Oh, I think you are definitely close to what’s going on. Precisely: salvation history itself is a SPIRITUAL process. Ame to that.
And, yes, I would say the imagries of Revelation in the Dragon, Beast and false prophet are dealing in primary sense with a spiritual way of looking at things.
For just as God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, imaged in the completeness of “7”, so then “6” is great imperfection, that is, of man. Hence, 3 6’s means man makes God in
his image, deifying himself, which is the essence of what is spoken of in Genesis in the beginning with the Serpent.
So there is the Father Almighty, the Son who is Incarnated, and the Word spoken between Them is the Holy Spirit. And, yes, the Word spoken by God is one of reckless gift, reception, abandonment, love, sacrifice.
So then there is the dragon, Satan, the Father of lies, the False Word, the word that says:
“God is lying, He does not speak the truth, and you will surely not die, for there a no consequences to sin, neither termporal nor spiritual. And ‘you will be like gods’, that is, you can be independent of God, His Love, His Help, His Grace, you can do everything on your own, and this mere material creation (the ‘fruit’) is all you need. You can forge a utopia utterly independent of God and any assistance or truth of his. You yourselves will be the arbiter and origin of truth, not God.”
And this very lie of Satan is repeatedly incarnated in human history through the great ages of sin, in which humanity repeatedly buys this lie and goes with it, making it a concrete (again, ‘incarnated’) reality in this world.
And again, the embodiment of this very lie that is shared between “father” (Satan) and his children of sin (‘the beast’) is in fact the metaphor in the “False Prophet”.
And for a big elaboration on this, you might read my article on this:
The Seven-Horned Lamb, the True Logos, and the Two-Horned Lamb, the False Logos
Also, we can see a certain sense in which the Seal of God is contrasted with the Mark of the Beast. And, again, I see it as spiritual. So that the Seal in its fullness is received by faithful Catholics in the “forehead”, that is, in the depths of their intellect. That is, they shall be “chaste” in regards to truth, which the forehead ponders in the mind. They “shall not be harmed” by the assault that is the Trumpets, progressive spiritual attacks on the very development of the Church’s doctrine, so that various ecclesiological classes arise in history arise as the results of progressive spiritual harms, culminating in utter depravity: the Mark of the Beast, an imprint on someone who will hear *nothing *of the Gospel, not the Trinity or Incarnation (Muslims), not the Pope (schismatics), not the general Bishops and Oral Tradition (heretics), not the Scriptures (the Enlightenment Deists and Rationalists), and finally, not even Reason itself, which is common to all humanity, if they will but seek to live in reason (the modern apostates: atheists and relativist materialists).
If you would like more elaboration on this as well, I have a wonderful article that i think you would enjoy in addition to the one above. Let me know if you would like to see it. It’s called the “Seal and the Mark and Everything in Between”.
Blessings to you, freesoulhope!
In Her love,
scott