Revelation 13: Christ Alone

⁸ All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

⁹ Whoever has ears, let them hear.

¹⁰ “If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”

This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.

-Revelation 13:8-10

Revelation 13 includes a wide array of mysterious language that has confused many readers throughout the ages. Yet one thing is clear–only those who know Christ will worship Christ. In the last days of the world, there will be much judgment. As a result of desperate times, everyone will bow down to the world’s leader in exchange for the ability to buy and sell–except those with faith in Jesus. There will be no cultural Christians in those days–only those will to suffer and die for their beliefs.

The interesting application for today’s reader is to make sure we know Christ today, and that we worship only him. There are many other noble pursuits, but nothing that compares with worship of the One who made us. For those of us facing relatively mild criticism for standing for our beliefs, these words call us to a deeper allegiance to our one true Lord.

Let us continue to worship Christ and Christ alone.

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Dillon Burroughs is the author and coauthor of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.