Our Fight With Satan's Minion, Beast #1 (Revelation 13:1-10) Series

to/into her place where she feeds there for a time, times, and half a time from the face/presence of the

serpent [again, the time of the church],

(15) and the serpent threw from its mouth after the woman water like a river (Psalm 18:4),

in order that, her, swept away by a river he would make ["her" is the topic, Position 1; "swept away by a river" is

focused, position 2],

(16) and the earth helped the woman,

and the earth opened its mouth,

and it swallowed the river

which the dragon threw from its mouth,

(17) and the dragon was angry with the woman,

and it left to make war with the rest of her children-- the ones keeping the commands of God and holding/having the testimony about Jesus-- [=us],

This is where we left off last week. The dragon is angry, and frustrated. Despite all its power, it's unable to seemingly do very much at all. And so it turns from attacking the church as a whole, to attacking individual Christians. It does so, Revelation 12:12 tells us, from two separate places: the sea, and the land. And what we are going to see, in Revelation 13, is that satan summons two minions. Beast #1 comes up from the sea, and Beast #2 comes up from the land. In a perfect world, I'd probably try to talk about both beasts this morning, but this is a complicated chapter, and my explanation is probably going to be really different than what you'll hear anywhere else. So we will just split it, and talk about Beast #1 today.

So, Revelation 12:18 (whoever divided chapters in English Bibles really did a terrible job here; maybe tell encourage people to "X" out the "13" in their Bibles?):

(18) and he stood upon the sand of the sea (=the seashore, but it's important to see the word "sea"),

(1) and I saw, from the sea, a beast rising up,

having ten horns, (like the dragon, Revelation 12:3; Daniel 7:7)

and seven heads, (like the dragon, Revelation 12:3)

and upon its horns, ten crowns, (like the dragon, Revelation 12:3)

and upon its heads a blasphemous name (Daniel 7:8),

The dragon here is summoning a beast from the sea. Let's call it Beast #1.

Now, my guess is that we understand that what John sees is symbolic. We aren't supposed to militarize the beaches, and prepare for a sea beast's invasion. We can't take this "literally."

But what does this symbolism mean?

The most remarkable, obvious thing about this beast, is how much it looks like the dragon. It's got ten horns, and seven heads, and ten crowns. Why does it resemble the dragon?

We've seen something like this once already in Revelation. In Revelation 10, we saw a huge, powerful angel, that looks so much like Jesus that a few scholars actually think it is Jesus. But almost certainly, it's not Jesus. The angel looks like Jesus, because he is Jesus' representative. In the thought world of Revelation, you look like the one who sends you.

So this dragon summons a beast, who looks like the dragon. And what this tells us, is that it serves the dragon. It's the dragon's representative.