The Image of the Beast

(Re 13:14, 15) And it misleads those who dwell on the earth, because of the signs that were granted it to perform in the sight of the wild beast, while it tells those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the wild beast that had the sword-stroke and yet revived. And there was granted it to give breath to the image of the wild beast, so that the image of the wild beast should both speak and cause to be killed all those who would not in any way worship the image of the wild beast.

What an image is

An image is a reflection of something else. Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), the perfect reflection of Jehovah, and Satan copies what he has seen. The image of the beast is his counterfeit: a man-made reflection of the eighth king that carries out the king's will on the earth. It's made after the head is healed, so it has no place in its prophetic role until the eighth king is in power, and nothing in the text says it ever goes away.

The pattern in Daniel 3

Nebuchadnezzar set up an image of gold sixty cubits high and six cubits wide (Daniel 3:1) and summoned every official of every jurisdictional district to its inauguration (Daniel 3:2). When the music sounded, all peoples were to fall down and worship, and anyone who refused was thrown into the furnace (Daniel 3:4-6). Every piece of that comes back in Revelation 13: an image, a number built from sixes, all governing authority pulled in around it, worship under compulsion, death for refusal. Even the breath is there. The instruments in Daniel couldn't sound without it, and the image in Revelation can't speak until it's given some.

Why the United Nations fits

The heads of the beast are nations, and the United Nations isn't one, so it can't be the eighth king. But it's exactly what an image of the eighth king would be: the world's jurisdictions gathered into one body, the way Nebuchadnezzar gathered his administrators before the image on the plain of Dura. When the ten kings "give their power and authority to the wild beast" (Revelation 17:12, 13), the image becomes the instrument that unified authority works through. Worship is demanded through it, and the mark of the beast is enforced through it. Its role changes. Its structure is already in place.