Jamin Bradley

John presents two worlds you can be a part of in the Book of Revelation. One is run by a lamb covered in the blood of his own self-sacrifice, and the other is run by a dragon out for the blood of others. In the lamb’s world, you conquer others through your own self-sacrifice. In the dragon’s world, you conquer others through power. The lamb’s world will last for all eternity, while the dragon’s world will be snuffed out permanently. The lamb’s world is run by Jesus, while the dragon’s world is run by Satan.

Which world will we choose to be a part of? The obvious answer for Christians is, “Well, the lamb’s world, of course.” But as John lays out the finer details of how the dragon’s world works, we start to sweat a little. We certainly live in the dragon’s world—there’s no denying that. What’s more, we can’t help but feel that we’ve made quite a comfortable home in that world.

The Four Horsemen

John lays out the systems of the dragon’s world so we can identify them, as he always reappears in the same predictable ways. John uses the four horsemen of the Old Testament to envision these systems. In the Old Testament, they were angelic horsemen, patrolling the whole earth like policemen. In John’s Revelation, they have become demonic horsemen—corrupt cops who represent a whole world given over to corruption.

The white horse represents political figures who have an insatiable thirst for conquest. This is not the white horse that Jesus rides, as that’s a good 13 chapters later. However, I assume the fact that people confuse this demonic white horse with Jesus is intentional on John’s part, for how often people confuse the conquest of our political leaders with the will of God.

Next up is the red horse, a representation of the war that accompanies conquest. Then the black horse, which implements a broken economy into the world, where the poor are vastly affected by unreasonable prices, while the rich remain completely unaffected. And then comes the pale white horse with its rider, Death, followed by his accomplice Hades. As the world falls into chaos, Death takes the lives affected by all the conquering, war, and famine and throws them into the underworld.

The imagery here seems to portray horses chomping at the bit to destroy the world, which creates the feeling that God has been holding these horses back, just as he’s chained up other fallen angels in Revelation to protect us. In this light, these forces are not God’s will for the earth; rather, when humans decide to worship the dragon over the lamb, God steps back, and the world experiences the weight of their dragon-like desires. The Lamb does not desire all of the stealing, killing, and destroying—the Bible is clear that that kind of stuff belongs with the demons. Rather, the Lamb reveals to John how the dragon’s world operates when the dragon is worshipped.

The False Trinity

While the four horses represent the deeds of the dragon, John lays out a false Trinity of sorts to show us how the dragon operates. While the dragon is the false god behind the world, he raises up two partners to help him carry out his will at a greater capacity. The first partner is a beast of chaos, who is appointed to lead a nation. This beast represents the kind of political power that partners with the dragon’s will to carry out the ways of the four horses. As crazy as it sounds, those who aren’t awake enough to notice might confuse this chaotic beast for the lamb, for it has a lion’s mouth. But the lamb only makes lion noises—he does not look like a lion in any way.

Enter chaos beast number two. This one represents the religious force that partners with the first beast, leading people to worship it. Although people should be able to recognize it as part of the dragon’s world, some do not, for although it talks like a dragon, it has horns like a lamb. The second beast points to the first beast, which in turn points to the dragon, with each seeking to deceive people into believing they are Jesus.

But they are not. Indeed, they are nothing like him. They are beastly beings with dragon tongues, masquerading behind lion mouths and lamb horns.

Lady Babylon

John then introduces a new character, known as Lady Babylon, to represent the nation under the reign of the dragon. If the four horses of the apocalypse represent the divine police force turned corrupt, then Lady Babylon is akin to the Statue of Liberty becoming its antithesis. All who have been living in the ways of the beast are found to have been sleeping with Lady Babylon. They have been seduced by the ways of the dragon and are participating in his chaos. She is drunk with blood and strengthened by idol worship, for all who have slept with her have made space in their lives for the demonic idols that assist the dragon. The whole nation has become a mess as she has only risen in power through the oppression of the weak and powerless.

The Cycle of the Dragon

As we step back to look at the dragon’s world that John has painted for us, we can’t help but notice that he’s not just talking about the end of the world—he’s talking about the chaos cycle that overcomes the world every time we fall under the ideology of the dragon. This cycle is spotted in the earliest chapters of Genesis, in the story of the Tower of Babel(lon). Indeed, Babylon didn’t exist in John’s time, so he was relating to us a system that had existed long before him.

For John, the beast was Nero, and Babylon was Rome. In the 1900s, an example of the first beast was Hitler, with the second beast of Nazism, and their Babylon of Germany. In our own context, the first beast is Trump, the second beast is MAGA, which leads so many people to confuse him with a messiah figure, and Babylon is America. Why can we say this? Because the four horses, the false trinity, and the ways of Lady Babylon are all present. And of course, beasts and Babylon can exist in multiple places around the whole at any given time, as all nations have the ability to become such things.

God revealed all of these systems to John for a reason: we’re supposed to recognize them when we see them. If we do not, then the Book of Revelation is quite pointless. It’s not the end of the world when we see these systems, though at the same time, the end is always here, though it’s never here, but always in our face.

The dragon’s world is a cycle that has existed all throughout history. It will continue to rise up over and over again until the Lamb comes to set things right and try all of creation in the divine courtrooms of Heaven. We might think we’re getting away with a little bit of dragon partnership, but we will be held to account. Our way is the Lamb’s way: faithfulness to a loving, self-sacrificial life.