She was soon to give birth, and the pains and suffering of childbirth made her cry out.

With his tail he dragged a third of the stars out of the sky and threw them down to the earth. He stood in front of the woman, in order to eat her child as soon as it was born.

The woman fled to the desert, to a place God had prepared for her, where she will be taken care of for 1, 260 days.

When the dragon realized that he had been thrown down to the earth, he began to pursue the woman who had given birth to the boy.

And then from his mouth the dragon poured out a flood of water after the woman, so that it would carry her away.

The dragon was furious with the woman and went off to fight against the rest of her descendants, all those who obey God's commandments and are faithful to the truth revealed by Jesus.

(12:18) (And the dragon stood on the seashore.) Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; on each of its horns there was a crown, and on each of its heads there was a name that was insulting to God.

One of the heads of the beast seemed to have been fatally wounded, but the wound had healed. The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast.

"Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves.

I know that after I leave, fierce wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock.

The time will come when some men from your own group will tell lies to lead the believers away after them.

For those who do such things are not serving Christ our Lord, but their own appetites. By their fine words and flattering speech they deceive innocent people.

Those men are not true apostles---they are false apostles, who lie about their work and disguise themselves to look like real apostles of Christ.

So it is no great thing if his servants disguise themselves to look like servants of righteousness. In the end they will get exactly what their actions deserve.

although some wanted it done. Pretending to be believers, these men slipped into our group as spies, in order to find out about the freedom we have through our union with Christ Jesus. They wanted to make slaves of us,

The Spirit says clearly that some people will abandon the faith in later times; they will obey lying spirits and follow the teachings of demons.

Such teachings are spread by deceitful liars, whose consciences are dead, as if burnt with a hot iron.

Remember that there will be difficult times in the last days.

they will be unkind, merciless, slanderers, violent, and fierce; they will hate the good;

they will hold to the outward form of our religion, but reject its real power. Keep away from such people.

women who are always trying to learn but who can never come to know the truth.

The time will come when people will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires and will collect for themselves more and more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear.

It is necessary to stop their talk, because they are upsetting whole families by teaching what they should not, and all for the shameful purpose of making money.

False prophets appeared in the past among the people, and in the same way false teachers will appear among you. They will bring in destructive, untrue doctrines, and will deny the Master who redeemed them, and so they will bring upon themselves sudden destruction.

In their greed these false teachers will make a profit out of telling you made-up stories. For a long time now their Judge has been ready, and their Destroyer has been wide awake!

My children, the end is near! You were told that the Enemy of Christ would come; and now many enemies of Christ have already appeared, and so we know that the end is near.

These people really did not belong to our fellowship, and that is why they left us; if they had belonged to our fellowship, they would have stayed with us. But they left so that it might be clear that none of them really belonged to us.

My dear friends, do not believe all who claim to have the Spirit, but test them to find out if the spirit they have comes from God. For many false prophets have gone out everywhere.

Those false prophets speak about matters of the world, and the world listens to them because they belong to the world.

Many deceivers have gone out over the world, people who do not acknowledge that Jesus Christ came as a human being. Such a person is a deceiver and the Enemy of Christ.

For some godless people have slipped in unnoticed among us, persons who distort the message about the grace of our God in order to excuse their immoral ways, and who reject Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. Long ago the Scriptures predicted the condemnation they have received.

But this is what I have against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a messenger of God. By her teaching she misleads my servants into practicing sexual immorality and eating food that has been offered to idols.

Then I saw another beast, which came up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb's horns, and it spoke like a dragon.

This second beast performed great miracles; it made fire come down out of heaven to earth in the sight of everyone.