Revelation 13: 11-18

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. ¹² And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. ¹³ And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, ¹⁴ And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

¹⁵ And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. ¹⁶ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: ¹⁷ And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. ¹⁸ Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

It has been a while since I wrote about prophecy. Over the past few years, in the COVID pandemic to be more precise, we saw the advancement of the New World Order jump in leaps and bounds. We had an unlikely prophet in the form of President Trump sent to tell us what was happening. Many, well, a large part of us people, and especially Christians, had been coasting along in the ride of life, not really understanding that the people that led us and are still leading us were our greatest enemies on earth.

We have seen the exposure of the super political families that have dominated the political landscape in the US for almost 50 years, that they are corrupt, compromised, and involved in evil. Many, including Christians, did not like the message, and as soon as they could vote back in the status quo in Joe Biden. Sadly, many Christians do not realize or did not realize, maybe some of them have woken up, that they voted for the man who wants them silent and out of the way, a man who opposes every good thing that God loves, and he and those who run the government will do all in their power to silence our voices.

Here in the Great White North, Christians in a similar manner have voted in a corrupt and narcissistic Prime Minister who is leading us to the path of Communism at a breath-taking pace. He has already spent our economy into massive debt and is printing money at the rate that will make our money practically worthless; we may be there already. Fortunately, other political leaders in places like Croatia can see the man for what he is and called him out to his face in speeches to the European Union this week. He is a dangerous man, and together he and the President are taking North America on a path to China like Communism faster than we can keep pace with.

Now, what I want to look at today is just the confirmation of things that we see unfolding that continues to give us more and more confidence in the scriptures and the future that God has planned. This is a lesson about reassurance and trust; it is not designed to alarm us. I assure you that it will be alarming for some, but that is not the intent.

• Technology and the Bible, verse 15

There is or was a preacher named Chuck Missler, who was famous for talking about technology statements in the Bible. He has a one-hour video on YouTube about this subject. The progress in robotics and artificial intelligence in science is moving rapidly.

Imagine John seeing this vision; he is surrounded by the Roman Empire, a pagan religious empire. Everywhere he goes, he encounters idols. He sees statues everywhere, and in this vision, he sees a statue that can walk and talk. This is the first time he sees what we would call today a robot. I was just 18 years old when the Terminator came out, a movie about a robot that looked human. It could walk and talk, had a mission, and was able to learn human behavior and mimic it. We had barely entered the age of cell phones as yet when this movie came out. But here were these people telling us that humans would create a human robot in the future. One that could walk and talk with us; one that would take over the whole world and send a soldier back to kill the human who would try to stop it.

We are here; the progress of artificial intelligence tells us that it will not be long, at least as far as we know publicly, before we have true interactive robots that will walk, talk and interact with us like humans. It is one of these that will be empowered by the Anti-Christ and his cohorts to speak to the world about the Mark. It will instruct the people to worship the Anti-Christ, and it will appear to be very human, even to the point of breathing.

We already have AI working around us, companies like Tesla are making ‘self-driving’ cars, and we are seeing things like having robots doing intricate surgeries. Machines may begin to take over dangerous jobs like firefighting, deep-sea mining, and other high-risk jobs. Those of us of a certain vintage can remember the movie Robo-Cop. What happens when we take the humans out of the equation? You can see the push to get rid of the police or to re-do the whole idea of policing. This kind of mindset opens the door for AI to come in and replace humans.

From the context that we observe here in Revelation 13, it does not appear that the people of the world run in fear from the talking, walking robot. No, they simply obey as if this is commonplace. People are slowly being conditioned to accept the rule of AI, to accept the importance and the convenience of AI. We saw how small and streamlined the global governments became in the COVID mess. Seemingly diverse governments coordinated and scripted almost identical laws. They invented and used global tracking systems via our phones to institute vaccination passport systems that prevented some and allowed others. They fundamentally created two distinct societies: one whose ‘rights’ were preserved with compliance and one whose ‘rights’ were dismissed for non-compliance.

Well, we are back to ‘normal,’ they say, but that is not true. Governments got to experiment with the Universal Guaranteed Income. They got to see how it would affect their bottom lines, how it would affect employment and now unemployment; they got to see how policing would work in a lockdown situation all over the world. They got to see how the masses would react: who will follow the party line and who will actually think for themselves. They got to see who would trade freedom for safety, even if the danger was clearly manufactured by the government.

We are beginning to see that the death numbers reported by the CDC for COVID are lower than what we were told. Even though it is clear that the vaccines caused great harm and did not stop the spread of the virus, people are still getting boosters and will continue to get them into the future.

• The Mark, verses 16-18

I am not making any predictions or prophecies. I am simply making an observation. The COVID pandemic has been and is being used to set up the framework for this very event here in Revelation 13:16-18.

In a speech this year to the World Economic Forum, Prince Charles made the observation that many countries are so deep in debt that they will not be able to come into the New Green Deal that they are setting up, and these debts will need to be dealt with to be able to open the opportunities for all the countries to get in on the new age. As you are reading, the debt of North American countries like Canada and the USA is growing at astronomical rates; they are unsustainable. There are deep rumblings of a serious economic crash coming this year or in the near future that will make the 2008-2009 collapse look like a mere speed bump in the road. People will lose everything from their homes to their retirement funds and have nothing.

As far as we can tell, this is an orchestrated event that is coming. We know that debts have to be paid back; we know that one cannot constantly spend more than one makes and not have to go bankrupt. We know, but still, we always vote for the guy who promises to spend more and more. We hate fiscal conservatives because they just take the stuff away and balance budgets; boring.

There is a great push towards the Guaranteed Universal Income in a lot of countries. Here in Canada, it is growing; the Democrats in the US are pushing it and trying their best to get it installed before the mid-term elections. How will they do this? Via a new digital currency, one that will be globally accepted and cross political and cultural lines. One of the ways to do that is to collapse the US dollar as the global reserve dollar. Right now, if you want to buy oil, or commodities for your country, like food, you need to pay for everything in US currency. I knew about this as a kid living in Barbados; the government used to buy up US dollars from the hotels to use for trade.

One of the things keeping the US economy afloat right now under the $30+ Trillion-dollar debt is the fact that most, if not all, countries of the world need US dollars to do international trade. They must have US dollar reserves and have lots of them. But if the globalists, yes, some of the US political leaders, can get their own dollar to collapse, they can institute a global digital money system. They can use the excuse of ‘writing off global debts by creating a new currency.’ They are talking about it here in Canada, the US, in the EU, and in many other places. The governments will have complete control over your spending once we go to a digital currency.

Mr. Trudeau ran afoul of our banks here in Canada when he began to freeze even the digital accounts of the legal, peaceful protesters in Ottawa a month or so ago. He played out the bank’s game, and people saw for the first time what was being planned as the push to digital currency marched on. Our Deputy PM, Mrs. Freeland, made the freezing and seizing of digital currencies a permanent part of the Emergencies Act. One only needs to declare an emergency, and voila, the government can freeze your digital money in the name of national security. They can also limit what you can buy and where you can spend your money. They will have total control over your finances. This is what we see here in Revelation 13: 16-18.

Now, I am a pre-trib rapture guy. I do not believe that we will be here for the vast majority of this. But we are seeing the framework being built right before our eyes. We can see the plans fall into place, and we can see that God truly does know the end and the beginning. God told us about technologies that he knew would exist 2,000 years in the future, and he had a first-century prophet write about it. Jesus is coming again soon, but for we who are saved, we who have put our faith and trust in the shed blood of Jesus and the empty tomb, soon the call will come; the flight to the heavens and the first set of judgments will begin with us.

Are you ready to meet the Lord? You will meet Him soon either as a redeemed child in Jesus or as a rebellious servant who rejected His loving grace. The choice is yours. I pray you will make the right one.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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The Examination of a Section: PART 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the passage in a very early church writing called The Didache, meaning “The Teaching of the Twelve (disciples),” written maybe about AD 70-80. It was a document relating to the practice of a very early church community, and among other things, it contains a section on eschatology (last things) and prophecy. We considered the first portion of that, and this time will do the remainder.

Paragraphs 8-10

8 And then the world-deceiver shall appear as a son of God;

9 and shall work signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands;

10 and he shall do unholy things, which have never been since the world began.

Now the writer hones in on the evil one who is coming. This is very remarkable because today and for 1,900 years, there are those who deny the events of Revelation and relegate it to past history or an allegory; who deny a Tribulation and even a separate Rapture. Those people are misled, but sadly, they mislead others. The Christians at the time of the Didache had it correct; they knew.

Paragraph 8 tells of a world deceiver who appears as a son of God. We know him as the coming world leader, or the general term most use is Antichrist.

He is known by other names. Paul calls him the son of perdition/destruction; John calls him the beast from the sea – Revelation 13. Paul calls him the lawless one.

{{2Thessalonians 2:3 “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.”

2Thess 2:8 “and then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming.”

Revelation 13:1 “He stood on the sand of the seashore, and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names.”}}

Matthew was the book best known to the writer of the Didache, but chapter 24 of Matthew does not contain any verse that would be inclusive of a world leader.

The closest we come to that in chapter 24 are these two references that speak of misleading and deception – {{Matthew 24:24 “for false christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Matt 24:5 “for many will come in My name saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many.”}}

Oral tradition was sufficient for them to know something about what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, and remember, Revelation had not yet been written.

In Paragraph 9, (9 – and shall work signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands). Again, the knowledge beyond Matthew except for that reference again in Matt 24:24 was scant but known orally. Signs and wonders will be breathtaking and will have the power to deceive, and the world leader is the great deceiver (in conjunction with the False Prophet).

Could we imagine the very first time a magician sawed a person/lady in two on the stage? Never before seen, and the audience must have been captivated. However, that is just magic. When the world leader and the False Prophet operate, it will not be magic, for it will be the very satanic power of the devil. The whole world will be deceived. It is going to be very spectacular because the world today is familiar with computer imagery and realism and holograms, etc., but it will be the real thing, not this type of technology.

The best understanding of this was penned by Paul – {{2Thessalonians 2:8 “and then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming, ⁹ that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, ¹⁰ and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.”}}

Of course, these 3 Paragraphs we are looking at right now also cover this verse – {{2Thessalonians 2:4 “who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.”}}

Paragraph 10 emphasizes the fact that this man is wicked.

10 – and he shall do unholy things, which have never been since the world began.

In other words, the writer knows that the man of sin who is coming will be more wicked than any human being who has walked the earth. Of course, a meditation on Matthew 24 and relevant Thessalonian verses must draw one to that conclusion. We have not seen the likes of it on earth at this stage. We think things are evil enough with people like Xi and Mao Zedong and Hitler and Putin, and the evil drafters of legislation to murder the unborn, and the thrusting of homosexuality onto us all, but all will pale greatly when the man of sin takes the stage.

I find it most disgusting that the early Christians knew these things, even these early people without proper scriptures at that stage, but those who occupy pulpits today with all the knowledge before them, refuse to preach these important matters of the Lord’s return and eschatology. They are bad shepherds of the sheep and ought to be ashamed. What sort of meaningless gospel are they teaching?

One thing we must not forget: Paul spent 3 weeks in Thessalonica, and during those three weeks, he taught these new converts from idolatry and paganism all about the faith, and that included all the eschatology he had been given by the Lord. In time, and in answer to their question, he wrote 1 Thessalonians, and this is what he said in the next letter – {{2Thessalonians 2:4 “… who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. ⁵ Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?”}}

If Paul knew the importance of the matter of the Lord’s coming and the path of eschatology for “just converted” pagans, why do these deniers in the pulpits and Bible colleges refuse to look into these things. They are false when it comes to the whole gospel. Some readers of RR have contacted me to say they try to interest their pastor/minister in these biblical matters, but they refuse to listen, or they write it off as not important. Shame. Shame.

Shame.

Paragraphs 11 and 12

11 Then all created mankind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish;

12 but they that endure in their faith shall be saved by the Curse Himself.

The writer was acquainted with {{Matthew 24:21 “for then there will be a great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall,”}} for all Matthew 24 is post-Rapture, and the confused and misled think otherwise, but the caution is here – {{Matthew 24:4 “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘See to it that no one misleads you.'”}}

All mankind will come into this testing judgment but not the true Church, which is raptured from it. The conjunction “for” that begins verse 21 is collecting all that went before.

Those who will be offended are those who betray and turn back, as Matthew also teaches in chapter 24 – looked at earlier. It is always a mystery to me why some hold solidly to what they have believed, but some will fall away as if they have no perseverance. I don’t know why, but it might be the soil as in the parable of the sower. The writer of the Didache draws on {{Matthew 24:12-13 “and because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold, ¹³ but the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved.”}}

The reference in Paragraph 12 above (saved by the Curse Himself) is better translated as “will be saved from under the curse itself.” I am uncertain what was in the writer’s mind, but it seems to be related to loss of faith in the Tribulation or judgment.

Paragraphs 13-17

13 And then shall the signs of the truth appear;

14 first a sign of a rift in the heaven, then a sign of a voice of a trumpet, and thirdly a resurrection of the dead;

15 yet not of all, but as it was said:

16 The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.

17 Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.

I am going to put all the remaining Paragraphs together, for they are connected with Messiah’s coming, the Second Coming.

Some of these details the writer has stated are derived from Matthew 24 except the resurrection and the coming with His saints. The resurrection is from Thessalonians and possibly Corinthians, by word of mouth, I assume. Events are haphazard and not in chronological order necessarily. Let us look at these individually.

13. This is put intriguingly. What is the truth? I see it as only two things. The first is that what Jesus spoke on Olivet was truth, and at the Second Coming, truth will be confirmed. The word “signs” is used, “signs of the truth,” and this relates to what the writer knew from Matthew – {{Matthew 24:30 “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”}}

The second possibility is the one I like better. The writer is telling verbatim from what he recalls of Matthew 24:30 but uses “signs of the truth” in place of “the sign of the Son of Man.”

Jesus is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE, and I think he is using another name for the Son of Man.

14. First a sign of a rift in the heaven, then a sign of a voice of a trumpet, and thirdly a resurrection of the dead. People today are confused and misled by others as to the distinctions of the two future comings. The Rapture and the Second Coming are confused, especially by those who try to put the two events into one. That is wrong. There is no excuse for it because many have carefully differentiated the two comings.

Study. Investigate. Study!

However, at the time of the writing of the Didache, scriptures were not available except to the church to whom the letter was written.

They had not started to circulate properly. All was by word of mouth, though this fellowship group may have had Matthew or portions thereof. It is understandable that the writer would lump aspects of the two comings together in mixed order. It is inexcusable today but not for them.

In Paragraph 14, this translation reads as “a rift in heaven” and another, “an opening of the heavens,” and another, “the sign of an outspreading in heaven.” It is referring to the coming of the Son of Man – {{Matthew 24:30 “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”}}

The trumpet is next mentioned in paragraph 14, obtained from this – {{Matthew 24:31 “He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.”}}

However, we know a trumpet is also connected with the Rapture, and it also features in Revelation, unknown to this group of Christians. The one in Matthew refers to the ingathering of the Jewish saints at the Second Coming; they are the elect.

Next one. The resurrection of the dead is a confusing matter for many, I find, when asked to explain all the different resurrections. We will not be doing that, but we know there are several in Revelation. And of course, the one we look forward to is at the Rapture. Jesus did teach a bit about resurrection in Matthew 22, but the writer here would be including material from the resurrection in the two main Rapture passages of the New Testament, I believe.

15. This Paragraph is brief, “yet not of all, but as it was said.” I cannot say what the writer had in mind when he wrote this. It would be related to the Second Coming from Matthew, but the Lord does not mention that in the Olivet Discourse. More likely, it would be drawn from the Rapture when the dead in Christ (only them) would be raised.
16. The quote used here – The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him – is similar to that which Jude used when he quoted from the Book of Enoch – {{Jude 1:14 “About these also, Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones'”}} (NASB). Of course, the writer could have had in mind something derived from the Rapture – {{1Thessalonians 4:14 “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.”}}

Another translates this Didache passage as – “Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.” The Book of Enoch was quite well known at that time.

17. Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.

This is a direct quote from Matthew. The last Paragraph in this eschatological passage of the Didache is – {{Matthew 24:30 “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”}}

CONCLUSION

In time, I suppose the order of events sorted themselves out, but it was a sad thing that when the great persecutions happened from Nero onwards, with 10 great persecution periods, the church generally moved away from these mighty and important teachings of the comings of the Lord, and then they were racked by heresies. They did have the hope of eternal life, but it was hard for them, as you realize when you read material from that time in church history, just trying to live with torture, abuse, and deprivation of all they had. There is the odd mention in the Church Fathers of what lies ahead but no effort to map out any of the future events.

Then the church in AD 325 moved to the Nicean Creed and later on the Apostles Creed, but by then, it became a weak statement about coming back to judge the living and the dead. The church had lost the hope of the Rapture in detail, and the whole of prophecy relating to the events leading to the Second Coming and the blessings for Israel were obscured and forgotten until the Lord began to move in the last 200 years to bring it to us again. Here and there, through the 1,800 years, there were ones who did understand some of the last things, such as hymn writer Isaac Watts, but it was uncommon.

I find it thrilling that this teaching in the Didache, even if incomplete regarding chronology and placement, was there in the very early Church. The early Church knew about these prophetic events in eschatology, but the modern church rejects or neglects this important area.

What a poor reflection of the Laodicean church period (which is ours).

ronaldf@aapt.net.au