Revelation 17:7-13 - Seven headed beasties

It is not clear whether John is marvelling at the whore herself or her destruction. Given that the image of the whore appears somewhat grotesque it seems strange that John would marvel at her. However, men are taken in by prostitutes. Then we can look at the sort of things that she is representative of, such as the Nazis. They were tryout grotesque, yet a whole nation marvelled at them. Indeed the whole of the human race is deceived by the world system. Or maybe John is just astounded at her power and that she is drunk on the blood of the martyrs. Remember that at the time the Roman Empire was persecuting Christians. 

The angel then explains to John and tells him not to marvel. We might think that he could have explained a little more clearly! Needless to say there has been much speculation as to who the seven heads and ten horns are. I think at one time the EU was identified with the ten horns! Now there is much wrong, and much ungodly, about the EU but it is not the anti-Christ. Anyway, it has long since had more than 10 members. This is just a reminder of the silliness of trying to identify these things. Two more sensible suggestions have been to identify the seven with various emperors or Rome, or with various empires. I think it is more fruitful to focus on the general meaning.

We are now looking at things that will happen at the end. Now this still has relevance for times prior to the very end for there are many precursors of the end itself. 

The angel tells John that the beast will rise from the pit, but only to go to destruction. All ungodly power will be destroyed. Whenever we see any evil power we can be confident that we are looking at something that is doomed for destruction. However the world will marvel at the beast. Just because the world is fascinated by something does not mean that we should be fascinated by it.

Note that it is those whose name has not been written in the book of life who will marvel at it. They are not removed from the book of life because they do marvel at it.

The beast comes after the seven kings. He is distinct, but belongs to the seven kings. In a sense he is the logical conclusion of the seven kings. The beast is what man's rebellion naturally leads to. Remember that the number of the beast is 666, the number of man. The only reason satan has any influence in the world is because we chose to rebel against God.

So there will come a time when the whole of the world is united in following the beast.