In Revelation 13 we get our first detailed look at the one whom the Apostle Paul referred to as "the man of lawlessness...the man doomed to destruction" and the one who "will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God". (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4) Paul said that the coming of the lawless one will be "in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie". (2 Thessalonians 2:9) Later in Revelation we will find this lawless man performing feats that deceive some who have rejected Christ into thinking he is Christ.
We need to keep in mind that the description of the Antichrist in Chapter 13 is highly symbolic, just like the description of the Lord Jesus Christ in Chapter 1 was symbolic, and like the description of Israel and the description of Satan (the enormous red dragon) in Chapter 12 were symbolic. Every aspect of his appearance tells us something about who he is and what he does.
John begins like this: "The dragon stood on the shore of the sea." (Revelation 13:1a) In the Bible we sometimes see the Gentile people (or "the nations") referred to as "the sea". The fact that the dragon stands on the seashore to call his man out of the waters has been interpreted by many Bible scholars to mean that the Antichrist will be a Gentile. This doesn't really narrow down his country of origin very much. It only tells us that the Antichrist will not be Jewish, if indeed "the sea" represents the Gentile nations.
The description of the Antichrist is quite bizarre and frightening, but he won't appear bizarre and frightening when he comes onto the world scene and assumes the reigns of power during the Great Tribulation. He will be an actual human being. In modern times we find a growing trend of people refusing to believe he is going to be a real man and not just an attitude of lawlessness that will be present in the world. These same people think Satan is not really a fallen angel but that he never actually existed---that his name only represents a breakdown of morality. The Bible, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, speaks of Satan as a literal created entity with intelligence. The Bible tells us he can think and talk and plot and plan. The Bible speaks of the Antichrist as a "man" who is a major world player in the end times, who is a political figure of great power, and who manages to put a peace treaty in place between Israel and her enemies. There is really no logical way for us to take anything the Bible says about Satan and the Antichrist and turn it into merely a figure of speech. We are going to treat the information included in Revelation regarding Satan and the Antichrist in exactly the manner it was intended to be treated: as if they are just as real as anyone or anything else.
"And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name." (Revelation 13:13b) We previously discussed in Revelation that in the Bible a "horn" symbolizes power. King David often referred to his reign and his God-given right to rule Israel as his "horn". This beast has ten horns, and this tells us he will be very powerful in the world. How does he attain this power? When we arrive at Chapter 17 we find John being told: "The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast."
The verse from Chapter 17 is generally interpreted to mean that a ten-nation coalition will form during the end times, and that this federation of nations will put its military forces and its wealth in the hands of the Antichrist. These ten nations don't exist in John's day. We know this because he's told in Chapter 17 that their kings "have not yet received a kingdom". They may all exist in our own day but it's impossible to say so for certain. I've read several commentaries on Revelation in which the authors attempt to name the ten nations from among the nations present on the earth today, but no one can accurately speculate on their identity. John will be told that the ten kings (the leaders of the ten nations) will be given power for "one hour", meaning for only a short time. Compared to great empires of ancient history, these ten nations will not have been in existence for all that long when they make their alliance with the Antichrist.
The beast from the sea is the same beast the prophet Daniel foresaw in his visions of the end times. He saw the ruler of the last great empire on earth as having "ten horns". (Daniel 7:7) He said that the beast is going to speak "boastful words", and that is exactly the type of speech we would expect from a man who is so utterly opposed to the things of God that he has essentially sold his soul to the devil.
When warning his readers about the man of sin who was coming into the world, John told them that the "spirit" of antichrist was already present, and that the spirit of antichrist is a spirit that refuses to acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come into the world. (1 John 4:3) So we see that this spirit is a spirit of falsehood. Satan very well knows that Jesus Christ came into the world, but he won't admit it because admitting it means that he himself is already a defeated foe. He wants to deceive the world into believing that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God and that His incarnation was not "God with us". If Satan can prevent people from believing this, he can prevent them from being saved from their sins. If Jesus is not God, then He has no power to save mankind from sin. If Jesus is not God, then His death on the cross means nothing. If Jesus is not God, then He didn't rise from the dead. If Jesus is not God, then He is not seated at His Father's side in heaven right now. If what the Bible says about Jesus isn't true, then where does that leave us? Lost and undone. But these things are true, so since Satan can't prevent them from being true then he wants to do the next best thing: keep mankind from believing they are true. If we refuse to believe the things the Bible tells us about Jesus, we are lost and undone. And that's exactly where Satan wants as many people as possible. He would love to overthrow God and ascend to His throne, but he can't. The only way for him to strike a blow at God is to consign human beings whom God loves to eternal separation from Him.
We are going to stop right here for today because in the coming days we are going to have to dive very deeply into the book of Daniel in order to understand what we are told in Revelation 13 about the Antichrist and his kingdom. We are going to have to look back at some ancient world history so we can properly interpret Daniel's prophecies and see how they line up perfectly with John's visions in Revelation. For now we only need to keep in mind that the Antichrist is going to be everything Christ is not---the opposite of all that is holy and righteous and good. The prefix "anti" means "against" and "in place of". Satan, and by extension his man the Antichrist, is against everything Christ stands for. He wants to be accepted in place of the Lord. In his effort to be worshiped as God, he is going to form an "unholy trinity" when he puts on his massive deception. He will think of himself as being in the place of God the Father, with the person known as the Antichrist being in place of Christ, and with the one who will be known as the False Prophet in place of the Holy Spirit. Keeping this is mind, we close with the words of a modern-day scholar of prophecy, Dr. Jack Van Impe: "Counterfeiting the work of God has ever been the work of Satan, the master enemy of the human soul...The crowning piece of counterfeit will be when Satan raises up a man to be a substitute for the Lord Jesus Christ."
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