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Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a

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moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith.

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And today, I want to challenge you to think through the issue of the mark of the beast

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and the letter to Ephesus in the book of Revelation. Oh, we have very early on. We

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don't have to wait till the later chapters of the book of Revelation to find out what the mark of

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the beast was because the letter to the Ephesians gives us an indication of what exactly that might

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be for the early church in the very first century. The mark of the beast is not just coming

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in the latter days. The mark of the beast was already there in the Roman Empire during the time

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of the apostle John when he wrote the book of Revelation. So we're going to begin to unpack that

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plus much, much more as we look then to chapter 2 and the letter to the Ephesians in the book of

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Revelation. But first, let me remind you of the Lincoln Day banquet that's coming up. It's going

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to be April 13th, and it's going to be held at the Melaleuca Corporate Headquarters. And I'm

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excited because one of my favorite people, David Barton, is going to be the special guest speaker.

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And his topic for the Lincoln Day banquet, sponsored by the Bonneville County Republican Party,

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his topic for the Lincoln Day banquet is God and the Constitution. Oh, it's going to be good.

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This man knows of what he speaks. He has been a student of the Constitution and a teacher of the

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Constitution for decades. He is the founder and president of Wall Builders, a national pro-family

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organization. And it teaches, and David is so expert at this, at teaching America's forgotten history,

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forgotten heroes, and a lot of different books. I used him personally, he and his materials,

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in my homeschooling of our own children. So I have been a fan of David Barton's for years.

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And I just encourage you to plan on setting aside Saturday night, April 13, the Lincoln Day banquet

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at Melaleuca Corporate Headquarters, and call ahead then for tickets. And you can call then at 435-494-1192

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to get tickets then to this banquet. And it's going to be good. They're also going to have a gun

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giveaway. I'll be there for that. They're going to have a sign on auction and a raffle, too. So make sure

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and join us for a Lincoln Day banquet. I'll be giving the invocation and the benediction as well.

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So I'll be participating as well. I just look forward to this time learning even more about God and the

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special guest speaker at Barton. Well, let's get back then to our study of the book of Revelation.

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And we're going to be looking now then at the second half of the letter. We looked last week at

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the commendation our Lord had for the church at Ephesus. And we're going to be looking at the

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condemnation this week that our Lord has for the church at Ephesus. He has both commendation and

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condemnation for this church. And we're going to find that most of the churches to which the seven

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letters were composed have both commendation and condemnation. And the church at Ephesus was one of

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those churches. Now, we saw in commendation last week that the Lord recognized their works, right?

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Your works, your toil, your patient endurance. And he also commended them for their discernment

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of truth and false authority. And then he also commended them for their indefatigable witness to his

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name, right? Well, today, he also chastens them. He has some criticisms. Let's cover those now.

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Now, first of all, then in Ephesus, in commendation, know that I see your forgotten heart of love

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towards me in the church. Oh, he does. He chastens them because they have forgotten your first love,

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right? You have forgotten your first love. Well, did you ever wake up and say, why am I doing this,

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right? Whatever it is you may be doing, just even a day-to-day, a day-to-day labors, just getting up

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and going to work and coming back home and some dinner and going to sleep and getting up and doing

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the same thing the next day. Why am I doing this? Maybe it's a job, a career, a calling that you

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loved at first and you were so excited to go to, but now swinging that hammer, tapping that keyboard,

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wheeling that carving knife, just doesn't cut it anymore. As many lovers and husbands and wives

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lose the romance they once had and they call it quits. You know, there's an old song by B.B. King

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called, The Thrill is Gone. Well, we have an expression in our own culture too, going through

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the motions, right? We all know what this feels like. The Ephesians, in many respects, were going

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through the motions. They had lost their first love. Our Lord chastens them for, verses 4 and 5.

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The trouble is, this cannot be sustained indefinitely, can it? Just going through the

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motions, right? No fire, there's no faith, there's no love, there's no labor. Pretty soon, that's the

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way it ends up being, isn't it? Well, Christianity is a religion of the heart and the spirit, isn't it?

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Well, I remember a lecture by one of my favorite authors, a man named R.G. Rushduni. He has an

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excellent lecture contrasting Christianity with Islam. Islam is very much a loveless religion of

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works because Islam teaches that you can never know God personally because God is so far above all

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things. He's so transcendent that he cannot be known per se. The only way a Muslim knows Allah is

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through the Koran. But Christianity is a religion of the heart where the Lord himself dwells within us

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in the power of the Holy Spirit. We can know our Savior. We can love our Savior because he loves us

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and he opens up those doors of communication. First by saving us, forgiving us of our sins so that we

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have access to him. And then when the Holy Spirit enters our heart, then he reveals, the Holy Spirit

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reveals Jesus to us and brings us to the Father. We have that great Trinitarian interaction between

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's intimate. It's personal. And we not only have our first love

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then when we meet Jesus, as the church in Ephesus did, but we also have a lasting continuous love

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because of Holy Spirit dwelling within us, Christ being with us, we being in Christ.

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And these are the things that the church in Ephesus was beginning to lose. Their hearts were

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beginning to cool towards the Lord. And he is warning them here that they must return to that first love

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that they had for. Christ renews and fills our heart, doesn't he? And love is the enduring attribute

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of our faith. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not

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love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries

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and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, if I give

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away all I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. So now faith,

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hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love, Paul says. Oh, and the church in

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Ephesus was doing all those things, right? Prophetic powers that they were suffering, being persecuted,

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being burned, delivering up their bodies to be burned. But our Lord warns them because they did

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not have the love they had at first, right? Implicit in doing works is love for the object of works.

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Our Lord says in a parable in Matthew 25, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and

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you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you

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visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. There is nothing colder than loveless works, brothers and

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sisters. May have been objects of loveless works or we may have been loveless workers ourselves

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and there's nothing colder than loveless works. And the Lord will call them out on the last day too.

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He says in Matthew chapter 7 in the Sermon on the Mount,

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not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will

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of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in

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your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? That's indeed the

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church in Ephesus was doing, right? But they were loveless works. And then I will declare to them,

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our Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness,

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unquote. Oh, the Ephesians were dangerously close to this ultimate rebuke, such that their lampstand

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would be removed, he threatens them. That is, the church would disappear, as did the church there

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eventually, as did the entire city in Ephesus. Eventually, because they were situated, the city

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of Ephesus itself was situated at the mouth of the Kaster River into then the sea. And the Kaster River

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brought down a lot of silt every year and filled in the harbor eventually, after decades and decades

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of this action. And the entire town then was removed, if you will. But long before that,

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the lampstand of the church of Ephesus was removed. But that condemnation, even then, the condemnation

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of losing their first love is a qualified, too. It is qualified by our Lord, because he goes on to tell

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them that one mitigating caveat is their hatred of the works of the Nicolaitans, the Nicolaitans. And

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here we come to an insight into what it means to bear the mark of the beast, because the church in

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Ephesus, by standing against the teachings of the Nicolaitans, were receiving, then refused to receive

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the mark of the beast. John is saying, once more, John is laying down a marker for the rest of the book

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here, when he says, one thing you have in your favor is that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans,

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like I do. And idolatry and immorality seems to come in threes in these matters. Now, I'm previewing

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for you, because in the rest of the letters, we have the Nicolaitans, the followers of Balaam,

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and those who follow Jezebel. They have different labels and sinning styles, if you will, but they do

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the same things, as indicated here in our text. We're in chapter 2, verses 1 through 7. And here

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we see that they practice sexual immorality and eat food sacrificed to idols. This is going to be the

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consistent theme and motif, whether we're looking at the Nicolaitans here, the followers of Balaam,

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a little later, and then those who follow Jezebel. Further on into these, they have different names

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and different sinning styles, if you will, but they all practice sexual immorality and they eat food

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sacrificed to idols, as our text says. Now, the exact nature of the Nicolaitans is lost in the mists of

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obscurity, exact teachings and origin, but we do have an indication from the church father,

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Victorinus. He attributes, he's about the late second and early third centuries. The church father,

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Victorinus, attributes the origins of the Nicolaitans to, as he puts it, false and troublesome men

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who as ministers under the name of Nicholas made for themselves a heresy, unquote. And our best guess is

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that he was the head of an artisan guild. Now, here's where the artisan guilds come in as a mark

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of the beast. What's the connection between the ancient artisan guilds, you may say, and the mark of the

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beast? I thought that was going to be a chip under our skin or our palms, or maybe barcodes that are

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tattooed under our foreheads or our hands, right? That's usually the general analysis of what it means,

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the modern analysis of what it means to have the mark of the beast anyway. Well, the mark of the

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beast is much older than Hal Lindsey. The mark of the beast was existent in the very first century

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in the church in Ephesus, and we'll unpack this for you as we go through, but the artisan guilds

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had much to do with it. The ancient artisan guilds, they weren't like the unions we have now.

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They were a much different kind of culture. They consisted of an entire culture of lifestyles

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and religion and worship and rituals and foods. We have from the book of Acts, for instance,

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Demetrius, who was the silversmith where? Where was Demetrius a silversmith? He was a silversmith in

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the book of Acts, right? Indicates to us. In the city of Ephesus, the very city we're talking about now,

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the letter to Ephesus. And Demetrius, of course, was a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis,

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right? Queen Artemis, who was the patron deity of the city of Ephesus. And Demetrius was most likely

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a head of the silversmith guild in Ephesus. And those guilds in those ancient days were not like

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the secular guilds and unions that we know today. No, no, no. They weren't the teamsters. These guilds

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were all dedicated to a pagan god who was the patron of that particular craft or trade being practiced.

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For instance, the Roman god Mercury was the god and patron of trade and merchants and travelers.

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Most likely, Lydia, before she was converted, was an active member of this trade, the guild of trade

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merchants and travelers. And her patron god would have been Mercury. Probably as a pagan, paganess,

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trader of purple, right? She was a merchant of purple. And so her patron god would have been Mercury

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and she would have participated in the festivals and the holidays and the pagan meals that had been

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sacrificed to Mercury and all of the rituals and dedication to Mercury. Mars, of course, was the god

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of war. And he was the patron god of soldiers. Minerva. Minerva was the goddess patron of wisdom. And so,

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consequently, she was the patron goddess in the guild of scholars and also the guild of doctors. Minerva was

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also the goddess of medicine. Then we have another example of Vesta, for example. Vesta was the Roman

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goddess of the hearth. And thus, she was the patron of bakers and homemakers. Vesta, the patron of bakers.

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And then there was another example, one last example. There are many others, but the god Vulcan,

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for fire, right? Vulcan. And thus, he was the patron of blacksmiths and craftsmanship. And if you

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were a blacksmith, you belonged to the guild of Vulcan. You participated then in his fiery rites and

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rituals. And you participated in the foods that were sacrificed, the animals, perhaps, that were

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sacrificed to Vulcan. And if you did not belong to one of these guilds, there were many, many others.

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Every trade had its own guild. Every trade had its own patron god. And if you weren't a member of the

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guild, you didn't work. No, you could not buy and sell or trade. You were not a member of one of

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these guilds. Are you beginning to see now what the mark of the beast might be? That is, you bore the

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mark of one of these. And many of these guilds had their own tattoos. They had their own marks, if you

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will, that may have been cut into their skin as a sign of their dedication to not only their trade,

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but also the god of that trade and membership in a guild. One excellent book that gives us some insight

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into this is a book called Pagans and Christians, simply called Pagans and Christians by Robin Lane

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Fox. And he gives great insight into the ancient world, especially the transition between pagan

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culture and Christian culture. It was long and slow. It was not sudden. It wasn't overnight. It

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didn't just happen when Constantine became emperor, first Christian emperor. No, on a long, slow,

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sometimes painful transition between a pagan culture and a Christian culture. And Robin Lane Fox's book,

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Pagans and Christians, does an excellent, it's a long book. It's almost 800 pages long, but it will

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chronicle for you in great detail that transition between a pagan culture and a Christian culture.

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And he treats of this idea of the guild, too. On and on the list could go, though. Mercury, Mars,

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Minerva Vesta Vulcan, if you worked, right, understand this, listener, because you will not

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understand the mark of the beast until you understand this. If you worked, you probably

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belonged to a guild. You participated in their ceremonies and their festivals and thus did what

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they did, right? Other members, your compatriots, your colleagues. And of course, many of these festivals

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and ceremonies and meals degenerated into debauchery, not only licensed with food, but licensed with sex

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as well. They honored who they honored. You, if you were a member of these guilds, you honored what

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they honored. If you were a member of a guild, you ate what they ate. The guild was your lifeline to a

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living. No guild, no work. Now, you see where we're going with this, right? Buying and selling. It wasn't

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chips and barcodes. It wasn't something far in the future. It was present in the life of the Ephesians

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at that very day. You go running off looking for great tribulations in the future, rapture, 666,

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marks of the beast. It was happening then and there, dear listener. That's what frustrates me so much about

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you futurists out there who cast everything into the future. You miss what was going on in the first

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century with our brothers and sisters in the first century, then and there. They were going through

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these things. Now, Nicholas and consequently the Nicolaitans, they were probably countenancing full

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participation in these guilds without reservation, right? And this is the teaching that the apostle

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John is there to put a stop to. And our Lord stands against it. And so do the Ephesians. And so

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he commends them for this. So it's one of our major motifs we're going to be seeing all the way through

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the book of Revelation. Come out of her, right? Touch no unclean thing. There's no compromise with the

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world. You can't be a member of these guilds and be a Christian at the same time, which is what the

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Nicolaitans were teaching. And there is reward. There is reward for obedience. Then that brings us to

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verse 7. We're in Revelation chapter 2, verses 1 through 7, and we're at verse 7 now, because there

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we find, for encouragement, know that those who conquer will banquet upon the tree of life in a

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restored Edenic garden. Our Lord gives the recurring exhortation to hear with understanding. He who has

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an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. That's the sense of hearing with

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understanding. And it's to us, because he tells us that to the one who conquers,

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Nekonti, we get our word Nike from this, the idea of conqueror, Victor. To the one who conquers,

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ah, who is the one who conquers? Just parenthetically here, who is the one who conquers,

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dear listener? Is it the one who wins high elective office? Oh, is it the one who finally triumphs like

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Constantine at the Melvin Bridge? Is it one who becomes absolute master of the world, grinding

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down all his enemies? Is that who is conqueror? Huh. That is the world's vision of conqueror, isn't it?

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That is the one who, with Mao, says political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Yeah, but the

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Spirit tells us that spiritual power comes blood of the cross. And for Ephesus, to the one who works

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in the love of Christ, who patiently endures, who disciplines false teachers, the one who comes out

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of the world and its system, to this one reward will come. And that reward is, and these are

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conquerors, brothers and sisters, we are still conquerors in this very same fashion. And that

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reward is tailored to meet the sacrifice then of this life, even if it falls for it, right? To the

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Christian guild member who must leave his pagan way of life because it's inextricably bound up with

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idolatry, debauchery as it was. His festivals and his steak dinners dedicated to his patron God

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will now be replaced by fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God, as verse 7 tells us.

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Once more, we see a theme that will carry us to the end, brothers and sisters. That is the idea of

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life in the paradise of God, food from the paradise of God. Revelation 22 tells us,

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on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruits, yielding its fruit each

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month, the leaves of the tree, the healing, the nations, unquote. Yes, this is a major theme for us

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then throughout Revelation is that we conquer. We conquer the nations as well. The nations are going

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to go into eternity, the text tells us. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,

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not just a general designation of all kinds of people. No, but the nations as we know them now

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will be judged and will be in, in some sense, in eternity. And the nations will be the Lord's as

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well. And we will be conquerors. As I keep telling you, dominion is our destiny. Dominion in this life,

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in this world, Christian, is our destiny. Even as we have seen Christ conquer throughout the

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centuries, have we not? We have seen Christ conquer throughout the centuries and he is making his way

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through the earth. We see the mustard seed begin in ancient Palestine, right? After the resurrection

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of our Lord Jesus Christ began. All authority has been given unto me. Hell will not prevail against

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you and against my kingdom, right? Behold, I'm with you to the very end of the age. And that mustard seed

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has grown from just the smallest of all seeds, as our Lord says, into a flourishing tree. We see

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Christianity as the largest denomination, the largest religion, if you will, in the entire world.

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It's flourishing. It's growing. Dominion is our destiny, dear believer. To the one who conquers

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will be given the fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God. Yes, and the nations will find

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great healing in the leaves of that tree. And we will be dominion takers. We are dominion takers now.

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We're not sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for a fictional rapture before the great

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tribulation. No, if you're waiting for that, you will be sadly disappointed, dear listener.

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We rather are dominion takers and we should be about taking dominion even now. Behold your work for

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the weak. And brother and sister, begin taking dominion. We take dominion not by the barrel of a gun.

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No, but by the blood of the lamb. And we live and we sacrifice. Worship. We labor. We work. We

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endure patiently. These are the weapons of our warfare. They're spiritual to the pulling down of

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strongholds. By these, we take dominion not with guns. Bam! Brothers and sister, may that be your portion

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this week. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Idaho Falls.

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We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. We're going through the book of Revelation,

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preaching the book of Revelation. And we meet for worship, holy worship, on Sunday at 10 a.m.

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at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And we encourage you to join us across our

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threshold. Come visit us, see who we are as a congregation. You'll find a warm welcome

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and you'll find an opportunity to worship in spirit. And for more information or some comments,

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perhaps you disagree with something I've said, shock upon shock, maybe, or perhaps you want more

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information about us, you can call us at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.