Who is the beast of Revelation?

“A beast rise up out of the sea” (Rev. 13:1) refers to the Roman Empire; the head wounded to death being healed, its revival. The Empire and its ruler are often referred to in the same terms. The beast, then, is the political and military head of the revived Roman Empire—the last and greatest of its Emperors. His doom is narrated in Daniel 7:11 and Revelation 19:20.

The “beast coming up out of the earth” (Rev. 13:11) is called “the false prophet,” proving his religious character; he is called “that man of sin,” “the son of perdition,” “that Wicked” (2 Thess. 2:3 and 8); “antichrist” (1 John 2:18); and his doom is foretold in Revelation 19:20. In the Old Testament he is described as “THE King” (Dan. 11:36-40).

What is meant by "the Beast"? The imperial system of Rome revived. All the empires refused to recognise God above. Man was made to own Him, and he alone does as taught of God. Man alone of all beings in the earth was made to look up to One above, and is responsible to do the will of God. A beast does not look up but down; it has no sense of an unseen superior, no conscience toward God. "The fool hath said in his heart that there is no God." In principle this is true of every unrenewed man; but here it is the more tremendous, because an empire ought to be the reflection of the authority that God in His providence conferred on it. No empire has avoided the moral sentence implied in the symbols: expediency has ever guided, not God; but this Beast will go beyond all that have gone before in lawless contempt of God and in blasphemies (vers. 5, 6).

The whole character of the beast, from beginning to end, is seen, but pursued to, and therefore having its agency in, its last form. This enables us to identify the beast all through, and brings him under the character of guilt which has attached to him from the beginning, or marked the course of his protracted progress, whatever unrestrained iniquity this may shew itself in at the close. He is therefore seen rising out of the sea having all his heads and horns: on his heads names of blasphemy - he bore them high on his front; and the crowns were on his horns, which was the latter form (i.e., the imperial power divided). I do not carry this farther than being definitely characteristic; for if it were carried into detail, as at the close, we should have, assuming the identity according to the ordinary interpretation of the beasts, three of the horns fallen. Further, this beast had incorporated the character of Daniel's three other beasts, but most of the Grecian leopard, though in ravening power and terror like the first. To this beast the dragon (he had not formed it, that is taken as the existing fact) gives his power, his seat, and great authority. Now, I doubt not, this has its full scope of positive action and manifestation from the close of the former chapter; when, in its last form, it will do Satan's work in the place of his power. But as we have the elements of things in these chapters, we have seen the beast traced from his very rise out of the sea; and whatever he so characteristically does, when formed, comes under the designation of holding the throne and power of Satan. It will be exercised according to the character of the place where Satan is, heaven or earth, each the scene of the conflict whether Christ and His joint-heirs are to have His creation, or Satan hold it by right of the first Adam's fall and sin, the great question agitated, along with the special redemption of the church. Doubtless, when on earth it will be more definite and formal, not necessarily more important. Nor can I see why the conflict for the delivery of the earthly people and the inheritance is of more or exclusive importance, rather than what is of heaven, in which the victory and fate of the heirs is decided; though this be more secret, and known only to the church. Yet it must be remembered that that by which Satan troubles the church, while here, is that by which he holds the world. It is, then, the great characteristic fact we have here as to the beast so formed: he holds the dragon's place. I may add, I hold the beast to be simply and plainly the Roman empire.

218 The next characteristic of the beast was the destruction and healing of one. of the heads or forms of government. This, observe, was subsequent to, and not preceding, the dragon's giving him his power. And there was admiration in all the earth at the beast. The Roman empire and its corporate power became in the earth the object of their admiration, and laid hold on their minds. And they worshipped* that infidel power and hostility to God, which had given power to the beast. The form in which this shewed itself in man was the pursuit of his own will, simply casting off the thought and principle of obedience. The shape which it assumed, or had in this history, was the dominant power of the Roman empire, not in its apostasy, but in its self-will and self-aggrandisement - Satan's power without reference to God - as the apostle expresses it, "the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Whether this arrives to any formal open act at the close is comparatively immaterial, save as an open act bringing down open judgment. They worshipped also the beast - honoured it as the place, and holder, and depositary of power (God being thus really put out of sight). Pride here was the characteristic - personal pride and power: "Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?"

The first personality of prophecy is the Roman Prince. He is the "beast out of the sea" (Rev. 13:1-10)—the evil, beast-like political-military dictator of Europe (Rev. 17:8-13). The sea speaks of the restless Gentile nations of the world, here specifically of the Roman Empire revived (Rev. 17:15). He receives his power directly from Satan (Rev. 13:2). An image or robot of himself is set up in the future Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the second personality to be discussed below (Dan. 9:27; 12:11; Matt. 24:15; Rev. 13:14-17).

Secondly, "It is a beast like one of Daniel's four beasts, but more portentous and formidable. … The beast is a symbol interchangeably of the Roman empire and of the emperor. In fact, to a greater degree than at any period of history, the two were one. Roman history had dwindled down into a personal drama. The Roman emperor could say with literal truth, 'L'Etat, c'est moi,' and a wild beast was a Jew's natural symbol either for a pagan kingdom or for its autocrat. When St. Paul was delivered from Nero, or his representative, he says quite naturally that he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.' … Lactantius speaks of Nero as a tam mala bestia."

We hear about her too in the 15th verse, and here discern vast religious influence. It is not a national church, but an idolatrous, persecuting, religious system claiming to be the spouse of Christ, but really an unclean harlot that extends its influence over all the world. It is easily seen what, and what only, such a system can be. There is but one such in Christendom, though she has daughters. Further (as in verse 16), what a change takes place!* Instead of these horns, or kings of the west, being any longer subjected to Babylon, they turn furiously with the beast against her. Would it not be a very strange thing if the Pope turned against his own church or city? The Pope is not the beast, and has nothing directly to do with Babylon's destruction. It is the symbol of the empire in its last phase, it is the beast from the abyss which joins with the various leaders of the different kingdoms of the west against that ecclesiastical system.

Satan having been cast out of heaven into the earth, as recorded in the previous chapter, we are not surprised at finding this chapter commencing with the rising up of the beast. The apostle says, "I 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 names of blasphemy." (Ver. 1.) He rises up out of the sea; which teaches us that he had been previously hid from the eye of man. Coming out of the sea may, perhaps, mean that he issues from peoples more or less civilized. Daniel saw also the great Gentile powers emerge from the sea: "They came up from the sea." There were four great beasts. The first like a lion, the second like a bear, the third like a leopard, and "the fourth beast dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things. I beheld till the Ancient of days did sit," etc. (Dan. 7:3-8.) This was Daniel's vision of the great Gentile powers. The beast which John saw seems to include the whole of these great beasts; for he says, "The beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion … and there was given to him a mouth speaking great things." (Vers. 2, 5.) The times of the Gentiles will be then still running on in the fourth or Roman empire — the legs of the image with its ten toes; or, as we have just seen, the ten-horned beast with its ten crowns — all, it would seem, personified in the first beast of the Apocalypse, or the little horn of Daniel, with man's eyes, and mouth speaking great things. He is one under direct Satanic inspiration and power — he ascends out of the bottomless pit; and we are further told, that Satan "gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." Daniel's little horn intimates that he issues from the Roman earth; and from the statement, "Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers" (Dan. 11:37), we may expect that he will be a Jew. He will have the iron teeth, and dreadful and terrible strength of the fourth monarchy; for it will be said, "Who is able to make war with him?"

The endeavour to find out the hardest things that can be found in the Bible, and to apply them blindly towards an object that you justly censure, is serious moral wrong. Whatever then the demerits of the papacy, the apocalyptic beast from the sea is really a quite different evil altogether, being the imperial power of the west in its last phase. It will be hardly disputed that the pope is an extremely diminished power now: is this honestly the lot of the little horn of Daniel 7? Judged by an imperial standard, there is not much resemblance between the two, as in my opinion there never was. The papacy never was anything politically, or at least territorially, but an inconsiderable power; whereas the beast here described is regarded as a commanding empire in the earth, and this of course Roman. But it clearly was when the Roman empire sunk into nonentity, weakened by the Eastern rent and its own corruption, and afterwards extinguished by the barbarian hordes, that the papacy sprang up into a temporal authority no less than an universal episcopate. So far is the papacy from really answering to the beast, that it has only come in during the non-existence of the beast. For the beast that was is not, according to St. John. Such is the true place and time of that strange incubus. Indeed the papacy is far more connected with the whore than with the beast, though I do not deny a sort of partial anticipation also. For I am not disposed to differ from the great and excellent men who attached the solemn description of Babylon to the see of Rome during the latter part of the middle ages, and at the time of the Reformation. To my mind Luther and others who so used it were justified in the main. They were right in fixing the divine condemnation of Babylon on Rome, and this not merely as "the woman" but as "the whore," which involves other features of guilt as already pointed out.

As to the next note, I must repeat the beast is not Antichrist, though Antichrist become (by absorbing all its power) practically the beast at the end. Besides, if in "was and is not and now is" "the present time were fixed as being at the period when John saw the vision," how ever can the beast mean Antichrist? Is it not a plain proof that it cannot, that it must mean the Roman empire? I do not believe that the words apply to John's time, or indeed to any other time, but are characteristic of the beast. Read verse 8 - "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition." Now how is this Antichrist? How did he first exist, and then not, and then ascend out of the bottomless pit?

The first and the second beast make a covenant, which marks the beginning of the seventieth week of Daniel. But when the little horn, the first beast, becomes energized by Satan, he breaks that covenant. Then the second beast demands the worship of the first beast as well as the worship of himself. This second beast is the final, personal Antichrist. He has two horns like a lamb, and speaks like a dragon. He is a counterfeit lamb and his two horns are an imitation of the priestly and kingly authority of Christ. He is the one of whose coming our Lord spoke (John 5:43). He is the man of sin, the son of perdition described by Paul in 2 Thess. 2. He must be a Jew or his claim of being Israel 's true Messiah would not be accepted by the Jews.