Commentary on Revelation 13:1-18

• 7/27/2025: Revelation 1:4-8; accompanying text: John 8:13-20
• 8/3/2025: Revelation 4:1-11; accompanying text: John 17:1-5
• 8/10/2025: Revelation 5:1-13; accompanying text: John 1:29-31
• 8/17/2025: Revelation 7:9-17; accompanying text: John 14:1-4
• 8/24/2025: Revelation 13:1-18; accompanying text John 12:30-32
• 8/31/2025: Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1–5; accompanying texts: John 4:1-14; 16:20-22

Week 5 (8/24/2025): The Beast and the Dragon

Revelation 13:1–18

Accompanying text John 12:30-32

Revelation earns its happy ending by dwelling at length on the evil that is inflicted upon the earth. It doesn’t duck or deny evil, though it also isn’t interested in giving evil more attention than it already claims. This book is more sophisticated than people assume; it knows that you end up worshipping what you stare at, so to stare at too much evil lures you into evil’s way of thinking and acting.

Yet pretending like it’s not there makes you easy prey. So you at least have to be able to identify the true enemies of God.

Today’s reading gives us the other most troublemaking number in Revelation (besides 144,000), namely 666. Six is one short of seven, the number of perfection, thereby making six signify imperfection. Repeat that imperfection three times in a row, in a kind of perverse trinitarianism, and you get 666.

But the more vivid image of the anti-trinity in Revelation 13 is the beast-dragon-false prophet triad. What’s so striking about it, other than the gruesome imagery, is that while it is certainly capable of horrific violence, its chief tool is deception. Its blasphemous words snare people; its great signs persuade them. The beast has 10 horns (the everything number) and seven heads (the perfection number), making it look supreme—but as we know, its supremacy is in evil. The horrible sight is so compelling that people give up and render it worship: “Who can fight against it?”

Revelation has no illusions that this enemy can be defeated by human means. Jesus alone can ultimately vanquish, silence, and lock up this enemy forever. The saints in the meanwhile are to endure and keep the faith, at great cost to themselves. Returning again and again to the worship of the Lamb is the best protection against losing your soul to the unholy trinity.