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The Beast In The Book Of Revelation

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In the Book of Revelation, the beast that came out of the sea represented the Roman Empire and its emperor Domitian. The beast is initially described in Rev 11:7 as coming out of the abyss, and his daunting appearance is depicted in Rev 13:2—“He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name” (REV 13:2). As the verses in Revelation illustrated, the best “opened his mouth to blaspheme God” (REV 13:6). Moreover, “all inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast” (REV 13:8). It seems like the beast has authority and is in opposition to the figure of God. As many scholars of the Bible believed, the beast represents the Roman Empire and its emperor, Domitian, at that time when the Book of Revelation …show more content…

The importance of money is undoubted even for Christians who value their faith to God more than wealth. The tradeoff between wealth and faith is common to Christians; sometimes, abandoning wealth, which is important to survival, is a necessary way to demonstrate their loyalty. For example, a protected paper from a trade guild recorded that, “in particular, the early Christians confronted powerful pressures to participate in activities directly or indirectly involving the worship of pagan gods. Refusal to participate in pagan idolatry and the cult of the emperor possibly required sacrificing labour market, commercial and consumption opportunities.” In addition, Christians were excluded from pagan trade guilds and trades involved with them through Asia Minor area. To conduct any business or trade in Asia Minor, anyone had to join these guilds; However, most of the trade guilds had their own deities to worship to, which means their members were supposed to show their faith to these deities. Therefore, Christians were excluded from these trade guilds. Due to business competition, these communities became a big pressure to Christians’ trades, which was an important way to make a …show more content…

On one hand, some believe that the Book of Revelation was the message from Jesus Christ’s which was sent directly to Christians of the first century to comfort them in a time of conflict and struggle. On the other hand, some comprehend the book of Revelation in another way—They argue that the Revelation was not written only for Christians in first century, and the original purpose was not to console their pain. It’s also important to explore these different approaches to interpret the Revelation. The first kind of view which I hold is called the Preterist view. And the other view which considers Revelation to be fulfilled in past history is called the Historicist view. Historicists would “see Revelation as predicting the major movements of Christian history, most of them have been fulfilled up to the time of the commentator.” According to this description, the historicist interpreters regard the purpose of the Book of Revelation as predicting a part of the future (which in this case means after the1st century). Different commentators in different time interpreted the Book of Revelation in different ways, but all of them only considered the history before the time when they studied it. But if Jesus Christ was to show the future, why did he just show a part of it rather than the whole Christian history? To answer this question, a new school called the futurist view emerged. “The futurist view

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