This article, a crucial part of our ongoing series on the Book of Revelation, delves into identifying the two beasts in chapters 13 and 17. If you’ve been following our series, particularly the first two articles, Rules of Revelation parts I and II, you’ll be familiar with our approach to deciphering Revelation’s symbolism. We’ll continue to use this method to determine the identity and symbolism of the beasts while also exploring their historical parallels.
As you may recall from the previous articles, a fundamental rule we will follow is that the symbols in the Book of Revelation must represent something or someone the initial audience, the Christians of the Apostle John’s Day, would recognize. This rule is of the utmost importance as it guides our interpretive approach and ensures we stay true to the context of the Book of Revelation. The significance of this rule will become evident as we start identifying the beasts, giving us a deeper understanding of the text and actively involving us in the historical context of the Book of Revelation.
Secondly, we will examine the literal clues in the Book of Revelation, focusing on chapters 13 and 17. Finally, we will validate our findings by filtering them through the lens of history, providing a confident and reassured interpretation. This rigorous process of validation through historical filtering will not only give us a deeper understanding of the text but also provide us with additional information about the historical and contextual explanations for the beasts, instilling a sense of confidence in our interpretation.
Revelation 13 describes two beasts employing symbolism and literal accounts of some of their actions. Therefore, we will divide chapter 13 this way:
The first beast – Revelation 13:1-8
The second beast – Revelation 13:11-18
The first is “a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.” 12 If we read verses 1 through 8 as pertaining to a single entity, given the actions and exploits described in verses 3-8, we should ignore the temptation to conclude that the beast in verses 1 through 8 is a person. Yet, this conclusion leaves us with several questions we must sort out. The most glaring one comes from verse 3: “And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed.” This verse seemingly indicates a miraculous recovery after receiving a mortal wound or resurrection. How can one have a partial mortal wound? And this wound is only to one of the beast’s seven heads.
Another problem is that there are no other references in scripture where a man rose up out of the sea; they always rise up out of the earth, IE, man formed from the dust of the ground. 3 Then there is the problem with this beast appearing out of nowhere “to make war against the saints and overcome them.” Finally, this interpretation raises another question in Revelation 17:10: “There are seven kings.” If this beast is a man, why would he have seven kings?
A similar vision in Daniel 7 provides us with answers to some of our questions. Daniel describes “four great beasts coming up from the sea.” 4 Each of the beasts in Daniel’s vision was an empire. He describes the fourth beast as different from the previous three, and Daniel’s beast, like the one in Revelation 13, has ten horns.
In verse 2a, “The beast which I saw was like a leopard; his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion.” If we compare the beasts in Daniel 7 to this beast, we notice that it is different in that it is not singular in appearance but composed of parts of four creatures. This multi-composition represents a heterogeneous empire of various peoples, languages, and customs. The previous empires that ruled the world in the past were homogeneous, like the Babylonian Empire, comprised of a singular people. The same applies to the Egyptians, the Medes, and the Greeks. However, the Empire of Rome was heterogeneous, symbolized by the diverse parts of the beast.
The first beast (Revelation 13:1-2) describes an empire, and (Revelation 13:3-8) describes the man who rules that Empire. A supernatural man to be sure, the false christ Jesus warns us of, “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, the very elect.” This connection to the false Christ is crucial in understanding the significance and impact of the beasts in the Book of Revelation. 5 The first portion of chapter 13 describes an empire that rises out of the sea of humanity and becomes dominant over the known world, “having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name.” A singular name. The symbolism in this verse relates to both the Empire and the ruler and will become more apparent as we get to Revelation 17.
In most Biblical prophecies, the treatment of kings and kingdoms is linked, especially in matters of judgment. In the book of Exodus, God judged Egypt as the nation, while the focal point of God’s judgment was Pharaoh. The book of Ezekiel also contains this format of prophecy. Ezekiel 27 is a lamentation against Tyre, while chapter 28 is a proclamation against the king of Tyre. This pattern is consistent in prophecy and judgment against the Empire and its ruler. For a beast (king or ruler) to be able to “make war against the saints and overcome them,” he must have the instrument at his disposal to carry out this persecution; hence, he needs an empire to have the power to do so. This need for resources is why we find the beast of the sea (the Empire) before the beast (the ruler).
Verses three through eight tell us some extraordinary things about this beast (the man). “He will receive a mortal wound.” In other words, he will die and then be resurrected—a false christ. The one Jesus warns of. Heralding this false christ, we find two questions in verse 4, posed to all of mankind, “Who is like the beast?” and “Who is able to make war with him?” Valid questions indeed: who can make war against a resurrected man? And this man, this beast, will war against the saints and overcome them.
Now for the second beast described in chapters 13:11-18. We know he’s a man based on a couple of pieces of information. In verse 11, “he rose up from the earth,” symbolizes a man. Being formed from the dust of the ground is symbolism, which dates back to man’s creation.6 The beast in verse 11 has “two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.” This beast is the false prophet to come in conjunction with the false Christ; the two Jesus warned us of in Matthew 24: false Christ and false prophets.
His job is to proclaim the false christ as the real Christ and make everyone worship the false christ and his image. He also possesses specific supernatural abilities and broad authority. 7 This authority extends over everyone and everything in the Empire, save the king. This order of authority is reminiscent of Joseph’s position in Egypt. Joseph had the final say over everything in Egypt except Pharaoh’s house, and he was second to none save Pharaoh himself. This second beast, the false prophet, can enforce the worship of the beast and its image because he controls all economic activity. Those who wish to engage in economic activity (make a living or purchase life-sustaining foodstuffs) must show allegiance to the beast or his image in some manner of worship.
Verse 18 is even more specific in identifying the second beast, “it is the number of a man.” The numerical number of this beast is “666.” You can find many biblical commentaries that have determined this beast is Nero Caesar, 8 which I’m afraid I have to disagree with. Nero Caesar is one of the main characters mentioned in the prophecies about the beasts, but he is not the beast described in verses 11-18. The recent popular source for this determination is Robert Govett’s excellent book on Revelation, The Apocalypse Expounded. Ironically, in this work, Govett gives the beast’s true identity but seems unsure of the conclusion he refers to. Govett and others concluded that ‘666’ was decoded to Nero, based on Hebrew numerology called gematria, which dates back to the sixth century BC. It is the mystical study of the relationship between alphabetic letters and numbers. Each letter corresponds to a number, so If you wanted to understand a spiritual message encoded in the text, you would decipher it by matching the corresponding letters to numbers. As Govett points out, six hundred sixty-six can equal Nero Caesar. Govett puts forth the reasons for this being the correct deciphering but comes short of declaring it as definitive.
The Greeks studied a similar form of gematria, called geometria, from where the word geometry comes—the combination of numbers, letters, and shapes. Whereas the Jews attached numerical values to letters, the Greeks attached numerical values to whole words, known as isopsephy. Some ancient manuscripts indicate that the beast’s number is 616 instead of 666, as noted by Ireanus. However, the difference between the two is due to different opinions among translators. Some say this number should be decoded from Greek, while others say Aramaic. As a discipline, gematria and geometria were taken very seriously by both the Jewish and Greek scholars. Ancient Greek philosophers explored connections between letters, numbers, and cosmic order, which we should not arbitrarily brush aside, considering what and who we are talking about.
The beast’s number in verse 18 is not Nero Caesar. Here, the symbolic must give way to the literal. We cannot accurately ascribe any of the attributes and actions of the false prophet in verses 12-17 to Nero. Nero never pointed to another more significant than himself. He was never second to anyone. He doesn’t fit the profile of the false prophet or his actions. The reason so many are confused over the roles of the two beasts is the refusal to let go of 666 being a name.
To sort through this, I want to return to reading verse 18 in the original Greek. “Here the wisdom is. The one having understanding, let him count the number of the beast, for a man’s it is, and the number is of it six hundred sixty six.”
The quote above is the interlinear (word-for-word) translation from Greek to English. You will no doubt notice that the sentence structure is different from that of English, and when we read the translation, we subconsciously equate the sentence structure and focal points as if they were initially composed in English. In other words, we assume the number of a man means the man’s name, which is incorrect. Looking at the verse again, “the number for a man it is,” and “the number of it is.” (italics mine). It is our key. The number equates to an it, a being, not the name of the being. It’s the number of a man, indicating it’s a created being; it’s just not a name. Some translations render it as his, which doesn’t pose a problem, as his, in context, is still not a name, but a description. The false prophet, the second beast, is a man who proclaims the first beast as the savior of mankind.
Govett mentions the second beast’s identity, a quote from Aleister Crowley’s book, The Book of Thoth: Crowley, the famed mystic who died in 1947. Crowley, and I doubt he was the first to propose this, deciphered 666 to To Meta Θhpion, Koine Greek for The Great Serpent.
In English: The Great Serpent
666 describes it as a being, or he as a person, but not a name, and we can read 666 as either The Great Serpent or The Great Beast. We can trace the roots of Θhpion in Greek mythology back to the time of the Phoenicians—a mythology that was alive and well in the Apostle John’s day. And I cannot look past the fact the first false prophet, appearing in the Garden of Eden, was a serpent. How much time has been wasted on naming the second beast? The name of the second beast is irrelevant, for he will appear just after the first beast, the resurrected false christ, has made his.
I must insert a comment here. Rejecting this deciphering of 666 because it was made by a mystic, borders on theological arrogance. Do not assume Christians are the only people who can understand the truth of Biblical texts. Remember that the Sadducees and Pharisees were masters of the text yet failed to recognize the truth of our Lord’s first incarnation.
Moving on to chapter 17, we find out some more details about the first beast. The principal character in chapter 17 is a woman, a whore, who rides a scarlet beast. A beast, according to verse 8, is a beast that “was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition.” 9The scarlet beast of chapter seventeen is both Empire and emperor, a combined beast like chapter thirteen; the first portion of the verse pertains to the person, and the second to the Empire. But the last line of verse eight is uniquely fascinating. “The beast that was, and is not, and yet is.”
This part of the verse belongs to an empire and implies an empire that is no longer in existence but remains. It refers to the vestiges of an empire that preceded Rome, was not Rome, and still exists. We will address its meaning in a future article. This first beast (the man) has already made an appearance on earth and was then removed, but it will come once again as the false christ and finally be doomed by the authentic Christ.
I will not spend time on the woman in chapter 17; she deserves her own article. For now, let me say that she owes her power and authority ultimately to Satan, the being behind the first two beasts. Satan is the third member of the blasphemous trinity, the three being the false Christ, the false prophet, and Satan himself, the Great Dragon.
There is additional information regarding the false messiah’s Empire in verses 10-11. “There are seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.”
The beast (the Empire) has seven kings, the seven heads recorded in chapter thirteen. This beast is how one of the heads receives a mortal wound but recovers (or is resurrected). So now, all that remains is for us to find the historical representation and conditions that meet the here-and-now requirement of biblical prophecy, recalling that biblical prophecy addresses both the here-and-now and future events. And the here-and-now we seek are the beasts of the Apostle John’s day.
Unquestionably, the Empire that ruled the known world in John’s day was the Empire of Rome. It is the Empire whose capital rests on the seven hills—the Empire with ten significant divisions of territory. Also, symbolically, the seven heads represent complete spiritual authority, and the ten horns represent complete political authority. The first beast (Empire) is Rome, personified by its emperor. The future false christ and false prophet will reappear and rise from a future empire like Rome.
Revelation 17:10 gives us the sequence of the false christ’s appearances, historically, present (in John’s day), and future appearance. “There are seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue for a short time.” The division and mention of the specific numbers of the kings are essential because they represent the emperors of the beast (the Empire) and granted the power to “make war with the saints and overcome them.” The emperor who began the war against the saints was Nero Caesar, the 5th king. As a concerted government effort, Christian persecution began under Nero’s reign. 10
Briefly summarizing some of Nero’s actions, Nero, using Claudius’s (his adopted father) fortune, bribed the military cohort (a unit of 480 soldiers) stationed in the city, securing them as his army of bodyguards, 11 making it all but impossible to remove Nero by force. Nero’s personal traits, as recorded by ancient Roman historians, are quite revealing. He fancied himself an artist, actor, and painter. He cared nothing about governing Rome except its treasury, which he lavishly spent on his vanity. He was guilty of matricide, murder, killing two of his three wives, and blatant homosexuality, even having a young boy castrated so he could marry him in the open.
The impoverished of Rome loved him because of the welfare Nero handed out and the lavish entertainment venues he provided, creating a loyal following and hiding his ungodly nature while bankrupting the Empire. This social condition gave rise to the phrase, ‘bread and circus.’ There was a large section of Rome Nero desired on which to build a golden palace for himself, mysteriously set ablaze in July of 64 AD. To provide cover for his actions, Nero blamed the Christians. The polygamists, who thought well of Nero, accepted the Christian blame, so the lie stuck. From this point forward, Nero began persecuting Christians without opposition.
Christians were wrapped in animal skins and fed to dogs in the street. They were wrapped in paper and wax and set on fire as human torches illuminating Nero’s night sports games. 12 Under Nero, Christians endured tortures far more brutal and insidious than those conceived by the minds of Hollywood writers.
The beast, the Empire, the beast, its emperor, yet the same. So, was Nero the antichrist? No, he was the 5th king. The one who began the war on the saints was a precursor to the subsequent two kings, one of which is, and the other is yet to come. The final king, or false messiah, will be similar to Nero in manner and rule; the Empire he personifies will be another empire like Rome. We must be careful with the term antichrist, especially concerning the beasts of Revelation. The New Testament calls the antichrist, anyone who denies that Jesus is Christ, an antichrist whose spirit is already in the world. 13 So, while we focus on the antichrist as a person and a world leader, we overlook the warning signs that come first in order of appearance.
Satan’s tool, Nero, came on the scene hundreds of years after the Empire of Rome was well established; he didn’t appear out of a vacuum. Satan is very shrewd in picking the time and the man to persecute the saints. Nero, with unquestionable and unchallenged authority, commanding a world power, was the perfect weapon to harm Christ’s chosen. From this realization, we should expand our field of observation. Just as the Empire existed before Nero appeared, perhaps the groundwork for the future beast is being laid unnoticed. Now that we have identified the first beast, king, and kingdom, we should look for signs of antichrist working in our world. In future articles, we will look more closely at the workings of the beast and how it infiltrates our spiritual lives today.
“Five have fallen,” Nero being the fifth. We have already established the last king, beast, the false christ, will be a resurrected being. Shortly after Nero’s death by assisted suicide, rumors persisted throughout the Empire that Nero was still alive or had come back from the dead to continue his reign of terror against Christians—a rumor that lasted quite some time. Let’s consider the other two kings, or Emperors, in the list of seven in verse ten. This list of seven kings also deserves its own article, but I will briefly identify the two. The first, the one who “is” the 6th, is the emperor of John’s day, Domitian. Under Domitian, Christian persecution reached a climax but would ebb and flow for the next two centuries.
The 7th, the one yet to come, is the final beast. More information is required for this to make sense. In verse 11, “The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going into perdition.” The final beast, the false messiah, will be like one of the seven in nature, in power and authority. He will be allowed to “continue for a short time.” Designated as the eighth, he is the resurrected one, the false christ.
History also affords us an example of the second beast, the false prophet. From his own writings, we find our historical example during Trajan’s reign in the person of Pliny the Younger. A man who was able to weasel his way into a second-in-command position due to family position and wealth, Pliny obtained a governorship in Bythnia, which is in Asia Minor, just northeast of the cities of the seven churches.
He records his plans for the region in a letter to Trajan, “My first request then is, that you would permit me to adorn the temple I am going to erect, with your statue, besides the rest.” 14 Pliny offered to or planned to build a temple for the citizenry to worship the Emperor (Trajan) and the other gods of Rome. No historical evidence exists that Pliny erected a temple in Trajan’s honor. However, history credits Pliny with restoring some existing temples, which had fallen into disrepair between Nero’s fall and Trajan’s reign.
Of more interest is Pliny’s forcing Christians to honor Emperor Trajan and the Roman pantheon under the threat of death. “The method I have observed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians is this: I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed.” 15 Pliny informed Trajan of these actions, and Trajan approved this course of action.
Pliny left us another account of his dealing with Christians, “Those who denied they were, or had ever been, Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the Gods, and offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose, together with those of the Gods, and who finally cursed Christ—none of which acts, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing—these I thought it proper to discharge (italics mine).” 16 A similar test of loyalty will be administered to people during the reign of the final beast.
We have now established the identities of the two beasts of Revelation and their historical parallels. The final appearance of the beast will be a resurrected ruler of an Empire – a false christ. Whether this resurrected will be honest or faked will not matter, for the world “will wonder after the beast.” The second beast, the false prophet, will make his final appearance in conjunction with the rise of the first beast, and he will possess supernatural abilities as the great spiritual battle begins the ascent to the final climax.
Something that caught my attention regarding Trajan is that modern historians give Trajan a pass regarding Christian persecution, labeling him as ‘one of the five good emperors.’ Labeling Trajan as a good emperor is a whitewash of his actual position on Christianity. The correspondence between Pliny and Trajan reveals the truth. Trajan was all for Christian persecution, as long as it was carried out by one of his subordinates so that he could claim innocence in its administering. Two-faced is how we find Trajan, like many politicians today, and should serve as a warning sign. While the world sees the beast as mankind’s savior, he wages war against the saints, in secret at first, then openly towards the end.
In upcoming articles, we will discuss the mark of the beast, the seven kings, the whore, and other sections of this great book. For now and always, let us be diligent.
+ There are no comments
Add yours