This note is interpretation, not translation, and the readings marked as Jon’s are his. It is written so that a reader knows what the second animal’s signs are before seeing any: real enough to watch, and false in where they lead.
What the text says about him. John sees another wild animal coming up out of the earth, and it had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon (13:11). It looks like the Lamb and talks like the Slanderer. Its authority is borrowed: it uses all the authority of the first animal on its behalf (13:12). It never points to itself: it makes the earth and everyone living on it bow to the first animal (13:12). It performs great signs, even making fire come down out of the sky, and by them it leads the people living on the earth off the road (13:13–14). It has an image of the first animal made, gives breath to the image … so that the image could even speak, and has everyone killed who will not bow to it (13:14–15). And it puts the stamp on everyone, so that nobody can buy or sell without it (13:16–17). The book then names it three times: the false prophet, out of whose mouth an unclean spirit comes with the dragon’s and the animal’s (16:13); the false prophet who had performed the signs in its presence, by which he led off the road those who received the stamp (19:20); and in the lake of fire, where the animal and the false prophet are (20:10).
The signs are real, and they prove nothing. The law settled this before any of it happened. If a prophet arises among you … and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, and he says, Let us go after other gods … you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart (Deuteronomy 13:1–3; 13:2–4 in the Hebrew). The sign coming true is not the test; where it leads is. Pharaoh’s magicians did the same with their staffs, and they became tanninim, serpents — the word Ezekiel uses for Pharaoh himself, the great dragon (29:3) — and Aaron’s staff swallowed theirs (Exodus 7:11–12). Jesus says it of the last days in the same words this book uses: false christs and false prophets will arise and give great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the chosen (Matthew 24:24); great signs, sēmeia megala, is the phrase of 13:13. Paul calls them signs and wonders of falsehood, working with all deception on those who did not receive the love of the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10). And signs done in His own name are no proof either: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name … and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you (Matthew 7:22–23).
So the test is where the sign points. John says what true signs are for: these are written so that you may trust that Jesus is the Anointed, the Son of God, and that trusting you may have life in his name (John 20:31). And how to test the spirit behind a message: do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits … for many false prophets have gone out into the world; by this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus the Anointed has come in the flesh is from God (1 John 4:1–2). The false prophet’s signs all point to the animal and its image. That is how they are known.
Fire from the sky. His best sign is the one that belonged to the true prophets: Elijah called down fire on Carmel (1 Kings 18:38, marked at 13:13), and the two witnesses in this book have fire for their enemies (11:5). When James and John wanted to call fire down from the sky on a village that would not receive Jesus, He turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:54–55). Fire from heaven on demand, used to make people bow, is a counterfeit of a true prophet’s sign.
The image, and the breath. This is Daniel 3 again (marked at 13:14–15): a golden image, everyone told to bow, and the furnace for anyone who will not. Habakkuk had already named what an image is: woe to the one who says to wood, Wake up; to a dumb stone, Rise … there is no breath at all inside it (2:19). Breath is God’s to give: He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7), and in this book, after the two witnesses are killed, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet (11:11). The false prophet gives breath to the image (13:15): the same word, pneuma, given to a statue, so that people will bow to it or die.
A counterfeit trinity — a reading many hold. The three are named together twice (16:13; 20:10), and each copies a person of the true God. The dragon gives the animal its power and its throne and great authority (13:2), as the Father gives all things into the Son’s hand (John 3:35). The animal has one of its heads as if slaughtered to death, healed (13:3) — hōs esphagmenēn, the very words used of the Lamb, standing, as if slaughtered, hōs esphagmenon (5:6): a counterfeit death and return. And the false prophet does what Jesus said the Spirit would do, the wrong way round: the Spirit will not speak on his own … he will glorify me (John 16:13–14), and the false prophet speaks for another and makes the earth bow to him; the Spirit gives life, and the false prophet gives breath to an image. The text never says “trinity”; the parallels are the reading.
Who could enforce the stamp — Jon’s reading. No religious leader could make the whole earth take a stamp on his own authority, and the text does not say one does. The false prophet looks like the Lamb, speaks for the dragon, and uses the political animal’s authority, not its own (13:11–12). Religious authority using a state’s power is the shape the text gives the enforcer. Where Jon reads that today is set out in the note on the Slanderer, the Animal and the Name.
Allowed, not approved. Everything the two animals do is given to them. In chapter 13 the verb edothē, “it was given”, occurs six times: a mouth speaking great things and insults, and authority for forty-two months (13:5); war on God’s people, and authority over every tribe and nation (13:7); the signs (13:14); breath for the image (13:15). And it is God’s own doing: God put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose — to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the animal, until God’s words are finished (17:17). Being given power does not make them good. The spirits that come out of the mouths of the dragon, the animal and the false prophet are the spirits of demons performing signs (16:14), and all three end in the lake of fire (19:20; 20:10). Scripture says it the same way elsewhere: the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him (1 Samuel 16:14); and the accuser in Job acts only as far as he is let, only against him do not stretch out your hand (Job 1:12; 2:6).
1 Kings 22 is the same thing told as a story. Ahab, king of Israel and Jezebel’s husband, gathers about four hundred prophets before a war, and they all say go up, and the Lord will give it into the king’s hand (22:6). One of them, Zedekiah, makes himself horns of iron and says thus says the LORD: with these you will gore Aram (22:11) — horns again, held up in the LORD’s name; an image beside 13:11, not shared wording. They are not prophets of Baal; they speak in the LORD’s name. But Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, having heard them all, asks is there not here still a prophet of the LORD, that we may ask him? (22:7). There is one, Micaiah, and Ahab says I hate him, for he does not prophesy good about me, only evil (22:8). The messenger sent to fetch him puts it plainly: the words of the prophets are one mouth, good to the king; let your word be like one of theirs (22:13) — beside the kings of one mind at 17:17. Micaiah answers what the LORD says to me, that I will speak (22:14), and tells what he saw: the LORD on His throne, the host of heaven standing beside Him, and the question who will entice Ahab to go up and fall. A spirit comes forward: I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets, and the LORD says go out and do so (22:21–22). So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets (22:23) — your prophets, Ahab’s, not the LORD’s. Ahab goes to the battle in disguise, and a man draws his bow at random and kills him, according to the word of the LORD (22:34, 38). He hated the one prophet who told him the truth, and he was given the lie he preferred.
Ezekiel 14 says it outright. Some of the elders of Israel came and sat in front of Ezekiel to ask the LORD, and the LORD said: Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity in front of their faces. Should I let myself be asked by them at all? (14:1–3). The idol is in the heart of the one asking, not the prophet. Anyone who does that, of Israel or a foreigner living there, and then comes to the prophet, God will answer Himself, according to the multitude of his idols (14:4, 7). Then the prophet: if the prophet is enticed and speaks a word, I the LORD have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him (14:9) — pittah, entice, the verb of 1 Kings 22:20–22. And the two are judged as one: the guilt of the one who asks will be like the guilt of the prophet (14:10). That is Ahab and his four hundred, and it is the itching ears: the wish comes first, from an idol already set up in the heart, and the prophet who supplies the answer it wants is given over with it. Even here the purpose is to bring them back: turn back, and turn away from your idols (14:6), so that the house of Israel will no longer stray from me … and they will be my people, and I will be their God (14:11). The Greek translation softens the chapter, giving dianoēmata, thoughts, for the idols and kolasis, punishment, for the stumbling block; this note follows the Hebrew.
What an idol in the heart is. Ezekiel 14 does not define it. It does not need to for the elders it is said of: they have set the idols up and still come to ask the LORD. Scripture does show, in two places, what a heart does that has put something in God’s place.
Ezekiel 28. To the ruler of Tyre: because your heart is lifted up, and you said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods in the heart of the seas — yet you are a man and not a god — and you set your heart as the heart of God (28:2; again 28:6). The word heart is in that one verse three times in the Hebrew. There is no statue in it. The idol is the man himself.
Deuteronomy 29. Moses has just reminded them of what they saw in the nations, their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold (29:17; 29:16 in the Hebrew). Then: lest there be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations; lest there be among you a root bearing poison and wormwood (29:18). And the man who hears the words of the oath blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart (29:19). The next verse says the LORD will not be willing to forgive him (29:20). The turning away happens in the heart, the idols stand outside it, and what the heart does is bless itself against the word it has just heard. Hebrews 12:15 takes up the root: lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, in the Greek translation’s words for Deuteronomy 29:18, riza ano phyousa.
Jon’s reading. Jon reads these two as showing what the idol in the heart is: a heart that puts itself, or what it trusts, in God’s place, and blesses itself while still hearing His word.
Red flag That the idol set up in the heart at Ezekiel 14:3 is self-worship. Ezekiel 14 does not say what the idols are. Ezekiel 28 and Deuteronomy 29 show a heart making itself God and blessing itself, and Luke 18:9 says some trusted in themselves that they were righteous; but no verse says that is what Ezekiel 14:3 means. Ezekiel itself says the heart goes after its idols (20:16) and, of those who sit before the prophet, after their gain (33:31), and Paul calls greed idolatry (Colossians 3:5).
Balaam is the mirror. Micaiah’s vow is Balaam’s, word for word in the Hebrew: the word that God puts in my mouth, that I will speak (oto adabber, Numbers 22:38). And in both stories God decides what comes out of a prophet’s mouth, whatever the king wants. The LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth (Numbers 23:5) and turned a curse that had been paid for into a blessing (Deuteronomy 23:5; 23:6 in the Hebrew). The LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s prophets (1 Kings 22:23), and a king who wanted flattery was given flattery.
Why God allows it — Paul’s reason. Paul gives the reason in the same passage that names the false signs. Those who perish do so because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason God sends them a working of error, so that they believe the lie, so that all may be judged who did not trust the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12). The deception is not where it begins. Refusing the truth is, and the deception is what is sent to those who refused it. Romans 1 runs in the same order: they exchanged the truth of God for the lie (1:25), and since they did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge, God handed them over to a worthless mind (1:28).
Itching ears. Ahab’s prophets said what he wanted, and he hated the one who would not. Paul says the same appetite will come again: a time will come when they will not put up with healthy teaching, but according to their own desires they will heap up teachers for themselves, because their ears itch; and they will turn their hearing away from the truth and turn aside to myths (2 Timothy 4:3–4). Isaiah heard a people say it outright: they say to the seers, Do not see, and to the visionaries, Do not show us what is right; speak to us smooth things, see illusions (Isaiah 30:10). Jeremiah: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their hand, and my people love it so (Jeremiah 5:31). Paul refuses the method himself: we never came with a word of flattery … God is witness (1 Thessalonians 2:5); and of those who serve their own appetite he says that by smooth talk and fine words they deceive the hearts of the innocent (Romans 16:18). The wish to be flattered comes first, and the teachers who supply it follow.
Where Jon sees it — Jon’s reading. Jon reads Paul’s reason as matching Catholic doctrine closely. Ahab’s prophets are the pattern he sees in it: they did not deny the LORD; they spoke in His name, with one voice, what the king wanted to hear. His reason is assurance. In scripture what saves is simply the faith and the good confession (1 Timothy 4:1; 6:12): if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9). And it is held with assurance: I wrote these things to you who trust in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13); let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22); there is therefore now no condemnation (Romans 8:1). Catholic doctrine, speaking in His name, teaches the opposite. The Council of Trent decreed that no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God (Session 6, chapter 9), and put under an anathema anyone who says a believer must believe for certain … that his sins are forgiven him (canon 13), or that he will certainly persevere to the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation (canon 16). So a believer, short of a special revelation, is taught that he cannot be sure. The same chapter of Trent says no one should doubt God’s mercy or Christ’s merit; the doubt it requires is about oneself. That, in Jon’s reading, is the truth refused: what John wrote so that you may know, taught in the Lord’s name as something no one can know. The Trent texts are given in full in the note on Revelation and Rome, and the rest of the doctrine he means is set out against the text in the notes on the Faith, or the Teachings of Demons, and on the Slanderer, the Animal and the Name.
Red flag That 2 Thessalonians 2 or 1 Kings 22 is about the Catholic Church. Neither names it. Paul’s condition is refusing the love of the truth, and who has done that is God’s to judge; and the call at 18:4 is to God’s people inside her, not a charge against them.
Abominations. Ezekiel already gives idolatry this name. The Hebrew word is to’evah, and no book uses it more: 43 times in Ezekiel, against 22 in Proverbs and 17 in Deuteronomy. The idols and the abominations stand side by side. Turn back from your idols, and turn your faces from all your abominations (14:6) — the verse that closes the Ezekiel 14 judgment. He lifts his eyes to the idols, he does an abomination (18:12). They made the images of their abominations, their detestable things (7:20). And once more the heart is in it: their heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations (11:21). In the temple vision the LORD shows the prophet great abominations that the house of Israel does there (8:6).
The same word in Revelation. The book’s word is bdelygma, which the translation renders “detestable thing”. It is the word the Greek translation of Ezekiel gives for to’evah at 7:20. It is in Revelation three times: the woman’s gold cup full of detestable things (17:4); her name, the mother of prostitutes and of the detestable things of the earth (17:5); and the city that nobody who does what is detestable or false will enter (21:27). The verb is at 21:8, among those whose share is the lake: the detestable, beside the idol-worshippers.
In Jesus’ mouth, and in Proverbs. Outside Revelation, bdelygma is in the Gospels only in the abomination of desolation (Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14) and once at Luke 16:15. There the Pharisees, who are lovers of money (16:14), hear: You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination before God. Proverbs says it of the heart itself: an abomination of the LORD is everyone proud in heart (16:5; to’avat YHWH kol gevah lev). In Ezekiel 11:21, Luke 16:15 and Proverbs 16:5 the heart and the abomination are in the one verse. The texts do not say the Pharisees worshipped idols, and Proverbs does not name an idol; what they share is the word and the heart.
Where this stops. The text names no one as the false prophet and gives no date. His signs are allowed (13:14, 15): the same word that limits everything the animals do. And he ends where the book says he ends, thrown alive into the lake of fire (19:20).
How sure I am — Jon. I am not fully confident of the readings flagged above. They are my best explanation of what I have studied here. If I learn otherwise, I will take them down, and my email is on the About page of this site if you want to show me.