And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
He had power - `it was given to him.'
To give life - `breath,' 'spirit.'
Image. Nebuchadnezzar set up in Dura a golden image to be worshipped, probably of himself; for his dream had been interpreted, "Thou art this bead of gold." The three Hebrews who refused to worship it were cast into a burning furnace. Typifying the last apostasy. Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, states that he punished Christians who would not worship the emperor's image with incense. So Julian, the apostate, set up his image with idols in the Forum, that the Christians, in doing reverence to it, might seem to worship the idols. So Charlemagne's image was set up; and the Pope adored the new emperor (Dupin, vol. 6:, p. 126). Napoleon, Charlemagne's successor, designed, after he had first lowered the Pope by removing him to Fontainbleau, then to 'make an idol of him' (Memorial de Saints Helene): he would, through the Pope's influence, have directed the religious as well as the political world. Antichrist will realize the project, becoming the beast supported by the false prophet (some infidel supplanter of the papacy, under a spiritual guise, after the harlot, or apostate church, has been judged by the beast, Revelation 17:16); he then might have his image set up as a test of secular and spiritual allegiance.
Speak. 'False doctrine will give a spiritual appearance to the foolish apotheosis of the creaturely personified by Antichrist' (Auberlen). Jerome, on Daniel 7:1-28, says, Antichrist shall be 'a man in whom the whole of Satan shall dwell bodily.' Rome's speaking images, and winking pictures of the Virgin Mary, are an earnest of the demoniacal miracles of the false prophet in making the beast's image to speak.