Jewish leaders were informed that the Apostles were in the temple preaching.

Acts 5:22-25

Click for a description of the mark of the beast.
Click for a description of the image of the beast.

“But when the officers came and did not find them in the prison, they returned and reported, saying, “Indeed we found the prison shut securely, and the guards standing outside before the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside!” Acts 5:22-23

Today, a prison is built to keep the followers of Jesus Christ from spreading His Gospel through the social network. The prison has two aspects: 1] The masses of people of the atheistic culture that opposes the Gospel of Christ and 2] The beast that has power over physiology to impose thoughts, feelings, words, and behaviors onto people. Today’s culture welcomes the beast that gives them what to speak and do. By what they say and do they shut-down the testimony of those speaking in the name of Jesus. With that, the beast drives thorns into our thoughts, drives a spear into our heart to fill our feelings with pain, heartache, humiliation, etc., and nails our hands and feet to prohibit our ability to mobilize with the testimony of Jesus.

As our Lord Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” John 15:18-20

Today, it’s obvious that the prison is shut securely to prohibit the spread of Christianity. Even so, we are not imprisoned by the sin of unbelief in God, not imprisoned by denying Jesus as the Christ [our Lord and Savior], and not imprisoned by fighting against the presence of the Holy Spirit. We have been set free from sin and death within a culture, which is global, designed to act as a prison against everyone whose faith is not in the culture of the beast. The guards are all around us but our faith in the Christ, Jesus remains.

When the prison doors are opened, the global culture wants to see how we will respond after being imprisoned by them. Will we say “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” Revelations 13:4 Or will we say, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.” When the prison doors open, there is no person of unbelief found because Jesus has set us free, “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness…Therefore if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Romans 6:18 and John 8:36

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1 John 5:4-5

“Now when the high priest, the captain of the temple, and the chief priests heard these things, they wondered what the outcome would be. So one came and told them, saying, “Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!” Acts 5:24-25

The Jewish leaders were contemplating what the outcome would be after the Apostles were not found in prison when the doors were opened. In today’s atheistic culture, the question is how Christians will respond after given a measure of worldly freedom. Let it be said of us [what was said of the Apostles], “Look, the people whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!” Let us always dedicate our body [the temple of God] as the temple of the Holy Spirit to lift up the name of Jesus. Let us not succumb to tactics designed to pressure us into making our body the temple of the beast that gives people what to speak, do, feel, and think. That beast is the one “…who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:4 The “he” in this verse is the “man of sin”. Click here for a post on the “man of sin”.

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“….to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets,“
‘I will not impose any other burden on you, except to hold on to what you have until I come.’”
“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.”
Revelation 2:24-25, 3:11