Look at the world and who’s in government right now.  They all got there by lying to each other, and the people, telling folks what they want to hear.  They don’t believe half of what they are promoting.  They’re promoting it because it just gives more power, more independence, more ability to get to the final agenda, which is an elitism where everybody else are just peons and need to be told what to do and be provided for.  It’s what Marxism and Socialism have always been.  It doesn’t care about the masses.  It cares about promoting itself to be of elite status.  As Americans, now we’re facing this kind of environment.  But stop for just a moment and think about a couple of the great empires that we are familiar with through the Scriptures.  Think about the hour we’re in and compare to the place that Daniel, Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego found themselves in.  God supernaturally being their providence, their provider, preserved their lives, made them ten times wiser than all of their contemporaries, promoted them to positions that could never have been attained in the natural.  We find these men in positions of prominence and the only way to bring them down was in those things that pertained to their God; amen?  Get ready.

We don’t know when it’s going to come, but it’s very likely to come and it may not be far away.  If you’re a born-again, Bible-believing Christian, you’ll become a security problem to this nation.  You won’t be able to hold any type of security clearance.  For how many of you would that change your life?  Would that change any of your lives if you had no clearance at all?  Okay, your job’s over.  So, just losing your job at the level you are, will change your life and will affect the church.  Now, when you think about these things, is there any new thing under the sun?  What was it that Babylon and Rome had in common?  The world doesn’t care if we come here and sing and praise but look where they’re taking us.  They will want us to worship the state.  This is not new to communism, to socialism.  What is the state other than the domain of the god of this world?  Christianity was not a problem. 

Some of you’ve been there.  Some of you were there on the great day that we discovered the Pantheon in Rome.  We were out walking one day and just came around a corner and there it was.  Boom!  This huge edifice, the Pantheon.  Some of you remember the big dome, the big circle on top of it.  At one time it was the largest dome in the world.  That opening, because of all the sacrifices, every religion was allowed to come and to worship and they would offer their offerings to their gods, whichever they appeased, and even Christianity.  The problem came when there was a conflict between your God and Caesar.  The persecution that came upon the church was because of their refusal to bow to the state, to worship Caesar.  “You can include Jesus, but you will worship Caesar.”  This control, without this mark, no man can “buy or sell.”  How that’s going to manifest, nobody knows.  People have tried to figure out what the mark is for years.  The number of man, 666, nobody knows for sure (Revelation 13:18).  But the technology is sure in place right now.  It was impossible, apparently.  I mean, nothing is impossible.  God could do whatever He wanted.  Things, that now have become fairly clear and easy, back when Hal Lindsey wrote his book “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” weren’t even thinkable.  We were still using rotary phones.  That was just a few years ago.  The necessary technology is here now.