Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, who is the beast of Revelation? Ah, 666. This is a favorite topic of end-time studies, isn't it?

When I was a new Christian back in the 70s, we speculated that it might be Henry Kissinger or Saddam Hussein or later even Bill Clinton or now Barack Obama. What I found was in those early days of my faith is that it was endlessly fascinating and awe-inspiring, too, was that the Bible revealed what would happen in the future. And if I could just figure out what all these mysterious beast bowls and scrolls were, it was fun to read the book of Revelation. I also read and listened to everything I could lay hands on that spoke of these things.

Books by Lindsay and LaHaye, sermons by Van Ippie and Van Der Laan, and all you needed to do to get me to sit in the front row of any church in a hundred-mile radius of my home was advertised, Prophecy Conference Here. There were a lot of them back then. I listened to the news on the radio with New Year's and watched the evening reports on CBS and NBC and ABC with new eyes and set my Bible next to my morning paper and cup of coffee that I might compare the headlines with the end times of the scriptures to see what was coming. Was the then, for example, forming European Union?

The Ten Nations, which comprised the Ten Horns of the Beast from the Sea, was the Gulf War in 1991, the beginning of Armageddon? Could Bill Clinton's name possibly be made to add up to 666 when translated into Hebrew gematria? Oh, this was far more fun than doing astrological charts or deciphering the quatrains of Nostradamus or playing Led Zeppelin records backwards to get hidden messages like I used to do in my BC days, that's my before Christ days, when I was a lost worldling.

Also, breathlessly watching current events as if the rapture would take place any moment was something that my pastor and deacons approved of, and they did themselves. I felt part of a special group in those days who were in the know, those few believers who had a kind of secret code by which to interpret the world around them, oracles of God in the Bible that gave special knowledge by which the future could be known and then prepared for it. So, dear listener, no matter how we try to deny it, there is an element of mystery and elitism and special knowledge that comes with immersion in and familiarity with end times prophecy.

Inevitably, one must ask, is this near obsession that so many in the church have today with end times prophecy, is it healthy? How many more failed prophecies by end times quacks like John Hagee or Hal Lindsey or Tim LaHaye? How many of these failed prophecies will it take before we regain our perspective? Is the problem the Bible or maybe my interpretation of it? Or maybe I'm just too preoccupied with these things.

Well, I certainly don't think the problem is the Bible. Let me get that clear first. By the Bible, we know the Lord and we find the way to salvation. It is Christ himself bearing witness that all of redemptive history, past, present, and future is owned, administered by the one who was and is and is to come, as Revelation says, and is already determined by him who created it. And to this, all of Revelation stands as testimony, even as the angel declares to John, worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Is it not? The testimony of Jesus is, in fact, the spirit of prophecy. Now, the modern church's misplaced obsession with end times prophecy stems more from the last two options I mentioned. That is an over-preoccupation with it, prompted in many cases by a misinterpretation of apocalyptic literature like Revelation. A misinterpretation of Revelation stands at the base of so much of this obsession and preoccupation.

But pastor, you may say, how can we misinterpret Revelation? It's clear that the locusts of Revelation 9, for example, are armored-up helicopters, right? The text talks of breastplates of iron whose rotating blades are the wings like the noise of many chariots and whose tailguns hurt people for five months, that is, tails and stings like scorpions. And then a nuclear explosion is what Zechariah described when he saw the enemies of Israel with their flesh rotting while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes rotting in their sockets, and their tongues rotting in their mouths. And, of course, how will, in fact, every eye see him?

That is, when Christ returns upon the clouds by satellite television, of course, silly. Now, when I ask my friends who believe these kinds of things, is that what John's first audience of believers saw and thought? Is that what you think? Many will say something like, well, pastor, John was seeing into the future, and he wrote about things he saw in our day in terms of that he was familiar with. They were helicopters that John saw, but the only frame of reference he could describe them in was as locusts.

That's the kind of explanation I get for many of the phenomena of Revelation. And my response is to agree that, yes, John was writing in terms he could relate to his people, but those terms were equally understood by his people, and they were standard, well-known images of their day, not ours. Where futurists go terribly wrong is in failing to understand the things of John's own day, to which the image is referred. This is so important in interpreting Revelation. Locusts, for example, were stock images for armies, and in this case, in chapter 9, armies of demons.

And all I ask you to do today with me is perhaps listen with fresh ears to the apostle John, as if you were a member amongst his first audience in one of those seven churches that we see in chapters 2 through 3. John did not receive his revelation in a vacuum. He was facing a beast himself. Every generation faces the beast. So was his flock.

We face the beast of Revelation as well, as I will unfold for you as we move through this book. John was the victim of one of the first great empire-wide persecutions of the church under the Roman Emperor Nero in A.D. 64. John says, I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Oh, he with us is a brother and partner, is he not? In the tribulation, he says.

There are tribulations, many tribulations. Dear listener, listen to that word, the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus Christ. We must patiently endure in our own day under tribulation. And he was exiled on Patmos on account of the persecution under Nero Caesar. So he had to write very carefully.

Don't rush on this. Don't get excited, dear listener, to go on to the beast bowls and scrolls. What I've just described for you is an important part of the context of Revelation. It explains a lot. If you were captive of the beast, like John was, reading everything that you send out, how would you write?

Might you not write in symbolic language that the beast would find hard to understand? This is precisely what John is doing in his apocalypse. Now I tease my friends that I try and foil the attempts of the NSA to spy on me by using pig Latin. For example, are Ibertilei, Tolensei by Bamaoei. Now all this does is illustrate in a pretty silly way the need to code language by the good guys to avoid detection by the bad guys.

In a very real sense, this is what John is doing in his apocalypse. We need to understand this. The trick then becomes breaking the code, so to speak. And once we do this, we begin to understand Revelation. Its enigmatic language, the beast bowls and scrolls, was not meant to endlessly fascinate and preoccupy end times devotees in the 21st century, but was rather used to confuse pagan Roman authorities while simultaneously informing the believers who did understand the genre of Revelation.

That is the kinder style of writing that it is. Apocalypse was a genre. It was an established mode by the time of Revelation. For example, Daniel, facing some of the same issues as the Apostle John, he wrote in this very same manner of a very similar beast. Read Daniel.

Daniel was describing not some Antichrist figure in the 21st century, but one in his own age. That is the Greek pagan king Antiochus Epiphanes. Greece was the worldwide beast at the time, even as Rome was the worldwide beast, and world government in our own day is a worldwide beast. Greece was the worldwide beast in Daniel's day of the late centuries before Christ, and Antiochus Epiphanes would desecrate the temple in Jerusalem by slaughtering a pig on its altar, what Daniel calls the abomination that causes desolation, because it meant that the altar in the temple then could no longer be used until it had been re-consecrated.

Dear listener, every generation has its beast. Daniel had one in his day. Greece. John had one in his day. Rome.

We have one in our own day. The worldwide government attempting to be established through the United Nations, for example, through treaties, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example, all these things part and partial of the beast. So this particular genre, apocalypse, pioneered by the Jewish prophets, captured these beasts in language that would confound their enemies, but not the faithful. John is doing no more than this in Revelation. He's confounding the Roman authorities by using figures and symbols with which they were unfamiliar, but whose figures and symbols would be known to the faithful.

This is why it is so important to understand Revelation first in terms of its first audience, that is, the Christians of the seven churches to whom John wrote. Not us. We can apply it later to us. But first we must understand it in terms of his first audience. When John interpreted, for example, what the beast of Revelation 13 was in Revelation 17, he fully expected them to know about whom he was talking.

Do you remember what the angel said to John when he marveled at the great prostitute and the beast from the sea that she rode? John says, and I quote, but the angel said to me, why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. Well, the angel then proceeds to interpret the symbols that John saw before in 13 by a new set of symbols in 17. For those of us unfamiliar with these new sets of symbols, Revelation just got more difficult and becomes like what Churchill said about the old Soviet Union.

It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, unquote. Well, welcome to the apocalypse. It has confused generations of interpreters. And while this may be the case for us, it definitely was not to the pagan Romans, it definitely was, I'm sorry, to the pagan Romans into whose hands this book might fall. In fact, the Romans probably screened the apocalypse before it left the island of Patmos, just as prisons screen all communications by and to inmates.

For the Romans, it would be gibberish. However, for the Christians, the enigmatic symbols of the beast in chapter 13 would be clearer by the symbols, four symbols in chapter 17. This is what John is doing. Is that confusing to you? It shouldn't be, for the symbols in 17 were more familiar to the Jewish and Gentiles in the churches to which John was writing.

They would just have to think a little bit further, or as the angel puts it, this calls for a mind with wisdom. That is, you know about who I speak, while the pagans don't. Do you realize this, O listener? Revelation 17 goes ahead and interprets who the beast of 13 really is. And there's no room for doubt or ambiguity here, at least for the early church.

They knew exactly about whom John was talking. Just because Revelation red-haver rapture teachers do not, and they endlessly speculate about who the beast may be, or may not be, from contemporary headlines, and therefore they chase their prophetic tales generation after generation, it doesn't mean that John's audience did not know precisely who the beast was, and into whose name 666 translates, because they did. John gives them no room for error. Let this point sink in for a moment, dear listener, for it's important for understanding the book of Revelation.

John gave his first readers enough information for them to know exactly who the beast was while simultaneously obscuring it for any unintended audience, that is, the Romans, who were persecuting them. Think like one of those first-century believers, dear listener, a partner in John's patient endurance and tribulation, and you will never arrive at the true meaning of Revelation or be able to apply it to yourself or the church today until you first interpret it as it was intended, that is, for the first-century church.

Until then, you will continue to chase your prophetic tale, trying to plug in helicopters and Hillary to locusts and Antichrist. Well, pray tell, Mr. Smarty Pants, you may say, tell us what this heretofore obscure and enigmatic book means, whose meaning has escaped everyone but you, right? You might say that, and rightly so, you would say. But the reason I am so confident in my interpretation is because I'm not alone in it. Many have gone before me in understanding Revelation in the same following manner.

Now, it may not be as glitzy or as thrilling or as breathtaking as your Red Heifer Rapture teachers make it out to be, getting you excited about blood moons and possible Antichrist goons, but, dear listener, be patient. I submit to you that the interpretation I lay out for you today has far greater application for today than any futurist can possibly sensationalize. Number one, note with me, the beast from the sea. As we outlined, first of all, the beast from the sea has a long history in biblical interpretation. Now, I went into some detail on this last week, but let me just review this briefly for you.

The beast from the sea has a long history in biblical interpretation and has application and interpretation for today, too. We have a beast today. Every generation has its beast. But the beast from the sea goes back to creation. When the earth was empty and void and dark, tofhu vabohu, as the Hebrew puts it, that is complete chaos.

And God brought order by destroying the beast. As Job puts it in Job 26, by his power, he stilled the sea. By his understanding, he shouted Rahab, that is, the sea serpent, the sea beast. By his spirit, Job goes on to say, the heavens were made fair. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent, unquote.

The beast from creation. Then also, the psalmist exalts in the beast's defeat in the great flood of Noah in Genesis, where he is a symbol for the wicked Nephilim who were destroyed from the face of the earth. And there, the psalmist says, you divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea monsters. That is, the beast from the sea.

On the waters, you crushed the heads of Leviathan. You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness, unquote. And then, of course, as we have alluded to already, Daniel employs the beast from the sea to describe the demonic scourge to Israel, the Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes. And there, Daniel says, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea different from one another. Daniel describes those beasts in the same manner as John in Revelation.

Dear listener, John was not making up something new. He drew upon a rich tradition of beasts from the sea who were symbols of the reigning political powers of their day, even as we have one in our day who brought demonic chaos to an otherwise orderly world created by the good God of the Bible. As we shall see, John had a demonic political power in mind, too, even as I do in our own day, a demonic bestial power. And so John used a metaphor. He knew his fellow Christians knew.

That is the beast from the sea. Secondly, note with me, too, from Revelation, the beast has a dual identity, first as a political order. The beast will have a dual identity, first one as a political order. John is careful to observe the beast's empire nature. He says, the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated.

This refers unmistakably. Every reader would have realized this refers unmistakably to the city of Rome, famously built upon seven hills on the Tiber River. The bestial nature of this political order is identified with the Roman Empire, per se, not some future kingdom. This is the sense of the power and throne and great authority given by the dragon, that is Satan, over those upon the earth.

All of the great empires of the earth have been satanically inspired, I submit to you, and we must get this through our heads if we are to understand the new world order with which we deal, the beast with which we deal, presently being established apart from Christ, satanically inspired. The apostle John knew this and reflected it cryptically in his apocalypse. Here for us, if only we read it with the wisdom that he recommends. Well, not only does the beast have an identity as a political order, but thirdly, the beast has a dual identity. Secondly, as a political person.

Yes, because John also observes in chapter 17. They are also seven kings. The number seven serves a three-layer purpose here. The number seven serves as the number of completeness and as the identity of the Roman Empire and then as the identity of the embodiment of the beast in a person. Who was the personification of the beast here?

Well, we know this without a doubt. Our first readers would have known this without a doubt. First of all, it was Nero Caesar. Well, how can we say this unequivocally? Because John confirms it with three different vectors.

He confirms that the beast was a person in the form of Nero Caesar with three different vectors. A, Nero was the sixth Caesar reigning, as John wrote. B, Nero was the coming resurrected bestial king, and Nero was also the coming resurrected, or Nero was also the bestial king of 666. Understand this. First of all, Nero was the sixth Caesar reigning, as John wrote.

Now, counting from Julius Caesar, Nero is number six, even as he says he is. Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and it was number five, and then number six, Nero. All of the churches of Asia in chapters two through three would have been able to count in this manner. Nero was presently the one who is, as John calls him. Nero was launched, was the one who launched the persecution of the church.

The warnings which ensue concerning his behavior, the church would be able to reference to Nero and prepare. B, then we also know that Nero was the coming resurrected bestial king. Harkening back to chapter 13, John refers to Nero as the beast that was and is not. It is also an eighth, but it belongs to the seventh. Unquote.

Cryptic language, but not cryptic if you understand. It so clearly refers to Nero that it should be an open and shut case for interpreters, but alas, there are so many blind and stubborn futurists that the modern evangelical church has been bamboozled. Understand this, listener. Understand Nero became such a beast that even his depraved, debauched fellow Romans hated and feared him. He finally had to flee Rome, and he ended up committing suicide by stabbing himself in the neck, that is, a head wound, and thus fulfilled Revelation 13.

One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. Unquote from chapter 13. In the Roman Empire of John's day, this became known as the Nero redidivus myth. That's Latin for resurrected. The Nero resurrected myth.

That is, through occult powers, Nero would be revived from the dead and lead a great army from the east to reconquer his former empire. This, of course, is an evident parody of what Christ will do. Christ, indeed, is the resurrected son of the father, the true resurrected son of the father, who was actually raised from the dead and will return in great power and glory to conquer what is his by covenant. But as a pretender, Nero will return from the dead, that is, according to the legend, and inspire those not written in the book of life to marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

That is, reigning presently as Nero was. He is not, that is, he will disappear for a time, apparently dead, and then is to come. That is, he will reappear as if from the dead. John uses the same language in chapter 13 to describe the world's response to the apparent healing of Nero's head wound. That is, one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.

So, taken together, Revelation 13 and 17 paint a clear portrait of the beast personified. That is, Caesar Nero. And then C, we also know the third vector is that Nero's name computes in biblical gematria to 666. Oh, yes. Perhaps no number is more associated with evil than this one, right, dear listener?

Try giving this number to an employee, or maybe a customer, or give it as a student number. They'll all recoil in horror, 666. It's the stereotypical number of Antichrist. Such is the irrational superstition that Revelation, Red Heifer, Rapture teachers have cast over end times prophecy. The problem is that even though he has looked forward to as yet to come, Caesar Nero has already come and gone as the beast, 666.

Does this mean there is nothing to fear from a beast in the future? No, no. More on this in days to come. Indeed, there are still personal beasts out there, but not this particular one. Caesar Nero's name, when translated into Hebrew, fits perfectly the number 666.

Many, if not all, of John's readers would be able to do this simple computation, as in Roman numerals, Hebrew numeral calculation was done with Hebrew letters, giving it endless possibility for names with numbers. Thus, they would be able to interpret Revelation 13 by means of Revelation 17. That is, the beast personified was Caesar Nero, the very king persecuting them at that very time. And by this calculation, then, the church knew of whom John spoke, but odds were that most Roman officials would not. It would be gobbledygook to them.

So, what I'm teaching you, dear listeners, nothing new. It is the orthodox teaching of the church from the beginning. Your Revelation Red Heifer rapture teachings based upon false eschatology of premillennial dispensationalism that cast all prophecy into the future. This is the innovation, as I covered last week. It is the new that is not true.

And, dear listener, if this is your eschatology, if you aspire this futurist eschatology obsessed with end times prophecy, your mistaken eschatology has you trapped. You're looking for a beast over the horizon when he's now gnawing at your ankles. You imagine how you might react to the persecution of the great tribulation when it is upon you now, and especially your brothers across the world. Look at what's going on in the world. Persecution of the church now.

You wonder and you speculate on how the government of the beast will look when it comes after your fantasy rapture, when our constitutional republic has been turned already into a plywood Hollywood movie set, while the real government of our nation and our world is operated behind the scenes by a select set of plutocrats. Now. The beast is now. Wake up. Stop serving that beast.

With great fascination, you debate whether the mark of the beast will be a tattoo like it was in the 50s and 60s, speculated, or a barcode back in the 80s and 90s, or now today, this mark of the beast may be an implanted microchip, right? When the devotees of the beast have always borne this mark when understood as John intended. It calls for wisdom, dear listener. Stop serving the beast. Get your wisdom on.

Stop serving the beast. You, futurists, you throw up your hands and you assert, we can't do anything about the world except save a few souls in evangelism. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Anyway, we'll be raptured out of here soon, right? And you rely upon your escape hatch of the rapture provided you in your futurist eschatology.

And you absolve yourself from doing anything now. And you wonder one day when you wake up, where am I going? And what am I doing in this handbasket? As long as all of your eschatology is exclusively future, you will miss what prophecy reveals about what is unfolding now, what God expects of you now, and what you can do on behalf of the kingdom, your Lord and your brothers now. Stop serving the beast, dear Christian, with your futurist eschatology.

It's not an escape hatch. John was not revealing what would happen to a self-centered generation in the 21st century as much as he was writing to his own generation to show them just how what they were experiencing was consistent with what happened to God's people in the past. And we can make the same application. There is a beast today. Stop serving the beast, dear Christian.

The truth for us today is that we share in the tribulation, the kingdom, and the patient endurance with them. We also have the interpretive keys to distinguish between Satan's unfolding plan for world dominion and God's sovereign, ultimately triumphant plan for his dominion and kingdom. Stop serving the beast. Serve God, not the beast. All of this and more is here for us if we have a mind for wisdom as we interpret Revelation.

May all of this be yours in days to come as we continue to unfold what God has for us now, today in the book of Revelation. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet, New Geneva Meets for Holy Worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us for more information or feedback at 523-0196. That's 523-0196.