Day 226

“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.” Revelation.13:11 (NASB)

An interesting feature of this part of Revelation is that beasts keep turning up, one after the other. The beast from the sea (Rev 13:1-10) looks a lot like the dragon of chapter 12. The beast from the earth, on the other hand, looks very different. But all three beasts have something in common, they all behave badly. It is a serious indictment on the human race. It seems that we learn very little from one generation to the next. 

A beautiful, 13-year-old Austrian girl got on a train and farewelled her parents. 50 years later without explanation, she ended up in a hospital with high blood pressure. She had no history of blood pressure problems so the doctors kept an eye on her. She told the chaplain that she was a Holocaust survivor.

“My parents were killed in Auschwitz. I was only 13. They sent me away on a train to Holland. From there I was sent to England. I never saw them again. I’ve always felt guilty that I left them there to die.” “You feel guilty?” the chaplain said. “Yes, I still do,” she said. “I never knew for sure if my parents were dead or alive until three years ago when they found the hidden files in East Germany. I was on a tour in Berlin when the news came to me about the date they were killed.” She went on. “I have lived through things that are now part of the history books. I don’t understand why we (humans) don’t learn. It doesn’t stop though; the genocides keep occurring. Look at Cambodia and Vietnam. Look what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds.” (I could add, “Look what Putin is doing to the Ukrainians”) The night before she had watched a program on it. The chaplain informed the medical staff as to the probable cause of the high blood pressure.

The Book of Revelation places the blame for human misery squarely on satan, aided by human stupidity. Generation after generation we make the same mistakes, thinking we are solving our problems when the only solution is to be found in the Lamb that was slain.