The Revelation 13:15-18 Review | Episode # 1098

December 31, 2025

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

The Revelation 13:15-18

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.

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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.

All right, now remember, what is the great power or the great work of God that man was made for? We were made to glorify God. But what is the work or the power by which we glorify God, that nothing else glorifies God by that power? It's the power of resurrection. It's the power of taking something dead and making it alive. Okay, great. Some of the. Some of the great books of. Of history are an effort to take something dead, make it alive. Frankenstein. That's what Frankenstein's about. It's about a scientist that was trying to. Trying to. To capture the ability to make that which is dead alive. By the way, Dracula and all those, if you dig down into the core of what they're written about, is the effort to try to live forever. Okay? It's the idea of eternality, of life or everlasting life, not eternal life. All right? If you think about it, it is the thing that runs through everything. It's the fixation of those world religions that deal with death and worship gods of death. Why? Because that's a. Extension of life past this mortal world, okay? Understanding that's real important. And this beast counterfeits. He counterfeits the. The. The power of resurrection. He counterfeits it in the first beast. And notice what it says. He causes the people of the earth to make an image which draws us straight back to where? Straight back to Genesis, straight back to Moses. Make a graven image. Make an image now. Well, that's bad. Bad. It's not bad. Not totally bad because God, in creating the universe, made an image of himself. And who was that? Adam. All right? So it's an aspect of God's creation where all of creation can look at that aspect of this creation, and it bears the likeness of God. Okay? You, when you're born again, are born back into the image of God. God's a three Part being. You're a three part being. The parts of you represent the aspects of God. Your body represents the physical manifestation of yourself. Jesus, the physical manifestation of God. Your soul represents your will and your passions and your intellect. The Father's, the will, the passion, the intellect of God. Your spirit's the power of. Of God. And the Holy Spirit is the resonant power, the present power of God. Okay? You are made in. You are an image bearer of God. You bear his image or his likeness. What does Satan want to do? He wants to make something that bears his image and his likeness, so he causes the people of the Earth to do it. Now, this is one of the things in my mind, and it's not a logical conclusion. It's a logical. I can't remember what the word's called, but it's a logical thing anyway. No, it's not a fallacy, but that's good. It came to my mind, but I didn't get there. Follow me on this. This person that's a beast, who is a religious leader who's acting like the Holy Spirit. What is he not going to be good at? Science, engineering, any of that? He's not going to be good at that. That's not going to be his sweet spot. Okay? He can't make the beast. He can't make the image. But the people of the world can make an image. Just like who is the. Who is the. Who is the religious leader who fashioned the idol at the. At the foot of the mountain, the golden calf, who did? The Holy Spirit. Okay? So we get all the people together, and all the people come together, what they consider life. Now, if that's not an artificially intelligent robot, I don't know what it is. Now, I watch Terminator, so I know that Skynet came up with a lot of cool terminators to send back. I know y' all all watch that, right? Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'll be back. You know that movie. All right. I don't know how good this robot's going to be, but it's going to be really good. Because that robot's not only going to. I want you to listen to me. He's not only going to lead everybody on the Earth to worship the beast, just like we were made to do, But he's going to know who doesn't worship and try to kill them. Now, how might they know that? Well, they might be listening on your phone right now. Could that happen today? Well, if you had a powerful enough computer, it would. Can we create that computer today? No, no, we can't. That's why we all of a sudden started trying to go to Mars and the moon and all those places. You know that, right? Listen to me. They gonna tell you AI is all that stuff. And we kept growing in compute power really, really fast. It started picking up speed in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and the. And the early part of the 2000s. Are you following me? And then about 2011 or 12, the exponential growth of computing power stopped. Now we're getting really good at writing programs that use the maximum amount of computing power that we can use. But there was two things that caused the computing power to exponentially grow, and that's microzation, which means make it smaller and smaller, and the purest metals we could create, which would conduct electricity or power as much as it could. But in about 2012, 2013, we couldn't shrink the transistors enough or. And we didn't have any more metals that were better than what we had. And so all of a sudden, about 10, 12 years ago, we quit being able to increase our compute power. About that time, everybody's all of a sudden going to the moon, going to Mars. You got the Martian, you know, the movie about Brad Pitt going to Mars and all that kind of stuff. It wasn't Brad Pitt. Matt Damon. Matt Damon. Sorry. Brad. Matt. All right. They're not the same. Okay, all right. Matt Damon went to Mars. All right? There's a reason for that. And I believe that we're going to find a metal that is extraordinarily more powerful in conducting electricity in our travels over the next 15, 20 years, at least over the next half century. Okay? And we're going to be able to. We're going to be able to put all this artificial intelligence into a being or into a computer that's able to do what this can do. Now, when will it happen? I already told you, I don't know. But I do believe we will find the ability to do that. But we can't right now. We can't. I know they tell you you can. The reason they're telling you that is you need to find. You need to find the best artificial intelligence company to invest in. Right? You know why they're doing that, right? So they can get you jack and do something that they know they can't do. It's not the first time that ever happened. All right? He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Now, Notice what does he calls to happen. There's a word used there. He causes all. Now, I want you to hear me. That's a unique Greek word, and it's translated all, okay? It means, everybody, Small, great, rich, poor, free, slave to receive the mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Now, if you don't take the mark, what are you. You're dead. Okay? And that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Okay? And then it says, here is wisdom or here's understanding. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man. His number is 666. Okay? Now, that tells you everything you need to know. It tells you all that you need to know. It is. It is a number that represents man because the number six is man. Man was made on the sixth day. He was the only thing that was made that day. Okay? Three is the number of what? The Trinity or the Godhead. Three sixes are man trying to be God. It's no more complicated than that. What he's saying is, his number is him trying to be God. Now, the passage that everybody gets upset about. Do I have time? I'm doing all right. Good. Verse 9 of chapter 14. Then a third of the angels followed them, saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength in the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but that's bad. Okay? That's. That's not. That's not a joyous experience, okay? That means that they face the full wrath of God. That means they're condemned, but as we always like to do. Are you following me? We don't do our. We don't use our logic to come to a conclusion. Are you following me? Take, for instance, one of the great arguments of modern Christendom. What does it take for a person to be born again, saved, go to heaven, all that kind of stuff. All right? I want you to hear me. There are thousands of passages, well, not thousands, hundreds of passages that give us direct quotes from apostles, John, Peter, James, Paul, Jesus himself, Old Testament figures. They give us. Do this and you'll be saved, okay? If you put them all together and marry them up with each other. Are you following me? And you made a list of everything that's mentioned. That would be a very, very long list, okay? But if you look at the list, there's only one thing that is a requirement or evidence of a person being born again or being saved or being. Or going to heaven. It's in every one of them, if you'll look at it, okay? And it's some act or. Or some element of faith, repent. That means to hear God believing and turn faith, right? And if you start going through them, every one of them, you can dig into them and you can look at them and go, oh, there's the faith, every one of them. Are you following me? Now, If Jesus was asked that question, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, first of all, the question's flawed, okay? Because what did you. What can you do to inherit? Anything. If you're going by family inheritance, Nothing. How can I do anything to be in that family? Did I do anything to be my father's son? So the question is flawed at the outset, but Jesus answers the question, okay? And what is his answer? What does it say in the law? Well, he says to believe on the one he sent. What is that? Faith, belief. Pistio pistis. Faith, O trust. Belief. All right? If you start going through all of them, that's what it says. Now, obviously, this passage that we're reading in chapter 14 is a passage of condemnation. Are you following me? So if it's a passage of condemnation, we need to read it in its context, and we need to read it for the words that tie together, okay? Because it's a list, right? He says, If anyone. This is the middle of verse 9. If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall go and drink wine of the wrath of God. What is the key word there? And. Because you have to have both if it said, or. All you got to do is have one. Now, I'm telling you that because oftentimes in language and oftentimes when we're doing reasoning, we don't reason these things out. What does it say? Anyone who worships the image and has the mark. Well, who's going to have the mark? Everyone. It said all. Is everyone going to be condemned? No. Who's going to be condemned? The people who have the mark and worship the image. So all of y' all who've been worried about spooked out about all these chips being put into people and all that kind of stuff. Stop, okay, look, if it was. Or, everybody'd be doomed. Everybody'd be doomed. But it's not or it's. And I have the mark. I worship the beast. I'm condemned. All right? So all of you who are worried about the chips and all that kind of stuff, stop worrying about it. Quit worrying about it. Now, I'm still not getting the chip, but okay, but don't worry about it. I don't believe I'm gonna be here anyway. But that's not. That's not the thing that worries. What is the thing that matters to God in this? Because he already said everybody's going to have it. What matters whether you place your faith in the image or place your faith in God. So what matters at the core of this? If I dug down, if I logically dug down, if I had used logical reduction and I dug it down, okay, everybody's going to have the image. So I'm moving that out of the way. What is it that causes them to be condemned in such a way that they're going to be the brimstone and all that and presence of the angels and however that works. Worship. Worship is an act of faith. Worship is. Is a product of faith, okay? That's why I say that everybody worships something. You either worship something God made, meaning you place your trust in it, money, cars, people, all that kind of stuff, or you worship God, meaning you trust in God, or you worship the most important thing in the universe to you, and that's you. Which means you either place your faith in something God made to include fallen angels and everything. Because remember, we go back to our foundation who made everything. John says that all things were made by him and nothing that was made was not made by him, right? Understanding that I worship what he made, I worship my favorite thing he made, or I worship him. And all that is to place your faith in either something in the world, yourself or God. So we've kind of killed two things today to worry about. The first one is not quite sure we can get there with the. With the robot, okay? Second of all, don't be worrying about the chip, okay? You're gonna be good. You're not gonna be here anyway. I'm not recommending getting the chip, okay? They're primarily using that for dogs and cats, and you're not a dog or cat, okay? But there are people who have that chip, okay? I wouldn't get the chip because that puts you for sure on one side of the end, right? And if I don't have the mark and I don't worship the beast. I'm not on either side of the end. I can't be in on, but I'm not in it at all. So I'm telling you not to get it. But that's not the fatal problem. The fatal flaw is to worship the beast. And by the way, Thessalonians tells us if you're a Christian or a pseudo Christian or a Christian who is not a Christian by faith and the Antichrist is revealed and you're not taken up that God will send a delusion so that you'll believe the lion worship the beast anyway. So all the people who play Christian when Jesus comes back there, they're condemned already. And that goes all the way back to the parable of the 10 virgins, okay? When that door shuts, the five that are out on the outside. And if you just use the math, that would tend to indicate if there's 2.4, 2.3 ish, 2.4 ish billion Christians in the world, okay? And there's 1.5 ish billion Muslims and then there's about 15, 16, 17 million Jews, that would indicate that one and a half billion people who claim to be believers are not born again. Now I'm going to tell you the secret of how to figure out who the ones that are and who the ones that aren't. All right? Y' all ready for it? The secret is. We don't know. Just letting you know. We don't know. God knows the spirit of God knows the heart of man. Nobody else knows. Now, you can produce fruit of righteousness, which is fruit of faith. Righteousness comes from faith. You can produce fruit of righteousness and be evident that you are a believer, whether you got it all going on or just that's the only thing you got going on. Okay, what do you mean by that? Well, you're really, really good at. You're just been walking with God and powers flowing through you and all that or all you got is faith, no matter what. Where you on the scale? Okay, you're in. All right. But to have a form of godliness and deny its power. And what is the power? The power is the power of faith. That is resurrection power. Is what believers are that don't actually trusting God and therefore they're not really believers and you can't figure out who they are, you won't know. So quit looking, huh? When we do know, it'll be over with. That's right. Because why, what am I supposed to do? Come back to the foundational center. Truth. Love God, love my neighbors, love each other. Right. If you'll always come back to the foundational truths. God's God. I have some rules that come from him. Those rules, all the Old Testament hangs on those rules. Love God, love my neighbor, love each other. If I know that, then I'm good to go. Okay. If I start there, I might get off path a little bit. That's fine. I'm in the right spot. I'm in the middle of where God wants me to be. All right. 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.