Greetings, John! This is for Mike....
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Thanks. Matt!
John

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Dear Michael,
 
A few months back I believe I stumbled onto the identity of these seven heads.
Revelation 17: 9 says that they are seven mountains upon which the Great Whore of Babylon sits. Some identify these as Rome.
 
In the next verse, however, we are told that there are also seven kings, five of which have fallen, one presently (at the time the Revelation was given) existed, and one more was to come who was "to continue a short space." The Beast--who we call the anti-Christ--is an eighth king, but he is of the seven.
 
The key to the identity of these kings can be found in Daniel, chapter 2:31-45. The great multi-metal image of which King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed is a panorama of human government on the earth. In verse 38 Daniel tells the Babylonian king that he was the head of gold. The chest and arms of silver represent the Medes and Persians--the Medo-Persian empire--which overthrew Babylon in the reign of Cyrus. The brass belly is Greece, which conquered the world in the brief reign of Alexander the Great. The iron legs represent imperial Rome. The feet of iron and clay represent the coming kingdom of the anti-Christ having the regal iron of Rome intermixed with the common clay of mankind, ie. democracy.
 
A knowledge of history allows us to identify each of the seven kings from the above information:
King 1 is Babylon;
King 2 is Medo-Persia.
 
The first two are easy, the next three require our knowledge of history. Upon Alexander's untimely death, his generals parted out his empire into three undeniably Greek kingdoms:
King 3 is Macedonian Greece, ruled initially by Antigonus Gonatas;
King 4 is Egypt, ruled initially by Ptolemy Lagus;
King 5 is Asia Minor to India, ruled initially by Seleucus.
 
Kings 3, 4 and 5 made the region around the Mediterranean a Greek World, with Greek language and customs becoming the norm. By the Apostle John's day, however, these five kingdoms had all fallen and one great empire, encompassing all these former kingdoms, held sway over the world:
King 6 is Imperial Rome.
 
The iron of Rome held firm until around 284 A.D., when the emperor Diocletian divided it into western and eastern administrative regions, easily envisioned by the two iron legs of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. The eastern region gradually morphed into the Byzantine Empire.
King 7 is Byzantium.
Byzantium continued "a short space" until it was absorbed by the Moslem conquest.
 
The anti-Christ will rise from this Roman ferment to be the eighth king. Rome never died...it just fell apart. The anti-Christ will use the mud of humanity and desperate democracy to glue it back together for a very short time--until the Rock of Ages comes against it and brings it to naught.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen and Amen.
 
Hope this was helpful.
Matt in Hayward CA.