The Beast and the Plagues
A Riddle for the Logical Mind
Three verses. One logical answer. Can you find it?
-
Revelation 13:2 (KJV) And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
-
Daniel 7:17 (KJV) These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.
-
Exodus 7:20 (KJV) And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD [Yahuah] commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.
Read all three. Lay them side by side. What must be true?
John saw the same water turn.
Revelation 16:3 (KJV) And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.
- The beast is built of a leopard, a bear, and a lion. — Revelation 13:2
- Daniel already named those beasts as kings. — Daniel 7:17
- Water to blood is Egypt's plague. — Exodus 7:20
Revelation is decoded by the Law and the Prophets, not the newspaper.
Why It Matters
The church teaches that Revelation is a coded book of end-time events, decoded from the headlines. John's beast is "like unto a leopard," with the feet "of a bear" and the mouth "of a lion" (Revelation 13:2). Those are Daniel's beasts, and Daniel says what they are: "These great beasts... are four kings" (Daniel 7:17). Revelation's sea and rivers turned to blood (Revelation 8:8; 16:3-4) are Egypt's first plague: "all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood" (Exodus 7:20). The key to Revelation is the Old Testament, not the evening news.
John says the book was "signified" (Revelation 1:1), set forth in signs. Those signs are drawn from Moses and the prophets on nearly every page: lampstands, the tree of life, the ark, the plagues, Babylon, the beasts. A reader who knows Daniel and Exodus can read Revelation. A reader who knows only the newspaper will be rewriting his chart every ten years.
The newspaper method has a history. The Reformers read the beast as a power already standing on the stage of history. In 1590 the Jesuit Francisco Ribera pushed the beast into a distant future, away from the Rome of his own day. John Nelson Darby and the Scofield Reference Bible spread that futurism in the 1800s and early 1900s. Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) tied it to current events.
This matters for two reasons. Every failed headline prediction makes a fresh crop of scoffers. Worse, a beast placed in the future is a beast no one watches in the present. Revelation was written to be kept, not merely decoded: "Blessed is he that readeth... and keep those things which are written therein" (Revelation 1:3).
The Exodus pattern ends Revelation's story as it ended Egypt's. The plagues fell on Egypt while Israel was set apart in Goshen (Exodus 8:22). The overcomers in Revelation stand by the sea and sing "the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb" (Revelation 15:3). The book is the Exodus told again, for the whole earth.