Mark of the Beast

The book of Revelation begins with the words "That which was, which is and which is to come" so I suppose from that we have past, present and future with John writing in approximately 96 AD being the axis. Thus that which "was" has already past, that which "is" speaks of the time of John and that which "is to come" speaks of all that which proceeds John. As John was the last of the twelve apostles it seems reasonable that he would have been the one chosen of the Lord Himself to make these things available to the church in that authority as one who was with the Lord, beginning at the baptism of John and being witnesses of His death and resurrection etc.

As far as who the beast is John says that he is, was, is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss. So again we can easily see that the beast (who is a man) was no longer alive though he had lived before John writing in 96 AD, that he was not alive in 96 AD and that he will come up out of the abyss at some unspecified date after 96 AD.

Again as for the more biographical information we have of this man (the beast) we read that he is one of seven kings, and will be an eight king as well. So he was a king, being one of seven kings, and he will become an eight king. There are seven kings but one of these kings reigns twice. Finally we are told biographically that the number of his name is 666. Given that John clearly expected the reader at that time to comprehend who he was speaking about and that the term king is derived from the latin "Caesar" it isn't too difficult to accept that John was writing about one of seven men who were Caesars (kings). Nor is it difficult to know which one of these Caesars he was writing about.

Augustus (Imp. Caesar Augustus)\t 27 BC-AD 14
Tiberius (Ti. Caesar Augustus)\t AD 14-37
Gaius / Caligula (C. Caesar Augustus Germanicus)\t 37-41
Claudius (Ti. Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus)\t 41-54
Nero (Imp. Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus)\t 54-68
Galba (Ser. Sulpicius Galba Imp. Caesar Augustus)\t 68-69
Otho (Imp. M. Otho Caesar Augustus)\t 69
Vitellius (A. Vitellius Augustus Germanicus Imp.)\t 69
Vespasian (Imp. Caesar Vespasianus Augustus)\t 69-79
Titus (Imp. Titus Caesar Vespasianus Augustus)\t 79-81
Domitian (Imp. Caesar Domitianus Augustus)\t 81-96

Of the twelve Caesars who reigned up to and including 96 AD, Julius Caesar was the first, and in 44 BC, the year he was assassinated, he declared himself god. His adopted son Octavian didn't become Caesar until he had fought a number of civil wars and so there was a gap of 17 years between the death of Julius Caesar and the declaration of Augustus Caesar (Octavian). Thereafter the Caesars reigned until the end of the first century, technically ending with Domitian as the last (Prophetic) Caesar and the one who sentenced John to the labour mine on Patmos where he wrote the book of Revelation in his last year of imprisonment. Of the twelve (Prophetic) line of Caesars seven spoke as god and five did not speak as god. The sixth (measured from Julius) or the fifth (measured from Augustus) was Nero and he is the last of the Julio-Claudian line. After Nero there were four men who became Caesar in a single 12 month period, the last of which was Vespasian. who was Caesar for ten years and was replaced by Domitian was the last of the (prophetic) caesars.

Therefore when John was writing from his imprisonment on the Island of Patmos he was writing in the reign of Domitian who had banished him there. Thus when it is written:

""The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come. "Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. "The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. "The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. "These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.” (Revelation 17:8”“13, NASB95)

.....we are told plainly (at the time John was writing) that of these seven kings, five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. I will leave you to work out who he is then from this information. The key is that he is a prophetic king because he speaks as god. It is clear and cannot be shaken. The key to understanding who the beast of Revelation 17:8 is as a future event from the time of John (after the destruction of Jerusalem of course) is that not only is he one of the seven, the seventh of which had not yet come, but he was the fifth of these seven and also an eighth.

Just to add a curious fact, this prophecy which John says attends to wisdom also mentions ten kings. At the moment there are nine reigning Monarchs in Europe in the dominion of the old Roman Empire. The tenth and the oldest Monarch in Europe is of course The Pope.

From The Vatican State Official Website:

Vatican City State is governed as an absolute monarchy. The Head of State is the Pope who holds full legislative, executive and judicial powers.

On the basis of this the Pope cannot be the beast of revelations 17:8. Still he is a curious fella!

Oh I know that John. It is an easy thing to dismiss most things if we intellectualise them too much. On the other hand we have The Spirit of God by which to comprehend these things if we have a need to comprehend them.

They key is not in the date of 96 AD or as early as the reign of Nero. However the understanding lays in the man and not in the date. Think about it!

Just to make my point a little further.

Clearly I believe in the late date for the book of Revelation. This is primarily because of Justin Martyr (c. 100”“165 AD), Irenaeus (c. 115”“202) Theophilus (died c. 183), and Tertullian (c. 160”“220).

I have come to see that the understanding does not lay in the date however. It lays in the character of the man himself. Apart from this there are two beasts of Revelation and we need to differentiate between them. The job of the second beast is essentially to provide a prophetic office for the acceptance and worship of the beast who comes into visibility as the anti-christ during the latter part of the tribulation.

This does not change however that the first beast who is the anti-christ has a definite pedigree and character. His biographical pedigree is that he is one who comes up out of the abyss. As such he is in effect in death. The only two men who qualify in history generally at this time of the first century for a part in this blasphemy are Judas and Nero. Both committed suicide and therefore cut their lives short by their own hand. Judas as the prophetic voice and Nero as the blasphemous man. It is the blasphemous man who is the one that matters. The false prophet doesn't requires anyone to worship him. He simply displays supernatural power as though heaven itself were answering him, in order to deceive the nations into receiving the blasphemous man himself.

It is that man who is a king. Not only a king, but a king who lived in the first century, and died in the first century, as a king. Regardless as to the date of Revelation this man is the fifth of seven kings who lived and died in the first century, and he is also an eighth king. That of being an eighth points to coming up out of the abyss.

Speaking of the second beast we read:

"He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed.” (Revelation 13:12, NASB95)

The term in his presence cannot be figurative it can only mean that they exist at some point in time together. It is the personal character of the first beast which identifies him and that character is essentially blasphemous. The character of the false prophet on the other hand is to blaspheme. These are two very different things. Not only this we cannot change the scripture. If the scripture tells us that the beast is a man, then we cannot change that to mean something figurative. Remember that it is a man and the number of his name simply speaks of his name. Who he is in reality is unimportant. What matters is that he is a man. Likewise if the false prophet (the second beast) is a blasphemer because he incites others to worship the first beast, then it is the first beast who is blasphemous by receiving the worship of god to himself.

Taking that distinction and applying it to the Caesars makes the name of the man less important than the fact that he is a man and one who has lived, died and comes up out of the abyss. If we remove the symbolism where it needs to be removed then the name of the man is unimportant to us today. Its importance was relevant to the day in which it was written. In this sense Nero qualifies on both counts. Whether he was the 6th Caesar from Julius or the fifth from Augustus (Octavius) he qualifies. You have to realise that even if the book of Revelation was written just one year after the death of Nero, then Nero qualifies. Not only this but there has been just one historical early source which has informed the earlier date and this attends to the Old Syriac Texts from the second century.

For me at least the one certainty is that the beast is a man. He is not a picture of something or a symbol of something. The scriptures state explicitly that he is a man. As Revelation has these two beasts acting in concert, the one inciting worship and the other receiving worship then it seem just as likely that the second beast is also a man. Whether the first beast is Nero and the second is Judas rests not on a date, but on that which was known about him in his lifetime. He is the only Caesar who was worshipped as a god, and was also called in his own day the beast. Judas in the books of Acts is said to have gone unto his own place when he killed himself. How many men have their own place reserved for them in death? No doubt the really difficult thing in all of this is to comprehend how either Nero or Judas could be found on the earth at the end of the age as living breathing men.

Thank you Andrew for your insight into these matters; why has no-one ever explained these things before so clearly regarding the seven prophetic kings? Have we all been blinkered?

When I was writing the comment, (which incidentally is the first time I have used that term), my thought was simply a common sense idea. There were seven Caesars who were blasphemous men in the sense that they gave themselves titles and declared themselves to be a god. To be more specific it was the adopted son of Julius Caesar (Octavian) who became Augustus Caesar who claimed that Julius Caesar had entered heaven as god as evidenced by a star which shone over Rome for seven days in 44 BC. Halley later on during the time of Isaac Newton did the astronomical calculations which gave this star (comet) it present day name. In this context of being the son of a god, Augustus declared himself Pontifex Maximus or High Priest of all Rome. It also conferred on him the status of "son of a god". It has to be remembered that this is the man who ordered the census which led the infant Christ out of Egypt into the land of Israel. So Augustus Caesar just prior to the time Christ was born, had declared himself, in effect, to be the son of a god. On his death Augustus was declared to be a god.

This blasphemy and development of a man being a living god eventually culminated in Nero in his own life time demanding worship as god. In this sense he was exceptional because he had done nothing to warrant the claim, it was simply a conference of benefit passes down from his Julian ancestors. Yet he carried it off through oratory skills and musical abilities, in a prophetic gift. That is where my understanding comes from. Nero was said to have been a gifted musician, but his utter vanity meant that his gift became oppressive rather than genuinely entertaining. He was the last direct descendant of Julius Caesar to rule in Rome and he was depraved beyond words both in his private life and in the streets of Rome. In short he was a physical prophet led by Satan. Julius was assassinated because of his declaration to the title and privilege of Caesar for life in 44 BC. This is the beginning of the foundation of hereditary kingship in Rome. The heredity whilst it was in the blood line, never meant father to son, it always means blood relative to adopted son. Nero was the personification of all that effort and its eventual meaning. Satan simply needed the blood line through which he found a man willing to pursue that blasphemy of a man declaring himself god. This was Nero who heard the gospel by the hand of the apostle Paul directly and yet rejected the truth.

Again we need to remember that Jesus is of the blood line of David, and therefore a true king. So when Augustus was laying the foundation for the future Nero, leading up to the time that Christ was born, it was a foundation written in blood, which is the only true basis for earthly kingship. In the Lord of course this means a righteous reign. In the case of the Julio-Claudian line it meant unrighteousness. In Nero that blood line came to an end. Because Christ is raised from the dead His reign will have no end. The Julio-Claudian blood line runs from Julius through to Nero. But it was not a bloodline of father to son it began with Julius and passed to the great nephew Octavian (Augustus). To accomplish this in legal terms Octavian became the adopted son of Julius. As did Nero become the adopted son of Claudius through marriage.

It has to be said though that the really important meaning is none of these things. The important thing is to make the proper separation, between the ambitions of Satan and the heredity of men. The sixth king who followed the fifth king, and the seventh king who was to follow the sixth king were not of the Julio-Claudian blood line. Nero killed his only child in the womb when he kicked his second wife in the stomach whilst she was pregnant with his child. His first child either died in childbirth or shortly thereafter. This means that it is the "spiritual" relationship between these kings, in their specific characteristic and ambitions, especially their desire to be worshiped and to be called god, as well as their claim to being the son of a god, which sets them apart. In Christ the true King, the complete opposite attitude is presented. The Lord did not seek to be as God, but humbled Himself even unto death. Yet the Lord of course could claim equality with God.

That man-god which Satan was establishing as a basis for the anti-christ was Julius Caesar, as declared by his great nephew, the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus Caesar. In July of 44 BC a star was seen to shine brightly over Rome for seven days and this became associated through Octavian (Augustus) with the persona of Julius Caesar. Eventually he erected a temple in which he set up a blasphemous statue of Julius Caesar with a dish shaped canopy over his head, showing the "Julian Star" of 44 BC. Therefore the thing which connects the fifth king to the eight king is not the bloodline, it is the character of the fifth king specifically fulfilling in his person and life, the ambition of Augustus to worship a man as god. Nero became in his own day that man. It is a man who claims to be the son of a god and therefore a god himself.

According to Scripture the fifth king is also an eight king, therefore although the physical line was destroyed, the personality and experience which characterises the end time anti-christ is fully manifest in Nero Caesar himself. That is why I emphasise the prophetic character of the seven kings rather than concerning myself with the name of a man by means of a number. If I spent my time seeking to ratify prophecy and end time events based on anything other than a simple understanding I would regard that to be wrong. Best to keep it simple.