Revelation Chapter 13

VERSE 2 continued “Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority.”

(As taken from The Keys of Revelation)

Feet of a Bear

The feet of a bear possessed by the beast indicate strength and power. With its feet a bear crushes or hugs its prey to death. The animal has such strength that it can pull up small trees by the roots (elephants are the only other creature that can do likewise). Sometimes, to scare a foe, a bear will stand on its hind feet and lift and wave its forefeet (arms) as it approaches. The bear being ponderous in size and weight, such a spectacle is terrifying indeed. The grizzly, appropriately named Ursus horribilis, is no figment of the imagination.

The Medo-Persian Empire is symbolized in Daniel 7:5 as a bear because of the great size and numbers of its armed host. The story is told of a quarrel between the Persian and Macedonian kings caused by the refusal of Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, to pay the annual tribute of a thousand golden eggs to the Persian monarch, Darab the Second (Darius Codomanus). When Darab sent an ambassador for the customary tribute, Alexander is reported to have replied, “The bird that laid the eggs has flown to the other world.”

Darab sent another ambassador with a bat, a ball, and a bag of small seed. The bat and ball were meant to ridicule Alexander’s youth; the bag of seed was an emblem of the countless numbers of the Persian army. Such symbolic messages of olden times were not uncommon among oriental monarchs. Romantic and fabulous as this account may seem, it at least points out that tradition credits the Persian forces as being of incredulous size.

The Papal Bear

As in the siege of a city the aggressor sought to cut off all supplies to the inhabitants therein and thus force submission, so Papacy was wont to employ the similar tactics of the bear and to hug its prey to death. Applying the interdict, excommunicating from the sacraments, cutting off from all the privileges of the Church or communication with its members—all of these tactics had a negative impact on the individuals to whom they were directed. The size, influence, and catholicity of the Church indeed made such injunctions a stark reality.

Innocent III (1198–1216) was, in many respects, the most powerful pope of the Middle Ages. He greatly strengthened the temporal power of the Papacy, for in addition to the papal states, which he ruled in Italy, he had as a vassal under him Sicily and Naples, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Aragon, and Poland. It was to him that King John surrendered England, receiving it back from the pope’s legate as a fief. To check in this thirteenth century what was considered to be the waves of heresy that swept over Europe, the Church of Rome established a special tribunal called the Inquisition to try persons accused of revolting against the religious authority. Up to that time, heresy trials had been conducted by local bishops. The new Inquisition courts, which were soon put into the hands of the Dominican friars, were able to carry forward the work on a broader scale.

The Inquisition procedure deserves brief notice here. The suspected party was detained in prison, only to be brought to trial when his judges saw fit to do so. The proceedings were conducted secretly. He was not confronted with his accusers, nor were their names even then made known to him. At a grand ceremonial called sermo generalis, the names of the guilty were announced and the punishments inflicted. Punishments ranged from fines and excommunication to imprisonment in the dungeon or the galleys for life or for a limited period; for heretics deemed incorrigible, the sentence was death on the scaffold or in the terrible auto-da-fé (death by fire). Since canon law forbade(?) the clergy to participate in bloodshed, the severer penalties were conveniently carried out by the state.

The Inquisition, also called “the holy(?) office,” was chiefly active in Southern Europe and reached its height in Spain during the days of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, when Fray Tomás de Torquemada in 1483–1498 was made inquisitor general for the kingdom.

Thus, the application of the interdict or excommunication, and the repression by the forces of the Inquisition, closely resembled the siege tactics of the symbolic Persian bear. Papacy, the little horn of Daniel 7:8 destined to prevail against the saints during the long era of “a time and times and the dividing [or half] of time,” would indeed “wear out [many of] the saints of the Most High” (Dan. 7:21, 25).

Continued with next post.