After exploring the surprising message of the lamb’s opened scroll, John offers a series of seven visions that he calls “signs” (Rev. 12-15). That word means “symbol,” and these chapters are full of them. The purpose of these visions is to expand further on the message of the lamb’s scroll.
The first sign reveals the cosmic, spiritual battle behind the Roman empire’s persecution of Christians, the ancient conflict that started in Genesis 3:15. The serpent in the garden of Eden, the source of all spiritual evil, is depicted here as a dragon. It attacks a woman and her seed, who represent the Messiah and his people. But the Messiah defeats the dragon through his death and resurrection, casting him to Earth. There, the dragon may inspire hatred and persecution of the Messiah’s people, but God’s people will conquer him by resisting his influence, even if it kills them. John is showing the seven churches that neither Rome nor any other nation or human is the real enemy. There are dark spiritual powers at work that can be conquered only when Jesus’ followers remain faithful and love their enemies.
John’s next vision replays the same conflict, this time with the symbolism of Daniel’s animal visions (Dan. 7-12). John sees two beasts, one representing national military power that conquers through violence. The other beast symbolizes the economic propaganda machine that exalts this power as divine and demands full allegiance from all nations. This is symbolized by taking the mark of the beast and his number 666 on the forehead or hand.
The meaning of this image is found in the Old Testament. The mark is the “anti-Shema.” The Shema is an ancient Jewish prayer of allegiance to God found in Deuteronomy 6:4-8. It was to be written on the Israelites’ foreheads and hands as a symbol of devoting all your thoughts and actions to the one true God. But now the rebellious nations demand their own god-like allegiance.
The number of the beast is also a symbol. John was fluent in both Hebrew and Greek, and his readers knew that Hebrew letters also function as numbers. If you spell the Greek words “Nero Caesar” or “beast” in Hebrew, both amount to 666. John isn’t saying that Nero was the precise fulfillment of this vision; rather, he’s a recent example of the pattern explored in Daniel. Human rulers become beasts when they assign divinity to their power and economic security and demand total allegiance to it. Babylon was the beast of Daniel’s day, followed by Persia, then Greece, and now Rome in John’s day. The pattern stands for any later nation who acts the same.
Standing opposed to the dragon’s beastly nations is another king, the slain lamb and his army, who have given their lives to follow him. From the new Jerusalem, their song goes out to the nations as “the eternal Gospel” (Rev. 14:6). All people are called to repent, worship God, and come out of Babylon. Then John sees a vision of final justice, symbolized by two harvests. One is a good grain harvest where King Jesus gathers up his faithful people. The other is a harvest of wine grapes, representing humanity’s intoxication with evil, which are taken to the wine press and trampled. With these “sign” visions, John places a choice before the seven churches. Will they resist Babylon and follow the Lamb, or will they follow the beast and suffer its defeat?
John then replays a final cycle of seven divine judgments, symbolized as seven bowls. Similar to the Exodus plagues, the bowls do not bring about repentance but the opposite. The people resist and curse God just like Pharaoh. With the sixth bowl, the dragon and beasts gather the nations together to make war against God’s people in a place called Armageddon. This refers to a plain in northern Israel where many battles had been fought against invading nations (Jud. 5:19; 2 Kgs. 23:29). Some think that this image refers literally to a future battle, while others think it’s a metaphor for final judgment. Either way, John has taken these images from Ezekiel 38-39, where God battles Gog, who is of rebellious humanity. And so in the seventh bowl, evil is defeated among the nations once and for all.
