Full explanation of Why the Beast of Revelation in the Bible must be a Nation. It will not be a creature but rather something that Is-real.
Hello all. I came to carefully read Revelation as a former atheist converting to Catholicism, just looking to move on from dispensationalist interpretations that have seemed to take over the internet. I’ll say what I found left me uncomfortable. This is a serious apostolic reading of the first beast, following the symbolic language used through the books of the bible. What the text describes is not a recurring pattern. The beast in Revelation was written to map to a specific nation. I don't know how this interpretation has been constructed yet. I think it needs to be read.
ON THE BEAST OF REVELATION, AND THE NATION IT IS
The Katechonist Interpretation
Ash
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I write this from a place of seriousness - and astonishment. I came to Revelation casually, as part of my own journey converting to Catholicism from atheism, not trying to find anything in particular, as I was just looking to move past the Protestant dispensationalist readings that had shaped how I thought about Revelation. This paper will be an apostolic interpretation of the beast of Revelation, a beast that rises out of the sea, that says it is god, that demands global worship and acknowledgement, what that actually means, and what is and will happen. I do not take this lightly, given the legitimacy of this interpretation. It is time to move away from Protestant dispensationalist readings that have unfortunately dominated this topic for too long. They are not serious engagements with the Bible. They are fabrications built for clickbait and consumption, and have utterly degraded how people read the Bible. Dispensationalism must be left behind. This is what the Bible actually says.
What Is Meant By “Beast”, “Sea”, “Mountain”, and Other Symbols
The Bible has consistent symbolic terms for nations, empires, and chaos that spans centuries of prophetic writing. Revelation uses it directly. It describes a burning mountain thrown into the sea and a beast arising from that sea, represented by a trumpet. Understanding what these terms actually mean cannot be optional, as it is the only way to read Revelation honestly.
The sea in the Bible does not represent a literal sea. Its roots go back to ancient Babylonian creation stories, which described creation as the defeat of a primordial sea-dragon, a creature that represents chaos itself. The specific story is the Babylonian Enuma Elish. The authors of the bible used this imagery and reframed it. God commands the sea rather than fighting it, but the sea retains its character as the source of chaos and disorder. When Daniel sees his four great empires, he sees them rising from the sea: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea” (Daniel 7:2-3). The sea represents chaos in the bible.
Mountains in the Bible do not represent literal mountains, or volcanic asteroids. Jeremiah addresses Babylon directly: “I am against you, you destroying mountain, you who destroy the whole earth, declares the Lord. I will stretch out my hand against you, roll you off the cliffs, and make you a burned-out mountain” (Jeremiah 51:25). Daniel’s vision ends with a stone that strikes a statue and becomes a mountain filling the whole earth: “But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). The burning mountain thrown into the sea in Revelation 8:8 is not geology: “The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood” (Revelation 8:8). Mountains represent powerful empires in the Bible
Trumpets in the Bible do not represent literal trumpets. They appear throughout the Old Testament as signals. These are signals of warfare, of divine presence, of judgment, of something consequential arriving. At Sinai trumpet sounds accompany God’s descent: “As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder” (Exodus 19:19). In Joel the trumpet signals the Day of the Lord: “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain” (Joel 2:1). The way the term is used is consistent across centuries. Trumpets announce that something significant is happening. In Revelation the trumpet events have the same function, they are not literal sounds that you will hear. They represent major events unfolding in history and in the divine order.
Beasts in the Bible do not represent literal beasts or creatures. Daniel makes this unavoidable. After describing four beasts rising from the sea, Revelation identifies them directly: “The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth” (Daniel 7:17). The angel then tells Daniel that the fourth beast “is a fourth kingdom that will appear on earth” (Daniel 7:23). The identification is not even symbolic interpretation, it is literally stated plainly in Revelation itself. Beasts are nations.
Revelation’s beast combines all four of Daniel’s beasts into one figure: “The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority” (Revelation 13:2). Daniel’s leopard is Greece: “The shaggy goat is the king of Greece” (Daniel 8:21). Daniel’s bear is Persia: “The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia” (Daniel 8:20). Daniel’s lion is Babylon: “The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle” (Daniel 7:4). The combination is purposely grotesque, it is parts that don’t belong together forced into a single figure. Daniel’s beasts were each distinct and complete. This figure is not. It is the culmination of every nation that claimed divine authority, and simultaneously a defilement - the fullest expression of claiming divine authority and representing defilement, a thing that should not exist, a nation that should not exist.
I want to stress that the most important part of this interpretation is that the first beast needs to be recognized as a nation. Revelation establishes this directly, and the way the language is used confirms it across centuries. Any interpretation that makes the first beast a single individual or a literal creature contradicts everything biblical authors were trying to convey.
What the Beast Actually Is, The Nation That it Is
Taking Revelation seriously on its own terms, the beast is a nation with a specific and identifiable profile.
Revelation 13:1 introduces the beast directly: “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” The beast rises from the sea. As established, the sea represents chaos, which is what this nation will emerge from. It will rise from chaos or a chaotic event. It should be noted that Revelation 8:8 describes a burning mountain thrown into that same sea before the beast rises from it. The symbolic terms Revelation has been using consistently throughout make this connection likely. The sea cannot be random background language, but rather the realm of chaos, and both the mountain and the beast are placed within it on purpose. A burning empire is destroyed and cast into that chaos. A nation rises from that same chaos. The destruction of the mountain is the chaos. The beast is what emerges from it.
Revelation 17:8 describes the beast as something that once was, is not, and will come: “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss.” A people with a real prior identity, cultural, religious, or ethnic, that precedes its formal political constitution. That prior identity is crucial. It is what the nation's identity is built on when it formally emerges. The people preceded the nation, and the nation’s self-understanding was shaped entirely by what the people already believed about themselves before there was a nation to enforce it.
Revelation 13:5-6 describes the beast speaking haughty and blasphemous words: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.” This is an exclusive, monotheistic-style claim implemented into the national identity before its formal existence as a nation. It is the idea that this nation will claim to be the single nation of God, that it is God’s singular instrument on earth, and that this nation's enemies are the enemies of God. This claim is not a case of propaganda after this nation achieved power. It’s a founding belief that preceded the nation’s political emergence and shaped everything that followed.
Revelation 13:7 states the beast was given authority over every nation: “It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation.” Economic, military, and ideological authority extending over the whole earth simultaneously. Something that touches every nation and people on earth at the same time. This is qualitatively different from anything the ancient world, or that any other nation in history, other than the beast, has produced.
Revelation 13:3 describes one of the beast's heads receiving a severe wound: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.” But I must stress that the idea of the standard English translation of fatal wound is imprecise. The Greek word used is esphagmenēn, the same word used for the Lamb that was slain in Revelation 5:6, which means slaughtered. The most accurate interpretation is that this nation will experience a singular, identifiable event that matches the characteristics of a slaughter, and significant enough that its response to the attack produces global astonishment.
The recovery or response of the Beast produces global despair. The Greek demands precision here. Ethaumasthē, the world’s response in Revelation 13:3, means stunned, horrified amazement. And the proskuneō that follows in Revelation 13:4, which is poorly translated as worship in most English versions, means to bow down before, to bow oneself in forced acknowledgment. “They bowed down before the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also bowed down before the beast and asked, ‘Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?’” The rhetorical question is despair. The collapse of the belief that opposing this nation is something that is even possible. The idea that the world will conclude that even resisting this nation in any sort of way is not even a possibility.
The recovery is retaliatory. The beast responds to the wound with force so overwhelming that it produces the despair described above. The demonstration of retaliatory power, and nothing being able to stop it, is what ends people's confidence that there is any possibility to oppose the beast.
Revelation 13:8 describes a separate and distinct group: “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast - all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life.” These are not people in despair. These are people in genuine allegiance to the beast. The distinction matters. Those in despair have not given genuine loyalty as their helplessness is not devotion. Those not written in the Lamb’s book of life have chosen the beast. Revelation acknowledges both simultaneously.
Revelation 13:5 states the beast was given authority to act for forty-two months: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months.” Forty-two months is three and a half years. This does not mean three and a half literal years. Seven is the number of completion and perfection throughout the Bible: seven days of creation, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. Three and a half is half of seven. It is a deliberate signal of incompleteness, a period that is real but permanently bounded, one that will never reach the fullness it seeks. The same period appears elsewhere in the Bible as one thousand two hundred and sixty days and as a time, times and half a time in Daniel 7:25, it is all the same period, all communicating the same thing. The beast's authority is real, but it will not be permanent. This period follows the wound and response and inaugurates the final phase of the beast's dominance. Whatever the nation was before the wound or slaughter, it becomes something more absolute and unchallengeable after it. The wound is the beginning of the beast's most dominant chapter. But that chapter has a ceiling it cannot break.
Revelation 17:13 reveals how the global power is actually built: “They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast.” The beast's reach over every people and nation is not purely its own. It is built through a network of nations that voluntarily surrender their sovereignty to it. The beast rules through nations that work on its behalf, not just through physical domination. And Revelation 17:16 describes what happens to the corrupt order that rode on top of it: “The ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” The allied nations that built the beast's power turn against the system they helped construct. Revelation 17:17 makes clear this is not accidental: “For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to hand over to the beast their royal authority, until God's words are fulfilled.” The internal collapse of the whole order is itself part of the divine judgment.
The beast does not operate under its own authority. Revelation 13:2 establishes what the authority is directly: “The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.” The dragon is Satan, who is identified explicitly in Revelation 12:9 as “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” The nation’s power and characteristics are the expression of satanic authority operating through a nation in direct opposition to God.
Why Rome Does Not Fully Fit
Rome is the typical academic identification - and it was deliberately meant to fit Rome in some ways. Revelation 17:9 explicitly identifies the seven heads as seven mountains, which is a direct reference to Rome's seven hills that ancient readers would have recognized immediately. Babylon was a standard Jewish and early Christian cipher for Rome. The imperial cult directly pressured the Christians Revelation was written to. The economic imagery of Revelation 18 maps naturally onto Roman trade networks. The Nero redivivus expectation addresses one head of the beast, one emperor, not the beast as a whole nation. Revelation 17:8 applies the was and is not formula to the beast itself, not to one of its heads. Rome as a continuous empire, never ceased in any meaningful sense. The was and is not feature points toward a genuine discontinuity in the existence of the nation itself, not one ruler within it. Rome is part of the immediate historical context of Revelation.
But the profile Revelation builds does objectively exceed what Rome fulfills. Rome prefigures the beast without completing it. The features that exceed Rome are specific and significant.
The burning mountain sequence establishes the order of events. Revelation 8:8 describes a great burning mountain thrown into the sea before the beast rises from that same sea: “The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea.” The beast emerges from the chaos that the specific prior empire’s destruction generates. Rome gradually absorbed and displaced its rivals over centuries. There is no single predecessor empire that was dramatically destroyed and cast into chaos from whose destruction Rome arose. The sequence Revelation describes does not fit Roman history.
Revelation 13:1 says the beast will rise from the sea: “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” The beast rises from chaos, and Rome did not emerge from chaos or a chaotic event. It grew gradually over centuries through military conquest and political consolidation, absorbing and displacing rivals incrementally. There was no chaotic period of disorder from which Rome crystallized into existence. So again, the foundational image of the beast's emergence does not fit Roman history.
Rome's imperial cult demanded serious religious loyalty and should not be dismissed. It required public acts of worship, claimed divine ancestry for Caesar, and positioned the empire as the bringer of peace, order, and universal authority. That is a real and significant divine claim. But it operated within a polytheistic framework, in which the gods favour Rome, and Caesar has divine status among many gods. Revelation's beast makes a categorically different claim, not the gods favour us but an exclusive, monotheistic assertion operating within the framework of the Abrahamic God specifically: "It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven." Revelation 13:6. This is not Rome saying Caesar is divine within a pantheon. This is a nation claiming to be the singular instrument of the God of scripture, whose enemies are His enemies, whose authority is His authority. Rome's religious framework never made this kind of claim. The distinction is not one of degree. It is one of a kind.
Revelation 17:8 gives the beast a prior existence, a period of absence, and a future re-emergence: “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.” This is a deliberate anti-Trinity parody of God who “is, and who was, and who is to come.” Revelation 1:8. Rome was the continuous dominant regional power during the period Revelation was written. It never ceased. It never went dormant. The was and is not feature forces a non-Roman identification. It points toward a nation with a genuine discontinuity in its historical existence: a people that existed before formally becoming a nation, ceased in some meaningful sense, and re-emerged in a new political form.
Revelation 13:7 states the beast's authority extends over every nation and people: “It was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” Rome was a Mediterranean and European power with hard eastern limits. It never touched East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, or the Pacific. Whatever Revelation describes genuinely has a global economic, military, and ideological reach simultaneously. Rome never had this.
Rome also did not construct its authority through the surrender of allied nations acting on its behalf. Its power was built through direct military conquest and political absorption. The beast's authority as Revelation describes it operates differently, it is through nations that give their power and authority to it, functioning as proxies, extending its reach into places it does not directly occupy, and forming an international power around it that ultimately collapses as part of the divine judgment itself. Rome never built anything resembling this. The beast will.
The Greek word used for the beast's wound is esphagmenēn, which is the same word used for the Lamb that was slain in Revelation 5:6. It means slaughtered, struck down. The standard English translation of fatal wound is imprecise. What Revelation actually describes is one of the beast's heads experiencing an event that has the character of a slaughter: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.” Revelation 13:3. Rome never experienced anything resembling this. There was no singular event in Roman history that had the character of a slaughter, that the entire world witnessed, and whose recovery produced global astonishment. The candidates within Roman history are too minor and too localized to generate anything resembling the global response Revelation describes.
While Rome has immediate historical reference, it is not the exhaustive fulfillment. The profile Revelation builds points beyond it.
Why the Recurring Pattern Interpretation Does Not Fit
The idealist reading, which states that Revelation describes a pattern repeating across history rather than a singular nation, does not actually hold up against the specificity of Revelation. Revelation does not describe a general category of empire or a recurring type of nation. It is describing a specific profile with specific characteristics that cannot be generically applied.
The idealist reading, ironically, multiplies the problem of misidentification, instead of actually avoiding it. By treating the beast as a recurring type, it inadvertently validates every wrong guess that has ever been made, like that Napoleon’s France was the beast, that the USSR was the beast, that the European Union or the United States was the beast or a recurrence of it. If the beast is a pattern, then anything powerful enough can be fitted into it, which is precisely how those misidentifications happened. The recurring makes false identification inevitable rather than actually protecting against it. The profile in Revelation is too specific to be a type. It describes one nation, and that nation will not resemble any of those guesses. Not one of the nations ever identified as the beast built its global authority through other nations voluntarily surrendering their sovereignty to it. Napoleon's France was conquered by force. The USSR imposed its rule by force. The United States projects power through alliances, but those alliances did not give their sovereignty to it. The mechanism Revelation describes is nations giving their power and authority to the beast, which has never been characterized by any proposed candidate in the past.
The nation Revelation describes will have existed in a prior fragmented form before formally constituting itself as a nation. It will carry the claim that the nation is of god and is baked into its identity before the state existed to enforce it. It will emerge from chaos connected to a prior empire's destruction. It will possess a genuine global influence of a kind that no prior nation or empire has possessed. It will experience a singular event with the characteristics of a slaughter from which it recovers. That recovery will produce horrified despair, the conclusion that there is no way to fight against this country in particular. It will demand global acknowledgment. It will operate under satanic authority. It will enter a final bounded period of authority during which it wages war against God's holy people and receives forced acknowledgment from the world, before divine intervention ends it. This is not a recurring pattern. No empire in history has matched this combination of characteristics, and no pattern produces them. This is a description of one specific nation.
I also want to address that some scholars read Revelation as overlapping instead of sequentially, meaning the trumpet cycle and the beast vision describe the same period from different angles. However, even on that reading, the narrative placement of the burning mountain before the beast vision is not accidental. The shared terms of the same sea and the same chaos suggest the author intended a connection between these events causally even within a parallel structure.
There is also a grammatical argument worth stating directly. The New Testament uses plural grammar when it actually wants to convey recurring opposition to God. 1 John 2:18 says many antichrists have come. Matthew 24:24 warns of recurring false christs and false prophets. The terms for conveying recurrence exist, and other New Testament writings use them. Revelation's first beast is consistently singular across chapters 13, 17, and 19. Reading recurrence into singular grammar when the New Testament uses plural grammar for recurrence is reading against the Bible's own signals.
It should be noted that we now live in an age where global reach exists among multiple powerful nations. The beast will not simply be the most powerful nation of its era in the way that European empires or the United States have been. Those empires are comparable to each other, given the territorial conquest, colonial administration, and regional dominance. They can be measured against one another on the same scale. The beast will not be measurable on that scale. And this will not simply be a function of technology. Modern nations with access to the same technology will not compare to it. The beast's authority as Revelation describes it, over every people and nation simultaneously, will be something no prior or contemporary nation matches. Not the strongest in a familiar category. Something the category itself cannot contain. This is not just a matter of visible scale. Every prior empire operated through a recognizable mechanism of power, like conquest or willing alliance. The beast operates through something categorically different. Nations will submit and give up their power. That distinction has never been true of any empire in history.
The details Revelation provides are too specific and too unusual to describe a recurring pattern. They describe one nation, one that will not match any past or modern nation. A reading that flattens those specific details into a general recurring type is not taking Revelation seriously on its own terms. It is diluting the precision Revelation actually contains.
The Timeline
A prior great empire, the burning mountain of Revelation 8:8, is destroyed and cast into chaos: “something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea.” The destruction of that empire and the fact that it is thrown into chaos are the conditions required for the beast’s rise. The beast emerges from that chaotic event specifically.
The beast rises to global prominence. Its emergence is connected to the preceding empire's collapse, the beast and that empire are connected.
The beast operates under its founding belief of being the singular nation of God and establishes unseen global influence, a kind no other nation has ever possessed.
The beast suffers an attack that has characteristics of a slaughter, given the actual definition of the Greek word esphagmenēn.
The recovery of the beast produces global despair: “the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast” (Revelation 13:3). Survival alone does not produce this response. The world's conclusion that resistance is impossible implies something more than just survival, an action so overwhelming that opposition is recognized as impossible. Revelation does not describe this action in detail. It describes the world's response to it.
The beast enters its period of maximum authority, “to exercise its authority for forty-two months” (Revelation 13:5). The 42 months is a quality of time, which symbolically means bounded, incomplete, deliberately temporary. Three and a half. Half of seven. The number signals that the beast operates under a permanent ceiling it cannot break. Seven belongs to God. The beast is permanently half. This period will most likely span an unknown amount of time. The number does not tell us how long. It tells us we are in the final act.
During this period, Revelation acknowledges two distinct groups. Those who bow before the beast out of despair, who have concluded that resistance is not possible, and those who give genuine allegiance to it. Revelation 13:8 is explicit about the second group: “All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast - all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life.” These are not people in despair. These are people in genuine allegiance to the beast. The distinction matters. Those not written in the Lamb's book of life have chosen the beast. Revelation acknowledges both simultaneously.
Within this period, divine intervention may produce a bounded era of peace and a possible reprieve of grace. This is consistent with the Catholic tradition of an era of peace preceding the final events.
During this period, figures may emerge who embody the spirit of what John's letters call the Antichrist, a denial of God operating within the beast's order. But the beast and the Antichrist are not the same figure. The term Antichrist does not appear in Revelation. The beast is the nation. Whatever figures emerge within its period of dominance are not the beast itself.
The final intensification falls primarily on those implicated in the beast’s order. The righteous are not the targets of divine judgment. They are those the beast has been harming throughout.
Before the final resolution, the coalition the beast built turns against it from within. Revelation 17:13 states how the beast’s power was constructed in the first place: “They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast.” The beast’s global reach as a nation was never purely its own, and was built through nations that surrendered their sovereignty to it, functioning as proxies and extending its influence across the world. Revelation 17:16 describes what happens to that order: “The ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” The nations that constructed the beast’s power are the ones that bring it down. The coalition of nations that surrendered its sovereignty to build the beast’s order turns and destroys what it built. The end of the beast comes from its allies’ abandonment.
The resolution is swift once it comes. The buildup is enormous, and the confrontation itself is almost anticlimactic: “The beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf” (Revelation 19:20). The beast and the false prophet are dealt with decisively. The age ends.
Christ’s return completes the broken seven: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon’” (Revelation 22:20). The incompleteness resolves into fullness. The half becomes whole through Christ.
What This Interpretation States
This reading states the beast must be a nation or people that existed in a prior form before formally constituting itself as a political entity, with a genuine discontinuity between that prior existence and its formal emergence. It must carry a founding idea that it is of god or the nation of god as part of its core identity. It must have achieved a genuine global reach and influence that has been unseen in any kind of way. It must build its global authority through nations that voluntarily give their power to it. It must experience an event that has characteristics of a slaughter, which is what the Greek word esphagmenēn actually conveys, not the imprecise English translation of fatal wound. It must have a recovery so overwhelming that it produces not submission or admiration but despair - that opposing this nation is impossible. It must enter after this recovery a final bounded period of authority, while also seeing the coalition it built turn against it before the final divine judgment falls.
This is the beast. A nation with a specific prior existence, a founding claim to be of God, global reach, an attack matching the characteristics of a slaughter, a recovery that ends the world's confidence in opposing it, and a final bounded period of authority before it is ended decisively and permanently.
Revelation has always said this. It is time to read it.
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To my Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters, and to people of the world who are or will be left in despair by the Beast, those that have asked themselves, ‘Who is like this nation? Who can even fight against this country?’ Know the one who conquers death knows your despair from the actions of the beast, and loves you. He specifically loves you for how much you care about those who fall victim to the beast. He is not distant from our suffering. He entered it. That is what the Cross was. And he will end what the beast started, decisively and permanently.