CONVERSATION STARTERS
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. These prompts have been designed to help Community Groups grow in their relationship with God, with one another, and with their neighbors. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource to you. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

1) What stood out to you from the sermon?

2) The average person is fast to dismiss the idea of a supernatural world where good and evil spirits battle, yet they can be fast to accept the “supernatural” world of things like horoscopes. What are other examples of “supernatural” phenomena that people embrace? Why do you think they embrace them?

3) According to John, the Enemy often comes disguised as an “almost Jesus”. When you are watching a purportedly Christian televised church service or talk show, what criteria do you use to decide who is legitimate and who is an “almost Jesus”?

4) How can you tell if you are following an “almost Jesus”? If you try to imagine your life without Jesus in it, would your priorities change or stay about the same?

5) Many people are quite upset when they get anything with a “666” on it (e.g. a license plate) because it is the “mark of the beast”. Based on what you learned from the sermon, how would you explain what the “mark of the beast” really is?

Title: The Deceiver of the World
Scripture: Revelation 12-13
Speaker: Andrew Jones, AndrewJ@ChristCommunityKC.org

I had excluded the middle level of supernatural but this-worldly being and forces from my own worldview…. For me the middle zone did not really exist. Unlike Indian villagers, I had given little thought to spirits of this world, to local ancestors or ghosts, or to the souls of animals. For me these belonged to the realm of fairies, trolls, and other mythical beings. - Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"In the same way the mark of the beast is a sign of loyalty and belonging, not to God but to the beast. And just as we should not interpret the seal of God as something visible to the naked eye, so we should not think of the mark of the beast as something that can be seen, or indeed even as a physical reality. It is a spiritual mark, an attitude, a mindset that shows compliance with the agenda and methods of the beast." - Paul Spillsbury, The Throne, The Lamb, and the Dragon