seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Revelation 13:1 The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.
a. Revelation 13:1 Some manuscripts And I
Ok... the dragon and the beast have to be two separate entities or beings... because John saw them both at the same time. The dragon is standing on the shore of the sea and the beast is coming out of the sea. So the Beast is not the Dragon even tho they look alike with all the heads and crowns and stuff.
Of course amazingdiscoveries is attacking the church again.
This beast is similar to the dragon from Revelation 12. They both have “seven heads and ten horns.” Revelation 17:10 shows us that the seven heads are seven consecutive world powers- earthly governments Satan uses to persecute God’s faithful church. The dragon is Satan working through pagan religions, the occult and spiritualism, while the beast symbolizes Satan working in disguise, using the corrupted Christian church to do his work. In verse 5 we see that the beast continues “forty and two months” (the 1,260 year period of Papal dominance). In verse 7 it makes “war with the saints,” persecuting Christ’s true followers who struggled to maintain the truth of God’s Word. This beast is none other than the Papal church system. It arose as predicted among the populated nations of Europe, symbolized by “the sea” and the “ten horns.” Revelation 17:15.
This is from the easy English site.
John saw a beast rise out of the sea. In the ancient world, people often thought of the sea as a place where evil things belonged. So, this awful beast came from the place of evil things.
People also used the sea as a description for the mass of the peoples. This beast rises from among people to become greater than them. This beast is actually an evil man.
The beast had 10 horns and 7 heads. The 10 horns are like those of the fourth (4th) beast in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 7:7). There the 10 horns mean 10 kings. The 10 kings rise out of the fourth (4th) kingdom. The 7 heads also mean 7 kings (Revelation 17:10). (This means that the beast was such a great ruler that he controlled many other kings.) Each horn has a crown. Each head has a name that insults God.
This beast was an agent of the dragon (Satan) to fight against God’s people.
This beast was the head of the fourth (4th) kingdom in Daniel. That kingdom is the last great kingdom on earth before Christ comes to rule.
People also used the sea as a description for the mass of the peoples. This beast rises from among people to become greater than them. This beast is actually an evil man.
The beast had 10 horns and 7 heads. The 10 horns are like those of the fourth (4th) beast in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 7:7). There the 10 horns mean 10 kings. The 10 kings rise out of the fourth (4th) kingdom. The 7 heads also mean 7 kings (Revelation 17:10). (This means that the beast was such a great ruler that he controlled many other kings.) Each horn has a crown. Each head has a name that insults God.
This beast was an agent of the dragon (Satan) to fight against God’s people.
This beast was the head of the fourth (4th) kingdom in Daniel. That kingdom is the last great kingdom on earth before Christ comes to rule.
Well that didn't help me much.
According to biblegateway.com, John would have equated the beast with the Roman Government. Of course John had no First Amendment rights during his time on Patmos. The Roman Government just would not tolerate one of the close friends of Jesus of Nazareth running around claiming this carpenter's son was the Messiah. To the Roman Government, Jesus of Nazareth was trying to start some kind of rebellion.... risen from the dead indeed.
No other figure in the book of Revelation has captured readers' imaginations quite like the beast of chapter 13. Above all, the challenge at the chapter's end to "calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number . . . 666" (v. 18) has drawn a chorus of responses from John's time down to the present, many forged in the heat of later but now long-forgotten controversies, and none very convincing. The general public (and often the church too) tends to view John's description of the beast either as the stuff of which science fiction is made or as a club to wield against personal or national enemies. Academic biblical scholars, by contrast, are more than willing to leave both the imagery and what it represents back in the distant past, on the grounds that John was making a veiled political statement about the Roman Empire in his own time. On this view, the beast is the empire, its many heads are a series of emperors, the wounded head is Nero, the first persecutor of Christians, who had died and, according to some versions of a popular legend, was expected to return to power with an army of the hated Parthians (for a summary, see Keener 1993:796, who concludes that "Rome would have taken serious offense at the implications of this exiled prophet John had the authorities read and grasped the symbolism of his book").
So yesterday we met Gog.... a Russian Prince, maybe. We also learned that Gog intends to attack Jerusalem while Israel is at peacehttp://forums.somd.com/threads/335020-Revelation-12-Spewed-a-river. Today we met what appears to be representative of a government.... since I'm still here... and Israel isn't at peace. There are some peace talks going on... but Israel is not at peace. She hasn't been at peace in forever.
I keep telling myself.... history repeats itself.... we all see things that tell us God is in charge and sometimes we see "signs" that could be interpreted as end times events. Israel has to be at peace.... remember that.
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