13 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed the beast with wonder. 4 Men 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?”
It is important to look at these beasts in the sense of a widening and narrowing lens. It's almost a reversal of what we see with God, then Angels, then Saints. We see the beast that is the devil, then the beast that is the Roman empire then the beast that is one of the emperors of that empire- Nero.
It is being illustrated how all the evil in the devil manifests itself through mankind through these ruthless men and regimes.
The image begins with the satanic image we saw in chapter 12 of a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns. Rather than flying through the heavens, sweeping down stars, this beast is rising up out of the sea which represents the gentile nations.
The beast displayed here is a composite of the 4 beasts shown in Daniel 7:3-7.
3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4 The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand upon two feet like a man; and the mind of a man was given to it. 5 And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side; it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’ 6 After this I looked, and lo, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back; and the beast had four heads; and dominion was given to it. 7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
The 4 beasts are the 4 empires that oppressed Israel. They are the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and- now- the Romans. Yet the horns and heads and diadems expand this definition outward to even future kingdoms so that Rome becomes a type of all political and tyrannical evil, through time. This will ultimately culminate in the antichrist.
The seven headed beast appears 3 times. It is seen in Revelation 12, here in 13 and again in 17 and there are different meanings given to what the 7 heads represent. One of those representations is of 7 kings. These kings are 7 emperors of the Roman empire. One of these kings receives a mortal wound that is healed.
Historically. the first 7 emperors of Rome are listed as follows (Source: Britannica):
Augustus (27 bce–14 ce)
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Tiberius (14–37 ce)
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Caligula (37–41 ce)
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Claudius (41–54 ce)
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Nero (54–68 ce)
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Galba (68–69 ce)
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Otho (January–April 69 ce)
These are the seven kings.
The significance of the mortal wound is that it represents on the kings that died but was symbolically raised from the dead. We will get more into that later. Suffice it to say that this particular beast was feared like no other before him.
The Neronian persecution, under which John was exiled, was indeed 42 months long. Notice what John says at the start of this book:
9 I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
This is to me, just one of my pieces of evidence that John wrote this book just after the death of Nero and during the short reign of Galba. The reader is being warned that another is coming who will be so terrible that it will be as if Nero had been reincarnated. The mortal wound healed.
The persecution of John and the other Christians was especially horrible because it was two-fold. There were two beasts in league with each other. One would eventually turn on the other.
This beast rises from the land which means it is of a religious nature. We can tell that this is a false religious figure because it looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. Remember the references to Revelation 2:9 and 3:9.
Many people are obsessed with the end-times fulfilment of this symbolism rather than what is right at hand. I believe you have to understand the latter to have any hope of understanding the former. This very much provides a template that will reverberate through history.
The actual mortal wound that killed Nero was perceived to be a mortal wound to the Roman empire- the 7 headed beast.
Verse 13 seems to be symbolic that this beast imitates the power of Elijah in some way- literal or not. By virtue of this, it uses the authority vested in it by virtue of the Jewish Priesthood in order to actually betray God by promoting allegiance to His enemy. This could be what is meant by creating an image of the beast and bringing it to life.
Of course, this was virtually the entire history of the Jews under the Roman empire and even before. The Herods were nothing but Roman puppets and the Jewish leaders' willingness to sell out to Rome is well recorded.
John 19:10 Pilate therefore said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin.”
12 Upon this Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend; every one who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.” 13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, and in Hebrew, Gab′batha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
Frankly, the fire coming from the sky is not nearly as important as this point. The Roman empire was actually brought back to life by the assistance of the so-called people of God. They forced allegiance to Rome and even cooperated with the persecution and killing of those who refused,
Much print has been put down over centuries attempting to assign this number to various individuals that have lived through time. A lot of manipulation of numbers and twisting of titles have been used to assign this to the Pope. Even more print has been generated to show how this is some type of implanted microchip or something.
I remember as a kid being told it was the UPC product labels.
However, a clear reading of the text here, and in other places, shows that John is instructing his own 1st century audience that this is a person that they can identify and that he is one of the 7 Kings (Roman Emperors), one of which had a mortal wound. In chapter 17, we are actually informed that 5 of the kings had fallen.
666 has multiple meanings.
First, it is the number of the name of one of the Kings. In Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the letters have numeric values. The names of some persons were given as numbers in the event a Christian were caught with these letters. It was a code.
John's audience knew who he was talking about.
Source The Roanoke Times, 1996:
``Calling Nero a beast, an enemy of saints as is outlined in the Scriptures, was certainly not a positive image. So they wanted to use a code,'' explained Marianne Meye Thompson, New Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. ``Christians of that era would have known to whom it referred.''
Thompson, who teaches a class on Revelation at the Pasadena school, says that a particular Hebrew acronym of Nero's name equals 666.
Another passage, Revelation 13:12, refers to the beast as one whose ``deadly wound was healed.'' That is thought to be a reference to Nero's suicide. Nero killed himself in A.D. 68, but legend had it that he fled to the east and would return.
Thus, in the first sense, John is referring to Nero who just recently died and someone who would come that be so horrible as to be Nero raised. More on that later.
The next meaning of 666. The Synagogue of Satan.
The number 666 appears only one other time in Scripture in a verse referring to King Solomon.
A coincidence?
I don't think so.
That's about 67,000 lbs of gold annually. At today's prices, that's about $3 Trillion of gold a year. We also know that Solomon had about 1,000 wives and concubines. No man in history exhausted himself more trying to satisfy the desires of the flesh with material things. In the end, he lamented it all as a chase after the wind. (Ecclesiastes 1).
No one person personifies the downfall of Israel more than this one man. He literally changed from King of Israel and a type of Christ to an idolatrous monster and a type of the antichrist.
The allusion to him is absolute and foundational to the conflict presented here.
Amos 5:26
And you carried the tent of your king— and Saturn, your star god idols that you crafted for yourselves.
Acts 7:43 And you took up the tent of Moloch,
and the star of the god Rephan,
the figures which you made to worship;
and I will remove you beyond Babylon.’
The star that both of these verses condemn starts with Solomon. It is a symbol of the occult called a Hexagram.
The star was associated with Solomon's idolatry and the occult. Is is the perfect pictoral depiction of the mark of the beast with it's 6 inner sides, 6 Triangles and 6 points.
I am absolutely convinced this is the Mark of the beast.
Depicted on the Israeli flag and called the Star of David, it has no connection with the Biblical King David. Here is a good article I found on the subject.
Remember, Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 says that these people say they are Jews but are actually a Synagogue of Satan. One of the other books written by John call those who deny Christ, Antichrists. The Bible case that the antichrist will eventually rise from this false Judaism is something I see as pretty much unimpeachable. The fact that it gets it's start by assisting the Roman beast is unarguable..
Join us next time for Part 14
