The mark of the beast

In the book of Revelation chapter 13 we are shown a vision of two terrible beasts opposing the church, one coming from the sea and the other from the land. The first has seven heads, and ten horns with crowns upon them, and on each head is a blasphemous name. It is similar to the four beasts of Daniel chapter 7, in opposite order of their appearance, but this monster is an amalgam of all Daniel’s beasts. One distinctive feature is that one of its heads has a fatal wound. It is a beast looking as if it had been slain; it is a caricature of the Lamb, and all men worship it and boast about it. ‘Who is like the beast?’ they ask one another. The beast blasphemes God and makes war on the saints.

The second beast (v11) comes out of the earth. It has two horns like a lamb; it speaks like a dragon and it pressurises people to worship the first beast. It performs miraculous signs, for example, calling down fire from heaven. It forces people to make an image of the first beast and it puts its breath into that image so that it actually speaks. It forces everyone to have a mark on their foreheads or right hands. No one was allowed to trade without the mark. The beast has a number, 666. Three obvious questions are called for:

They are not future despots. When I was a little boy there were those who thought that they were Hitler and Mussolini, and who can fault them for such an interpretation? They were taking Scripture seriously, but the beasts are symbols of powers which are always attacking the church.

The first beast stands for all forms of atheistic power, the spirit of the Enlightenment, materialism, humanism, all of this world’s philosophy, postmodernism, all of non-Christian power structures. This beast is enormously powerful in Europe and North America today. It has ten crowns which underline the extent of its influence. It has seven heads, so you dare not absolutise one of them and say that our single greatest enemy is, for example, communism and devote all your energy to fighting that, for if you could succeed in chopping off that head the other six heads would be growing stronger in the meantime. So these seven heads are intellectual powers like Marxism, evolutionism, materialism, rationalism, love of pleasure, apathy. Sometimes the state is very antagonistic to the gospel church - Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. There is also the power of atheistic learning. That too was a New Testament threat; to the Greeks Christianity was folly.

The second beast stands for all false religion. It encourages men to worship man, his power, his scholarship, the whole human system. It also performs great wonders and thus it deceives the world. This beast is man-made religion and is just as dangerous as the first beast of atheism. The main opposition to Christianity in the New Testament came from religion. To the Jews Christ crucified was a stumbling block. To Islam today the crucifixion of God’s great prophet Jesus is utterly unacceptable. It was Barabbas, they claim, who hung and died there. That religion cannot accept the possibility of the resurrection. I think we ought to realise that we carry no brief for the religions of the world; we cannot speak of them in terms of too severe a denunciation. They have caused mankind’s greatest crimes. The hatred of Islam for Christianity and its murderous threats directed on those who become Christians in North Africa and the Middle East constitute the greatest single barrier to the spread of faith in the Lord in the world today. Hinduism in India and its attacks on Christianity are another effective impediment to Christian progress.

But I would say more, that the diluted forms of our own Christian faith, the unreformed Roman church and the Orthodox church, and Protestantism under the influence of humanist philosophy, and the cults that have spread into the world from America are also another barrier to evangelism. We meet the important men of the modernist dominated religions who control the media and the religious departments in most colleges and universities. To them the historic Christian faith with its inerrant Bible, atonement by the blood of Christ, a physical resurrection and the need for personal regeneration is utterly unacceptable. They are no friend of that gospel; they will stand side by side with the forces of rationalism against the faith of that gospel. The two beasts stand in solidarity; they are determined to defeat the church. They are committed to its overthrow. These monstrous powers co-operate in an alliance to destroy the gospel church. That is how it has been and that is how it is always going to be. They threaten the youngest and most vulnerable Christians. They are having to live their entire Christian lives under the hateful eyes of these beasts.

You would expect the world to be scared stiff, terrified at the malice of these beasts, but the response rather is of wonder. The world is terribly impressed by these awesome creatures. History reflects this. There was, for example, the procession of English intellectuals like the Webbs who went in the 1930s to Stalin’s Russia - one of the most repressive regimes this world has ever seen with 30 million people slaughtered - and they came back to Britain full of praise for Stalin and Lenin. I parallel that phenomenon to the scores of women who write each week to those infamous mass murderers languishing in prison, and they breathe out their love for these men, longing to meet them and marry them. There is no revulsion and horror at what they have done to other women. They are completely captivated by handsome wickedness.

More than captivated by the Beast, men brag about him and worship him (v4). They worship man’s achievements; his power and his plans for the future, all his boasting, pomp and show. Think of the prominence given to the corpse of Lenin in Moscow, and the long lines that pass his open coffin each day. Think of the way men treat the North Korea dictator, or the late Chairman Mao. Those men are made virtual gods.

Or you consider the signs and wonders of the second beast. Milk may appear to come from china cows in Hindu temples; statues may appear to bleed real blood; people are healed of various ailments so that piles of crutches show the consequence of praying to certain women or men. The beast has put its mark on their heads, that is, on their thinking and whole attitude to life, and also on their hands, that is, on their actions in whatever they do. If the men of the world don’t toe the line there is trouble, persecution and years in concentration camps.

Here it is in verses 8 and 9, He who has an ear, let him hear. If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. How plain it is. Be prepared for what lies before you. You are following a crucified Saviour, so take up your cross and be ready for the troubles to come. John warns them in this verse about taking up an iron sword to fight for the gospel and he urges them to trust in God. Patient endurance and faithfulness are the marks of victory over the two beasts. Take what God gives and love him still. Let’s keep on trusting the Lord and following him wherever he goes. That’s the victory that overcomes the world. God doesn’t give them breezy promises, saying that revival will soon come or that the tide is going to turn. He says keep trusting in God, but he adds one thing more, calculate the number of the beast (v18). In other words, please think when some men announce that they know the identity of the beast, that it is Mussolini or Hitler. Calculate! Don’t be gullible.

What about this number 666? Derek Thomas writes in his excellent book on Revelation: ‘Since the number 7 is used throughout Revelation as a number of completeness (the seven days of creation and rest), it is likely that John intends 666 to be parody of 777. A number short of completeness repeated three times is a trinity of imperfection. The beast of the earth bears the spirit of utter imperfection. Despite his lofty claims he bears a deadly flaw" (Derek Thomas, ‘Let’s Study Revelation’, Banner of Truth, p114). He cannot answer the great questions all men ask, why are they alive, what is the purpose of life. They cannot satisfy the deep longing in the heart of man for communion with the God who made them in his image. They are not 777, that is our living and true God. They are the pathetic 666.