The Metamorphosis

At the summit of his glory, with the world at his feet and a cheering multitude crying out his name, the man at the center of the Covenant is struck by a sword, in the middle phase of the Covenant, in the days before the abomination.

For three and a half years he has led the world through the pressure cooker. He was the peacemaker, the stabilizer, the savior who distributed the bread when the shelves were empty and whose realm still had light burning when the rest of the world sat in the dark. They did not yet worship him, but they trusted him with everything. And then, at the hinge point of the week, he falls. A deadly wound — "the wound of the sword," as the sixth chapter showed, the mark that made clear this is no empire but a man. The savior is dead. The world stands paralyzed. And then, after three days, he rises.

But the man who rises is not the man who fell.

What Came Up Out of the Pit

For do you remember what happened at the end of the previous chapter, in the run-up to the midst? The fifth trumpet sounded, and the abyss — the Abyss — opened. The pit that was sealed since the primeval age was unbarred. And now, at the midst of the week, what all of that was leading to is accomplished. For the Scripture says something uncanny about this figure: the beast "ascends out of the abyss" (Revelation 11:7; 17:8). It is not the man who rises out of the grave — out of the abyss something rises, and it takes possession of the emptied body of the man.

It is a counterfeit resurrection, three days after death, a deliberate parody of the One who truly rose on the third day. And the world, which rejected the real empty tomb two thousand years ago, now throws itself in worship before the counterfeit: "and all the world wondered after the beast" (13:3). This is the wonder the sixth chapter placed in the future — not the resurrection of an empire in history, but the resurrection of this one man, here, in the middle phase. The peacemaker is gone. What walks about in his skin is the Destroyer.

For you already know his name. Out of the pit came a king, "in the Hebrew tongue Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue Apollyon" — the Destroyer (9:11). And the chain followed back then now closes: the beast that ascends out of the abyss "goes into perdition" — eis apōleian — and the man he inhabits Paul calls "the son of perdition," the son of apōleia (2 Thessalonians 2:3). The man who came with peace now comes with destruction. The charismatic savior has become an empty shell in which the abyss itself has come to dwell.

The Spirit with the Bow

And permit me here, as a weighed conjecture and not as proof, to take up the thread from the sixth chapter one more time, for here it comes to rest.

Earlier it became clear that behind the empires stands not merely a nameless darkness, but a spiritual essence that has embodied itself through the centuries in empire after empire — the "prince" behind the thrones. And of that essence the prophets name one again and again: the Assyrian. The figure who falls "by a sword, not of man" (Isaiah 31:8); for whom the pyre of Tophet lies "prepared long beforehand" (Isaiah 30:33); who in the days of the Messiah "comes into our land" (Micah 5:5). The god of Assyria was the war-god of the drawn bow; the Greek name of the Destroyer, Apollyon, sounds like Apollo, the archer — and the Greeks themselves already connected that name with "destroying"; and the first rider rode with a bow. Three times the same bow, down through the centuries. It is, I repeat honestly, no airtight identity — no text equates Asshur and Apollyon. But as a typological resonance it is too striking to pass over in silence: the being that now enters the body of the antichrist is not new. It is as old as Nineveh. Micah names Assur and "the land of Nimrod" in one breath (Micah 5:5-6), and from Shinar Nimrod went to Assur and built Nineveh (Genesis 10:11). In our time the "caliphate" of 2014 was proclaimed from Mosul, the old Nineveh, on 1 Ramadan 1435 (29 June 2014). That too is interpretation, and it chafes: Mosul is Nineveh, not Babel, and the woman of Zechariah 5 is set down in Shinar, not in Assur. The prophets called it the Assyrian; John calls it Apollyon; and at the midst of the week it steals a name and a face.

He Sits Down on the Mountain

And then he does it. The deed the whole Bible, from Daniel to Paul, has warned of with bated breath.

He goes to the Temple Mount — to the one rock where, as the seventh chapter showed, the two focal points of history touch each other. He ends the sacrifice that Israel was only just permitted to resume; "in the midst of the week," exactly as Daniel wrote, "he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease" (Daniel 9:27). The Covenant is broken — the hudna has done its work, and the noose is drawn tight. He sets up the abomination of desolation (12:11). And he does what no tyrant before him ever dared: he goes, in Paul's words, to "sit as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4). (The Greek word Paul uses, naos, points to the holy place itself, not to an entire temple complex; so a temple need not even have been built — one marked-off sanctuary suffices.)

Understand what truly happens here, for it is deeper than one man seized by megalomania. Behind the man stands the dragon. And for the dragon this is no new whim; it is his oldest dream, spoken in a text thousands of years old. Listen to what he once said in his heart: "I will ascend into heaven [...] I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the uttermost north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:13-14). Once he was a covering cherub on the holy mountain of God, and he was cast down from it (Ezekiel 28). Since then he has craved one thing only: back upon that mountain, and not as servant but as god. And now, at the midst of the week, it happens — literally. For the first time since his fall the adversary sits on the mountain of God, at the center of all power, and lets himself be worshiped. Not metaphorically. On the rock of Moriah. For forty-two months.

And to attain it, he finally throws away what carried him up. For the religion that helped him climb — the system that brought him in as the Mahdi — he no longer needs now that he wants to be worshiped himself. And so "the ten kings and the beast shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire" (Revelation 17:16). The trap snaps shut: Islam was the lever, not the goal. In the end only one is to be worshiped, and it is not Allah and not any god of any nation. It is he.

The Throne That Does Not Fill

But here lies what the dragon, in all his cunning, never understood — and it is perhaps the deepest truth of this whole chapter.

He has it. At last. The mountain, the throne, the worship, the power over the whole earth. Everything he has hungered for since his fall now lies in his hand. And it does not fill him. Read what the Scripture says about the heart of the dragon at precisely this moment of his triumph: "Woe to the earth [...] for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has but a short time" (Revelation 12:12). No joy. No rest. Wrath. He has reached the summit, and the summit is empty.

It is like a spoiled child who climbs a whole lifetime toward the very highest place, shoving aside everything in its way, finally reaching the top — and there, instead of the fullness it was so sure of, finds only a gaping emptiness, and in a fury begins to strike out all around. For a stolen throne can fill no one; only a given crown gives rest. The dragon has taken everything he wanted, and it tastes like ashes in his mouth. The forty-two months are not his coronation. They are his tantrum — the blind fury of a being that has at last conquered the mountain and discovers that it was never the mountain he was made for. He wanted to be equal to the Most High; instead he has become the loneliest presence in the universe, and he knows it, and it drives him mad.

The Image That Speaks and the Mark That Divides

And out of that wrath he rolls out, in the second half of the week, his system of total subjugation. The False Prophet gives "breath to the image of the beast, that the image should even speak" (Revelation 13:15) — the image that emerged in this book as the sovereign intelligence, the demonic black box no one fathoms, inspired by the prophet, an oracle that answers but cannot be sounded. And he compels "all, both small and great, rich and poor," to receive a mark, "that no man might buy or sell, save he that has the mark" (13:16-17). Digital, yes — the switch from the eleventh chapter, at last fully in one hand. But also, deeper, a sign of loyalty, a confession: whoever bows, lives; whoever refuses, falls under the sword on the neck from the ninth chapter. From this hour the division is absolute. Worship the beast, or die.

The Mountain Is Occupied

This is the darkest hour of history — the abomination on the holy place, the Destroyer on the throne, the mark over the whole earth. And if here you are in danger of losing courage, then look, one last time in this chapter, at the clock.

Forty-two months. It stands there, in black and white, by the authority the beast receives (13:5). A number. A limit. The dragon sits on the mountain of God not because he has won, but because he has been given a short, measured leash to fill up the measure of unrighteousness before the Stone falls. His wrath is not the wrath of the victor; it is the wrath of the condemned man who already knows his sentence. He has conquered the mountain — but he has only occupied it, as a usurper, for forty-two months, on ground that will never be his.

For it is the same mountain. The rock on which the adversary sits for forty-two months in stolen glory is the rock to which the true King returns. "His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem" (Zechariah 14:4). The occupier sits on borrowed time, on ground that is not his, and above his head hangs the Stone that was cut without human hands.

So when you see the abomination set up and the world bow down, do not despair, and do not think that evil has triumphed. The abomination on the mountain is no sign that the King has lost. It is the surest sign that He stands at the door. The tantrum of the dragon is the birth pang just before the birth. The mountain is occupied — and the Owner is coming home.