Revelation 17:8 Commentary and Bible Study

Our immediate reaction is to be utterly confused. How can the beast be all those things? How can it have been in the past, not be in the present, and be again in the future? But yes, it can be. The beast always has been, but we are talking about particular manifestations of it in history, and we are looking from the perspective of John’s time. Even before then, there was the beast. Egypt was one head of the beast. The Assyrian Empire was another head – Ninevah the capital was there, the high centre of fornication and show and self-indulgence. The Chaldean Empire which followed had its beast, Babylon. Then we had the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire. Each empire falls, and the beast re-emerges in another manifestation. These were all past from John’s perspective and so belong to the beast that was. Then came the Roman Empire. That would continue for some time, but it had been struck a fatal blow. One final head of the beast will appear, and it will ‘ascend out of the bottomless pit’. God will allow the beast to reappear so many centuries after the fall of Rome, and it will be the same beast, but a different head. This last head will appear right at the end of time. The point is that all these different world empires are essentially the same thing, and have the same spirit activating them. The identity of the beast continues through them all, because the devil does not die when one empire passes away, but raises up the next. They all belong to the same project of the devil. They are his successive attempts to bring into existence his own absolute tyranny on earth through human government, through the medium of his servants, ungodly men and women. Rome was the heart of the Roman Empire, and Rome can also be seen as the woman who rode on the back of the beast because, as Gibbons famous massive history – The rise and the fall of the Roman Empire – contended, it was homosexuality, fornication and effeminacy that destroyed the it from within. In our age, in the last fifty years – when people have themselves promoted licence and immorality, alternative morality, and have derided the Scriptures and the standards of God – the deception has even taken the world of historians. They say, or say most of them say, ‘No, no; it wasn't fornication, immorality, homosexuality that destroyed Rome; that was only one minor factor.’ But there are other voices, prominent among the historians who contend for the old Gibbon analysis, and it is only prejudice that would say otherwise. The sense of wonder spoken of is future. It is parallel to the worship of the beast (Revelation 13:12). Only those who are not of the elect of God will join in with this wonder. The elect will be protected, and they were chosen from the foundation of the world. What causes them to wonder is the reappearance of the beast in its final form. Is this because they recognise that it is the same beast as before, or because it is so impressive to them in its final form and in its recovery from the bottomless pit?