Recording: It's time now for Bible Talk. Join our hosts Gary Gibbs and John Bradshaw, speakers for the Amazing Facts Ministry as they now open the Bible and discuss themes that affect your life today. Stay tuned because the next 15 minutes will deepen your understanding of God's Word.
John Bradshaw: Hi, friends and welcome again to Bible Talk! Where we talk about the Bible and the Bible issues and Bible subjects that affect you today. Great to have you with us! I'm John Bradshaw. With me is Gary Gibbs. Hi, Gary!
Gary Gibbs: Hi, John! We are discussing a very, very important topic.
John: The Mark of the Beast. It doesn't get much more important. Or controversial! Or confused than the Mark of the Beast!
Gary: We've spent the last couple of programs, and we can't rehash all of this. Our listeners are going to have to call in, write in, get the past Studies that we have covered.
John: And you know that on Bible Talk you can do that. Just call our number, email us, we'll get you the Bible Studies that we're offering and we urge you to do that. Listen at the end of this program today for that information.
Gary: Well, let me just say what we have discovered and I hope this will spark some interest. We have learned, and you have shown us from the scriptures, that the Mark of the Beast is not, and I did say that correctly, not 666!
John: That's right. 666 is the number of the Beast, that's something altogether different. Related but the number and the mark are two separate things.
Gary: I want to say something that we haven't said yet on this program, John. But that is probably, if this is true...let me back up a half a second. If it is true that 666 is not the Mark of the Beast, then that is the biggest deception on this topic, that has been pawned off on Christianity than anything else!
John: And I tell you it's an unnecessary deception. All you need to do is pick up your Bible and read. I had a man, and I mentioned this a couple of programs back if I remember correctly. He said to me "I read in the Bible that the Antichrist will have three 6's tattooed on his head!" And I said "I don't know what Bible you were reading out of." And I opened mine and read to him Revelations 13:18 that 666 is the number of the Beast. He said "You know, I guess I'm wrong." And then he confessed that in truth that the knowledge that he has on this subject, and much of it very confused, isn't anything he got out of the Bible. He said "I get most of my understanding from the television, from the movies, from the best selling books. I really don't read my Bible." Friend, you got to read your Bible for yourself! Just reading through some of these passages, even if you don't understand everything, just reading them will cause you to gain great knowledge and you will lose a lot of confusion and misunderstanding.
Gary: It really is clear because it says it's the number of his name. It doesn't say it's the number of the Beast, it says it's the number of his name. His name adds up to 666. Very clear.
John: Yeah, it says it's not the Mark of the Beast, you're quite right about that.
Gary: That's right.
John: All right.
Gary: But here we are and you know, if most people believe that the Mark is 666...and I got to thinking about that and I say "Well, it's not in the Bible." Then the Devil then has pawned off this deception to get us all looking for something that's not going to happen because he's going to sneak up with what the real Mark is and we're not going to suspect him.
John: Absolutely right! If you're looking in the wrong direction, then when the real thing comes along, if you're not looking for it, you won't know it when it comes and it will take you as an overwhelming surprise and a great deception. That's what the Devil's doing! Setting people up to be confused and swept away. That's why the Bible says the majority of people in the last days will follow the Beast because they will be convinced that the dangerous things are other than what exists before their eyes.
Gary: Now, John, I want to kind of take us now in a direction, a new direction today. Because as I have explored this and I've studied it with people, I have heard this said, that people say "Well, it really doesn't matter because I'm not going to be here! I am going out in the Rapture." In fact, we had a program, I was hosting a live Bible answers program and somebody called in and said "What does it matter anyway? I'm not going to be here! I'm going up in the Rapture! So it's all the people who are left who have to worry about that, not me!"
John: I've had many people tell that to me right to my face. "Hey, what does it matter? I'm not going to be around." But does the Bible say that? In fact, let me show you right in the Bible in Revelation chapter 13 how important it is. The chapter Revelation 13 starts off about talking about the Beast.
Gary: OK.
John: Seven or eight verses talking about the Beast, how the world will follow the Beast. And then it says in verse nine "If any man have an ear, let him hear!" It does not say anyone other than those who think they're going to get out of here early. Anyone other than those caught up in the Rapture. It just says you need to hear if you've got ears! And by hear it's not just saying listen to John and Gary on Bible Talk. It say hear, know and understand and have this word in your heart. So no matter when you think you're getting out of here, you ought to understand and have a solid understanding of this. The book of Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ. So how can we think that it will be God's will for us not to understand it or not to try to understand it when what you read in Revelation shows us and reveals to us Jesus himself?
Gary: John, that's right. This whole topic really talks about the Rapture and we're talking about the Mark of the Beast. It does tie into when the Rapture happens. But we did a whole program on the Rapture and we have a study on the Rapture, the Second Coming of Christ. If our listeners want to call in at the end of the program, we'll give the phone number, the email address. They can contact us, enroll in our Bible course and we will send them these studies. But without going into the Rapture topic specifically, why do you say we're going to be here? Because a lot of people believe from Revelation four on, that's all written for the people who are left here because when all the Christians are gone, they're going to say "Wow! We heard those Christians talk about this." They're going to grab their Bibles, or maybe they don't have Bibles, they'll grab our Bibles that we left behind. And they're going to start reading and they're going to say "Ah! I'm the one who has to have an ear to hear!"
What tells you that we're all going to be here during this Mark of the Beast time? And if that's the case, you need to give me and our listeners some assurance that everything's going to be OK going through that type of time of terrible trial and trouble, as the Bible calls it.
John: Well, trial and trouble and feels and never seems terribly good at the best of times. So I'm not going to ever tell anybody that being a Christian is always going to be a picnic and a walk in the park and any other cliche that you would hope to insert right there. Jesus promised you that if you have the privilege of being a Christian, then you are in for some rather interesting experiences. At one time, Jesus shared a parable. Anyway, let's talk about this specifically. Will you be here or will you not be here?
Gary: That's right, that's the question.
John: He talked to the disciples about a man who was sowing seed in the field. "While men slept, his enemy...". This is Matthew 13, I'm in verse 25 "...his enemy came and sowed tears among the wheat." I'm going to get down to [inaudible 07:15 verse 30, you know the gist of that story. The tears grow up, the wheat grows up early on, you can't really discern one from the other. They sheds, the tears up. O. No. You don't do that. You might pull up some of the good.
Gary: M hmm.
John: And Jesus said in that story, "Let both grow together until the....". Do you know?
Gary: The end.
John: "The Harvest" is the word he uses right to the end. And He says in the same chapter, "The harvest is the end of the world". Now ladies and gentlemen, if you are just going to be biblical about this. God said very clearly in Matthew 13, "The wheat and the tears that's the good and the bad, grow together, but shred in the last. Exist together until the harvestwhich is the end of the world. If somebody was gone to get out of here lonely, the wheat was gone to be evacuate this place. And raptured out early, Jesus would have said something completely different.
But he didn't. He said that the wheat and the tares, they grow up together until the harvest which is the end of the world. I don't know but, you, I don't anybody getting out early in this parable, anywhere else in the battle.
Gary: And then we makes think about Revelation 14. Because in verses 14 and 15, He talks about the harvest its as I looked in the whole a white cloud, and upon the cloud, one sat like unto the sight of man. Having on his head, a golden crown and in his hand, a short sickle. And an another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice, to him that sat on the cloud, trust in thy sickle and reaped for the time is come for thy to reap, for the harvest of the earth is right, and so the person doing the harvesting is the Son of Man Jesus.
John: Absolutely.
Gary: And the time that the harvest comes cordon of what you just read in your Mathew 13:39.
John: Is..
Gary: That's the end of the world right and what's significant here to me is that preceding the harvest scene here. Revelation 14:14, John, it warns people against the market of the East.
John: Absolutely.
Gary: In practice most fearful fearsome warning and all the Bible says if you receive the Mark of the beast, then you got burns of the fires of Hell. But then, in the same context it says, but there will be the state's Revelation 14:12. This calls for patient endurance on behalf of the saints. And then it has the second coming in first workings that tells me, "Before the harvest before Jesus comes, we'll got the market of these going on right along the side of God saints patiently enduring.
John: Now I'm just concerned for the person who's hearing this and this considering something to the first time and now is fearful. Now, Now, Now....
Gary: John, We later brought out of the article there are people who are extremely careful. I met a lady one time that just basically needed a seductive. After she learned this because her whole religious experience was built around the whole of getting out of her as a fire scape religion.
John: Getting out before some terrible and imaginably powerful period of tribulation and pain grits and erects this with. You know preachers, I'm not sure exactly why they want to fill people with fear. When you come to Jesus, according to the Bible for the low costs outfield and we can have a relationship with Jesus that allows us to see a hate through the prophecies of the Bible that's what coming. But, we face them with confidence and with the come-out, surest in Jesus as our idea.
Gary: Is God going to do for his people that are alive and go through this time of trial and trouble surrounding the marketplace to tell us John, what surest can I have because as I look at myself now, I don't have what it's going to tank to go through that kind.
John: No question.
Gary: So what surest lie have that I'm going to be able to endure and have the peace of God in my heart through that time?
John: The famous preacher, Spurgeon was approached by one woman one day who said, "Mr. Spurgeon, I don't have the faith necessary to be a mortar". He said, "Neither do I". She said, "Well. If you don't know, how can I?". He said, "If God want me, to be a mortar, he'll give me the faith necessary to me a mortar". At that time, Daniel went into the Lion's Den. Don't tell me he went in there, with a bigger smile on his face, Happy to be spending the night with the lions. You have seen lions at a zoo, they look good, from a distance.
They look good through the glass and through the bars of the cage. Daniel went in there, wonder what took place at the faith, the faith of God. God relieved him. Look back to Egypt. Plagues failed, then, three plagues fell on everybody. The seven last plagues only affected the enemies of God. What a God do? He protected his people during that time and we have that assurance.
Gary: And you know, that's good news. And John makes me think about Revelation 18:4: "There were hearing God speaking to people on planet Earth, and He says: Come out of her come out of Babylon my people in Babylon, its spiritual possess to people following the beast.
John: Yes.
Gary: That he be not partakers of her sins and that you receive not a replace, that tells me that there are two groups of people on planet Earth while the planes are falling.
John: Right.
Gary: There is my people and they are Babylon's people. And if you stay in Babylon, to get the plagues. If you come out of Babylon, you don't get it. So, we don't have to be fearful, I think there are a lot of preachers appear is picture the plagues falling on every light but if I am sheltered under the almighty scare, God's going to protect me from a lot of us start fastening.
John: Yes. Yes. He absolutely is what he did for Daniel, he will do for you. What he did for Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, he'll do for you. Friend, we have the relationship with Jesus, you can face the future with confidence. And that's one of the key issues in the mark of beast question. But if you belong to Jesus, you can have confidence for the future. Right subject Gary. Thanks for being with us today, friend. We look forward to being with you again. Join us for more on this subject, again next time on Bible Talk.
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