Editorial: “Who Are the Beasts? I Don’t Know!”
When I wrote that we Adventists shouldn’t condemn Roman Catholics just because our Victorian pioneers said that church was identified by beasts in Daniel and Revelation, someone sent me a note and demanded, “Okay, Loren: if those beasts aren’t the pope, who are they?”
And I responded, “I don’t know.”
Most scholars who have looked at these passages without the Uriah Smith overlay we Adventists depend on, say that the beasts were probably a code to describe certain political figures back then—kings or rulers who were threatening believers—and to remind the faithful that God was still with them.
But to apply them specifically to our day? I see little evidence that’s what they were meant for.
Take the multi-metal statue of Daniel 2 which, reading from the golden head down, was said to be great empires that changed every few hundred years. It concludes with the ten toes of iron and clay. The evangelists said the toes were the nations of “modern” Europe, that were weak and would never be able to “cleave one to another.”
Even as an academy student, when we had to memorize that scheme, that last part seemed to me a rather strained interpretation. We’ve waited 2,000 years for the next act—and it still hasn’t happened?
Meanwhile, the European Union has proven that Europe isn’t fragile.
I doubt the beasts were ever meant to be identified as specific churches or nations millennia hence. What we can do is identify the characteristics of the beasts—like, say, those that persecute people for their beliefs, and prevent people from buying or selling—and say, “Powerful organizations sometimes act like that. God doesn’t approve. Let’s not be like them. Let’s protect people.”
But God is still with us. And we continue to trust that someday—we don’t know when—God will end our troubles in this world once and for all.
Loren Seibold,
Adventist Today Executive Editor
5 October 2024
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