I hope you had a great week! Did you get a chance to think about what it means for us if all these prophecies about an antichrist and a beast government have already been fulfilled? For one, we don’t have to worry about some mark of the beast coming that will doom us to the lake of fire if we accept it. I feel like that’s a worry that a lot of Christians have: that they will unknowingly accept this mark, or that they will be tempted to accept it because without it they will be unable to survive in the world.
For another, we don’t have to worry about a beast government being formed that will torture and kill Christians across the globe. Now, I am all for optimism, and I certainly hold out hope, given certain recent developments in our nation and the world, that the future will start to align more and more with YHWH’s desire for how man should live. Originally, when I believed in a future fulfillment of all the persecution, wrath and destruction of Revelation, I thought that would be the only way that the world would be ready for Yeshua to return physically and rule. The world would have to have degraded so significantly under man’s rule that we’d have no choice but to admit that we need a higher power to run things.
Perhaps it’s something different though. Perhaps the way the world is prepared for Yeshua’s physical return, which I still believe is a future event unless proven otherwise, is by more and more of the world believing in Him and following Him. At that point, He would be welcome to come rule by the majority of the world, with them knowing that He would be the only one that could truly rule in righteousness. Of course, there will always be those who do not believe, and will resist Him. I’m not so naïve to think that every single person will accept Him as their savior, especially if they don’t actually see Him here in the flesh.
To me, the most significant impact that a past fulfillment of the majority of Revelation has is giving Christians the recognition that the time is now for us to accept the power Yeshua has given us through our belief in Him. It seems to me that at some point, Christians started focusing more on sitting in a pew on their day of worship than realizing, embracing and using the power we have through Yeshua. I mean, when and why did we stop going around healing those that are sick? When and why did we stop casting out demons on a regular basis as a part of ministry, bringing more people to Yeshua?
These kinds of things are seen in scripture, even after Yeshua was resurrected. Yet today, there are only small pockets of believers doing these things, and unfortunately some of these events are faked, which give ammunition to naysayers to mock the reality of what Yeshua promised to us. When He said “whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I am doing. He will do even greater things than these,” (John 14:12) did He mean just the disciples? I mean, He was even talking to one at the time He said that, so why wouldn’t He have just said, “you and your brothers will also do the works that I am doing…?” The claim some Christians make that only the disciples, who became the apostles, had, and will ever have, the ability to do these works is blown out of the water with that simple statement by Yeshua. Not to mention the fact that there were those other than the original apostles that did the same works (Acts 6:8). The rebuttal the naysayers give is that hands were laid on those people, which gave them the power, but are we really going to limit the Holy Spirit's power and ability in that way? Can He not give those abilities to whomever He wishes, without being bound to a process of a person having to lay hands on someone?
The key is the very next thing Yeshua talks about: the giving of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-17). Yeshua was connecting these two things because that’s how a believer is able to do the things Yeshua did. It is done through the Holy Spirit that is given to him or her. And receiving the Holy Spirit does not require laying on hands. In my opinion, rather than claim that power and use it for the Kingdom, Christians are waiting for Yeshua to come back. They either think they’re going to get removed from the earth before some great tribulation and then return with Him, or they’re waiting, biding their time so they can be protected through a world-encompassing beast government which will eventually result in Yeshua’s return. If all that’s behind us though, what are we waiting for?
Since we’re on the topic of the beast government, why don’t we take a look at what Revelation says about it and see if there’s anything that lines up with it in history? First off, there are two beasts seen in Revelation: a sea beast and an earth beast. We’re going to look at the sea beast first, and we’ll probably have to get to the earth beast next week.
There are a few different ties in Revelation to the description of the sea beast, and we’ll touch on those as we go through, but the first time we see the beast described in detail is in chapter 13 (Revelation 13:1-8). Right off the bat, we have some key aspects to this beast that we can use to figure out what it represents, but the first thing to understand is that a beast in prophecy is always a kingdom/governmental structure. You see that in Daniel’s visions, and the sea beast is no different. In fact, we see connections between this beast and Daniel’s beasts in that it has some of the same characteristics as the ones Daniels saw: a leopard, bear, and lion (Daniel 7:1-8).
Daniel’s beasts are well understood by experts to be kingdoms that ruled vast portions of the world, specifically including the land of Israel, and the connection would have been recognized clearly by Jewish readers of John’s writing. The Roman Empire was Daniel’s fourth beast, and the fact that the three previous beasts were seen in the sea beast of Revelation is a connection to the fact that these were all successive kingdoms that conquered each other, ruling the same or similar area of the world. If the sea beast were some future governmental structure or kingdom, Daniel’s fourth beast would have been a part of it because as of today the Roman Empire no longer exists. Just as the three previous kingdoms had fallen and thus were included as characteristics in the beast from the sea, the fallen Roman Empire would have been included as a characteristic, perhaps by John specifying the iron teeth as Daniel did.
The sea beast also has quite a lot of heads. Seven, to be exact, and we’re actually told later that these represent seven kings (Revelation 17:10). The greater detail of chapter 17 also tells us that at the time of John’s vision, five of these kings had fallen, one was (meaning he was in power), and the last of the seven was to reign in the future. However, that king would only last a little while. According to the vision, these kings are all part of the beast, meaning they are all part of the same governmental structure, and the detail tells us that they reign one right after the other, successively. When you look at the Roman Empire, this perfectly lines up with the emperors that ruled once the government transitioned from a republic to an empire.
Where you start the numbering of the emperors is up for debate, however there is credence to the view that Julius Caesar was the one to start the empire, even if the government wasn’t officially considered that during his reign, based on the fact that the structure under Julius was still transitioning to the new form. If you start from him, your sixth emperor (the one who was reigning at the time of John’s vision) was Nero, who was arguably the worst persecutor of Christians out of all the emperors. After Nero committed suicide, there was about a year period where the empire was in chaos. There were three successive emperors in the span of that time and then finally Vespasian took over and ruled for about ten years.
Any one of these three successive emperors could be considered to have ruled for “only a little while” (Revelation 17:10), and the reason I hesitate to start the numbering of emperors at Julius Caesar is because if you start at Caesar Augustus (when the empire was officially called an empire) the scripture seems to align with exactly how the governmental structure transitioned during the period of the Jewish Revolt, from ~66-73AD. The eighth king, who was going into destruction (Revelation 17:8), would then be Vitellius, who ended up being murdered by Vespasian’s troops just before Vespasian took over. One of the heads of the sea beast having a mortal wound (Revelation 13:3) would be the suicide of Nero and how that seemed to be a death blow to the empire with all the chaos it created, yet it still continued to reign. To add to this, subsequent emperors, especially Vitellius, attempted to imitate Nero so they could be more popular among the people. This imitation could be the fulfillment of a seemingly resurrected emperor.
But, you might ask, what about the fact that the sea beast itself was this eighth king that went into destruction? Wouldn’t that mean the empire was destroyed as well? That’s where the next beast, the beast of the earth, comes in. We won’t get into detail of this beast this week, but as a teaser for next week, remember that Greek word for earth that we found out really means land, and more specifically the land of Israel? Well you’ll never guess where the ninth emperor came from when he went to take the throne….ok, with those hints, you probably will guess it!
Back to the sea beast for now, though. It had blasphemous names on its heads, and wouldn’t you know it, the emperors of Rome considered themselves gods, placing themselves above YHWH. We also see that the dragon, which we looked at previously, gave the sea beast its power. In fact, that dragon looked oddly similar to the sea beast, didn’t it? I mean, it also had seven heads and ten horns, along with seven crowns on its heads (Revelation 12:3). Clearly, the Roman Empire grew and gained its power through the works of Satan, who is represented as the dragon (Revelation 12:9), and this checks with the fact that the Roman religion involved a pantheon of gods that most likely were actually fallen angels rather than purely mythical beings.
This beast was also from the sea, and this is a testament to the fact that the Roman Empire encompassed the Mediterranean Sea entirely. As a side note, the sea is also called the abyss, or bottomless pit, as we see elsewhere in Revelation (Revelation 11:7, 17:8). This is not a connection unique to John’s writing however, as we see Paul make the same connection (Romans 10:6-8). He quotes the Old Testament, however where the word “sea” is used, he substitutes “abyss.”
Other key aspects of this sea beast include the fact that the whole earth (read land of Israel) marveled at it and wondered who could make war with it (Revelation 13:3-4). Did you know that early on, before the Jews started to actually revolt, Josephus records that these types of statements were literally made by them? They were more than upset about what the Romans were doing to them, and wanted to do something about it, but they asked each other, how can we? The empire is too powerful for us to do anything to it, let alone succeed in a fight against it and gaining our independence from it.
As far as speaking blasphemies against YHWH and slandering His name and His tabernacle (Revelation 13:6), we sort of already covered that the emperors considered themselves gods. Additionally, the emperor Caligula attempted to have a statue of him erected in the Jewish temple. As well, during the final moments of the siege of Jerusalem, the Roman soldiers certainly desecrated and destroyed the temple.
As you can see, there are too many coincidences of connection between the sea beast and the Roman Empire for us to ignore. To me, given all the descriptions provided and the events that occurred in the first century there is no way that the sea beast is not a representation of the Roman Empire itself, and not some “reincarnation” of the Roman Empire as some would claim. Next week, we’ll cover the beast rising out of the earth (key phrasing to recognize, by the way), and perhaps we’ll clear up some confusion you may have about the fact that the sea beast went into destruction around 70AD yet the Roman Empire lasted for hundreds of years after.
Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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