Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

13:1-2
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LEVIATHAN AND BEHEMOTH
The Book of Revelation is a Covenant document. It is
a prophecy, like the prophecies of the Old Testament.
This means that it is not concerned with making
“predictions” of astonishing events as such. As
prophecy, its focus is redemptive and ethical. Its
concern is with the Covenant. The Bible is God’s
revelation about His Covenant with His people. It was
written to show what God has done to save His people
and glorify Himself through them.
Therefore, when God speaks of the Roman Empire in
the Book of Revelation, His purpose is not to tell us
titillating bits of gossip about life at Nero’s court.
He speaks of Rome only in relation to the Covenant
and the history of redemption. “We should keep in
mind that in all this prophetic symbolism we have
before us the Roman empire as a persecuting power. This
Apocalypse is not concerned with the history of Rome.
. . . The Beast is not a symbol of Rome, but of the great
Roman world-power, conceived as the organ of the old
serpent, the Devil, to persecute the scattered saints of
God.” 1 The most important fact about Rome, from the
viewpoint of Revelation, is not that it is a powerful
state, but that it is Beast, in opposition to the God of
the Covenant; the issue is not essentially political but
religious (cf. comments on 11:7). The Roman Empire is
not seen in terms of itself, but solely in terms of 1) the
Land (Israel), and 2) the Church.
The Beast from the Sea (13:1-10)
1 And I was stationed on the sand of the sea. And I saw a
Beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and
seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on
his heads were blasphemous names.
2 And the Beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet
were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth
of a lion. And the Dragon gave him his power and his
throne and his great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as if it had been smitten to
death, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole
Land wondered after the Beast;
4 and they worshiped the Dragon, because he gave his
authority to the Beast; and they worshiped the Beast,
saying: Who is like the Beast, and who is able to wage war
with him?
5 And there was given to him a mouth speaking great
things and blasphemies; and authority to make war for
forty-two months was given to him.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to
blaspheme His Name and His Tabernacle, those who
tabernacle in heaven.
7 And it was given to him to make war with the saints and
to overcome them; and authority over every tribe and
people and tongue and nation was given to him.
8 And all who dwell on the Land will worship him,
everyone whose name has not been written from the
foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb
who has been slain.
9 If anyone has an ear, let him hear.
10 If anyone is destined for captivity, to captivity he goes; if
anyone kills with the sword, with the sword he must be
killed. Here is the perseverance and the faith of the
saints.
1-2 St. John tells us that, just as he had ascended to
God’s Throneroom in order to behold the heavenly
world (4:1; cf. Ezek. 3:14; 8:3), the Spirit now stationed
him on the sand of the sea, the vantage point from
which he is able to view the Beast coming up out of
the sea. In a visual, dramatic sense, the mighty Roman
Empire did seem to arise out of the sea, from the Italian
peninsula across the ocean from the Land. More than
this, however, the Biblical symbolism of the sea is in
view here. The sea is, as we saw in 9:1-3, associated
with the Abyss, the abode of the demons, who were
imprisoned there after having been expelled from the
Garden. The Abyss is the “Deep” of Genesis 1:2,
“without form and void,” uninhabitable by man. It is
away from the dry land of human environment, and is
the place where the demons are kept imprisoned as
long as men are faithful to God. When men apostatize,
the demons are released; as man is progressively
restored, the evil spirits are sent back into the Abyss
(Luke 8:26-33). Here we see the ultimate source of the
“beastliness” of the Beast: In essence, he comes from
the sea, from the chaotic deep-and-darkness of the
Abyss, which had to be conquered, formed, and filled
by the light of the Spirit (Gen. 1:2; John 1:5). This is
not to suggest that there was any real conflict between
God and His creation; in the beginning, everything was
“very good.” The sea is most fundamentally an image of
life. But after the Fall, the picture of the raging deep is
used and developed in Scripture as a symbol of the
world in chaos through the rebellion of men and
nations against God: “The wicked are like the tossing
sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse
and mud” (Isa. 57:20; cf. Isa. 17: 12). St. John is told
later that “the waters which you saw . . . are peoples and
multitudes and nations and tongues” (17: 15). Out of
this chaotic, rebellious mass of humanity emerged
Rome, an entire empire founded on the premise of
opposition to God.
The Beast has ten horns and seven heads, a mirrorimage
(cf. Gen. 1:26) of the Dragon (12:3), who gives
the Beast his power and his throne and great
authority. The ten crowned horns (powers) 2 of the
Beast are explained in 17:12 in terms of the governors
1. Milton Terry, Biblical Apocalyptic: A Study of the Most Notable Revelations of God and of Christ in the Canonical Scriptures (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1898), pp. 393f.
2. Cf. 1 Kings 22:11; Zech. 1:18-21; Ps. 75:10.
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