Greg Boyd clarifies the meaning of the second beast in Revelation 13, naming it as the beast of “wow and wonder,” as it aims to expand our attention on the first beast. Greg then identifies common strategies the second beast uses in our culture today, offering ways to identify these issues along with three challenges for resisting the beast.
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The Beast of Wow and Wonder
• Greg Boyd
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In this sermon, Greg addresses the nature of the second beast from Revelation 13. This beast works on behalf of the first, which is the beast of perpetual ascent. The goal is to get all focused and entrapped by the need to ascend, to attain more without any sense of satisfaction.
First, a couple of points of interpretation are helpful because these issues often distract from the primary message of this vision. The number 666 is not a “mark of the beast” that comes upon unbelievers in the last days. Instead it is a code that refers to a person. In this case, it is Nero Caesar, who enforced wide persecution during the first century. John is using Nero Caesar as a prototype of evil rulers of all oppressive empires who manipulate and deceive masses in anti-Christ ways to win allegiance.
The second thing to note is that the Roman Empire regularly held local religious festivals that put on impressive magical displays to convince crowds that the Emperor was divine and that the empire was destined by the gods to reign forever. Revelation 13 mentions that the second beast could send fire from heaven and cause statues to come to life. There is good evidence that these spectacular displays of magic was simply new technology that few knew about. They were used to manipulate the masses. As the science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any significant technological advance is indistinguishable from magic.”
Greg asks where we see the second beast at work today. Where do we see new technology looking like magic and winning people’s allegiance to the lie that our global empire will have peace, safety and prosperity forever? The answer to this question is “everywhere.”
Greg then lays out for us how technology has advanced. Over the last 75 years, there has been more technological advancement than in all of previous history combined. To those who lived before 1950, microwaves, cell phones, GPS and AI all appear to be magic. With each advance, life seems to improve, and we can easily join the intoxicated masses by bowing to the power of technology.
While technology itself is neutral, as it can be used for good or evil, there are unintended consequences that come with each new advance. For instance, there are a great number of benefits to plastic, but it also contains forever chemicals. We are also seeing the unintended effects of social media upon our lives, even though it offers ways to stay connected to others. Then there are the challenges that AI presents.
We are called to be a resistance movement as a part of God’s kingdom. If we don’t resist, then we will find that we are going with the flow of everyone else. Greg offers three things that we can do to resist the second beast. First, stay sober with your relationship to technology. We live in the world, but we cannot be intoxicated by it. One way that we can do this is to limit our screen time. Second, see through the deception. Technology pundits would have us believe that technology is far more beneficial than it actually is. We must see it for what it is, not for what it overpromises. Third, ask yourself where you get your “wow.” We must rediscover the wow and wonder of the things that really matter.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Discipleship, Spiritual Warfare, Temptation
Sermon Series: The Unveiling, Dragon Slayers
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The MuseCast: November 25
Focus Scripture:
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Revelation 13:11-18
Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
4 thoughts on “The Beast of Wow and Wonder”
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WOW Greg thank you thank you.
Again in my ignorance, as with your sermon “Hearing His Voice” knowing nothing of Malcolm Guite, I also knew nothing of Shanna Swan.
I’m, as a fellow AI tinkerer, a big fan of Elon Musk so I elected to google the two names for, just by chance, a possible connection and landed on: [Google]
“Population COLLAPSE is Coming – Elon Musk, Dr. Shanna Swan & Jordan Peterson”
– an ‘After Skool’ animation format, with the addition of Jordan Peterson, aligning well with your sermon.
Adding to this: [Google]
“A Global Fertility Crisis – Dr. Shanna Swan”
“Jordan Peterson – The Dark Cost of Being Timid & Comfortable”
I recently finished Jordan’s book “We Who Wrestle with God” and Greg your resent sermon “The Beast of Perpetual Ascendancy”, I consider, aligns well with the wrestle of two assents: Cain’s FLESHLY tyranny and pride Tower of Babel versus Abel’s, via Abraham SPIRITED call to ADVENTURE, climbing of Jacob’s ladder.
I’m now attempting to read a Peterson earlier work “Map of Meaning” which appears to echo your even earlier book “God at War”.
Jordon, as Iain McGilchrist in “The Master and His Emissary”, spends time with the idea that the right hemisphere needs to wrestle with the left in an ADVENTURE of, nested generational life memory systems [procedural-episodic-semantic] STORIES climbing Jacob’s ladder to heaven or NOT.
I used AI for any correlation between Jordan’s “Map of Meaning” and your “God at War”
AI Overview
Jordan Peterson’s book
Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief does not list Greg Boyd’s book God at War in its notes or bibliography.
Maps of Meaning, published in 1999, draws heavily from a wide range of thinkers in mythology, psychology, and philosophy, including Carl Jung, Northrop Frye, Jean Piaget, and Friedrich Nietzsche. While both authors discuss related themes of conflict, (Peterson even originally titled his work The Gods of War as a draft), there is no indication that Peterson directly references Boyd’s work in his notes.
Greg Boyd’s book God at War (published in 1997) has been noted by other writers as a recent example of a “warfare worldview”, but there is no evidence of it being cited by Peterson.
Basically from what I can gather so far ‘Maps of Meaning’ posits that the world can be construed as a place of THINGS using the formal methods of science as the domain of the objective world – WHAT IS from the perspective of intersubjective perception
but second also portrayed as a forum for ACTION using the techniques of narrative MYTH, literature and drama as a world of value – a domain of WHAT IS and WHAT SHOULD BE from the perspective of emotion and action.
MYTH represents the world as forum and ACTION comprising THREE eternally extant constituent elements of experience [the unknown, the knower and the known] making up the world of drama and a fourth the indeterminate precosmogenic chaos that precedes their emergence serving as the ultimate source of all things.
The precosmogenic chaos tends to take metaphorical from as the self-consuming serpent who represents the union of matter and spirit and the possibility of transformation serving as primal source of the mythological world parents: unexplored territory [the Great Mother, nature, deity of the unknown, creative and destructive source and final resting place of all determinant things];
explored territory [the Great Father, culture deity of the familiar, tyrannical and protective, cumulative ancestral wisdom]
and of their; [Divine Son the knower, in the archetypal individual process of exploration, the generative Word and vengeful adversary].
All three have both a spirit good Jacob and evil flesh Cain side that wrestles with God to climb ascend Jacob’s ladder or NOT descending back into chaos, the beast of perpetual ascendancy, the tower of babel that will when Jesus returns be left at the gate.
Great message!
Is the transcript available? The link is to the previous one.
Thanks!
Hi John – thanks for letting us know! I accidentally linked the wrong transcript. The correct one is linked now!
–Sarah from the Communications Team
Thank you John!
I didn’t even know there was a transcript. When I searched it for ‘Shanna Swan’ I got NO finds, so a see your point, however I did find exactly what I was looking for:
The dopamine is the buzz of anticipation. It’s the chasing chemical, and it gives us a buzz because we’re anticipating this. It’s what we want. But see; now our whole economy is running on this, chasing after dopamine hits. Every advertisement— and now they have AI helping with advertisements to fine-tune how to get you to have a dopamine buzz looking at their product. “If you want to really be a man, you’ve got to drive this kind of car. If you want to be sexy, you’ve got to use this kind of toothpaste.” And all of them are there to give you a buzz. “Oh, I want that. I want that.” It kind of feels good. I want that. But once you get it, it wears off.
First a back drop:
The movie “The Matrix” and Greg and Al’s shared book “Escaping the Matrix” core concept was perceived reality as an ANIMATED illusion.
In The Matrix, the world perceived by most humans is not real; it is a computer-generated virtual reality (VR) simulation. This “system” is an artificial construction designed by machines to control humanity.
Sensory Input: Humans are in a comatose state in the real world, connected to the Matrix via input/output jacks. The Matrix feeds sensory signals (sight, sound, touch, etc.) directly to their brains, making the virtual world feel completely real.
The “Real World”: The true reality is a dystopian future where human bodies are used as a power source (or, in an earlier concept, as a massive neural network). The experience of awakening from the Matrix is a central theme of the film, often described as seeing “how deep the rabbit hole goes”.
Philosophical Tie-ins: The film draws heavily on philosophical theories, such as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the simulation hypothesis, which suggest that the world we perceive may be an illusion (known as “Maya” in some Eastern philosophies).
If you watched the YouTube: “Population COLLAPSE is Coming – Elon Musk, Dr. Shanna Swan & Jordan Peterson”
at the end there is a 2nd YouTube: [Google]
“A Caveman’s Journey into the Prison of Dopamine”
Watching this, for me, conveys “dopamine is the buzz”, above, entangled in ‘The Matrix”, a problem for a majority of consider one talent say so folks mesmerized by the global industrialized integrated complex, is in need to detox, for the West consider possibly Amish communities, to their called say so purpose of caring for the plant and animal kingdoms with a few, more given talent say so folk, wisely using technology to assist that main directive.
You might say a little twist on the map is not the territory, Map[s] of Meaning, as Heaven as the territory and the map[s], unique for each of us, is the narrow path of Wisdom that is used to discover in a trial and error process, NOT figure out on our own, by following Jesus, THE WAY BACK illuminated by RUACH ANIMATING energy. by the power of the Holy Spirit.