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Greg Laurie - Beauty and the Beast


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    Greg Laurie - Beauty and the Beast
TOPICS: End times

"Beauty and the Beast". No, this is not a message about how I met Cathe, my wife. She's the beauty, I'm the beast, obviously. Nor is it a message about the Disney film by the same name. "Beauty and the Beast," this is a message about good versus evil, God versus Satan, antichrist versus Jesus Christ. First, let me start with the beast. The Bible says there is coming a world leader. He'll be charismatic, no doubt he'll be good looking, he'll bring global solutions, he'll bring a pseudo peace for three and a half years to this war torn planet, and the fact of the matter is the Bible calls him the beast. He's also referred to as antichrist. The prefix anti, as I've told you before, doesn't just mean against, it also means instead of. And for those that don't know better, many will hail this charismatic world leader as the very Messiah.

I've shared recently that I was in Israel some years ago, and I was talking with a Jewish man, and I told him I believed Jesus was the Messiah, and he said, "Well, we don't believe that as Jews". And I said, "Well, who do you think the Messiah will be"? And he said this to me, "We believe when our Messiah comes that he'll bring peace and rebuild our temple". I said, "Friend, you just described the antichrist," and that's exactly who antichrist is. He comes in the place of Christ, and this phrase the beast is not a description of his appearance, but actually of his character. He'll be a wicked man. If Satan ever had a son, this is him, the beast. Well, what about the beauty? Well, that's the church. And when I say church, I don't mean a brick and mortar building, I mean God's people gathering together. When you become a follower of Jesus, you become a part of the church, and you now are the bride of Christ.

Now, some guys are listening, and you're saying, "I don't wanna be a bride". Deal with it, you're a bride, you're the bride of Christ, we're the bride of Christ, we're the beauty in the story. But this battle between the beauty and the beast, if you will, goes all the way back to the book of Genesis when Adam and Eve were tempted by the devil and the judgment of God came as a result of them eating of the forbidden fruit, and God said to Satan, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, and he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel". In other words, God is saying a battle has now begun, and he puts Satan on warning, the Messiah is coming. And so, Satan wanted to stop Messiah from arriving in this conflict, this battle of the ages between the beauty and the beast, between antichrist and Jesus Christ, between God and Satan began. But here's what we know, the beast is gonna lose, and the beauty is going to prevail.

So, let's pick up where we last left off with the beast in our story. The Bible tells us that a powerful religious deception will sweep the earth in the last days, and it's described as Babylon. Babylon is pictured as a prostitute riding a beast, and she's dressed in red, so we'll call her the scarlet harlot, and it's also revealed as a mystery. We all love a good mystery, right? There's this mystery Babylon. Let's read Revelation 17, verse 3, "So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman," verse 6 of chapter 17, "drunk with the blood of saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. And the angel said to me, 'Why did you marvel? I'll tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has seven heads and ten horns.'"

We'll stop there. So, you read a text like this, and your reaction is probably, "What? What does this all mean"? But it's not as complex as you may think. Remember, the purpose of Revelation is to unveil truth to us. Revelation means unveil, so it is not God's desire to conceal, but to reveal. This is a mystery to someone who doesn't understand the Bible, but to us as believers, we understand it. Babylon is a picture of man's kingdom without God. Man's kingdom without God, Babylon is sort of a code word, it represents something else. For instance, when we say, "Well, over in Madison Avenue, they do this and so". We don't mean the literal Madison Avenue, but we're referring to people who are involved in advertisement and promotion and things of that nature. Or when we say, "Hollywood," you now, "over in Hollywood," we don't mean the literal city of Hollywood, we mean the entertainment industry.

When we say, "Well, over at Wall Street," we don't mean the actual Wall Street, we're talking about commerce and finance. So, when we use the word Babylon in the Bible, it's a picture of pure evil. When Peter wrote to the believers living in Rome, he said, "To the church in Babylon". No, in fact, they weren't in Babylon, which was a city, they were in Rome. But because of the wickedness of the city, he said, "To the believers in Babylon". So, Babylon is a point of reference for evil. Contextually looking at the book of Revelation, Babylon refers to an entire worldwide political, economic, and religious kingdom under the control of antichrist. But Babylon can be personal as well. It's basically a life that is consumed with pride, sensuality, idolatry, effectively, anything that takes the place of God.

That's religion in a nutshell. Religion is man's attempt to reach God. Christianity, in contrast, is God's attempt to reach man. Religion can be summed up in one word, do. Do this, and you'll reach nirvana. Do that, and you may get to heaven one day. Do this other thing, and you might find inner peace. Do this, do that, do, do, do, do. Religion can be a lot of doo-doo, but Christianity can be summed up in one word. Not do, but done. It's done. When Jesus died on the cross, he said, "It is finished," which means it is accomplished, it is completed. I don't have to do a bunch of stuff to reach God. God has done the heavy lifting to reach me in sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sins and rise again from the dead, and we can have him live in our hearts, and at the end of this message I'll give you an opportunity to put your faith in Jesus Christ. But man is a religious creature, he always has been, but he sort of likes to make it up as he goes, sort of a do it yourself faith.

You know, we like the idea of forgiveness, we just don't want to repent. We like the hope of heaven, but we don't like the reality of hell. We sort of like to pick and choose what appeals to us. That's Babylon, Babylonian thinking, if you will. Babylon was also the beginning of humanism. People came together. God said, "I want you to spread out across the earth," and the people said, "No, let's come together instead. Let's come together in defiance of God. Let's come together and build this tower and look to the stars, not to the Lord for direction in our life". And so, they build this tower, and they're all excited about it. They're thinking it's really gonna be impressive to God. It's almost like they're saying, "Hey God, there's a new kid in town, we're here. Check out our awesome tower".

And the Bible tells us that the Lord came down to see it, and it's kind of almost humorous, because it's so tiny, the Lord says, "Actually, I don't have a telescope in heaven strong enough to even see your mighty tower, so I'm gonna come down, way down, down, and get on my hands and knees and see if I can find your awesome little tower". And that's us with all of our accomplishments, thinking we don't need God. Of course, God sent confusion to them. No one could understand each other, and they were babbling, and so that's the root word of Babylon. Now, of course, there was a mighty kingdom of Babylon as well ruled by Nebuchadnezzar, remember? It was a massive, mighty world power which was ultimately defeated by the Medo-Persian Empire, and that was when the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar was ruling, his name was Belshazzar. So, it was the end of Babylon's babbling.

Let's come back to this woman riding the beast, the scarlet harlot if you will. Verse 3, "I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast," scarlet's just another word for red. This is sort of like the rodeo from hell. Red symbolizes evil in this context, it's not evil if you're wearing red, but in this context, it symbolizes evil, because remember Satan is presented to us as a red dragon in Revelation chapter 13. So, all of this madness that we're looking at, this religious system of Babylon is energized by the devil, and it's all coming together. Here's another point, Babylon looks good on the outside, but it's dead on the inside. Babylon looks good on the outside, but it's dead on the inside.

Look at Revelation 17:4, "She has in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication". So, a golden cup would refer to luxury, right? Abominations refer to things that are offensive to God. Purple was a color usually worn by royalty back in that day, as was scarlet, and covered in jewels, that speaks for itself. If you see someone covered in jewels head to toe, obviously that's an affluent person, and this is how sin is. It looks good on the outside, but then you take a bite of it, and it is like poison in your system.

Babylon will not only be a mentality, it will not only be a religious system, it will be an actual entity. In effect, it will be a super-city that is going to be judged. Go over to Revelation 18, verse 1. "After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, 'Babylon the great is fallen, it's fallen, it's become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, a cage for every unclean and hated bird!'"

In general, I like birds, but there's some birds I hate, and I'm gonna call them out right now. Number one, seagulls. I hate all of you. If you're watching, I'm sorry. I'm not told in the Bible I have to love you. I hate you, and I'll tell you why I hate you, seagulls, is because you steal things all the time. You know, if you have your food on the beach and you go into the water, you come back, the seagull's flying off with your sandwich, and then of course they're doing their thing on your car, and in fact I have a story for that. Years ago, many years ago we took our son Christopher, who was just a little guy then, to Sea World, and so when you go into the park, there's an opportunity to feed the dolphins, you can buy fish. I think, wait, didn't I just pay admission? Now I have to pay for fish to feed your creatures? Yeah, that's the way it works.

So, we buy these fish, and I give them to Christopher, and there's this place where the dolphins are, and he's feeding the dolphins, and out of nowhere, seagull comes, grabs the fish right out of his hand. Christopher's like, "Dad, I hate seagulls"! I know, they're the worst, aren't they? And then we go to lunch in this restaurant, and he ordered a big thing of chicken. So, he's eating this chicken, and out of nowhere a seagull comes and flies off with his chicken, literally grabbed it off his plate. I thought, wait a second, isn't that cannibalism? Is that even right in the bird kingdom? I mean, I know seagulls are messed up, but even they crossed a line there. Flying off with the chicken, Christopher's shaking his fist, "I hate the seagulls"! Then we're walking out of the park, I'm not making this up, and all of a sudden, a seagull got a direct hit on my son, boom, a big seagull poop, right? And that pretty much finished it off.

So, that's a hated bird, right? But understand contextually in the Bible, birds sometimes are symbols of evil. Jesus told a parable about a bush that turned into a tree that was filled with birds. This was not a positive thing. Bushes don't turn into trees, so this was something that was supposed to be smaller that became bigger, and it was filled with birds. But then in the parable of the sower Jesus talked about the seed that was sown on the roadside, remember? And the birds come quickly, probably seagulls, and eat it, and he says, "These are they that hear the Word of God, and Satan comes immediately and snatches it away". So, in the parables birds are symbols of evil. So, putting this all together, we have an evil situation of these unclean birds.

You know, in the church we have real believers and we have pretend believers. You can have a Bible and not be a Christian. You can even go to church and not necessarily be a Christian. To be a Christian, you must follow Christ. So, Babylon is gonna go down one day, and it happens quickly. Listen to this, "Satan sails a sinking ship. Sin cannot win and faith cannot fail". It's interesting, in Revelation 18 it says, "Babylon is destroyed in one hour". So, the super-city, actual entity of Babylon will be built, I'm not sure where, and it will be destroyed in one hour, amazing. You know, in a way, everyone will have their Babylon fall at some time in their life. People build their hopes on a Babylon of sorts. Don't put your hope in Babylon. Don't put your hope in possessions. Don't put your hope in experiences. Don't put your hope even in relationships. Put your hope in God, because there's coming a day when the Lord's gonna say, "The party is over".

Coming back to Babylon the great kingdom being ruled by the boy king Belshazzar. Speaking of golden cups, he brought out all the cups and other objects used by the Jews in their worship of God and filled them with wine and began to toast the false gods of Babylon, going out of his way, really, to mock God. And the Bible said God judged him. That was the end of Babylon, and that was the end of Belshazzar, and things come to an end. So, we've talked a lot about the beast, let's come back to the beauty. What is the beauty doing while the beast and the scarlet harlot with their rodeo from hell are wreaking havoc on planet earth? Oh, we're in heaven singing the hallelujah chorus.

Revelation 19, "After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, 'Hallelujah! Salvation, glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! For true and righteous are his judgements, because he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants shed by her.'" You remember the first Star Wars films. There was a massive space station called the Death Star that terrorized the galaxy, so Luke Skywalker and his X-Wing fighter came in, and they blew up the space station, and it was destroyed. That's what's gonna happen to Babylon. But while all of this is happening, we're celebrating in heaven.

Why are we celebrating in heaven? Number one, we're celebrating because the power of God has finally vanquished evil, Revelation 19:1 and 2. So, when we talk about the end of the world, we're speaking of the end of this wicked system that's in rebellion against God. Number two, we're rejoicing because the Lord is reigning. God is establishing his kingdom, it's all coming now, and we're celebrating the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Look at Revelation 19, verse 7. "Let's be glad and rejoice and give God glory, for the Marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, and the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints, and the angels said to me, 'Write this, blessed are those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are the true words of God.'" Matthew 8:11 says, Jesus speaking, "Many will come from the east and the west and take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven".

Can you imagine having a meal with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? You'll meet the great people of the Bible. You can ask David what it was like to fight Goliath, you can ask Noah what it was like to live in that ark, ask Moses what it was like to part the Red Sea, ask Mary what it was like to carry the Son of God in her womb, and best of all, ask Jesus anything you like, and you'll be reunited with loved ones who have preceded you to heaven. This is the hope of the Child of God. This is not the hope of the child of Babylon. You have two cities you can choose from in life, the city of God or the city of man. Babylon or the New Jerusalem. Antichrist or Jesus Christ. This world we're living in is not our permanent home as Christians. We're passing through. To have this hope of heaven, you need your name written in a book.

I passed over this verse quickly, but let me come back to, Revelation 17:8, "Those that dwell in the earth will marvel whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world". When you're a Christian, your name is written in a book. It's the Book of Life. When your name is written, I don't know. Here it says from the foundation of the world. Since God has foreknowledge, maybe he put your name in the book ahead of time because he knows you will believe, but regardless of when your name gets in there, this is what I know.

As a Christian, my name is in the book, and I ask you in closing, is your name in the Book of Life? You say, "Well, why does that matter"? Because, as we'll see in our future message, if your name is not found written in the Book of Life, you're cast into the lake of fire as you stand before the great white throne judgment of God. Listen, one day everyone will stand before God, small and great, rich and poor, famous and unknown, everyone will stand there. Every man, every woman, every person will stand there, and all that matters is having your name in this book.

Maybe God has spoken to your heart and you have seen your need for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came from heaven to this earth. He was born in a manger. He died on a cross. He rose again from the dead. Why? Because he loves you, and he wants a relationship with you. Listen, I'm not talking about religion. I don't want to be a religious person, I don't think you want to be one either. I'm talking about relationship with God. Jesus, who died and rose again, stands at the door of your life and he knocks. And he says if you'll hear his voice and open the door, he will come in.

Question, have you asked Jesus Christ to come and live inside of you? You might say, "Well, I think so, I'm not sure". Hey, if someone moved into your house in the middle of the night, do you think you would be aware of it? I'm sure you would, and in the same way, if Christ has come to live inside of you, you will know. And if you don't know, maybe he has not come in yet. He's just a prayer away. All you need to do is say, "Jesus, I want this relationship with you. I want you to forgive me of my sin. I want to go to heaven when I die". Would you like to do that? Would you like Christ to come into your life? If so, why don't you just pray this simple prayer with me? You could pray it out loud, or you can pray it in the quietness of your heart. But this is a prayer where you're asking Jesus Christ to be your Savior and Lord. Pray this with me now:

Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner, but I know that you're the Savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Now come into my life. I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Thank you for hearing this prayer and answering this prayer. In Jesus's name, amen.


Did you just pray that prayer with me? If so, I want you to know in the authority of scripture that Christ himself has come to live inside of you. And I would love to send to you, at no charge, something called The New Believer's Bible. It's a very friendly translation of the New Testament you'll find very understandable. And it's filled with hundreds of notes that I wrote that will encourage you in this commitment you've just made to follow Jesus. Let me send that to you at no charge. And let me be the first to say to you, congratulations and welcome to the family of God.
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