Heraclius as The Beast out of The Sea

I've already laid some ground work for this in a few prior posts that were mostly meant to potentially support more then one model but end on a connection to Heraclius (The Seven Kings, Pergamon, Roma, The Image being a Son).  Here I shall break things down more firmly.

I am of a few different minds about the issue of the Four horseman, I often learns towards a very Historicist understanding of them with all of Revelation 6 corresponding to the beginnings of sorrows of Matthew 24 and thus referring to conditions that start before 70 AD but apply still even today.  I will be considering in the future the arguments against viewing the Horsemen as villains.  But for this post I shall focus on arguing they can refer to the Sassanian Conquests of the early 7th Century.

The rider on The White Horse, the Conqueror, would be The Persian Shah Khosrow II.

The Red Horseman would be his general Shahin Vahmanzedegan who penetrated all the way to just outside Constantinople in 614 AD.

The rider on the Black Horse would be Shahralanoyzan the Persian military Governor of Egypt which position gave him a lot of Economic Power with Egypt having been a main source of the Roman Empire's Bread.

Death and Hades of course can't be identified with human figures.

There are strong arguments others have already made for The Two Witnesses being Jewish leaders (probably not Christians), paralleling Zerubbabel and Jeshua in Zechariah.  In this context they would be Nehemiah Ben Hushiel and Benjamin of Tiberias.

In Revelation 13 the Beast is described as like a Leopard, it is identified with the Third Beast of Daniel 7 more directly then any other.  The Reign of Heraclius is considered by many historians the key turning point in the Eastern Roman Empire becoming more Greek then Roman.

I think Hosea 13:7-8 is also a factor in understanding how Revelation 13 and Daniel 7 relate. The feet of the Bear are associated with violence and thus military force, I think they represent the Persian Generals who eventually defected to Heraclius, Shahrbaraz and Kardarigan.

We know from Daniel 7 the Mouth of a Lion must represent some connection to Mesopotamia.  But in 2 Timothy 2:17 the mouth of the lion is associated with Martyrdom.  There was a city called Martyropolis that was important to Byzantine Mesopotamia.

As far as the mortal wound goes, Heraclius was in some sources literally wounded at the battle of Nineveh in 627.  But symbolically I think it mainly refers to how the loses the Empire suffered in 610-614 seemed like something it would not be able to recover from, until it did under Heraclius's campaigns of the 620s.

622 was the beginning of Heraclius's counter offensive "who is able to make war with him", and I think the 42 months specially begin with a key turning point in 624 and end with the major victory of spring 628.

The Beast out of Earth aka The False Prophet would be Sergius Patriarch of Constantinople, the highest ranking religious leader in the empire who also held pollical and military authority at times.

My Roma post ends with how The Beast destroying Babylon fits Babylon as Rome.  But if you view Babylon as Jerusalem then in the Spring of 630 AD Heraclius did betray and massacre the Jews of Jerusalem (and possibly Miaphysite Christians as well).  And if you want Babylon to still be an east of the Euphrates center of Paganism then that fits Takht-e Soleymān in 624 or Dastgerd in 627. 

One could also see the Woman of Revelation 17 as representing the Oriental Orthodox Church which wielded power in Persia at this time partly through the influence of Gabriel of Sinjar and Queen Shirin.

The Fast of Heraclius is a Coptic Tradition that comes from Heraclius supposedly desiring to repent of the massacre of the Jews in 630 so that could fit my Baptism of The Beast premise.