Revelation 13:9 Commentary and Bible Study

Those same words which Christ spoke so often, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear!’, and which are solemnly repeated by the Spirit after each of the letters to the seven churches, are again given here. It will be too late to hear these words after a man has been deceived by the beast, after the end of the world, after the Saviour has returned to judge men. Then there will only be a response of terror, for the door of heaven will be closed. The response must be based on the word spoken now. That word is of the utmost importance. It is easy to ignore a word spoken in this world. It is easy to offset it against all the contrary voices which teach us not to take religion seriously or to despise it altogether. Out from the many voices that we hear we must listen to the one voice that matters, the voice of the Son of God, the voice of Scripture. ‘He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of saints.’ The quotation is from Jeremiah 15:2. Why does it contribute to the patience and the faith of the saints to think that people who persecute on earth will be judged by God in heaven at the end of time? Because, the implication of the verse is, this is war against the church. ‘He that leadeth into captivity’ refers to their taking measures against us. So the meaning of the verse is that anyone who is the agent of Satan, who takes hostile measures against the church, will be judged for that. There has not been a change of subject, but it is because the beast is a symbol of earthly authority that we are to have patience in accepting what governments do to us. For the most part, Christians are not in a position to resist such oppression. Their best response is to accept it passively and to hold on to the truth that the sovereign God is allowing it for his own reasons.