Read Revelation 13:4-5. What identifying marks of the beast power do we discover in these verses?
The beast of Revelation is an apostate religious power that rises out of pagan Rome and grows to become a worldwide system of worship. According to Revelation 13:5, it is a blasphemous power. In the New Testament, blasphemy is equated with assuming the privileges and prerogatives of God as an equal.
Read Luke 5:18-26 and John 10:33. What two aspects of blasphemy do these verses identify?
mage © Steve Creitz from GoodSalt.com
Jesus was accused of blasphemy by the leaders. In Jesus’ case the accusations were unjust because He has all the powers and prerogatives of God — including the right to forgive our sins. And that is because Jesus is God. Or as He so powerfully expressed it: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ ” (John 14:9).
Meanwhile, 1 Timothy 2:5 teaches that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. In contrast, the Roman Church teaches that the priest is the mediator between God and sinful humanity. But because the priest himself is a sinful human being, he cannot be our mediator because he also needs a mediator. Blasphemy is also defined as the claim of any man to be God or to stand in the place of God. Here are just two statements from the Roman Church’s authoritative sources:
“The pope is of so great dignity and so exalted that he is not a mere man. … he is as it were GOD on earth.” — Lucius Ferraris, “Papa,” article 2 in his Prompta Bibliotheca (1763), vol. 6, Pages 25 – 29.
Pope Leo XIII boasted: “We [the popes] hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.” — The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger, 1903), p. 193.
These claims become even more relevant when we understand that the word “anti-,” as in anti-Christ, doesn’t always mean “against” but can also mean “in the place of.” Hence anti-Christ also means “in place of Christ.” Talk about blasphemy!
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