The worship of the Beast. The worship of the Beast (Antichrist) and the image of the Beast are the great issues of the last days. According to the Book of Revelation, one of the primary tasks of the saints of the end-time is to overcome the Beast and his image.

As we have stated previously, the Beast is Antichrist, that is, the desire of man to be his own God. The False Prophet is the attempt of people to gain the power of Christ apart from union with Christ. There is no doubt that these abominations will be a mixture of the world and Christianity. They will represent the maturing of what already is prevalent in the wealthy nations of the earth, the attempt to set up a system that speaks the words of morality, of faith, of hope, of love (even in the name of Jesus) but which is motivated by human reasoning and objectives.

It is our point of view that the "faith" and "prosperity" movements are of the False Prophet. The "Reconstruction" movement appears to be an attempt of Christian people to use the power of Jesus to gain control of civil government. Then too we see Christian leaders attempt to persuade the world leaders to "accept Christ" according to the "four steps of salvation." They do not seek to convince the politicians to walk in obedience before God, to take up their cross and follow the Lord, but to be "born again" in the sense of a shallow mental and verbal acknowledgment of the Christian redemption. Such teaching will not cause the political leaders to tremble, as did Felix. Paul did not talk to Felix about grace or being born again but concerning righteousness, self-control, and judgment to come.

In addition the Christian leaders stress the value of a democratic form of government (which does not of itself result in godly behavior, as evidenced in the United States, France, England, and West Germany) and free-enterprise capitalism as an economic system. We are not certain that it is the Holy Spirit who is sponsoring these attempts to bring the Divine salvation into the political arena.

Antichrist and the False Prophet will attempt to use the things of Christ to solve the problems of the world. It seems these two members of the satanic trinity are with us already.

There may be a day when people are forced to have some sort of mark in their hand or on their forehead in order to participate in the world economic system. Our concern is that today the actions of the believers and their thinking reveal they already are part of the world system. With their hands they serve the God of the world and their minds think like the world.

The believers are worshiping the demons of covetousness, lust, violence, drunkenness, and occult practices as they watch their televisions. They are seeing on the television what Antichrist desires they see. The believers sit in a mental torpor, allowing Satan to stamp their minds with covetousness, lust, murder, reveling, and sorcery. The Christians do not have the strength to resist the entrance of Satan into their homes. This is because they have been taught that Christ desires to forgive them, rather than the truth of the Gospel which is that Christ wants to change them. Salvation is moral transformation. Apart from moral transformation there is no salvation.

To be continued.