Revelation13chapter 13

Emperor worship was not a fringe cult in Asia; it was the province's proudest institution. Cities competed for the honor of building an imperial temple, priesthoods of the imperial cult were prestigious local offices, and public festivals, games, and civic business ran through them. Pergamum, Smyrna, and Ephesus all held that honor.

What Rome asked of an ordinary person was small and therefore lethal. Offer a pinch of incense, say the words, and go home. Refusing looked like disloyalty rather than devotion — which is why Roman officials found Christians baffling and dangerous. A letter from the governor Pliny to the emperor Trajan, written about twenty years after this book, describes him inventing a test on the spot because no procedure existed: invoke the gods, offer wine and incense before the emperor's image, and curse Christ.

The first beast is a composite of Daniel's four beasts, given its power and throne by the dragon. It has a head wounded to death that is healed, and the world wonders after it and asks who is able to make war with it.

The second beast looks like a lamb and speaks like a dragon and exists to make people worship the first — a picture of a religious apparatus serving a political power. It performs signs, sets up an image, and enforces a mark without which no one may buy or sell.

The economic squeeze was not imaginary. Trade guilds had patron gods and shared meals; markets, contracts, and civic life were laced with religious observance. Losing access to trade was a real penalty for a real refusal.

Then the famous number: 666, given as the number of a man, with an invitation to calculate it. Ancient languages used letters as numerals, so names had numeric values, and people played this game on walls and in graffiti. One long-standing proposal reads the Hebrew spelling of "Neron Caesar," which totals 666. Other readings have been offered for centuries. Nobody has proved one.