Hartland Winter Convocation 2021: The Mind Which Has Wisdom

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

The Book of Revelation

Steve Wohlberg

04 Ten Horns at War with the Lamb

So, let's open our Bibles to Revelation 17, verse 12.

Part 4 is called 10 Horns at War with the Lamb.

I've been very encouraged by your responses to these meetings and it just shows me that God is at work and that his word is resonating with people's hearts.

Dear God in heaven, thank you so much for this weekend at Heartland.

It's been wonderful to be here, to have the chance to share what you have been working with me on in Revelation chapter 17.

Nobody has all the light except for Jesus.

And we pray that you will continue to teach us and help us as we go back into your book to try to understand the words of prophecy.

We've worked our way through the bloody woman.

And the 10 horns, which you saw are 10 kings, which have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive power as kings for 1 hour with the beast." Very interesting, isn't that?

Well I've researched this, I've studied this, I've tried to figure this out myself.

And when it talks about 10 horns, the number 10 takes us back to the book of Daniel.

And I've got a slide here that illustrates some of these applications.

Daniel 2, I've mentioned this before, all the way back to the first major prophecy in the book of Daniel, you see those legs of iron and then it has feet of iron and clay.

And then it talks about in Daniel 2, it goes down from the head of gold, the breasts and arms of silver, the legs or the arms of silver, and then bronze and then iron, and then it goes to the toes.

It actually uses the word toes in Daniel 2.

Now it doesn't actually say 10 toes in Daniel 2, but you would assume that the image of a man when it talks about the toes, that there's 10 of them, unless this is some kind of a strange man that has 11 toes or 8 toes, you would assume that's 10.

And typically when we go down through in our prophecy seminars and go down through the Beast of Daniel or the image of Daniel 2, and we get to the toes when it says that they will mingle with the seed of men and they will not cleave to each other.

We typically apply that to Europe, right?

To the European divisions and how the different nations of Europe wouldn't cleave together.

They would mingle with the seed of men, meaning intermarriage among them, but they don't cleave together.

So we apply that to the 10 divisions of the Western Roman Empire in Europe.

Now, then we move to Daniel 7 and we have those 4 beasts.

We have the lion, the bear, the leopard, the dragon-like beast that has how many horns?

And then the little horn comes up and he knocks out 3 of the 10, Remember that?

And we've always applied that to the 3 of the 10 in Western Europe that are being uprooted as the 11th horn, representing the papal power, rises up in Italy in the midst of Western Europe.

I mean, I've taught and I do teach prophecy seminars regularly, and I have a whole sermon in our Startling Prophecies for America series on our YouTube channel where I go into Daniel 7 and look at that fourth beast representing the Roman Empire, look at the 10 horns representing the breakdown of the Roman Empire and from the barbarian nations that settled in Europe.

And then the little horn, the 11th horn, the papal power grew right up there and sat right on the city of 7 hills.

And then did its dastardly work during the dark ages for 1260 years.

So Daniel 7, we have 10 horns representing 10 divisions of the Western Roman Empire in Europe.

And then we get to Revelation 13, and we have this beast that has 7 heads and 10 horns and crowns on those horns, right?

And that represents the shift from Imperial Rome to the time of Papal Rome, when the Papal Empire is ruling Europe through it's the support and its connection and its fornication with the kings of Europe.

So we're just going down kind of reviewing history as we understand history and Bible prophecy.

Now we get to Revelation 17 verse 12 again, and it talks about the 10 horns.

So as we go back through history, we see these 10 horns and 10 toes, 10 horns, again and again, being connected to events in Europe.

There's a slide showing the breakdown of the Roman Empire and some of the different northern barbarian tribes that swept down into the empire and divided it up as the little horn was growing there in the city of Rome.

I thought about this just this morning, and actually added this slide just this morning.

That's why I said I had kind of a busy morning, got up.

I thought I need to tweak these slides, and I need to add this.

If you look at the 10 different tribes there, 1 of them is called the Franks.

Now, if you study history, you realize, you learn that Clovis, who was the king of the Franks, was a leading king that helped establish the papal power.

Yeah, he was a major player in the development of the papacy.

He was the first Catholic king who gave his legislative authority to the papal power.

And it's also interesting that it was, the Franks eventually became the French, that What nation was it that knocked the papacy out of power in 1798?

So the Franks helped build it up, and the French helped knock it down.

And once again, to me, this is an argument in favor of a European application to the horns, to the horns.

Now let's go back to our Bibles and look again at chapter 17, verse 12.

It says, the 10 horns which you saw are 10 kings which have received no kingdom as yet.

So now at this point, You know, we've gone down from Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Revelation 13, and in chapter 17, when it talks about the 10 horns, in this verse, it's not looking primarily to the past, but it's looking to the future.

It's talking about something that is going to happen.

They've got no kingdom as yet, but they've received power as kings 1 hour with the beast.

These have 1 mind, and they will give their power and their strength to the beast.

Now I've mentioned to you that I have adopted a principle that I think is a solid principle, which is called the symbol to literal principle.

I've shown you that in Daniel 2, we've seen it in Daniel 7, that the fourth beast, the symbol, is the fourth kingdom upon the earth application.

We see it in Daniel 8, that the ram, the symbol, represents the kings of Media and Persia, and the goat represented Greece.

And we saw that in Revelation 17, when the waters are the people, multitudes, nations, and tongues, We see this principle over and over again, that symbols are often interpreted by angels or prophets to represent something literal.

So based on that principle in verse 12, where it says the 10 horns, that's the symbol because they're on the beast, which you saw are, here's the application, 10 kings.

So I see these 10 kings or kingdoms as real kings or kingdoms in this world.

And I interpret this as I've done the best I can do, trying to figure this out prayerfully.

I apply this primarily to the literal nations of Europe.

Because I see Europe specific down throughout Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Revelation 13.

It was 1 of the horns that wounded the papal power in 1798, which was France in Europe.

So I apply this primarily to the literal nations of Europe.

But I also apply this based on the principle of dual application which we saw yesterday.

That the 7 heads literally apply to the seven-hilled city of Rome.

Just like the 7 candlesticks, Jesus applied to the literal 7 churches in Asia, but then those literal 7 churches in Asia also are expanded to periods throughout Christian history.

03 And There are Seven Kings

Well, I hope you've had a good day today.

It's been a very nice day, a relaxing day.

I was taking a walk this afternoon and I crossed somebody and that person's probably here somewhere.

And as we crossed each other, he made an interesting comment.

He just said, I've been blessed by your meetings so far.

And I thought about that and I thought, well you know the first night, last night we talked about who the bloody woman is and that went really well.

And this morning we went into who is the seven-headed beast, and the brother was blessed by that, but I think maybe, maybe he was kind of refraining himself to wait and see what happens next.

And so that's what's gonna happen tonight.

Tonight we are continuing this four-part series dealing with the deep truths of the book of Revelation chapter 17, 1 of the most amazing chapters in the Bible.

And Our talk tonight, part 3, is called There Are 7 Kings, based on Revelation chapter 17, verse 10 and 11.

So if you have your Bible, if you wanna open up, we read this during the scripture reading, And by the way, my little book, The Bloody Woman and the Seven-Headed Beast, we've got a lot of them in the little bookstore over there.

Got a whole stack of them for this meeting.

They're only $2 a book, so that's pretty cheap.

And there's a lot of information in this.

It wasn't just written for us, it was written to be shared with the public for people that have an interest in studying the deep truths of the book of Revelation.

So the 7 kings, let's pray, and let's pray for God's blessing that part 3 will go as well as parts 1 and 2.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you for the privilege of being here and as we dive deep into your book and into your chapter and look at a very controversial and interesting and important subject, we pray for the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of God.

And Lord, I don't wanna be an innovator, I want to simply reveal, be a channel for your truth that's in your word, that Jesus will be lifted up.

We pray for your blessing now, please help us to understand, give us wisdom, in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, and I guess I should welcome those of you that are not here in front of me, but are out there somewhere, who knows where.

You're part of this as well, the online audience.

In verse 10, the angel said to John that there are 7 kings.

And when he comes he must continue for a short space.

And then verse 8, or verse 11, goes back to the beast.

And the beast that was and is not, even he is the eighth and he's of the 7, and he goes into perdition.

I tell you, these verses, these 2 verses, have mystified and baffled scholars and Bible prophecy students for centuries trying to figure this out.

I have wrestled with these verses myself and as I told you I think it was Friday night last night after a journey of about 2 years trying to figure this out and studying this and praying and going this direction, running into a roadblock, going that direction, running into a roadblock, and then getting over a roadblock, and then going this way and that way.

I've had ideas that I've given up and I've been, you know, just going back and forth on this.

The pieces finally came together to the point where I felt comfortable to stand in front of an audience and share my views.

And of course I encourage everybody, I always do this, to test everything by scripture.

Verse 9 says, Here is the mind which has wisdom.

The 7 heads are 7 mountains on which the woman sits.

And I've talked about this last night and this morning that I've adopted a principle which I call the Symbol to Literal Principle.

I gave you examples of those principles in Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Daniel 8, Revelation 17, that when a symbol is used And then an angel or a prophet interprets the symbol, we see over and over again that the application is literal.

And so I accept that application when it comes to the 7 heads, which are the symbol, R, which is the application, the 7 mountains on which the woman sits.

And as I've mentioned this before, mountains in the Greek, Strong's Concordance says it can also mean hills.

And Rome is famous for centuries as the city of 7 hills.

And there you can actually see those 7 hills right there, they have different names.

And right next to that picture you'll see an old Roman coin from 1 of the Roman emperors, Vespasian.

And you can see if you look closely that that old coin of Rome depicts a woman sitting on 7 hills.

So the seven-hilled city of Rome is classic Protestant interpreters for hundreds of years have understood this to represent the church of Rome sitting on the city of 7 hills, like we talked about Friday night in our first meeting.

Now, I've mentioned a couple times that in my studies, I've also concluded that there is another principle called the principle of dual application, and that there are times when that principle is valid.

We see that in Matthew 24 where Jesus talked about the destruction of Jerusalem, and that also has an application to the end of the world.

And we see this also in the book of Revelation.

Now let me show you where this is in the book of Revelation.

If you go back to verse 7, which is the context of the 7 kings, verse 7 says, "'The angel said to me, wherefore did you marvel?

I will tell you the mystery, notice the word mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has 7 heads and 10 horns.

So notice the word mystery, we have a woman representing a false church, and we have a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns.

Now keep your finger here in Revelation 17 and go back to chapter 1.

And I don't remember exactly how many months ago when I was studying this, and it sure seemed to me that the Holy Spirit, as I was trying to figure this out, led me to Revelation chapter 1.

And I saw something that I'd never seen before You know the the lights just go on In Revelation chapter 1 Jesus John sees Jesus walking in the midst of how many candlesticks?

And then if you look at verse 20, Jesus begins to explain this.

He's beginning to explain the mystery, notice the word mystery, we just saw that in chapter 17, the mystery of the 7 stars, which you saw in my right hand, and the 7 golden candlesticks.

The 7 stars are the angels of the 7 churches, and the 7 candlesticks, which is the symbol, 7 candlesticks were a symbol, which you saw, and then he says they are, here's the application, and what does he say they are?

In chapter 1 and in chapter 17, we have 2 mysteries.

Jesus said, I'm gonna explain the mystery, and the angel said, I'll tell you the mystery.

We have the false woman in chapter 17, and then we have Jesus talking about his church in chapter 1.

In chapter 1, Jesus is the interpreter, and in chapter 17, the angel is the interpreter.

So, 2 mysteries, 2 women, 2 interpreters, and we also have 2 sets of 7.

There's clear parallels, 2 mysteries, 2 churches, 2 interpreters, and 2 sets of sevens.

Now, if you go back to verse, let's see, where is it?

Verse 11, Jesus says in chapter 1 verse 11, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, which you see right in the book, and send it to the 7 churches, which are where?

Here I have a slide here where we have the 7 churches which were in Asia, which is modern-day Turkey, and there literally were 7 churches there, weren't there?

You can do your homework on this, you can study these churches, you can go to read about the town of Laodicea, the city of Ephesus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Pergamos, those were real churches that were in Asia.

So what we have is Jesus says the 7 candlesticks are the 7 churches which were literal churches in literal Asia.

And then we also have the 7 heads are 7 mountains on which the woman sits literally in Italy.

So we have Asia is the location of the churches of Jesus Christ, and Rome at that point is the location of the false church sitting upon the city of 7 Hills.

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