Revelation 13: 1-10

Another similarity to Jesus is the sea beast’s mortal head wound, which was healed. This is an imitative allusion to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sea beast’s recovery astounds the world, which then begins to marvel after the beast. Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him? is a rhetorical question that implies no one can defeat the power of the beast. The question and implication shows the devil’s pilfering of God’s attributes, for it recalls the Old Testament’s “Who is like You, God?” (Exodus 15: 11; Psalm 35: 10; Micah 7: 18) .

The sea beast, then, represents not only a nation but a religious system. However, it is a corporate, spiritual system that blasphemes against God. Blasphemy is claiming equality with God and His prerogatives (Matthew 26: 63-65; John 10: 33). That the beast voices these things is an allusion to the little horn that arises from among the ten horns of Daniel’s fourth beast (The Roman Empire). The little horn (papal Rome) “will speak against the Most High and oppress His saints…for a time (1yr.), times (2 yrs.), and half a time” (half a yr.). That equates to forty-two months. This prophecy corresponds to the forty-two months given to the sea beast’s authority.

The forty-two months consist of 1, 260 days (a biblical month is 30 days). Using the prophetic day-for-a-year principle, that translates into 1,260 years. That corresponds to the dragon’s pursuit of the woman/church into the wilderness (Rev. 12: 6). It is that same period that the dragon began to enlist the help of the sea beast.

Historicist interpreters, like myself, mark the 1,260 years as beginning in A.D. 538. That’s when the political/religious power that arose from the Roman Empire – papal Rome – established itself and began oppressing and persecuting God’s wilderness people (heaven’s citizens) who didn’t adhere to the institutional church’s teachings. (During the course of its authority, papal Rome also changed God’s times and laws – predicted in Daniel 7: 25 – claiming it had the right to do so because its authority and traditions are above the Bible.) The capture of the Pope, during the French Revolution in 1798 ended the 1,260 year reign of terror.

Let those who have an ear hear. The Roman church’s wound appeared to be a mortal wound when the Pope was captured and died in a French prison. Plus, the church’s lands, called the Papal States, were taken away. Another Pope did move into the Vatican, but wouldn’t show himself to the world for fifty years. However, the church recovered in 1929 when a treaty gave the Vatican the right to be a sovereign nation.

Since then, though it hasn’t retrieved its former worldwide rule, the church/state has been healed; enough so, that the world follows the church/state with wonder, acceptance, and as a standard of moral authority. Its complete healing, though, should only be thought of in terms of it regaining worldwide rule; at which point it will fulfill its mission to be the leader of a one-world religion.

In reference to the sea beast, the endurance of the saints has to do with perseverance, knowing that their faithfulness will sometimes destine them to be captives. At the same time, though, they know that their persecutors’ destiny lies with the judgment and retribution of the Lord.