Patterns of Revelation

With the events we see happening around us all the time, it's easy for everybody to get discouraged. The war now between the Israelis and Hamas, although this is the fourth time Israel has had to invade the Gaza Strip because of terrorist attacks.

It's not something new. But it's a problem with no solution, right? Every time the terrorists attack, they reinforce Israel to have a really strong army, and they attack back. And every time they attack back, the next generation of terrorists are being formed. It's just a never-ending loop.

It's the problem of humanity. And what was done with the attack that started this was some of the most barbaric behavior. There's no human history. There's nothing but anything more barbaric than what happened to launch this war. But there's no real solution to anything. And when you look at what's happened over the last couple years, starting with COVID, the Russian-Ukrainian war, this war now that's going on, it's expanded out. I mean, there's what, four different nations now with navies inside the Mediterranean Sea, all squared off against each other?

You have the economic problems that the whole world's going through, not just the United States. There could be global economic problems, or there already are, but collapse. It's just a time that hasn't happened very often, where on a global scale there is a disintegration of what had stabilized the world for a long time. I've talked about a little bit over the last couple years different prophetic sermons about the world we live in. I gave one on the rise and fall and rise of a new globalism, that the last time globalism fell was when there were seven different empires that ruled the world, basically, back in 1914.

And they started fighting each other. And after over 30 years of war, between First World War, Second World War, the Great Depression, the Chinese Revolution, the Russian Revolution, in which hundreds of millions of people died. Hundreds of millions. And probably hundreds and hundreds of more were left maimed, permanently damaged.

At the end of that, a new world order formed. And that new world order last till recently, and it's collapsing. So we're going through a global change. And that's not just saying, well, we're going to talk about all this bad news. The reality is, anyone who studies history knows we're in the midst of a global change that happens every once in a while.

And when it does, at the end, the whole world has changed. So I've talked about that. I've gone through, in fact, I gave a sermon on the Four Horsemen and talked about that in two different sermons in the last couple years. And Matthew 24, in which Jesus called that the time that He was talking about before He was coming is, there's the beginning of sorrows. Which, the beginning of sorrows, the Four Horsemen connected each other. And then there's what He called Great Tribulation.

So we covered that a little bit. I talked about the millennium, God's coming judgment on the world. I talked about that on the Feast of Trumpets this year. That God is judging the world. When Christ comes back, there's a war between Christ and Satan, although Satan is using human beings. The real war is between Christ and Satan. I talked about, I gave a sermon on Babylon and comparing ancient Babylon to the Babylon that's going to happen that's predicted in Matthew or in the book of Revelation.

So I've given a number of sermons, but I decided what I want to do between now and the end of 2024 is go back through a whole basic understanding of core prophecy and time prophecy and throw in a few new things that we haven't covered. So some of the things we're going to be talking about, some of the things we're going to talk about today, I've talked about some in the last two years. I gave a whole sermon on the mark of the beast. Some of you might remember that one. So I've tried to cover some of this, but I want to give up a basis where we're going to start here in Revelation today.

But then we're going to go back into Daniel. We're going to go back into different prophecies throughout the Scripture that talk about this time.

This is my opinion. I believe that we are in what Jesus called the beginning of sorrows. We're not the Great Tribulation because a lot of things have to happen before that starts. But we are in a time of massive global change. I don't know how long that will take, and I don't know what it looks like at the end of it. But it's not going to be the world you and I lived in 10 years ago. It's just not.

That's not doomsday. That's the reality of history. And it's a regular cycle. And we, I believe, are in the last cycle. And so we are in that beginning of sorrows. So today what I want to do is I want to look at two comparisons. There's two prophecies, two sets of prophecies, in Revelation.

One comparing two horses, and the other comparing two sets of two people. I want to look at that. What we'll do in the next series of this sermon, since we do them every six weeks or so, we'll be going through another set of comparisons in Revelation. There's two women. So this is going to set up sort of a basis. Okay, this is how we're going to look at this. And then we're going to have to go clear back to Daniel. We're going to have to go through a lot of things. We're going to have to go through the rapture. Why we don't see the rapture as a prophecy. But we have a different viewpoint of that. So we're going to do that throughout the next year and a quarter. We're going to be going through these basic things, re-establishing the basic things. I mean, what is Gog and Magog? We see that in the Bible. We're going to go through these things so we can then have not all the details because I can't give you all the details. And I can give you all kinds of speculation I have and it might be absolutely wrong. One thing I've learned is that an amazing amount of our prophetic speculation ends up being wrong. But the basics are the basics because they're scriptural. And there's a reason God put them in here is because He wants us to know certain things. I gave a sermon last month, or maybe it was two months ago, in Nashville on why should we even study Biblical prophecy? I'll be giving it here in the next six weeks. Why should we even do this? It just seems like a lot of what? Horses, a woman riding a dragon and beast and weird things. What does it mean? So we're going to sort through what is obvious. So today we're going to start with, and one thing I want to stress is what we're looking at here is that the end time is actually a war between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God. That's what we're actually looking at. We're looking at a war between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God. Okay, let's begin in Revelation 6. And we're going to look at, once again, this is something we've covered here in the last, probably, about a year. That's why some of the slides will look familiar. But I always use slides on prophecy because if we don't have something our brains can zero in on, it gets like, what is this stuff? So they're concept slides, mainly. They give you an idea of something. We know what happens here. This is the beginning of the end time events.

And John gets a vision of what's happening in heaven, and there's a scroll, and it's each scroll that has seals on it. As each seal is broken, part of the scroll opens up, and a new event is announced. So we're looking at this vision here that John had. Now, I saw in the Lamb, and this is another important imagery in the book of Revelation, the Lamb here always refers to Jesus Christ, except one place. All other places, the Lamb here is Jesus Christ. And it's obvious when you read through Revelation, wherever the word Lamb is used. So I saw the Lamb open one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice, like thunder, come and see. Behold, I looked, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. Okay, this is known as the first of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it's a whole series of events that are going to happen that go down through verse 6. And in these series of events, culminate, it says in verse 6, he says...

Well, actually it goes down to verse 8. He says in verse 8 then, So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. This is the last of the four horses. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed him. Empowered was given to them. In other words, these four series of events, they're going to happen almost at the same time.

One starts, and the next starts, and the next starts. They all culminate in something very important. Empowered was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill sword with hunger with death and by the beasts of the earth. So there is a total collapse of human society. I don't mean there's still not going to be nations and so forth, but I mean the whole structure of what we have known is going to collapse into something that leads to constant wars, religious issues.

He talks about how there's going to be all kinds of disease epidemics, all kinds of things that lead to one-fourth of the world dying. So that's why when people say, are we in the tribulation yet? No. This has to happen first. This is what causes the tribulation. So as things unravel, all these things are getting worse and worse and worse. And what I want to talk about today is that first horse, the white horse, because who is the white horse? And you and I, knowing the difference between the two horses, the two white horses that are mentioned in Revelation are important.

One of the common explanations of this white horse in Protestant study of the end times is that this white horse is Jesus. And the reason they say that is they go to Revelation 19. So let's go to Revelation 19, and we'll come back here. Revelation 19. Verse 11. John said, I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse.

And he said on it was called Faithful and True, and righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. He had a name written on it that no one knew except himself.

He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And we know that the Word is Jesus. And the armies in heaven clothed and fine-laid and white and clean, followed him on white horses. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, and with it he should strike all nations. And when I went through the judgment of God on Christ's returns, I read this, that there will be armies on earth gathered together under the influence of Satan to try to actually stop Jesus Christ from coming back, and Jesus Christ is going to destroy those armies.

Because he himself treads the winepress of the fiercest of the wrath of the almighty God. And he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. So this is Jesus Christ. But he's coming back, and you read chapter 20, you put this in the context of chapter 17, 18, 19, 20, he's coming back as King of kings and Lord of lords to rule on the earth.

To rule on the earth. To overthrow Satan's kingdom. Now let's go back and look what it says here about the white horse. Did you ride that horse, James? Okay, we actually have... Did you ride all of them? Okay, so we have death, destruction, all that sitting right here. Nobody talk to that man, whatever you do, do not talk to that man. Remember I showed the pictures of all the horses last time, including the one has the one weird eye because the light went out. So the only one eye worked and the other one didn't. But anyways... I didn't know you were coming today, but that's...

So, verse 2, A white horse who sat on it with a bow, and a crown was given him, he went out, conquering and to conquer. And then the second seal was opened, and he starts to describe all these events. Jesus coming in the last part of Revelation is the seventh seal. So we have the first four seals. He doesn't come back to the seventh seal.

When he comes back, it's to conquer Satan. What we see here, in these first four seals, is Satan unleashing his power. And it ends up with 25% of the world dying. There's a war between God and Satan, and humanity is caught in between. That's what this story is. This white horse is not Jesus Christ, but it is a fake Jesus Christ. What we're going to have is a fake religion that connects with political power and exercises the greatest single power any kingdom has ever done in the history of humanity.

It doesn't last very long. Even human beings rise up against it. It just doesn't last. But there is, for a short period of time, a great power in which Satan rules the earth, tries to rule the earth from a central place. It never works. But he tries. And in it, there has to be, then, the formation of a fake Christ. There's going to be a fake Christ in all this. You and I have to know the difference between the two horses.

This first one are events that happen before the tribulation. And is Satan setting up literally? I mean, he reigns now, but he's actually trying to set up a world kingdom. And then Christ's coming at the end of it.

So those who see this white horse must wait for the rider with the other white horse to come, the supernatural coming of Jesus Christ. So this starts at the beginning. Christ comes back at the end. We have to know the difference between those two. That's why in the Olivet Prophecy, Matthew 24, which, remember Matthew 24, those first verses all correspond with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They're talking about the same events. Because they asked Jesus about, what is He coming back?

And verse 3 says, Now He said on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, Tell us then, when would these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming at the end of the age? And He said, Be careful that no one deceives you. What's going to happen is going to be so unbelievable that even the people of God have to be careful not to be deceived by it.

And that's this first white horse. He says, and Jesus answered in verse 5, For many will come in My name, and saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. He said, There's going to many come in His name, and He's going to deceive many people. You will hear wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not troubled, for all these things have come to pass. But the end is not yet, for a nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

And there will be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. And these are the beginning of sorrows. And I'm going to give a sermon in the next, like I said, the next year and a half as I go through all these events. I'm going to go through what He calls the abomination of desolation here, and what that means. Because understanding that helps us understand some end time events. But verse 11, He says, And many false prophets will rise and deceive many, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

But he who endures to the end shall be saved. In other words, Christians are going to... This is going to be a hard time for those who are truly following Jesus Christ, who are waiting for the coming of their king on His white horse, instead of this fake king on His white horse. He won't be literally riding a white horse.

But the whole point is, He's going to appear as a messiah. That's the whole point of it. Christ comes back on a white horse. Everything that Satan does is a counterfeit. So it's going to appear that the messiah is here. Now, to appear that you're the messiah, and you deceive lots of people, you're going to have to do some pretty amazing things, right? If somebody gets up and says, I'm the messiah, everybody says, you're crazy.

So what's He going to be able to do so that the world believes there is a new messiah? This messiah has come, and he can bring people together, different political ideas, different religious ideas, he can bring them together. Well, let's go to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2. One of the few sort of detailed prophecies we have in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

Paul writes a lot about doctrine, just practical Christian living. Every once in a while, God gave him a prophecy to give. So here's what happens. Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, we ask Him. He says, okay, there's some problem in the church of Thessalonica.

They're not understanding the return of Jesus Christ. Now, remember, they don't have the book of Revelation, by the way. That information is not even... they have no knowledge of it because it hasn't been written yet. They have Old Testament prophecies. They have things that Jesus said that were being written down. But they don't have all these other details. He says, He tells them not to be soon shaken and mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if it came from us, though the day of Christ had come.

And so the teaching was going around. You know, Christ came the first time that kingdoms on earth, He's somehow here in a mystical way. There are people who teach it. Now, the kingdom of God exists... I'm going to give a sermon on that, too. I mean, the kingdom of God didn't go anyplace. God still remains thrown. In fact, the kingdom of God on the earth is God working through you. It says we're citizens of the kingdom.

But that's another story. Remember, look at what Paul says here, what he's dealing with. He says, some people in Testament like heaven deceived by clever arguments that Jesus had already returned somehow. He went, He came back, He was here in spirit, whatever it was. But they were being taught something that wasn't true. So, he tells them, 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 tradition.

The day of the Lord, the coming of Jesus Christ to literally establish the kingdom of God on earth and to remove Satan, must be preceded by this person. This person must come on the scene. Verse 4, Who opposes and exalts Himself above all that is called God, or there's worship, so that He sits as God in the temple of God, showing Himself that He is God. What you have is a leader who sits in the temple of God. This is why there has to be some rebuilding of the temple.

One of the reasons inside of Israel today, there is a political split over how hard they should go after the Palestinians. And the reason why is they would have drive them out of, completely out of Jerusalem, so that they can rebuild the temple. Now, they're not a majority in Israel, but there is a vocal minority. We have to drive them out of Jerusalem, too, because there we can take over the Dome of the Rock, which would, of course, cause a billion Muslims to rise up against them.

You talk about a world war, but there's a group, and Netanyahu isn't listening to them, but there is a drive to do that. They believe that they must rebuild the temple for the Messiah to come back. So there's going to be some structure, I don't know what it's going to be, grand or small, I don't know, but there's going to be some structure, and when we go through Daniel, we'll show that there's actually going to be sacrifices being done again in Jerusalem, before the coming of the Messiah.

And in that structure, this man sits in it and claims he's divine. We have a Messiah. We have a Messiah. So we're going to begin to see the formation of that and some kind of religious movement. Now, he doesn't do this until after we know this. He doesn't do this until after the four horsemen. But the four horsemen involves this religious movement. And something with that religious movement is Islam, but it is not.

I'll show you why. It's not Islam. So he's going to sit in the temple and he's going to say that he is divine. He is a Messiah. So he sits as God in the temple of God, show himself that he is God. And he talks about how he's being restrained at that time. It's still being restrained. Then verse 7, 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 that the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord... Now we know when he exists... whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming.

Well, that's Revelation 19. That's when Christ comes back on his white horse. But this individual is going to represent a false Christ. Probably an ecumenical movement that brings together the brotherhood of man in love and acceptance and tolerance. Except there's some things they won't tolerate. And the things they won't tolerate is anyone that doesn't accept him as a Messiah. That will not be tolerated. And there'll be people all over the world that will be persecuted for that because there'll be lots of people who just won't accept this man.

But there'll be lots who do. And here's why. Verse 9, The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders. In other words, he does miracles. This is why Jesus says, be careful, you're not deceived. Because there are going to be all kinds of miracles take place. There may be people being healed. We're going to see some other things he's going to do. They're going to make people believe. Remember when he comes on the scene, the world is in chaos. Twenty-five percent have died. Economies have unraveled. Wars are all over the place.

It looks like humanity may destroy itself. And this person is doing miracles and sets down in the Jewish temple and says, I am the Messiah. He says, And with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. In other words, humanity, a lot of humanity, is going to accept this as true. It's because they hate the truth.

They would rather live the lie than live the truth, because living the lie is so much easier. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, and that they may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure and unrighteousness. In other words, God is just going to turn them over to complete having reprobate minds. You go ahead and be and do whatever you want, and God will not be involved in this power.

This is going to lead the whole world into a decay, into a pit of evil and barbarism that is absolutely unimaginable. And yet it's going to save the world in the eyes of the people who are there, because they'll be in such bad state by sheer power. So now we have an understanding of how, okay, do not be deceived. And so now we have this person coming along that's on this white horse. In other words, he appears to be a representative from God.

He is during the time of the four horsemen, but he doesn't take power until after the four horsemen. How do we know that? Okay. Revelation 13. I'm not taking a lot of time on this, because we have covered everything we've covered, except the last few verses I'll cover. We've actually covered it one time or another over the last year. So are you with me so far? Okay. Because this isn't totally new, but you see the timeline of things. So Chapter 13. Then he stood at the sand of the sea. He has another vision, John does. And it's all beasts rising out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.

And all these horns were ten crowns on his heads, a blasphemous name. He goes on and talks about what this beast is like. We'll go through that in detail when we go through Daniel 2 and Daniel 7. And then it says, So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast. Who is the dragon? So Satan is actually being worshipped in this system. Now, that doesn't say they know he's Satan, right?

But this political person is doing all kinds of miracles. He's brought also a system into the world in which they're starting to sort of clean up the mess. An economic system is reestablished. It doesn't last very long. But for a little bit, they get sort of, people aren't starving in mass numbers anymore. They got some stuff going here. It seems like this is good. And they say, Who is like the beast who is able to make war with him?

He's able to bring together a military power that defeats other armies and brings the entire world into some state of submission. Not total submission, but some state of submission. And he's given a mouth-speaking great things and blasphemies. He was given authority to continue for 42 months. Ah! This is why we know that this is after the Four Horsemen.

This 42 months, three and a half years will come up over and over and over again as a series of events. And they all happened at the same time. So when that, the Four Horsemen reached their culmination, one of the great leaders who are going to be leading this whole thing is going to take power. And he's going to sit in Jerusalem in the temple, some temple that the Jews have put together.

I say the Jews, there are evangelical churches that have raised tens and tens of millions of dollars and sent them to Israel to build that temple. Why? The temple has to be there before Jesus comes back. So they're doing it for Jesus to come back, and the Jews are doing it for the Messiah to come the first time, working together to create some kind of temple.

And I mean, that's not a conspiracy theory. The Israeli government is involved in it. I mean, it's a common knowledge. It's all over the place. It's not some hidden thing. It is a desire to do this. When we were in San Antonio, John Hagee regularly gave sermons to his 10,000 people there at his huge church about, we've got to raise more money to build the temple than Jesus can come back. And we're sending it over to the people who are over there developing it.

So he's given this mouth-speaking great things and blasphemies for 42 months.

And he goes on, and he blessings against God and against his name and his tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven. Verse 7, It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority was given to him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the earth. And anyone has an ear, let him hear.

He goes on and says the fact that God's going to deal with this is the patience of the saints.

The saints can last this out, even though some will die. And when we go through the two women, we'll see what happens to one of the women, which is the church, knowing the Great Tribulation. The patience is they know it doesn't last. Satan's final attempt—it's not his final attempt, he does it at the end of the millennium— but his final attempt before the first coming of Christ, will fail miserably because Christ is coming back. But there's something else here that tells us that there's another person involved, and this becomes important.

It's not just this political leader.

Verse 11, I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and had two horns like a lamb, and spoke like a dragon, and 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. There's another place that says he's dead, but then he's not dead. He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth and the sight of men.

He deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he's granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who is wounded by the sword and lived.

He has 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 to worship the image of the beast to be killed.

Very interesting here. There's two involved.

One is a religious leader. One is a political leader.

And there's miracles done, and you must worship.

And what it seems to be here is the political leader.

So the religion supports the state.

The political leader being worshipped, the whole Roman Empire.

The history of the Roman Empire was emperor worship. It was central to their empire.

The worship of the... they believed in other gods, too. They didn't wipe out all religions.

They just said you had to worship the emperor.

And you have this image of the beast.

Now, we don't know exactly what the image is. We do know this. To receive the mark of the beast, you worship the image.

You actually worship it.

This religion and political movement is merged together.

And it says all those who will not worship the beast.

There's actual worship involved of this messiah.

Actual worship of this messiah.

And you don't do that, and you will be persecuted and killed.

So here we have two people. Two men. One a political leader, one a religious leader.

One is leading this religious movement. One is leading the political movement.

And one is causing people to worship the other one. Even the image of him.

I don't know what that image might be. It might be on money.

It might be... It says you have to bow down to it.

Whatever it is, it might be a mark you actually receive. It might be something in your mind.

It might be just a declaration of what you're doing, and now you can live.

But you have to worship that beast. And you receive that mark.

And in doing so, you can buy and sell. And there's the absolute basis of this system.

The basis of this system is the ability to have merchandise, the ability to sell, to buy, to move food and goods all over the world.

That's the basis of it. It's a global restoration of a global economy. The whole world, once again, starts to function after the collapse caused by the four horsemen.

So we have two horses and we have two men. But there's another two men.

Revelation... We'll look at the other two men. Once again, this is just recapping some things. Although I don't think I went through Revelation 11 in a long time.

So let's look at Revelation 11. This gives us some framework to work off of.

Because without framework, prophecy has no idea. It's just all over the place.

I have no idea. If I don't start in Daniel 2, I have no idea what the prophecies mean. None whatsoever.

And you can just make up anything. And people generally do. So you have to have a structure. We know what the two horses are.

We know that these two individuals are going to deceive the world. One of them claiming to be the Messiah.

Well, there's two other individuals that come along and they have a little different job.

They are set by God to stand up to the beast and false prophet, as they're called.

Their job is to stand up to them and tell everybody, that's not real. That's from Satan.

I don't know who these two guys are, but you talk about the worst jobs in history.

You two guys get to stand up publicly to the whole world hates them.

With electronics and stuff, everybody will be watching them. You know, BBN, Beast Broadcast Network. They'll be watching them and they're going to be hated.

I went through that so fast I forgot the slides.

Okay, verse 1. Well, let's go to verse 3.

He says, I will give power to my two witnesses, that they may prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days clothed in sackcloth.

Oh, another forty-two months, another three and a half years.

Once certain things happen, once we get to the abomination of desolation, it's three and a half years.

And that all happens with the fifth seal, which happens after the four horsemen.

The four horsemen tell us what's going to happen in this beginning of sorrows.

And Jesus said, but the end is not yet. The end is not yet.

Because a lot of things have to happen to set up what Satan's going to be able to do.

So you have two witnesses, dressed in sackcloth.

I remember a number of years ago we did a program, a BT program, on the two witnesses.

And we didn't know what to dress them in, sackcloth.

So, in fact, Steve Myers was the one that did the program.

We had two guys in suits, one in suits and one in, like, robes.

I mean, really nice suit, really nice, look like a Catholic cardinal.

And they were the beast of Paul's prophet.

And then we had two guys dressed in burlap, I think.

It was anything we could find. What do you have, burlap?

Oh, did we get letters about that?

These are the two witnesses. They will be the best dressed men in the world.

And we said, no, they're not. They're dressed in burlaps, the closest thing we have.

Okay? Oh, boy, that offended some people.

That the beast of Paul's prophet was dressed so nicely, and the two witnesses were dressed so poorly.

Well, that's what the Bible says.

So, anyways, people get so caught up in the weirdest things sometimes.

You don't know it until you're on TV, and you get it from all different directions.

Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, you know, so you get all kinds of things.

In verse 5, he says, And if anyone wants to harm them...

No, of course the beasts of Paul's prophet are going to try to harm them.

I mean, they're bringing out fire from heaven. They've conquered a big chunk of the world.

The rest of the world is being economically forced to be subject to them.

If anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from the mouth and devours their enemies. If anyone wants to harm them, they must be killed in this manner.

So you have two, a political power, a religious power, doing miracles from Satan.

And then you have these two guys coming along, looking like bums off the street, and they're doing all kinds of miracles. God's doing it through them.

This is the Great War for three and a half years between God and Satan.

Satan mustering all the demonic powers and bringing all humanity together, and God uses two guys that can't even dress right.

And that's the battle for three and a half years.

And they have the power to shut heaven so it hit no rainfalls in the days of their prophecy.

They have power over waters that turn to the blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.

Well, you know, these powers say, well, we've cleaned up this disease.

So, you know, praise to the Messiah.

And they do it just in the sense, it's okay, God's going to give you another one.

Of course they wouldn't have killed. They're using diseases as weapons. So you've got to... everybody would have to pick one of these two men to follow, by the way.

That's the point. The ones that seem so right and are saving the world, and the two guys who just show up and say, nope, this isn't right, and they both do miracles back and forth.

And everybody who tries to kill them dies. Assassins, maybe they send out some SEAL team and they all die, you know.

And these guys don't do anything.

This is a reality that's... you know, you made a movie like this, and it could be, you know, it's going to be just another version of Star Wars, right?

This is what's going to happen. He says in verse 7, When they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit, that's Satan, will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them.

Satan finally seems to win. He kills the two witnesses. And if you read the rest of this, their bodies just lay out in the street for three days so they can televise it. Because this is the whole world knows.

Now, that wasn't possible till today with the Internet.

The whole world knows. The whole world sees it.

The whole world rejoices because we finally got rid of the evil messengers.

The ones from God are evil in their minds. Satan's leaders are good.

And then God shows them what's really happening.

Because while the whole world watches after three days, He resurrects them, and they watch them come back to life and ascend into heaven.

Now, you've got to know you're in trouble when that happens.

In fact, it's very interesting.

Verse 11 says, because verse 10 says, "...and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth." For three and a half years, the whole world can enjoy this newfound, you know, system of wealth and economic system and healing and everything that's going on.

They can't enjoy it because there's two guys that every day they can't get away from them.

They're constantly being able to broadcast them out to the world.

No, this is not from God. So they rejoice. Verse 11, now after the three and a half days, so they're they died for three and a half days, or they're lay there.

"...the breath of life of God entered them. They stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.

And it ascends into heaven." They ascended into heaven. Verse 13.

"...and that same hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell." This has been Jerusalem.

"...and an earthquake seven thousand people were killed, the rest were afraid, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

People start to wake up and say, Uh-oh, we're on the wrong side here.

He can kill them, but he can't bring them back to life.

And the whole world will have known that these two men were brought back to life by God.

They give glory to God, finally. So what we have, once again, is simply...

What we've been going through is very simple.

It's two horses.

One is that a white horse that speaks like a lamb, or appears like a lamb but speaks like the dragon.

In other words, he appears to be Christ.

He appears to be Christ, according to Revelation, but he's actually motivated by Satan.

So we have that person riding that horse, and there's two of them involved.

So we have the two horses.

One is Christ coming back, one is this false leader, and we have to know the difference.

If you don't see him coming on clouds with armies gathered together to fight him, it's not the real Christ. I don't care what miracles he's doing.

And then we have the beast and the false prophet, and the two witnesses, and everyone will have to choose.

Everyone will have to choose the guys that don't know how to dress.

Because they're the ones from God.

You can see why people won't think that's true, and that's why they're going to be confused.

They're going to be in the midst of a spiritual war like has never happened before, where miracles are happening, the whole world has collapsed, it's being rebuilt, there's been massive wars, massive destruction, massive death.

And people are doing miracles.

It's a different time. It's a totally different time, and that's what's coming ahead.

So that's not to discourage us, because as we go through these, we'll see over and over and over again, God says that those who know this are the blessed ones.

Those who know this, even if you have to live through it, are the blessed ones.

Because to live through it, not know it is even a lot worse.

Like I said, I don't know how long the time of sorrows is, but I believe we're in the beginning stages of the beginning of sorrows.

That's my opinion.

Because of the cycle is going to end up really bad, and I don't know how long it lasts and how bad it gets.

But it could lead into these events just like that. I mean, it wouldn't take much.

So we just need to be aware of it.

How does that inspire the way we live? Well, I live today with the joy of the knowledge of salvation, and it's a good day.

That's how you live. Every day, God is with us.

Every day we have the joy of salvation.

And you get up tomorrow and you do the same thing.

And whatever happens around us, that becomes the core of who we are.

That becomes the core of who we are. That becomes the core of who we are.

So, before the end of next year, we're probably going to have about eight different sermons where we're going to take, like here, we just go through, okay, let's compare these things.

We'll compare the two women in Revelation.

And we'll go through about, like I said, about eight different parts of end time basic, very basic.

Sorry, I won't give you much new stuff because I don't have any. Very basic stuff.

By the way, I'll conclude with one thing that's very interesting.

People are saying that Netanyahu has launched a religious war, and they don't understand why.

I saw the speech he was given.

And he got up and he used a prophecy from, I think it was Psalms, maybe it was Isaiah, where violence will be destroyed.

And he talks about how violence will be destroyed. He reads the prophecy.

And they said, well, he just launched a religious war.

Well, you have to understand why they're saying that.

Hamas is an acronym, H-A-M-A-S, is five different words in Arabic. So it's just the beginning letter, you know how we'll do that?

Beginning letters, and we make a word out of it.

That's what Hamas is.

In Hebrew, H-A-M-A-S, haemas, is the Hebrew word for violence.

So I think he knew what he was doing.

Hamas will be destroyed.

He was launching war against them. He meant violence, and they're violent.

So he's doing it in an underhand way.

In Hebrew, H-A-M-A-S is a very fascinating word, because in that way it means violence.

It means liars. It means worthless men. I mean, it's a very nasty word.

And so I really don't know what he meant, but now he's accused of launching a religious war.

And maybe he is. I don't know.

But he's using a play on a Hebrew word that's missed in English, so no one knows what he means.

Okay, well, have a good Sabbath, and where are we next week?

We're someplace next week, so you'll have a good Sabbath.