Art as expression – NOT as market campaigns, will still capture our Imaginations
The number 777 is said to be “the number of God, Christ, grace and salvation for men.” The number 666 is therefore the crowding out of perfection “in Christ,” and the contradiction of all that is indicated in 777.
This beast is PERVERTED GOVERNMENT used by Satan as an instrument against God’s people, especially the seven great universal dominions in which the saints of God were persecuted.
The beast out of the earth represents FALSE, BLASPHEMOUS RELIGION reaching from the shadows of Eden to the end of time (Revelation 13:11-18).
Revelation 18 deals with the particular judgment of God himself upon Babylon, as sharply distinguished from the judgment of Revelation 17, in which the nations of earth, not by the intervention of heaven, but by something that mankind does, grow weary of her and destroy her.
The argument in these verses is simple, but profound. If Satan was really casting out Satan, a ridiculous absurdity on the face of it, then Satan’s kingdom was being destroyed.
This prophecy received its highest fulfillment at the coming of Christ, the true Light of the World, which was followed by a great ingathering of the nations to the church of God, the church of Christ.
God’s device of accounting people righteous is that of forming them into a corporate unity, of which Christ is head, all the saved being members of it, the body itself being identified as “Christ,” and therefore partaking of the perfect righteousness of the Son of God himself.
