Chapter 18 The beast from the sea (Rev. 13)
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER 13: THE BEAST FROM THE SEA
13.1: He stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns ten diadems, and on his heads names of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like to a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a . bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority (-13.2).
Recapitulation is needed here, for we met this Beast before in 11.7 as the persecutor of the Two Witnesses. The word for beast is therion, and it is used of literal beasts in Acts 28.5; Hebrews 12.20; James 3.7; Mark 1.13; in Acts 10.12; 11.6 it is used of really existent creatures, though seen in vision; and in Titus 1.12 it is a contemptuous description of Cretan people. It is not used symbolically in the New Testament outside Revelation, while of its 38 occurrences in this Book only one (6.8) could conceivably be literal. The word is found over 100 times in LXX, quite often of literal animals, but it is also used symbolically, including numerous occasions in Daniel 7 in contexts closely related to the present chapter. The parallels between the two chapters are compelling:
Daniel
Revelation
7.2
The four winds broke forth
7.1 7.3
Four angels holding the four winds
till we have sealed the servants of God
7.2
broke forth on the great sea
13.1
He (R.V. The dragon?) stood on the sand of the sea
7.3
Four great beasts came up from the sea
13.1
A beast coming up out of the sea
7.4
The first was like a lion
13.2
His mouth as the mouth of a lion
.7.5
A second like to a bear
13.2
His feet were as the feet of a bear
7.6
Another, like a leopard
13.2
The beast was like to a leopard
7.7
A fourth beast had ten horns
13.1
Having ten horns
7.1-7.7
(A total of seven heads: 1 1
4 1)
13.1
Having seven heads
7.8
A little horn speaking great things
13.5
Speaking great things and blasphemies
7.11
The beast was slain and his body destroyed, and he was given to be burned with fire
19.20
The beast was taken and cast alive into the lake of fire
7.21
The same horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them
13.7
It was given him yo make war with the saints and overcome them
7.24
Out of this kingdom shall ten kings arise
13.1
Having ten horns . . . The ten horns are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as
yet
7.24
Another shall arise after them
and put down three kings
17.10
The other is not yet come
7.25
The saints shall be given into his hand until a time, times, and half a time
13.5
To continue forty two months
These parallels are so detailed that a common interpretation must obviously be sought. There are differences, of course: four beasts in Daniel, only one in Revelation; a horn engaged in the blasphemies in Daniel, a head in Revelation. But the Beast of Revelation has characteristics of all the beasts of Daniel, even to summing up their heads in itself, and this is plainly deliberate. It is impossible to suppose that the Spirit which inspired Daniel and the angel which guided John were not leading us to look at the two prophecies together.
The picture is vivid. The dragon has been cast from heaven to earth (12.13) and stands by the seashore awaiting the Beast (13.1). When the Beast emerges the dragon conveys its power to it, and causes it to be enthroned with great authority (13.2). It is as though it seeks to compensate for the power it has lost "in heaven" (12.10) by taking steps to pursue its evil designs on earth. While reminding ourselves that the dragon, like the other symbols of this Book, is not to be construed as a literal creature, yet the story is told with great verisimilitude, so that we can picture it as such a story before we begin to think of it as a vision. Note how well the account hangs together:
Once there was a woman in heaven about to give birth, and an evil dragon stood in front of her, intending to devour the newborn child (12.1-3). It had already done great damage in throwing down a third part of the stars (12.4), but when the baby boy was born he was snatched away from the dragon to the safety of God's throne (12.5), while the woman, too, ran away to a safe hiding place in the wilderness (12.6). The wicked dragon was beaten in a war with Michael and his angels and, with its own angels, was thrown out of heaven to the earth (12.7-9). The heavens rejoiced that the dragon had been expelled (12.10-12a), but things looked bad for the earth, for the dragon meant to continue doing evil during the short time left to it (12.12b). First it pursued the woman, but she fled out of its way to her refuge (12.13-14), and even the flood it sent after her failed to overwhelm her, because the earth itself came to her aid by swallowing up the flood (12.15-16). There were still some of her children left, though, remaining faithful to their God and Lord, so the dragon decided to make life hard for them (12.17). What it did was to stand by the seashore and conjure up out of the sea a dreadful beast to which it gave worldwide authority (13.1-2) and also healed it when it looked as though it was wounded to death (13.3); so that the earth fell down and worshipped before the dragon, and before the beast which took over its power (13.4). From the wings of the stage the dragon still caused its voice to be heard through another beast, from the earth (13.11), and helped both beasts to gather the nations together to war against God Almighty (16.13). But its designs failed, for when the beast and the false prophet (the second beast) were beaten by the Lamb it was placed under restraint in the abyss (20.2) and not allowed out for 1000 years, at the end of which it was released, and gathered the nations together against the saints (20.7). The nations were overcome, however, by fire from heaven, and the dragon was finally removed from the scene by being destroyed in the lake of fire where its helpers, the beast and the false prophet, had been cast (20.10).
There is a purpose in telling the story in that way. It is obviously the same dragon throughout the Book from chapter 12 to chapter 20. No interpretation can be accepted which makes it mean basically different things in different parts of Revelation. Yet this is in fact what at least one version of the Continuous Historic interpretation does. The following quotations illustrate the point:
"The diadem of twelve stars (on the woman) is the symbol of the pagan Caesars. . . Constantine . . . was the woman's child — political offspring of the church . . . Another power in the east was waiting to devour (him). This power is symbolized by 'a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads'. The identification of this power with pagan Rome is not only easy, but inevitable. . . When Constantine (the sun with which the woman had just become clothed). . . The woman in the case is the Christian community . . . While the woman . . . continued in the sun-invested position in the heaven to which events had elevated her, the woman in another sense fled the position and became the object of persecution of the new and professedly Christian government . . . The Catholic sun-invested woman . . . In these verses (the war in heaven in which the dragon is defeated and expelled) we have a symbolic representation of the struggle that elevated Constantine ... to the position of sole emperorship. It was a struggle in which the testimony for Christ . . . obtained final victory over Paganiam and banished it from the system of the civilized world . . . Michael was the symbolic name of Constantine . . . Pagan imperialism was the political incorporation of the original diabolism of human nature . . . When Licmius . . . conceived hostile intentions against Constantine . . . the devil was Tilled with great wrath', knowing his time was short. . . After the overthrow of the pagan dragon, the actual persecutor in the case was the government of Constantine... It is staggering at first sight to find the dragon stand for paganism, and then for the Christian government of Constantine, who overthrew Paganism . . . When Constantine occupied the dragon capital — Byzantium, afterwards called Constantinople — his government became transformed into the political serpent and dragon ... A recognition of this is necessary to enable us to understand the statement that 'the dragon gave (to the beast of the sea) his power, and seat, and great authority'. It was from the emperor reigning in Constantinople that the Papacy in the west received its constitution and recognition. . . The political sequel (to the return of the Lord Jesus) is the suppression of human government and the establishment of the kingdom of God in all the earth. This is shown in the symbolism of 20.1-6. . . "He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. . . The dragon... or human nature in organized opposition to God, and here represented by the symbol1 of the eastern section of the Roman Empire (the dragon), because that is the part of the earth (Turkey occupied by Russia) in which the closing opposition is offered. . . The dragon we have indisputably identified as the heraldic symbol of human opposition to God, officially incorporated in the kings and governments in which it is headed up. . ." (R.R., pages 99-109, 166, 174).
So, we are told, the sun which clothes the travailing woman is not donned until after the child is born; her child casts the dragon out of heaven and then becomes the dragon himself; the dragon is persecuting paganism and then persecuting Christendom, and then the symbol for Russian-occupied Turkey, and (having been "inevitably" identified with pagan Rome it is then "indisputably identified as the heraldic symbol of human opposition to God, officially incorporated in kings and governments in which it is headed up". This simply will not do: it is one thing to see a woman who changes her raiment and her behaviour as two different phases of the same organization, as we have tentatively done; but it is quite another to take a symbol whose appearance is given to us once and for all, and which is at beginning and end "that great serpent called the devil and Satan", and make it pass through these mutually inconsistent evolutions. The last definition of all in the quotation can be accepted but, if this is "indisputable", enormous doubt must hang over the previous identifications. The historical survey to follow will not make the interpretations given in this quotation any more acceptable.
THE CONTINUOUS HISTORIC VIEW OF REVELATION 13
This view, in brief, understands the Beast of the Sea to be papal Rome in the Dark and Middle ages; the Dragon which gave the Beast its authority to be the Eastern Roman Emperors with their capital at Constantinople; the head which was fatally injured to be the Western Roman Empire which 'died' in 476; the healed head to be a revival of the old Empire in the shape of the Holy Roman Empire ( 800 onwards), the Beast of the Earth to be the Germanic Empire (4-936 onwards); the image of the Beast to be the Papacy; and its number to denote lateinos. The seven heads and ten horns of 13.1 are used as identification marks of the Roman ,
Empire, while the fact that the crowns are upon the horns and not the heads (by contrast with the dragon in 12.3) is said to refer to a state of affairs long after the time of Constantine, when ten kingdoms had made their appearance, said to concern the barbarian kingdoms of the Dark Ages. The names of blasphemy advert to the Papacy, and so the Beast has to do with papal times.
The barbarian kingdoms are said to be those which arose consequent on the fall of the Western Empire, and their names are given (J.T.) as the kings of the Huns, Vandals, Visigoths, Burgundians, Gepidae, Lombards, Franks, Suevi, Alans, and Bavarians, though other lists have also been suggested. The seven heads are supposed to denote seven successive systems of government in the Roman Empire, namely: (i) Regal; (ii) Consular; (iii) Dictatorial; (iv) De-cemviral; (V) Tribunitial; (vi) Imperial; (vii) Gothic kingly (C.C.W. page 34).
It seems most unlikely that John would see a Beast complete with ten horns representing barbarian kingdoms which were not a part of the Roman system until 300 or more years after his time, since such kingdoms already existed in his day, without forming part of the Roman Empire. He sees the Beast complete with horns, and there is no indication that it had ever been without them. Moreover since the same Beast has ten horns in 17.3,12, at a time shortly before it is destroyed by the Lamb, it is necessary to give a quite different interpretation to the horns in chapter 17 from one which applies to the Dark Ages in chapter 13.
The barbarians had originated in Scandinavia, wandering approximately in two different directions, one eventually reaching the Rhine, and the more easterly group reaching the Danube and the Black Sea. From the first century B.C. they troubled the Empire, but were either conquered or repelled by such commanders as Julius Caesar, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and the great Illyrian emperors of the later third century. Towards the end of the fourth century the Huns emerged from Central Asia and, penetrating into Europe, routed those barbarians who had settled down in central and eastern Europe, pushing them into Roman Gaul, Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, finally bringing the Western Empire to an end. The menace of the Huns disappeared quickly, and the other barbarians resumed their internecine warfare. It would not seem that the ten horns were in fact constantly pushing at one another.
Identification of the Beast with papal affairs on account of its names of blasphemy — R.R., page 123 — would not have occurred to the earliest readers, who could reasonably have seen in this the blasphemous emperor-worship of their own days. "Papal times" is in any case a vague expression covering around 1 Vz millennia; nor is there much justification for thinking of these as times when the Popes exercised temporal power, for the influence of papal Rome was often extremely strong when it had little or no temporal power. The pontificate of Leo I (440-461), for example, set papal primacy on an almost impregnable basis, while Gelasius I (492-496) asserted final jurisdiction in a manner which was highly influential for centuries. In our own day Popes John XXIII and
John Paul II have greatly enhanced the reputation of their office. Moreover, papal temporal power did not, as often affirmed in seeking for a starting point for the supposed 1260 years, commence anywhere near the time of Phocas ( 607). It really began with the grant of certain lands in Italy by the Prankish king Pepin ("The Donations of Pepin", ca. 754-756), when for the first time the reigning Pope Stephen II was regarded as a sovereign prince. Phocas' decree merely declared Rome to be the head of all the churches, which it had been for some time in any case, and temporal power was not in question. This disposes of the idea that the papal temporal power lasted "42 months" (13.5), and there is nothing to be said for the alternative which dates the period from Justinian ( 535) to the virtually meaningless closing years of the 18th century. The short-lived takeover of the Papal States by Napoleon occurred a little too late, in 1808. Moreover, the temporal power of the Popes was revived in 1929 when the Lateran Treaty made Vatican City a sovereign state.
The persecution of spiritual Zion has continued down the ages, and readers of 13.1-10 in varying periods might have thought of persecution by pagan Emperors, governors and mobs; or in mediaeval times by the papal Inquisition; or at other times by various European governments including those of Britain, France, Poland, Austria, and Spain; and quite recently by Nazi Germany or the countries of the 'iron curtain'.
In 13.2,4 we are told that the dragon gave power to the Beast. Two errors are found in the curious idea that the dragon represents the Eastern Roman Empire, and the unhistorical notion that the rulers of that Empire gave the Papacy its power. The dragon of Revelation is the power of sin (12.9; 20.2) underlying kingdoms and men, and is not to be localized in this way; while the Eastern Roman Emperors were more often than not suspicious, even actively hostile, as regards the Papacy. Obsession with political events is a basic flaw in the historical system of interpretation.
It is suggested that the conflict between the hosts of Michael and of the dragon (12.7-12) represents the 11-year rivalry between Constantine and the pagan Licinius, ending with the triumph of Constantine in 324. But for nearly all this period the two men were not in conflict, for a single campaign in 314 and a few months' fighting in 324 comprized all the conflict there was, which is hardly on the scale of 12.7-8, especially since the conflict was mainly political. Constantine was a sun-worshipper until 312, when he became convinced that the God of the Christians was on his side. The edict of Milan in 313 gave freedom of worship to all Roman subjects, Christian and pagan alike. Between 320 and 323 further laws were enacted which favoured the church, but old pagan institutions were allowed to continue, and the emperor retained the heathen priestly title of Pontifex Maximus. Later in the reign of Constantine paganism was further discouraged but not persecuted. Constantine haled schism, and assisted in crushing Donatist 'heretics', and compelling the Council of Nicaea to adopt the unscriptural view that God and His Son were of one substance, thereby establishing the trinitarian teaching on a basis which has lasted to the present day. He was baptized only on his death-bed. Famous and important though he was, Constantine can hardly have been depicted by Michael and his angels; the very idea may be thought derogatory to these heavenly powers.
But because Constantine, after triumphing over Licinius, took over his seat of government at Byzantium, completing the new city of Constantinople in 330 and making it his imperial capital in 331, the view is now advanced that he and his eastern successors (all of whom with one brief exception professed Christianity) became the dragon because they occupied the same capital, ruled the same territory, and showed the same hostility to God's true people. But the same Book would hardly represent the same man as Michael and (with his successors) as the dragon, particularly since Constan-tine's opposition to paganism was greater rather than less from this point on.
His successor Constantius (337-361) was a strong opponent of orthodox trinitarianism, and later successors strongly opposed the worship of images and relics, and evidence of the persecution of true Christians from Constantinople is not offered in J.T.III or related works: certainly persecution was more severe, more widespread and more enduring in the West, which means that it is wrong to stress the persecuting role of Constantinople and the East.
Now the claim must be examined as to whether it was really from the Eastern Empire that the Papacy received its "constitution and recognition, or its power and seat and great authority" (R.R. page 124). The decree of Justinian is of so little import that it is not even mentioned in Gibbon, or in the long article on Justinian in E.B., 11th edition. In C.M.H.I V we find that in 535 it was decreed that "Old Rome enjoys the honour of being the mother of law, and none will doubt that she is the head of the supreme pontificate", while in 545 it is declared that "the Pope of Rome is the first of all priests, and the blessed archbishop of Constantinople is second after the holy apostolic see of Rome". Thus Justinian confirmed the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the church, but the Emperor remained "the supreme master, the representative of God upon earth, taking care of the material and spiritual needs of his subjects; only in purely doctrinal matters did he leave the last word to the Bishop of Rome" (C.M.H. XIV, 437). But he treated the Popes, especially Vigilius, in peremptory fashion, reducing their power to a minimum. Their election was to be subject to his confirmation, for which he was to be paid a fee. "The reign of Justinian proved throughout a period of deep humiliation for the Papacy. Two Popes had suffered indignity, and Vigilius' next two successors were elected under imperial pressure, and were forced to continue the humble servants of the emperor. The church of Ravenna, the capital of reconquered Italy, was deliberately exalted at the expense of Rome. The subjection of the patriarch of Old Rome to the emperor" seemed likely to continue as absolute as that of New Rome, and his prestigue suffered during the reign far more than his colleague's. The Byzantine system of the imperial patronage and complete dominance of the church had seen its most splendid phase" (Margaret Deanesly, History of the Medieval Church, page 12).
Proceeding to the decree of the brutal ruffian Phocas ( 607), we must first say that the real reasons for the growth in papal authority owed little or nothing to Eastern Emperors, but are to be found in the conservatism of the Roman church in the first four centuries, the link of Peter and Paul with Rome, and the fact of its being the church of the imperial capital. The sack of Rome by the Goths in 410, the withdrawal of the Western Emperor Honorius to Ravenna, and the departure or slaughter of many leading citizens, left the Pope, at that time Innocent I (402-417) as the greatest man in the capital. Under Leo I (440-461) the primacy of Rome was finally established: it was he who provided it with a dogmatic basis which was to be -upheld for centuries. He interpreted Matthew 16.18-19 to mean that Jesus bestowed supreme authority on Peter; he held Peter to have been the first bishop of Rome; he claimed that Peter's authority had been perpetuated in his successors, enhanced by a mystical presence of Peter in the Roman see; the authority of all other bishops is limited to their own dioceses, whereas the Pope possessed fulness of power over the whole church. These claims were never accepted in the East, but were reaclily accepted in the West in exchange for papal assistance. (Condensed from J.G.Davies, The Early Christian Church, page 250).
The sixth century saw "the gathering gloom of Byzantine tyranny over the church" (T.J.Jalland, The Church and the Papacy, page 342). The Eastern Roman Emperor Phocas did issue an edict in 607, acknowledging that Rome was the head of all the churches, but this would have afforded little satisfaction to the recently dead great Pope Gregory I (590-604) or to the then-Pope Boniface III, for in the same edict Phocas described the church of Constantinople as the first of all the churches, which simply added to the bitterness between Rome and Constantinople while had existed lor some years. Gregory needed no acknowledgement of his primacy from such an Emperor, nor did his successor, for Gregory's own character, capacity, and charity increased the prestige of the papacy more than any Pope had since Leo I. Moreover, temporal power was neither sought by these Popes nor conceded by any Eastern Emperor. The relationship between Popes and Emperors was always uneasy, and sometimes stormy. Thus, when Pope Martin 1 (649-655) protested against the interference of Constantinople in doctrinal matters, the Emperor had him arrested and brought to Constantinople, where he was condemned as a traitor, and died in exile. Bad relations continued during the late seventh century and most of the eighth. The idea that the dragon, supposed to be Eastern Rome at Constantinople, gave the Beast, supposed to be the Roman Church, its power and authority is a myth.
The Second Best of Revelation 13
13:3: I saw one of his heads as though it ha'd been smitten to death;
and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole earth wondered after
the beast; and they worshipped the dragon because he gave his
authority to the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is
like the beast, and who is able to war with him ? There was given to
him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and there was
given to him authority to continue forty two months. 13.6: He
opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His
name, and His tabernacle, even them that dwell in the heaven. And
it was given to him to make war with the saints, and overcome them:
and there was given to him authority over every tribe and people and
tongue and nation. And all that dwell on the earth shall worship
him, every one whose name has not been written in the book of life of
the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world. If
any man hath an ear, let him hear. If any man is for captivity, into
captivity he goeth; if any man shall kill with the sword, with the
sword must he be killed. Here is the patience and the faith of the
saints. 13.11:1 saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and
he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.
All the symbolic passages using the word therion, beast in
Revelation, refer to the Beast of the Sea (13.1), except 13.11,
where "another beast coming up out of the earth" is referred to.
This latter beast we shall find occasion to equate with "the False
Prophet" of 16.13; 19.20; 20.10 using the term, pseudoprophetes
already familiar from Matthew 7.15; 24.11,24; Mark 13.22; Luke
6.26; 2 Peter 2.1; 1 John 4.1); and it may be useful to list the
remaining passages for ready reference. They are: 13.1,2, 3, 3,3,
12, 12, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 17, 18; 14.9, 11; 15.2; 16.2, 10, 13; 17.3,
7, 7, 8, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17; 19.19, 20, 20; 20.4, 10 and, of course,
11.7, to which previous reference has been made. Taking all
these passages together, we discover that the Beast of Revelation
has the following characteristics:
1 It comes from the sea, or the abyss (13.1; 11.7; Daniel .7.3; compare Luke 8.31 and 33, where "deep" = abrussos = abyss);
2 It persecutes saints (11.7; 13.7,15-17; 15.2; Daniel 7.21,25);
3 It has ten horns (13.1; 17.3; Daniel 7.7; compare Revelation 12.7 of the dragon);
4 It has seven heads (13.1; 17.3; the total of the heads in Daniel
7.4,5,6,7);
5 It has qualities of leopard, bear, and lion (13.2; Daniel 7.4, 5,6);
6 It owes its power to the dragon, "that old serpent called the devil and Satan" (13.2; 12.3, 9; 20.2);
7 It suffers a deadly sword-wound in one of its heads and is healed (13.3, 12, 14);
8 It blasphemes against God (13.5; Daniel 7.8);
9 Its blasphemies and persecutions continue for 3'/2 times or 42 months (13.5; 11.2,3,7; Daniel 7.25; 12.7);
10 It acquires power over all the earth (13.8,14; 17.12,13; Daniel 7.23);
11 It is served by the beast of the earth, or false prophet, which works great signs in its name (13.11-17; 16.13; 19.20; 20.10);
12 Men are required to wear its name, or its number 666, if they would be immune from severe penalties (13.17-18; 14.9,11; 15.2; 16.2);
13 Those who do receive its mark or number will be punished by God (16.2,10; 19.21);
14 It will be dominated for a time by the great harlot, and exercise the powewr of the ten kings (17.3-18);
15 It will wage war against the Lamb, and be overcome and cast into the lake of fire together with the false prophet (17.4; 19.19-20; 20.10);
16 It "was, and is not, and is about to come out of the abyss" (11.7; 17.8);
17 Its seven heads denote seven mountains on which the harlot sits (17.9);
18 They also denote seven kings, of which five are fallen, one existent, and the last yet to come and survive for a short period (17.10);
19 The beast itself denotes an eighth king, who will go into perdition (17.8,11);
20 The ten horns denote ten kings, not yet reigning, but about to reign under the leadership of the beast (17.12-14,18);
21 These ten horns will destroy the harlot who is seated on the beast (17.16);
22 The harlot herself is the great city which rules over the kings of the earth (17.16);
23 The Victor over the beast is the Lamb (17.14), the Word of God, Who is to rule over the nations with a rod of iron, King of kings and Lord of lords (19.11-16);
24 The harlot seated on the beast is also said to be seated on many waters, which denote "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues" (17.1,15).
From these complex characteristics the following points emerge clearly:
A. The activities of the Beast and its associates in these chapters
are certainly latter-day ones, because:
a. The Beast persecutes the Two Witnesses, who are concerned with preaching the gospel very shortly before the Lord's return;
b. It is consigned to perdition, or the lake of fire, as a result of its defeat by the Lamb, and immediately before the Judgement;
c. It exercises the authority of the ten kings for "one hour" (17.12).
B. Nevertheless, the Beast is firmly rooted in Bible history and Old Testament prophecy, having characteristics of all four beasts of Daniel 7.4-7, and therefore in some way reflecting the dominions of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. It embodies in itself, that is to say, the characteristics of all the world empires with which Daniel deals, and so represents the entire image of Daniel 2. For although that chapter pictures successive empires under the symbols of gold, silver, copper, and iron (2.32-33; 37-43); when the kingdom of God is set up, all these metals are said to be ground to powder together by the Stone cut out without hands (2.34-35,44). All horns and heads and crowns and beasts and metals which ever represented the rebellious powers of men will be demolished at a stroke and given to the flames.
At the time dealt with in Revelation 13, 17, and 19, then, a mammoth power will arise which will utterly dominate the earth. It will control the lives of its subjects so completely that they will bear its brand as the token of their subjection, and the very means of normal life and sustenance will be denied to those who do not accept the brand. It will persecute the servants of God who seek to bear witness to their faith and to the coming retribution of God on wicked nations. It will assume authority over hitherto independent kingdoms, and will for a time be dominated by an apostate religious system called the harlot.
This unnatural concordat between a materialist power and a traitor religion will be betrayed by the kingdoms which share power with the Beast, with the result that the religious power will be totally destroyed, but the Beast will provide itself with a substitute in the shape of the religion of the false prophet, which will work mighty signs, and enslave all men save the faithful disciples to the allegiance of the Beast. It will be this combination of evil politics and evil religion which will, guided by the overriding
force of human evil (the dragon, that old serpent called the devil and Satan), confront the Lord Jesus when He returns, and by Him be defeated and destroyed.
It is evident that this Beast closely resembles the "Man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2.1-12:
2
Thessalonians 2
Revelation
3
The falling away must come first
17.13
A harlot will be seated on the Beast
The man of sin is the son of perdition
17.11
The Beast goes into perdition
4
He exalts himself against God
13.4
The world worships the Beast
13.5
It speaks blasphemies
13.8
All that dwell on (he earth except the faithful shall worship it
13.12
The false prophet ensures that all the world shall worship the Beast
4
He sits in the temple of God claiming to be God, opposing himself to all that is called God or worshipped
13.6
It blasphemes God's name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven
7
The mystery of iniquity is alreadv at work
17.5
The harlot is called mvsterv, the mother of the abominations of the earth
8
The Lord Jesus shall destroy him with (he breath of His mouth, and hring him to naught by the manifestation of His coming
17.14
The Lamb shall overcome the Beast with the ten
kings
19.15
Out of this mouth proceeds a sharp sword
9
His coming is according to the working of Satan, will all powers and signs and lying wonders
13.13
He doeth great signs, that he should even make fire come down from heaven; it was given to him to give breath to the image of the Beast, that it should speak
10
With all deceit of unrighteousness in them that are perishing, because they received not the love of the truth that thev might be saved. For this cause God sends them a working of error, thai thev should believe a lie
13.14
He deceives them that dwell on the earth by reason of the signs —
13.8
Everyone whose name has not been written in the book of life
Some of the references in the Revelation column relate to the actions of the false prophet, but since these are performed on the Beast's account they are included in the characteristics of the Beast itself.
This comparison leaves no doubt that the Man of sin and the Beast refer to the same power , and since the Man of sin is evidently to arise in anticipation of the Lord's return, and to be destroyed by Him, this is yet further evidence that the significance of the Beast in Revelation concerns primarily the last days before the Lord comes back.
17.8: The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition . . . 17.11: The beast that was and is not is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven,
' A different, and in some particulars more detailed tabulation of the common characteristics in Daniel 7, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 11, 13 and 17 is to be found in P.W., page 66.
and he goeth into perdition.
The characteristics listed are also those of the "little horn" which arises on the head of the fourth beast in Daniel 7.24-27; and this, since it comes up last (7.8), represents a late phase in the life of this Beast, and in that respect corresponds to the same phase of the Beast of Revelation 17.8. That is, the power referred to could at one time have been seen reigning before, but had disappeared into "the abyss", from reigning before, but had disappeared into "the abyss", from which it should revive, and come again to do its evil work before the Lord's return, when it would be consigned to perdition.
At this point the image-prophecy of Daniel 2 comes to our aid, for the fourth phase of that image, the iron empire of Rome, was to degenerate into detached kingdoms, some strong and some weak, before the entire image-structure would be destroyed by the Lord at His second advent. A world-dominion which seemed to have passed away for ever would rearise: It "was, and is not, and will emerge from the abyss".
The identity of the Beast
The characters requiring identification in the story of the Beast are the Beast itself, the Dragon which awaits it by the sea shore, the False Prophet or Beast from the earth, and the woman mounted on the Beast. We have so far identified the Woman as a system apostate from the true faith, but left unsettled whether she is apostate Jewry or apostate Christianity, or both, but with a bias to the view that if she is to be identified with one only of these, then it would have to be apostate Christianity, since the Book of Revelation is concerned primarily with this world-wide counterpart of the Israel of the Old Testament.
The Beast we have found to be a composite of all the beasts of Daniel 7, and therefore a fitting symbol for a power whose destruction will bring the total downfall of the kingdom of men, in the day when it is defeated and destroyed by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Dragon, though manifested in political powers, is to be understood much more widely, since it is "the old serpent, called the devil and Satan", and so is human sin in all its forms, operating through the powers of wicked human systems in a world which is wholly "in the evil one" (1 John 5.19.)
The Beast, then, is international and imperial, specially since the "ten kings" agree to allocate their power to it (17.12). It is this confederacy of ten kingdoms with the Beast which brings to an end the power of the harlot Woman, and which then, with the support of its own False Prophet, engages on subjugation of men
to its rule, persecuting those who will not yield, and goes on to oppose the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, and suffer final and total defeat.
17.9: Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth; and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and • when he cometh he must continue a little while.
The link between the seven mountains and Rome is universally admitted to be obvious. Yet we know already that this cannot be 'spiritual Rome', for that is the Woman and not the Beast: she and not he is "the great city which ruleth over the kings of the earth" (17.18). She and not he is Babylon (17.5; 18.2, 10, 21). If it is Rome, then, it is in a political sense, as though the prophet was being told,'"Rome is the ruler of the world now; there will arise from it near the time of the end of a Power which will control the world again. It will be controlled for a while by a harlot apostate power, the Woman, but then it will break loose from her and destroy her, and for a short time rule the world alone." It is thus a political system derived from Rome, but not in any way to be identified with apostate Christianity or Judaism.
Yet the identification with a Roman system on the basis of the seven heads, interpreted to mean seven mountains, is not quite as convincing as is sometimes supposed. It is true that Rome was known as 'the seven-hilled city', with its annual national festival of the Septimontium. But it is also true that this is the only time in this Book where such a description is used, and if Rome were as constantly in mind as has jjbmetimes been suggested ("Zion versus Rome"!), we might have expected the description to be more ubiquitous. And we have met so many sevens already in this Book as betokening fulness or completeness, that its meaning may be by no means exhausted by counting the hills around physical Rome (Coleius, Viminal, Aventine, Esquiline, Quirinal, Capitoline, and Palatine). Early readers of the Book would no doubt have thought of the Rome they knew as they saw this prophecy; it is already clear that what they thought, helpful though it would be to them, will in its actual realization turn out differently from their expectations.
It has to be remembered that Jerusalem, too, was famous for its mountains, amongst which it is sung as being situated (Psalm 125.2; Isaiah 2.2). It could well be that the same ambiguity which we found in connection with the harlot Woman might arise with regard to the Beast too: why should not the Spirit use terms which would be full of meaning to contemporary readers in terms of the Roman empire as they knew it, but whose fulfilment would include a parody of the "great city" of the New Jerusalem which is yet to be? (11.8; 21.10).
The wounded head
13.3:7 saw one of its heads as though it had been wounded to death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole earth wondered after the beast. . . 13.14: And (the beast from the earth) says to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast, who hath the stroke of the sword and lived.
The wounding is evidently to occur subsequent to the giving of the Apocalypse, for it is part of the wonder in which men regard this Beast as it assumes sovereign power over the earth while recovering from this wound (13.1, 12, 14). The False Prophet, or Beast from the earth, which arises to promote the worship of the Beast, emphasizes this apparently miraculous recovery as evidence for the divinity of its master. The disaster and the recovery from it both appear, therefore, to be phenomena of late development, the time around that in which the Two Witnesses prophesy and the saints are undergoing their last persecution. Accepting this timing, this must be another occasion when we have to say: We must wait and see. We must await a time when a political power which seems destined to extinction suddenly and amazingly recovers, and in its recovery assumes dominance over the kingdom of men before it is itself destroyed in the setting up of the kingdom of God.
If it is disappointing not to be able to be more precise than this, we need to remember that the classical alternatives have little probability of their own. To say that political Rome 'died' under pagan attacks in the 5th and 6th centuries, while papal Rome restored its power in the 8-9th by crowning Charlemagne (C.C.W., page 38) is to impart an air of drama to long-drawn out events (250 years or more) which would certainly not have been felt by the people of that long period, which is quite out of keeping with the amazement, wonder and worship which characterize this passage. And in any case this kind of exposition is involved in hopeless complexity in trying to decide which of the symbols really is to be applied to the papacy, fluctuating among the Beast, its mouth, the False Prophet, and the Woman, all of which are mooted and accepted at different points within the same covers. It is, of course, no witness in favour of a view which postpones the detailed interpretation to call attention to the faults in other opinions, but the fact that such serious faults are to be found should help is to keep our minds open and alert.
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