Important Takeaways:

• Technology Platform:
  • We often lose sight that our modern conveniences also lay the ground work for a “One-World Everything” scenario, which is how Antichrist will come to power.”
  • He will be seen everywhere, and his words will be understood in every language. (Note: A counterargument can be made for how we can also “go global” with the Gospel in a way that hasn’t been possible before. We realize this. Our aim in this illustration is not to preach against the tools, but to discuss how the evil messenger of the End Times will exploit them.)
• Vulnerability Platform:
  • Right now, COVID-19 and a string of other upsets through 2020 produced a global desperation for leaders to take us “back to normal” and “repair our cities.” The devastation on the earth in the End Times will be so overwhelming that the fragility of human life will cause people of all walks of life—“small and great, rich and poor, free and bond”—to cooperate with an answer man out of panic, impulse, and fear (Revelation 13:16).
  • When extreme tragedy hits, nonreligious people suddenly get very religious, very fast (9/11 is a major example of this), learning for themselves that the “God-shaped hole in everyone” that the Church talks about is real. When adherents of various faiths are shown the famous miracle worker who “is the one and only God over all world religions,” as he will claim to be, they’ll turn to him for answers to the natural calamities occurring all over the planet. The populations of the world will feel the instability and vulnerability of humanity and vote for, support, follow, and usher in any man who can effectively prove that his political and religious ideas will unite humanity in responding to these catastrophic End-Time events (Matthew 24:11). This moment in time is what Paul described in 2 Thessalonians 2:3: “The apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed” (NASB).
• The Day All Religions Are Destroyed:
  • Scholars and theologians have long acknowledged that the Harlot of Revelation represents both: a) the city of Babylon…and b) false (pagan) religions of the world
  • …throughout the Bible, when we read that “woman” (God’s people) is unfaithful to God, “she” is a “harlot,” like Gomer, the adulteress God told the prophet Hosea to marry as a symbol of the Israelites’ idolatrous spiritual infidelity (Hosea 1:2ff). Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul clearly demonstrated that God will not “share” His people with the “harlot” called false religion.
  • Therefore, the Harlot of the End Times is understandably interpreted to represent “false religion” and the unholy alliance that false religion has with the “kings” of the One-World Government (Revelation 17:1–2). Upon her very forehead is “a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” (Revelation 17:5).
  • In the beginning, as the Great Tribulation begins to unfold for the first three and a half years…[Daniel 7:25; 12:7; Revelation 12:14]), the Harlot is perched atop the Beast, riding him like a steed
  • Many scholars interpret the woman to be in complete control over the Beast, as if to suggest that Antichrist is not yet powerful enough to take over. Others believe that, due to her seemingly instant downfall, Antichrist will have been strong enough to devour her all along but chooses instead to take advantage of her ability to draw people into false religion…
  • When the Beast is through with the Harlot—when Antichrist has successfully built a “peaceful,” “benevolent” rule with the help of all the “beautiful” religions and philanthropic economics she represents—he will “hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire” (Revelation 17:16) in the second “forty-two-month” (or three-and-a-half year) time slot of his command.
  • Antichrist, in this moment, will “be God,” or so the globe will acknowledge, and it will be as if all the religions of the world from the beginning of time never existed.
• Woe to Western Laodicea!
  • Why are we railing about Western Christianity, specifically?
  • It’s because we are the world’s center for scriptural training that we are held more accountable for honoring the true Gospel message than are the other geographical areas of the world…and the Word agrees with this conclusion: “But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48).
  • Laodicea was another site of extreme cultural prosperity. Its resident Christians were so spoiled to “the good life” that they overlooked their true responsibilities and were found by their Lord to be spiritually empty (Revelation 3:14–22). To them, following Christ was a popular lifestyle or trend, but where it counted, they didn’t prioritize the Gospel as they had been commissioned. Consider what Christ says to them: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing!’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17; NIV). They were blind to their own spiritual bankruptcy.
  • Fast forward to the book of Revelation and the Laodiceans’ Ephraim-esque reliance on the comforts of their own routines, which propagated a festering apathy in the matter of the Gospel, making them into a then-modern Ephraim. This, the Laodicean compromise, “made their witness to Christ impotent in its effect…they were on the verge of being considered an unbelieving community (cf. also [Revelation] 2:5; 3:1–3), no different from the rest of the pagan world.”
  • Both Ephraim and Laodicea booted the God of the Bible out of their club and raised up a pagan central focus that misdirected their God-appointed purpose—Ephraim to Jeroboam’s calf-worship and Ahab/Jezebel’s Baal-worship, and Laodicea to Roman emperor-worship. Not surprisingly, both were also destroyed—Ephraim to the hands of Assyria and Laodicea to a terrible earthquake.
  • We cannot dine at the same table with Christ and with demons (1 Corinthians 10:21)

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