I've been preaching on the series concerning the Antichrist, and this will be the last of this series for the present time. Of course, this subject is a very big subject, and I could go on preaching for many, many more months on this, since we have been going quite slowly and breaking it down into easily digestible portions, I hope. But we must wrap everything up today, at least for the present time. But I hope that the purpose will be accomplished — why we have been looking at this series of messages. Because I find that many Christians live as though they have forever. As though neither Antichrist is coming, nor indeed Christ himself is coming again. And living under this illusion or delusion, many Christians live with a carelessness and a purposelessness that is thoroughly alarming.
Very soon it will be Chinese New Year. You know what year is coming up? Of course you know, you live in Hong Kong. If I were asking this question in Canada, among the Chinese there, I think many of them might not be immediately aware what year it is. It is the year of the dragon. Think about it. The year of the dragon. Oh, the dragon is a very impressive creature, and Chinese people find the dragon really a marvelous creature. But not in the Bible, unfortunately for us.
Our Chinese emperors used to wear the longpao, a great big dragon in front of his dress, symbolizing him as, strangely enough, the son of heaven. The dragon was almost a mythical, not to say divine, kind of creature. And many women, I hear, would like to have their children born in the year of the dragon because they think that the children will be something special. Well, they might be something special, but not exactly what you had in mind.
The Bible mentions the dragon in only one book of the New Testament, and in that book the dragon is mentioned some 12 times. That is the last book of the Bible, Revelation. Interesting. Bear in mind, the rest of the New Testament doesn't mention the dragon. But when we come to the last book that speaks about things which must shortly come to pass, things which will very soon begin to happen, suddenly there is mention of the dragon. And not even at the beginning of Revelation, but halfway through. The dragon first appears in the book of Revelation at chapter 12. And then in chapter 13, most of the 12 references, and indeed about 10 out of 12 references, occur in those two chapters, right in the middle of Revelation. And then in chapter 20, near the end of Revelation, the dragon is seized. Oh yes, this magnificent dragon is seized and thrown into the bottomless pit. Because he represents Satan, the enemy of God.
And we are coming to the year of the dragon. Is it a coincidence? Now think about another thing. The year 2000. It's a very interesting date, isn't it? Twelve years from now. And what year will the year 2000 be, according to our Chinese calendar? Indeed. Indeed. The year 2000 will be the year of the dragon again. Interesting. Can it be that 1988, this coming year, will be an introduction to the final appearance of the dragon from 2000, or the final downfall of the dragon, whichever it is? Now those who study the Bible know well enough that we shall not predict any dates. But it is interesting to think of these things, unless we think of these things as pure coincidence, that the year 2000 is the year of the dragon. Pure coincidence? Interesting.
Now the Bible does not underestimate the power of the dragon. The Bible warns us that the dragon is extremely powerful. Indeed, you just look at chapter 12 for yourself in Revelation, and in verse 3 you read that the dragon is an impressive beast, an impressive creature, with seven heads, ten horns. And on each of the seven heads, there is a crown. A crown. So our Chinese ideas are not entirely mistaken when we think of the emperor, the former emperors, as being the bearers or representatives of the dragon, and hence entitled — and they alone are entitled. Only the emperor is allowed to wear the longpao, the special garment with the dragon on it, reserved only for emperors. The Bible confirms that: the dragon wears seven crowns.
And then in the very next chapter, chapter 13, talks about the false messiah. And you know what? The false messiah, if you look at the chapter, looks exactly like the dragon. He also has seven heads and ten horns. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that he actually looks like that when he appears. That is all symbolic language, of course. They all have symbolic meaning. And many of you who have tried to read the Revelation wonder what it's all about. You can't make head or tail of it. Neither dragon head nor dragon tail. You can't make anything out of it. But I'll give you a very simple clue. Very simple clue, to begin with anyway. It all has to do with crowns.
I just mentioned that the dragon wears crowns. And the false messiah also wears crowns, what is called the Antichrist. Now, the dragon has seven heads and seven crowns. He also has ten horns. And the Antichrist also has seven heads and ten horns. But this time, his crowns are on the horns, the symbols of his earthly power. And who else has crowns in the Revelation? In chapter 4, the elders in heaven wear crowns. And they throw their crowns at the feet of God. In worship, they throw their crowns before him. They don't want to wear the crowns. They want to offer their crowns to God alone. And then in chapter 19, in verse 12 of Revelation, a marvelous figure appears who is crowned. He has only one head, not seven heads. But on the one head, he wears many crowns. Many diadems.
Do you get the message of Revelation now? Do you understand the symbolism? Well, let me make it very simple for you. It is a contest for the crowns, for the kingship of this world that is going on. And the book of Revelation portrays in symbolic language and predicts in prophetic language how this battle for the kingship of this world is going to be fought, and what will be the outcome. The outcome is not in doubt. I already told you. Yes, the dragon has seven crowns, but he will be cast into the bottomless pit. And then what will happen? And then the one who has many diadems, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, will reign upon the earth. Jesus shall reign.
You know, right now the battle is going on. It is fought in heaven and on earth. And you and I, we are on one side or another of this battle right now. And I want to tell you something more about this battle. This battle is being fought between God and Satan through his representatives. And the supreme representatives in the last days will be Christ versus the false Christ, the Antichrist. That's when the battle will reach its climax. But right now, there are many Antichrists in the world. And right now, in this very hall, there are those who are on one side of the kingship, the battle for kingship, and on the other. Where you stand, you know. You should know. Where do you stand? Are you on the side of God, that his kingdom will be established on earth? Is it your prayer, "Father, your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth and in my life"? Or is it not your prayer? You don't care who is king, so long as you can live a good life while this age lasts. Well, how many more years? We don't know. But as long as it lasts. You've got to make a decision.
Now, let me tell you also what Revelation tells us and what the New Testament, what the Bible tells us. Right now, this whole world is under the kingship not of God, but of the dragon. Yes, it is the year of the dragon. No, it's more than the year of the dragon. It is the time of the dragon. It is the age of the dragon. We live right now in the age of the dragon. Maybe in the year of the dragon, the dragon gets more active. I don't know. But he has been in power for a long time. And I will tell you something else that is important for you to know. And what the Bible tells us, that the whole world, and that means all the people of the world right now, are living in the power of the dragon. It is the time of the dragon. And the kings of the earth — not just the emperor of China — read in the Revelation, the kings of the earth, for the most part, follow the dragon.
And I would like to tell you something more too. As long as you have not consciously and deliberately renounced the kingship of the dragon, that is, of Satan, to this day you are still his subject in his kingdom, under his power. You see, you don't have to make any decision. You don't have to do anything to be a subject of the dragon.
It looked like our friend the dragon is trying to give us some problems. I've fought this battle a long time. It doesn't worry me too much. As you notice, many of you who were at the prayer time, I arrived 15 minutes late because those who are delivering the means of transportation to me arrived half an hour late. I managed to cut the loss in half and I arrived 15 minutes instead of half an hour late. And so as I sat there, I thanked the Lord. I said, good, I'm sure the dragon doesn't like my message, but I'm going to just be quiet and pray and relax and get on with it anyway.
So let us remember this. You don't have to do a thing to be a citizen. Just like if you were born in Hong Kong, what do you have to do? You've got nothing to do. You're born in Hong Kong, you're a citizen of Hong Kong, right? What do you have to do? You don't have to apply to become a citizen of Hong Kong. If you're born in the UK, you're a citizen of the UK. You don't have to apply to become a citizen of the UK. Just fill in a form and they give you a passport. And so in virtually every country, it's like that. And if you're born into the world, you're a citizen of the dragon kingdom. Ah, glorious. Oh, for the Chinese people, that's glorious. Yes, yes, dragon kingdom. Don't rejoice too fast. But remember what happens to the dragon in the end. It is his day of glory now. And you don't have to do a thing. You are a citizen of his kingdom right now.
But in order to become a citizen of the kingdom of God, you've got to apply. That's the tricky part. And the applications are very hard to get approved. I mean to say, you would think that since the whole world is already lying in the power of Satan, God will be rather hungry to get some citizens into his rather small kingdom on earth. I mean, he's got so few citizens that, I mean, he'll be putting great big posters up there and say, all of you apply, there are so many benefits to the kingdom of God. And you know what happens? When you apply, he thoroughly examines you and says, no, your application is not approved. It's really something. I mean, I already gave you face, right? We Chinese people speak of face. I gave God face. I applied. And you know what he does? He turns me down.
You know what Jesus says? You don't take up your cross, you can't follow me. Cross? I mean, my friend, Satan — I mean, my friend, the dragon — never asked nobody to take up any cross. Not only he never asked anyone to take up the cross, he's willing to give you all the kingdoms of the earth if you just follow him a little more closely. You bless your business, burn a little bit of incense at the door. You'd be amazed how your profits go up. I mean, incense only costs a few cents. But the cross? This is really too much.
You see, there is the difference. We are all born into Satan's kingdom. Me, you, we are all born into Satan's kingdom. But to get into God's kingdom, it says, you've got to strive to enter in at the narrow gate. And when you've striven to get in with all that effort and all that sweat, you know what happens? You discover, you who used to be your own boss when you lived in — you know, Satan is very good. He believes in the system of free enterprise. You just run your own little show and feel big. I was reading a book the other day, how to make people do things the way you want them to do it. You make them do what you want and let them think that they are really doing what they want. That is called practical psychology. Now, if you want to be an administrator, you go to those schools and learn how to make other people do what you want and leave them under the delusion that that's what they always wanted to do anyway. That's very wonderful.
And you know, Satan is a master psychologist. But Jesus is no psychologist. Jesus never heard of this type of psychology — or rather, I should say, he heard about it but he refused to practice it. No psychology in the kingdom of God. No, no. Satan says, yeah, you follow me and you can do whatever you like. I will make you the boss of your own little kingdom, and you will feel just great. If you don't feel too great, no problem. I got other solutions for you. There are drugs that can give you a boost. There are TVs that can distract you and other things. We got lots of solutions to this. But you — I will make you feel good. You will be boss of your little kingdom.
But when you come into the kingdom of God, you discover you are told that you are a slave of God. You say, what is this? Slave? I never wanted to be a slave. But without being slaves, you don't become citizens, much less do you become sons of God. We sometimes like to talk about being sons of God. Sounds so good. Unfortunately, in the New Testament, you don't become sons without first becoming slaves. And there are preachers who like to forget the slave bit and just get to the son bit. There are preachers who would also like to give you a passport in the kingdom of heaven without mentioning something about taking up the cross, which is very embarrassing.
Do you want to have God as king of your life? That is the question. And the Antichrist will tell you, no, don't be a fool. And Satan will tell you, no, don't be ridiculous. Look at my kingdom. The whole world is mine. You follow me, you got the world. You follow Jesus, all you got is heaven.
Well, I want to finish the rest of this message today by basing it basically on Matthew 24 and talking about the kingdom of God, the kingship of God. The kingship of God is a wonderful kingship. But if you think that you can get something for nothing, then I'm not the one to tell you that. It is a pearl of great price. But it will cost you everything to get it.
Now, let's look at Matthew 24, and I'd just like you to keep Matthew 24 in front of you for the remaining time that we have in this message. And I'd like to conduct you through Matthew 24 so that you have a clearer perception of what it's all about. Now, the key to understanding the whole of the New Testament, and not just Revelation, is this central question of whether you will have God as king or remain under Satan's kingship. You are already under Satan's kingship. You don't have to make a choice. No choice is already a choice. No decision is a decision for Satan. So you don't have to do anything if you want to stay in Satan's kingdom. You don't have to do a thing today. All you've got to do is ignore today's message and you will carry on happily in Satan's kingdom. But if you want to get to God's kingdom, you're going to have to make a very deliberate, costly choice. Then God becomes king of your life and wonderful things will happen.
But now, let's just stay with Matthew in this section. And one more thing before we come to Matthew 24. You will have seen the sequence, and I preached on this some time ago — Matthew 23, 24, 25. They are one unit of the Lord's teaching. And in the middle of that unit of the Lord's teaching, there is Matthew 24, which talks about the end time and the pseudo or the false messiah, the false Christ, the Antichrist. Matthew 23 has to do with people who profess to have God as their king, but in fact, their lives show that God is not their king. You see, the key to understanding the whole of the New Testament is the kingship of God. If you want to understand how the teaching connects.
And let me tell you — and maybe you don't need me to tell you — that the church is full of people who claim that God is their king, and they are every bit as hypocritical as the Pharisees. You look at their life, you look at the way they talk, you look at the way they think, the way they live, the way they behave, and you know, you know, even as a non-Christian, that God is not king of their lives. That's what the Lord Jesus says right at the beginning of Matthew 23 to these Pharisees. They speak the word of God, they speak of the law, the law of God as king, but their lives betray it. They are like tombs that are painted white on the outside and they look so nice, but inside they are dead, full of dead men's bones.
I beg of you, please, if you want to be a Christian, don't be this kind of Christian. There are too many of these in the world today already, and they are stumbling blocks. And you know something? Satan, our dragon king of this world, loves — oh, he loves these people. They are his favorites. He loves them so much, you couldn't believe it. That's why you see why the Lord Jesus can't tolerate these people. God can't stand these people. Why don't you just be a person who frankly lives as one of Satan's citizens, living under Satan's kingship, and claim to be living under God's kingship, and deny him every day by the life you live, in your place of work, in your school, wherever you go. Don't be this kind of person. That's why the Lord Jesus prefaces his message about the false Christ with a message about false believers. Oh, the Pharisees had all the right doctrines, they believed all the right things. The problem with them is not their belief; the problem with them is their life. And let me tell you, God is king of our lives, or he is not king at all.
And then chapter 25, as you go on the other side, talks about what? Same thing. Some servant of God, allegedly, who beats up the other servants. He is filled with a sense of his own importance. He thinks he's a servant of God, he's something important, he's a pastor, a bishop, whatever he likes to call himself. He's really important. And he says, my master is delaying his coming. So he goes around and ill-treats the people entrusted to his care. Christian leaders who are every bit as bad as the Pharisees. Yes, there is the other parable. The Lord Jesus said it, not me. You look at it for yourself there. And then he speaks about another group of Christians whose light was indeed shining, but that gradually they ran out of fuel, they ran out of oil, and they stopped shining. They blended into the darkness. Now, you may not be a church leader, but you may be one of those who once shone with a certain light. But as the darkness kept on and on pressing upon you, your light began to grow dim. You ran out of fuel. You couldn't endure. That's why the Lord Jesus says, before you think of coming into the kingdom of God, before you think of crowning God as king of your life, count the cost, whether you can endure to the end until his coming again.
And then the last bit of Matthew 25 talks about the judgment of the great king. You see, we are on the subject of kingship all the way. It reaches that climax at the end of these three chapters. It talks about the king. And once again, what does he deal with? He deals with false Christians. That's his preoccupation. The goats, the people who look like sheep but are not sheep. Did they believe in Jesus? Yes. They call him Lord, Master. "When did we not do this? When did we not do that?" See, there we are at it again. Lord, Lord. He says, don't call me Lord. I don't know you. Your life has been a disgrace. And I don't know how many people you have stumbled in your lifetime. You see, that's what I mean. Becoming a true Christian is a difficult thing.
But now on to Matthew 24. And what do we read here? Well, we read something quite interesting. This question that comes to our minds is, when you read Matthew 24, the Lord Jesus first predicts there will be wars. Many wars. Matthew 24, verses 6 to 8. You read it there. There will be wars and rumors of wars, and they will go from bad to worse. And I have expounded this before, and I will not go into detail. There have been wars all through the centuries, as you very well know. But as I have expounded before, the significant thing about this prophecy of the Lord Jesus is, the point is that the wars will get more and more frequent, more and more intense. Was my exposition correct? An exposition which I gave many years ago. We'll see in a moment.
But then, towards the end, you see, at the beginning of chapter 24, he speaks about wars and rumors of wars. In the latter part of Matthew 24, he speaks about the days of Noah, which was the days of peace, verses 37 onwards. I'm not going to read all this. We don't have enough time, because we must very soon be closing. Verse 37 onwards, the Lord Jesus says that as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. What did they do in the days of Noah? Fight? No. What did they do? They did all these innocent things, like eating and drinking, for which we in Hong Kong, of course, are well known around the world, and marrying and giving in marriage. So what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that the only thing that concerned the generation of Noah was earthly things, just like we here in Hong Kong. There's nothing wrong with being interested in education and more education and degrees and more degrees and more businesses and more money, and so it goes on, right? Seems quite harmless. The problem is that the things which are eternal are forgotten, and the things which are passing away become all-absorbing. Anyone who lives like that, you know, is under Satan's kingship, because this is the only world that Satan has got, and he wants you to keep your mind on this world. Don't go thinking about the kingdom of God and other such airy-fairy things, according to him. Think on this. The trouble with this world is that it's passing away. Well, don't think about the world passing away. Just look at this minute. How real is what you got now?
But now it raises a question. You see, Noah's generation was simply a generation, it seems, not of war, but of peace. How do we put these two things together? Wars and rumors of wars, eating and drinking and getting married. War on the one hand, and peace. War and peace at the same time? You know, the Bible is amazing. The Lord Jesus gives this teaching, and I ask you right now this question. Are we in war or are we in peace? Right? This year, 1988. Are we in war or are we in peace? What's your answer? Well, we're in peace. Where do you see war? We are living in a time of great peace, right? If you think so, you have obviously not been in touch with what's going on in the world today. A Christian should read not only his Bible, which he indeed should do, he should read his newspapers. And there are many Christians who don't seem to bother to read the newspapers, except for other things maybe, job classifications. And what happens elsewhere? Who cares? Are we living in war or are we living in peace? Matthew 24 tells us both are true at the same time, amazingly.
Last Monday, South China Morning Post, January 25th, gives this report. I wonder how many of you read it. Global military outlay, the newspaper tells us. The expenditure on weapons in 1987, which passed only a few weeks ago — in 1987, do you know how much money the world spent on weapons in this so-called peacetime? Do you know how much? It boggles the mind. My calculator can't put enough zeros just to record the number. It is 930 million? No. 930 billion. That is 930,000 million US dollars. Can your calculator put that many numbers on? No. The zeros alone come to 9 zeros, plus 930, followed by 9 zeros. 930,000 million. And we are talking about US dollars, which translates into 7 point something trillion Hong Kong dollars. Now, I am sure if you could manage the US dollar figure on your calculator, you would have trouble with the Hong Kong dollars. This is called peacetime. In peacetime, the world spends that kind of money.
And what is more, was my preaching right that the situation gets worse every year? Well, in 1986, the same newspaper tells us that the outlay was 880 billion US dollars. That is to say, in 1987, the world spent 50 billion US dollars more on weapons in our so-called peacetime. You know how much it amounts to per minute? They even did us the favor of calculating that in the newspaper. This newspaper is wonderful, isn't it? I mean, you don't even have to bring out your calculator. They did it all for you. It amounts to 1.8 million US dollars per minute. That's being spent on weapons. Every minute. How many millions were spent since I got onto this pulpit? It boggles the mind. Every minute, I am talking every few sentences, 1.7 million US dollars were spent on weapons. Are we living in peace or are we living in war? Let me ask this question again.
You want to know a few more facts? It says here, the nuclear bomb inventories of the two superpowers, the nuclear bombs, in 1987 increased at the rate of 16 nuclear bombs per week. That is more than two a day. New nuclear bombs are being created. Today, there will be two more nuclear bombs that have been created, manufactured. We are in peacetime, you think? The total destructive power that we have available in 1987 is 2,600 times the explosive power available for all the armaments in the world during the Second World War. Not double, not three times the explosive power that was available in the Second World War. And if you have watched movies of the Second World War, and the carpet bombing, and the flattening of Germany, and the flattening of Japan, and on it goes, and you thought that looked terrible — and I visited Germany immediately after the Second World War as a little boy, and I was shocked with what I saw. Germany was flattened by Allied bombing. And if I was shocked, and you are shocked by what you saw in the movies or on newsreel, then remember what this tells us here. Today, the destructive power is 2,600 times that of the Second World War. It boggles the mind. These statistics are beginning to get out of hand. We are living in peacetime, right? You thought we are living in peacetime. Wonderful.
Let me give you one more quote and I finish with this for today. Here is the paragraph which reads this. In 1987, last year, 22 wars — and counting only those wars in which 1,000 or more people, 1,000 or more people died.
# Kingship: God's or Satan's (Part 2)
It was last year. And notice the closing sentence of this report. It says, and that is more than any other year on record. More than any other year on record. I said years ago in expounding Matthew 24 that the meaning of what the Lord Jesus said is that it will intensify and intensify year after year. And this is exactly what this newspaper report confirms to us. Every year, it's getting worse. So the year of the dragon is going to be a great year, is it? We'll add another 50, or will it be 100 billion US dollars to military expenditure this year?
It's also interesting. I mentioned the dragon with seven heads. This newspaper report says that only six countries in the world, six nations, account for 75% of all that military expenditure. All that 930 billion US dollars. Amazing. The Bible is truly amazing. That's why I say, read your Bible, and read the newspaper, and you'll be amazed if you have eyes to see how God's word is being fulfilled in front of our eyes.
I must rush on. What does it say here? I have to make an important point, too, which I've touched on several times, and in my last message, I illustrated it rather dramatically, and maybe disturbingly for some people, when I pulled the pistol out of my pocket to the shock of everyone, simply to illustrate a point. What was the purpose of my pulling out that handgun? And of course, at the end, everyone breathed a sigh of relief to know that it was not a real gun, although it looked dreadfully much like a real one. In fact, that gun cost 4 US dollars, nowhere near the 930 billion. 4 US dollars that children buy to shoot little plastic pellets with, and robbers use to rob banks with, because it looked so genuine that nobody knows the difference.
Why did I go through all this? Because I wanted to drive home a very important point: the distinction between a contra-Christ, anti in the sense of contra, which is the general meaning in English, but not in Greek, and the pseudo-Christ. And you may think, why did you go so far to illustrate this point? Because it's very important for our understanding of this subject. And I've touched upon it again and again, but didn't explain what I was driving at. And in this last message, I must take a few minutes to explain. Why is it important?
First of all, if you look at Matthew 24, you will not see anywhere any reference to a contra-Christ. Only to a pseudo-Christ, or pseudo-prophet. There's nowhere any reference to contra-Christ. You study it for yourself. Everywhere, the stress is on the falsehood of this Christ. Just like false Christians. False Christ. I shall come back to this in another brief moment. But the stress is this.
First, the reason why I want you to grasp clearly this contrast is because the Bible has nothing to say, strangely enough, nothing whatever to say about a contra-Christ. So we must pause to ask, where did this doctrine come from? I'm very fearful in these last days in which we live because there is a lot of false teaching going around which parades itself as true teaching. Just like when that false Christ comes, he will parade himself around as though he were the true Christ. He is an imitation Christ, a counterfeit Christ, but very convincing in his falsehood.
Now, as I search the Scriptures, I get more and more puzzled looking at the Scriptures and reading the books on this subject that I find in various Christian bookshops. How do we come to teach about a contra-Christ when in the Lord's teaching in Matthew 24, you can't find a contra-Christ being referred to? No. For that matter, the rest of the New Testament. The answer is simple. The whole exposition on contra-Christ derives from a certain interpretation of Daniel. Basically, Daniel 7 and two or three, parts of two or three other chapters of Daniel. It all is supposed to derive from Daniel. And the Antichrist is supposed to be modeled on Antiochus Epiphanes IV, that hated person who was predicted to come in Daniel. Daniel predicted his coming and he did indeed come. That prophecy was fulfilled. And the question is, why then are we still talking about Daniel 7? The answer is Matthew 24, verse 15, which reads here: "Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place."
Now there comes an assumption from this. The assumption of our commentators is that because Daniel speaks about the abomination of desolation and the Lord refers to Daniel, therefore the whole business, the whole sequence of events referred to in Daniel, will somehow be repeated one more time. Not just in Antiochus Epiphanes in 164 BC, which had already happened and the Lord Jesus knows it was already fulfilled, but that somehow this whole thing would be repeated one more time in the future. Now that's an assumption, but it is not proven. And every attempt to prove it must be deemed as having failed. Because there's no support for it in the New Testament. The fact that the Lord Jesus refers to one thing which will happen again, one thing only, that the temple will be desecrated one more time by the setting up of an abomination in the temple, does not mean that all the sequence of events in Daniel leading up to that will be repeated.
And then of course there are those so-called scholars who remind us that in Revelation chapter 13, verse 1 onward, the chapter on the Antichrist, the beasts that are referred to there are also referred to in Daniel 7. That's correct. But with a major and very important difference. In Daniel 7 there is a sequence of four beasts. In Revelation 13 there is no such sequence. The beast in Revelation 13 is an amalgam, a composite figure of these four beasts, which shows that the apostle John did not see Daniel 7 being repeated in sequence again. No. The beast is a composite figure composed of characteristics which did formerly appear in Daniel 7 and in the fulfillment of Daniel 7 leading up to the coming of Antiochus. Now I say these things for those of you who are better equipped in scriptures, and this part may be a little bit complicated for you. That's why I've been going very slowly in these series. But that's all I will say in all these technical comments.
That's the one reason that we must reject a notion of a contra-Christ and go for the scriptural teaching of a pseudo-Christ. What is the second reason? The second reason is precisely this: that any teaching that stresses a contra-Christ will of necessity stress persecution as the main element. A contra-Christ is supposed to be really a contra-Christian because he cannot persecute Christ. Christ is at the right hand of the Father, so how can you be contra-Christ as a matter of fact? There's no way to be contra-Christ. You can't touch Christ. He is at the right hand of the Father, coming again in glory. In fact, the very term is meaningless since you cannot persecute Christ. So really, what they mean is contra-Christian, that is, they will try to persecute Christians. So the emphasis is all on persecution.
And indeed, there will be persecution, but that's not the stress in Matthew 24 or anywhere else in the New Testament. There will be persecution. We do not deny that. And there has been persecution from the beginning. But the significant and dangerous thing is deception that the Lord Jesus warns us of. And he does that three times in Matthew 24. Look at it for yourself. He uses the word "mislead" three times in Matthew 24. Verse 5, verse 11, verse 24. In fact, he begins the whole message with a caution that the disciples should not be misled. Verse 4: "See to it that no one misleads you." That's how the message begins. The whole concern is with the danger of deception.
The same concern is found in 2 Thessalonians 2 — the delusion that comes with the Antichrist. Not the persecution. The delusion is the dangerous part. And the same thing in Revelation 13. The signs and wonders and miracles all designed to deceive. Persecution will come against those who refuse to be deceived or cannot be deceived. But the emphasis, the point is where the emphasis is. For those who emphasize the contra-Christ, they never speak about deception. That is where they have left out the important element. They only concentrate on persecution. But anyone who speaks about the pseudo-Christ emphasizes both persecution and deception, but with the emphasis on deception.
But there is one more, the third and last point why the distinction must be made. And the reason is this. A contra-Christ can be anybody. A pseudo-Christ can only be a Jew. Do you understand what I am saying? Anyone can oppose Christ. They can't really oppose Christ, but they can try to oppose his church. So one should say contra-church or contra-Christian, as I said, to be precise. But no one can claim to be a false Christ. No one can claim to be a false Messiah because the Messiah is a Jewish title. The title of the Jewish king. The promised coming king. See, we come back to the word king. Of the line of David. Nobody can claim that unless he is a Jew. Now that greatly narrows the field.
And anyone familiar with early church doctrine — and unfortunately there are not very many who are — will know that Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of the very John who writes about the Antichrist in his epistles — so Irenaeus is a disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John — Irenaeus taught that the Antichrist, that is the pseudo-Christ, would be a Jew. And in fact, many of the early church fathers taught exactly that. There is almost nobody today who teaches that. The reason is not hard to find. You see, in the early church, the church was composed of Jews and Gentiles, and in many places they were predominantly Jews, with a smaller section of Gentiles. But as the generations wore on, the Jewish element became smaller and smaller in the church, and finally they disappeared almost completely from the church. The church became totally Gentile, failed to reach the Jews. One of the greatest disasters of the church is that it failed to reach the Jews and excluded the Jews almost completely. And as you know, I've been to Israel, and I'm trying to reverse that situation. We owe the gospel to the Jews. But as the Jewish element disappeared from the church, the teaching of the early church that the Antichrist, that is the pseudo-Christ, would be a Jew, also vanished from the church.
And so all kinds of speculations came that the Antichrist would be like Antiochus, or that he would be Napoleon, or that he might be Hitler, or he was even poor old Kissinger. Some people even came up with this idea, and Kissinger has since disappeared from the scene, but they think maybe he'll turn up again. Or some other future person. There we go. The king that God promised, the Messiah, would be a king from the line of David. And if the Antichrist is a pseudo-Christ who claims to be the promised king that God promised will rule in this world, not just over Israel, but over the whole world, then he has to be a Jew, whether we like it or not. I may not like the idea, but that's how it is in Scripture.
I will make one modification for those of you who are a little bit more deeply versed in Scripture. You know, there are those who oppose the idea that the Antichrist will be a Jew, because it says here that the Antichrist will blaspheme God. In fact, he will set himself up in the temple and claim to be God himself. You see it in 2 Thessalonians 2 as well as in Revelation 13. And they say we cannot imagine any Jew who would blaspheme God, much less set himself up in the temple. If you think so, then you don't know the Jews. The Jews are no different in their mentality in this respect from the Gentiles. To use that as an argument is absolute nonsense. Has it ever crossed your mind, for example, that the one powerful atheistic system that exists in the world today, which is communism and denies God, was founded by two Jews, Marx and Engels? And their writings are still the Bible of the communists to this day. They were Jews. They established the atheistic system.
If that's not enough for you, think of Herod in Acts chapter 12, verse 20 onwards. Herod Agrippa the first, a sort of grandson of Herod the Great. He also had Jewish blood. And he was the first one that we have in Acts who was willing to receive divine honors as the people chanted, "That is no man, he is God! Herod is God! Herod Agrippa is God!" And God struck him down. You read that in Acts chapter 12, verse 20 onwards. You can read it for yourself. The fact that he had Jewish blood, that he was of Jewish descent, didn't prevent him from seeking to be proclaimed God. Even the Bible writes away that objection.
But speaking of Herod, we can bring in another important point. In Jewish thinking, a person is not a Jew because his father is a Jew. Did you know that? He is a Jew if his mother is a Jew. Very interesting. We always tend to think that we follow our father. If our father is whatever it is, we are that too. But not in Jewish thinking. In Jewish thinking, your father is a Jew doesn't make you a Jew. But if your mother is a Jew, you can be counted as a Jew. That's very interesting. I just mentioned the Herods. The Herods had Jewish blood on their mother's side. And hence, the Jews had to grudgingly admit that the Herods — the whole line of kings, by the way. Herod is not just one king. There are several king Herods in the Bible. Many people are not aware of that. The Jews had to grudgingly admit that these kings were Jewish, even if they hated them.
Now, the Antichrist could very well be Jewish on his mother's side and Gentile on his father's side. And that's very interesting because it means that he would be accepted as a Jew. Remember that the Lord Jesus was a descendant of David on his mother's side. The Antichrist could do just the same. Of course, in the case of the Lord Jesus, his father was also Jewish. But that didn't count, of course, because it was through his mother's side that his descent was traced. The Antichrist could therefore be pleasing to the Gentiles because he is Gentile on his father's side, but Jewish on his mother's side. He becomes acceptable to both Jew and Gentile. He could be king of the world on that score. Excellent arrangement. Satan is not stupid. He has worked it all out.
This is what I want to share with you. Before I close, there's only one more point. And I said I could preach on this subject for many, many messages, but we must close. Jesus is king. And we saw that the battle is for kingship. So Satan, in order to challenge God's kingship through the king that he establishes, namely Jesus, the Christ, the king — the word Christ means the anointed one, the king, in particular — he will set up his own Christ, an imitation Christ, a pseudo-Christ, but so similar, and performing such amazing miracles that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It is a battle for the kingship of this world.
But the difference is that this Antichrist, this pseudo-Christ, will really be a gangster. A gangster king trying to supplant the real king. I was recently reading a book called "Yakuza." Yakuza. Have you heard of Yakuza? No? They're all very good people. You know nothing about Yakuza. Yakuza is the Japanese equivalent of the triads in Hong Kong. They are the criminal gangs, or the association of criminal gangs in Japan. Did you know there were criminal gangs in Japan? No. Japanese people are very decent. All very nice, polite people. All right. Okay. I'm very embarrassed every time I go to Japan. They keep bowing to me and talking to me in Japanese. I keep looking in the mirror. Did I look like Japanese? Obviously they think so. I was in the airport and I was asking which gate should I go to, I asked the air stewardess this. The next thing she was bowing down and talking to me in Japanese. I said, excuse me, excuse me. I'm sorry, but I don't speak Japanese. And when I go on the train in Japan, they all keep talking to me in Japanese. And then I talk to them in English and they look at me and think, why does this Japanese not know how to speak Japanese? It's rather like Hong Kong people. When you speak to them in English, they think, this arrogant guy, he thinks he's a cut above us because he speaks English. So I got the same problem in Japan.
Japanese people are so nice, right? They could never be gangsters. Well, let me tell you this. This book, a huge book like that, nearly 500 pages of it, tells us the truth is quite amazing in Japan. The Yakuza is so powerful that it can influence even the decisions of government. They control — listen to this — 26,000 legitimate businesses in Japan. Legitimate, legal businesses, 26,000 of them. Next time I go to Japan, I'm not too sure which store to walk into. In 26,000 stores I might be walking just into a Yakuza store. And I'm not much more comforted to be told in the next sentence of that book, which was written by a group called the Center for Investigative Reporting, who do research at great risk to themselves on this kind of subjects, that not only are there 26,000 legal outlets that are controlled by the Yakuza, but he goes on to say there are countless businesses that are controlled by them illegally.
You know how much their annual revenue is for the Yakuza in Japan? Nobody knows exactly. But it runs into not millions, but billions of US dollars. We are back to this billions business again. Some put the figure as low as $5 billion per year, and some put the figure as high as $22 billion a year. They control gambling, all kinds of various businesses, they control waterfront activities, but above all they control, of course, as you would have guessed, drug trafficking, which accounts for over 50% of their income.
But the point I want to get to is this. Strangely enough, many Japanese people respect these gangsters as the descendants of the ancient samurai. In fact, they like to carry samurai swords around with them, with which they kill people from time to time, not too infrequently, and they get special tattoos on their body. They are so loyal to their leaders — or Christians might learn something from this — that to prove their loyalty, they chop off the top of their little finger, wrap it up in a piece of cloth, and present it as a token of their loyalty and devotion to their leaders. That is why the organization is so powerful, because it's bound by a fanatical loyalty to one another and to the leaders. Satan's kingdom is very, very well organized, that's what the book tells us. Yakuza is exceedingly well organized, very disciplined, very loyal to one another, very faithful to their leaders.
But if you go to Japan and you see somebody with a missing tip of the finger, you might realize that he is a member of one of 110,000 known members — 110,000 known members of the Yakuza gangs. But the interesting thing is, as I mentioned, that they all claim to have a certain air of dignity, of patriotism, of the samurai tradition. Amazing. We find it hard to put together. Gangsters who claim to be samurai, patriotic to their country, as long as they can continue to rob some of its citizens. You know that during the Second World War, many of these Yakuza were in fact members of the Japanese army. They were conscripted into the army. They came back, of course, from wars, those who survived the war, with a lot of military experience, and proved very valuable to the Yakuza organizations.
The Antichrist also wants to have this semblance of legality. So impressive is the Yakuza organization that we are told in this book that time and again, the cabinet and the prime minister consult them and need their help. They sometimes even have access to the emperor himself. Amazing. And I want to conclude on this point. Don't think that because the Antichrist or the pseudo-Christ is called the man of lawlessness that he behaves in a lawless way. No, no, no. Not openly. Not publicly. This brings me back to the point about the deception, so important to bear in mind.
You know, that book has photographs of past Yakuza boss leaders, bosses. And you know what? They each look like perfect gentlemen. They are dressed up in beautiful suits. They behave in very gentlemanly fashion. And if you met them on the street, including their followers who are all dressed in business suits, you wouldn't have the vaguest idea that they are criminals. And when the Antichrist comes, the man of lawlessness, he will behave in a very lawful manner. All the lawlessness, like the Yakuza, is undercover. There are legal fronts to cover everything. That is why I say one more time before I close: the pseudo-Christ is so terribly dangerous. May God give you the courage to transfer your citizenship out of the kingdom of the dragon and his false Christ, and speedily, before the time is too late, to transfer your loyalty and citizenship to God and his kingdom and to his king.
Let us pray.