resented as having seven heads and ten horns, and signified Rome
under the Pagan power. Did old Rome really possess the ten horns? No.
According to verse 12 in this chapter, they were to arise future of
John's time. But notice carefully that the seven heads, which according
to this description, belonged to the beast sustaining the Papal power in
after years, are here explained by the angel as signifying the very
forms of government by which _Pagan_ Rome subsisted. "Five _are fallen_
[a past event], one _is_ [exists at this present time], and the other
_is not yet come_." So according to divine interpretation, the same
heads and horns serve for both the dragon and the beast. This could not
possibly be a true representation unless they were both in reality the
_same beast_, they being represented as two only for the purpose of
describing the two phases of Roman history--Pagan and Papal.

With this point established, that these two forms of Roman history are
the same beast, we are now prepared to understand the statement that the
beast "was and is not, and yet is." This is equivalent to saying that
the beast existed, it ceased to exist, and then it came into existence
again. This was exactly the history of Rome. Its downfall under the
Pagan form was described under the fourth trumpet as an eclipse of the
sun, moon and stars, so that they shone not for a third part of the day
and night. For a time it seemed not to exist. A little later the eclipse
is lifted; the beast exists again under the Papal form. In this is set
forth clearly the wounding and the healing of the beast. The wound was
inflicted on its sixth, or Imperial, head (for the first five had
already fallen, according to the historical facts just related), being
accomplished by the hordes of Northern barbarians overturning the empire
of the West. It appeared for a time that the beast was indeed wounded
unto death; but not so: to the surprise of all, he survived under the
form of the seventh head. At this point the question is sure to be
asked, How could the beast continue to live if its seventh head was to
continue but "a short space"? This is accounted for by the fact that
there was what might be appropriately called an eighth head, but which
was in reality of the seven. "And the beast that was, and is not, even
he is the eighth, and is of the seven." Verse 11.

The identification of the seventh head will now make the matter
complete. The facts all meet in the Car