Memory Verse: “Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And 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.” Rev. 13:1
Revelation 13 tells us about two beasts, one from the sea, the other from the land.
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?” 5The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
We’ve seen in Revelation 12, that the dragon can symbolize (1) Satan (Rev. 12:7-9), (2) pagan Rome (Rev. 12:4), or (3) papal Rome (Rev. 12:14). This is true again in Revelation thirteen: In verse one, the dragon is pagan Rome, because the beast described is clearly papal Rome. We are told that “the dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority,” and we know that pagan Rome gave papal Rome its seat and its authority. One example of the transfer of authority would be that the title of the head of the pagan Roman religion, Pontifex Maximus, once conferred honorarily on the pagan Roman emperors, was transferred to the popes, and still among their titles to this day.
But, in verse four, people are said to be worshiping the dragon, and it seems likely that people are not worshiping pagan Rome but Satan himself, because Satan, although cloaked in a hundred different names of diverse idols and pagan gods, is the hidden figure at the center of all pagan, anti-Christian religions.
The beast had the ten horns, which we know signifies pagan Rome, but this beast also has characteristics of the Leopard (Greece), the Bear (Medo-Persia) and the Lion (Babylon). This means that papal Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, had incorporated beliefs and doctrines that stemmed from Rome, Greece, Medo-Persia, and Babylon.
In last week’s lesson, we focused on the Babylon connection, but clearly the Catholic Church incorporated everything it could get its hands on, not just the Babylonish religion, but every pagan religion. This baptism of paganism continued into the modern era; one fairly recent example being that the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico has embraced the “Virgin of Guadalupe,” who, although thinly disguised as yet another Virgin Mary, is really the goddess Tonantzin, long worshiped by the native Aztec/Mexica before the arrival of Cortes and his conquistadors.
We are told that one of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. Adventists have traditionally identified the fatal wound as the blow delivered to the Catholic Church by Revolutionary France when, in 1798, General Berthier arrested the pope and the pope died in prison. The papacy’s political power has never yet fully recovered from this wound; it is now, for the most part, just another church. But this passage teaches that someday it will recover the full political power it wielded during the Medieval period.
The beginnings of the recovery of the papacy’s political power can be seen in events in the U.S., a nation founded by Protestants and based upon Protestant principles. 1960 saw the first Roman Catholic elected president. In 1984, President Reagan announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican, appointing William A. Wilson as ambassador. In 2015, Pope Francis addressed a packed joint session of congress, the first pontiff ever to do so; he was lauded and applauded as well as any popular president ever has been. So it is plain that the “deadly wound” is gradually being healed, and the Roman Church is gradually recovering its lost political power.
The beast uttered blasphemies. What is blasphemy? Scripture (Luke 5:18-26) tells us that it is blasphemous for a human being to claim the power to forgive sins. Of course Jesus, as God, had the power to forgive the paralytic’s sins. The Roman Catholic Church set up a system in which it purports to forgive sins; you enter the confessional and confess your sins to a priest, and the priest tells you what your penance will be and what you must do to be forgiven for your sins. Rome’s false system of expiation sets aside the priestly mediation of Jesus Christ in the heavenly sanctuary, in which Christ pleads his blood in our behalf. (1 Tim. 2:5-6; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1)
Another instance of blasphemy is claiming to be God when you are only a man (John 10:33), and the papacy does this with titles such as “Lord God the Pope,” and vicarious filii dei, the “vicar of the Son of God.” Jesus did confer religious authority on His church on earth (Mat. 16:18-20), but He never set up a single human individual or officer to be his personal representative on earth, having the power to speak and rule for Him. Hence the claim that each pope is the personal representative of Christ on earth is a blasphemous claim.
As we’ve seen in previous weeks, the papacy was given power for 42 prophetic months, which is 1260 prophetic days/literal years. This period began with the consolidation of papal power in 538 and ended with the “deadly wound,” which was the Revolutionary’s France’s arrest of the pope in 1798.
How can I claim that this beast from the sea is papal Rome when I have previously argued (including just two weeks ago) that in prophecy beasts represent political kingdoms, whereas women, fallen or virtuous, represent churches? Aren’t I now mixing up my symbols? The answer is that, during the 42 months of papal supremacy, the Catholic Church was not just a church. To the contrary, it was exercising tremendous political power, so much so that it can be represented by a beast as well as woman. The most famous example is when Pope Gregory VII forced King Henry IV to wait outside in the snow for three days and three nights at Canossa in the Italian Alps before allowing the king an audience. A political church or a church-state combination can be depicted as, or symbolized by, a beast. This is very important to bear in mind when we begin to interpret was is meant by “the mark of the beast.”
11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. 18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
The first beast came up out of the water, but this second beast came up out of the earth. We’ve seen that “waters” represents, peoples, tongues and nations, and so “the earth” must represent a sparsely populated area of the world.
This second beast looked like a lamb, which means it appeared to be gentle and Christian, like Jesus Christ the lamb of God. But when it opens its mouth to speak, it speaks like a dragon, which, we have seen, can symbolize Satan, pagan Rome, or papal Rome. Because it is called a beast, it is a political entity or a kingdom/nation. But, again, a beast can be a church/state combination, or a type of government in which a church exercises power over the king or the secular state.
This new beast has all the power, but it exercises its power on behalf of the first beast, which is papal Rome. It sets up an “image” to the first beast, which is papal Rome, the Roman Catholic Church. This new “image” of papal Rome would be nominally Christian (but really pagan), just as papal Rome was and is nominally Christian but really pagan, and it would include using political power to enforce the religious system.
By this time, the papacy’s deadly wound has been fully healed, meaning that the papacy has somehow managed to fully regain the political power it lost to Revolutionary France in 1798.
This second part of Revelation 13 is very straightforward and obvious, at least compared to much of Bible prophecy. The events described lie yet in the future.
The second beast of Revelation 13 must be a nation that (1) grew up in a lightly populated region of the earth, (2) has the power to “cause fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people,” and (3) will set up an image to the first beast. This image to the beast would have enough power to rule the whole world, and it would use that power to enforce the prerogatives of that Christian-but-really-pagan religion on the whole world. That includes enforcing “the mark of the beast” by excluding dissenters from the money economy.
What nation could set up such an image?