The beast that comes from the sea to do the bidding of the dragon has the same number of heads and horns. Although his crowns are on the horns.
I wonder if that means he will be worshipped for his power (horn=strength), and the blasphemous names could represent evil personified (7 meaning perfection, 7 heads with evil names = perfect evil, or complete rebellion against God.
Perhaps the different animal descriptions are clues to where this man comes from, or maybe the different countries that group together to produce him, it’s hard to tell. The descriptions are reminiscent of Daniels descriptions in Daniel 7. In that chapter Daniel tells us that the 10 horns are 10 kings that come from a very powerful kingdom, it’s called the 4th kingdom since it is the 4th to rule over the entire land. There are some who feel that this 4th kingdom was Rome and that our society today is just an extension of them…creating the 4th kingdom. Rome was a city built on 10 hills, so references to 10 anything could have been received by the original hearers to mean “Rome”.
I wonder if it’s significant that one beast come out of the sea, and the other comes up from the earth?
In any case there is a larger picture here that sometimes gets lost. The devil is putting together his counterfeit monarchy. God lives in community, the three in one that we call the Trinity. The devil is trying to mimic that here. God seals 144,000 people that the devil cannot harm, and the devil responds by making everyone who serves him receive a mark.
What about this “mark of the beast”? Theories abound, and I have my own, but they aren’t that important. What’s significant here is that anyone who swears allegiance to the beast and takes the mark will never enter heaven. I used to worry that I would be “tricked” into taking the mark of the beast…but when it’s being offered by a being covered with blasphemous names I don’t think we will have to worry that we won’t recognize it. Sure, the temptation to take the mark will be there…but the Holy Spirit living within us will help us remain strong so we don’t cave to the peer pressure.
Should we even wonder about this? I mean, who cares…if we aren’t going to be here when it happens. Here’s the thing, in 13:10 it says “this calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints”. Why would that statement be there if the “saints” were gone? Then, in 14:13 it says again “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on”. Again, why would that be there if it weren’t possible? I think there will be Christians on the earth up until the end, and some will have to resist the mark of the beast even to the point of martyrdom.
In order to prepare for these “last days” we should spend our time becoming holy, because holiness has value for daily living even if we aren’t the generation that sees the end, and secondly, because a holy people will be able to recognize evil much more readily. These are not the times in which we should be content to remain lukewarm or unmotivated. At the very least we are training the generation who will have to muster the resolve to resist the antichrist.
Determined,
PR