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Chapters 19,20 The identity and mark of the beast

CHAPTER XIX

AN ISRAELI BEAST?

However, a bold attempt has recently been made to provide identifications for the entire set of symbols contained in chapters 11 to 19 of the Apocalypse, and though it is impossible in a short compass to expound and examine everything in Peter Watkins' "EXPLORING THE APOCALYPSE AND THE FUTURE" with the detail it deserves, it would be unseemly to pass it by.

THE VIEW STATED

A large part of this book is devoted to a detailed identification of the Beasts of Sea and Earth, the Dragon, the Woman giving birth to the Manchild, and the Woman mounted on the Beast, and the heads and horns of the Beast, and what follows is a mere summary of what is advanced.

The Beast from the sea of Chapter 13, who is the same as the Beast from the Abyss of chapters 11 and 17, arises, says P.W., from being overwhelmed in the sea of nations to a new and unexpected lease of life. This Beast has seven heads, of which five have passed, the sixth exists at the time of writing the Apocalypse, the seventh is yet to come, and the revival of one of these in the future will represent an eighth power who will control the Beast at the time when the Lord Jesus returns.

This book was published in 1980, shortly after the death of its author. He had thought long and hard as to whether he would issue such a possibly controversial work, and had only decided to publish it because his conscience led him to feel that it would be wrong not to alert true believers to the dangers which the situation as he saw it would bring before them shortly before the return of the Lord Jesus. There is so much that is good in his book, and so sadly no opportunity now to discuss with its author points of difference, that one is tempted to leave readers to form their own judgement without making comments of any kind. But long thought has made this author convinced that this, too, would be a wrong course of action, and one which Peter Watkins would not himself have asked for. The analysis we offer, therefore, will be as frank as he would have wished, and this note is inserted to assure the readers, many of whom counted Peter a dear friend and brother in the Lord, that this writer too shares that esteem. He is grateful for the rich use of Scripture by Peter even when he dissents from the conclusions drawn, and is glad of the provocation to further study which the book has provided.

The five heads must be counted from the time of the first beast of Daniel, and therefore include one for Babylon, one for Medo-Persia, and three out of the four heads which designate the Greek empire (Daniel 7.6). It is therefore from the fourth of these that the power will arise which will challenge the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in fact, we are told, Israel emerged from the power of one of the four subdivisions of Alexander's empire, that of the Seleucids of Syria, and it was Israel which opposed the Lord Jesus when He came the first time, speaking great words against this Prince of the Host (Daniel 8.11). Israel is therefore the "little horn" which sprang out of that fourth part of the Greek empire (8.9), and consistency of symbols demands that it shall also be identified with the little horn of Daniel 7.8. If it is surprising that in Daniel 7 the horn is said to spring from the fourth beast, which is Rome, while in Daniel 8 it springs from Greece, both are true. Israel inherited its independence from the Seleucids, but its actual political power was exercised under the Romans in the time when Jesus first came.

/When Israel had put Christ to death, it quickly lost its power when the Romans destroyed Jersualem in 70, so that this Roman power became the seventh head of the Beast. However, and surprisingly, when the Roman empire had been broken up, and in the latter days ten kingdoms had arisen, Israel would make its appearance again, as it has so dramatically done during the past half centuryKrhis is the Beast arising from the sea, and this is the healing of the deadly wound (13.3) from which it had seemed that the nation coufcTnever recover. If Israel then arises as the eighth head in Revelation 17.11, this is to be equated with the latter-day fulfilment of the little horn of Daniel 7 and 8; and the casting down of three horns before it (Daniel 7.8) is to be the destruction of three of the ten surrounding Arab kingdoms when they try to destroy Israel. The result of this will be that Israel will be recognized by the surviving Arab kingdoms as their overlord, so that Israel will become in effect the Beast itself. As such it will raise up for itself a False Prophet, who will perhaps combine the false pretensions of Islam and of Judaism, and will represent a power which will first dethrone and destroy apostate Christianity (the harlot of Revelation 17), and then engage in persecution of the true saints of God.

It will be at this stage that the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11.3) will prophesy, primarily though not exclusively to Israel. They will have some success, and those whom they win to repentance will be those who will greet the Lord Jesus in humility when He returns (Zechariah 12.10). However, in the main their work will be unrewarded, and at the end of their appointed preaching time

the Beast, which is the power of the eighth head and the little horn, will put them to death, and cause their dead bodies (no doubt symbolically) to lie in Jerusalem (11.8). From this state they will be rescued by being taken up into the presence of the Lord Jesus Himself, and He will himself come and destroy the Israeli Beast. This means that He will take away power from the unrepentant Jews, and give it to His true servants who have repented at the preaching of the Witnesses. ,' ,

The victory of the Jews over the Arabs will be so striking that unwary believers will be in danger of concluding that the Christ has appeared at this point, and so will be fatally deceived. Hence the need to warn them against this seductive teaching, and to tell them to await the time when the Lord will destroy this Beast.

The believers From among natural Israel are the 144,000 of Revelation 7, and it is they whose resurrection is pictured in Revelation 15.2-4. When the Lord Jesus has destroyed the Beast He will reign locally in Jerusalem until a power from the north (Ezekiel 38 & 39) arises, and when this is totally destroyed the kingdom of God can be set up over all the earth.

The resemblance of the Dragon of 12.3 to the Beast of 17.3 is so great that the dragon, too, represents a Jewish power opposing " God, particularly having regard to its casting down stars from heaven, which was also a characteristic of the Little Horn of Daniel 8.10, though it represents quite a different enemy when it reappears in Revelation 20.7. The identification of the ten kings with Arab nations is supported by a reference to Psalm 83, where ten nations, most of them descended from or related to, Abraham are depicted as seeking the destruction of Israel, and being overcome.

Israel is understood in two lights, perhaps three, during this phase of her warfare. She is a disobedient people being punished by the nations. She is God's hammer whereby the nations are themselves punished for waging war against her. And she is the people who survive when the Beast has been destroyed, now as the penitent people of God inheriting His blessings in the promised land. The nations as a whole appear in the picture (at least prior to the defeat of Gog) only in so far as they support the Arab cause, perhaps to secure their supplies of oil, and are therefore involved in the Arab defeat as Israel assumes its temporary power over the nations.

Much of the background of this point of view, here briefly summarized, arises from the author's often-repeated statement that the Bible as a whole has an Israelite background, and that expositors of the Apocalypse have erred in not taking this into account in arriving at their understanding of that Book.

A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE 'ISRAELI BEAST'

Thoroughly though this point of view is worked out, it seems to the present writer that it suffers from notable defects:

1.The 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 15 do not represent exclusively Jewish saints. l-\' -,--.' •-•;'•

2.The sea from which the Beast of 13.1 arises is surely the same sea as that from which all four beasts arise in Daniel 7.2, which is a symbolic application of the Mediterranean Sea around which the empires of the Old Testament were clustered, and so is not the sea of oblivion and submergence in defeat.

3.There is confusion as to whether or not the message of the Two Witnesses is to Israel primarily, or to the nations equally. P.W. obviously favours the view that Israel is the primary target of their preaching, but, being unable to resist the message of 10.11 and 11.9, allows of their also preaching to other nations, though he quite fails to give any real significance to this.

4. Israel is given too many r les. In particular, it is hard to see how a dragon Israel could give power and authority to a Beast which, at least from the time when its eighth head arises, is also Israel.

5. Again, if Israel is in all essentials the Beast in its last phase before the Lord returns, it is hard to see that Israel survives under a different guise to be theconverted and repenting people who will greet the Lord with tears when He comes, especially since this repentant Israel is nowhere to be found in Revelation 11-19, but has to be imported from Ezekiel 37.

6. While P.W. rightly says that the term "harlot" is to be used of an apostate community and, perhaps rightly, prefers apostate Christianity for the identification of the harlot of Revelation 17, it is odd that the Beast in its eighth head phase and in all its other phases, as well as the little horns of Daniel 7 and 8, and the evil person of Daniel 11.36, should have no trace of the harlot-outlook in their behaviour as described, when that term is so common for apostate Jewry, as we have shown, in the Old Testament.

. 8. Of the nations of Psalm 83 Moab, Gebal, Ammon, Philistia, Tyre, and Assyria either are not, or cannot be shown to be, descended from Abraham.

The underlying defect is, though, to be found in the basic assumption. It is entirely true that the prophets of the Old Testa-

ment concentrated on the nation of Israel and the promised Land. It is not at all true that one would expect Revelation to do the same. Here we have a Book where seven separate lampstands have replaced the seven-branched lampstand. Here nations and peoples and tongues are the dominant theme. Here the tempi of God is in heaven, not in Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem on which Revelation concentrates is in heaven, and when it comes down will enshrine the salvation of all saints from all nations, and its only temple will be God and the Lamb.

In short, the canvas of Revelation is too large for a merely Israelite significance to be given to its symbols. The "gathering of the kings of the whole world together to the war of the great day of God Almighty" (16.4) is too big a thing to be merely an incident in a conflict between Israel and the Arabs; and the subjugation of the Beast in 17.14 and 19.19 is too global and too bloody for its central event to be regarded as the humiliation and conversion of natural Israel.

It is no doubt true at the present time that every suggested solution of the problem as to what exactly will occur to Israel and the nations when the Lord returns can be confronted with apparently insurmountable objections. Anyone who attempts, as P.W. has done, to give detailed programmes in advance, may do us a service in bringing to our notice evidence so far neglected; but in his turn he may have found it necessary to offer solutions of his own, not because they are obviously right in themselves, but because certain presuppositions seem to require them. Meanwhile we remain in the position we were in,before: we must wait and see.

CHAPTER XX

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

13.16: He causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand or on their forehead; and that no man should be able to buy or sell, save he that hath the mark, even the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom: He that hath • understanding, let him count the number of the Beast; for it is the number of a man: and its number is six hundred and sixty and six.

14.9: If any man worshippeth the beast and his image, and receiveth a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God ... 14.11: They have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name.

15.2:7 saw as it were a glassy sea mingled with fire; and them that had come victorious from the beast, and from his image, and from the number of his name, standing by the glassy sea, having harps of God.

16.2: The first (angel) went and poured out his bowl into the earth, and it became a noisome and grievous sore on the men which had the mark of the beast, and which worshipped his image.

19.20: The Beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought the signs in his sight, wherewith he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image.

20.4:7 saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgement was given to them; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast nor his image, and received not the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

We meet the mark of the Beast for the first time in 13.16, but it is to become a characteristic and sinister feature of its activities from now on, as the quotations above show. This mark identifies the worshippers of the Beast and its image, the devotees of its cult: and those who do not wear it go in peril of their lives. In 14.9 the opposite side of the picture is shown: those who do wear the mark will have to endure the wrath of God. In 15.2 those who refuse the mark stand in triumph in the temple of God; while in 16.2 the last series of judgements is directed primarily against those so branded, in much the same way that certain of the

plagues of Egypt fell only on the Egyptians (Exodus 9.4,26; 10.23; 11.7; 12.13). In 19.20 the wearers of the mark suffer the loss of their leaders when Beast and False Prophet are thrown in the Lake of Fire, and by implication suffer the same fate; while in 20.4 their opposite numbers receive the blessings of living and reigning for 1000 years in the kingdom of God.

This sequence of alternations: what God will do to those who bear the mark of the Beast, what the Beast will do to those who do not, and the blessings of God on the latter — should not allow us to think merely negatively of the saints as those who do not wear a certain brand. They are also distinguished as those who do bear a sign of another kind, being "sealed in their foreheads" (7.1-17; 9.4). This symbolic 144,000 declines the worship of the Beast because it is already committed to the service of God, and will emerge triumphant because it has "this seal: the Lord knoweth them that are His" (2 Timothy 2.19). Only in 14.1,9 are the two groups specifically set in juxtaposition, but there is no doubt that the contrast is intended to be made: the judgements of God fall on those "which have not the seal of God in their foreheads" (9.4), and on those which have the mark of the Beast as above. Men will have to choose which of the two tokens of recognition they will bear.

What the mark of the Beast is can hardly be decided. The claim that, "as this authority ('of the Papal image') was conveyed by signing the cross on the forehead or the right hand of the recipient of official favour, the cross became the subject of this symbolism as 'the mark of the beast'" (R.R., page 111) can hardly be accepted. For not only does this relate the symbol to a time long before the one we have come to see referred to here, but also it seems singularly repugnant that such an interpretation should be offered. It is true that the superstitious use of the sign of the cross as conveying some kind of security, or the wearing of emblems of the crucifix, is no part of true Christian worship. But it is also true that the Cross is a highly prized term in the New Testament for the manner of our redemption. We are bidden take up our cross and follow our Lord to a symbolic crucifixion. Our old man has been crucified with Him; they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts; Paul would glory in nothing save in the Cross of Christ his Lord, whereby the world had been crucified to him, and he to the world (Matthew 10.28; 16.34 1 Corinthians 1.17-18; Romans 6.6; Galatians 2.10; 5.11; 6.12, 14; Ephesians 2.16; Phillippians 2.8; 3.18; Colossians 1.20; 2.14; Hebrews 6.6; 12.1). This perverse identification, with its associated fruitless argument as to whether the stauros, was or was not cruciform in shape, has done far too much damage in diverting attention from the true message of the Cross, and bringing its meaning into disrepute.

The worid for 'mark' is kharagma, and is only found in the New Testament in Revelation and in connection with the Beast, except for Acts 17.29, where it refers to the graven idols of the Greeks. It is derived from the verb kharasso, to notch or engrave, but this is not found in N.T., and its single occurrence in LXX is of no assistance. All that it enables us to say, perhaps, is that it conveys some visible sign by which its recipient may be recognized. Dur-v ing the Second World War many people carried ration cards, without which essential foodstuffs could not legally be obtained, and identity cards which were a passport to important privileges. Passports themselves have related functions for travellers even in times of peace, ft is now possible to mark the skin in a way which would be recognized by a computerized scanner, and which could easily be employed to admit, or deny admission, to stores and banks. tany people carry credit cards and cash cards which allow of deferred purchases or give access to money from cash-points. Such as these could easily be withheld from those out of official favour, or could be so programmed that they would refuse them servicerThe carrying of proof of party membership has already in 'iron-curtain' countries brought great hardships to those denied or refusing it.\ The storage of personal data in retrieval systems can (and to an unknown extent already has done this), provide instant evidence as to the credentials of private individual citizens, and there would be no difficulty whatever in extending it so as to make it produce exactly the effect here set out, "that no man might buy nor sell, save he that hath the mark" (13.17). It is plain enough what kind of thing this mark could be, and what misery its absence could inflict on the one declining to bear it.

13.18: Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is six hundred and sixty and six.

We need first some reference to the principles assumed in many calculations. In both Hebrew and Greek, numerical values are assigned to letters, as indeed in Latin too, although the last-named did not use the sequence of increasing values as one goes further down the alphabet. The essential data for indulging in this kind of calculation are provided in the Table on page 246.

Taking the figures in the Table, this would give as the numerical value: 1 30 500 100 5 4 ( = 640); 50 70 100 10 6( = 336),givingatotalof 976 (using the 'final sigma' value for the last letter). We are now in a position to evaluate some of the suggestions which have been made.

One of the most popular of them all is LATEINOS, which when written in Greek characters is said to have the value 30 1 300 5 10 50 70 200 = 666, though it is hard to see the justification for avoiding the 'final sigma' value for the last letter, which would reduce the result to 472.

TABLE OF THE NUMERICAL VALUES OF LETTERS

No.

Hebrew Letter

Greek Letter

Latin Letter No.

aleph

alpha

beth

'ft

beta

ghimel

gamma

iii

daleth

delta

epsilon

waw (vav)

final sigma

zayin

zeta

vii

cheth

•n

eta

viii

teth

theta

yodh

iota

kaph

kappa

lamedh

lambda

XXX

mem

nun

samekh

'ayin

omicron

Ixx

' •

Ixxx

tsadhe

(koppa)

100 200

P T

qoph resn

v P

rho sigma

c cc

100 200

300

shin

' T

tau

ccc

300

400

tau

upsilon

400

500 600

frii

500 600

700

psi

dec

700

800

omega

dccc

800

900

•

(sampi)

900

1000

Starting with the confident assumption that the Beast is papal, R.R. writes (page 111):

There has been a great deal of guessing and speculating on this subject. It is a standing joke with the scorning and scoffing class, but it is a matter of wisdom for all that. The difficulty which most people have had in finding it out is due to the fact that their theology prevents them from identifying the beast. . . Those who know the truth are burdened with no such difficulty. They see in the leading figure of Christendom ... an exact fulfilment. . . The only question is how the Apocalyptic identification of 666 can be found in him. Does any official title appertaining to him, when the letters of that title are summed up in their numerical value, yield the number in question as 'the number of his name'? It matters not if twenty other names can be made to yield the same number: it must be a name in connection with a one-man system which has wielded a compulsory authority in all the earth in centuries past. The Papal system is such a system, and there is no other system or

man of whom this can be affirmed. It is therefore a simple question of whether a system, answering in all material points to the prophecy, presents this feature of identification, that its name, numerically estimated, is equal to 666.

The answer is then given as LATEINOS, as above. It has to be said that the words quoted are both unwarranted and ungracious. In the first place, good reasons have already been given why the Beast is not a religious system: the Harlot no doubt, but the Beast, No. In the second place, who would have gathered from this quotation that the identification with LATEINOS was discussed by Irenaeus in the second century, even though he did not himself favour its acceptance? Who, moreover, would have guessed that Alford, in his Greek Testament of which the relevant volume was first issued in 1857, and the fifth edition of it in 1875, writes as follows:

Of all the hundreds of attempts which have been made in answer to the challenge, there is but one which seems to approach near enough to an adequate solution to require serious consideration. And that one is the word mentioned, though not adopted by Irenaeus, viz. Lateinos . . . This name describes the common character of the rulers of the former.Pagan Roman Empire . . . and, which Irenaeus could not forsee, unites under itself the character of the later Papal Roman Empire, as revised and kept up by the agency of the false prophet the priesthood. The Latin Empire, the Latin Church, Latin Christianity, have ever been its commonly current applications; its language, civil and ecclesiastical, has even been Latin . . . There is no one word which so completely describes its character, and at the same time unites the ancient and modern attributes of the two beasts as this. Short of saying absolutely that this was the word in St. John's mind, I have the strongest persuasion that no other can be found approaching so near a complete solution.

It is true that Alford adds, in his Prolegomena to Revelation, V,32, the following:

Still less can I offer any satisfactory solution of the prophetic number of the beast (13.18). Even while I print my note in favour of the Lateinos of Irenaeus, I feel almost disposed to withdraw it. It is beyond question the best solution which has been given: but that it is not the solution I have a persuasion amounting to certainty. It must be considered merely as worthy to emerge from the thousand and one failures strewed up and down in our books, to be kept in sight till the challenge "he that hath wisdom" is satisfactorily answered.

Whichever position one adopts as to the Tightness or wrong-ness of Lateinos as the identification, there is no doubt that Alford was fully aware of the possibilities decades before R.R. was written, and some years before J.T. was published. What is more, and more regrettable, is that EHiott (H.A., III, 206ff.), who

comes in for some hard words from J.T. and whose first edition was published in 1844, writes emphatically in favour of the same solution, though in some respects he takes a wider view:

I subjoin in a Note a few other remarkable solutions of the numeral enigma, all bearing on the Papacy: and would call attention very specially to Mr. Clarice's of Hie Latirie'Basileia, which is indeed so remarkable that I cannot but think that the Divine Spirit had it also in view, as an alternative solution involving the word Latin in its more usual, though not the mystic, orthography. But the principal, and that which most clearly and simply answers to every requirement of the sacred enigma, I fully believe to be Irenaeus' solution, LATEINOS. And the total failure of every anti-Protestant solution, and of every one moreover of which the object has been to turn away the application from Popedom to some quite different enemy of Christ's cause and Church, has only served to make it the more remarkable and the more convincing. (Op. cit., 212-214).

These rather lengthy quotations are not made in order to make the solution in terms of the word Lateinos seem more probable. They are given in the hope of persuading all engaged in discussion of the Apocalypse and its interpretation (i) to play fair with the views of those whose theology they (like the present author) reject when they take them over and make them their own, rather than taking the appetizing food thrown to them and then growling menacingly at the donors; and (ii) to remember that, when these borrowed vie\vs are not accepted, no apostate desires underlie the rejection.

The interpretation here referred to for the number 666 is not the monopoly of one religious community, and it was not discovered by our own. Whether it is right or wrong can therefore be freely discussed without complaints of disloyalty to our traditions.

A number of other solutions offered to the problem, all in terms of this addition of numerical values of letters, can be mentioned, if only to show the variety which is possible:

NERON KAISAR, when assessed in Hebrew numerical equivalents, using the long consonantal waw, and samekh for s, gives 50 200 6 50 (= 306); 100 60 200 ( = 360) = 666. This is the more remarkable in that, if the final n of the first word is omitted, the total becomes 616 which is the figure found in some manuscripts.

ROMANUS, when suitably transliterated into Hebrew, and ROMIYITH, as a Hebraized form with the same meaning, can both be made to yield 666.

TEITAN, which was the solution preferred by Irenaeus, not only has the desired numerical value (300 5 10 300 1 50), but denotes in mythology one of the giants who assailed the gods, and was thought to be an appropriate description for Antichrist.

VICARIVS FILII DEI (Vicar of the Son of God). The writer does not know the ultimate origin of this idea, but inserts it because it introduces a Latin ingredient into the problem. The method of calculation here is simply to ignore those letters which do not have a numerical equivalent in Latin, so that the values become 5 1 0 0 0 1 5 0 0 1 50 1 1 500 0 1 = 666.

One is not sure whether to regard the last example as the reductio ad absurdum of the whole system of interpretation. It is evident that the identifications are all in a way subjective. Those who lived in the earliest Christian times would tend to see a covert reference to their pagan Roman oppressors, which accounts for the popularity of TEITAN and NERON KAISAR in those days. Those who lived in the ages of papal oppression would tend to favour words or phrases which, even though they could originally have been applied to pagan Rome, could also be applied to the Roman church: hence the great popularity of LATEINOS and the possible preference for HE LATINE BASILEIA.

There are many problems associated with looking at the matter in such a way, some of a general, and some of a particular character, and some of these should be mentioned:

1 The figure 666 itself appears in the Greek text of Irenaeus' comments as the three appropriate Greek letters X?X,(khi-xi-fmal sigma), and though it is written out in full in the earlier manuscripts, as hexakosioi hexekonta hex, it was in some later ones so abbreviated. How then could Irenaeus, or anyone else, take another word in Greek characters, Xa-miW (Lateinos), and give that final sigma the significance of a non-final one, thereby substituting the value 200 for the value 6? This seems to the present writer a far more serious objection to this word than the discussion as to whether Lateinos or Latinos is the more appropriate spelling.

2 In the quotation given on page 145 it was intimated that the papal identity of the Beast is so obvious that a corresponding word must be found bearing that significance as well as that value. But in that event why is the word needed at all, and where is the wisdom involved in finding it out? The discovery of a suitable word or words is then merely an exercise in confirming a conclusion already believed to be incontcstible.

3 Sound reasons have already been given for denying to the Beast the strictly papal significance which alone would make Lateinos and its related words relevant.

4 If, as all our study so far has made increasingly likely, we are concerned with things close to the return of the Lord in Revelation 13-19, then a name which has endured, with such relevance as it might possess, for 18 centuries does not seem to fit the needs of the case at all.

If these considerations once again mean that we have to say, "Wait and see," then so be it. But there may yet be a little more to be said from a Scriptural point of view.

SCRIPTURAL PRECEDENTS FOR 666

The words expressing this number as above, occur in the Old Testament as hexakosia kai hexzkontaex in 1 Kings 10.14; and as hexakosia hexJkontaex in 2 Chronicles 9.13, the only difference, apart from the conjunction kai (and) in one of the cases, being due to a difference in gender. Both the passages are concerned with the number of talents of gold imported by King Solomon in a year, which might be thought to be of little revelance to our topic. This may be so, but it is the only numerical lead we have in Scripture, and when the Revelation was given to John the heavenly Revealer Himself would be perfectly aware of the fact. He would surely have foreseen that a search for a biblical interpretation of the number 666 would sooner or later lead to this passage, and so the 'coincidence' would be spotted: which makes it at least possible that He intended it to be so.

But can the two records really be linked? We would be better able to judge of this if we were able to find any other parallels between Solomon's reign and the Apocalypse; and in fact, whether significantly or not, we do. Solomon was a great international trader (1 Kings 9.26), having "ships that went to Tarshish . . . bringing gold, and silver, ivory, apes and peacocks" (2 Chronicles 9.21). He brought also "gold from Ophir, . . ., great quantities of almug trees, and precious stones" (1 Kings 10.11-12). The terms in which this trade is described are very similar to those in which in Revelation "the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over" the fall of 'Babylon' (18.11-14), where here the merchandise includes gold and silver, precious stones (as in 1 Kings 10.11, 22), thyine wood (possibly to be identified with the almug tree (Illustrated Bible Dictionary III, 1953), ivory (2 Chronicles 9.21), cinnamon and spices (1 Kings 10.2, 10, 25; 2 Chronicles 9.9. Cinnamon is associated with Solomon in two of its three O.T. occurrences, Proverbs 7.17 and Song 4.14); wine and oil (2 Chronicles 2.10); wheat (1 Kings 5.11); cattle and sheep (1 Kings 8.65); horses and chariots (1 Kings 4.26-28; 10.25-29; 2 Chronicles 1.16-17; 9.24-28; 1 Kings 9.19, 22; 2 Chronicles 1.14; 8.6-9). Even the slaves and souls of men might be associated with the bondservants whom Solomon used to carry out his public works (1 Kings 9.21-22).

There is, however, another Old Testament parallel to this list of merchandise, found in the prophecy against Tyre in Ezekiel 27, which parallels the merchandise in Revelation in respect of ivory, linen and purple, silver, persons of men, horses, precious stones, oil, wheat, wine, sheep, spices, and gold. The parallel is made even closer in this case by the lamentation of Revelation 18.8, 15-19, which is clearly reminiscent of the mourning over Tyre predicted in Ezekiel 27.29-36; 28.19.

This by no means detaches the references in Revelation from Solomon, for the principal trading partner of Solomon in all his trading enterprises was this very Tyre of whose pride Ezekiel writes. It is even arguable that during the reign of Solomon Tyre became in effect a vassal province, prosperous primarily because of the patronage of Solomon, and given (most improperly) cities from Solomon's own dominions — which God had given to Israel! — so that Tyre's rulership over these would signify the fact that it held them from Solomon as overlord. C We must return to Revelation 13.18 and recapitulate. The number of the Beast is 666, the same as the annual import of talents of gold by Solomon, and paralleled nowhere else in Scripture. This same Beast is found in 17.3 to be carrying a Harlot on its back, and it is after the destruction of this Harlot, whose name is Babylon, that the lamentation over its fall is taken up in 18.9-19, in terms strongly reminiscent of Solomon and his vassal Tyre. It is true that Babylon is the name of the woman and her city rather than of the Beast, but it is the Beast on which she sits until she is destroyed, and she is engaged in the activities of the Beast as long as she controls it. he is, moreover, a main agent in the persecution of the saints of God which the Beast continues after her fall, and the saints are taught to look for the identifying number of the Beast from its uprise, including therefore the period when the Harlot rides it.

The suggestion is, therefore, that the Beast's power is at least partly financial, economic, and commercial; that at some stage this power is manipulated by an apostate organization, with likely links with the world churches and possible ones with Israel, both turned aside from the true ways of God. It is possible that the uprise of this monolithic tyranny controlling the world's economic life is something for which the saints should be looking. The suggestion is tentative certainly, and the manner of its outwork-

ing unknown: but to reject it utterly would be to say that the Lord Jesus asked us to look for a number, 666, whose only precedent in Scripture is nothing better than a trap for the unwary: a suggestion which must be judged unlikely.

Summarizing what has so far emerged from Revelation 13, then, we found the woman, the true Israel of God who gave birth to the Manchild Jesus Christ, flee into the Wilderness under severe persecution when her Son had been delivered from the power of evil and had ascended to heaven. We found her accepting the help of the earth to such an extent that it was only the remnant of her seed which kept the commandments of God. These fell under the persecution of the evil power in their turn (12.1-17). The power of evil, which held the power to prevent men and women being received by God, because we are sinners and hitherto the Redeemer had not come, was cast out of that position when the Lord died and ascended (12.7-12), and amid the rejoicing of the heavenly powers the saints were granted spiritual access to God's heavenly temple (12.10-1 1).

We are still troubled by the fact that, though the Lord ascended so long ago, the period of His presence in heaven is described as "a short time" (12.12), but though a full explanation of this may not be apparent, it is of one piece with "shortly come to pass" in 1.1, and "the time is at hand" of 1.3, and with the general picture throughout the New Testament where the "last time" can commence in the first century (1 John 1.18). We meet the problem wherever we go, and it is not peculiar to the Book of Revelation. It would appear from this that the sojourn of the woman in the wilderness (12.6,14), described as 1260 days or time, times, and half a time, will be difficult to identify with a precise time interval, for we have seen that the historical identification with 1260 years cannot be sustained, and yet the exile of this Woman before we meet her again in 17.1 must be of long duration compared with the short and painful witness of the Two Witnesses of 11.3, during the same period, itself the same as that during which "the holy city" is trodden down (11.2).

It has more than once been pointed out that the number (ifiti triplicates the imperfection which is considered to be symbolized in the figure 6; and this is contrasted by the numerical value of the name JESUS, whose Greek original Jesous, adds up to 888 (10 8 200 70 400 200 = 888). This again, though, rests on the shaky foundation of taking a final sigma as though it were not. It is the case, of course, that Revelation is very much concerned with the conflict between the true and the false Christ, so the idea has its attractions if the method of counting could he justified.

Towards the end of the period after the power of evil has lost its influence in the heavens, it stands on the seashore (13.1) and summons forth a dreadful creature to its bidding, and we meet for the first time face to face the Beast of the Sea. We have already been told that this is the power whicn will persecute and slay the Witnesses (1,1.7), and when it emerges it does indeed reveal itself as the persecutor of the saints of God (13.3ff). It is the embodiment of all the four beasts of Daniel 7, the kingdom of men in its entirely, and after a period of defeat emerges marvellously to renewed power, and takes to itself a False Prophet, the Beast of the Earth (13.11-18) who proclaims a false religion and demands that all the world shall pay allegiance to its lord.

In the chapters which follow we learn that the Beast is for a while under the control of the apostate church or synagogue or both, which emerges from its wilderness sojourn in power (17.1-6), and sits, an unwelcome rider, on the back of this Beast to which all the kings of the earth have given their power (17.13), directing its persecution of the saints of God (17.6; 18.6,20). By the kingdoms which sustained her, though, she is toppled, stripped, devoured and consumed till there is nothing left of her, "utterly burned with fire" (17.16; 18.8). An apostate religion, dating back to the blood of Abel, going on to crucify its Christ, adding the affliction of the apostles to that of the prophets, and of later saints to all those, will then have "filled up the measure of its fathers" (Matthew 23.32 ; 1 Thessalonians 2.13-16; Revelation 18.20). Whether represented by apostate Jewry, or by the apostate descendants of the spiritual seed of Abraham, or both, this Woman is guilty of turning aside from the God she once knew, and of seeking to frustrate His purpose.

When she has gone, however, the situation does not improve. The False Prophet promotes his false religion of Beast-worship (13.11-18; 16.13; 19.20), and the saints are still hard-pressed. But the time is not to be long now. The Beast is about to commit the crowning folly of waging war against the returned Christ (17.14), and in the ensuing war will be utterly destroyed with its False Prophet (19.11-21).

Into that broad canvass must now fit the events set out in chapters 14, 15, and 16.

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