The visions, on the contrary, take not the smallest notice of (proconsular) Asia and its problems. Their scene is Palestine, their subject the outcome of Jerusalem's agonizing struggle against Rome. From the moment the threshold of iv. 1 is crossed there is no consciousness of the existence of such places as Ephesus, Smyrna and Thyatira. The scenes are Palestinian. The great battle-field is Har-Magedon (_i. e._ city of Megiddo, on the plain of Esdraelon, the scene of Josiah's overthrow, 2nd Kings xxiii. 29 f.). "The city," "the great city," "the holy city" is Jerusalem; though "spiritually (in allegory) it is called Sodom and Egypt" (_i. e._ a place from which the saints escape to avoid its doom). When the saints flee from the oppression of the dragon it is to "the wilderness." When the invading hordes rush in it is from beyond "the Euphrates." When the redeemed appear in company with the Christ it is on Mount Zion; they constitute an army of 144,000, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes. Two antagonistic powers are opposed. On the one side is Jerusalem and its temple, now given over to the Gentiles to be trodden under foot forty and two months, on the other is Rome, no longer, as with Paul, a beneficent and protecting power, but the city of the beast, Babylon the great harlot, at whose impending judgment the Gentiles will mourn, but all the servants of God rejoice. Jerusalem rebuilt, glorified, the metropolis of the world, seat and residence of God and his Christ, will take the place of Rome, the seat of the beast and the false prophet. The gates of this New Jerusalem will stand open to receive tribute from all the Gentile nations, and will have on them the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. The foundations of the city wall will have on them "the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." All this is cumulative proof that the horizon of the seer of Rev. iv.-xx. is that of Palestine. Its expansion in the introductory Letters of the Spirit to the Churches to include the seven churches of (proconsular) Asia, is as limited in its way as the original. The later writer merely adds the special province where he wishes the 'prophecy' to circulate, with its special interests; there is no real interrelation of the two parts.