And the angel said to me: Why dost thou wonder? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast which carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast which thou sawest, was, and is not, and shall come up out of the bottomless pit and go into destruction. And the inhabitants on the earth (whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world) shall wonder, seeing the beast that was and is not. (Rev. 17:7-8, DRCB)
At sinabi as akin ng anghel, Bakit ka nanggilalas? Sasabihin ko as iyo ang hiwaga ng babae, at ng hayop na sinasakyan niya, na may pitong ulo at sangpung sungay. At ang hayop na nakita mo ay naging siya, at wala na; at malapit ng umahon as kalaliman, at patungo as kapahamakan. At silang mga nananahan as lupa ay manggigilalas na ang kanilang pangalan ay hindi nakasulat as aklat ng buhay mula nang itatag ang sanglibutan, pagkakita nila as hayop, kung paano naging siya at wala na, at darating. (Rev. 17:7-8, TCB)
And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. (Rev. 17:7-8, KJB)
The angel gives Apostle John a detailed description of the “beast” that is carrying the “great harlot woman” on his back. The beast is explained chronologically here as that “whichwas…is not … andisabout to ascend … from the abyss and gointo perdition [meaning go into destruction – the beast will be cast into an eternal lake of fire – Revelation 20:10].
“The bottomless pit” (abyss) is the home of Satan and demons and this indicates that the power of the political empire is ‘satanic’ in its origin. Even in the early centuries of the Church, Christians believed that the phrase once was, now is not, and yet will come means that the Antichrist will be a figure from the past, someone who had lived before John’s time, was dead when John wrote the book of Revelation, but will come back at the End of the Age as Antichrist. Most in the early centuries of the Church believed Antichrist will be the Roman Emperor Nero who died in 68 AD.
Here is a quote from F. W. Farrar (1882) …
[BEGIN QUOTE] - "All the earliest Christian writers on the Apocalypse, from Irenaeus down to Victorious of Pettau and Commodian in the fourth, and Andreas in the fifth, and St. Beatus in the eighth century, connect Nero, or some Roman emperor, with the Apocalyptic Beast." (p.541) "the clue is preserved for us, not only by Jewish Talmudists, and Pagan historians and authors, such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and Dion Chrysostom; but also by Christian fathers like St. Irenaeus, Lactantius, St. Victorinus, Sulpicius Severus, and the Sibylline books, and even by St. Jerome, and by St. Augustine. Nothing can prove more decisively than these references that for four centuries many Christians identified Nero with the Beast." [END QUOTE] [1]
Here is a quote from G.R. Beasley-Murray . . .
[BEGIN QUOTE] - (On Nero Myth) “One point must be clarified concerning John’s use of the so-called Nero myth. There is no question that John looked for Nero literally to return from the dead to fulfill the role of the antichrist. He utilized the current expectation to portray the works of the antichrist as those of another Nero, and that for a good reason: Nero was the first Roman emperor to persecute the Christian church, and he did so with such bestial cruelty as to provide a pattern for the beast of Satan to follow in his war with the Lamb (Rev 11:7-10; 13:7; 17:12-14). By his presentation of antichrist as another Nero, John has made it clear that the cult of the emperor is a projection of what will take place when the seeds of its beginning reach their full harvest.” (Beasley-Murray, GR. “Revelation, Book of”) [END QUOTE] [2].
Here is a quote from Israel P. Warren . . .
[BEGIN QUOTE] - “The man of sin,’ ‘ that wicked.’ In attempting to show whom Paul meant by these appellations I would speak with becoming diffidence where the ablest commentators of every age have been so much puzzled. Apart from that fact, however, I confess it does not seem to be such an unresolvable mystery, Three things, I think, ought to concur in the solution : 1, the man of sin must be a person ; 2, he must be one in such position, and holding such relation to the Thessalonians as to be an object of apprehension to them personally . . . ; 3, he must be, nevertheless, one whom, for some reason, it would be unsafe to name more definitely. . . . Taking these, then, as our clew, we are conducted at once to the emperor Nero as the monster in whom all the probabilities of the case meet.” (Parousia, pp. 69, 70) [END QUOTE] [3]
The “Beast” (Antichrist) that John observed had once been alive but was no longer alive; the beast had already died when John saw the vision. The angel’s description is a revelation to Apostle John that the ‘beast is a man’ (not a kingdombecause the angel uses the masculine pronoun “he” in Revelation 17:10, 11) [4]
