The Book of Revelation was written in the very late years of the first century or very early years of the second and is full of images and metaphors that would have been much more clear to its original readers than to us. We do know that a lot of the various creature references were familiar as visions first used by their own Hebrew prophets and other surrounding civilizations. In those days, the Empire of Rome had destroyed their whole way of life by devastating their holy city of Jerusalem and burning their magnificent Temple to the ground. The writer of Revelation saw Rome as the Seven Headed Dragon, and in fact, Satan. There was no greater monster to him than Rome. The sad fact today is that many of us still follow the example of allowing our anger to gradually remove all of the attributes of humanity from those we hate, eventually transforming them into irredeemable monsters. And of course, we can more easily kill monsters without remorse. (Image from Beasts of the Bible.)
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