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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter  13

Section 1 Subsection 8

8. The Ten Diademed Horns of the Beast


 
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"Horns are the symbols of power, exerted by strength of arms because such beasts as have horns make use of them as their arms.

"As the symbol of strength they are used in Psa 18:2. They are also used to denote the regal power; and when they are distinguished by number, they signify so many monarchies. Thus horn signifies a monarchy in Jer. 48:25; and in Zech. 1:18, the Four Horns are the four great monarchies which had each of them subdued the Jews. See also Dan. 8:20-22.

"The Horn of David in Psa. 132:18, is explained by the Targum of a glorious king to arise out of the house of David.

It appears from Valerius Maximus, that the ancient Romans understood horns as the symbol of regal government; and the images of the gods, kings and heroes, among the heathen, were adorned with horns as a mark of their royalty and power.

"Horns upon a wild beast are not only expressive of powers, but also of such powers as are tyrannical, ravenous and at enmity with God and his saints, as in Dan. 8"  Daubuz.

The Horns of the Sea Monster represent Ten Kingdoms established by the Barbarians of the Abyss upon all that Mediterranean territory conquered by them from the Roman Dragon. This appears from the testimony that "the Dragon yielded to him his power, and his throne, and an extensive jurisdiction" - ver. 2. In relinquishing it to the beast, he yielded them to his appendages, the horns and mouth as well.

In ch. 17:12, John was informed that the ten horns were symbolical of kingdoms: "the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdoms as yet;" that is, they had received no kingdom at the time the interpreter was talking with John. Daniel gives the same record in ch. 7:23. He had said that he wished to know the truth represented by the ten horns upon the fourth beast's head; upon which it was stated to him that "the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise;" and those in ver. 9, are styled "the thrones" which are to be "cast down" when the Ancient bf Days comes to sit in judgment upon them. And this judgment John indicates in the words: "These (Ten Horns) shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over-come them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him (the Saints of the Holy City) are called chosen and faithful" (Apoc. 17:14).

The geographical extent of the Roman Habitable upon which the barbaric tribes of the abyss established themselves with Feudal Sovereignty, was the Mediterranean West. They have to be enumerated by the names they bore in the period when, they were engaged in the work of establishing themselves upon that territory. The symbol, as we shall see, requires at least eleven abyssal tribes - ten for the horns, and one or more for the Seventh Head. The following is the list that seems to me authorized by history: 1. Huns; 2. Vandals; 3. Visigoths; 4. Burgun-dians; 5. Gepidoe; 6. Lombards; 7. Franks; 8. Suevi; 9. Alans; 10. Bava-rians. These were the founders of the Horn-Kingdoms of the Beast. This divided form of Mediterranean Europe has continued for ages, even to the present time; though the number of its divisions has not always, nor is it now, ten. The prophecy does not require that the number of the kingdoms should be invariable. They were ten in the period of their foundation, and from this fact have acquired the symbolic designation of the Ten Horns. So that though their number might be reduced one-half, the power that might be established over the territory they originally occupied would, to that extent, be represented as the Ten Horns.

"The emergence of the wild beast of the sea," says Mr. Lord, "is not to be regarded as having been accomplished in a moment, or a brief space, but as having occupied such a period as would naturally be required for the invasion of the empire (of the Catholic Dragon) by many separate tribes migrating from vast distances, engaging in numerous wars, and, finally, after victory, establishing new and independent governments. Nor are the chiefs who rule them after the conquest of parts of the empire, to be considered as having assumed that relation in which they are symbolized by the horns while they remained, as in France for a long period, in subordination to Rome. They emerged from the sea as dynasties, when, by concession or victory, they became rulers of portions of the empire in independence of that power. The institutions of the horns, therefore, took place at different periods, and they were those that subsisted when the conquest of the (Western) empire was completed and the imperial power extinguished"  A.D. 476.

On the conquest of Italy and termination of imperial authority by the deposition of Augustulus by Odoacer, the Herulian Goth, A D. 475, the barbarians of the apocalyptic abyss held possession of the whole western division of the Latin Sea, with the exception of a part of Gaul, and were distributed under ten kingly governments

1. The Huns, erupting from the Scythian region of the Alps, crossed the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Dniester, and planted themselves in the vicinity of the Danube, and, therefore, styled Hungary, A.D. 370. Under Attila, A.D. 451, they descended into Thrace, about thirty miles from Constantinople; then turning westward into Macedonia, he wheeled north into Pannonia, a part of Hungary; and thence, passing through Noricum, a part of Austria and Bavaria, crossed the Danube and the Rhine near their sources, and pursued his march through Belgium almost to the English Channel. He then crossed the Seine, and descended to the Loire, whence he turned eastward, recrossing the Seine, the Rhine and the Danube near their sources; thence he descended into Lombardy, from which, repassing through Noricum and Pannonia, he again crossed the Danube, where he died at his seat of government. This was the course of the Great Blazing Star of the third wind-trumpet, the remains of whose dominion exists in the Horn-Kingdom of Hungary.

2. The VANDALS descended from the Swedish section of the abyss, and entered Gaul, A.D. 406. They soon passed into Spain, and after occupying a part of that Mediterranean province nearly twenty years, A.D. 427, crossed into Roman Mrica, wrested it from the Catholic Dragon, set up an independent kingdom under GENSERIC, and ruled it until A.D. 533. The kingdom was founded under the sounding of the second wind-trumpet, when a Great Mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.

3. The VISIGOTHS, or Western Goths came originally from Sweden with the Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, as the "hail and fire mingled with blood" of the first trumpet, after their separation from the Ostrogoths, who encamped between the Dnieper and the Dniester, descended upon Greece under the leadership of ALARIC, and after-wards, having ravaged Illyria, Lombardy and Italy, laid siege to Rome. In A. D. 408, they passed from Italy into the south of France, and maintained a kingdom there till A.D. 506, when, being driven by the Franks into Spain, they wrested a part of it, Gallicia, from the Suevi, and in A.D. 585, extended their sway over the whole peninsula.

4. The BURGUNDIANS issued from the Germania region of the abyss east of the Vistula. They established themselves in Belgic Gaul A.D. 407. After a few years they obtained possession of Savoy, and sub-sequently of Gaul on the Rhone, and maintained a separate kingdom till A.D. 524, when they were conquered by the Franks. On the division of the Frank kingdom, it again became a separate state, and continued such most of the time for several centuries.

5. The GEPIDÆ migrated from the Scandinavian country west of the Baltic, now called Sweden. They crossed the sea and proceeded southeasterly across the Dnieper, and encamped between that river and the Don. From thence they passed westward into Hungary and thence radiated to Illyria, now styled Dalmatia, in which they established them-selves on the Adriatic Bay of the Mediterranean, after the death of Attila in A.D. 453. Ardaric, the king of the Gepidae, erected his throne in the palace of Attila, whence he exercised royal authority over the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Black Sea. The kingdom of the Gepidae continued until A.D. 566, when it was destroyed by the Lombards.

6. The LOMARDS migrated originally from Scandinavia, ascending thence nearly due south to the Danube. On the dissolution of the empire of Attila, A.D. 455, whose standard they followed, they took possession of a portion of Pannonia, a part of Hungary. Subsequently to the conquest of the Gepidae, they extended their possessions as far as Bavaria, A.D. 568; they invaded and conquered Italy, where they maintained themselves till near the close of the eighth century, when they were "plucked up by the roots" (Dan. 7:8).

7. The FRANKS is a name assumed by a confederacy of German tribes, inhabiting that section of the abyss lying between the Lower Rhine and the Weser. It signifies the Freemen. In Gibbon's day, their original territory was in part enclosed within the Circle of Westphalia, the Landgravate of Hesse, and the Duchies of Brunswick and Lunenburg, now absorbed by the Prussians in their transitory confederation of Northern Germany. In their inaccessible morasses, redolent of mud, water, and frogs, they used to shake defiance at the Roman arms. When the time arrived for the ascending of the Diademed Horns out of the sea, they instinctively obeyed the summons of the First Trumpet, and in A.D. 407, entered Gaul, and within a few years established a kingdom upon the Rhine, which they continued to maintain and advance, until in the sixth century it extended over the whole territory embraced in modern France.

8. The SUEVI filled the interior Germanian countries of the abyss from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. A short time before the sounding of the first trumpet, they united with the Alemanni. They passed through Gaul, conquered Gallicia in Spain, and maintained themselves there as a Diademed Horn of the Sea till A.D. 585, a space of one hundred and seventy-seven years.

9. The ALANS migrated from the Asiatic Sarmatia, lying between the Black and Caspian Seas. They passed from this section of the abyss into Germania, being joined on their march by the Vandals, who had previously descended from Scandinavia, and had halted in European Sarmatia, between the Dnieper and the Don. In Germany their forces were still further increased by the accession of the Suevi. Thus strengthened, the Alans, who did not remain in Gaul with the Vandals and Sueves, crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, where they divided; the Suevi settling in Gallicia, the Alans in Portugal, and the Vandals in Vandalitia. After sustaining a separate government eight or nine years, they were incorporated by conquest with the Vandals and Sueves, and passed with the Vandals under Genseric into Africa. Another body of Alans had settled between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire. They repulsed Attila from Orleans, their capital, on his invasion of Gaul, A.D. 451, and were stationed in the centre of the army by which he was defeated at the great battle of Chalons. On his invasion of their territory, A.D. 453, they were supported by the Goths, and gained another victory. A.D. 464, they invaded Italy, and laid Liguria, the southern part of Sardinia, waste. Clovis, king of the Franks, extended his conquests over their territory as far as the Loire, A.D. 485, but they continued to subsist as a separate people till A.D. 507, or thereabouts, when they were conquered by the Franks.

10. The BAVARIANS. The present Bavaria in the time of the Romans formed part of the Dragon empire, known as Vindelicia and Noncum. Besides South Bavaria, Vindelicia also embraced the south-eastern part of the kingdom of Wurtemberg; while Noricum comprehended the Archduchy of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and part of Carniola. The Jesuit Gordon in his Opus Chronologicum, referring to A.D. 511 says "Theodon, the first king of Bavaria, dies." We are not informed how long he had reigned; but Mr. Elliot thinks we may date it as before A.D.493. The Bavarian Horn is noticed by Gibbon as forming one of the boundaries of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy under Theodoric: "He reduced," says he, "the unprofitable countries Rhoetia (the Tyrol), Noricum, Dalmatia, and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians." And again he says, "the Lombard kingdom extended east, north, and west, as far as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy;" and Muller:"the Bavarians had now (that is, about the end of the sixth century) given name to Noricum."

Such, then, is my list of the ten notable abyssal horns of the sea. Though separate dynasties, they are very properly united in a single symbol, and exhibited as one great combination of tyrannical states, from the identity of their origin in the abyss, the oneness of their policy (ch. 17:13), and the similarity of these rulers. This European Common-wealth was composed of monarchies that were all feudatories of the Dragon; for Gibbon shows, that they all adopted, in a great degree, the laws of the ancient empire as their common law. They all came at length to submit themselves to the Papal Yoke; a power which was rising with them out of the sea, whose system of falsehood they cooperated in imposing upon their subjects at all hazards. They may truly be styled the Papal Horns; for their history has proved them to have been, in all their past career, the blind instruments of "THE NAME OF BLASPHEMY" that sits upon the Seven Heads.

In the foregoing enumeration of the horns of the sea, I have made no mention of the Saxons and Danes, who issued forth from the Scandinavian and Germanian abyss against the Dragon province'of Britannia. In all the lists of the horns I have seen, the Saxons have been made to figure as one; and, consequently, the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, now styled England, have been set down as one of the horns of the Beast. But this classification of England with the horns cannot be admitted. It is true that the Saxons and Angles issuing from Holstein and Schleswig, A.D. 449, conquered Britannia. But, instead of constituting themselves one horn, they founded seven kingdoms, styled Kent, Essex~Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland. These were called the Saxon Heptarchy; and were as distinct and independent kingdoms as any of their ten contemporaries upon the Continent(*).

Another objection to England being numbered with the ten, is that she is not a country of the Great-Sea world. The ten horns were to ascend out of the Mediterranean upon which Daniel saw the tempest raging. Gaul, Spain, Italy, Illyria, Africa, and Dacia, are political sections of a torrene, whose waters, directly or indirectly mostly discharge themselves into the Mediterranean. But the British Isles afar off have no relation to it at all. As Origen says in Horn. 6, A.D. 230, "The Britons are divided from our world." They are no part of the Sea Monster's interior maritime territory. Even in modern times they are three kingdoms, not a single horn only; and those three horns, the horn of England, the horn of Scotland, and the horn of Ireland, are more imperial than regal, and more Oriental than European.Another objection to Britain being numbered among the ten horns is, that though, indeed, she is ruled ecclesiastically by a name of blasphemy, her constitution is, in word and deed, opposed to "the Name of Blasphemy" upon the heads of the Beast. The ten horns all worship this Name, and recognize it as their Holy Father; and maintain ambassadors at his court; and exercise their infitience to uphold him in glory and power, that his supposed relations with the heavenly world may, by his favor and blessing, be caused to redound to their spiritual and temporal prosperity. He is their Mouth in all spiritual utterances, "speaking great things and blasphemies concerning the Deity, his Name, his Tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven" (ch. 13:5,6). But, blasphemous as Britain is in her constitutional ecclesiasticism, she protests against, and repudiates, the Chief Blasphemer of the world. She does not belong to the politico-ecclesiastical system, or body politic, of which he is the Mouth. She sends no ambassador to the Court of Rome; and though there may be spiritual imbeciles who have real, and crafty politi-cians who have feigned, reverence for the Roman God and the mummery of his superstition, the heart of the British peoples is hardened against them with the impenetrability of adamant. This hostility is known and understood at Rome, where the will, but not the power, has always existed to reduce Britain to subjection to the so-called "Holy See." In witness of this, there is the Spanish Armada equipped and sent against England in the days of Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Court of Rome, that by the thumb-screw arguments of the Inquisition, the British nation might be brought within the pale of the Mediterranean Sea Monster, beyond which no heretical soul can be saved!

No, the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland was never one of the ten horns . The taint of imperiality, as it were , was indelibly infixed in British soil by the Dragon. The Saxons and Angles from the abyss did not expel him. The Dragon withdrew, and told the Britons to defend themselves. Invaded by the Picts and Scots, they invited the Saxons and Angles to come over and help them. The Celts were repelled; but when the war was over, the Saxons refused to leave, and made the heptarchial settlement for themselves. Nearly fourteen centuries have passed since these events; and the Dragons carved in relief upon the interior of the House of Lords, are now the appropriate symbol of British power. The real ruler at Constantinople, the throne of the Dragon, is Britain, who claims "the Sick Man" there, as her "ancient and faithftil ally." Her interests are intimately associated with the destiny of the Turkish empire, more especially with that part of it termed Syria and Egypt. If the British power in any way be an element of the beast, it can only be in connexion with its body, which is like unto a Leopard." As the power indicated by the words, "Sheba and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish and the young lions thereof," in Ezek. 38:13, she becomes identified with Daniel's third beast, the four-winged and four-headed Leopard, which is to have its dominion taken away when the Ancient of Days comes; but which, before it loses its dominion thus, is to come into collision wlth "the feet of the Bear." 

 

[*Britain not included among the ten horns of the beast. This important fact of prophecy is outlined by the Author of Eureka above, but is frequently ignored by others who attempt to interpret The Apocalypse in accordance with current events. Though Bntain once formed part of the Roman Empire, by the year 449, on the eve of the termination of the Western Empire in 475 when the horns received their independence (indicated by them being crowned as described in Rev. 13:1), Britain was invaded by the Jutes, Angles, Saxon and Danes, and being divided into the seven kingdoms mentioned in the text of Eureka, never did form part of the "beast of the sea" the political order of Western Europe following the fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 475) nor the "twohorned beast" (the so-called Holy Roman Empire that superceded the "beast of the sea" in the year 800). Therefore, the present affiliation of Britain with the European Common Market must be only temporary, and before the "beast of the sea" is again formed in its latter-day manifestation as required by the prophecy of Rev. 17:8, she must withdraw or be excluded therefrom. The map on p. 200 depicts Europe about A.D. 449 — Publishers.]

 

 

 


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