{"id":19004,"date":"2019-10-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/revelation-055-clash-of-the-titans-part-1\/"},"modified":"2019-10-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T05:00:00","slug":"revelation-055-clash-of-the-titans-part-1","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/revelation-055-clash-of-the-titans-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Revelation 055 – Clash of the Titans (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[111],"series_event":[490],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-19004","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-revelation","series_event-revelation","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Revelation 055 - Clash of the Titans (Part 1)","sermon_date":"20191013","sermon_month":"10","sermon_year":"2019","sermon_notes":7146,"sermon_slides":7147,"sermon_mp3":7149,"sermon_id":"101319127167021","series_or_event":490,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":111,"chapter_and_verse":"17:6b-12","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Clash of the Titans (Part 1)\n\nRevelation 17:6b-12\u00a0 Lesson 55\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take our Bibles and open them to the Book of Revelation, chapter 17 and verse 6.\u00a0 The title of our message this morning is The Clash of the Titans. I couldn\u2019t think of a better title than that when you look at the chapter that we\u2019re in.\u00a0 Which is probably one of the most difficult chapters in the Book of Revelation, if not the whole Bible, to understand.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what kind of message we\u2019re going to have today, it\u2019s sort of a thinking cap type message.\u00a0 I mean, all the messages are that way really but this one is REALLY that way!\n\nWe\u2019ve been moving through the Book of Revelation and we have seen the chronological approach to the judgments that are coming upon the earth, one of which is bowl number seven, on the far right there, just before the return of Christ. We\u2019ve studied that along with the other bowls.\u00a0 And part of that judgment involved the destruction of a city called Babylon.\u00a0 In chapter 16, verse 19 we read these word:\u00a0 \u201cBabylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath.\u201d\u00a0 And what happens after you move out of that particular judgment, as you go to the next chapter, chapter 17, verse 1, which say this:\u00a0 \u201cThen one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke to me, saying \u2018Come here and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters.\u2019\u201d\n\nSo chapter 17 logically flows out of that seventh bowl judgment involving the destruction of Babylon because now what we get in chapters 17 and 18 and even a little bit into chapter 19 is a lot more informa\u00adtion on Babylon.\u00a0 Who is Babylon?\u00a0 How is she going to fall?\u00a0 We know that she\u2019s going to fall, that\u2019s very clear from the prior chapter, but what are the details.\u00a0 How is this fall actually going to take place?\u00a0 And that\u2019s what you have in chapter 17, it\u2019s something concerning the fall of Babylon that has never been disclosed anywhere in the Bible thus far; it\u2019s what we would call a mystery or a new truth.\n\nThe Book of Revelation does this; there are the chronology is pretty straight forward, believe it or not, but there are about five times in the book when the chronology stops to give us more information on something that\u2019s just happened in the chronology.\u00a0 This has happened four times already in the Book of Revelation, as we have studied, and now we\u2019re into that fifth and final insertion into the chronology, chapter17, verse 1 to chapter 19 verse 16, information that is revealed before Jesus comes back at the end of the seven year tribulation period, specifically focusing on that seventh bowl judgment, specifically referring to the fall or the destruction of Babylon.\n\nChapter 17 we started last week, we have a vision concerning Babylon, verses 1-6.\u00a0 And then in the second part of verse 6 all the way through the end of the chapter, which I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get to today, we have the interpretation concerning Babylon.\u00a0 You might remember what we saw in verses 1-6; we saw a woman named Babylon riding the beast.\u00a0 We learned about Babylon\u2019s introduction, judgment, immorality, influence, appearance, title, the persecution that she will bring to God\u2019s people in the last days.\u00a0 And now what follows is an interpretation of that woman riding the beast.\u00a0 Who was the beast?\u00a0 Who was the woman?\u00a0 How did they interact with each other?\u00a0 How does the interaction that they have with each other lead to Babylon\u2019s destruction?\u00a0 That\u2019s the contents of chapter 17.\n\nSo as we move into the interpretation of what we saw last week in verses 1-6, we have three things here in that section.\u00a0 Number one, an interpretation is promised to John by an angel.\u00a0 Number two, our letter B, we have a description of the beast and his system, verses 8-14.\u00a0 And then finally we have a description of Babylon or the woman riding the beast and how she falls in verses 15-18. I don\u2019t think a person can really understand the direction that this world is moving in unless they understand this chapter.\u00a0 You know, a lot of people, they look at the headlines and they\u2019re just sort of bewildered, they don\u2019t understand why things are happening, why things are taking place in our country the way that they are.\u00a0 And how different it is when\u00a0 you sort of know how the game is going to end and consequently you can see the headlines through the very things that God said would happen in the end times.\n\nI remember rooting very, very aggressively for one of my athletics teams and I remember going to the game and being on the edge of my seat the whole game, because I really didn\u2019t know who was going to win but my team pulled it out.\u00a0 And I remember going back to my home, I remember watching the exact same game that was recorded earlier and so I knew exactly how things were going to end.\u00a0 And it\u2019s amazing how much calmer I was watching the replay.\n\nSo many Christians today are so distracted and so distressed and they\u2019re upset about this person, they\u2019re upset about that person, upset about this cable TV show or that politician over there, of this politician or that guy said this, you know, it goes on and on. Christians are all uptight over this.\u00a0 And yet we know how everything is going to end; we know exactly how it\u2019s going to end.\u00a0 And so we ought to have more of a mindset where we\u2019re watching this as a tape rerun or tape delay rather than someone that\u2019s sitting on the edge of their seats all of the time with sweaty palms.\u00a0 Panic palace really has no place I the life of the Christian because we know the end from the beginning.\n\nSo notice if you will verses 6-7 where we have an interpretation is promised to John of this woman riding the beast.\u00a0 Take a look if you could at verse 6, about halfway through the verse.\u00a0 He says, \u201cwhen I saw her\u201d the woman on the beast, \u201cI wondered greatly.\u201d\u00a0 [Revelation 17:6]\u00a0 So this interaction between the woman named Babylon and the beast is something that perplexes John.\u00a0 He knows that Babylon, the city of Babylon, is going to be destroyed and it\u2019s going to fall; what he doesn\u2019t know is how it\u2019s going to happen.\u00a0 And what does this woman riding the beast have anything to do with the destruction of Babylon?\n\nAnd so he is perplexed and an angel who has been with John this entire time, giving him this Revelation, says something very interesting there in verse 7.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe angel said to him, \u2018Why do you wonder?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty good question, I mean, why does this bother you when you know that God has everything under control.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good question we ought to ask.\u00a0 \u201cThe angel said to him, \u2018Why do you wonder, I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her which has seven heads and ten horns.\u201d\u00a0 I will reveal to you this mystery\n\nNow you\u2019ll notice in verse 7 what the mystery is.\u00a0 The mystery is not the woman.\u00a0 The mystery is not the beast.\u00a0 The mystery is the woman riding the beast. \u00a0We\u2019ve already seen in chapter 17 verse 3 that this woman is sitting on a scarlet beast; the beast has seven heads and ten horns.\u00a0 And as I said before that\u2019s exactly what it looks like, because I found that on Google images and Google images wouldn\u2019t be wrong, would it?\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty careful artist rendition of what it could have looked like, what it probably looked like, and this is what John saw in this vision.\n\nAnd you\u2019ll notice, it\u2019s very interesting that the mystery is not just the woman named Babylon, and it\u2019s not just the beast, it\u2019s the woman rides the beast. It\u2019s the clash of the titans, as I like to call it, because as you move through God\u2019s Word what you see developing are two parallel prophetic strands of thought.\u00a0 We know that there is an antichrist coming, Daniel 2, Daniel 7, most likely out of the ancient Roman Empire, and those prophecies have been given to us and they\u2019re very clear but at the same time you have another independent stream of prophetic thought; you have a prediction in Isaiah 13 and 14 and Jeremiah\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a050 and 51 and Zechariah 5:5-11.\u00a0 We\u2019ve looked at all of those verses, of something different that\u2019s described, a restoration of the literal city of Babylon on the Euphrates River.\n\nSo this is part of the confusion, people will gravitate towards one stream or prophetic thought or another and they\u2019ll say well is the antichrist coming from a Revived Rome or is he coming from the revived city of Babylon.\u00a0 And people that believe he\u2019s coming from the revived city of Babylon cancel out all of the Rome passages, and people that believe that he\u2019s coming from a revived Rome cancel out all the Babylon passages, when in reality it\u2019s not either\/or it\u2019s both\/and.\u00a0 Both streams of prophetic thought are a reality and they are coming.\u00a0 But how is it that these two independent streams of prophetic though reach a resolution?\u00a0 That\u2019s the mystery.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Rev 17 is about.\u00a0 How could it be both?\u00a0 Revelation 17 is an answer to that.\n\nArthur Pink writes, \u201cThat mystery is connected with the woman herself and not with her name as is clear from verse 7, the verse we just read, \u201cthe angel says unto John, \u2018I will tell you the mystery of the Woman, and<\/u> of the beast which carries her.\u201d\u00a0 [Pink, The Antichrist, pg. 262] The mystery is not just about the woman.\u00a0 The mystery is not just about the beast, it\u2019s about both of them and how these two strands of independent prophetic thought reaps their resolution and how God uses this resolution to fulfill His Word of Babylon\u2019s destruction.\u00a0 We know from the end of chapter 16, with the seventh bowl, that Babylon will be destroyed.\u00a0 How is she destroyed relates to woman\u2019s interaction with the beast and that\u2019s the mystery.\n\nYou\u2019ll notice as we move into verse 7 is an interpretation is promised that the Bible is a self-interpreting book.\u00a0 So many people come to sections of Scripture like this and they just let their sanctified imagination run rampant and run wild; all of them are on You Tube saying some of the craziest things I\u2019ve ever heard about anything let alone the Bible.\u00a0 And they\u2019re coming up with very strange interpretations of this and strange interpretations of that and that\u2019s not a practice that we follow here at Sugarland Bible Church.\u00a0 We are patient with the Bible because if you give the Bible enough time either in the immediate context or sometimes somewhere else in the Bible, the Bible will interpret itself.\n\nSo we have a vision of a woman riding the beast, verses 1-6a and now we move, 6b to the end of the chapter where we are given an interpretation of that vision.\u00a0 John Walvoord, a great scholar and commentator on the Book of Revelation tells us that the Book of Revelation will do this 26 times; there are 26 times in the book where the book will interpret itself.\u00a0 So let\u2019s be patient with the Bible and let\u2019s let God say what He wants to say.\n\nSo we move into the interpretation where the focus now, verses 8 -14, which is likely as far as we\u2019ll get today, is not on the woman riding the beast, the city of Babylon, but it\u2019s about the beast himself and his system.\u00a0 We have a description of the beast, or the coming antichrist, verse 8.\u00a0 On the beast are seven heads and we have a description of what those seven heads mean in verse 9-11, seven heads, and that\u2019s one heck of a dream, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 A beast with seven heads!\u00a0 What do those seven heads mean?\u00a0 And then if that weren\u2019t difficult enough the beast also has ten horns.\u00a0\u00a0 Verses 12-14 is a description of those ten horns.\u00a0 What you\u2019re getting is a composite description of the coming antichrist.\n\nSo take the woman and put her out of your mind as we move now into verses 8-14; we\u2019re not talking about the woman named Babylon riding the beast.\u00a0 We\u2019re getting into a description of the beast himself.\u00a0 Notice first of all verse 8, the beast.\n\nVerse 8, \u201cThe beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come.\u201d\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice first of all that this beast comes out of a place called \u201cthe abyss.\u201d\u00a0 Now this is a little bit tricky because based on how we\u2019ve taught that word \u201cabyss\u201d used elsewhere in the Book of Revelation it\u2019s sort of like a place of incarceration.\u00a0 It\u2019s where the angels that sinned in Noah\u2019s day are incarcerated, Revelation 9:1-2, that are released to torture mankind in the fifth trumpet judgment.\u00a0 [Revelation 9:1-2, \u201cThen the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. [2] He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.\u201d\n\nThe abyss also is the place where Satan himself is going to be confined in solitary confinement, you might look at it that way, in Revelation 20 verse 1 and verse 3.\u00a0 [Revelation 20:1, 3, \u201cThen I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.\u201d\u00a0 [3] \u201cand he threw him into the abyss, and shut it<\/em> and sealed it<\/em> over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.\u201d]\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of a temporary holding tank, if\u00a0 you will, for fallen angels.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s how John is using the word \u201cabyss\u201d here when he describes the beast coming out of the abyss.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same word but it has a different meaning.\u00a0 Over in Romans 10:7 the abyss is a reference to death.\u00a0 [The beast comes back from death.\u00a0 Romans 10:7 uses the word \u201cabyss,\u201d same word here, in that same way.\u00a0 Paul says in Romans, \u201cWho will descend into the abyss?<\/strong>\u2019 <\/strong>\u00a0(that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).\u201d\n\nSomething has taken place and manifested itself in history in verse 8, life from the dead.\u00a0 Now over in Revelation 13:3 it speaks of the beast coming back from the dead.\u00a0 And it says this, \u201cOne of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound but the fatal wound had been healed.\u00a0 And the whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.\u201d\u00a0 Now you\u2019ll notice that the injury that happened to the beast is not to the beast\u2019s head, it\u2019s to \u201cone of the heads of the beast.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And when we were studying that section of Scripture we made the point, and we\u2019re going to continue to make the point, that one of those heads is a representation of a kingdom.\u00a0 And we\u2019ll see a reference to that concerning the seven heads, or seven mountains, down in verses 9 and 10.\n\nAnd you might recall that when we were in Revelation 13 we were talking about the fact that one of the things that makes the antichrist so appealing to people is he brings back an empire from the dead.\u00a0 He will bring back Rome, we\u2019ll talk about this in just a little bit, from the dead.\u00a0\u00a0 You know, it\u2019s interesting how many people in world history have sort of prided themselves as dictators, as being the person that brings Rome back to life, ancient Rome.\u00a0 The very empire that crucified Christ bringing that back; many in history have tried and if we\u2019re understanding this correctly and interpreting this correctly the antichrist is the man who will do that.\u00a0 That\u2019s the reference to the ten toes in Daniel 2, the ferocious beast with the ten horns in Daniel 7.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of an empire arising out of the remains or the ashes or the cultural inheritance of ancient Rome.\u00a0 And when the world sees that life from the dead they\u2019re going to be astonished.\u00a0 When they see a political resurrection and a political miracle of this magnitude they will be astonished and they will follow after the beast.\n\nSo is it a political miracle?\u00a0 Yes, but there\u2019s more to it than that.\u00a0 You might recall that when \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0we read Revelation 13:14 sometime back we read these words.\u00a0 \u201cHe deceived those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given to him to perform in the presence of the beast telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast\u201d watch this, focusing now on the beast or the coming antichrist, \u201cwho had the wound of the sword and has come back to life.\u201d\u00a0 Is there going to be a political awakening?\u00a0 A political revival of ancient Rome?\u00a0\u00a0 Yes there is.\u00a0 But when you look at this passage here, Revelation 13:14, there\u2019s more to it than that.\u00a0 The antichrist himself will be killed and will die.\u00a0 And he himself will be brought back to life.\n\nNow many, many people will reject this interpretation because they say well, only God can bring back life from death; this can\u2019t be an actual literal resurrection.\u00a0 And it\u2019s very interesting that when you look at that verb \u201chas come to life,\u201d [\u00a0<\/strong>\u03b6\u03c9\u03ae \u00a0<\/strong>z\u00f3\u00e9] I\u2019ve got it there in brackets, it\u2019s the identical word used to describe Christ\u2019s resurrection in Revelation 2:8.\u00a0 \u201cAnd to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: The first and the last,\u201d referring to Jesus, \u201cwho was dead, and has come to life.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s z\u00f3\u00e9.\u00a0 Now is Christ\u2019s Resurrection literal?\u00a0 Of course it is.\u00a0 So why would the identical verb in Revelation 13:14, relative to the coming beast or the coming antichrist, be interpreted differently?\n\nBy the way, did you know you need a resurrection body, anybody drink a lot of coffee this morning to get themselves energized enough to come to church?\u00a0 That\u2019s evidence that you need a resurrection body.\u00a0 It says this concerning the future resurrection body: \u201cThey came to life,\u201d that\u2019s all, \u201cand reigned with Christ for a thousand\u00a0 years.\u201d The rest of the dead did not come to life,\u201d that\u2019s \u03b6\u03c9\u03ae \u00a0[<\/strong>z\u00f3\u00e9] again, \u00a0\u201cdid not come to life again until the thousand years were completed.\u00a0 This is the first resurrection.\u00a0 Now everybody takes the future resurrection body of the believer literally, z\u00f3\u00e9, just like they take the resurrection of Jesus literally, so why would the identical verb in Revelation 13:14 be interpreted differently?\u00a0 I\u2019m of the persuasion that the antichrist\u2019s resurrection, people say is it going to be political or is\u00a0 it going to be individual?\u00a0 The answer is yes, it will be both.\n\nNot only is he going to be looked at as the person that brought ancient Rome back to live but some\u00adhow in the outworking of Satan\u2019s purposes he will be killed, assassinated, we\u2019re not told how, suffer a wound of fatality to the point of death, and he will come back from the dead just as literally as Jesus Christ Himself came back from the dead.\u00a0 \u00a0You say well now you\u2019re going to far because if Satan can imitate Christ\u2019s bodily resurrection then how do we know that Christ\u2019s bodily resurrection itself was not satanic?\u00a0 That\u2019s what people say.\n\nThe answer to that is right now as I speak there are literally hand cuffs on Satan, he can do an awful lot but he can\u2019t do everything because there is something in the earth called the restrainer.\u00a0 It says there in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, that the lawless one, or the antichrist can\u2019t just show up because there\u2019s the restraint on him that says \u201cAnd now you know\u201d Paul says what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. [7]\u00a0 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.\u201d\n\nThere is a restrainer on the earth.\u00a0 You say well who\u2019s the restrainer?\u00a0 For a lot of reasons I believe the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, primarily at work through the church.\u00a0 So our little church, Sugarland Bible Church, right now as I speak is holding back the antichrist, because of our mere presence in the world.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit is in us for how long?\u00a0 Forever, and one of these days that restraint will be taken away.\u00a0 How\u2019s it going to be taken away?\u00a0 Through the rapture or the translation of the church. And once that happens the handcuffs come off Satan and he\u2019s able to do what he\u2019s always wanted to do, bring back someone even from the dead.\n\nSatan clearly does not have as much power as God but he has an awful lot of power.\u00a0 And in this time period with the restraint gone and the handcuffs removed he pulls off\u00a0 [A] a political miracle.\u00a0\u00a0 You know Adolf Hitler was worshipped because he brought back Germany after World War I, moving into the World War II era, he brought back Germany from the brink of economic disaster, the brink of political disaster.\u00a0 And people will worship the Furor because of his ability to do this. \u00a0Think if someone was able to do this on a global scale and also think if that was coupled by the fact that he had received an actual physical wound that killed him and he physically rose from the dead as well.\n\nYou think of a guy like John F. Kennedy, we\u2019ve seen the tapes over and over again as Kennedy assassination and that horrific event that happened there in Dallas.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gone to the museum there that they have set up there to sort of educate and commemorate that entire event.\u00a0 I mean, what if a guy like John F. Kennedy, a young charismatic talented individual had been killed and then all of a sudden he came back from the dead?\u00a0\u00a0 I would bet you would say such a person would never lose another election ever, coupled with the political miracle of a restoration of ancient Rome, and this is who this beast is.\u00a0 This is who this beast represents.\u00a0 But at the same time don\u2019t put the beast on too high a pedestal because the Bible is very clear that what goes up must come down.\u00a0 You\u2019ll see in verse 8, it\u2019s very clear, it says,\u00a0 \u201cAnd he goes to his destruction.\u201d\u00a0 [Revelation 17:11, \u201cThe beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes<\/strong> to destruction.\u00a0 NASB]\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>\n\nEvil is going to have its heyday; evil is going to get its way for a season.\u00a0 Evil is going to have a ascendancy but it\u2019s not forever.\u00a0 He too goes to his destruction. \u00a0Daniel 7:11 says \u201c\u2026the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0[Daniel 7:11, \u201cThen I kept looking because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking; I kept looking until the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire.\u201d]\n\n2 Thessalonians 2:8 of the antichrist says, \u201cWhom the LORD Jesus will overthrow with the breathe of His mouth and by the splendor of His coming.\u201d\n\nRevelation 19:20 says the two of them were thrown into the Lake of Fire\u201d the beast and the false prophet, of burning Sulphur.\u201d [Revelation 19:20, \u201cAnd the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs [ a ] in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with [ b ] brimstone.\u201d]\n\nIt\u2019s always interesting to me that the Bible is so balanced, revealing the ascendency of evil but at the same time reminding us who exactly is in control.\u00a0 God is in control!\u00a0 Evil gets its heyday but it doesn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 In fact, in our very passage this morning, as hopefully we\u2019ll get to it, his empire of ten contemporaneous kings gets its day in the sun for about an hour.\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if the hour there is a literal sixty minutes but it\u2019s a brief age of time in comparison to the sands of eternity where evil gets its way.\n\nYou know, you read through the Psalms, you read through people of God so distressed about the progress of evil and as we watch the news or read the newspapers we can become very distressed about it too.\u00a0 How is it that evil always seems to get the upper hand.\u00a0 They seem to be getting away with everything.\u00a0 And\u00a0 then the Psalmist is reminded of what it\u2019s like against the sands of eternity.\u00a0 How brief evil gets its control or heyday; it\u2019s just but a nanosecond, it\u2019s a drop in the bucket compared to an eternal God.\n\nAnd so consequently we as Christians with the eternal perspective can walk through this life with its great progress of evil and yet at the same time not lose hope because we are analogizing those things through the lens of God\u2019s eternal Word.\u00a0 I pity the person who seeks to understand these events without the Scripture.\u00a0 How easy it would be to become to come depressed and discouraged and despondent.\u00a0 And if you look there at the end of verse 8 it describes the reaction of the world to this political and individual miracles.\u00a0 It says, \u201cAnd those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life\u201d these would be unbelievers, the only people that have their name in the book of life are bels, Revelation 20:15.\u00a0 I hope your name is there.\u00a0 My name is there because Jesus promised it to me when I trusted in Him, He would write my name in the Book of Life.\u00a0 That\u2019s probably the most important book you could ever have\u00a0 your name in.\u00a0 It says those \u201cwhose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, who was and is not and will come.\u201d\n\nI hope by this time in the Book of Revelation you\u2019re seeing the fact that all these things Satan is doing once the handcuffs are off is simply an imitation of what Christ already did two thousand years ago.\u00a0 There\u2019s eleven similarities between the program of Satan and the program of God. And I must have been up really late one night because I made a second chart of eleven or ten more similarities between the program of Satan and the program of God.\u00a0 But the reason this looks so real to people when these events happen is because it looks so spiritual.\u00a0 It looks so accurate in terms of the things that happened in the Bible and\u00a0 yet a careful observer will note that these things are but a mere imitation of what God has done.\n\nYou know folks, I just want to warn you about something, we are entering a period in history, I believe at the end of the church age and then following the rapture the church it will accelerate where the program of Satan is going to look so real and so spiritual, because he comes as an angel of light, that people are going to think it\u2019s the real thing.\u00a0 People are going to think it\u2019s the real McCoy!\u00a0 And only the person that is steeped in God\u2019s Word from Genesis through Revelation will be able to see the difference.\u00a0 Unbelievers whose names have not been written in the Book of Life are sitting ducks for this.\u00a0 And so are Christians who have not spent the time reading and studying and learning the Word of God.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have a barometer for distinguishing truth from error.\n\nAnd so there are a lot of things that look spiritual that really have nothing to do with God.\u00a0 The spiritual talk today folks is in!\u00a0 I mean, Oprah Winfrey talks about God, right?\u00a0 And yet she is a leader of what we would call today, I would call it the New Age Movement, she\u2019s probably one of the most influential spiritual leaders on planet earth today\u2026 Oprah Winfrey!\u00a0 She is promoting a theology, there\u2019s a lot more going on in her teaching that simply weight loss tips and cooking tips and things like that.\u00a0 She is promoting something.\u00a0 And your average person, millions if not billions of people watching her on a day by day basis, they have no understanding for what\u2019s happening.\n\nAnd this is how Satan operates; he gets his program as close as it can get to God\u2019s program without it actually being God\u2019s program, but it looks like God\u2019s program.\u00a0 And after all, it makes me feel good, it makes me feel spiritual, it gives me the liver quiver of the day; they even let me use the G word, God, every once in a while.\u00a0 They don\u2019t say a lot about Jesus, you notice that?\u00a0 They talk an awful lot about God, \u00a0the G word and people think it\u2019s right.\u00a0 And this is the type of thing that we\u2019re seeing here in Revelation 17:8.\n\nNow we move away from the beast and now we get a description of these seven heads, what are those about, on this beast.\u00a0 And notice, if you will, verse 9, \u201cHere is the mind with has wisdom, the seven heads are seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019ll go ahead and do verse 10, \u201cAnd they are seven kings, five have fallen, one is and the other is yet to come and when he comes he must remain a short while.\u201d\n\nYou\u2019ll notice the woman is riding the beast; we\u2019re not focused here on the woman, we\u2019re focused on the beast because it\u2019s the beast that has seven heads.\u00a0 Now as we continue on we learn that this beast having seven heads, watch this now, verse 9, \u201care seven mountains.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cseven mountains\u201d as we learn, are seven kings.\u00a0 The seven kings, as we\u2019re going to learn, is another way of saying kingdoms.\u00a0 So it goes heads, interpreted as mountains, interpreted as kings, interpreted as kingdoms, and these entities are not on the woman riding the beast.\u00a0 It\u2019s very important to understand that.\u00a0 They\u2019re on the beast that the woman is riding.\n\nAnd gosh, I\u2019m afraid to figure out how many people believe this, when people see that they think that\u2019s the seven hills of Rome.\u00a0 Does it say seven hills there?\u00a0 My Bible doesn\u2019t say that, it says \u201cseven mountains.\u201d\u00a0 The Greek word there is oros<\/em>, there\u2019s a completely different Greek word to describe hills.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say seven hills, it says seven mountains, and it also says there in verse 9, \u201cHere is the mind which has wisdom.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, here is a harder thing to grasp or to calculate or to understand.\u00a0 Now the last time we saw that expression, \u201chere is wisdom,\u201d it had to do with the antichrist\u2019s name.\u00a0 Revelation 13:18, \u201cHere is wisdom, let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast\u00a0 for the number is that of a man; his number is six hundred and sixty-six.\u201d\n\nAnd I\u2019ve tried to explain in ancient languages numbers are associated with letters, but in Hebrew and Greek, it\u2019s a practice called gematria.\u00a0 It\u2019s not practiced that most westerners are familiar with but those in Biblical times knew all about it.\u00a0 And what will happen, I believe, is you will be able to take the antichrist\u2019s name, not his title, his name, and you\u2019ll be able to spell it out in Greek, when he comes.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know who he is.\u00a0 I tried spelling my own name once just to make sure I wasn\u2019t the antichrist and fortunately I was six hundred and sixty-six.\u00a0 But whoever he\u00a0 is will show up and you\u2019ll be able to take his name, spell it out in Greek, attach the right number to the right letter and it will yield the total 666.\n\nAnd John says, \u201cHere is the mind which has wisdom.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s going to take some additional mental steps for this to occur and decipher this; that\u2019s how anybody living on the earth at the time will know exactly who the antichrist is.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the Bible assigns an eternal penalty for those living in that time period of taking his mark because everyone will be without excuse, they will know exactly who he is.\u00a0 But it\u2019s going to require some additional mental work to do that.\u00a0 And what you see in Revelation 17:9-10 is that expression, here is wisdom, or \u201cHere is the mind that calls for wisdom\u201d is used for a second time.\u00a0 So therefore the seven heads or seven mountains is not something very easy to understand; there\u2019s additional mental steps that are required to figure out who these seven heads or seven mountains represent.\n\nAnd I being that to your attention because people are saying all of the time, \u201cwell, that\u2019s the seven hills of Rome.\u201d\u00a0 Everybody understood that Rome is the city that sits on the seven hills.\u00a0 So they would have attached this to Rome.\u00a0 And my response is well how would that require any wisdom to do that calculation?\u00a0 I mean, if it\u2019s that simple, if it\u2019s that easy, why would it say again, Here is the mind which has wisdom.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s something that is working just beneath the surface to understand it\u00a0 but it\u2019s not on the surface and it requires a little bit of mental work to figure out who these seven mountains, seven heads, or seven kings actually are.\n\nSo for all of these reasons I\u2019ve tried to articulate the seven hills, it doesn\u2019t even say seven hills, is not speaking of Rome.\u00a0 By the way, people are saying Babylon is the city on seven hills, so Babylon equals Rome.\u00a0 We have a little problem here because these heads or mountains or kings are not part of the woman.\u00a0 They\u2019re part of the beast that the woman is riding on.\n\nSo can we make sense of this.\u00a0 Notice verse 10, \u201cand they are\u201d speaking now of these seven heads and mountains, \u201cthey are seven kings;\u201d look at that, \u201cfive have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. Now I am completely and totally in favor of literal interpretation of the Bible whenever it\u2019s possible.\u00a0 But there are times in the Bible where the Bible itself will say don\u2019t interpret this literally, right there in the passage, don\u2019t interpret this literally, here\u2019s what it means.\u00a0 You remember Jerusalem, the great city where the Lord was crucified, which mystically is called Sodom in Egypt.\u00a0 It\u2019s the city of Jerusalem but here is another way of interpretation of Sodom in Egypt residing over that city in the last days; Sodom referring to depravity, Egypt referring to bondage.\u00a0 So why can\u2019t I add this additional layer of meaning?\u00a0 Because of the word \u201cmystically.\u201d\n\nAnd \u201cmystically\u201d doesn\u2019t leave me to my own devices, it tells me what it means.\u00a0 Galatians 4:24, Sarah and Hagar, do you believe in a literal Sarah and Hagar?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 Their historical instances and stories but Galatians 4:24 says now we\u2019re going to take those literal stories and not de-historicize those stories but we\u2019re going add another layer of meaning.\u00a0 When it says, \u00a0Galatians 4:24, \u201cThis is allegorically speaking, for these\u00a0women<\/em>\u00a0are two covenants: one proceeding from\u00a0Mount Sinai bearing children\u00a0who are to be\u00a0slaves;\u00a0she is Hagar.\u201d \u00a0One woman means freedom, one woman means slavery. One woman means faith, one woman means Law.\u00a0 Why can I attach to those to those two stories an allegorical understanding without de-historicizing those stories?\u00a0 Because the Bible tells me I can do it through the word \u201callegorically\u201d or the words \u201callegorically speaking.\u201d\u00a0 If those words were not there I would have no permission to do it.\u00a0 And when I do it I\u2019ve got to pay attention to the interpretation that the Bible itself gives.\u00a0 See that?\n\nSo this is what is happening with these seven mountains.\u00a0 They are not meant to be understood as literal seven mountains because verse10 tells us what these mountains represent, \u201cthey are seven kings.\u201d\u00a0 So the heads on the beasts are mountains or kings, seven kings total.\u00a0 And here\u2019s what\u2019s interesting; in the Bible, Daniel being the basement, Revelation being the ceiling, the two books have to be understood together, \u201cking\u201d and \u201ckingdom\u201d are used synonymously.\u00a0 Daniel 2:37 aimed at Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel says, \u201cYou, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, [the power, the strength and the glory;]\u201d\u00a0 Later on he says you are the head of gold.\u00a0 [Daniel 2:38, \u201c\u2026. You are the head of gold.\u201d]\n\nIt\u2019s like saying today the President of the United States, Donald Trump, did X.\u00a0 And we read that and we say okay, the President did some-thing, that means the President as head of our government involved the United States in his decision.\u00a0 We do this all of the time, we switch from king to kingdom, Trump to White House, to Executive Branch, to authority over the United States.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s happening here in Daniel 2 verses 37 and 38.\n\nSo what am I trying to say?\u00a0 Here is the mind which has listened, the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, they are seven kings, or also we could say they are seven kingdoms.\u00a0 And sometimes in the Bible a mountain, he\u2019s on seven mountains, refers to a kingdom.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have time to give you or read all the verses but jot down Isaiah 2:2, Isaiah 41:15, Babylon, Jeremiah 51:25 is called a destroying mountain.\u00a0\u00a0 God\u2019s kingdom, Daniel 2:35 and 45 is described as a mountain.\u00a0 So understanding a mountain not just as a king but also as a kingdom fits completely and totally with what the Bible has to say.\n\n[Isaiah 2:2, \u201cNow it will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord\nwill be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it.\u201d\u00a0 Isaiah 41:15, \u201c\u201cBehold, I have made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with double edges; You will thresh the mountains and pulverize them<\/em>, and will make the hills like chaff.\u201d\u00a0 Jeremiah 51:25, \u201c\u201cBehold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, who destroys the whole earth,\u201d declares the Lord, \u201cAnd I will stretch out My hand against you, and roll you down from the crags,\nand I will make you a burnt out mountain.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel 2:35, \u201cThen the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed [<\/sup>a<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup>all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel 2:45, \u201cInasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.\u201d]\n\nSo enough talking, let\u2019s do the BLT which stands for Bottom\u00a0 Line Time.\u00a0 (Not Bacon Lettuce and Tomato).\u00a0 What\u2019s the bottom line?\u00a0 Who are these seven heads or seven mountains, or seven kings, or seven kingdoms not attached to the woman named Babylon but to the beast.\u00a0\u00a0 They represent seven anti-Semitic kingdoms, the most anti-Jewish kingdoms in the history of Israel.\u00a0 The first was Egypt, that is the kingdom that the nation of Israel was taken into captivity in the days of Moses.\u00a0 The second anti-Semitic kingdom was Assyria, that\u2019s the kingdom that scattered the northern tribes in\u00a0 722 B.C.\u00a0\u00a0 The third anti-Semitic kingdom was Babylon; Babylon is where the nation of Israel went into captivity for seventy years.\n\nAnd then came Persia, following Babylon, from Persia came a very wicked ruler named Haman, who devised a plot to exterminate the Jews.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t go too well for him, he got hung on his own gallows.\u00a0 You know, it\u2019s interesting, every time that a dictator comes on the scene and tries to wipe out the Jewish people, not only do the Jewish people survive but they end up getting a holiday out of the deal.\u00a0 And in this case Lots or Purim was added to the holidays to commemorate this.\n\nThen came Greece and we know what Antiochus Epiphanes did to the Jews in the intertestamental period in terms of desecrating the temple.\u00a0 That\u2019s where Hanukkah or Feast of Lights comes from.\u00a0 And then would come Rome; Rome was horrific to the Jews, driving them out of the land in A.D. 70.\u00a0 And number seven is this miraculous Rome that comes back to life; this political miracle that the antichrist pulls off, this kingdom arising out of the cultural inheritance of Ancient Rome that we call Rome, phase 2.\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice what it says, John, in the first century, five have fallen. Which five?\u00a0 Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, they\u2019re all in the past when John receives this vision in the first century.\n\nAnd then he says, \u201cOne is,\u201d present tense, which would refer to the empire that was in existence when John was on the earth, ancient Rome.\u00a0 But then he says \u201cOne is\u00a0 yet to come.\u201d\u00a0 That would be the Revived Rome of the antichrist during the Tribulation period.\u00a0 Now there\u2019s a very, very interesting verse in Daniel 7:12. By the way, that Revived Rome is the ten toes in the feet of iron and clay in Daniel 2, and it\u2019s the horrific beast with ten horns in Daniel 7.\u00a0 Daniel 7:12 says something that most people just skip right over.\u00a0 It says, \u201cAs for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted to them for an appointed time.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s interesting, Egypt fell but the Egyptian system continued to live in Assyria.\u00a0 Then Babylon came, Egypt and Assyria were the thing of the past but the Egyptian and Assyrian system continued to live in Babylon.\u00a0 And then Persia conquered Babylon and yet Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, their systems continued to live in Persia, the same with Greece, she absorbs everything that was wrong in evil and all of those prior empires.\u00a0 And then Rome came along and any historian will tell you that Rome conquered Greece politically but Greece conquered Rome culturally.\u00a0 The deities of Ancient Greece continued to exist in Rome; the Romans just gave them different titles.\n\nSo everything that\u2019s bad keeps getting passed down\u00a0 down the food chain.\u00a0 And by the time we get\u00a0\u00a0 to a Revived Rome you won\u2019t have a political Egypt, a political Assyria, a political Babylon, a political Persia, a political Greece, political Rome Phase 1 anymore but all of everything that\u2019s evil, everything that\u2019s wrong, everything that\u2019s anti-God will be absorbed into Rome phase 2 or the anti-Christ\u2019s empire.\u00a0 And as best I can tell that is probably the best interpretation of the seven heads or seven mountains, or seven kings, or seven kingdoms that are connected to this beast.\n\nThen you come to verse 11 and I was hoping we would run out of time before we got to verse 11 because verse 11 (to me) is one of the most difficult and strangest verses, not only in the Book of Revelation, perhaps in the entire Bible.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not completely\u00a0 100% confident in my own understanding of it.\u00a0 But it says there in verse 11, \u201cThe beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to his destruction.\u201d\u00a0 We had seven, now we\u2019ve got eight.\u00a0 Who\u2019s the eighth?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if I know other than perhaps the eighth is the antichrist who is connected to the seven, as I\u2019ve tried to explain, but when he dies and rises again that makes him an eighth and the imagery therefore shifts from kingdom back to king.\u00a0 Is that something worth starting a new church over? Probably not, but I think that\u2019s what it\u2019s talking about when it mentions an eight king, one of the seven, the seven we talked about, but the eighth would be his resurrection from the dead.\n\nYou\u2019ll notice also the reminder, verse 11, that he too is going to his destruction.\u00a0 [11] The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one<\/em> of the seven, and he goes to destruction.\u201d]\u00a0 Oh yeah, this is terrible, but the Bible keeps throwing in these little reminders that look, evil is going to get its heyday for a season but don\u2019t get despondent over that beloved, don\u2019t let that ruin your hope.\u00a0 He too (the antichrist) is going to his destruction.\u00a0 God hasn\u2019t lost control of things; do you\u00a0 understand that?\u00a0 I understand that things in your life, when I read the prayer requests, are very severe.\n\nWhat you have to understand is that needs to be analyzed and contemplated against the light of eternity; that\u2019s how God has designed this book.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why you can walk through valleys in this life and not grow weary, as Isaiah 40:31 says because you keep looking at these things through not your own lens but through the lens God has given us, called His Word..\u00a0 [Isaiah 40:31, \u201cYet those who wait for the LORD Will - Bible Gateway Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles<\/strong>, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.\u201d]\n\nIf that\u2019s who the seven heads on the beast represent what in the world do we do with the ten horns also on the beast?\u00a0 \u201cAnd he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads\u201d we did our best at that, and now it gets more complicated and it talks about \u201cten horns.\u201d\u00a0 Verse 12 tells us who these ten horns are. \u201cThe ten horns which you saw\u201d look at this, \u201care ten kings which have not received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour.\u201d [Revelation 17:12]\u00a0 This would be a ten king confederacy arising contemporaneously or simultaneously with the beast.\u00a0 These are ten horns on the beast that the woman is riding and you\u2019ll notice that these kings aligned with the beast get their day in the sun for an hour.\u00a0 That\u2019s not an awful long period of time.\n\nIn John\u2019s writings what you\u2019ll discover is an \u201chour\u201d many times is not used of a literal sixty minutes, but it\u2019s used of a short age.\u00a0 Jesus says, John 17:1, \u201cFather, the hour has come;\u201d prior to His crucifixion.\u00a0 [John 17:1, \u201cJesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, \u2018Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You,\u2019\u201d]\n\n1 John 2:18, of false prophets in the last days, says, \u201cChildren, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.\u201d\u00a0 This is how we know it\u2019s the last hour.\u00a0 It\u2019s an age of time but it\u2019s very brief.\u00a0 And that\u2019s who these kings are, they\u2019re allies of the antichrist.\u00a0 They arise, as verse 12 says, \u201cwith\u201d the antichrist.\u00a0 They are the ten toes in Daniel 2.\u00a0 Daniel 2:44, of that ten toed empire, says, \u201cIn the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.\u00a0 The return of Christ, the stone cut without human hands, striking the feet of the statue, annihilating these ten toes all at once, obviously must be ten kings in existence with the antichrist at the very moment Jesus returns.\n\nDaniel 7:24 says, \u201cAs for the ten horns,\u201d now they\u2019re not ten toes but \u201cten horns out of this kingdom ten kings will arise; and another will arise after them, and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings.\u00a0 The ten king confederacy of the antichrist, in alliance with the anti-Christ and together, end of the chapter which we\u2019re not getting to today, they will turn on the woman named Babylon, the city of Babylon which is a description of not that she is destroyed but how she is destroyed, the ten horns of Daniel seven.\n\nNow, for years and years and years and years and years and years and years (I guess I\u2019m not that old)\u00a0 but I was taught that these are the ten nations of Revived Europe.\u00a0 Ever since I became of age as a Christian that\u2019s the interpretation I was given on this; this is all Europe.\u00a0 But if you look at Daniel 7:23 of the ten kings it says, \u201cwill devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0[Daniel 7:23, \u201cThus he said: \u2018The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.\u201d]\n\nDwight Pentecost in his book Things to Come<\/em> says this final form of world power will have a world-wide influence.\u00a0 So I no longer believe that these are simply the ten kings or nation states of Europe; I think Europe has a lot more than ten now any, doesn\u2019t it, twenty-three, twenty-seven, something like that.\u00a0 I believe that these are ten regions into which planet earth will be divided because there\u2019s image shifting from king to kingdom.\n\nArnold Fruchtenbaum correctly says, \u201cThe stage was seen in both Daniel 2 and the ten codes and in Daniel 7 and the ten horns, but one world government will divide into ten kingdoms that will cover the whole world, not merely Europe.\u00a0 This requires that the ten kings could cover the entire world will cover the entire world not just the territory of Europe.\u00a0 David Hocking says, \u201cThe ten horns could represent the nations of the end times or perhaps more likely ten divisions of world government.\u201d\u00a0 Now is that not interesting; that\u2019s the club of Rome, a one-world organization.\u00a0 They produce a [can\u2019t understand word].\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019ve got the world divided up into ten, not nine, not eleven, ten regions.\u00a0 Our particular region there would be the North American Union.\u00a0 Other regions of the world are represented, Europe being just one of the ten regions.]\n\nThis concept of using different regions as a stepping stone ultimately into world government, is in the play book of the globalist, you just have to know where to look for it.\u00a0 As early as 1970 at the first birthday this document was released, called The Environmental Handbook, 1970<\/em>.\u00a0 They say in here, \u201cNations must be phased out as quickly as possible and replaced with tribal or regional economists economies.\u00a0 Oh, that\u2019s why the United States of America, as I speak, is broiled in a controversy concerning whether our borders are enforceable or not.\u00a0 You see?\u00a0 I mean, why is it that now we have all of this tension in the politics of our day concerning immigration, concerning enforceability of borders, the President of the United States trying to enforce the borders, the rest of the world, the rest of the media telling him it\u2019s somehow wrong to do this.\u00a0 It\u2019s a collision of what the globalists want concerning regions and what traditional Americans, like us, want in terms of a nation state.\u00a0 That\u2019s the battle.\n\nDonald Trump, whether you like him or hate him, is the only politician that spoke directly to that issue.\u00a0 And that may be one of the reasons why his popularity grew and he ascended to the Presidency.\u00a0 I\u2019m not\u00a0 here making political statements, I\u2019m not telling you who to vote for, I\u2019m just explaining to\u00a0 you the realities that we are in are explainable when you understand the tension between what globalists want in terms of regions and what nationalists want.\u00a0 That\u2019s the whole conflict.\u00a0 And it\u2019s very interesting to me that Jean Monet, in his memoirs, the last page in his memoirs, in other words this is what he wrote just before he died.\u00a0 \u201cJean\u201d or Jean Monet is the architect of the European Union.\u00a0 He\u2019s the one that came up with the idea.\n\nYou know what I mean by a region\u2014the European Union is this idea that we\u2019re going to take Europe and regionalize it; we\u2019re going to take the different currency\u2019s amongst the different tiny European states and merge them into a single currency called the Euro.\u00a0 And power, (watch this now) is going to shift from the individual nation states to Brussels.\u00a0 And Brussels is now going to decide how long and how loud your lawnmower engine can be.\u00a0 And the Brits got sick of it and that\u2019s what called Brexit, and this whole outworking of this conflict that we\u2019re seeing in Europe and in the United States is a clash of visions between the globalists and the nationalists.\u00a0\u00a0 See, if you understand this issue you\u2019ll understand exactly what\u2019s happening.\u00a0 The Bible said that day would come.\n\nJean Monet says, \u201cThe sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present.\u00a0 They cannot insure their own progress or control, their own future,\u201d watch, \u201cand the European community itself is only a stage on the way to the organized world of tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 Jean Monet never intended for the experiment in Europe to stay in Europe.\u00a0 He, from the beginning wanted Europe as a model for the whole world, ten regions, not one!\n\nHere\u2019s a great movement, even in the north, North America.\u00a0 Take the United States, Canada, Mexico and regionalize them, erase the borders between those nations.\u00a0 Oh, that\u2019s why the politicians don\u2019t enforce the borders any more. And to come up with a single currency, like they have in Europe, they have the Euro, we\u2019ll just all ours the Amero, and you\u2019re going to have Kennedy\u2019s all over the world.\u00a0 And they, according to Monet\u2019s own design, the Monet method, by the way, what is the Monet method?\u00a0 You lie to the people.\u00a0 You don\u2019t tell them exactly what you\u2019re going to do; you tell them it\u2019s all about economics and free trade.\u00a0 You never told them that Brussels was going to control how low their lawnmower should be.\u00a0 You never told them that their individual governments are going to be nothing more than debating societies.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t tell them their currency was going to be marked or merged into another currency.\u00a0 That\u2019s the Monet method, everything is promoted in terms of free trade.\u00a0 And Monet himself specifically said, just prior to his death, that Europe is just the beginning.\n\nHenry Kissinger, in his book, The New World Order<\/em> is very clear on this, the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another.\u00a0 And then here comes Hillary Clinton, she lost the election, I know you guys are very sad about that, we have some trauma dogs out in the parking lot to comfort\u00a0 you for that, [laughter]\n\nWhat I\u2019m trying to show you, what I\u2019m trying to explain, I\u2019m not here saying yeah for this party, boo for that party, I\u2019m trying to explain why she lost.\u00a0 In a private speech to a Brazilian bank on May 16, 2013 Hillary said, \u201cMy dream is for a\u2026\u201d watch this, \u201chemispheric common market with open trade\u201d (say it isn\u2019t so) \u201copen borders!\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Some in the future with energy that is green and sustainable as we get it, power and growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere,\u201d close quote, this secret speech was released as part of the Podesta e-mails attained by WikiLeaks.\u00a0 This was supposed to be a secret speech.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing how transparent these people become when they\u2019re\u00a0 outside of our borders, speaking to a Brazilian bank.\n\nMr. and Mrs. America may not understand everything there is to know about Bible prophecy; they may not understand or be able to put together and articulate the exact things that we\u2019ve been mentioning here in this sermon, but I know this about Mr. and Mrs. America, they can sense something\u2019s not right. They sense it! It\u2019s just in their gut.\u00a0 Trump is the only one that\u2019s spoke directly to that issue.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why Trump, whether you like him or hate him, is as popular as he is.\u00a0 And so where am I going with this\u2026 I don\u2019t even know where I\u2019m going with this.\u00a0 [Laughter]\n\nWhat I\u2019m trying to say is you start to read the news through the Bible, that\u2019s where I\u2019m going with this.\u00a0 And this is the description that was written two thousand years ago of the antichrist\u2019s kingdom that would be a composite of the seven mountains, which we\u2019ve talked about, and the rise with ten contemporaneous kings, which cover the whole world, or kingdoms, and that\u2019s who this beast represents and it\u2019s that beast that\u2019s going to turn on the world, named Babylon, as we move through this chapter.\u00a0 And that becomes a description of not that Babylon\u2019s fall but how she fell.\u00a0 And it\u2019s all right there in your Bible.\u00a0 And little ole me and little ole you can understand these things just by reading the Word of God and interpreting it correctly.\u00a0 WOW!\u00a0 Part of me just wants to keep on preaching but I interpret numbers literally, [laughter] it\u2019s twelve thirty-six.\n\nHere\u2019s the deal; this world is falling apart; God said it would.\u00a0 And you have a choice, you can either be a citizen of this kingdom, of this world, that\u2019s deteriorating as I speak, or in a nanosecond you can place your faith in Christ and be a citizen of that stone cut without human hands that\u2019s going to crush the kingdoms of this earth and grow till it fills the whole earth.\u00a0 Who do you want to align yourself with at the end of the day?\u00a0 The faltering failing world system or the kingdom of Christ which can never be overthrown?\u00a0 Frankly I\u2019ll take the kingdom of Christ.\u00a0 And you become a citizen of the kingdom of Christ by simply trusting and believing what Jesus did for you.\u00a0 Jesus did it all!\u00a0 Everything that\u2019s necessary to bridge the gap between following humanity and a holy God He already accomplished.\u00a0 And He simply asks for us to trust in Him which, believe me, you get some right now realities, forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, the new nature, that\u2019s all part of the package deal.\u00a0 But there\u2019s more to it than that because you have hope for tomorrow, because all hell could break loose on this earth and it\u2019s going to happen but you know that you\u2019re unshaken by that because\u00a0 you\u2019re receiving one day a kingdom which can never be shaken.\n\nSo our exhortation to you at Sugar Land Bible Church is to trust in Christ and Christ alone for you salvation.\u00a0 I usually like to say if you need some questions answered on that I will be available after the service today\u2026 well today I\u2019m not available after the service because I\u2019m going to Connecticut, you can pray for me, for a conference Monday and Tuesday at Middletown Bible Church and coming back Wednesday morning in time for Bible study Wednesday night.\u00a0 But you can see the elders about that, as a matter of fact, if you\u2019re an elder at this church can you raise your hand, put it way up there, so these are the people that know,\u00a0 these are the folks you can go talk to if\u00a0 you have confusion about your salvation.\n\nLet\u2019s pray.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for You truth, we\u2019re grateful for Your Word, we\u2019re grateful for what it reveals and how it speaks directly into our age and our life.\u00a0 Make us good stewards of these things.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus\u2019s name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026. Amen!","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t