Here we are back in Revelation after a couple weeks off and what an appropriate passage of Scripture we have today for Halloween. The Dragon and the beasts, this is a literal horror show with evil that can’t even be replicated by Hollywood.
Let’s begin by looking at
The Dragon, or as we see ahead in verse 9, the ancient serpent that is clearly the one from the Garden of Eden in Genesis.
Now before we are introduced to him there is this first sign, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and 12 stars as a crown. This sounds familiar if we look at Genesis 37:9 (read). There are only 11 stars in Joseph’s dream because he himself would be the twelfth.
Israel is referred to as a woman throughout the Old Testament, and the church is later referred to as a bride, so this is the second woman in the book of Revelation and she is good. She is the nation of Israel, the twelve tribes of Jacob.
The Catholics and at one time myself, believed that this woman was Mary, but the problems with that are the reference we saw to Genesis, and the fact that she never fled to the wilderness for three and a half years. Yes she did have to go to Egypt after Jesus’ birth to escape Herod, but if we read carefully, this fleeing in Revelation occurs after Jesus is caught up to God, after his resurrection.
She is also not the church, Christ birthed the church, not the other way around. The only explanation then that seems irrefutable is that this is Israel, and she is crying out in birth pangs as we see in Isaiah 26:17, relating to Israel.
Why is this important? Because our interpretation of who this woman is provides a key to the interpretation of the whole book, and the importance of Israel and the Jews throughout history and in the future.
The second sign John sees is the dragon. This one has no interpretive problems as we are told clearly in verse 9 that he is Satan. We’ll look at the symbols when we see them again with the first beast.
Now we need to be careful with verse 4. Here we see Satan casting a third of the stars out of heaven. These are demonic angels that he sends down, who rebelled against God with him. He must be pretty persuasive for a full third of these angels to go over to his side. Notice though this is not the same as verse 9 where Satan himself is thrown out of heaven.
These demonic angels in verse 4 are there in the world before Christ is born but Satan still has access to heaven. I think we can safely say that verse 4 details the fall of Satan and his angels, and verse 9 represents the defeat of Satan through the cross and his being chained in the abyss. More on this in chapter 20.
The next verses probably describe very quickly the life and resurrection of our Lord, and Herod’s attempt to kill him by slaughtering all the male infants in the area. And after Christ’s ascension, the woman, the nation of Israel is protected for 1260 days. This I believe is the first part of the tribulation, or the church age after the resurrection of Christ. Though the Jews have scattered around the world and been persecuted terribly, God is maintaining a remnant and preserving the nation of Israel.
Now in verse 7 the scene again shifts to the spiritual realm where Michael, the guardian angel of Israel from references in Daniel, and his angels, are at war with the dragon. Now again I believe we see the beginning of the first part of the tribulation. When Christ saved the world and defeated Satan on the cross, Satan is now thrown down to earth with his angels and he is going to terrorize the woman, no longer able to accuse the brothers and sisters in heaven before God.
He can now only work on the earth. We see that he couldn’t destroy Israel or prevent the Saviour from completing his work, so he turns his war on the church, the rest of the offspring of the woman who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
How does a person, how does the church defeat the Devil? Very simple answer here in verse 11. With the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Satan cannot fight the reality of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and we saw with Jesus in the wilderness, he has no power over the word of God and the testimony of Jesus by God’s children. Satan can be conquered by spreading the gospel to the point of “loving not our lives even unto death as our Lord did”.
Read story from NIV App. Com. pg 332.
One last thing I want to show you here is that he, the dragon, stood only on the sand of the sea. What did we see last time in chapter ten? Christ standing on the sea and on the land. Christ has complete rule but Satan has only partial rule and it is on a foundation that can easily be washed away, which it will be very soon.
Let me get very serious and very practical here. Everytime you accuse someone, cut someone down, gossip negatively, become someone’s adversary, seek to hurt someone, you are under the power of Satan. Don’t use his tactics. Do you want to be a child of God, or a child of the devil as John states in 1John 3:8-10?
We can show people Jesus with our words and behaviour, or we can show them Satan. Think about that.
Moving on now to chapter 13 we’re introduced to the Beast of the Sea. We are now witnessing John’s vision of what happens on earth after the spiritual battle is won. This is Satan’s physical incarnation for the last half of the tribulation - time, times and half a time. I think this may now be a literal three and a half years before Christ comes. But by now the true church is gone, the Bible is probably not accessible and nobody on earth besides Satan knows that Christ is coming at the end of this time.
Hell is where Satan will rule for eternity and he wants as many people there as he can get to worship him.
We are now firmly into the second part of the tribulation and the scene shifts from the spiritual realm to the physical earthly battle where I believe we are witnessing Satan incarnate, the political beast, the final Antichrist. Let’s look at his description.
We just need to head to Daniel 7 to see this beast in his visions. The beast in Revelation here is a compilation of the four beasts Daniel saw. Daniel saw this beast’s destruction at the hands of the Ancient of Days, none other than Jesus.
Both Daniel and John see this beast coming out of the sea. The sea in this kind of biblical literature seems to always refer to unregenerate humanity, the Gentile nations, or the world system without God. This beast, antichrist is coming out of the Gentile world’s political system.
What are the ten horns and ten diadems? Again we look to Daniel 7 and see in verse 20 that the ten horns are kings or rulers with one standing out above the others - the culmination of all the others. Perhaps these are ten previous antichrists. Satan doesn’t know when Christ is coming back so he has to keep antichrist’s in waiting. He has not yet been released fully. This single horn Daniel says makes war with the saints and prevails over them temporarily like in verse 7 here in Revelation 13.
This horn represents all earthly kingdoms through history, and is now the one world power, the first ruler of all the world, a true world empire. That is when we will know Christ is coming soon and Satan is fully released.
Again the seven heads are very interesting, and I think this is another brilliant method of God to reveal both something that John’s listeners could relate to, as well as something people through all time can relate to. In John’s time these seven heads most likely referred to Rome which was built on seven hills, and was clearly the Christian’s main enemy. Most of John’s listeners would have thought of the evil emperor Nero as the final antichrist.
John may not even have known that he was also giving future readers a description that described the whole world that Satan would rule for a time. How many continents are there on the earth? Seven. No one in that time would have known this. These ten horns and seven heads represent every worldly kingdom, every country that will ever be.
This beast has at least majority control over the entire world until he is finally and completely destroyed.
In verse 2 the Dragon, the spirit of Satan, gives this incarnate version of himself, his power, throne and great, but not full authority.
Now one of these heads has a mortal wound. Look with me back in Genesis chapter 3:15. “I will put enmity between Satan’s offspring and the woman’s offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”
This wound is fatal, a bleeding brain will eventually kill a person, but a bleeding heel won’t. This beast from the sea has already been mortally wounded by the resurrection of Christ, but it appears here that the wound has been healed. You can’t see a bleeding brain from the outside.
This is miraculous and no doubt Satan uses this to say hey, look at me, I have been resurrected from the dead, God didn’t defeat me, where is he? I must be the Christ, the Messiah. So the whole world marvelled and followed this beast.
In verse 4 we begin to see his destiny.
The haughty and blasphemous words he speaks are not necessarily curses to the Lord, but boasting and pretending that he is God. That is the true blasphemy that even Jesus was accused of. But here people believe this antichrist when they didn’t believe Jesus. For 42 months, 3.5 years, this beast is allowed by God to exercise authority.
This is the last part of the tribulation, and I do believe this could be a literal 3.5 years. Jesus said this time was cut short for the sake of the elect. There is a definite time limit on Satan’s full rule on earth. But during that time he is allowed to make war and conquer the saints. These saints are the people who come to believe during these 3.5 years of tribulation, as well as the 144000 sealed Jews. And now with them out of the way Satan has complete authority over all the people of the world.
This my friends has to be the time of Satan’s release after the millennial reign. This is the time of deceiving the nations and gathering the four corners of the world for battle. There are no believers left on earth because verse 8 says all who dwell on the earth will worship the beast. This is literal hell on earth, because that is where everyone who is left will ultimately be, as we will see. There is no symbolism here, so I think we must take it literally.
From the second part of verse 8 through verse ten it gets a little tricky. What does this mean about everyone whose name was not written in the book of life before the foundation of the world? Is this evidence for predestination?
I don’t think so, at least not in the way we think of it. I don’t believe God has chosen who will and won’t be saved. But because of his omniscience and the fact that there is no time in the spiritual realm, He does know who will accept the invitation, and so the book of life has always existed. The witnesses have done their job and are gone. God has known everything that would happen from creation to the second coming of Christ. Remember he knows us before we are even conceived. I know this is hard for us to understand.
Many will disagree with me here. A common interpretation is that there will be believers on earth during this final tribulation period, and that the statements in verses 9 and 10 are spoken to the saints on earth. That they should just go along with Satan and not resist him, because it would be futile to fight, so they are to have patience. This is hard to believe though. God would never condone this and would never make his saints passively live under Satan’s rule.
I think that interpretation is another way Christians have tried to avoid the possibility of going through persecution and martyrdom. “Just go along with it until God cleans it all up. Nowhere does it suggest that.
No I think verses 9 and 10 are directed toward potential believers. “If you have ears to hear”, which in other places refers to those who believe, if they come to believe, they will be taken captive and probably killed during this time. Then he asks them and all the saints who are in heaven to endure this and keep faith while they witness Satan take over for an hour. This is Satan’s final hour.
Finally in chapter 13 we are introduced to another beast, the beast from the earth. This beast has two horns resembling the Lamb, not as powerful, and speaks like the dragon. This is the false prophet, and we see first of all his agenda.
Clearly we read that his goal is to convince people that the first beast is to be worshipped, that he is the one everyone has waited for. This is the antichrist’s henchman who can perform great signs reminiscent of Elijah bringing fire down from the sky.
He is a master at propaganda and deception, he uses the media with great influence and he gets the people to make an image of the Antichrist which is also given supernatural power, and everyone who does not worship it is slain. No believer can survive this period.
This is his impact. Everyone is marked somehow with the mark of the beast. All people as we see in verse 16 will be given this mark, and only they will be able to do business and basically have their lives spared.
Is this an implanted microchip, a special bank or ID card, retinal scans, fingerprint scanners. Who knows, but these ruling powers will have the ability to track and limit every person on earth, and if they go against the beast they will be killed. Even now the banks and economic powers have pretty much complete control over the world. It will be even more complete in these days.
Now we can’t end without addressing this number 666. I don’t think it’s really important in the scheme of things in our time, but it probably had some relevance for them in the first century, because every letter and word from the Greek and Hebrew had a numerical equivalent. For instance, the word for Jesus comes to 888. 777 would be the number of perfection or the trinity, and it would make sense that 666 represents a number just below this, the number of the beast (the Satanic trinity) and of humans just short of perfection.
There are many theories and the truth is that no one really knows. We do know that we have all been assigned numbers and that it’s already very easy for the government to keep track of us. To think we have real privacy today is a little naïve. Once the world dictator has access to this information and more, he will certainly take more advantage of it. He will not be bound by any rules.
If there is anything I want us to take from today, it is this. There is a satanic trinity that acts both on the spiritual and physical realm. That as believers we are part of this war. The main component of this war is who and what we will worship. Do you see how already the world system has gotten even believers to make God less important, and the desires of this world more important?
This trend is going to continue. The first part of the tribulation which I believe we are in since Christ’s ascension, is when Satan will be more passive in deceiving and controlling people. There are still institutions and rules that bind his power. He will make the world attractive, he will even bring peace into the world, all with the goal of setting us up for the second part of the tribulation, where he will come in person and start ruling with force, demanding our worship.
Do you see what’s happening even in the church? Satan is having a great influence in a very subtle and deceptive way, setting us up for a time when we will definitely have to make a difficult choice, a choice that may cost us dearly. Follow him and be allowed to participate in the world system which involves denying God and worshipping him, or go through much tribulation and ultimately physical death.
The Great Prostitute or Babylon who we will meet in chapter 17 is in the world and as we look ahead we are warned to come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, and lest you share her plagues.
This is the command God has always given his people to remove themselves, separate themselves from the culture that does not worship the true God, but rather pleasure and self-deification. This is not a command for later, it is not a command to remove ourselves from the earth. It is a command to relinquish our attachment, and dare I say addiction to this man made, Satan inspired world system that we have created and become so attached to.
Are we taking part in her sins, are we experiencing her plagues? It sure seems like it to me. It’s time for us to come out of the relentless desire for pleasure and comfort, die to our own desires, and live for God’s desires, they will be more fulfilling.
Not detach from the world, but in essence to go to war with the world system by not participating in and standing up against the ungodly aspects of it. Rejoicing in the trouble that bring to us because we are experiencing what Christ did.
We’ll look more deeply at this when we get to those chapters, but just let me show you what it says right after it says come out of her. In Chapter 17 verses 6 and 7, “pay her back as she has paid back others, in fact pay her back double. As she (and we, if we have been in her) glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. If we are in her we will share in her destruction.
How do we come out of her? Back to verse 11 in chapter 12. “By the word of our testimony about the blood of the Lamb, which causes us to love not our lives even unto death.
I guess we can talk about Halloween in this regard. Should Christians participate in Halloween? I don’t think that’s the right question. If you choose not to of course that’s fine. I think the question is how do we participate in Halloween. What kind of decorations do we put up, what kind of costumes do we wear, what do we give out at our door, what do we say. What can we do at Halloween to let people know that we are Christians, that we don’t take part in promoting evil and the occult?
There is nothing wrong with being holier than thou, if we do it with humility, acceptance, and love. The problem is when we have a holier than thou attitude that says I am better than you, because I live like this. We have gotten so afraid of being seen in a negative light because we live like Christians in the day to day world.
Yes we need to be careful how we treat others, but we are called to live as Christians in this world, and that is radically different from the majority. Other groups live by their convictions, why can’t we. The small minority will see the difference in us and want to be changed, but the majority will hate us and ridicule us, and Jesus said to expect that, to not be ashamed. Not to camouflage ourselves so that we don’t cause any discomfort or persecution. We will be attractive to those who are truly seeking if we are different, not if we are compromising.
My friends, I really hope that I’m in heaven when Satan really turns up the heat, because I’m not sure that if a gun was pointed at my head in front of my family, and I was told to renounce Christ or die, or even if I couldn’t buy anything if I didn’t worship the beast, if I could withstand that, certainly not on my own power. I pray that God would strengthen me, strengthen us if it comes to that.
And the point is, it could happen any day. Are we ready, have we developed that kind of faith, that kind of fellowship with the Lord that would get us through something like that? Have we put on the full armour of God? Right now, would we give up our house, never mind our life for Christ? Please look at your action plan, and take it seriously this week.
