Understanding the Antichrist: Symbolism and Historical Context

"And today we're going to turn our attention to the book of Revelation and its teaching regarding the beast. It's found in chapter 13 of Revelation beginning in verse 1. We read this: 'And then I stood on the sand of the sea and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns. And on his horns ten crowns and on his heads a blasphemous name.'" [00:00:47]

"Now, the beast which I saw was like a leopard. His feet were like the feet of a bear; his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of the heads as if it had been mortally wounded. But its deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast." [00:01:19]

"Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell in the earth will worship him whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." [00:01:25]

"Now, the first thing we understand about the beast is that he rises up out of the sea, and he is described as having ten heads and all these crowns and all of that sort of thing. And we saw earlier that there were references to the one who was alive who was a king at this time in chapter 13 that we identified with the Emperor Nero of the Roman Empire." [00:03:49]

"Now, if we look at the imagery and the military power of this beast that comes out of the sea that has the seven heads and so on, most scholars would grant that this is obviously a reference to the military power of Rome, and that the seven heads refer to the seven mountains or the seven hills. One of the ancient references that we find in the literary sources of antiquity to the city of Rome is that Rome was commonly called the Septa Montium, or simply the seven mountains, because it was established on seven hills." [00:04:27]

"Throughout church history people have sought to give clear identification to the beast who is known by the number 666, or to the beast as the Antichrist. And again we see the vacillation between the power of the institution, in this case, perhaps the Roman government, and the power of an institution being embodied in a single person, like a king, an emperor, or some other representative person." [00:05:36]

"At the time of the Reformation, the most popular candidate for fulfilling the image of antichrist was the pope. Luther and Calvin both were convinced that the pope in Rome was the Antichrist, that the Roman Catholic church was the antichristian institution that was embodied in the one who called himself the vicar of Christ on earth, that is the substitute for Jesus in the church; namely, the pope." [00:06:49]

"In the twentieth century some of the candidates for identification of antichrist have been Joseph Stalin, and Mussolini, because if you translate the title of Mussolini El Duche in a certain way you can come up with the number 666, and obviously the most popular candidate in the twentieth century has been Adolph Hitler, because of his devastating destruction of the Jewish people and of his unprecedented wickedness." [00:08:03]

"Now, again, if we follow this process that we've been examining here in terms of our study of the timeframe references of the Mount of Olives discourse, the timeframe references of the book of Revelation, and we continue to struggle with this sense of the radical nearness of the time of fulfillment of so many of these prophecies that are set forth in the New Testament, obviously it would be important for us to consider the question of a first century fulfillment of this prophecy." [00:09:43]

"If we consider the possibility of a first century candidate and a candidate who would appear before the coming of Jesus in terms of the destruction of Jerusalem and the judgment coming of Christ on the temple and on the Jewish nation, we would be looking for somebody who would appear obviously before AD 70. If that is the timeframe in which we are restricted to work for the fulfillment of this concept of antichrist then obviously the most likely candidate would be Nero." [00:12:24]

"In the ancient world, even among pagans, nobody distinguished themselves or their wickedness to the degree that the Emperor Nero did. Nero's life was a life of radical violence and debauchery. He murdered several of his own family members. He castrated a boy and then quote 'married' the boy. He brutally murdered his own wife while she was pregnant by kicking her to death." [00:13:06]

"Now, one of the most preeminent textual scholars of the twentieth century, a man by the name of Bruce Metzger from Princeton, and Metzger once offered the opinion that in his judgment as the supreme textual critic in the world today that his judgment was that in all probability the textual variant in the Greek that was found in antiquity where the number is 616 rather than 666 was an intentional variation, so that Greek-speaking people would be able to discern the number on the basis of the Greek language rather than requiring them to know Hebrew in order to understand this encoded cipher." [00:22:04]