Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, a very important biblical issue, what does Satan and the beast of revelation have to do with you as a believer now, today? And it might be more than you might think at first, if you've been following with us over the last few weeks, you know, we've been making a case that the book of Revelation, from which the devil and the dragon and the beast derive in our discussion today.

The book of Revelation was composed by the Apostle John in An Apocalypse, which means revelation of Jesus Christ. And it was intended to show what? To show what must someday take place, two millennia hence, when the mark of the beast can be barcode strips and microchips and locusts are really helicopters and satellite TV can broadcast the second coming so that every eye will see him. Is that what John intended to encode? No.

I would suggest to you the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants, as John says, the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant, John. And he goes on to say that the time is near. These words are trustworthy and true, he says, in the conclusion of the book. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.

Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near, John says, constantly, time and again. We must understand that this book was for John's first audience in the first century. Now, some try to qualify this by smuggling in and understanding that's not there. That, for example, when the signs are right, all these things will take place. Or another alternative is that when these things begin to happen, they'll happen swiftly.

But these are not exegetically tenable, I suggest to you, dear listener. What John writes took place soon after his composition, for the time was near, the time was near then, in the first century. Well, does that mean that revelation is irrelevant to us? That it has no application for us anymore? And I would say, au contraire.

No, no, no. It has application to us. The book of Revelation. Precisely because the devil is still active on the earth in the same manner, shape, and form he was in the first century. And he's still working through earthly agents, that is, the beast.

Such was it at the beginning, and so shall it be to the end. The trick is, for us, to discern these things with John, which he notes, as well, calls for wisdom. You have to put your head on straight, dear listener. You have to put your biblical interpretive cap on, so to speak, straight. Well, how do we know this?

How do we know that it has application to us? How do we know, indeed, that the beast is still active on earth, working through his earthly agents, the beast? Well, let me note with you several things. First of all, Satan, the adversary, has attempted to establish his worldwide tyranny from the very beginning. It's nothing new.

It's nothing that's going to happen exclusively in some imagined great tribulation. It's been going on from the beginning, because in a parody of and in competition with the kingdom of God, which he bestows upon Christ and his co-heirs, God does, Satan also seeks a kingdom, and he bestows it to whom he will. Remember, when he tempted Jesus, the devil took him up, that is, Jesus up, Luke says, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, to you, I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours.

Oh, this has been the promise, the temptation to kings and all those who rule and are in authority all through history, dear listeners. The apostle John portrays this very graphically in Revelation 12, where the devil and Satan, Revelation 12 tells us, is given us as a great red dragon, the very epitome of evil. This dragon constituted with the emblems of a kingdom, that is, seven heads adorned with seven crowns, symbols of kingly power and leadership, and then also with ten horns, horns, of course, being symbol of royal power and strength. David talks about the horn of his power, does he not? The Lord has exalted his horn.

He and his kingdom then, Satan and his kingdom in Revelation 12, try to devour the child of the woman, which is, of course, Christ, when he is born, when the woman is delivered of him. And here, Satan is pictured in Revelation chapter 12 as a king in competition to and mortal combat with God himself in an attempt to destroy the seed of the woman, that is Jesus Christ.

Here in Revelation chapter 12, John is clearly drawing upon the first promise of the gospel all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, where God says there to the snake, to the serpent, to Satan, he says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring or seed and her offspring or seed. He, that is the child born, will bruise your head, that is, kill you, destroy you, and you shall bruise his heel, that is, wound or temporarily hurt him.

In Revelation 12, then we see that offspring is born that would crush the serpent's head, that is, the male child who would rule the nations with a rod of iron, and he is caught up to heaven, Revelation 12 tells us, from once he shall return when finished building his kingdom. But in the meantime, these kingdoms remain in conflict, dear listener, Satan's kingdom versus God's kingdom. It is not all future. It is not all for a time after the rapture when a supposed seven-year tribulation will transpire. No, John is drawing upon a rich history of kingdoms in conflict from the beginning.

Do you think that the devil will only try to grasp for worldwide tyranny after a supposed rapture and the fictitious commencement of the seven-year great tribulation? Oh, he has been grasping, Satan has, after complete worldwide tyranny from the very beginning and getting at the very first progenitors of God's kingdom, and he wanted them for his own, that is, Adam and Eve, and he got them, did he not, in the garden? He also attempted, Satan did, to co-opt God's kingdom, that is, the woman's seed, by intermingling the demonic seed of fallen angels, euphemistically called the sons of God in Genesis chapter 6.

He tried, indeed, to intermingle that demonic seed with the seed of the woman, and he was initially very successful in this venture, such that, as chapter 6 of Genesis tells us, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, unquote. And had this process continued the intermingling of demonic seed with the seed of the woman, well, then the seed of the woman would have been so corrupted that no true seed of woman would have survived, but only that of the bastardized Nephilim.

The devil would have successfully co-opted, taken over the genetic line of the woman, Eve. In fact, the earth was corrupt in God's sight, Genesis 6 tells us, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. So much so did this happen, that God destroyed the world in a worldwide flood, did he not? Satan's grasp for worldwide dominion in Revelation is nothing new. After the flood as well, dear listener, the devil once more tried to impose his worldwide tyranny on Noah's descendants at the Tower of Babel.

The whole earth had one language, the Bible tells us. Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, in competition with God, that is. Behold, they are one people, God said, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they propose will now be impossible for them. So God confused their language, dispersed them all over the face of the earth.

Satan's grasp for worldwide dominion in Revelation is nothing new. Satan, as well, has had no more long-standing success story than the 3,000-year-plus dynasties of Egypt. Take these as an example. We see these things resonating down to our own age. Our oldest heritage of Luciferian magic, for example, stems from Egypt.

That is the Egyptian order of the Golden Dawn. And even that magic system is enjoying a revival today, courtesy of Aleister Crowley, who revived this ancient Egyptian order of the Golden Dawn. In Egypt, the 10 plagues imposed by God through Moses each corresponded to one of the demonic deities in the Egyptian panoply of gods, culminating in Helios, Lucifer himself. We have so much from Egypt that still resonates today, the Eye of Horus, Blood Ritual, Child Sacrifice, and Child Sacrifice goes on in this world. Dear listener, you're naive if you think it doesn't.

The Abelisk, the Sundisk, the Scarab, dozens of other occult symbols have their origins in Satan's utter monopoly over the souls of Egypt for more than three millennia. Satan's grasp for worldwide dominion in Revelation is nothing new, dear listener. Wake up! Known for her sorceries, even today, Babylon now. Babylon also became a metaphor for the corrupt, debauched rule of the demonic.

The world empire that brought Judah into captivity, Babylon took over and perfected the Luciferian rites of Egypt and made them her own. Babylon's gods were also very appealing and powerful to the average man, seducing many spirits into their worship. And so willing were most Jews to abdicate to them from Yahweh, a process in the Old Testament called prostitution, equated with prostitution, that John could call her name, that is Babylon, written upon her forehead, Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations. In Revelation 17, Satan's dominion was complete in Babylon.

Satan's grasp for worldwide dominion in Revelation, I submit to you, is nothing new. Also, Greece, personified in Alexander the Great as a beast, dear listener. A goat he was in Daniel, conquered the known world swiftly, did he not, in the brief lifespan of Alexander the Great? Greek historians saw in it a supernatural force, and they were right. The will and testament of the gods, as one Greek historian put it.

The goat, as well as a favorite representation of Lucifer, for many reasons. The display of his head, for example, forms a perfect pentagram, the goat head pentagram. The gods of Greece ruled the minds and hearts of men for centuries afterward and fused the culture of the West, even, into our own day. Everything from our poetry to architecture is decorated with them, even if we do not formally worship the gods of Greece. Satan's dominion was complete in Greece.

His grasp for worldwide dominion, I submit to you, is nothing new in Revelation by the time we come to it. And here we come for Rome. Rome, in the Roman Empire, we come now to the contemporary expression of Satan's dominion for John's own audience. For them, for John's first audience in the church, the beast from the sea was the Roman Empire. The beast from the land was the Roman emperor's wicked as they were.

And the great harlot who sat astride the beast was indeed the syncretistic religious system we now know as the emperor cult. All of these references were not in the future. All of these references John's congregation would have understood. They would have related to in their own day. They would have gotten this.

And to ignore all of this and run roughshod over the original context of Revelation by saying that the apostle John is only and exclusively envisioning the grasp of the dragon for worldwide dominion in the far distant future, achieved fully only in some imagined seven-year great tribulation trivializes the Bible and the vast spectrum as well of meaning that John was intending to communicate to us. All of history is the stage for this epic struggle, dear listener, not just some narrow seven-year period which can be safely isolated in a box, not to be opened until after the rapture. Dear listener, please listen with me.

Satan has labored since Rome to achieve worldwide dominion too. He has not stopped nor relented. Now in time, we will recount for you some historical examples of these satanically inspired dominions. But my point is that he is bringing all things to consummation now. Satan is working through human governments now.

He is working through particular world leaders recognized and unrecognized by the general public. He's working through them now. This is Satan's modus operandi. This is how he has worked and will work right up until the end. Note with me as well, not only has Satan been alive and well working in the world, but the devil still works through human and earthly agents like the beast to establish his kingdom.

The devil still works through human and earthly agents like the beast in Revelation. He still does this through human and earthly agents to build his kingdom because in a parody of and in competition with God's use of intermediaries like the mediator Jesus Christ, and the Bible says there is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, while in competition with him and mocking him, the devil has always employed and still uses human and earthly agents to achieve his kingdom and his tyranny. Revelation is in a long tradition of portraying this truth of using beasts and intermediaries.

For example, the satanic inspired beast first appears in the garden. This motif runs from Genesis to Revelation, literally. What does our text say? Now the serpent, Genesis 3 says, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. The serpent, a beast as given in Genesis 3, is not some garden snake we know of today.

All the serpents we're familiar with are of the post-fall, belly-crawling, dust-eating variety. The pre-fall serpent walked upright. He manifests skill and wisdom and was wondrous to behold in his beauty and attractiveness. But he was a creature, nevertheless a beast. However attractive and winsome he may have been, Satan has inhabited and inspired beasts from the get-go.

We also see in the pre-flood generation, the Nephilim, these were bestial, serpentine in nature. As Genesis 6 succinctly recounts for us, the fallen angels of Satan mated with our first mothers, the daughters of men as they're called. We see in Genesis chapter 6, when man began to multiply in the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God, that is the fallen angels, saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years.

The Nephilim, the Bible says, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Now, if God had not intervened to destroy this monstrous bestial race, but had allowed them to continue to multiply on the face of the earth, then Satan would have successfully established a bastard race of serpentine creatures, no longer men. Thus, the program of God in which I will put enmity between you, he says, and the woman and between your offspring or seed and her offspring, her seed.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This program would have failed utterly and the serpent would have achieved complete dominion over God's creation. My point is that Satan was laboring even here through beasts. We even refer to iterations of the Nephilim today as reptilians, do we not? He was laboring, Satan was, through beasts to consummate his kingdom.

Now, to put all of this in the future, as if this were all that Revelation is talking about, is not only eisegesis of the most egregious kind, it is also dangerous because it ignores what Satan is doing now, today, and it puts Christians who should be fighting asleep. Because as then, so now, Sauron, if I can borrow an image from the towers, if I can borrow an image from the trilogy of Tolkien, the return of the king and so forth, Sauron is on the move. He's building his kingdom now, laboring through the beast now, deceiving even well-intentioned Christians now.

Satan's grasp for worldwide dominion is nothing new by the time we get to Revelation. In earlier lessons too, I highlighted this historical fact of satanic inspiration of kings and kingdoms. Rahab the beast was with Egypt. Leviathan the beast indeed was identified with Babylon. Even Daniel's vision of the beasts from the sea in chapter 7 of Daniel is historically forecasting the tyranny of the great king Antiochus Antiochus Epiphanes that indeed transpired in his own day, not some antichrist of a future tribulation.

Historically, Antiochus Epiphanes is the little horn that uproots the three others of the ten, which is precisely what Antiochus Epiphanes did in his rise to power. Antiochus Epiphanes is indeed the very same one who commits the abomination that causes desolation. In chapter 9 of Daniel, when he slaughtered a pig on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem, not some far-off future antichrist of a future great tribulation. Even the greatest of the Babylonian kings was a beast, Nebuchadnezzar, remember, who presided over the exile of Judah.

He's caricatured as a beast when he prided himself as his own god by saying, is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty. Ha! A braggart just like all power men, power-hungry men. Well, God humiliated him by subjecting him to seven years of this state of being, dear listener. The Bible goes on to say, while the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken.

The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. Indeed, the dew fell on him, his nails grew, his hair grew, he scratched around on the ground, snarling like a beast. Behold, O listener, the modus operandi of the dragon. He is identified in Revelation 12 as a sign in heaven, a great red dragon. He's been doing this from the beginning.

None other than, as John says, that ancient serpent who is called the devil in Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, unquote. So much of our own world is revealed here in this chapter, Revelation chapter 12, dear listener, as well as that of the past, and not reserved for some future great tribulation. Do not let the deceiver deceive you. For example, the dragon was a stock metaphor in the ancient world. This creature symbolized three characteristics.

That is, if I can use this alliteration, the dragon personified lust, loot, and lordship. The dragon personified sexual lust. The phallic serpentine image of the dragon stood for its sexual corruption in all the ancient myths. And that included incest and rape and adultery. You'll find these especially in the Canaanite religions.

This is implicit even here in Revelation 12 as the dragon broods around the woman waiting for her to give birth to a male child. Secondly, not only lust, sexual lust, but also loot. Dragons are notorious for their greed. Their lairs are piled with treasure. Take, for example, the lair of Smoag in Tolkien's The Hobbit.

Their appetite for wealth can never be satisfied. The proverb, what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, never suited any creature better than the dragon. While there is not only lust and loot, but there is also lordship, the grasping after power. Dragons, wherever they appear, strike first at those in power and authority. Kings in their castles, lords in their manners, knights in their fighting retinue.

These are always the targets of the dragon's predations as he struggles to reign unopposed. This relentless accumulation of power then. This relentless accumulation of power is evident here in Revelation 12 as the red dragon sweeps the stars from the heavens and the seven crowns that it wears upon its head. So for all of its fearsome ways and power, what does the dragon leave in his wake? What are the products of the dragon?

Well, the red color of our dragon here in Revelation 12 is symbolic of its fiery nature and indicates what lies in its path as it passes by, that is ashes and chaos and death, destruction, misery, and tyranny. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent dragon offers Adam and Eve a shortcut to perfection and paradise, but leaves in its wake only death and curse. The Nephilim create a bastard, mongrel race of beings to the earth. Egypt personified as the sea serpent Rahab brings slavery to the people of God. Egypt did, did it not?

Babylon personified as the bestial Leviathan brings destruction and exile to the Holy Land. And then here in Revelation, Rome personified as the beasts from the sea brings tyranny and persecution to the apostle John and his church at that day for that audience, not some future one in some great seven near tribulation. Operating in and through each of these beasts is the dragon, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, John says. It is the dragon who animates. It is the dragon who inspires.

It is the dragon who beguiles and deceives with visions of grandeur, pleasure, and paradise, but leaving in his fiery wake only chaos, destruction, and death. It is this red dragon who inhabits the soul of Washington DC, dear listener, the power nexus for the world power of the United States. It is the red dragon who inhabits the soul of Brussels, Belgium, the power nexus for the corrupt European Union. It is the red dragon who inhabits the soul of Moscow, Russia, the power nexus for the old Soviet Union. It is the red dragon who inhabits the soul of Beijing, the power nexus for the world power China.

This dragon, this ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, still uses his bestial intermediaries to accomplish his purposes, dear listener. For example, if I can use several metaphors for beast myself here today, let me outline for you lust, loot, and lordship active today in our own Washington, D.C. For example, the chaste Madonna of classical art is now the whore Madonna of rock and roll. If I can use this metaphor for a moment, it is no coincidence that Louise Ciccone adopted the stage name Madonna as a performer.

Her corrupt and debauched sexual persona has led many a young girl into a sexually debased lifestyle as a woman. She is emblematic Madonna, emblematic of the lustful nature of the dragon, and is an apt persona for the beast that Americans aspire to become. For example, in Washington, D.C., there are now more escort services, private gentlemen's clubs, and exclusive massage parlors per capita in Washington, D.C. than in any other American city. Indeed, right now, today, the dragon has inspired the debauched beast of the American Madonna. She is an apt, satanically inspired beast for our first L, that is lust.

Secondly, the majestic American eagle, if I can use another metaphor, another image, the majestic American eagle has morphed into the scavenging federal vulture. This beast, dear listener, the federal vulture is busy greedily piling up the treasure of the world in our second L, that is loot. Eight of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States now surround Washington, D.C. The federal government has sucked the American people dry through the economic theft of taxes, inflation, and debt.

The super-rich manipulate our branches of government through campaign contributions, bribery, corporate lobbies, revolving door jobs in government and business, so-called foundations like the Clinton Foundation that are little more than influence-peddling, and the granddaddy of them all, the Federal Reserve, which is neither federal, it is actually a government-sanctioned monopoly of six private banks, nor does the Federal Reserve reserve anything. Rather, it creates profligate debt by entering numbers on its ledger in its own name, which debt then it foists on the American people.

Indeed, right now, today, the dragon has inspired the scavenging beast of the American vulture. Thirdly, then, Uncle Sam, in our third L, Uncle Sam has transformed himself into Big Brother. Uncle Sam is now Big Brother. Big Brother is, of course, the name of the ubiquitous tyrant in George Orwell's novel 1984. He has become the Western metaphor for our third L, lordship.

This beast, Big Brother, our federal government is busy accumulating all the reins of power unto itself. Others have chronicled this meticulously, and you, no doubt, are well aware of it. But my question to you is, do you see the old hand, the ever-present hand, of the red dragon of history at work in it? He has grasped for power through beasts since the Garden in Genesis, and he'll continue to do so, ever-widening scope through the world until his end in Revelation, dear listener. I suggest to you that you no longer possess a constitutional republic here in the United States.

It has rather become the possession of the dragon via the mediation of these beasts. In future lessons, we'll unpack how and why our constitutional republic on paper exists now as a mere outward shell and show for you, the average voter, and what we can and must do to redeem it. This is why I caution you, dear listener, in projecting Revelation and other biblical texts into the future, because John, here in Revelation, gives us a model, a biblical template for Satan's modus operandi throughout time until his final defeat at the glorious return of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is our ultimate consolation, when, as Paul says, the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among those who have believed, unquote. This is our hope. This is our consolation to this we look forward, brothers and sisters. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196.