Fireworks!, Part 2

Never mind that on the authority of Scripture we've got a rapture ahead. Never mind that the planet we read earlier from Peter's epistle is reserved for fire, that mankind is reserved for judgment. Never mind the terror of God. Never mind the wrath of God that we've been studying from chapter 6 on into chapter 13. Never mind any of that. Human history is going somewhere wonderful.

It's not. Human history is going somewhere terrible and then wonderful. One of the goals of many cultures and societies is increasing and never-ending good. For example, the economy should steadily grow and not have setbacks.

The average lifespan should continually be getting longer. These things are good and I don't want to minimize them, but we need to temper our expectations with what God says. A day of great trouble is coming to this planet and we need to be spiritually prepared to face it.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davey is in a series from Revelation looking at the Antichrist and the reign of terror he will bring in the future. We're bringing you the conclusion to a lesson Stephen began yesterday called Fireworks. How will the world follow this false prophet? Why would they? Why would they follow the message of this one who says he is the true prophet? John's going to answer that. We've seen his partnership with the enemy, Satan, and his power. We've seen his passion and his purpose to glorify the Antichrist, but what is going to cause the world beyond a partnership and his passion? There have been prophets and they've been really passionate. What's going to cause the world to believe him? I want to show you then the answer in his performance.

Let me show you the fireworks. Look at verse 13 and answer the question. Verse 13 of chapter 13 he says, John says, here's the vision, he performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men. See John answers the question, why will the world follow him?

Well look at his performance. Look at his great signs, Samia, it's the same word used to speak of the apostles. Back in Acts chapter five where it talked about from the hands of the apostles came many signs and wonders, authenticating them as the true prophets, of course, of God. It's interesting to me that John uses the same word Samia here, only he adds that little word mega loss which gives us our word mega. Listen, the false prophet is performing mega signs. You haven't seen anything until you've seen his mega signs.

What is it? Well, the people are going to flock to him because he's making fire fall from heaven. You can imagine with all of the crowds that follow the so-called miracle workers of our generation and the healers of our world, you can imagine the influx of followers here. This prophet, listen, is not just healing bad blood pressure and bad knees and bad credit.

He's doing something observable, definable, demonstrable, provable, visible. Look at verse 13 again, he makes fire come down out of heaven. Who does that remind you of? The prophet Elijah. He could probably take people back to first Kings and say, look, you saw this here. This was proof that this prophet was the true prophet.

Now watch this. And he can call fire down from heaven, which will be even more remarkable. Perhaps you remember that event where Elijah gathered all the false prophets who followed after their gods, their primary God being Baal.

And Elijah said, I follow the one true and living God, Yahweh. So he gathered all of the children in Israel together and they all came to watch this contest and he said, let's build altars. You guys build your altar.

I'll build my altar. And then he poured water around the base of his because it was going to be more significant. It would lick up even the even the water and he said, OK, you guys go first.

And so they prayed all day, all morning, all afternoon, started cutting themselves to try to get attention from their God with their great passion. And Elijah's even mocking them, saying he's hard of hearing. He's a ways on a trip or whatever. He can't hear you. And finally said, OK, that's it.

You've had enough. And he prayed, prove that you are, in fact, the true God. Send fire from heaven and a fireball fell, licked up the sacrifice, licked up the water and all of Israel began to chant. That Lord is our Lord. He is God. He is the true and living God. And so this one will have that kind of precedent mimicking perhaps the great Elijah.

And we're told that the Messiah right will come and will be preceded by whom Elijah? He'll say I'm it. And I'll prove it. I've got the sign he had.

And what's interesting is that is the tense of this verb, the dramatic present means that he will do it over and over and over again. Did you like that? I'll do it again. Do you like that?

I'll I'll send it over there. Was that impressive? All those people sleeping back on the back row center there, piles of ashes. They're awake. I'm teasing.

They're really awake now. What? What? What?

It's not fair. You know, it struck me as I compared these two texts, first Kings 18 and this text that Elijah called on fire after praying, the false prophet doesn't even have to pray. The world has never seen such a visible demonstration of authenticity, power from God like that. Listen, this is no sleight of hand. This isn't smoke and mirrors. There's smoke, but no mirrors. This is not hocus pocus.

What a performance. This is literal fire hurtling downward from outer outer space. And he will do it over and over again to punctuate the reality that he is. We know deceiving the world, proving to the world that he represents the true God.

Follow him, the inner Christ. Perhaps this is speculation on my part, the false prophet will mimic the miracle of Pentecost when fire, the form of fire came in a little licking fire and it rested on the apostolic community and they spoke in unlearned languages, creating inaugurating the error of the church. And he says, maybe he'll do that with his lieutenants. And he will say, I've come to call a brand new people of God. It'll be amazing. These fireworks will be breathtaking.

Every news organization will carry the sights and the sounds of the crashing of this fireball coming to wherever he designates it come. Make no mistake, and I don't say this glibly, my friend, but make no mistake. The Mormon will forget Joseph Smith. The Muslim will forget Mohammed. The pseudo Christian will forget Christ. The Hindu will say, Krishna, who?

That's all. This is the prophet of the true and living God and we will follow him and they will raise their collective voices in our global chant. This God is the true God. Now remember, the false prophet isn't soliciting worship for himself, isn't pointing to himself. He's empowered by the end of Christ, by Satan, ultimately by God to point toward the one who was miraculously healed, the one who was the peace bringer, the one who claims to be the Messiah, the one who bears the wounds of his death event.

He will point to him. The apostle Paul has already warned the world in 2 Thessalonians 2, the one who's coming is in accord with the activity of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. The world wanted unity. The world wanted a one world government. They wanted a world united religion. They loved that.

They loved to talk about that. It's erudite. It's scholarly. It's sophisticated and surely you'd want to go along too, but they did not believe the truth of this book so as to be saved. Listen, every generation, in every generation there are false prophets. There are false miracle workers. I think the last hundred years of the church in America and our own history has set the table for this, for those who follow apart from the scriptures, the sign givers, the signs and wonders, the miracles, well that ever evaluating whether or not the word of God would say to pursue it or experience it. Experience is now trump doctrine. All somebody has to say is I experienced it.

Well, I, you know, I'm not really evaluating in the light of the word. I just, I just experienced it and I've had people tell me that they're going to heaven because they saw a light. There are people that tell me that they're going to heaven because they experienced this or that and the gospel that I present becomes offensive to them. The day will come when the world will set aside all other speculations and they will say we are following what we believe to be the true and living God. This should be a warning to us all because of the spirit of antichrist exists in every generation. He allows us proceeding the coming of the antichrist, so be alert, be discerning. This isn't all the false prophet, by the way, conjures up.

Notice even more fireworks, so to speak. Look at verse 14 and he deceives those who dwell on the earth that is the earth dwellers and believers because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, that is the antichrist, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. In other words, we're going to make a statue bearing his resemblance. This is a life bigger than life statue that, that, that pictures our great God. Now notice verse 15 and it was given to him, the false prophet, to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be, to be killed.

Now fire from heaven is amazing. Oh wow. But this performance is staggering. In fact, it's so staggering that many authors have come up with some way to explain it other than what it seems to be saying. Some suggest that maybe this is some kind of sleight of hand, maybe some kind of dark art, maybe this is a microphone hidden somewhere, maybe this is kind of like a Disney lifelike animal that moves and boy, it looks real and that was scary, but it really isn't. Well, there's nothing in this text to give us an easy answer, ladies and gentlemen, apart from what it just clearly says. Some commentators, good men, would say that since we're told in verse 15 that he was given breath, the word for breath is pneuma, and we're not told that he was given life, that's the Greek word zoe, both words by the way can refer to human life, but since it says pneuma and not zoe that maybe it wasn't life as we know it, maybe it's just that the false prophet made it seem like it was breathing.

I would like to believe that's the case. It's easier to believe, but the problem is that later on in verse 15, this colossal creature is not just breathing, he's what? He's speaking. In fact, he's delivering the sentence of death to everyone who does not follow the antichrist.

Keep in mind now that this is one of those things, this is one of the lying wonders more than likely that Paul is referring to that causes the world to believe the prophet is telling the truth. At this moment, you have this image taking a breath, speaking, calling for the execution of all who refuse to worship the antichrist, which then implies there's some sense of reason. There's the ability to form words. There's vocabulary. There's grammar.

There's dialect. He is communicating a decision and we're told that in verses 14 and 15, this is the image of the antichrist. This would be one more lying wonder, the statue coming to some form of life.

This is the desolation of the temple perhaps that Daniel was speaking of in Daniel 11 31. Many believe that this image will actually be placed in the holy of holies and that newly constructed tribulation temple. This will be the most blatant act of idolatry and blasphemy ever to hit the planet. And there he will perhaps stand in the holy of holies declaring the true God is the antichrist and the world will literally fall to their face in worship. The pilgrimages to this new Mecca will now begin, they'll commence as millions of followers from around the world come to worship this devilish image and in that worship, give their obesions and honor to the son of perdition, the antichrist. And there is this threat, we'll talk about it more in our next session, but there is this threat. There isn't a mention of a fiery furnace, although this seems reminiscent of Nebuchadnezzar's image and if you didn't bow down before it, you got thrown in the oven, right? But there is the sentence of execution just as a little threat that if you don't like our religion, you're in deep trouble.

But the fireworks evidently paid off. The world believes the signs and wonders. The majority of the human race has been duped. They have believed a false preacher who with his signs and wonders will ultimately lead the world to hell. What a tragedy, what an everlasting horror. But let me ask you this, how much of a tragedy do you think it is today for people to follow a lie, the God of their own understanding, some miracle worker, someone who pulls them away from God and his word and unto themselves?

How disturbed are you about that? I can tell you this brought great agony to the heart of Paul, Pastor Paul, who warned the elders in Ephesus. He said, watch out for wolves in sheep's clothing. He cried, he begged, please stay alert. They're gonna come up from among you, they're gonna speak twisted, distorted things to lead people astray. This was his agony. And it wasn't too long later that we read about that church in Ephesus.

They didn't stay alert because one of the letters sent to them says, you've lost your first love. You're about to lose your testimony. You've bought into your own delusions. So let me warn you, dear flock of God gathered here with this timeless caution.

Let me say it as clearly as I can. Whatever downplays the authority of the word of God should be rejected. Whatever downplays, discredits, denigrates the authority of the word of God and we can throw in sufficiency. And that's really another sermon. The sufficiency of scripture, whatever, whoever reject it, reject them.

So stay alert. Those who deny the authority of scripture are merely Paul wrote to the Corinthians blinded by the God of this world so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Brian McLaren, that emergent church leader I've quoted more than enough, co-authored a book recently with Tony Campolo, a sociologist, and together they denigrated so much of what we believe rather tragic expose that they will stand accountable for one day. They believe the Christians, you know, keep missing the point.

Well, listen to one of one of the points they think we're missing. And I quote, the theology that has this implicit threat of being left behind or of time running out is merely used by preachers for evangelistic effect. To the contrary, the history of the world is infused with the presence of God who is guiding the world toward becoming the kind of world God willed for it to be when it was created.

Human history is going somewhere wonderful. Never mind that on the authority of scripture we've got a rapture ahead, 1 Thessalonians 4. Never mind that the planet we read earlier from Peter's epistle is reserved for fire, that mankind is reserved for judgment. Never mind the terror of God. Never mind the wrath of God that we've been studying from chapter 6 on into chapter 13. Never mind any of that. Human history is going somewhere wonderful.

It's not. Human history is going somewhere terrible and then wonderful. They just skip that little point in between. They've labeled a bottle of poison peppermint. These guys are like that proverbial man who fell off the roof of a 10-story building.

And as he fell, he fell past an open third-story window and he was heard to say, this isn't all that bad. Eventually reality will collide with his delusion. One of the elders in our church sent me an article regarding an ad campaign in England. In fact, it's interesting. The British Humanist Association sort of played off of what happened in D.C. a little bit ago where they had these bus campaigns. Well, the British Humanist Association decided to make a statement about God or their lack of belief in God. And it was endorsed by the well-known atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins. They purchased large advertisement space on 800 British buses that ran this past month to show their disdain for God. Here's what the announcement said.

Stay alert. Listen, just listen to this announcement, and I quote, there's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

It backfired. There's probably no God. That's the same thing as saying there's probably a God. There's probably no God.

Stop worrying. I couldn't imagine, but what that unemployed atheist is doing who came up with this idea. There's probably no God. They weren't supposed to put the word probably in there.

That was a typo. I read how Christian campus organizations are taking advantage of it. Starting debates on campuses, already some have come to faith in Christ. Because if they're uncertain, well, let's give you our certainty.

We believe it based on the objective truth of God. But how ridiculous. There's probably no God.

Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. I grew up with three brothers. Three brothers, they were always into mischief. I can't tell you how many times my mother sent me outside that kitchen screen door to the porch where the big kind of bush tree was to pull off a switch and she'd take those leaves off it so she could give my brothers what they deserved. Somehow I got in the way.

I just got a switching too. But you know, we're always up to mischief. We were fairly close in age and how many times did we say is, you know, as we grew up before we started into some kind of mischief, it's okay, mom and dad are gone.

It would never work to say it's okay. Mom and dad probably are gone. Go check again, look out the window. Imagine that.

I mean, we were rebellious, but we weren't idiots. You know, make sure they're gone. Hey, go ahead and check out earlier. Boss probably isn't in his office. Go ahead and cheat on that test. The teacher's probably not looking.

Go ahead and steal that item. Those cameras up there probably aren't on. Does that lead you to certainty? No, it leads you to greater doubt and uncertainty. Are you kidding? We're not talking about a spanking.

We're not talking about taking a trip downtown in a police car. We're talking about eternity, heaven or hell. Here's the message. There is a God.

Believe in him and you never have to worry about standing before him and now you can enjoy your life. That's the message, amen? That's as simple as it gets, as simple as it gets. Let me close. You know, I get these emails, you're on the same email chain, aren't you?

So you probably got this one too. This was really, really interesting to me. The question was, and I thought it'd be a good conclusion as we apply this to our lives so that we are challenged to stay in the word, we are challenged to obey the word. It isn't just them out there that deny it, it's how about us in our lifestyles? Are we accepting it? Are we obeying it? The question was this. What if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phones?

How many of you got that, you saw that? What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets? What if we raced back home if we forgot it? What if we flipped through it several times a day? What if we used it to receive text messages?

What if we gave it to our kids as gifts in a multitude of colors? What if it became our GPS system of direction when we traveled? What if we used it in case of emergency? Unlike your cell phone, you never have to worry about being disconnected or dropped.

It has service anywhere on the planet. It occurred to me as I read this that the only difference in this analogy would be that when you came to church, we wouldn't tell you to turn it off. We tell you to turn it on. Wasn't that a good reminder today and a good way to end this lesson? We need to remain fully rooted and grounded in God's Word. We also need to renew our commitment to share the truth with others who need to hear it.

Unsaved men and women are facing a future that is grim. We have the hope that they need, and we need to share it. Here at Wisdom for the Heart, we want to equip you to shine as a light in your community. We have a pamphlet that explains the Gospel message in detail.

It's called God's Wisdom for Your Heart. We have a printed version available in our online store. You'll find us online at wisdomonline.org. We also have an online version, and you can find that on our smartphone app or on our website. On our phone app, click the button that says The Gospel. On our website, you'll find this in the About section. And as I said, we have printed copies that you can share.

Those are in our store. We can help you over the phone as well if you call us today. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE.

Numerically that's 866-482-4253. Call us any weekday and we can help you over the phone. In addition to being our daily Bible teacher, Stephen Davey is the pastor of Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, North Carolina. You can learn more about our ministry at wisdomonline.org. Wisdom publishes a monthly magazine called Heart to Heart. It features relevant articles from Stephen that will strengthen you in your walk with Christ. There's also a daily devotional guide that you can use to remain rooted and grounded in God's word every day. Heart to Heart magazine is a gift we send to all of our wisdom partners. If you're not one of our partners, you can sign up to receive the next three issues absolutely free. Sign up online or call us and join us for our question and answer broadcast tomorrow right here on Wisdom for the Heart. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.