Everything I Need to Know About Eschatology I Learned From TBN

Unlike the previous character discussed, the Antichrist, the present subject of our discussion has quite a bit of Biblical dissertation regarding it/him. The Beast of Revelation. The Beast has so much information regarding him that it will probably take more than one post to deal with all of the information and implication. No single character, though, has had so much written that has nothing to do with the Biblical character called the Beast.

Like mentioned in the previous discussion there is a tendency to merge the information on the Beast, Antichrist, Man of lawlessness and “Prince” into a single hyper-evil man of disrepute despite the fact that Scripture does not combine them in the same manner. So, like the previous discussion, we will do our very best to limit our discussion to what the scripture says about the Beast and how best to consider what it or he represents.

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ESCHATOLOGY I LEARNED FROM TBN

There is so much misinformation regarding the truths of eschatology that passes for expertise that to introduce our discussion of the Beast and his number, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss how the character has been misrepresented by prophecy experts.

• Noah Hutchings claimed that Pope John Paul was the Beast after he survived an assassination attempt

• According to Jack van Impe “The number “6″ in Roman numerals is made up of the letters, “VI”. The ancient Greek number “6″ was taken from the sixth letter of their alphabet, the letter “sigma” which looks like the English letter “S.” Returning to the Babylonian empire and their sexagesimal system of numbers, I considered that the possibility that their letter “A’ equaled 6. Thus, from the three great world empires of history, I found that the composition of the number “666″ spells the word VISA (11:59 and Counting, pp.106,107)

But my personal favorite is found in the once popular book “666: The Final Warning” and the companion computer program “666: Ancient Mystery Code Revealed”we were given the option of discovering who the Beast was for ourselves. One could insert names, places and events into the computer program and the program would determine whether it added up to 666. Many of the names of people, places and events that added up to the dreaded number are:

• New York

• A War in Iraq

• Bush’s War

• Santa Claus

• Ronald Wilson Reagan

The accompanying book also concluded that Ronald Reagan was the Beast and Pope John Paul was the False Prophet. There is now only one thing both of those men have in common and it’s not fulfillment of biblical prophecy!

The book also explained how television would be used by the Beast to promote his diabolical plan. This is a bit confusing but is well worth the burning of brain cells to comprehend such an original understanding of the rich texts of Scripture

• Te is the symbol for tellurium and the Latin spelling is “Tellus“

• Levi said he would bring back the Messiah to Mt. Sion (Zion)

• So, Satan will “tellus” (or tell us) his “good news” about how he is the Levi to bring the Messiah back to Sion … using tell levi sion … or television!

The biggest problem with this interpretive method is not the loose usage of original languages, it’s not the poor translation issues, it’s not even the ridiculous misrepresentation of the passages in question. the biggest problem with this interpretation is I LOVE TELEVISION and simply can’t see that wonderful blue glow used for anything other than the true pleasure it provides, especially in High Definition!

I was saddened beyond belief. There must be some Biblical support for television. Fortunately Gary DeMar did some research that proved fruitful. The trick to finding the Biblical support for television is to you the bible that the Apostle Paul personally penned, the Authorized King James Version. After much toil and travail Mr. DeMar was finally able to unearth the single passage that not only prophetically addressed the future, beautiful invention, but also shows God’s mysterious hand of providence and support for television.

Matthew 17:9 And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.

Tell the vision … television!

So, television was not to be used until after the resurrection. We are now well passed the resurrection of Christ therefor television should be promoted!

As silly as finding some ridiculous way to support television, there has been no less foolish attempts to decipher the beast, his name and what to do with his ominous number, 666.

Should it be this difficult? Are there clues within the texts that reveal who and what “The Beast of Revelation” is? Does it need to be this difficult? In the next few posts we will deal in detail with this character and his number.