The Kingdom of Man: Traced through History
Revelation 13:1
We are introduced in this chapter to two more of the key players in the Tribulation period. Starting in chapter ten we have been looking at the contents of the "little book" prophecy that was given to John by the powerful angel. The first characters we were introduced to were the two witnesses in chapter 11—two prophets. They have a tremendous ministry to Israel and it is only when they are martyred and resurrected and they ascend to heaven that there is a response, and that is because God judges Jerusalem with this massive earthquake where seven thousand are killed and the rest give glory to the God of heaven. We believe that that is when a vast number of Jews in the land trust in Jesus as their Messiah. It is not long after that that this event referred to as the abomination of desolation takes place and the Antichrist will set up his image in the temple in Jerusalem and seek to be worshipped as god.
In chapter twelve the focus is on the woman (Israel) and her flight into the wilderness where she is protected by God during the second half of the Tribulation period. We are also introduced to the dragon which is identified clearly as Satan. Both the angels and the demons will probably be visible during the Tribulation period because God is bringing all of these various themes and threads together for the final judgment.
The titles of Satan that we find in Scripture
These titles say something about his character on the one hand and they say something about his goals, objectives, his methodologies on the other hand.
1. The title that is used most often is the term Satan which is a Hebrew word [satan] and it means "adversary." It is used 27 times in the Old Testament and almost 30 times in the New Testament, and it is the most common word that is used. So Satan's name is "adversary" and it shows his role as an antagonist to God from his original fall where he was seeking to set himself up as god.
2. The devil, [diabolos/ diaboloj]. He is the slanderer, the father of lies. Matthew 4:1. He slanders the character of God, he slanders believers, he lies about them and misrepresents them and God's character for his own ends.
3. The prince and the power of the air, Ephesians 2:2. "… according to the course of this world…" Here we have the term kosmos [kosmoj]. That is important to understand because kosmos isn't just a term for the earth or all of those who dwell upon the earth, though it is used that way in John 3:16. Here it is talking about the thinking of the world, the thought systems of the world, and there are as many different thought systems on the earth as there are people groups and language groups. A worldview expresses the thinking of a people within the world. A worldview always expresses itself in terms of reality. What is reality? Is it personal or is it impersonal? If it is personal, does that person communicate or has that person communicated to man? What kind of person is it? Flowing out of the idea of ultimate reality is the idea of knowledge. How do we know about this ultimate reality? How do we come to know truth? From the time we are born we live according to the standards of the world system around us, we are brought up and trained to think a certain way by those around us. An unbeliever's thinking is always shaped by the thinking around him. It is also called human viewpoint thinking, of which there are many different kinds, and it is all cosmic thinking because the starting point is always man or something in creation and not God as being distinct from creation. This is the same kind of thinking that Satan has, his starting point was himself and that he was a creature who could be like God. He shifted his thinking away from God as the ultimate reference point to himself. It is the thinking of "the prince of the power of the air" because it is Satan who lies behind all of those different ways of thinking, his basic arrogance and autonomy. So we are born into the cosmic system and basically brainwashed in the cosmic system and we think the way Satan thinks. "… this is the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." The "sons of disobedience is just a general term Paul has for those who are unbelievers who are in rebellion against God. It is a term that is somewhat parallel to but not exactly identical to the term that we have seen in Revelation, "earth dwellers." The "prince of the power of the air" emphasizes Satan who energizes the thought systems that define the cultures in the kingdoms of man.
4. The god of this age. 2 Corinthians 4:4 NASB "in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." The term "age" here translates a Greek word aionos [a)iwnoj], a word that overlaps the word kosmos. The word kosmos has to do with the world and the thinking within the world, emphasizing its organization and its orderliness—systems of thinking. aionos emphasizes the same thing but from a different vantage point. It is looking at that system as a system that dominates during a certain time period. This is the word that is translated "world" in Romans 12:2 where it is emphasizing the spirit of the age. The spirit of the age is the spirit that dominates any culture at any particular time. We live in an age where the spirit of the age is postmodernism. So "the god of this age" is dictating the thought systems of the age.
5. The ruler of this world (John 12:31), the ruler of the cosmic system. These last three titles tell us that Satan is behind all of the world's systems of thinking. There are only two ways of thinking: God's way and the way that is opposed to God, even though there are many different facets and manifestations of the way that is opposed to God. Human viewpoint thinking is identical to Satanic thinking and to cosmic thinking; they are all the same thing. So when we are not thinking like God would have us to think, i.e. according to the Scriptures, we are thinking just like Satan would have us to think, and he is working furiously behind the scenes to achieve his end results in terms of controlling human history and bringing about the establishment of his kingdom and the defeat of God's plan.
6. This takes us back to his fall, Isaiah 14:12-14 where he is referred to as Lucifer in the KJV. In the Hebrew [helel ben shachar] it means "shining one," or "son of the dawn."
7. The great red dragon, Revelation 12:9. The great dragon is going to empower the Antichrist in the end time kingdom is the same person that was in the garden with Eve and what he does is deceive the whole world.
8. The wicked one, Matthew 13:19. This describes his character, evil to the core.
9. He is called the tempter in 1 Thessalonians 3:5 and Matthew 4:3. His role is to entice people to disobey God and to live independently of God.
10. He is the accuser, Revelation 12:10.
Satan as the god of this age and the prince of the power of the air is the one who is behind the rise of this kingdom that comes into power at the end times. We can already see the pressure and the movement in our times toward this kind of global unification. This is not saying that the Rapture is around the corner. It may be around the corner and it may not be for 25 or 50 or 100 years, we have no way of knowing. The Rapture is imminent which means there is nothing that has to occur in prophecy before it occurs, but Satan is constantly pushing in order to be ready so that when the Rapture occurs—he doesn't know when it will occur any more than we do—he has some person and some strategy in order to pull together some sort of kingdom. All of the empires that have arisen throughout the church age were power bases which, because of their global reach, Satan could use if the Rapture occurred as a vehicle for promoting his man, whoever that might be. In Revelation chapter 13:1-10 we will be introduced to him, the first beast, and in 13:11-18 the focus is on the second beast. The first beats is usually called the Antichrist and the second beast we usually call the false prophet.
Revelation 13:1 NASB "And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns {were} ten diadems, and on his heads {were} blasphemous names." The NASB translates, "And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore." The NKJV or the KJV the text says, "I stood on the sand of the seashore." The reason there is a difference here is because there is a discrepancy among some of the MSS related to this verse. The difference has to do with just one letter of the text. The word that is used here for "standing" is estathen [e)staqhn]. The "n" on the end of it in Greek means the first person singular, so that should be translated "and I stood." That is found in the Majority Text as well as in the Textus Receptus which is the tradition behind the KJV. The Majority Text and Textus Receptus are not absolutely identical. In many texts and three or four of the oldest texts the word is spelled estathe, dropping the last "n." The difference is whether it is saying "I stood" or "he stood." A "he" would be a reference to the dragon, that is why the NASB translates it "And the dragon stood." If the Majority Text is correct it should be translated "I stood," and in evaluating the data it seems that it makes sense from an internal argument that it is more likely that the scribes dropped a letter than added a letter. There is no real reason for the dragon to e standing on the sand of the seashore but there is a necessity for saying that John has now moved his position of viewing to the sand of the seashore, and so it makes much more sense that the original reading would be, "I stood on the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea."
The word that is translated "beast" here is therion [qhrion] and it refers to a wild beast or wild animal. This is not a tame animal, a domesticated animal, it is picturing this as at its most bestial, ravenous, destructive form. The sea represents the Gentile nations, and this has its support in two passages. The parallel passage to what we are studying is in Daniel chapter seven, the second great vision recorded in Daniel. Daniel 7:2 NASB "Daniel said, "I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea." Notice the winds are coming from heaven and they are acting upon the great sea. The word for "wind" is ruach, the same word that is translated "spirit" for the Holy Spirit moving upon the face of the deep back in Genesis 1:2, and the word is also used for evil spirits or demons. So what we have here is a play on words, that the spirits of heaven are stirring the great sea. The picture that we have is that the affairs of human history are influenced and acted upon by unseen forces in the angelic realm. This is clearly substantiated in passages such as Ephesians 6:10ff as well as Daniel 10 and 12 which talk about Michael coming to answer Daniel's prayer being resisted by the prince of Persia, the prince of Persia being a demon who was influencing the affairs of the Persian empire. So the picture here is of the seas, and the seas indicate the tumultuous, uncontrolled nature of the Gentile kingdoms and that they are being acted upon by these unseen forces of heaven.
Daniel 7:3 NASB "And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another." These four beasts that come out of the sea are the same four beasts that are going to be brought up in Revelation 13:2 NASB "And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like {those} of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority." What Daniel sees is these four beasts, each different from the others, and he sees a lion with the wings of an eagle, representing the ancient neo-Babylonian or Chaldean empire; the lopsided bear with the ribs in its mouth represents the Media-Persian empire; the leopard with the wings of an eagle represents the kingdom of Greece under Alexander the Great; the fourth beast is just a great and terrible beast that eventually in its final manifestation has these ten horns like the ten horns in Revelation 13:1—the ten kingdoms that will comprise the confederacy of the Antichrist's kingdom in the end time.
We see the same thing indicated in Revelation 17:1-3 which gives us another picture of the Antichrist's kingdom, this in the imagery of the great harlot who sits on many waters. The many waters there relate to the sea.
Revelation 17:1 NASB "Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, 'Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, [2] with whom the kings of the earth committed {acts of} immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality. [3] And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.… [15] And he said to me, "The waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." So the Scripture makes it clear that the sea represents the mass of the Gentile nations. And it is contrast to that that the second beast is going to come up, and he is going to come up out of the earth, which in contrast to the seas would mean he comes out of Israel. This would indicate that the Antichrist is going to have a Gentile origin.
Revelation 13:2 NASB "And the beast which I saw was like a leopard [indicating speed], and his feet were like {those} of a bear [power and massive strength], and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority." This takes us back to Daniel chapter seven.
Dan 7:2 NASB "Daniel said, 'I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea'." What we see in Daniel is the beginning of the period that Luke refers to as the times of the Gentiles. The times of the Gentiles refers to the power base on the earth in terms of empires. Up until 586 BC there is a Jewish kingdom—from the inauguration of Saul to 586. But because of their idolatry and their rejection of God, God is going to take them out of the land according to the 5th cycle of discipline (Leviticus 26). By taking them out of the land God is showing them that there is a shift and He is going to start working more directly through these Gentile powers. The times of the gentiles began in 586 because from that time until the present Jerusalem has always been functioning under the heel of a Gentle power. Throughout this time human history has always had a rise and a fall of these great empires. It is under these great empires that we have periods of peace and stability in human history. During Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, there was tremendous opportunity to spread the gospel because of the stability that came under Rome. That doesn't mean that Rome was a wonderful empire. There were tyrannical, horrible aspects to the Roman empire but it was a time when there was peace and stability. Since the fall of Rome there have been other empires that have arisen and there has been the spread of the gospel. But that doesn't mean that these empires were better than they were because all empires are represented as bestial. Ultimately all empires, powers, nation fall to the corrupting influence of sin and they are manifestations of the kingdoms of man.