Revelation 17:16-17

16, 17. When the hour of one mind has passed, and the victories of the Lamb have multiplied, a new turn shall come. The ten horns shall begin to hate the whore. Her capital having been destroyed, her power diminished, her deceptions refuted, and her character exposed, she will be made desolate and naked.

Eat her flesh The great body of her wealth and substance, of which the people have been robbed by false pretences, shall be appropriated to feed the poor.

Burn her with fire The penalty of incest, Leviticus 20:14, and of unchastity in a priest’s daughter, Leviticus 21:9. In this woman the harlot shall be burnt away and the bride of Christ shall appear in her place.

His will That she should be permitted to fill the measure of her iniquities.

The words of God The prophetic predictions, especially of Daniel 7:0.

These ten horns, or kingdoms, have a wonderful significance in prophecy. They first appear in the ten toes of Daniel’s image, proceeding from the Roman legs of the image. Then they are verified and enlarged, Daniel 7:7, as the ten horns growing from the head of the Roman beast, defined (ver. 33) as ten kings kingdoms to be developed out of the Roman empire. Next we have the ten horns (with the seven heads) of the pagan-Roman dragon. This is repeated in the papal-Roman beast, Revelation 13:1, reiterated Revelation 17:1, and here, Revelation 17:12, the ten horns are expressly defined as ten kings =kingdoms not yet organized, but which will come up from the Roman empire, and, first uniting with the Roman harlot, ultimately destroy her.

Looking into secular history for these ten nations, as emerging from the downfall of the old Rome, we are startled to find the constant tendency of the European nations to a decimal number. This is shown by earlier and later writers, Romish and Protestant. Elliott gives such lists by Jerome, Machiavelli, Bossuet, Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, and Bishop Newton. Elliott himself furnishes a list which seems preferable to any by his predecessors.

It stays within the Western Empire; it is posterior to the disappearance of the imperial power; it is made up of Teutonic governments; it contains a three which (in accordance with Daniel’s prophecy) impeded for awhile the growth of the power of the pope, but were finally abolished and made part of his patrimony. Elliott selects the year A.D. 531, and finds the following ten kingdoms on the platform of the Western Roman Empire: “the Anglo-Saxons; the Franks of Central, Allman Franks of Eastern, and Burgundian Franks of South-eastern France; the Visigoths, the Suevi, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, in Italy; the Bavarians, and the Lombards still ten in all.” Of these three were nigh and obstructive neighbours to the pope at Rome; namely, the Vandals in Corsica and Sardinia, the Ostrogoths in Central Italy, and the Lombards in Northern Italy. The Vandals and the Ostrogoths were conquered by the Eastern Emperor Justinian, erected into the Greek exarchate of Ravenna, and afterward given to the pope. Lombardy held out until the eighth century, an impediment to the papal power, when it was conquered by Charlemagne and given to the Roman See. These three kingdoms became “the patrimony of Peter.”

Elliott well notes that, in spite of frequent variations of number, ten has been the ever-recurring number of Europe ever since. To this effect he quotes Gibbon, Whiston, and Cunninghame. To these we may add that Schlegel, a convert to Romanism, in his “Philosophy of History,” (re-published by Appleton,) about forty years ago reckoned ten kingdoms as constituting the modern system of Europe.

But apocalyptic thought makes provisions for world-wide extensions as time advances. The local Jerusalem, symbolized as the true Church, becomes universal, and so Babylon, as the anti-Church. The Roman-papal beast expressly includes all the preceding anti-christianities in her descent to perdition. Note Revelation 17:11. As the apocalypse draws toward its close its geographical area seems to enlarge from the limits of the Roman empire to the entire surface of our globe. The “nations” of Revelation 19:15, and Revelation 20:3; Revelation 20:8, and “the kings of the earth” of Revelation 19:19, must be taken in their widest extension; and it is the whole human race of all ages that finally appears before the throne, Revelation 20:11. And we seem easily bridged over this enlarging process by the double meaning (specified in our Introduction) of the word “ten.” From its literal count of the nations of the Roman empire it may emerge into its symbolical universality, and become truly world-wide. In this full sense the people of America are of the ten nations. And all the peoples of both hemispheres are clearly included in “the nations” after the ten is dropped.