Revelation 13

    13:1-18.  This chapter introduces two beasts, two major tools that the dragon (Satan) uses to make war with the rest of the woman’s children (cf. 12:17), i.e., the church in the world.  “The first [beast] represents the persecuting power of Satan operating in and through the nations of this world and their governments.  The second symbolizes the false religions and philosophies of this world” (Hendriksen, pp. 174-175).  The dragon and these two beasts, which are so much manipulated by him as to be an extension of him, his hand of power, and his mind, form virtually a counterfeit trinity.  They are ready to receive your worship.

     13:1-8.  The enraged dragon stands on the sand of the seashore, and John sees the first beast emerge from the sea (1).  This is the sea of people and nations who live outside of Christ (cf. Is. 17:12; Rev. 17:15).  The beast called forth is in many ways in the image of the dragon himself (cf. 12:3).  

     There are obvious connections here to Dan. 7.  Daniel saw a succession of beasts that represented the rise and fall of four empires: 1. the Babylonian lion; 2. the Medo-Persian bear; 3. the Macedonian-Greek leopard; 4. and the great beast with ten horns that followed the others (Dan. 7:1-7).  The beast John sees is a cosmopolitan beast made up of the three before it.  It is Daniel’s fourth beast, and pictures the Roman Empire of John’s own era (2).  But Rome serves well to symbolize all such beasts that come forth from the sea of unbelief during these last days.  The beast has seven heads, and ten crowned horns all vying for world dominion and power, which give themselves the many blasphemous names we have come to know so well, from “Caesar is Lord,” to “the dear Leader of the collective.”  The devil once tried to tempt Christ with such dominion in exchange for his worship (Mt. 4:8-10; Luke 4:5-8).

      John had witnessed Christ receive a deadly wound, and rise up to receive his eternal kingdom in power and glory.  He had heard him announced in heaven as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, yet he saw him as “a Lamb standing as if slain” (5:5-6; cf. 13:8).  Therefore, the devil offers the world a counterfeit Messiah whose kingdom is of this world, an antichrist (cf. 1 John 2:18, 22).  One of the beast’s heads appeared “as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed” (3).  Totalitarian universalist governments are destroyed, only to rise again, just as pridefully arrogant as Babel of old (see Gen. 11:4).  “Government views itself as a savior.   It has a messianic complex….  The beast, anti-Christian government power, is viewed as the earth’s messiah”  (Dennis Prutow, In Response, June, 1996).

     The world gives the dragon and his beast the worship and allegiance they crave and demand (4).  The beast uses his roaring lion’s mouth (2; 5; cf. 1 Pet. 5:8) to boast, and to blaspheme against God.  Yet it is not really the dragon that grants him his forty-two months of authority to act (5; cf. 11:2).  The Lord determines and shortens his time (Mt. 24:22), a time in which he makes war with the saints and overcomes them (6-7; cf. 11:7).

     Once again, the witnesses lie dead in the streets, and the world rejoices and worships the beast (see 11:10), “all whose names have not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain” (8).  (Translation note: NASB and RSV rightly arrange v.8 to agree with 17:8; KJV and NIV read as the margin, making it the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the earth.)

     13:9-10.  Faced with such persecuting power, God’s people know that in fact God is still sovereign.  Their names are in the Lamb’s book of life.  They are not to fear those who can only kill the body.  They are to be faithful unto death, and Christ will give them the crown of life (cf. 2:10; 11:11).  The destiny of those who capture and kill them is fixed by God according to their own works.  Here is the perseverance and faith of the saints.  They know that God is sovereign, and God is just.

     13:11-18.  This part of the vision reveals the last of the dragon’s counterfeit trinity, the beast out of the earth.  These verses cover again the same “forty-two months” as before, because this beast is always associated with the beast out of the sea.  This earthy beast is false religion and worldly antichristian education, science, and philosophy.   It promotes a worldview that draws men to worship the dragon and the first beast.  This beast is the false prophet, the mouthpiece of the dragon (11; cf. 16:13; 19:20).  In deceiving appearance he is like a lamb.   He is the mind control and cultural minister of the antichrist beast whose fatal wound was healed (12).  The marvels of perverted science and technology done to exalt man, to the exclusion of God, appear to many as great signs, the fire from heaven, Pentecost mocked by the spirit of human progress (13).  Anything seems possible with the power of the resurrected beast.

     The false prophet leads men to idolatry, to worship the image of the beast, and he breaths life into that image.  Man was created in the image of God, and God breathed life into him.  This beast makes an image of antichrist, and breaths life into it, and men commit idolatry with their own narcissistic reflection.  This is the image that speaks to fallen man, but with the voice of the dragon (11, 15).  He is a jealous god, causing all who will not worship him to be killed.  Thus are the witnesses to the truth silenced and put to death, to lie unburied in the streets once more (14-15; cf. 11:7-10).

     Just as the bond-servants of God bear his seal on their foreheads (7:2-3; 14:1), so those who are not so sealed are marked with the mark of their master on their forehead and hand, i.e., their thinking and doing shows the brand of their owner (16; 14:9; 20:4).  The more beastly governments and their supporting religions and cultures become, the more difficult it becomes for those without this antichrist mark to earn a living (17). Those who bear the seal of God are persecuted, purged, and excluded from government, schools, and trades.  Their property is seized, and they are even imprisoned and killed.  And all this is done while the beast of worldly conformity is making the idol of the beast of worldly power speak “as the great defender and protector of earthly rights and equality, and the promise of a new era of social and material prosperity.”  It is interesting to me that James Ramsey wrote this in the late 1860’s, preceding this by saying that he saw “the power and wisdom of the world culminating in an enslaved and lifeless church” (Ramsey, p 485).

     13:18.  Wisdom is needed here indeed, and the world is full of those who claim to have the needed understanding.  The opinion that seems wisest to me is that the beast is man without God, and such a man’s number is six, and six again, and always six.  Therefore, his name is MAN, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six (cf. 15:2).  Apart from God, man always falls short of a complete seven.  But “There remains…a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9), where the redeemed find their rest in God.