It is gloriously easy to get caught up in the business of life and forget for a moment (or a decade) about beasts, dragons and antichrists. Jesus warns his disciples in Matthew 24 that there is a time coming on a day or hour no one knows, when the Son of Man will come on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect.’ But even if you see this prediction as a ‘secret rapture’ designed to spare his church from suffering [see Chapter 19 for why you shouldn’t], be warned: there are beasts and antichrists who have been here already, are here now and there will be more to come, as the Dragon (Satan) continues to try and wage war on us through them.
The focus today is on the Beast (as well as a second beast). We met the Beast first in Revelation 11:7 where he waged war on the two witnesses. He will also turn up in Revelation 16:13; 19:20; 20:10. Revelation likes to cycle around to tell the story from different angles (meaning it is not simply chronological), and here in Revelation 13 the Beast emerges from the sea followed by another beast from the land.
Let’s take a look at three ways of seeing this chapter.
The Left Behind Beast
Left Behind is a series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. They are ‘futurist’ and ‘dispensationalist’ – i.e. into the Secret Rapture theory.
The Beast from the sea in Left Behind is a very charismatic future world leader, the antichrist. He saves the day during a post-rapture Tribulation period, but ends up persecutes the saints and requires worship. People receive his mark.
He ultimately consolidates global dominion. The second Beast (from the earth) then becomes a false prophet who directs people to worship the Antichrist and enforces the mark. The beast is equated to the ‘man of lawlessness’ from 2 Thes 2 and the beasts in Daniel 7. Revelation is seen as a roadmap of the future.
Ian Paul’s Beast
This is in contrast to Ian Paul’s symbolic and historical, pastoral reading of Revelation. He avoids constructing a detailed timeline or a single future antagonist figure. He wants us to interpret Revelation in its first-century historical context. It’s written to seven churches facing the might of Rome and imperial persecution. He treats it as Apocalyptic literature, where the meaning is coded, but supposed to be decoded by enlightened readers, who immediately get the references (see e.g. the Dragon in Chapter 19).
A maths graduate, Ian Paul is drawn to the numbers in Revelation and notes the well known idea that the ‘number of the Beast’ (666) should be interpreted through a sort o fnumber coding called ‘gematria.’ 666 is likely as an allusion to Nero Caesar in Hebrew. Nero was the notorious prosecutor of Christians who ‘fiddled while Rome burned’ and blamed the Christians for it.
But Ian Paul doesn’t just locate the Beast in the past (a preterist position), he also sees the Beast as symbolic of oppression of any human authority that defies God’s sovereignty. John’s vision therefore critiques each and every totalitarian ruler who blasphemes God and persecutes the faithful. The Beast embodies not just Nero in the past or a solo dictator in the future, but the ongoing contest between divine authority and human systems of power. The beast can be seen at work in systems that promise peace and prosperity while delivering chaos, suffering, and idolatry.
G. K. Beale’s chunky commentary (NIGTC)
Beale sees the Beast through the lens of the biblical canon and symbolism. He brings to life the imagery in Daniel 7 and gives a strong account of how the Beast’s characteristics as leopard, bear, lion and ten horns are intentionally mirroring Daniel’s four beasts. This gives the sense that the Beast has already been at work in history and will be at work in any successive empires or kings that set themselves up against God. So the Beast is a historical symbol intelligible to Ephesians in 1st Century Imperial Rome, and also a recurring archetype of anti-God power that stretches from ancient empires through all human history.
So the Beast includes all forms of political, religious, economic, and cultural opposition to Christ and the church that you can imagine (and may have experienced in your country). The two beasts (from the sea and the land) are composite figures given power by the dragon (Satan). The image of the Beast and the mark and examples of how this ‘Beastly spirit’ tries to inflict itself on the people of God.
What should we make of all this? Justin Dillehay at the Gospel Coalition, has put forward a helpful field-guide.1
He first reminds us Narnia fans of CS Lewis’s character ‘Shift the Ape.’ In The Last Battle Shift is an ape, ‘the cleverest, ugliest, most wrinkled Ape you can imagine.’ As Aaron Armstrong puts it: ‘Shift is a swindler, a con-artist who dresses his “friend” Puzzle (a donkey) in a discarded lion-skin in order to pose as a false Aslan and gain glory for himself. Interestingly, as the story goes, he becomes increasingly insistent that he’s a man, not an ape; he dons ill-fitting clothing and a crumpled crown that make him look far more silly than serious. Nevertheless, he insists, “I’m a man!”’2
Dillehay groups the dragon and the two beasts together into an ‘unholy trinity.’ He agrees that while:
‘there’s plenty we can’t be sure about… based on the intercanonical connections of Scripture, the beast should be understood as a powerful human kingdom that blasphemes God and persecutes his people and is seen throughout history (especially at the end of the age).’
This is quite helpful in accounting for the seemingly forward direction of Revelation where things are clearly coming to a head. The last earthquake we saw (seals) was more powerful and destructive than the previous two. The final incarnation(s) of the beast may well mean there is worse to come – worse even than Nero, Domitian, or your pick of modern day monsters.
Dillehay also takes us back to Daniel, arguing with Beale that:
The first rule is to read Revelation 13 in light of the Old Testament, not in light of the news cycle (although the news cycle can help you make applications).
In Daniel’s dream four beasts are seen [Daniel 7].
- one like a lion (v. 4), (represents Babylonian Empire)
- one like a bear (v. 5), (represents Medo-Persia)
- one like a leopard with four wings heads (v. 6), (represents Greece divided in four)
- one with 10 horns and iron teeth 7–8 (represents the might of Rome) and a little horn with a boastful mouth (may represent Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who desecrated the Jerusalem Temple – and a type of antichrist).
And while Revelation 13:2 is just one beast it reminds us of Daniel’s four. John describes this beast as:
- like a leopard (Daniel’s third beast – Greece),
- with feet like a bear’s (Daniel’s second beast – Medo-Persia),
- with a mouth like a lion’s (Daniel’s first beast – Babylon),
- with 10 horns and a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words (Daniel’s fourth beast – Rome) and its little horn (Antiochus).
The beast was “given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words” like the little horn in Daniel (Rev. 13:5; cf. v. 6; Dan. 7:25; 2 Thess. 2:4). The Beast doesn’t want to serve God but to be God – a trait he shares with the ancient power the Dragon (Satan).
As Dillehay puts it:
‘Here, the verbal similarities with Paul’s “man of lawlessness” are so close that it makes his identity with the Beast virtually certain (2 Thess. 2:1–12). Not only does the beast hate God, but it also hates God’s people.’
The Beast is ‘allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them’ (Rev. 13:7; Dan. 7:21). Through the threat of violence (Rev. 13:15) and economic penalties (v. 17), the Beast pressures people into false worship. The only Resistance comes from those whose names were written in the Lamb’s book of life (v. 8).
He gains control through civil government. The Beast’s rule does not punish evil but practices it. It persecutes those who do good instead of honouring them. It demands worship and idolatry like the Caesars with their Imperial cult.
‘While the Lamb commands us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, the beast commands us to give to Caesar what is God’s (i.e., worship: Rev. 13:5–6, 15; Mark 12:17).’ Dillehay
So is the Beast past, present or future (or all three)?
Rapture theology aside LaHaye and Jenkins are probably onto something that we can expect at least one end of the age version of the Beast that will terrorise and try to deceive the elect. The ‘man of lawlessness’ that Paul talks about in Thessalonians. He will be there at the coming of our Lord Jesus but he will be ‘doomed to destruction’ [2 Thes 2:2].
But the author of 2 Thessalonians could also state at time of writing that ‘the mystery of lawlessness [was] already at work’ (2 Thes 2: 7). And the human author of Revelation also wrote elsewhere that ‘as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come’ (1 John 2:18).
‘Practically, this frees us to identify numerous embodiments of the beast throughout history. For the early church, it was Nero and the Roman Empire. For 20th-century Russian Christians, it was the Soviet Union. For modern American Christians, there can be times when it’s our own government.
This also frees us from having to decide whether the current beast figure is the final one. In one sense, it doesn’t matter. Any time a government or its figurehead requires us to disobey God under pain of legal or economic sanctions, it has become the beast, and we’re called to resist. Perhaps the final antichrist will be brazen enough to actually say, “I am God.” But he doesn’t have to—he simply has to make all other claims of loyalty subservient to those of the state, whether it’s the claims of the family, the church, or God himself. To demand ultimate allegiance is to demand worship, and to yield ultimate allegiance is worship.
So let’s be on the alert. For if Revelation teaches us anything, it’s that those who follow the Lamb must always be ready for the beast.’ Dillehay
Read More in this Series
The Lamb Wins Whole Series Catch Up : Introduction: Chp 1: Hope is Here | Chp 2: First, Love: Ephesus | Chp 3: Fear Not: Smyrna | Chp 4: I Know: Pergamum | Chp 5: Tolerate This: Thyatira | Chp 6: Wake Up: Sardis | Chp 7: Hold On: Philadelphia | Chp 8: Knock, Knock: Laodecia | Chp 9: What Must Soon Take Place | Chp 10: Holy Forever | Chp 11: Most Blessed | Chp 12: One That Was Slain | Chp 13: Come Home | Chp 14: Sun Forbear to Shine | Chp 15: 144000 | Chp 16 Sound of Silence | Chp 17: Spiralling Down
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