Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #21 of Revelation, chapter 13, and I am going to be reading Revelation 13:11-12:

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

We are continuing in our study of the Book of Revelation.  We are going, verse by verse, and trying not to miss anything, go around anything or skip over anything.  We want to deal with each verse in the Bible.  That is our desire because this is the Word of God and whatever God has said is “good” and it is our desire to do the will of God.  So this is an excellent opportunity to learn the will of God when we go, verse by verse, through a Book.  The way God has written the Bible, especially a Book like Revelation, you end up going to many Books of the Bible as you compare Scripture with Scripture – one verse might direct us into several other books.  Certainly, as we go through each chapter of this Book, we will have touched on many other places in the Bible.

Revelation 13:11 speaks of “another beast coming up out of the earth.”  This follows what was said of the first beast, back in Revelation 13:1:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

That beast is Satan, who was loosed at the end of the church age and beginning of the Great Tribulation period.  He came up out of the depth, out of the bottomless pit.  If that first beast was Satan (and it was), then who was this other beast?  God moved the Apostle John to write, “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth.”  The second beast came out of the earth, not out of the sea.  Notice that the beast had “two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon,” and that is very helpful to us because when God loosed Satan at the beginning of the Great Tribulation period and the beginning of judgment on the churches, He allowed Satan to take a far greater degree of reign in the churches and in the world.  Satan had always infiltrated the churches and, occasionally, he would overcome a local church or an entire denomination and they would become a “synagogue of Satan,” given over to lies rather than the truth, and Satan would be worshipped there.  But Satan had never before been able to overcome 100% of all the churches and that was due to the fact that the Spirit of God was in the midst of the congregations, so God always kept some churches closer to the truth and He used those churches to bless the ministry of His Word. 

But, now at the time of the end, Satan had overcome all the churches – there is no exception.  There are not a few churches, or even one corporate church, anywhere in the world that was able to maintain their faithfulness because the Holy Spirit departed out of the midst of all churches.  Therefore, it did not matter how faithful a pastor or the elders might be, if the Holy Spirit is not there; immediately, the “faithful city,” as we read in Isaiah, chapter one, becomes a “harlot” because the churches could be considered a “faithful city” only due to the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As soon as He left, they were all, instantaneously, harlots.  In the past, some have said, “Well, you cannot know every church is apostate.  You have not visited every church in the world and, certainly, somewhere out there is a faithful church and you do not know it.  So this whole idea of the end of the church age is wrong because you cannot vouch for every church having gone astray.”  Well, you see, that idea is completely false.  It does not matter, even if there is a church that still follows basic doctrines that are faithful; without the Holy Spirit, in the eyes of God, that church has gone apostate and has become like a harlot, because the “man” that God is looking for in regard to determining faithfulness is the Lord Jesus.  If He does not see Christ, then He does not see a faithful church and this is exactly what God is addressing, in speaking of the New Testament churches, in Jeremiah 5:1:

Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.

You can go throughout the whole world and look at every church in the world – whether Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Catholics, Independents, Congregationalists or house churches – and try to “find a man” (Christ) and God says He will pardon that church, because  God knows you will not find that “man.”  You will not find the Lord Jesus.  Some people point to their pastor, but their pastor is not the “man” that would cause God to pardon a church and lift His hand of wrath from that congregation.  It is only Christ that can make God repent, in a sense, and turn back from pouring out His fury. 

Again, it says in Revelation 13:11: 

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb…

This helps us to identify this beast, in particular.  The focus of this beast that comes up out of the earth is going to be on the churches and congregations.  First, in a general sense, God speaks of Satan, who was loosed, as the Lord has taken the key to the bottomless pit and opened it.  He has loosed Satan for the “little season” at the time of the end; the “little season” identifies with the Great Tribulation.  Satan has come up out of the depths, picturing that bottomless pit, and he is taking his seat to rule in the world in a far greater way than ever before and in the churches. 

But, now, with this “other beast,” God is going to focus our attention exclusively on what will happen to the churches after the beast (Satan) is loosed and Satan has been granted complete reign over all the churches of the world.  Therefore, this beast has “two horns like a lamb,” because the Bible refers to Jesus as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world,” and Satan comes looking like Christ.  He tries to be an imposter to deceive others, by taking the Word in his mouth (through his emissaries) and by preaching the Word of God, getting as close as possible to the truth, but adding error in order to deceive.  We read in 2Corinthians 11:13:

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

Now how would someone transform himself into an apostle of Christ?  Well, first of all, you accept him, or you believe in him, or you walk down the aisle; you say the Sinner’s Prayer and you get baptized and then you profess you are new creature – you are a believer and you have accepted Christ and you are baptized.  You begin to attend the church and you partake of the Lord’s Table and you are a faithful, attending member; you give your offering regularly and you are “in good” with the pastor who thinks, “This man has had a dramatic change in his life.”  You start to be in individual the congregation looks to for guidance and leadership and, soon, you are a deacon; then not long after that, you are an elder and you are in a position of authority in that church.  The only problem is that you never became saved, because the true Gospel does not permit a man to do any “work” to get yourself changed.  Therefore, “accepting Christ” never saved a single soul; walking down an aisle never benefited anyone spiritually; saying the Sinner’s Prayer may have made someone feel better, but it never saved a sinner; and being baptized with water (while a proper thing to do during the church age as a sign of baptism by the Holy Spirit) is meaningless; it is simply a sign of what God does when He truly saves someone.  He washes away their sins and water baptism never washed anyone’s sins.  Partaking of the Lord’s Table has never imparted the least bit of grace to anyone that has eaten the bread or drank the grape juice; it was just another sign to “remember” what the Lord Jesus had done. 

None of these things can save a soul, but they are able to deceive the congregation and even deceive the person himself into thinking, “Now I am saved.  Now I am a child of God and now I am an apostle of the Lord Jesus.  (An apostle means “one that is sent.”)  Now I am a Christian and I am going to live for ever.  I am going to heaven.  Let me get involved in the operation of the church.”  That is one of the ways (and it has happened thousands, upon thousands of times in churches in this country and across the world) that unsaved men have entered into the churches and worked their way up in the church.  That is what men do in the world – you start at a job and you look for promotion; or, you go to school and you look to graduate from one grade to the next.  In the churches, you look to be elevated to positions of authority and, after a while, if it is not offered, you might leave and go to another church.  The churches recognize that and they say, “Well, he has done his time and let us put him in a position of deacon or elder.” 

In thousands, upon thousands of cases (and this number may be understated because there are numerous positions like deacons, elders and pastors and other positions above those), unsaved and unregenerate men and women have entered into those posts and they are nothing but “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.”  They transformed themselves – God did not do the transformation; God did not give them a new heart or new spirit; God did not cleanse them from sin.  So it has all been done “of themselves” and based on their own beliefs and their own understanding and, yet, it is all a lie.  It is all a big, fat lie, starting with the lie that they have become saved.   Not only are they in the church as a member of the congregation, with their family, but they are now ruling in the church.  If it is a church that teaches a “free will gospel” or that teach “works” plus “grace,” and, perhaps, all the deacons are unsaved men and all the elders are unsaved and the pastor is an unsaved man.  Yet, they are the ones making the decisions the corporate church is charting in order to “sail to heaven.”   They are the ones determining doctrine, what is “right” and what is “wrong” and “good” and “evil,” as far as the Word of God is concerned, but they had never become saved. 

This is how Satan entered into the churches all during the church age, but especially at the time of the end.  Once the Holy Spirit came out of the midst, this situation in the churches worsened; it was heightened in as negative a way as could be possible, until the point where all the corporate churches and all their leadership was totally apostate.  We can say this because the Bible says the church age is over and God commanded His people to come out.  There was a “time” for leaving the churches and now even that time is past because the day of salvation is ended; the Latter Rain has ceased to fall and God has now brought judgment on the world.  So all that remain in the churches and congregations were “as tares bundled for the burning” of Judgment Day.  So the leadership is false apostles and they are individuals that transform themselves into the apostles of Christ. 

Then it goes on to say in 2Corinthians 11:14:

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Satan himself is transformed or changed into an “angel of light.”  You know, that picture people have in their minds (of the Devil) and you see it around Halloween and the kids are dressed up like the Devil.  How do they dress?  They dress in a red cape, with red horns and a sinister-looking mustache and beard and they carry a pitchfork.  There is the picture of Satan, the world says, and that is about as far as you can get from the truth.  First of all, in reality Satan is a spirit being, so you cannot draw pictures of him like that.  We cannot see spirit beings and we cannot really describe them because they are spirits.  But more than that, Satan is constantly trying to be like God.  Remember, it says in 2Thessalonians 2:4:

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.

And God is “light.”  God is like the sun and shines with a brilliance and the Word of God is “light.”  The Lord Jesus Christ, who is eternal God, is Light.  So Satan transforms himself into “an angel of light.”  He tries to appear as Christ appears and that is why we see churches develop doctrines that are not evil, villainous, despicable and ugly, such as the doctrines of the end of the church age or the end of salvation, where God has shut the door of heaven and is not saving people any more.  They call those doctrines of the devil.  People make that kind of mistake, just like they make the mistake of thinking that Satan looks like someone with a red cape and horns and a pitchfork – easily recognizable – but that is not so. 

And even though true, faithful doctrines of the Bible may sound like what some people think would be of Satan, yet, they are true and faithful and of God.  It is the “sweet sounding” and the “smooth and pleasing” doctrines that are actually from Satan.  You can know a doctrine of Satan because it is a lie and the doctrines of Christ are the truth, so the doctrine of Satan that the churches espouse is that “Christ died for everyone.  He died for the whole world.”  Then they point to a Scripture or two, and they say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”  And, they think, there is the evidence, but it does not harmonize with everything else in the Bible, so that should have been an indicator that their conclusion was not true.  It is erroneous and they have come to a wrong conclusion.  It is a lie. 

Another way to quickly recognize this doctrine is false would be that if Jesus died for everyone, then it means He paid for the sins of everyone, so why is everyone not saved?  Of course, they try to get around that, but it becomes obvious that their doctrine is way off base and it is a complete and total lie.  Yet, it sounds so good and wonderful, if it were true: God loves everyone; Jesus died for all.  It is just so comforting, how can it then be wrong?  But that is how Satan comes – as an angel of light.  He is very kind, is he not?  Is that not “good” of Satan to take salvation that God limits only to the elect and make it much more generous and much more giving?  So Satan expands it to include everybody and that seems like a much more loving and kind thing to do.  But what is the problem?  The problem is that it is not true.  It is not true, no matter how loving, kind and generous it may sound; or how inclusive it sounds when it claims that everyone is saved.  But we cannot get around the hard truth that it is not being true to the Bible.  God did not save everyone.  Christ did not die for everyone.  Christ died for a specific group of people that the Bible calls the elect.  Even though that sounds harsh and not so loving and so kind as the other doctrine, yet, it is the truth. 

Would you rather have the lie that pleases your ears and gives you a warm feeling?  “Yes, that is my idea of a God.  He died for all.”  Or, would you rather hear the straight truth from the Bible?  And that is always what God tells us when He opens up doctrine to us.  He tells us the truth.  Is it often difficult?  Yes.  Is it hard in some ways?  Yes.  And, perhaps, we do not fully understand why God did it this way and, yet, it is the truth.  That is the nature of truth in the Bible.  Truth is often made to sound like a lie by Satan and the lie of Satan is always packaged as the truth.