Revelation 13:1-18

Revelation chapter 13 let me read the I’ll read the first six verses and then verse 18 to begin with and then we’ll be looking at the whole chapter Lord willing today 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 on his heads the name of blasphemy and the beasts which I saw was like under a leopard and his feet were as the feet of a bear in his mouth as the mouth of a lion and the dragon gave him his power and his seat in great authority. I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death. His deadly wound was healed and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power under the beast and they worshipped the beast saying who is like unto the beast who was able to make war with him? And it was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies and power was given unto him to continue 42 months. He opened his mouth and blaspheming against God to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. Verse 18, here is wisdom, let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast for this the number of a man. and his number is 600, 3 score, and 6. Now, when we see a monstrous beast arising out of the sea, we might think of the Loch Ness monster or something of that nature. However, this is all a vision of John, which has a spiritual teaching associated with it. And Christ is showing John in symbolic form. Another great enemy here of the church, which is the Lamb’s Bride. Chapter 12 revealed the great red dragon, Satan, and his vicious attack upon, particularly the Jewish element of the Church of Christ. Here you have a very powerful agent of Satan who will make war with the whole church, the Gentile, the Gentile, as well, the remnant of the woman’s seat. Now, we’ve already looked at this in a previous study, so this is going to be more like a quick review rather than a detailed consideration. Then when we proceed to look at the second enemy that’s listed in this particular passage, and that is the false prophet, verses 11 to 17, which we’ve also studied in the past. The false prophet is the supporting agent of the beast, and another enemy of the Church of Christ. Now, the beast here is taken up in verses 1 to 10 in verse 18, and the identity of the beast, verses 1 to 6 in verse 18. So let’s start with the identity here, the beast. John alludes here to Daniel’s prophecy, in Daniel chapter 7 where he sees four beasts come up out of the sea. The eagle-winged lion, which is Babylon, the hungry bear, which is Medo-Persia, the swift leopard, which is Greece, and the indescribable monster, which is Rome. The beast John sees is a combination here of the three previous, beast, they were mentioned in Daniel’s prophecy. And you remember in Daniel’s prophecy, it says the beast lived on. Well, they lived on in the fourth beast, which had conquered their territory. It assumed all their evil characteristics. So Daniel 7, along with this Revelation 13, and as we shall see also, Revelation 17, gives us a lot of the information with regard to the identity. of the beast. And I think if you look at it carefully, the inspired interpretation is it identifies the beast as the Roman Empire. What made the Roman Empire unique is that it had divided rule. There are ten horns, which are the rulers of the ten provinces of the Roman Empire. We know about King Herod in Palestine. and he ruled there, but we know that he was also under the Roman government when he’d rule. And so we see that listed in Revelation 1712, we’re told the horns are kings. And the ten horns we said were probably Italy, Asia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany, and Akaya. the various rulers of those provinces are the ones that are considered. The seven heads, according to Revelation 17, represent the seven hills on which the woman sits, and we find that they represent the Julian line of the emperors. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero in particular, and then Galba’s the one that’s there just for a short period of time. Now, Nero is identified in Revelation 17 as the present ruler because Revelation 17 tells us in verse 10, there are seven kings, five are fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come. And so the seven kings of the seven emperors that I’ve listed, and of course the sixth king is the one who’s ruling presently. Five are fallen. One is, and that is Nero if we count the various emperors. Revelation, we said, also, will shift between the general idea of the various emperors. of the beast, the Roman Empire, and sometimes the specific idea of the beast, who is the emperor or the ruler of the empire. They’re sort of intertwined together. Sometimes it’s looked at more individually, sometimes it’s looked at as the whole empire. The blasphemous names on the beast, we said, are the deification names that the emperation names that the emperors took because they took divine titles and declared themselves to be gods who deserved worship. The fatal wound that was healed, we said in verse 3, refers to the assassination of Julius Caesar, the first Roman emperor. You recall that Julian assumed great power. He took authority that no one else had before him, became the first Roman emperor. a dictator over the empire. The Roman senators didn’t like this development, so they stabbed him to death on the Senate floor. They were saving the republic, according to their thinking. However, this led to a brutal civil war between the East and West Roman Empire, which could have proved fatal and looked like it might prove fatal for the empire. However, Augustus, who was Julian’s adopted son, defeated all rivals, resurrected the empire, and thus the fatal wound was healed, and he assumed the emperorship. The number of the beast in verse 18 is 66. It involves a riddle where the letters of the Roman alphabet are used as numbers. We still do this today. We use Roman number one. two, three, and so forth. We all know the Roman numerals. You know, I is one, V is five, X is 10, L is 50, C is 100, and M is 1, 6,000. 666 is then a cryptogram, concealing the name of the beast. But we do know this, according to verse 18, that it’s the number of a man. So he’s focusing here on an individual. We also know that he’s a contemporary of John because we read in Revelation 17 and 9 and 10 that he’s one who that is now is, is the present ruler, and that’s in John’s day. And that was the sixth emperor. And so the beast here is a present reality in John’s day. We said it has to be relevant to John’s readers. because in order to calculate the number of the beast, to count the number, verse 18 of chapter 13 tells us one would have to be able to figure it out to decipher the name. And so it’s assumed here that the readers are going to be able to do that, which if it was somebody in the far-flung future, how they know who this person was. This person is of a person of evil character, which this text certainly indicates to us, makes war with the saints. And he’s a political leader because he’s associated with the Roman Empire, and he has great power. We said that 666 could be decoded into Neeron Kaisar, N-R-W-N-Q-S-R-R-S-R. or Nero Caesar. This fits perfectly with Revelation 17, where the sixth head is said to be presently reigning, and that fits the sixth Roman emperor of the Julian line. You’re reminded here that any worship of the beast is actually a worship of Satan who is the power behind the beast. So the identity of the beast, any question about the beast. about this. Okay, the beast war with the saints. Let’s look at verses 7 through 10 here. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth or land shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of the Lamb, the book of life of the Lamb, from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. This beast, being directed by Satan, made war against God’s people in order to overcome them. While all over the Roman Empire, people were willing to worship the Christians obviously could not worship the emperor. They refused to do so. In all the wows of the devil and the power of the persecuting Roman government could not cause true believers to dishonor their Lord and offer worship to another. So the worship of a beast was an indication of a person’s name not being in the Lamb’s Book of Life. In other words, their reprobation from all eternity. However, the genuine Christian remains faithful to Jesus Christ to the end, faithful even under death, if need be. In verses 9 and 10, God provides a word of comfort for his people that they should carefully hear. The indication is that God’s enemies will reap what they sow. You use the sword, you’re going to die. by the sword. And so the indication here is if you lead into captivity, you go into captivity. There’s going to be a judgment upon them for what they’ve done. God will bring retribution against them. The war with the saints would also test the patience and the faith of the saints. And of course, these two graces in particular are exercised under persecution. Confidence in Christ’s rule is a key factor and we have to believe that he is ruling and that he will even the score and recompense his people and we have to have patience and wait for his time to bring judgment against the enemy. So this is the beast. The identity of beast and the beast war with the saints. questions about this. Okay. The second part of this chapter takes up the false prophet. Let’s look at verses 11 to 17 here. And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, and he spake like a dragon. He exercised all the power of the first beast before him, and caused the earth in them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, his deadly wound was healed. and he doeth great wonders so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of man and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast. Saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound of a sword and did live. And he had power to give life. under the image of the beast, and the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Chapter 16 verse 13 and chapter 19 verse 20 this second beast is called the false prophet. In this beast you have a religious power. He’s called a false prophet as I mentioned. He has the appearance of innocence because he appears as a lamb but he speaks as a dragon because he is really promoting Satan’s agenda. As a a false prophet, he is a deceiver. His purpose is to draw people away from the true worship of Christ in order to get them to worship the emperor. This second beast has limited authority. He only has two horns. Doesn’t have the power and authority of the first beast, but he does have some power and authority, and he exercises the power and authority of the beast itself. He’s associated with the false religion. and his purpose is to promote and enforce the worship of the emperor. Idol worship is involved in this religion. For he compels people to worship the image of the beast. This puts the false religion here in direct conflict with Christ’s followers who cannot worship an image, nor do they give worship to any but their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The second beast works all sorts of lying wonders to persuade people to worship the beast. In verses 13 to 15, we read that. Down through history, Satan has had his agents perform miracles to deceive people. You look at all the magicians in Egypt, and they were able to copy some of the miracles that Moses did when he brought the ten plagues. It shouldn’t be surprising then that the false prophet here appears to be able, and I use the word appears to be able, to call fire down from heaven and to cause the image to speak. This of course wows the world and most people readily comply and worship the beast. The second beast, this false prophet, appears to represent the Caesar’s cult, which promoted the worship of the emperor throughout the Roman Empire. The Caesars were called gods and encouraged the people of the empire to worship. There were temples erected to them, statutes. There were also busts that were put up over the place to promote emperor worship. Nero the present reigning emperor was very obsessed with deification. In Athens, he had an inscription that was speaking of him as the all-powerful Neero Caesar Sebastos a New Polo, and he often referred to himself as Almighty God and Savior. So as Emperor worship grew, there arose arose this emperor cult, which had a sole purpose to promote the worship of the emperor and by force, if necessary. Refuse of the worship, the Caesar, of course, would be viewed as being disloyal to the Roman Empire, disloyal to the emperor, and thus it would be a treasonous act. In a polytheistic world, most people wouldn’t have a problem worshipping in a God, but for the Christian, there’s only one God, and therefore there was a clash. It was inevitable. The two horns speak of the authority of this beast. The pro-councilia enforced emperor worship. The pro-council was the Roman governor of the region, and the concilia was a great authoritative body composed of deputies, which erected images of the Caesars and temples and so forth and altars for worship. Each town also would have a Prefectus Erbie, a group for enforcing emperor worship. So there was a lot of pressure put on people in each town and so forth in the Roman Empire to worship the emperor. Now we see the Caesar called in miracles. The priest of the Caesar cult performed. these what I’ll call false miracles by using magic tricks. We talked about them calling fire down from heaven in the past. It may be similar to the tactics of the prophets of Bail in Elijah’s day when he accused them of putting fire underneath, like a little spark underneath and then blowing on it so that it would look like they called fire down from heaven. They secretly hit a small spark. It would appear as if the prophets called down far from heaven, but it was all a sham. You can read about that in First Kings 18. The magicians are certainly capable of ingenious illusions. If you ever watch a magic show, there’s a lot of tricks, light of hand, and tricks that people have in order to deceive you about what they’re doing. Talking and moving statutes was wide-scentruthers. spread at this time. Either they had a mechanism in the statue. It could be demonic voices. It could be ventriloquism. It could be just a speaking tube in order to make these idols talk or some mechanical part that would move. We think about our own modern day in the Roman Catholic Church and we got the bleeding and crying statutes and pictures and the voice of marriage. supposedly announcing things. It’s all a great perception. It’s still Satan’s agents doing sort of the same kind of thing to promote idol worship. So the second beast is Caesar’s call. The mark of the beast is spoken of in verses 16 and 17. Almost everybody has heard about the mark of the beast. Everybody knows about 666. You know, people think that maybe it’ll be tattooed, are branded on people to mark you as a worshipper of the beast. However, we shouldn’t be obsessed with the idea of it being a actual physical mark. Remember, God marked his people in chapter 7, verses 1 to 4, but it was an invisible mark that he put upon their foreheads. And it showed that their minds were controlled by the Lord. here the mark on the forehead would be their minds are controlled by Satan. We said it could be on the hand or the head. Because even if you didn’t, even if your mind wasn’t controlled, maybe your hand would just go along with it, just outwardly you go along with it in order not to get punished in some fashion. These marks and seals then could not be seen by other human beings, but they were actually something that were present. So it’s not necessary for the mark of the beast to be an actual physical mark visible to the eye, but it did speak of a willingness to subject yourself to emperor worship. You are marked by doing that as an enemy of God, and you’re dedicated to Satan’s agent, the deified emperor. There can be no compromise for Jewish believers here. It can’t be marked both ways. Either marked by the Lord and preserved by him or you’re marked by the 666, and you are following Satan and the Roman Emperor. We talked about in the past the economic sanctions that were imposed upon Christians for non-compliance with Emperor. If a Roman citizen did not have the mark of the beast, didn’t worship the emperor, he would be shunned. No one would buy his property, his possessions. In other words, they wouldn’t have dealings with him because it would be a sign of this loyalty to the Caesar. So they couldn’t buy herself. They boycotted Christians based upon a dread of the emperor, which the emperor cult was very careful to watch who was true and who wasn’t. At the time, a receipt was given to those who sacrificed to the emperor. Now here you’d have at least a visible token that you could show and say, Hey, I worship the emperor. These official certificates would allow you to buy or sell as a loyal, devoted follower of the Caesar. So thus Christians suffered economically for, their faith, and that was a cross they had to bear. Any questions here about the false prophet? All right, let me conclude then with a couple of practical thoughts from the chapter. Satan’s ideal strategy down through the years is to unite political power with religious power in order that he could enforce false power. worship. The state can compel you to engage in false worship or be punished. So these two beasts, the tyrannical government and the false state religion, are a very powerful force opposing the Christians. Down through history, believers have suffered severely whenever political power and state religious power are joined together. It’s one of the reasons why, you know, the separation of church and state occurred in our constitution so that this would not happen, or it’s not supposed to happen, let’s put it that way, in America. You remember that Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament commanded his his kingdom of worship, the golden image you had set up. And if you didn’t worship the golden image, you got thrown into the fiery furnace. I mean, that’s, a compelling reason to worship his beast that he set up, or his image. So here in the Roman Empire, refusal to worship the emperor meant economic hardship or even death. In England, you recall that kings aligned with either the Roman church or the Church of England. And if you weren’t in parallel with that, you could be in big trouble. And we find they punished all who refused to comply. Look at the Christians suffered in France. because the rulers aligned themselves with the Roman Catholic Church. Even Calvin was forced to flee and go to Switzerland and go to Geneva under threat of persecution. Consider how danger it is for Christians in a Muslim country today, where again, you have the political power joined with religious power and they are persecuted or put to death. In communist China, we have an officially sanctioned church. there with the idea of controlling the message that is given out. And so Christians have to secretly meet in various houses. And C.J. Williams has talked to us about what his experience was when he went to China. So Satan is going to use violence or economic penalties in some way to compel you to worship a false religion. The second thing we see here is going to compel you to worship a false religion. is that God’s purpose at times exposes you to grave danger to test your faith. You’ll have to face some form of tribulation in this world. There is a cost of following Jesus Christ. There is a cross that we have to bear. There is a price to pay. I will say this, that the graces of the spirit often require us to suffer. the development of those graces, such as patience and faith that are mentioned in this chapter. In other words, some graces are only developed. Tribulation, work in patience. So if there’s no tribulation, is there going to be any patience? So this is the kind of thing we have to realize. So one must be fortified spiritually to successfully endure such suffering. and thus the constant need to grow in grace in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in order to face such adversity when it does come. Any questions then about this chapter? I know we rushed through this, but we’ve already covered this, and I didn’t want to spend a long time, you know, just being redundant. I sort of hit the highlights here.