The Wild Beast (Beast Out of the Sea)

(Re 13:1, 2) And I saw a wild beast ascending out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and upon its horns ten diadems, but upon its heads blasphemous names. Now the wild beast that I saw was like a leopard, but its feet were as those of a bear, and its mouth was as a lion's mouth. And the dragon gave to the beast its power and its throne and great authority.

The seven heads

The angel tells John that the seven heads are seven mountains and seven kings (Revelation 17:9, 10). In scripture, beasts represent political power, and this beast is Satan's political system over God's people through history. Its heads, in order, are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and Anglo-America. Each was a sovereign nation with its own borders, language, currency, gods and rulers, and that pattern is the standard for identifying anything the text calls a head.

At the time John wrote, "five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet arrived" (Revelation 17:10). Rome was ruling; the Anglo-American power was still future. That seventh head "must remain a short while," and the historical record shows it fully formed only when Britain and the United States bound themselves into one power after the Second World War.

The head that is slaughtered

(Re 13:3) And I saw one of its heads as though slaughtered to death, but its death-stroke got healed, and all the earth followed the wild beast with admiration.

Revelation 17:8 describes the same event from another angle: the beast "was, but is not, and yet is about to ascend out of the abyss." The head that is slaughtered is the seventh. When its death-stroke is healed, the beast comes up out of the abyss and becomes the eighth king, which "springs from the seven" (Revelation 17:11). The eighth king is never itself wounded; once it ascends, it remains until it goes off into destruction at Armageddon.

What the beast is not

The wild beast is not the image of the beast, which is made later at the command of the two-horned beast (Revelation 13:11-14), and it is not Babylon the Great, the woman who rides it (Revelation 17:3). Confusing these three is the root of most failed interpretations, including the teaching that the League of Nations and the United Nations are the beast from the abyss. The studies on this site keep them separate and let each one's pattern identify it.