Revelation 13:3

"And. saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast."--13:3.

The heads have been found to mean governments or forms of dominion. The mortal wound inflicted would apparently put an end to the dominion. This evidently symbolizes some mighty shock that the secular authority would receive, and would seem to be sufficient to bring it to an end. The imperial head did receive such. wound. In A. D. 476, the last of the Roman Emperors of the West was hurled from his throne, and Italy became the prey of contending barbarian hordes. It would seem as though the fate of Rome was forever sealed. Nineveh fell, but it was to rise no more. Babylon fell before the armies of Cyrus, and after. few generations it became the abode of "doleful creatures." Tyre fell, and on the bare rock, which was once the seat of. mighty city, "the fisherman spreads his nets." Carthage fell, and. century after the exiled Marius sat among its ruins, musing upon the fickleness of earthly fortunes, and returned the answer to the Roman officers who ordered him from the coast: "Go, tell your masters that you have seen Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage." Other cities have fallen and lost their glory, their dominion, their existence, and have been converted into heaps of ruins, where wild beasts have lurked, serpents hidden, and desert winds howled; but in the case of Rome, the deadly wound was healed.

Mysteriously, wonderfully, the captive city, by the development of. new power, binds her conquerors in the chains of superstition, and by establishing. spiritual dominion over the souls of men, she yet succeeds in holding the secular authority over. vast portion of the world. The means by which the deadly wound was healed is clearly pointed out, not only in history, but also in the latter portion of this chapter. It is the two-horned beast, "like. lamb, and with. voice like. dragon," "which commanded all the earth to make an image of the beast that had the deadly wound and lived," and then "gave breath to the image of the beast" (vs. 14, 15).