Six Hundred Sixty-Six
Who Was The Beast of Revelation? [Off The Shelf: 6/20/2022]
Welcome to Off The Shelf, a Monday missive from The Square Inch Newsletter. This feature, in which I share with you thoughts and commentary about books on my shelf, is for paid subscribers. But today I am sending this one along to all you freeloaders, too! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It helps keep the lights on, and more importantly you’ll never miss the scintillating content behind the paywall. Enjoy!
Dear Friends,
I might’ve been convinced that the Beast of Revelation—whose number is the notorious “666”—is Anthony Fauci and his Covid vaccination regime, except that the people telling me so already assured me it was Barack Obama. And before that it was Bill Clinton. And maybe George Soros. The Rothschilds. And so on. At some point you have to lose some credibility, don’t you?
That was just a rhetorical opening paragraph. I actually couldn’t have been convinced that it was any of the above, because I am pretty confident that I already know who the Beast of Revelation was. Note that I did not say is. Nor will be. Rather, was. Past tense.
This will no doubt come as shocking news to the average evangelical Christian. What kind of weird, novel heresy am I spouting? Everyone knows that the world is going to get worse and worse until there comes a “Great Tribulation,” when the Antichrist or “Beast of Revelation” takes over and enslaves the world. And Christians will be spared because Jesus will come and “rapture” them away first. And then after seven years Jesus will come again for his, well, second Second Coming and establish a one-thousand year reign in Jerusalem. Then comes Armageddon and The End and then eternity. Maybe you’ve seen the charts. Basic Christian doctrine. Right?
Not exactly. Sadly, few contemporary evangelicals are aware that that entire narrative is, for the most part, the invention of some very idiosyncratic and imaginative 19th century fellows known as the Plymouth Brethren. These very novel ideas (i.e., they hadn’t occurred to Christians in the previous 19 centuries!) traveled across the Atlantic and gained popularity in America through the efforts of C.I. Scofield (of the Scofield Reference Bible) and others. Eventually some “prophecy” buffs like Hal Lindsey (The Late, Great Planet Earth) and Tim LaHaye (Left Behind) mainlined this “Dispensational Premillennialism” directly into the evangelical world by way of sensational books and movies. And now it is widely taken for granted as “what the Bible teaches.”
There are a lot of problems with this, but the biggest one is that it really isn’t what the Bible teaches.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Let me wheel in today’s selection for Off The Bookshelf.
This is my old (autographed!) copy with a crazy cool retro cover. Ken Gentry must’ve been going for the popular “prophecy book” theme so as to compete with all of the other sensational “End Times” authors. But behind that cover is a very significant difference from its competitors: Gentry is a careful scholar (not sensationalist) who has spent his lifetime writing on the topic of Christian eschatology (=study of the “end times”). I understand that in the near future he will be releasing his magnum opus—a massive two-volume commentary on the book of Revelation. But while we look forward to that, it would be good to revisit this very crisp and straightforward 1989 book, The Beast of Revelation, in which he explains the identity of the Beast in extremely elegant and convincing fashion.
Just to give you some necessary background: Gentry is an advocate for a view of biblical prophecy known as “preterism,” which (in its mainstream, orthodox form) understands that many, if not most, “end times” prophecies (think of apocalyptic visions of stars falling, sun going dark, moon turning red, etc.) are not about the end of the world. They are about the end of a world. Namely, the end of the old covenant world. Central to that world was a building: the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was where God dwelled with man; it was the place where heaven and earth were “interlocked,” (as N.T. Wright likes to put it). The temple was a miniature cosmos—an architectural representation of the universe. And the destroying of the temple and its sacrificial system was indeed, to the Jewish way of thinking, the end of the world.
It is helpful to take a close look at Matthew 24 and what is known as the “Olivet Discourse” where Jesus prophesies about war and tribulation, but it is even more helpful to skip back to chapter 23 and see how that whole speech even comes up. Jesus has just finished pronouncing his seven “woes” on Jerusalem, and climactically declares, “Look! Your house is left to you desolate.” That is … provocative. Your temple is desolate. God has departed (because, note, Jesus has just departed!). It is, to borrow another of Jesus’ metaphors, a “whitewashed tomb.” The disciples then start pointing to the buildings of the temple and they ask him when these things are going to happen, what are the signs of his coming, and of the end of the age?
And Jesus says very clearly in his following speech that the temple is going to be destroyed, “not one stone left on another,” and he tells them of many sociopolitical signs of this impending doom, tells those living in Judea to “flee to the mountains,” and—pay attention!—he says, “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (v.34).
The preterist thinks he meant it. He wasn’t talking about some great tribulation in the very distant future, but rather the impending great tribulation right in front of them: the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans. Which all happened within the generation to whom Jesus was speaking, in AD 70. (Fun note: many liberal scholars have argued for a late date for the writing of the book of Matthew partly because the prophecies of the temple’s destruction are too accurate—liberals don’t believe in real prophecy. It had to be after the fact, you see.)
Now, I could write about this all day long, but I’ll spare you because that’s Ken Gentry’s job. I will just point out, if this is all new to you, that there is a fairly dramatic transition that happens in Matthew 24:36. Jesus has been talking about “those days” (plural), but now he talks about “that day” (singular). He has been talking about all kinds of warning signs (wars, rumors of wars, etc.), but now he says of “that day” that there won’t be any signs at all (“two men in a field,” one taken and the other left) and that not even he knows the day or hour. And then, right after talking about this generation he then starts telling stories about a long delay—virgins trimming wicks and running out of oil, servants given talents and “after a long time the master returned” (Matt.24:19). In sum, it is best to understand that Jesus first talks about the “end of a world,” and then talks about the end of the world—his Second Coming. He’s talking about two different events, both of utmost significance in terms of his kingdom, of course. But the key thing for our purposes right now is that the event to which the “Great Tribulation” attaches is the former, not the latter.
Now, in the book I’m sharing with you today, Gentry doesn’t give an analysis of Matthew 24. I just had to give you that sketch for background. Instead, he focuses on the book of Revelation, a book that also has a pretty straightforward time indicator in the very first verse: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.” Again, Gentry (and a lot of other scholars—like the recent commentary by Peter Leithart) takes this seriously. These visions are primarily (note: I didn’t say exclusively) about things John’s readers are about to experience. They are not primarily about things that would happen thousands of years in the future.
In keeping with this broader project, in The Beast of Revelation Gentry homes in on the specific question of the identity of the dreaded “Beast,” and the meaning of his “number,” which is six hundred sixty-six—not “six six six.” And the answer is? Should I spoil it? Oh, sure. The fun is in the journey, not the destination—you’ll want to read his argument in full even if you know where he’s heading. The “Beast” of Revelation, whose number is 666, is Nero Caesar. Yes, Emperor Nero. That’s actually what the number means. John is using a known “alpha-numerical” code that applies numerical values to letters. And when 666 is decoded using Hebrew, not Greek, letters, the result is Nrwn Qsr. Pretty slick, for a guy exiled by the Romans on an island, eh? This is a well-known and recognized fact in biblical scholarship, and completely astonishing how few people are aware of it.
Of course, Gentry also knows that there’s a problem with his view. Most scholars believe the book of Revelation to have been written in the very late 1st century, circa AD 95. If so, the book cannot be a prophecy about the Jewish wars and the destruction of the temple! Well, he’s got you covered. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the dating of Revelation, and in part two of The Beast of Revelation he gives you a very accessible argument for why he believes the book was written prior to AD 70. Although it is a minority view, it is growing in acceptance (see: e.g., Leithart) and I myself am fully convinced.
I know you’ll have a lot of questions, and I cannot even begin to answer them here. This is a teaser for you to delve deeper into these matters if you wish. You can start with Gentry’s book, which you can buy here.
I will say, by way of application, that there is great spiritual freedom and optimism if you dispense with the (mistaken) conviction that everything is doomed and we are just waiting for a world catastrophe brought about by Anthony Fau—oops—an evil, sinister figure ready to arise at any moment. It helps to get out of bed in the morning if, rather, you see the future as the open field of harvest where God grows his new temple, the multinational and multiethnic body of Christ, and expands his kingdom throughout the whole earth. Jesus has won, is winning, and will win. And you and I get to be a part of it!
A brief note on the publishing history of The Beast of Revelation.
I believe the book went out of print for some time, and I recently discovered, happily, that it has been re-released, this time without the original 40-page “Publisher’s Introduction.” The original publisher was a man by the name of Gary North and, well, if you know of Gary North then you just know. To put it politely, he was a man of very strong and settled and controversial opinions and he rarely shied away from sharing all of them all at once at every opportunity and venue. So when it came to publishing Gentry’s book, North apparently saw it as an opportunity to write a lengthy introduction in his usual—I’m looking for an adjective here… um, strident?—style explaining that everybody who doesn’t agree with him is a dunderhead. This was, in my estimation, a severe drag on the quality of the book. Gentry didn’t need Gary North’s help explaining and defending his views. In truth, the book was hard to recommend to uninitiated readers for fear they would be forever turned off by the time they finished the introduction. If they finished it.
Now that the book exists sans preamble, I can recommend it with no reservations.