SEE EVIL CLEARLY
Rev. 12-18
INTRODUCTION
I don’t know if any of you have ever had to go to the eye doctor and have those drops put in your eyes that dilate your pupils. Anyone ever had that done? Me, too. Once as a child and once as an adult.
When I was a child I was diagnosed with astigmatism which caused me to have a lazy eye, a slightly crossed eye. They dilated my pupils, did tests and gave me glasses. Glasses in the 60s were a little like tennis shoes. You could have black or white Chuck Taylors, high top or low top (I always got Chuck Taylor high tops—black). With glasses you could have black plastic rims or brown plastic rims. I chose the black. (They matched my tennis shoes). But I hated them. Here’s a picture (show picture).
They helped me see things clearly, even after that horrible dilating stuff wore off. But I lost six pairs between my 8th and 9th year. And mom finally gave up.
As an adult I had my pupils dilated last year. The doctor asked how long I’d gone without glasses and I told him about 45 years. He did some tests, told me I still had that astigmatism and prescribed bi-focals. When I put them on it was like 3D, high def television. “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.” Seeing clearly had removed “all the obstacles in my way.”
If there’s one thing the devil, our enemy wants to do, it’s to keep us from seeing him clearly. He wants to disguise his true identity. And because each of us have a “sinful astigmatism” (yes, I made that up) of the heart we’re easily deceived when, as Paul says in 2 Cor. 11:14 “satan masquerades as an angel of light.” The word for masquerade is similar to the word hypocrite, “someone who wears a mask.”
Satan knows if we ever saw him unmasked we would run in terror. We’d be overcome with disgust. We’d recoil at his real appearance in terror.
So “satan, the serpent of old, the great dragon who’s been thrown out of heaven to earth because he was not strong enough to take God’s place in heaven, even with the help of one-third of the angels he lost the war, was cast to earth, and so were those angels who followed him.” (Rev. 12:9)
Read Revelation 12:1-9.
In Revelation 12-14 John rips back the veil on the spiritual realm and the
l. Angel of Light is “Unmasked”
“Behind satan’s mask is a blood red, murderous grotesque dragon. He spreads his leathery wings, malice and hate drip from his jagged teeth and he sears his enemies with fiery, sulfurous breath.” (Matt Proctor)
He is huge and hideous and intimidating. We jump back in revulsion. There is nothing subtle or hidden in his appearance here. The absolute “evil one” has been unmasked. When you see this picture of the devil, even a child would recognize this creature is wicked to the core.
My wife collects manger scenes. She has crystal ones, Precious Moments ones, she even has an Eskimo one (show picture). But what if I did this—inserted a horrible dragon in the middle of the manger scene. The birth of Jesus is a familiar, heartwarming story, until I put something hideous in the middle of it. Something that towers over the happy faced Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. An evil monster in the loveable nativity changes it from a Normal Rockwell picture into a Stephen King novel. What does it mean?
In Revelation 12 we sense a shift in the book. For the past six chapters we have witnessed mayhem on planet earth, but now the camera points upward to the heavens. And we discover that wars and rumors of wars also take place in an invisible world as large as the cosmos itself.
In Chapter 12 John suddenly sees “a great and wondrous sign” in heaven, a large pregnant woman wearing a crown of 12 stars preparing to give birth “to a son who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” (Rev. 12:5). The baby described here as in Psalm 2:9 is “the Messiah.” Who is the lady? She’s too big to be little Mary. She is probably Israel, the Messiah’s mother nation and the 12 stars represent her 12 tribes (Gen. 37:9)
Matt Proctor in his devotion on Revelation writes a description better than I ever could. Listen:
“So we are at the nativity, Christ soon to be born. But suddenly a great red dragon appears—so large his tail sweeps a third of the stars from the heavens—bent on killing the almost-born child. “The reptile is a crimson gash, violating the sky,” and we cringe, anticipating the baby’s bloody, violent end. The child is born, the dragon lunges, we hold our breath…and at the last possible moment the child is rescued by God!
In the living room with my kids that December I explained. It wasn’t just King Herod trying to kill the baby Jesus; it was the devil himself. Praise God that Jesus was protected! But when the dragon can’t kill the baby boy and is thrown out of heaven by Michael the archangel, satan turns to devour the woman. God miraculously rescues the woman, too, so finally in frustrated fury the dragon attacks the woman’s offspring.
I told my kids: that’s us. The church is the offspring of God’s Old Testament people. We are the descendants of the woman Israel, and that means we are square in the devil’s crosshairs. The scene vividly pictures this truth: we have an unseen enemy bent on our destruction. Revelation 12 graphically depicts Satan’s malice. “He longs to drink the blood and eat the flesh” of God’s people and craves the terror of your children.” This is serious stuff!!”
The birth of Jesus was not meant to inspire cozy little Christmas carols while we hold hot chocolate in our hands. It inspired a great war across the heavens, and now we are part of the battle. By all means we should sing praises thanking God for the gift of his son, but we should sing them armed and on guard against the dragon.
The fact is we live near the dragon. Thrown from heaven he now prowls the earth, and if you want to remain faithful you’d better be prepared when he attacks. Paul warned us in 2 Cor. 2:11 “We must not let satan outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.”
Starting in Revelation 13 John helps us be aware of three such schemes of the devil:
1. Godless government
2. False religion
3. Hedonistic culture
Two grotesque creatures and a “whore”…
II. The three allies of the dragon
John once again unmasks evil so that once again we can see that which looks harmless is really hellish and deadly.
I. The first beast is godless government with its goal of physical persecution…listen to
Revelation 13:1-4
This first beast looks similar to the dragon, both have 7 heads and 10 horns and the beast from the sea has what appears to be a fatal head wound, but which now has healed. (Nero died of a self inflected head wound and a myth continued after his death that he would someday come back to life).
John’s point is simply that this beast represents the godless Roman government. The beast demands worship and utters blasphemies just like emperor Domitian demanded worship and declared himself “Lord & God.” When believers will not participate in the Imperial cult, the “beast then makes war against the saints.”
Read Rev. 13:7, 8
John’s audience is enduring persecution from the bloody hands of Rome. But this beast represents any godless, oppressive government that exalts itself above Christ. Think of the 400,000 Christians who were persecuted in Uganda by Idi Amin. Think of modern day Iran, Cuba, China, India and Muslim countries like the Sudan.
I love America. I am the son of an American soldier and the father of an American soldier. My favorite movie is “Saving Private Ryan.” John Gatton and other men are some of my greatest heroes. But John’s warning is clear. When a government opposes Christ it becomes a grotesque beast. As I pledge allegiance to America I’d better make sure I’ve pledged allegiance to the cross first. We live in a nation that censors the Bible in schools, passes out free condoms to children, requires a background check for weapons but allows abortion without parental consent. A nation where marriage is no longer between one man and one woman. A nation that seems increasingly hostile to biblical faith. The dragon stalks us all and we’d better keep our eyes open.
The second beast uses false religion as its weapon to undermine a culture…the earth.
Revelation 13:11-18
This beast has two horns like a lamb (He’s trying to imitate the true lamb, performs miraculous signs and promotes worship of the 1st beast. If the first beast’s power is persecution, the 2nd beast’s power is deception. He deceived the inhabitants of the earth (13:14) and is called the “false prophet” in Rev. 19:20.
For John’s readers the Imperial Cult and the Roman pantheon of gods were the work of the 2nd beast. He was a powerful ally because satan uses false religion to enslave billions of people through deceptive systems like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, the occult and secular humanism. Any false philosophy is his tool.
He is the father of lies and instead of physically attacking people, he wages a war of propaganda. “Earn your way to heaven; all religions lead to the same place; there is no God; God doesn’t love you and He’ll never forgive you; God just wants you to be happy.” His whispering voice lies behind every despicable philosophy of the world. The dragon stalks us; we’d better keep our eyes open.
Satan’s third ally is found in Revelation 14:8 “fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.” But she’s not fully introduced until Revelation 17:1-5.
The whore (sorry if this offends you, but it’s a much better definition than prostitute). Prostitute can mean Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” but whore clearly defines this ally of the dragon. Revelation 17:1 calls her the “Great whore.” There we discover she is Rome herself—“the great city that rules over the Kings of the earth and sits on “7 hills” as Rome did. The whore represents Rome’s Hedonistic culture. Monetary success in Rev. 18:23, acquiring luxuries (18:3), drinking (18:6), pursuing sexual pleasure (17:27), attaining power and fame (18:7). She’s all about herself and she wants John’s readers to think only of themselves.
The first beast uses power to physically persecute and the 2nd beast uses propaganda to intellectually deceive then the great whore uses temptation to morally corrupt. Through the whore, satan the dragon tries to gradually seduce us into increasingly selfish, pleasure seeking, greedy habits. If sexual promiscuity, perversions, lack of courtesy and crude homor become the cultural norms, he wins. He does this gradually. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot without any sudden turns, without milestones, without signposts.”
Right now in our culture I believe the score is in satan’s favor. We’ve gone from Lucy & Ricky in separate beds to Family Guy’s foul mouthed sexually crude baby. We didn’t get there overnight. The bar lowered little by little over time. That’s how the whore works. John knows it. The culture which looks so attractive is actually a cheap, diseased street walker and satan is her pimp. Stay away from her. The dragon stalks us. Keep your eyes open.
The mark of the beast is 666. Kyle Idleman gave a great definition. “If 7 is God’s number for perfection
