Number of Land or Sea Beast in Revelation 13:8?

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

1 May 2011

On behalf of someone who asked this question, I looked at it swiftly and answer from what I know in situ without delving deep into it. I do not expect alternatives to this view exist except maybe on the “Babylons” idea below, which is really my own studies and its result so far.

Both my wife and I looked independently at the texts again and coming together came to the same conclusion, the number is of the first beast or sea beast in Revelation 13:18 and not the land beast.

Biblically

Context: Verse 18 on its own does not give us a license to say sea beast or land beast. It does not specify enough. Context is the added logic required which will enable us to see the choice between sea or land beast.

Verse 11 is another beast, the land beast.

Verse 12 clarifies that the land beast is a second beast and that the first beast was the sea beast.

He acts in favor and on behalf of the first beast. He is the agent for the first beast. The primary beast in this verse is the first beast and the secondary beast in this verse is the second beast.

Verse 13 The second beast or land beast is remarkable in air missiles and drone attacks.

Verse 14 The second beast or land beast deceives the world asking all to make an image to the beast which is now alive again. Now there are two beasts, the sea beast and the land beast together.

Verse 15 The second beast or land beast receives the mandate to empower this newly created image of the first beast or beast from the sea. The image became an agent to force all to worship the image of the first beast.

Verse 16 A option: In this verse the assumption is that the “he” is the land beast as a continuation of the same style that one finds in verses prior talking about the actions of the second beast or land beast.

For those who wish to follow an alternative route here:

[B: Whether one wants to take the alternative route here and suggest that the image is the one who causes all to receive a couple of things, will not change the picture since the image of the beast is the image of the first beast and it acts to enhance the worship of the first beast and finally a number supplied (if it is assumed to be the image of the first beast causing this) would still be on behalf or in favor of the first beast, thus a number of the first beast]

A option: This land beast causes all to receive a couple of things:

1.   Mark on the forehead or right hand (verse 16)

2.   No one can sell if they do not have the mark, name or number of the beast.

At this point we stop and ask ourselves:

Which beast’s number?

In all the above verses the land beast’s function was to serve as secondary support for the primacy of the first beast or sea beast. It is thus not out of place to suggest that the second beast will not suddenly brush aside the first beast and then assume primacy power for himself or itself. If that was the case, one would expect a verse 17a to explain just that, namely a sudden change in the status of the relationship of first beast to second beast, instead of support to one of substituting it. There is not such phrase in the text or elsewhere in the Bible.

In the absence of such a statement, i.e. the change in status or roles between the land beast and sea beast as was spelled out before, one can assume that the role or status is unchanged and thus the number of the beast is the number of the sea beast and not the land beast.

Bringing us at this point, the logic expects us to calculate the number of the first beast from the sea and not the number of the second beast from the land in verse 18.

This is as far as the logic of the text takes us in personal close reading.

EGW and her statement

We are not familiar with the statement.

Many Babylons

Niniveh the capital of Assyria was called Babylon as a cuneiformist from Cambridge published a few years ago (2005). Dr. Stephanie Dalley showed in an article “Babylon as Name for Niniveh and Other Cities” in RAI 51 (2005) that there is evidence in lexical cuneiform texts that cities other than Babylon were known as Babylon, starting at least in the late 8^th-7^th centuries BC. This is crucial for two reasons: our understanding of Babylon in Revelation 13 or in the book of Revelation as a whole, and secondly, as a correction of S. Drivers commentary on Isaiah who wants to allocate certain portions of the book of Isaiah to the Babylonian exile, just because Babylon appears in the text. Dalley’s results now shows the point, which Babylon and from which Empire. That is also the method necessary for Revelation. Which Babylon and which Empire?

Babylon was Babylon as Daniel pointed out.

[Was Shushan also Babylon? No evidence yet published]

[Was Athens in Greece Babylon? No evidence yet published]

Rome was Babylon as the New Testament indicated and outside sources.

Papal Rome is Babylon as one can pull together from a couple of verses in the New Testament.

[Is the USA as world empire and land beast of Revelation 13 also Babylon? Is Revelation 18 speaking of the Land Beast’s role in New York harbor? It remains to be seen]