This first of two beasts in Revelation 13 also is the last of four beasts in Daniel 7, and they’re the political expressions of evil: 1. a lion with eagles’ wings for the Babylon Empire; 2. a bear for the Persian Empire; 3. a leopard with four wings for the Greek Empire; 4. a fourth horrible, terrifying beast with 10 horns and seven heads with seven crowns for the Roman Empire from 44BC to 476AD.
This was a time during which their emperors were worshipped as gods while they lived — Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, and hated after they died.
Satan was thrown out of heaven because he wanted to be worshipped.
“One of the heads of the beast seemed to have been fatally wounded, but the wound had healed. The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast. Everyone worshiped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshiped the beast also, saying, ‘Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?’” — Revelation 13: 3-4
So now our world worships the Satanic trinity: Baal is the god of money and power; Ishtar is the goddess of sex with the ability to change her gender; and Molech is the god of darkness and death focused on the death of babies and children.
In the past was Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome while now is China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and into the future, the Satanic trinity and the four beasts “roam the earth seeking whom they might destroy.”
As Christians, we need to understand we are at war with evil.
One of evil’s “targets” was an 86year-old woman who fell and broke her collarbone. Emaciated and frail, she was hospitalized with heart failure.
Absolutely silent during the day, she erupted into screams at night, ripping out the medical tubes. She was so violent they called an archbishop, who then called a priest to perform an exorcism.
After the exorcism, she fell into a deep and peaceful sleep. And you might find it hard to imagine the need for an exorcism on a Catholic nun who’d won the Nobel Peace Prize, became the most admired woman in the world, and was, after the exorcism, proclaimed a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Her closest friend Sister Nirmala, said, “Mother Teresa often felt abandoned by God. But then, Jesus also felt abandoned on the cross saying, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
