And I saw another beast, this one coming up out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. Rev. 13:11.
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) greatly resembles 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. A serious indictment on the human race is that we learn very little from one generation to the next.
A beautiful, blond 13-year-old Austrian girl got on a train and said goodbye to her parents. Fifty years later she ended up in the hospital with high blood pressure. The physicians could find no explanation for the problem. Because she had no history of blood pressure problems, the doctors kept a close watch on her.
She told the chaplain that she was a Holocaust survivor. "I don't talk about it much--I mean, I didn't talk about it until my husband died. That's just how it was. We just didn't talk about it. But lately I've begun to...my parents were killed in Auschwitz. I was only 13. They sent me away on a train to Holland. From there I went 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. 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 perished in Auschwitz. The Germans kept very precise records, but they were hidden for many years.
"I have lived through things that are now part of the history books," she went on. "I don't understand why we [humans] don't learn. The genocides keep occurring. Look at Cambodia and Vietnam. Look what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds. I watched a program last night about it. They showed pictures of the bones and things. That's probably why my blood pressure went so high."
A nurse came in. The chaplain told her the probable reason for the blood pressure surge, and she went off to tell the doctor.
The book of Revelation places the blame for human misery 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 slain Lamb.
Lord, strengthen me to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, today. Help me to break the cycle of violence and oppression in my family first, and then everywhere else I go.
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