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

Daniel sees four great beasts coming out of the sea-- the first like a lion, the second like a bear, the third, like a leopard, and then a fourth beast with ten horns. Each of these beasts, in Daniel, represents a distinct (Daniel 7:3), earthly superpower. I'm not going to pretend to understand Daniel at all, but these four beasts are usually identified with (1) Assyria, (2) Babylon, (3) the Medes and Persians, and (4) the Greeks. The beasts appear one at a time, in succession.

What John sees very obviously builds on Daniel 7, but at the same time, it's different. John sees a single beast, which has characteristics of all four beasts. The beast is a mixture of lion, and bear, and leopard, and the fourth beast. So John isn't seeing the fulfillment of Daniel. He's seeing an adaptation of it.

What does this adaption teach us? I think it shows us that the Beast #1 of Revelation 13 is a symbol for human empires. Today, we'd call them superpowers. And specifically, this Beast seems to be a symbol for the Roman empire.

Let's reread Revelation 13:2:

(2) and the beast that I saw was similar to a leopard, (Daniel 7:1-8)

and its feet were like a bear,

and its mouth like the mouth of a lion,

and the dragon gave to it, its power, and its throne, and great authority/power,

In the last line, we see that the dragon-- satan-- gives his power, and throne, and authority, to the Roman empire. Out of all of the nations in the world, satan picks out Rome, to bless it, and lift it up. And Rome becomes satan's servant.

This leads us to verse 3:

(3) and one of its heads [was] like being slaughtered to death (Revelation 5:6, 9, 12),

and the wound of its death was healed,

and the whole earth was amazed [and followed] after the beast,

Verse 3 is one of the more complicated verses in Revelation, but scholars generally seem to agree that it should be explained along two lines. The first line centers around the Roman emperor Nero. Nero famously persecuted the church in the first century (60s). Eventually, he was dethroned, and he killed himself with a dagger (Revelation 13:14 Suetonius, Nero 49:3–4; h/t Craig Koester). Even though his funeral was public, there was a widespread belief that Nero hadn't actually died, and that he would someday come back with a Parthian army, and reclaim his throne. His story is a bit like Elvis's, or, more darkly, Hitler's. Did he really die? Is he going to make a comeback, eventually?

And from the perspective of the first century church, Nero did sort of come back. Revelation was probably written during the time of Domitian, who also persecuted the church. Domitian was like Nero (a "type" of Nero). Any Christian in his 60s or older, couldn't help but link the two. You survive one evil emperor, one period of tribulation, and you think that was horrible, but you tell yourself, "We made it through." You got through that, like people today got through the Great Depression, or WW II. And then 30 years later, another wicked emperor takes his place. We talk the same way today, comparing people to Hitler or to Nazis. We could also talk about how half of the U.S. is terrified that Trump will be reelected, and his reign will come back to life. I mean, the same thing could be said about Biden. You think he's dead, and then he gets reelected in 2024, and the world marvels.