Who Is Like the Beast?

13:1-3A monster from the sea

"I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads. On his horns were ten crowns, and on his heads, blasphemous names" (WEB). In Hebrew imagination the sea was the home of chaos and of nations in turmoil. Daniel 7:2-3 had seen four great beasts rise from "the great sea," and John's creature gathers them into one body: "like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion." He has the dragon's heads and horns from 12:3, and the dragon "gave him his power, his throne, and great authority." This is a copy of a copy, a chain of borrowed power running opposite to the way the Father gave authority to the Son (Matthew 28:18).

Then comes the most chilling copy. One of his heads "looked like it had been wounded fatally," yet the wound was healed. The Lamb in 5:6 stands "as though it had been slain." The beast wants the look of a death and a rising.

Who is the beast? Interpreters differ. Many scholars think John means Rome and its emperors, and some link the healed wound to a rumour that Nero would return, though that connection is debated. Others see a pattern in every state that exalts itself and persecutes God's people. Others add a final individual, linking the passage with the "man of sin" in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4. Some hold more than one of these at once. What every view affirms is the shape: a power energised by Satan, demanding worship that belongs to Christ, and doomed.

13:4-6A question that answers itself

The world worships, and the chant it uses is a quiet blasphemy: "Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?"

Anyone who knew their Bible would hear what is being stolen. After the Red Sea, Israel sang, "Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods?" (Exodus 15:11). The prophet Micah wondered, "Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity?" (Micah 7:18). And Michael, the angel who has just thrown the dragon out of heaven in chapter 12, carries a name which in Hebrew is a question: "Who is like God?" The beast's followers take the greatest question in the Bible and aim it at a creature.

His mouth is "speaking great things and blasphemy," exactly like the little horn of Daniel 7:8 and 7:25. He blasphemes God's name, his dwelling, and those who live in heaven. Everything God is, the beast insults.

Look at the number. "Authority to make war for forty-two months was given to him." It is the same period we have met again and again, in 11:2 and in the 1,260 days of 12:6. Many scholars take it as a symbol for a limited season, the half-seven of Daniel, in which evil is real but cut short. Whatever the length, the beast has a clock, and the clock is not in his hand.

The question has an answer, and it is the song of heaven. Who is like the beast? Nobody. Who is like the Lord? Nobody. The only difference is that one of them is eternal.

13:7-8Given, not owned

Read these verses slowly, because there is one small phrase that does a great deal of work: "it was given." A mouth "was given to him." Authority "was given to him." "It was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them." The verb is passive, and in biblical writing a passive like this usually hides God. The beast does not seize anything. He is permitted, and only for as long as and as far as God allows.

Yet the verse is honest about how it looks. The beast makes war with the saints and overcomes them, as the little horn did in Daniel 7:21. His authority stretches over "every tribe, people, language, and nation," the same sweep of humanity John was sent to prophesy to in 10:11. The beast and the church are going after the same people.

Notice the word "overcome." In chapter 12 the saints "overcame him because of the Lamb's blood." Here the beast "overcomes" them. Both are true, on different levels. The beast overcomes their bodies. The saints overcome by faith, and in the end it is their kind of overcoming that lasts.

Then the great division: all who dwell on the earth will worship him, "everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed." The Greek can also be read, as the King James Version has it, as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," and both readings are good news. Either the names were written before time began, or the cross was the plan before time began. Your safety does not rest on how tightly you hold on, but on what is written in his book.

13:9-10An ear, and endurance

"If anyone has an ear, let him hear." We have heard that line before, at the end of each of the seven letters to the churches (for example 2:7 and 2:29). It is the Spirit's call to pay attention, and here it is attached to the most fearful chapter yet.

What follows is hard to translate and has been read in different ways. The WEB has "If anyone is to go into captivity, he will go into captivity. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, he must be killed." That echoes Jeremiah, where God appoints "such as are for captivity, to captivity" and "such as are for the sword, to the sword" (Jeremiah 15:2). Some ancient manuscripts have a different wording, closer to Jesus's words in Matthew 26:52, "all those who take the sword will die by the sword." Either way, the lesson is that the saints are not told to fight the beast with the beast's weapons. They are told to expect suffering and to meet it without revenge.

The verse ends with its purpose: "Here is the endurance and the faith of the saints." The Greek word for endurance is hypomone, literally "remaining under," staying put beneath a weight rather than slipping out from under it. It is the quiet courage of showing up faithful tomorrow, and the day after.

Notice also what is not said. There is no plan to beat the beast with votes, riots, or schemes. The weapons are the Lamb's blood and the believer's testimony from chapter 12. And behind the beast from the sea, the dragon has called up another helper, which is where tomorrow's study takes us.