Good evening, everyone, and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation, chapter 13, and we are going to be reading Revelation 13:3-4:

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

I will stop reading there.  Last time we were looking at how the world “marveled” after the beast.  The word translated as “wondered” is also translated as “marveled.”  We went to a few verses where the Lord Jesus performed miracles and the people who witnessed these miracles “marveled” at the things Christ had done.

There are a couple more verses I would like to look at before we move on to verse 4.  One is in Luke 24:12:

Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

This is a translation of the same word and it is translated here as “wondering.”  Then it says in Luke 24:41:

And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?

This is when Christ was making an appearance after His resurrection and Peter “wondered” at what had come to pass when he found the empty tomb and the disciples also “wondered.”  They “marveled,” and that is, perhaps, more similar to our verse than the verses that dealt with Christ’s miracles, because, according to Revelation 13:3, “one of his heads as it were wounded to death;; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast,” and if his deadly wound was healed, then it is almost as though he has come back to life or been resurrected.  The Lord Jesus died and was resurrected and the true believers, like Peter, “wondered” at those things. 

Notice that God is very careful not to use that kind of language concerning the “beast,” or the devil.  He does not speak of him coming back to life and He does not speak of him being resurrected, but simply says that he was wounded to death and his deadly wound was healed.  Satan never had “life,” as he has also been judged and has died in his sin; there is no life in him.   There is only life through God and Satan is against God, so God carefully avoids using words or terms that would imply that Satan possesses any “life,” but only that “his deadly wound was healed.”  The world marveled at this and we spent some time in our last study thinking about how the world “marvels” in the increased wickedness in the world and God had indicated that this would be something that would come to pass at the time of the end of the world.  For instance, we read in Matthew 24:11-14:

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.  But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

So in the context of the end of the world, God makes the statement that “iniquity shall abound” and “the love of many shall wax cold.”  The Biblical definition of “love” is keeping God’s commandments, so “waxing cold” from love would mean that they are no longer keeping God’s commandment.  They are getting further and further away from being obedient, as we have personally witnessed in the world in these last years.

Notice, also, that it says that “iniquity shall abound.”  The word “abound” is only translated that way here, but in other verses it is translated as “multiply.”  It says in Hebrew 6:13-14:

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.

Both the words “multiply” and “multiplying” are the same word translated as “abound” in Matthew 24:12.  So we can understand Matthew 24:12 to be saying that iniquity shall multiply.  Notice how God used that word “multiply” in referring to Abraham’s seed increasing from a few in number to great in number, as “the stars of heaven,” or as “the sand of the sea.”

So, too, the sins that mankind will show forth will multiply and the love of many will wax cold at the time of the end.  We can read this and we know, absolutely, what God is talking about.  There is just no other period of history in all the generations of the world that can even come close to the multiplication of iniquity in our present world.  I do not care what nation you are from, because it is not just in North America, but it is everywhere that iniquity has increased and this is an indicator that Satan’s deadly wound was healed; he is active like he has never been before and in a far greater way.  So the world “wondered” after the beast and then it says in Revelation 13:4:

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

Notice how the world is said to worship the dragon and worship the beast.  Why does God say this in two different ways?  Is not the dragon Satan?  (Yes.)  Is not the beast Satan? (Yes.)  It is just a double emphasis that they will be worshipping Satan.  Actually, the Bible says in Matthew 6:24:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Since the fall of man into sin back in the Garden of Eden, there have been two masters.  There is the Master who is the Lord Jesus Christ and there is the master who is the devil, the dragon.  And all people in their unregenerate state serve Satan.  They do homage to him.  This is exhibited when people serve sin and go after sin.  They allow sin to have dominion over them and they love the world.  The world is that which belongs to Satan when he won the victory over man in the Garden of Eden.  He won, by conquest, all of this world, so to love the world is to show love and to serve Satan.  No one wants to think they are a “devil worshipper.”  There are a few people that outwardly admit to worshipping the devil, but that is very rare among mankind, but all unsaved people, in reality, are doing worship to Satan when they want nothing to do with God; they want nothing to do with the Word of God; they do not want to obey God; they do not want to serve God.  Therefore, they reject God and His Word as their master.  People like to think they are their own master or that they belong to themselves.  They are just an individual and a very independent-minded person: “I do not want anything to do with religion.  I do not want to serve God as the Bible tells me to do.  I do not want anything to do with any religion; I do not want to be a Muslim or a Hindu or anything.  I will just live my life independently and I will do whatever I want to do.  I will stay far away from religion and I am just going to enjoy myself.  I am going to make a lot of money and buy the things I want to buy.  I am going to get a nice house and a nice car and maybe I will get married and have children, and just have a nice life that I fully intend to enjoy without God.”  Well, that is a life that is dedicated to service to Satan and service to doing his will, because that is exactly what Satan would want someone to do.  He would want them to do a thousand different things – be a Muslim, be a Buddhist, be a Hindu, be an atheist, be an agnostic, be a secularist or a humanist.  He would want people to think that they were independent and they are their own person and they can do things their way and not bow down to anyone or anything.  Satan would want that because it is a “lie” and, therefore, through the lie, Satan is worshipped.  Through the self deception of man, Satan is worshipped.  He is done homage.  He is done service.  Satan does not care if people acknowledge or comprehend that he is the one getting the worship. 

Remember what Satan did back in the Garden of Eden.  How did he win the battle?   How did he overcome man to begin with?  It was through a “lie.”  He told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die.”  Then Eve ate and Adam ate and they died, spiritually, in sin and they brought death into the world.  Satan was worshipped by our first parents and, since, then, all are conceived in sin and born “speaking lies.”  We commit sins in thought, word and deed and unless God intervenes and rescues us from the bondage of sin, we are lost.  It says in 2Timothy 2:25-26:

In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

It is Satan’s will that people be imprisoned in spiritual darkness and in the dungeon of sin that holds them fast.  It is his will, because he won the early victory over man and he did that through a “lie.”  He is the “father of lies” and he has continued to lie all through history.  I do not know if we can rate lies and assign degrees of “lesser lies” or “greater lies,” but there is no greater lie that the world has been taken in by than that you can just enjoy yourself and seek pleasure.  You live that “good life,” where you work hard and earn money and you buy the things you want and you build that life for yourself – you build a house and you build a family and you gather your friends around and “eat, drink and be merry.”  You try to have as much fun as you possibly can before sickness comes and before your life ends.  Then you can say you had a “good life.” 

What a terrible “lie” that is.  It is not a “good life.”  It is a miserable existence because it is a paltry length of time if you live a few decades and you live to be 70 or 80 years and then your body ages and sees corruption and you die, as a result of your sin, and you cease to exist for evermore.  Everything you worked for and fought for and were promised by this world is removed from you, in an instant, upon your physical death.  You know it no more and you have no more conscious existence.  All your love, all your hopes and dreams are removed like a puff of smoke that is gone for evermore.  It is complete and utter vanity and, yet, man does not want to look into the future beyond this world and into eternity; they do not want to think about God and His Word and these spiritual truths about an existence that transcends this world.  They have “tunnel vision” that is focused on this life, on having fun this Friday night, relaxing on Saturday and working overtime on Sunday to get extra money to buy something that is better than what they have.  What a pitiful lot it is for the natural man.  It is extremely sorrowful and they are deserving of much pity by the child of God.  It is such a horrible life that this world has accepted, in believing that this world is all there is and this is it.  That is the “lie” of Satan and his deceitfulness.  He has set up the “flashing lights” that are but for a moment in this world and he has said, “All you can hope for are some temporal pleasures and you cannot and should not look for anything else.”  This is listening to the voice of the devil, the liar from the beginning, rather than listening to the voice of God which can be heard in the Word of God, the Bible.

Let us go back to Revelation 13:4:

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast…

Worship does not take place just in churches and religious institutions.  “Worship” is performed when we do service to anybody.  Who rules our life?  Who is the one that has that dominion and authority and power over us?  Again, the tragic truth is that over unsaved person in the world, it has been Satan, from the fall of man until the Day of Judgment.  At that point, Christ put Satan down from all worship and authority.  But the point in time we are reading about in Revelation 13 is the beginning of the Great Tribulation, the beginning of the reign of Satan which God bestowed by giving him a final period of rule over the hearts and minds of men, like never before in history, and they worshipped him.  Of course, this worship of the dragon and worship of the beast is against the commandment of God.  That is obvious.  We read in Exodus 34:14:

For thou shalt worship no other god: for JEHOVAH, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

God is bringing mankind into judgment at this point in Revelation 13, when the judgment begins on the house of God, the churches, for the same reason.  They have been involved in idolatry and spiritual fornication; they have served other gods.  They have gone after the world’s ideas and they have allowed it to enter into the churches, which ought to have had nothing to do with the world and its ideas, its music and its philosophies.  An example would be that as the world began to give equal rights to women, the church followed suit and they said, “Well, it is time that we start allowing women to be pastors, elders and deacons and have positions of authority.”  Of course, that goes contrary to the Law of God and what we read in the Bible.  In doing so, they are worshipping other gods.  They are allowing the world to influence them.   They are allowing the world to become their authority and now the trends of the world start to dictate what they will follow.  At this point, it does not matter, as the church age is over.  The churches have been destroyed and they have all been bundled as tares and cast into the spiritual fire of the day of God’s wrath. 

But, here, we are reading of the beginning of the Great Tribulation, as God speaks to us through these verses in Revelation 13 and He is telling us of this worship of Satan that is taking place in the world.  By the way, as we read of the beast in these first few verses, this applies primarily to Satan in the world.  Later, in Revelation 13:11, we will read of another “beast” that comes up and that “beast” has an image made to it and that “beast” narrows our focus from Satan’s rule in the world to Satan’s rule, in particular, in the churches and congregations during the period of the Great Tribulation.

We will pick up in Revelation 13, verse 4, when we get together for our next Bible study.