Questions From Readers

● What are the unclean inspired expressions mentioned at Revelation 16:13, and who are the dragon and wild beast and false prophet out of whose mouths these expressions come?—M. Q., United States.

Revelation 16:13 (NW) reads: “And I saw three unclean inspired expressions that looked like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the wild beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” Preceding chapters of Revelation show the identities of the dragon and wild beast and false prophet. Revelation 12:3, 9 (NW) shows the dragon is fiery-colored and has seven heads and ten horns, and that it is the “original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth.” Revelation 13:1, 2 (NW) speaks of “a wild beast ascending out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads.” This wild beast is Satan’s visible organization that rises up out of the seas of humanity alienated from God, and it is similar in appearance to the dragon, whose evil it images and reflects, and from whom it gets its power: “And the dragon gave the beast its power and its throne and great authority.” One of the heads of the wild beast, each of which represents one of the seven world powers, is then shown in more detail as a beast that “had two horns like a lamb, but it began speaking as a dragon,” and caused “those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the wild beast.” (Rev. 13:11-15, NW) This two-horned beast is the seventh world power, the Anglo-American world power, and it caused the nations of earth to form the “image to the wild beast,” the League of Nations and later the United Nations, and it made great claims as to what these international political organizations would accomplish in the way of establishing world peace. Since these claims were never fulfilled, this two-horned beast that appeared lamblike but actually spoke for the dragon was proved to be a false prophet, and from then on Revelation speaks of it as “the false prophet,” at Re 16:13, Re 19:20 and Re 20:10.

The unclean inspired expressions that come from the mouths of the dragon Satan and his visible agencies, the wild beast and the false prophet, “are, in fact, expressions inspired by demons and perform signs, and they go forth to the kings of the entire inhabited earth, to gather them together to the war of the great day of God the Almighty. And they gathered them together to the place that is called in Hebrew Har–Magedon.” (Rev. 16:14, 16, NW) The likeness of these expressions to frogs shows their uncleanness in Jehovah’s eyes, just as the frog was unclean for his people Israel. They are the unclean mouthings of Satan through his visible organizations, the wild beast and the false prophet. Frogs are small, but they make a resounding noise nonetheless, and proclaim things that put the nations against God.

On this point the book “New Heavens and a New Earth” says: “The inspired expressions from Satan the Dragon and through his visible organizations, the wild beast and the false prophet, are unclean in God’s sight like slimy frogs. With big mouths they croak swelling words of peace and security. They produce signs such as the League of Nations and the United Nations and regional treaty organizations and ideological blocks. But where they really are leading the ‘kings’ (the rulers) of the entire inhabited earth is to the greatest war of all times, not a mere World War III with hydrogen bombs, but a universal war involving heaven and earth, the invisible and the visible. It is ‘the war of the great day of God the Almighty’! This will spell mournful defeat and disaster for Christendom and the rest of the demon-worshiping world.”

For more information on the identification of the dragon and the wild beast and the false prophet, and the unclean inspired expressions that come out of their mouths, please see the book “New Heavens and a New Earth”, pages 287-290.