Revelation 17:17

The remarkable unanimity and obedience of the usurping vassals, which welds them into an avenging instrument, can only be explained on supernatural grounds. A divine overruling controls all political movements (cf. Revelation 11:2; Revelation 13:5; Revelation 13:7), according to the determioism of apocalyptic tradition (Baldensperger, 58 f.). The irony of the situation is that the tools of providence are destroyed, after they have unconsciously served their purpose (as in Isaiah 10:12 f.). The Imperial power, hitherto the usual support of Rome, is to prove her deadly foe; John's stern philosophy is that one partner in this hateful union is employed to ruin the other. Not long before this prophecy appeared, Vitellius and Vespasian in the person of their partisans had ravaged Rome in the near future Nero's allies were to fight, like Corio-lanus, against their “cankered country, with the spleen of all the under-fiends”. μίαν κ. τ. λ. The same tradition, on a simpler scale, appears in 4 Esd. 13:33, 34 where, at the revelation of God's Son, “every man shall leave his own land and their battles against one another; and a countless multitude shall assemble together, desiring to come and fight against him”. The dualism of God and Satan is not absolute; even the latter's manœuvres are made to subserve some providential design.