Rabbi Schneider - What is Satan's Goal?
We're talking about end time events and the return of the Messiah. I'm gonna pick up now right where I left off last week. Last week I concluded, I was in the Book of Isaiah, because I'm showing you not just what the Book of Revelation teaches about the end times and the return of Jesus, but also about what the Tanakh or the Old Testament teaches about the return of the Messiah and the end times. And in the Book of Isaiah I was showing you last week what Isaiah reveals to us about the devil and the anti-Messiah who will be the devil personified. So let me just get right into the text. Then we're gonna make some comments and begin to put things together. I'm gonna journey forward today after this and we're gonna get in, beloved ones, today to the mark of the beast.
Hear the Word of God, Isaiah, 14, verses number 12-14: How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn. You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations. It's interesting that what we're actually seeing here is this, the devil, Lucifer, Satan, the serpent of old, who began to rebel in heaven. We see here, Isaiah says, He was cut down to the earth. So he was cast down out of heaven. Remember I said earlier, Jesus said, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. So that's what we're reading about here in the Book of Isaiah. Let's continue on: But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne, get this now, above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the recesses of the north. Satan continues in verse 14: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High God.
So God now is revealing what happened. He's revealing how Satan was cast out of heaven. He was thrown down to the earth. And yet in his heart he said, I am gonna arise and take the place of God. And so this is what we're dealing with. This is the power of rebellion that we're dealing with on the planet. Now I want to ask you a question. When you see Satan's heart here, this one that said, I will ascend. I will become the center of the universe. I will make myself like the Most High God. God is the center. So Satan wants to be the center. So when you think about this and look at our planet today, doesn't humanity in general reflect this same type of disposition where human beings want to be the center? I mean, look at any of the shows about the entertainment industry, Access Hollywood, any of the different types of coverage we see of the Hollywood stars. What do we see? We see these people getting out of limousines, clothes, and the finest clothed, make-up, hair done perfect. And you see how conscious they are that all the cameras are on them, the billboards of their faces and magazines, and in cities.
But you know what, beloved? Not only is that a great personification of the spirit that we're describing here, but the truth is, many of us, most of us carry around this same type of disposition in perhaps smaller ways, but in similar ways. We think about how everybody else is thinking about us, how everybody else is looking at us. We can't even sometimes come out of our own world be, because we're so focused just on ourselves. We can't really put ourselves in other people's shoes because we're so focused, beloved, get this now, on the god of me. And that's the heart of Satan. It's all about himself. And even if you and I examine ourselves, we need to be cleansed of this type of disposition. That's why Jesus said, He that loses his life for My sake shall find it and gain it. But he that tries to hang on to their life, the life of the me, will lose it. Not that we're not people that have our own personalities and consciousness, etc. but that God needs to be the center not ourselves. And the power that we're in a fight with is the power of me.
In other words, the, the spirit, beloved, that is seeking to control us is wanting to make us like himself where we make ourselves the center. And in making ourselves the center, you know what we're actually doing? Making Satan the center because that's what he wants, because he knows that anybody that makes themselves the center will be destroyed. And that's what he's trying to do is to bring all of humanity into destruction. That's why the Bible says he weakened the nations.
Now I want to share with you a prophetic experience that I had that I hope is a blessing to you because I don't share my prophetic experiences just 'cause I like to talk. I share them because I feel like the Lord often gives them to me, not just for me, but for all the people that I minister to. This happened several years ago. It was in the form of a dream. And here's, here's what I saw in the dream. Some of you may have heard me share this before on a different episode because it was so life-changing for me. But let me share it with you because it relates so heavily to what we're talking about right now.
In the dream I was preaching to my congregation. I saw myself preaching the Word of God, standing behind the pulpit, preaching again the Word. And in the middle of my sermon, the congregation stood up. Somebody said, They don't want to listen to you anymore. And they started pledging. They put their hand over their heart and they were saying, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And they literally drowned out my preaching. So I'm preaching the Word of God. Suddenly the congregation stands up and they're overpowering my preaching as they're reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm so humiliated in, in the dream. In other words, it's all still in dream form. I'm so humiliated that the preaching of the Word of God had been drowned out that I walked out of the sanctuary, and I went to the restroom down the hallway. And I'm in the restroom feeling totally humiliated, didn't know what, what happened. What happened? Why did this happen? And the Lord spoke to me and He said to me, I want you to go back in there and finish.
So I went back in. I finished the sermon. And at the end of the sermon, you know, the dream ended. And I was so, after, after the dream I woke up. I was so dis-settled by it. I said, Lord, what did that mean? They drown out your preaching with their pledge of allegiance. Somebody rose and said, I don't want to listen to you anymore. They don't want to listen to you anymore. I said, What was that about, Lord? And I said, I said, Lord, what am I doing as a leader where the congregation would go into such rebellion like this. Where, where am I weak as a leader? Where am I failing? What's my blind spot? I was so grieved about it because I felt sure in my spirit that the Lord was the one that gave me this dream. And I kept on asking the Lord, Lord, what am I doing wrong that this would happen? Where am I failing?
So I'm grieving. I'm praying for days about this. About three, four days later, I don't remember exactly how many days later, but within the week I was in a hotel room because I was preaching at a church somewhere, you know, at a different location as a guest speaker. And that, that night in the hotel room, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, and it wasn't, it wasn't in an audible voice but it was so clear it was like it was an audible voice. I just knew in my heart He was speaking to me. And He said to me, It wasn't about you. I kept on asking the Lord, Where am I failing, Lord, that this would happen, that the congregation would go into such rebellion and drown out my preaching. And Holy Spirit spoke to me. He said, It wasn't about you. He said, What I was showing you was that people's allegiance, even though they're attending churches, it really isn't to Me it's to the American dream.
Now I want you to understand, beloved, I am so thankful to be an American. I love our country. I love our government. I honor our president. I want you to know that, that you know, I am blessed and thankful. The Bible says, Honor the king. So this is not meant to be unpatriotic. But I believe it's truth. The Lord was showing me, What I'm showing you, He said, was that people, even they're in church, He said, they may come to church but deep inside, the way they live, the way they think, their heart, it's not for Me first. It's for themselves first. It's for the American dream. It's all about getting success.
You know, we're known as the land of opportunity. In other words, the Lord was saying that people have as the center of their lives, me. They want to get fulfilled. That's their primary thing. It's not to live for Me. It's not to lay down their lives for Me. It's not to serve Me. The Lord was saying, It isn't about Me. It's not about God, the Lord was saying, it's about themselves. And where does this spirit of self come from, the spirit of putting self first, the spirit of self-exaltation? It comes, beloved, from the one that was cast out of heaven because he put himself above the Lord. And that's what we're struggling with in this age, beloved ones, and in this time, in this generation in which we live.
Satan is the author, beloved, of the gospel of me. And much of the gospel that's being preached today in "Jesus' name", it's not the real Gospel. It's not the Gospel that was delivered to Paul and the apostles. The Gospel that Paul preached was, I am determined to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. That was the Gospel that Paul preached; Christ crucified, buried and raised. It was all about laying down His life. It was all about following Jesus, denying ourselves, picking up our cross and following Him. It's all about fighting the fight. But the gospel that we're hearing today it's more beloved of the gospel of me. It's in Jesus' name, but remember, Jesus said, Many false Christs and false teachers would come, Jesus said in Matthew, 24, in His name.
And this is one of the characteristics of the end of the age. We're gonna have false gospels that are being preached in Jesus' name. And the gospel that's being preached, beloved, today in Jesus' name that's a false gospel is a gospel of me. It's a man-centered gospel rather than a Christ or a God-centered Gospel. The gospel that people so often are hearing today that they think is a Christian gospel is not really the Christian gospel. But what it is, beloved, is a gospel that has made Jesus a magic genie. In other words, they're saying, they're presenting Jesus to people. They're saying, Just receive Jesus and Jesus is gonna make you wealthy. He's gonna make you happy. He's gonna make you wise. And it's all about using Jesus to fulfill me as opposed to saying, Jesus died on the cross for you.
Now we need to lay it on our lives for Him; love Him, serve Him, obey Him regardless of the cost. Beloved, the gospel that we're hearing today is often times a false gospel because listen, it's not a Christ-centered gospel. Jesus said, Unless you pick up your cross, deny yourself and follow Me... That's not the Gospel that we're hearing. It's not a Christ-centered gospel. Rather, listen now, it's a man-centered gospel and Jesus is just being presented as the way, hear me now, to self-fulfillment. And Jesus wants us to be fulfilled. He said, He that believes in Me, rivers of living water will flow through him, and I'll become within him a well of living water, so he'll hunger and thirst no more. That comes from dying to ourselves, beloved, and yielding ourselves to Him. But what I'm saying in terms of fulfillment now in relationship to Jesus is different than the way that Jesus is being presented today in many circles, where it's not about dying to ourselves to obey Jesus, it's just simply about using Jesus as a magic genie, again, to fulfill our own selfish desires.
And so, again, you can see that this all goes back to the fall of Satan from heaven that I just read about in the Book of Isaiah, and that Jesus spoke of when He said, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Now we're gonna move forward. I'm, I'm changing gears now and I want to talk to you about as Satan arises and gains power on the planet, he is gonna cause people, listen now, to take what we have heard of as, hear me, the mark of the beast. I'm gonna read now from the Book of Revelation. Hear the Word of God: And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast, get it now, or the number of his name.
And so again, we've heard of the mark of the beast. It's the name of the anti-Christ or the number of his name, the number 666. Let me read it again. Revelation, chapter 13, verse 16-17: And he causes all, the great and the small, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead... Again the mark was on their right hand, right, or on their forehead, over here, okay, their right hand or on their forehead. Here we go, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell, except the one who has the mark either the name of the beast or the number of his name.
Now I want you to think about this for a second so that it doesn't just seem like science fiction to you. We think today about all the identity theft that's going on with credit cards. How many today, for example, have had to call your credit card company, tell them that there was a wrong charge that appeared on your card. Or maybe you were alerted by your credit card company that there was a charge on there and they were checking to see whether you made that transaction or not. And it turned out you didn't. So what you had was a fraudulent activity on your credit card. And as a result of that, your credit card was stopped. You had to cut that one up. And your credit card company sent you a new credit card. How many of you have had that happen? I have that happen, listen, to me like almost every couple months because of all the travel that I do around the world. I took a poll in my congregation. I said, How many of you have had that happen to you? And I would say about a quarter roughly of the congregation have had that happen.
We know that identity theft, especially through credit cards, is huge. And it's happening all over the earth. So the governments and institutions are looking for ways to prevent identity theft. It isn't far-fetched for us to see how we could move away from having paper or plastic credit cards to instead the government now mandating that everybody gets a chip placed under their skin somehow, and that transactions take place through scanning the chip. Now I'm not saying or suggesting that that is absolutely the way that this is gonna be fulfilled, that mankind will be required to take the mark of the beast and no one's gonna be able to buy or sell, get that tie in now to the credit card, without the mark. I'm not saying that it is absolutely or necessarily gonna be some type of chip under the skin. But we certainly can see that possibility because today we see it happening, for example, even in animals where dogs are getting these chips implanted in them so that if the dog gets lost, all someone has to do is to scan the dog's skin.
You know, you take it to the appropriate location, a vet or whatever, and right, they'll be able to see it on a computer who the dog belongs to, what the address and the phone number is of the owner, etc. So it's not hard for us to imagine how this is going to be fulfilled. Now I want to continue here and I want to read another Scripture. I'm going to the Book of Revelation now, chapter 14, verse 9-11: Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast, listen now, and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with the fire and the brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment goes out forever and ever; they have no rest, day and night; those who worship the beast and image, get this now, and whoever receives his mark.
Now remember, I got done saying that this mark is gonna make it possible for people to buy and sell. And the small and the great are gonna be forced to take it. Think for a second to try to bring this down to earth for you in a way that you can see, Wow, I can see how, how that's possible. Think, for example, what Hitler did in Nazi Germany; again, just about 70 years ago. He required every Jew to wear a yellow Jewish star on their clothing to identify them. He made them take a mark. And if they were caught, beloved ones, without wearing the mark, they'd be killed.
Now on next week's broadcast, I am gonna give you some information that I think you're gonna find extremely interesting. I'm gonna share with you a possible explanation for what the mark of the beast is. Many people have speculated over the years, what is the mark of the beast? When Jesus speaks of the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation, He says, Let he that has understanding understand, in reference to the mark of the beast. Again, on next week's broadcast, I'm gonna talk about some possible ways that perhaps are outside of the box that you thought in before, some possible ways that we could see the mark of the beast coming to fruition and fulfillment in the lives of humankind.
Beloved, I love you. The purpose of this is not to scare you, but rather it's to prepare you. Jesus gave us the Book of Revelation, listen now, because He loves us and He wants us to be like the sons of Issachar that were able to discern what is going on around them in the spiritual world, and God's activity in government being unfolded upon the planet. So stay tuned, pay attention, tell a friend about this very important broadcast, beloved ones, and get the book. I love you. This is Rabbi Schneider saying, until next week, peace and Shalom, Amen, in Yeshua's name.