WordPress.com



Revelation 13 New International Version (NIV)The Beast out of the Sea13?The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2?The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3?One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4?People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”5?The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6?It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7?It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8?All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.[b]9?Whoever has ears, let them hear.10?“If anyone is to go into captivity,????into captivity they will go.If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,????with the sword they will be killed.”[d]This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.The Beast out of the Earth11?Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12?It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13?And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14?Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15?The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16?It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17?so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.18?This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.IntroductionSlide - 1Chapter 13 starts where chapter 12 leaves us with the image of the dragon (Satan, 12:9) who had been hurled to earth (think of Genesis 3:15) and wages war against the woman’s offspring. (the church or community of God)Now, under pressure from those who keep God’s commands, we pick up the story with the dragon standing on the shore of the sea. (remember from previous chapters we learned that the sea was the place where evil often emerged from)Cracking the Code (Context)Slide - 2What did it mean to them?Before we get too bogged down in the detail, of which there is plenty, lets try to summarise what this chapter is all about: indeed, what to a large extent, most of Revelation is about.John is urging the Christians of his time, and of course of all time, to stay loyal to Christ and to not engage with the gods of this world, or the underworld that lies behind all evil.In doing so, he sets up the image of an anti-Christ who is opposed to Christ and in this chapter the enemy is portrayed as a beast, or beasts, who are employed by the dragon (Satan) to draw worship towards him, as opposed to the Lamb, who is on the throne and draws all worship towards the one true God.Just as the Lamb shares the throne and authority of God (Rev. 5:6, 12 & 13) the beast also shares the throne, power and authority with Satan (13:2)It is more than coincidence then, that the word used here to describe the head wound to the beast (Rev 13:3, sphazein, translates as slaughter) is the same word used for the slaying of the lamb (Rev. 5:6)The outcome of the lamb’s work is that the world worships God the Creator (Rev 5:10, 13) whereas, here – the outcome of the beast’s work is that the world worships Satan the destroyer. (Rev 13:4) Therefore, careful choices have to be made.Slide - 3Verse 1: The Dragon is standing on the shore of the sea, the place where chaos, evil and demonic powers arose from, symbolically; not only here in Revelation but throughout Jewish tradition, e.g. Leviathan is mentioned in other apocalyptic writing such as Enoch and Esdras while the second beast is very like 2 Baruch’s mention of Behemoth. (Also, in Job)Some traditions said that these two beasts were created on the 5th day and humans were created on the 6th day to rule over them. However, the point is that people would have identified with the imagery that John was using.Slide – 3, 1st clickVerses 2- 4: One thing we can’t ignore is the similarities between Revelation 13 and Daniel 7. Now volumes have been written on this subject, but I want to suggest to you that John is using the same type of apocalyptic imagery, to tell his readers that the 4th beast of Daniel 7, is the Roman empire.Daniel enquires about the 4th beast (Daniel 7:19) and is told that it would be a terrifying king, more so that all the others, who would devour its victims like no other before him. John does not use the exact same word for word detail as Daniel but it appears that he merges all of Daniel’s imagery of four beasts into one, so that he can help people to understand that this fourth king, or kingdom, is Rome, or its emperor.Upon the 10 horns and 7 heads, are 10 crowns, each one with a blasphemous name. We have already heard, in Revelation, of believers bearing the seal of God, (and again in the next chapter) now we are about to hear how those who are beguiled by the beast, under Satan’s authority – will receive a mark on their foreheads. (a kind of great reversal, or parallel narrative)In verse 3, take note of this fatal wound – this seems to be a demonic imitation of Christ. Sticking with the principle of ‘what did it mean then’, this could have represented the Emperor Nero, Nero committed suicide in AD68 but there was a widespread fear, that he would return from the dead.In fact, according to early church father, John Chrysostom, there were many imposters, who claimed to be Nero reincarnated, that there was widespread astonishment, more so than when Christ arose, such as the Neronian imposter who persuaded the Parthians to march on Rome in AD88-89. (Also, Jewish prophetic sources relating to this)Of course, there were imposters but there was no resurrected Nero, just the dragon, through the beast, trying to ignite fear over his diminishing power.2nd clickVerse 4: This beast, empire, had become so totalitarian, that nothing could stand against it.Slide - 4Verse 5-8: Again, we read of the beast, Roman Empire being allowed to reign for a set period of time, three and a half years, but not a literal period of time. The deification of emperors could have been the blasphemy talked of here and the empire was given power to conquer God’s holy people of every tribe, people, language, and nation, which may refer to the empire’s stretch throughout the Mediterranean world. Note that those who do not worship the lamb, names are in the book of life, are worshipping the beast, and the nature of salvation attained by the lamb, was something that God had known would be necessary, since before the creation of the world.Its as if we can see this as a great cosmic battle, which stretches as far back as before creation, until its full consummation, when Christ returns. Part of that is the wounding of the lamb, as mentioned in verse 8.Slide - 5Verses 9-10 serves as a reminder to Christians that they are not to walk this way but to endure patiently, in the knowledge that God has things under control and will deliver them. A major theme of Revelation.Slide - 6Verse 11-15 In a strange twist John now describes a second beast. It strikes me (Not in commentary) that this is parallel with the two witness, the churches, that we learned of in the first half of the Revelation.The second beast operates in powers similar to that of the Holy Spirit, (fire from Heaven) yet he is deceiving the multitudes on earth.It ordered them to set up an image. We know that this was a problem to early Israelites and the beast is capitalising on this basic human propensity towards idolatry.We know that Roman Emperors used magicians, to practice astrology among other occultic practices, and that Emperor Caligula tried to erect his statue in the Temple in Jerusalem. One Jewish-Christian writing of the time, the Ascension of Isaiah 4:11, says that ‘the image of the anti-Christ was et up in every city’.Statues of the emperor were indeed erected all over Asia Minor for the goddess Roma, and her offspring, which were worshipped throughout the region.Slide - 7Verses 15-17 In Emperor Domitian’s day, it was expected that people would worship him, as emperor and god, and in doing so they received the charagma, which is the imperial stamp, it appeared on documents, coins and sometimes would be tattooed on to slaves and defeated soldiers, to say who they belonged to – ultimately, the emperor.The suggestion here in Revelation 13:17 is that one could not trade without the mark of approval, i.e. the name, or number of the beast.Now, I have said a lot about Rome and its emperors here, to give a picture of what people may have read from this Revelation, around that time. And if you are thinking I am pitching things too much in the historical setting, here is one last thing, on which I will rest my case.Slide – 8, click 1Verse 18 gives the number of the best, the number of a man, as 666. Many years ago, our local funeral director in Wick, got a new hearse and the number plate included the number 666.It caused such a stir, even getting reported in the national press, that he eventually changed it.That is mild compare with much of the stuff which has been written about this number throughout history, some of it very complex in terms of numerology.Therefore, you may appreciate all the more, a simple offering:Gematria is the practice of assigning numerical values to letters of the alphabet. It was a favourite practice of Jews as well as in the Greco-Roman world. The number 666 is significant because it is the number just short of perfection and completion, 777. Therefore, it is symbolic of incompletion and chaos. The gematric value of the number equates to a name.2nd clickIt has been calculated that the name, derived from this number, is Nero Caesar. Furthermore, not only does it do so in Greek, it also does so in Hebrew and Latin as well. And if that’s not enough, the numeric values for beast come to 666 as well.In summary then. This chapter may well have been read by people of that time to be, telling them that Nero, Emperor of Rome, was the beast who derived power from Satan, the empire and all of its emperor/gods, was a system which controlled and oppressed people all over the known, at that time, world. At the centre of it is a call to remain faithful in the madness of it all and continue to walk the way of Christ, for His resurrection, and ascension, has displaced Satan and his minions.If that then – What now? (Contextualise)Slide - 8What might it mean for us?Its hard to get away from teaching that for years has identified things like the European Union as the new Rome or beast or the pope as the ant-Christ and so on.After the Reformation of the church in the mid 1500’s the reformers named the pope as the ant-Christ, and it may well be that some popes, in an era when violence could be unleashed by the church in power, could have been rightly given this title for simply not acting as Christ did.However, many of the reformers did not act in the manner described here in Revelation because they retaliated with violence, so they could have been anti-Christ in their behaviour either.Basically, anyone or anything that acts brutally, oppressively or unjustly, is acting in a manner opposite to Christ, which is basically what anti-Christ, or anti-Christian means.I guess too, for all of us, we do not face the sort of persecution to death, that these early Christians faced, therefore, we don’t fully get it. But we do increasingly face opposition and may find ourselves having to stand firm in our beliefs and not give in to opposing anti-Christian stances in our own society.Personally, I don’t worry too much about talk of imprinting bar codes on our foreheads, or any other physical mark, unless we are being forced to betray our faith in some way.However, we do bear the mark of Christ in our lives and people ought to see that.They ought to see that our lives have been changed by this wonderful work in our lives which God decreed before the creation of the world.They ought to see it in the way that we too put our trust in God, as Jesus did, and that no matter what harm may come upon us, by standing firm in him, we surrender control to God, who is in ultimate control.There is not much of a positive nature in this chapter but one thing that we should not miss and that we should embody, for it is prevalent throughout Revelation, is the way of Jesus as in passive non-violent resistance.Perhaps one of the best know practitioners, and examples of this, in our modern times was Martin Luther King Junior.In one of his sermons he said:Slide - 9To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will continue to love you. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you……Be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer…we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.I wonder how often we think of the victory, as being that which God will inflict on our enemies, whether in the present time, or at the end of time. Luther King’s take on things are in line here with scripture:Slide - 9Whoever has ears, let them hear.10?“If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go.If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.”[d]This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.Whatever you may have to endure this coming week. May we know, and be granted, his patient endurance and faithfulness, in all that we do.Amen…Communal Discernment (Conversation) ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download