Oh why cant you see? In the twelfth chapter of Revelation we have as a symbol a great red dragon. In the ninth verse of that chapter this symbol is explained as follows: “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Undoubtedly the dragon primarily represents Satan. But Satan does not appear upon the earth in person; he works through agents. It was in the person of wicked men that he sought to destroy Jesus as soon as he was born. Wherever Satan has been able to control a government so fully that it would carry out his designs, that nation became, for the time, Satan’s representative. This was the case with all the great heathen nations. For instance, see Ezekiel 28, where Satan is represented as actual king of Tyre. This was because he fully controlled that government. In the first centuries of the Christian era, Rome, of all the pagan nations, was Satan’s chief agent in opposing the gospel, and was therefore represented by the dragon. But there came a time when paganism in the Roman empire fell before the advancing form of Christianity. Then, as is stated on page 54, “paganism had given place to the papacy. The dragon had given to the beast ‘his power, and his seat, and great authority.’” That is, Satan then began to work through the papacy, just as he had formerly worked through paganism. But the papacy is not represented by the dragon, because it is necessary to introduce another symbol in order to show the change in the form of the opposition to God. Previous to the rise of the papacy, all opposition to the law of God had been in the form of paganism,—God had been openly defied; but from that time the opposition was carried on under the guise of professed allegiance to him. The papacy, however, was no less the instrument of Satan than was pagan Rome; for all the power, the seat, and the great authority of the papacy, were given it by the dragon. And so, although the pope professes to be the vicegerent of Christ, he is, in reality, the vicegerent of Satan—he is antichrist. The beast which is A symbol of the papacy is introduced in Revelation 13; And following it, in the same line of prophecy, “another beast” is seen “coming up,” [Revelation 13:11-14.] Which exercises “all the power of the first beast before him,” that is, in his sight. This other beast must therefore be a persecuting power also; and this is shown in that “it spake as a dragon.” The papacy received all its power from Satan, and the two-horned beast exercises the same power; it also becomes the direct agent of Satan. And its Satanic character is further shown in that it enforces the worship of the image of the beast, by means of false miracles. “He doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do.” The first persecuting power is represented by the dragon itself; in heathenism there was open alliance with Satan, and open defiance of God. In the second persecuting power, the dragon is masked; but the spirit of Satan actuates it,—the dragon supplies the motive power. In the third persecuting power, all traces of the dragon are absent, and a lamb-like beast appears; but when it speaks, its dragon voice betrays the Satanic power concealed under a fair exterior, and shows it to be of the same family as the two preceding powers. In all the opposition to Christ and his pure religion, “that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan,“—“the God of this world,“—is the moving power; earthly persecuting powers are simply instruments in his hands.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 13:30:50 +0000
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