Useful Bible Studies > Revelation Commentary > chapter 13
Evil things are completely awful; there is nothing good about them. They only cause pain and trouble; nobody should ever consider them attractive. However, we all know that, in reality, evil things have convinced the whole world not to serve God, but to serve the devil instead.
There is nothing attractive about the word-pictures that John uses to mean the devil and the antichrist. John refers to the devil as the ‘dragon’. A dragon was the worst kind of wild animal that people could imagine. John calls the antichrist (Christ’s enemy who leads the whole world to follow the devil), the ‘beast’. A beast means a wild animal; John’s description of this beast is very terrible and awful.
However, people give honour here not to God, but to the devil and to the antichrist. They praise them not because of anything good, but because they are so evil. They praise the antichrist because he is so cruel and powerful. They have seen how his terrible injury healed (verse 3). Now they believe that nobody - not even God - will be able to defeat him.
They praise the devil because he gave the antichrist authority to rule the whole world. It is the natural result of every evil act that the devil receives honour. However, this is much worse, because the people are praising the devil on purpose. We have already read that people would give honour to evil spirits and to images (9:20). Now they will choose the devil himself to be their god. They have believed a powerful lie (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). They imagine that the devil will support them in their war against God (see Psalm 2:1-3). They believe that the devil and the antichrist are, together, powerful enough to defeat God. Of course, this idea is completely wrong.
Next part: Antichrist’s proud words against God (Revelation 13:5-7)
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© 2016, Keith Simons.