Beast of the Book of Revelation

“ It makes God a fool, man a lunatic, religion a farce, and the Bible superlative nonsense. Revelation is defined to be "the act of making known." But what is made known by a book whose language is so contradictory and so ambiguous that no two persons in a million agree with respect to all it teaches? ”

“ Thus 'day and night for ever and ever' describes in a picture the completeness of the final overthrow and the anguish of the enemies of the Lamb. The symbolical character of the expression is further indicated by 'the beast' and 'the false prophet'—themselves symbolical figures—being with the devil the subjects of the torment. ”

“ If God did not wish us to understand the book of Revelation, He would not have given it to us at all. A good many say it is so dark and mysterious that common readers cannot understand it. Let us only keep digging away at it, and it will unfold itself by and by. Some one says it is the only book in the Bible that tells about the devil being chained; and as the devil knows that, he goes up and down Christendom and says, “It is no use your reading Revelation, you can not understand the book; it is too hard for you.” The fact is, he does not want you to understand about his own defeat. ”

“ It is blasphemy to deny that god cursed the serpent- who had unfortunately lost the power of speech just at the time at which he most required it-for being the helpless tool of Satan, and condemned him to go on his belly and to eat dust. ”

“ In that low fervent voice of his, his body bent a little forward, he opened out to them a revelation, he poured out on them the vials of God’s wrath. Not an idea had he of sparing them, he called things by their right names, and spoke of sin, such sin as theirs—drunkenness, uncleanness, thieving—as the Bible speaks of these things; and he showed them that every one of them were filthy and gone astray utterly. ”

“ Even if it be taken as a figure only, the figure is never so great as the fact it prefigures! "The land shall be drunk with blood, and its dust made fat with fatness, for it is the day of Jehovah's vengeance, the year of recompenses for the controversy against Zion." Isaiah xxxiv. 7, 8.
As a picture of the absolute triumph of God, on this occasion, the Psalmist uses the most awful figure of any in the Bible—THE LAUGHTER OF GOD! "He that sitteth in the Heavens SHALL LAUGH; the Lord shall have them in derision." Ps. ii. 4. "God is not mocked!"
"And the Beast (Anti-christ) was taken." ”

“ He is virtually stripped of his dominion; he can prophesy, but his rule is a thing of name, and not a fact. A false prophet is he; truth-less as Satan; sporting himself with his own deceivings, and thereby provoking a speedy fate, which is "capture and destruction."
But, before he and the two-horned beast before whom he is now working, perish in the European fiery lake they are blowing into a flame, they must fulfil the mission to which they are appointed under this series of the sixth vial. ”

“ A Revelation, of which the Prophets of God, His saints and chosen ones, have either not been informed, or which, in pursuance of God’s inscrutable Decree, they have not disclosed,—such a Revelation these mean and depraved people have sought to measure with their own deficient minds, their own deficient learning and understanding. Should it fail to conform to their standards, they straightway reject it. “Thinkest thou that the greater part of them hear or understand? They are even like unto the brutes! ”

“ Such application I believe this chapter has had; and this falls in consistently with the whole plan of the protracted scheme of prophecy, because the second beast loses its character as a beast and becomes a false prophet before the final close. The saints in the fifteenth had their victory over the effort to make them worship the image of the beast; but it was the second beast, not the false prophet, who sought to make them worship the image of the first ”

“ And yet once again comes the peculiar certifying of the contents of this Revelation message, and a solemn warning against any interfering with its meaning. Jesus says,—I hereby certify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any man add to them, making them mean something else than I intend, God shall add unto him the plagues that [Page 234] are written in this book: and if any man shall take away, or lessen the meaning, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and out of the holy city. It comes as a very solemn warning. ”

“ The immediate visible agent in the seduction of man to sin was the serpent; but the testimony of Scripture is in proof that the real tempter was that subtile and powerful evil spirit whose general appellations are the devil and Satan ”

“ You do not, unless you have the light of revelation. You may believe the testimony of others, but unles [s] you get a revelation for yourselves, you do not know whether it is by the power of God or by the power of the devil. Have we witnessed persons apostatizing from this people, from the kingdom of God, to go into the world and become wicked, and give way to swearing, drinking, gambling, and horse-racing, and become as they formerly had been, only more wicked than they were previous to coming into this Church, and that, too, through the principle of Mesmerism? ”

“ Satan who begun this work by deceiving, will end it in deceiving, and this will be the last act of his deception; the image of the devil will be found on all his children; an image God hates, will reject and punish but those who bear the image of the heavenly Adam ”

“ The worship of the beast and his image, and the reception of his mark, must be something that involves the greatest offense that can be committed against God, to call down so severe a denunciation of wrath against it. ”

“ In chapters iv-x, the prophet brings up the charges against the people: "There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, lying, killing, {358} stealing and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood." "The priests are like the people." For these sins the judgment of destruction is pronounced, but the book closes with a prediction of God's blessings as the final outcome. ”

“ But after a few years had elapsed, our cunning adversary began to give revelations and manifestations to the people, and he spread abroad his lying signs and wonders, and now they are far more numerous than those contained in the Bible. People everywhere can get revelation. Profane men and women—drunkards, gamblers and wicked people of every decree can get round a table and obtain revelation. What necessity is there for them to obey the Gospel? What attractions has truth for such persons? ”

“ The saints of the last days may calculate on being scandalized by every evil epithet which malice and ignorance combined can invent, and the nearer they approach to the image of the Savior, the nearer these ignoramuses will think, they will approximate the likeness of satan, and if they should so purify their hearts, as to be in the express image of the person of the Savior, then they may confidently expect to be called beelzebub the prince of devils. ”

“ When the world would believe in new revelation, the devil commenced to give them his revelations by spirit rapping, and by every kind of necromancy that he could induce the people to believe. He had to resort to a new method for deceiving mankind, for the old plan did not entirely succeed against the revelation of the truth, the sending of angels, and the causing the hearts of the people to be filled with the light of eternity. ”

“ In this kind of revelation the devil may meddle freely. For, as revelations of this nature come ordinarily through words, figures and similitudes, etc., the devil may very readily counterfeit others like them, much more so than when the revelations are in spirit alone. Wherefore, if with regard to the first and the second kind of revelation which we are here describing, as touching our faith, there be revealed to us anything new, or different, we must in no wise give our consent to it, even though we had evidence that it was spoken by an angel from Heaven. ”

“ In this Lord I will that ye all believe, and so renounce our false gods, for they be devils and therefore may not aid us nor avail us. And he that will not believe, him will I make be slain or die a shameful death. ”

“ The devil, who is on the watch, has ensnared us in our speech; he has got one more sin recorded against us. Had we watched our tongues he would not have caught us; we should not have sinned; our neighbor would not have been scandalized. How common it is for us to hear God's name taken in vain and spoken lightly; how frequently, alas! do we hear the sweet name of Jesus used for a curse; how often that holy name, "which is above every name," is bandied about as though it were as the name of the lowest of creatures! Blasphemer! reviler of the Holy One! Satan has ensnared you in your speech. ”

“ The reign of Satan, for near eighteen hundred years, has almost effaced every relic of Bible truth from the earth. Every thing that is valuable and powerful in the ancient system of prophets is done away, and the devil himself is supposed, by many, to be merely the evil passions of men. But, sir, the devil is not dead nor done away. But the gospel of apostles will rouse him up again; and knowing that his time is short, he will show his spite again on those bodies from which he shall be expelled by the apostolic priesthood, in choking, tearing, and casting them down to the ground. ”

“ And the devil, too, strives to deceive the soul with his visions, which in appearance are good, as may be seen in the Book of the Kings, when he deceived all the prophets of Achab, presenting to their imaginations the horns wherewith he said the King was to destroy the Assyrians, which was a lie. ”

“ The Revelation is the most difficult book to interpret of any in the New Testament canon. Its meaning is often involved in much obscurity, and the interpretation of eminent scholars has differed so widely in the past that we cannot always be sure, especially in the more difficult portions, that the particular view which appears to us the more satisfactory or convincing is certainly the correct one. ”

“ And while we were yet in the Spirit, the Lord commanded us that we should write the vision, for we beheld Satan, that old serpent—even the devil—who rebelled against God, and sought to take the kingdom of our God, and his Christ, wherefore he maketh war with the saints of God, and encompasses them round about. ”

“ In Revelation it is the prison of evil spirits whence they may occasionally be let loose, and where Satan is doomed to spend 1000 years. Beneath the altar in the temple of Jerusalem there was believed to be a passage which led down to the abyss of the world, where the foundation-stone of the earth was laid. ”

“ As God has promised that when he pours out his Spirit upon his people both their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, so the devil, when he acts as a spirit of lies and falsehood, is so in the mouth not only of false prophets, but of false prophetesses too, and those are the deceivers whom the prophet is here directed to prophesy against ”

“ It is evident that the devil and his angels, according to all that we can learn of them in the sacred books, are real beings; that the demons of the New Testament are malignant spirits; and that they act upon the same principles, and even under the authority of Satan himself, who is otherwise called Beelzebub, and the prince of the devils. Nay, in these very cases of possession, the chief of the apostate angels is clearly set forth as acting either in his own person, or by means of his infernal agents. ”

“ What remains of this chapter will be occupied in explaining these words of the prophet, -- "The judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end." (Dan 7:26) . The judgment sits upon the whole beast, and consists of slaying and burning. This distinction is preserved in the Apocalypse; for whilst the beast and false prophet are cast alive into a lake of fire, "the remnant," or the horns that remain, are "slain with the sword of him that sits upon the horse, which sword proceedeth out of his mouth." ”

“ Has the devil power to afflict, and cast the spirit into torment? No! We have gained the ascendency over him. It is in this world only he has power to cause affliction and sickness, pain and distress, sorrow, anguish, and disappointment; but when we go there, behold! the enemy of Jesus has come to the end of his chain; he has finished his work of torment; he cannot come any further; we are beyond his reach, and the righteous sleep in peace, while the spirit is anxiously looking forward to the day when the Lord will say, "Awake my Saints, you have slept long enough;" ”

“ We infer from the fact, that God our heavenly Father has pointed out the way by revelation ancient and modern, that his creatures should pursue to glorify and enjoy him, and that we are acting the irrational part towards ourselves as well as that of base ingratitude to him, to let the adversary get the ascendancy over us and decoy us, till folly, vanity, and sin ultimately preponderate and satan literally take us captive at his will. ”

“ There is, however, a second point of consideration, and that a very important one, which ought not to be lost sight of, the consequences of Revelation being true,—the unutterable anguish of hopeless, endless despair and torment. ”