Antichrist and the False Prophet

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of end times in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

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We saw last night in Revelation 12, Satan, pictured as a great dragon, is violently enraged against the church. He has been hurled out of heaven. His sphere of operations has been curtailed. He is filled with fury because he knows he is defeated in principle and his time is short, so he goes after the woman, the messianic community, the people of God.

God leads her (us) into the desert, into a time of strife and trial and testing before the consummation; nevertheless, it is a time of his own watch-care and wooing and love. All this takes place, we saw, during 1,260 days or 42 months or three and a half years or time, times and half a time, symbolism deriving from the Maccabean period and foreseen centuries earlier by Daniel, a time of bitter conflict before there is final relief, and cut short. It is not seven years; it is three and a half, cut short for the sake of God’s elect. All this we saw last night.

But Satan does not work in isolation. He does not usually work apart from means. Chapter 13 introduces the two agents through whom Satan most frequently carries out the worst aspects of his war on God’s people. Doubtless, you will recall in chapter 12, when Satan is hurled out of heaven, the voice cries (verse 12), “Rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!” Because Satan has been cast out. “But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!”

Now a beast comes out of each of these two. A beast comes out of the sea and out of the earth. What does this mean? The beast out of the sea is a grotesque, seven-headed monster, and then from verses 11 on, the beast out of the earth is, perhaps, initially less terrifying a spectacle but given to great deceptions.

Tonight, I want to focus attention on these two beasts, and then tomorrow night, although I would dearly love to spend time in chapter 14, we will turn to the end of the book, chapters 21 and 22, and uncover afresh the final triumph of the Lamb and the glories of heaven to come. What I have to say, then, is divided into two unequal parts tonight. First, I want to talk about the beast from the sea (that will take up most of my time), and then more briefly, the beast out of the earth, and in each case to learn how God’s people are to respond in their obedience to the Lamb.

1. The beast out of the sea

I shall divide what I have to say about him into five points.

A) The power of Satan expresses itself in antichrists in concrete, historical opposition to God’s people.

As I have already indicated, the ancient world, except for a few peoples who were mariners, tended to think of the sea as the Abyss of chaos, the source of all that was evil, and if the Jews were not so superstitious, they, nevertheless, utilized the same kind of symbolism. They were not a sea-going people.

Thus, for example, you read in Isaiah 57, “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.” Isn’t that a great picture of wickedness? “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked,” just as there’s no peace at the sea. It just goes on and on and on and on. By the seashore there is always motion, always waves. There is never a glassy sea. Not the ocean. It’s always doing something.

This beast, then, comes out of the sea. The sea, which we’ll see tomorrow night, is abolished at the end. There is no more sea. The symbol of all that belongs to the fallen order is gone. It is important to recognize this beast recurs in the book, and this is another one of those instances where a symbol is introduced and then explained a little later.

The same beast comes out of the Abyss in chapter 11, verse 7, and in chapter 17, verse 8, and in particular, this beast receives a great deal more description in chapter 17, so I invite you to turn there for a few moments so we may better understand his nature and character. In Revelation, chapter 17, we are introduced to another woman, not the messianic community, but another woman whom we shall not here unpack in detail, but she rides this same beast, this beast with ten horns and seven heads.

Chapter 17, verses 5 and 6: “Her name on her forehead: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth. This woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.” John is astonished. “Then the angel …” Again, an interpreting angel. “… said to me: ‘I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns.’ ” Thus, the beast is identified for us, the same one introduced in chapter 13.

Now in verses 8 and following, what do we read? “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction.” That’s exceedingly interesting. It fits a whole pattern of this beast. At one level, this is a parody of God. Do you remember how God and the Lamb are regularly described in this book as the one who was, and is, and is to come?

“The beast was, is not, and is to come.” At one level, it’s a parody, but there’s a difference. It is a way of saying this beast recurs. The beast manifests itself. He was. Then he’s not. Then he comes again. He comes out of the Abyss, we’re told, and then he goes back again. This is a recurring beast. This is a beast, in other words, who keeps coming out of the Abyss, who keeps coming out of the sea.

Keep your finger in chapter 17, but turn back to chapter 13, and notice exactly the same sort of point made here. Chapter 13, verse 3: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.” A fatal wound! In other words, apparently the beast had been killed, but now the beast is back.

In case we haven’t got it, it’s identified for us again the same way in verse 12. Now we’re introduced to the second beast, but the second beast, we’re told there, “… exercised all the authority of the first beast, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.” A fatal wound, but it had been healed. The beast keeps coming back.

Again, in verse 14, “He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.” In other words, this is the beast that keeps coming back. Moreover, some of the language in chapter 13 is drawn immediately from Daniel 7. In chapter 13, verse 2, we read, “The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.”

But when you read Daniel 7, there are four kingdoms represented as four great beasts: the lion represented Babylonia; the bear, Media; the leopard, Persia; the fourth beast was Greece. Now this beast resembled all four of them. What is going on? Then the ten horns … Horn, if you recall, regularly represents a king or kingdom. I think in the context of Daniel they’re clearly the 10 Seleucid kings leading up to Alexander the Great after Greece and the terrible little horn, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who I introduced to you last night, a beastly chap all right.

Thus, the beast, then, recurs throughout history. He is Antiochus IV Epiphanes. He is Nero in Paul’s day. He is Pope Innocent III. He is Mao Zedong. He is a recurring beast who exercises great authority in historic, concrete contexts to oppose the people of God. At John’s time of writing, he says he is not clearly manifest. He was, he is not now, but he will come back again. That is, the church has faced persecution but at the moment is not going through particularly terrible persecution, but John sees around the corner, and he knows the beast is coming back.

He was, he is not now, but he is coming back again. In John’s specific context, if you will turn back to Revelation 17, there is little doubt what the major opposition the church confronted was. Look at verses 9 and 10. “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.” Could anybody in the entire Roman Empire detect there anything other than the seven hills of Rome? It was part of the mythology of the ancient empire.

The seven hills on which the harlot is sitting, Rome, represented all that was evil, the totality of evil at this point in the empire. The city began as seven small settlements on the hills on the left bank of the Tiber River, but eventually they coalesced into mighty Rome. Then we’re told in verses 10 and 11,” They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.”

What kind of mathematics is that? I have to tell you there have been all kinds of suggestions. The seven kings with five fallen, one now and one still to come? People have tried to line these up with the Roman emperors. For those of you who are interested in history, let me tell you the most popular alignment, although I don’t think it works. The first is Augustus; the second is Tiberius; the third is Caligula; the fourth is Claudius of I, Claudius fame; the fifth is Nero; the sixth, the “who now is” under this view, is Vespasian; and Titus is still to come.

But it doesn’t work. First of all, the first Caesar was not Augustus; it was Julius. Then you’re cheating a little bit because after Nero and before Vespasian, there are three emperors who are left out: Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. They didn’t last long. They each got bumped off, but they were there. In any case, as far as I can see, the most plausible dating for the book of Revelation is in the 90s during the time of the Emperor Domitian, not the Emperor Vespasian. It just doesn’t work.

I suspect, again, the symbolism is simpler than that. The seven regularly symbolizes a completeness of kings. To have five gone means the Roman Empire, this next in the series of exhibitions of the beast … Five have come. A substantial number have gone. We’re still in it, and one is still to come, but that means John sees something beyond the Roman Empire. Do you see what he says?

Verse 11: “The beast who once was, and now is not …” He’s not only the seven kings. “He is also an eighth king.” He belongs to the seven precisely in the sense that he represents the beast as well. He belongs to the seven in character and quantity, but you have the seven, the totality of power that makes up the Roman Empire, but beyond that, you still have an eighth king. There’s always one more. The beast comes out of the Abyss. He keeps recurring. Do you see? Outside the seventh, there’s still another one.

In other words, the beast himself here is an eighth king who both belongs to the seven and succeeds them. He is, in fact, to use John’s language elsewhere, Antichrist. Now I think you will recall another passage John wrote. Do you remember in his first epistle, chapter 2, verse 18? John writes, “My little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now there are many antichrists.”

John is not saying there is no final Antichrist. What he is saying is even in his day antichrists manifest themselves, and in the concrete situation of the heresy he confronted when he wrote that epistle, the antichrists turn out to be precisely the apostates who have left the church over the Gnostic heresy.

Antichrist keeps recurring, with power to destroy, and just when you think you got rid of him, he comes out of the Abyss again. There is a final Antichrist. John presupposes it there in 1 John, chapter 2. “… as you have heard that antichrist is coming …” He doesn’t wash that away or relativize it. “… so now antichrists are here.” That, I take it, is also what is in Paul’s mind in 2 Thessalonians 2, but that’s another account.

He belongs to the seven. Not is one of the seven. He belongs to them in the sense that he plays the same sort of role as the seven, but his period is a time of special evil after the seven beyond the Roman Empire. Thus, in chapter 13, the beast out of the sea represents the chaos of the Abyss. He represents the previous kingdoms. Verse 2 suggests he represents all that is evil in the previous kingdoms and now introduces his own.

Verse 3 suggests, yes, he dies down for a while and comes back again. The beast out of the sea embodies all the evil of previous empires. Then he reemerges again as Satan’s own emissary. This is a beast whose authority is derived. “The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.”

Do you see what is being said there? At the historical level, we see this beast or that beast or the other beast, but this text is telling us to see behind the beast, the dragon. Where did Hitler get his authority? Where did Pope Innocent III get his authority? Where did the Gnostic heretics get their authority?

What we confront is the beast. We must see that behind the beast is the Dragon, Satan himself full of rage, full of anger, full of spite, and a determination to crush the people of God. From the beginning of history, pagan and immoral states and movements have sometimes risen in violent evil against God’s people. They receive, eventually, mighty death blows from God himself, but the evil returns.

While they are there, their power is overwhelming. Do you see what we read in verse 3? “The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, ‘Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?’ ”

Isn’t that what Germans said when the Nazi beast came to the power? “You can’t fight this one. You can’t win.” There were people who tried, and there were several attempted putches, but none of them worked. The beast won, but eventually, the beast received a fatal blow, and the beast comes back.

His name won’t be Hitler the next time. The beast comes back, though just the same. Pharaoh may decide to wipe out the Jews, but he himself is wiped out. The Assyrians decide to wipe out Israel. Have you ever met any Assyrians? There’s a small community of about 300 of them. That’s about it. Mighty Babylon decides to wipe out the people of God. Is Babylon a great threat today? Rome decides to take on the people of God. Hitler establishes the Thousand-Year Reich.

After each one is destroyed, people say, “Phew. The war to end all wars,” and then the beast comes back, and shall our culture survive, if it squeezes God to the periphery and worships self and things and success and money and sports and media personalities, Antichrist comes in many forms, in movements, as in political power.

That is clear in 1 John 2:18, where the issue is not political power, the exercise of the beastly authority in the state, but in an ecclesiastical movement. That is to say, in the rising power of the Gnostic heresy, and every time the antichrist comes in great power, people ask the question of verse 4, “Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him? What can we do?”

In a sense, this, too, is a parody of such Old Testament passages as Exodus 15. “Who among the gods is like you, O Lord?” Instead of people focusing on God and asking that question, they look to the beast and say, “Who can fight him? Who is like him?” That’s the first point. It is extremely important. The power of Satan expresses itself in antichrists, in concrete, historical opposition to God’s people.

B) Antichrist is always full of blasphemy.

That appears already in verse 1. “He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” At one level, of course, in the first century, this was undoubtedly tied to the tendency of the Roman emperors to take divine names on themselves.

After Augustus Caesar died, the Roman Senate voted he should be reified or apotheosized after his death and become a god. It’s a wonderful way of being divinized. By the time you get to Caligula, who was mad, he proclaimed himself a god while he was alive, and he was so powerful and so cruel that the Senate didn’t balk. Then Caligula divinized his horse as well.

Although the precedent was established by a madman, Caligula, by the time you got to the next emperor, who on the whole was a good man, Claudius, the Senate divinized him during his lifetime. Thus, it came to be the case that loyalty to the state represented by the emperor demanded some kind of allegiance to the emperor as god.

In fact, what the empire tended to do was arrange god swaps. When they took over some new territory, they insisted some of the gods from that territory be adopted into the Roman pantheon of gods and some of the Romans gods, then, be adopted by that territory. The reason they did this was purely political.

They knew you were far more likely to get a rebellion in a territory if you could line up in that territory land, people, and religion. If you could break up one of those, there’s much less opportunity for rebellion. Earlier empires had broken up the people element. That’s why they transported people. They transported the Jews, but they transported many other people as well. Break them up. If they’re not tied to their land, they’re less likely to rebel.

What the Romans did, instead, was break up the god element. What they did was insist that some of those gods be adopted by Rome and that these people adopt some of the Roman gods. If that was the case, then the people couldn’t appeal to their land and their gods anymore as being on their side against Rome because those same gods were partly on Rome’s side. Thus, you broke up the power of land, people, and gods.

But when the Romans came to Israel, what do you do with a people like that? They don’t have any gods? Many Romans thought the Jews were atheists. They said, “Show us your gods,” and the Jews said, “Our God is invisible.” “Oh, yeah. We’ve heard that one before.” They just thought the Jews were atheists, that they worshiped this invisible, for all they knew, non-existent God.

Moreover, they were willing to die for him. They weren’t going to share him with anybody. The Jews, therefore, were given an imperial exemption. Rome made an imperial exception in the case of the Jews. You didn’t have to worship the emperor because the Jews were such inveterate, stubborn people in the eyes of the Romans that it wasn’t worth insisting on it for this small population of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Thus, as long as in the eyes of the Romans Christians were a subset of Jews, they were relatively safe from Rome.

The first persecution against Christians was not from the Roman Empire; it was from the synagogues, but eventually, as Christians became stronger, the Jews kept saying to the Romans, “Listen. These people, these Christians, aren’t really Jews. Therefore, they have no protection under the imperial exemption.” What that tended to do, therefore, was in time to expose the Christians to the full wrath of the Empire.

They didn’t belong to a single state, they weren’t tied to a particular land, and they weren’t Jews. They didn’t fit in anywhere. They weren’t arranged under a god swap. They weren’t arranged under the Jews. Therefore, they were seen as, in principle, treasonous because they would not offer worship to the emperor.

By the end of this first century, that became very serious. Domitian in John’s day was addressed as Dominus et Deus noster, “our Lord and God,” in Latin. How would Christians understand that? Our Lord and God? Augustus had already been proclaimed as divus, “one like the gods,” almost a century before, in his lifetime. Now, it was a matter of imperial policy and civic loyalty to worship the emperor and offer a little incense in his honor.

From a Christian point of view, the beast was uttering blasphemous names. That’s what he was doing, taking on the names that belonged only to God and his Christ. Verse 5: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.”

Have you noticed this? He was given a mouth. He was given the power. Even by his form of expression, John is still reminding his people that this is still under God’s control. Yes, this is wicked. Yes, the beast is vile, but he’s not independent. John never lets us think there is a God here and a beast over here and they’re sort of battling it out on a par.

No. In God’s inscrutable and wise plan, the beast is given certain authority. For a constrained period of time, the 42 months, three and a half years (that’s all), and he takes on these terrible blasphemies, and he opposes God. He slanders his name. He takes his name to himself. He slanders his dwelling place. He slanders those who live in heaven. That may actually be a reference to the people of God, as in Hebrews 12. “But you have come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.”

There is a sense in which my citizenship is already in heaven. I first began to understand this when I was in high school, strangely enough. It was partly because I had been brought up in the province of Quebec in the lean years when there was a great deal of opposition to the gospel, when people got converted and their businesses were burned down, and where there were beatings and men put in prison for preaching the gospel.

The charge was always disturbing the peace or inciting to riot or whatever, but it was for preaching the gospel, but I didn’t think about that. At that point, it was just the way I grew up. It was what you more or less expected. Then I went to high school, and although I was reared in a bilingual circumstance … on the street the language was French; the church was bilingual … the school I went to was more English than French, and it was fairly small.

While I was in senior high school, we had a new principal who was extremely bright. He was a very, very gifted teacher. You can tell how long ago this was by the fact that in his English literature class he taught, he insisted any halfway decent student would automatically memorize one-third of all the poetry he read.

Well, I never managed it, but because I wanted to be at least a halfway decent student I managed about a quarter of it. It was the way it was done, so today I can still rhyme off yards and yards and yards of the stuff because of that one man. He was an extremely gifted teacher, and he used to take one or two of us after school who were more interested in academic studies and talk with us. We’d just chat. “Come on into my office and we’ll have a chat.”

We’d talk about everything under the sun: sometimes sports, sometimes philosophy, sometimes history, sometimes world affairs. It was a small school, and principals still did that kind of thing in those days. I knew he was an atheist and he knew I was the son of a pastor, so we had talked about religion every now and then, and he always went gently on me.

Then, one day we were talking about humor, and he told a couple of whopping good jokes. He was a great raconteur, a great storyteller. He told a couple of excellent jokes. In fact, they were about the pope. After we had all stopped laughing, he said, “I believe there is nothing too high that you can’t make fun of it and have a good laugh. Don’t you?”

I was maybe 15 or 16, and suddenly I saw the beast. I remember thinking, and the light went on, just like that. The man changed in my eyes before me. I saw an evil man. Oh, a good man in many ways. By all societal norms, a great teacher, a friend, an encourager of students. I don’t want to belittle the man, but this was evil.

It is extremely important to recognize the beast manifests himself in concrete realities, in concrete movements, often in political power, and whenever he comes, he is full of blasphemy. Whatever else characterizes him, he does not honor God.

C) Antichrist commands wide allegiance.

We’ve already looked at verses 3 and 4. Now look down at verse 7. Not only is he given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them, but “He was given …” Notice that language again. He still operates under God’s supreme, providential authority.

“And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” In part, that is simply picking up the theme of chapter 12, where the Devil comes down to the earth. “Rejoice, you heavens! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury.”

Now this Devil assigns tremendous authority, then, to the Beast, and he is given authority. “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.” Except one group. “… all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” That is, the all-inclusiveness of the one group introduces the other group.

Those who belong to the Lamb whose names are in the Book of Life, the book belonging to the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, they do not worship the Beast. In fact, a little further on we shall discover there is a tremendous division in humankind between these beasts and the people of God, and you belong to one group or the other group. “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.” All of them. “… all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.”

Historically, of course, this is true in all totalitarian regimes, is it not? The Roman Empire demanded absolute allegiance. Nazism demanded absolute allegiance. Communist totalitarianism demanded absolute allegiance. Totalitarian regimes of left and right always do, but this can manifest itself in subtler ways.

As one person has written, the worship of a satanically inspired perversion of secular authority is the ultimate offense against the one true God. The temptation rejected by Jesus at the outset of his public ministry (Matthew 4) reappears at the end of history. Satan says, “Worship me, and I will give you all these things.” Does not that siren call reappear in our culture again and again and again? “And everyone worships this beast! Everyone, except those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

How shall we think of sin? Do you know that it’s getting hard to talk about sin in some circles today? I don’t mean it’s embarrassing. I don’t mean that. I mean, for serious Christians it’s hard to communicate because the words we used to use don’t mean the same thing anymore. You talk about sin in a university dorm, and it’s a snicker word. How do you make sin odious when you snicker every time you hear the word?

An example I sometimes use is when God made human beings, he made them so they were rightly related to him. They were made in his image. They naturally thought with respect to him. Their thoughts gravitated toward him. They loved him, and because they were rightly related to him, they were necessarily rightly related to each other. He was the center of their minds, of their imaginations, of their thoughts, of their hopes, and of their delights. If they woke up, they would think of him.

With the advent of rebellion came such a terrible self-centeredness that each individual human being thought of himself as at the center of the universe. Each person thinks of himself first. It’s true he thinks of others, then, and he thinks of God, but he even thinks of God with respect to himself. “God exists now to serve me, and others exist to serve me.”

You say, “Is this too extreme?” No, it’s not. Supposing somebody comes up and shows you a group photograph and says, “Here’s a picture of your high school graduating class,” which person does your eye go for first? Supposing you’ve had a fight with somebody, a really good hum-dinger, a knockdown-dragout quarrel with your spouse, maybe, or your employer or an employee, a longstanding friend, and you’re embarrassed, but you go away and you’re still seething with this turmoil of suppressed rage.

You start thinking through your mind all the things you should have said, all the things you would have said if you would have thought of them fast enough, all the things you could have said if only you’d been a little quicker. You have a rerun of the entire debate, and you get angrier and angrier. In this rerun, as you think of all the things you would have said and could have said and should have said, who wins? I’ve lost many debates; I’ve never lost a rerun.

Selfishness appears in so many forms. Eventually, it becomes a nationalistic thing or a racial thing or an economic thing and starts wars, but it becomes a religious thing, too. We don’t want God to have authority over us, so we invent a religion to make God essentially domesticated so we basically have authority over him. He becomes, more or less, like a genie from a bottle who pops out and gives us blessings rather than someone before whom we bow.

Still, it’s the same problem. “I’m number one, not God.” That’s the whole universe in rebellion against God. Doubtless, the first beast comes in many forms. Doubtless, he claims many different power centers, many different allegiances, but whether it is the power of the ancient Roman Empire or Marxist totalitarianism in Beijing doesn’t really matter.

It might equally well be a philosophical secularism that demands you worship the present, that demands you pursue material success. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” At Trinity, we have a new bumper sticker: “He who dies with the most toys still dies.” It’s a healthy reminder. No. This beast demands wide allegiance. He always has.

D) This Antichrist causes great suffering among the people of God.

Verse 9: “He who has an ear, let him hear.” It’s an announcement. “Now hear this …” Then this couplet: “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed.”

Like the loyal defenders of Jerusalem against Antiochus Epiphanes, the citizens of the New Jerusalem must expect to fall before the persecuting emperor and before Antichrist as he recurs. I mentioned to you last night there have been more Christian martyrs in the last 150 years than in the previous 1,800, and if God in his wisdom tarries in sending his Son for the consummating hour, there will be more yet ahead. Antichrist causes great suffering among the people of God.

Yet, there is another contrast here. It is implicit but it is very strong. This one causes suffering. This one has been wounded and comes back, but we’re reminded of someone else in this chapter who also received a wound. Did you notice it as we slipped by it? Verse 8: “… in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.”

In the historical arena, the beast is killed and comes back, he is killed and comes back, he is killed and comes back, but in the historical arena, the Lamb was slain only once, and in God’s mind that Lamb was slain before the creation of the world. This is not an accident. What is going on is not merely the whim of an arbitrary history. This is God still having his say as he works out his wise plan in the triumph of the Lamb.

There are two animals here slain: the Beast, who is slain again and again and again but will one day go to the Abyss to arise no more, and the Lamb, also slain in the historic arena outside Jerusalem on a little hill 2,000 years ago, yet, in the mind of God, slain before the creation of the earth, so that those whose names are in the Lamb’s Book of Life will not worship the Beast.

E) The existence and threat of Antichrist calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.

Verse 10: “This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness.” Not less than both. You can have a kind of patient endurance that is slogging. It endures, but it’s not really faithful. It puts up with things but is not triumphant.

You can have a certain kind of faithfulness on the short haul that burns itself out in a flash and a flare, but it does not endure under the long haul. No. Those who understand what God is doing in history understand that part of having your name in the Lamb’s Book of Life means a conflict with the Beast, and that requires faithfulness and patient endurance, knowing that the Lamb has triumphed.

2. The beast out of the earth

I will say more of the Christian’s victory in a moment, but for just a few moments let me say something of the other beast, the beast out of the earth. Verses 11 and following. Why should he be described as “out of the earth”? We may say several things about him as well.

A) The power of Satan expresses itself in false prophets in concrete, historical deception.

We must exercise care, once again, to identify this beast. He comes out of the earth. What does that mean? Some have suggested this means local opposition against Roman imperial opposition, because the Roman imperial opposition might come from across the sea, across the Mediterranean (the first beast), whereas the local opposition will just be in the local county, the local turf, so it’s out of the land.

Well, I don’t think that is part of apocalyptic metaphor, and in any case, there are all kinds of places in the Roman Empire where the Romans would not send troops by sea. They often sent their troops by land around the north and around the northeast corner. It demanded a tremendous fleet to send them across the sea. Besides, if there was some trouble in Macedonia or if there was some trouble in northern Italy, they didn’t use ships. They walked.

No. It doesn’t understand the apocalyptic imagery. I suspect this is primarily related to the fact that it’s a contrast with the sea. The sea is full of chaos. Do you remember the passage from Isaiah 57? “There is no peace for the wicked. The wicked churn up mud and mire.” There is chaos, so it’s an excellent image of overt, wicked hostility against the people of God.

Now this beast comes out of the earth which, unless you live in California, is stable. There is no image associated now with churning and instability. It seems so stable. In fact, the Old Testament sometimes linked Leviathan in the Abysses of the ocean and Behemoth who lives in the waste wilderness.

On top of that, this is simply a fulfillment of chapter 12. That is to say, the Devil is cast out of heaven to the earth and the sea. His beasts cover all of his territory, as it were. If, then, the sea speaks of violence and chaos and the earth apparent stability, this becomes an excellent genesis for this beast, because he is given not to overt opposition but to deception. That is what characterizes him.

This beast is the satanically inspired power to deceive men and women. Listen. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.” That is, the two horns do not here represent kingly authority but an image of gentleness and harmlessness.

Did not Jesus say, “Watch out for false prophets; they come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves,” in Matthew, chapter 7? This beast, though he looks like a lamb, speaks like a dragon. Not, that is, that he speaks with a loud voice and fire coming out of his nostrils.

No. He speaks like the Dragon’s mouthpiece. He comes to you, you see, as a lamb, and you think he is safe, he is gentle, but in fact, he is the Dragon’s mouthpiece. He speaks for Satan. He’s deceptive. In case there is any doubt about this interpretation, in fact, once again he is identified for us a little further on.

Chapter 16, verse 13: “Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs.” We won’t go into the frogs. “They came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast …” That’s the first beast. “… and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” The second beast is explicitly called the False Prophet.

Again, in chapter 19, verse 20. “But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf.” A clear allusion back to later verses in chapter 13. The same thing takes place in chapter 20, verse 10. In other words, the very terminology suggests deception. He is a false prophet. He seems to be good. He seems to be a lamb, but he’s actually articulating the Devil’s own lies.

B) The False Prophet serves Antichrist, who serves Satan, an unholy triumvirate.

Listen carefully to the language. Verse 12: “He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf [or, in his presence] and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.”

The first beast serves Satan (verse 4). The second beast serves the first beast. Do you see what’s going on? You have a triumvirate of powers. The Devil authorizes the first beast, and the second beast uses his power to give credence to the first beast who, thus, in fact, is speaking for the Devil. There is an unholy triumvirate, and anyone steeped in John’s thought knows there’s something very clearly parallel here to the Holy Trinity.

In John’s gospel, the Father sends the Son, and then Father and Son or just the Son sends the Spirit. The Spirit speaks so as to give glory to Christ. He speaks, taking the things of Christ and referring back to him and bringing him glory. Christ’s whole aim is that he might bring honor to his Father.

It is almost as if the Devil and his cohorts of wickedness ape God. Not an ontological trinity, but certainly an unholy triumvirate. In fact, that which opposes God often does so by trying to take God’s place, does it not? Satan may use quite different forms of evil to reinforce one another to achieve his main aim.

It’s almost a good cop-bad cop theme. You know how this works. Good cop. Bad cop. Some criminal is interrogated. One cop seems to be a bully and is going to threaten to punch out your lights, and the other cop is apparently placating him, softening him, keeping him quiet. “You just tell me, and this bad cop will go away.” The “bad cop” is the first beast. The “good cop” is the second beast. He comes in as a deceiver.

Satan sometimes will oppose the church in a bloodbath, and sometimes he’ll take on the church in deception. China has gone through a bloodbath. North America has gone through deception. Make no mistake, the second beast aims that we should serve the first beast, who is nothing other than Satan’s emissary.

In fact, the very expression antichrist is ambiguous. Antichrist may mean someone who opposes Christ, but antichrist may mean someone who tries to usurp his place, who stands in anti– him. That is, instead of him, demanding the allegiance that only Christ ought to receive. Look at the language. It is terrifying.

C) The False Prophet is full of deceptive power.

In verses 13 and 14, he apes Elijah, the forerunner of Jesus. We read, “He performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth.” There is no hint here this beast was unable to do them. There’s no hint that these are tricks. These are, by all tests, miracles. Did not Jesus himself say in Matthew, chapter 7, “Many will try to deceive you”?

“Many will come in my name and say, ‘Have we not cast out demons? Have we not done many wonderful things? Have we not prophesied?’ Then will I say, ‘Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.’ ” This does not mean there is no such thing as a miracle today. It doesn’t mean, either, that God can’t do miracles today.

What it does mean is that miracles prove nothing today, and in the ancient world, Apollonius of Tyana, for example, was part of an age in which there were all kinds of gimmicks to try to get the people to be deceived. The book of Acts tells us of Elymas, the sorcerer of Cyprus, in Acts, chapter 13. Apelles of Ascalon was in Rome at the time in the courts of Caligula doing all kinds of tricks and terrible stunts in order to prove he was a magician and a sorcerer.

We are in an age when those sorts of things are coming in for a rerun. Are they not? Verses 14b and 15: “He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.”

This might be a reference to some of those idols that were known in the ancient world to apparently speak. Ventriloquism was used. Sometimes there were little cubby holes for priests to hide inside. Sometimes it’s as deceptive as that. Did you see the exposure of the American evangelist Popoff on television? Did you see it? It was remarkable.

There was Popoff whose healing campaigns ran like this. When people came in, they signed little cards with their concerns so people would pray over those concerns. The cards were handed in. Popoff would stand before these vast crowds, and he would say, “The Spirit of God is telling me that a Mrs. Brown up there in that section (row 14, seat B) has a certain pain.” He would always get it right. “Would she come forward, please?” Then he’d lay hands on her. It seemed very impressive.

What the television network did was notice that Popoff had a hearing aid. Now a healer with a hearing aid is always a little worrisome in the first place, but what they suspected was it wasn’t a hearing aid but a radio receiver, so they went in there with a radio scanner. A radio scanner crosses all the reception waves until it locks onto the strongest signal.

They discovered Mrs. Popoff was taking these cards in and picking out ones that seemed like likely things to be cured and, then, noting carefully where those people sat. Then she’d radio in a little back room to her husband. “There’s a Mrs. Smith. She’s in section B, row 14. She says she wants prayer for her lumbago.” While this Popoff was saying he was hearing the voice of God, the scanner was picking up the voice of Mrs. Popoff. Eventually, the television show put the two together on the air. Popoff popped off.

It was very difficult to deny that kind of sheer, sheer hoodwinkery, but the overwhelming majority of those who went to Popoff were, in fact, simplistic believers wanting some touch from God, desperately ignorant biblically but wanting to get in touch with the Almighty. There is a kind of attitude that doesn’t believe enough; there is another kind of attitude that is so gullible it believes too much.

It is extremely important to recognize the power of deception is so difficult to perceive precisely because it seems all right. Does the Devil ever come along to you and say, “Go ahead. Commit adultery. Lie and cheat on your spouse. Shack up with some broad. Destroy your family. I mean, after all, everybody’s doing it. I know it’s wicked, but wickedness is fun.” Is that how the Devil comes to us? Of course not.

He comes to us like, “It really is sad that your spouse doesn’t properly understand you. If your spouse weren’t so bound up with the children or so bound up with his work, maybe he or she would be a little more gentle. Person X over here is just a good friend. That’s all. We all need friends, people to unload to, don’t we? You’re not doing anything wrong. Besides, God is the author of love. How can anything wicked seem so good? It refreshes my whole spirit.” Is that the way he comes to you?

In the area of doctrine, what’s the Devil going to say? “Here is a great big filthy lie! Go ahead! Teach it.” Of course not. He’s going to come to you and say, “Everybody gets something a little bit wrong. On this point, frankly, I think the pastor and everybody who has ever come before him is probably just a little bit wrong.

I mean, don’t you believe in the priesthood of all the believers? The priesthood of all the believers says that the pastor is no pope. I know I’ve only been a Christian for six months, but I have the Spirit the same as the pastor does, and we’re all supposed to read our Bibles. It seems to me the Spirit is telling me this is what this means.” The hardest people I ever deal with are six-month old Christians who think they know it all.

What deceives, then, in our age? That’s the question to ask. It is so easy to go back and look historically and see what deceived another age because hindsight is 20/20 or jolly close (20/40 anyway), but to be discerning in your own age … That’s what’s difficult, and many people think they are discerning and lay waste all around them.

While one group of evangelicals blissfully goes on its way as if everything is hunky dory and fine, there are other evangelicals who can’t see the Lord’s doing in anything. They’re only negative. They can’t talk about any Christian other than their own little group without saying something nasty and mean.

I remember once preaching at a large convention in Wales on the subject of revival. Wales, you know, has had a whole history of revival. One of the men came to me afterward and said quite honestly, “If God began the next revival in England I wouldn’t know what to do.” He was so angry. Deceived again. Somehow he thought it was his right as a Welshman to have revival before England.

What deceives in our age? May I take a couple of minutes to outline some things that deceive in our age? In no order of priority, first, strengthening naturalism. That is to say, an outlook that is purely materialistic at a philosophical level. You look at everything (the movements in history, science) from a naturalistic perspective.

As recently as the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt could say on national radio in one of his fireside chats, “Our problems, thank God, are only material.” Could you imagine Clinton saying, “Our problems, thank God, are only material,” or Bush or Reagan before him or any prime minister of Canada since long before Mackenzie King?

One hundred and fifty years ago it was impossible in either Canada or the United States to address national issues without thinking through questions of divine providence. Now that is the one thing to which you cannot make appeal, not in the public accounting of things, for the very simple reason that people don’t acknowledge divine providence.

You can’t get a PhD writing history and working out the providence of God in the historical event anymore. No where in the country could you do that, but 150 years ago, you couldn’t write anywhere in the country without doing it.

Secondly, the assumption of human goodness. More importantly, there is a rising emphasis on spirituality that is divorced from any biblical constraints. Spirituality is achieved by technique in various religious traditions: Catholic meditation techniques or Hindu techniques or Buddhist meditation. They all have something to teach us about spirituality.

Hundreds of books have poured off the presses in the last 15 years on the subject of spirituality. I finally got upset enough that I wrote an article called “When is Spirituality Spiritual?” Worldviews are at stake. There is rising biblical ignorance, and this in our culture, is of overwhelming significance. It might not be so important in Japan where they have other things that hold their society together in cohesiveness, but in our society it is critical.

In 1950 Gallup asked how many Americans had received no religious training in their youth. The answer was 6 percent. In 1989 he asked the same question, and the answer was 38 percent. That means none. Most of the people who make professions of faith in evangelicalism broadly do so out of churchy backgrounds or they’re related to people with churchy backgrounds, but the growing group in our society is of people who are so foundationally biblically ignorant that they don’t even know what the language is, what the categories are.

When Whitefield preached, he preached to people who were woefully ignorant biblically but were still brought up in a Judeo-Christian heritage. They believed there was a God who made them, they believed there was a man named Jesus who appeared in history, that he died, and rose again, and they believed at the end there was an accounting to be given. They believed at least that much, but this 38 percent (this two-fifths) now doesn’t believe that. Most of them haven’t heard of Moses, or if they have, it’s Cecil B. Demille’s film with Charlton Heston.

A friend of mine teaches grade five in a posh suburb in metro Chicago, so they’re 10 years old or so, and just in talking about right and wrong she happened to mention the word sin. Several hands went up. “Please, miss. What is sin?” When I preach evangelistically in a university setting nowadays, I assume going in that of the non-Christians present, two-thirds of them won’t know the Bible has two Testaments. In recent years, my estimate is low.

When you start addressing people like that, you cannot assume there is already a Judeo-Christian worldview to which you plug in a few more facts, explain substitutionary atonement, and make an appeal. You are in Acts 17 all over again (Paul in Athens), and you’re starting with the doctrine of God and the doctrine of creation and the nature of sin and providence and accounting and judgment and teleology and aseity, before Jesus is even introduced.

Otherwise, what you say about Jesus, quite frankly, won’t be understood the way you think you’re articulating it. New Age religions use words like truth, spirit, regeneration, and may even cite Jesus. It talks about freedom and guilt, and all of these words mean something very different from what you and I mean. They have none of the mental baggage we bring with us out of our knowledge of the Bible, which may not be all that great.

Out of this, then, has come philosophical pluralism, which on highly sophisticated grounds now argues for epistemological reasons … that is, for reasons bound up with how you know things … the one certainty is that you cannot be certain. The one truth is that there is no objective truth. Truth is language related. It is culture related. It is group related. It is truth for you or truth for your group or truth in your language, but it is not objective truth, and that we drink nowadays with our mother’s milk.

When you send your daughter off to university, she is not going to crack up in Biology 101. She may crack up in English 101 where she is introduced to radical hermeneutics, radical forms of interpretation and deconstruction. There she will be taught not, “Your religion is really quite stupid and narrow and ignorant.” She will not be taught that. She will be taught, “It’s fine, of course, for you, from the group from which you spring. That’s, I’m sure, a very helpful truth, but of course, other groups see things a different way, don’t they? And we can show …”

And they proceed to do so by very sophisticated means. “We can show, in fact, that truth is always relative to the understanding of the group. After all, no group, no human being is omniscient. We all speak out of our baggage. We all think and understand out of our baggage. We all look at things from a certain point of view. That’s your point of view, and we’re happy for you, but of course, there are other points of view. You wouldn’t want to deny that, would you? Are you going to say they’re wrong?”

Without ever having taken on a single reason for overturning the faith, the faith is relativised and its power is destroyed. I spend more time with university young people dealing with this one question than any other. It used to be 20 years ago, if I were speaking to a university crowd, I could say with all good conscience, “I know why some of you won’t close with Christ. It’s because you’re shacked up with your boyfriend, and you know it’s going to cost you that relationship. It’s a moral problem.”

I can’t say that anymore. Why? Because they’re not shacked up? Of course not. It’s because they don’t feel guilty about it. The Judeo-Christian culture has so pulverized the modern conscience that people (many of them) just do not feel guilty about that. In fact, people come and say, “I’d like to be a Christian, but somebody told me if I’m a Christian I have to stop shacking up with my boyfriend. Is that true?” It is another whole world from the world I inhabited as an undergraduate 30 years ago, and it has many, many, many similarities to ancient Rome. These are the deceptions we face.

D) The False Prophet demands conformity.

Verses 15 to 17: “He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.”

Here there is economic boycott. Totalitarian regimes have done that again and again. Have you not met Romanian and Czech and other pastors whose children could not go on to education, who got sacked from their jobs, who could not buy or sell and lived out on the handouts of God’s people just because they were pastors?

Yet, in the book as a whole, this, too, is an obvious parody of the sealing of the elect in Revelation 7 and repeated in Revelation 14. There all the people who are God’s have the mark of God on their foreheads so they will not suffer with the Beast. Now the beasts themselves put their marks on all of their people so as to exclude God’s people.

Do you see what is being said? You’re going to get stamped one way or the other. You’re either stamped with a seal of God so that you don’t suffer the final condemnation of the Beast and all of his progeny or you’re stamped with the Beast and you suffer, then, under his reign because you align yourself with the people of God. You have one stamp or the other.

The language derives, of course, from the prophet Ezekiel again where certain people are stamped so they will not be destroyed with Jerusalem when it falls. Now the same thing is being said here, but a particular detail is difficult, is it not?

E) The False Prophet commands loyalty.

Yes, he does. He demands loyalty. In the ancient world, it was loyalty to the imperial cult, but then what is this mark of the Beast? Verse 18: “This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.”

F) Identification of the False Prophet may be difficult.

In modern English, our numbers are different from our letters (A, B, C, D, E, and so forth, versus the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, and so forth) but in ancient Greek and in ancient Hebrew, they used the same cipher for both, so that alpha was simultaneously their A and their number 1 (they just put a little stroke beside it) and beta was simultaneously their B and their number 2, and so forth.

Then when you got up to 10, then you moved up by 10s (10, 20, 30, 40). Then when you got to the end of the alphabet, by which time you were in the 100s, then you put a mark on the other side of the digit, and you kept going through the alphabet again. What that meant, therefore, was with any word you could add up the numbers represented by the letters and any name, therefore, had a number. It’s called gematria.

In fact, you find graffiti like that in the ancient world. There’s a wonderful graffito that has been found. “I love her whose number is 545.” Those aren’t dimensions. That’s a name. You find gematria in the opening chapter of the New Testament. Have you noticed how the names are arranged in sequences of 14 … 14, 14, and 14? Then one is cut short. Then, when you look at the list very carefully, you discover three kings have been left out of one 14 to make it all work.

It’s done on purpose because, of course, in the ancient world when you said, “So and so is the father of someone,” it didn’t necessarily mean the father immediately. It could be the sire of or the grandfather of, so you could skip a couple of generations, and the author clearly did, in order to make it come out to 14, 14, 14, and he draws attention to it.

It’s from Abraham to David, David to the end of the Davidic line, the end of the Davidic line to the Son of David. What is the number of David? It’s four plus six plus four. David. Fourteen. A Jew would have picked that up like that. It seems strange to us, but it’s a way of symbolizing, again, that God is in control and he’s bringing about his history.

Clearly here, 666 is a gematriachal number. It’s the number of some person. “If this calls for wisdom, let him calculate the number of the beast.” But it has to be said that who John had in mind is far from certain. There have been many, many suggestions. Some have argued for Nero. Some have argued for Julius Caesar. In every case, you have to do something special. You have to use initials here or something.

For example, in the case of Domitian, you abbreviate the Greek form of the full Latin title of Domitian and it comes out. You have to do something slightly unbelievable to make it work. For Nero and Caesar, to do it you need the Hebrew transliteration of the Greek form of the Latin name and then it works out. As a result, people are not quite certain.

You can make many names match this if you’re careful. About 20 years ago, I read a learned article proving that 666 was Henry Kissinger. You give me 15 minutes and let me choose the language and the abbreviation and I bet you I could prove it’s Hillary Clinton. One needs to be very careful, because 666 could be representing a lot of things if you just go by gematria.

Others have argued 666 is the triangular number of 36. For those of you who are mathematicians, you know what I mean. For those of the rest of us mortals who aren’t, if 666 is the triangular number of 36, what it means is 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 plus 5 all the way to 36 adds up to 666. It does. The number 36 is the triangular number of 8. That is, 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 plus 5 all the way up to 8 gives you 36, and 8 is the number of the Antichrist. That is, he’s the eighth king in chapter 17. It’s clever, but you can do all kinds of things with mathematics.

Others have suggested the significance of this name is 666 and not 777. That is, he tries so hard to ape God and his perfections but he never makes it. He always falls short. If you push me to the wall, I will tell you I’m not sure, and from the second century on, no one has been sure except those who shouldn’t be, and I suspect God has arranged it that way.

The first readers, doubtless, made a precise identification. They knew John. They knew what was on his mind. They knew what was going on exactly when he wrote. We do not. But precisely because the beasts recur again and again and again and again in history in concrete manifestations, it may be better not to know. This calls for wisdom.

3. How God’s people are to respond.

In conclusion, let me ask this question. This is a depressing subject. I don’t know if you feel depressed by this chapter, but it is a depressing subject. I can hardly wait until tomorrow night. From an entirely biblical perspective, now, not just from this chapter but running through the Scripture now rapidly … How do you overcome deceit? How do you win over deceit?

I tell you frankly that after you have listed humility, seeking God’s face in prayer, the fellowship of the saints, the means of grace, and all the regular things you and I would put very quickly, if I had to put one thing down (just one thing), it would be that you must, I implore you … you must … steep your mind in the Word of God.

Have you not found Christians with no advanced training and not a very good ability to articulate much theology, but who have read their Bibles and read their Bibles and read their Bibles for years and years and years and somebody comes along with yet one more bright interpretation and their instincts just wave them off?

My father died less than two years ago. He was a church planter in French Canada. In the annals of pastors he was not by any public standards a great man. He never wrote a book. He never pastored a big church. He never witnessed revival. He was an acceptable expositor, but he never shook the world with fire. Moreover, he wasn’t a rigorous thinker. He was a careful student, but he had one of those picky minds that focused on little things. He’d spend all day working on a genitive. He had a picky mind rather than a broad theological mind.

Moreover, he felt himself a failure. Six months before he died he wrote in his journal, “I am so ashamed of all the sin that still clings to me. I do not seem to be able to break free. After all my years in Christian ministry, why am I not more holy?” He’d change his sentences from English to French as he was looking for the right word, back and forth, and then he quoted full, partly in English and partly in French:

Alas! and did my Savior bleed,

and did my Sovereign die!

Would he devote that sacred head

for sinners such as I?

Was it for crimes that I have done,

he groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

And love beyond degree!

I’ll tell you this about my father. He was steeped in Scripture. He was just saturated with Scripture. He just couldn’t think apart from Scripture. He may not have put it all together in the most sophisticated theology, but he was saturated with the Word of God, and in his later years after the fruit began to come in Quebec, by which time he was already 61 (he saw no substantial fruit until he was 61), he was viewed by many, many others as one of the grand old men of Quebec because of his kind of biblical knowledge.

Hosts of young men and young couples would come to him for advice on this or that or the other, and he would just pour out Scripture. He couldn’t think any other way. He died as one of the grand old men of Quebec without recognizing that’s what he was. Isn’t that wonderful?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not all called to be a Whitefield. We are not all called to be pastors. We are not all academics. Very few of us will be professional theologians, but all of God’s people are called to read and read and read God’s most Holy Word. Do you remember how the book of Psalms opens? It describes a righteous person negatively.

“Blessed is the man who does not walk according to the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful.” Then it describes him positively, and it does not reverse those procedures, then, as if to say, “Blessed, rather, is the man who walks in the counsel of the righteous and stands in the way of the holy and sits in the seat of the praiseful.”

It doesn’t say that. It just gives one criteria in the positive arena. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever it does prospers.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what we need is a holistic view of life and our society and heaven and hell. Hear this prayer written as a hymn in this century by one of the greatest living hymn writers today, Timothy Dudley-Smith.

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,

urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,

sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:

Lord for the years, we bring our thanks today.

Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,

speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,

teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us:

Lord of the word, receive your people’s praise.

Lord, for our land in this our generation,

spirits oppressed by pleasure, wealth and care:

for young and old, for commonwealth and nation,

Lord of our land, be pleased to hear our prayer.

Lord, for our world where men disown and doubt you,

loveless in strength, and comfortless in pain,

hungry and helpless, lost indeed without you:

Lord of the world, we pray that Christ may reign.

Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us,

self on the cross, and Christ upon the throne,

past put behind us, for the future take us:

Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Amen.