, of pheter-psychal approach, very, let's call it, right-winged. And then on the other side, as new people came into the church, which were Gentiles, and they brought in with them their beliefs and their traditions, and they could not let them go. Then those traditions and beliefs initially took the approach of taking the grace of God, the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, and leading that into a misinterpretation that would allow people to say, well, God will forgive so I can do whatever I want.

In other words, taking the grace of God into lewdness. Turn with me to Jude 3 and 4. Jude 3 and 4. So Jude 3 and 4. This is beloved. This is Jude. While I was diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, in other words, I wanted to write this letter about our common salvation. I found it necessary to write to you.

You see, I was going to write to you with a specific theme, with a specific purpose statement, but I had to change my theme, my SPS, the purpose of the letter. He says, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the five which was once delivered for all Christians, for all the signs, for all of us true Christians. For certain men, verse 4, crept in unnoticed. And that means it's internal. It's in the church.

They crept in. They infiltrated into the church, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation and godly name. Who did what? Turn the grace of our God. That is, His loving mercy, His kindness, His goodness into lewdness, into an excuse that we can just sin.

And therefore, deny the only Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ. In other words, they deny what God is doing through Christ, what is done through Christ, that sacrifice of grace of Christ, which implies, the sacrifice of grace implies, a returning the favor. Again, I mentioned, I think last time, that our booklet on grace has got a chapter, a very, very enlightening chapter, about how the word grace implied in those days, that you had an obligation to return the favor. And so, God's grace to us, God's goodness to us, has an implied responsibility from our side, to return the favor and therefore do what?

Do what is pleasing to God in His sight. We then accept the mercy and the kindness that God has given to us, and as a retribution, as a rightful required requirement to return that by saying to God, I want to do now what is pleasing to you. In other words, I want to obey your commandments. I want to do what's pleasing to God. And that, in the end, is good for all of us, because it's good for us. So people were turning this grace of God into an excuse to say, well, I can now break the law.

You see, so that was a blatant, a blatant deviation from the truth. You see, because the truth is Christ died for us, yes, to forgive us, but we are forgiven upon repentance. We've got to trust Him and we've got to repent. We've got to have faith in Him and we've got to repent. Repent means change. We've got to change from the old man to be a new person, to be a new man. It's not an excuse to continue living the old way.

So people were turning the grace of God into lewdness. So getting back to what was happening. As God's truth of Christ's sacrifice, we came down to the church. There were some people that filtered into the church internally with a tendency to actually either be, let's call it, very right-winged, very pharasical, and others with a tendency to be, let's call it, very left-winged, very anti-law, turning the grace of God into an excuse to disobey God's commandments. This was what it's called an apostasy. It was a deviation from the truth that became very large, which became the predominant, let's call it, deviation impacting the church, which was this deviation from obeying God's law. Let's call it antinominal, or it's known today as Gnosticism. This concept of, yeah, I've got this extra knowledge because of this extra knowledge I can understand, and this Gnosticism had various variants one of them being, for instance, Gnosticism, which said, well, Christ came, but he left that body before he died so that the world didn't really suffer, and things like that. Complete nonsense, complete nonsense. So, going back to Jude, Jude wrote this because this letter of Jude, because this was happening in the church already in those early years. Understand, Jude was written around about the year 80 or 90, which means it was during that period of the age of shadows between 70 and 120. So, we do have a glimpse of what was happening in that age of shadows by reading the books of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, by reading Jude, by reading Peter, and obviously by reading the book of Revelation. And so, yeah, in Jude, look, for instance, at verse 19, Jude 19, because it says, you know, these are the men that came in, and it says, these are sensual persons. In other words, they are motivated by pleasures of the flesh who caused divisions. They were causing divisions internally in the church. And then it says, those that are doing that, causing divisions, do not have God's Holy Spirit.

That's a powerful statement. That is a very powerful statement. So, what Paul, we are in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 3, is saying there was going to be two, let's call it phases. A first phase will be a falling away, which will be internal, and the second phase will be the man of sin is revealed, which we know through history that was developed through the Roman Empire, and then the Roman Church, where it became an authoritarian change of the law affecting the church. So, we had two phases, one internal and the other one external. Right? Now, let's read a little bit about these two phases, because the first phase, as I mentioned, was internal. So, let's read, because I mentioned the first book of John talks about it, so let's just look at a few verses in the first book of John. We're going to first look at 1st John chapter 1 verse 1. It says, that which was from the beginning which we have heard, and which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled concerning the world of life. It was that was from the beginning which was Christ, which was the word, which became flesh, and that from the beginning is what we have been teaching you. Look at verse 5. This is the message which we, as apostles in this case, John the apostle, we heard from him, from Christ, and declared to you that God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all.

So, this is the message we have from the beginning that we heard from Christ, and then we'll go a little bit further in chapter 2 verse 7. Chapter 2 verse 7. 1st John chapter 2 verse 7. Brethren, I write no new commandment to you. So now he's explaining God's law. We are not deviating from the law, right, but an old commandment which we had from the beginning. So, there's no deviation from God's law. There's no watering down of God's law. There's no none of that, which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. That said, there's no quote-unquote new truth, new thing that we can go out and do something else, and we understand that the Sabbath is done away, or whatever, all right? Then let's look at verse 24. 1st John chapter 2 verse 24. Therefore, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. You see the emphasis of the word from the beginning, from the beginning, from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. So, there's no new, progressive understanding of God's truth. No, it is what we heard from the beginning. Now, look at 1st John chapter 3 verse 11. Verse 11. For this is the message that you heard from the beginning. There's no new message. And what is the message? That we should love one another. And you know God's law is love. God is love.

Love God and love towards fellow man. That is no change. There's no watering down of God's law of the truth. And then look at 2nd John. 2nd John 5 and 6. It says, And now I plead with you, lady. And so he's writing in in code, yeah, I believe. He's writing to the church, but because of pressures that were happening in that day, he wrote it as the lady, which obviously we know in the Bible, the church is a woman. So now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And that is God's 10 commandments. That's God's laws. And verse 6, this is love. That we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment that you have heard from the beginning. You should walk in it. But what was happening is I mentioned there were these people infiltrating into the church, and with these progressive Gnostic ideas, understanding of intelligence and whatever these intellectualistic ideas, they were changing the grace of God into lewdness. And so he says he. And then we continue reading now in verse 7 of 2 John. It says, For many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. That's what I mentioned is docetism. Docetism did not, which is a branch of Gnosticism, which is an idea of Gnosticism, and it's saying that Christ didn't come in the flesh. So there was a man Jesus, and then the word came into and like as if he took over this individual. And when was the time to die, this word left and left him alone to die by himself. That is not true.

That is not true. Christ became a human being, and he died, and he suffered, and he was dead for three days and three nights, and he had to be resurrected. So that's what he says. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. So that concept is wrong, and that concept is basically, basically, if you think about it, is Trinity. Trinity is a doctrine of antichrist because Christ never really died because it's part of this Trinity. So he's never really dead. He never really suffered. So and then look at verse 8. Look to yourselves that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward. In other words, don't let go of the truth. Hold on to it. Don't deviate from the truth. Hold on to it. And then in verse 9, and this is important, and we need to understand this, verse 9, because for whoever transgresses, what do you mean transgress? Transgresses from this understanding goes beyond this understanding that it is in the beginning. This is the law. There's no change. That way, once they transgress, they do not abide. They go beyond with different interpretations and different understandings with this Gnostic wave of liberty. You have liberated from God's law because God's law is hard and difficult, but now because of Christ and the grace, you don't need that hard, tough law.

God's law is not hard and tough. It's a law of love. And so, it says whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ. What is the doctrine of Christ? That He came. He didn't do away with the law. He died for us, so we can be forgiven. And therefore, through Him, He then sends us His Spirit that helps us to overcome and change and become more like God through what it's called the sanctification of the Spirit. So it says, He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. In other words, the Father and the Son are in us because Christ's thinking is the same thinking, the same mentality, the same Spirit as the Father's, and in the end, He's the Spirit of the Father. So it just shows that people were deviating from the truth. And so when we go back to Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 3, it says, let no one deceive you by any means unless the falling away comes first. In other words, the falling away, this apostasy has to come first, and second, this dictatorship, this pressure on the church from outside, which was the Roman governance and the Roman church, which is then the man of sin, the false prophet, the son of perdition. So this is very important for us to understand because it says the Son of Man is revealed. Again, there's duality. Because when Paul was writing this, they were only going through the first phase of the apostasy inside the church. The pressure political from the Roman government and from the Roman church only came later in the second, third, and fourth centuries. So it was a second phase that came.

I want you to again look at 1 John chapter 2 verse 18. 1 John chapter 2. So we went through a few points in John about how the apostle John kept referring to going back to the beginning. There's no change. There's no progress of new truth. It's the same truth.

It's the love of God. There's no change in that. But then let's look here at 1 John chapter 2 verse 18 and 19. Little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard, that the Antichrist is coming. Even now, many Antichrists have come.

So again, he mentions about these two phases. Many of Antichrists have come. This is the first phase infiltrating into the Church. But then he says, he said also, that the Antichrist is coming. That is the future political and religious pressure that is to come. So he is already talking about these two phases. Internal and external. First internal and then external. Now let's continue to read because this is very important for us to understand, and we want to go through this very clearly today. He says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. Very important. This first phase of apostasy, they went out from us. When there was in the modern age, in today's age, there was this big phases of apostasy. People were leaving the worldwide Church of God and starting other groups with different ideas. And then there's the actual thing that the worldwide Church of God did away with the Sabbath. But God's people stayed. And we know many ministers, hundreds of ministers, got together and said, what do we do? And under prayer and fasting, that's how united got developed. But those people left from us. We don't leave the truth. They left from us. And this has always been, in this first phase, they left us. They left from us. And it became manifest that none of them were of us. Now, I want to now refer to a very interesting book called Primitive Christianity by Ellen Knight.

And I'm going to refer to this because it talks about these two phases. But the interesting point, brethren, is that these two phases in the early Church, internal and people leaving the Church, and then later external through the Roman government and the Roman Church, is exactly what is going to be replicated at the time of the end. First internal and apostasy internal. We've seen that a number of times. First phase and a second phase will be government pressure through the beast and then the the religious beast. Because these two, as you know, that will come. So, these two phases of apostasy, first internal and then pressure from outside being dictatorial and authoritative, is basically forecast to happen. And we can see that it will happen by looking at the first few centuries of the Church. So, I'm going to read here in this book of Alan Knight on page 331.

And he says, and I quote, page 331, book, Primitive Christianity in Crisis by Alan Knight, it says, Gnostic Christianity first formed inside the apostolic church where it flourished as proto-nosticism, in other words, the early versions of Gnosticism, reaching a high point late in the first century. So, like in the late 70s and 80s, that's why we have these letters of 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Peter, written around about the years 1890 after the destruction of the temple. And these apostles are fighting this internal pressure that was happening in the church, the internal apostasy that was affecting the church. So, then he says, this provoked a backlash against this antinomian theology, which is reflected in the epistles of John, Jude, and 2 Peter, chapters 2 and 3. Beginning late in the first century, there was a mass exodus in which Gnostic Christians left the church. You see, so they left the church. And why? Because these apostles, getting older, Peter and John, they were fighting this, and then these people ended up leaving. That's what we read here in 1 John chapter 2 verse 19, where he says, they went out from us, because they were not of us.

And then he continues, after that, however, other unique forms of Hellenistic religion infiltrated the church, the apostolic church, culminating in a second great Hellenistic apostasy. And what was that second great Hellenistic apostasy was by the Romans, and the Roman church was military, was dictatorial.

So once again, the first wave was more of freewheeling, libertarian, individualism, the spirit of being independent, of, well, I want a church which is more liberal, more this, or more that, or whatever it is. There's that spirit of, I just want things a little bit more liberal, because after all, Christ was full of grace. Then later, there was a second phase, which was political. Let me read the same thing a little later, in page 335.

It says, from the epistles of John, we also know that those responsible for this, in other words, these Gnostic Christians, those that were deviating from the truth, left the church en masse beginning late in the first century. Then a little later, then it says, the first wave of apostasy ended somewhat, this is what this writer says, cleanly with the exodus of those responsible. So in other words, those left the church. That's why we see in the first letter to the church era in Revelation chapter 2, it says, yeah, you stood up for it. Well, you lost the first love, but you stood up for it. You lost that first enthusiasm, but you stood up for it. So we see here, it says a little later. Unfortunately, still on page 335. However, there is worse to come.

Because then it says, the new of, well, I'm just reading up, what began as a theological innovation in the first century, ultimately turned political. So these people left, they became a false church through this age of the shadows, they formed themselves up, yes, under the banner of Christianity, but was already false Christianity. That's why after AD 120, it comes up as a Christian church, but having complete different beliefs, because these people had left, and now they start gathering strength with the Roman government. And then this became an authoritarian leadership, which then caused the trouble that we see, which was the Roman government, started with a constant team, and then the Roman church. So that is interesting to study a little bit from history, because we see in the early church, there were these two waves. First, an internal push of turning God's grace into lewdness. But those people left the church, but as they left the church, and they get involved with other political things, etc., etc., they came back as a second phase, as a political organization involved with governments, and then a church, which put pressure on obedience to God's law. And that, in a sense, is what we see with the coming, future coming, of a second wave of apostasy, which would be through the beast power and the false church. So we can see that parallel, which is very, very interesting. Now, let's go back. Having covered that, let's now continue with 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. But now, we go in the latter part of verse 3 and verse 4. So it's talking that the man of sin is revealed. And he, even though this man of sin in the first early primitive church, would have been the Roman and the Catholic Church, the ultimate man of sin is still to come, is still future, which is then actually prophetically pointing to the beast power and the false prophet to come in our time soon to come. So then he says, the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped. In other words, this man of sin, this false prophet that is going to come, now, therefore, we're looking at in time, this false prophet that is going to come as part of the second phase of persecution on the church will be by government and by a false prophet. He opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God. So you will be able to do miracles and things like that that people will believe in it.

Now, I want to show you back to this chart that I showed you earlier on so that you see what I'm referring to. So Yah is the man of sin that is going to be revealed, the false prophet, and through that there's going to be obviously the appearance of the beast, the development of the beast, and of the false prophet, and then from there they will be culminated in what the Bible calls the abomination of desolation, which then will trigger the great tribulation. Now understand that when we read scriptures like Revelation 3 and others and Revelation 12, we know that a portion of the church will be protected. As I say, church Yah will be a portion of the church will be protected for time, times, and oftentimes. So there will be a protection of a portion of the church. So that's why we read in other scriptures like Luke 21 and 36, watch and pray that you may be counted worthy to escape and to stand before the Son of Man. God will protect you if you're doing the right thing. That is very important for us to understand that God is there and you will protect because it says, yeah, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped. So yeah, we're talking about this man of sin causing this thing called abomination of desolation so that he sits as God in the temple of God. So he sits, whatever he's going to sit, he's going to sit and act as God acts in the temple of God. Well, God's not acting God in the temple of God, he's sitting as God, right? So he's going to sit in maybe a temporary tabernacle, could be a tabernacle built out around the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and there would be then sacrifices in there and then he sits in that area as God sits in the temple of God. Now, obviously, some, by putting the comma in different parts of this phrase, could read so that he sits as God in the temple of God. So that some interpret that as mean that he sits like God sits, but he sits in the temple of God. It's not, it does not have to be that. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying it isn't, but it does not have to be that. It could be a tabernacle and that he sits in that tabernacle where they are offering sacrifices and he stops that sacrifices with the abomination of desolation and he sits there as God sits in his temple, you know, was as as having all the God-like authority, and he says, and showing himself that he is God. So it could be that interpretation, which is the one I'm more inclined to believe. I don't think they will break down the dome of the rock to build a temple there, but I think it is possible they will put up a temporary tabernacle in front of that and where they will offer sacrifices. And let me tell you, that will cause a lot of trouble in Israel. We know that is still to come. That is still to come, and that will cause a lot of trouble in Israel. There will be very difficult times around the world when that happens. And also, it will be that there will be like the formation of a beast, which means what? Which means the formation of a dictatorial Europe. And what does that mean? It means, I'm speculating, yeah, but it's a reasonable speculation, that Europe, as we stand, will cease to exist as a democracy, but it will be more like a dictatorship. And 10 kings will hand their power to this other king, which will then be the beast. So there are a number of things that we do not know. Really, there are a number of things that we don't know. But yeah, in verse 4, we see that he exalts himself as God.

Not the vicar of Christ, as the pope is today, but even more than that, he will say that he is the representative of God. He is just more than the vicar. He is God.

So, and that's what we see in scriptures, like in Revelation 13. I want to quickly turn to Revelation 13, because it is also interesting to see, yeah, in Revelation 13, we have two beasts. From verse 1 to verse 10, we have a beast that rises from the sea. And as you read carefully, you'll see this is a military government.

And rises from the sea, implying from a turmoil, a sea in turmoil, like strikes, demonstrations, etc. And some leader comes up, and it causes great change in Europe. So, there's a beast that rises from a very big confusion, very probably, in Europe and around the whole world. And so, it means the formation of that beast power in Europe. But then, we have verse 11 through verse 18. And look at verse 11. It says, Then I saw another beast, which means the government will come first, and then that religious power. But it says another beast coming out of the earth, not out of the sea. In other words, it's a religious entity that already exists in the earth, but then is empowered with more power through this man of sun and through Satan's deceptions that becomes a very powerful entity. So, it is the second beast. So, we have first the government, and then the religious authority.

When we look back at what happened in the second, third, and fourth century, like I mentioned to you, it was Constantine and the Roman government first, and out of that, then later, came the Roman Church. So, very interesting parallels from the earliest times to the latter time. So, this is very interesting as well. So, I think that's where I will stop today in verse 4.