The image of the beast is described in Revelation 13:1-2:
And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.
Will there literally be a terrifying creature like this or is this more of a metaphor to describe the terrifying nature of the Antichrist?
The beast described in Revelation 13:1-2 is not a literal creature. It’s a symbolic representation. The ten horns and seven heads symbolize coalitions or kings aligned with him).
Just as Jesus is called the “Lamb” to reflect His character and mission, the “beast” reflects the brutal, deceptive, and God-opposing nature of this end-times figure.
The Revelation of St. John, also known as The Apocalypse of St. John, is a unique text in the New Testament, it is the only example in the New Testament of a literary genre known as “apocalyptic”.
Apocalyptic literature was a very common literary genre in the ancient Jewish world, in the 2nd Temple Period there were a lot of apocalypses written, and the genre continued well past the 2nd Temple Period and into the early middle ages. Most apocalypses were Jewish, but there are also many Christian apocalypses that were written in later centuries.
So what, exactly, is an apocalypse? In spite of what the name “apocalypse” might conjure in our imaginations, the word literally just means “unveiling” or “revelation” or “uncovering”. The Greek word kaluptein means “to cover” and apo means “un-”, so literally “to uncover”. Apocalyptic texts are texts which usually present a figure who sees and experiences marvelous things, which he then relays to the reader. The language is often bold, graphic, and highly symbolic. A common motif is the figure being taken up into heaven and escorted by a heavenly messenger–an angel–and shown mysteries. Ancient Jewish apocalypses often took important biblical figures, like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, or Enoch and describe them being brought into the supernatural sphere and shown strange sights and sounds and smells. But the point of the text isn’t the fantastical itself, but what the fantastical is supposed to represent.
In the Old Testament we do not, quite, have apocalyptic texts, but both Daniel and Ezekiel are seen as pre-cursors, prototypes, of later Jewish apocalyptic material. Daniel and Ezekiel prototype the apocalyptic genre, the narrator (Daniel and Ezekiel respectively) is shown visions, encounters heavenly/angelic beings, has dreams; these visions are highly elaborate and fantastical. Daniel interprets dreams where images mean things, Ezekiel experiences a vision of the Divine Throne-chariot of God where strange heavenly creatures as “wheels within wheels” are discussed.
So let’s get back to the Revelation of St. John. The bulk of the text consists of visions John received while imprisoned on the island of Patmos, which he relays to seven churches (seven Christian communities located in the Roman province of Asia in what is modern Turkey). In these visions John encounters the fantastic, he is shown heavenly mysteries by an angelic escort, he sees all manner of things going on. Judgments being poured out in the form of “vials” and “bowls”, scrolls being opened in heaven which cause all manner of crazy things to happen. Visions of human-faced locust monsters pouring out of a bottomless pit, a beast rising from the ocean with many heads and crowns, a prostitute who rides around on a multi-headed beast.
But all these things are not literal. This is apocalyptic imagery. The beast that rises out of the sea? It’s just a man. A man with a name (what’s his name? John tells us the key to figuring that out is a numeric cipher: the man’s name has the numeric value of six hundred and sixty-six). The prostitute that rides upon the beast? She’s actually a city, a city on seven hills that was the center of global civilization and commerce (aka Rome) and the beast she rides? It’s said to be “scarlet”/”crimson”/”purple”, i.e. the color associated with the Roman Emperor–and indeed the many heads/crowns of this beast? These are kings, some have already died, but one still is, and one is still yet.
John was writing sometime around 90-95 AD, during the reign of Emperor Domitian. There’s some important historical information the Revelation gives us about what the Christians were experiencing at this time. Remember, the Revelation is written to seven churches (these were real, historical Christian communities John was connected to), and chapters 2 and 3 of the Revelation are devoted to revealed letters from Jesus to each of these churches: to Ephesus, to Philadelphia, to Smyrna, to Laodicea, etc. So, for example, when we get the scathing rebuke of the Laodiceans, we know that all the other churches are facing hardship, there’s persecution, there are heretics troubling them, they are struggling–but then we get to Laodicea and they aren’t struggling, in fact they are comfortable–and this is why Jesus rebukes them. Because they are so comfortable, they have become worthless “neither hot nor cold, but tepid” so Jesus says He would sit them out of His mouth (as one would spit out tepid lukewarm water).
That’s important to keep in mind when reading the Revelation: John is writing TO his contemporaries in the Asian churches, and so we should always be asking “What would this mean to the original readers?” Why a vision of a prostitute that’s a city? Because the city is Rome, and the beast is the imperial power of Rome–the city, the empire, mad withp ower, drunk on the blood of martyrs, persecution and oppression of the Church. Why does John tell people living in the first century that the name of the beast is a name of a man, and the key to figuring out who he is is the numerical value of his name–that only makes sense if people in the first century would have been able to figure that out. Because the man in question was known to them.