Page:Darby - Notes on the Book of Revelations, 1839.djvu/151

 elsewhere remarked of Daniel and the parables, the interpretation carries the facts of the prophecy into a further scene, altogether consequent upon that in the prophecy. “The beast which thou sawest.” The interpretation takes up the time of the passage into this further scene, which did not exist in the actual vision of the apostle; which saw (in order to give her her full character), the woman in all her splendour. “The beast which thou sawest, was” (to wit, the fourth great empire), “and is not;” i.e. had not, at the noticed period, its united formal character:—shall resume this formal character, under the direct influence of Satan—shall ascend out of the bottomless pit—and then be destroyed; and all within the prophetic range of his power (the earth—the woman’s influence extended further, “she sat on the waters,”) should be amazed when they thus saw it. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman, not the whore, sitteth, “but that great city which reigneth.” This cannot mean merely Babylon; for that was the whore’s name already on her forehead, and therefore not an explanation to be given; that was her symbolic character, this her local explanation. There are also seven kings; these are not the horns, they were not moreover contemporaneous,