And the angel said to me, Why hast thou wondered? *I* will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast which carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.
John has just seen a woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and the sight stuns him. The angel does not leave him there. He asks why John wonders, and promises to explain. Two questions follow. What astonished John so deeply? And why are the woman and the beast spoken of as one joined mystery?
The angel does not simply decode the picture. Commentators note that divine explanations always enlarge the subject rather than merely restate it.
Then comes the angel's explanation, and we shall find that it gives fresh information of the most important kind. It is always like this in the interpretations of Scripture. Man's explanations rest only on the thing to be explained. God, out of His fullness, loves to give us more, and of even deeper importance.
The shock was not that evil exists. It was the disguise this evil wore, and where it aimed its violence.
But it was no such evil that astounded the prophet. What filled him with astonishment was this. A mysterious form of evil, the enemy's counter-testimony — not antichrist, but antichurch — should appear to be, and be widely accepted as, the holy catholic (that is, universal) church of God. And Christendom, if not Christianity, should at the same time become the bitterest of persecutors. It was more savagely enraged against the witnesses of Jesus and the saints of God than paganism had ever been in any country or in any age.
The angel's "why do you marvel?" is not only a preface to teaching. One writer hears in it a principle about corruption that should have removed John's surprise.
The angel questions John as to why he marvels (v. 7). Is it so hard to understand that when the best thing on earth (the true Church of God) is corrupted, it becomes the worst corruption?
The angel names two things to explain, not one. One writer sets the pair against the mystery of Christ and the church in Ephesians.
Then the second part of the chapter explains the "mystery of the woman and of the Beast which carries her." It is a double mystery — the woman and the Beast. It is a mockery of the New Testament mystery "concerning Christ and the Church." In the mystery of our chapter the woman is named first. In the mystery of Ephesians Christ is named first, and rightly so.
The word "mystery" is not decoration. The reason the angel must interpret her is that she has been misread for centuries by sincere people.
For she is a mystery. She is not like the Babylon of old, the plain and open enemy of the people of God. She is a riddle, so hard to read that many of God's people in every age have taken her — prostitute as she is — for the pure bride of the Lamb. Yet here, for all ages, the riddle is solved for those who are close enough to God to understand it.
The angel names the woman and the beast as two things. One writer shows they cannot be the same.
This is in fact the main subject of the chapter. It describes the woman above all, and her connections with the beast, the Roman empire. For beyond all denial, the woman and the beast are two distinct things. If the beast is the Roman empire, the woman cannot be. She may be seated on the beast, but for that very reason she is not the same thing. And the woman is not only distinct from the beast. Later we find that the beast turns against the woman and takes his part in destroying her.
The phrase "that carries her" describes a working arrangement, and writers read the arrangement as temporary.
She sits upon the many waters (see verse 15), and she rides upon the beast. For a time he is under her control. Religion then rules politics and uses them for the expansion of her own power.
- Wonder — John was not shocked by open evil. He was shocked by a system welcomed as the true church of God while it killed Christ's witnesses.
- Question — The angel's question holds the answer. The best thing on earth, once corrupted, becomes the worst corruption.
- Mystery — She is a riddle. Every age has mistaken her for the Lamb's own bride. Only those who stay close to God can read her.
- Double — The angel explains two things, not one. Together they counterfeit the mystery of Christ and the church.
- Distinction — The woman rides; the beast carries. Religion uses political power for a season — and the same beast will later turn and destroy her.
The beast which thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go into destruction and they who dwell on the earth, whose names are not written from the founding of the world in the book of life, shall wonder, seeing the beast, that it was, and is not, and shall be present.
An angel is explaining John's vision, and he starts with the beast's strange life story: a past, a gap, and a return. Two questions follow: which power is this, and why does its return leave the world amazed?
The clause "was, and is not" is not a puzzle but a timetable. Commentators identify the beast as the Roman empire and trace three phases of its history.
The Roman empire was to have three stages. The first is its original imperial form, when John suffered under the last of the Caesars. Next comes its state of non-existence, from about the fifth century, when the Goths and Vandals broke it up. That is its condition now. But then there is a third stage, and it is in that last condition that it is to be found in open opposition to God and the Lamb.
That middle stage answers a common objection: no such empire exists today.
It may be alleged that the Roman empire does not exist in our days. That is one more proof of what we have been saying... It existed; next, it exists no more; then, it will come out of the pit. It will have a really diabolical character; it will be a full expression of the power of Satan.
The verse names where the beast comes back from: the abyss. Commentators stress that this is worse than anything the empire ever was before.
Even when it rose up against the Son of God, Scripture did not say then that it had come up out of the abyss. When the empire finally reappears, it will wear a still more clearly devilish character than it ever had of old.
Chapter 13 already showed Satan backing the beast. This verse pushes the point further, to its very origin.
Revelation 13 showed us that Satan would support and direct the empire in its revived form. Here we discover that Satan will produce it. And it will enslave the minds of all those false religionists who have dragged the faith of Christ down to a mere religion of earthly things.
God's providence has always stood behind human government. This last form of the beast ends that arrangement.
There is a time coming when power will cease to be ordained of God. This is the point to which the last phase of the Beast refers. In His providence God did authorize the world-empires of old. That principle continues as long as the church is here below... But the day is at hand when Satan will be allowed to have things his own way. For a short time (what a mercy that it is to be only so!) Satan will bring forth an empire suited to his purposes.
Older English Bibles end the verse with "and yet is," which sounds like a contradiction. Commentators differ. Kelly blames a faulty Greek text and reads a simple future — "and shall be present," with no paradox intended. A. J. Pollock keeps the older wording and reads it of the present moment:
The verse ends with the remarkable expression, "Behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is." This shows that the Roman Empire does not exist right now, yet all the elements for its revival are at hand. It exists potentially.
What separates those who marvel from those who don't is not intelligence but grace.
Divine grace is that alone which makes any to differ; and of this we are reminded here. The power at work in the revival of the beast is clearly beyond the power of man. And how many today seem to assume that any power greater than man's must be divine! This is the essence of the "strong delusion" which God sends upon those who have not received the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
Revelation mentions more than one register, and they are not the same. One can lose names; this one cannot.
The elect had their names written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. Ah! these future times were all thought of and provided for in the foresight of God... We read of another book of life in Revelation 3:5. There it is the book of Christian profession, true and false. So some names will be erased and others will stand. But in our chapter the book, or register of life, is the book of reality. So no name can be blotted out.
The verse names the beast's doom in the same breath as its rise.
"Goes into destruction," or perdition. This happens at the start of the millennial reign, and Revelation 19:17-21 describes it vividly... The two great chiefs — the head of the secular power and the head of the religious power — are thrown alive into the lake of fire.
- Was — the empire had a real past under the Caesars, and it rose up against the Son of God.
- Is not — its collapse is not a failure of prophecy but a stage in it. Its absence today confirms the prophecy.
- Rises — it comes back up out of the abyss. Satan does not just back it now; he produces it, and government breaks loose from God's ordering.
- Wonders — the earth-dwellers marvel. They assume that any power greater than man's must be divine. Only grace makes anyone differ.
- Perishes — the same sentence that predicts its rise names its ruin. Yet the names written from the foundation of the world can never be erased.