"Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon."
(Revelation 13:11)
The case of two beasts in one chapter can be confusing! John distinguishes the first by its political power. He pictures the kingdom of the world opposed to the kingdom of God. It is the age old conflict of darkness and light. The second beast focuses on religious deception that seeks to turn people away from worshiping the one true God in order to worship Satan.
John’s concern in Revelation 13 is to warn of Satan’s deceptiveness, not only in the world at large but even in the church.
How can people fall for false religions? The deception is to make the false religion appear to have a ring of truth about it. John shows that Satan does this through parodying Christ and the apostles. A parody is a weak imitation of the real thing, whether of some literary work or person or religion. The second beast is first described as a parody of Christ. “Then I saw another beasts coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb and he spoke as a dragon.” Irony drips from this picture. If one thinks of a lamb, he certainly doesn’t have any image of a dragon in mind! What John is saying is that the beast gives some appearance of the gentleness of the lamb—and in this case, he has reference to parodying Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God. His appearance as a lamb is meant to deceive others into accepting what he has to say. His speech as a dragon implies deception since John has already described Satan as “the great dragon…who deceives the whole world” (12:9). No one is afraid of a lamb or intimidated by a lamb. He feels comfortable around a lamb. In just such setting, the second beast gains access to the world’s trust, and then, deceives with diabolical speech.
(Phil A. Newton)
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