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The job ahead of me here has two factors- God seems to be telling me to work faster; and it's getting a LOT more complicated. It's going to be jumping around a lot to get where we need to go- so if you try following along in YOUR Bible, you might just get hopelessly lost. But stick with me, and you'll hopefully be okay. Last time, I said we'd now be looking at our major players, and so we will. And also, there is a returning thread that will put itself into our story. Remember how, between fourth and fifth seals, we got a disaster, a hope for the future, and how we'll get there? We have that coming. But first...
Rev 13:1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
Rev 13:2 And the beast which I saw was like unto 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 seat, and great authority.
So this is how God sees the AntiChrist, the Living Idol, the Worthless Shepherd, who we first introduced way back at the first seal. So why go through him again? Because this and other passages expand what we KNOW about this ruler to come. First, observe something we saw last time:
Rev 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
Remember, the Dragon is Satan/the Devil/Lucifer Morningstar. And the Beast, the AC, is a reflection of him. Same seven heads and ten horns, but the Beast has ten crowns and the Dragon 7. Why? I believe: Seven is God's number of completion; twelve is His number of relationship with man (12 Patriarchs, 12 Disciples, etc). The Dragon casts himself as God's dark reflection, with seven heads and seven crowns. But ten horns- horns are power- power he's "a little" short of God on. The Beast is Satan's dark reflection, but with ten crowns AND ten horns. We know from Daniel 7 these 'horns' are ten kings who will rule with him; so he's a "little" short on the man-side as well. As they say in the comic books, his reach exceeds his grasp. Observe Daniel 7:
Dan 7:7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.
Dan 7:8 I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.
Okay, a step at a time: Three horns "plucked up by the roots": He will be a member of a 10-part confederacy, but will overthrow three of them to take the lead. In this way- and ONLY this way- he is like Napoleon Bonaparte, who first came to power as a member of the Triumvirate, only to force his personality past his two fellows and eventually become Emperor.
Fourth Beast: this is coming at the end of a prophesy that involved at one level the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Rome was indeed different from the others; and in Daniel 9:26 we learn that the AC leads a revived Rome at the End of Days. And somewhere along the line, he crushes (or God does) a Russian/Muslim confederation in Israel, and uses this win to a) launch himself a new Babylon to rule the world, and b) come to Jerusalem to name himself God.
Rev 13:3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.
Rev 13:4 And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?"
We have examined this bit about his supposed death and resurrection during the first seal. The second part about worship, that ties to the other two characters we'll be looking at. There's one more section about his character I want to weave in here, but first, let me go back to Daniel, to something I just noticed today...
Dan 7:11 "I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire.
Dan 7:12 As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time...
Nobody seems to have a good answer about this- including myself, at first. I thought at first, "How does God let the kings that rule with the AC live past Armageddon, when the AC and (the other guy coming up) get tossed in the lake of fire?" But then, one of the commentators brought up the pertinent point- they are NOT the kings that the crowns represent, they are the BEASTS that came before the AC's kingdom! Whether that means they are some manifestation of Persia (Iran), Babylon, Greece, and Rome, this I doubt; but I think it means that after Armageddon, when Christ rules on earth, there will be a remnant of the Gentile political system among those who survived, who took the name of Christ as theirs and survived the final horror. I won't go into it now, but there are several places in the Bible where nations such as Egypt, Assyria, and Edom will have a presence. (Or at least, their cognates in this world.) But for now, one more thing about the Beast.
Rev 17:8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend out of the abyss and go into perdition. And those dwelling on the earth will marvel, those whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
Rev 17:9 And here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits.
Rev 17:10 And there are seven kings; five have fallen, and one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time.
Rev 17:11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition.
Rev 17:12 And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have received no kingdom yet, but will receive authority as kings one hour with the beast.
Keep "the Woman" in mind for later. "The Beast that was, and is not, and yet is"- is the kingdom of the AC, as well as he himself- it was, falling apart finally with Constantinople's fall in 1453; is not- until the time of the AC- and yet is, when the Empire is somehow brought back to life. Sit on verse 9 for now. But now we are introduced to seven kings- "five have fallen, and one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time." This one doesn't fit into the ten crowns, does it? I really had to pray and "wrestle with the Man" to figure even what I did out about this. The key to it comes next:
Rev 17:11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition.
The AntiChrist, whom we have seen over and over, is the ultimate in Man making himself God. So these seven are the forerunners of this mindset, so that gives us some pretty good guesses at who the other seven might be:
Nimrod: According to Jewish legend, his whole gig was "putting God to death", so men would worship him. And he has deep roots in future parts of our story.
Sennacherib of Assyria: I think of him because of his siege of Jerusalem in 2 Kings, and what his underlings said to the Jews:
2Ki 18:33 Has any of the gods of the nations at all delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
2Ki 18:34 Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
2Ki 18:35 Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land out of my hand, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?
Jehoiakim of Judah: The son of Josiah, he was the one we learned (way back during my "All the kings, men" series) That according to the rabbis, dedicated himself to being the ultimate in wickedness, and that God finally left Jerusalem to her fate then.
Belshazzar of Babylon: He's the one who decided at a drunken orgy to take the golden cups looted from the First Temple to drink from- bringing out the Hand that wrote Mene Mene Tekel Upharishtim on the wall in Daniel's old age.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Greece. The test case for the "Abomination of Desolation", who killed a pig on the Temple altar and proclaimed himself god.
Domitian of Rome: This is the Caesar in Rome when John had his vision. He was crucial both in bringing back the old worship of gods (especially Minerva/Athena, goddess of "wisdom") AND Emperor worship, to the point (according to Wikipedia):
With regards to the emperor himself as a religious figure, both Suetonius and Cassius Dio allege that Domitian officially gave himself the title of Dominus et Deus ("Lord and God").
So there are two almost certainties and four really good fits. The one that is to come, is a lot trickier. Certainly there are a lot of good candidates between 90 AD and now. The catch is, "And when he comes, he must continue a short time. " Looking at our candidates, we can only guess how long Nimrod reigned, but men were living to be 300 to 500 in that time; Sennacherib reigned for 24 years before his own sons murdered him; Domitian reigned for 15 years, all the rest eleven. The Beast/AC himself has at best a seven year reign; so that eliminates candidates that we know of such as Napoleon (15 years), Lenin (7), Stalin (29), and Hitler (9). Even one further back, such as Julian the Apostate (8) don't make that cut. Not that I couldn't find good candidates in, perhaps, the Papacy; Paul IV banished the Roman Jews to a ghetto and banned books that taught Reformation under pain of death, for example. But my spirit is telling me, "This guy might not have come along yet."
One last thing, and we've alluded to it before:
Rev 17:12 And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have received no kingdom yet, but will receive authority as kings one hour with the beast.
Rev 17:13 These have one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast.
And these, contextually, are separate and different from the seven we just went through. Perhaps the 'short-timer' will be among these, and we have no way of knowing what 'one hour means' in this context. One commentator reminds us that, last time, we saw the Devil, cast down to earth, had only a short time; this we can reasonably guess is the 3 1/2 years after AC declares himself god. If I were pressed for a guess, I'd say he was part of 'the Triumvirate' and was one of the three that got overthrown. But we don't know.
All we do know, and will look at next time, is that the AC is so terrible, that that other thread I mention will begin with the end of the passage about him:
Rev 13:10 He who leads into captivity will go into captivity. If anyone will kill with the sword, he must be killed by a sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.
A good post to read and ponder over
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