The Image of the Beast

(Revelation 13:2,14-15)

The apostle John said that the false prophet “deceived those who dwell on the Earth to make an image of the beast who had the wound of the sword and came to life.”1Rev 13:14 The beast was described as a combination of three animals: “like a leopard, his feet like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion.”2Rev 13:2

God is love, and His image was glorified on the cross, but the idolatrous image of the beast was the image of three animals. In Hosea, God said, “They should have known that I am God… Therefore … I will be to them like a lion, like a leopard by the road I will lurk, I will meet them like a bear.”3Hos 13:4,7-8

John said the false prophet would “even cause as many as would not worship the image to be killed.”4Rev 13:15 Arius was a presbyter who opposed the Trinity. Emperor Constantine said that anyone who protected the writings of Arius would be killed. In the next three centuries, the Trinitarian states of Europe attacked the states that sided with Arius, believing that the “Trinity God” would help them win.

From 600 to 700, Muhammad easily overthrew the Christian Arab states and rebuked them for forsaking the monotheism of their forefathers.

From 1096 to 1487, the Crusades of the pope tried to regain the Holy Land from Islam. Daniel said that the king of the north would act against the strongest of fortresses with the help of a god his fathers did not know.

In 1198, Pope Innocent III decreed: “Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God that conflicts with church dogma must be burned without pity.”5Pope Innocent III, 1198, Papal Bull

The deaths continued during the Reformation, when Michael Servetus, the Spanish theologian, who opposed the Trinity, was burned on his own books, by the Protestants.

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