Good evening, everyone, and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #6 of Revelation, chapter 13, and we are going to be reading Revelation 13:3:
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
In our last study we were discussing the “heads” of Satan and how they represent different periods of his rule, granted to him by God due to his conquest over man in the Garden of Eden.
We saw that “one of his heads as it were wounded to death,” and this refers to the deadly blow given by Christ at the cross, when Satan was bound for a figurative “thousand years,” the duration of the entire New Testament church age, which actually worked out to 1,955 years, from 33AD to 1988.
In this chapter, the beast is now coming up out of the sea, our out of the “deep,” which is a word that is also translated as “bottomless pit.” He is coming up out of that condition that Christ had cast him into, which had prevented Satan from snatching away the Word of God, as God was establishing the churches and congregations of the world. More than that, God was establishing His Word as each church carried the Word of God and God was bringing His Word to the darkness of this earth. Satan was powerless to prevent it, until he was loosed. Let us look at that, again, in Revelation 20:7:
And when the thousand years are expired…
Again, the “thousand years” points to the completeness of whatever is in view and, in this case, it is the completeness of Satan’s binding, which would have been for the entire church age.
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Now something has dramatically changed. Satan had not been able to deceive the nations to the degree of preventing the establishment of the churches, the going forth of God’s Word into the world and the salvation of the “firstfruits.” Satan could not hinder any of that, but now the season of the “firstfruits” was completed and the (figurative) “144,000” had all become saved. God had a timetable to follow and now He would begin the judgment on the churches, the Great Tribulation period and the time of the end. So Satan was loosed precisely at the point at which God intended to judge the churches and congregations of the world because Satan will be that instrument of judgment in the hand of God; God is the one that loosed him and Satan, predictably, went against the camp of the saints, the churches, immediately. Throughout history he had partial success, for instance, in turning a particular church into the “synagogue of Satan,” a place of false worship. He could, perhaps, turn an entire denomination, but the church body as a whole he could never defeat because the Lord Jesus was in the midst of the churches, preventing him from overcoming the churches completely. That was the case until the point in time which we can pinpoint precisely as May 21, 1988, the 13,000th year of earth’s history. That is the point when the church age ended. That is the beginning point of the Great Tribulation when the 2,300 evening mornings would commence and the 23-year Great Tribulation period got under way. Now there was a drastic change in the churches and in the world, unlike anything before it. Satan, who was bound, was loosed and notice what it says in Revelation 13:3:
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
They realized something had changed. Of course, the world always did wickedly and unsaved men have always lusted after sin; they have always desired to do evil all through history. That is their nature. The heart of man has always been desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Yet, when we look back at the history of the world, we are amazed to see a certain level of morality that the nations maintained. Just a few decades ago there were laws in this country against opening a business on Sunday; there was respect given to the churches and to pastors as “men of the cloth.” There was certainly something that was preventing mankind from going after his evil desires to the fullest extent. The Bible explains why this was, in 2Thessalonians 2:3-7:
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
That last verse is a mysterious sounding verse as it speaks of “the mystery of iniquity,” and, of course, no one had ever previously understood this, but due to our superior vantage point of living in the Day of Judgment, we can know exactly what God is referring to in this verse. The “mystery of iniquity” was that men were desperately wicked and they had an evil heart of stone. God describes the nature and character of men in many places in the Bible; there is nothing good that God says about the sinner. The mystery was that society still functioned and there were towns and cities and even nations that followed the law.
You know, today we have really lost sight of this. We have newspapers and the nightly news on TV that informs us of all sorts of acts of man’s inhumanity to man: murders, robberies, and all sorts of sexual immorality and every kind of evil possible. But this was not always the case, if we go back a few decades, or back a hundred years or two hundred years. Yes, there were acts of murder and some evil things, but not to the incredible degree we have now. There was not this overwhelming wickedness that had overtaken the earth. Men would have been shocked at the evil things we commonly hear about today and it does not even “register with us” any more, because it is just another act of evil and we have lost the ability to be shocked by it, but men of previous generations would have been horrified. They would have been incredulous and they would not understand how these things can be.
If we could go back to the time of the Civil War, for example, or the Revolutionary War when this country was being established, and if we could bring these men forward to our day and let them walk down our streets and see our society and the things the people are doing today, you can be sure there would be genuine shock. How could things have deteriorated and fallen away to the degree they have?
But the “mystery” is why they were not just as wicked and evil? They certainly had the “heart” for it. The answer is that God’s Spirit worked in the world to restrain sin and that is the “mystery of iniquity,” as it says in 2Thessalonians 2:7: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” It was already working in the first century AD and it worsened down through history. It did not mean there could not have been an individual mass murderer, for example. But in the olden times when God was restraining sin, the mass murderers would have been “few and far between.” That was why they were so remembered because it was not typical, but today we have a mass murder in practically every large city and, sometimes, even more than one. You see, there has been an incredible increase in this type of thing. I do not know what the percentages are, but it must be astronomical. Yes, “Sodom and Gomorrah” was a wicked city of old, but now the world is full of cities like “Sodom and Gomorrah.” It says in 2Thessalonians 2:7:
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
The word “letteth” or “let” means to “hold back.” It is in italics, but it is there to help us. It means that “he who now holds back, will hold back until he be taken out of the way.” That is why the churches have lost sight of truth to the degree they have, but it is also true of the world. I will not say that it is not being restrained to some degree, even though the language of the Bible says that “he be taken out of the way.” The Bible does not say he is taken out of the way 99%, but it simply says “he is taken out of the way.” Of course, we understand that we have been plumbing the depths of wickedness, but we have not reached the bottom because there is always more and more evil. Evil seems to be unlimited as men “wax worse and worse” in their evil deeds, but I think God is still maintaining a certain semblance of order in the nations so the world can function.
But as far as how God operated in recent centuries past, Satan was bound in all the nations of the world and this is why we can look back fondly and say it was a “kinder, gentler time.” It is not because of technology and modern advances in the world that these days are so evil by comparison, but it is because Satan was bound from the 33 AD until 1988. But then he was loosed and from 1988 to 2011 he was given incredible ability to rule once again; he was given power over the nations and over the churches and we see the results of that. This world we live in and all the things we hear about are a testimony to the truthfulness and accuracy of the Bible in pinpointing the time of the end. The Bible indicates we have reached the time of the end and the judgment began on the house of God in 1988 and the Great Tribulation began at that time and we have been living in that kind of world for some 25+ years. The world is getting worse and worse and the churches are getting worse and worse and that is in accord with what we have learned in the Bible.
Let us go back to Revelation 13:3:
…and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
The Greek word translated as “wondered” is Strong’s #2296 and it is an interesting word. It is found in Matthew 8:25-27:
And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish. And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!
The word “marveled” is the same Greek word that is translated as “wondered.” You can imagine this storm at sea and then the Lord Jesus arose and He rebuked the wind and the sea. That would be astonishing. That would be amazing. How could He do that? It leaves the witnesses to this feat “marveling” and “wondering” at what they saw.
It says in Matthew 9:8:
But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
This refers to the man who had the palsy and Jesus had said to him, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” Then certain of the scribes said within themselves, “This man blasphemeth.” Then Jesus said, “For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” Of course, the answer to that question is that it is much easier to say, “Arise, and walk,” because in order for Jesus to say, “Thy sins be forgiven,” Christ would have had to give up His life for that person from the foundation of the world. To heal someone of a physical ailment did not require Christ to die, so it was much easier to say, “Arise, and walk.” In other words, Jesus did the hardest thing first by forgiving this person’s sins. Of course, that did not go over well with the scribes and the Pharisees, so Christ did the easier thing in order to prove that He could do the other. So Christ said, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” Then it says in Matthew 9:7-8:
And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
You see, this was a miracle and this was something spectacular and completely out of the ordinary. It was not typical for a man who had palsy to rise up and walk just because another man told him to do so. This was why the people marveled. It also says in Matthew 9:32-33:
As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil. And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel.
You see, that which is a miracle does not follow “basic laws” that govern this world – a law that says that if you walk on water, you will sink, or a law that says that when a storm arises a man cannot speak and quiet the storm, or a law that says that those that have palsy, or that are blind, deaf, or dumb, or that are lepers, or that are dead normally cannot be changed. The normal laws that God has established dictate that some that are sick can, perhaps, become better with medicine, but they cannot become better just by wishing or hoping it to be so. And, certainly, you cannot speak and make someone better or touch someone and make them well. You cannot do these things, so these things were miracles and they said, “It was never so seen in Israel.” Therefore, they “marveled,” and this is the word God uses to express the wonderment of the world at Satan, as it says in our verse in Revelation 13:3:
…and all the world wondered after the beast.
They “marveled” after the beast. They had never seen this before. The hearts of men had previously been restrained by God and they were “held back” from committing greater evil and descending into the depths of wickedness that potentially existed. Somehow, the “mystery of iniquity” was held back, but now the “deadly wound” of the beast is healed and Satan is loosed. We thought he had been put down at the cross and the Lord Jesus Christ had won the victory and that war was settled and the church was going forth, and it appeared to be triumphant as the Word of God went from nation to nation. But now things have suddenly changed; things are different. Now the tendency toward evil is being fulfilled. The inward wicked desires of men are surfacing and men are able to do even more of the things they have always wanted to do and to do more of the things they have lusted to do. There does not seem to be any holding back. They can speak evil of God’s church. They can speak evil of God, of His tabernacle and of those in heaven. They speak evil and there is no harm. What has changed? Lord willing, when we return in our next study, we will continue looking at this dramatic shift and change in the world and in the churches that has come about in these last days of earth’s existence.