Jaw-dropping Jewels about Jesus
Rarely does Jesus, God the Son, do exactly what we expect of Him. It seems odd that He so frequently surprises us, given that He never changes. Hebrews 13:8 makes this absolute statement: “Jesus the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Still, though He is blessedly consistent in His goodness, Jesus does unforeseen things. Even when He does what is expected, He does not always do it in the way that we anticipate. Let us join with Jesus on a jaw-dropping journey. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
The symbolic description of the “man of sin” (II Thessalonians 2:4), whom we call the Antichrist, tells us much about him: “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority” (Revelation 13:1-2). As we studied yesterday, a very real Satan (“the dragon”) will give a very real man (“the beast”) pernicious “power,” symbolized by both “horns” and “crowns.” The imagery of “lion…bear…leopard…beast” is also found in Daniel 7:4-8, and there it symbolizes the empires of the Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. What we see in Revelation 13 is the consolidation of similar political, economic, and military might under the Satanic leadership of the Antichrist. Some Bible scholars use the phrase “the revived Roman Empire” to try to pin down the exact parameters of the Antichrist’s quite brief reign, but it is unwise to speculate about nations and alliances, especially given the changeable nature of geopolitical boundaries and geopolitics in general. Specific details about Israel and Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, Daniel, Zechariah, and elsewhere must be taken literally, of course. Likewise, passages such as Ezekiel 38:1-6 that contain specific geographical detail must be interpreted literally. The extent of the Antichrist’s reach is considerable, as we will see in verse 8. Exactly what nations will exist at that time, though, is uncertain. The certainty is that the Antichrist will rule in a cruel and destructive manner and that this reign is extremely short.