42: World News & Prophecy - Revelation 13:1-12

[McNeely] All right. In this class, we want to get into Revelation 13. There’s a lot to cover here. As I mentioned in the last class, we are getting kind of a focus onto the work of Satan — in this case, through spiritual or ecclesiastical power and political, civil power — symbolized by these two beasts that rise up out of the sea in chapter 13.

As we get into this, just keep that in mind, and we’re going to do a deep dive into all of this. I don’t think we’ll get through all of it in this particular class, but there’s a lot to capture here as it moves on.

This is another inset chapter. Again, it focuses in on the story that we’ve already been studying in Daniel with the beasts, and particularly now the Roman Empire. We’re focused on the Roman Empire — that fourth beast of Daniel 7.

As we go to chapter 13: “I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” (Revelation 13:1)

So here is another depiction. In this case, it’s the Roman Empire. And it is depicted here — verse 2 — “The beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were as the feet of a bear, his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, his seat, and great authority.” (Revelation 13:2)

Now, a lot here to look at and to unpack. We saw this beast in Revelation 12, another fiery beast, and we identify that one with Satan. But he had the same heads and horns, showing that that beast is a part of the beast identified here in chapter 13 and then later in chapter 17 of Revelation.

So we’re talking about all of these beasts being the same system — and it’s Rome. And it is Rome grown large. It is Rome wounded in part, but then revived, with many revivals down through history into our modern world. And we wait for one final revival.

We studied that back in Daniel 7. We’ll get to it again in chapter 17. But the leopard, the feet of the bear, the mouth of a lion — all are symbolic. These are the elements of the other empires of Daniel chapter 7, showing that this beast encompasses all of the other three — Babylon, Persia, and Greece — but now it is even greater.

Remember, the fourth beast of Daniel 7 was dreadful, with iron teeth that ripped and caused Daniel to wonder at that fourth beast. He wanted to know the truth of that fourth beast.

And I echo Daniel’s words in my life today. I love to read books about Rome or watch movies about the Roman Empire just to learn about that — for many different reasons: prophecy, background to the New Testament, etc.

And there’s a reason that they still make movies and still write books about the Roman Empire even today — because it’s fascinating. And it’s the groundwork of reality upon which all the fantasy and science fiction genres are built. So again, the best is in the Bible, and the origins of all the stories are in Scripture. And so this is a beast.

Now, let’s call this a—well, I want to draw kind of a little bit of a—put it up here. We have this beast, and it has all the elements of the leopard, the bear, and what else? The lion. And then the terrible ferocity of the fourth beast, etc. So you’ve got all of that.

And what else do we learn here? “The dragon gave him his power, his seat, and his great authority.” (Revelation 13:2) All right? And so we’ve got the dragon in here.

So there’s a spirit world behind it. It’s satanic, showing the ultimate authority. So these are political, earthly powers. They come up out of the sea, it says — out from among the peoples and the nations of the earth. Here is what we’re being told.

By the time we get to this, it is far more than the fourth beast of Daniel. It is that — and more — on steroids, if you like, in terms of what we’re told here. You might just hold your place. Let’s quickly turn back to Daniel 7 and read something about what was told to us in Daniel 7 regarding this beast.

Daniel 7, verse 7: “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.” (Daniel 7:7)

Then in verse 24, “The ten horns are ten kings who shall arise from this kingdom, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the first ones.” (Daniel 7:24)

So there’s much more to this particular beast as it moves along, and there will be a spiritual component to it, as we will see. Let’s go on then to—well, let me just look at this. We’ll move on to this one here.

Verse 3: “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.” (Revelation 13:3)

All right, so now something happens. There is a deadly wound to this. A deadly wound takes place — and it is healed. Wounded and healed. And the world wondered after the beast. Now, if we’re looking at this as the Roman Empire — and the Roman Empire that becomes the empire — which we’ve already defined under the Emperor Augustus in the very late first century BC, when the empire is founded — it’s in place when we open the New Testament and the birth of Christ, the beginning of the Church.

That’s the empire that continues for about nearly 500 years. Just shy of 500 years, the empire continues. And there is a date that you need to know, which is the year 476 AD. The year 476 AD — the city of Rome, the eternal city, the capital of the empire until Constantine builds Constantinople over here — but that doesn’t come until the 300s AD. So at the time John has this vision, the seat of empire is Rome.

And when he talks about it being the wound taking place, this is identified by scholars—Bible scholars—and our identity as well, as when Rome, the city, fell in the year 476 to the Germanic tribes that came down out of northern Europe into Italy, and they sacked Rome — 476. You will read — this is a famous date in history — and you should know that date: 476. It’s sometimes said to be the fall of the Roman Empire, but technically it’s only the fall of the Western Empire which was headquartered at Rome.

Why? Because remember, Constantine built a second capital. The empire was so big it needed another capital to administer all of this at that time. And in 476 AD, Constantinople did not fall. It continued for actually another thousand years. It did not fall until the late 1400s when the Muslim armies finally sacked Constantinople and took over. So technically the Roman Empire in the East continued on. They had emperors and etc. And so prophetically, when we look at this wound taking place, as John sees it, it’s applied to Rome and the fall of Rome in 476.

And I think that’s a correct application of that. And the city just collapsed. Rome had been decadent for a number of years. They had been in decline. Edward Gibbon writes his famous book called The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he chronicles that very, very well. It declined for hundreds of years. Now great empires don’t always fall overnight — kind of like Babylon, remember? In one night it fell. Not all empires fall at once; there can be a slow decline.

And that’s what happened with Rome. It declined — the quality of emperors, the quality of the Senate, the quality of life even, its armies, its approach toward itself declined. By the time Rome fell in 476, the Roman armies were largely composed of many other foreign peoples — Germanic and others — because the Roman base had kind of died out or lost interest. And there had been a lot of assimilation. There had been a lot of migration into the empire. And so a lot of things had changed.

And finally, these Germanic tribes just kind of pushed over the decayed remnant of what Rome had been at its height during the early Caesars, Augustus and his successors. And that’s what’s being described here. It’s a wound to death, and yet it was healed. Okay? So, and the world looked at this. Now, here’s what happens. Let’s look at the healing of this.

Let’s go on — read verse 4: “And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” (Revelation 13:4) “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.” (Revelation 13:5)

All right? So here again, we see that Satan is the power behind this civil power, and it is a civil power. The beast is a — let’s call it — a political, civil power, government. It’s not religious. That’s the second beast that we’ll talk about in a moment. But the power behind this — the real power — is Satan, because verse 4 tells us people worshiped the dragon that gave power to the beast.

So Satan’s great desire through Scripture is to be worshiped — whether it’s through an idol, or Christ falling down and worshiping him that He commanded Him to do in Matthew 4. And he said, “Fall down and worship me, and I’ll give you the power over all these kingdoms of the world.” (Matthew 4:9) He had the ability to do that on a physical level, if you will, but Christ resisted that temptation.

But it tells you what power Satan had — has — and that he wanted to be worshiped. In that case, he wanted to be worshiped by God, and Christ would not do it. He said, “Get behind me.” (Matthew 4:10) So verse 4 is telling us a great truth about Satan and his vanity.

And so, the world worships him through this political power and ultimately the spiritual power. “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” And so this period of forty-two months is another period of 1,260. And this has been understood.

So we’ve got forty-two months, which is another 1,260. And this is taken to be from the period of 554 to 1814. All right? AD 554. It says it continues for forty and two months. So something begins with this deadly wound being healed. The deadly wound was 476. The healing is a little more than a hundred-so years later, in the year 554, and begins a forty-two-month period, or 1,260-year period, if we want to look at it in this way.

What is it that we’re looking at? What took place during this time? Let’s read a couple more verses. “And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.” (Revelation 13:6) “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7)

Again, testifying to the breadth of Satan’s influence as the god of this world that has deceived the world. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of those who do not believe.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) Satan is the god of this world, and he deceives the world. We read that in Revelation 12. And power was given to this entity — this power, this beast — to be over nations, tongues, and kindreds.

It’s virtually the same terminology of chapter 17, verse 15 of Revelation, where it says, “The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.” (Revelation 17:15) And so, we’re describing the influence and the breadth of that influence of this system as it has influence over the world here. And let’s see — yeah — what else do I need to cover here in regard to this?

Let me explain this healing of this deadly wound. And that’s what happens in the year 554. This is the healing. What happened? Why do we use this as the beginning mark of a period stretching to 1814? Briefly, this constitutes the various heads of this beast — the first one beginning in 554 and the, let’s see, would be the sixth one ending in 1814, or the fifth one ending in 1814 at the time of Napoleon. All right. Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of the French, who rampaged across Europe trying to take over Europe.

This particular period begins with a man named Justinian. I’ll go ahead and put his picture on the board. This is a Roman emperor in the East, in Constantinople. If Rome falls in 476 — the last emperor there abdicates — this continues. By the year 554, there is an emperor of Rome on the eastern throne, and his name is Justinian. You have a picture of him here on the monitor.

Justinian was a unique and influential, consequential Roman emperor at the time because of what he did to try to restore the Roman Empire. He was a very strong emperor. He actually had an even stronger wife, Theodosia, and she was an interesting study in history all by herself. He also was kind of in touch with the other world. There are some interesting stories about him as well, but a lot of significant people from the ancient world have stories like that connected to them.

This particular map shows what we—well, it doesn’t come up. Okay. All right. Let’s go back to this one. We’ll use the old-fashioned kind right here. Okay. Here’s what Justinian did. He tried to restore the whole empire. The Germanic tribes had come down into Italy and actually down into North Africa and taken over this western part — Spain — of the Roman Empire. And while the East was still under Constantinople, Justinian comes along. He has a very capable general, a man by the name of Belisarius, and he’s got an army. He sends this army to the West, all right? And they reclaim the dominions of the Roman Empire from the Vandals, from all the others, even up into Italy.

Justinian also recognized the authority of the bishop of Rome, known by this time as the Pope of the church here. Keep in mind, Christianity is still, well, very much over here too, and it’s all one Christian church. There’s no Orthodox church at this time. That comes a few hundred years later, when the Eastern church splits from Rome, creating what we call the Orthodox church today. But that’s another story for another time.

Justinian looks, and he acknowledges the Pope at Rome as the supreme leader of the Christian world. And that is important in the story as well as we deal here with Justinian. Make sure I’ve got my notes pulled together here on this. Yeah — Justinian makes significant headway in restoring this during his reign. A lot of intrigue and a lot of other interesting stories that take place.

Justinian actually builds a church in Constantinople, or Byzantium by this time, and it’s called the Hagia Sophia. I mentioned that in class the other day. The Hagia Sophia is still there. He builds it in the sixth century AD and it’s still there. It was originally a Christian church. Today it’s a mosque. When the Muslims took it over, they made it a mosque, and it’s still a mosque today, with a period of time as a museum in between. But about three or four years ago, the current Turkish government turned it back into a mosque. You can still go into it. It’s fascinating.

That’s where I told you that the pillars from the ancient temple of Artemis in Ephesus were taken to help build the Hagia Sophia. It’s awesome to go into. Justinian creates it. He heals this deadly wound and restores an empire that then allows for successive revivals.

The next revival is that of Charlemagne — we studied that briefly in Daniel 7. And then after Charlemagne was Otto, and then Charles V and the Hapsburg Empire. And then I mentioned Napoleon, about 1814. And the reason that this becomes kind of a terminus date within that forty-two months is because 554 to 1814 encompasses, in a general sense, the period of time known as the Holy Roman Empire.

And let me put that up here — well, let me put it down here — the Holy Roman Empire. All right. And that is a combination of church and state that is symbolized by these two beasts that we have here in Revelation 13.

And so in 1814, Napoleon is defeated by combined armies of other European nations. And essentially, historians mark that as the end of the Holy Roman Empire. It actually probably began with Napoleon’s crowning. He would not be crowned by the Pope. All the other Holy Roman Emperors were crowned by the Pope at Rome, beginning with Charlemagne. Napoleon took the crown from the Pope and put it on his own head — and in a sense, trying to show his superiority above the Pope. That’s what took place.

So this forty-two months kind of represents this period of the Holy Roman Empire. But I want to cover something about Justinian that helps us to appreciate this whole system of Roman government and what really began with the healing of this deadly wound that developed over a period of time. Justinian, among the many things that he did — the reconquest — he also did something in that he began to pull together Roman law, Roman law.

And I’ll put that up here. Rome was known for its law, and there was a thousand years of Roman civil law that had accumulated — and inconsistencies, contradictions, a law here, a law there. And it was a vast tangled web, kind of like the bottom of our closet sometimes. And Justinian knew that this had to be pulled together, reformed. And he had a good lawyer. And he gave it to this guy.

He got it done. And he created what is called Justinian’s Code. This is a book that shows a copy of it — later years, here from a museum. And you can find it on the internet. It’s well known. When it was finally published, Justinian’s Code then became the law of the empire. And what is unique about this — and this is where this healing of this deadly wound, and one other thing we’re going to talk about in a few minutes, and that is the image of the beast that we’ll refer to — kind of all comes together.

And what we have today and what we look for when we look at the system yet to arise called Babylon, and a final revival of this entire system. This Code of Justinian, this legal code that was the law of the empire, helps to form something that has been transmitted from the time of the sixth century down into modern legal jurisprudence. Justinian’s Code kind of languished for a time. And then, you know, a few hundred years later, it still was there. It got revived itself.

And here’s what happened. Justinian’s Code was based on Roman law. And that’s the law of the beast, if you will — where there’s a sole person at the top, a Caesar, an emperor. In later years, the king. Or if you’re from Germany, the Kaiser. Or if you’re from Russia, what are they called? The Tsar. The Tsar, yeah. One person in which all authority, legality, everything — the state — is the king.

This is a foreign idea to us in America because we’re democratic, republican — not by party, but republican in terms of a system of governance where people have a vote, people have rights, people are guaranteed rights. That’s a different form of law. Roman law — all of the law was held in the person of the king or the state. All right? Now, that’s very important to understand.

That law, that system, has been transmitted down into European nations to this very day. And I’m talking about the continental European nations — not the United Kingdom or Great Britain or England — but the states on the continent, from Germany to France to Belgium and everything on the continent of Europe. That is a part of the stage of the story of these revivals of this beast power down through time, beginning with Justinian to Charlemagne to Charles of the Hapsburgs to Napoleon, et cetera, down to Hitler and Mussolini — where all authority is seized or given to a king, a dictator, as in the case of Hitler or Mussolini, and his word is law.

Okay? That is what is known as civil law. The king is supreme. Now, that is different — and that is what has come down today into the modern forms of European law today, embodied within the European Union and a lot of bureaucrats in Brussels. About twenty-seven countries form the European Union today — twenty-six or twenty-seven, I can never remember that. But it is a very highly technical, bureaucratic state headquartered in Brussels. They make laws that govern everything.

And sometimes those laws clash with American laws, because when Microsoft, Google, Apple have wanted to do business in Europe, they have to conform to European law, which is different from American law. But in the civil law, authority resides in the state. The king owns your property.

We all know the story of Robin Hood. When Robin Hood would take from the rich and give to the poor, he was taking from evil King John, right? And giving to the poor — the poor people in their little hovels out in the woods. We’ve all seen the story, right? Well, that epitomizes something — even though that’s English law, King John was kind of an aberration. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

But in Europe, the king was the state. Literally, Louis the Fourteenth, the great king of France — he had a saying: “L’État, c’est moi.” Pardon my French. “I am the state.” L’État, c’est moi. I am the state. “I will determine the law. I will determine justice. My court. And I’m the ultimate.”

That’s Roman civil law. The Caesar. And we’ll see this in Rome — in the book of Acts, Paul appeals to Caesar when he is accused, and he goes all the way to Rome at the end of the book of Acts, because as a Roman citizen, he can appeal to Caesar. But Caesar is the ultimate end of the law.

Where do you and I appeal today in our system? We appeal to a court. And if it’s big enough, it’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court.

That’s not the way civil law runs. But this is what is developed in a system that we look at to be the seedbed for this beast power of Revelation 13 and 17—from which to arise—that has the tendencies and the characteristics of this Roman law. What Justinian did was to embed that into the DNA, almost, of European countries that has endured since the 500s.

Now, contrast that to what form of law that you and I are under today. We’re under a form of common law in the English-speaking nations. And common law began with this picture right here. This is King John of Robin Hood fame. He ultimately was forced by his nobles to sign something called the Magna Carta. Have you heard of the Magna Carta?

Essentially, this said that the king is subject to the laws that everybody else is subject to. That’s, in a nutshell, 1215 — the year 1215. I remember that because that was my lunch date, lunch hour, in junior high school. So I know 1215, okay? That’s how I remember it. They made him sign this document, which is the basis of English common law from which America and all the other English-speaking nations develop their systems of law that basically says, “I have the right to bear arms. I have the right to my own property, and it’s not the king’s.”

And in our Constitution, we actually wrote in that you did not have to billet or bed the king’s forces in your home, because that’s what happened in the late 1700s. And they wrote that specifically into the Bill of Rights. In other words, it’s your home, you own it, and you can do with it whatever you want. It doesn’t belong to the state. It doesn’t belong to the king. All right?

You have ten acres. You inherit forty acres from your grandparents, or something’s handed down in your family for years and years. There are rights that guarantee that. That is one of the fundamental blessings of our legal system. It’s all part of common law. And on that, you can build wealth. You can build wealth individually. It’s a part of our entire system. But it’s different from Roman civil law, which all goes back to Justinian — a Roman emperor, part of this beast power.

So when we read, as we will later, in Revelation 18 and 17, and I have already about the power of these beasts, they have a legal structure. And so the healing of this wound that Revelation 13 is telling us is quite significant — quite significant — in terms of the impact upon the development of peoples along this system. And then years later, English-speaking peoples developing along a system of common law.

This will come back into play in a few weeks when I give you a — we talk about the promises to Abraham as one of our fundamental beliefs and what those promises have at their heart in terms of individual liberty and freedom, guaranteed by the Word of God, that are embedded in that example of Abraham and the promises God made to Abraham that are part of the biblical story and even the story of history down to our time — and the contrast between this beast power and, let’s say, a system that has roots in what God established in His law.

As you read Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Numbers, you see that God’s law is based on freedom, liberty. Oh yeah, it’s God’s law, and we do obey God — but that produces liberty. The New Testament talks about that. I mean, even when you look at the laws that govern slavery, freedom was at the heart of even those particular laws that did regulate a very bad thing, because ultimately there was a hope of freedom.

Personally, out of the system that God forced, you know, had the Israelites embed in their system, if the person went bankrupt, there was a way — there was a path back to economic freedom. If a person lost their property because of bad management, and the next generation and the next generation were in poverty, the law of Leviticus 25 — the law of Jubilee, thank you very much — the Jubilee law reset it every fifty years.

It’s too bad we don’t have time to teach that fully here at ABC, because the Jubilee — when you do a deep dive into that — you see that the Jubilee law is the solution for poverty and injustice everywhere at all time. And God embedded it into a law that regulated economics so the economy didn’t get out of whack every few years. Every fifty years there was a reset. And if great-grandpa lost the farm because of overextending, bad debt, that property could be reset into the original family line — which gets back to the reason and the importance of families, as God set it.

But those are at the heart of freedoms and liberty of God’s law that these human laws — like common law and Magna Carta — at least have their roots in, even though they’re not perfect. But they have their roots in certain freedoms. And today, when you look around the world at the peoples that have prospered the most, comparatively speaking, they are peoples that have been, at one time or another, under this system.

And it was given to them, and it was spread there largely through the network of English-speaking nations. So we’re contrasting two systems here in Revelation. And we’re seeing in Revelation 13 how this beast was wounded, this beast was healed, but it continues on, and the story is there.

So we’ve covered these two verses. Let’s look at verse 6: “And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.” (Revelation 13:6) “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7)

And we have read that and talked about the impact of this beast through time. Verse 8 says, “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8) “If any man have an ear, let him hear.” (Revelation 13:9)

So God is giving, through John, this revelation so that we might all hear and understand what is being done, what is being accomplished, and how the world in which we live has developed and what we are a part of.

And verse 10 says, “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” (Revelation 13:10)

Now, the conclusion of verse 10 is here to show us — how do we cope with all of this? And we have an image of a powerful system of political and spiritual beast-like entities that, through church councils, impinge on the law of God — forbidding to keep the Sabbath, changing even the day of the Sabbath from Sabbath, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week.

Persecuting people — we talked about that earlier — creating a system of law that causes people to have to look to a king, look to a man, rather than to God. How do you deal with that? How do you cope with that? That grinds people in generations. God gives the story. He shows the origin of it. He shows that Satan is behind it all and that there is a power that is seeking to roll and move upon the earth from the beginning — that seeks to upend the purpose and the will of God.

And yet God has a people through it all. It began with Abraham — his descendants. Christ came, began His Church. God is still in the details. “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” (Revelation 13:10) Those are the arms that we have to deal with what we see and read and what we know about human government, history, human suffering, the role of evil, spiritual deception — all that we look at and we understand.

God’s called us to live truth. God’s called us to understand who He is, what man is, what our purpose is, what God is and what His plan is — and our purpose in life. And we have to develop patience along with faith. Patience and faith — those are the great things that we have to hold on to, to both understand, to endure, and to live through these times that are here as a result of these forces that move and breathe upon the earth.

Now, in the next verse, He moves on to another beast in verse 11: “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” (Revelation 13:11) “And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” (Revelation 13:12)

So now we have a second beast up here — calling beast number two. And he causes the world to worship this beast. Now, the description that we will get into with this beast is that of a miracle-working person.

Now, these two beasts always — and they will in the time of the end — they will have personification. There will be people behind this. Understand that. Just as I say, Augustus was kind of the prototype of the Roman beast as he founded the empire, Alexander the Great for the Persian. In the time of the end, there will be a person — we often refer to “the beast” as a person — that will embody that. The second beast, a spiritual leader, will also embody that.

So we are talking about two people that will appear on the world scene. I don’t know who they are. We’ve always identified or looked to the Catholicism leader — the nominal leader of Christianity, the pope — to be this. And while we look at a political leader over here, and we’ve looked at, actually through the years, there have been individuals we’ve kind of looked at in Europe — could that be the beast? Well, they’re all dead now. And, you know, folks come and go.

This current pope appears to be in his last days, but he’s still alive. And — but there will be spiritual, you know, people behind both of these. We’ll talk more about the second beast in the next class. We’re kind of getting to the end here, and we’ll wrap it up. And probably the class after that, we will get into the specifics about the mark of the beast.

But there’s a lot to talk about with the second beast — particularly what Scripture talks about here as the image of the beast. And we’ll talk about what that is and how we understand it so we can understand things presently for us. So we’ll pick that up — the second beast — in the next class and keep moving forward here. As I told you, there’s a lot to get into. Another fire hose.