Posted on 06/05/2021 9:02:31 AM PDT by JAG 5000
Who Was The Beast Of the Book Of Revelation?
Short answer: Nero Caesar.
Read on , , ,
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{The following was taken from He Shall Have Dominion. by Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. It is not a word for word quote but the substance of this below is Dr. Gentry's. I typed it in. It is not on the web. Footnote at the bottom}
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Who Was The Beast Of Revelation? The Beast is a well known Christian Eschatological character. Premillennialists incorrectly believe that the Beast is to appear in the future. This is false. The Beast was a 1st Century character that appeared in the 1st Century and will never appear again in human history.
The Apostle John wrote the book of Revelation.
The Time Of The Beast. John clearly expects his prophesied events to take place in his day, the 1st Century.
John writes: "The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place." Revelation 1:1
"Then he told me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near" Revelation 22:10
"must soon take place" "the time is near"
In light of Revelation's significance to its first-century audience, the Beast must be someone relevant to that first-century audience.
"The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near." Revelation 1:1-4
“Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.” Rev. 1:11 {these were churches of the 1st century that received this letter of Revelation}
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Revelation 13 presents the Beast as a horrible and powerful foe attempting to destroy God's people.
Sometimes Revelation presents the Beast as a kingdom and sometimes as an individua leader of that kingdom.
In some places the Beast has seven heads which are seven kings collectively considered.
In Revelation 13:1 John notes that he saw a Beast coming up out of the sea having 10 horns and seven heads. Revelation 17:10 specifically says that the seven heads represent seven kings.
Thus the Beast is presented as a kingdom. But kingdoms have representatives. This is why John also speaks of the Beast as an individual.
John urges his readers to calculate the number of the Beast which is the number of a man Revelation 13:18
The Beast's General Identity is the first-century Roman Empire and NOT a "revived Roman Empire" as imagined by Dispensationalism.
According to Revelation 17:9 the Beast's seven heads represent "seven mountains." The seven mountains symbolize Rome. Rome is the one city in history distinguished and recognized by its seven mountains.
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The Beast's Specific Identify. The Beast in his personal identity is Nero Caesar. He and he alone fits the bill as the personal and specific expression of the Beast. This vile character fulfills all the requirements of the text of Revelation.
First the number of the Beast. In Revelation 13:18 the number of the Beast is 666. The usefulness of this number lies in the fact that in the first-century alphabets serve as both phonetic symbols and as arithmetical values. Significantly a common spelling of Nero Caesar's name is Nrwn Qsr, which provides the numerical value of 666
Second the Textual Variant. See Dr. Gentry's book for this explanation. Page 381
Third the Beastly Image. Revelation 13 both calls and portrays the one behind the 666 riddle as a "beast.". The term "beast" can easily symbolize persons with a beastly nature. Almost all scholars agree that Nero Caesar possessed a beastly nature.. Nero Caesar is even hated and feared by his own countrymen, as ancient Roman historians agree. The pagan writer Apollinius of Tyana, a contemporary of Nero Caesar, calls him a "beast."
Fourth, the war with the saints. John's Beast will make war with the saints and overcome them.{Rev. 13:7} In fact Nero Caesar conducts a blasphemous war with the saints for a specific period of 42 months {Rev. 13:5} Nero begins his persecution of Christians in A.D. 64. The persecution finally ends when Nero Caesar dies on June 8, A.D.68 forty-two months later, but for a few days. {Point of interest: Nero's own end comes by the sword.}
Conclusion: The Beast of Revelation was the beastly Nero Caesar of the 1st Century.
Source He Shall Have Dominion by Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. pages 379 - 381
Best Regards,
JAG
“The Beast is a well known Christian Eschatological character. Premillennialists incorrectly believe that the Beast is to appear in the future. This is false.”
This is not false.
Why don’t you STUDY the book of Revelation?
New Age garbage, straight from the father of lies.
Bump
Very interesting! This is why we need a “like” button! I am currently working on a Unified Theory of Everything, but am finding that the Hebrew Sages beat me to it! ;-)
https://www.scribd.com/document/470732777/Unified-Theory-of-Everything
New age is garbage. But, never the less the way the ancients looked at things and did things is comply different than the 20th and 21st century sophistries and rationalizations that theology uses to deceive themselves. Most people believe what they want to believe and they use theology or some such thing to justify themselves. If you really take a look at the ancients and the way they did things then you should be able to come to a completely different understanding of the way things were done by the people who wrote the bible and the way is interpreted by modern day “theologians” and new agers. Eternal truths do not change from generation or from denomination to denomination. If they do something is very wrong.
In the first part Revelation specifically addressed seven different leaders in different real congregations in actual cities. These addressed the current circumstances of those congregations and then the book transitions from the things that are to those that will be.
There is, to explain that section, no need to import in either mystic fantasies written by people with itchy ears not content with the Hebrew Scriptures or pagan beliefs that served fallen hosts.
He makes a plausible argument.
This seems pretty weak sauce. The arguments seem to be:
*Beast will come soon so must be first century - God is eternal. Soon in a Biblical sense may be very different than a human one. It could be millions of years
*Some Biblical numerology - which can be arranged to prove anything you want
You didn’t say homena homena Ed Norton.
“It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Book of Revelation], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherencies of our own nightly dreams ... I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events, past or subsequent. There is not enough coherence in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas.... What has no meaning admits no explanation. And pardon me if I say, with the candor of friendship, that I think your time too valuable, and your understanding of too high an order, to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive, I hope, also that I do not consider them as reveladons of the supreme being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms which, he would know, were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed.”
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, January 17, 1825
Some time ago, IIRC, there was a book that proposed that Darrow was not in Hell (in the book) because of the Scopes affair but because of his role in arguing that someone could be held irresponsible because of insanity.
“Take the time to study ancient religion and look at the paralells in them to Christian writings and you will see who is Gobbledygook and balderdash.”
But that will create a problem. There are more than 2500 translations in hundreds of languages. They are not all alike. So depending on what your religious belief is can have a great differentiation on your answer to the question.
One is during the future tribulation period, the world will be ruled by a godless man presiding over an evil governmental system. The Bible associates this end-times ruler with a terrible beast in Revelation and in Daniel.
In Revelations, the term beast refers to two related entities. Sometimes “the beast” refers to the end-times’ empire. The seven heads and ten horns indicate that the beast will be a coalition of nations that rises to power to subdue the earth under Satan’s control. Later references to “the beast” in Revelation picture an individual—the man who is the political leader and head of the beastly empire. I’m sure the nations mentioned above have already been identified. And it is possible the heads can be numbered in one nation. I can pick seven heads out of congress and the VP and POTUS very easily from the way they have mistreated the US for many years.
wy69
Your title revealed you were going to fl;oat a lie even before the article came up. You put the identity in the past tense when it is clearly in the Greek New Testament as a future identity, as in our times. You and Cronos and Philsworld can gather up and tell the preterist lie in as many variations as you servants of the lie want, it will not change the prophecy or the basis fror the doctrine of imminency taught in the Scriptures.
Thomas Paine
“Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, bye the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases the proper answer would be, “When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God.” This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of the Age of Reason; and which, while it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.
“Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication.”
Interesting...Darrow was one of the premier atheists of his day...
Because clearly we’re in the millennial reign of Christ.
Okaaayyyy..
Next time I have surgery, I want what you’re on.
Like you did.
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