Revelation 13:11-18

September 13, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 19:05 in the audio file.

Or, A Trifecta of Ineptitude

If you understand these parts of Revelation to describe future events, as I do, you may wonder how you could reasonably claim an optimistic eschatology. The dragon hates the community connected with the Messiah and chases them into the wilderness in chapter 12. The beast out of the sea parodies the Messiah and conquers many of the saints to their death. Another beast is introduced in this final paragraph of chapter 13, and he appears to be successful in wooing the world into beast worship and putting to death those who refuse. Where is the optimism supposed to fit?

Jesus will return, and will win, eventually, but everyone (who’s orthodox) believes that. We might look longingly over at those who seem so happy believing that these things in Revelation already happened (except for Jesus’ return), that we’re past all this beastly Roman Empire stuff, and all we see today are bumps in the gospel’s path to success.

A couple things: in order to say that all this beastly stuff was fulfilled in the first century, you have to selectively skip over a bunch of the story; the same is true if you only think the beasts are repeating cycles of cruelty throughout history. Even more than that, the angle I really want you to see from this passage: the world does go to hell in a hand-basket, but in a flame of desperation. The reason it seems so bad is due to deceit. Behind the scenes is the truth of failure and ineptitude.

We’re optimistic because we know the truth. We’re optimistic because we know why it’s bad; this is the best the beasts can muster.

In a parody of the Trinity, the dragon gives his authority to a beast from the sea, and now a third being comes to point to the first beast. While this second beast is identified as a false prophet (explicitly as soon as 16:13), he rounds out the unholy trinity, just as the Spirit came to point to the Son.

The Debut of the Earth-Beast (verses 11-12)

A new vision begins as John again says, 11 Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.

We know this is a second beast, a third character, because John says it is another, because it comes from a different place, because it has a different number of horns, because it is represented by another animal, and because it points to “the first beast” in verse 12.

The beast comes out of the earth, which probably meant it was less scary than a beast out of the sea. In the apocryphal book of 1 Enoch, Leviathan is a female monster who lived in the ocean’s abyss and Behemoth was the male monster who lived in a waste wilderness (Mounce). That this second beast only had two horns rather than ten means that it is less forceful, and looking like a lamb suggests that it is less fierce, unlike the leopard-bear-lion. Jesus Himself said that false prophets come in “sheep’s clothing.” The nominal and compromised in faith may not notice.

Nevertheless it spoke like a dragon, like a serpent, like the serpent, charming and deceiving Eve in the garden. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, big mouths and slick tongues. “Whereas the first beast speaks loudly and defiantly against God, the second beast makes the first beast’s claims sound plausible and persuasive” (Beale).

It Works Delegated Authority (verse 12a)

Verse 12 introduces us to the activity of the beast in two general ways which are expanded in verses 13-17. The key word in Greek is ποιέω (poieo), variously translated as “makes” or “causes” or “exercises” or “performs.”

12 It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, meaning that the earth beast works on behalf of and for the pleasure of the first beast; there is only one policy maker. We’ll see more specifically w[...]