The Book of Revelation is known as the Apocalypse in Greek, which is a word that means something
which is concealed that's being unveiled.
The Book of Revelation uses very strange symbolism.
However, the symbolism in Revelation is interpreted predominantly in the Old Testament.
In other words, the symbols are found originally in the Old Testament that the Apocalypse uses.
Chapter 12 of Revelation deals with a time frame which is the middle of the tribulation
period and it talks about a dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
Now the word dragon there, now remember this is coming from the 1611 King James translation
of the Bible, is actually a Greek word that means a serpent.
It actually can translate into, I saw a seven headed serpent.
Now in symbolism, a serpent, everyone, if I were to say to Christians, what is a serpent
representing a needle, they know going back to Genesis 3, the serpent represents Satan
and it represents him throughout scripture.
Now when we look at that, the serpent has seven heads.
Now this is a really bizarre looking picture.
However, in the early days in what we call Mesopotamia, Ur of Caladis, Saudi Arabia,
those countries, let's say four to five thousand years ago, there were frescoes found of a
serpent with different heads, like seven heads and different, a many headed serpent.
So sometimes the imagery that John used by revelation of the Holy Spirit is found in
ancient empires.
So the people of his day would have had a little bit of an understanding of what he's
talking about, but we today have to interpret it because we don't use those particular symbols.
Satan had in the Bible, from Genesis all the way into the time of the New Testament, six
major empires and every one of these empires in some way affected either the Jewish people
or the Jewish people and Israel as a nation or the city of Jerusalem or the temple or
many times a combination of all of those.
Now if we go through and I think most Bible scholars would agree with me on what I'm about
to say, that if we look at the heads of the serpent, the empires that affected Israel,
the Jews in Jerusalem, we start first of all with Egypt and then after Egypt, we come into
the Old Testament to the kingdom of Assyria and then after the Assyrians, we come into
the time of the Babylonians.
After the Babylonians came the Medes and the Persians, after the Medes and Persians came
the Greeks, after the Greeks came the Romans.
So those are your six major empires of Bible prophecy.
In Revelation, however, it says there's a seventh head that will continue a short space.
Now in John's day, when he wrote that vision about 95 to 100 AD according to Rick Renner,
the Greek scholar, when John wrote that, the seventh empire did not exist, but it was going
to come out of one of the previous empires of prophecy.
And the seventh empire, of course, many have said is the common market, the EU of Europe,
and believe it's a global government that's about to form that that's the one that we're
coming into or that is possibly here.
And it could be connected to the EU, the division of the East and West, according to Daniel
Tude.
I don't want to get too complicated here.
We're trying to make it as simple as possible.
And so there is a seventh empire and then out of those seven world empires, including
the last one coming in our day and time, will come in Revelation chapter 17.
You read 17 and 18, you'll see this together.
An eighth empire that rules for 42 months, which is the empire of the Antichrist.
So there's your seven heads.
Now when it comes to the 10 horns, those 10 horns are also found in Daniel 2, which are
the 10 toes at the end of days on the image of that metallic image that Nebuchadnezzar
had that dream about.
Those are 10 kings.
Then later in Daniel 7 and 8, there is 10 horns that he sees, which again are 10 last
day kingdoms.
And John picks up on it later in the book of Revelation where he talks about the dragon
now has 10 horns.
So these 10 kings are five kings from the Eastern part of the world, five from the Western,
East and West.
That's how it's going to be divided up.
And it is today really.
You have China, who's really almost like the red dragon, you might say, that's in the East.
You have, of course, the United States, which is a Western empire.
The United States still is an empire in my opinion.
So it's going to be divided between East and West, but there'll be 10 of them at the end
of days.
So if we look at the book of Revelation chapter 12, what John is seeing is John is seeing
a vision of Satan who has had Prince spirits or chief demon spirits.
Now what's a Prince spirit?
It's known in the New Testament, Ephesians 6 and 12 as a principality.
It is a high ranking spirit directly under Satan that rules over a nation or a kingdom.
And we know that from Daniel 10, when the angel Gabriel is revealing to Daniel that
there was a Prince of the kingdom of Greece and a Prince of the kingdom of Persia.
And Gabriel was in the middle battling both of these.
And he revealed that to Daniel.
So in other words, there has been a Prince over Egypt.
And when I talk about an earthly man, we're talking about a demonic power with great authority.
Then there was one over Assyria.
Then there was one over, of course, Babylon.
Then it was one over media Persia and Greece.
That's in Daniel 10.
There also was one over the Roman empire.
And there are the, this is what I want to make clear to people.
These same Prince spirits have never been bound.
These same Prince spirits of previous empires are still on the earth today and still working
to control governments.
For example, to pass legislation against God, against God's people and so many other things.
And so that's what we, what the scripture alludes to in Revelation 12 on the seven heads
of the dragon and the 10 horns.
The spirit behind each of those empires had a particular emphasis that, or let me say
this assignment in that empire.
And I'm just going to give you a few here because it would take a little longer than
probably the time we have.
If we go, for example, to the, the, the, the Egyptian empire, it was an empire that tried
to put people in bondage and people into slavery.
And Paul in Romans talks about the spirit of bondage.
Now the spirit of bondage is something that binds a person to causes them to be attached
to a sin they can't get free from without the help of the Lord.
But you see this spirit of slavery and the spirit of bondage because you see it today
in the form of addiction, which is a bondage pornography, which is a bondage.
People becoming these evil people that sex traffic people, putting them in bondage.
You see that spirit.
Now, when you come to Assyria or the Assyrian empire, what did it do?
It divided the nation of Israel.
It took 10 tribes captive.
And of course, Judah and Benjamin remained in the land up until the Babylon captivity.
So when you talk about the Prince spirit over Assyria, without a doubt, it is a spirit of
division.
Have you ever seen the United States probably the only other time would be during the civil
war, more divided over everything, over the climate, over the economy, over religion,
over race.
It's like this.
It's just like 50% are this way, 50% are the other way.
And they don't get along with each other at all, which is a terrible thing.
And so the spirit of division is seen through the Prince spirit that controlled the Assyrian
empire.
And when you go to the time of the Babylonian captivity, if you look at what Babylon did,
the Babylonians were an empire that you remember that Daniel, of course, is placed in alliance
then the three Hebrew boys are placed in the fiery furnace.
So what they attempt to do, the Babylonian empire, of course, took the Jewish people
into bondage.
They took them into slavery, but they were in complete and total control of the minds
and the hearts of the people.
And it was an area full of idolatry.
Now I'm going to jump ahead here and tell you the media Persian empire passed laws against
praying.
Daniel was arrested for praying because you could not break the Persian laws.
Now we see all these laws being passed.
If we go back to June several years ago about the same sex marriage, that was a law that
was passed.
Of course, abortion was overturned on a national level.
It's not in the control of the state, but see, that was a law that was passed.
So what happened is in the media Persian empire, laws were passed against things that dealt
with righteous living and righteousness.
And we see that in America right now.
And if we go on into the Grecian empire, it was philosophy, it was humanism, it was secularism.
We see that in the United States, not just the United States, but the world.
And then the one empire, and this is the one I want to focus on because the Roman empire
patterns are all over America from the architecture in Washington.
They had an eagle as their emblem.
And we have an eagle in all of our military plus over the White House.
The emblem of the White House, of course, is the eagle, the president.
They had a Senate, we had a Senate, they had a Capitol Hill, we have a Capitol Hill.
They raised taxes and bankrupt the country.
We're doing the same thing.
So there's about 20 parallels of the Roman empire that America has right now.
Now here's the big one, and this is the one I want everybody to understand.
If you look at the Roman empire, they were tolerant of any kind of a sin.
They were very tolerant of pornography.
You know, I say pornography, let me explain that because the brothels had pictures in
them, paintings, they didn't have print, but they had paintings, they had naked statues.
They were very tolerant of that.
They were tolerant of men with men and women with women relationships.
They were even tolerant.
And I have a message I'm going to preach on this in one of our meetings, but I did some
research which really shocked me, but the emperors had young boys, teenagers and under
that they were having relations with.
That was in the Roman empire.
I mean, they were, okay, here's the key.
Romans were tolerant of every God except the Christian God.
All right, now here's why, real quick, four reasons why, if I can remember these.
Number one, the Christians wanted a day of rest and the Romans worked seven days a week
and that was a problem.
The Christians had what was called a love feast, which was a feast for the poor people
in the church.
And the Romans started a rumor that it was a sexual feast and the Christians got very,
very persecuted over that.
The Christians believed in another kingdom and Rome was supposed to be the only kingdom
you believed in and you honored them.
The Romans believed, I'm sorry, the Christians believed there was another king, which was
Jesus and there was only supposed to be one king who was the emperor of Rome that you
honored and worshiped.
So the Christians were in the eyes of the Roman government, very negative people, very
distrusting people, people that were spreading confusion in the empire.
So they went out to persecute Christians.
Now here's what I was going to say.
The spirit of the Roman empire is summed up in one word, tolerance.
So today, what do we hear?
If you say, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, you are intolerant.
If you were to say, I believe in the life of a child that an infant should live, you
are intolerant.
If you go against today's culture, especially in North America, and there's of course places
in Europe that do the same thing, they will tag you as a phobic of some kind.
There's about 17 kinds of phobics that are in the earth according to the left or what
we call the extreme liberals.
And so suddenly you're labeled with a phobia.
You were labeled as intolerant and they use all kinds of names to degrade you and to down
you to suppress your speech.
So in the Roman empire, they would persecute Christians to have them shut up.
I know Paul one time was arrested and he said, you just arrested a Roman citizen and they
freaked out.
They said, oh my, we're in trouble.
We can't do this.
So they told him to go out the back door quietly.
And Paul said, you didn't arrest me quietly and I'm not leaving quietly.
And I think that's how Christians need to be.
We don't need to start a confrontation, but when we are attacked for our faith because
we're called intolerant, we need to stand up and say, you know what?
First of all, there's freedom of speech.
Second of all, we have the right to freedom of religion in our country.
You have a freedom to not be religious at all.
You got the freedom to be an atheist if you want, but you have no right to attack my belief
just because you don't believe in it.
And so the spirit of tolerance is overwhelming the United States to the point that this culture
that we now have, you can't say what the Lord gives you.
You can't preach what the Lord gives you without fear of repercussion.
And of course the internet is used as a weapon.
There's so many people that weaponize the internet.
And I just want to encourage people that if you're going to, as a Christian, listen to,
you know, maybe it's a YouTube video or listen to the internet or teaching, get people who
are in the word who love God, that have relationship.
Do not pay attention or listen to these individuals who are trying to make a name for themselves
by putting pictures of 20 preachers and calling them heretics.
Let me tell you, let me expose it.
Listen, humans are not a watchdog for the kingdom.
The Holy Spirit is the watcher of the kingdom.
People are not to judge other Christians by their opinion or standard.
It is God that's the judge.
And yet people defile this, they defile their spirit.
Paul talks about roots of bitterness that defile many.
And to defile in Greek means to stain a white garment, to put stains on a garment.
Well, nobody's going to go out.
If you're a minister, you're wearing a white shirt to business.
I mean, you spill coffee or grape juice on it, you're not going to go out in public with
it.
But there are people who have defiled themselves by listening to lies and rumors and innuendos
and slander.
And they don't even know the facts.
They just feel like if it's, you know, if it's on social media, it must be true.
And I want to encourage people to be sure and understand that this spirit of tolerance
is attacking us, to silence us, because if we go against the cultural grain of today,
and that's the spirit that I think that we are dealing with most in America, is to silence
a true voice that is giving the Word of God, that is just saying, this is what the scripture
says, this is what thus saith the Lord says.
And I want to make people aware of that, because one thing the enemy does not like is when
you expose his behind the scenes agents.
When they get exposed and whatever method the enemy is using, he doesn't like that,
because then people become aware and they become more discerning of what they hear and
what they're dealing with.
But my point is that the spirits, the Prince spirits, not just the lower level spirits,
like Malik was, as you know, was a idol worshiper, they offered children to.
Well, that is similar to offering a child, and we say offering, we know that medical
terminology does not use that word, they use the word abortion, but it's the same spirit
behind it from a different perspective.
And so these are national spirits, but they're the lesser ones in the sense of these that
control the empires of the seven empires are the strongest.
And these are the ones that if you trace it back, people are going to have to deal with,
you know, in the last days, when we talk about a dragon, we're usually thinking then of some
big, scary, very obvious monster that we're battling with.
And so we can talk about those things in the, you know, the macro context, but in the in
the context of our own lives, you know, you think about things like drug addiction or
pornography addiction, or, you know, who knows what it is, alcoholism or just unfaithfulness
in different areas or discipline problems, whatever it is, it's some big dragon that
you're battling with that you're fighting with.
Those things always start out very small.
And when they start, they very rarely seem to us to be the dragons that they ultimately
become.
So I told the story in the book of a newspaper article that I read about in a British newspaper,
where a guy bought a rock Python, he ironically named him tiny, this Python grew to be something
like I forget what it was like 14 feet long or something started out as a little tiny
snake he could probably hold in one hand that he bought from the pet shop.
This Python grows to 14 feet long, and then ends up killing the guy in his sleep.
And I thought it was a bit of an interesting analogy that so very often the things that
end up killing people in the end, our pets, that they have raised since they were very
young.
And they, they could have when those things were young, and when those things were small,
and when those things didn't have a lot of power over those people, they could have shut
the door quickly, they could have dealt with those things, they could have repented, they
could have cut them out of their lives in a very aggressive way.
But instead, they said, Oh, this is not a very big deal, this is a small sin.
And so they they were very lenient with it, they coddled it, they didn't pay much attention
to it.
But over time, those things begin to grow and they grow in such a way like your kids,
you know, your kids, they're born and you turn around one day and they're 18 years old
and they're six feet tall.
And you say, Well, when did that happen?
Well, it happened one day at a time.
It happened in very small, slow incremental steps.
So slow, in fact, that very often you didn't even notice it happening until you look back
and you go, what in the world is this?
And so for a lot of people, even for believers, the big dragons that they fight start out
as small eggs.
So if you have a big dragon in your life, it may require a serious battle.
But what I was trying to talk about in that chapter about killing your pet dragon is what
about those things that are not dragons yet?
They're not big, daunting, overwhelming, insurmountable obstacles yet.
They might be in 20 years, but today they're small.
Today they're in that egg form and you could actually destroy them and you can get them
out.
You could repent of them.
You could be delivered of them very quickly and very easily if you would take care of
business today.
But if you wait and you let this thing drag out, you could be dealing with something that
could destroy your life and the lives of people that you love in the end.
You know, the Holy Spirit, unlike us, he knows the future and he knows the things that are
in our lives that are going to become problems for us down the road.
And I really do believe that because of that, he is there convicting us and warning us and
giving us the tools that we need to be able to free ourselves from those kind of bondages.
So when a person coddles those pet dragons and raises those pet dragons, one thing that
is also happening at the same time is that there is a certain refusal to obey the voice
of the Holy Spirit and a hardening of the heart towards the Holy Spirit, which may even
be a bigger problem than the dragon itself.
Because if we quench the voice of the Holy Spirit and we harden our hearts, we come to
a place where we become immune to his voice.
When it comes to people like the boot camp students or others, I really think that the
key is to learn to be submitted to the voice of the Holy Spirit on a day-to-day basis.
This is kind of like it's the secret ingredient to the Christian life.
This is what makes Christianity different from every religion in the world.
All the religions are about, here's a book.
This book tells you how you ought to be.
Now you work really hard to make it happen.
Christianity is different.
The author of the book says, let me come live on the inside of you.
And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to live through you.
If you will yield to me, I will live through you in such a way that I'll fulfill everything
on the page.
And so the Christian life is not lived from the outside in.
Christian life is lived from the inside out.
So how do you teach someone to kill their pet dragons?
You teach them to be submitted to and sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
It's the ace up all of our sleeves.
This is an interesting subject to get into because I have dealt with this a lot.
I do see a lot of things out there that tend to sensationalize the issue of deliverance.
For me, very often deliverance is quite a simple and undramatic experience.
You can now.
That doesn't mean that you can't make a show out of demonized situations.
There are people when they have a demon, there are ways to get that thing to go crazy, to
talk back.
I don't like devils talking back to me.
And I don't like to give them my platform or my microphone.
My goal is to shut them up and get them out as quickly as possible.
I think the caution, though, is that casting out devils and deliverance is exciting and
it draws people's attention.
You want to talk about this because it's going to get people to watch your social media channel
or watch your video or whatever.
But the reality is that if you dive into this area of deliverance without the first part
that I talked about earlier, which is being submitted to God, you are actually setting
yourself up for a very dangerous situation.
Because again, I referenced the seven sons of Sceva.
These were people who they knew the formula to cast out devils, but they didn't actually
know the Lord.
And so I think what in the back of the book here, this is kind of a little bit of a cheat
code for the ones that haven't read it yet.
But in the back of the book, I have a chapter that's called How to Cast Out Devils.
And I give you basically a formula that works, a step-by-step instruction.
Here's how you cast out a demon.
And it works wonderfully.
And it's actually the way that I would suggest, especially people that are just beginning
in that kind of deliverance ministry.
It's what I suggest that they use for many different reasons.
But there's a reason that I put it at the end of the book instead of the beginning.
I know it's the part a lot of people want to read.
But I really felt like it was important that you got all this stuff first, because this
is what shows you about how to submit yourself to God and to keep yourself internally aligned
with Him.
And that's what protects you.
Because there will be people, according to the very words of Jesus, that will cast out
devils and do wonderful works in the name of Jesus.
And Jesus will look at them and say, who are you?
Not only that, He'll say, depart from me.
I never knew you.
So just the ability to cast out devils shouldn't be what we are excited about and what's turning
us on in spiritual matters.
Jesus said, don't rejoice that the demons are subject to you.
Rejoice that your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
That's what I would say.
Even though deliverance is very important, it is a part of the ministry of Jesus.
It ought to be a part of all of our ministries as men and women of God and men and women
of the Spirit.
But at the beginning and first and foremost, there ought to be that internal alignment
with the things of God and that submission to His will.
It was not an accident.
It is spiritual and it is part of an ancient war.
We just saw a little part of that war, the last chapter of that war.
But we are involved in a gigantic one and this goes with the Book of Revelation.
This is what I saw when I saw the dragon, you know, when I saw it at Images of the Dragon.
By the way, John, when I started writing the Dragon's Prophecy, it turned out it was 2024,
it became the year of the dragon.
It turns out there is a comet that comes sweeps by Earth every like 70 something years.
Well, it was appointed for 2024.
It's called the Devil's Comet or the Mother of Dragons Comet.
So many things about the dragon.
And the dragon is mentioned in Revelation 12 and onward and it's the dragon is at war
with a woman.
The woman has a crown of 12 stars.
That's Israel, the 12 tribes.
The woman gives birth to Messiah.
That's only Israel.
And so Revelation actually gives this.
This is 2000 years ago and it's giving the war right then and it has a lot of revelations
within it, including number one, he uses the word Greek word for persecuted.
So it's not an accident that the Jewish people are more associated with that word than any
other people.
It's right there in Revelation.
It says that the dragon has that word, kinsou, that's the Greek word for a rage, an antipathy,
a hostility, a burning hatred for Israel.
And this rage you see to this day in Hamas.
You saw it with Hitler.
It's never ending.
You saw it on American campuses.
It's all part of that.
Now the thing about Revelation and Revelation 12 is that it focuses on the beginning of
the age and the end of the age, when the woman gives birth to Messiah for a century to now,
which at the end time.
So it happens when Israel is back in the world.
That's when it kicks in.
That's when the focus of that, that Israel will become the focal point of this rage and
it'll intensify.
Well, that's what we're watching in the world.
This opens up the door of all sorts of mysteries that we are watching right now.
The last part of the book is going into what do we do and how do you, because there's the
war is again, not just against Israel, it says he made the dragon war against the rest
of her children who follow the ways of Messiah.
So it's a war against every believer and it's a war against everyone who bears the image
of God.
The dragon has a war.
Since you were conceived, the dragon has been warring against you.
He's also going to keep you from God, to abuse you, to addict you, to defile you, to depress
you, suppress you.
That's it.
So we recognize, because the same battle against Israel, same battle against we're all dealing
with, the Bible gives a promise about how to overcome.
In fact, that same prophecy of the dragon in Revelation 12 is the one that it says,
but they overcame him by the dragon, by the blood and the lamb of the power.
So we are guaranteed victory, but we have to fight.
And the thing is that, and so the last parts of the book deal with that.
And the thing is that there's actually a mystery, we won't be able to go into it, but there's
a chapter called the mystery of the secret Israelis.
And I'll just say this, it gives the key about how to overcome everything in the end days,
because it's going to be more intense, but everything you're dealing with in your life.
And the thing is, it's linked to that.
I'll just say this, the secret Israeli is actually you, everyone listening who is born
again, you're a secret Israeli, according to the Hebrew of the Bible.
And there's an incredible revelation about how to overcome.
So God has called us to overcome, and just keep in mind, when you're looking at this
whole picture and you're looking at what's happening in Israel, yes, Israel, the history
of Israel bears witness to the enemy, but it also more bears witness to God.
Because after all this, all this, we're getting a little taste of it.
It's been going on for 4,000 years.
The Pharaohs tried to destroy Israel, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the
Hitler, Russia, but you know what?
The Pharaohs are gone, the Rome has fallen, Babylon is gone, Hitler's gone.
All the terrorists are going to be gone.
They're all gone, but the nation of Israel lives because the God of Israel lives and
because Messiah of Israel lives.
And if you are following him, you're going to live and you will have victory.
If you fight the fight, you're going to, you're guaranteed victory.
Your God lives and that's beyond all the things.
And in Revelation, it says there is victory in the lamb.
In the end, you got to drive in, you got a lamb, but amazingly, the lamb wins.
So you're with the lamb, you're going to win, but you got to fight and you will be
guaranteed that victory.
Slay your dragon.
You have the power or the blood of the lamb.