Posts Tagged ‘Book Of Revelation’

October 6th, 2009
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What of Antichrist in Revelation?

by Clinton Chisholm

In our last blog we pointed out that the term ‘Antichrist’ is rare in scripture and even when Paul’s ‘man of sin/lawlessness’ is equated with Antichrist the evidence is still quite thin.

One of my prized students in Barbados, Kevin, responded to my blog by asking about the beast(s) in the book of Revelation vis-à-vis Antichrist.  Kevin is in good company because the late Brethren scholar F.F. Bruce, in the Word Biblical Commentary on 2 Thessalonians says, “Antichrist appears again in the N[ew]T[estament] in the Apocalypse, although he is not called by that name there. The beast from the abyss which kills the two witnesses of God in Rev. 11:7 is introduced more formally in Rev. 13. [Here] we can hardly fail to recognize a more detailed description of the man of lawlessness of 2 Thess. 2, although in Revelation there is some oscillation between the antichristian power and the individual in whom that power is vested for the time being. But for John of Patmos the antichristian power is unambiguously the Roman Empire…” (p.181).

Bruce goes on to argue that the “first beast of Revelation 13 [is] the ultimate Antichrist” (p.181). Is Bruce correct in his view?  Our basic approach to the book of Revelation challenges Bruce’s equation of the beast in Rev. 13 with Antichrist, a still future centre of evil.

No matter which school of interpretation re Revelation one prefers, all agree that John wrote the book to a group of churches in Asia Minor in the 1st century of this era (Rev. 1:4, 11). The purpose of the book also attracts universal agreement —to comfort the said churches facing tribulation and even martyrdom (2:9-10; 3:9-10; 6:9-11, etc.)

Different scholars have noted the Hebraic nature of the language and thought forms of the Apocalypse. It is as if the writer is thinking in Hebrew though writing in Greek. There is no direct quotation from the Old Testament but numerous allusions appear. Hebrew-derived words get special mention in 9.11 and 16.16. In 12:9, ‘devil’ is Greek-based whereas ‘Satan’ is Hebrew-based. The Hebraic nature of Revelation will assist greatly in a point we make later concerning the identity of the beast in Rev. 13.

Another feature of Revelation is the repeated instructions concerning the timing of the events prophesied. The events “must shortly take place” (1:1; 2:16; 3:11; 22:6), “the time is near” (1:3; 22.10). As Kenneth Gentry points out, John places these time terms of imminence in the first century “in both his opening and closing comments…in his introduction and his conclusion [1:1; 22:6; 1:3; 22:10]…before and after the difficult visions. They are not in the symbolic sections, where one might wonder if they require special interpretive rules. Rather, they are in the clear, straightforward, didactic portions of Revelation.” (The Book of Revelation Made Easy, 2008, p.18).

If John intended to comfort his 1st century audience with his book then nothing in the book could have exclusive reference to the modern world unless the book clearly mentions a distant future cue like that found in Dan. 12:4 “…close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end.” Contrast though Rev. 22:10 “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near.”

Any reading of Revelation that could not have made sense to the primary 1st century audience must be a misreading of the text. Imagine writing a book to console suffering Christians in sections of India today and putting in that book material that will only become a reality in 4025.  That would be insensitivity married to idiocy!

The book of Revelation is highly symbolic (non-literal) in language and contains clues for interpreting some of the symbols. If you miss the non-literal nature of the visionary sections of the Apocalypse you are doomed to misread and misunderstand the book!!

Things that appeared to John, as it were, encoded (veiled), are at times decoded (unveiled) by the formula “this [visual symbol] represents or is this [reality].” Thus in 1:20, the seven stars are the angels/messengers of the seven churches. Similarly and apropos the beast, in Rev. 17:3 (cf. 13:1) and 17:9, “the seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits, they are also seven kings…” In 17:18 we learn that “the woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” At the time of writing, the rulership by the great city was a current reality not a future possibility or eventuality.

The beast in 17:3 is identical in description to the beast in 13:1 and this beast has a dual identity, the one is individual and the other corporate. If we read the Apocalypse with virgin eyes, that is, without our denominational obsessions and doctrinal biases, the dual identity of the beast is reasonably clear. Bruce shares this view in the quote from him used earlier.

  • The corporate identity of the beast is the easier of the two — the beast, corporately speaking was Rome, cf. the seven hills of 17:9. Rome was traditionally seen as built on seven hills (Capitoline, Esquiline, Aventine, Palatine, Caelian, Quirinal, and Viminal).
  • The individual identity of the beast is a bit more involved but still clear from the text, supplemented with a bit of history. Nero Caesar was the beast of Revelation 13 and 17. How do we arrive at this conclusion? Ponder 17:9-10 “The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while.”
  • In the mentioned sequence of seven kings, five are dead, one is (the current ruler) and the other will rule for only a brief period. From the historical record of Roman rulers the first seven would be Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Galba. The sixth ruler then would have been Nero. Galba had the shortest reign of the seven, just a few months (June, AD 68 to January, AD 69).
  • Further corroboration of Nero as the beast comes from the beast’s number or mark in Rev. 13.18. Gentry mentions an easily overlooked point “John does not state that this mark involves a series of three sixes. In the Greek of Rev. 13:18 the number actually is ‘six hundred, sixty and six’, not ‘six, and six and six’.” (p. 61). Using the only convention re numbers available in John’s time—the letters of the alphabet doubling as numbers—and remembering the Hebraic nature of the book we can identify the beast individually by reflection on his number 666.

As Gentry says a Hebrew spelling of [Nero’s] name, verified by archaeological finds, was Nrwn Qsr (pronounced Neron Kaiser). This comes out to 666 based on the formula n=50, r=200,w=6, n=50,p=100, s=60, r=200. (p.62). Fascinatingly, there are a couple manuscripts of Rev. 13.18 that have 616 instead of 666 as the number of the beast.  This manuscript change seemed not to have been accidental.  As the revered textual critic Bruce Metzger says, “Perhaps the change was intentional, seeing that the Greek form Neron Caesar written in Hebrew characters [nrwn qsr] is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin form Nero Caesar [written in Hebrew characters nrw qsr] is equivalent to 616.” (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 1971, p. 752.)

Support for the view of Nero as the beast, individually spoken of in Revelation can be further corroborated Gentry argues by examining the action of the beast mentioned in 13.5, 7. Here the beast is said to have been given authority to act for forty-two months or three and a half years, during which time he would be allowed to make war with the saints and even overcome them.

Nero’s persecution of Christians is well-known. “We know from historical records that Nero’s initial assault on the Christians in Rome occurs in November of A.D. 64.  And we know that Nero dies [by suicide] early in June of 68…Thus, we have a period of time wherein the Beast wages war against the saints for virtually forty-two months: November, 64 until June, 68.” (Gentry, p.64).

Examination of the beast’s character vis-à-vis Nero’s character provides further corroboration of the identity of the beast.  The revival of the mortally wounded beast also points to a 1st century beast. To those intriguing issues we turn in our next blog.

So then to sum up, even if as Bruce and Kevin surmise, the beast in Revelation 13 can be equated with Antichrist then that Antichrist was Nero and he did his worst in the 1st century.

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