Before the world was, there was the Book of Life, and it contained every conceived soul ever to be conceived at the point of conception written in it. God wanted all to be saved. Jesus was the lamb slain for all at the foundation of the world.
Unborn souls who die in the womb, babies, and innocent young children go to heaven because they have not yet sinned. God judges them to be innocent. They have not yet come to the knowledge of good and evil.
When people come to the knowledge of good and evil, usually as a child at a young age, even so their names remain in the Book of Life.
If a person dies without Jesus, their names are blotted out of the Book of Life. Most of the world still have their names written in the Book of Life. The unsaved, but not yet reprobate.
Reprobates (those who reject God and thus are given up on by God) are blotted out of the Book of Life, twice dead spiritually. The walking damned. (Unfortunately, the world is run entirely by the twice dead, walking damned.)
Therefore, the bible teaches that only the twice dead reprobate children of the devil will be worshiping the beast in the end times.
And of course, the mark of the beast – worshiping the Antichrist – is the device and method in which people are given the choice:
1) Accept the mark, reject God and the gospel, worship the image and the beast and remain alive on earth. Receive the mark and retain the ability to buy and sell and live on earth.
2) Reject the mark, reject worshiping the image and the beast, and you will be killed.
The entire point of the mark of the beast system is designed to weed out and find true Christian believers and kill them. All saved Christians will be unable to take the mark whether they want to or not. In fact, it will be impossible for a saved Christian to take the mark of the beast even if they beg for it.
But the lesson is thus: Only reprobates will be worshiping the beast when the Antichrist declares himself to be God and the image is setup. Those that choose to take the mark and become reprobate will also worship the beast. However, at the start, those who worship the beast is a very, very small minority of the world, the twice dead reprobates.
The New World Order kingdom will indeed be weak.
THE COUNTS
