Keep Believing Ministries
P. O. Box 257
Elmhurst, IL 60126
Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay in touch. We love hearing from you.
Ray Pritchard
Keep Believing Ministries
Shawnee, Kansas
Revelation 13
Consider these recent headlines:
“What in the World is Wrong with This Country?”
“Putin Threatens to use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine.”
“Biden Says Putin’s Nuclear Threat Brings Risk of Armageddon.”
“Americans Rapidly Losing Hope as We Head Toward 2023.”
“Will Nuclear War Be the End of Our Civilization?”
“This Winter, Europe Plunges Into ‘The New Dark Ages’.”
“World War 3 is Coming.”
“We Are Headed for Big Tech Tyranny.”
“Biometric Blockade: Political Critics could have Bank Accounts Frozen as Governments Tend Toward Total Control.”
“Actor Russell Brand Links Amazon’s Palm-Payment System to Mark of the Beast.”
“Israel Moves Closer to Cashless Society Following Latest Legislation.”
“Cheer up! The World is Ending.”
None of those headlines are made up. They all describe real-time events or movements happening in our day.
None of this is fictional.
None of this comes from a Sci-Fi thriller.
All of it is real.
Lately I have heard numerous people say “something big” is about to happen. Someone told me this “something big,” whatever it is, will happen before the Mid-Term elections in November.
Of course, we don’t know whether that is true or not.
But this much is certain.
We live in dangerous, unstable times.
Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote these chilling words:
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
That comes from an article called Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us in the April 2000 issue of Wired Magazine. Nothing in the article references the Antichrist, but his use of the word “evil” is telling. The technology that makes modern life so pleasant is also paving the way for “the further perfection of extreme evil” in the days to come.
Perilous Times
The Bible speaks of these days.
According to 2 Timothy 3:1, "In the last days perilous times will come." Jesus spoke of a time so frightening men would faint for fear of what was about to happen:
“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars.
On the earth, nations will be in
anguish and perplexity
at the roaring and tossing of the sea.
Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of
what is coming on the world" (Luke 21:25-26).
But Jesus went on to explain would happen next:
“At that time they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with
power and great glory” (v.27).
Just before Jesus returns, the world will be in unprecedented turmoil. Take the uncertainty over the Middle East, multiply it by a factor of 10, and you have the situation Jesus is talking about.
Where are we on God’s calendar? A sober reading of the New Testament suggests that these are the next three events ahead of us:
The Rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
The Worldwide Apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3a)
The Rise of the Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:3b-4)
In this message I intend to focus on that last item: the rise, reign, and ruin of the man called the Antichrist.
The Name Game
So let’s begin this way. What do these names have in common?
Nero
The Pope
Sam Donaldson
Adolph Hitler
Bill Gates
All of them have been suggested as possible candidates for the Antichrist.
And there are many more: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Every recent president is on the list, including Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
We’ve been guessing for 2000 years, and so far, every guess has been wrong. Or at least, they haven’t been right yet.
I can’t and won’t attempt to identify the Antichrist.
In God’s time, he will be revealed.
You are free to make your own guesses.
As I survey the contemporary scene, I can say that there is no shortage of good candidates!
Known and Unknown
When we come to the Antichrist, there are some things we know, and some things we don’t know.
We know there will be an Antichrist.
We don’t know his identity.
We know he rises from the Revived Roman Empire.
We don’t know which part he comes from.
We know he will work closely with the False Prophet.
We don’t know the False Prophet’s identity.
We know he will apparently die and come back to life.
We don’t know how that will happen.
We know he will control the world economy.
We don’t know how he obtains that power.
We know he requires his followers to wear his mark.
We don’t know the precise nature of the mark.
We know the number of his name is 666.
We don’t know exactly what that means.
The Antichrist is given various titles in Scripture:
The Little Horn of Daniel 7.
The Prince Who is to Come of Daniel 9.
The Man of Lawlessness of 2 Thessalonians 2.
The Antichrist of 1 John 2.
The Beast from the Sea of Revelation 13.
Will the Antichrist Come from Technology?
As to his identity, if you survey the names suggested across the centuries, you discover that the candidates tend to be political leaders.
The ones we don’t like, we call the Antichrist!
But things have changed.
Today we see companies that transcend all borders. I’m thinking about companies like Amazon, Facebook (or Meta), Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
These companies are fantastically wealthy and global in their reach. They depend heavily on the internet. Taken together, they control a huge part of the world economy and global communications.
Perhaps we should consider the possibility the Antichrist may arise from the technology sector.
Back to the Bible
What does the New Testament say about this coming world dictator? To answer that question, we need to follow two strands of teaching.
The first one comes from 1 John 2:18:
“It is the last hour and as you have heard
the Antichrist is coming,
even now many Antichrists have come.”
In every generation you can find people with an “Antichrist spirit.” One day the final Antichrist will rise to the center of the world stage.
That leads us to the second strand of biblical teaching. We see it clearly in 2 Thessalonians 2:3b-4:
“The man of lawlessness (will be) revealed,
the man doomed destruction,
He will oppose and will exalt himself
Over everything that is called
God or is worshiped,
So that he sets himself up
In God’s temple,
Proclaiming himself to be God.”
Think about that for a moment. The Antichrist will enter the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, stop the sacrifices, and proclaim himself to be God. He will then demand that the whole world worship him.
So there you have the bottom line on the Antichrist:
His spirit is with us in every age.
He rises to power in the last days.
The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist
Who is he?
Before we go any further, let's briefly describe what we mean by the term "the Antichrist." He will appear on the world scene in the Last Days just before the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. He will be the very incarnation of evil, cleverly disguised as a dynamic, charismatic, visionary leader. He will astound the world with his solutions to human problems.
His empire will span every continent, and his rule will be the most demonic the world has ever experienced. He will rise to world domination by declaring himself a Man of Peace but will later plunge the world into global war. Eventually, his true character will be revealed. He will oppose Jesus Christ and will offer himself to the world as the savior of humanity. He will control the global economy and force his followers to receive a mark on their hands or their foreheads. Most of the world will willingly follow him.
Those who do not receive the mark will be hunted down, and many will be killed. For a short time, he will become the most powerful man on earth. At the apex of his power, he will launch an all-out attack on Jesus Christ at a place called Megiddo in the valley of Jezreel in the central region of Israel. We call that battle Armageddon. His reign of terror comes to a sudden end when the Lord Jesus Christ destroys him as he returns to the earth to set up his kingdom.
How close are we to the Antichrist?
Closer than we think.
America Has Gone Insane
Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. America is in trouble morally and spiritually. No matter how much we argue about politics, our deepest problems are spiritual.
Each year we abort over one million babies. Sometimes those aborted babies are sold for body parts. We legalized gay marriage, and now we have hospitals performing gender reassignment surgeries on minors—a form of legalized child abuse. We no longer know the difference between male and female. In a world with fifty genders, what does gender even mean?
Let me recommend two books by Erwin Lutzer, Pastor Emeritus of Moody Church in Chicago:
We Will Not Be Silenced (2020)
No Reason to Hide (2022)
Pastor Lutzer documents the moral confusion in our society and points people to the only source of hope: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I know a gifted pediatrician who surveyed the current scene and remarked, "America has gone insane."
My friend is right.
America has gone insane.
As a result of that insanity, some conservative, Bible-believing pastors have been intimidated into silence.
That’s a shame because we need bold, Bible-centered pastors more than ever. When Francis Schaeffer wrote How Should We Then Live?, he asked why the Romans killed the early Christians. His answer was simple:
1. Because they were rebels
2. Because they believed Jesus was the only true God.
He drove the point home this way:
No totalitarian authority or authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge the state and its actions.”
The Christians had that absolute in God’s revelation.
Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.
We face a similar situation in America today.
Let’s Go to Revelation 13
Where are we in relation to the Antichrist? To answer that question, we turn to Revelation 13, the most detailed explanation in the Bible about the Antichrist. It tells of two coming world rulers who will be masters of evil.
They work together to do the devil’s bidding.
John presents them to us as two wild beasts, one rising from the sea of the nations and the other rising from the land (probably a reference to Israel).
We commonly call the first beast the Antichrist and the second beast the False Prophet.
Let’s focus on the “signs” that lead to the Mark of the Beast.
There are five such signs in Revelation 13.
Sign #1: Satanic Leadership
When John describes the first beast, this is what he says:
“The beast I saw resembled a leopard,
but had feet like those of a bear
and a mouth like that of a lion.
The dragon gave the beast his power
and his throne and great authority” (Revelation 13:2).
We know Daniel 7 is on John’s mind because in that chapter, Daniel sees four strange creatures coming out of the sea:
A lion (Babylon)
A bear (Medo-Persia)
A leopard (Greece)
An unnamed fierce beast (Rome)
When John sees the beast from the sea, he immediately connects it with Daniel 7. The fierce beast contains elements of all four pagan empires. But its ultimate power comes from Satan. The Antichrist ascends to world domination through the one Jesus called “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30).
If you took Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Atilla the Hun, Alexander the Great, Saddam Hussein, and rolled them all into one, that’s the Antichrist.
Satan intends to create a global concentration camp under the leadership of the Antichrist. This leads to an important distinction.
Jesus gives his followers a new name.
Satan gives his followers a number.
Because the world rejected the Lamb,
The world will now receive the Beast.
This “beast from the sea” will be clever, ruthless, amiable, friendly, and brutal. He will be the ultimate manipulator.
In the beginning, no one suspects him. Because he seems like a Man of Peace, millions follow him, and they will take his mark gladly.
Only later will his true character be revealed.
The world flocks to this modern-day Caesar. Because he dominates life on earth, all men must worship him.
What does this mean for us?
Expect an outbreak of evil like we have never seen in the days to come. When men turn away from God, there is no place to go but down into the pit. It reminds me of what Jesus said to the chief priests who came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane: “This is your hour—when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:53).
There is coming an hour when darkness will reign supreme on the earth. Out of that darkness the Antichrist will rise to power.
Sign #2: Open Blasphemy
Notice what happens next. Once the Antichrist comes to power, he begins to blaspheme God.
"The beast was given a mouth to
utter proud words
and blasphemies and to exercise
its authority for forty-two months.
It opened its mouth to blaspheme God,
and to slander his name
and his dwelling place
and those who live in heaven"(Revelation 13:5-6).
Blasphemy doesn’t mean using foul language. That’s cursing. Blasphemy happens when we claim for ourselves that which belongs to God alone. We blaspheme when we worship anyone or anything other than God. In this case, the antichrist commits blasphemy by demanding that others worship him.
God controls all things, yet Satan controls the Beast, who in turn blasphemes God and attacks his people.
Men voluntarily follow the Beast, who leads them to kill God’s people, who display their faith in the face of death through patient endurance and faithfulness.
Following Christ is not always easy or popular.
In those days it will be difficult indeed.
Note that the Lord puts a limit on the reign of the Antichrist. He rules the earth for 42 months—3 ½ years. That’s the last half of the coming tribulation.
As bad as things are today, the presence of the church on the earth restrains evil. Once the church is removed at the Rapture, the earth will become Satan’s playground.
What should we expect in the future? Christians will be mocked, ridiculed, canceled, cursed, and eventually arrested and put to death.
Today we see believers forced into silence. Soon that will not be enough.
Sign # 3: One-World Religion
“Then I saw a second beast,
coming out of the earth.
It had two horns like a lamb,
but it spoke like a dragon.
It exercised all the authority
of the first beast
on its behalf,
and made the earth and its inhabitants
worship the first beast,
whose fatal wound had been healed.”
Notice these two phrases:
He is “like a lamb” in appearance.
But he speaks “like a dragon.”
Furthermore, this second beast exists only to promote the first beast. He is the PR agent for the Antichrist whose primary function is religious propaganda. He is the Joseph Goebbels of the last days.
At first glance, he seems to like Jesus. He speaks in smooth, glowing tones of the need for all humanity to unite in this time of worldwide crisis (the seven-year tribulation). He comes to power as God pours out his wrath on the earth (the seals, trumpets, and bowl judgments of Revelation). This clever religious leader will bring together under one big tent all the Christian denominations, along with the Muslims, the Jews, the Buddhists, and the Hindus. “We’re all in this together,” he will say. “Let’s unite around the worship of our true leader, the Antichrist.”
He leads the apostate church of the last day. He may be Bishop so-and-so, but he is no Christian. He will pray, but not to Jesus.
His crowning glory will be a fake resurrection of the Antichrist. Though apparently assassinated, when he comes back to life, the whole world will worship him.
What you have here is a truly diabolical scheme. A counterfeit messiah suffers a counterfeit death and comes back to life through a counterfeit resurrection.
It’s easy to see why this works. Who needs Jesus when you’ve got the Antichrist?
If you pull the camera back for a wider view, what we have in Revelation 12-13 is Satan’s counterfeit trinity:
Satan is the anti-God.
The Antichrist is the anti-Christ.
The False Prophet is the anti-Holy Spirit.
Easy Days, Great Days
Let’s take a moment to think about what all this means. These “signs” are simply trends that will accelerate in the last days. Here are the first three signs leading to the Mark of the Beast:
Satanic Leadership
Open Blasphemy
One-World Religion
Do we see these things happening around us? The answer is yes, and if we believe the Bible, we shouldn’t be surprised. We need not be frightened or run for cover. These things are happening because God said they would happen.
What should we expect in the days to come? Look for evil to become more brazen. Evildoers will go from bad to worse. We will face enormous pressure to keep silent about Jesus. People will tell us to “go along to get along.” A spirit of deception will fill the earth in the last days as Satan pulls out all the stops. Look for further development of a global ecumenical movement that blurs religious distinctions.
On the night before he was crucified, Jesus gave this command to his disciples: “Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:1). He said those words knowing that in a few hours he would hang on a Roman cross. For the disciples, their dreams and hopes would seem to die with him.
That was Friday.
Then Sunday came.
If we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then we should have no trouble believing that he will return in power and great glory.
Let me repeat what I have said elsewhere:
Easy days are over.
Great days are ahead.
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