The Anti-Christ is the WORST human who ever lived.
Today we are about to see one of the facets of ministry that excites me so
about God and His Word. I like to call it the: Big Picture or Panoramic View
of the Bible. We started many weeks ago looking at Revelation 6. By the second
verse of the chapter, God was introducing us to the first of four horsemen.
The white horse represents the “antichrist” influence Satan has always sought
to pour out upon humanity. But now God shows us that the influence is taking
the form of the most malignant person ever to live.
SATAN’s person introduced in Revelation is a figure that God’s Word has described
in so many ways and places. I’d like to explain to you why it
takes so long to go through the verses of Revelation, the answer is simple
if you understand the nature of prophetic Scripture.
The Bible is completely unified, interconnected, and woven together by God,
just like all of the various organs and systems of our bodies. One element
within God’s Word are Biblical prophecies, which are also interconnected, and
run through every corner of the Bible much like nerve cells are woven through
our human bodies. So, when teaching the Bible there are two valid methods
that can be used:
* ONE method is to focus solely upon just one verse or passage out of the
31,003 verses of the Bible; and to work only through the words and ideas of
that verse alone, and then go on to the next. That is called textual teaching,
or sticking to only the verse or text of the message.
* The OTHER method of preaching is expository preaching, which sticks to the text;
but it also adds the weight of what God has said about that verse from any of the
other 31,003 verses of the Bible. What we are doing in Revelation is this type of
expository teaching of the Word.
All of the 404 verses in the Book of Revelation are incredibly tied to what God
began in Genesis and is in the process of finishing. God has given pieces of information,
tucked away in the words of the Prophets about the events in the Last days. Each of
these are powerful lesson about His character, and His plan, and teaches us more
about how to worship and serve God through every season of our lives.
Now, using the expository method of study, let me show you the immense weight of all
that God has previously told us in the rest of the Bible, about the coming false
messiah called the antichrist. We began to meet this worst human who will ever live,
as we stepped into Revelation 6. But as we did we found a person about whom there are:
27 Chapters of the Bible and counting.
TODAY we need to pause and think about how many different chapters of the Bible are
used by God to describe this evil servant of Satan. Here’s the tally so far:
* Jesus talks about him in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 (that is 3 chapters);
* Paul describes him in 2 Thessalonians 1-2 (that is 2 chapters); then
* John describes him in 1 John 2 & 4 and 2 John 1 (that is 3 chapters);
* Revelation devotes chapters 6-20 to describe his impact on humanity and his fate
(that is 15 chapters); and now in
* Daniel we see him in Daniel 7,8,9 and 11 (that is 4 more chapters).
So this worst of all humans who ever lives is already the subject of 27 chapters
of the Bible. That is quite an extensive coverage, and there are more we haven’t
even touched. Think about this man with so many different names in the Bible:
the man of sin, the son of perdition, the beast, the lawless one, and the Antichrist.
Satan EMPOWERS the Worst Human Ever.
Of all who have ever hated good, hated God, and hated Christians, the Antichrist
will be the pinnacle. If we were to take all of the worst persecutors, deceivers,
and malignant terrorists and stew them until they boiled down to the essence of evil,
this is what would pout out: the man of sin, the son of perdition, and the false Christ.
The Anti-Christ is the WORST human who ever lived.