The beast is the supreme representative of unregenerate humanity, separated from God and unable to achieve divine likeness, but always trying. The admonition of v. Here, as there, the saints are to have spiritual perception to comprehend the inaugurated latter-day tribulation brought about by an evil kingly figure who deceives others into acknowledging his sovereignty.
The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. John is exhorting saints to spiritual and moral discernment, not intellectual ability to solve a complex mathematical problem, which unbelievers as well as spiritual Christians are mentally capable of solving.
The prophecy of Daniel already warned that apostates from the covenant community would be allies of the ungodly state and infiltrate the believing community. This article was originally posted on The Gospel Coalition. Why Is the Number of the Beast ? Assessing the Options The problem is that no clear identification can be made linking with any particular ancient historical name.
Other Factors Throughout Revelation If the number were intended to be identified with some ruler by means of such a literal calculation, it would be a rare exception from the way numbers are employed elsewhere in the book.
Share This. Gregory Beale. Where Do I Begin? My People: Properly Subversive Theology. After Nero's suicide in AD 68, there was a widespread belief, especially in the eastern provinces, that he was not dead and somehow would return Suetonius, LVII. Suetonius relates how court astrologers had predicted Nero's fall but that he would have power in the East XL.
And, indeed, at least three false claimants did present themselves as Nero redivivus resurrected. The first, who sang and played the cithara or lyre and whose face was similar to that of the dead emperor, appeared the next year but, after persuading some to recognize him, was captured and executed Tacitus, II. Sometime during the reign of Titus AD there was another impostor who appeared in Asia and also sang to the accompaniment of the lyre and looked like Nero but he, too, was exposed Dio, LXVI.
Twenty years after Nero's death, during the reign of Domitian, there was a third pretender. As popular belief in Nero's actual return began to fade, he no longer was regarded as an historic figure but an eschatological one. The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah dates to the end of the first century AD and is one of the apocalyptic pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. In an interpolation, the so-called Testament of Hezekiah , Isaiah prophesies the end of the world, when Beliar Belial the Antichrist will manifest himself as the incarnation of the dead Nero.
This angel, Beliar, will come in the form of that king, and with him will come all the powers of this world, and they will obey him in every wish And he will do everything he wishes in the world; he will act and speak like the Beloved, and will say, 'I am the Lord, and before me there was no one. Beliar will perform miracles and seduce the followers of Christ until, at the Second Coming, "the Lord will come with his angels and with the hosts of the saints from the seventh heaven, and will drag Beliar, and his hosts also, into Gehenna [the figurative equivalent of hell].
Nero also possesses the attributes of the Antichrist in the Sibylline Oracles , a collection of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic verses attributed to the prophecies of the ancient Sibyl, who identifies herself as a native of Babylon III. In Oracle V , which dates to the late first or early second century AD, Nero has become a resurrected and demonic power symbolic of Rome, itself.
But even when he disappears he will be destructive. Then he will return declaring himself equal to God" V. Here, Nero is manifested as the Antichrist, "that man of sin [lawlessness] The Sibyl presents Nero both as king of Rome Oracle V , ff and the means of God's retribution in destroying it A matricide and megalomaniac, who presumed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth and was perceived as responsible for the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70, Nero "will come from the ends of the earth" as a champion of the East and an instrument of God's punishment.
He will overthrow tyrants and "raise up those who were crouched in fear" before falling in a final battle against the West. Then there will be peace and "no longer will anyone fight with swords or iron or with weapons at all" ff. The Christian poet Commodian fl. AD also writes of the Antichrist, when Nero will return from hell. He himself shall divide the globe into three ruling powers, when, moreover, Nero shall be raised up from hell, Elias shall first come to seal the beloved ones; at which things the region of Africa and the northern nation, the whole earth on all sides, for seven years shall tremble.
But Elias shall occupy the half of the time, Nero shall occupy half. Then the whore Babylon, being reduced to ashes, its embers shall thence advance to Jerusalem; and the Latin conqueror shall then say, I am Christ, whom ye always pray to; and, indeed, the original ones who were deceived combine to praise him.
He does many wonders, since his is the false prophet" Instructions , XLI. Writing in the early fifth century AD, Sulpicius Severus recounts the reign of Nero, "the basest of all men, and even of wild beasts Too, given that his body never was found, there are doubts whether he committed suicide; "even if he did put an end to himself with a sword, his wound was cured and his life preserved," as foretold in Revelation, "to be sent forth again near the end of the world, in order that he may practice the mystery of iniquity" II.
Not all Christians shared the popular belief that Nero was the Antichrist or his precursor. Lactantius was a converted pagan who was tutor in Latin to one of the sons of Constantine.
In the early fourth century, he wrote On the Deaths of the Persecutors , which recounts the fearful deaths of those who had persecuted the Christians. The death of Nero, however, frustrated this account in that some thought he had not died at all.
This has led some persons of extravagant imagination to suppose that, having been conveyed to a distant region, he is still reserved alive; and to him they apply the Sibylline verses concerning 'The fugitive, who slew his own mother, being to come from the uttermost boundaries of the earth;' as if he who was the first should also be the last persecutor, and thus prove the forerunner of Antichrist!
But we ought not to believe those who, affirming that the two prophets Enoch and Elias have been translated into some remote place that they might attend our Lord when He shall come to judgment, also fancy that Nero is to appear hereafter as the forerunner of the devil, when he shall come to lay waste the earth and overthrow mankind" II. This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it i Site HarperCollins Dictionary.
Passages Home in Popular Culture and History. Add this:. Ask a Scholar. Related Articles 3 Animal Imagery in Apocalyptic Literature Animal imagery in ancient apocalyptic literature illustrates how strange animal-like creatures often function symbolically for the real-life concerns of the writers of the ancient apocalyptic texts. Apocalyptic Thought after Revelation For reasons that are not fully clear, Christian apocalypticists in the three centuries after Revelation were concerned more with visions of heaven and hell, although the end of history was always in sight.
HarperCollins Dictionary Antichrist. Title designating an emperor of the Roman Empire. A broad, diverse group of nations ruled by the government of a single nation. People who study a text from historical, literary, theological and other angles. Textual documents, usually handwritten. The office of the Roman Catholic pope or the historical progression of popes. Rev 16Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead,17so that no one can buy or
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