Day 254: When I saw her, I wondered greatly. And the angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.

The Roman practice of identifying prostitutes is to have them wear a head band bearing the name of the owner. Here John sees the woman riding on the beast with the name of her owner: Babylon. The name is a’ mystery’. It has a hidden meaning; it is the anti-Christ’s ‘capital’. When John wrote this there had been a short period of persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero, about which Tacitus writes: ‘A great multitude was condemned for arson (although Nero had set fire to Rome himself!) and for ‘hatred against humanity’. They were not only executed, but also killed in an unworthy and abhorrent manner. They were sewn up in animal skins and thus bitten to death by dogs, or hung on crosses and set alight. And when darkness fell, they were used as torches for the night.’ Compare Hebrews 11, with a long list of saints who had similarly suffered for the Lord.

This persecution in the Roman Empire had nothing to do with the ‘Emperor worship’— which Christians refused to do—although that was going to happen later, under Emperor Domitian. John during his days still has little to observe when he sees the ‘woman’, the ‘whore’, intoxicated from the blood of the saints. He thinks of eschatological ‘Babylon’, the ‘Babylon’ of the end-times. John is surprised when this ‘woman’ is shown to him. He wonders greatly. Maybe because he had expected to see the judgment of ‘Babylon’ immediately, in his days, thinking that Babylon referred to the Roman Empire?1 Or perhaps he wonders because he sees her riding on the ‘beast’?2 The angel’s reply shows that this is a one-of-a-kind mystery – that of the ‘woman’, the ‘whore’ and that of the ‘beast’, and, ultimately, that of the judgment of both of them. They are connected and intertwined.

The angel will start with the explanation of the ‘beast’ with the ‘seven heads and ten horns’, that carries the ‘woman’. John had already seen the ‘beast’ from the sea (of nations).3 Some commentators believe the seven heads (which are seven mountains and seven kings according to the angel4) refer to seven Roman Emperors in John’s life-time. This is the list of Roman Emperors:

1. Julius Caesar, a friend of the Jews, 46–44 BC
2. Octavian (Augustus), permitted divine emperor worship outside Rome, 27 BC–14 AD
3. Tiberius, a withdrawn, gloomy man who eschewed titles, 14–37 AD
4. Caligula, mad, made people worship him as a god, 37–41 AD
5. Claudius, a moderate man, favourable to Jews and worshipped as a god, 41–54 AD
6. Nero, power-hungry, arsonist of Rome, persecutor of Christians, committed matricide. His mother was Agrippina whom he murdered. Livia was Nero’s Nero committed suicide or fled to the Parthians. A legend sprang up claiming his resurrection from the dead and possible return. This idea may have sprung from the Biblical prophecy that the anti-Christ will be healed of a mortal wound.5 Nero was a type of the anti-Christ and of the decadence of the Roman Empire, 54–68 AD.
7. Galba – three emperors in one year, 68–69 AD
8. Otho
9. Vitellius
10. Vespasian, general, moderate and ‘righteous’, 69–79 AD, his son
11. Titus conquers and destroys Jerusalem and the Temple, 79–81 AD
12. Domitian whose title was Dominus et Deus—lord and god—a cruel persecutor of Christians, 81–96 AD. John possibly wrote the ‘Book of Revelation’ during his reign although the ‘Book of Revelation’ could have been written much earlier as well, even before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple e. before the year 70 AD.
13. Nerva, an old man, moderate, ‘good’ for Jews and Christians, 96–98 AD
14. Trajan, the most worshipped Caesar after Augustus, 98–117 AD. The Roman Empire reaches its greatest extent and the climax of its might; Christians are punishable ‘in principle’, but there are few There is indeed ‘Emperor Worship’, however, and a cautious continuation of Domitian’s policies. This situation remains more or less for some two centuries, until Constantine (306–337), who raises Christianity to the status of official state religion.

• This is quite a puzzle for those commentators who want to elect seven Roman Emperors as the ‘seven kings’ that John mentions. The angel will say that ‘five kings’ have fallen, one is still alive and the other one has not yet come.6 Or to pick one Emperor to be the anti-Christ in John’s days. We think that John is looking to the distant future, however!
• The Roman historian Tacitus reports that the first temple to ‘Rome and his divine Emperors’ was built in 195 B.C. in Smyrna and the first temple to the ‘divine Caesar’ in Pergamum in 29 B.C. ‘Emperor worship’ reached a crescendo under Caligula, and by the end of the first century A.D. all cities in Asia had temples for the ‘worship of Rome and her Emperors’.
• The influence of ‘Emperor Worship’ on Asia Minor, can be summarized as follows: “There is little question that the province of Asia was the world leader in the imperial cult. Asia Minor was a veritable hotbed for the imperial cult”
• That Christians were compelled to worship the Emperor several decades after the Book of Revelation was written is documented in a letter from the Roman historian Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan, who evidently executed Christians and forced those who denied being Christians to invoke the heathen gods and offer worship, wine, and frankincense before a statue of the Caesar/ Emperor.
• Traditionally, it has been thought that Domitian (AD 81-96) was the worst of the first-century Emperors, insisting on his own divinity, demanding Caesar/ Emperor worship, and persecuting Christians who did not participate.

Bible References:
1.Revelation 16:19, 17:1 2.Revelation 17:3 3.Revelation 13:1–7 4.Revelation 17:9–10 5.Revelation 13:3 6.Revelation 17:10