Beast (Revelation)

“ The Beasts in the Apocalypse are the natural and fitting embodiment of brute force operating to control men in the sphere of religion. Some would prefer the translation of θηρίον as a “monster” rather than a “beast”,468 and perhaps, it is technically more accurate, but the long use of the term “beast” in this connection has made it familiar to our minds and also intelligible, for it is a beast in the bad sense that is intended, and to the average reader this term undoubtedly conveys the proper meaning. ”

“ The First Wild Beast, or the Spirit of Worldliness.—In the chapter of the Revelation which precedes the appearance of the beasts (Revelation xii, 12) the warning had been given, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath.” We are now to witness the fulfillment of this warning. The apostle saw two wild beasts rise, one from the sea, the other from the land, both of them formidable foes and intense in their hostility to the kingdom of Christ. ”

“ Another wild Beast, also an ideal and composite creature, like unto yet different from the first, is seen [pg 171] coming up out of the earth,472 i. e. out of established and well-ordered society; the Two-horned Beast in whom the exercise of personal power or force is less prominent than in the First Beast with ten horns to whom he is subordinate, for the power he exerciseth is “all the power of the First Beast”. This Beast is the symbol of the universal world-religion, i. ”

“ The view, therefore, that the beast rages from the beginning of the Christian era, from the moment when he rises after his fall, or, in other words, is loosed after having been shut up into the abyss, is not inconsistent with the view that his rage goes on augmenting until it attains its culminating point. ”

“ Taking up the Greek word θηριον in this sense, it is fully evident, if a power be represented in the prophetical writings under the notion of a wild beast, that the power so represented must partake of the nature of a wild beast. ”

“ The general description of the two-horned beast, however, brings into prominence an evil characteristic—the disposition to lead people into deception by making an image to the beast and then worshiping it. ”

“ Men who stood vacantly staring in muttered, "Beast!" women, shrinking from the unsightly spectacle, whispered, "Beast!" and children, gazing in silent horror with the rest, stared "Beast!" out of their wonder-stricken eyes. ”

“ Beast, how you frightened me!’ she cried. ‘I never knew how much I loved you until just now, when I feared I was too late to save your life.’
‘Can you really love such an ugly creature as I am?’ said the Beast faintly. ”

“ I used to look at everyone that way, until I had to get away from humanity. I was living in a world of beasts. Most of them looked like some beast or bird or other. The strong were vicious and criminal ”

“ And yet for one I think it true.
The days of wonder have not ceased
If there are beasts in forms of men,
As sure it happens now and then,
Why may not man become a beast,
In way of punishment at least? ”

“ Are not these beasts, then, much wiser and better than we? We will honour them, and pray to them not to devour us—to make us cunning and powerful as they are themselves. And if they are no better than us, surely they are no worse than us. After all, what difference is there between a man and a beast? The flood which drowned the beasts drowned the men too. A beast is flesh and blood, what more is a man? If you kill him, he dies, just as a beast dies ”

“ Give no truce nor sign of respite at the binding of the Beast.
He is cunning, he is strong, and the war shall yet be long,
Where the seven thunders wake and the walls of heaven shake.
He is cruel, blind and ruthless; he is boastful, sly and truthless;
By his will the Powers of Darkness are increast;
But the shackle and the chain shall avenge the hurt and slain,
Who have broken bread with heroes at the binding of the Beast. ”

“ The beast is the very incarnation of familiar qualities of man; and such names as lion, bear, fox, owl, parrot, viper, worm, when we apply them as epithets to men, condense into a word some leading feature of a human life. Consistently with this, we see in looking over details of savage transmigration that the creatures often have an evident fitness to the character of the human beings whose souls are to pass into them, so that the savage 18philosopher’s fancy of transferred souls offered something like an explanation of the likeness between beast and man. ”

“ The beast tale is a very old form which was a story of some successful primitive hunt or of some primitive man's experience with animals in which he looked up to the beast as a brother superior to himself in strength, courage, endurance, swiftness, keen scent, vision, or cunning. ”

“ Then the man told him all; of his bootless journey to the distant seaport,—of how his eldest daughters had [Pg 25] desired jewels and gold raiment, and of Beauty’s wish for one white rose.
Silently, the Beast heard; then, drawing a deep breath, like a human sigh, he spake again very softly. “Merchant,” he said, “death is the price they pay who steal that without which life to me were one long death. But if life still to thee is sweet, thou must bring hither that young maid of whom thou spakest. ”

“ Since the monster will accept of one of his daughters, I will deliver myself up to all his fury, and I am very happy in thinking that my death will save my father’s life, and be a proof of my tender love for him.” “No, sister,” said her three brothers, “that shall not be: we will go and find the monster, and either kill him or perish in the attempt.” “Do not imagine any such thing, my sons,” said the Merchant, “Beast’s power is so great, that I have no hopes of your overcoming him: I am charmed with Beauty’s kind and generous offer, but I cannot yield to it. ”

“ I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then that. ”

“ If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man over a beast as an object of God’s mercy or wrath is lost. “Beasts, in that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion.” ”

“ Not a big beast, you will say; but in the wild he ruled big, being snaky and of a fighting turn, so to say. He was, in fact, the very devil, and he looked it—hard as nickel-steel. A dull, tawny devil, with a peculiar purplish sheen in some lights—due to the longer hair—on his short, hard coat, turning black on his throat, legs, and tail—as if he had walked in black somewhere—and finished off with patches of creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraordinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power and slow ferocity about the beast—a very natural born gladiator of the wild places. ”

“ Besides, all the wit and Philosophy in the world can never demonstrate, that the killing and slaughtering of a Beast is anymore then the striking of a Bush where a Bird's Nest is, where you fray away the Bird, and then seize upon the empty Nest. ”

“ Hence, like beasts, they rot in their dung; they are become corrupt and abominable in their ways, and live as though there were no God, and no knowledge in the Most High, — as though man and beast had one end, and the condition of both were the same. ”

“ Could he never do that again? Must he, when cured, remain for all the rest of his life the man conquered by the beast, the man eaten up by the beast, the man broken in the contest with the dragon-beast? ”

“ The wild beast shall tear them; not only God will be as a lion and leopard to them, but the metaphor shall be fulfilled in the letter, for noisome beasts are one of the four sore judgments with which God will destroy a provoking people, Ezek. xiv. 15.
Now all this teaches us, 1. That abused goodness turns into the greater severity. Those who despise God and affront him, when he is to them as a careful tender shepherd, shall find he will be even to his own flock as the beasts of prey are. ”

“ For what gross Wickedness, I say, was there ever committed in all, or any part of the World, that we have had any Account of, in any History or News-Papers, but this Beast with his Seven Heads, Ten Horns, and Ten Crowns, and his Name of Blasphemy, have not had a share and hand in it, so then all Covetous Men are Beasts, Blasphemers, Lyers, Thieves and Murtherers as well as Idolaters. ”

“ If any man worship the Beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb ”

“ As the beast makes no reply, they cut out the string of the tongue, and throw it into the fire. If it crackle and shrivel up, which it is almost sure to do, they accept this as a good omen; if not, they consider that the spirit of the beast is not appeased, and that the chase of the next year will be unfortunate. ”

“ It was not merely a fancied external resemblance between the beast and man, but it was the perception of skill, pursuits, desires, sufferings, and griefs like his own, in the animal creation, which led man to detect within the beast something analogous to the soul within himself ”

“ For what is the voice but the Beast calling, awakening that other Beast sleeping in the depths of mankind, the Beast which all great art has ever sought to chain up, as the archangel chains up, in old pictures, the demon with his woman's face? How could the creature attached to this voice, its owner and its victim, the singer, the great, the real singer who once ruled over every heart, be otherwise than wicked and contemptible? ”

“ These, as natural brute beasts, the ten-horned beast and two-horned beast, or false Prophet, made to be taken and destroyed, in the lake of fire, blaspheme the things they understand not:—they count it pleasure to riot in the day-time—sporting themselves with their own deceivings, while they feast [26] with you, having eyes full of an [27] Adulteress: for the kingdoms of the beast live deliciously with the great Whore, and the nations are made drunk with the wine of her fornication. ”

“ God hath denounced the cup of his eternall wrath to all those who have taken the mark of the Beast, either upon their fore-head or on their hands, that is, have joyned themselves to the Beast, either by their profession, or by their works, Rev. ”

“ Thus when the savage gets over his fears, he still keeps up in ironical merriment the reverence which had its origin in trembling sincerity. Even now the Norse hunter will say with horror of a bear that will attack man, that he can be ‘no Christian bear.’
The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between man and beast, so prevalent in the civilized world, is hardly to be found among the lower races. ”

“ Well did Marcus Tullius say, In truth, if there is no one who would not prefer death to being changed into the form of some beast, although he were still to retain the mind of a man, how much more wretched is it to have the mind of a beast in the form of a man! ”

“ The whole character of the beast, from beginning to end, is seen, but pursued to, and therefore having its agency in, its last form; this enables us to identify the beast personally all through, and brings him under the character of guilt which has attached to him from the beginning, or marked the course of his protracted progress, whatever unrestrained iniquity this may shew itself in at the close. ”

“ But it is to the terrible character of its attack, to the fact that this is so frequently fatal, and to the awe-inspiring appearance of the beast as it comes on with dilated form and fire-darting eyes, that much of its reputation for more than ordinary ferocity is due. ”

“ Well, then, after this swift glimpse into inspired and general literature, and this glance upon the typical symbols of the national life, we are more disposed than ever to say that the beast is just anti-Christ, the presumptuous claim of the animal to take the place of the spiritual, the defiant claim of the devil to usurp the throne of God. But here are men and women whose triumph is recorded in my text, who have conquered the beast, and who have attained a strong and fervent purity in which the spirit is all in all. ”