This verse is both a warning and a comfort to the church of Christ in the world as she faces the rising and eventual onslaught of that terrible beast whom John sees rising out of the sea of nations. Satan gives his seat, power, and authority to this beast, who is the final form that antichrist will take in world history. The beast hates God, Christ, and the church of Christ in the world. The elect will refuse to worship the beast and to take his mark on their foreheads or hands. In his hatred of God and Christ, this beast will make war on the church and—as John makes clear in Revelation 11 with the deaths of the two witnesses—the beast will succeed in putting the church institute and the public preaching of the word of the gospel out of existence in the world.
The temptation of the church will be to oppose by the sword the coming and working of antichrist. The sword is simply the ultimate form of earthly power as the means to deprive someone of his life on the earth, and thus the sword stands for all forms of earthly power. The church cannot and may not oppose antichrist with earthly power. His coming, success, and power are ordained of God. Antichrist will come, and he must come. He must have his day, and in his day will be the culmination in him personally and in his kingdom of the history-long development of sin. If one opposes antichrist with the sword and then perishes with the sword, his perishing is just.
Yet in this warning there also is comfort for the beleaguered church. The kingdom of antichrist is nothing more and nothing less than a leading into captivity. Antichrist will deceive the nations and bring them into the bondage of his kingdom, which is bondage to sin and death. He will take the legitimate power of the sword that God has given to the government, and antichrist will turn that sword against the church of God, the apple of God’s eye. And antichrist’s end will be destruction. For “he that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” Therein is the statement of God’s perfect justice, which he will execute against that man, his whole damnable kingdom, and all who belong to it and worship the beast out of the sea. When the Lord appears, the beast and Satan, who will inspire the beast, will be cast into the lowest hell.
Herein, then, are the patience and faith of the saints. In the rise of this glorious but wicked beast, by faith the saints see God, sovereign over all things and reigning through his king, whom God has set upon his holy hill of Zion. The saints see Jesus, ruling over the nations with a rod of iron. They see in that opposition to God and Christ the vain imaginations of the heathen, who want to cast God’s yoke from them. And the saints see that he who sits in heaven is laughing at the wicked, who even in their opposition to God are but the instruments of God’s sovereign good pleasure. Being united with God’s Christ by faith, the saints see that their faith is the victory over the world. And they wait. Yes, they wait; they watch; and they pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”
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