Bible Readings — Bible Questions Answered

A Great Persecuting Power

The Ten-Horned Beast of Revelation 13

What is the first symbol of Revelation 13? BR-ASI9 188.10

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” Revelation 13:1. BR-ASI9 188.11

Note.—As already learned from studying the book of Daniel, a beast in prophecy represents some great earthly power or kingdom; a head or horn, a governing power; waters, “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” (Revelation 17:15.) BR-ASI9 188.12

“The beasts of Daniel and John are empires. The ten-horned beast is the Roman power. . . . The head is the governing power in the body. The heads of this beast represent successive governments.”—H. Grattan Guinness, Romanism and the Reformation, pp. 144, 145. BR-ASI9 189.1

How is this beast further described? BR-ASI9 189.2

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion.” Revelation 13:2, first part. BR-ASI9 189.3

Note.—These are the characteristics of the first three symbols of Daniel 7—the lion, bear, and leopard there representing the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, and Greece—and suggest this beast as representing or belonging to the kingdom symbolized by the fourth beast of Daniel 7, or Rome. Both have ten horns. Like the dragon of Revelation 12, it also has seven heads; but as the dragon symbolized Rome in its entirety, particularly in its pagan phase, this, like the “little horn” coming up among the ten horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7, represents Rome in its later or papal form. Both it and the little horn have “a mouth” speaking great things; both make war upon the saints; both continue for the same period. BR-ASI9 189.4

Allowing a very broad meaning to the symbol, the Douay, or English Catholic Bible, in a note on Revelation 13:1, explains the seven heads of the beast as follows: “The seven heads are seven kings, that is, seven principal kingdoms or empires, which have exercised, or shall exercise, tyrannical power over the people of God: of these, five were then fallen, viz., the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian monarchies; one was present, viz., the empire of Rome; and the seventh and chiefest was to come, viz., the great Antichrist and his empire.” That the seventh head represents Antichrist, or the Papacy, there can be little doubt. BR-ASI9 189.5