Revelation 13
The monsters enter the arena! The number 666 is known before modern humans changed its meaning! Beware and be aware!!
Reading this chapter reminded me of that final scene in Carrie, the Stephen King horror movie I stupidly watched all by myself late at night in an empty house on the TV set in the basement when I was in my teens. It’s an old, old movie. The only scene imprinted on my terrified memory is that scene.
The dirt
The hand.
The arm.
Rising out of the soil.
Carrie is not dead!!!
I was supposed to be able to sleep after that in a dark, empty house?!!
I probably did.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
666: Evil Rises Back to Life?
This dead-evil-rising-from-its-grave idea is what happened in John’s vision. Nero is dead. The number 666 represented Nero, the terrifying butcher who ruled Rome and the Roman Empire. Yet he lived on. An evil that refused to die.
It’s like a parody of the Resurrection.
We laud the memory of good people, people who changed the world, and whose followers try to carry on their good work. But we have a collective tendency to fear evil doesn’t remain dead but will literally rise again. That scene in Carrie worked because Stephen King preyed on that fear. Even when we think we’ve done everything we can to slaughter the slaughterer, we find they’re not dead. Their acolytes continue. Like the world is waiting now to see what will happen in Syria. Will it be like Russia? Monarchy was felled, serfs became free, tyrants took over, slaughtered tens of millions, the USSR fell, democracy conquered the tyrants, we cheered, and now we’re back to a tyrant rules Russia and wages war against the world, slaughtering the citizens of one country at a time.
The monsters in Revelation 13 are first the world ruler and second the local elites who insist all must worship the first.
Who Is Behind the Monsters?
While humans were made in the image of God, these monsters are made in the image of Satan.
The first monster’s appearance reflects the fiery red dragon: seven heads, ten horns, coronets.
https://open.substack.com/pub/shireenjeejeebhoy/p/revelation-12?r=2kjnfd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
But whereas the fiery red dragon wore the coronets on its seven heads, the sea monster wears them on its horns and has a severed head that’s healed over, meaning it didn’t really die. The second monster on the earth has two horns that parody the two horns of the lamb aka Jesus. It speaks like the dragon.
We’re visual creatures. We believe what we see. And so a monster that looks like Jesus can deceive people easily. Listen to the words, the vision warns. The words are those of the fiery red dragon, Satan. The words demand what we must worship. And it ain’t Jesus’s good teachings but the opposite.
Back then, it was Caesar whom people worshipped at temples built to worship Imperial Rome. Pagan idols, too.
“…worshipping or not worshipping was quickly becoming the dividing line between people who were acceptable in the community and people who weren’t.” page 89.
Sound familiar?
What Do Modern Westerners Worship?
Money, sex, fame, secularism are the usual ones brought up that people worship. But what I notice is the demand to worship certain acronymns, phrases, words. It doesn’t matter which side of the political divide you’re on, the words you use will tell your community whether you’re acceptable or not. Bring in nuance, and you’ll be out on your keester.
You belong to a political party? You must worship the leader — agree with their words, use their phraseology — even though the elected members are supposed to represent their constituents and party members to hold the party to account not genuflect to the leader.
You have a particular political bent? You must abide by certain attitudes even if those attitudes are written in black and white and delineate harsh lines between neighbours.
You’re non-partisan? Tough. You must choose to speak your community’s preferred phrases. No deviation. No nuances.
You’re Christian, the kind who actually espouses Jesus’s teachings? For God’s sake, don’t say, “thoughts and prayers”! Leave the prayer part out, for you must worship at the idea that prayers don’t work.
It’s like the world has raged into war and toddler thinking.
“We can understand the dilemma faced by those Christians back then. We like to think that we would always choose the reality [of Jesus and God] and reject the parody [the monsters]. But would we?… Does it count as a compromise if I use Caesar’s coinage, even though it has words like ‘son of god’ stamped on it?…For us, does it matter if we buy a nespaper which openly mocks the Christan faith…even if all I’m going to read is the sports news? Does it matter if I work for a company that, through one of its other offshoots, is cheerfully polluting lakes and rivers and destroying their wildlife?” page 89.
Or, given the latest news about the murder of UnitedHealth’s CEO to the majority’s cheering, does it matter if you work for an insurance company, provide legal services to them, or consult as a medical expert against, oh, sorry, “for,” one of their clients?
I personally believe that insurers — and many corporations — are today’s equivalent of the first monster. Working for them in any capacity is to ultimately fall into line with Satan’s plans. Yet economic exigency, the kind of society we live in, makes this kind of choice for many not as easy. For some, it would be easy, except rationalization has a habit of excusing the inexcusable. We remember that these corporations began as service providers, not to kill people through their standard operating procedures of accruing profit over providing the services that they were set up to provide. But over the last four decades or so, they became the first monster and their supporters the second monster who empowers the first. When we don’t acknowledge that evil transformation, we end up worshipping the parody.
As I wrote the first draft of The Soul’s Reckoning, I threw my protagonist into danger as she grappled with some of these issues. What does a person, who was shielded from learning about God and Jesus, do when faced with the signs talked about in chapters 12 and 13?