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Revelation 13
7 It was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them. Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him.
It was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them
The beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. (Revelation 13:2)
This presents a troubling concept leading many to have serious reservations about God's trustworthiness. Our it is our limited understanding of the larger backstory and the issues involved that causes us to doubt God's goodness. We assume this is saying that God hands over saints to the enemy to be defeated by his sinister exploitation. This raises suspicions about God's faithfulness and what it should look like for God to care about His children when the evidence seems to indicate the very opposite. This was the issue in the story of Job, and it troubles most everyone at some point. We have to wrestle with this honestly if we want to move deeper into the kind of trust that was perfected by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and offers to us for our times of darkness.
Just because God grants permission for His enemies to have access to viciously attack His faithful children does not prove that God shares some of Satan's disposition towards us. What we must appreciate is that the issues that must be settled on the cosmic level far beyond our capacity to comprehend, involves moral dilemmas that sometimes appear to contradict the truth as revealed by Jesus. Yet this same Jesus Himself experienced fully this moral dilemma and fought His way through it by choosing to trust His Father's will over every feeling, emotion and craving to stay alive, surrendering control over his circumstances and even His will to be superseded by God's objective will even when it clearly meant certain suffering and death.
Such a choice is not a compromise of the truth about God's love, but rather a choice to believe that God's heart is always better than our perspective regardless of how it makes us feel. Believing our feelings over trusting God's heart is the sure path toward opening a door to the enemy. Possibly that may be part of why it is allowed to happen to the saints at this time, for this may well be part of the final purging process, the refining process necessary to prepare their condition to be liberated from our penchant to give priority to our feelings rather than choosing to consistently rest in God's love regardless of the apparent perceived outcome.
"Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31-32 NRSV)
Ultimately it is God who is being judged by all of us, not the other way around. The dissonance caused in our hearts and minds at the thought of God allowing us to be overcome by the enemy is not signaling that God is untrustworthy but rather that our distrust of Him runs so deep that it requires more than we care to think about or want to experience in order to rid us of self-dependency, all self-defensiveness, all pride and shame, leading us to throw ourselves entirely on the mercy and faithfulness of the One who created us for intimacy with God. This is what is called the time of Jacob's trouble, for the experience Jacob went through that night was a fight against his own internal confusion and double-minded thinking about God inhibiting him from surrendering entirely to God's relentless love for him. This is the same experience we must pass through if we are to be prepared to safely enter the intensity of the presence of the Lamb and holy angels of God.
These are the words that Yahweh spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus says Yahweh: We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask now, and see whether a man does travail with child: why do I see every man with his hands on his waist, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. (...out of it is not found in the original Hebrew. The word saved means to be open, wide or free; to be safe. This is not being saved from what is happening but rather healed by it, liberated from the internal lies, fears and distrust by passing through this experience. The following verses expand on this as it may be our rite of passage into a whole new condition of true freedom. This reveals our need to die to our old familiar self in order to enter into life through a new birth of heart perspective, for the life Jesus came to provide us.)
It shall come to pass in that day, says Yahweh of Armies, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and will burst your bonds; and strangers shall no more make him their bondservant; but they shall serve Yahweh their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up to them. Therefore don't you be afraid, O Jacob my servant, says Yahweh; neither be dismayed, Israel: for, behold, I will save you from afar, and your seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and at ease, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with you, says Yahweh, to save you: for I will make a full end of all the nations where I have scattered you, but I will not make a full end of you; but I will correct you in measure, and will in no way leave you unpunished. (God relays promises of a positive outcome before warning of the extremely painful truth of our present condition.)
For thus says Yahweh, Your hurt is incurable, and your wound grievous. There is none to plead your cause, that you may be bound up: you have no healing medicines. All your lovers have forgotten you; they don't seek you: for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins were increased. Why cry you for your hurt? your pain is incurable: for the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins were increased, I have done these things to you. (Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse. (Proverbs 27:6) This is like a doctor explaining the suffering that must necessarily be experienced to bring about healing and achieve full restoration to health. What is incurable is our false identity we have lived under our whole life. That false identity has to die so that our true identity in Christ may thrive and displace it entirely. No other solution can accomplish this.)
Therefore all those who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, everyone of them, shall go into captivity; and those who despoil you shall be a spoil, and all who prey on you will I give for a prey. For I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds, says Yahweh; because they have called you an outcast, saying, It is Zion, whom no man seeks after. (Jeremiah 30:4-17) This involves the real mortal wound in need of healing that is counterfeited by the beast of Revelation 13.
As terrifying as it is to realize what it takes to be restored to full health spiritually and emotionally, we still must give God permission to do whatever it takes in us, choosing to trust His heart of love. The good news is that He promises to be with us through this extremely painful process of ridding our heart of every trace of resistance to love so we can be brought into a condition of implicit trust in God's heart. This experience is essential to ensure the future security of the universe where only love reigns supreme, free of all fear, suffering, shame or death.
Some men's sins are evident, preceding them to judgment, and some also follow later. (1 Timothy 5:24)
What does this mean? Our personal consent has to be involved in this process of purification, not by trying harder to overcome sin but giving permission/authority to God so He is allowed to wrestle with us against the internal lies, confusion, shame messages, pride and anything that sets itself up against a knowledge of Him that prevents us from living joyfully in the powerful presence of the pure, passionate love of God. As we allow the Spirit of truth and love to expose us now, the power of His love makes our sins evident, meaning we are exposed by judgment now instead of later after it is too late for our character to be transformed into His likeness.
This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world....he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God. (John 3:19,21)
Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him
This word authority means power over, access to interfere or meddle in someone else's life. Satan was granted access to Job, meaning he was allowed authority to exercise his supernatural powers in Job's life that resulted in all the tragedies that transpired in Job's situation that were then attributed to God as being the cause. Did this authority come only from God, or were Job's actions revealing his mindset in the beginning of the story part of why authority was released to Satan? Some feel this was the case. What is important is that the pattern of Job's experience will be repeated again in the lives of all who are willing to be refined like Job was so as to be cleansed of everything that is not reflective of God's pure heart of love.
I saw, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. Thus he said, The fourth animal shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.
As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom shall ten kings arise: and another shall arise after them; and he shall be diverse from the former, and he shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time. But the judgment shall be set, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end. The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High: his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. (Daniel 7:21-27)
This authority given to this beast power involves both kinds of authority. Counterfeit authority is the top-down system of hierarchy which is how Satan and all the kingdoms of this world exercise power. Clearly in this passage power/authority is given to the beast directly from the dragon whose version of power is coercive and cruel. Yet at the same time release of protection is granted by God that allows the saints to be overcome by the beast warring against them. As we have seen, this overcoming is temporary but very necessary in order to cleanse them of all lurking sympathies with the beast's and dragon's version of God. Parallel to this, all the rest of the identifiers used to define people groups in our world are brought under subjection to the tyranny of this beast power, and that is because they believe in this kind of power more than the power of love alone.
According to the way real authority operates, it is granted through consent by those who are ruled over by their own choice as to who will rule over them. All who cling to notions that God should govern by means of force or other methods of Satan, give this beast their authority to rule over them by these methods of control. Why? Because they believe this is the only effective way to govern. This is the danger of allowing any sympathy to remain in the heart for the assertions of the dragon as to how God should achieve victory. When we sympathize with his methods of warfare and winning, we open the way for him to exert his power in our lives because we are already sanctioning his weaponry and tactics rather than relying on the methods and motives of the Lamb.
Jesus answered, "My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight, that I wouldn't be delivered to the Jews. But now my Kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36)
For though we walk in the flesh, we don't wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him
This refining process that purges the mind and heart of each person who chooses to follow the Lamb fully and be conformed into His image and likeness, is glimpsed in how people groups are mentioned in the praise for the Lamb during its introduction in chapter 5. This is in direct contrast with the song of those who dwell on the earth who sing praises to the power of the beast and how intimidating it is to challenge its authority. In fact, the song in chapter 5 is the answer to the question in its counterpart about who is able to make war against the beast.
They sang a new song, saying, "You are worthy to take the book, and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood, out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign on earth." (Revelation 5:9-10)
The Lamb condenses these divisive labels by replacing them with unity in place of disparity. What is highlighted here is competing authority between the Lamb and this beast both relating to the same list of identities. The beast is given authority over these ways that we segregate ourselves from others, while the Lamb relates to this same issue in a completely different way.
I saw an angel flying in mid heaven, having an eternal Good News to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation, tribe, language, and people. He said with a loud voice, "Fear the Lord, and give him glory; for the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and the springs of waters!" (Revelation 14:6-7)
We see how the issue of worship is central to all these passages involving this list. In chapter 5, all those with heaven's perspective honor and worship the Lamb because of how He has brought unity out of divisiveness by sacrificing His own life blood to win their trust and affection. By contrast, this beast uses opposite methods and motives to exert tyrannical control over all these classifications in order to exalt itself and compel their worship.
Worship involves where we get our sense of identity and purpose. This list is a reminder that there are really only two options for worship: we will either follow and trust the Lamb's version of truth, of God's disposition and character, or we will embrace the divisive ways of the dragon as enforced by his surrogates. We will either fear God, meaning we believe Him and what He says about us our highest priority above anyone else, or we will live in fear of man, what others think about us or intimidated by what they might do to us if we do not comply with their demands.
I see a progression of relationships in this list that may be something to consider.
Tribe = clan, those sharing the same habits and culture, our extended family group.
Tongue = language. This was the means of dividing (un-unifying) humanity at the tower of Babel.
Nation = ethnicity, race, especially in regards to foreigners.
People is listed here in some versions but not in KJV. However it does show up in Revelation 5:9.
What could be observed here is a progression from local and familiar to distant and foreign. I believe this may be significant as the effects of Satan's system is the cause of disparity, divisiveness, competitiveness and prejudices even while asserting it is seeking unity. The unity sought by our world's system are attempted through means foreign to the kingdom of heaven, while the unity brought about by submitting to the Lamb and embracing His motives and methods results in restoration of healthy relationships of trust and love while maintaining complete freedom for all.
This list begins with the unity or cohesion experienced by growing up in our immediate family and then expands to our relatives defining our larger group identity who have the most affect on how we perceive who we are, where we belong and what it looks like to act like ourselves. Our family and our extended clan is our tribe. This is where we develop our distinct habits, expectations, culture and taboos that shape how we perceive reality and how we relate to the rest of the world beyond our tribal cultural, emotional and spiritual borders. This involves not only our primary language with which we communicate, but includes the nuances and idiosyncrasies of our shared forms of expression constituting our unique culture.
Language is the second classification that interferes with unity and can be a cause of division between peoples of this world. It began in the story of the tower of Babel from which Babylon later emerged. In Revelation we are called to come out of Babylon, yet this is not merely about superficial separation but rather being divested of the divisive artificial identifiers by which we judge each other and identify ourselves as better or worse than others.
The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. (Genesis 11:1)
This verse contains some key information relevant to what we are studying right now.
Language: the idea of termination; the lip (as a natural boundary); by implication, language; bank, binding, border, brim, brink, edge, language, lip, seashore, side, speech, talk, words.
Speech: a word; by implication, a matter or thing; a cause: commune, communication, counsel, judgment, message, purpose, song, thought, work.
There is more from the definitions I did not list here, but the sense that comes to me is that what was happening was a solidification of disposition in nearly everyone alive, setting their minds on a unified direction in reaction to the flood just finished. This was posturing them onto a fast track that if allowed to play out would return them to a condition just like before the flood. This would have returned the human race to the same mindset of selfishness and continuous evil that had brought on the flood originally, so something needed to happen to disrupt and slow down this trajectory toward chaos and continuous evil everywhere.
When I compare these two words language and speech to see how they relate to each other, it appears the first word refers to the intended boundary designed to limit evil from taking over fully again as it had done before the flood. In other words, the will is supposed to limit what is allowed to come out of the lips that if released, will affect others just as words and songs synchronize how we perceive reality and tends to unify the direction of our thoughts and feelings collectively.
As an aside, I find this providing credibility to what someone recently proposed to me about this story. They suggested that possibly before this disruption of how people freely communicated, people used their voices primarily to sing what they communicated rather than using speech as we are accustomed to doing. Music provides a far greater dimension for communicating ideas with strong emotional links that speech alone cannot provide. Thus by delinking conversation from the carrier of musical expression, language became severely limited in its capacity to unify or even convey accurately what people are trying share. In other words, by disrupting our capacity to express freely our thoughts and ideas expressed through musical tones and lyrics, the devolution of humanity sped up greatly, but at the same time the spread of evil was greatly inhibited too.
They said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let's make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)
Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. Yahweh said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them [no natural restraints to prevent a repeat of what happened before the flood], which they intend to do. Come, let's go down, and there confuse [introduce an inhibiting factor to slow down their rush to unify the world in abject wickedness all over again] their language [the natural boundary of the lips that is no longer working as designed to limit and filter expression], that they may not understand one another's speech." So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city. (Genesis 11:5-8)
Confuse: to overflow, specifically with oil. By implication, to mix; also confound, fade, mingle, mix, temper.
While diversity of ethnic races and languages is sometimes celebrated as wonderful and healthy, it is also the root of much prejudice and even hostility towards those who don't share a common history or culture. The selfish nature we inherit from Adam originated with the ancient serpent in Eden. This leads us to assume our way of thinking, living and prioritizing is the right way, while others who live differently are viewed with suspicion or even hostility. This is the legacy of growing up in this world and is reflected in divisive labels used to identity differences. This also results in resistance to embracing the truth that we are all in fact one single family.
He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.' (Acts 17:26-28)
The man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (Genesis 3:20)
These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the whole earth was populated. (Genesis 9:19)
Don't we all have one father? Hasn't one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers? (Malachi 2:10)
Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)
I said, "You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like one of the rulers." (Psalms 82:6-7)
One of the outcomes of the separation of the united thinking of all peoples of earth at the collapse of the tower of Babel was the development of the concept of separate nations around the world.
Nation: a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own.
an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or derivative languages.
A distinct government means a political entity used to unite a group of people into what we think of as a nation or a country. While this is often celebrated as a healthy concept in our world, it is actually part of the effects that sin has brought to our world, for independent governments means that they no longer recognize or live under the authority of any other government. This has roots far back in history before even the creation of this world, for it was in heaven that the first rebellion against the government of God led to the existence of separate governments that have multiplied ever since.
The conflicts between nations and empires and competing governments mars the history of our world ever since the emergence of defining artificial distinctions between peoples based on things such as geographical boundaries, ethnic differences, variations in speech and language or even arbitrary creation of countries after violent warfare. Some countries today were intentionally created from disparate people groups in order to weaken their ability to unite to mitigate them becoming a serious threat to other nations around them.
All of this is part of the divisive nature of sin and selfishness that is often expressed through violent power compelling people to live under the control of others and forced to submit to artificial group identity imposed on whole nations with or without the people's consent. The natural outcome of all of this divisive labeling and separating of people on this planet is that it violates the natural design for which we are created that alone brings life. Getting our identity from these inhibits our giving first priority to our true identity as all children of one family under the government of heaven.
But the free gift isn't like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. (Romans 5:15)
For as through the one man's disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)
For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of no effect. For the law works wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience. For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. (Romans 4:14-16)
What we find in this study of Revelation 13 is a final push by this beast power relying on the kind of authority the dragon utilizes to unite the entire planet into a single system controlled by means of hierarchy which is foreign to how heaven governs as it defaces the image of God in humankind. By seeking to impose its own arbitrary identity on people, it may temporarily appear to resolve the problems caused by differences by unifying the world under one leader. Yet despite all efforts to compel everyone to unite into one group identity, in the end it cannot succeed, not because God will intervene with force to prevent it, but because the human heart cannot long live under such duress.
This is the problem with Satan's entire counterfeit system. It asserts that unity must be achieved through a balance of good and evil and that this is the only way to maintain order and cohesion in society. Yet the divisive nature of its very design means the human heart longing for freedom cannot long function under repression until it reacts in rebellion against authoritarian control. Thus the core fault of Satan's entire system of governance is that its very design will ultimately lead to its demise. It is not God who will have to impose a forced resolution to the problem of sin and rebellion, for the seeds of death are embedded in the very design of the counterfeit system itself, meaning that in the end evil has no other option than to destroy itself along with all who refuse to receive a love of the truth.
As we work through this chapter we shall observe the tactics relied on by this beast, along with all the other entities that will emerge and synchronize with it. These will seek to enforce their version of unity on the whole world to unify it in worship of the dragon. The government and religions of this world symbolized in Revelation are exhibitions of Satan's desperate attempts to prove that given enough time, his system of law and order really can succeed in uniting society under one leader. The sentiments expressed by those building the tower reaching up to heaven at Babel, continue to the end of time and there find re-expression in the sentiments and actions of what is referred to in this book as Babylon, the symbol of what was initially attempted at Babel.
They said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let's make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)
Jesus pointed out accurately that a kingdom divided against itself ultimately cannot stand. Empires may appear to be unified and strong for many years, yet governments relying on the principles of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil will ultimately will face demise, because death is the natural outcome of living out of harmony with the principles of agape love that alone provides access to the only Source of life that exists.
One last question to consider in this verse. Why is the target of the warring by the beast directed at the saints? Why are the saints, those loyal to living under God's design and governance, considered such a threat to this world that they must be singled out and eliminated in order that full authority and unity may be achieved on earth?
The kind of authority exercised by all the powers of this world is authoritarian power that imposes a top-down hierarchy relying on threats and compulsion to achieve unity. The symbols of saints refers to all who have chosen a different model of social order that presents a mortal threat to the kingdoms of this world because it exposes the fatal flaw of their very foundation of existence. The law of love is also the law of liberty, meaning that so long as people exist who exhibit the joy of living free of fear and refuse to participate in using compulsion to achieve unity through forced compliance, such a testimony presents a threat that undermines the very authority by which earthly governments stay in power. This is why these beast powers view it as essential to eliminate all evidence of the Lamb's version of unity, for love and fear cannot occupy the same heart at once. Thus the saints must be silenced and their witness must be obliterated so that the unity of fear can reign supreme to prove it is essential for maintaining the rule of law in contrast to the apparent weakness of love that grants total freedom to everyone.
