Revelation 13:6-8 - Power to wage war against God's holy people

13:6,7

The beast blasphemed God, and this blasphemy was total. He slandered “His Name, His dwelling place and those who live in heaven”. Today we see something of this happening in Western Society, we also see it happening to a much greater extent in China with the Communist Party.  The beast was also given power to “wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them”, then it talks about “authority over every tribe, people, language and nation”. There is a clear parallel with Rev 7:9. So the power of the beast seems to be total. Now we know that this will prove to not be the case, what is happening here is that we are getting a dramatic picture of how things must have seemed to the Christians.

13:8

We should not be surprised when “all inhabitants of the earth” seem to go nuts and worship something that is manifestly evil. Many of them will be ignorant of what they are doing, but nonetheless they are doing it. Many of them will seem to be quite normal likeable people. In Nazi Germany much of the nation went along with the Nazis. They were not inherently more evil than you or I, but support, or at least allow, the Nazis to rule they did. This is all people except “those whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life”. When we come to Christ we become a new creation. The scales are taken off our eyes and we start to see things as God sees them. We should not be surprised when the world seems to be blind to the truth, for it is indeed blind.

“who was slain from the creation of the world”. How can this be? Christ was crucified in about 30 AD. This is the eternal plan of God. Christ was not Plan B, there was always only one plan. We have eternal purposes worked out in time.