Seven Heads, Ten Horns, & the Second Coming of JFK - Revelation 17:6-11
The Dissidents Guide to Revelation, part 10
Now that I’ve got your attention, lets read Revelation 17:6-11 together, but this time as dissidents.
REVELATION 17:6–11
When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. 7 Then the angel said to me: “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. 8 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.
9 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.
This is a stunning passage and I’ll probably be able to squeeze a couple more posts out of chapter 17 because it is heavily weighted with symbolism and warning.
Though the beast is called Babylon, it appears to them as something they would recognize as the Roman Empire. I’ll explain how, and then we’ll talk about how the name of an ancient city could be applied to the vast empire of Rome.
Remember that Babylon is a trope in the mind of the ancient Israelites. The spirit of Babylon (an ancient city that enslaved and oppressed them) visits each generation. She causes division and unevenness by tempting people with power and wealth, causing people to think less of each other and more of the power and wealth that lures them deeper into and towards the centers of Rome’s power.
John describes the beast as having “Seven heads and ten horns” (17:3). In verses 9-10, the heads become hills, a well-known reference to the great city of Rome. Then, the heads represent the kings of Rome. It appears that John is speaking about the time in which he is living, not in some future time, as many evangelical leaders have taught over the last half-century, and New Testament Scholar, N.T. Wright, sheds some light on the symbolism for us here:
“If we start a list of emperors with Augustus, we then add Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero to make five. That takes us up to Nero’s death in AD68. It is just possible that this is the moment when John is writing, speaking about Otho as the seventh, short-lived emperor.”
[1]
So it is Nero mentioned in verse 8 as the one who “once was, now is not, and yet will come” (Rev 17:8). But how can this be? Did Nero rise from the dead? Not exactly, no.
That part is likely a reference to a conspiracy theory that was popular in the late first century[2] that Nero had not actually died, but that he had gone into hiding and was plotting to return to usurp the throne with a vast army and resume his reign as emperor. All of this sounds eerily familiar to the Q-anon JFK conspiracy theories of last year. I bring that up because these types of conspiracies typically spread during political upheaval as a sort of unifying myth to help keep hope alive. As it turns out, at least three different revolutionaries arose over the next three centuries, all claiming to be the return of Nero (they weren’t).
The big idea in chapter 17 is that Babylon is Rome, with its royal emperors, armies, and glorious capital city. John spoke of Rome in a way that made Babylon as obvious as the noon-day sun in their own day.
But Babylon did not fall with the Roman Empire. Babylon is timeless,[3] she was at work in Ancient Egypt, and she will be at work in the future Mars colony. Everywhere that humans stockpile wealth and weaponry and build walls and military fortifications Babylon is at work forming people in her own image, the image of the Beast.
David Barr says it like this:
”Johns Goal in these visions is to distance the hearer from Rome and from Roman culture. To disillusion the hearers - to destroy their illusions that they can be at home in the Roman world — is the primary performative effect of this story.”
But we miss it today.
Evangelical thought leaders of the last century would have you see John’s message very differently. They have used speculative practices in order to read Johns letter in a way that aligns with what they understand about the world and reflect their own politics and worldview, which often disciples Christians towards the empire and away from a pattern of life that emphasizes the Lamb, instead of the Beast.
How might John describe Babylon if he was writing to the Church in America in our century?
Perhaps he’d describe how “the beasts stood with arms of steel that reached from sea to shining sea. He bled red, white, and blue and caused all who served him to do the same. Behind him, a large banner with the word ‘FREEDOM,’ which veiled prisons filled with its poor.”
Though we don’t know what John might write to the church in America, the offense would equal the allegiance of its hearer.
So here is the sum of it:
The mission of Babylon is to embody the beast and to get others to do the same.[4]
But there is another character in the cast of Revelation for the Christians to embody, and in this way, dissent to the creeping perversion of Gods world by Babylon.
Thats next time.
[1] Wright, Revelation for Everyone, 155
[2] Known as Nero Redivivus
[3] McKnight and Matchett, Revelation for the Rest of Us
[4] Ibid, 38
[5] David L Barr, Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation, 321.