3. The Nature of the Beast
I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and
on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. Now the
beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like a bear, and his mouth
like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and
great authority. And I saw one of his heads as if it had been
mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed.
- Daniel 13:1-2
It is a strange looking beast. Can we really make sense of
this? Indeed we can, the way we make sense of anything. We
never understand anything by itself without its context, and that's why we'll
never understand the description of the beast in Revelation 13 by itself.
Like everything else, it makes sense in its context – in particular, the
mental world of the writer.
When Gary Hart ran for President in 1984 talking about "new ideas,"
Walter Mondale asked him, "Where's the beef?" It was
devastating, because it recalled to everyone the Wendy's ad campaign against
McDonald's, the point being that when you felt past the golden arches and
Ronald McDonald, there really wasn't much beef in the McDonald's burger. Mondale didn't have to explain all
this. The existing background in his hearers let Mondale say it all about
Gary Hart's campaign with just three words - "Where's the
beef?" With the Wendy's ad campaign in the minds of the hearers,
"Where's the beef?" worked for Mondale, because its meaning was not
in those three words alone but in the background they called to mind.
The Revelation works the same way. It looks strange if we're missing the
background. With the prophetic background that John assumes, the beef in
this beast becomes evident.
He Rises Up
The beast rises up out of the sea, his origin, which we are told is
"peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues" (Rev. 17:15).
Rising up - self-assertion - is the essence of his nature. He does not
receive appointment from above but muscles in from below by seductive promises,
just like Absalom the son of David (2 Samuel 15:1-12) - and like Satan his
master (Isaiah 14:13-17). He is revolutionary.
Daniel 11:36-38 says it like this:
Then
the king shall do according to his own will: he shall exalt and magnify
himself above every god, shall speak blasphemies against the God of gods, and
shall prosper until the wrath has been accomplished; for what has been
determined shall be done. He shall regard neither the god of his fathers
nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall exalt himself above
all. But in their place he shall honor a god of fortresses; and a god
which his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with
precious stones and pleasant things.
Here is the mentality of utopian revolution. Consider how the Bolsheviks
swept away the entire old order in
Nothing is more clearly antichrist than a revolutionary mass
movement. Hitler and Stalin are obvious to all in this respect.
When Stalin was warned that the Pope would disapprove of something, Stalin's
reply was, "How many divisions does he have?" Truly, Stalin
disdained every god and worshiped the god of fortresses. In the same way,
Hitler disdained every principle except force and deceit.
If we mean to be faithful to God and to overcome the mark and number of the
beast, we must be very ruthless with our love of revolution and of violence,
and with the contempt for the wisdom of the past which the spirit of antichrist
teaches. In many counselors there is safety, says the proverb. The
simplest way to be robbed of these counselors is to be convinced that wisdom is
new with us, and that those that came before us, along with everyone around us,
are all fools that we wise men need not learn from. We Americans need to
pay special attention, because this attitude defines American culture from the beginning,
so that anyone who is a product of American culture and religion must radically
repent (change his mind). In a day that American values have profoundly
influenced the entire world, any of us who thinks he is not a product of
American culture and its contempt for the past needs to remember that Pharisee
in Luke 18:9-14 who said, "God, I thank you that I am not like other
men."
He Arises from the Empires of the Past
The pride of any antichrist flatters him that he is the salvation of the
world that mankind has always waited for. Now at last, the Revolution has
come and we will finally shake off the chains of the old, corrupt past.
No more reforming and tinkering, but as we read on any dollar bill, "Novus
Ordo Seclorum" - "A New Order of the Ages" - taken from Virgil's
Fourth Eclogue, which promises: "the iron shall cease, the golden race
arise."
All utopian revolutions talk this way - the French Revolution, the Russian
Revolution, and certainly the first in the modern era - the American Revolution
- which has inspired revolutions ever since. But as Isaiah says, "He
makes the omens of boasters to fail." Peter denied Jesus precisely
because he boasted that he would not. Children who boast that they will
not do like their parents do exactly what they despise in their parents.
And utopian revolutionaries who boast that the world is new with them recreate
the order they thought they were doing away with, only worse. The
Bolsheviks boasted that they had overthrown the Czarist regime, but by 1921 it
was obvious, especially to the peasants and the sailors of Kronstadt including
the Bolsheviks among them, that they had reconstituted the Czarist regime, but
with greater ruthlessness. Utopian revolutions always arise out of
the old order that they scoff at, and so they recreate it, especially including
their fierce repression of the poor and the weak.
Revelation 13:2 tells us which empires the beast arises from, and how he
expresses their nature:
Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority.
We find these in Daniel 7:3-7, and then the beast himself, described as follows:
And four great beasts
came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion, and had
eagle’s wings. I watched till its
wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand
up on two feet like a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And suddenly another beast, a second, like a
bear. It was raised up on one side, and
three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.
And they said thus to it: “Arise, devour much flesh.” After
this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back
four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and dominion was
given to it. After this I saw in
the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible,
exceedingly strong. It had huge iron
teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its
feet. It was different from all the
beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.
Daniel speaks repeatedly of four great empires following one
another. In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar sees a great statue with a head of
gold, arms and breast of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, and legs of iron,
with its feet partly iron and partly clay. These kingdoms unite to form
one awesome image, which is shattered by the kingdom of God striking it in its
feet - the last kingdom. The head is the Babylonian kingdom of
Nebuchadnezzar. The second, inferior to it, is the kingdom of the Medes
and Persians which replaced it. The Medo-Persian
Empire was replaced by the Greek empire established by Alexander, which was
divided into four parts by his four generals, as we are told in more detail in
Daniel 8:5-8 and 8:20-22. The fourth is the Roman Empire, out of which
emerged a composite empire of multiple kingdoms - its ten toes
corresponding to the ten horns of the beast which represent the multiple rival
kings by which it is ruled. As they progress from gold to iron and clay,
they progress to greater internal disunity.
The Beast Is Like a Leopard
The leopard that Revelation 13:2 refers to is the third of the four
beasts arising from the sea, described in Daniel 7:6 as follows:
After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had
on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and
dominion was given to it.
Having seven heads, the beast is like the leopard, the four-headed
Hellenistic (Greek) empire that arose out of Alexander's conquests after his
death. What was this leopard like?
Unlike any of its predecessors, it was not politically unified.
Culturally, it operated as a single empire, but it consisted of rival kingdoms
that were frequently at war with one another, especially Syria and Egypt.
What made them one was their common Greek culture. Beginning with
Alexander, this empire appointed itself the evangelist of its Greek civilization,
by which the benighted world around it would be lifted out of its
darkness. Indeed, the leopard was a predator who by “doing
good” did right well. While the captive peoples received Greek
civilization, whether they wanted it or not, their conquerors plundered and
devastated them while congratulating themselves for selflessly bearing the
Greek Man's Burden of civilizing the barbarians. When the Greeks under
Antiochus Epiphanes decided to "civilize" the Jews this way by
suppressing the temple worship and by sacrificing swine on the altar of God,
the Jews saw this cultural imperialism as a satanic attempt to destroy the
worship of the true God. The beast is
like this leopard.
His Feet Are Like a Bear
The bear is the second of the four beasts, described in Daniel 7:5 as follows:
And suddenly another
beast, a second, like a bear. It was
raised up on one side, and three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And they said thus to it: “Arise,
devour much flesh.”
Since this bear, the second of the four empires, is the empire of the Medes and the Persians, the feet of this beast resemble Media-Persia. What is the nature of this empire?
Daniel was led in one of his intercessions for God’s people to fast as follows (Daniel 10:2-3):
In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, until three full weeks were fulfilled.
At the end of this time, the angel of God appeared to Daniel to give him revelation, and he explained his delay in this way (Daniel 10:12-13):
Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.
Michael is the leader of the angels when there is war in heaven in Revelation 12. The prince of Persia opposing the angel, which Michael had to help him with, was an evil angel of the same class, not a human figure. The human rulers here were the kings of Persia whom the angel had been left alone with, to defend them from the satanic principality that ruled their empire. This may explain why the Persian kings, beginning with Cyrus, were on the whole more merciful kings than the Babylonians and Assyrians before them or the Hellenistic kings that followed. But what kind of power is this prince of Persia?
What Daniel fasted from in his struggle against it explains how it beguiles people – fancy food and drink, and pampering the body. This is confirmed more completely in the king’s banquet given to us in the first chapter of Esther. These things are not bad things, since outside these three weeks Daniel clearly used them. It’s pointless and indeed harmful to avoid them as though they are themselves the enemy. But since the prince of Persia rules by convincing us that life is not worthwhile without them, Daniel had to lay them aside in the face of that accusation when he met his enemy as he prayed to God.
Returning to the beast, we see that he walks through the earth like Persia, by a spirit of luxury and self-indulgence. And yet the fourth beast “trampled the residue with its feet.” Thus we see here what many miss, that the taste for luxury and self-indulgence does not make us easy-going and gentle but leads on the contrary to extreme cruelty and wanton violence. The lure of plunder, rape and easy living powered the Spanish conquest of Mexico and South America. The taste for luxury and easy living motivates the American military to hold bases in many militarily useless places like Okinawa. These harm the interests of the United States by inspiring hostility, but they impel the United States on a path of conquest and imperial domination to justify their existence. In the same way, the Red Army wanted to stay in East Germany and other Eastern European nations simply because life was more pleasant there than back in Russia.
Indeed, self-indulgence does not simply make people
soft. It impels their kingdoms to
violence and plunder. In this way, the
lure of easy living impels the beast to trample the earth so that it can
preserve its luxurious lifestyle. The
iron feet of the American occupation that makes sewage run in the streets of
Baghdad arose to trample due to the American lust for easy living on cheap
petroleum. If
His Mouth Is Like the Mouth of a Lion
The lion is the first of the four empires, and from the vision of the statue in Daniel 2, this is clearly Babylon, the empire of the Chaldeans. Habakkuk writes concerning the “Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation,” that “their justice and dignity proceed from themselves” (Habakkuk 1:6-7). The picture we get is the unrighteous judge in the parable “who did not fear God nor regard man” (Luke 18:2). “The great man speaks the desire of his soul,” as Jeremiah puts it. He says what he wants, and he gives his judgment, and of course he’s right because he is his own judge. Whoever disagrees is just wrong, and probably evil. If the beast is insulted, then like Lamech the son of Cain he teaches people to respect him – 77-fold!
Because the beast is his own judge, he speaks great things and blasphemies (Rev. 13:5). Being given authority to continue for a while, he goes further, opening his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven (Rev.13:6). The Babylonian kingdom begins in Genesis 11, where men get together to build a tower in order to make a name for themselves. This helps us to understand the nature of his blasphemies.
All kinds of religious people are deceived by the beast - indeed, as Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, all who do not receive the love of the truth. The blasphemy of the beast is not the kind of direct insult to God or to the feelings of religious people that prompts them to write angry letters to the Federal Communications Commission.
He blasphemes against God by taking God’s place, promising what only God can deliver. By decreeing that no one can buy or sell without his mark or his number, he means to show that in him, not in God, all move and live and have their being. Life is impossible without his approval – he, not God, is the Indispensable[1]. This is what we see in the insolent speech and letter of Sennacherib to Hezekiah (Isaiah 36).
He blasphemes against God’s tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven by proclaiming himself the kingdom of God on earth - his kingdom our home, sweet home. Those who are strangers here, whose home is in heaven, are counted treasonable because they are not grateful for the sweet life of peace and safety (1 Thessalonians 5:3) that the beast and all the other kingdoms of this world provide to those who faithfully serve them, overlooking the slaughter and oppression by which they provide these benefits. If we don’t like the kingdom of the beast we should go somewhere else. But by denying us the power to buy or sell, he sets out to prove that there is nowhere else.
Finally, with his mouth he devours the poor. The love of money is the root of every evil, and the kingdom of the beast is one of those evils. 666 gold talents is Solomon’s annual income (1 Kings 10:14, 2 Chronicles 9:13), and 666 is the number of the beast. Money is what makes his kingdom go around. He keeps his servants in line by forbidding them to buy or sell without his mark or his number. The love of money always means loving those who can give you money - the rich - and despising those who cannot - the poor. This has nothing in common with the kingdom of God, which God gives to the poor, to those who need God. The kingdom of the beast, whose number is 666, gives the poor to the rich and strong, whose aim is to profit from them – to feed on them. Their natural resources are for plunder, and their bodies are for cheap labor, and when they are in the way, the mouth of the beast devours them from the earth. Even relieving their poverty is an industry, an occasion for financial gain. In the Proverbs the beast and those who bear his mark are described in this way (Proverbs 30:11-14):
A generation that curses its father and does not bless its mother.
A generation pure in its own eyes is not washed from its filthiness.
A generation – oh how lofty are their eyes! – and their
eyelids are lifted up.
A generation whose teeth are swords and whose fangs are knives,
To devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men.