Close-up :
The man of sin and his helper
(13, 17:7-17, 19:17-21)
Perhaps the most obvious of the long-term background descriptions is the one regarding antichrist. It is proper so to refer to him, but John never does, in Revelation. He here calls him the beast. In Daniel 7, he is the little horn on the final of a series of beasts in his prophecy. That horn rises up to supplant some of the ten horns originally on that beast. It is this conquering horn that makes war against the saints and prevails against them (Daniel 8:9-12). He controls the beast of which he is a part.
But in Revelation 13:2, the same man is described in terms of all the animals in Daniel’s vision. He is especially reminiscent of the ferocious fourth beast. Notice that both the revelator (13:1) and Daniel (Daniel 7:1-8) see ten horns, and they both see seven heads. While in Revelation the seven heads are on one creature, it takes four creatures in Daniel: The lion has one, the bear has one, the leopard has four, and the fourth creature has one. Seven heads. Note also that John says the beast is like a lion, bear, and leopard. That is, he is like the three beasts of Daniel. Then there is the mouth given the beast (13:5), as in Daniel 7:8, 11, 20, 25. He continues 42 months (13:5), paralleling Daniel’s “time, times, and half a time” (7:25). He overcomes the saints in both descriptions (Daniel 7:21, 25 and Revelation 8:24). And he receives worship (Revelation 13:4, Daniel 8:11). There is no question that both visions speak of the same offender.
He sits in the Temple claiming to be God, according to Paul, II Thessalonians 2:4. Daniel 8:11 discusses the way a certain prince, not necessarily the final world ruler, will take away the daily sacrifice, i. e. break the covenant with Israel, as in Daniel 9:27: “In the middle of the week (seven-year period) he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” Then, after that man, comes one who makes desolate. It seems in that Daniel passage that the man of sin picks up where the “Prince” leaves off. We conclude from his aversion to worship rituals that from then on, worship is to be centered on Satan’s man only, much like in the days of the Roman Emperors. In Revelation 13:8, 14, worship of the Beast is seen, and by 13:15, it is required by law.
In Daniel 8, he is a latter-day outgrowth of one of the 4 successors of Alexander the Great. This means that he can only come from somewhere within the ancient Greek Empire: southeastern Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa. A most impressive clue!
Paul knows him as “the man of sin.” Once more it is easy to get carried away with imagery and history, much of which can fit. But when it’s all over, this man and his partner are thrown into a lake of fire (19:20). Literal lake. Literal man. Literal partner. In Scripture it is nearly always better to take the Word as it is. A close study of Daniel and II Thessalonians reveals that only one man is being talked about here. His profile is laid out so clearly that no end-time saint will have any trouble recognizing him. Yes, previews have shown up in men like Hitler and any number of Popes, but one man is still to come. Let no one write him off before his time. Everything written of him will be fulfilled.
What of the numbers describing the “beast from the sea” (13:1)? “Seven” and “ten”. The seven seems to be world empires and/or mountains, as in chapter 17, where the same beast is described in his relationship to Mystery Babylon (17:10). Traditionally, Christian scholarship has pointed to Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and revived Rome as the empires that have ruled mankind with their severe politicians and religious poison. A closer look at Daniel 7 reveals another possibility. We’ll look at it shortly.
Whoever the past kings/kingdoms are, this person represents them all in one man, one final rule. The ten corresponds to Daniel’s “ten toes” and the “ten horns” of the beast of Daniel 7, and the ten horns of John’s later revelation in chapter 17. There is general agreement that there is a ten-nation confederation, perhaps akin to Common Market nations, that holds the final rule of this planet with the “beast” (17:13).
He appears following a falling away from the faith, a time when the world will easily believe anyone who will save it from its mess (II Thessalonians 2:3). He is Satan-inspired (13:2), as Christ was Spirit-inspired. He dies, but is resurrected, as was Christ. The world accepts him as its own, anticipating Christ’s reception when He returns. As to the blasphemies that are said to come out of his mouth (13:5), this point is underscored in Daniel 7:8, 11, 25 and 11:36-37. Paul makes note of it in II Thessalonians 2:4. His persecutions are successful (13:7), and are the reason for a great populating of heaven during this 42-month period (7:9-14). He not only has authority over the world, but over the saints! This too is borne out in Daniel, 8:24. He will be the object of worship, as stated above, aided by a false prophet described in 13:11-18. All will be commanded to make an image of the beast, perhaps something as simple as watching him on television or the internet. Those who do not worship his image must die. Perhaps, by then, TV/computer will have become fully interactive.
He “was” and –in John’s time, A.D. 90, he “is not” (17:8). Here is the crowning mystery, explained to us by John’s accompanying angel in chapter 17. For although chapter 17 is often considered to be all about Babylon, a full 9 verses, and parts of 3 others, concern the beast by which Babylon is supported, the very beast introduced in chapter 13.
The Revelation 17 beast is “full of names of blasphemy.” 17:3, “having 7 heads and 10 horns.” This corresponds exactly to 13:1. It is the man of sin and his domain. Notice that he supports Mystery Babylon until nearly the end, when, perhaps out of jealousy, he destroys her with fire(17:16). He wants all worship to center on himself.
The truly enigmatic portions of this passage begin in 17:8. Watch carefully!
17:8, paraphrased, could read, “He once existed, but is not among us now. He will, some day, ascend out of the bottomless pit." In my opinion, this is a perfect fit with II Thessalonians 2:7: “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” Only he who is restraining, that is, the angel of the bottomless pit as in Revelation 9:1-2, will do so until he is taken out of the way (See on chapter 9). Then the lawless one will be revealed! And his coming, 17: 9, is according to the working of Satan. That is, we will have to have a full-scale resurrection from the dead. God will send delusion on the world so that they truly understand the importance of this historical figure, and see him resurrected , and believe he is from God. John says it like this: “Those who dwell on earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life” (17:8).
He was. He is not. Yet he is! He lived, he’s not with us now, but he is waiting somewhere, under restraint. And Paul says, the mystery of iniquity is ALREADY working. That means the person has already died. In New Testament days, he has already died, and is waiting to be revealed! Clear analysis of the text frustrates the notion of a modern man rising to power, being shot, and coming back to earth immediately.
13:3 mentions a head wound that is healed. But read more carefully. It says, “one of his heads.” This is not talking about the man of sin’s head, but one of the heads of the 7-headed beast. This is a picture. The animal is not a real animal, and the sword-wound is not a real sword wound. All are pictures. Yes, these are kings that have lived in history, and one of them dies, but not necessarily by a sword or bullet to the head! (In fairness, though, one of the seven rulers, Tiglath-Pileser, did die by a sword wound.)
Back to chapter 17, and the mystery unfolding: verse 10 says there are seven kings. Five of them have already fallen, passed on. The one that “is” (the sixth) must mean the head of the Roman Empire in John’s day. The one who has not come, the “seventh” of 17:10, refers, I believe to a Prince Daniel saw (Daniel 9) taking the world by storm in his 70 weeks prophecy, and who may be the conquering white horse figure of seal one (Revelation 6:1). He rules over a revived Roman Empire for “a short time” . Perhaps the first half of the Tribulation?
Then comes the “resurrection”. Of someone (17:11). The beast - antichrist - man of sin - little horn - is the “8th”. But he is really one of the seven. Really one of the first five, since in John’s day it is said that he “was”. And he will go back to perdition when he has played his role.
So who is he? Note again that the earth population of these last days, including most of the professing church, has fallen from the Lord and strict adherence to and belief in His Word. The world can therefore easily be deceived. A world ruler arises, and unites the earth. There is peace and safety. But then another ruler arises and takes his place. This latter ruler comes from the pit, as a resurrected King of antiquity. The world believes in him. He proceeds to suppress and wear out the church, nearly to extinction. He demands that all worship him. He is a blasphemer. He was. He is not. But he will be.
For me, one plausible answer to all of the above lies back in Daniel’s prophecy, chapter 11. There, a very strange construction of sentences makes one wonder what happened to Daniel’s otherwise right-on reporting of history. All the way to Daniel 11:35, from verse 21, Daniel tells the future career of Antiochus Epiphanes so well that the critics call Daniel a forgery. Prophecy couldn’t be that perfect, they argue. But though the story continues in verse 36 and seems to be carrying on the same history to its finish, there are no known facts of Antiochus’ life that match with verse 36–45. In fact the text flows right on into the Great Tribulation and the end of the world! The critics conclude: The author of Daniel is not Daniel at all, but someone who lived during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes and just guessed, rather poorly, the end of his life.
Whoa! Daniel, slow down. You skipped thousands of years of history. Could it not be that this strange reporting is nothing more than the Spirit’s way of identifying the one who will indeed “pick up” where he “left off” in the second century before Christ? Is he not waiting even now to be released, at a time when the political situation in the Middle East is similar to those ancient days?
This would all seem to fit with the 666 mystery (13:16-18). It must, you know, be the number of a man’s name. I quote from the “Last Trumpet” website, an article entitled “The Numeric Value of the Greek Alphabet”:
Revelation 13:18 gives us the number of the name of the Antichrist (666). There is a lot of speculation today about exactly what this means, and how to arrive at a number for a given name. When the New Testament was written, this was no mystery at all to the readers of Revelation. This is because the Greek language had no numerals. The letters of the alphabet each had a numeric value. In Greek, every word had a numeric value, which was understood by adding up the value of all the letters.
In the text of Revelation 13:18, the oldest manuscripts do not spell out the number 666, but simply have three Greek letters. The first equals 600, the second equals 60, and the third letter equals 6.
The fact that three letters were used in the oldest manuscripts, rather than spelling out the names of the numbers, as some later manuscripts do, indicates that the name of the Antichrist should be calculated by simply adding up the letters of his name in Greek. So, in reality, not only does this passage tell us the value of his name, it also illustrates the correct procedure for calculating his name.
So, I believe, it is a Greek name we are looking for. It is true that “Antiochus Epiphanes” does not add up to 666 by this method (although Epiphanes by itself is very close!), but it is quite possible that he will go by a shortened form of that name that all can understand easily.
Perhaps it is worth our while to consider also that Epiphanes, a name given to several rulers of that time, but especially meaningful to a man of sin, means “a manifestation, especially of a Divine being.” Epiphanein in the Greek means “to manifest, to show”. And in I Timothy 3:16, Paul says that God was “manifest” in the flesh (through Jesus). John in I John 3:8 says that the Son of God was “manifested”. Antichrist will want to show the world that he, not Jesus, is God manifest in the flesh. His first name, Antiochus, not surprisingly, means “withstander” , according to Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary.
How will the world know that the resurrected one is truly Antiochus, and why will they even know who Antiochus is, historically? I speculate here, but it seems to me that a media campaign can handle that quite easily on a population that has become Scripture-less and therefore gullible. Think of the hoaxes of men like Geraldo Rivera. Who knew of Osama Bin Laden before his “big event”? But what nation of the world does not know of infamous Osama now? It is possible the beast from the pit will rise on live worldwide television, and immediately take his place with the greats of earth soon thereafter. And, who will be able to make war with a resurrected King? Only the Lamb.
In II Thessalonians 2, he is called the son of perdition, or destruction. Daniel sees one such man given to the burning flames as his body is being destroyed (Daniel 7:11). Twice John says that this blasphemous character is going to perdition, eternal loss (Revelation 17:8, 11). We see this promise fulfilled and Daniel’s picture repeated in Revelation 19:20, where the beast is captured and cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
In thus being consigned to eternal death, after rising from the dead, Antiochus becomes a “forerunner” of those who are damned. All men exist forever, some as saved some as damned. Jesus and John both describe a resurrection of glory and a resurrection of damnation. But the resurrected damned are fit only for a Lake of Fire. The antichrist will be raised from the pit in a new body, thinking he is all-powerful, energized by Lucifer. But after a short strut across the stage he will go back directly to his eternal loss (17:8).
By the way, only one other man is called the “son of perdition” in Scripture. Jesus gives this title to Judas, the betrayer, in John 17:12. Is there a connection between the two in the spirit world? It does not seem to me now that Judas and the coming man of sin should be identified as one, but the allusion to such a one by Jesus is certainly worth looking at.
For further study of the man of sin, see notes at chapter 17.
The false prophet, 13: 11-18. Aiding and abetting the political ruler will be a false religious ruler, equal in authority, with great power in his words, yet seeming to be as meek as a lamb. He is a miracle worker, and uses this power from the spirit world to force all to follow the man of sin.
There seems at first glance to be little Scriptural support for an assistant world power in the last days. Perhaps only John sees this detail, we think. But then we remember that the book we study often tells the same story in two different ways. Why could this false prophet not be equal to Babylon, the great world religion described in chapter 17? That would mean that the religious power will ride the political power to world authority. A woman rides the beast, a false prophet assists the beast, two ways to say the same thing?
Consider: It was Rome’s brand of religion that supported Charlemagne, and the entire “Holy” Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. Later that same group by its silence and signing of Concordats, gave its strength to Hitler and Mussolini, hoping that their historical territory would be restored for Papa’s purposes. Yes, in hopes of world recognition and acceptance, Popes and Cardinals, representatives of the false prophecy known as Romanism, rode the back of the beasts of their day. It is quite possible that this associate dictator is none other than the head of the harlot church, so graphically portrayed later.
If this were true, chapters 13 and 17 would be companion pieces. The only difference in the two chapters would be that in 13, antichrist is mentioned first, followed by the religious element. In 17, the order is reversed.
Another key to understanding the co-rulers is the description of their origin. The first beast rises out of the sea, corresponding to Daniel’s very words in Daniel 7:2, where winds are stirring over the Mediterranean Sea out of which his animals arise. Could it be that this suggests an origin in the Pit, as opposed to kingdoms that are earth-based? The second beast arises from the earth. His power is also demonic, but is tied to the established religion of earth from the days of Nimrod. That which rises fresh from the Pit now gives added impetus to the Babylonian Mysteries here for so long.
Miscellaneous notes, chapter 13:
13:5,7, Important to see here that everything Satan does is given to him. As Jesus says to Pilate , “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). The church in the Tribulation will need to keep remembering this: What is happening all around us is all a part of the plan. So be encouraged. Hang on!
13:7, The universality of the antichrist kingdom. We tend to think in terms of a “Revived Roman Empire”, and we should. But that Roman entity will only be the base of the Kingdom. From this base, this one Satanic man will rule the entire planet!
13:9, a special word to the saints who will hear. This unique arrangement of words ("If anyone has an ear, let him hear") is used only in reference to the church. Other than in those church letters of chapters 2 and 3, this is the only place in the Book where this particular formula is used. It seems the Spirit is especially eager for God’s people to understand the issue of identifying clearly the man of sin, so as not to be found in any allegiance with him (13:8).
13:10, This word echoes Isaiah 33:1 and Jeremiah 15:2, and 43:11, and seems to be a comforting message to the saints, letting them know that justice will be served the one who presently torments and kills them. “Faith and patience” are mentioned together also in Hebrews 6:12, reminding the brothers not to become lazy, but to imitate those faithful and patient saints of God who inherited the promises through continuing on with the Lord (see also 14:12). Yes, soon the man of sin will go into captivity, into the pit, for 1000 years (20:1-3). And the sword that proceeds from the mouth of Jesus (19:15) kills all those who have come against Christ and His people (19:21). Be strong! God prevails!
13:14, 15 The living and speaking image of the beast can be a statue, as historically thought. But technology of our day opens wide the door of speculation. Is this a hologram? Is this a projected image on a public square? Is this interactive Television? The internet? And look again at the construction of verse 15: It seems to say that the image itself will cause death to those who do not worship it (Daniel 3:5) !
13:16, Many translations follow up on the shocking interpretation of verse 15 with another shock here, and the Greek can support it, but does not demand it: “It” can also be the causative factor for the mark of the beast. That is, supposing for example that interactive TV is the means of worship, it can also be the method by which a person will be marked. So no need to travel anywhere or do much at all to get hooked up to the flow of the world. Turn on your set, push the right buttons and you can have all of this super hero that you want, including his very personal identification tag lasered right on to your skin. Your Visa or MasterCard will be billed , of course.
And equally certain, if you do not submit to all of this, you will be executed. Those monitoring your house via TV will know of your rejection. You can expect a knock on the door soon after.
Here before us then is a wicked scenario. Mankind has found its idol, a man who comes in with great ideas, and sweeping solutions. Israel is in the beginning at peace, Jerusalem an international city, the temple sacrifices re-established. But somewhere at the beginning of this three and one-half year period, all is changed, as the daily sacrifice is taken away, the fragile situation of the Middle East is disrupted, and bombs begin to drop. Elect Jews run for cover and are air-lifted to a place of protection. The world ruler tries to kill them, but is repulsed and takes out his vengeance on the church. He is successful in killing not only many Christians but two mighty prophets of God who preach throughout this period a message of repentance. He raises a worldwide consciousness of himself through the Media and demands worship of all.
Have we all counted the cost lately of service to Jesus Christ?
