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Most of us grew up hearing the remarkable story of the three Hebrew young men who stood up to the most powerful king in sixth century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, not only held all political and military power but also religious power. Daniel 3 records the story. Nebuchadnezzar made an enormous golden image; ninety-feet tall and nine feet wide. It was strategically placed so that it could be viewed from a great distance. At the sound of any musical instrument, he demanded that everyone in his kingdom bow before the image and worship. Here, the state viewed itself as omnipotent, establishing the only acceptable worship in the kingdom. Religion and state rule merged into an anti-God coalition. Those refusing to bow and worship would be cast into the blazing furnace.
With great conviction, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to comply with the king’s religious demands, choosing to worship the Lord God only. Some of their fellow Jews likely indulged in Nebuchadezzar’s command, thinking that it didn’t matter if they mixed the worship of the Lord God with the state’s religion. At least it would keep them out of the blazing furnace! But the three young men were different. Their refusal to bow and worship the image was not kept secret. They were called before the king. After interrogating them and offering another chance to comply, they stood their ground, trusting their future to the Lord alone. Even if God chose not to deliver them from the king’s fiery wrath, they would not serve his gods or worship his golden image.
Generations of believers have taken courage by the example these young men set. God did deliver them from the blazing furnace, just as He has delivered others in such times. Yet, not always has He been pleased to deliver His people from the oppressiveness of the world opposing the gospel truth. Some, as the writer of Hebrews told us, were “stoned…sawn in two…put to death with the sword,” while others “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated…wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (11:37-38). The believer’s acceptance with God is never based on temporal deliverance but rather upon that God-satisfying work of Jesus Christ at the cross. Because of Christ’s triumph believers can endure even the most difficult times of oppression.
John’s Apocalypse helps us to grasp the struggle that Christians face through the centuries with the world; not for some kind of self-pity but for living triumphantly. He warns of the ever-present danger of the world creeping into the church to paralyze and destroy it. John shows this to be Satan’s grandiose plan. The world under Satan’s power cannot view biblical Christianity with neutrality; inevitably, it seeks to destroy gospel truth. Some react to this by withdrawing from the world. However, we’re to be salt and light to the world; we’re to confront the world with the truth of the gospel even though constantly opposed by the world that needs our gospel message. Far too many professing Christians have been numbed by the world and even acquiesced to the world’s influence. Cultural Christianity masquerades as the real deal. How does the church recognize this worldly deception?
The case of two beasts in one chapter can be confusing! John distinguishes the first by its political power. He pictures the kingdom of the world opposed to the kingdom of God. It is the age old conflict of darkness and light. The second beast focuses on religious deception that seeks to turn people away from worshiping the one true God in order to worship Satan.
Now, if someone blatantly called for “Satan worship,” that would be easy to spot. There are some in our country and beyond that openly confess their love and loyalty to Satan. They have their own commandments, confessions, and liturgies. But their numbers are few compared to other religions. However, the reality is that if one is not for Christ he is against Him. If one does not worship God in truth then he worships another god or gods. If one is not in the kingdom of God, he is in the kingdom of the world under the god of this world.
John’s concern in Revelation 13 is to warn of Satan’s deceptiveness, not only in the world at large but even in the church. He’s already exposed problems with the seven churches where false teaching crept into the church to turn the Christian community away from dependence upon Christ alone (cf. chap. 2-3). But that problem is much larger than Asia Minor. It is a global issue that we’re warned of in this chapter.
How can people fall for false religions? The deception is to make the false religion appear to have a ring of truth about it. John shows that Satan does this through parodying Christ and the apostles. A parody is a weak imitation of the real thing, whether of some literary work or person or religion. The second beast is first described as a parody of Christ. “Then I saw another beasts coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb and he spoke as a dragon.” Irony drips from this picture. If one thinks of a lamb, he certainly doesn’t have any image of a dragon in mind! What John is saying is that the beast gives some appearance of the gentleness of the lamb—and in this case, he has reference to parodying Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God. His appearance as a lamb is meant to deceive others into accepting what he has to say. His speech as a dragon implies deception since John has already described Satan as “the great dragon…who deceives the whole world” (12:9). No one is afraid of a lamb or intimidated by a lamb. He feels comfortable around a lamb. In just such setting, the second beast gains access to the world’s trust, and then, deceives with diabolical speech.
The second parody is of the apostles. Jesus warned, “For false Christs and false apostles will arise and will show signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). Paul warned the Ephesian elders, “And from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). The same apostle rebuked the Galatian church, asking who had bewitched them in their understanding of the grace of God through Christ (Gal. 3:1-5). He told Timothy, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:1-5). John told the readers of his first epistle, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Jude raised the alarm concerning those who crept in unnoticed “who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).
So, what John describes is nothing new. He simply gives it unforgettable hues. He says of the second beast: “He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence…He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men.” One thinks of the disciples being sent out and performing miracles as they preached; or Elijah and Elisha calling down fire from heaven. Greg Beale points out the striking similarities between the second beast, (also called the false prophet in 16:13; 19:20; 20:10), and the apostles. The second “(1) beast is a successor of his master in both ministry and authority (Rev. 13:12a; cf. Acts 1:1-11),” just like the apostles; “(2) his attempts to persuade others to worship his master are inextricably linked to his master’s resurrection (Rev. 13:12b, 14b; cf. Acts 2:227-47),” just as apostolic preaching focused on the resurrection of Christ; “and (3) he performs miraculous “signs” as concrete manifestations of his authority (Rev. 13:13; cf. Acts 2:43; 5:12; 15:12),” in the same way that the apostles used signs to point attention to their authoritative gospel message [NIGTC: Revelation, 709].
I noticed a bumper sticker in the past week or two that uses symbols of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, the 60’s peace movement, and other religions to form the word, “Coexist.” The message is that all of these religions should just get along with each other. Obviously, the driver of this particular car understands very little of the nature of religion, especially the nature of the Christian faith in relationship to the religions of the world. World religions coexist only in opposition to the truth of the gospel!
Notice what John indicates of the beast’s purpose: “And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed…And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed.” Notice the common thread: the second beast influences the world to worship the beast and in so doing, turning the people of the world away from any recognition of the Lord God. John has already explained that worshiping the beast is actually worshiping the dragon who gave the beast authority (vv. 3-4). To worship anything other than the Lord God as He has revealed Himself through Christ is to ultimately, worship the dragon. That’s why truth is so important. That’s why doctrine counts so heavily. That’s why the centrality of the gospel as the only way to know the living God matters so much. The aggressive work of Satan is to deceive as many in the world as he can to reject the way to God through Christ. Whether it is by worshiping other gods or bowing to idols or worshiping the true God in a false, unacceptable way, it’s all the same to Satan. The object is to turn the world away from its Creator to follow after the god of this world. That’s the devil’s agenda through his evil agents throughout the centuries until Christ returns. And that’s what John explains in these pictures.
John’s audience understood something about “the image of the beast.” By the end of the first century, all of the cities identified in Asia Minor in chapters 2-3 had cultic centers for emperor worship. That included images of the emperor that citizens were expected to worship [cf. Beale, 710]. Just as John spoke concerning the false prophet, ancient magicians claimed that they could make images speak and move. The false prophet and false professor of Christ that we see in Acts 8, Simon of Samaria, better known as Simon Magus, reportedly said, “I made statues move; I gave breath to inanimate objects”” [Simon Kistemaker, NTC: Revelation, 392, quoting Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 3.47.2]. In the 2nd century, the church father Irenaeus told of mystic priests belonging to the sect that worshiped Simon’s image practicing magical arts, using potions, incantations, exorcisms, and anything in their power to entice others to worship Simon and follow his teaching [Against Heresies, 1.23.4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 348]. So, John’s message concerning the “image of the beast” that speaks and causes amazement in the world was current.
The second beast’s intention is global worship of the beast throughout the centuries. “And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast…He performs great signs…in the presence of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth…And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead.” Just as we noticed in our previous study, John’s intention is not to address a brief time just before Christ’s return. Rather, he uses chapter 13 as a bridge that spans the first coming of Christ compressed in 12:5, with the second coming in chapter 14. The present chapter shows the spirit of the world under the power of Satan seeking to turn people away from God to worship the beast. Satan is not satisfied with a few followers. He hates the Lord God with such passionate hatred that he does all in his power to dupe and deceive the world to follow the anti-God and less-than-God spirit of this world. He makes no distinction in social, economic, or political status. He wants all to be marked by the character of godless rebellion against the Creator and Redeemer.
How do we see this happening in our own day? It’s easy to identify the false religions of the world, such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism that have captured over two billion adherents between them. Thousands of other religions, some localized tribally, have deceived millions of people into rejecting the redemptive message in the gospel. But does this hit closer to home? The first beast’s goal is to attract a massive following that ultimately, worships Satan, though it may be cloaked worship so that the devotees don’t even realize they worship Satan. The second beast, his false prophet, uses his parody of apostolic authority to entice people to worship the beast. To worship the beast is to worship Satan (vv. 4-5). To worship any god other than the true God as He has revealed Himself through Christ is to worship the beast. For one to reject that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection, is to acknowledge that Satan is right in his assessment about God, about Christ, and about the biblical gospel.
How often does this happen in our day, even in circles that profess the Christian faith? The Reformers through the Puritans, living in the heyday of Roman Catholic supremacy, typically identified the pope as the antichrist or beast. The Bohemian reformer John Huss identified the pope as the antichrist [footnote in Martin Luther’s Tabletalk, p. 287, from Huss’ De Anatontia Antichristi]. Martin Luther said, “Seeing the pope is antichrist, I believe him to be a devil incarnate. Like as Christ is true and natural God and man, so is antichrist a living devil” [ibid 287]. Seventeenth century preacher James Durham of Glasgow, Scotland wrote in his exposition of Revelation 13, “Mark here the Lord’s censure of Popery in its full extent, it is a worshipping of the devil; and this, in less or more, will be His censure of all corrupt worship not warranted by Him” [Commentary Upon the Book of the Revelation, 702]. While identifying the antichrist with the Roman papacy, Durham, like others, also expanded it as indicative of “all corrupt worship not warranted by Him.” Luther actually combined the pope and Islam as the antichrist; the pope as his spirit and the “Turk,” as he called Muslims, his flesh [Tabletalk, 285].
What John addressed in the first century, in terms of the deceptive antichristian teaching that crept into the church might be called Romanized Christianity. The influence of the Roman emperor worship, pantheon of gods, trade gild festivals, and so many other religious practices crept into the framework of Christianity, thus both denigrating and confusing the gospel by actually given credence to the worship of false gods. In the same fashion, what we face of the same spirit of antichrist is Americanized Christianity or cultural Christianity. By this, the churches in John’s day struggled with embracing a watered-down Christianity in order to accommodate the Roman world. Thus, a professing Christian might sacrifice to an image of the emperor in order to avoid persecution; such an act was unacceptable and accounted as the spirit of antichrist. In our day, some churches appear to merely emotionally massage their members, having nothing to do with faithful gospel ministry; they only try to make people feel better without dealing with their sin and idolatry. Or the church might substitute clever entertainment for gospel-centered worship. That’s the spirit of antichrist. That’s among the many dangers that our own generation faces in American Christianity.
This is further expanded when we consider the mark of the beast.
Several years before barcode scanning at the checkout line was common, I saw a movie that promoted the idea of barcodes being the mark of the beast. Unless a person had a barcode embedded in his skin, he couldn’t buy groceries at the market. It was a very clever idea that gained early popularity. But the problem is that this misses the point that John makes concerning this mysterious mark.
The global impact of the devil’s assault upon the Christian faith by his agents gains more traction by John’s description of the beast’s mark. He said that the second beast “causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.” The broad range of human extremes identifies this as global and not a merely localized incident. Kistemaker points out that “the small and the great” “is really an idiom that includes “people of all ages or all stations in life”” [393; quotes David Aune, Revelation 6-16, p. 766] (see also the same use in 11:18; 19:5, 18; 20:12). John indicates that absence of “the mark” affects the normal lifestyles of believers; in this case, the effect is economic. That was already happening in at least Smyrna and Philadelphia. John’s explanation shows such opposition to Christians to be common through the centuries; our brethren in Sudan, Nigeria, and China know this quite personally.
The “mark…of the beast or the number of his name” indicates that a clear identity and distinction is being made between those who worship the beast and those who worship the living God through Jesus Christ. Remember that part of the major problem with several of the churches in chapters 2-3 centered on the church recoiling from this distinctive identity as Christians. They sought the favor of the world; some engaged in the sinful practices of the world. John emphasizes that “there may be a time “when the act of refusing to commit high treason against Christ will be interpreted as high treason against the Antichrist,”” so believers must rely upon the power of the Spirit to live out the gospel in spite of the opposition they must endure [Kistemaker, 392, quoting Martin Kiddle, The Revelation of St. John, p. 258].
Just what does John mean by “the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name,” which he explains, “the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six”? That has been a question of regular debate. First of all, the Greek word “mark” or charagma is the basis for our word “character.” One early Greek use was for “the individual character.” It also was used for “an official stamp on writings, e.g., attested copies of documents.” The imperial stamp used by the emperors marking coins and documents was the charagma. It was also used for a brand or tattoo on slaves or camels to identify who they belonged to [U. Wilckens, “χάραγμα,” G. Kittel, TDNT, vol. IX, 416-417].
Second, historically, lots of ideas have been proposed for the identity of a specific person by the number 666. In the 19th century, four German scholars proposed that John was using a technique known as gematria which was “the practice of representing words and names by the sums of their numerical equivalents” [Beale, 719]. “A” would represent 1, B-2, C-3, J-10, K-20, L-30, etc., if we used English. These same scholars took the Latin name for Nero Caesar, transliterated it into Greek and then into Hebrew to come up with a formula that identified Nero’s numeric equivalent as 666. But to do this, they had to use a defective spelling of his name [Beale, 719]. No one until the 19th century identified 666 with Nero [Kistemaker, 395]. These scholars also did not have a reasonable explanation of how a primarily Greek-speaking original audience could transliterate Nero’s Latin name into Greek and then into Hebrew to come up with this identity of Nero for 666.
Some have suggested that John used this number to cryptically identify the emperor in order to avoid persecution. But that’s unlikely since he was already exiled, ready to go to heaven, and his message affirmed that persecution was the normal experience of believers [cf. Beale, 721].
Third, it seems best to take the triple sixes as symbolizing “incompleteness and imperfection” multiplied [Beale, 722]. If seven represents perfection and the number for deity, and six represents imperfection and “is a number of man” [my translation], then the triple use of six implies “failure upon failure upon failure,” as Wm. Hendriksen put it [More than Conquerors, 151]. It is “the completeness of sinful incompleteness found in the beast” [Beale, 722]. To be marked by 666 means to be identified by this kind of character. It is a number that “belongs to Satan and not to one particular individual who did the devil’s work in history” [Kistemaker, 396]. Therefore, keeping with the symbolism of the book, what John specifies is not a literal marking but the identity of unbelievers with the devil. This appears to be very clear when we read the contrast in the next verse in 14:1, where Christ comes with His followers “having His name and the name of His Father written on their forehead.” They belong to Christ by reason of His atoning death and resurrection. So certain and sufficient is this work that God declares them to be sealed (7:3-4). It means that they are marked out by the character and completeness of Jesus Christ. They are complete in Christ as opposed to the followers of Satan who remain incomplete.
The later 1st and early 2nd century church father Ignatius, whom it appears was a disciple of John the Apostle, used this distinction for “the mark” or charagma, that gives a fitting summary: “…two different characters are found among men—the one true coin, the other spurious. The truly devout man is the right kind of coin, stamped by God Himself. The ungodly man, again, is a false coin, unlawful, spurious, counterfeit, wrought not by God, but by the devil” [“Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” chap. 5, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, 61].
John calls attention to this distinguishing mark, this proper coin in contrast with the spurious. “Here is wisdom.” In other words, wisdom calls for discernment, recognizing the distinction between that which is of God and that which is of the devil. Here’s something to ponder that will help you apply the gospel more effectively to your lives. “Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast.” He doesn’t mean that smart people will be able to add this number and come to a conclusion. Rather, he implies that the Christian will be able, by the Holy Spirit, to discern and identify the work of the beast that would destroy the church. Remember the deceptiveness that characterizes the devil and his agents. By wisdom from the Lord, Christians will be able to perceive the character of the beast that would deceive and destroy.
Christians live in a world hostile to the gospel. The spirit of antichrist and the false prophet continue throughout the centuries, attempting to distort the gospel, deceive Christians, and destroy the church. Let us, by the Holy Spirit, exercise wisdom and understanding. Let us recognize the ways that the devil would deceive us in order to move our hope away from Christ and His redemptive work. And let us stand firmly in dependence upon our triumphant Lord.
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