Go to Homepage

The Image of the Beast

In Revelation the 13th chapter we read about a man that is known as the second beast. He is also referred to as being "the False Prophet." Satan, the False Prophet and the Antichrist will work hand in hand to destroy God's people along with anyone else that does not submit to the Beast. The False Prophet will have great influence over millions of people causing them to follow after the Antichrist giving him their allegiance and support. The tool that he will use will be what the Bible describes as "the image of the Beast." This image will cause a certain group of people to submit to the Antichrist, it will give them purpose and hope to fulfill what they will believe to be God's will.

Revelation 13:
14: And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15: And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

In verse 14 it says that he deceives those who live on the earth by using miracles. Many believe that these miracles will be miracles such as healing miracles like Jesus did. But we have to dismiss this line of thought or believe that Jesus could have been someone else besides who he said that he was. Why do I say this? Because Jesus told the Pharisees that the miracles that he did was proof of who he was. These miracles were the witness of God almighty concerning his son Jesus. If the Devil can heal, then Jesus could have been a devil, it is that plain and simple. Jesus also warned people that to accuse the healing power of the Holy Spirit as being a devil was the unpardonable sin. This sin cannot be forgiven in this world or the world to come. So the miracles that the False Prophet will use will be the kind of miracles that the Muslim or Islamic people consider to be miracles. Many of them believe that the destroying of the twin towers in New York was a miracle from Allah to prove his greatness. This is the kind of miracles the False Prophet will produce to convince others of his message that will support the Antichrist.

The False Prophet will convince the people that they need to make an image to the beast. The beast he is speaking about is the one that comes up out of the sea in Revelation 13: 1. 1: 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. This Beast will eventually become a ten-nation confederacy that will band together to be led by the Antichrist. The Antichrist himself is referred to as the Beast. The False Prophet will conceive a political vision that people can believe in that will become a propaganda machine to glorify the Antichrist and the nations that he leads. This is how they will make an image to the beast. In verse 15 it says that the False Prophet has power to give life to the Image of the beast. This means that he has the ability to convince others to follow after and serve this image or dream. Until the people themselves begin to labor together to make this dream happen it will be just a dream. But when they begin to labor to make it happen it will take on a life in itself to become unstoppable in that part of the world. This is how the image comes alive.

When I was a young Christian I thought that this meant that the Antichrist would cause the people to make a statue of the Antichrist. It would cause me to shudder to think that the False Prophet would give life to this statue and then it would begin to walk and talk like a person. This all came out of my imagination, not from the spirit of God. But it was exciting. The only problem was, it wasn't the truth. The truth is much more deceptive. The best example I can give you at this moment is the dream of Hitler. In fact it was called "My Struggle or Mein Kampt." Hitler dreamed of world conquest and much like the anti-Christ he dreamed of a world that was free from the Jews. He came up with a belief called National Socialism that would eventually become known as the Nazi party. Who would have ever dreamed that Hitler's dream would almost become a reality? The world was shoved into a conflict called World War 2 and would touch every person in the world in some way or other. He tried and his dream took on life as people fell under its spell, but only God stopped him with the intervention of other nations, but it took the lives of millions of people. His was a false hope, the same as the false hope that the False Prophet is going to promote to the people that will follow after the Antichrist in his time. I find it remarkable that Hitler's Dream was called "My Struggle" and the word Jihad means to "Struggle" and the dream of world conquest is the same dream that both the Nazi's and the Islamic Extremist share.

In verse 15 it says that all that do not worship the image of the beast will be killed. Notice it says those who would not worship the image. This means those who do not agree with his dream or vision, the image of world conquest and his people as the rulers of it. Hitler did the same thing, if you were not a Nazi or disagreed with this vision of the future under the Third Reich then you were sent off to a concentration camp to eventually die of starvation or something else. Often times however he just had people lined up and executed if they disagreed with his plan. This is the same thing that the Antichrist is going to do. His method of execution will be to cut off the heads of those who do not agree. Does this sound like any group of people today? Is there anyone today that practices cutting off the heads of their enemies? If you said Muslim you are right.

The fourth Seal in Revelation 6: 8: And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

In this Seal we see the Antichrist right after his invasion of Israel at the middle of the Tribulation. He is given power over a fourth part of the earth. The previous Seals always referred to him as he but in this Seal it goes from not only him but to them.
They will kill with sword, in prophetic terms most of the time this is speaking of army. Although this scripture is not talking about Hitler he is the best example that we have today of this future event. He began a world conquest forcing people in other countries to accept his way. His armies defeated those nations that opposed him with their armies. The Antichrist will do the same thing.
They kill with hunger because whoever doesn't agree with them or worship the dream or image of the Antichrist will not receive the mark and will not be able to buy or sell, they starve to death.
They kill with death. It is best to explain it like this. If you take the mark you will die spiritually and will be cut off from God exactly the same as blaspheming the Holy Ghost without remedy. This is one kind of death. But, the other death is that if a persons refuses to worship the Antichrist or his image they will be killed. So the victims are killed with death one way or the other, either spiritually or physically.
They kill with the beasts of the earth. To understand this we must remember Hitler again. Hitler surrounded himself with henchmen and stooges that would do anything he said. This included murdering million of Jews and other groups in various horrible ways. Today we view people like that to be like animals. This is exactly the way God sees them as well. This is why he calls them the beasts of the earth, they are horrible murdering animals in his eyes.

The mark of the beast will be something that identifies the people of the Antichrist much like the swastika that the Nazis wore on their uniforms. It may actually be 666, then again it may be something else but it will figure into the prophecy one way or another. When I was asked by a friend to go to a Muslim website that had a teaching about the number "666" I was astonished at what I read. This is what this particular Muslim was teaching.

He said, "The number 666 is highly publicized all over the world and it is associated with evil and danger. However, it is not what it seems. It was a Satanic trick. The trick was to prevent the people approaching the 666. Satan knew that the 666 is the book of GOD and the people should be kept away from it. According to his plan, he placed a bad image to the number 666."

He was teaching that the number 666 is a Holy number representing the Quran and was evidence that Allah was the only true God. He went on to say that the Book of Revelation in the Bible was added by the Devil to keep people from accepting the true religion of Islam. He said this because it warns the people not to accept the mark of the beast which is 666. As I thought on this I realized that if a Muslim was willing to strap on bombs and blow himself up for Allah it would be no problem for a Muslim to wear the number 666 tatooed on their foreheads or in their right hands.

Ahmadinejad the president of Iran speaks of a dream for world conquest under the name of Allah. Allah wants Jihad, kill the Americans, kill the Jews is the cry of millions. This is his message to the world. He believes that to bring world peace and order they must get rid of the state of Israel and destroy America as well. Anyone who opposes the will of Allah should die. They believe that you instill fear in the hearts of those who oppose the will of Allah by cutting off their heads. And this they seem to do with great zeal because they believe that they are doing God a service. Doesn't the scriptures declare this? Jn:16:2: .....................yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.
This is the mind set of the Muslims. But there must be a great deception to bring this about before this image or dream can materialize. It will be this political dream that becomes the force that will cause the Islamic world to submit to the Antichrist. He will be raised to hero status in his journey to jihad, or war against the West and Israel.

An article in the Jerusalem Post, Nov. 7, 2006 said the following:

"Meet 'national Islamism'

By Barry Rubin, Article taken from the Jerusalem Post, Nov. 7, 2006

In July 2006, Muhammad Abd al-Sattar, a deputy minister in Syria's government, made a very strange statement on that country's state-controlled television. Jihad, he said, is the duty of every Muslim, Arab and Christian in order to kill the Jews.
But wait a minute. Why did Sattar say Muslim, Arab and Christian? After all, jihad is an Islamic religious notion. Why should Christians wage Jihad? And the word Arab here means the non-Muslim, non-Christian Alawites who rule Syria and pretend to be Muslims.
What's happening here is a new ideology, the doctrine of Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria; and the Iraqi insurgents, behind what Syrian President Bashar Assad calls the "resistance" philosophy.
It is the blend of two radical world views: Islamism and Arab nationalism. Call it National Islamism. The last time there was such a synthesis it brought together right-wing nationalism and left-wing populist socialism. The doctrine called itself, appropriately enough, National Socialism. It is best known by the German version of those two words, Nazism for short.
I'm not making this comparison for shock value. It's a perfect parallel. National Islamism fits the interests of many key political groups in the Middle East. For Iran, it constitutes a bridge into the Arab world, overcoming a big problem. They are Persians, not Arabs, and Shi'ite, not Sunni Muslims. As long as Arab nationalism rules, they are outsiders. But even with pure Islamism, the Shi'ite-Sunni gap still limits their influence.
With National Islamism, though, the problem disappears. Iran can claim to lead the Arab-Islamic people - a designation filling all those gaps - against the evil Western-Crusader-American-Jewish-Zionist-imperialistic-satanic conspiracy........ "

What I believe we are looking at in this article is the beginning of the plan or image of the beast. A dream of National Islamism very much like the Nazi heroes of the Muslim world. Did you notice that this article included Christians? Interesting enough is that the Bible shows a certain group of Christians playing right into the hands of the Antichrist giving him their support. This plan in this article reveals the desire to unify the people who live in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean Sea into one force. The Christians in that part of the world are for the most part Catholic.

In the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezar had a dream about a man whose head was gold, his chest and arms of silver, his waist was brass but his legs were made of iron. His feet had ten toes and was made of iron and clay. Almost any good Bible teacher can explain that the legs of Iron was the Roman Empire after it had become Christian and was divided into two groups, one in the West and one in the East. And we see this iron continue down into the feet and toes of this image. This shows us the presence of this group being in the ten nations of the Antichrist. However we have never understood for the most part what the clay was. Today it is easy to see who the clay is. The clay is the Muslim religion, Islam, They will work together with the Catholics from that part of the world but will never really stick together because of the differences in their beliefs. However this will last for around three and a half years before the clay (Muslims) turns on the iron (Catholics) and destroys them.

One of the things that most Protestants do not understand is how that the Catholics in that part of the world will be able to go against Israel. I want to stress at this time that I believe that it will only be the Catholics from that part of the world that will unite with the Antichrist to kill other Christians and Jews. There is a core belief that seems to give them the right to do this. The Pope and his other leaders in Rome know that the scriptures openly states that the land of Israel will be desolate until the Jews in Israel accept Jesus as their Messiah. This is one of the reasons it has taken the Catholics so long to have anything to do with the government of Israel since they were established in 1948. They believe that Israel is an intruder until they accept Jesus as their Messiah. Because of this belief sympathy among the Catholics go to the support of the Palestinians. Many Palestinians are Catholic and that only enforces the belief that they should support the Palestinians. Pope John Paul before his death visited and tried to re-establish relations with Israel and the Catholic Church but it was to go against all previous Catholic belief to do this. This is why the Catholics in that part of the world will be able to support the Muslims when it comes to driving Israel out of their land again. They will feel that God wills it.

The question you may have in your mind at this moment may be this. Well, does Israel have the right to be in the land? It is true that the land of Israel belongs to Israel by promise from God. But there was a condition made concerning their dispersal. The truth is that God did not promise a full recovery of the land until they accept Jesus as their Savior. God has willed for part of the people of Israel to return to the land so that Bible Prophecy can be fulfilled. This is the stone that God has placed in the backyard of his enemies. God has brought Israel back to the land to provoke the nations that hate her. It is there, on the mountains of Israel, in the valley of Megiddo that God will eventually fulfill his plan as they try to destroy Israel. At first they will drive Israel out of the land and Israel will escape to another nation to be protected, Another nation that is far away from that part of the world, another nation similar to America perhaps. Then God will call for his mountains, a group of nations that will go to war against the invaders of Israel. These allies will drive the Antichrist and his armies all the way back to the river Euphrates. The Antichrist and his nations will call for help. He convinces the Chinese and others to come help him retake the land of Israel. They will come to Jerusalem in a mighty force. It is then and there that God will put an end to the Antichrist, his nations and his dream of world conquest.

Yours in Christ,
Tommie Spurgeon

Printer-Friendly version..