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.
The apostles of Jesus Christ constituted the most interesting group of men ever to live upon earth. For nearly two thousand years already, children have learned with eagerness the names of the Twelve Apostles, and gray-headed men and women have gone down to the grave repeating the blessed words these men delivered to the human race.
Certainly, one of the legitimate meanings is that of the eternal beauty and value of the church of the living God; but there is another very curious and intriguing possibility.
Continuing to walk in the Spirit, centering and continuing the thoughts and meditations of the heart upon the teachings of the Lord, actively seeking to maintain identity with the mind of Christ, consciousness of the indwelling Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – these things will indeed “crucify” the lusts and evil imaginations which feed them.
Seven baptisms are mentioned in the New Testament, three of which are mentioned in this verse. In spite of the fact that all these baptisms find mention in the New Testament, there is, nevertheless, but ONE baptism in force. See Ephesians 4:4.
The one certainty regarding the antichrist is that he shall appear as the head, the usurper and the unscrupulous dictator over the apostate church itself.
But that death-stroke was healed. It did not mean the end of Roman persecutions of God’s people. Where the first beast left off, the second took over. The old pagan empire was revived in a Christianized form, “The Holy Roman Empire”; and all of the arrogance, hatred, and persecution of the first beast was restored.
