Most of Revelation's mysteries have defied explanation because no clear parallels to its scenes exist elsewhere in Scripture. A major exception to this in the opinion of most commentators is the description of the beast from the sea (Rev. 13:1-8), which has been equated with the man of lawlessness (2 Thess. 2:3-10) and the fourth beast of Daniel's first vision (Dan. 7:7-27).
Many traditional Protestant studies of Revelation have been governed by two assumptions: the Roman papacy is the antichrist, and the antichrist is the same person as the man of lawlessness. One of the characteristics of the man of lawlessness, that he opposes "everything called a god or an object of worship" (2 Thess. 2:4), is interpreted as suppression of the genuine worship of God as outlined in the New Testament, of which the papacy was accused during the Reformation period. The further equation of the man of lawlessness with one or more of the beasts in Revelation would then require that any interpretation of the book as a whole must be based on the premise that Roman Catholicism is either its sole villain (the church historicist view) or one of its principal villains (the idealist view).
In the New Testament, the term antichristos appears only in 1 and 2 John. A close examination of these texts reveals that the antichrist, besides being evil, has little in common with the man of lawlessness; indeed, in most respects they are exact opposites. John made it clear that there had in fact been many antichrists beginning from his time (1 John 2:18). These originated in the church, then abandoned it (v. 19). They denied that Jesus is the Christ, and thus denied both the Father and the Son (v. 22). More specifically, they "do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh" (2 John 7; see also 1 John 4:2-3). This denial includes both "that Jesus Christ comes in flesh," resulting in the minimization of Jesus' human nature (a common error among "conservative" versions of Christianity), and "that Jesus is the Christ who comes in flesh," resulting in the minimization of Jesus' uniqueness (a common error among "liberals"). On the basis of both views, Protestants would be judged correct in their assignment of the title antichristos to the Roman papacy, which has traditionally denigrated sexuality and secular lifestyles, and taught that various persons, such as Mary and other deceased saints, share various aspects of Jesus' unique salvific office.
By contrast, the man of lawlessness (o anthrópos tés anomias) is a singular figure who was not manifest in the first century (2 Thess. 2:6). He invades the church from the outside to employ it for his self-deifying agenda (v. 4b). His opposition to "everything called a god or an object of worship" (v. 4a) cannot refer to the true God or biblical worship, repression of which had already occurred in Paul's day under Roman and Jewish authorities. Indeed, the biblical faith has no "object of worship" (sebasma, employed elsewhere in the NT only of pagan idols, Acts 17:23).
Until recently, no culture or government had ever been founded on a program of hostility to all known religion. That changed in the twentieth century when Russia, followed by many other nations, adopted the socio-economic philosophy known as Communism, one of whose basic assumptions is that religion is "the opiate of the people." Russian Communism infiltrated the Orthodox Church and other denominations with government agents to create a "Christian" vehicle for Communist propaganda. If the man of lawlessness is indeed Communism, and the former is also a character in Revelation, this generates the major hypothesis of this study: one or more of the beasts in Revelation is modern Communism.
As previously noted, the first beast in Revelation, the one from the sea, is widely held to be the same as the fourth beast of Daniel's first vision. Both come from the sea (Dan. 7:3; Rev. 13:1), have ten horns (Dan. 7:7; Rev. 13:1), speak "great things" (Dan. 7:8, 7:20; Rev. 13:5), and conquer the saints (Dan. 7:21; Rev. 13:7). The animals representing the predecessors of Daniel's beast (lion, bear, and leopard) are the same, though in reverse order, as those associated with the beast in Revelation. Daniel's beast reigns for "a season, seasons, and half a season" (7:25), which if interpreted as three and one-half years is parallel to the forty-two month timespan of the beast in Revelation (13:5).
Daniel's four beasts are commonly understood as the empires of Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The other major views, that the beasts are Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Greece, or Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Alexander's Greek empire, and the Seleucid Greek empire, are chiefly held by those who are skeptical of predictive prophecy and who date Daniel in the Hellenistic period. The former view makes Daniel guilty of historical error, since Media had already been conquered by Persia before their combined empire defeated Babylonia. The latter view has difficulty correlating the major motifs of the fourth beast with the Seleucid empire. The Maccabees, who successfully revolted against Seleucid rule, are poor candidates for "the one like a son of man" (7:13) or "the Ancient of Days" (7:22).
The motifs associated with each of Daniel's beasts are then correlated with events between each empire's conquest of its predecessor and its defeat at the hands of its successor. Thus, the four heads of the third beast (7:6) correspond to four generals who came to control the major regions of Alexander the Great's empire: Cassander in Macedonia and Greece, Lysimachus in Thrace (modern European Turkey and Bulgaria) and Asia Minor, Seleucus in Syria and Babylonia, and Ptolemy in Egypt and Palestine. The fourth beast, however, has no earthly successor; it is conquered by the Ancient of Days, after which the saints receive it as an eternal possession (7:22).
In accord with this, the Roman Empire to this day has never been conquered in the manner it assimilated its predecessors; instead, it has broken up into many separate countries. Some of these have been temporarily conquered from the outside (Spain by the Moors, the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks, Russia by the Mongols), or have been organized into partial replicas of the original (the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires), but attempts to reconstitute the entire empire (notably by Napoleon and Hitler) quickly failed. As a result, the motifs of the fourth beast can refer to any situation between the Roman Empire's conquest of Greece and the Parousia, without restriction to events prior to the demise of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD or of the Eastern Roman Empire in the fifteenth.
A most obvious candidate to fulfill the characteristics of Daniel's fourth beast is Russia, whose capital was called "the third Rome" and whose pre-Communist rulers (the Tsars, i.e. Caesars) were direct descendants of the last Byzantine Roman Emperor (Constantine XI, whose niece Zoe married Grand Duke Ivan III of Muscovy). This data suggests a more precise form of the initial hypothesis: the beast from the sea is the Soviet Union.
A correlation may now be attempted between the motifs of the beast from the sea in Revelation and Daniel's fourth beast, and events in the history of the Soviet Union.
Daniel refers to "the great sea," which most likely indicates the Mediterranean (see Num. 34:6). All four of his empires conquered territory along the Mediterranean's eastern shore; the Soviet Union similarly encompassed its northeastern extension, the Black Sea.
Ten is often asserted to be a "number of completeness"; if so, it has no unique significance compared to other numbers. Indeed, all numbers are numbers of completeness; for example, 603,550 is the number of the complete population of Israel (Num. 1:46). Idealists especially cannot decide whether the "number of completeness" is seven or ten, and indeed use synonymous phrases to label virtually every symbolic number in Scripture.
In fact, ten is the number of synchronic or concurrent groups, as in its most familiar biblical usage, the Ten Words. These comprise no chronological sequence, whether regarded as the ten word phrase of Exodus 20:5 (only when all ten words are taken as a unit do they constitute a meaningful expression) or as "the ten commandments" (one does not first safeguard a neighbor's life, and only subsequently become concerned about his spouse or property). The New Testament occurrences of ten outside of Revelation, all in the synoptic Gospels, similarly involve synchronic groups. Most of these are in parabolic motifs: ten virgins (Matt. 25:1), ten slaves (Luke 19:13), and ten monetary units (Matt. 25:28; Luke 15:8; Luke 19:13).
The significance of ten is especially clear in its last scriptural occurrence, in which ten horns rule simultaneously with the scarlet beast (Rev. 17:12). The latter text defines "horns" as "kings," apparently referring to any high government official in addition to the emperor. This would agree with its usage in Daniel 8:8 and 22, where the four generals under Alexander the Great are designated as horns, with Alexander himself depicted as a large horn.
Daniel 7:8 contains an additional datum concerning the ten horns, that another horn arose in their midst which displaced three horns in the process. This precisely corresponds to a major transition in the early history of the Soviet Union. In 1922, its ruling Politburo consisted of Vladimir Lenin (né Ulyanov) and ten other members. After Lenin suffered a series of strokes that year, Josef Stalin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigori Zinoviev ruled the Soviet Union as a triumvirate. Lenin died in 1924, and his seat on the Politburo (but not his primacy over the Soviet Union) was filled by Nikolai Bukharin. Stalin then began a two year ascent to sole power, culminating in the expulsion from the Politburo, and eventual execution, of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Stalin's chief rival, Leon Trotsky (né Lev Bronstein).
As previously noted, seven has been confused with ten as a "number of completeness." Some commentators assume, without providing evidence, that the meaning of symbolic numbers is to be sought in the summation of other symbolic numbers (in this case, three plus four), and that three is the number of God (an association not supported by Jonah 1:17, Luke 13:7, or Rev. 16:13). Seven is then called a "divine" or "sacred" number, or is defined with such phrases as "God's gracious dealings with mankind." An additional problem then arises in explaining this number's use with manifestly evil characters. The response that the latter portray demonic mimicries of God's dealings with mankind simply proves that the context, not the use of seven itself, is the source of any "divine" significance.
The original source for the entailment of this number is obviously the creation story (Gen. 1:1-2:3). What Genesis and Revelation have in common is their use of seven to label a series of chronologically distinct events. Seven is thus the complement of ten as the number of diachronic or consecutive groups. It must be conceded that other New Testament occurrences of seven, confined to the synoptic Gospels, Acts, and Hebrews, do not support a diachronic interpretation. Unlike ten, however, seven is never employed in parabolic literature. Both numbers are of course capable of literal as well as symbolic use. For example, the datum that there were seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19:14) is unrelated to any symbolism derived from Genesis 1-2 or elsewhere.
As was true in the case of ten, the scene involving the scarlet beast provides the most precise information concerning both the number seven and its associated term. "The five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come" (Rev. 17:10) clearly describes a diachronic series. The "heads" are identified as "kings" (v. 9), but unlike the identically described horns, in Daniel and apparently also in Revelation these refer only to imperial rulers, to the exclusion of any surrogates.
Beginning from the period indicated by the ten horns, the Soviet Union had seven rulers: Josef Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. This correlation explains why this beast's horns precede its heads, while those of the dragon (Rev. 12:3) and the scarlet beast (17:3) follow their heads. The horns of the beast from the sea are to be connected with the beginning of the series of heads, thus the Politburo with Stalin, whereas the horns of the dragon and scarlet beast are to be associated with the last king in each series.
The identification of these particular seven Soviet leaders with the seven heads is complicated by several disorderly transitions in the 1950's and 1960's. After Stalin died in 1953, Malenkov became both premier and effective ruler of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was made Communist Party general secretary at this time, but was not considered a central figure. In 1955, Nikolai Bulganin became premier, but by this point Khrushchev had risen in influence so as to become the real head of government. When Khrushchev was dethroned in 1964, Aleksei Kosygin became premier, but real power was in the hands of Brezhnev as Communist Party general secretary.
In contrast to a stephanos, which occasionally adorned the head of a priest (Zech. 6:11), a diadéma was a crown worn only by a king as a symbol of the territory he ruled. For example, Ptolemy VI Philometor wore two diadems on his head, one for Asia and the other for Egypt (1 Macc. 11:13). In the aftermath of World War II, ten such "diadems" came to be ruled by Stalin and his successors: the Soviet Union itself, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Mongolia.
The Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which unlike the "satellite nations" had been part of Russia since the eighteenth century, were assimilated into the Soviet Empire at a different time (1940) and by a different procedure (annexation into the Soviet Union). The supposed independence of Yugoslavia and Albania from the Soviet Empire in later years was little more than a propaganda device designed to minimize the threat of a monolithic "Communist bloc." Cuba did not become a part of the Soviet Empire until Khrushchev's administration.
The location of the beast's diadems on its horns indicates that credit for its conquests goes back to the group symbolized by the horns, namely, the Politburo which conferred power on Stalin. The placement of the reference to the diadems after the heads indicates that these territories would be retained through the reign of the final head. A slight refinement of the basic hypothesis is thus indicated: the beast from the sea is the Soviet Empire created by Josef Stalin.
This could be a specific name, but is more likely the philosophy "in whose name" the beast's heads acted. Obvious candidates to fulfill either sense would be Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. If "name" should here be read as a plural (as in Codex Alexandrinus and the Majority texts), both of these along with Friedrich Engels would be indicated.
The leopard, bear, and lion (Rev. 13:2) represent the Roman Empire's predecessors: Greece (Dan. 7:6), Medo-Persia (v. 5), and Babylonia (v. 4). The stress on Greece, also suggested by the beast's bronze claws (Dan. 7:19; see also Dan. 2:32, 39), reflects its influence on the culture, language, and philosophy of ancient Rome and its Byzantine and Russian derivatives. It is doubtless a coincidence that the bear has been an unofficial emblem of the Soviet Union; the leopard and lion have played no similar role in that nation's symbolism.
The bear's feet and lion's mouth point to the destructive power and arrogant propaganda of the beast. Daniel's fourth beast uses its feet to "trample the remaining things," meaning the remnants of its predecessors, and its mouth to "speak great things" (7:7-8). Motifs involving feet and a mouth are also present in the description of Daniel's first two beasts (7:4-5), but with different functions (the feet used to stand upright, the mouth used to devour) and reversed associations (the lion's feet and the bear's mouth). Since the kings of Babylonia and Medo-Persia had certain positive traits (Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. 3:28-30; Darius, Dan. 6:16-28), John's reversals may have been intended to portray his beast as their negative image.
The iron teeth of Daniel's fourth beast find potential fulfillment in the name "Stalin," meaning "man of steel," which the founder of the Soviet Empire adopted in place of his original surname Dzhugashvili. Winston Churchill's comparison of the inception of the Soviet Empire to the descent of an "iron curtain" may also be indicated here.
The great dragon first mentioned in 12:3 gives "its power, its throne, and great authority" to the beast from the sea. The former is described as having seven heads and ten horns (the reverse of the beast's order), with seven diadems on its heads rather than the ten on the beast's horns. Such imagery clearly suggests an earthly empire. This is not contradicted by the subsequent identification of the dragon as "the ancient serpent, called the Devil and Satan" (v. 9); that Satan could manifest himself in an earthly empire is no more bizarre than his "incarnation" as a serpent (Gen. 3:1).
The dragon's distinctive activity includes an attack on "the third part of the stars of the sky" (v. 4), which based on the significance of "star" in 1:20 would refer to the pastors of the visible church. In the latter verse, seven stars in the right hand of the "one similar to a son of man" represent the seven "messengers" (aggeloi) of the Asiatic churches, who receive letters from John in chapters 2-3. That these are human beings is proven by the fact that several are called to repent of their sins (metanoéson, 2:5, 2:16, 3:3, 3:19). The Scriptures nowhere support the widespread identification of aggeloi as winged celestial beings akin to the cherubim and seraphim. In several texts (Mark 1:2; Luke 9:52) they are clearly humans performing duties associated with clergymen.
The most likely identity for the dragon would be the modern German Empire, including both the "Second Reich" of Otto von Bismarck (founded in 1871) and the "Third Reich" of Adolf Hitler. Seven individuals served as head of state for this empire: Wilhelm I, Frederick III (who ruled for only a few months in 1888), and Wilhelm II (all called kaiser); Prince Maximilian of Baden (an interim figure in 1918); Friedrich Ebert and Paul von Hindenburg (both presidents of the Weimar Republic); and Adolf Hitler. Though never called kaiser or president, Prince Maximilian clearly functioned as the head of state for a brief but crucial period. He was appointed chancellor of Germany on October 3, 1918, in one of Wilhelm II's last official acts. As a prerequisite for the armistice ending World War I, Prince Maximilian announced Wilhelm II's abdication on November 9. He appointed Friedrich Ebert as the new chancellor on the same day, and authorized the signing of the armistice on November 11.
The dragon's ten horns (connected to the last head) refer to the ten other members of Hitler's initial cabinet. After being named chancellor, Hitler quickly became de facto head of state with the passage of an "enabling act" which cut Hindenburg out of the political process. The seven diadems (located on the heads, but whose reference occurs after the horns) are territories originally possessed in Bismarck's time which were held or restored in Hitler's: Germany proper (as reduced by the treaty of Versailles), Saarland (annexed March 1935), the northern section of East Prussia known as Memel (annexed March 1939), West Prussia (annexed September 1939), the southern section of Upper Silesia (also September 1939), the western section of the Rhineland known as Eupen-Malmedy (annexed June 1940), and Alsace-Lorraine (also June 1940). Other annexed territories, such as Austria, Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, had never been part of the Second Reich. The northern section of Schleswig-Holstein, transferred to Denmark after 1918, was never officially reintegrated into Nazi Germany.
The dragon's color also appears to indicate Nazi Germany. Although purros (12:3) is commonly translated "red," it was employed in extrabiblical Greek for the color of an egg's yolk, a lion's fur, and "red" hair. This color did in fact play a significant role in Nazi symbolism, in the form of the "brown shirts" of storm troopers and Hitler youth. Its yellow-orange to yellow-brown range is supported by its derivation from the word for fire, whose yellow-orange color is confused with red for the same reason as that of "red" hair. "Orange" is not employed in common English Bibles. More surprisingly, neither is "brown," except for Genesis 30:32-40 KJV to describe wool (RSV and NASB read "black"). "Yellow" is hardly less rare; it occurs in Leviticus 13:30-36 to describe hair color and in Psalm 68:13 KJV to describe gold (RSV reads "green"; NASB reads "glistening"). The Greek word for bright red is kokkinos, usually translated "scarlet."
Germany has clearly been the fatherland of the greatest modern evils in church and state: the historical critical method of biblical research (resulting in the "sweeping away of stars"), rationalism and nihilism, Marxism and Nazism. Germany specifically enabled the foundation of the Soviet Union not only by conceiving Marxist philosophy, but also by weakening the government of Nicholas II during World War I. In John's precise description, the "power" and "throne" which the beast received were previous possessions of the dragon. Soviet military and technological power was indeed greatly enhanced by German scientists captured at the end of World War II, and the original "throne" of Second Reich Germany, the territory of Prussia which extended from East Germany through Poland to K�nigsberg (Kaliningrad) in Russia, ended up entirely in the possession of the Soviet Empire. The use of "throne" as the central section of a territory ruled by a king is supported by Matthew 5:34, where "heaven" is called "the throne of God."
There remains one motif which at first glance renders this correlation impossible: the dragon's oppression of a woman who gives birth to a male child (12:5), which is almost universally assumed to refer to the birth of Jesus. Several major problems with the latter interpretation have apparently gone unrecognized. The normal emphasis on Jesus' redemptive work (1:5b-6, 1:18, 5:9-10) is completely lacking here. Indeed, this child is not said to have died or risen, but is "snatched up to God and to his throne" (12:5). "Snatched" (arpazó) is never employed in the New Testament for Jesus' ascension, but does describe two unusual transportations of Christians: the apostle Philip from the Gaza road to Ashdod (Acts 8:39), and an anonymous believer to "the third heaven" or Paradise (2 Cor. 12:2, 12:4). The fact that the child would "shepherd all the nations with an iron rod" does not point exclusively to Jesus. Indeed, the "one similar to a son of man" offers this very right "to the one who conquers and who maintains my actions until the end" (2:26-27). Finally, the subsequent experiences of the woman (12:6, 12:13-17) do not match any known events in the life of Mary, or of the post-apostolic church in the Roman Empire. Inconsistently, most Protestants who assume that the child is Jesus refuse to identify the woman with Mary. In both cases, the interpretation is based on dogmatic bias (respectively, christocentricity misdefined as "Jesus alone" and anti-Catholicism) rather than exegetical data.
Since John says nothing further about the child and does not connect him with any other character in Revelation, it is currently impossible to say who this individual is or what role he might play as the Parousia approaches. If the motif of the woman describes a collective, namely the church or Christian society, rather than a private individual, the motif of the child could refer to another collective which is derivative from the first, such as orthodox clergy, or a specific congregation or church body. This interpretation would be fully compatible with the biblical understanding of christocentricity, since the ascended Christ manifests himself in a collective (the church as "body of Christ," 1 Cor. 12:27).
The beast's "stroke of death" (13:3, 13:12) or "stroke of the sword" (13:14) corresponds to the barely unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany during World War II. The "one head" would then be Josef Stalin. Here again, Germany played a central role in assisting the establishment of the Soviet Empire, since Stalin was able to invade and conquer various Eastern European nations on the pretext of defeating the Nazis.
The second beast of this chapter employs this "miracle" in his commendation of the first beast's agenda (13:12, 13:14). As will be seen, the second beast is indeed a regime which took power in the aftermath of World War II.
The entire world was indeed astonished at how quickly the Soviets advanced from a virtually conquered nation to a superpower rivaling the United States in military and technological prowess. Due to its nuclear capability, no one dared wage war with it. By the 1970's, virtually every nation on earth was either led by Communists, allied with Communists, threatened by a Communist rebel movement, or influenced by Communist sympathizers in the media, the academic community, and major religious bodies.
The worship of the dragon together with the beast would appear to contradict the idea that the dragon is Germany, since loathing of Nazism has been all but universal since the end of World War II. However, it is only Hitler's cult of personality and his theories of racial supremacy which have been denounced. Second Reich Germany continues to be viewed positively as the source of rationalism, existentialism, socialism, and revisionist approaches to Christianity.
The Soviet Union's repression of the Christian religion, especially of those two major confessions native to its empire (Russian Orthodoxy and Lutheranism), exceeded that of any previous regime, including the ancient Roman Empire. Numerous church buildings were destroyed or converted to secular use, pastors and laity were sent to concentration camps, and atheism became an integral part of Soviet culture.
This period appears to correspond with the forty-two years of the Soviet Empire, which began in 1947 with the establishment of COMINFORM (Communist Information Bureau), the official coordinating body of the Soviet Union and its satellites, and ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the various Soviet dominated regimes in eastern Europe. Forty-two years was the length of time Israel spent in the wilderness after the Exodus (Josh. 5:5 LXX; "forty" in Josh. 5:6 MT).
At first, the interpretation of "months" as "years" appears arbitrary, even though the use of one temporal term in the stead of another has precedent in the Old Testament (for example, days for years, Ezek. 4:5). Fortunately, there is one other reference to a specific number of months in Revelation, namely, the five months during which locusts terrorize the earth in connection with the fifth trumpet (Rev. 9:5). There are compelling reasons to connect this scene, especially the detailed description of the locusts, with the five years of World War II. The latter is commonly dated from official declarations of war in 1939, but it did not become a multinational battlefield conflict until the next year, when Germany invaded a number of continental European countries and attacked Britain.
Concerning the locusts, John writes, "The sound of their wings was like a sound of many horse chariots rushing into battle" (v. 9), which is identical to that of propeller driven aircraft; the piston engines generate the sound of horses' hoofbeats, and the rotational noise of the propellers corresponds to that of chariot wheels. Two other motifs, that "their faces were like the faces of men" (v. 7) and that "their teeth were like those of lions" (v. 8), precisely describe the unique air intake port of the most distinctive weapon of the German blitzkrieg, the Ju 87b "Stuka" dive bomber. This particular Stuka, the only Ju 87 model employed in all theaters throughout the war, had a large semicircular scoop on the underside of its engine with thick vertical bars inside, and a prominent nose-like cone in the center of its propellers. When the plane is viewed head on, this creates the impression of a human smiling. That these locusts "were allowed not to kill the men who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads, but to torment for five months" (vv. 4-5) does not imply that no individuals were killed, but that the entire group of such people would not be eliminated. In any case, it should come as no surprise that agents of evil would rebel against a divine directive.
The manner of the Soviet Empire's demise in 1989 was all but unprecedented. The majority of empires ancient and modern have collapsed due to foreign invasions; the rest have broken up as a result of internal revolutions. The Soviet Empire, by contrast, disintegrated in the face of the most modest internal political and external diplomatic pressure. The most peculiar aspect of this was the Communist Party's seemingly voluntary relinquishment of power, which historically has occurred in no major nation, especially not one ruled by totalitarian principles.
The promise of the beast's demise in 13:10 has unfortunately been muddled by a textual problem. Codex Alexandrinus, which many modern editors follow, reads fatalistically, "if someone is for captivity, he goes (or leads) into captivity; if someone is to be killed, he is to be killed." This may well apply to unbelievers, but this text is addressed to "one who has ears" (a similar phrase concludes some of Jesus' parables, such as the sower, Matt. 13:9). Codex Sinaiticus, on the other hand, enjoys much wider support from ancient manuscripts, and presents a message of hope for evil's demise: "if someone leads into captivity, if someone kills, he must be killed." This principle will provide similar comfort in the midst of the horrors described later in Revelation.
The similarities in the descriptions of the two beasts in Revelation 13, especially the use of the word "beast" and the motif of the horns, should have suggested to commentators that the beast from the land (13:11-18) is also a secular empire. However, the confusion of the Johannine antichrist with the Pauline man of lawlessness has caused many to conclude that the second beast must represent false religion, such as Roman Catholicism or first century emperor worship, rather than an evil government as such.
If the beast from the sea is the Soviet Empire, the obvious candidate for the second beast, which "exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence" (13:12), is the People's Republic of China, which despite its proximity and similarity to the Soviet Union never became a formal part of its empire. Assuming the same time frame for both beasts in this chapter, the two horns of the second (13:11) would refer to Mao Zedong and his principal successor, Deng Xiaoping.
The seemingly contradictory comparison of this beast to both a "little lamb" (arnion, a term otherwise associated with Jesus Christ, as in 5:8-10) and a dragon is resolved when their specific motifs are considered. The Christian church, like Communism, is a collective governed by a group (note the seven horns and eyes of the godly little lamb, 5:6), organized however by free will under the Gospel rather than by coercion under the law.
The speech of the dragon doubtless refers to the propaganda of Nazi Germany, in which the most outrageous falsehoods were regarded as unassailable. China employed the same technique to justify its version of totalitarianism and mass murder. The comparison of the second beast, but not the first, to the dragon at this point may reflect the fact that Nazi and Chinese propaganda primarily targeted racial (Jews, Tibetans) and political opponents, whereas the Soviet Union uniquely stressed Christianity as a major threat to its regime.
One of the "great signs" of this beast, "that he even makes fire descend out of the sky to the earth in the presence of men" (13:13), may refer to China's above ground nuclear tests, which continued long after other nations had banned the same.
China's devotion to Stalinist principles outstripped that of the Soviet Union itself. No other twentieth century Communist leader produced any influential piece of literature, whereas Mao Zedong "gave breath to the image of the beast, that it might speak" (13:15) by means of his "little red book" of quotations. China also has been second to none among Communist nations in social control and rigidly planned economics ("no one can buy or sell except the one who has the mark," 13:17), as demonstrated by the "Great Leap Forward" and the suppression of Tibet in the 1950's, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in the 1960's, and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
The much discussed "mark" of this beast, which it administers to either the right hand or the forehead (13:16), is almost certainly not a visible alteration of the skin. Parts of the body are regularly employed in Scripture as metaphors of human psychology. The most obvious example is kardia, "heart," exclusively employed as a metaphor for mental activity (as in Rom. 10:6-10). The removal of a "right eye" or "right hand" involved in adultery (Matt. 5:29-30) likewise describes a change in thinking, since the elimination of one of these body parts would have no effect on a person's ability to sin. A forehead (metópon) of bronze, parallel to a neck of iron, denotes an obstinant attitude (Is. 48:4).
Communism has without dispute constituted the most comprehensive "mark" or "imprint" on human thinking and behavior ever conceived, controlling not only a person's attitude toward politics, economics, and religion, but also dictating tastes in matters of art, music, and literature. The most mundane activity of daily life is regularly motivated in Communist nations by appeals to party loyalty and devotion to the head of state.
The second beast's number, "six hundred sixty-six" (13:18), has for centuries been explained as a gematria, the summation of the numerical value of the letters in some word or phrase. Biblical Greek and Hebrew both employed the letters in their alphabets as numeric signs, in the order 1-9, 10-90, and 100-900 (in Hebrew, 100-400). The Greek system retained three obsolete letters as numbers: digamma for 6, qoppa for 90, and san for 900.
Unfortunately, if the gematria explanation is correct, it would seem impossible to decode the number, since many words can be shown to have the same value. Irenaeus suggested several candidates, most notably "Latin" (lateinos). Other early church preterists, who hoped to link this beast with a specific Roman emperor, proposed "Nero Caesar" (nrwn qsr in Hebrew) or "Gaius Caesar" (gaios kaisar), better known as Caligula. The latter was enabled by the variant reading "six hundred sixteen" in Codex Ephraemi, also cited by Irenaeus, which apparently resulted from confusion of the capital letter for sixty with the capital letter for ten.
Some interpreters have suggested that, since man was created on the sixth day and God is a trinity, 666 indicates "man making himself God." Others regard this number as a triple falling short of seven (defined as a "number of completeness" or of "God's dealings with mankind"), thus connoting extreme evil. Still others have merged the previous two theories (six as the number of evil, three as the number of God), resulting in the idea of the devil making himself God. A contrast with 888, the numerical value of Iésous, "Jesus," has also been suggested. All of these views require the use of Arabic numerals, by which "six hundred sixty-six" is written with the same character three times. In John's time, however, no such numeric system existed; in the Greek alphanumeric scheme, as illustrated above, "six hundred sixty-six" is written with three different letters.
One reason why a solution to this puzzle has eluded most commentators is their failure to reflect on the number's Old Testament usage: Solomon's annual income in gold talanta (1 Kgs. 10:14). The only other biblical occurrence of six hundred sixty-six, the number of Adonikam's descendants in a list of returning exiles (Ezra 2:13), suggests no obvious symbolism. The connection between a number associated with a government's economic activity and the second beast's repressive use of economic power, cited in the verse immediately prior to its number, should have been obvious. Assuming that the second beast is Maoist China, this number would primarily symbolize its totalitarian economic policies. A specific parallel between Mao and Solomon also exists in the stylistic similarity of Mao's "quotations" and Solomon's proverbs. However, in view of the linkage between the "Solomonic" number and the second beast's economy rather than its propaganda, it is unlikely that this coincidence was intended by John.
The admonition to calculate (pséphizó) the number of the beast would nevertheless seem to favor its interpretation by gematria. The other biblical occurrences of this verb all involve summations: the cost of a tower (Luke 14:28), and tallies of people and animals (1 Kgs. 3:8 and 8:5). According to the Wade-Giles system employed during Mao's lifetime, his personal name is romanized as Tse-tung (the Pinyin system, which transcribes his personal name as Zedong, was adopted in 1979). The value of Mao Tse-tung in Hebrew letters (see below) is indeed six hundred sixty-six. The other motifs associated with the beast from the land would then provide the evidence for favoring this summation over rival theories.
