It was 1994. The Barclay family in San Antonio, Texas, frantically searched for their missing 13-year-old son, Nicholas. They could find no trace of him—he seemingly disappeared into thin air.
Three years later, however, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received the call that the Barclay family had been waiting for: their son had been found. The boy was then flown back to Texas for an emotional reunification with his family.
For a few months, everything seemed to be back to normal. However, a private investigator started to harbor some doubts about the identity of Nicholas, and eventually it came to light that the boy was not Nicholas, but rather a 23-year-old French con artist named Frederic Bourdin. Bourdin excelled at his devious profession, becoming known as “the Chameleon” because of his exceptional ability to impersonate other people, especially children. He is said to have assumed 500 different identities in his life.
While Bourdin seemed to be the real Nicholas, he was nothing more than a liar and a fraud.
As we come to the second part of Revelation 13, we see a fraud show up on the world scene. His motives are much more sinister than those of Bourdin–he will claim to represent the ultimate religion—one that finally unites the whole world in peace. However, his religion is fraudulent.
We have already been introduced in the first part of chapter 13 to the first beast, who turns out to be the Antichrist under the power of the Devil. Now a second beast appears; a false prophet luring the world into a fraudulent religion.
Why will people fall into his trap? Be he is going to fix a huge problem in the world—the incompatibility of different religions. He will do away with religions and denominations, convincing the world to worship the Antichrist.
And the world will fall for it.
The good news is that we will not be here. However, like most things we read in Revelation, there is an important lesson for us. We face “false prophets” in our day who would like draw attention away from God and onto other things—things like unity and social issues. Or maybe they just leave God out of it altogether and simply operate a religious social club.
We may not face the Antichrist and his false prophet, but we do face their agenda, which is rejection of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Anyone who does that is a fraud, offering nothing more than an empty religion.
