CHAPTER XIII.

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This chapter introduces two new personages who play a vitally important part in the scenes described throughout chapters 13-19. they are both savage wild beasts;--the first comes up from the sea (v. 1); the second from the land (v. 11); both sustain special relations to the great red dragon already introduced in chap. 12, for they are his servants, subserving his purposes and doing his work.

Here our first main question should be--Who are these beasts? What do they represent?--Certainly some great persecuting powers, for they make war with the saints and overcome them (v. 7); they blaspheme God, his tabernacle and his people (v. 6); they receive their power from the red dragon and do his work (vs. 2, 4); they receive the homage of all whose names are not in the Lamb's book of life (v. 8); and in all these points the second beast is only a subordinate agent of the first (v. 12), acting upon the public mind by great but lying miracles and by manifold deceptions to bring to him the confidence and the worship of the people.--The same view is sustained by the obvious allusion to the beasts of Daniel's visions (chaps. 7 and 8) which represent worldly powers hostile to Christ. These are similar powers, reproduced under like symbols.--For the more precise identification of these two beasts we must bear in mind the positive limitations of time within which the main events of this book must fall as given us by the revealing Spirit repeatedly, in both the first chapters of the book and the last. And then finally we are very much indebted to chap. 17 in which the revealing angel appears for the definite and declared purpose of explaining to the prophet and to us what is meant by the woman and by the beast that carries her having seven heads and ten horns. The explanations given in that chapter are God's own key to the sense of this chapter and of these two beasts.--At this stage of the discussion I need only say that, guided by these limitations of time, by these points of character, and by these special explanations, it is simply impossible to make any thing else of the first beast save the Roman Empire--the civil power of the Roman Emperors; while the second beast (v. II), judging from the description given of him here, from his influence as sketched here, and also from the further description of him which appears in chap. 16: 13, 14, and in 19: 20--" the false prophet that wrought miracles before him" [the first beast] "with which he deceived them that had the mark of the beast, etc., we must interpret to be the Pagan Priesthood--every-where ministering to the idolatrous homage paid to the Roman Emperors; every-where inspiring the animus of Paganism, and by virtue of their character, naturally active in the persecution of Christians. Beyond all question this second beast is co-ordinate and co-operative with the first and therefore contemporaneous, doing its work at the same time; receiving its final doom in the same fearful hour of judgment.--Another great personage is yet to appear, first called "Babylon" (14: 8, and 16: 19), and then taken up for a more particular description and explanation in chap. 17. Her real name, her place in history, and her relation to the first beast will be readily seen when those passages come under consideration.

In this chapter the beast from the sea is described (vs. 1, 2); also the special fate of one of his heads (v. 3); the worship given him (v. 4); additional points of his character and history (vs 5-8); a special call of attention to him (v. 9), with an intimation of God's retribution upon such wickedness (v. 10).--The second beast comes to view and is described (vs. 11-17), and the chapter closes with an intimation that special wisdom will be requisite to identify precisely the then present representative of this formidable beast (v. 18).

1. And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

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