MARK OF THE BEAST CONTINUED

By Rick Lange
http://bibleprophecybyricklange.blogspot.com/
Posted with authors permission

In part one; I talked about the Mark of the Beast and the seal of god in personal terms. We choose daily whether we will live by the spirit or by the flesh, the Word of god or our own opinions, the Gospel of the Kingdom or the Beast kingdom of Satan...

Likewise the Seal of the Holy Spirit is a very personal thing in which the very presence of Christ inhabits us and we learn to live by that Spirit rather than by the spirit of this world.

But this is not to ignore the fact that we are now entering into an epic confrontation in which we will have to choose whether to take the Mark of the Beast and survive, or to remain faithful to Christ even in the face of persecution, starvation or even death.

We see this global kingdom of the Beast forming rapidly all over the world and as the bible predicts, Jerusalem will be at the center of all controversy simply because Christ is going to reign from Jerusalem for 1000 years and Satan wants to preempt that reign.

It makes sense then that just as the bible predicts that the global kingdom of the beast will involve the control of three main forces: Our money, our politics and our religion. Whoever has control of those three things has control of the entire world. Therefore we see globalist banks and technologies coming on line that will have the capability to control all buying and selling. We also see the political forces squeezing us into global governance.

And as I have mentioned numerous times we see the false prophet, uniting all religions along with many Christian denominations into one conglomerate religion for the sake of peace and safety.

Do not take these things lightly, because they will directly affect our lives I the near future and they are affecting our lives even now a whole lot more than most people realize.

What do you think the struggle over the control of Jerusalem is all about? Most Christians don’t realize that the Vatican is in control of Israel. It is in control of the Middle East mess, it is in control of the global banking system. It is in control of global politics. As we can see the heads of every nation in the world are beating a pathway to Rome to receive their marching instructions. The leaders of religion, including the leaders of false Christianity are also beating a pathway to Rome and they are selling our Gospel and our mission along with our souls to the coming antichrist even as we speak.

Adventists have been teaching for 150+ years now that the Mark of the Beast will involve a choice between Saturday (The Jewish Sabbath) as God’s day of worship, and Sunday (changed by the authority of the pope) as the key issue. And while, as in my last article, I showed that the Sabbath is not the seal of God, but rather the Holy Spirit, I nevertheless do not deny that this Sabbath issue could and will even most likely become an issue in the very last days.

Think of it this way. A global religion is now being formed and headed up by Pope Francis. This global religion will force all peoples on earth to worship the Beast and His image… and given the fact that the Pope of Rome is deeply involved in the formation of this global religion and since, Sunday was enforced as the day of worship by the popes of Rome, it is highly unlikely that this satanic cabal would choose to enforce Saturday worship as the global day of choice. And since we know that the coming global system will be a dictatorship and that they are using religion as one of three arms of their control, we can expect that we will be forced to worship on one specific day.

We are given a picture of this in Daniel 3 where Nebuchadnezzar, resenting that he was only the head of gold on history’s image, instead made an entire image of gold and then called everyone in the then known world to worship said image. In this case there were only three, who refused to bow to this image and so they were thrown into the furnace, where Jesus stepped in and rescued them.

It is also interesting in connection with this story that Daniel and his three friends also refused to drink of the king’s wine. Evidently the rest of the Jewish captives did drink of the king’s wine and we never hear of them again. But this same Babylonish system is seen in the last days as yet another global kingdom and the woman who rides the beast is said to have another cup of wine in her hand, full of abominations. (See Rev. Chapter 17)

There was also another cup which was offered to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane which He was loath to drink. It was the cup of our sins, the cup of Babylon, and the wine of God’s wrath, which Jesus and to drink if He were to rescue all who would choose Him as their Savior. He drank of that horrible cup for us. He asked His father if there was any other way, but there was not. And so He drank of the bitter cup absorbing our sins into Himself so that He could pour His righteousness into us.

Now back to the issues of the last days. Will the Sabbath become an issue? It stands to reason that it will. The Beast system has and holds its own authority in this world in defiance of all that is called true and holy and the Sabbath is certainly one of those things that were called Holy, not only in the Law, but in the very fabric of creation.

The Sabbath/Sunday question is not a confrontational issue right now, but it may be in the near future and if so, I, for one, am going to live by God’s authority rather than man’s. So when we see the global religion being enforced upon all of humanity, and if it includes one global day of worship, then we as true Christians will have to stand alone just as Daniel’s three friends did… and we will have to come out of any religious system that goes along with the Beast on this issue or any other issue.

Sadly, we see many main stream and even evangelical religions siding with the Beast right now for the sake of unity and we, as servants of the Most High God must watch these things very carefully.

I am happy to say that right now many prophets and prophecy teachers are coming alive to the realization that Pope Francis is playing a major role in the forming of this global religion. Even faithful Catholic, priests and bishops are saying that this Pope is destroying the basics of their faith and that he is a devil and may bring the church to ruin.

On one hand the true church has faced the antichrist and the Mark of the Beast for 2000 years now. It has always been the nemesis of true Christianity, but in our day, the issues are coming to a head in such a way that every person on the planet will have to make a choice either for or against Jesus Christ. This choice will involve obedience to His Word and even more importantly it will involve the seal of God which is the Holy Spirit, for we will either have received the Holy Spirit or lived by that Spirit; or we will have taken on the spirit of this world and lived by that spirit. We will either be drinking of the cup of the New Covenant or the cup of Babylon.

But remember this: The true rest is found in Christ. “Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. YOU can keep the Sabbath all day long, but unless you have the Holy Spirit of God… and unless you have become fruitful trees through which the Holy Spirit is bearing His fruit, you are a dead branch that will be pruned away.

Make sure, above all that you are connected to the Vine and that His life is flowing through you in worship and praise and thanksgiving to God and by extension, into the hearts and needs of others. Selah.