THE APOSTASY
In league with this first beast will be a second, viewed in Revelation 13, as having two horns like a lamb, but speaking as a dragon. This is antichrist, the false messiah, a mimicry of the true Lamb of God, combining, in his own person, power in the land of Israel (being accepted as their prince by the mass of Jews), the head of Jewish apostasy (Rev. 13:11-18), and also exercising all the power of the first beast before him. Arch-leader too of the apostasy of Christendom, he denies the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22). Men in that day will be so deluded that they will worship the dragon, who gives the beast his power; also the beast, saying, “Who is like unto the beast?”; and also the antichrist, who sits in the temple of God, and shows that he is God (2 Thess. 2:4).
In addition to this, the wicked one leads men to make an image to the beast; and he has “power to give life (or breath) unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads; and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Rev. 13:14-17). Some will be so bold-faced in their wickedness that they receive the mark in their foreheads, willingly and openly owning the beast; others who receive it in their right hand, which would be more secret, can show on whose side they are if necessary. Those who refuse the mark and will not bow down to and worship the image of the beast are prohibited from buying or selling, and must in consequence pass through terrible sufferings, many being martyred.
There will be a terrible hour of temptation, not only for Judah, but for the whole world (Rev. 3:10), to try them that dwell on the earth. These latter are a special class, mentioned many times in the Revelation, termed variously in our translation “inhabiters of,” or “dwellers on the earth,” a class whose hearts are fully set on the earth and earthly things, to the exclusion of the claims of God.
Towards the closing hour of this awful scene that we have been tracing, the evil system that is viewed in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of Revelation as a woman, and also as a city, whose name is “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth,” receives the cup of judgment from God. This represents ecclesiastical corruption— Rome, the mother and center, enriched by unholy traffic and intimacy with the worldly powers. The beast and ten horns or kings, that is, the civil power, after supporting her for a time (for she is seen riding upon the beast), at last hate her, and are the instruments in God’s hand of her judgment (Rev. 17:3,16-18). Kings, merchants, shipmasters, traders, sailors, bewail her fall (Rev. 18).
In comparing Revelation 17:1 with Revelation 21:9, we find the prophet in the former passage invited to come and see her judgment, and he is carried in the spirit into the wilderness; in the latter passage to come and see the bride, the Lamb’s wife, and he is carried in the spirit to a great and high mountain. There is shown to him the Holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
(Continued and to be Continued).