Seven Heads
A head of state (or chief of state) is the public persona who officially embodies a state in its unity and legitimacy…the head of state may be a ceremonial figurehead (such as the British Monarch) or concurrently the head of government and more (such as the president of the United States, who is also commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces).
Hitler was the supreme leader of the Axis Powers consisting of ten heads of state of Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Croatia and Finland.
Likewise, the totality of the Roman Empire was subdivided into provinces based on territorial absorption into the Empire. Obviously there were different administrative imperatives based on the the relationship of submission or chronic rebellion to Rome’s authority, value of resources, etc. You don’t see American forces expending military resources in impoverished Sudan like we do in oil-rich Iraq.
Likewise there were two basic types of provinces.
- Public provinces were managed by the Senate, which voted governors into annual terms.
- Imperial provinces were headed by imperial appointees to indefinite terms, rich provinces, like enviable embassadorial posts, granted to supporters to whom the emperor owed favor. The imperial provinces were further broken down by the presence, or not, of a military garrison.
- A militarized zone was ruled by a praefecti, a military officer under legatus Augusti pro praetore(literally: “envoy of the emperor – acting for the praetor”), who was the combined head of the provincial administration, chief judicial officer and commander-in-chief of all military forces based in the province (legions and auxiliaries).
- A province that had been absorbed through an alliance, such as Judea under Herod, and did not require military occupation was ruled by a procuratore. or praefecti. These were men of the second highest Senate rank, equestrian rank, the Roman knights, whose appointments were based on their support of the Emperor.
During Nero’s reign, out of a total 36 provinces, 10 provinces were headed by procuratores or praefecti. However, the number of provinces which had reached a high ranking with resultant economic benefits varied, depending on current status of alliance. This is easily recognizable by the fluctuations in alliances by foreign nations with America, such as Turkey.
“From the reign of the emperor Vitellius, who ruled in the year 69, onward, these equestrian procurators often served as heads of the great ministries of the Roman government.“ The most important ministries were finance, correspondence and petitions, equivalent to the American roles of Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, and Vice President who is also the President of the Senate empowered to break a tie in proposals / petitions.
Ten Horns
Daniel’s original prophecy regarding this last kingdom defines the horns.
“The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth…the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:23-25)
OK, so doesn’t this state categorically that the beast is a kingdom, not an individual?
Semantics.
Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control…
In earlier times, the term autocrat was coined as a favorable description of a ruler, having some connection to the concept of “lack of conflicts of interests” as well as an indication of grandeur and power. This use of the term continued into modern times, as the Russian Emperor was styled “Autocrat of all the Russias” as late as the early 20th century. In the 19th century, Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies within the territories of which lived diverse peoples.
Daniel’s prophecies about the Persian and Greek Empire assumes understanding of the autocratic nature of the ancient nations.
- “a ram which had two horns…the two horns are the kings of Media and Persia…
- an he goat came from the west…had a notable horn between his eyes.
- the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.
- And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great” (Daniel 8)
“the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.” (Revelation 17:12)
A current conceptual fit for the ten kings under an autocracy can be found in the United Nations, where ten leaders are fully subject to the main power.
The Security Council, the United Nations’ principal crisis-management body,is empowered to impose binding obligations on the 193 UN member states to maintain peace. The council’s five permanent and ten elected members meet regularly to assess threats to international security, addressing issues that include civil wars, natural disasters, arms control, and terrorism…
The Security Council has five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—collectively known as the P5. Any one of them can veto a resolution. The council’s ten elected members, which serve two-year, nonconsecutive terms, are not afforded veto power…
the United States was among the powers that prevented a robust UN response in Rwanda. Despite alarming reports received by the council in 1994, it declined to respond as an estimated eight hundred thousand people were killed in a genocide committed against ethnic Tutsis.
So since horns have always symbolized kingship, the real question is not “what do horns symbolize?”, but “why do horns symbolize kingship?”
Horns signify the God / god who is the source of the king’s power.
“God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.” (Habakkuk 3)
“this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death…of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord…let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph…his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.” (Deuteronomy 33)
“And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” (Revelation 5:6)
So of course the Adversary has his counterfeit.
Gerald Gardner says (in 1959’s The Meaning of Witchcraft) that The Horned God is an Under-god, a mediator between an unknowable supreme deity and the people.
Horns have always been an important symbol throughout history and throughout every culture but now this symbolism is appearing more and more in mainstream pop culture. It makes you wonder “why now?” and what’s going on…To really understand we have to go back through time and look at what’s behind all the symbolism.
According to DNA studies, all cows, bulls, and oxen…originated from the now extinct, wild aurochs…enormous and fearsome animal that roamed all of Europe and Asia for thousands of years…The Aurochs cow (female) and bull (male) were so connected with the creation of the universe[emphasis added here and below] that the first two runes in the Elder Futhark are dedicated to them…and the 24 runestaves of the Elder Futhark is said to be, when understood, the secret to the entire sequence of the universe. The Egyptian Goddesses Isis and Hathor both are depicted with cow horns connecting them with creation…
One of the most notorious ancient gods Moloch, was a bull horned god worshiped by the ancient Canaanites, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and most of the Eastern Mediterranean. His name has a root that in the Semitic languages means “king”…The god Enlil [Adam, Son of God] was also considered the bull of heaven and his son, Sin, the moon god, rode on a winged bull. You can see how all this symbolism gets distorted over the course of history. The difference between good and bad really depended on who’s team you were on.
The first one that we have a written record of is Enki [Sumerian Lucifer], the master shaper of the world, god of wisdom, and all magic. He is usually seen with the horned crown of divinity...Other important gods who had these horns were the Egyptian, Ra Ammon…Osiris, Utu, sometimes Zeus, Mercury, Jupiter, Odin
…Alexander the Great…made a visit to the Oracle of Ammon in the Libyan Desert, and supposedly, the oracle told him he was the son of Ammon/Zeus, and afterwards he became known as the “two horned one”. Coins minted after this time show him wearing the “Horn of Ammon” crown…Alexander really believed that the oracle was right and that he was a god, as we know that he founded a dynasty on this claim…Cleopatra of Egypt, later claimed to be the goddess Isis because she was a descendant of Alexander and therefore of the royal line of the gods.We can clearly see that horns in the ancient world were considered a sign of kingship, divinity, and wisdom. Even as the “Emperor Card” in the tarot shows the emperor seated with horned rams’ heads on the four corners of his thrown signifying his divine power brought into the physical realm…
remember the truth about who and what we are and how powerful we are. That truth is that as humans we are all descendants of gods and most of what we were taught to believe are lies specifically engineered to make us forget who we really are. The purpose of demonizing the culture of our ancestors…is all part of the plan to make sure that we never wake up. Our ancestors have left us with all the pieces of the puzzle, and now all we have to do is figure out how to put them together.
With this background in mind, we should be able to recognize that every culture in which the 1st Century Jewish scriptures were preached proclaiming that Yeshua haMessiah of Nazareth was the rightful king of Israel naturally also accepted him as the son of the Jewish God YHVH Creator, and therefore also easily accepted him as one prophesied to be the Savior of the world. He was simply one of many claimants – importantly – within the Roman dominions.
What made Yeshua different, and more appealing, was his message of equality and spiritual empowerment of even the lowest members of society, not to mention the legally admissible proof by witnesses of his resurrection, ergo real power over death.
Kingdom Come 