Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190014B
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00:01 We shouldn't be surprised at this kind of compromise
00:03 because down through Christian history, down through the 00:07 Israelite history, they had the true religion from God, 00:11 there was always this pressure to make some kind of 00:14 peace between the paganistic world and the true religion 00:19 and the true gospel of the Lord Jesus. 00:21 So we shouldn't be so surprised at some of this. 00:24 So let's go back to again this pagan Babylonian religion. 00:28 What was it like, and how did all this get started, 00:31 and why does this have a relationship to 666? 00:35 Well the Babylonian religion had a seven-headed, 00:39 now this is fascinating, 00:41 seven-headed astrological dragon. 00:44 Does that sound familiar? 00:46 A seven-headed astrological dragon. 00:48 And he ruled over 36 sub-gods called decons. 00:52 And over all of them ruled the sun god. 00:57 And they considered the sun god to be the father of the gods. 01:01 Of course, that's a substitute for our heavenly father 01:04 and for our wonderful Lord Jesus Christ. 01:06 Well every one of their gods, and the Babylonian thing, 01:09 each one of them had their own sacred number. 01:12 And these numbers indicated the god's power and place 01:17 in this 36 setup of gods. 01:21 And the Babylonians divided this astrological house 01:24 into twelve different houses in the zodiac. 01:28 And each one of those were divided into 01:31 three rooms making 36. 01:33 Remember that number. 36. 01:35 36 gods, 36 rooms, and they're ruling, of course, 01:39 the universe, so to speak. 01:41 So the first god they counted got the number 1 assigned to it. 01:46 That was also the sun god's number, 01:47 but he also gets another number because he's considered to be 01:50 the father of all these gods. 01:52 And you'll see that in just a moment. 01:53 The second one was the moon god, and so forth. 01:55 Up to 36. 01:57 Well where did this 666 come from? 02:02 Well if you take their gods and each one of their numbers, 02:06 the first one, 1 + 2 + 3, all the way up to 36, 02:13 guess what that number comes out to be? 02:16 It's six hundred and sixty-six. Or 666. 02:20 So that number became a sacred mysterious number 02:25 for the Babylonian religion 02:27 because it was the sum total of their gods 02:30 and it was also the number that they gave to the sun god, 02:34 because the sun god ruled over this astrological set 02:38 of 36 sub-gods. 02:41 So people then would say, "Well, if that's the case, 02:46 I want to make a charm." 02:47 Because these ancients were fearful. 02:50 They were afraid. 02:51 They were afraid of these gods. 02:53 The Bible teaches in the New Testament 02:55 that these pagan gods are backed up by unseen demons. 02:59 Remember, Satan works through his agencies. 03:03 And he's working through the Babylonian religion. 03:06 People have a reason to be afraid. 03:09 There's a supernatural power behind these gods. 03:12 It's not the God of heaven, it's not His supernatural power, 03:15 but it is power unseen that is putting charms 03:21 and spells, and all these kinds of things. 03:23 So these people were rightly afraid of these gods. 03:28 And so they wanted to protect themselves from these gods. 03:31 And so they decided the way they could do that 03:33 is they would make a charm. 03:35 And the charm had on it this astrological table 03:40 with the 36, and each row added up to 111, 03:46 and then the subtotal of each side would be 666. 03:51 They put that on the charm. 03:53 And then on the other side of the charm 03:55 they would put the face of the sun god. 03:58 And they believed that if they could wear this, 04:00 that this would protect them from these demonic 04:03 evil powers that they were afraid of 04:08 and worried about. 04:09 They didn't want to get struck down by these powers. 04:13 So the design of these charms was to achieve 04:16 a magical purpose. 04:18 You know, our world today is just, 04:20 they're possessed with magic and witches, 04:23 and all of these pagan gods. 04:26 And all of these things have just come in like a flood. 04:31 And the entertainment world, the entertainment world makes 04:34 this something young people know more about witches 04:37 and they know more about this kind of stuff 04:40 than they know about the Bible today. 04:43 They don't read the Bible. 04:44 Because these evolutionists have taught them that, 04:47 you know, they came from some kind of monkey or amoeba, 04:50 or something, whatever. 04:52 But let's go back to this. 04:54 How does this get into Christianity? 04:56 In the early Christian church, the Christian church 05:00 refused to go along with this. 05:02 This is why the Romans put them to death. 05:05 The early church would not compromise. 05:08 They had one wonderful Jesus, and they were not going to 05:12 put Him in this pantheon of Roman gods. 05:16 Rome was happy if you just add your god to theirs, 05:19 and they're fine. 05:21 But you had to accept everybody's god. 05:23 And the Christians wouldn't do it. 05:25 And so that's why they hated them. 05:28 They wouldn't compromise. 05:29 They wouldn't amalgamate their religion. 05:31 But there was a group of Christians, 05:33 and you could just see it coming almost, 05:35 called the Gnostics. 05:36 And the Gnostics were this... 05:39 And we think, some of us think that they were probably 05:42 at least the forerunners or the descendants, if you please, 05:45 of the Nicolaitans. 05:47 But they basically compromised, just like in the Old Testament, 05:52 with these Babylonian kinds of concepts 05:56 and these pagan gods. 05:58 And they began to amalgamate early Christianity. 06:01 And they would see this parallel, 06:03 and they would see that parallel. 06:04 And they would say, "Oh, isn't that nice. 06:06 Maybe this isn't so bad after all." 06:07 And pretty soon it began to dilute true Christianity. 06:12 In fact, Edwin Goodnow, professor of religion 06:17 at Harvard University, he actually had this to say 06:20 about that very thing. 06:22 And he said, "The Gnostics combined elements 06:25 from Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, 06:29 and Christian religions," listen at what he says, 06:32 "into the universal Catholic system 06:35 which embraced all others." 06:38 It's kind of like the old pagan Rome. 06:40 They wanted to control the world. 06:42 They wanted to have all the gods put together. 06:44 You hear a lot of that nowadays. 06:46 People saying, "Well, there are many ways to heaven." 06:48 That's not what the Bible says. 06:50 But that's what many people like to say. 06:52 They feel comfort in it. 06:54 But you know, by the way, never take refuge in lies. 06:57 They won't get you anywhere any good. 06:59 You want to know the truth. 07:00 The truth as it is in Jesus. 07:03 And so he goes on to say, "The summary number 07:07 includes the whole circuit of the heavens and all its gods," 07:11 and then he goes on to say, this Harvard professor, 07:14 "the number 666, the secret and most sacred number, 07:18 we believe, in all of paganism." 07:22 So the Gnostics were part of bringing this into 07:25 the Christian church. 07:28 And as they began to do that, 07:29 and as Christianity went through time, 07:32 time that begins to change things, 07:35 and people came in that shouldn't have come in, 07:38 then they began to lose their distinctiveness. 07:41 Now we want to note something here. 07:44 That this number is not only the number of a man, 07:46 it's the number of a system. 07:49 So the beast or this symbol represents a systematic 07:54 power in the end of time. 07:58 Now, let's go to our friends the papacy and just look at 08:04 what has happened with the papacy. 08:06 Because basically what the papacy has done is embraced 08:09 all of this kind of thing. 08:11 Our Sunday Visitor, that's a Roman Catholic paper 08:15 that's still produced today November 15, 1914, 08:19 had this to say, "The title of the pope of Rome 08:22 is Vicarius Filii Dei. 08:23 And if you take the letters of his title, 08:26 which represent Latin numerals printed large, 08:28 and add them together, they come to 666." 08:32 Really? Wow! 08:34 Now there are some people that come along and say, 08:35 "Oh, you know, that Filii Dei, 08:37 that's not really the name of the pope." 08:39 Well he doesn't use that name as much today, 08:41 but it was a significant name in the papacy for many years. 08:45 A document called the, Donation of Constantine, 08:49 centuries ago was forged by the papacy to defend its power 08:55 on secular power as well as religious power. 08:58 They put this together. 08:59 And in there they use Filii Dei, Vicarius Filii Dei 09:04 as the title for the popes. 09:07 And then Dr. Johannes Quasten, he's a renowned Catholic 09:12 scholar who studies church fathers, 09:15 when we was questioned about Vicarius Filii Dei, 09:19 he affirmed it by saying that the title, Vicarius Filii Dei, 09:22 as well as the title, Vicarius Christi, 09:25 which is usually the one they use nowadays in modern times, 09:28 is a very common title for the pope. 09:32 And then the book, Summary, on the power of the church 09:37 has been described as one of the most influential 09:40 and important books written on the nature 09:44 of papal supremacy. 09:45 It was commissioned by Pope John XXII, 09:49 and it set forth both the ecclesiastical, 09:52 that's the church religious power, 09:55 and the temporal, meaning civil authority, 09:58 of the papacy. 10:00 And in it, it has at least 29 references 10:03 calling the pope, Vicarius Filii Dei. 10:07 And let me quote here from that. 10:10 It says, "Only the pope is said to be the 10:12 Vicar of the Son of God... 10:15 The decision of the pope and the decision of God 10:18 constitute one decision... 10:21 Therefore no one can appeal from the pope to God..." 10:24 This is quite a statement on the power of the papacy. 10:27 "...because there is one decision and one court of God, 10:31 and the pope." 10:32 So it's basically saying the pope and God 10:34 are one and the same. 10:37 And then here is another one. 10:39 It says that, "As seen here that the honor that is due to 10:44 Christ as God is due also to the pope." 10:48 It's an amazing statement from these authoritative sources. 10:52 "Because the honor is due to the power, 10:54 and the power of Christ as God and the power of the pope 10:57 are one, which is shown to be true." 11:02 Well, in the Greek, the early church fathers always thought 11:07 the Latin speaking man would be the antichrist, 11:10 if you please, or this power that's spoken of. 11:13 And when you look in the Greek language 11:15 and you use the Greek numerical counting, 11:17 then it also comes up to 666, 11:20 just like "Vicarius Filii Dei" comes up to 666 11:24 using the Latin approach to it. 11:30 So we see all of these things that have come into the church, 11:33 this amalgamation with paganism. 11:37 So let me just say this, that this number, 666, 11:44 is the number of a pagan religion for two reasons. 11:50 One, it brings the church and the state together. 11:53 It's the number of religion that does that. 11:56 And number two, it persecutes God's people, 11:59 just like ancient Babylon did. 12:02 It persecuted Daniel and his three friends. 12:04 It threw Daniel into the lion's den. 12:07 And they say, "We'll never find anything against this Daniel 12:10 except if we don't find it according 12:12 to 'the law of his God,'" quote unquote. 12:16 The law of his God. 12:18 The law of God always comes into play. 12:21 So this 666 is the number that stamps this opposing power 12:28 to Jesus, this persecuting power, 12:30 this power whether it's pagan Rome or papal Rome, 12:34 or this image to the beast that's going to be formed 12:38 in the end of time, it's the same power 12:42 and it works the same way. 12:45 And that's why Jesus is trying to help us to understand 12:48 that our only safety is not receiving 12:52 this mark of the beast, 12:54 and we'll talk about that mark, or the image of his name. 12:57 Listen, our only safety is clinging to this 13:00 incomparable Jesus, 13:01 clinging to His gospel and to His truth as it is in Scripture. 13:06 And as the Bible says, if you don't have the doctrine 13:08 of Christ, in 2 John, you don't have God. 13:11 The teaching of Jesus cannot be amalgamated with paganism. 13:16 So hold on to the incomparable Jesus. |
Revised 2019-09-10