Why then should we have to have a man teach us how the gift operates? But there’s a danger here, for there is coming a False Prophet. Now he’s called a prophet and prophecy, and I do not mean the future, but the gift of prophecy has suddenly sprung to the forefront in the church. Until it is being misused, it is being exercised in services where they may go on to excess in the number of manifestations of the gift that are brought forth.
But there is a reason for it, because there is coming a tremendous prophet. One who will have authority, one who will speak, mind you, he will speak having apparently the ministry of a lamb. For he has the two horns of a little lamb. So subtle, and so deceiving is this False Prophet who will come. He comes, as the scripture says, with all lying wonders. He comes with power, he comes with the ability to call fire down out of heaven. He will work miracles before the Anti-christ. He will work miracles in the eyes of the world. He is not an individual to be toyed with. He is not one to be discounted, for he will go one step farther and it is he who suggests to the world that they make an image of the Anti-chirst.
The purpose of the Lord Jesus in the church is to create in you and in me the very image of Christ. Jesus came into the world and he was the express image of his Father. The Greek word is ‘Ikon’. It is used here in reference to the image of the beast. It again is ‘Ikon’. You and I are to take upon ourselves the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to be made anew, afresh in the new creation into his image. Here is one who will create an image. The scripture doesn’t say that this image will be one of stone or of iron or of gold or of silver. It simply states an ‘image’. When I first started thinking of this and saw what men were doing I thought that perhaps we would have an electronical gadget of some kind. You can go to various areas of the world where they have, for instance, in Disneyland, they have a replica of Lincoln, you can stand and listen to Lincoln speak. It’s not Lincoln of course, it’s a replica, it’s an Icon of Lincoln. And through electronic gadgetry it can speak. And it brings you a message, and there are others there. I thought that perhaps this was what the Anti-christ and the False Prophet would perpetrate on the people. And then scientist began to deal with test tube babies. A baby born outside of the womb. Which may perhaps be the method that will be used.
But now we have another method and that is cloning. And the inference, the statements, the language that is used. Using a single cell and creating something that is in the image of that from which the cell is taken. I would surmise, I don’t know but it’s possible that if you take a cell from a male you would have a male child, if you take a cell from a female you would perhaps have a female child. But this that will come by the effort of the False Prophet will be in the image of the Anti-christ and amazingly will speak, will breathe. When I turn back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis I find that God created man and breathed into him the breath of life and that man became a living soul. Now God created him, he created him body, he created him soul and then he breathed into him the breath of life and that man became a living soul and every one of us that have been born into this world since that time are living souls. And no one has been able to reproduce that! Until you come to the Anti-christ.