Revelation 19:11

The military function of the messiah is known even to the philosophic Philo, who (de praem. et poen. 15 20) represents him incidentally as καὶ στραταρχῶν καὶ πολεμῶν ἔθνη. The victory of messiah over the earthly foes of God's kingdom meant the triumph of the kingdom, according to Jewish and Jewish Christian hopes; but owing to the increased spiritualisation of the latter, this nationalistic tradition was laid side by side with the wider hope of an eternal, universal judgment upon dead and living. The latter was originally independent ot the earlier view, which made the culmination of providence for Israel consist in the earthly subjugation of her foes. The prophet John, by dividing God's foes into the two classes of Rome and Rome's destroyers, preserves the archaic tradition and also finds room for the Gog and Magog tradition later on.