Revelation 13:1–10

Original Meaning

The Sea Beast (13:1–2)

THE BEAST IN 13:1–10 recalls Daniel 7:3–8, where four beasts arise from the “sea” (Dan. 7:2), as here; the sea may also be significant as the location of the mythical serpent God overthrew in the Exodus (Ps. 74:13–14; 89:9–10; Isa. 27:1; 51:9–10).1 Daniel’s four beasts are a winged lion (a griffin?) that becomes somewhat human, a devouring bear, a winged leopard, and finally a ten-horned beast fiercer than its predecessors (Dan. 7:3–8), apparently immediately preceding the Son of Man’s coming (7:9–14). The dominant ruler of the final beast will persecute the saints for three and a half years (7:21, 25; cf. 9:25–27). Jewish tradition understood the fourth beast as Rome, which most Jews believed would be the fourth world empire to subdue Israel (4 Ezra 12:10–11; 2 Bar. 39:7).2 Judeans (as well as an exile on Patmos or citizens of Ephesus) would perceive Rome as coming from “the sea” even geographically, and the sand of the seashore may represent “the nations” over whom the beast claims to rule (Rev. 20:8).3

Yet the beast in Revelation differs from the fourth beast of Daniel, being a composite of different beasts: Besides ten horns (13:1; cf. Dan 7:7, 24) it is in some respects like a leopard, in others like a bear, and in others like a lion (Rev. 13:2). Composite descriptions can amplify the glory of a creature (Ezek. 1:10), but here they amplify its hideousness. Thus, though John makes his allusion by way of Rome, the point goes beyond Rome to the general threat of an “evil empire.”4

The “ten horns” and “seven heads” (13:1) connect this beast with its suprahuman mentor, another beast, namely, the serpent (12:3); this image in Revelation fits the Bible’s use of images from the ancient myth of the superhuman enemy (Ps. 74:14).5 The “blasphemous name” (Rev. 13:1) probably evokes the arrogant boasts of Daniel 7:8, 20, as do his blasphemies or slanders against God and the saints in Revelation 13:6.6 These would prove especially relevant to John’s audience: Roman coins in the eastern Mediterranean announced that the emperor was “son of God” and “God”; Domitian even demanded the title “Lord and God.”7 We will comment further on this beast in 17:1–11.

Revelation 13:1–7 adapts many images from Daniel 7, but the paragraph in Revelation 13 that follows reflects new information and images directly relevant to John’s audience. Bauckham lists parallels with Daniel 7:

Revelation	Daniel
13:1	7:2–3, 7
13:2	7:3–6
13:4	7:6, 12
13:5a	7:8, 25
13:5b	7:25 (cf. 12:7, 11–12)
13:6	7:25 (cf. 8:10–11; 11:36)
13:7a	7:21
13:7b	cf. 7:14

Bauckham notes that the parallels run out after 13:7 and argues that the section after 13:7 refers to a new Nero tradition, also attested in Ascension of Isaiah 4:2–14.8

Bridging Contexts

MANY ANTICHRISTS. If John envisioned the Antichrist as a new Nero, this does not imply that his vision was relevant only in his century. He speaks of an oppressor after the current one (17:8), one that embodies evil, as Nero did. Because he is recycling older images like Nero and biblical traditions about Antiochus IV Epiphanes and others, the issue is more the pattern than the person—the “secret power of lawlessness” rather than a “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess 2:3, 7). The ultimate incarnation of evil simply epitomizes and carries forward the character of his predecessors, so we may find many evil rulers whose behavior provides analogies.

We know enough about Nero to translate his image readily into that of our contemporaries, perhaps by saying something like: “You thought Hitler was bad. Wait till you see what’s coming.” Perhaps in our generation some will find other names (such as those of some contemporary terrorists) even more terrifying to hearers of our era than Hitler’s. In any event, until Jesus returns, the world has not seen its end of antichrists.36 Because Satan does not know the time of Jesus’ return (Mark 13:32), he must always have antichrists in waiting, so that we will know which is the final one only by when Jesus comes and wipes him out. Until then, the spirit of lawlessness continues in the world (2 Thess. 2:7), and we continue to experience many antichrists (1 John 2:18).

Some, however, use this passage to pinpoint a contemporary particular antichrist figure. The favorite candidate of early Protestants (not popular today) was the Papacy; thus even the early Swiss exegete Theodorus Bibliander (1504–64), who viewed the wound in Revelation 13 as Nero’s death, believed the Roman imperial line continued in his day in the Papacy, located in Rome.37 Other interpreters preferred Napoleon in his time or other conquerors of their own eras.38 Yet most modern speculations as to details about the final Antichrist are unfounded. Revelation fortunately omits the sort of speculation about the Antichrist’s awful features (e.g., fingers like scythes) found in later apocalypses (Gr. Ezra 4:29–31; Apoc. Elij. 3:13–18).

Some modern interpreters take the unity of the kingdom under the beast as demanding a new Roman empire, which they understand as the European Common Market.39 But just because Rome performed the function of the world system in John’s day does not require us to locate contemporary Babylon in or near Rome today (so those who find it in the Vatican). If “Babylon” today is not an empire with Rome as its head, then neither need it be an empire in which Rome and Italy merely play a role. Next to Antarctica, Europe may be the least evangelized continent today, and one of the least evangelized regions next to much of the Middle East. But antichrists and evil empires have risen in many parts of the world, and if Europe (or specifically literal Rome) produces the final one, it will be only as a crowning touch of divine irony and not because the text of Revelation demands it.40

Is armed resistance permissible? If 13:10 warns against armed resistance, what kind of contexts does it address? To be sure, a persecuted minority taking up arms against Rome may have proved suicidal and pointless, but is violent resistance ever commendable when there is a better chance of winning? Does John here urge a mere fatalism? Since he envisions a God who cares for the persecuted, fatalism is too strong a term; but what of the accusation that Christianity is “pie-in-the-sky,” not radical enough to fight injustice in ways that terrify the unjust?

John’s point seems to prohibit Christians persecuted as Christians from retaliation, but does not address participation in revolutionary movements that are not specifically Christian, yet work against tyranny or genocide. Given John’s commitment to waiting on God’s action, he may have preferred that Christians would avoid violence altogether.41 Yet even if this is not the case, those who insist that violence is sometimes necessary must at least prove consistent. Many white Americans think the American Revolution—which involved taxes and representation—a just war against colonial exploitation, yet condemn Nat Turner’s slaughter of civilian whites to protest slavery. That the latter nevertheless addresses a harsher degree of injustice than the former should warn us to screen as much bias as possible from our criteria for just violence.

History provides many examples of believers prepared for martyrdom without resistance. In the tradition of Jesus (Luke 23:34) and Stephen (Acts 7:60), Protestant Michael Sattler, as he was being tortured and executed, “prayed for his persecutors” and called on them to be converted.42 Anabaptist Dirck Willems escaped across a frozen lake, but when the ice cracked and his pursuer fell into the water, Willems rescued the man who had sought his death. This delay allowed his capture, and his enemies burned him at the stake in 1569.43 Protestant leader George Wishart (1513–1546), seeing his impending martyrdom, sent away his friends, noting that “one is sufficient for a sacrifice.”44 He peacefully surrendered and was quickly executed. Whereas such martyrs died in the spirit that appears in Revelation, however, much of church history and much of today’s church leads me to wonder if we are prepared to be like the saints described in Revelation.

Contemporary Significance

WORLDLY POWER VERSUS courageous faith. Satan has signs, including even a false resurrection; how does this impact Christian apologetics? To put the matter differently, what proof of the truth can believers offer in the public arena (i.e., apart from our subjective experience) that trumps this? Satan’s kingdom acts from worldly power, but God’s people act from courageous faith. Islamic regimes repress Christians and other Muslim sects and anything else that challenges their hegemony; true Christians multiply through martyrdom. History shows that every kingdom based on power has ultimately collapsed; yet God’s people have persevered and now leaven the nations. Thus, Christ’s power is greater even in this world (though hidden like a mystery; see Matt. 13:31–33); those with the eyes of faith can look ahead to ultimate victory!45

Today when charismatics and social justice activists commonly belong to different streams of biblical Christian piety, we rarely think of contemporary prophecy in terms of pronouncing judgment on ungodly political structures. The biblical prophets repeatedly denounced social injustices, however. Greek and Hellenistic Jewish oracles also were often political prophecies, sometimes resembling biblical oracles against the nations (e.g., Sib. Or. 4).46

The passage warns us about the demonization of the state: We must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s (including taxes—Mark 12:17; Rom. 13:6), but when a state begins to claim the worship due God alone, it has usurped a divine prerogative and succumbed to the spirit of the Antichrist.47 Genuine Christians differ over where to draw the line between the state’s legitimate authority and idolatry, but they cannot deny that such a line exists. Some grounds exist for civil disobedience, whether that disobedience is resisting the worship of Caesar or refusing to serve in the military enforcing South African apartheid.48

By refusing to support Hitler’s war, for example, German Christians faced death.49 When Pastor Martin Niemoller, one of a few hundred German pastors to publicly stand against Hitler from the pulpit, was imprisoned, a shocked chaplain asked what he was doing in prison. “ ‘And, brother, why are you not in prison?’ Niemoller replied.”50 Many German and Swiss Christians resisting Nazi totalitarianism made abundant use of Revelation 13.

Only by eyes of faith or in the retrospect of eternity can we see how the rewards of faithfulness outweigh its cost. Boris Kornfeld, a Jewish doctor who had just become a believer in Jesus, refused to cooperate in the deaths of prisoners in the Soviet Gulag, hence lived long enough to witness to only one patient before he was brutally murdered. The patient, however, soon became a Christian and multiplied the influence of that conversion many times over; his name was Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.51

How the devil works. This passage reveals just how hideous evil is. Anthropological studies attest the pervasiveness of spirit-possession in various cultures, and the concrete existence of personal evil is one of the most empirically verifiable doctrines of the Christian faith.52 The frequent denial of the devil in the Western world is less rational than it pretends to be and plays into the devil’s hands.53

Yet what is truly horrific in this passage is that here, as in most of the Bible, the devil works not independently but through people. This passage testifies to the awfulness to which humans can descend in following the devil’s ways (Eph. 2:1–3)—the Neros, Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, and Pol Pots; the Arab and Western slave trade; the genocide in Rwanda; and so forth—these all testify to the reality of demonic power amplifying human sin and crushing its usual restraints. Who could have believed the mass gang rapes, followed by murder, of surrendered Chinese women at Nanking?54 If witnesses and documentation did not remain, how could we believe the raping and execution of young Korean women, including new brides, as “comfort women” by imperial Japanese soldiers?55

Nearly all of us today recognize slavery as unconscionable, but many continue to tolerate the racial prejudice or neglect that permits it. As the 1837 women’s antislavery convention declared—the morning after their meeting hall was burned to the ground by an angry Philadelphia mob for daring to allow blacks and whites to meet together—“Prejudice against color is the very spirit of slavery.”56 Human rights investigator Gary Haugen discovered in Rwanda that mass murder does not require “pathological” killers: “When all restraints are released, farmers, clerks, school principals, mothers, doctors, mayors, and carpenters can pick up machetes and hack to death defenseless women and children.” Haugen concludes, “The person without God … is a very scary creature.”57

We object to evil when it gets quantitatively out of hand, but what we do not want to admit is that qualitatively the evil that brutally crushes families and lives on a large scale is the very depravity that also surfaces in daily human relationships. This passage not only reminds us that the devil plays without rules; it testifies to the unimaginable horror of our human sin that most of us would refuse to believe possible if not confronted with its more dramatic evidences.

That the world worships not merely the gods they think they worship but also the dragon that stands behind them (13:4) is also a wakeup call for us. Some Christians in Asia Minor merely wanted to accommodate food offered to idols, but in so doing, they were involved in the worship of Satan himself (2:24; cf. 1 Cor. 10:20). Indeed, there are only two sides, and Christians lulled into complacency by worldly acceptance or pursuits should take note. As the church was to be a multicultural chorus of worship to the Lamb (Rev. 7:9–10), so the world becomes a multicultural chorus of worship to the beast (13:6–7).58 If we do not worship God alone, we participate in the worship of what the world values.

Multiculturalism and the Christian. Further, the world’s multiculturalism (13:7–8) is a parody on that of God’s church (7:9–10). God created all cultures and delights to bring them together in Christ, but the world tries to bring cultures together around different centers. Whereas the world often imposes conformity by force, economic necessity, or simply peer pressure, the church must provide an alternative multicultural unity linked by love for one another and by the same heavenly Lord rather than by his earthly counterfeits.

On many college campuses, it has become “politically correct” to tolerate anything that can be associated with any cultural view.59 But a moment’s reflection will show the shallowness of unity possible if based only on tolerance, because tolerance, if taken too far, eradicates justice. Tolerance is good, but social tolerance is not identical with moral relativism. As one social commentator observes, “Tolerance is only a virtue when it is difficult—when it involves keeping strong beliefs on a short leash. Tolerance that reflects the absence of strong beliefs is a symptom of a distinctively contemporary form of decadence.”60

When some traditional societies want to practice female circumcision (genital mutilation) as a cultural practice, Western women’s rights organizations rightly protest that this is an injustice to the girls so mutilated.61 But the moment anyone appeals to a standard of right and wrong that applies to all cultures, we have limited how far we push multiculturalism, as many more responsible multicultural advocates point out.62 In many parts of today’s church, however, the reverse problem is probably more common: We do not work hard enough to understand or embrace our brothers and sisters who are culturally different (see comment on 7:9–10).

Moral relativism can be a deadly scourge for modern secular multiculturalism. Once when a New Age friend of mine was explaining why right and wrong were merely illusions, a Greek Orthodox friend of mine asked what the New Ager thought of Hitler. “Maybe Hitler had a reason for what he did,” my New Age friend responded with chilling “tolerance.” Without a sense of right and wrong, there is little basis for justice, and anything goes—leading to the suicide of civilization as we know it.

The beast’s multiculturalism in this passage is based on just such a limited kind of tolerance. The Roman empire was polytheistic, always able to accommodate new deities. The only religions it found intolerable were those it felt subverted public order—or those who insisted that others should renounce polytheism to serve one true God (cf. Acts 14:15; 1 Thess. 1:9). Is it possible that by completely accommodating postmodernity and simply offering Christ as one help to people among others rather than the only true Lord, many American Christians have embraced the mark of the beast?

At the same time, this passage offers hope to those who dare grasp it here: God is the One who gives the beast authority for forty-two months, and he does so to execute his purposes of judging the world by handing it over to its own evil ways (cf. 17:17; Rom. 1:18, 24, 26, 28). Thus “one has to say with Luther that even when the Devil works his worst he remains God’s Devil. At no time in history does this appear with such clarity as in the hour when the Son of God died on the cross” by the hands of his enemies.63 The promise of judgment is also given to encourage the saints (13:10); it reminds us that God is just, that there are some moral certainties and issues of justice in the world, and that God will vindicate justice in the end.

Original Meaning

Nero Strikes Again (13:3)

ALLUSIONS TO NERO, however, probably begin as early as 13:3. Revelation goes beyond earlier biblical and apocalyptic traditions in its portrayal of the Antichrist, using not only biblical images but also symbols borrowed from contemporary events that Christians in the churches of Asia would have recognized. Most New Testament scholars, liberal and evangelical alike, recognize the image of a new Nero here.9 Nero was the first emperor to declare an official state persecution against Christians (though probably limited to Rome), and he burned hundreds of Christians alive to light his imperial gardens at night and butchered others in various ways.10

Nero died June 9, A.D. 68, but even at the end of the first century, many believed that he remained alive.11 Even if he is exaggerating, it illustrates the point when Dio Chrysostom suggests that “most people” believed Nero was still alive, despite the impostors who had risen in his name (Or. 21, On Beauty 9–10). A false Nero arose shortly after Nero’s death (Tacitus, Hist. 2.8–9), and another during the brief time Titus was emperor, about a decade and a half before Revelation was written (Dio Cassius, 66.19.3). Finally, around A.D. 88—during Domitian’s reign and less than a decade before Revelation was written—another false Nero arose, and this one proved a terrifying threat to the empire, garnering the support of the feared Parthians (Suetonius, Nero 57).12 This fits Revelation’s warning about a Parthian invasion (9:14–16; 16:12).

Some Jewish people also believed Nero would return (Sib. Or. 5.33–34, 137–54, 361–85). Shortly before Revelation was written they even predicted that Nero, “the fugitive from Rome,” would return at the head of the Parthians (4.119–20, 124, 137–39) and conquer all lands (5.365, 368–69). Some even expected that he had died yet would return (5.367). Christians expected a new Nero (8.68–72), who would be called “a great beast” (8.139–59).13 The myth of the new Nero continued to develop in the decades following Revelation.14 The tradition that Nero would come back as the final Antichrist became so pervasive that in the Armenian language “Nero” actually became the equivalent for Antichrist.15

Here in Revelation we read of a head that is wounded, then restored (13:3)—an account that presumably points to the Roman ruler (17:10). Although the image of multiple heads on a beast may come from the four heads of one of the beasts in Daniel 7:6 in addition to the seven heads of the dragon (Rev. 12:3), a Roman tradition may also be of interest. Early Romans found a human head buried in the earth and understood it as a prophecy of Rome’s future rule.16 What would retroactively clinch the allusion to Nero for informed members of John’s audience is the riddle of 13:18 (or, if they failed to catch it, the riddle of 17:9–11).

None of this is to say that Revelation predicts a literal return of Nero from the dead—at least not before the resurrection of the damned (Rev. 20:6, 14). Rather, the final Antichrist or the tradition of antichrist figures would be like Nero, just as John the Baptist was another Elijah (Matt. 17:12–13; Luke 1:17).17 Romans could speak of emperors this way; Claudius was another “Germanicus,” Tiberius another “Augustus.”18 Thus the imperial power of Domitian and emperors to come were a sort of new Nero “in the same sense as the church … is Moses and Elijah” (cf. Rev. 11:3–6).19

Some doubt that John is alluding to the Nero story here. One scholar rejects it on the dubious premise that John lacks interest in the political situation of his day.20 Another rejects it because the first-time reader would not recognize the new Nero until Revelation 17 (where he does see the theme).21 But both passages imply a return of a ruler to life (13:3; 17:11), and John often clarifies earlier visions by later ones (e.g., 7:1–17). Further, one wonders whether a book with such complex numerical patterns as Revelation was intended to be read to the churches only once; ancient works were often meant to be reread (Quintilian, 10.1.20–21).

After Nero’s death, chaos ensued as rival candidates for emperor successively seized control of Rome; the peace of the empire had apparently died with Nero. The original imperial line was dead, and some may have hoped for the restoration of the Republic. But with the accession of Vespasian, Domitian’s father, the empire regained a semblance of stability and power. The empire had for all practical purposes returned from the brink of death—but Revelation declares that this evil empire would yet die (18:2–8).22