How I Read Revelation 13

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Anyone who says that a prophecy of Scripture may be fulfilled in our time owes his readers an account of how he reads. Otherwise they cannot tell whether he is reading the text or reading himself into it. St. Peter warned that “there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). This page sets out my method, so that you can hold me to it.

The literal sense first

The Catechism teaches that “all other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal” (CCC 116). So I begin with what the words of Revelation 13 say, read as the kind of writing they are. Revelation is apocalyptic: it speaks in images of beasts, horns, heads and numbers. Those images are not code to be cracked by private ingenuity. They are to be read the way the Church reads them, within the whole of Scripture.

The images also had a first meaning for St. John's first readers. Most commentators see in the beast from the sea the persecuting power of Rome, and in its worship the cult of the emperors. I accept that first meaning. The question this site asks is whether the same chapter, like other prophecies, also points beyond its first fulfillment to a final one at the end of history, as the Fathers held of the Antichrist.

Three rules from the Church

Scripture must be read in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written, and the Church gives three criteria for doing so (CCC 111–114). I try to keep all three:

• The unity of the whole of Scripture. Revelation 13 is read with Daniel 7, 2 Thessalonians 2, the letters of St. John and the Lord's discourse on the last days, never on its own.
• The living Tradition of the whole Church. I read it with the Fathers and Doctors, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyril, Augustine, Jerome and Thomas, and with later writers such as Fr. Charles Arminjon and Fr. Vincent Miceli. Where they agree, I follow them. Where they differ, I say so and leave you free.
• The analogy of faith. No reading may contradict the faith as a whole. In particular, no one may fix the time of the end (Matthew 24:36; CCC 673), and no one may claim to fulfill within history the messianic hope that can only be fulfilled beyond it (CCC 676).

Levels of authority, kept distinct

Not every statement about the beast carries the same weight. On this site every claim is meant to be clear about where it comes from:

• Scripture, the word of God.
• The Church's teaching, chiefly the Catechism (CCC 668–682).
• The Fathers and Doctors, whose common opinion carries great weight, and whose disagreements leave the question open.
• Theologians and spiritual writers, such as Arminjon, whose views are respected but not binding.
• Private revelations, such as approved Marian apparitions. These “do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith” (CCC 67). They can help, but they never add to the faith.
• My own reading, which is marked as mine and graded.

Confidence, graded

Each part of my reading is graded possible or probable. Nothing is graded settled, because the Church has not settled it, and I may not settle what she has not. I am more confident about the first and second beasts than about the three frogs, and the grades say so. When the evidence changes, the grades change, and the scorecard shows where each mark stands today.

The many antichrists, and the one

St. John wrote to the first Christians: “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared” (1 John 2:18). Scripture distinguishes the antichrist who is to come from the many antichrists already present in every age. Anyone who “denies the Father and the Son” shares in that spirit (1 John 2:22).

This distinction keeps me honest. A public figure may show several marks of the beast, and still be one of the many, a forerunner and not the last. Only the full course of events, and finally the Lord himself, will show which. That is why I call my reading a possibility to be tested, why this site names no one as the final Antichrist, and why every verdict here is on an argument, never on a soul. Judgment of persons belongs to God alone (CCC 1861).

The standards I hold myself to

My reading is one proposal among many. Interpreters have read these chapters in our day and in every age, and on apocalypse13.org my proposal is weighed beside theirs by the same standards. Among them:

• Test everything. “Test everything; retain what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
• Failed predictions count. If a prophet speaks and it does not come true, the Lord did not speak it (Deuteronomy 18:21–22). A reading that predicts must be judged by what happens.
• Evidence a reader can check. Every mark I claim should rest on public words and deeds, cited to sources you can verify.
• Others stated at their best. Those who read these chapters differently are given their strongest case before it is answered.
• Charity and justice. Nothing here may stir hatred or invite anyone to act against anyone.
• Fruit. A sound reading leads to “faithful endurance” (Revelation 13:10), not to fear.

Where I stand on the disputed questions

The saints have disagreed about many details of these chapters, and the Church has left most of them open. For the record, here is where I stand on a few, each as my own view:

• The temple. I find no real basis in Scripture for a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. I am closest to St. Jerome, who reads the holy place as the Church. I also see the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), which the mark desecrates.
• The daily sacrifice. I read it as the Mass. With Arminjon, I hold that the Mass ceases only after the Antichrist's universal rule (The End of the Present World, pp. 50–51). The suspension of public Masses during the pandemic was a foreshadowing, not the fulfillment.
• The mark. I read it as the abomination of desolation itself: a mark on each person who accepts it, desecrating the body as God's temple.
• The timing. The symbolic reading of the numbers is the Church's. My literal reading is offered only as a test against history, graded possible, and no date is set or computed.

What would change my mind

A reading that cannot be wrong is not worth holding. I have set out in advance, on the scorecard, what would strengthen my reading and what would weaken it, without any dates. If the evidence goes against me, I will say so.

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