Revelation 7

Chapter 7. The Two BeastsAnd I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. (Revelation 13:1)Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. (Revelation 13:11)We have seen the true Church of God, His representative on earth. We are now to see the counterfeit, the devil’s representative on earth. In the vision of the Apocalypse it takes the form of many symbols. Later on it appears as Babylon, and again as a vile woman sitting on a wild beast, the antithesis of the holy Woman in chapter 12. In this chapter it is presented to us under the image of two beasts. In order to get at once to the heart of the subject we will premise that these two Beasts represent respectively the secular and ecclesiastical powers by which the devil has sought to destroy the Church of Christ and build up his own kingdom on earth. Let us immediately turn our attention to these two powers. The first is described as a wild beast rising up out of the sea having seven heads and 10 horns. He is further described as a composite creature, pan leopard, part lion, part bear. The imagery at once recalls the vision of Daniel in which he saw the four great empires of the world respectively under the image of a lion, a bear, a leopard and a monster that seemed composed of the attributes of all other fearful creatures. The difference between this vision and Daniel’s is that here they have seven heads, while in Daniel there were but four. We infer, therefore, that while this describes substantially the same world-power, yet it looks farther back in the history of the world to the very beginning of this world-power, and on the other hand looks farther down to its last development. We will inquire immediately what these seven heads mean. It is sufficient at present to identify the picture generally with Daniel’s vision of the great empires of the world. As the scene unfolds, numerous particulars are added. It is a blasphemous power. It is a universal dominion. One of its heads is wounded to death and then soon after is succeeded by another and thus the wound is healed. It makes war with the saints and overcomes them and its dominion continues through 42 months, or 1,260 prophetic days, that is, years. Let us look at these points in detail, meanwhile premising again that this wild beast represents the universal empires of the world from the beginning to the end, the successive heads of the worldwide authority and power through which Satan has ruled the earth and sought to destroy the cause of God.

The Political Wild Beast

The Political Wild BeastThis beast rises out of the sea. Now the sea always represents the great masses of earth’s peoples and tongues, the hordes and myriads of teeming tribes not yet organized as nations. Later, in the 11th verse, we see another beast coming up, not out of the sea, but out of the earth, which represents the organized political powers of the earth. But out of the primitive and disorganized masses of the world’s population there grew up seven forms of worldwide dominion, crystallized around certain cities and certain human leaders.

Seven Heads

Seven HeadsIt had seven heads which we believe represent the seven successive forms of worldwide dominion. The first of these was the Egyptian power which for ages was the great oppressor of the people of God and the devil’s chosen instrumentality for opposing and defying Jehovah. Egypt was Satan’s ancient throne and it was against the gods of Egypt that Jehovah took vengeance when He sent the Egyptian plagues by the hand of Moses. Assyria was the second. Around the center of mighty Nineveh, it stretched out its scepter to the confines of the world, again and again invading Palestine, finally destroying Samaria, taking the 10 tribes captive and blotting out the kingdom of Israel from the page of history. The third of these seven heads was, of course, Babylon. And now our course becomes very plain, for Daniel has given us all the others but one, and not only revealed the image, but its interpretation. The fourth was Medo-Persia, the power that conquered Babylon and expanded its empire over a still wider realm. The fifth was Greece, or Macedonia, the mighty empire of Alexander, that subdued and succeeded Persia and stretched out its borders still farther over the mighty East. The sixth was colossal Rome, mightier than them all. But who is the seventh? The solution is in Revelation 17:10 : “They are also seven kings. Five have fallen.” These five are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece. These all were fallen when John wrote the Apocalypse. “One is.” That was old Rome which was then existing. “The other has not yet come.” That was the seventh. Then we are told in the 11th verse the devil himself was to come in person and be the eighth head and last. Now this seventh head was the one that succeeded old Rome. What earthly power took the place of the empire of the Caesars? It is not hard to answer. The story of the Middle Ages tells us that mightiest sovereignty of the world for a thousand years was the Papacy, not now considered as a church, but as a civil power, an organized dominion with a triple crown on its head, an army, and a right to use all the other armies of the world to carry out its behests. This is the seventh head of the beast, and the eighth is the devil incarnate, who will wind up the series.

The Ten Horns

The Ten HornsWhat are these? We have already learned from Daniel and his two visions of the 10 toes and the 10 horns, that they represent the smaller kingdoms and political systems that were to come upon the stage after the fall of Rome. It is a fact that after the empire of the Caesars fell it was succeeded by a lot of broken states which have continued to divide what remains of the old Roman empire up to the present day. Now, in the 17th chapter of Revelation, John tells us that these “ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast” (Revelation 17:12). There we see these 10 powers existing and working coordinately with the Papal power, assisting it and maintaining its cause. We will be led more fully into this view of the subject when we come to the 17th chapter. Meanwhile the light it sheds upon these horns is sufficient to identify and explain them. If we look at the map of Europe today [originally published in 1905], we will find that there are just 10 powers, counting those states as one which belong to the same family and race. They are Russia, Turkey, Scandinavia, including Sweden and Norway, the Netherlands including Belgium and Holland which have always been associated, Spain and Portugal which are also practically one, France, Germany, Austria or Austro-Hungary, Italy and Great Britain with her colonies and children. Ten in all.

The Wounded Head and Its Healing

The Wounded Head and Its HealingOne of the heads was wounded to death. This vividly describes the fall of Imperial Rome by the successive onslaughts of the barbarians until at last, when the city fell, it seemed for a time as if all organized government had ceased from the earth. The wild beast seemed to be at last extinct, with the destruction of this mighty head. But gradually another power arose in its place. It was the sovereignly of the Popes. The disturbed condition of Italy demanded that someone come to the front to restore order and government, and it was then that the Pope established his temporal authority, annexed three of the states of Italy to his kingdom by right of which he wears a triple crown to this day, and brought back the ruined capital of the Caesars to a glory and an eminence even greater than during the most prosperous age of the Empire itself. Down through the Middle Ages, for more than a thousand years, Rome continued to be the capital of the world, and from its proud throne dictated not only the policies of the States of the Church but of all other earthly kingdoms. Nothing is more vivid than the description which an infidel historian has given of the strange resuscitation of this fallen head. The following extract from a Roman Catholic secular historian will illustrate this. The rise of the temporal power of the Popes presents to the mind one of the most extraordinary phenomena which the annals of the human race offer to our wonder and admiration. By a singular combination of concurring circumstances a new power and a new dominion grew up silently and steadily on the ruins of that Roman Empire which had extended its sway over, or made itself respected, by nearly all nations, peoples, and races that lived in the period of its strength and glory, and that new power of lowly origin struck a deeper root and exercised a wider authority than the empire whose gigantic ruins it saw shattered into fragments and moldering in the dust. In Rome itself the power of the successor of Peter grew side by side with, and under the protecting shadow of that of the emperor and such was the increasing influence of the popes that the majesty of the supreme Pontiff was likely ere long to condemn the splendor of the purple. The removal by Constantine of the seat of the empire from the West to the East, from the mystic banks of the Tiber to the beautiful shores of the Bosphorus, laid the broad foundation for a sovereignty which in reality commences from that momentous age. Practically almost from that day Rome was gradually abandoned by the inheritors of her renown and its people deserted by emperors and an easy prey to the ravages of the barbarians whom they had no longer the courage to resist, beheld in the Bishop of Rome their guardian, their protector, their father. Year by year the temporal power of the popes grew into shape and hardened into strength without violence, without bloodshed, without effort by the force of overwhelming circumstances fashioned as if visibly by the hand of God. This could scarcely have been more exact if the author had been writing with the 13th chapter of Revelation open before him.

A Worldwide Power

A Worldwide PowerThis was to be a worldwide power. The dominion of the Papacy was worldwide. The official seal of the Papal government is a woman holding in her hand a cup with the inscription on the seal, “She sits supreme above the world.” It needs only a very little knowledge of medieval history to understand that the Popes of Rome not only conferred the crowns upon the heads of the kings of France, Germany and sometimes England, but took them away when they pleased and compelled the wearers to hold them always subject to Rome’s dictation.

A Blasphemous Power

A Blasphemous PowerIt was a blasphemous power. “On each head a blasphemous name” (Revelation 13:1). The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies. The blasphemies were of the nature of great assumptions. A simple list of some of the tides claimed by the Pope is a sufficient interpretation of this prophecy. One of his usual tides is, “Our Lord God, the Pope,” and the following quotations from Romish authorities themselves will more than verify the application of this prophecy to this system of presumptuous pride. The blasphemous character of the Papacy is evident from the following titles ascribed to the Pope by a leading Roman Catholic writer, Monsignor Capel: Prince of Bishops, Vicar of Christ, Sovereign Pontiff, Apostolic Lord and Father of Fathers, Infallible Pope, Most Divine of all Heads, Moses in Authority, High Priest, Supreme Bishop, Head of all the Holy Churches, Ruler of the House of the Lord. Another Roman Catholic writer ascribes to him the following powers: The Pope is of such dignity and highness that he is not simply a man, but as it were, God, and the representative of God, hence the Pope is crowned with a triple crown as the king of heaven, of earth and of hell. He is above angels and is their superior, so that if it were possible that angels could err from the faith or entertain sentiments contrary to authority, they could be judged and excommunicated by the Pope. He is of such dignity and power that he occupies one and the same tribunal with Christ, so that whatsoever the Pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of God. The Pope is, as it were, God on earth, to whom the government of the earth and heavenly kingdom is entrusted. The following is from various Papal bulls. The bull of Sixtus V says: The authority given to St. Peter and his successors excels all the power of earthly kings and princes, and if it find any of them resisting God’s ordinance it takes more severe vengeance on them, casting them down from their throne, however powerful they may be, and tumbling them down to the lowest abyss of the earth as the ministers of Lucifer. Pope Innocent III says, “The Pope holds the place of the true God.” Pope Nicholas I says, “The Emperor Constantine conferred the name of God on the Pope, who, therefore, being God, cannot be judged by man.” The canon law of the Church of Rome designates the Pope “Our Lord God, the Pope.” Another of the Popes quoted by Fox in his acts and monuments declares, I am all in all, and above all, so that God Himself and I, His vicar, have both one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do. In all things that I list, my will is to stand for reason for I am able by law to dispense above the law and of wrong to make justice in correcting laws and changing them. Wherefore, if those things I do be said not to be done of man but of God, what can ye make of me but God? Again, if the prelates of the Church be called and counted of Constantine for God’s, I, then, being above all prelates, seem by this reason to be above all gods. Wherefore no marvel if it be in my power to change times and times, to alter and abrogate laws, to dispense with all things, yea, with the precepts of Christ. Cardinal Manning endorses the following declaration: “We declare absolution and penance to be necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff.” The following references to the indulgences sold by Tetzell will show the blasphemous character of this extraordinary institution. Tetzell was one of the vilest of men and yet he was selected to carry these indulgences to all that would buy of them. He declared that the red cross which accompanied him had as great efficacy as the cross of Christ, that there was no sin so great that he could not remove it. Indulgences saved not the living alone but they also saved the dead. The very moment the money chinks against the bottom of the chest the soul escapes from purgatory and flies free to heaven. Among the abominations of the system was a regular scale of price: polygamy cost six ducats: sacrilege and perjury nine; murder eight. The final climax was the mad and fatal folly which 30 years ago dared to claim infallibility and lifted itself so high that it fell from its citadel of supremacy to rise no more, at least to political preeminence. Many of us can remember a time during our own lives when the Pope was a king in the Vatican and took part in conferences of European sovereigns and always claimed and received the right to occupy the chief place of honor and respect in diplomatic banquets and conferences. But the world has just witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the refusal of the great powers of Europe to even allow him to be represented at the Peace Conference to be held at the Hague during the present year. It is not necessary to suppose that blasphemy is always marked by open hostility to God. It is just as great a blasphemy to usurp the place of God or call ourselves His representatives, and we know that the vital principle of the Papacy is that the Holy Father is the Vicar of Christ, and the supreme authority on earth for law, right and human conscience. Several of the Popes have even officially declared that no man can convict the Pope of wrong even if it be open immorality. It ceases to be wrong if he chooses to call it right.

A Persecuting Power

A Persecuting PowerIt was to be a persecuting power, to make war with the saints and afflict them. Was there ever any earthly power that so fulfilled this terrible picture? Imperial Rome was cruel, but it was reserved for Papal Rome to outdo all her cruelties by her fiendish outrages. The number of her martyrs has been estimated in the millions. The massacre of St. Bartholomew wiped out the Protestants of France in a single night to the number of at least 50,000, and when the news reached Rome, a solemn Te Deum was celebrated and a medal was issued by the Pope in commemoration of this joyful event. Spain sent the Duke of Alva to the Netherlands to stamp out the Protestant heresy. And during all the years of that terrible war, women and little children were murdered, outraged and exterminated, whole cities at a time often, with a fiendish barbarity unequalled in the annals of pagan war. The story of the Spanish Inquisition is the most hideous chapter of the Middle Ages. Men were set apart for the one purpose of inventing the most ingenious tortures for the human body and mind, and while martyrs were literally being clawed to pieces with red hot flesh hooks, or torn limb from limb on wheels, a lot of robed priests were standing by denouncing upon them the curses of heaven and telling them that they were going down to hell and everlasting torment. Papal decrees regularly announced the names of men that had exterminated the greatest number of heretics, and they were held up for emulation to the Catholic world. Today, Spain is drinking in her turn the dregs of that cup which so long she held to the lips of the saints of God.

The Length of Triumph

The Length of TriumphThis destructive, blasphemous and devilish power was to triumph for 1,260 years. Here we come to the great subject of prophetic chronology upon which we have not time to enter fully in this brief space. It will suffice to say that the rise of the papacy was gradual and its fall will also be gradual. In measuring its duration we must reckon therefore from the different dates which mark the standing points of the system and we must carry the measuring line forward to the corresponding dates which mark the epochs of its downfall. There were several marked periods in connection with the rise of the Papacy. Measuring from one of the most important of these, the decree of Phocas establishing the supremacy of the Pope, 1,260 years brings us to the year 1870, when the death blow was finally struck at the temporal power of the Papacy. Through a most marvelous series of providences the Pope was led first to claim his infallibility before the world and then before the echoes of that blasphemous announcement had ceased it was answered by war between France and Germany, which crushed the power of France and rendered it impossible for her to further sustain the Papacy, whereupon Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi raised the standard of Italian liberty and in a few days the throne of the Pope had fallen and Rome became the capital of united Italy. Thus precisely within the prophetic limit one phase of this system of blasphemy, persecution and oppression finished its career and met its judgment.

The Spiritual Beast

The Spiritual BeastWe now come to another image of evil power, to the second beast. This beast unlike the other, rises out of the earth and not out of the sea. It comes from the midst of the organized political powers of the earth. Its principal is at first entirely different from the other. It is not a wild beast but looks like a gentle lamb and it is only when it speaks that its voice is like a dragon. It bears a very intimate relation to the beast that has just preceded and is really an ally to its power. It is a wonder-working power claiming to work great miracles and to make fire come down out of heaven. It is especially a deceiving power. It is also a despotic power claiming the right to control men’s consciences and to compel them to worship its head and obey its authority under the penalty of the severest civil and social disabilities and punishments, boycotting even the ordinary avenues of trade when men refuse to be dominated by its despotic will. Finally its very name is hinted at by the symbolical number 666. Let us look in detail at these particulars. First, however, let us premise again that this second beast represents not a political but an ecclesiastical power in very close alliance with the political power already described. What can so well fulfill all these specifications as the system of Papacy, not now as a state and sovereignty, but as a great false church. Let us now notice some particulars of this picture.

1. It arises out of the earth from the organized political states of the world.
2. It has the appearance of a lamb, is most plausible and insidious in its bearing and claims.
3. But it speaks as a dragon. Its voice is harsh, cruel, proud and blasphemous. It issues its Bulls and Interdicts, its maledictions and curses and has shown a fiendish cruelty in its dealing with mankind.
4. It is allied to the first beast, the Papal sovereignty, helping it and helped by it. It used through the Middle Ages its authority over the consciences of men to hold them in subjection to the basest bondage.
5. It claims the power of working miracles, and its largest stock in trade is relics, images, bones and records of false miracles through the power of the prayers of countless saints.
6. It is a deceiving power. Its miracles are false. Its claims are contradicted by the facts. It is built upon duplicity, hypocrisy and Jesuitism and it is essentially a system of deepest subtlety and Satanic guile.
7. It had power to give life to the image of the beast; that is to say it revived and restored the old Roman power that had been dying out, and aimed in the eighth century to reestablish the whole Roman Empire under Charlemagne, and literally fulfilled the prophecy of the 15th verse.
8. It compelled the obedience of men to its authority even in civil and social as well as spiritual matters. We know what a Papal interdict means. It was a decree issued by the Popes in peculiar exigencies when some king or subject became willful and disobedient and an interdict was issued against him, the effect of which was to prevent his subjects from obeying him, his soldiers from fighting for him, his wife from living with him, and all trades and classes from supplying his needs or giving him in any way help of any kind, so that he was practically cut off from the world and left to the mercy of the Pope.
9. Finally a hint is given of the name of this system of evil by the number 666. Many interpretations have been given out but the most satisfactory is that which is as old as the days of Irenaeus, a father of the second century, who first suggested that word Lateinos which means Latin and numbers exactly 666, each letter in the name having a certain numerical value. This is indeed very wonderful, when we remember that Irenaeus lived centuries before the Papacy arose, and yet he foresaw that this system of iniquity would in some way become connected with the Latin language and the Latin race. The Papacy is Latin through and through, using the Latin language and having its constituency among the Latin races. Whatever else this number may mean it certainly is strangely appropriate in connection with this name. Doubtless there will be important changes in the varied developments of the Papacy and probably before the end there will be some personal embodiment of the anti-Christ, crystallizing in some extraordinary manner that which has been already fulfilled in the system he will represent. But while expecting this let us not commit the fatal error of blinding our eyes to the tremendous facts of the present and the past. As Dr. Bonar has said with such force and wisdom: “It is one of the wiles of the devil so to pre-occupy our minds with the thought of the coming anti-Christ that we shall fail to recognize who is already here.” At the same time let us not forget that the spirit of the Papacy may extend far beyond the Papal organization. There seems to be a marked movement in all the Protestant churches today to gradually return to the things from which the Reformation delivered the Church. The Spirit of formalism and worldliness leads naturally to ritualism, and ritualism finds its only complete satisfaction in Romanism itself. When God’s judgment strikes mystical Babylon it will strike all who in any way have shared her spirit, and let us not think that the name of Protestantism will save us from the discriminating and certain judgment of God. We will come back to this subject again in the 17th and 18th chapters where the same organized and double system of political and ecclesiastical power will meet us under different imagery and in its later developments. But through all the changing figures we will find the same mystery of iniquity, and back of it the same subtle Adversary who has been its supporter and its head, and is at last to become himself its consummate embodiment and final head.