Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
666.
You know the number.
You've seen the documentaries.
Over the last 50 years, thatnumber has been pinned on
barcodes, social securitynumbers, credit cards,
microchips, vaccines, and atleast four American presidents.
Now, here's where it comes from.
If you open up your Bibles toRevelation chapter 13, verse 18,
(00:24):
this is literally what it says.
This calls for wisdom.
Let the one who hasunderstanding calculate the
number of the beast, for it isthe number of a man, and his
number is 666.
Now read that again.
This is what it says.
(00:44):
Let the one who hasunderstanding calculate it.
Friend, that's not writing orwarning somebody about a distant
future.
That's a riddle.
And John hands it to sevenchurches, fully expecting that
somebody in the room is going towork it out before the reading's
finished.
So today I'm going to show youhow they solved it.
(01:07):
I'm going to show you whythere's an ancient manuscript,
okay, that says 616 instead of666, and why that variant, which
ought to be a problem, isactually the best evidence we
have for what that number means.
And then I'm going to dosomething that you might not
expect.
I'm going to tell you why I'mnot going to name the beast for
(01:28):
you today.
Not because I'm scared to, butbecause I think naming is the
trap.
Okay.
So let's jump into this.
Okay, real quick before we jumpin, I want to tell you about a
(01:49):
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This is a book that I wrote backin 2023 where I took a lot of
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(02:09):
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David.
I talked to you in this bookabout the compromised
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(02:30):
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Guys, it would be greatlyappreciated.
(02:52):
You're supporting our ministry,and I know the book's going to
be a blessing to you.
Before we touch chapter 13, wehave to go back up one chapter
because if you start at 13,you're going to spend the whole
hour looking at the wrongcharacter.
So go back to Revelation chapter12, actually starting in verse
(03:12):
one.
And this is what it says and agreat sign appeared in heaven, a
woman clothed with the sun andwith the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of 12stars.
So I want you to look at thissun, moon, 12 stars.
Well, friend, if you know theBible at all, you can go back to
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Genesis chapter 37.
This is literally speaking toJoseph's dream.
The sun and the moon and the 11stars are bowing down.
That's the family.
That's Israel.
Okay.
So this is the covenant people.
And she's giving birth to theMessiah.
And then there's a dragonstanding in front of her,
(03:55):
waiting to devour the child themoment it's born.
So now here's the question:
Who's the dragon? (03:59):
undefined
Well, you don't have to guess.
Look at verse 9, okay?
And it says, and the greatdragon was thrown down, that
ancient serpent who is calledthe devil in Satan, the deceiver
of the world.
Okay.
So he just tells you no decodinghere, no chart, no gamatria.
(04:24):
When John wants you to becertain, and I've said this
before in this series, he saysit out loud.
So I want you to hold thisbecause it really reorganizes
the whole chapter that you'reabout to read.
See, the beast in chapter 13 isnot the top of the
organizational chart.
Okay.
The beast comes up out of thesea, and the first thing that it
(04:45):
does in verse 2 is listen tothis, is receive its power and
its throne from the dragon.
Okay.
Now listen to this.
Every organization has twopeople.
There's the one whose name is onthe door and whose face is on
the billboard.
And then there are the one,there's the one who actually
decides what's going to happen.
(05:06):
And if you spend all of yourenergy fighting the guy on the
billboard, you can win.
You can absolutely take him downand discover that nothing
changed because he was never theone making the calls.
He was just the guy out front.
So I want to tell you guys rightnow, the beast is not the
villain of Revelation.
(05:27):
The beast is an employee of thegreat villain.
And one more verse before wemove on, because everything else
gets answered by it, um, ischapter 12, verse 11.
Okay, so if you go into chapter12, verse 11, it says, And they
have conquered him by the bloodof the Lamb and by the word of
their testimony, and they lovenot their lives even unto death.
(05:51):
Okay.
Now I want you to flag that andwrite it down because we're
going to come back at the end.
And when we do, it's going to bethe entire answer to everything
this chapter is about to throwat you.
Okay.
Now, now let's step into chapter13, verse 1.
Okay.
This is what chapter 13, verse 1says.
It says, And I saw a beastrising up out of the sea with 10
(06:12):
horns and seven heads.
And the beast that I saw waslike a leopard, its feet was
like a bear's, and its mouth waslike a lion's mouth.
Okay.
So we've got some animals here.
We've got a leopard, we've got abear, we've got a lion.
Now, if you have the key that wethat I gave you in week one, you
already know where we are.
(06:33):
You ready?
Daniel chapter seven.
Daniel sees four beasts comingout of the sea: a lion, a bear,
a leopard, and guess what?
Listen, and a fourth one soterrible he doesn't even have an
animal for it.
So there's four beasts, andthose four beasts represent four
kingdoms.
So John takes Daniel's four andthen he welds them into one.
(06:56):
Okay.
Now, I'm gonna give you anillustration of what's happening
here.
There's this thing thatphotographers do where they take
a stack of portraits and theylayer them on top of each other
until you get one face.
And that face that comes outisn't any of the individual
people, it's all of them atonce.
It's the type.
(07:16):
You look at it and you're notlooking at a person, you're
looking at what they all have incommon.
See, friend, that's the beast.
John isn't describing an animal.
He isn't describing one man.
He's showing you every empirethat Daniel ever saw layered
into one being, into one face.
And notice where it comes from.
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This beast comes up from thesea.
So in the Hebrew imagery, thesea is chaos, the deep, the
churning, the unstable,dangerous place.
Empires come up out of chaos.
So I want you to keep that inyour pocket because next week we
get into Revelation 21, and thevery first thing it says is the
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sea was no more.
Okay.
This is really powerful, man.
I I wish I would have known thiswhen I first was born again
because Revelation scared themess out of me.
And now as I begin to read this,there's so much understanding to
it.
So now, okay, two details thatalmost everybody reads straight
past.
Okay.
One is in verse five, talkingabout the number 42 months.
(08:23):
Now, this is big.
42 months is three and a halfyears.
It's the same figure as the 1260days elsewhere in this book.
And it's the same as Daniel'stime, times, and a half of time.
Okay.
And here's what it's made of.
Okay, we all know that seven inthe scripture, in the Bible's
number, um, in biblicalnumerology, seven is for
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completeness, for wholeness, forthe finished thing.
Okay.
So what does three and a halfmean?
Well, three and a half is sevenbroken in half.
So it's not a calendar, it'sreally a way of saying two
things at once.
So what John is saying is thisis real suffering, but this is
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not the whole story.
So it's a broken seven, cut off,incomplete by design.
So 42 months isn't a countdown.
It's God's way of saying this isreal and it is not forever.
Okay.
Second point, and this is thisone's really like buried in the
grammar.
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Verse five says, authority wasgiven to it.
Verse seven says it was allowedto make war.
Verse seven again, authority wasgiven to it over every tribe and
people.
So this is written in a passivevoice over and over in this
chapter.
Was given, was allowed.
Okay.
But given by whom?
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That's the question.
Well, John never spells it out,and he doesn't have to.
There's only one answeravailable in a book that spent
all of chapter four establishingwho is on the throne.
See, friend, the beast isterrifying, and yet the beast is
on a leash.
Friend, I know you've walkedpast a fence where something
(10:11):
enormous came at you.
The noise, the impact on theboards, the whole fence moving.
And what does your body do?
It reacts before your brain doesevery time.
So you'll flinch or whatever.
And then your brain catches upand tells you the thing that you
already knew.
There's a chain on that dog.
And friend, it didn't getquieter, it didn't get smaller,
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but the size of it and the reachof it turn out to be two
completely different questions.
Okay.
And one last thing in thischapter, verse three.
One of the heads has a mortalwound that has been healed.
So a death and then a comingback.
Do you see what that is?
Friend, that's a counterfeitresurrection.
(10:54):
So put the dragon, the beast,and the second beast together,
and you've got a parody, uh,you've got a how do I say it?
A parody trinity.
Okay.
So everything, single thing thatthe beast has, it's imitating.
It has no original material.
It's a knockoff all the waydown.
Now, one for the comments herebecause I love hearing from you
(11:16):
guys.
Had you ever been told thatRevelation 13 is built out of
Daniel 7?
Yes or no?
Keep it simple.
I just want to see where you'reat.
All right.
Now, this is the part that youcame for.
So let's do it carefully becauseprecision matters here more than
anywhere else in this series.
So let's start with somethingwe've lost.
(11:38):
Okay.
Ancient languages didn't have aseparate set of numerals the way
that we do.
Okay.
The letters were the numbers.
Hebrew did it, Greek did it,alpha was one, beta was two, and
so on.
Okay.
Which means every single namehad a number automatically.
You didn't have to do anythingwith it.
(11:59):
Okay.
And people played with thisconstantly.
There's graffiti preservedliterally preserved from
Pompeii, buried in 79 AD.
So this is the exact world thatwe're talking about, where
somebody scratched a messageabout a girl and gave her number
instead of her name.
See, friend, that's a firstcentury teenager flirting in
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code.
And everybody reading that wallknew exactly what was happening.
So when John says calculate thenumber, nobody in those seven
churches thought, what a strangeand impossible instruction.
They thought, oh, it's one ofthose.
Now let's run it.
Okay.
Take the name Neron Caesar,okay?
The Emperor Nero.
(12:42):
Okay.
Written the way that it wascommonly written, transliterated
into Hebrew letters.
If you add the values up, itwould be 50 plus 200 plus 6 plus
50 plus 100 plus 60 plus 200.
What does that equal?
666.
Now, here's the part that almostnobody in your audience has ever
(13:05):
heard.
I guarantee it.
And where you go to church orwhatever audience maybe you
preach to or teach to, and it'sthe strongest card in the deck.
Okay.
Some of the oldest survivingmanuscripts of Revelation don't
actually say 666.
They say 616.
Now, normally, okay, a variantlike that is a problem for a
(13:29):
theory.
Here, it's actually theopposite.
Here it's really the fingerprintbecause watch what happens.
The Hebrew spelling of Neronends with a letter called none,
and none is worth 50.
So spell the name the Latin wayinstead.
Guess what?
Nero.
Without that final N, which isexactly how a Latin speaker
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would write it.
And you drop that letter.
Okay.
666 minus 50 equals what?
616.
Okay.
Listen, two different spellingsof the same name, both preserved
in the manuscript tradition,both landing exactly where you'd
expect it.
Friend, there's an ancient copyof Revelation that says 616
(14:16):
instead of 666.
Friend, that's not a mistake inthe text.
That's the same name, onespelled in Latin instead of
Hebrew.
Okay.
So now let me be honest abouthow hard I'll push this.
Okay.
This is the majority view amongscholars who work on Revelation.
And I think it's the bestexplanation available by a wide
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margin.
Okay.
So I'm not going to tell youit's mathematically proven.
I'll tell you this.
The riddle had a first centuryanswer.
It was a first century answerthat the first readers could
solve.
And the best candidate we haveis Nero.
Now, let's talk about the markitself because this is where I
(15:01):
believe the pastoral work is.
So if you're going to look inverses 16 and 17, again, we're
in chapter 13, a mark on theright hand or the forehead, and
without it you can't buy orsell.
Now, put that beside chapter 7,verse 3, and chapter 14, verse
1, where the servants of God aresealed on the forehead.
(15:24):
Okay.
So two marks, same locations,one from the beast and one from
the lamb.
Friend, this is not abouttechnology.
This is the language ofownership.
Whose name is on you?
Whose are you?
Who you'll bow to in order tokeep your shop open.
(15:47):
Now think about what it meanswhen somebody's wearing a
jersey.
Okay.
Nobody thinks the fabric ismagic.
Nobody thinks the logo has powerin it.
The jersey isn't doing anythingto them.
What it's doing is announcingsomething.
It says, I'm with them.
When they win, I win.
Put me in the column.
Okay.
That's the mark.
(16:08):
It was never a chip.
It was never a barcode.
It's a jersey.
It's a declaration of who youbelong to in a world that makes
your ability to eat depend onthat answer.
And here's why I want you tohear this clearly today, because
I think people have lost sleepover it for decades.
Listen, write this down.
The mark of the beast was neverabout technology, it's about who
(16:31):
owns you, and you cannot get itby accident.
So stop with thisfear-mongering, talking about
the mark of the beast andconnecting it to technology.
It's nonsense.
Nobody has ever stumbled intothe mark of the beast at a
checkout counter.
The pressure John's readersfaced was economic and social
(16:51):
and completely legible.
Okay.
So go along, say the words, burnthe pinch of incense, keep your
business.
That's what was happening inthat day.
Who, who, who's who is your God?
Who whose jersey do you have on?
Who's got the mark on your handin the forehead?
Are you going to go along withit?
Are you going to say the words?
You're going to go through theritual, you're going to use the
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burn the pinch of incense andkeep your business open?
Friends, Christians have facedthat in every century since,
including this one.
It's never once required a chip.
This is talking about who ownsyou.
Okay.
Now, if we go look into chapter17, okay, let's move on from
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chapter 13.
Let's move into chapter 17.
Okay, here's another symbol.
There's a woman on a scarletbeast dressed in purple, holding
a golden cup.
And John does the thing that hedoes.
He's going to tell you, quittrying to miss make this
mystical.
He's going to tell you, verse 9,the seven heads are seven
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mountains on which the woman isseated.
Verse 18, the woman that you sawis the great city that has
dominion over the kings of theentire earth.
So every single person in thatempire reading that sentence
knew what city sets on sevenhills.
This was not subtle.
This was about as subtle as itcould safely be.
(18:14):
So why not just say Rome?
Two reasons.
Okay.
The first one's practical.
John is a prisoner on Patmos.
He's writing to churches insidean empire that executes people
over exactly this question.
I want to tell you aboutsomething that we call the
family table.
Almost everything we make here,we give away.
(18:34):
The teaching, the resources, thetools that we put in the hands
of pastors and church leaderswho are running on empty.
It's free because we believe itshould be free.
And it's free because a group ofpeople quietly decided to pay
for it.
Friend, that's the family table.
Monthly partners who fund thiswork so that somebody who could
never afford it can walk inwholeness, anyways.
(18:58):
Your giving does three things.
It gets free resources into thehands of individuals and
churches.
It plants family tablecommunities all across the
country.
And it helps pastors and churchleaders find the wholeness that
they've been handing toeverybody but themselves.
Friend, family table members getexclusive content, early access
(19:19):
to new resources, and a monthlyZoom call with me and my wife, a
real one where we talk aboutwhat we're actually doing, a
little behind the scenes andcasting vision for the future.
So if that's you, you want to bea part of the family table, want
you to go to marcasto.cobackslash donate, set up your
recurring gift, and we'll sendyou the details shortly.
(19:41):
We'd love to have you at thefamily table.
Guys, you know how people writewhen the letter is going to be
read by somebody else first.
So you write about the weather,you mention Aunt Rose, you say
something that means one thingto the censor and something
completely to your family,completely different to your
family.
Okay.
So that's a riddle with apurpose.
(20:03):
John isn't being mysterious forthe fun of it.
He's writing so that thechurches understand and the
empire doesn't have a sentenceto hang him with.
And the second reason I think isbigger, and it's the one that
matters for you and I.
Okay.
He calls it Babylon becauseBabylon already meant something.
Jeremiah wrote against Babylon.
(20:24):
Isaiah wrote against Babylon.
Centuries before John, therewere whole oracles about a city
that gathered the world's wealthand crushed the world's people
and thought it would standforever.
Okay.
So when John looks at Rome andcalls it Babylon, he is saying,
this is the same thing.
This is Rome is Babylon, butit's just wearing new clothes.
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So, friend, I hope youunderstand by now.
Babylon's not a place.
Yes, it was at one point aphysical place, but but you got
to hear this.
Babylon's not a place.
Babylon is a spirit.
Babylon is a costume that getshanded down through the
generations.
So now get to chapter 18.
The merchants lament, and I wantyou to hear the whole list
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because this list is the sermon.
Okay.
Cargo of gold, silver, jewels,pearls, fine linen, purple
cloth, silk, scarlet, all kindsof scented wood, ivory, costly
wood, bronze, iron, marble,cinnamon, spice, um, incense,
myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil,fine flour, wheat, cattle,
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sheep, horses, chariots, listento this, and slaves.
That is human souls.
So that's the last item.
After the cinnamon, after thehorses, same list, same
manifest, same counter.
Okay?
So nobody in that supply chainthought of themselves as evil.
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They were merchants, they weremoving product.
The product at the bottom of theinvoice was people, and the
system that had gotten so usedto it that it didn't even
require a separate page.
Friend, if you're taking notes,write this down.
The cargo list ends with humansouls right after the sentiment.
That's the whole indictment ofthe empire in one line.
(22:21):
That's the reason why God hatesBabylon, because it has reduced
people down to money.
And then look at why themerchants are weeping in
chapters 18.
Read it.
It's not grief.
Nobody's mourning a person,they're mourning the market.
Verse 11 says, No one buys theircargo anymore.
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That's a revenue statement.
And into that, verse 4.
God says, Come out of her, mypeople.
Friend, that's not geography.
Nobody's being told to move.
He's talking about allegiance.
Come out from under what itwants from you and be mine.
Okay?
(23:03):
Now, let me put my position onthe table in one breath.
No hedging here, okay?
This had a first centuryaddress, and it has a permanent
pattern.
So I want you to hear this.
The book of Revelation has afirst century meaning.
That's why I say first centuryaddress.
(23:24):
But also with it is an unfoldingpermanent pattern.
So John was writing about Rome,and John was not only writing
about Rome, here's why it has tobe both.
Okay.
If it were only about Rome, thenthis book died somewhere in the
second century, and we'rereading somebody else's mail for
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no reason at all.
So a historical curiosity with ablessing attached for some
reason doesn't really makesense.
But if it were only about thefuture, then this is just cruel.
Useless to the very people whowere bleeding when it was
written.
Imagine handing a church underpersecution a coded document
(24:08):
about events 2,000 years awayand calling that pastoral care.
Friend, the book of Revelationwas written as both a real
empire and the shape that empirealways takes.
Okay?
And the shape is remarkablyconsistent.
Empire always demands worship.
In some form, one way oranother, an empire always
(24:31):
demands worship.
It always attaches that worshipto your ability to eat.
It always turns people intoinventory somewhere in the
supply chain and then calls itsomething else.
It always looks unbeatable fromunderneath.
And it always, always has amortal wound.
Now, here's where I'm going todo something that you might not
(24:55):
have expected when you clickedon this video with a 666 in the
title.
Okay.
I am not going to tell you whothe beast is today.
And I want to be clear that it'snot because I'm nervous or
because I'm scared, and it's notbecause I don't have opinions
about the world.
It's because I believe namingthe beast is the trap.
(25:15):
Why don't you think about whatwe what we've done for 150
years?
Every generation has confidentlyidentified him: Napoleon, the
Kaiser, Mussolini, Hitler,Stalin, a Pope, a president, a
Secretary of State, sincerepeople every time with charts
and verses and real convictions.
And guess what?
(25:36):
With all of those realconvictions, every generation
was wrong.
But here's the part thatactually costs something.
Okay.
It isn't just that the answerswere wrong, it's what the
searching does to you.
So while you're scanning theheadlines for the Antichrist,
you stop examining what you'reactually being asked to bow to.
(25:58):
And listen, I know what I did inmodule three was satisfying: a
riddle, a calculation, amanuscript variant, a name.
That clicks.
It feels like mastery, okay?
And that feeling is exactly whatgot sold to all of us.
The decoder ring is the product.
If all I've done today is handyou a better decoder ring, I've
(26:20):
failed because I taught you thesame habit with more accurate
answers.
Here's the difference that Iwant in teaching you the book of
Revelation.
You spent a long time at thewindow watching, scanning the
street, trying to work out whichone of them it is and who's the
beast, who's the false prophet,who's the Antichrist, who's the
dragon, and whether it's startedyet.
(26:42):
Friend, and this text walksover, closes the blind, and
hands you a mirror.
Not to condemn you, to ask youthe only question that was ever
actually on the table.
What are you bowing to in orderto keep buying and selling?
Now, friend, I understand that'snot a comfortable question.
(27:02):
It's a much better one than whois he?
And you have to admit that.
The beast isn't a predictionthat you decode, it's a mirror
that you check.
Do you get that?
Like we're looking at theproblems instead of the mirror,
going, Do I have the mark on myforehead and on my wrist?
Do I have allegiance to thebeast or to the lamb?
(27:27):
Okay, now, chapter 12, verse 11.
Let's go back for a second, theverse I told you to flag at the
very beginning.
This is what it says.
Most of you can quote it.
And they overcame him, and theyhave conquered him by the blood
of the Lamb and by the word oftheir testimony, and they love
not their lives even unto death.
Now, I want you to look at whatthe saints are not given.
(27:50):
They're not given an army.
Okay.
I hope you're tracking here withthis.
They are not given an army,okay?
That's not, that's not what theywere given here.
Okay.
They're not given an army.
There's no army anywhere in thisbook on our side of it.
They're not given an escapeplan.
Nobody's getting evacuated inchapter 13.
They're not given a date, not asingle one.
(28:13):
What they're given is the bloodof the lamb, which we did two
weeks ago, and it's the finishedwork.
It's not their performance.
It was never about theirperformance.
And the word of their testimony,which means a faithful witness,
out loud, and there's a costattached to that.
That's it.
That's the whole strategy thechurch has ever been issued.
(28:35):
And I want you to notice it'sthe same way the Lamb won.
He didn't outpower anybody, hetestified, and it cost him
everything.
And that actually turned out tobe a victory.
And guess what, friend?
The saints just do what he did.
Friend, I'm going to say this toyou, and this is going to help
(28:55):
you with the book of Revelation.
Every generation gets a beast,and every generation gets the
same solution.
Okay.
And Rome fell, not to an army ofChristians.
There wasn't one.
It fell the way they all fall.
And the church had no army, noescape plan, no date that was
(29:18):
there.
But they were still telling thetruth out loud, and we're still
telling the truth out loud 2,000years later.
So again, here's another one forthe comments.
And I want you to take this veryseriously.
Forget the headlines for asecond, okay?
What's the thing in your actuallife that's asking you to bow a
(29:40):
little to keep thingscomfortable?
You don't have to name itspecifically.
Just say that you know what itis.
Okay?
I want to see that in thecomments.
Okay, now in closing, 666 was ariddle.
It had an answer.
The the the first people to readthis book could solve it.
(30:01):
And most likely his name wasNero.
And he's been dead for nearly2,000 years.
But guess what?
The pattern outlived him.
Babylon is just a costume, okay?
And it keeps getting handeddown, and every generation meets
it wearing something new.
And the answer has not changedonce in 2,000 years.
(30:22):
Not an army, not a bunker, not adate.
The blood of the lamb, the wordof your testimony, and a people
who love the truth more thanthey love being comfortable.
Now, friend, next week is thelast part of this series that
we've done called Unveiled,helping you understand how to
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read the book of Revelation.
And guys, we're going to readthe ending.
And I'm telling you right now,it is not the world burning
down.
I want you to hear this.
It's a city coming down and ariver running out of the throne
and gates that never close.
Friend, stop looking out thewindow looking for the crisis.
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Stop looking out the windowlooking to interpret end time
events.
Go look in the mirror.
Be honest with yourself.
Ask who's my allegiance to?
Tell yourself the truth.
I'll see you next week.