The Revelation 13:12-14 Review | Episode # 1097

December 30, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 13:12-14

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus Name.

Ox are the ones that wear the hats and. And where the. You. I mean, if you've ever lived in New Jersey or New York, you could pick them out anywhere. Okay? They have clothes that are very distinctive. The women all wear a wig, all look the same as far as their hair. They really do. And they all live within walking distance of a synagogue because they can't travel in an automobile to the synagogue on Saturday for church, for worship. All right, if you're not that, but you are Conservative, meaning you're biblically, theologically conservative as a Jewish person, which would be. Who can I tell you? Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is a conservative Christian Jew. A Jewish Christian, but he's not Hasidic or he's not Orthodox. Does that make sense? All right, they'll wear the hat, the little beanie hat, but they believe. They believe in the Old Testament. They believe living by the Old Testament. Okay? All right, now, there are Jewish people that are Jewish by family origin, and they do associate with the Jews in the sense that they call themselves Jewish people, but they're not religiously Jewish at all. Okay? Meaning they don't follow any of the teachings of the Bible. They don't believe in any of the prophecies. They don't believe any of that. And some of them, a lot of them are agnostic or atheist. Okay? They're. Their heritage is Jewish, but they're not Jewish in any way that we would think of as a Jewish person. And you go, well, where did that come from? Well, it kind of comes from a group that existed in Jesus's time, right? And that would be the Sadducees, right? Y' all remember that? Always got to do my Sadducee joke, right? The Pharisees believed that there was a life after death, because Scripture teaches that, and that there was life with God. And so that's what they believed. Now, the Sadducees didn't believe there was a life after death, that once you died, it was all over. And so they were sad. You see, right? Anybody not ever heard that one before? They were the Sadducees. And that's how, literally how I remembered them when I first started trying to think. Yes, um, They believed in the. Yeah, yes, kinda. Okay, when you say believe in the Bible, they didn't believe. Even the ones who would actually believe in the Torah, they didn't believe in the Bible like we believe in the Bible. Okay? They didn't believe. They didn't, they didn't place an emphasis on it like you and I would place an emphasis on the Bible. Okay? They did believe it was written by Jewish people and that it had a religious ideas with it, but they didn't, they didn't believe it was. Now here's what's so cool, because it is at this time, okay? And I'm not telling you that this is how it works. I'm not telling you that it happens. But this, this beast takes the form of a religious leader. He is a lamb, he's a servant, he serves the beast out of the sea, okay? And he's got enough reputation such that. People in the world would see him as a religious leader and a Christian religious leader. Now, at any time in the since Constantine became Roman dictator, at any time since then, the main or the most well known religious leader of Christianity in Christianity would be who? Who? The Pope. Okay? Now you could say that, you know, when Billy Graham was alive, he might have been as famous as the Pope, okay? But at that time, the Pope was John Paul, who was really, really famous. So I couldn't even say worldwide that Billy Graham was more famous than the Pope even back then. And so there are people who will teach you that, and they wouldn't be wrong in saying that, but that this Antichrist or this beast is going to be a Jewish Pope. Okay? All right, Now I'm not saying that's the case. I don't know that I can't say that 100% being true. But it does make sense. And you say, well, how do you have a Jewish Pope? Well, you couldn't really probably have a Jewish Pope. In fact, it would be almost impossible to have a Jewish Pope until what, until World War II. Okay? And during World War II, obviously you had the Holocaust and you have a lot of Jewish children being taken in by Catholics in not only in Europe, but in the United States, okay? And by the way, somewhere about 95 to 97% of all Jewish people live either in Israel or the United States. Did y' all know that? Almost. Almost all of them, but not all 95 to 97% of all Jewish people either live in the United States or Israel. And it's about the same amount, about 8.5 million in both places. All right? But there's a lot of people who are not affiliated in the sense of they're not Jewish in that they understand themselves to be Jewish or even act like they're Jewish, but their heritage is Jewish. Like, you know, my wife is some percentage Ashkenazi Jewish, okay? Her great grandfather, her great great grandfather, her great great grandfather was Jewish. I. So it's very. This is something that couldn't happen and now really could happen. You could have somebody who had some. Some percentage of Jewish heritage, even up to maybe even close to 100%, who would be Catholic and be in the Catholic Church. You also could have a Jewish person who is an evangelical Christian, okay? There's lots of evangelical Christians, okay, that are Jewish. Lots of them. Okay? And so that's not something that's abnormal either. And so this beast being the spiritual religious leader, and you go, why are you saying that about the. About the Holy Spirit? Well, think about what the job of the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit's job is to unveil God to you. How does he do that? Well, he is the one who allows you to understand the spiritual things of the scripture or of God. He's the one that teaches you about God. And so he glorifies Jesus. He makes Jesus known. And what is Jesus's. What is. What is the whole purpose of Jesus? Well, the whole purpose of Jesus is to glorify an aspect of God's character that could not be glorified any other way. And that aspect of God's character is his grace and his mercy. And so Jesus. Jesus glorifies God in a lot of ways. But the most important primary way that Jesus glorifies God is he is able to redeem that which is lost, sinful, broken to God. Okay? And that's what he does. He redeems us to God. All right? So the Holy Spirit is the one who reveals that to you. He's the one that reveals that to you. It can't be revealed any other way. Things that. Things that are revealed by the Spirit can only be revealed by the Spirit. All right? So it says here, I'm giving you that context for him, and he exercised all the authority of the first beast in his presence, meaning he was just as powerful and just as authoritative. He was just as powerful and just as authoritative as the beast out of the sea. And it says and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast. Which is exactly what the Holy Spirit does. Right? The Holy Spirit causes us to worship Jesus. Right. This beast causes the people to worship the first beast or the beast out of the land or the one everybody else calls the Antichrist. Okay, he's not the Antichrist. He is one of the Antichrists, Okay? And it says whose deadly wound was healed. All right? So notice this beast has a wound, a head wound that we've already talked about, appeared to be mortal and Scripture's clear about that, that it's not mortal, that he doesn't die, and that he's healed by the second beast. Okay? Now these are all important things because if you're doing that with Jewish people, with, by the way, the third, the other two religions that believe in a coming Messiah are the Christians, obviously, and the Muslims. Okay, and you go, do the Muslims believe that? Yes, in all actuality they do. They believe that Jesus is going to come back and rule as a Muslim in a Muslim caliphate for a thousand years. Did y' all know that? And then he's going to die and he's going to be placed in the box. The big black box in Mecca has two places for people. One of them is the tomb of, of Muhammad. And the other one is for Jesus when he comes back and then dies. Did y' all know that? So the Jews believe that there's going to be a messiah. They don't believe it to be Jesus, but this guy's not going to be Jesus to them. The Muslims believe that there's going to be a messiah come back and that he is Jesus. And the Christians believe that there is going to be a returning of the Messiah. And, and his name is Jesus. So when you get to the end, about 4 billion people on the earth are going to believe this person is the Messiah. Now it's not gonna be the 4 billion, cause about half of em are gonna be dead. All right? But it's gonna be a lot. And it's gonna be a lot of people who are Christians by name but are not born again. Okay? All right. And that's found in second Thessalonians. It says he performs great signs. Does the Holy Spirit perform great signs? Absolutely. He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. Who is he imitating? Okay, well, first of all, he's imitating Elijah, all right? He's imitating Moses. He's also imitating somebody else. Who else? The two witnesses that are prophesying at the gate. So he's got to be able to at least do what they do or nobody's going to listen to him. Right? So he does. He causes fire to come down from heaven, all right? He's a. It's a picture of the Holy Spirit, all right? And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast who granted him the power to do those things. Well, I want you to hear me. God does. God allows all this. There's a purpose for it. Remember? I want you to hear me. When you begin to build your theological understandings, I want you hear me. The foundation has a cornerstone, and that's Jesus. But the foundation is that God is all that it means to be God, Period. And I talked to y' all about, you know, when you live your life as Christians. Sunday morning, I kind of stepped back and I said, you make sure you're in the right spot, right? And. And that spot is, love God, love your neighbor, love each other. Theologically speaking, when I'm trying to figure something out, I make sure that I'm standing on the foundation. And the foundation is that God meets all the attributes of God. He's all knowing, which means there's nothing that can be known that he does not know.

Period.

I'm going to tie that in. He's all powerful, meaning everything that is done, every force that exists in the universe exists from him and emanates from him, period.

Everything.

And that he's omnipresent, which involves not just being everywhere, but he's everywhere all the time. Omnipresence doesn't mean just to be everywhere. It means to be present at all time, everywhere. He's not a different God tomorrow as he is today because he's lived to tomorrow. He's the same God tomorrow and today because he's omnipresent, All right? And he is completely, perfectly good, okay? All that is good comes from Him. All power comes from Him. All of time and space come from him. And it is all good because of Him. Are you following me? All that is good is good because of Him. Now, that means he is sovereign over everything. That means he is sovereign over everything. And so when I get a hard theological question, you know, I've been doing this for over 30 years now. When I get a hard theological question, and it kind of, you know, shake me A little bit, because somebody kind of comes at me with a curve ball. You know what I'm talking about? When I get a hard theological question, I always go, okay, let me view this not from my cheap seats over here. I need to stand in the middle of the foundation and view it from that perspective. And that always gives me the right answer. If I'm gonna get the answer, maybe that I need to. God's going to show it to me down the road, but I always have to start out with that. And fundamentally, if you start out with that all the time, there's great peace that comes from it, and there's great joy that comes from it, because nobody else is in control. He is in control, which puts me in a perfect position because I'm his. All right? And so understanding that is great importance. Remember, the Holy Spirit is revealing that to you. This person who is trying to function as the Holy Spirit is not all powerful. He's not all knowing. To include Satan and the first and second beast, all three of them. They're not all powerful, they're not all knowing. And critically, none of them are omnipresent. None of them. And they're not innately good, they're innately evil. So knowing that when you're studying this is of great importance. It's great understanding to have. So when Jesus says that the Satan is the father of lies, meaning he was the first to lie, and that nothing that comes from him, I mean, nothing that he lies about comes from him, what's he saying? It all came from me. He is misrepresenting what I did. He didn't do anything. Does that make sense? All right. He says, telling those who dwell on the earth by those. He said, let's read Psalm 14 again. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image of the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.