Română
In this recording, Archimandrite Athanasios Mytilinaios (1927-2006), answers the question: “a Jehovah’s Witness once told me that the beast mentioned by John in the Book of Revelation is the Anglo-American political power. What can I say to him to pinpoint his error?”
Audio source: “Answers to Catechism questions”, no. 498 (in Greek), December 1st, 1991
https://arnion.gr/index.php/diafora-uemata/pantiseis-pori-n-katixitiko
Fr. Athanasios:
A second question asks: “a Jehovah’s Witness once told me that the beast mentioned by John in the Book of Revelation is the Anglo-American political power. What can I say to him to pinpoint his error?” But what if he is not mistaken, and this is indeed the case? Anyway, let us carefully examine this issue step by step. Firstly, never call them “Jehovahs”. Unfortunately, it has become common in our country to call them “Jehovahs,” but this is incorrect. Even they object to being called that, and rightly so because the word Yahweh refers to the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God in Hebrew scripture. It is called the Tetragrammaton because it consists of four consonants. You may know that the Old Testament was not written with vowels and consonants but only with consonants, even though the Hebrew language has both consonants and vowels. For example, Aleph is the letter A and it is a vowel. However, while vowels exist in the spoken language, they were not used in the written form. Thus, since God’s name was written with four consonants, we do not know its exact pronunciation.
Besides, the Jews referred to it as “the ineffable, the inexpressible name”, and instead of using the Tetragrammaton, they used other synonyms such as “Adonai” that means “Most High” etc. So, later scholars inserted vowels into the Tetragrammaton and the word Yahweh was formed. The Chiliasts, that is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, used a variation of this reconstruction “Jehovah”, but whether the vowels are slightly altered or not is irrelevant when translating it into another language like Greek. So, the name Yahweh verbalizes the four-letter name of the Lord. However, calling these heretics “Jehovahs” is highly inappropriate and offensive as you can understand; it is something very bad and unpleasant. Unfortunately, it has prevailed, and even some ecclesiastical circles have adopted this terminology: the “Jehovahs”. Instead, we should refer to them as Chiliasts (Millennialists).
Now, regarding our question: a Chiliast said that John in Revelation identifies the beast with the Anglo-American political power. Let us clarify this, kids, it is neither the English nor the Americans. Years ago, during our analysis of the Revelation, we explained that the beast represents the Western culture of the so-called Western world, that is Europe and America. But this so-called western culture is not limited to certain geographical borders anymore. It is as a way of life. For example, Japan is a nation deeply influenced by the Western culture. What does that mean? Even though it is an Eastern nation known as “the country of the rising sun”, it is not defined geographically but culturally as a western country. At its core, the Western culture is essentially the Greek culture. Mark my words: it is essentially Greek because Greek thought, philosophy, science, and wisdom of the Greek thinkers laid the foundation for all disciplines like astronomy, medicine, physics, political science, and so forth.
Xenophon of Athens wrote a rather brilliant book called “Oikonomikos”. It is about a husband who teaches his wife about economics, household economics etc. Therefore, it is understood that the Western civilization has its roots in Greek thought. However, this civilization leads to the distancing from God over time. It does not foster this distancing on its own, but it is humans who arrogantly think they can achieve everything on their own and no longer need God.
Therefore, the so-called western culture, that is the Greek culture, is the one that brought the apostasy. Bear in mind that this apostasy occurs within a Christian context and ultimately paves the way for Antichrist and the total alienation of humanity from God. Thus, when Revelation speaks of the beast, we must remember that there are three of them: the first beast is the devil, the second beast is the Antichrist and the third beast is the false prophet. The beast mentioned in the Revelation is not primarily the Anglo-American political power but rather the Western culture as a whole, a system that today leads humanity away from God. This does not need much of an explanation to be understood since we can clearly see it in our everyday lives. That is all with this question.
