2012 A.D.: There are multiple 'Cities of 7 Hills'!
Ok, first read this, from Revelation Chap 17:
"1 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”
3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5 The name written on her forehead was a mystery:
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.
When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. 7 Then the angel said to me: “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
9 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction."
End Quote
I'm sharing something I just became aware of here. I don't know how many times I've heard people speak about Rome being the 'city of the seven hills' when they are talking about which city it is that the Book of Revelation is refering to. Sometimes they make it out to be the only city that could be a contender.
But, not to comment either way on whether Rome is the actual city referred to, yet Rome has to share that billing of being a 'City of Seven Hills'. For one instance, they share it with another heavyweight contender among ancient cities: Muslim Turkish Istanbul, which once was Byzantium, and before that Constantinople. That city also thinks of themselves as having seven hills in their midst.
Do an internet search using 'city of seven hills' and 'Istanbul', and you will see that Istanbul has seven very specific hills within their walls, and that they have long been aware that there are seven specific hills.
What does that mean? Well, how many cities are there in the world, exactly, that know themselves to be a city of seven hills? A good number! So, when people teach others about what this portion of the Book of Revelation is actually talking about, what the symbolism means, they had better be careful to consider the other 'seven hilled' cities before they speak, right?
For instance, pertaining to Istanbul, Turkey: did you know that Armenia was the world's first officially Christian nation? In 301 A.D. they attained that distinction, declaring Christianity their nations official religion. (There's an amazing account of how that happened here on this website - go to 301 A.D.)
Starting in about April of 1915 A.D., during the first World War, approximately 1.5 million Armenian Christians were massacred by the Muslim Turkish that had long ago moved into land occupied by these Armenians and who had dominated them for several hundred years, yet in relative peace.
A political group called 'the Young Turks' had, in 1915, recently gained control politically of the Turkish government, and they formed a group called the 'Committee of Union and Progress'. (CUP) And with this CUP in their hands, so to speak, they killed these many hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christian (God's people). They began, it is said, by killing 300 Christian leaders among the Armenians, but by the time it was over, they had led a staggering number off into the desert on these brutal death marches, stripping them naked in cases and forcing them to walk until dehydration killed nearly all, then sometimes shooting the rest anyway. They marched them over 100 miles sometimes. In other cases, they killed them in their villages - men, women, and children. It was an example of the usual atrocities that attend a Satanically inspired genocide.
As for Rome, meaning Catholic Rome, even old Imperial Rome, they killed far more Christians than Istanbul did in the 19th century. Ancient Rome likely killed tens of millions during the early century Christian persecutions under various Roman Emperors.
As for the Roman Catholic church, it killed millions during the Protestant Reformation and the years which preceded it. In some cases the 'charge' against the Christians that Catholic Rome martyred was that they read the Bible aloud in the local languages of the listeners. Rome held that it was for Priests to read, and in Latin, back during some of those times. In other cases, the punishment was meted out because of Christians claiming that the Bible had more authority than a Pope because those words in the Bible were God's very own words. In other cases, it was other things. It was yet another case where Satan had infiltrated an organization - in this case the Roman Catholic Church - and had taken charge. not to excuse it in any way, but it can happen to any type of organization. Where there is great power centralized in a very few hands, the Devil will always work with exceeding concentration and brutal focus to gain control of that power. You can do a lot of damage from a place like that.
But, back to the 'seven hills' idea, I won't pretend to have studied the matter much yet, there are reasons to also consider other cities than Rome, other religions than the Catholic, as being the place and people referred to as the WOMAN that rides the Beast, and the City of the Seven Hills, etc. And one of those other cities might just be the right one! Or, maybe that passage from Revelation 17 was meant to be understood more symbolically? But as for myself, I expect that once it actually comes to pass we will see that the clues will be literal enough, omce the events of that time provide the proper context for considering the prophecies.
It's important for us all to try to interpret all Biblical prophecies carefully and correctly, though that is always hard, and even impossible in those cases where the worldly events preceding the prophecy have not yet unfolded enough to reveal God's intended interpretation.
Here is a short list of cities knowing themselves to have 'seven hills', drawn from a Wikipedia posting that came up from searching 'cities with seven hills'. The entire list had 59 cities, but these are a few prominent ones:
Albany, New York,..........Amman, Jordan, ...........Athens, Greece,.........Jerusalem, Israel,..........Edinburg, Scotland,...........Bergen, Norway,...........Brussels, Belgium,............Barcelona, Spain,............Moscow, Russia,.............Providence, Rhode Island (Rhode Island definately has some sort of Biblical significance in my opinion, but of a different nature),..............Staten Island, New York,..............Tehran, Iran,.............and last but not least, San Francisco, California.
We are encouraged to consider the possibilities - to 'watch' and to 'know the times'. But we only have the minds of men, and the prophecies come from the mind of God. Big difference! So, when we point our finger and label someone or some group as the villain of a Biblical prophecy, we should remember that there have been a great many prophetical finger pointers, nearly all of whom were wrong.