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Whereas ch. 12 described the Dragon as God’s enemy, ch. 13 identifies two beasts as enemies of the church who ally themselves with the state against the saints. Ch. 13 lifts up the theme of conflict and demonstrates John’s application of the OT to the first-century crisis.
John condensed the four beasts of Dan 7 into this leopard beast. Daniel’s lion, bear, leopard, and terrible fourth beast furnish the physical features for John’s leopard beast (13:1-2). J.B. Smith observes that Revelation “is a supplement to that of Daniel” (Smith, 4). It seems that John believed that the historical crises of the Jews during the persecutions of Antiochus IV of Syria were being repeated and fulfilled during Domitian’s reign. Thus John turned to Daniel as a scriptural basis for understanding what was happening. His visions update Daniel for the first Christian century.
The leopard beast commits blasphemy, has dominion over the earth, is worshiped, and makes war on the saints (13:1, 5, 6). These evil deeds recall the misdeeds of Antiochus IV as recorded in Dan 7:21-25. John mentions the leopard beast’s authority (13:2, 4, 5, 7) and power. These words, the actions of the beast, and the revision of Dan 7 suggest, as Beasley-Murray concludes, that the beast represents “the deification of secular authority” (Beasley-Murray, 251). The leopard beast represents the Roman emperor Domitian.
John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Alma White, and F.G. Smith erred in interpreting the first beast as Roman Catholicism. They read back into Revelation the tensions related to the Protestant Reformation. Ralph Earle regards the beast as Domitian, while allowing it to represent possibly a forthcoming antichrist at the end of time (Earle, 578).