Hard things in the Bible, part 5: Beasts, and the Mark of the Beast

 

If you’ve been following this series, by now I hope you’ve gotten at least one thing firmly embedded in your brain: None of us can just make up an explanation for what the hard stuff in the Bible means.

Or rather, everyone can; anyone can spout ideas about what they think things mean; and therefore none of us should pay any attention to those explanations. The only reliable explanation of a Bible symbol is one found in the Bible itself.

I’ve had individuals tell me that ‘the spirit revealed’ to them what this or that passage meant. Does that really make sense? The Bible itself warned us: “Do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions to see whether they originate with God.” (1 John 4:1) It also warns us, repeatedly, not to rely on our own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5; Jeremiah 17:9) ‘Follow your heart’ is a Hollywood-ism, not a scripture.

John had good reason for that warning about inspired expressions: It had been 30 years since anyone prior to him had actually been inspired by God to write any part of the Bible. That was a long drought. But that didn’t stop people from claiming they were inspired.

For example: Noting that the Bible is silent on Jesus’ life from age 12 to 30, books such as ‘The Gospel of Thomas’ made up details about miracles Jesus supposedly did during those years. Obviously, any idiot can make up details that are omitted from the Bible. 

I should know: While I followed Acts chapter 27 as closely as possible, I nevertheless made up details about Paul’s catastrophic voyage to Rome for my novel The Minotaur Medallion. But I didn’t try to pass it off as “inspired” – I made it quite clear it was fiction.

We need inspired scripture to explain inspired scripture. We can understand the beasts in Revelation only by reading other passages in the Bible that explain exactly what various symbols mean. And the Bible doesn’t leave us hanging.

The book of Daniel, like the book of Revelation, has several descriptions of monstrous beasts. Daniel gives us quite a bit to work with. In Daniel chapter 7, Daniel sees a disturbing vision of four huge beasts. Then an angel explains:

“These huge beasts, four in number, are four kings who will stand up from the earth.” (Da. 7:17)

See? Simple. Beasts = Kings. Now, did the angel mean literally 4 individuals? No. How do we know? The angel says so: “As for the fourth beast, there is a fourth kingdom ...and ten kings will rise up out of that kingdom.” (Da. 7:23, 24)

So each beast is a kingdom, not an individual king.

In explaining his next vision, the angel told Daniel, “The two-horned ram that you saw stands for the kings (plural) of Media and Persia. The hairy male goat stands for the king of Greece; and the great horn that was between its eyes stands for the first king. As for the horn that was broken, so that four stood up instead of it, there are four kingdoms from his nation that will stand up.” (Da. 8:20-22)

While a Bible beast may stand for a kingdom, the horns on the beast often represent the individual rulers over that kingdom.

Now let’s use this method to define the beasts in Revelation. We’ll take them in the order in which they appear.

1.     ‘A great fiery-colored dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads seven crowns...’ (Re. 12:3) That one’s easy: A few verses later the account tells us clearly that the dragon is, “the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan. . .” (Re. 12:9) But why is he pictured with 7 heads and 10 horns? The devil is portrayed in other parts of the bible as a snake or as a lion. Each creature has specific traits. In John’s day, a dragon was a mythical beast, possibly based on fossils of dinosaurs. In any case, the Greek word “drakon” refers to a beast that quickly slurps down its prey. The crowns tell us clearly that we are dealing with Satan as a king; his role as ruler of all (seven heads and ten horns) the kingdoms of the world. That’s not a stretch; in this same passage, when Satan is thrown out of heaven, a voice announces that, ‘Now have come to pass the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ...’ 

 

2.     Next comes a ‘beast ascending out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and on its horns ten crowns, but on its heads blasphemous names. [This wild beast] was like a leopard, but its feet were like those of a bear, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth.’ (Re. 13:1, 2) This beast, while similar in appearance to the beast representing Satan's rulership, this is not the same. The various beasts Daniel recounted in chapter 7 included many of these same features: lion’s mouth, leopard spots, feet like a bear, and so on. In Daniel, it was telling in advance the march of the world’s major powers from Daniel’s time down until the last days – Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome; and unnamed governments that would grow out of Rome.  But as we showed in Part 3 of this series, Revelation is a vision of things as if it were written in these last days. So this Revelation beast is a summary, after the fact, of all those world powers in whatever iteration they grew into: All the governments that grew out of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. From Iceland to New Zealand, China to Zimbabwe, it would be difficult to find a country that was not at some point in its history ruled by an outgrowth of one of those powers. The similarity in appearance between this beast and the dragon is not a coincidence: It reinforces that Satan is the ruler of all these kingdoms.

 

3.     “I saw another wild beast ascending out of the earth, and it had two horns like a lamb, but it began speaking like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first wild beast. . .” (Re. 13:11, 12) This beast’s ‘two horns like a lamb’ might remind us of Jesus, who is pictured by a lamb in the book of Revelation. Or it might simply be meant to put us in mind of the gentle nature of a lamb. However, the beast is a hypocrite... an attribute that is very un-christlike. And it is clearly a government. Whatever government is here pictured, it might be one that tries to pass itself off as Christian – remind you of any ‘one nation under God’? – or the symbolism could simply be that of a nation or group of nations that hypocritically pretends to be as peaceable as a lamb while actually behaving like Satan – as, for example, the allied powers of the U.S. and Britain. 

 

4.     The next beast is called “an image to the wild beast.” (Re. 13:14) This beast is an image, icon, or idol made to look like beast #2 above, the leopard/bear/lion with 7 heads. This image-beast is described as being made or instigated by the lamb/dragon beast. This is something unusual. Most governments arise when a group of people who live in one geographic place organize a government over themselves, which gets passed down in some way to successors. But this beast is created, a manufactured copy of something else. This image beast is a copy of, or a miniature representation in composite, of all of Earth’s governments. What could be the meaning of this symbol? Is there, today, a governmental organization that is like a copy in miniature of all the world’s governments? There is. It is called the United Nations. And, just as John foresaw 2,000 years ago, the U.N. was brought into existence at the instigation of the lamb/dragon – the U.S. and Britain.

 Now: what is “the mark of the beast”?

“High and low, rich and poor, freemen and slaves--it causes a brand to be put on the right hand or on the forehead of every one of them, so that no one is able to buy or sell except those that bear this brand--either the name of the Beast or the number indicated by the letters of his name.” (Re. 13:16, 17, TCNT)

In this loose translation the word “mark” is rendered “brand”. But it’s a good mental picture. The marks put on slaves in John’s day were not written in pencil or ink. They were permanent, what we would today call a brand. Like a cattle brand, they were unique to the owner; they marked whose property the slave was.

So getting ‘the mark of the beast’ is nothing as literal as a particular tattoo, or a credit card, or a vaccine, or getting an RFID chip embedded in our hand. Rather, it shows ownership. Jesus says of his faithful followers, “I will write upon him the name of my God.” (Re. 3:12) Yes, we are slaves. But, as Romans chapter 6 points out, everyone is. You are either a slave of God, or a slave of Satan’s system.

Note what Revelation 19:20 says about this mark: “The false prophet (lamb/dragon)... misled those who received the mark of the wild beast and those who worship its image.”

Those who slavishly support this world’s governments, indicating their belief in those organizations, aren’t forcibly branded, like a slave. They’re worshipers; they're misled. They make themselves slaves. That’s why the ‘mark’ is on the “forehead” – their thinking – and their “hand” – their actions.

What about the part that says, “nobody can buy or sell except a person having the mark”? (Re. 13:17) We’ve seen something like that in miniature a few times over the last few decades. Occasionally, some government somewhere starts requiring people to demonstrate their support of the government in order to do basic business transactions, or even to feed their families. Think of the people in World War II Germany who were expected to say 'Heil Hitler' to the grocery store owner; or the citizens of Malawi in the 1970s being required to show membership in the political party just to hold a job. Based on this prophecy it’s likely that, before this system ends, we’ll see this happening on a much larger scale.

Before that time arrives, we need to decide whose slaves we are. 

 To read other columns in this series click here.

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Bill K. Underwood is a columnist, Bible scholar and photographer. He is the author of several books available in either paperback or ebook on Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.

Hard things in the Bible, part 4: Symbolic numbers

As we mentioned in the last part of this series the book of Revelation, being full of symbols, is one of the hard parts of the Bible. No one should claim to be able to explain those symbols without referring to other parts of the Bible.

Before we get to all the beasts and plagues, let’s start with something more basic: the various symbolic numbers mentioned. We’re not talking numerology here; neither are we talking about the kind of demented math used in the Jewish Kabala. There is simply no proof that any of that has anything to do with the Bible.

Here are some of the numbers that seem to crop up with some regularity in the Bible:

ONE: Revelation refers to events that happen in “One day”, and others in “One hour”. Comparing these phrases to other parts of the Bible, we find Isaiah 10:17-20, which describes Israel’s destruction as happening in “one day.” It actually took several years. But relative to the centuries that the nation had lived, its destruction was sudden. “One hour” would be an even more startlingly short time period: “Too bad, too bad, you great city, Babylon you strong city, because in one hour your judgment has arrived!” (Revelation 18:10) "One" can also mean united: "The two will become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) “That they may be one just as we are one. . .” (John 17:11)

TWO: In some cases the “2” is clearly meant to be literal; “2 wings of an eagle” or “2-edged sword.” And in others, it seems to refer to a small amount but more than one. For example, when the heavenly armies of angels are described as “two myriads of myriads”, (Revelation 9:16) we shouldn’t assume it means literally 200,000,000 angels. A ‘myriad of myriads’ might be taken literally as 100,000,000; ‘two myriads’ simply makes it clear that we’re talking about millions and millions of angels.

“2 witnesses” are mentioned at Revelation 11:3. The rest of the passage refers to an olive tree and a lampstand. That should remind Bible students of the book of Zechariah. In that book, the olive tree feeding olive oil to a lampstand is explained as referring to the high priest of the time, Joshua, assisting the governor of the time, Zerubbabel. Both of them were faithful men who were taking the lead in providing ‘light’ to Jehovah’s people the Israelites who had just returned from Babylon. It might also be helpful to remember that initially Israel was led by 2 men, Moses and Aaron.

With that background it becomes fairly easy to make the connection to the picture John painted, of 2 witnesses taking the lead at an assigned task during “the Lord’s Day” (if this term is unfamiliar go back to Part 3 of this series); not literally 2, but a small number relative to the workers they were leading. The work Jesus has assigned his disciples for “the Lord’s Day” is to preach the good news of the kingdom earth-wide (Matthew 28:19). I’ll leave the reader to decide which religion fulfills the picture, but here’s a hint: You will struggle to find an application of this prophecy to most of the denominations active during these last days.

THREE: The number 3 comes up a lot in Revelation: 3 angels, 3 trumpets, 3 woes, 3 unclean expressions... While there are hundreds of uses of the number 3 in the Bible, the ones that seem to have a symbolic usage are those that are a triple repetition, the idea of ‘3 times for emphasis’.

For example, “A ruin, a ruin, a ruin I will make it,” speaking of Israel’s kingship. (Ezekiel 21:27) If that were the only example you would be right to be skeptical. But check out these others:

Elihu, counseling Job about Jehovah’s forgiveness: “‘He has redeemed my soul from going into the pit, And my life will see the light.’ Indeed, God does all these things twice, three times, for a man.” (Job 33:27-29)

Jehovah’s instructions to Ezekiel: “Clap your hands and repeat ‘A sword!’ three times. It is the sword of the slain victims, the sword of great slaughter, that surrounds them.” (Ezekiel 21:14)

Now, compare the passages in Revelation where a thought is repeated 3 times:

• Revelation 4:8 (TCNT) “These four Creatures... never cease to say-- 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, our God, the Almighty, who was, and who is, and who shall be.'”
• Revelation 8:13 (TCNT) “I heard an eagle flying in mid-heaven and crying in a loud voice--'Woe, woe, woe for all who live on the earth.”

The threefold repetition of “Holy” in reference to Jehovah is fairly obvious; the threefold “woe” for all who live on the earth shouldn’t be taken as 3 specific ‘woes’, but as an extremely woeful state.
"One third", as in Satan dragging a third of the angels (Rev. 12:4), is often used simply to describe a significant portion but still a minority. (Ezekiel 5:12; Rev. 8:7)

FOUR: Perhaps one of the first things that comes to your mind with the number 4 is direction: north, south, east, west – the ‘4 corners of the earth.’ The Ark of the Covenant was rectangular with 4 feet under it. It resided in the center of the tabernacle built by the Jews in the wilderness, also rectangular, with sides facing north, south, east and west. The Israelite camp was laid out by divine command in a square, with 3 tribes on each of the four sides of the tabernacle. The temple Solomon built was also a rectangle aligned with the compass. Many of its furnishings were square. There seems to be a link between the number 4 and something being organized for worship of God.

Now what about 4 in the book of Revelation? “Around the throne were 4 living creatures.” (Revelation 4:6) It’s probably safe to assume these 4 represent the complete organizational structure of heavenly creatures supporting God’s worship.

“After this I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding tight the four winds of the earth, so that no wind could blow on the earth.” (Revelation 7:1) The 4 winds, 4 corners idea clearly mean the whole earth, north south east and west. 4 angels, then, probably represents the organized angelic army waiting to bring Armageddon to the whole earth.

Re 9:14 (YLT) “Loose the four messengers who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” Again, “four” indicates something organized; Euphrates is the major river of Babylon which, in Revelation, is all false religion (more on that later). So these messengers (or angels - the Greek word for messenger is angelous) have an organized work spreading a message with global effect (verse 15). That message had been chained up by Babylon but was to be released during the Lord’s Day.

TWELVE: The first thing that pops into mind may well be the 12 tribes of Israel, or the 12 apostles. But that example can't be stretched too far. The Christian congregation today isn't divided into 12 'tribes', some following Peter, others John, etc. In fact, the apostle Paul strongly counseled Christians not to think that way. (1 Corinthians 1:10-13)

However, we do find a commonality if we think of 12 as the leadership of the two respective organizations - In its beginning, Israel referred to the 12 sons of Jacob, (each of whose qualities were prophetically described by their father in Genesis 48) just as the initial leaders of the Christian congregation were the 12 apostles, each having various gifts and qualities.

Why did Jehovah use Jacob's 12 sons? Why did Jesus name 12 apostles? Possibly, in part, because of the symbolism, that 12 is a multiple of 4 and 3: 4 for organized, 3 for emphasis of that idea. Similarly, 144,000 pops up in Revelation 7, and the number is there explained as '12,000 from each' of Jacob's 12 sons. (I know the passage says '12 tribes of Israel,' but read the names closely - there was never a tribe of Joseph - and remember that Revelation is symbolic.) 

TWENTY-FOUR - another multiple of 12 - also makes an appearance in Revelation. If our understanding of 12 as the organization of Israel's leadership or the Christian apostles is correct; and our understanding of 2 (2 X 12) as leadership of a god-assigned work is correct, then the '24 elders' mentioned first in Revelation 4:4 pretty much explains itself.

The numbers 5, 8 and 9 don’t get a lot of mention in the Bible. So let’s move on.

SEVEN and TEN:  7 is one of the earliest numbers in the Bible. The week of 7 days was initiated by Jehovah himself. “God went on to bless the seventh day and to declare it sacred, for on it God has been resting from all the work that he has created.” (Genesis 2:3) God viewed 7 as the perfect completion of a task.

As humans we tend to think in 10s: we have 10 fingers and 10 toes. And throughout the Bible, 10 is often used as a number that means “all” or complete from a human perspective: When Hannah was upset about being barren her husband said, “Why are you so sad? Am I not better to you than 10 sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8) When Jehovah wanted to reassure Hezekiah that He would keep him alive He offered him a miracle: “Do you want the shadow on the stairway to move forward ten steps or back ten steps?” (2 Kings 20:9) The steps were arranged like a sundial. Jehovah could have offered to move the shadow 7 or 8 steps, or 12 steps, but He didn’t. He offered 10.

SIX: If 7 is a number that is complete or perfect from God’s viewpoint, His use of 6 might well represent something that falls short of that ideal – something imperfect, sinister, perhaps even destructive.

It’s true that both Isaiah and Revelation refer to certain angels as having 6 wings, but in each case it is emphasized that they actually have 3 pairs of wings, triple-emphasizing of their flying ability.

Other references to 6 are kind of obscure: Goliath was 6 cubits tall; other monstrous men from his tribe had 6 fingers on each hand; Solomon’s yearly income was 666 talents of gold; the image Nebuchadnezzar set up which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to worship was 6 cubits wide by 60 cubits tall; You could perhaps make the case that 6 represents things that are monstrous, idolatrous, or materialistic, but I think that would be a stretch: none of those number were used symbolically.

So: With few other biblical sources to lean on, what can we conclude about the mysterious passage: 

“Let the one who has insight calculate the number of the wild beast, for it is a man’s number, and its number is 666.” (Revelation 13:18)

Other factors in the book of Revelation make it clear that this wild beast is a bad guy. The fact that the number is specifically called ‘a man’s number’ makes it clear this isn’t a heavenly picture; the fact that the number 6 repeats 3 times should make it clear that the ‘3 times for emphasis’ rule applies here; and the characteristic of the beast being emphasized seems to be that it is grossly imperfect, that it falls short of or even rebels against heavenly perfection.

Next time, we’ll talk about the beasts.

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 Bill Underwood is the author of several books. All are available in either ebook or paper at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hard Things in the Bible, Part 3: Revelation

The book of Revelation or Apocalypse certainly qualifies as one of the ‘hard things’ of the Bible. But don't leave! I promise, we can make some sense of it.

Revelation is full of prophecies and symbolism. That shouldn’t surprise anyone: Revelation tells you, right at the beginning, that it was written in symbolism:

Rev. 1:1 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants the things which must shortly take place. And He sent it and he symbolized it when he sent by his Angel to his Servant John.”

The Greek word rendered 'symbolized' can also be translated as 'signified' or 'in or with signs'. 

As we pointed out in part 1 of this series, opinions are a dime a dozen... everybody has them, and they all have the same value: zero. The only way to know for sure that your understanding of a hard Bible passage is on the mark is to compare it to other parts of the Bible.  So that’s how we’re going to go about this.

Before we get to the individual symbols, we need to understand when to look for these signs or symbols. Does Revelation answer that? 

 Rev. 1:10 “In the Spirit I found myself present on the day of the Lord.”

John’s use of the term “Day of the Lord” did not mean Sunday, despite some really bad translations that render it that way. Sunday didn’t have any special significance until hundreds of years after John died and even then, it was part of Catholicism’s attempt to overwrite pagan ideas. 

But there are other biblical references to a special future “day” of the Lord. 

Revelation 1:10 uses the Greek word "en". The first definition of en is ‘in’, not ‘on’... John's visions happened "in the Lord's day", not 'on the Lord's day'. What's the difference? When we are being specific we say ‘on such and such a day’, but when we are referring to a time period, we say “in”: ‘In my grandfather’s day’, for example. The Bible does the same:

 “Just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.” (Matthew 24:37-39)

So in Revelation 1:10,  because it says "in", not "on", 'the Lord's day’ means a time period, not a single day. What time period, then, did John mean by "the Lord's day"?

In the passage just quoted, Matthew 24:37, Jesus refers to that time period of the last days preceding the Flood as a parallel to his future presence. 

(By the way, if your Bible says “coming” instead of “presence” in these passages in Matthew, you need to get a better Bible. The Greek word in all these places is parousia, from which we get our English word “presence”... It even has a P, an R, and an S, just like “presence.” The Greek word for “coming” is erkhomenon; and the fact that the root part of that word, ‘khom’, sounds a lot like the English word “come” is not an accident, either.)

Jesus' often warned of a future day of reckoning. 

“Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord...” (Matthew 7:22)
“Just as lightning flashes from one part of heaven to another part of heaven, so the Son of man will be in his day.” (Luke 17:24) Note the parallel account in Matthew: “Just as the lightning comes out of the east and shines over to the west, so the presence of the Son of man will be.” (Matthew 24:27)

So when John says that in some spirit-assisted way he found himself ‘in the Lord’s day’, it is reasonable that he was speaking about seeing visions of Jesus' future presence... some future, pre-Armageddon period of time.

If further proof is needed, John’s description of the ‘horsemen of the apocalypse’ in Revelation chapter 6 includes war, famine and pestilence – the same signs Jesus told his apostles, in Matthew 24, would mark the period called 'the last days'.

What has confused some readers of the Revelation account is that the first horse out of the gate is the white horse, and his rider is armed with a bow, given a crown, and described as heading toward a conquest. 

People want to equate that picture with Armageddon, but it almost seems backwards. After all, if the white horse and the crowned rider refer to the 'thy kingdom come' we've all prayed for, why is it immediately followed by war, famine and pestilence? Billy Graham even went so far as to claim that the rider on the white horse couldn’t possibly mean the establishment of Jesus’ kingdom; It had to represent some false kingdom.

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He and several other Bible commentators, however, are leaning on their own interpretation instead of using the Bible to understand the Bible. Matthew 24 is undeniably discussing the same events as pictured by the horsemen of Revelation 6. Matthew 24:3 reads: "The disciples came near to him by himself, saying, `Tell us, when shall these be? and what is the sign of thy presence, and of the full end of the age?'"

The answer Jesus gave was that his presence would be characterized by many bad things that would begin happening on Earth.  So yes, the establishment of Jesus’ kingdom - the beginning of the ride of the white horse - doesn’t happen at Armageddon. It happens prior to, and then is immediately followed by bad things, rising to the crescendo of Armageddon.

Another vision within Revelation makes exactly the same point:

“War broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them any longer in heaven. So down the great dragon was hurled... On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them! Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing that he has a short period of time.” (Revelation 12:7-12)

Again, we see a reference to a period of time, marked by ‘woe for the earth’, that precedes the climax which will spell the end for Satan.

Of course, there’s way too much to the book of Revelation to discuss in a short article like this one. In coming discussions we’ll deal with some of the individual symbols, characters, beasts, and numbers.

 

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Bill K. Underwood is a columnist, consultant, photographer and author of several bible-friendly novels available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.