Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," June 2009
Who Is The Beast Of Revelation Chapter 13?
We do not begin with the popular assumption that Revelation chapter 13 describes a "scenario" that happens during some future seven year great tribulation period after the Church has been removed in the rapture. That is Scofield/Darbyism, and Scofield/Darbyism is a cult of false doctrine, as far as truth is concerned.
Revelation chapter 13 says nothing about the existence of any "seven year" great tribulation period. It does not mention the word "Antichrist," nor does it talk about a resurrection of the dead, or the removal of the Church in any pre-tribulation rapture.
Instead of being a one-world government leader "personal Antichrist" that appears only at the end-tme, the first beast of Revelation chapter 13 refers to the pagan Roman Empire that existed long ago in the first Christian century.
Its "wound by a sword" and subsequent reviving (Rev. 13:3), refers to the near death-blow to empire paganism that was achieved by the early Church in her usage of the sword of the Spirit. The conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine (313 A.D.) and the subsequent paganization of Christianity over time in the Medieval Roman Church, indicates the historical development of the rise of the second beast (see Rev. 13:12ff.)
According to Revelation 13:5 the Roman beast empire (first in its pagan and then in its papal forms) was to continue "forty-two months." These months, we believe, refers to "generations" (as explained elsewhere) and ended in the the year 1815 by the Napolenic transitional era that curtailed the Roman imperial papal power, or the one-thousand year long Holy Roman Empire.
The Roman beast is not the same entity as the great whore Babylon of Revelation 17-18. The Babylon indicated there is rather earthly Jerusalem, which now answers to the Zionist world empire centered about the United States, and legitimatized, religiously, by contrivance of the Darbyite heresy. Later.
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