And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
Another beast - "the false prophet" (Revelation 16:13; Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10).
Out of the earth - society civilized and consolidated, still, with all its culture, of earth earthy: as distinguished from 'the sea,' the agitations of peoples, out of which the world-power and its kingdoms have emerged. 'The sacerdotal persecuting power, Pagan and Christian: the pagan priesthood making an image of the emperors, which they compelled Christians to worship, and working wonders by magic; the Romish priesthood, inheritor of pagan rites, images, and superstitions, lamb-like in Christian professions, dragon-like in word and act' (Alford, from the Spanish Jesuit Lacunza, or Ben Ezra). As the first beast was like the Lamb in being, as it were, wounded to death, so the second is like the Lamb in having two lamb-like horns (its essential difference is marked by its having TWO, the Lamb SEVEN, Revelation 5:6). The paganism of the world-power, seeming wounded to death by Christianity, revives.
The harlot-apostasy of the Church answers to the healing of the wound. When she has been eaten by the beast and burned with fire (Revelation 17:16), the second beast (Antichrist) brings back the first beast's paganism, recommending it by a spiritual form and earthly culture. Matthew 24:11; Matthew 24:24, "Many false prophets shall rise:" ushering in "the false prophet." This Antichrist has both the mouth of blasphemy (Revelation 13:5) of the little horn of the third kingdom (Daniel 8:11-12; Daniel 8:23-25; Daniel 11:36), and also "the eyes of man" of the little horn of the fourth kingdom (Daniel 7:8). "The eyes of man" symbolize intellectual culture and spiritual pretensions, characteristic of "the false prophet" (Revelation 13:13-15; Revelation 16:14). The first beast is political; the second spiritual, the power of ideas (the favourite term in the French school): humanity substituted for the Son of man, Antichrist for Christ. Lawless democracy х anomia (G458)] (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8), ever since the 1789 revolution, has been preparing the way for the lawless one.
Both alike are beasts, from below, not from above; faithful allies, worldly anti-Christian wisdom serving worldly God-opposing power: both "lion" and "dragon" (Revelation 13:2; Revelation 13:11): might and cunning. The dragon gives his power to the first beast, his spirit to the second, so that it speaks as a dragon. The second, arising out of the earth, is in Revelation 11:7; Revelation 17:8, said to ascend out of the bottomless pit: its earthy culture only intensifies its infernal character, the pretence to rationalistic philosophy (as in the primeval temptation, Genesis 3:5; Genesis 3:7, "their EYES were opened") veiling the deification of nature, self, and man. Hence, spring Idealism, Materialism, Pantheism, Atheism. The fourth kingdom little horn, the papacy's claim to the double power, secular and spiritual, is the immediate forerunner of the twofold beast in its final state, that out of the sea, ministered to by that out of the earth, or bottomless pit. Primasius of Adrumetum (sixth century), 'He feigns to be a lamb, that he may assail the Lamb-the body of Christ.'