Breath versus life
"And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak, and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain" (Revelation 13:15).
My Bible was closed and I was trying to remember a passage from Revelation in which the second beast of the unholy trinity does something to the "image" of the first beast that he told the people of the world to make. But I couldn't recall exactly what the text said: Did it say that the beast gave life to the image? Suddenly, that possibility disturbed me. The thought that anyone but God himself could ever give "life" did not sit right with me.
So I looked it up, and the verse (as you see above) does not use the word "life" at all but "breath." It is a distinction I would have glossed over in my reading if I had not been preoccupied, as now, with the question about God and demons and "life."
I find it chilling that the beast is able to give "breath" without "life." In every aspect of the triune monster of dragon, first beast, and second beast, there is not a scintilla of reality, but only facsimile. The whole thing is a scam. The wound on the beast that seems to be healed (13:3) is a fake. The authority the dragon gives the beast is fake. The similarity between the creaturely faces of the beast (13:2) and the four living creatures around God's throne (4:7) is fake. The amity among the dragon, beasts, and harlot are fake too, as time will prove (17:16).
And the life that the beast seems to give its duped disciples is fake: It is "breath" without "life." People around you, driving their cars, making their dinners, going to nightclubs, are breathing but are not alive. Theirs is hologram life. It is The Truman Show, The Matrix. All those who follow demons rather than God have breath but no life. They are walking dead men-"waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted . . ." (Jude 1:12).
In contrast, brothers and sisters, we who have come to Christ have come out of the kingdom of nothingness and death, and into the kingdom of reality and the living. For here is the mystery, and we will never comprehend it fully here:
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4).
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
Please wait while we load the latest comments...
Comments
Please register, subscribe, or log in to comment on this article.