The two beasts (Revelation 13)

My cliff notes summary of my interpretation:  various governments of the world will wage war against Christianity.  That is it.

I am very tempted to leave it at.  But let's expound for the sake of argument.

John sees two beasts.  The first is a seven-headed leopard creature with 10 horns, 10 crowns, and emerges from the sea.  It is also made up of parts of various animals.  

The second beast has a number, 666.  This beast is working in tandem with the first beast mad has the authority to make everyone with this number.  The effect of marking this number is that people cannot buy and sell without the authority of the beast.

Taken together, this just sounds like the Roman empire.  The various parts of the body with 10 horns and 10 crowns coming together to form one body sound like an empire.  This thing comes of the ocean.  The closest ocean to John would be the Mediterranean Sea, but that might add details to the vision that are not specified in the Bible.  But anyway, the Roman Empire straddled the Mediterranean Sea.

Similarly, the number 666 comes out to Nero, who was Emperor of Rome.  I do not know the specifics, but in the original Greek, letters and numbers are somehow interchangeable.  If one adds up the number of the letters for Nero, it comes out to 666.

This would also correspond to what the "mark of the beast" is actually doing.  People cannot buy and sell without the beast's authority.  Governments regulate trade and commerce.  That is all the 666 on people is doing.

Taken with the rest of the allegorical message of Revelations, it just means that the governments of the world will wage war with Christianity throughout history.  We can look back and see that pattern beginning with the Roman Empire.  Modern equivalents would include Soviet-Sino communism and many Muslim (Sharia) governments.  

Likewise, governments change.  A few centuries after John wrote Revelations, the Roman Emperor became Christian.

Another thing, the beast might be the New Testament version of the Leviathan from Job.  The Leviathan was multi-headed and lived in the ocean, although it is usually depicted as a serpent.  Here in Revelations, we again see a multi-headed sea creature, but this one is mostly depicted as a chimera of terrestrial mammals.

If we go down that analogy, then the near-fatal wounding of one of the heads of beast in Revelations could be a reference to how God could "hook" the Leviathan by its mouth.