By Jerry Huerta
copyright 2023
Where there is wisdom, Revelation 17:10-11
establishes that the scarlet beast “was and is not” while the sixth king “is,”
making it one of the fallen five and the revived eighth king. There are seven
kings, of which five have already fallen, and one is presently ruling, with one
yet to come. When the seventh king arrives, he will reign briefly, and then the
scarlet beast that reigned before the sixth king will rise to become the
eighth. The beast that was and is not is the eighth, one of the seven,
specifically the fifth; the little horn is the beast that goes into perdition
in Revelation when Daniel is held as the precedent in interpreting Revelation.
This passage in Revelation 17 challenges the preterist and futurist
interpretations of Revelation. Preterists must show that in John's time, the
first advent, there was an emperor who preceded a sixth one, suffered a deadly
wound, and was revived as the eighth. No historical account supports the Roman
emperors in such circumstances at Christ's first advent. On the other hand, futurists also assert the
sixth king is of John's time and must show how their antichrist “was” before
this first advent kingdom. All such explanations are fallacious and without
merit. The passage is prefaced with the need for wisdom in discernment, which
excludes the futurist's and preterists’ accounts.
The evidence that the woman sits upon seven mountains also ties the woman to
the beasts in Daniel 7. Futurist John Walvoord concedes the true interpretation
of the mountains even as he mistakenly holds the sixth king is of John’s time,
The seven heads
of the beast, however, are said to be symbolic of seven kings described in
verse 10. Five of these are said to have fallen, one is in contemporary
existence, that is, in John’s lifetime, the seventh is yet to come and will be
followed by another described as the eighth, which is the beast itself. In the
Greek there is no word for “there,” thus translated literally, the phrase is
“and are seven kings.” The seven heads are best explained as referring to seven
kings who represent seven successive forms of the kingdom… The mountains, then,
are not piles of material rocks and earth at all, but royal or imperial powers,
declared to be such by the angel himself.[1]
Walvoord affirms that the Greek has no word for “there,” which makes the heads
and mountains also seven kings in the passage; the heads, mountains, and kings
are appositives; John renames the kingdoms in Daniel 7 and prophesies there are
seven in all, renaming them as seven heads and seven mountains and seven kings,
but Walvoord incorrectly attempts to add Egypt and Assyria to Daniel’s count,
Thus, then, we
ascertain and identify the sixth in the list, which shows what sort of kings
the angel meant. Of the same class with this, and belonging to the same
category, there are five others—five which had then already run their course
and passed away. But what five imperial mountains like Rome had been and gone,
up to that time? Is history so obscure as not to tell us with unmistakable
certainty? Preceding Rome the world had but five great names or nationalities
answering to imperial Rome, and those scarce a schoolboy ought to miss. They
are Greece, Persia, Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt; no more, and no less. And
these all were imperial powers like Rome.[2]
Nevertheless, Daniel commences with the imperial power of Babylon, making Rome
the fourth kingdom and the little horn the one whose dominion is taken away and
given to the saints as a result of the judgment beforehand,
But the judgment
shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it
unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom
under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most
High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve
and obey him. (Daniel 7:26-27)
The preceding verses 23-25 affirm that the little horn’s dominion is taken and
given to the saints at the “end,” establishing it as the fifth mountain or
imperial power with its own dominion that supplants the fourth beast, Rome,
after its fall.
Thus he said, The
fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse
from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down,
and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings
that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse
from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak great words
against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and
think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a
time and times and the dividing of time. (Daniel 7:23-25)
Not only does the little horn supplant the Roman empire, but it also endures
until the saints receive their reward, which John prophesied as the last
trumpet in Revelation 11:15-19. The circumstances support that the little horn
in Daniel is the revived or ascended eighth king in Revelation 17. This also agrees
with the scriptural and historical proof that the scarlet beast, the papacy,
reigns before the sixth king and ascends as the eighth king. The papacy was
wounded almost to death by Protestant liberalism that enriched the merchants.
The papacy is the beast wars with Christ at his return in Revelation 19:19. One
cannot devise a futurist or preterist narrative that accounts for the evidence
the eighth king is one of the fallen five, insomuch as it “was and is not.”
[1] John F. Walvoord, Revelation (The John Walvoord Prophecy
Commentaries), Moody Publishers; New edition, April 1, 2011), 255
[2] John F. Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 1966, by The
Moody Bible Institute of Chicago
This post is a postscript to the book above, which is available here.
