The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

alone to the Almighty, and seek to prove that it enjoys the cooperation and sanction of the
Almighty.
Another feature descriptive of it is that it would in some way, not mentioned, cause the
earth and those who dwell therein, to worship or reverence the first beast--particularly
stated to be the one who received the deadly wound and was healed. And finally, and
seemingly the most important feature of all, is that it would be an agency in causing an
image or likeness of the first beast government to be made.
Views of eminent expositors
Recognizing what seems to be a Divine law in the interpretation and application of these
visions--that of a progressive understanding of their fulfillment as history unveils their
meaning--we most naturally and properly inquire, what has been the interpretation of this
vision by expositors in general? We answer, There has not been that unanimity in the
interpretation of this vision that has prevailed in the interpretation and application of the
vision of the ten-horned wild beast. We give, in brief, the interpretations of some of the
most noted expositors.
Mr. Elliott interpreted this two-horned beast to be "the Papal Clergy, united under the Pope
in his ecclesiastical character as the Western Patriarch; and acting so as to support him in
his usurped and far loftier character of Christ's vicar on earth, or Antichrist." Its two horns
were interpreted by him to be its secular and religious powers. This same expositor
understood the "image of the beast" to represent "the Papal General Councils of Western
Europe."
Mr. Barnes, in his Notes and Comments, interprets the two-horned beast to represent the
Papacy itself in its exercise of ecclesiastical and civil power. The image of the beast, he
interpreted to represent the Holy Roman Empire established under Charlemagne in 800
AD. Mr. Lord says that "all the characteristics of the two-horned wild beast are found
conspicuously in the hierarchy of the Italian Catholic Church within the Papal dominions."
He interprets its two horns to be the spiritual and temporal power, and not two kingdoms.
The image of the beast he understood to have been fulfilled in the Gothic rulers (ten
kingdoms) forming a union of their several national churches into a single hierarchy,
under Papacy's prompting, and subjecting it to the Pope as its supreme legislator and
judicial head, after the model of the ancient civil empire under Constantine and his
successors.
In his Dissertations on the Prophecies, Thomas Newton says: "The beast with two horns like a
lamb, is the Roman hierarchy, or body of the clergy regular and secular." He further says,
"This beast is otherwise called the 'false prophet,' as we shall see in several instances [Rev.
16:13; 19:20]; than which there cannot be a stronger or plainer argument to prove that false
doctors or teachers, were particularly designed. For the false prophet, no more than the
beast, is a single man, but a body or succession of men, propagating false doctrines, and
teaching lies for sacred truths." The image of the beast is thus commented upon by this
writer: