Revelation 17:16

"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate, and naked and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." There are two things to be observed here. First that the ten horns are not successive kings on the throne of Rome, but they are contemporary powers under Rome. They combine against her. The next verse speaks of their agreeing together, hence they are contemporaneous.

Second, that these kingdoms embraced within Rome are the agents of her downfall. And the student of history will recall how the Germans, the Goths, and others descended on Rome like the scourge of God. So that the horns that at first gave the beast their power at length turned their power against him. The nations embraced within the empire that at first made it great, turned at length against Rome and wrought her destruction.

And the last verse of the chapter says: "And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." She was reigning then, and there is only one city that can fill the bill. This shows conclusively that we are not dealing here with the Papacy, as some interpreters think, for the Papacy had not yet risen when John wrote; and did not reach any point of reigning over kings for many centuries after this time.

And this shows just as conclusively that these Chapter s of Revelation cannot be forced into the Premillennial scheme that assigns all this middle part of the book to a "Tribulation" period just prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

And this should be particularly observed that all this historical setting; all this plain identification of symbols which God has furnished us in the text of the book itself, cuts to the roots the whole Premillennial interpretation of Revelation. If the woman was the city of Rome, and John says she was, then the beast that carried her was certainly the Roman Empire, and not some future king of a "Tribulation" period.

Another thing to be observed is that the figure of the beast with seven heads and ten horns is imagery borrowed from Daniel who used a ten horned beast, the same figure, to describe a world power.

We must not, however, too hastily conclude that Daniel and John refer to the same political world power.

It must not be assumed that the Bible has only one meaning for a symbol. Leaven generally represents sin, but in the parable of the leaven, it represents the kingdom of God. Again a lion is the symbol used in Scripture to represent such diverse personages as Jesus Christ and the devil.

Because a fig tree may be used in one place to teach a lesson to the Jews, it does not follow that every time a fig tree is mentioned in the Bible it must be regarded as a type of the Jews.