With verse eighteen the chapter closes with a significant declaration: And the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth. It is this passage that has been the basis of the interpretation and theory that Rome was the city that reigned over the kings of the earth, and was therefore the harlot city. But the conclusion does not follow. In chapter 11:8 Jerusalem is called the great city under the symbols of Sodom and Egypt, hence the term “ great city” has been a mystic designation for Jerusalem. In the history of Josephus, Volume 7 of Wars, Section 8, 7, the historical term “ that great city” was applied to Jerusalem. This was both the historical and symbolic designation for Jerusalem. There are no such terms and titles employed to designate Rome. The appellation for Jerusalem comports further with the reference to the city as Babylon, the Great in chapter 11:8, symbolically called Sodom and Egypt, but identified as being Jerusalem by the statement where also our Lord was crucified. The last statement of verse eighteen “ which reigneth over the kings of the earth” did not refer to the empire of the Caesars, nor the city of the emperors. The word reign here denoted a dominion. The earth, as defined at the beginning of the visions and later repeated, referred to the land of Judea, inclusive of Palestine. The city of Jerusalem was the royal city where the kings of Judah reigned. The phrase the kings of the earth was used in the sense of Act 4:26-27 : “ The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast annointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together.” These “ kings of the earth” were of Judah, and Jerusalem was the capital city of the land, standing in the same relation to these “ kings of the earth” as Rome sustained to the emperors. The second psalm represents Jerusalem as ruling with a rod of iron over “ the kings of the earth” who had set themselves against the Lord’ s annointed One. In the Wars, Book 3, Section 3, 5, Josephus adds that “ the royal city Jerusalem was supreme, and presided over all neighboring country as the head does over the body.” There is every contextual reason to apply the language of verse eighteen, “ that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth,” to Jerusalem in relation to the kings of Judah, as figuratively set forth in the second psalm, and quoted in fulfillment in the gospel of Matthew. Beside these scriptural applications, it must be true in ordinary logic and common consistency that the beast being the Roman empire, the harlot city which the beast hated could not have been the city of Rome. The entire vision is centered on the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, the demolition of the Jewish temple and the end of theocratic Judaism and of the Jewish state; and the devastation of the land of Judea, the homeland of the Jews. The persecution of the church was a consequence of such catastrophe, being considered by the Romans as a sect of the Jews. But the Roman empire and Rome, the city, were only collateral to the visions of Revelation as the instrument of the power of destruction and of persecution.