HE SPAKE AS A DRAGON

This is the third member of a triumvirate of evil in this chapter, a Satanic answer to the blessed, holy Trinity. The two wild beasts are empowered by the devil and, while earthly domin­ion plays an important part in their aims and ambitions, it is in the realm of the religious and the ‘spiritual’ that their true evil is seen.

Man has always harboured ambitions to be like God. The first lie told by the devil to human beings was that by partak­ing of the tree in the midst of the garden they would not surely die and would be as Elohim. Here, now, in the latter part of the last great week of years of God’s dealings with man prior to the public assertion of His rights in the earth, a man is causing those who dwell on the earth to worship the first beast. The claims he makes are backed by great wonders, even to the extent of his exercising power to give life to the image of the beast so that it becomes a breathing, speaking image. These will be fearsome days: those who will not worship the image of the beast shall be killed. Praise God that there will be those who will not bow and will live and reign with Christ a thou­sand years, cf. Rev. 20. 4. Faithfulness to God is always highly valued in heaven.

This second beast, the false prophet, has a lamb-like exterior but has all the savagery of a dragon. How different he is from the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Lamb of Calvary, the Lamb in the midst of the throne. He is the One who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, who ‘opened not his mouth’, Isa. 53. 7, and displayed features of gentleness and humility in every aspect of His delightful character. The Lord Jesus properly accepted worship because He is God but anyone who accepts that which belongs alone to divine Persons, as Herod did in Acts chapter 12, will be dealt with. These beasts, and the devil who empowers them, will be cast alive into the lake of fire, Rev. 19. 20, when the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from heaven in flaming fire. For our Lord, however, the future is all glorious. ‘At the name of Jesus every knee should bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord’, Phil. 2. 10, 11.