Most students of prophecy believe that the Beast in Revelation with seven heads and ten horns represents the seven kingdoms. John who wrote Revelation said that five had fallen, one was, and another was to come. So the list looks like this:
Seven Kingdoms
- Egypt – 3100 to ?
- Assyria – 2500 BC to 605 BC
- Babylon – 612 – 539 BC
- Medo-Persia – 539 – 331 BC
- Greecia – 331 – 168 BC
- Rome – 168-476 AD / 1453 AD – inc Byzantine period
Speculation about the seventh kingdom has been varied. Some say it is a revival of the Roman Empire which today is the EU. Others say it is Vatican City which sits in the middle of Rome which suffered a deadly wound at the hands of Napoleon and was reinstated on the 11 February 1929. Another view is the British Empire which was certainly a significant empire and is often coupled with the USA as being the seventh and eighth kingdoms as prophesied by John.
- Revelation 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction.,
- Revelation 17:11: The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.
Notice that there is also an eighth king and it is of the seventh, thus they say that the American Empire is of the British Empire and have so-called proof that the USA is still being run by the British Empire.
Recently I discovered something in scripture that helps us narrows down the list considerably. It is found in this scripture:
- Daniel 7:2-3 “I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. “And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another.…
The Great Sea is a term that refers to the Mediterranean Sea according to the rest of scripture.
- Joshua 1:4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even to the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.
- Joshua 23:4 Behold, I have divided to you by lot these nations that remain, to be an inheritance for your tribes, from Jordan, with all the nations that I have cut off, even to the great sea westward.
- Ezekiel 48:28 And by the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the border shall be even from Tamar to the waters of strife in Kadesh, and to the river toward the great sea.
Also see: Numbers 34:6,7, Joshua 9:1, Joshua 15:12,47, & Ezekiel 47:10,15,20.
Even Google says that the Great Sea of the Bible is the Mediterranean Sea.
So we can see the seventh head of the beast or the kingdom that was to come according to John must be located around the Mediterranean Sea. This rules out the British Empire, the American Empire, China etc and leaves us with an empire that has a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea. What empires does that leave us with if we narrow the search to the area around the Mediterranean Sea? Here is a possible list:
- Rome (EU)
- Vatican (city)
- Ottoman (Islamic Caliphate)
I want to talk about the last option. While many a book has been written on the EU as the next Beast and the Vatican as the Harlot that rides the Beast, other books have been written about the Vatican being the Beast. However, most students of prophecy hardly ever consider the Ottoman Empire when identifying the seventh kingdom of the Beast. But let’s look closely at this possibility. This empire ticks many if not all the boxes when it comes to identifying the Beast to come.
- It conquered the Roman Empire. Just as each empire succeeded the previous, if we follow the pattern we see in history that it was the Ottoman Empire that conquered Rome. Many think that the Roman Empire fell into decline and that is true of the western leg, but the eastern leg survived for another thousand years after Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople in Turkey.
- Islam is of the antichrist according to 1 John 2:22-23:
Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist–denying the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son, the same doesn’t have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.
The Quran states clearly in Quran 2:116
Who says “Allah has begotten a Son”? Quran 10.68 They say, “Allah hath begotten a son!” Glory be to Him! He is Self-Sufficient! His are all things in the heavens and on earth! No warrant have ye for this!
A central tenet of Islam is that God has no son.
- We know that the the Beast receives a deadly wound. The Ottoman/Islamic Empire suffered a deadly wound in the wake of WW1 meaning it ceased to exist as an empire. This also means that the whole beast actually died because all the previous heads of the beast existed in succession. So the beast was gone when the Ottoman Empire fell.
- it looks like we are seeing the rise of an Islamic Empire or Caliphate today. This all aligns perfectly with the Beast that is to come which we read about in Revelation 17:8
The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction.,
Further, we read in Revelation 17:11:
The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.
Today we see in the Middle East the beginnings of a new Islamic Caliphate. If it becomes an empire, then it easily fits as the seventh and eighth, with a deadly wound between each reign.
- The Mahdi of the Quran and in the Hadith is the awaited leader to come in Islamic prophecy. He seems to match the Antichrist of the Bible. Muslims await the arrival of the Mahdi in the same way that the Christians await the Yeshua the messiah. The Hadith writes that the Mahdi will be a descendant of Muhammad and kill all enemies of Muhammad, When we compare the Mahdi with the Antichrist, there seem to be too many similarities to ignore the possibility that they are the same person. Similarities for both include: they are military leaders, they are stout according to their appearance, they sign peace treaties between seven and ten years, they change laws and times, they target Christians, Jews, Israel, and Jerusalem, they honor a god of force/strongholds/war, and they do not honor the desire of woman.
To read a more indepth writing about Islam as the Beast of Revelation, see this page:
