God means soon to manifest a man, even the Man who is His fellow, as the center and channel of all majesty, wisdom, glory, and power. So Satan, as anti-God, glorifies with his glory the final antichrist; while people in their depravity and delusion rejoice in it, and cry their devoutest vive le Roi to his hell-derived majesty. Imagine all that has ministered to the glory of worldly empire in the ages past-the imposing array of intellect, knowledge, arts, and arms-the splendor of Oriental monarchs, the valor and grandeur of mighty heroes and conquerors-the eloquence, wisdom, and power of statesmen, orators, and poets, and all the varieties of mental accomplishment and external greatness united in one marvelous man, possessed of all the hitherto divided power and distributed attractions of all preceding times, and where is the soul, untaught of God, that would not run wild with enthusiastic adoration over him? Yet this is the sort of appeal which this Beast makes to the unsanctified million of his time. Not as an instrument of terror, dismay, and horror is his revelation, but with all the blandishing allurements of the sublimest champion of human interests and greatness. People will not fly from him, but love him, and delight and glory in him as the consummate sage and hero of all time. He will be the idol of the world. All kings will gladly yield him their thrones, and give their dominion to him; and all the nations will think their millennium come in the splendor, and wisdom, and miraculous greatness of his teachings and his deeds.

In Nimrod’s days, when the people combined to build a city, and a tower which should reach to heaven, and make themselves a name, lest they should be scattered abroad upon the earth, what was it but one grand ceremonial of worship to earthly greatness? And if they could thus glory and sacrifice to the ambition and schemes of Nimrod, how much more to the wonderful Anti-christ? If the genius and exhibitions of such men as Caesar, Charlemagne, Frederick, Napoleon, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Byron, and the like, have been able to delight the souls, fascinate the minds, and lead captive the wills of the children of disobedience, how can it be otherwise, when the glories of intellect and taste, of war and conquest, of miracle and majesty, of recovery from death, of mastery over all the mysterious forces of nature and spirit come forth in one sublime embodiment!

The very cities and regions over which this Beast rules will add to the fatal delusion of those times. Where, indeed, have the thoughts of people so fondly lingered as in Rome, in Greece, in Egypt, in Babylon, in Jerusalem? All the associations of greatness, conquest, taste, learning, eloquence, art, and religion are mostly bound up with these places. And these are to rise up again under the antichrist, as if from the world of death, whence he himself comes, mimicking the glories of the true restitution which the Son of God is then about to bring.

And to the natural impulses of the human heart will be added the unwonted instigations of the Devil himself operating behind and through all, influencing the hearts, and tongues, and energies of people. And so they will be deluded, bewitched, and rallied to the worship of the Beast, and to the acceptance of him as the true and only God.

Seiss’ The Apocalypse: Exposition of the Book of Revelation