Episode Transcript
We'll now get into the study of God's Word.
And boy, have I been looking forward to this.
I'm telling you what, the book of Daniel, especially, the book of Daniel has been wonderful.
When I hit chapter 7, huh?
It's like. .
Like sending a fat man into a Chinese buffet.
I've just been having a good time.
And so let's open up God's Word now into Daniel chapter 7.
And God willing, we'll be expounding verse 3, and the title of the message this morning is The Beast of the Sea.
And I'm telling you, it's a whole lot better than chicken of the sea.
You have to be the right age to know the chicken of the sea.
You know what I'm talking about, Abigail?
I didn't figure you did.
You have to be the right age to know the chicken of the sea.
But the beasts of the sea were only two verses.
Into chapter 7.
I better find my water quick.
We're only two verses into chapter 7.
And already, it has been an amazing chapter.
In verse 2, Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.
And we've learned that the four winds Our four angels who execute the will of God here on earth.
And we learned that the great sea is a sea of not water.
But people, the mass of fallen souls living in a fallen world, unstable like water, as the scripture words it, because they don't have God as their foundation.
They're unstable like water.
We've also learned that the four winds striving upon the great sea speaks of them striving together on earth.
And the power of God's Spirit and wind to ultimately accomplish God's kingdom agenda in spite of the powers of darkness and the world's agenda.
And keeping all that in mind now, let's see what happens when these four winds strive upon the great sea.
Daniel spake and said, verse 2, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.
Verse 3: And four great beasts came up from the sea.
Now, immediately upon reading this verse, something should pop out to us.
What pops out to you immediately?
That's exactly right, Brother Shepherd.
The number four.
All right, we're getting it repeated again.
We already know what the number four stands for.
Who can tell me?
Stands for what?
The number of the earth.
Very good.
So immediately we should be making a connection between the four winds and the four beasts.
Now, before we get into what these beasts are.
Let's first take a look at what they are doing.
These four beasts are what?
They're rising, aren't they?
They're rising.
Daniel said, four beasts came up.
They came up.
So we have four winds striving, causing four beasts.
To be rising.
Okay, you see how they're connected together?
And remember, again, in the Bible, the number four is the number of the earth.
And if you're just now visiting with us, tuning in with us online.
Because a lot of times, and by the way, it's a good time to plug our podcast.
If you like listening to podcasts, you want to go back and listen to previous messages, if you're traveling.
Sitting somewhere and you got your ear pods in, just go to any podcast platform, type in Know I'm Saved podcast or Know I'm Saved Bible teaching.
Type in No, I'm Saved Bible Teaching.
You can go back and you'll hear the collection of Daniel's teachings, the different books that Brother Shepherd and I have taught through.
You can go back and listen to them at any time.
And so you can go back and start back at chapter 1 of Daniel, or go start at chapter 7, and go back and hear more deeply.
What we've learned so far here in the first couple of verses.
But four is the number of the earth.
And these four spirits or these four winds are working heaven's will here on earth, resulting in four earthly beasts rising up from the sea.
Now we need to make another connection.
Because if you'll look carefully here at the wording, you're going to see that not only do the beasts share the same earthly number.
As the winds, but they all share the same earthly origin as the sea.
I'm going to repeat that again.
They not only share the same earthly number as the winds.
But they also share the same earthly origin as the sea.
Observe, there are four what kind of beasts?
Great beast, you see that?
That came up from what kind of sea?
The great sea.
The four winds drove upon what sea?
The great sea.
And now you have great sea, and you have great beasts coming out of it.
This is letting us know this connection here.
It was verse 2 describes it as the Great Sea.
So the Great Sea is the origin of the great beasts.
Daniel said they came up from the sea.
Verse 2, the great sea, for they were part of the sea.
That's very important for us to understand.
The sea is where they came from.
Now, We have to go back to Genesis to really understand this.
We're always going back to Genesis, aren't we?
You go back to Revelation, you go all the way to Revelation.
You know how you understand Revelation?
Going back to Genesis.
You got to.
And so as Adam, what did Adam come from, Brother Doug?
He came from the dust of the earth, right?
He came from the dust of number four.
That's what he came from.
Adam came from the dust of the earth.
God formed man from the dust of the earth.
And as Adam came from the dust of the earth So these bees came from the sea of the fallen world.
It's their origin.
And if their origin, it's what they're made of.
Adam wasn't just from the dust Adam was the dust, wasn't he?
Genesis chapter 3, verse 19.
Genesis chapter 3, verse 19.
God told Adam, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return.
Unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken.
Watch this now.
For dust thou art.
You are your origin.
You are your origin.
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Up from the sea they came.
Up from the sea these four beasts came.
For the sea they are.
And unto the sea shall they ultimately return.
Y'all with me?
So exactly what are these beasts?
It's important to understand because it can be very confusing.
Have you ever read prophecy like this and you just say, oh It's so mysterious.
It's so over my head.
It's so confusing.
And you just kind of get bogged down with it.
And you go, I'll just trust God that everything's going to work out in the end.
And you don't understand it.
Any of y'all ever go through life like that?
Hey, it's going up everywhere.
It wasn't meant to be that way.
We were meant to understand.
God wouldn't have given us the scriptures if He didn't mean for us to understand them.
And so let's just pause here.
And spend some time here.
And how are we going to understand the beasts of the sea?
Going back to where?
Genesis.
There you go.
All right, just like we had looking at Adam here So it's important to understand what these beasts represent because, like the four winds, you notice how when we study the four winds, we saw them in other passages, both Old and New Testament.
It's the same way for these beasts of the sea.
This beastly or animalistic.
Because they're not always beasts, sometimes they're animals.
Or domesticated animals, this animalistic symbolism is used in other passages of the Bible, just like the four winds, in both Old and New Testaments.
So.
If we understand the meaning here in this passage, then we can understand it better when we get to other passages and we see that symbolism repeated.
Okay?
Won't be repeated in the same words.
But it would be repeated in the same fashion.
Okay?
Just like some of Jesus' parables.
They may not be the same story, but they're giving off the same teaching, the same truth.
So to understand the meaning of these beasts, Let's do what we said.
Let's go back to Genesis where the beasts were made, right?
If you want to understand beasts, go back and watch how they got made.
When I used to be an auto theft detective, Sister Becky used to work in auto theft.
She was our admin secretary.
She remembers to understand those vehicles that we had to identify, because when they steal vehicles, sometimes they burn them.
And you had to be able to identify them after the serial numbers were gone.
You know how they got Timothy McVeigh?
Auto theft stuff.
They had to be able to go back and look at parts and identify the whole.
And how did we understand that vehicle being made?
Ms.
Becky, we went and we toured the manufacturers.
We go to the Chevy dealership, we go to Peterbilt Factory, we'd watch them get built from the ground up.
And so by going back here to Genesis, we watch the beast get built.
Okay?
So let's watch this now.
Genesis 1:24.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth Watch where they're coming from.
You see their earthly origin?
Watch number four.
Bring forth the living creature after his kind.
Now they're going to give three types of the living creature: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the what?
Earth.
Number four, four great beasts.
You see how this is all tying together?
After his kind, and it was so.
So, on the sixth day of creation, the earth brought forth Living creatures, similar to how the sea brought forth these four beasts, living creatures of the sea.
Okay?
So as the beast came up out of the earth, so these creatures, these beasts came out of the sea.
And these creatures In verse 24, as I just told you, they're divided into three categories.
I want to break it up here: cattle, that's domestic animals.
Creeping things, that's things that creep you out.
I got told by our cleaning.
Staff this morning, without mentioning her name, about a terrifying spotter that might be inhabiting a plant back there.
So I got to check that out after church But that's a creeping thing.
And then the other category was beasts, right?
And that's your wild animals.
That's your wild ass, not your kitty cat.
At your coyote, right?
That's your wild animals.
And so here, we're not getting into them this morning Into the specifics of them this morning, but the beast that he saw come up from the sea consisted of a lion, a bear, and a leopard.
All of those are beasts, right?
They fit into the wild animal category.
Of the living creatures, the animals that God made on the sixth day.
The reason they're called animals and the reason they all fit in the same category of living creatures.
Whether it's fish, fowl, animal, God was separating them from the vegetation he had made. the word animal, animalistic, same word we get a word animation from, right?
So we we go from having vegetation, which just stands there and has no knowledge at all, to having Animated life, a mind, a motion, will, all of those are in the animal kingdom.
And so we have beasts.
That's okay, sweetie.
That's okay.
Don't be embarrassed.
She's got it.
We have Beast.
That was her excitement button.
Anytime she gets excited about the message, that goes off.
Yeah.
So so she'll get it.
So um We have these four wild animals coming up from the sea.
We have a lion, a bear, a leopard, and then at last.
We'll have the fourth animal be a wild animal that's a fiercely unique species.
Unlike anything we've ever seen, if you just think of it like that.
You know how the scientists will go or the naturalists will go out and they'll say, oh, we've just identified a new species.
We see that all the time.
That's what this is.
It's a new species.
That has never been seen before.
We'll get more into that when we get deeper into the prophecies.
But as God caused the beast in Genesis to come up out of the substance of the earth, So God calls the beast in Daniel to come up from the substance of the spiritual sea.
And what is that substance?
Fallen men, not dust.
But fallen men.
The souls of fallen men is so the beast is rising up from the souls of fallen men.
And as Adam was dust, the beast is fallen.
Men make sense?
Now watch formed, organized fallen men.
Because Adam wasn't just dust.
He was formed, organized dust, right?
It's what we are right now.
You can tell the difference between me and the dirt, can't you?
But you know what?
I'm still dirt.
All right, so when God brought beasts from the earth, he took the earth and he organized it.
He took the dust and he organized that dust into living, moving, intelligent creations with their own unique characteristics.
And when God brought beasts from this spiritual sea, he took fallen men and he organized those fallen men into living, moving Political monstrosities.
You with me?
With her own unique characteristics, living moving political monstrosities with their own unique characteristics.
And by God's grace, we're going to study these beasts in more detail in a future message.
But for now, we need to understand that these beasts are the political organizations of men.
They are kingdoms Of this fallen world.
Now, in Genesis, God created every living thing in progressive stages, didn't He?
We just talked about that earlier.
Vegetation and then animation, right?
So the vegetation came first.
The fish, the birds, and the land creatures, they came after.
And then man.
The most sophisticated creature of all, he came last.
But there was one big difference.
That sets men apart from all the other living creatures that God made.
Man was made in the glorious image of God.
God gave us a spirit so we could know him.
And when I teach in the Genesis of Jesus class, we explain it like this.
The first stage of living creation was light, because nothing can live without light, right?
God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
First stage is illumination.
And then, what did God do?
The first life. that was powered by illumination.
That's how vegetation lives.
Photosynthesis, right?
So the first stage of life that came after illumination was vegetation.
And then after vegetation came animation.
After animation came inspiration.
Inspiration.
You know how animals operate?
They operate off of instinct, don't they?
That's all they have is instinct.
You can't get them past instinct.
You cannot add inspiration to their instinct.
It's not available.
Okay?
And that's how it comes all over the world today, there are people like me and you who are sitting in church talking about spiritual things.
Because God gave us something He didn't give the animals, He gave us a spirit.
Because Jesus said God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
So we're spiritual creatures.
We were not made to live by instinct.
We were made to live by inspiration.
We were made to have God's Word written on our hearts.
And to live according to His revealed will in our lives, inspirationally.
His Spirit living in us.
Working through us, loving through us, serving through us.
Wouldn't that be a wonderful life?
That's the way it was designed to be.
Animals don't have that.
Okay?
It's like a two-way radio.
We can talk to God.
We can understand spiritual things.
God can talk to us through that knowledge, that revelation of His Word.
But animals don't have that frequency.
It's just not there.
All they understand is the instinct.
They're only of the earth.
They have no knowledge of heaven.
We're all on the same page?
Now keep that in mind.
Because how we see God creating the animals and man in Genesis helps us to understand Daniel.
When God formed man from the dust of the earth, he did something he didn't do to the animals.
He created them in his image.
Genesis 1:27 says, So God created man in his image.
In his own image, in the image of God, created he him, male and female created he them.
So whether you're male or female, you were made in God's image.
To have God's knowledge and His Spirit living in and through you.
It's a wonderful thing, it's a holy thing.
You were created as glorious creatures.
But these weren't men rising up from the sea.
They were beasts.
You following me?
You seeing what's happening?
The Bible says God formed man from the dust of the earth.
Don't see this with the beast.
Then it says, Then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
Man became a living soul.
You know what Jesus did after he rose from the dead?
He looked at some of his disciples, Brother Doug, and the Bible says he breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
When God breathed into Adam, God's spirit moved into man's spirit.
He was He was inspired.
Inspiration.
Inspire.
You have respiration.
You have inspiration, respiration, expiration is to breathe out, inspiration is to breathe into.
God breathed into.
He inspired Adam.
Man was God's first house.
God was living in man.
Man was a temple of God.
Which is why you have another temple built later.
It's a wonderful story.
We don't have time to get into it.
It takes about a year.
But.
We don't see men coming up from the sea.
We see beasts coming up from the sea.
They were kingdoms of men.
And those men were like dumb beasts.
They lacked the Spirit of God.
Do you know what happened when Adam sinned?
The Spirit of God moved out.
His house became vacant.
Remember what Jesus said when he was there at the temple?
He said, Your house has become desolate.
Do you know who's supposed to have been in that temple?
In the center, the most holy spot, the most inward spot of that temple, do you know what was in there?
God was.
He dwelt in the most holy place.
We are a three-part person, body, soul, spirit.
In our innermost, holiest chamber, our spirit.
That's where God's spirit was created, that's where God created us to dwell.
We are that spot that the most holy place in the temple represents.
But sin, God won't live in a dirty temple.
So God moved out of his house.
In the gospel, it's all about.
Taking a broken temple and rebuilding it and putting God back in.
It's not about getting.
As Adrian Rogers once lovely said, it's not about getting man out of earth into heaven, it's about getting God into heaven back into man.
That's what the gospel is all about.
But when we see these beasts rising up from the sea, they are men with no God in that temple.
And a man with no God in his temple is like a dumb animal.
He's just fleshly, earthly, not spiritual, not heavenly.
Not inspired, he's living like a dumb beast.
A beast has no spiritual understanding.
They simply, again, are dumb animals.
They work off their fleshly instincts.
And when I say a dumb beast, I mean Literally, just that, literally, dumb, meaning that God did not give them the ability to communicate, to speak.
He did not give them the ability to communicate complex thoughts because they lacked the ability to understand and process complex thoughts Spiritual thoughts.
I could just hear someone say now: Pastor, animals are not dumb.
They are very intelligent and can love and understand us.
Yeah, well, I hope you enjoy your animals.
God created domestic animals and they're awful nice.
We have two cats in our backyard that we give food to.
I enjoy holding one and it enjoys me petting it.
But that's about the end of that.
You can pretend they're more.
There's people now calling animals people.
They say, well, they're people too.
No, they're not people.
They're animals.
To say otherwise is to deny what we just read in Genesis.
If they can understand and they're intelligent and they can understand us and they can love us, then why do you hold your pets down when you're at the vet giving them a shot?
Why do you have to sneak food into or medicine rather into their food and trick them into getting it swallowed?
Why do people get trampled by buffaloes, Brother Doug, when they're taking selfies with them at the national park?
Why do they get bit by wildlife when they're trying to rescue them?
Why don't you just explain to them the benefits of what you're doing for them?
Because they can't understand.
And that's why when people trying to help, when Christians are trying to help some lost people.
Sometimes they end up getting hurt.
There was a man when I used to work in Metroplex.
There was a man up there.
I don't know if y'all remember this.
He was out on one of those lakes, and there was one of those waterfowl out there with the big long beaks.
And he was out in his boat, and that waterfowl got entangled up in a fishing line.
And he went out there and was untangling that bird, and that bird pecked his eye out.
I was gone.
Do you remember that, Brother Shepherd?
I don't even remember that story.
You're probably reading something scientific or something deeper than that.
But I was watching the basic news and listening to it on the radio.
He pecked, that bird pecked his eye out.
And a lot of times, because that bird's just a dumb beast, in all the love and affection that man tried to share that bird, he got his eye pecked out.
You know, that's what happens to Christians.
You ever had someone you love and you're trying to share Christ with them?
You're trying to tell them about Jesus?
You're trying to tell them how they're living wrong and how their lifestyle is going to hurt them?
Do you know what you're doing?
You're trying to untangle them from the fishing line.
And have you been bitten for that?
Apostles got stoned for it.
They got boiled in oil.
Prophets got murdered in prison.
Christians are still getting murdered for it today.
Do you know why?
They're trying to help a bunch of dumb animals.
They're trying to help people whose rejection of God They have kicked their conscience to death.
They have denied the Spirit of God in their lives, and they're just a bunch of dumb beasts.
And they don't recognize someone's trying to help them, and they lash out and they hurt them.
They don't have the Spirit of God in them.
And that's why sometimes we get hurt.
When we're trying to help these animalistic people who have not the Spirit of God in them, speaking of godless men in 2 Peter 2, verse 12.
The Apostle Peter said, But these as natural brute beasts.
You see, that's how it describes these people.
As natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not.
You ever seen those people get up and they bad-mouth God, they bad-mouthed Christians, they bad-mouthed this.
They found a They found us.
I love following archaeology.
They got this stone that Describes the events of Exodus.
They've had, they found back in the 1800s, describes the Pharaoh dying in the sea, all that stuff.
They've got one I was reading about this past week, last night in fact, was a statue they found.
Back during the time period that we're teaching on here in Daniel, a Persian statue during the Persian reign.
And the Romans, when they took over, they took that statue, they buried it face down, and they used the top of it as stone to pave a road with, and they found it recently.
And the face is preserved because it was buried face down.
Fascinating.
And someone got on there and said, well, That in no way proves that the fairy tales of the book of the Revelation are true.
And they're acting like they're this big authority.
And I'm like, I told my wife, I said, those poor people have no understanding whatsoever.
That has nothing to do with, I mean, showing this history has nothing to do with what Revelation is talking about.
We're talking about a totally different era of time.
And they got it all mixed up because they don't even understand.
But they're spouting their mouth out.
You watch those people on TV and they're spouting their mouth out about things against Christianity, and they have no clue what they're talking about.
And Peter is describing these same people that we're seeing today.
He says, they're like natural brute beasts that are made to be taken and destroyed.
In other words, just as you'd. take a cow and butcher it and not think anything about it.
It's just a dumb beast.
It's not a person.
You don't get m murder charges for it.
You just kill it.
You eat it.
And he said, they're living like those people.
In their minds and their hearts, they're just like the beasts.
He said, They speak evil of things that they understand not, and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.
Corruption from inspiration down to animation.
The Greek word translative brute literally means something not said.
S dumb.
A dumb beast.
Beasts have social and physical instincts, but they have no human or divine that is spiritual understanding.
And that's the idea from these beasts coming up from the sea.
They are kingdoms of men.
Who, as natural brute beasts, lack the understanding of God.
Kingdoms that are built in the dumbness of a beast.
Godless, fleshly, earthly kingdoms of men Now, Daniel said they all came from the sea.
Yet Daniel said they were, look back at your text, diverse one from another.
Now don't let that throw you off.
They all came from the sea.
They're all number four rising up.
But they're diverse one from another.
Like the beasts of the field, right?
They took on different characteristics, like the difference between a lion and a bear.
But they were all the same thing.
They were just another kingdom of fallen men who refused to follow God.
Make sense?
So they were all the same, yet they were all different.
Now, let me explain, and I'll give you a way you can understand this.
You'll never forget it.
How many of y'all watch Shirley Temple movies?
Have y'all ever heard Shirley Temple saying, Animal crackers in my soup?
There you go.
You'll never forget this now.
We got animal crackers here in the sea.
Think about animal crackers for a minute.
Y'all read animal crackers?
You read animal crackers?
Now, Abigail.
When you pulled out those animal crackers, can you remember any of the animal shapes that were in there?
Give me a couple.
A cow?
A cow was in there?
Let's look at a lion and a cow.
Let's do that.
When you ate the lion, And you ate the cow.
Did they taste any different?
Why not?
Cracker, different shape?
Same cracker, different shape.
These are the same substance here coming up out of the earth.
It's the same kingdom in a different form.
It's the kingdom of darkness.
It's the kingdom of the fallen world that's headed up by the devil.
And it's just taking a shape, a different shape, a different form as it comes out of the sea.
It's the same substance.
The reason those crackers all taste the same, they're all made from the same batter.
The reason these kings are these animals are coming up from the sea, they're all coming from the same batter.
They're just coming up in different Forms.
It doesn't matter if it's a monkey or an elephant.
They're the same cracker in different animal shapes.
Each beast that we see coming from the sea is just a different shape.
Cut from the same ungodly cloth.
That's all it is.
Each world kingdom that they represent when they come up from the sea, it's simply the presentation.
Of the same fallen kingdom of this world that started when Adam sinned in Genesis, and it's just manifesting itself in different forms.
That's all it is.
So the four winds.
You have to understand the four winds didn't create the fallen kingdom.
The influence of the devil and the sin of man created the fallen kingdom.
You with me?
However, though the four winds didn't create the fallen kingdom, they do instigate the rise and fall of many forms of the government of that fallen kingdom.
You with me?
So they didn't create the fallen kingdom, but they instigate the rise and fall of the many forms of that fallen kingdom and the last form of beastly government.
Is going to present itself in the end times.
And that's what we're learning about here in Daniel.
We're learning about the past forms, learning about the future form.
By the way, the future form is the last beast.
You with me?
The beast that no one's ever seen before, that nothing's like it.
And so, so.
That's what the book of the Revelation tells us about in that final form of government.
You've heard this before: people receive the mark of what?
The beast.
Is it making more sense to you now?
The beast is a what?
It's a government of godless men.
The mark they receive is going to be a political identification, is all it is.
It's a political identification.
So, in that final form of government, they're going to receive the mark of the beast.
In other words, the mark of the government at that time.
To which people will either have to pledge allegiance to that form of government or be left out of the world economy.
And if you've ever wondered why people will worship the beast in the future, All you have to do is watch how the communistic forms of government operate today.
Whether it's North Korea, China, wherever, Russia, wherever.
All you have to do is watch how these communistic governments work today.
A communistic government Simply replaces the authority of God with the authority of government.
That's all they're doing.
They replace the authority of God with the authority of the government.
And when you replace God with government, the government becomes your God.
Hence, the worship and the mark of the beast.
And God willing, we will look more at these godless beasts next Sunday.
Isn't this fun?
We're learning scripture, and by doing so, God's preparing us to understand what's going to befall us.
And our offspring in the times to come.
Lord, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father, for spelling it out to us in Daniel's vision.
Thank you, Father, for giving us the understanding to see it.
Thank you for Moses, who wrote about the creation of the beast.
Thank you for the prophets, Father God, who described them to us.
Thank you, Father, for the book of the Revelation, Father God, who explains it further.
Which explains it further and for John.
Thank you for your Holy Spirit, Lord, who wrote it all, who teaches all.
And Father, by your grace, will perform everything we're reading about here in Daniel.
And we're looking forward, Father, not to the chaos.
Not to the harm and the pain and the fear and the devastation to come.
But we're looking forward, Father, to the Son who comes after it.
In his precious name we pray.
Amen.
