The first beast hence the name first beast is the original. Notice John doesn't call him the first beast anymore more when he is revived, that is one point to consider.
The first beast hence the name first beast is the original. Notice John doesn't call him the first beast anymore more when he is revived, that is one point to consider.
You have to realize that it is only obvious to you that there is a "revived" version of the beast separate from the one encountered in ch. 13 because that fits your overall theory. To convince me, who does not subscribe to your overall theory, you need to stop assuming things that need to be demonstrated. I have pointed out that the first mention of the beast identifies him as coming up out of the abyss, which is an entirely natural way of saying he comes back from the underworld of the dead (cf. Rom. 10:7). I'll add to that the circumstantial fact that the beast, unlike the rest of humanity with the exception of the false prophet, does not go to Hades, thence to be resurrected. He goes straight to the Lake of Fire (Rev. 19:20, and see 20:10, which refers back to this, and is most naturally to be interpreted as meaning that the beast has been in the Lake of Fire for the duration of the 1000 years). A natural (although not absolutely incontestable) interpretation of this information is that the beast and false prophet have already been resurrected, and so goes immediately to the Lake of Fire. It's tempting to speculate also that either (1) the devil receives permission from God to name two people to be resurrected in his own cause--having argued that the only reason Christ has received such a following is that he has his miraculous resurrection to testify to his divinity, and that if he, the devil, could have the same miraculous testimony for his own anti-messiah, he could gain an even greater following, or (2) that the two witnesses of ch. 11 are to be understood as Moses and Elijah or Enoch and Elijah, and the devil puts forward an analogous argument, saying if God can have two people miraculously appear from the past to testify to the gospel, by rights he, the devil, should have permission to have two people miraculously appear from the past also. But that is speculation and neither here nor there in the larger discussion. John immediately, upon seeing the beast whom he only mentioned in ch. 11, describes him as having a fatal wound that was healed. So Rev. 13:1-4 describes the first and--as far as you have so far given real evidence--the only beast whose most distinguishing characteristic is the fact that he appears to have been killed and resurrected from the underworld. This is what is unique about him from the very beginning.
Secondly I differ with you on your interpretation of the sea. Sea does not mean the first beast comes up from the dead, because the first beast IS meaning he existed in the world and has not yet been given the mortal head wound. Preterists would agree that this happened in 70AD.
No, you are not reading the text. The text says,
"The seven heads [of the beast] are [i.e. the heads symbolize, among other things] seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are [i.e. they symbolize, among other things, a sequence of] seven kings; five have fallen [i.e. five in the sequence have already died], one is [one now reigns], the other has not yet come [one will come after the one who now reigns]; and when he comes, he must remain a little while [i.e. he will have a relatively short reign]. The beast [i.e. the whole symbolic seven-headed creature that John is looking at] which was and is not, is himself also an eighth [i.e. the eighth king in the sequence] and is one of the seven [presumably because one of the seven, the one that has not yet come, and reigns only for a short while, will appear to resurrect as number eight], and he goes to destruction" (Rev. 17:9-11).
So it seems to me that you have not begun to present any real evidence for your claim that "the first beast IS meaning he existed in the world and has not yet been given the mortal head wound." Each of your individual elements of your theory must be demonstrable on its own in terms of specific textual evidence, and you cannot simply ask me to let your whole theory carry it. The whole theory is built on each of these elements added together, and each one has to support its own weight or the theory as a whole fails.
This second beast doesn't come at the same time as the first beast because it would require that the false prophet of the first beast who received the mortal wound in 70AD be destroyed in the battle of Armageddon. The false prophet isn't the second beast and there in lies the shift of hands so to speak. If you miss this important point you will think that the false prophet is the second beast and that the first beast is the same as the healed beast.
You've been told by someone that the first beast was destroyed in 70AD, but you haven't presented any evidence for it. Perhaps you need to lay out a list of all the salient characteristics of the first beast
as described by John, and then show a one-to-one correspondence between those salient characteristics and something that you believe was "destroyed in 70AD." Let me just mention that the longer your explanation needs to be, the more the suspicion arises that you are weaving something out of whole cloth. (And you can hold me to the same standard.)
Notice that the second beast comes out of the earth, meaning newly discovered land that was opened up by God.
I don't notice that this means something about a newly discovered land, etc. You have presented no evidence for this, and I don't see any in the text of Revelation. Here is something more plausible--or at least every bit as plausible: the second beast, the false prophet, is seen rising up out of the earth because, like the first beast, he is to be understood as rising up out of the grave. That would, of course, potentially make sense of the fact that he goes straight to the Lake of Fire along with the beast in 19:20: he also has either experienced a resurrection or a pseudo-resurrection, and he will not be given another.
Remember when the first beast spewed a flood of people in pursuit of the 1st century church, the pregnant women who was to deliver the child/gospel was given wings to go to newly discovered lands/continents and then the flood of people were dispersed by the EARTH opening its mouth and revealing those new continents and lands, that were previously not on the maps of those days of the 1st century church.
No, I don't remember any of that. It was the dragon who spewed out a flood after the woman, which the earth drank up, protecting the woman. And there is no evidence that the woman represents "the first century church," as distinct, for example, from the trans-historical community of the faithful, i.e. "the Israel of God." It is, in my opinion, this mystical community of the faithful--including the creation itself--throughout the generations whose "labor pains" Jesus refers to in the Olivet Discourse. The entire beloved community of faithful creation is participating with us and with God in the strenuous and even painful process of birthing the age to come (Isa. 26:17-19; 42:13-14; Rom. 8:18-23).
The first beasts gets his power from the symbol of the red dragon where red represents persecuting power and he comes from amongst the already well established sea of people's, the nations of the world or better known as the cradle of civilisation Babylon.
The first beast doesn't get his power from persecution, according to the explicit information in the text, but from the devil. I can't disprove what you're saying, but I also can't say that I find it supported or plausible.
So in that respect the first beast is the original beast that came up amongst the already well established land, where as the second beast comes up much later when the earth opens its mouth and reveals newly discovered continents and lands that the women/church was winged to, along with her seed that had the testimony of Jesus, so to continue preaching the gospel.
This all appears to be speculation based on unstated but particular relationships between Revelation and history, and it doesn't have any plausible anchors in the text. It sounds rather as though you are hinting that persecution of Puritans in Europe resulted in the colonization of North America. But if so, that strikes me as romanticism and as very far fetched. I don't know much else to say. If you interpret the flood from the dragon's mouth as people, then you ought, I would have supposed, to have taken the earth swallowing up the flood as something like a miraculous destruction of persecutors, as in the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in Numbers 16. This business about "earth opens its mouth and reveals newly discovered continents and lands that the women/church was winged to" is (forgive the harshness of this) just gobbledygook, indicating your inability to make a coherent and well-supported interpretation of the actual words of the text.
We knew that the healed beast is not he same flavour of the original first beast but as scripture states: And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, Giving life unto the image of the beast that had the mortal head wound is not saying the first beast came back from the dead and it is NOT the same first beast all over again. Here we are told that he gives life to his image which is not the same as bringing the same original entity back to life but rather to setup a future seat in the distant future and erect an image in memory of the first original beast, so that he could be worshipped all over again.
None of this is plausible to me. You read the text with these ideas already in mind, but they do not correspond to anything definite and appropriate in the words of the text. You have to remember the original scriptural background of this imagery. In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar has a large statue set up of himself, so that people can see it from afar and worship it. He's very much alive and present when that happens. There is nothing about the fact that an image is used that intimates that the beast is not alive as his image is being employed.
Also we note the following verse as reference between when the devil is calling the shots so to speak from heaven to the time he is hurled down to earth where the second future battle of Gog and Magog ensues and satan himself is killed along with the second beast and the erected image of the healed beast.
Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
So the 1260, 42 months, time, times and half a time must be in context to the preaching of the gospel by the two witnesses who are those that hold the testimony of Jesus from the first century apostles right down to the time in the future where the second beast raises an image to the killed first beast in his honour. But that does not mean it is the same article that is being raised but only an image in memory that is all. So this means that Preterists nor futurists are right, because 1260 encompasses a time period of the new covenant and thus far it is 2000 years and counting.
I'm sorry, but this is just too confusing. And that in itself is a major point of weakness. I want to see a timeline making clear the temporal relationships you hypothesize between the major periods of activity by the major actors--e.g. devil expelled from heaven, the devil rampages for 42 months, the woman is hidden for 42 months, your hypothetical first, living beast has his career lasting 42 months, the thousand years, the career of the lamb that speaks like a dragon, the career of your hypothetical resurrected beast, 33AD, 70AD, today, the hypothesized time of future persecution that precedes the appearance of the lamb beast and revived beast, the coming of Christ in glory, and so on.
Meanwhile, why don't you consider
my simple, straightforward, and concretely supported reading of Rev. 19-21 and ask yourself, what is so defective about that reading that requires all the intricate complication of your own theory?
If it is that Titus burned Jerusalem in 70AD, I have a simple answer. That was a labor pain, a contraction (Mt. 24:8; Mk 13:8). It wasn't the final push that results in the birth of the age to come and the glorious appearance of God and his Christ, Jesus, as judge of the living and the dead. Nothing prophesied in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelation has to be exhaustively fulfilled in the events leading up to 70AD. At any moment in history events are trying, in some way, to line up with the prophecies of scripture because unrepentant humanity in this age keeps acting in the same ways--concentrating more and more power, with more and more violence and more and more blasphemous claims by its leaders. Hitler was an antichrist, but he was not
the antichrist. Nero was an antichrist, but he was not
the antichrist. At any given time and in any given place, someone is, so to speak, auditioning for the part of the final beast. But no one has yet gotten the part.
