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.

An image is a reflection of something else

Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), the perfect reflection of Jehovah. 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 is made after the head is healed, so it does not exist in its prophetic role until the eighth king is in power, and nothing in the text says the image ever disappears.

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 whoever refused was thrown into the furnace (Daniel 3:4-6). Every element returns in Revelation 13: an image, a number built from sixes, the consolidation of all governing authority around it, worship under compulsion, and death for refusal. Even the detail of breath is shared. The instruments in Daniel could not sound without it; the image in Revelation cannot speak until it is given it.

Why the United Nations fits

The heads of the beast are nations. The United Nations is not one, so it cannot be the eighth king. But it is exactly what an image of the eighth king would be: a conglomerate of the world's jurisdictions gathered into one body, just as 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 through which that unified authority is exercised, worship is demanded, and the mark of the beast is enforced. Its role changes; its structure is already in place.