The eighth comes out of the seven. It is formed by the seven. All the achievements and characteristics of all the preceding empires are bunched together in the eighth empire: divine grandeur, despotic authority over life and death, iron legislation, an iron military fist, enormous opulence and prosperity, a mixture of democracy and dictatorship, subtle philosophy, religion, culture and science completely in the service of the empire. The empire is worldwide, with its leader masquerading as a prince of peace, only revealing himself in all his horrible bloodthirstiness later. It promises freedom, equality and fraternity. Everyone is of course equal, but some are ‘more equal’ than others, to quote ‘Animal Farm’, by George Orwell. Language is reshaped by the new way of thinking, and history is re-written accordingly. There is a world economy, electronic currency, bread and circuses from the cradle to the grave. Everyone is registered. The eighth comes out of the seven. How the previous empires were mortally wounded? The answer is that the Roman Empire and the post-Roman empires have all imploded thus they have been mortally wounded and have seemingly disappeared. However, ‘Rome’ is coming back to life.
But the old view that the seven mountains (v.9), also translated hills, refer literally to the ‘city of Rome’ should not be forgotten either, even though mountain, in combination with king, also signifies power. The influence of the city of Rome is pervasive in the secular world through the extensive use of Roman law in the western world and it also dominates the religious world through the Roman Catholic Church. And the Pope, living in Rome, is seen by the world and also by the members of other religions as the leader of all Christianity. And the Vatican deliberately having a statehood of its own – is still situated in Rome. That Roman system is one of the systems that the whore will ride All seven world empires in history bear blasphemous names. The political power system is glorified and even deified in all seven of them.
The number ‘eight’ stands symbolically for what is ‘normally no longer possible’, what is superhuman, the beginning of the negative supernatural, in the revelation of the anti-Christ as a power and as a man, who appeared to have been written off, dead, vanished but who now rises up out of the ashes like a phoenix. Eight appears also as a positive principle in the Bible. The circumcision of little Jewish boys took place on the eighth day. The consecration of priests in Israel also took place on the eighth day of the period of purification. Eight people left Noah’s ark on the eighth day, to become a new human race in a new world. The day of resurrection of the Lord Jesus is on the ‘eighth’ day. In each case there is a new start following the fullness the ‘seven’- the completion, of the The eighth day will dawn after the seventh day, the Sabbath period of peace on earth with the new Heaven and the new earth where peace and righteousness dwells. In short: Daniel’s four empires and John’s seven plus one match when only Egypt and Assur are added at the beginning of the series. An explanation of the ten horns of Daniel 7:7 and Revelation 13:1, which are ten kings, will have to be given later. They belong to the last, the eighth world empire. However, John immediately says of them: this eighth empire will be destroyed! It is going to meet its downfall, together with all the kings and whores that belong to it! The final victory is sure. Jesus is coming, for you too. It is so reassuring and encouraging to realise that.
• The return of Nero from the ‘dead’ was a widespread legend in the first centuries. He had himself killed by a slave’s sword in 67 AD. Apparently, he had no courage to commit suicide himself. There was soon a rumour in Rome that he had not died, however, but had fled to the Parthians living on the other side of the Euphrates! Compare Revelation 16:12! Imposters came from there regularly, claiming to be him, Nero, and inciting Greece and Asia Minor to rebel.
• This popular belief also gained some credence with a few Jews and Christians, as a result of which Nero was proclaimed to be the future destroyer of Rome and the anti-Christ in apocryphal books.
• In the second century, when it was no longer possible to believe that Nero was still alive, belief arose that he would rise from the dead, in order to become the anti-Christ, the living incarnation of the devil.
• The name ‘Emperor Nero’ could be transcribed as 666 in John’s time.The Nero legend has only any value as an anti-Christian typology. There are many more of these types of anti-Christ. Look at the figure of Antiochus Epiphanes’, full of blasphemy and anti-Semitism with his cruel and crazy actions, murdering many Jews in Israel, forcing upon them his Greek Humanism/Hellenism instead of their faith in the God of Israel. People nicknamed Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Antiochus Epimanes, the crazy Fool.
• ‘Animal Farm’ is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. Was that a foretaste of the final Empire under a different ideology?
