Of Beastly things

Gordan has posted on his blog, http://gordansplace.blogspot.com/ ,an opening discussion concerning the beasts of Revelation. Hopefully, in addition to it being interesting to look at different interpreting views, it should help organize our thoughts of God’s working in this world. An advantage to me of such a study is that when we learn more about Revelation’s dragon, beasts, and evil my wife may begin to understand what I continually seem to have to assure her: that I am not really one of those despicable characters having escaped from the haunting the pages of Revelation.

I, being long persuaded of the value of my own reasonable, studied and persuasive conclusions, decided to post my thoughts—-okay, and others’ thoughts, too—-regarding this beastly issue. This interpretation method is called the Timeless/Symbolic interpretation. To call it “Idealist” sounds much too pie-in-the-sky flighty. Idealism is rarely well grounded. But I digress!

To look at the beast of Rev. 13, we must at least skim over Ch. 12. The dragon has failed to destroy our redeemer and his church. He is mad. Verse 17 says “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring--those who obey God’s commandment and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (NIV) Hey, that last phrase makes it clear that John, and his excellent Ghost Writer, the Holy Spirit, is talking about us, all believers. That’s believers then and now and all saints in between. We’re not any less an offspring of Christ and His Church than they were. Or, the earlier century Christians were no less God’s children than we are. The dragon’s war is timeless. (Of course, we all agree that the dragon is Satan. Sure, we do agree on that, don’t we?)

So we adopted Children of Christ are duly warned in Ch. 12:17: Satan is after us. It’s a war. Now let’s notice that the first verse of Chapter 13 is organized in several modern translations so that verse 1 is placed as being the last verse of Ch. 12. The modern compilations have it right. In fact, all of Chapter 13 is the continuation of the devil’s anger and his war against us who believe in Jesus.
The dragon stands at the sea and John sees the beast coming out of the sea. The proper grammar has the beast rising (present tense). The word “beast” in the original language denotes fierceness, a lower type of creature with a very beastly nature as it’s main characteristic. The beast in Daniel is an example of the beasts referring to successive nation powers. The reference here in Revelation to leopards, bears, and lions properly reminds us of Daniel’s images referring to earthly powers. But in Jewish apocalyptic writings it was common to portray demonic powers in terms of a beast. So is it earthly nation powers or demonic powers? Yes, both. One feeds or feeds upon the other. It is said in the early Ch. 13 verses that the dragon gave his power and authority to the beast. Thus, just as the serpent deceived Eve and persuaded her to act for him in disobedience to God, the fallen unredeemed nature of man since has resulted in actions instigated by the dragon that bring us the horrors of the modern age–and ages past.

“Out of the Sea”–this phrase deserves a post of its own. In summary, the Old Testament [citations can be given upon request] uses “sea” to represent the confused, unstable, disorderly, and rebellious multitudes of the nations. The dragon is using the godless, the lawless, the false religions. Today we are under siege; everything anti-Christian is cheered--and that makes for a lot of cheering.

In the U.S. there seems to be a meth/drug epidemic, violence, an over abundance of secular and religious child rapists, pornographers, agenda ridden baby killers and homosexuals and other sin seekers demanding we approve this or that particular brand of sin. Who knows what kind of leaders we’ll end up desiring to govern us! In matters of religion in the last 150 years we’ve had so-called liberal theologians teach us the liberating value of “rationalism” and of our being “self-sufficient.” We were taught we don’t need God–-besides, the miracles in the Bible are all myths and legends. Science will save us. And this teaching was by men who deemed themselves part of the great Christian Church, professors in Christian seminaries. (Oh, that clever devil. He needs to be thrown into a lake of fire.)

Is this influence of the dragon giving us beastly world governments that keep rising out of the Godless unstable sea? Yes, when John wrote it was Rome who persecuted, but pick a period of time and we’ll find Godless actions by successive governments on this earth filled with Godless men. In the U.S., well financed legal entities are using the governmental judiciary to attempt to suppress even the public mention of God. Political correctness in our culture rules the day; it has become censorship when governmental law can not censor. Relativism is a rather new idea. It sounds so sweet and tolerant, but it is a concept certainly pulled from Satan’s war arsenal. Let me move on. These are important principles, yet Gordan’s exposition of the preterist view excellently covers the proposition of “the sea” being symbolic of civil turmoil. With these concepts defining “the sea” I am in agreement, even if they are preterist.

How about that “mortal wound that healed”? That is totally a contradictory/antagonistic statement. Yes, but John the author may be using a bit of parody here, i.e., here is the dragon antagonist being able to mimic somewhat Christ’s death and resurrection. While in this war theme, I suggest the following analogy is clarifying: The allies invaded at Normandy and managed to establish a beachhead from which they could not be driven. The allies then had the superior material resources and the strategic positions to overwhelm the enemy. Military historians agree that the victory of the allies was inevitable with that successful landing. Yet we know that fierce fighting, attacks and counter-attacks, and human casualties continued. It was a vicious struggle for the allies to push on across Europe. In a real sense the war was over, yet it was not. Christ’s life, death and resurrection was victory for all who believe. Satan was defeated. The end is inevitable: God wins!

Satan is defeated? The power of Satan seems to be increasing! I look out upon the world and see Christianity mocked. The secular world might laugh at my suggestion that God’s victory is already assured. But they don’t understand the cross. They see only that the sins of our culture are crashing through Christianity’s “old-fashioned” standards of right and wrong. The dragon racks up victories. He has the power and power is admired in the secular world.. “Who is like the beast?” Here John seems to give us another parody that the people of his day would quickly understand. “Michael” was an important angel. The name means “Who is like God?”

Mimicry of Christianity is a thread running through the dragon’s war plan. We’ve seen the gnostics earlier on, then withstood the within-the-Church assault on the doctrine of the Trinity. The Islamics claim their ‘bible’ was written by a prophet, as was our Bible in fact; they claim Abraham as a religious patriarch, as we Christians do. The Mormons claim to be Christian, as I understand it. Jehovah’s Witnesses are out at Easter inviting people to come to them. Yep, Satan is clever!

Rev. 13:5: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.” Note that the devil “was given” his authority. God is in control. The 42 months is best taken, I submit, to be understood the way the readers of those days would understand it. In that culture the idea of applying a meaning of precise concepts to numbers was in continuing use. At the time Revelation was written, certain numbers expressed definite concepts symbolically. For example: Seven is a number found throughout the Bible. It conveyed the idea of Spiritual wholeness or completeness. Likewise, ten, perhaps arising out of the decimal system, became a number indicating human completeness. For example, an absent landowner out with a caravan might send back a message to his servants, “Work on my barn ten days.” Instead of servants scrambling frantically, they would understand they were to complete the work in whatever short time it would take. Recall the question, “Do I forgive seven times?” Answer, “No, seven times seventy.” Are we to count such things literally and leave our spouses maybe after 490 offenses? Of course not. Literally, the answer is symbolic. It conveys something like “forever.” It is completeness multiplied. Oh, yes, “12" was the number for organized religion. Okay, that’s the principle.

Now, back to “42 months.” Hey, that’s three an a half years! “3 ½ ” was a symbol of imperfection or interruption of the divine order of things. The existence of the number language has been established in ancient writings, etc. The use of 3 ½ became commonly used in Jewish circles. It signified there is definite limit, definitely an end to a bad period of time, however long in actual years or months it might be. Used in Rev. 13:5 we can see that the beast “was given” a period of time in which to mock and wield authority. That given time will expire, definitely end. Scholars seem persuasive when they say the period of time represents the End time, i.e., the time we are in, the time between Jesus’ birth and life and His return. There definitely will be an end to the sway of evil. John had an encouraging message for the persecuted saints of his day, and for all of us since then.

Well, I’ve written a big blog of words and should pause. I am aware that more beasts are on their way. I’ll leave that for another posting...should anyone first read this one! I wish you all a great Spirit filled Easter.