Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
In the Book of Revelation, chapter 13, a dragon and two beasts start a new religion, requiring everyone to worship the beast’s image and get tattooed with its name or number. Don’t want a tattoo? Too bad. Objectors will be executed.
In chapter 14, John looks away from this beastly vision, to Mount Zion, where the lamb stands with 144,000 people tattooed with God’s name, not that of the beast.
Then we see three flying angels. The first says, “Worship God, because he’s ready to judge everyone.”
The next angel says, “Babylon the Great, which infected the whole world with madness, has fallen.”
The third angel declares, “God is angry with anyone who worships the beast or is tattooed with his mark. He’ll throw them into a pit of burning sulfur.”
John says, “This calls for patient endurance by God’s people on earth” and a voice from heaven says, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”
What’s this? The beasts have been busy executing Christians. And now we’re told even more Christians will die? And those who die are blessed? Is this good news or bad news?
When the Old Testament prophet Daniel got news like this, his face turned pale and he was deeply troubled. In his vision, four beasts rose out of the sea. The fourth beast blasphemed God and oppressed God’s people for three-and-a-half years. Then the son of man came in the clouds of heaven to destroy the beast and set up God’s kingdom on earth (Dan 7:1-28).
John’s vision also has the son of man coming on the clouds to deal with a world where sin has ripened into a harvest. An angel does the harvesting, throwing the produce into the winepress of God’s judgment. There the grapes are trampled and blood flows, rising as high as a horse bridle for 300 kilometers.
A mighty harvest that! God’s judgment creates a river of blood.
Let’s pray.
O father, give us patient endurance to live through the evils of our time.
John prophesied that Babylon the Great would fill the world with madness. In our time, many nations pose as Babylon and drive the world to insanity. Trade wars and pornography, weapons production and cyber warfare, gambling and guns and bombs and drones. Pollution beyond control.
O Lord, we have crowned beasts as kings of the earth, and we display their names and number wherever we go. Drivers license, social insurance, health care numbers, money stamped with political images, bank accounts that report to government and tax authorities.
Is patient endurance the best you can recommend for us, Lord? Don’t you want us to try to change the politics of the world? To avert the rise of worse and greater beasts? Should we try to domesticate the politicians and encourage them to enact Christian legislation?
O God, we live in troubled times, immersed in divisive politics and watched by intrusive technology. May we wait patiently and wisely while you prepare to ride the clouds of heaven and vanquish evildoers.
Amen.
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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