justsurfing said in post 166:
In the first 7 years, the wound to the head of the first beast is most likely "allegorical". The "head" is a "nation" and also represents the "headship" of the 666 beast over a nation.
Rev. 13:3,14b could have a dual application. It could apply to the revival of a dead, past empire (i.e. one of the 7 heads of the beast in its empire aspect), and it could apply to the revival of the Antichrist (the individual-man aspect of the beast) after he dies from a head wound (probably in an assassination attempt).
Re: the revival of a dead, past empire, the 7 heads of the beast in its empire aspect (Rev. 13:1, 17:3) represent 7 empires (Rev. 17:9-10): Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, & (possibly) Islam. The first 5 had fallen by the time of John the apostle in the 1st century AD: "five are fallen" (Rev. 17:10, 1:1b-2). The 6th (Rome) existed at the time of John: "one is" (Rev. 17:10). The 7th (possibly Islam) had not come by the time of John: "the other is not yet come" (Rev. 17:10).
The empire of the Antichrist will be a different, still-future, 8th head (Rev. 17:11), which will be a revival of one of the 5 empires which had fallen by the time of John (Rev. 17:8,10-11). It could be a revival of the empire of Babylon. The Antichrist may claim to be Nebuchadnezzar returned, & so reinstitute the system Nebuchadnezzar set up whereby everyone had to worship an image or be killed (Dan. 3, Rev. 13:15). And the Antichrist could make his world capital in the rebuilt city of Babylon (in Iraq), & build a main temple to himself (& Satan) there. For a temple to "wickedness" will be built in Shinar (Babylonia) (Zech. 5:8,11), & the Antichrist is called "that Wicked" (2 Thes. 2:8). He may also claim to be Nimrod (the founder of Babylon: Gen. 10:8-10), & Hammurabi, & Asoka, et al. For he may claim that he has had many different "past lives" as different human rulers.
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Re: the revival of an assassinated Antichrist, the "image of the beast" (Rev. 13:15) could be an android image of the Antichrist which the Antichrist's False Prophet (Rev. 13:11-16, 19:20) will cause to be made after the Antichrist (the AC) receives a terrible head wound (Rev. 13:3,14b) which could leave his facial & bodily appearance permanently marred, & which could render him unable to speak clearly (like someone after a bad stroke), so that the AC won't want to appear or speak in public again. Did you ever see that movie "Dave"? It had a President who was in a coma, so his handlers found a regular guy who looked exactly like the President, & had him be a public stand-in for the President. He was able to speak just like the President did. It could be like that with the AC's image; it could be the AC's "Dave", his double, that appears & speaks (Rev. 13:15) before the world instead of his wounded self. But instead of letting people think the AC's android image is the AC himself, the False Prophet (the FP) could tell people from the beginning that the image isn't the AC himself, but still fully represents him.
In Rev. 13:15, the original Greek word translated as "life" or "breath" (pneuma, G4151) can mean "spirit" in the sense of consciousness (1 Cor. 2:11a, Lk. 1:47), so the android could appear to have a spirit, to have consciousness. The way this could be achieved would be through the android having wireless connections to huge banks of supercomputers running advanced artificial intelligence software. The FP could claim that the AC's consciousness dwells within the android by means of neural networks imprinted with the AC's brain patterns. But this could be a lie, in that the android won't actually have the AC's consciousness, or any true consciousness, but will only appear to have consciousness, by its being able to pass even the most stringent Turing Test, whereby one speaks with a computer and can't tell whether it has consciousness or not, because all its answers are the same as if it had consciousness.
But the android's "consciousness" could appear far more advanced than any human's, for it could have access to huge databases containing every fact known to man, so that the android will appear to be omniscient, so that it could convince the world that it's not just a machine, but a material incarnation, a machine avatar, of the true God, a literal "deus ex machina", a literal "God from a machine". And this machine "God" could boast not only of his mental powers, but also of his physical powers: he could be extremely strong. And he could boast of the "immortality" of his machine body, which could be made of titanium, covered with some practically-everlasting flesh-like silicone. People could just be completely awestruck by his (what they could call) "omniscient wisdom, his strength, his indestructibility". They could consider him more than worthy of worship by (in their words) "mere humanity, which is so mentally & physically limited, made out of mere flesh & blood, which is so weak & so mortal". The world will actually worship the AC's image (Rev. 13:15), just as it will actually worship Lucifer (the dragon, Satan) & the AC (Rev. 13:4,8, 12:9).