Revelation 17:11

11. And the beast Passing from the heads, our angel now considers the whole beast.

Was, and is not As the predicate, and yet is, (Revelation 17:8,) is omitted for abbreviation, this describes the beast through all his historic changes, from Egypt to Pontifical Rome. Each previous phase once was, then by fall is not, and then is in its successor, until the perdition. The beast, here, is the totality of the entire successional antichrist the whole composite beast.

He is the eighth The Greek article being omitted, it should read an eighth, that is, a sort of eighth. Not an eighth head, for there were, as the cut shows, but seven heads to the beast. Besides, the Greek adjective for eighth could not grammatically agree with head, being of different gender. The meaning is, that it is the beast, as a totality, which, forming a sort of eighth individuality, finally goeth into perdition. Not one head alone not merely all the heads but the entire beast is destroyed. With papal Rome the last head all the five or six inherited by and embodied in her namely, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, pagan Rome all go as one whole beast with her as antichristianities into perdition.

And is Or, consists or results of, or rather from, the seven. Counted as a single head he is but one of the seven; counted as the whole beast he is an eighth. The six profane empires, traceable through and beyond Daniel’s image, are all abolished in her; an abolition which does not, probably, imply the destruction of the peoples but of the SYSTEMS by which the nationalities are antichristian despotisms. When, by the power of divine truth and the blessed Spirit, rectitude reigns in every heart, governments of force, of tyranny, and of war, may cease. The inequalities of wealth even, based, as they largely are, upon the thriftlessness and vices of a large share of the community, may largely disappear. And the equalized distribution of the goods of life, with all the necessary reforms of society, according to the laws of a truly Christian social science, would prove the downfall of iron politics and despotisms.