Revelation 13

In Revelation 12–14, we have discovered that Revelation 12 pictures the Devil as a great dragon. This Dragon, which once tried to destroy Christ, is now himself frustrated, because in principle he is a defeated foe. Nevertheless, this does not mean he is hiding, but rather, filled with fury, he is set to destroy, to harass, to persecute, to torment as many of the children of the woman, the messianic community, as possible.

Satan doesn’t work alone, he has two helpers. The first is the beast out of the sea, elsewhere known in Scripture as the Antichrist, characterized especially by direct opposition to the people of God, and in verse 11 we will deal with the second beast, which we will see is the false prophet.

The power of Satan expresses itself in antichrists in concrete historical opposition to God’s people.

Antichrist keeps recurring, with power to destroy, and just when you think you got rid of him, he comes out of the Abyss again. Then there is a final Antichrist, John presupposes it there in 1 John 2:18

What is being said there?

At the historical level, we see this beast or that beast or the other beast, but this text is telling us to see behind the beast, see the dragon. Where did Hitler get his authority? Where did Pope Innocent III get his authority? Where did the Gnostic heretics get their authority?

This suggests that the symbolism drawn from Daniel’s vision in Daniel 7;

First, the beast of the sea ( the antichrist) embodies all the evil of previous empires, which in John’s perspective meet in Rome.

Second, the beast’s authority is, finally, derived from Satan. “The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.”

If the beast recurs, if the beast recurred even in the first century, If these evil people and schemes, are concrete historical personages but with the authority of the Devil behind them, then what you see is the concretizing in history of the power of Satan himself coming again against Christ, often trying to claim the authority of Christ. You see these antichrists afresh in anticipation of the final Antichrist again and again and again.

Again and again and again he receives a fatal wound, and the people rejoice, and then they’re astonished that he springs back to life again.

Isn’t that what happened at the end of World War I?

The war to end all wars. Then there was World War II.

Satan takes over the legitimate interests of the state until the state becomes Satan’s tool to oppose Christ.

That is clear in 1 John 2:18, where the issue is not political power, the exercise of the beastly authority in the state, but in an ecclesiastical movement.

The understanding of this might be tied to another Johannine writing.

1 John 2:18–19, My dear children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even so also now there are already many antichrists.” In other words, the arrival of Christ ensures also the arrival of Antichrist until finally in the new heaven and the new earth there’s no more opposition.

John is careful enough from his point of view that, at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to make the Roman Empire the sum total of all the active historical opposition against the people of God.

Will our culture survive if it squeezes God to the periphery and worships self and things and success and money and sports and media personalities? These are all forms of the beast. Antichrist comes in many forms

The Antichrist is full of blasphemy

13:1 “And on each head a blasphemous name.” At one level this language is tied to the tendency of Roman emperors to take divine names on themselves, which would inevitably be a great offense to genuine believers.

The Roman Senate from Augustus on regularly declared the deceased emperors to be divine. Domitian, who I think is on the throne in John’s day, was addressed as “Our lord and god.”

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. That is, the whole period of this time of sharp opposition against God’s people. “He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.”

The model is the supreme blasphemer: Antiochus IV Epiphanes. 2 Thessalonians 2:4: “The one who comes opposes and exalts himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, and even sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”
what it means to blaspheme God, His name. That is, all that he is as represented by his name. It’s not mere profanity, although it includes profanity, but it means anything that you can do to make a joke about God or to cut him down to size or to make him just like you or to make him evil

That’s all slandering God, because it is presenting a god other than the God who is there.

The whole question is one of who is in charge, who is doing the assessing. Do we stand back and poke fun at others, including God, or is God in charge of us?

The Antichrist commands wide allegiance.

Verses 7b and 8: “He was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast, all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world?

Now you’re getting this setup that becomes stronger and stronger and stronger into chapter 14. You get either the people who are lined up with the beast or the people who are lined up with the Lamb.

There are only two groups here. At the end of the day, this beast is worshiped by everybody except for one group. These are not the peculiarly awful people, these are not the particularly miserable customers in society, this is everybody except for those who are in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

In one sense, the formula in 7b (people from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation) apes the extent of the gospel that we saw in chapter 5, where, again, the gospel is proclaimed and Christ draws men and women from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation.

Now at one level, again, this is understandable, especially in totalitarian regimes. Whenever you have a totalitarian regime, a really truly totalitarian regime, what they really want is absolute conformity. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a totalitarian regime of the left or the right. What they want and demand is conformity. It was true in the Roman Empire ,it was true in Nazism, and it’s true in Communist totalitarianism.

But there is a way in a democratic society that you can have a kind of totalitarianism without imposition of absolute authority. The worship of a satanically inspired perversion of secular authority is still an ultimate offense against the one true God. If, at the end of the day, the demand of all of society is to worship pluralism as a philosophy or to worship self-fulfillment as a society or to adopt a therapeutic model in which the whole universe exists to meet my needs.

“I’m number one, not God.” That’s the whole universe in rebellion against God. Doubtless, the first beast comes in many forms. Doubtless, he claims many different power centers, many different allegiances, but whether it is the power of the ancient Roman Empire or Marxist totalitarianism in Beijing doesn’t really matter.

It might equally well be a philosophical secularism that demands you worship the present, that demands you pursue material success. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” There is a new bumper sticker: He who dies with the most toys still dies. It’s a healthy reminder. This beast demands wide allegiance. He always has.

As one person has written, the worship of a satanically inspired perversion of secular authority is the ultimate offense against the one true God. The temptation rejected by Jesus at the outset of his public ministry (Matthew 4) reappears at the end of history. Satan says, “Worship me, and I will give you all these things.” Does not that siren call reappear in our culture again and again and again? “And everyone worships this beast! Everyone, except those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

There was a time when need was a verb, not a noun. “I need something.” Now I have needs. We’ve seen that before. So there are ways of distorting whole plausibility structures, structures of the way people think, until finally Antichrist commands extraordinarily wide allegiance.