The 3½ years, the two Beasts and the Image. SATAN THROWS EVERYTHING AT GOD'S PEOPLE BECAUSE HIS TIME IS SHORT. IT IS A TWO-PRONGED ATTACK WITH LIES AND DECEPTION ON ONE SIDE (THE FALSE PROPHET) AND VIOLENCE AND EXTORTION (THE SECULAR BEAST) ON THE OTHER. THE BEAST AND THE FALSE PROPHET JOIN FORCES AND CONTROL THE WORLD TO DEFEND SATAN'S DOMAIN AND WIPE OUT GOD'S WAYS AND HIS PEOPLE.

Use this link to go back to the summary.

This chapter addresses one more thing that Christ must do to confirm the covenant, which is to restore His Kingdom to Jerusalem. God's Kingdom requires His people. Remember that the picture of Christ's work is depicted in 7 years and we must see these 7 years of prophecy as continuous although that is not what happens in reality. At the end of the first 3½ years Satan is pictured as having been cast down. One phase of this was 2,000 years ago but in prophecy it is as though it continues uninterrupted to the second 3½ years, and so we saw the second phase in Revelation 12. This chapter focusses on Satan's attempt to preserve his position on Earth using the Beast or the dragon of Revelation 12:3 and focussing on the second 3½ years.

Satan, the power of the beast and ruler of the Earth, has now been cornered. He was never a threat to the Father, and was bested by Christ even as a human, then by the angels in Revelation 12, explaining the falling stars period in Revelation 6:12. Earth is his last hope and he marshals the two beasts. Some represent this as the beast and the image of the beast but the book says that they are two beasts. The image appears to be something else. Other explanations that I have encountered suffer from these two flaws:

1. The head that dies and was replaced is represented as a current event in the vision, not something that happened 1,500 years before, hence it cannot be the Babylonian conquest of Rome.
2. From the general information in the Bible the scarlet woman that rode the beast appears to have existed for the life of the beast, and certainly at the time of Constantine, but the interpretation only lines her up with the beast after the 6^th. century.

At this point the historical interpretation of the prophecy presents this challenge to me. If the beasts are all world ruling empires they must include Britain and the United States otherwise what excludes them? If they are not then what are they? From Daniel 7 beasts seem to be all of the empires that controlled Jerusalem since its fall as with the king of the north and king of the south. Notice this enlightening extract from the Enclyclopaedia Britannica article Byzantine Empire subtitle historical empire, Eurasia:

. . .Theirs was, in their view, none other than the Roman Empire, founded shortly before the beginning of the Christian era by God’s grace to unify his people in preparation for the coming of his Son. Proud of that Christian and Roman heritage, convinced that their earthly empire so nearly resembled the heavenly pattern that it could never change, they called themselves Romaioi, or Romans. . .

John L. Teall Donald MacGillivray Nicol Byzantine Empire historical empire, EurasiaBritanicahttps://www.britannica.com/place/Byzantine-EmpireLast Updated: Apr 3, 2018

It would therefore appear as though they saw themselves superior to Jerusalem or obligated to control it as part of their Roman inheritance. If the all beast must have controlled Jerusalem then it cannot include Napoleon. To me it is unrealistic to expect that the prophecies of Daniel 10 onward (which refer to the king of the north and king of the south of Jerusalem) do not have the same basic reference as those of Daniel 7. In any case, it seems to me that God is always concerned with Jerusalem as it will be the centre of His Kingdom on earth. The beasts in Revelation 13 and Revelation 17 are not the same. That beast in Revelation 17 is Satan carrying the woman which is the city-state. She is not riding as in guiding the creature, just sitting down.

What is a Beast?

In this article I use Strong's to mean Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Dictionaries of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments.

The word used in the KJV for beast in Revelation 4 and in Revelation 5, 6 and 19, refers to the same beings and is not the same Greek word translated as beast in the rest of Revelation. Strong's definition of the word is: G2226 zoon (dzow`-on) n. 1. a live thing, i.e. an animal. This word just means a living thing.

The word used in Revelation 13 is different.

Strong's defines it as G2342 therion (thay-ree'-on) n. 1. a dangerous animal [diminutive from ther (a wild animal, as game)]

The beasts of Revelation 13 are of the same kind as the beasts of Daniel associated with the lion, bear and leopard (the fourth beast is a combination). On the other hand the zoon are not wild animals. They symbolically have a different heart. The therion are wild and brutish.

Symbolism of the wild beast

Biblically a beast alternates between the leader of the beast territory or the territory itself. A beast (as in wild beast) is a personification of a ruler and his realm which may live on after him through his heirs etc.

It has power (an army or some force of strength) , a seat (throne), and authority [Revelation 13:2]. The word used for seat in Revelation 13 is also translated as throne as in:

The same Greek word from Revelation 13:2 is also in Revelation 16:10 and Revelation 20:11. It is defined as

Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Dictionaries of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments

G2362 θρόνος thronos (thron'-os)

1. a stately seat, "throne"

2. (by implication) power

3. (concretely) a potentate, sovereign, or ruler

According to scripture the the beasts are kings or kingdoms or dominions.

Biblical significance of the beast

Israel has always gone into captivity because they turned to false gods. The beast brings an alternate theocracy to Israel. Israel was established as a perfect theocracy under God who was a blessing to Israel. Since that system was designed by God then all other systems are of necessity corrupt.

The kingdoms that replaced God's theocracy devoured Israel like beasts.

The point is that the beast is identified by who controls the fortunes of Jerusalem, where God placed His name. It is a line of earthly powers that obstruct God's theocracy by choosing to control Jerusalem.

A beast has a head

In the Bible blood represents life so the head does not represent life but it does stand for the lifetime of the beast. The beasts provide the power to subjugate the kingdom of God and suppress God's theocracy centred on worship at His Tabernacle. The head provides personality and character and gives the beast a mind. The mind chooses whom to worship.

compare Revelation 13:4 with Revelation 20:4.

I propose that the head gives the beast direction and purpose. Severing the head and replacing it would cause an abrupt change in purpose and direction. One example of this could be a response to the world system as represented in the image of the beast, moving from uni-polar thinking to multipolar thinking as is indicated by the transformation from feet to toes. This is a paradigm shift that could bring out the worst of an already bad situation.

The personality of a beast

In Revelation 2 and 3 God shows us how to rise above the behaviour of beasts. It stands to reason that the more of those negative traits that exists in an entity the more beast-like it is.

First love

If love is to be preserved in a relationship there must be unconditional commitment, since an essential part of true love is unconditional commitment. That is to say that we do not abandon one another, not that we tolerate unacceptable behaviour. Things will happen to sour the relationship and without commitment then we should not expect it to be restored. Defining love can be a very extensive endeavour and I put it to you that this is the subject of the whole Bible. In support of that I first present Deuteronomy. Let me present a synopsis of my understanding of that book. It is basically comprised of the last three sermons that Moses gave to Israel. Moses was terrified that Israel had proven to be so wayward and obstinate that they would lose favour with God. God apparently shared Moses' concerns and the two of them set about to put Israel on the best possible foundation with the book of Deuteronomy. In pursuit of that objective they summarised the relationship of God with Israel up to that point. It was a relationship of love. Moses rehashed how they reached where they were which is a chronological summary of their dealings with God. There was no need to restate Genesis. He then set out to clarify areas that were new to them since leaving Egypt. In order to help them remember he gave them things like phylacteries and mezuzot as well as a song. Tefillin, or phylacteries are small leather boxes containing pieces of parchment with extracts from the Torah and typically tied to the forehead or forearm by leather straps. A phylactery is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah, which Jews attach to the door-posts of their homes. Finally he blessed them. The point here is that Moses was defining a relationship and that relationship was one of love.

This is brought out by Christ in the New Testament but by then the prophets had been added to the Law, the Law being the five books written by Moses, the first five books of the Bible.

That settles it. The Law and the Prophets mean the whole Bible, something that I explained in my web-page on Revelation 12. Those two main commandments are about love and the basis of the Bible is those two commandments. So getting back to my main point, it takes the whole Bible to define love. A key element of love is a commitment to preserving the relationship. Another is trust or faith. Beasts can do these in small communities or packs but they cannot extend it beyond that. At best beasts consciously try to preserve the pack, not their kind. They are territorial and treat others with hostility. Without God men are beasts and hence nations are beasts.

Fear

Beasts form relationships based on hormones like testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol, i.e. physical and biological. Except for copulation these hormones promote either fear or aggression. Nations form relationships based on things like mutually assured destruction which is fear or Porters' Five Forces which is aggression. Cubs play when they are a part of the pack but once they reach maturity it becomes a relationship of fear and aggression. As long as you do not mature you can pursue playfulness and love in submission to the pack but if you dare mature you become a threat and are viewed with fear.

The other five

I will stop with those two but I can similarly go through all the messages to the 7 churches and demonstrate that the issue is rising above the nature of beasts. You can analyse it within the parties and within the nation or whatever community you want. These nations (represented by their leaders) do not pursue the goal of rising above those messages and are hence doomed to be beasts in nature. Indeed they cannot because to do that requires God and whenever they have to make a critical choice they reject Him.

The First Beast

John saw two wild beasts. One came from the sea and the other from the earth. It is interesting that when Israel was being prepared to leave Egypt they were trapped between the land and the sea (Exodus 14:2-3). The first beast was from the sea and this is further elaborated on later in the description of waters in Revelation 17  . . . The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues (Revelation 17:15). From the rest of the description in Revelation 13 we see that this is a powerful multi-national beast touching many lands and peoples and having some of everything.

This first beast is the leviathan, the powerhouse. In my opinion the reference to sea has more to do with the physical scope and size of this empire. It touched everywhere. It is attempting to rival what Christ will set up.

It is because of the vast scope of the domain of this beast that the whore is able to have such sweeping control.

Seeing the beasts in Revelation as in keeping with a combination of all of the beasts seen by Daniel in Daniel 7 is reasonable, but the time reference is sometimes different. John is seeing it from the end looking looking towards the beginning, while Daniel is seeing it from the beginning (the first world empire) to the end. The 42 months in Revelation is only partly interpreted by the 70 years prophecy of Daniel. This 42 months is one Sabbath of months (7 months) short of a Sabbath of Sabbaths of months (7x7=49 months). The final Sabbath of months to complete the period and make 49, is the Rest (the Millennium). The Jubilee (which followed a Sabbath of Sabbaths of years) is atonement when everything is delivered to the Father. The Sabbath is rest but this (the 42 months in Revelation) stops just short of that because it contains neither the final Sabbath of months nor the fiftieth month. That period of rest and freedom will be ushered in by the Day of the LORD. This 42 months is a representation of the same 3½ years that John covers again and again, but phrased here to focus on freedom and rest. This time it represents liberation from the beast.

Seven heads

This beast of Revelation 13 appeared with seven heads, one of which was dead and subsequently was replaced. John is viewing events from the perspective of the Day of the LORD (Revelation 1:10) so it is leading up to that time that a dead head would have been replaced.

The first beast represents a consolidation of the empires that controlled Jerusalem. It has the seven heads of all the previous dynasties revealed in Daniel's first vision (found in Daniel 7) and ten horns representing the different conquering armies or kings that would lead it. Horns are specifically called kings in Revelation 17:12 and Daniel 7:20 but horns generally represent power and strength used for scattering threats and are warnings of danger. Each dynasty was started by a different individual who represents that dynasty as the head. So we have :

1. The CHALDEAN EMPIRE (Babylon) 625-539 B.C. with Nebuchadnezzar [lion head]
2. The PERSIAN EMPIRE (Meda-Persia) 559-330 B.C. with Cyrus [bear head]
3. The GRECO-MACEDONIAN empire (the ^3rd., ^4th., ^5th. and ^6th.heads of Daniel 7:6 as Greece, started under Alexander the Great, 334-31 B.C. ) It was divided into 4 divisions upon his death [leopard heads]
4. The The ROMAN EMPIRE from 31 B.C. with Augustus Caesar (his great-uncle Julius never united the empire) actually then becomes the 7^th. head [unknown head]. Augustus was adopted by Julius and became his heir. This represents the system under Satan that has ruled the world and incorporates all of the previous heads. The Romans developed the republican system which rules without a king (a hereditary ruler). In previous systems the king's heirs always ruled but in a republican system the ruler is chosen. A republic is not necessarily a democracy. Many of the evils of the Roman system effectively continue in the way modern societies are governed although they are hotly denied. The patricians still dominate in reality even though it does not exist legally. Although Britain remained a monarchy it adopted Roman features. Modern historians generally consider Sir Robert Walpole to be the first Prime Minister of Britain; he led the government from 1721 to 1742. The first British general election was in 1708, Between 1850 and 1928, through the introduction of a series of acts of parliament, Britain adopted the republican system.

These add up to seven heads and from John's perspective looking back from the Day of the Lord, it is these seven heads that are on the beast. The beast is what is recognised as controlling Jerusalem (and indirectly God's theocracy) and is in turn controlled by the heads, therefore in the case of Greece (it has four heads that split off), it remains the same beast. The divisions were the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, the Seleucid Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and Macedon. According to the Bible what makes the fourth beast unique is that it has all of the qualities of the other beasts that went before.

The first thing to note is that all of these animals have similar traits. They all have strong teeth, powerful paws, can swim and have speed but God focuses on which trait is most important to each animal's survival.

The lion

Lions typically attack in an organised pack with a strategy. One may go upwind to allow the prey to catch the scent and stampede toward the waiting pride. The important trait of the lion is the teeth. The lions eat with their teeth. The large canines (perhaps cheek teeth of Joel 1:6) are not really used in feeding but they are very effective weapons used for gripping prey. Most big cats kill their prey by suffocation, not biting, and the canines are the main teeth used in the choke hold. The idea of the choke hold is to close the airways by clamping down on the throat, the canines lock into the flesh in the neck and stop the prey pulling out of the hold.

The bear

Paws (or feet) are critical to a bear. It has not got the finesse of the choke-hold and uses any brute force attack. Bears' claws are multi-functional. During combat, bears use their paws to strike their opponents in the chest or shoulders. Its paws are also used to gather food. It can swipe a fish from a river, dig up a yellow jackets' (wasp) nest, claw its way into a log to raid ants' or bees' nests, or strike its prey with its immense forearms to kill or cripple it. Bears also use their powerful claws for territorial markings. Sometimes a bear will stand on its hind legs to get a better view or reach food from high places. The specialty paws of the bear help it run fast, climb trees and swim well.

The Leopard

The leopard's body is built for speed and agility. Pound for pound it is the strongest of the big cats. They weigh up to 91 kilograms (201 pounds) but can run at speeds of up to 58 kilometres per hour (36 mph), leap 6m (almost 20 feet) horizontally and 3m (almost 10 feet) vertically. Its tail is about as long as its entire body helping it to maintain balance and navigate sharp turns quickly.

The bird

Both the leopard and the lion had wings. All birds of flight depend on their wings. Wings are used to raise them over obstacles in their path and to allow them to pass quickly to their objective. Flying keep you out of reach from enemies as we just saw in Revelation 12:14. The beast in Daniel 7 is essentially a leopard but strengthened with the essential characteristic of a bird - speed in bypassing obstacles safely.

The fourth beast

The fourth beast of Daniel 7 is said to be diverse from all the beasts that were before it. The intention seems to be to convey that it is a variation on all of the others. It might have looked like a monstrous griffin. It would have the tail and body of the leopard, shoulders and legs of the bear and the head of the lion to contain the teeth. This would suggest that it has the hump and head of the bear. The ten horns appear to be indistinguishable. There are many combinations of horns that can be formed without resorting to dinosaurs.

Switching our attention back to Revelation 13 there would be 10 horns on one head, the seventh head. This beast had the same mind in any incarnation (one-world power and religion) hence it was the same head, but it had the most powerful parts of the previous beasts. What I would expect in this beast would be :

• (lion)
  • attack as a pack
  • kill by suffocating
• (bear)
  • sheer power and brutality
• (leopard)
  • speed and agility
• (bird)
  • easily scale obstacles to others and make a straight path
  • remain out of reach of enemies
    

I would therefor look for nations in a pack where once the pack gets it teeth into you it never lets go, but suffocates you. Could that be what happened to Haiti?

What is often ignored by commentators is that the fourth beast is associated with two legs in Daniel's statue. Alexander broke the power of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia) by a series of decisive victories, including those at Issus (333 BC) and Gaugamela (331 BC). At Gaugamela Alexander defeated Darius III for the final time and and went on to conquer the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety. Darius, the last king of the Achaemenid dynasty, fled but died at Bactria. He had been placed on the throne by the eunuch Bagoas, who had poisoned the two previous kings, Artaxerxes III and Arses. In order to buy some time for their escape, Bessus and his co-conspirators killed Darius III and left his body by the road in July 330 BC. Both Rome and Persia came out of the Greco-Macedonian Empire. Persia as horn #2 (the Sasanian Empire) were the first to take Jerusalem from the Romans in 614 AD. It was not yet Muslim but was later taken over by Islam. Here it introduces the line that formed the second leg.

Revelation 13:15 says And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.  The word image is translated from Strong's G1504, Greek eikon which literally means statue or profile. In the statue there is a combination of the Muslim world and the Christian world. The statue or image shows the final dominant force over Israel as a system split between two legs but, the beast shifts from being one leg to the other over time, according to the overturns/uprooting of in Daniel 7:8.

Ten Horns

This beast with the horns came into existence after the leopard and appears to have all of the qualities of the beasts that preceded it.

Many commentators present a completely historical interpretation of these ten horns; the problem is that something of the beast and its horns exists at the return of Christ, when the Ancient of Days sets up His throne.

The ten horns and the other horn were all in the head of the last beast.

The ten horns are ten kings (horns are used by the beast or the head of the beast) and after they arrive on the scene another different kind of king rises up. This is a horn and not a head but it has eyes and a mouth like a head so it is not as easy to control as the other horns. It has its own independent perception and voice that could control the beast and it was more capable than other horns. This horn is apparently the source of the uprootings that occur over the years of the life of the beast. Both the beast and this horn are actually interested in world power and control but the horn employs religion (the spiritual) while the beast engages the military (material or carnal).

Moving on to Revelation, the dragon that appears to persecute the Church also had seven heads and ten horns. The dragon, an ancient adversary, appears to be in ultimate control of the beast, its heads, and its horns. The details of this dragon were given in Revelation 12.

In Revelation 13 a terrifying beast rose up with ten horns. The horns wore crowns.

The beast that the woman sat on also had 10 crowns.

The specific beast that had the horns did not exist at the time when John wrote Revelation, although it had existed in some form before and would exist again.

The ten horns will attack the woman. So these horns are not the historical horns.

All these horns and the beast would exist at the return of Christ.

So these kings depicted as horns are not the regular kings but exist only around the time of Christ's return. It is the same beast but the beast gets an eighth head and that is the head that has these ten horns. These are not the consecutive horns. So then we have 10 consecutive horns on the seventh head (three of which the little horn uproots) here in Revelation 13 and ten concurrent horns (which attack the woman) on the eighth head in Revelation 17.

The significance of a beast, a head on a beast and a horn

One of the key challenges that I have is determining the significance of a beast, a head on a beast and a horn. The real power to destroy is in the beast. The head gives the beast a voice and a vision. The head gives the beast a purpose and a means to communicate its objectives. A horn gives the head the ability to control masses of people by show of power and by causing fear. I am not a historian or a zoologist but let me point out what I have noticed about the horns.

This little horn plucked up by the roots or uprooted three other horns. This horn is therefore a constant while the other horns change. This little horn is among them but it is not one of the ten. Notice that it has the features of a head. In my opinion this is the false Christian system which started in Babylon and was perpetuated in Rome by Simon Magus. Physical prowess is represented by the size of the horn and this horn had very little of that but it is still a military power i.e. it is able to cause military action to be taken. Who was behind the Crusades?

From above we know that the little horn is the one that makes war with the saints. The little horn is the religious entity. The scriptures below are not quoted to indicate that it is the same beast but that horns imply power.

From the scriptures above, one obvious connection between a horn and a beast is that a horn is typically attached to a beast and used by the beast in aggression. A beast may already have horns but can always use another, perhaps like using a religion to subjugate an empire. The horn indicates physical prowess. As I see it then horns are synonymous with armies and establishing dominance. In Revelation 17:12 they are identified as kings that join together apparently to form one army or dominant force. A similar arrangement is described in Daniel 8:20 with the horns of Media and Persia. The ten horns in Revelation 13 are not described as on the heads of the beast although that is the logical place for them. We can deduce that they are on one head from Daniel 7, since the ten horns in Daniel 7 are on one head (Daniel 7:7, Daniel 7:20). The ten horns have crowns (Revelation 13:1), but there are also 10 horns in Revelation 17 which all appear around the time of the Day of the LORD (Revelation 17:12) so you could argue that they are the same horns of Revelation 13. Bear in mind however, that I am saying that Revelation 13 relates to the three and a half years while Revelation 17 applies to the Day of the LORD. To resolve this we consider that Revelation 17 shows Satan acting during the Day of the LORD (the LAMB overcomes him). Those horns exist for only a little while (Revelation 17:12). In Daniel 7 the 10 horns are on the fourth beast (Daniel 7:7) which has the 7^th head and which spans several centuries. I align the horns of the current chapter (Revelation 13) with those of Daniel 7. This makes sense because the accounts of the beast in both cases seem to span centuries and also because the new description of the red beast with horns in Revelation 17 does not yet appear. So far my understanding depicts the heads as all governments which control Jerusalem (Muslim and Christian or other) since its fall, chronologically in Revelation 13, but restored to do so simultaneously in Revelation 17.

Uprooted by the papacy

One major problem in identifying what a head is stems from the fact that the seventh head, called the Roman head, covers a period that cannot totally be identified as Roman. The same criteria must be applied consistently to all heads and we will see more on this later, but an important point must be made here: all of the heads controlled Jerusalem when it had a functioning temple. They did not only control the area but they controlled the means of maintaining the covenant relationship. Jerusalem was the kingdom of God on earth. That is what concerned Daniel, he wanted to know about the restoration of God's kingdom. That is what concerned John also. The Temple is central to the kingdom and God only concerns himself with the powers who reigned over that system. The others are irrelevant. The issue of uprooting relates to who controls Jerusalem.

Assuming that the beast refers to Jerusalem-controlling empires then we have, adapted from the Jewish Virtual Library http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/jerutime.html and Wikipedia, Timeline of Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem dated 2016-03-20:

• HEAD 1: Chaldean period (625-539 BC)
• 586 BCE - Babylonian Forces Destroy Jerusalem and Demolish First Temple
• HEAD 2: Persian Period (539-322 BCE)
• 539 BCE - Persian Ruler Cyrus the Great Conquers Babylonian Empire, Including Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple
• HEAD 3: GREEKS (332BC -63 BC)
• Hellenistic Period (332-141 BCE)
• 332 BCE - Greek Leader Alexander the Great Conquers Judea and Jerusalem
• Hasmonean Period (141-63 BCE)
• 141 BCE - Hasmonean Dynasty Begins; Jerusalem Again Expands Limits to Western Hill
• HEAD 4: ROMANS (70BC – current)
• HORN 1: Romans (70BC – 614 AD)
• early Roman (63 BC-70 BC)
• 63 BCE - Roman General Pompey captures Jerusalem
• Herodian Period (37 BCE - 70 CE)
• 37 BCE - King Herod Restructures Second Temple, Adds Retaining Walls
• 30 CE - Jesus Crucified by Romans in Jerusalem
• 70 CE - Roman Forces Destroy Jerusalem and Demolish Second Temple
• 135 CE - Jerusalem Rebuilt as a Roman City
• Constantine I (324–337) reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, and legalised Christianity
• HORN 2: Sasanian Persian Period (614 AD - 629 AD) [Zorastrian religion not Muslim]
• 614 CE - Persians Capture Jerusalem
• HORN 3 – uprooted by the papacy 1 : Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Period (629-638 CE)
• 629 CE - Byzantine Christians Recapture Jerusalem from Persians
• HORN 4 : First Muslim Period (638-1099 CE)
• 638 CE - Caliph Omar Enters Jerusalem
• 661-750 CE - Jerusalem Ruled Under Umayyad Dynasty
• 691 CE - Dome of the Rock Built on Site of Destroyed Jewish Temples
• 750-974 CE - Jerusalem Ruled Under Abassid Dynasty
• HORN 5 - uprooted by the papacy 2 : Crusader Period (1099-1187 CE)
• 1099 CE - First Crusaders Capture Jerusalem
• HORN 6: Ayyubid Period (1187-1259 CE)
• 1187 CE - Saladin Captures Jerusalem from Crusaders
• 1229 -1244 CE - Crusaders Briefly Recapture Jerusalem Two Times
• HORN 7: Mamluk Period (1260-1516)
• 1260: The Army of the Mongol Empire reaches Palestine for the first time
• HORN 8: Ottoman Period (1516-1917)
• 1517 - Ottoman Empire Captures Jerusalem
• 1538 -1541 - Suleiman the Magnificent Rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem
• HORN 9 -uprooted by the papacy 3: BRITISH (1917 to present - deadly wound inflicted on this)
• British Mandate (1917-1948)
• 1917 - British Capture Jerusalem in World War I
• Divided City (1948-1967)
• 1948 - State of Israel Established; Jerusalem Divided By Armistice Lines Between Israel & Jordan
• Reunification (1967-Present)
• 1967 - Israel Captures Jerusalem's Old City and Eastern Half; Reunites City

I find it striking that the beast was Persian-Zorastrian twice. It went from Babylonian to Persian, to European and back to Persian (Sasanian). Following this the final dance meant alternating between Middle Eastern Muslim leg and European Roman-Christian leg until the end. The Persians (the Samanids, 819–1005) did rule again but had become Muslim and did not hold power as the beast. In spite of the religions seeming to alternate between Muslim and Roman Catholic the real distinction seems to east versus west of Jerusalem. In the end time the power east of Jerusalem seems to hold sway but that is not explained by overturns but by something else.

Some may see a clear reason why the British forces cannot be considered as fighting the romish cause but the result of their action is that Jerusalem is once again controlled by those aligned with the romish religion on the western side through its daughters. This is what Wikipedia says:

Military history of Italy during World War I
. . .Fighting ended on 3 November 1918. Italy and the Allies had been victorious. Italian armed forces were also involved in the Western Front and in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. At the end of World War I, Italy was recognized a permanent seat in the League of Nations' executive council along with Britain, France and Japan. . .

editors of WikipediaMilitary history of Italy during World War IWikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Italy_during_World_War_I2017-09-14

In the war The Central Powers consisted of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire while the United Kingdom was acting with allies Serbia, Russia, France, Italy and the United States. This put Britain on the side of Rome. The allies - excluding the United States (US) - went on to form The league of Nations ostensibly to prevent another world war. The United Nations (UN) replaced it after the end of the Second World War and the US became a member. The fate of Jerusalem is currently linked to the US and Britain. The EU traces its origins through the European Economic Community (EEC), and members include Italy and Britain. At the time it was formed control over Britain would have effectively meant control over Jerusalem. This dominance has since shifted to the US and the United Kingdom has withdrawn from the EU leaving the UN as Rome's direct link to Jerusalem. Recent developments have been driving a wedge between the US and Jerusalem but the US sees that area as essential to its national security. Each time the romish religion loses control over Jerusalem it is regained by the efforts of the romish church. As I see it we are never told which head/horn suffered the deadly wound in Revelation 13:3. The seven heads are computed as the The (1) CHALDEAN EMPIRE (Babylon) (2) The PERSIAN EMPIRE (Meda-Persia);(3) 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th HEADS GREECE (4) The seventh head, the ROMAN EMPIRE. One of them died and was replaced and we will discuss the wound that was healed later.

IMAGE OF THE BEAST (A Sunday-keeping, Christmas Christ)

I myself have widely speculated about the image of the beast but I think that it is best to stick close to the basics. I have earlier proposed (when speaking of The fourth beast) that the image means the statue while the beast is the lead kingdom. That explanation indicates that there will never be a union of the Muslim world and the Christian world, i.e. the two legs. However they do appear to have a coordinated approach in the end as the eighth head so there is an accommodation to survive together. That does not necessarily mean all Muslims and all Christians will unite but will develop at least a significant enough union to control the world as one system of elites. Perhaps they become members of one organisation in the last days. Could the UN be in play here? What is the UN's view of issues that relate to the true Christ whether from a Muslim or Christian perspective? Who runs the UN? In the next few paragraphs I will explore possibilities connected with this view.

There are two beasts, one has tremendous military might while the other is weak militarily but very influential and devious. The weak one proposes the image of the beast as a means to achieve its own ends, which is very likely intended to ingratiate itself with the beast in order to manipulate it. For sure it has to do with a watered down version of Christ that does not loose any sleep over breaking the commandments and It may very well have something to do with Christmas. Christ kept the commandments: If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love, John 15:10 [KJV]. It was an essential component of being saviour. It may come as a surprise to some that Muslims believe in Christ, just not exactly what Christians do. In the Quran, Jesus is described as the Messiah (al-Masīḥ), born of a virgin, performing miracles, accompanied by disciples, rejected by the Jews, and raised up to heaven. The Quran rejects that Jesus was crucified or died on the cross, but instead was miraculously saved by God. Muslims therefore have no problem with Christmas or much of the other fundamental Christian dogma. Then there is what Ezekiel said in Ezekiel 8 about a cabal of high-ranking Jews. Be reminded that during Paul's lifetime resistance to the Gospel was Jewish and he said this, For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way (II Thessalonians 2:7 [KJV]). It all seems to link back to Babylonian mysteries: the cabal of Jews (you could call these the Israel lobby) united with the roots of Catholicism and Islam. Christmas takes place on December 25 and Hanukkah also takes place in December but for eight days typically falling around the middle of December. Hanukkah spans eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev. It is a memorial of the recovery of Jerusalem and the re-dedication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt in the 2nd century BC. Christmas is a huge event in Jerusalem. The watered down commandment-indifferent, Christ-image is therefore basically universal. Christmas certainly is. They could unite around a version of Christ.

So how difficult would it be for the two beasts to establish a Christ-image (Christ means messiah or saviour) that corresponded with and enhanced their objectives? It does not need to go as far as what I propose concerning Christmas, because as I see it, all that is required is that the elites see that by working together the will accomplish their objective of world domination and unification. Since the preposition of has such a wide range of uses, first let me say that in this case I propose that an image of something can mean either that (i) the image is owned by or attributed to the thing or (ii) that it is a representation that captures the essence of the thing literally or conceptually. I think that in this case it could be both. An image is an attempt at reproduction. Males are a reproduction of God as well as the glory of God. Females are not a reproduction of men they are the reproduction of God but they are the glory of men. Women were never intended to be the same as men physically. They both carry the image of God but are different.

An image captures the essence or distinguishing feature.

Christ is an image of the Father. Exactly the same but a separate person.

The image of the new man, the Christian, is created in the image of Christ and has no national or racial constraints.

I have just shown examples of an image meaning something that looks like or captures the essence of something, but given the context (the time of Matthew 24:5,11 - false prophets deceiving many while proclaiming Christ), I am inclined to believe that the image also has to do with idols (something people venerate). Consequently it both belongs to (was created by or ascribed to) the beast and resembles it in character e.g. multi-faith or one size fits all such as Constantine wanted in order to unite the empire. Hence it could be an image or version of a messiah that belongs to the beast i.e. a creation suited to the beast, a manifestation of a false messiah that massages the ego of the beast.

I propose that for the image is owned by or attributed to the beast it has to do with idolatry born of veneration of the beast, where it is seen to be God's chosen, even though it does not love the true God, i.e. it breaks His Commandments (John 14:15). Remember that this is a military beast and they are typically full of pride in their power that can be massaged. The image tailored to the beast by the smaller beast compromises God, and hence it is to the beast. The image serves the purposes of the beast, possibly with the same reasoning as Constantine i.e. to unify the empire under his control. Considering the ego and subtlety of the second beast I believe that this would be to simultaneously promote the god that the second beast already created and serves. All images of worship or veneration are expressly prohibited by God's word, Exodus 20:4-5. Christ was not particularly attractive as a human, Isaiah 53:2. The record of His life presented in the gospels gives no indication of a frail, pretty, blond hired blue eyed man in the midst of Jewish society. Simon Magus and Constantine both understood that the false messiah must exalt them as superior, while simultaneously appealing to people of multiple ethnic backgrounds. The first beast will be a loosely held union of secular domains and the second will be a group of religious people held together by a centralised religious domain. God is a jealous God, His wife serves Him only. Bending to the will of other religions is adultery and doing it for money is whoredom even when you claim that it is evangelical. Because the harlot daughters of the second beast love money and will perhaps see the numbers of their patrons (or perhaps sugar-daddies) increase, they will undoubtedly capitulate. It could somehow spread the impression that the first beast, which breaks Christ's Commandments, yet somehow is sent by Him. The beast could never allow itself to be outdone by the theocracy in the Torah being established at Jerusalem like it was under Solomon, and so will continue to stifle its potential that has been defined by God. That is what makes it a beast. This is what Constantine tried to do in the fourth century and made a Constantinople instead. Evangelicals and Muslims both accept Christmas and hence submit to an ancient religious source connected with fertility rites and the coming of spring. Countries including Egypt, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and  Palestine decorate Christmas trees, set up lighted streets and buildings, have holiday parties and exchange gifts with Christian family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Ezekiel 8 shows that the Jewish component acts in secret.

According to Wikipedia on Evangelicanism at 2017/08/28:

Global statistics

In 2015, the World Evangelical Alliance is "a network of churches in 129 nations that have each formed an evangelical alliance and over 100 international organizations joining together to give a world-wide identity, voice, and platform to more than 600 million evangelical Christians".[70][71] The Alliance was formed in 1951 by Evangelicals from 21 countries. It has worked to support its members to work together globally.

According to a 2011 Pew Forum study on global Christianity, 285,480,000 or 13.1 percent of all Christians are Evangelicals.[72] These figures do not include the Evangelical movements Pentecostalism and Charismatic movement; 584,080,000. The largest concentration of Evangelicals can be found in the United States, with 28.9% of the U.S. population or 91.76 million,[73] the latter being roughly one third of the world's Evangelicals.[4] The next most populous is Brazil, with 26.3% or 51.33 million.[74]

The World Christian Database estimates the number of Evangelicals at 300 million, Pentecostals and Charismatics at 600 million and "Great Commission" Christians at 700 million. These groups are not mutually exclusive. Operation World estimates the number of Evangelicals at 550 million.[75]

From 1960 to 2000, the global growth of the number of reported Evangelicals grew three times the world's population rate, and twice that of Islam.[76]

editors of WikipediaEvangelicanismFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism2017/08/28

Evangelicals and Christians accept Eid-al-Adha and hence submit to an ancient religious source. Dhul Hijjah is the 12th month in the Islamic calendar, but the exact start date of this month can only be confirmed by the position of the moon. In the Islamic lunar calendar, Eid al-Adha falls on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah and lasts for four days. It is connected wit the Bible but not with the teachings of Christ. Eid al-Adha honours the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael in obedience to God's command, a date not recorded in history. It is marked by prayers, animal slaughter, charity, social gatherings, festive meals, gift-giving the same as Christmas. The first day of Year One of the Islamic calendar was set as the first day of the Prophet's migration from Makkah to Madinah on July 26. This conforms to some time in summer each year in the west, while Christmas is in winter. Interestingly God's year focuses on Spring and Autumn.

In the next half century or so, Christianity’s long reign as the world’s largest religion may come to an end, according to a just-released report that builds on Pew Research Center’s original population growth projections for religious groups. Indeed, Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group.

While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population.

By Michael Lipka and Conrad HackettWhy Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing religious groupPew Research Centerhttps://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/April 6, 2017

The Quran states that Jesus (Isa), the son of Maryam (Isa ibn Maryam), is the messiah (al-masih) and prophet sent to the Children of Israel. Could there be a world order of whom Jesus could say For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many, Matthew 24:5 [KJV]? Could Muslims accept a version of Christ and preach a gospel that conforms to Matthew 24:5? Many people are looking for a development of an image of the beast to appear on the scene shortly before the 3½ years but it has already started. The Bible warns us that there would be another gospel. Evangelicalism is derived from the Greek euangelion, good news or Gospel. The bible warns us of another gospel that would be preached (Galatians 1:8). The Pietist Movement of the seventeenth century in Germany, was a Lutheran movement recognised by some as the beginning of the present day evangelical movement. This was followed by the Puritan movement of the Anglican Church toward Calvinism and the current Presbyterian Church. The Wesleyan movement lead to Methodism which in turn lead to Pentecostalism. These daughters all present a common image of God supporting Sunday worship with Christmas and are all prophesied to return home, which means that in some way they will be subsumed by popery. I propose that at the root of the image of the Beast (at least in the West) is the Sunday keeping, long-haired blue-eyed Christmas-Christ that has been around for a long time. I also believe that popery has  overturned the world religion its allotted three times already and will be trying to maintain its hegemony. Christianity, Judaism and Islam each have a version of an anti-Christ. Could they find common ground with an international institution (like the UN using WTO) in enforcing the defence of their interest against atheism and an advancing China and Russia? Could that common ground sacrifice commandment-keeping Christians and true Christianity?

Perhaps the best way to imagine the image of the beast is to understand the motivation behind the image. The first beast is an international, loosely united hegemony and the priest-king (priest-ruler/priest-emperor) of the second beast wants to control it and has the trump card of religion and a slick tongue. Even atheists recognise the importance of religion as immortalised in the paraphrased statement of Karl Marx, religion is the opium of the people. Marx argues that religion is the backbone of maintaining the status quo by promising rewards in the after-life rather than providing them now, in this life. The old arguments against atheism crumble in the face of China. How will the religious world defend social inequalities that result from the differences inherent in class structures akin to the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. The manipulation of religion stands out in history under Constantine. This is the same beast up to its same old tricks. If we trace its roots in the Bible we get a combination of the situation of Daniel 3 (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) and the one in Daniel 6 (Daniel in the lion's den). In Daniel 3 Nebuchadnezzar made his own image as an appeal to his ego and was furious when God's people would not worship that. In Daniel 6 it was a mental image established by a harmless law conjured up by jealous people to target Daniel, and was repeated by Haman in the book of Esther to target Mordecai. This is a subtle attempt to eliminate God's people by appealing to the ego of the ultimate earthly authority: the UN or a similar organisation. Bear in mind that this picture of the priest-king starts before the beast was healed. The priest-king had this in mind long before the 3½ years but seizes the opportunity now with globalisation and the large ego of this system. That ego is seen in the God complex (inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility) of the system.

The Developments Concerning Images in the Torah

The first time that we hear about an image is in Genesis 1:26 when God said that man is formed in His image. Then in Genesis 5:3 Adam had Seth, a child in his image, so an image has a strong resemblance to the original. In Genesis 31:19 the word is used in a negative sense when Rachel stole Laban's images. Laban had never actually seen this God so the images represented an impression. This usage is identical to idols. That is the final incident using images in Genesis and the next is in Exodus 20:4 where God prohibits the use of images for worship and in Exodus 23:24 and Exodus 34:13 Israel is instructed to destroy any found in the land. These same directives are found in Leviticus (Leviticus 26:1, 30). In Numbers 33:52 it specifically adds pictures to the list of things prohibited for worship. In Deuteronomy (Moses' final message) it is all repeated and emphasized because God hates it (Deuteronomy 16:22) and any man that does it is cursed (Deuteronomy 27:15).

So by the time that Israel becomes a nation in the Promised Land it is established, absolutely no images for worship or incur God's wrath. However people who are smart and powerful (i.e. great) see no value in that warning as we see in Ezekiel 8.

Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

Nebuchadnezzar thought a lot of himself because of what God chose to let him achieve. He was warned about his pride but just could not help himself. God sent him a vision of a tree and he approached Daniel to interpret the vision. When Daniel understood it he was petrified for Nebuchadnezzar.

He warned Nebuchadnezzar that if he showed genuine repentance then God might defer judgement otherwise he was destined for suffering.

Nebuchadnezzar tried for a while but his basic nature eventually got the better of him.

This is the type of person that we are talking about when we are discussing the secular beast. Now let us go back to Daniel 3 and discuss what is behind the image of the Beast. Nebuchadbezzar had this huge golden statue made and pronounced this decree.

It was basically to show people who was the boss and how great he was. Most people fell in line and some went so far as to point out Jews who refused to comply.

Nebuchadnezzar demanded that they conform or face the consequences.

This is the same state of affairs generated by the image in Revelation 13.

Daniel and Darius

The next image that needs to be considered is a bit more subtle. It is a mental image described in Daniel 6 where Darius was tricked into imprisoning Daniel in the lion's den. Daniel was an outstanding citizen.

This brought on the jealousy of people who could find no way to attack him except through his God. Notice that it was not the whole nation that wanted this, just a small minority of powerful people that had an agenda.

This time the image was in the form of a decree. It was about showing who is all powerful. Who we submit to.

So where is the idol? Remember that an idol is also an impression as pointed out by Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness (Romans 6:16 [KJV]). This action created an impression in people's mind. They formed an image in their minds of something that was greater than their god and could overrule their god, and could be used as an alternative until such time as they were free to continue their regular form of worship. That image would have been Darius or the establishment in Babylon. There is no alternative to the true God. The people behind it were shrewd. They had the disposition of the religious beast that looked like a lamb but spoke as a serpent. By the time Darius understood he could do nothing.

This is what we can expect again. By the time the secular leaders understand what is behind the image and that they were tricked (like with the secret Petro Dollar agreement of 1973 between Saudi Arabia and the US), the damage will have already been done and they will not be able to stop it.

THE LITTLE HORN

It is in Daniel 7 and 8 we find the little horn, not in Revelation, but it ties back in. The beast of Revelation 17 is a red beast associated with a woman and it also has 7 heads and 10 horns and that woman is a specific city (Revelation 17:18). Vatican city was founded February 11, 1929; Rome was founded April 21, 753 BC.; So what happened in between? We begin to explore this here. We know that the little horn developed under Rome and by AD 325 was the state religion. This was interrupted in Jerusalem by the Sasanian empire but the Sasanian Empire never conquered Rome and hence never subdues the little horn. This little horn is never subdued after it arises but not all of the horns submit to it. It seems to have the gift of talk and it was fatter suggesting a more luxuriant lifestyle. As a horn in Daniel 7:8 it was little i.e. not having the military might so its size is not what is being described by Daniel 7:20 but it was plump in comparison to others.

In the 7^th. century Caliph Omar of the Umayyad Dynasty Enters Jerusalem. The Umayyad Dynasty did not conquer Rome either and so the little horn continued. Following this Jerusalem was ruled Under Abassid Dynasty but they did not conquer Rome either. During the many vicissitudes of Jerusalem the little horn remained and dominated the fortunes of Jerusalem.

The Papal States were territories (a kind of Pope empire) in the Italian Peninsula under the direct rule of the pope as sovereign, from the 8^th. century until 1870 (a papal millennium). The kingdom of Sardinia, the forerunner to modern Italy, subsumed the authority of the Pope and united the area under it in 1870, so how did it become independent again or was sustained or carried? Italian leader Benito Mussolini solved the crisis between modern Italy and the Vatican, and, in 1929, the Vatican City State was granted sovereignty. Vatican city is a continuation of the Papal States. This red beast is Satan the red dragon (Revelation 12:3). The woman rides Satan (the false church's true head) not the Roman Empire. So you have the Jerusalem-ruling empires with 7 heads and 10 horns and Satan with 7 heads and 10 horns. The heads appear to be identical but the Bible tells us that the horns are different. The horns of the red dragon only last a short time (Revelation 17:12).

What seems to have sustained the seventh head is a republican system and a connection with a root religion. The language of Rome is Latin. Rome was the first state to use the term republic,  Latin: res publica for its system of government. A republic is a government in which citizens elect representatives to rule on their behalf. This is not the same as a democracy, which is rule by the people, and every citizen is expected to play an active role in governing the state. In a republican system the lineage is not by birth but by election, so the line continues even though it is not descended from the same individual. Popular Christianity is not the same as the Christianity of Christ and the apostles. That Christianity is more like Messianic Judaism. To the first century Christian the Christianity today would be seen as sun worship. It has a female deity, a major god and several minor gods called saints. Popes (emperors of Rome) are often deified to become these minor gods. This is the system that was introduced by the emperors as the state religion and was labelled Christianity by Constantine. It has been carried everywhere by the seventh head (the current world order). Down through the ages this intimacy has focussed on power and control particularly over Jerusalem.

During this long period of Jerusalem's separation from God the dominant religious power influencing it is in my opinion the papacy. As the leader of popular Christianity it uprooted the alternate religion (the Muslim faith) three times. Ezekiel 8 indicates that the Jewish participation is secret. Emperor worship re-branded as Roman Catholicism was the state religion since the time of the early Romans and has remained a constant over the last 2,000 years. In spite of it being a sovereign state Israel, like all of the other western nations, is bound by the major decisions of the United Nations, which in turn is linked to the Vatican.

Revelation 17:5 identifies a church as the mother of harlots. Harlot because it does not worship God alone but breaks the covenant for wealth. The Catholic Church gave birth to the protestant churches. These are the harlots in bed with national powers and political systems as the religions of the nations' rulers, just like the original, the mother.

One major problem in identifying what a head is stems from the fact that the fourth head, called the roman head, covers a period that cannot totally be identified as roman when the focus is Jerusalem. One constant is the little horn which seems to bring Jerusalem back to roman control whenever it changes hands. This horn in Daniel 7:8 had eyes like those of a man.

The scriptures indicate that eyes of a man are not godly and decide what is good and evil for themselves as in the garden of Eden lacking understanding of the heart or the spirit.

God gave instructions to Adam and Eve but they decided that they were smart enough to set that aside and do what seemed best in their eyes. Is there any Church that has publicly claimed to be able to decide for itself what is right or wrong by its tradition, whether or not it is in conflict with the Bible?

It also had a mouth that spoke of grand things or greatness. It was not militarily strong but it spoke as though it was in that same league as these mighty emperors. The Hebrew word (rbrbn or rabrab) used for great is found only in Daniel where it is applied to people and objects of surpassing power.

THE SECOND BEAST

All beasts are defined by their opposition to God's system of worship, His theocracy, being established in Jerusalem. This has to do with Temple worship based on the Torah as it was under David. We have just discussed the little horn. Even though this horn is on the beast and hence gives its power to the beast (the system controlling the fortunes of Jerusalem) it actually has a mind of its own and so it is also a beast in its own right. The second beast (Revelation 13: 11) is from the land where man lives not leviathan. This could be a focus on where man and his idols come from and return to.

In spite of this fact I believe that the significance of land has to do with the beast being land-locked and physically less powerful than leviathan. It is completely surrounded by another land or nation. The second beast had lamb's horns. Horns are used to establish dominance so this beast could not establish dominance through violence but it was subtle like Satan.

God warns us about such people: Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves, Matthew 7:15 [KJV]. Through its crafty words it manipulated the other beast. If one beast represents the global nations then the other could represent global religion. Since it has two horns one could be Muslim and the other Catholic, which would represent most of the world's nations. It has no real military might because its horns are small like a lamb's. The Imām (literally guide), is the head of the Islamic community. Since the tenth century, the real power has not been exercised by the imām, but by sultans and emirs (the military). The Pope is seen as the head of western religion. Even though the Vatican is a complete nation the real power in western nations is exercised by the military of the hegemony. So the power in either case is the military. Some go so far as to claim that Islam is an offshoot of Roman Catholicism and hence is one of the daughters of Roman Catholicism. Even though I believe that there is enough evidence to demonstrate that to be essentially true, I do not see that in the way that the Bible describes the daughters. I believe that these daughters are more closely linked to the Catholic Church.

The woman is not necessarily the beast so by destroying the beast you do not necessarily destroy the woman or vice versa. While it is true that the woman rides the beast it does not appear that the woman is the second beast. In other words the second beast may simply be the means that the woman employs to control the first beast e.g the UN. The head of the second beast could be a pope but it could just as easily be a Cardinal, a Jesuit or some high-ranking Muslim that is controlled by the woman. I might add that it could also be a remnant of the cabal of Jews from Ezekiel 8. All we know is that this is someone that is charismatic, controlled by the woman and is bent on religious hegemony. On the other hand we know that woman (the one connected with the first beast) is a specific city (Revelation 17:18) whereas nothing of this is said to apply to the second beast.

The beast is a false prophet. In the context of the Bible being a prophet makes him religious because it implies speaking as a representative of God. We therefore have a religious (in the sense of speaking on the same level as God's prophets) ruler that presents himself as harmless but is a deadly deceiver. The description in Revelation 13:11-12 definitely makes him a religious entity that deceives. These characteristics make him identical to the false prophet of Revelation 16:13. According to the narrative in Revelation 16 he will become possessed by a demon with the sole purpose of gathering the world's armies to their destruction at Armageddon. People often presume that it is a Pope or high-ranking Catholic official but that may prove to be somewhat hasty. Remember that this person gets demon-possessed and that is something that could happen to someone from any religion. Having said that it is worth considering the origin of the Imām. The Imām is the spiritual head of the Muslims and from a Biblical perspective is in the same position as the Pope and some claim with the same origin. Both Catholicism and Islam squabble over Jerusalem and both present an image of a Christ that suit their interests. My definition of a beast is essentially an entity that obstructs the worship of God according to the Torah and in my opinion both of these organisations are complicit in breaking that law. I cannot trace the Jews from Ezekiel 8 but by definition they work in secret. Below I have traced the history of Catholicism as I understand it. The fundamental religion pre-dated Islam. That fundamental religion that existed in the first century AD has split off into various strains representing modern Christianity but it appears that Islam may also be a daughter conceived by a somewhat different method than the others. 

Tracing the Papacy

According to catholic tradition the papacy began with Peter, the first Bishop of Rome (pope), about AD 30. I believe that this assumes that Christ was born in 4 BC hence this is the same year that Christ died. They identify an incident recorded in Matthew 16:18, And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it as the establishment of the papacy. This is contested by Eastern Christian tradition which claims that Peter was the First Bishop of Antioch (patriarch). In the Bible Peter seems to have started preaching the gospel first in the region of Galatia (1 Peter 1:1) and ended up in Babylon (1 Peter 5:13) but it makes no mention of him starting congregations in Syria or Rome. The interesting thing is that both the word pope and the word patriarch are derived from Greek and mean father. This is in direct opposition to a command that would have been given to Peter and the others by Christ relatively recently at the time.

Peter would have been given this instruction between AD 26 to AD 30 and by AD 64-68, when he is supposed to have died, would have disobeyed it.

They feared the Lord, and served their own gods

The defence of this naming convention (for example https://www.catholic.com/tract/call-no-man-father) reminds me of what is said in II Kings 17:33 [KJV], They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

You might hear something like this: Jesus is not forbidding us to call men “fathers” where they actually are not parents either literally or spiritually. Now how else could He mean it? What else is there aside from the spiritual and the carnal? So apparently He did not mean what He said. The argument would continue something like this: He actually meant what I am going to tell you that He meant, which is . . . . That argument combines some truth with some error. He obviously did not mean that you cannot call your male parent father because that is the genesis of the word, that is a specific relationship that cannot be altered. He did mean that you have no spiritual father but God because that is the only alternative. No human being is spiritually a father to you or me, we are all brothers in the sight of Christ. There is no spiritual rank that puts anybody above another Christian in His eyes. That goes into a more extensive argument about positions in the Church which I will leave for another time.

Interestingly I find this approach of worshipping God but deciding what you want to do based on the pronouncements of men rather than Him, to be emblazoned in the record of the beginning of Samaria (the area where the Samaritans lived). The Assyrians had deported the northern tribes out of Samaria and replaced them with pagans. The pagans complained that they were suffering the wrath of the god of the land because they did not know how to worship him. One of the same priests that led the northern tribes into apostasy and caused God to expel them from the land, was brought in to teach these Samaritans how to worship God! The combinations of religions in Samaria are the same ones which were inherited by the Roman empire.

There is no love lost between the Samaritans and the Jews. At the end of the Babylonian exile the Jews required that those who held official positions in the priesthood must be able to trace a pure lineage back (Ezra 2:59-63). Samaritans held themselves to be descendants of Israel but were unceremoniously rejected by Zerubbabel from the rebuilding of Jerusalem because they could not produce evidence of their lineage. This leads me to believe that the Israelites (who were now in Samaria some 200 years) had been intermarrying on a major scale even way back then. In turn they continued to vent their hostility in opposing the rebuilding of the temple.

By the time of Christ it is about 400 years after the captivity and I see no reason to believe that the intermarrying did not continue. The confines of Samaria forced them to amalgamate and produce a unifying religion that appealed to local Jews and all types of gentiles: John 4:12 [KJV], Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? The woman did not know Jesus and had no idea how much He knew about them, and hence when she said we it is understood that she meant all Samaritans. The woman identifies Jacob with all Samaritans, hence we have II Kings 17:33-34 where everybody (man, woman, gentile, Jew) feared the Lord but did as they pleased. I say this is interesting because Simon Magus was a Samaritan and I will return to him shortly. So to trace the papacy we are presented with Peter c. AD 30 to c. AD 64-68; Linus c. 67- c. 76; Anacletus c. 79- c. 92; Clement I 88 - 99, Evaristus c. 99- c. 107; Alexander I c. 107- c. 115, Sixtus I c. 115 - c. 124; Telesphorus c. 126- c. 137; Hyginus c. 136- c. 142; Pius I c. 140- c. 155; Anicetus c. 157- c. 20 April 168 and so on until the present.

Continuing on the subject of Simon Magus. There is a theory that the Samaritan woman was only approached because she was an exception and had a purer line of descendency from Jacob than the typical Samaritan. Why then did the apostles accept Simon Magus? It is in Acts 10 that the gospel went to Cornelius and Peter was lead to understand that his vision of the sheet with unclean animals meant that gentiles were to be accepted as Christians. In addition a reference to Acts 11:19 shows that up to the time that Stephen was stoned the gospel went only to Jews. The change came with Cornelius. Now two chapters before Cornelius was baptized (in Acts chapter 8) is where Simon was accepted as a Christian. It had to be based on his Jewish qualifications. This was according to the example of Christ. Peter did not have the same spiritual insight as Christ did. All he knew is that Simon was a Samaritan. I go on to propose that Simon sought to have himself installed in the Roman imperial cult as a great one being master of supernatural arts. Acts 8:524 shows that he had ambitions to be a great one and even to be revered as a god. He saw Philip's preaching as a means to achieve his objectives and was baptised. When he saw the power of the Holy Spirit demonstrated by Peter and that it could be transferred he recognised it as something that he was willing to obtain at any cost and proposed to buy it (he had access to money enough to think that it would impress Peter). Simon's offer to purchase was rejected and so his hope of gaining pre-eminence through the Church of God was dashed. Simon sought another route to prominence, which led him to Rome in a grand spectacle.

From wikipedia 2017/08/28

Justin Martyr and Irenaeus

Justin Martyr (in his Apologies, and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his main source) and Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses) record that after being cast out by the Apostles, Simon Magus came to Rome where, having joined to himself a profligate woman of the name of Helen, he gave out that it was he who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. He performed such signs by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber which the two bridges cross, with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto, "To Simon the Holy God" (Apologia, XXVI).

the editors of WikipediaJustin Martyr and IrenaeusFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus#Justin_Martyr_and_Irenaeus2017/08/28

Simon would have therefore been the originator of the modern Trinity.

Peter had no business in Rome

The apostle Peter was sent to the circumcision, and hence not to Rome as they were gentiles.

Jesus had placed the burden on Peter to get the Gospel to Jews. He was not expected to do it alone but he had the personality type to take action hence. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep (John 21:17 [KJV]).

Peter and the other apostles agreed that they would tread a different path from Paul and hence it is unlikely that Peter ever went to Rome. Notice that Peter did not impose this decision on the apostles by some divine right, it was conferred by them all through the Holy Spirit.

The second letter from Peter starts out by letting us know that he expected to die shortly, II Peter 1:14 [KJV] Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. But it concludes in a manner that suggests that Paul was yet alive.

The Bible provides no support for Peter ever going to Rome. On the other hand legend after legend puts Simon Magus in Rome. One account of his death shows him striving to be exalted up to his death.

From wikipedia 2017/08/28

Acts of Peter
The apocryphal Acts of Peter gives a more elaborate tale of Simon Magus' death. Simon is performing magic in the Forum, and in order to prove himself to be a god, he levitates up into the air above the Forum. The apostle Peter prays to God to stop his flying, and he stops mid-air and falls into a place called the Sacra Via (meaning, Holy Way), breaking his legs "in three parts". The previously non-hostile crowd then stones him. Now gravely injured, he had some people carry him on a bed at night from Rome to Ariccia, and was brought from there to Terracina to a person named Castor, who on accusations of sorcery was banished from Rome. The Acts then continue to say that he died "while being sorely cut by two physicians".
editors of WikipediaActs of PeterFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus#Acts_of_Peter2017/08/28

Paul built and supported the Church in Rome

The apostle Paul visited Rome about AD 60 and was under house arrest for two years (Acts 28:17-31). There is no indication of a Church started by Peter who is said to have died between AD 64–68. There is no evidence in the Bible that Peter outlived Paul. The Church in Rome was organised by Paul under Christ's direction (Acts 23:11) and it would be very presumptuous of Peter to believe that he could overrule that even after they had unanimously agreed to leave it to Paul. There is speculation that a couple of years after Paul was executed in Rome that Peter turned up. The question then becomes which Peter? We know that there was a Simon but how would the Peter derive. I propose that there was a Simon pater which is the first pope. The word pater is the same as father which is the same as pope. To lend legitimacy to the papacy it was erroneously associated with the apostle of God. I cannot accept that it is coincidence that Simon Magus died in AD 65 after apparently attempting to impress Rome and raise his status to a great one. Magus is the Latin word meaning great. Simon always wanted to be a great one (Acts 8:9) and after he was rejected by true Christianity he developed his parallel system which appealed to everybody (Acts 8:10) and flourished. There is no real evidence that Paul lived beyond AD 65 and so it looks like as soon as he died Simon Magus turned up. Simon would have been aware of what happened to Elymas/Bar–jesus and would have avoided locking horns with Paul.

From the time that he wrote Philippians (which occurred between approximately 49 and 51 AD) he was ready to die.

He recognised that his value in going to Rome was more important, it was his motivation for going on. By the time of 2 Timothy (which was written during a second imprisonment in Rome following a fourth missionary journey that is not recorded in Acts, [e.g. Paul’s 4th Missionary Journey (And I Don’t Mean His Trip to Rome) Kenneth Berding — April 14, 2015]) he realised that his time was up. Paul appears to have done this fourth and  final missionary journey alone. It is believed that Paul’s second arrest brought it to an end. This time he was sent to Mamertine Prison, and was not kept in house arrest as before. Nero was on the rampage against Christians and Paul knew the time of his departure from this world was near (2 Timothy 4:6). Luke continued to provide care and support (2 Timothy 4:11) and he was also visited by Onesiphorus (2 Timothy 1:16–17) but abandoned by many others.

2 Timothy was probably written somewhere between AD 61-65. There is no reason to believe that Paul survived beyond this time. Paul had an illness which was serious enough for God to call it a weakness. I believe that it might have been Parkinsons Disease which developed from blows to the head like Muhammad Ali's condition did. Some claim that he was blind but that does not fit all of the facts. Galatians 6:11 [KJV] says: Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. It does not say that the the characters on the page were big but that it was a big letter. It would have taken him a long time to write steadily enough to be legible. Add this to the fact that Paul appeared relatively feeble in presence, note II Corinthians 10:10-13 [KJV] For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible. [11] Let such an one think this, that, such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present. [12] For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. [13] But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. Paul was a well educated man so his contemptable speech was not because he did not know the language but he could no longer speak the words eloquently. He was a man that valued exercise so his feebleness did not result from a lack of that. He talks of bodily exercise being profitable and he admired the games and made reference in his letters so he was not physically weak but he appeared to be feeble. Consider this as well. If you were blind would you go to a strange city and go by a river alone looking for people. How would you find the river and how would you recognise the people? Can you imagine a blind man baptising people in a strange river. Acts 16:12-15 [KJV] And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony: and we were in that city abiding certain days. [13] And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. [14] And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. [15] And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us. Anyhow that is my perception of the facts. Paul's condition made it difficult for him to travel, but he could and did travel alone as indicated by his fourth missionary journey, but even before that we have his Journey from Troas to Assos.

This was at the end of his Third Missionary Journey hurrying back to Jerusalem after the incident when Eutychus fell from the window. The distance from Troas to Assos is about 21 miles point-to-point but by road the journey goes south along the coast to Hamaxitos and then turns east across land to Assos, a distance of about 31 mi. It must have taken him at least two days. He went by foot. Would a blind man do that? Paul was not reckless and foolish even though he endured only through the grace of God:

Paul did not lead an easy life and God took him. Simon pater seized the opportunity to give the image of the beast its modern appearance.

Power transferred from Pergamos to Rome

The Bble tells us that the seat of Satan's Power was at Pergamos.

We also learn from an article By David Hulme, Through an Ancient Looking Glass, that:

According to one source, the defeated Chaldeans fled to Asia Minor, and fixed their central college at Pergamos, and took the palladium of Babylon, the cubic stone, with them. Here, independent of state control, they carried on the rites of their religion (William B. Barker, Lares and Penates: or, Cilicia and Its Governors, Ingram, Cooke and Co., London, 1853, pp. 232233)'.

It later goes on to show that these Chaldeans worked in league with Alexander the Great to undermine the Persian Empire. The Great Altar at Pergamos (Pergamum), which still existed in 200 AD, is testimony to how much greater a center of pagan worship this would have been than Rome in the first century AD. This is probably where Simon Magus went learning his arts and biding his time. So we have a mystic individual that wants to be exalted and worshipped and we will soon see that Rome also had a millitary individual that wanted to be worshipped. One is the image of the other and will travel on the back of the other.

To trace the origins from the first Roman Emperor notice according to Wikipedia on 2017/08/28

Augustus
 . . .was the founder of the Roman Principate and considered the first Roman emperor, controlling the Roman Empire from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. . . .His maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and Octavius was named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir, then known as Octavianus (Anglicized as Octavian). He, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at the Battle of Philippi, the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as military dictators. . . .Lepidus was driven into exile and stripped of his position, and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Octavian in 31 BC.

editors of WikipediaAugustusFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus2017/08/28

And at the same website on the same day

Imperial cult (ancient Rome)
The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority (auctoritas) of the Roman State. Its framework was formulated during the early Principate of Augustus, and was rapidly established throughout the Empire and its provinces. . .

Augustus's reforms transformed Rome's Republican system of government to a 'defacto' monarchy, couched in traditional Roman practices and Republican values. .. The official offer of cultus to a living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate pious respect for traditional Republican deities and mores.

A deceased emperor held worthy of the honor could be voted a state divinity (divus, plural divi) by the Senate and elevated as such in an act of apotheosis. The granting of apotheosis served religious,political and moral judgment on Imperial rulers and allowed living Emperors to associate themselves with a well-regarded lineage of Imperial divi from which unpopular or unworthy predecessors were excluded. . .

The Imperial cult was inseparable from that of Rome's official deities,whose cult was essential to Rome's survival and whose neglect was therefore treasonous.editors of WikipediaImperial cult (ancient Rome)Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)2017/08/28

So Octavian (Augustus) had united the Roman Empire but in the process transformed Rome's Republican system into a monarchy with him as the head and made the Imperial cult inseparable from that of Rome's official deities.

The Triumvirate was started to combat Brutus and Cassius. Antony needed soldiers and to finance his army he wanted the cash from Caesar's war chests. To legitimise this he passed the lex Titia on 27 November 43 BC, which formed a Triumvirate of Antony, Octavian, and Caesar's cavalry commander Lepidus. It formally deified Caesar as Divus Lulius in 42 BC, and Caesar Octavian became Divi filius (Son of a god, filius means son) the real trinity in the Roman cult. Lulius is the ancient Roman form of Julius and Divus means deified one hence Divus Lulius means the god Julius.

Remember that Augustus was Octavian so under him Rome was a theocracy ruled by the son of god. The developing Simon Magus system was a theocracy ruled by the pope or father. The separate systems continued unhindered until the 4^th century when Constantine briefly liberated Christianity but as far as I can see did not rescind the divinity of the emperor, but harmonised the two systems. One system to appeal to the masses as well as the elite. The systems were officially joined in 800 under Charlemagne (Charles I) king of Germany.

These pagan systems hold nominal similarities to the fledgeling Christian Church but they show a completely diffferent spirit at work. The Church that Christ started held no property but property owners sold possessions and made contributions then the church distributed the proceeds (Acts 4:34-37). Simon Magus' offer of money held no attraction to Peter but we see another church arise and somehow come to be called Christian. Note also that the Imperial Cult was feared by all because it was the means of maintaining the Pax Romanus but it did not hold personal appeal to the masses. Women and the not-well-to-do were left out, but this was different with the religion that Simon offered. Let us examine the origins of the Papal States.

The Papal States

Continuing from Wikipedia on the same day, 2017/08/28

Papal States

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Origins

For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized, unable to hold or transfer property.[2] Early congregations met in rooms set aside for that purpose in the homes of well-to-do individuals, and a number of early churches, known as titular churches and located on the outskirts of Ancient Rome, were held as property by individuals, rather than by the Church itself.

editors of WikipediaPapal StatesWikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States2017/08/28

Let me point out here that in the Church of Christ the Church was the people not the building. The people met wherever was convenient. Acquisition of property in Rome was not a concern but rather Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality, Romans 12:13 [KJV]. Somehow this church might have suffered along with the Church of Christ (although that is doubtful) and now becomes identified with the Christian Church. The original Church was basically messianic Jews and Israel's diaspora with comparatively a few gentiles added along the way. The original persecution of the Church was by Jews. I find no evidence that the Church was generally persecuted by the state in the first 300 years (notwithstanding Pliny the younger).

Pliny the Younger, the Roman governor of Bithynia et Pontus (now in modern Turkey) wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan around 112 AD and asked for counsel on dealing with Christians. The letter (Epistulae X.96) details an account of how Pliny conducted trials of suspected Christians who appeared before him as a result of anonymous accusations and asks for the Emperor's guidance on how they should be treated.[1][2]

Neither Pliny nor Trajan mentions the crime that Christians had committed, except for being a Christian; and other historical sources do not provide a simple answer to what that crime could be, but a likely element may be the stubborn refusal of Christians to worship Roman gods; making them appear as objecting to Roman rule.[3][4]

Pliny states that he gives Christians multiple chances to affirm they are innocent and if they refuse three times, they are executed. Pliny states that his investigations have revealed nothing on the Christians' part but harmless practices and "depraved, excessive superstition." However, Pliny seems concerned about the rapid spread of this "superstition"; and views Christian gatherings as a potential starting point for sedition.[4]

The letter is the first pagan account to refer to Christianity, providing key information on early Christian beliefs and practices and how these were viewed and dealt with by the Romans.[2][5][6] The letter and Trajan's reply indicate that at the time of its writing there was no systematic and official Empire-wide persecution of Christians.[7][8] Trajan's reply also offers valuable insight into the relationship between Roman provincial governors and Emperors and indicates that at the time Christians were not sought out or tracked down by imperial orders, and that persecutions could be local and sporadic

editors of WikipediaPliny the Younger on ChristiansWikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians2017-10-30

The general theme is echoed by the website of Christianitytoday 2017-11-18

From A.D. 30 to A.D. 311, a period in which 54 emperors ruled the Empire, only about a dozen took the trouble to harass Christians. Furthermore, not until Decius (249251) did any deliberately attempt an Empire-wide persecution. Until then, persecution came mainly at the instigation of local rulers, albeit with Romes approval. Nonetheless, a few emperors did have direct and, for Christians, unpleasant dealings with this faith. Here are the most significant of those rulers. . .

MARK GALLIPersecution in the Early Church: A Gallery of the Persecuting EmperorsChristianitytoday http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-27/persecution-in-early-church-gallery-of-persecuting-emperors.html2017-11-18

Even in the seven churches which the book of Revelation was initially addressed to in Asia Minor, we find varying degrees of peace in the Church, from Laodicea (which seemed very comfortable) to the intense persecution in Smyrna. The pattern of localised persecution changed in A.D. 250 when the emperor Decius issued an edict that ordered all Romans to sacrifice to the gods and present a certificate to prove that they had complied. The edict was prompted by a serious barbarian threat, much like those in America have fear of Muslims or Communists today.

The article on papal States goes on to claim that property became effectively but not legally owned by the pope in Rome because the bishops etc. who held title to the properties all submitted to him.

This system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated (in the larger cities of the empire this would have been quite considerable, and the Roman patrimony not least among them).[2] The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, most probably a gift from Constantine himself. . .

The properties were held as a private citizen and not a political entity.

. . .The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning In 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italy's political and economic structures. . .

The Byzantine-Lombard wars occurred from AD 568 to 750. The Lombards steadily weakened Byzantine power in Italy while the popes, who controlled huge portions of property, remained Byzantine (Imperial) subjects. In practice the Duchy of Rome became an independent state ruled by the pope. Apparently the pope's skill at diplomacy, along with popular support, worked to limit the Lombards' influence over Rome.

. . .In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch and Ravenna. A climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprand's Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II.

So we have just traced the papacy from the time of Christ up to the 8^th century, and earlier we saw it survive a thousand more years i.e. until 1870 when the kingdom of Sardinia subsumed the authority of the Pope, after which Benito Mussolini granted sovereignty to the Vatican City State in 1929.

Other daughters of the same root as the Papacy

Let me clarify something here that I was uncertain and somewhat confused about earlier. The root is Hellenism not Roman orthodoxy. To establish this let us go back to Daniel 2.

The legs begin with the thighs and the thighs are of brass, Hellenistic not Roman. The divergence begins with Hellenism and both legs draw from their core. In fact they both draw heavily from Egypt. Egypt was in opposition to Jerusalem just as Babylon was in opposition to Jerusalem. We know that the Babylonian mysteries went to Rome but the incidents with Moses and the magicians of Egypt tell us that Egypt and Babylon held those mysteries in common. Paul puts it this way, Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith (II Timothy 3:8 [KJV]). Jannes and Jambres are widely thought to be the magicians that opposed Moses in Egypt. We see them first in Exodus 7.

It is easy to see how many of the daughters of the root church of the first century are connected through Constantine and splits within the Roman Empire to produce the various flavours of modern Christianity, but the link with Islam is a bit more obscure. All of the people whom I have heard speak of it have views associated with Alberto Rivera the activist. He alleges that Muhammad was manipulated by the Catholic Church to create Islam and destroy the Jews and other groups of Christians, and that Muhammad's first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, was actually a Catholic nun in an Arabian monastery, who was told by a bishop to marry Muhammad and create Islam. Rivera also alleged that the Vatican staged an apparition at Fátima (named after Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad) to cultivate favor with Muslims. He further says that it also staged the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II using a Muslim as the marksman "to guilt-induce the Muslim world, bringing them still closer to the Catholic faith", according to Wikipedia, citation Alberto Rivera, caption Allegations about Catholicism and Islam, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Rivera_(activist), 20:26, 3 July 2022. While that may be true the more reliable connection is found elsewhere.

The Roman province of Arabia was created out of the former kingdom of the Nabataeans and the Syrian cities of Gerasa and Philadelphia by the Roman emperor Trajan in 105 AD. The Hedjaz region was integrated into the Roman province of Arabia in 106 AD. In A.D. 212 all or almost all free subjects in the Roman Empire became citizens. Arabia after Diocletian was a part of the Diocese of the East, and was largely Christian. The province was conquered by the Arab Muslims under the Caliph Umar in the early 7th century, ending the Roman presence in Arabia. Muhammad therefore came out of the Roman Empire and out of a largely Christian environment.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 570 A.D. which is around a century after the fall of the western side of the Roman Empire. He would have seen the threat of the power of the Pope as well as the possibility of a successful challenge to the Byzantine Empire. Starting in about 613, Muhammad began preaching that there was no other God but Allah and that Muslims (followers of his religion) should devote their lives to this Allah. Muslims claim that the revelations came to Muhammed bit by bit through Gabriel. When you consider what had recently occurred in Britain with the Gregorian mission which started in 596, you will see that Muhammad had cause for concern. There was a spreading abuse of Christianity by Rome and it would have been evident in Africa since Jews (including Messianic Jews) had fled there, and Christianity had also spread there via the Ethiopian Eunuch. Because of the power of Rome in Europe the Pope could seek papal supremacy there, but Rome was weak in Africa and the situation opened the door to the rise of Islam.

Philip the Arab (Latin: Marcus Julius Philippus Arabs;[3] c. 204 – September 249) was Roman emperor from 244 to 249. He was born in Aurantis, Arabia, in a city situated in modern-day Syria. After the death of Gordian III in February 244, Philip, who had been Praetorian prefect, achieved power. He quickly negotiated peace with the Persian Sassanid Empire and returned to Rome to be confirmed by the senate. During his reign, the city of Rome celebrated its millennium. Philip was betrayed and killed at the Battle of Verona in September 249 following a rebellion led by his successor, Gaius Messius Quintus Decius. Philip's reign of five years was uncommonly stable in a turbulent third century.[a][b]During the late 3rd century and into the 4th, it was held by some churchmen that Philip had been the first Christian emperor; he was described as such in Jerome's Chronicon (Chronicle), which was well known during the Middle Ages, in Orosius' highly popular Historia Adversus Paganos (History Against the Pagans), and was presented as a Christian in Eusebius of Caesarea's Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History).[6] Modern scholars are divided on the issue.

Editors of WikipediaPhilip the ArabWikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_the_Arab22:10, 25 June 2022 (Undid revision 1094643336 by 24.126.244.19)

The Severan dynasty was founded by the emperor Septimius Severus ( r. 193–211), who rose to power after the Year of the Five Emperors. He was Roman emperor born in Leptis Magna, Tripolitania [now in Libya]. The dynasty featured several powerful Roman-Arab Empresses.

The Severan dynasty was a Roman imperial dynasty that ruled the Roman Empire between 193 and 235, during the Roman imperial period. The dynasty was founded by the emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), who rose to power after the Year of the Five Emperors as the victor of the civil war of 193–197, and his wife, Julia Domna. After the short reigns and assassinations of their two sons, Caracalla (r. 198–217) and Geta (r. 209–211), who succeeded their father in the government of the empire, Julia Domna's relatives themselves assumed power by raising Elagabalus (r. 218–222) and then Severus Alexander (r. 222–235) to the imperial office.

The dynasty's control over the empire was interrupted by the joint reigns of Macrinus (r. 217–218) and his son Diadumenian (r. 218). The dynasty's women, including Julia Domna, the mother of Caracalla and Geta, and her nieces Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea, the mothers respectively of Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, and their own mother, Julia Maesa, were all powerful augustae and instrumental in securing their sons' imperial positions.

editors of Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaSeveran dynastyWikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severan_dynasty19:52, 2 June 2022 (→‎Alexander Severus (222–235)

There is also the Abgarid dynasty.

The Abgarid dynasty was a dynasty of Nabataean Arab origin.[1][2] Members of the dynasty, the Abgarids, reigned between 134 BC and 242 AD over Edessa and Osroene in Upper Mesopotamia.[1] Some members of the dynasty bore Iranian names, while others had Arab names, including Abgar itself.[3] J.B. Segal notes that the names ending in "-u" are "undoubtedly Nabatean".[3] The Abgarid dynasts spoke "a form of Aramaic".

editors of Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAbgarid dynastyWikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgarid_dynastyat 18:23, 26 June 2022

The dynasty controlled Edessa and Osroene but the Romans eventually turned Osroene into a Roman client state. Abgar IX Severus was deposed and Osroene was incorporated as a Roman province following which Abgarid dynasts only ruled in name.

Palmyra is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. It became a subject of the Roman Empire in the first century AD. Palmyra produced Odenathus and Zenobia. So Arabs were intimately involved in the development of the Roman Empire. It is even claimed that Philip the Arab was a Christian, although this is somewhat debated. The actions of Muhammad was cultivated by this environment, and the religion moving from polytheism to worshipping a single god was from the same roots as that of Rome.

Much of the success of the Arabs as a people can be attributed to Muhammed. Hijra or Hegira refers to Muhammad's departure from Mecca to Medina in AD 622. Mecca's principal revenues derived from it being a centre of commerce and trade located at the crossroads of several caravan routes. It's second major source of income arose from the sacredness of its principal religious shrine, the Ka‘bah which Islamic tradition maintains was constructed originally by Adam and then rebuilt by Abraham and his son Ishmael, the father of Arabs. Out of respect for the the Ka‘bah, fighting in Mecca and its vicinity was forbidden, which allowed commerce to flow unhindered by feuding clans and tribes.

Waraqa/Waraqah was the first cousin of Khadija, the first wife of Muhammad/Muhammed. He is said to have left the pagan faith of Mecca in search for the the religion of Abraham and returned as a Christian, bear in mind that Christian and Roman Catholic is not the same thing. Roman Catholics persecuted what I consider to be true Christians. Some claim that he was the source of the Qur'ân. The point here is that Muhammad had and understanding of true Christianity and also an awareness of the threat of Roman Catholicism. It seems natural that he would develop a means to oppose it, and if he recognised truth in the faith of Waraqa it would logically be grounded in that.

Khadija and apparently Muhammed were originally polytheistic. It seems that they both worshipped an idol called Al-Uzza (the Arabian Minerva). One night Muhammad told Khadija that he didn’t believe in Al-Uzza and didn’t want to worship her any more. Khadija agreed. It appears to be following this that they approached Waraqa.

Waraqa was by that time an old man and died not long after. So here we have a situation where these recognise that paganism is wrong and Christianity seems right but they have no teacher. What results is their best effort. Muhammad was eventually driven from Mecca and the rest is history. If the root church of Waraqa was not true Christianity then it is the same root as Catholicism, which is Hellenism, on one side. If it was true Christianity then it is still the same root in principle because it is a combination of a pagan old religion and the awareness brought on by Christianity. There is no question that the immense show of culture of Al-Andaluz drew from the Egyptian Mouseion and Alexandria. The point of all of this is that the false prophet could be from any of these religions.

Then from Wikipedia we get the following contribution.

Witness to Muhammad

When told of Muhammad's first revelation (which is understood to be Sura 96:1-5), Waraqah acknowledged his call to prophecy as authentic. Tradition recounts Waraqah saying: "There has come to him the greatest Law that came to Moses; surely he is the prophet of this people".[5]

Two different narrations from Aisha give these details.

    Aisha also said: "The Prophet returned to Khadija while his heart was beating rapidly. She took him to Waraqah bin Naufal who was a Christian convert and used to read the Gospel in Arabic. Waraqah asked (the Prophet), 'What do you see?' When he told him, Waraqah said, 'That is the same angel whom Allah sent to the Prophet Moses. Should I live till you receive the Divine Message, I will support you strongly.'"[6]

    Khadija then accompanied him to her cousin Waraqah bin Naufil bin Asad bin 'Abdul 'Uzza, who, during the Pre-Islamic Period became a Christian and used to write the writing with Hebrew letters. He would write from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as God wished him to write. He was an old man and had lost his eyesight. Khadija said to Waraqah, "Listen to the story of your nephew, O my cousin!" Waraqah asked, "O my nephew! What have you seen?" God's Apostle described whatever he had seen. Waraqah said, "This was the same one who keeps the secrets whom Allah had sent to Moses (Angel Gabriel). I wish I were young and could live up to the time when your people would turn you out." God's Apostle asked, "Will they drive me out?" Waraqah replied in the affirmative and said, "Anyone (man) who came with something similar to what you have brought was treated with hostility; and if I should remain alive till the day when you will be turned out then I would support you strongly." But after a few days Waraqah died and the Divine Inspiration was also paused for a while.[7]

editors of Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWaraqah ibn NawfalWikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraqah_ibn_Nawfal edited by 80.251.236.46 (talk) at 19:13, 22 November 2021

Most members of the Quraysh (the merchant tribe) in Mecca considered Muhammad to be a threat to their lifestyle. In 618 his influential uncle Abu Talib died and having lost that protection he eventually fled to the city of Yathrib (subsequently called Medina) in 622 AD. Muhammad developed a role as impartial arbitrator in a local disputes which lead to him becoming the city’s judge, foremost statesman and military commander and of course its supreme religious leader establishing the community as Muslim. Muhammad and his many followers returned to Mecca and conquered the region. Muhammad died in 632 and a series of leaders, known as caliphs, became his successors. This system of being run by a Muslim ruler, became known as a caliphate.

THE WOUND THAT WAS HEALED

In order to identify the Beast we need to define it. We know from the Bible that it is a king or his domain or a system, but what makes each king or domain or system unique or special? That is a rather long discussion governed by the King of the North and the King of the south and is too much to include here. I take the position that the fourth beast is the Roman Empire and I will soon present some support for that. The other beasts are identified by their first ruler and named after the Empire created by him. As long as that dynasty was not conquered by another army the beast remained in existence but with Rome it is not so clear but assuming that my position is the correct one then Rome is the empire that prevailed when the deadly wound was healed.

It is self evident that the seventh head is the Roman Empire when each Empire is identified. It is the only one that was left at the time of John. In the context of what John wrote it seems that the wound was healed leading up to the Day of the LORD (the Lord's Day). There is also a strong indication that the head was not healed as such but a new head grew in its place, Revelation 17:11 [KJV], And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. The beast is future but John gave a contemporary example using 666 that resolves to Emperor Nero.

Christians suffered sporadic persecution by Rome over a period of three and a half centuries but the persecution began with Nero and the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Their refusal to participate in the Imperial cult was considered an act of treason and was thus punishable by execution. The Imperial cult of ancient Rome gave emperors divine authority. In the year 313 the Roman Emperors Constantine the Great and Licinius jointly promulgated the Edict of Milan which legalised the Christian religion. Shortly thereafter a sleight of hand basically made Christianity the same thing as the Simon Magus religion combined with the Imperial Cult. Nicene Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, when Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the Empire's sole authorized religion. Nicene Christianity means that it adopts the Nicene Creed (formulated at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD) which, among other things, personifies the Holy Spirit as the Lord and giver of life but simultaneously corrupts it with the Trinity.

Specific to the deadly wound that was healed; some writers date this from when the Romans were conquered by three consecutive powers during the 5^th century, causing a deadly wound to the empire. Each of the armies (armies of the VANDALS, the HERULI and the OSTROGOTHS ending in 554 AD) constitute a horn. These are believed to form the period of the deadly wound until restored by Justinian's army in the 6^th century. The vandal kingdom was in North Africa and did not include Rome. The Heruli were north of Italy and Rome is in Italy. The Ostrogoths did control Italy but the Ostrogoths were already Italian and it is true that most of the social institutions of the late Western Roman Empire were preserved by them but I take exception to them because if you replace one cat with another cat then you still have a cat dynasty. The empire did not change. The Roman Empire did not die so there was no deadly wound.

Prophetic support for the view that the deadly wound occurred during the period just given is presented by considering the 42 months of Revelation 13:5 as 42x30 = 1260 prophetic days. By using 1 day for a year 1260 years is worked out from the time of the Ostrogoths. While that may be true I believe that the 42 months is primarily intended for the end time and is literal as was that in Revelation 12. Revelation is not Daniel. When God wanted numbers to be interpreted differently HE provided a method in Daniel and indicated the use by linking it to the messiah. None of that was done in the book of Revelation. I am no Roman historian but in my opinion the Roman realm was not destroyed during this period hence no fatal wound. In addition I see the focus of the chapter to be the time of the end not the 6^th century.

Whatever the Roman Empire was, it was called the Holy Roman Empire from 800 (Charlemagne) and seems to have been ended by Napoleon who transferred all power to himself, and the system died when his dynasty ended. That was a death blow.

According to Wikipedia, Napoleon and the Catholic Church, 3 March 2016.

In 1796, French Republican troops under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy, defeated the papal troops and occupied Ancona and Loreto. . . .
General Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on February 10, 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the Pope the renunciation of his temporal power.

Upon his refusal he was taken prisoner, and on February 20 was escorted from the Vatican to Siena, and thence to the Certosa near Florence. The French declaration of war against Tuscany led to his removal (he was escorted by the Spaniard Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador) by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, the chief town of Drôme where he died six weeks after his arrival, on August 29, 1799, having then reigned longer than any Pope.

editors of WikipediaNapoleon and the Catholic ChurchWikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_and_the_Catholic_Church3 March 2016

What the Bible actually says is that it was wounded to death i.e. it received a death blow. In Revelation 13:3 the word translated wounded should be slaughtered. You could see a head that was dead and the incision that killed it. Actually according to Revelation 17:9-11 the head dies off and is replaced by another.

Mickelson's Enhanced Strong's Dictionaries of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments

G4969 σφάζω sphazo (sfad'-zo) v.

1. to butcher (especially an animal for food or in sacrifice)

2. (generally) to slaughter

3. (specially) to maim (violently)

The beast of Revelation 13 represents a composite of the power that has controlled the territory of Israel, but its heads tell another story. Each head extends from the one beast but each one has a time when it dominates the character of the beast and by the time of John the only head left was Rome. This head was slaughtered to death not just wounded. Then the KJV says that the deadly wound was healed. This should be the fatal blow was healed. The head was slaughtered and resurrected in John's sight probably just before the 3½ years begin i.e. coming up to the Day of The Lord, which was John's perspective. In other words I do not believe that the wounding being referred to in Revelation 13 is the disruption of the Roman system during the 5^th century. Even though its dominance fluctuated over time, the empire that provided the alternate theocracy to God's was very much intact, it could still be identified as existing somewhere during the 5^th Century. The head must work with the false Church so that it can provide an alternate theocracy to God's kingdom. Earlier I said that it is necessary to define what a beast is. Towards that end let us consider what all the beasts empires do. What we have in the Bible is that empires subjugated the theocratic system given to Israel by God as an identifier that they (Israel) are His kingdom - His people and territory on earth. What comes across from talking of a deadly wound is that this beast never dies but heads change when a new power takes control of what was a functioning theocracy set up by God. Israel has always gone into captivity because it turned to a false god. These heads come into confrontation with God's kingdom not just occupy Jerusalem. One of the heads die and that specific head comes back to life in John's sight. Rome destroyed God's theocratic system and it was never restored, because it includes Temple worship. There can be no new head until the system is restored, just a resurgence of the old one. It seems to me that the next incarnation of the beast must be closely linked to some clearly identifiable Roman dynasty (a horn). One of these was the Germans/Francs/British.

A system that was in opposition to God's theocracy was slaughtered under Napoleon. The head stopped working with the false Church and was destroyed. In February 1798, French troops marched into Rome and took Pope Pius VI prisoner thereby subsuming the papacy. He was taken to the citadel of Valence where he died almost two years later on August 29, 1799. On the 30^th of November 1799, 34 cardinals from across Europe gathered to elect Pius VII as successor to Pope Pius VI. This papal election did not have the customary pomp and ceremony of the Sistine Chapel and was not even in Rome, the home of popery.

In the ensuing 15 years we see the character of the little horn at its most potent. Daniel 7:8 (KJV), I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things. The little horn has very little military power and relies on its eyes and it mouth. Pope Pious VII appointed Ercole Consalvi as his cardinal secretary of state. Cardinal Consalvi negotiated with Napoleon to produce the Concordat of 1801, that tightened his control over the French Church. The Pope was impotent to oppose Napoleon. As an emperor exercising real power over a empire he was dormant and only survived by the permission of Napoleon who had the real power. Napoleon occupied Rome in February 1808, arrested many of the cardinals, and imprisoned the pope within the Quirinal Palace in Rome. Pius VII broke off all diplomatic relations with Napoleon and Napoleon responded by annexing the Papal States. To emphasize who was now dominant over the papal power the French flag was now flown over Castel Sant'Angelo. Beginning in the 14^th century, the popes had converted this structure, built as a the tomb for emperor Hadrian, into a castle. The Papal state had used it as a fortress, as a prison, and even as the place where executions were conducted, so the symbols of papal strength were all transferred to Napoleon. The little horn (false church) was all but dead but the Bible said that the little horn must survive.

On March 31, 1814 the Allies entered Paris. Napoleon surrendered and was exiled to the Island of Elba and so Pius made a triumphant return to Rome on May 24, 1814. After a brief return of 100 days in 1815, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, expelled from Europe and sent to the island of St. Helena. The undoubted head of the Roman empire controlling both church and state was given a fatal blow so is that the deadly wound that was healed? IMPOSSIBLE! 1: The deadly wound is healed just before 3½ years. 2: Napoleon was not the beast at the time. He did not control Jerusalem. At the time it was under Ottoman control!

Where is the Beast now

Colonies were considered as a source of necessary raw materials for England. Colonies were guaranteed monopolies for their products in the British market and in return were required to use only Elglish ships for  all their trade and to be guaranteed outlets for British manufactured goods. The Navigation Act of 1651 and others that followed set about to ensure that all colonial imports had to come by way of England and used English ships. Of course they came to Britain at a pittance but were sold back as high priced goods. Has anybody ever encountered anything like this, perhaps in WTO? Anyhow, what came next was limited self government for the colonies. From there it progressed to dominions, which were colonies that had complete control over their internal affairs. The first colonies to attain this status came in 1907 and in 1910 another dominion, the Union of South Africa. When Britain had declared war on Germany in 1914 it was on behalf of their entire empire (the dominions as well as the colonies) but following the war, only four years later, the dominions signed the peace treaties for themselves. Then came independence. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster referred to them as the British Commonwealth of Nations. When World War II broke out in 1939, the dominions made their own declarations of war. In the other colonies there was also a great desire for independence so, beginning with India in 1947, independence was granted them, along with the option of remaining in the Commonwealth of Nations. The independence movement accelerated in the years after 1960 in response to pressure by the United Nations. In 1919 the forerunner of the United Nations called the League of Nations was established under the Treaty of Versailles. Many of the dominions had joined as equals with Britain and came into the United Nations later. Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and was the last significant remaining colony.

Prior to this was the loss of Hanover and France. In the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England/Great Britain also claimed the throne of France. The claim dates from Edward III, who claimed the French throne in 1340 as the sororal nephew (son of one's sister) of the last direct Capetian (of the House of Capet in France), Charles IV. The claim was never able to be enforced despite years of war over it. The claim persisted until 1801, by which time France had no monarch, having become a republic.

So what is really happening with the British Mandate (1917-1948) where Britain is supposed to have gained control over Jerusalem? The British government made the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 announcing support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, which was then an Ottoman region with only a small minority of Jews. The League of Nations (LON) formally adopted a British mandate for Palestine four years later in July 1922, which incorporated the principles of the Balfour Declaration in the mandate. The real power that tied things together was the Commonwealth and the League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations (UN). It was only possible through their support. Britain was the point person but the power was the UN/LON. The union is not with Britain but with the United Nations (what constituted the empire) and Britain could not have attempted implementing the Balfour Declaration without its support. It was initiated by Britain but it was accomplished by the UN. As far as I can see the UN is undoubtedly the Beast and Britain and the US are part of it and controlling it as Heads or a Head. The Us transformed the empire from colonisation to neo-colonisation where they technically lost colonies but in effect gained many more. They have been the head and that Head will be given a death blow. The problem is NATO. The Bible talks of a new type of system where there is no longer a monolith but ten toes united loosely. You cannot have a one-world system as long as there is a NATO fueling neo-colonisation. NATO is set up for conflict not unification. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. By its very definition it obstructs the creation of a united world order. NATO is likely to collapse or be destroyed along with US hegemony as the European Union faces pressure from Asia/China and Russia to introduce a new world order, leaving the former power block out on a limb. The objective of the EU is a global alliance as indicated by the its tower of Babel and they may see that as a more tangible possibility under the new world order.

The number of body parts of Nebuchadnezzar's statue does not determine the structure of the union. The Greco-Macedonian Empire was divided into four parts but the image did not split into four. The image gives the chronological order of the systems and the quality of character of the leadership. The best of this beast will be decadent. Iron decays rather easily and clay is easily re-molded or smashed. Gold and silver do not decay and brass only tarnishes on the outside. God repeatedly represents quality character by gold and purged with fire. The assumption of a two part union is unjustified. The assumption of a ten-member union because of ten toes is also unjustified. The ten is more likely to represent completeness in its coverage of the earth. The entire world will be represented and it will be an unstable union because of the iron and clay.

The change of leadership from British to American was relatively seamless but at some point there will be violent change and the emergence of the eighth head. The uprooted stages are swaps form Muslim to Catholic (including the daughters of the woman). Since there is no more uprooting, i.e. all three are accounted for, then it will not switch back to Muslim however it will be so badly compromised that at best it will be iron mixed with clay. I would watch Turkey since they were the centre of Ottoman Empire. There is no more uprooting so I do not expect turkey to actually support Arab unity. The shift in cohesiveness begins with the feet i.e. when there is still a clear dominant leader of the empire and both the Muslim side and the Christian side begins to decompose. In the final stage (the toes) it will not be a union of equals in any regard and it will not be cohesive but it will still be lead by the Germanic elites since there will be no further uprooting. There will be pockets of unity or groupings within the system.

As far as the future is concerned the above leads to the undeniable conclusion that the United Nations, and very possibly the European union as well, will never have something akin to a king, it will forever remain a collection of sovereign states but it will transition from being dominated by one state to having a more democratic form. The army of 200 million from Revelation 9:16-18 points to a similar union forming in the East. Based on the fact that the world can only produce such a force by merging armies from the worlds most populous nations, I can say that a union of India and China is most likely. I believe that Pakistan may also join but the present economic woes of that nation and the political instability, make it vulnerable to being used as a proxy to a that region. The world will once again be divided between multiple superpowers but if I understand the meaning of uprooted correctly then Jerusalem will not change hands again. As I said earlier the Biblical description of the beast points to the United Nations governed by the UN security counsel. The United Nations Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security presently dominated by the US but that head may get cut off. It has 15 Members, and each Member has one vote. At present if any one of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) casts a negative vote in the 15-member Security Council, the resolution or decision would not be approved. That is the veto power. Under the Charter of the United Nations, all Member States are obligated to comply with Council decisions. With the emergence of BRICS vs the G7 prophecy is beginning to crystallise. BRICS is putting pressure on the UN to change but the US seems to rather die than change. Even in the new form the woman will still ride the beast for a time. Under the new system the east will prosper to such an extent that  it will be the source of the 200 million army. The Bible does not require that there will be superpowers. The weakening and maybe cutting off of the US is almost certain. A weakened US could mean better opportunities for the downtrodden in places like Venezuela. The macro events are fixed but a lot of the details depend on the behaviour of people and if God chooses to intervene in order to bless or curse as a result. This is brought out by the example of Nineveh. Control of Jerusalem will continue to be in the hands of a reformed UN and Jerusalem will be divided between Muslim and Germanic Christian as has been the history.

Pray for our leaders

Wherever you think that the beast is now I believe that it is important to pray for our leaders and to do so with wisdom. I also believe that it is at least equally important to give thanks and to do so with wisdom as well. Seeing that the nature of man tends to be that of beasts I think that it is essential to apply what we learn from Revelation 2 and 3 to our prayers and thanksgiving. We need to pray that our leaders will fear God and hence rise up to meet those criteria set out in Revelation 2 and 3 thereby directing our societies away from being beast-like. From my perspective as a Christian in the west, Putin (who is supposed to be an atheist) shows more respect of God at times than leaders of the West so I would take account of that in my prayers. I have similar regard for leadership of the Muslim nations. Leaders have the opportunity to raise their citizens above the nature of beasts and we all benefit. That brings us to giving thanks. Since we know the nature of men and hence nations, when they act contrary to the nature of beasts we need to give thanks to God because only God can bring about that.

MARK ON THE RIGHT HAND AND FOREHEAD

There are two references to marks in chapter 13. The beast had a name (i.e. a mark) on all his heads (muslim and Christian) and everybody had a mark. Those who did not worship it had a mark on their right hand and foreheads and those who did worship the beast also had marks in these places but theirs belonged to the beast. In discussing chapter 7, I said that the forehead confirms our attitude to GOD (from Ezekiel 9), identifies us as GOD's and if we are unclean or not (as with lepers, Leviticus 13, unclean would be outcasts and lepers to the establishment); as such we can be made accountable to God as the High priest was accountable to God (bore the iniquity). I want to add here that forehead relates to intellectual matters because it always has to do with the will and hence a choice. The opening verse of Revelation 14 speaks about God's name written in the forehead which has to do with the choice they made and the way that they think, as is brought out by Romans 2:29. We will look at those scriptures when we get to Revelation 17 and we will talk of putting a seal on something later.

THE NAME

A name is how you are defined, what you are seen to be. God names things what they are. A name has to do with what you represent. It defines you.

You can have the name of your father.

The name of your home-town.

Your tribe.

And your occupation among other things.

Each head was blasphemous. These are the secular heads. We talked a bit about emperor worship as one of the blasphemous practices. Another thing to note is that it is a mark and not a seal. A seal identifies the object as owned by someone but a mark does not provide a guarantee of ownership for that item.

THE MARK ON THE FOREHEAD

The mark here is an indication of our attitude, our will. Let me begin by attempting to establish that all marks are not the same.

All marks are not the same

The first thing I want to do is to contrast this mark of God from Revelation and Ezekiel with the one in Leviticus 13. Leviticus 13 discusses leprosy and the mark indicated a disease that was a living death. It was not on the surface of the skin that could be removed. You had no control over it. It could appear as a boil, a bright spot, a swelling or start with a burn and it could be in clothes or appear in various parts of the body. This type of mark is not the one that is from God. With God we always have a choice but we choose to keep the mark.

God's Mark on the Forehead

In Ezekiel we had six men come to Jerusalem and one was identified as righteous by his white clothes. He had a writing kit and they set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. Following this the other men were told to kill indiscriminately. They were told not to touch those marked and to start with those who were involved in worship, i.e. the sanctuary which we could relate to as Christians today. So what did the mark indicate? That these were sorrowful for the evil being done, it had to do with their attitude. We can infer that sealing or marking the forehead indicates our attitude to sin i.e. if we become numb to it or accept it compared with if we are uncomfortable with it and oppose it. It is a question of will.

In Deuteronomy 6 we see how to treat the word of God. I find it interesting that it says nothing abut the temple but emphasizes the forehead. It appears to me that the forehead has to do with our attitude while the temple represents knowledge. So to me the concern is really with the mind and particularly the will by the forehead and the actions by the hands etc. are just a means of demonstrating what is in the heart. As with the marks of leprosy all parts of the body and the home itself can be identified with a mark but God's marks can all be removed or rejected.

The mark on the forehead was special in that it indicated the state of the mind or heart, a resolve or will to do right. In Isaiah 48:4 the word translated brow (Hebrew: metsach) means forehead.

From Revelation 13:16 everybody had a mark one way or another. From Revelation 17 only those that had the mark of the Beast could buy and sell.

Re. The Mark on the Right hand and Forehead

There are several possible uses of the right hand and the forehead but the closest that I have found in the Bible of putting a mark on these has to do with consecrating priests as in the following scriptures. A priest is one who brings others to his or her God and acts as an intermediary.

Notice that from Revelation 17:5 that the mark in Revelation 14:9 was a name. This must be the same mark in Revelation 13:16 therefore Revelation 13:16-17 must be telling us that the mark = the name = the number and is confirmed in Revelation 13:18. Furthermore applying that knowledge to Revelation 17 shows that the number was also something in the right hand or in the forehead. There was a similar mark on the High Priest.

The mark on the forehead meant that the High Priest bore the iniquity or had the will to take responsibility for the things devoted to his God.

This mark could therefore mean that those who have it have accepted and adhere to the dictates of the beast rather than exercise the will to resist. In the case of the High Priest It is not only the hand and head but other parts of the body being used. He cared for them in the way his God required. Holy means accepted or approved by God or guaranteed by God. People can sanctify things but only God can make them holy through His acceptance. Hallow means to recognise and treat as holy.

We see here that in the consecration ceremony putting a mark (in this case a mark of blood and of oil) meant that the priest would dedicate his ear, his hands and his feet to care for the things of his God. The blood purified them (Hebrews 9:22) and the oil meant that the presence of God (the Holy Spirit) was there (Isaiah 61:1). Your hand cannot work without a thumb and your feet cannot balance without the big toe. These were to be actively involved in caring for the things of our God and acting on his behalf. Also notice that there are two different levels. In Exodus 28:36-38 we saw that Aaron (the High Priest) had it on his forehead but the others got in on their hands etc. alone. The High priest made himself accountable to God by going through the ceremony.

Now in Ezekiel all that was required to protect the people was a mark on the forehead so why is it necessary to mark both the forehead and hands in Revelation 13? The beast (the government) is who created this mark. From Ezekiel we see that marking identifies. From Exodus we see that hands have to do with service and that the forehead had to do with accountability and will. It therefore seems that we are looking at a system of accountability for how you serve (if you are a good boy) and you are identified accordingly. You were accepted if you had either of the following:

1.  You had the mark signifying your will (Holiness to the Lord or Mother of harlots and abominations). This demonstrated your service and allegiance as could be deduced by your attitude to keeping the Sabbath. It has to do with repudiation and is often given by the establishment as an ID document. Remember the edict of A.D. 250 and the certificate to prove compliance but repudiation simply means that you have chosen sides and that it is undeniable.
2. You had the name of the beast. God names things what they are so if you have the name then you are a beast too meaning that you are part of the system or you are promoting the establishment.   
   
3. You had the number of his name. So far my most likely answer for the number is emperor Nero. He was a particularly unscrupulous example of the establishment in the Roman empire.
   

The answer to what the number of his name lies in Revelation 13:18 but that whole verse is is a riddle and I find it perplexing. From one perspective we have been given numbers for the beast and they are at most 7 because there are 7 beasts. Those numbers are clearly not the ones identified as his number because in that case you needed to calculate the number of the beast because it is the number of a man. The number is really 666. Added to that we find in Revelation 15:

The beast, his image, his mark and the number of his name appear to be four separate things which target Christians but we know from comparing Revelation 17:5, Revelation 14:9 and Revelation 13:16-17 above that the mark, the name and the number are all things in the hand and in the forehead. Everybody can easily see how the beast does it's manipulation by sheer force. His image is more difficult to see but it seems to be by deception and brain washing. His name would provide access by indicating that you are part of the same family, sharing the same surname and hence being of the same kind. His mark is applied in state controlled extortion since it is something that people can see or identify. But it is not so clear what to do with the number of his name. It is something that we must gain victory over along with the beast, the image and the mark. It would seem that if you have either of these you would need nothing else. The number of his name could mean those who are his followers like how those in Christ's name would be Christians and hence it could be an ID number of a state acting something like a passport. Perhaps at some point they will identify themselves by a symbol that can be translated as 666 but lets hold off making that final decision until we consider emperor Nero as the personification.

Gematria

Having said all that there is still the matter of gematria. The writers of the New Testament were familiar with gematria. In connecting the genealogy of Christ to David Matthew approaches it this way, Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah (Mathew 1:17). The numerical value of the Hebrew characters in David (דוד) is 14 calculated in the following manner: (4) ד (4) + ו (6) + ד the sum of which is 14. Matthew uses gematria to demonstrate the undeniable connection.

John uses gematria in Revelation to establish a connection between Nero and the beast. Gematria is Hebrew corresponding to the Greek isosephy and they both have to do with adding up the number values of the letters in a word to form a single number. Wikipedia has an article called Number of the beast which captures the challenge that we have with 666 and I found another one from the Luther Seminary that was very helpful. The details on the first page are:

Luther Seminary Digital Commons @ Luther Seminary


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Faculty Publications                                          Faculty & Staff Scholarship

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10-2016
The Number of the Beast in Revelation 13 in Light of Papyri,Graffiti, and Inscriptions
Craig R. Koester
Luther Seminary,ckoester@luthersem.edu

It appears to be published in Journal of Early Christian History 6 (2016): 1-21, the title is The Number of the Beast in Revelation 13 in Light of Papyri, Graffiti, and Inscriptions and it was written by Craig R. Koester, LUTHER SEMINARY, ST. PAUL, MN

Gematria is also represented on youtube e.g. Number of the Beast - 616 or 666? or an extract from the story of God with Morgan Freeman which also has very sound backing.

That brings us to the essence of the issue here. The Greek spelling of Nero Caesar (Neron Kaisar) transliterates directly into Hebrew nrwn qsr which has the numerical equivalent of 666. The words must first be transliterated into Hebrew from Greek giving nrwn qsr, n=50 + r=200 + w=6 + n=50 + q=100 + s=60 + r=200 which sums to 666. This is an alternate spelling of Nero Caesar because it can also be transliterated into Hebrew using nrw instead of nrwn producing, n=50 + r=200 + w=6 + q=100 + s=60 + r=200 which sums to 616. This is the source of the confirmation that John intended Nero and the Roman Empire. Ancient scriptures have been found using both spellings and hence either 666 or 616 depending on the document. From this it appears that the concern was with identifying Nero as the target of John's riddle.

Another instance of gematria that is somewhat less potent applies to the Greek word for ‘beast’ (θηρίον). When this is transliterated into Hebrew as ‫תריון‬ the value of its letters is 666 (‫ת‬ = 400, ‫ר‬ = 200, ‫י‬ = 10, ‫ו‬ = 6, ‫נ‬ = 50).

So if the evidence points to Nero why did John pick Nero?

Nero

In Revelation 13:18 God indicates that if we have wisdom we will consider the person identified by 666. People seem to believe that this could never happen to their country because we are somehow more enlightened. The people of Rome thought that they were enlightened too.

Nero was a Roman.

He was tremendously popular during his early reign

Nero had a knack for knowing just what to do that would endear him to the Roman public. He was loved by the Praetorian Guard and the lower-classes and became the darling of the crowds. In spite of the horrible person that he was we still find people trying to justify his behaviour up to today. Long after his death (up to over 30 years after in fact) imposters pretending to be him were able to gather support that almost lead to civil war. Emperor worship was practised in the Roman Empire. In emperor worship emperors were considered divinely empowered with the authority of the Roman State. Considering the popularity of Nero it is inconceivable that he would have been considered otherwise by the masses. The book of Revelation was written in the 90s AD and Nero committed suicide on the 9th of June, AD 68. His characteristics are bound up in what John is describing and so John would have had to be careful in highlighting him as a recent example.

Nero was an exception and a tyrant

Nero was an exception in that most emperors did not target Jews or Christians. He conformed to the beast in that he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. He was a figure of emperor worship and hence gave life to the image of the beast. He murdered the Christians who would not worship the image of the beast. Romans like almost all the other people in the empire were polytheistic. They believed that they were benefits from worshipping all gods. Since they believed other peoples had gods too, they had no problem including them. By the same token they were apprehensive of people who rejected their gods and feared the consequences. Judaism and Christianity faced problems because they were monotheistic. In general the religions were tolerated and could even flourish but Nero was an exception. Nero was the emperor of Rome from Oct. 13, 54 A.D. to June 9, 68 A.D. In 63 B.C. (about a century before Nero) the Romans conquered Judea. The Jews refused to pay homage to Roman gods. Rome exempted Jews from this requirement largely because the Jews had helped Roman general Julius Caesar several years earlier. Judaism was recognised allowing Jews to worship freely. The siege of Jerusalem of 70 AD obviously did not take place during the reign of Nero. It was the climax of the First Jewish–Roman War, in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem. The connection with Nero stems from the Jerusalem riots of 66 AD in which there was massive unrest in the Roman province of Judaea. That is what triggered the First Jewish–Roman War. It was Nero. The conditions for it was generated by his leadership. According to Josephus it was provoked by Greeks sacrificing birds in front of a local synagogue. The Roman garrison did not intervene causing Hellenistic-Jewish religious tension to sky-rocket. Now bear in mind what is said of the beast in Revelation 13. Wikipedia says:

Timeline
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Protests over taxation joined the list of grievances and random attacks on Roman citizens and perceived 'traitors' occurred in Jerusalem.[citation needed] Tension reached a breaking point when Roman governor Gessius Florus sent Roman troops to remove seventeen talents from the Temple treasury, claiming the money was for unpaid taxes.[2] In response to this action, the city of Jerusalem fell into unrest and some of the Jewish population began to openly mock Florus by passing a basket around to collect money as if Florus was poor.[3] Rioters even attacked a garrison, killing the soldiers. Even the ensuing intervention of the Syrian governor could not help.[4] Florus reacted to the unrest by sending soldiers into Jerusalem the next day to raid the city and arrest a number of the city leaders, who were later whipped and crucified, despite many of them being Roman citizens.[5]the editors of WikipediaJerusalem riots of 66Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_riots_of_6615:59, 7 August 2022‎

In addition to the above remember that Paul was a Roman citizen which normally demanded the best of treatment under the law. In the society under Nero truth and law took a back seat to his objectives. It is considered a certainty by most that Paul was murdered (directly of indirectly) by the Roman emperor Nero following the great fire of 64 AD. Paul broke no law but Nero controlled life or death based on his terms.

Nero persecuted the Church

In 64 AD, the Great Fire of Rome broke out and devastated the city. Most contemporary writers, including Pliny the Elder, Suetonius and Cassius Dio held Nero responsible for the fire. Tacitus says that he is unsure. In order to divert attention away from himself Nero blamed Christians for the fire and ordered that they should be rounded up and killed. Nero participated in the gruesome murders as he burnt Christians alive as human torches. This reminds us of Naaman in the book of Esther, a vindictive person who would hurt people out of pride.

Nero burned Rome

Revelation 18 portrays the beast as burning a city. As I understand it that city resolves to Rome. This is the type of person that believes the end justifies the means.

God defines good and evil

Christians can find themselves supporting characters that God defines as abominations because of their behaviour. It seems to me that Christians were among those who supported Nero in the early part of his reign. Nero had his mother murdered by a loyal ex-slave in 59 AD at her country house. He had tried to drown her before and failed. He is also supposed to have murdered two wives. He had exiled and eventually had his first wife Claudia Octavia murdered because she was barren. His mistress Poppaea Sabina had become pregnant during the exile and he divorced Claudia Octavia to marry her. The child died months old. While she was pregnant with the second Nero violently kicked her in the abdomen over an argument and she died as a result in 65 AD. In 67 AD, Nero ordered the castration of Sporus, a former slave boy. He then married him, supposedly because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Poppaea Sabina. In his other epistles John references the laxity that had crept into the Church and the hostility to the faithful. The descriptions in Revelation and other scriptures indicate that people came to accept and revere such leaders driving rifts into their Christian families. It is obvious that the behaviour of both Nero and his mother were suspect and that Christians should have smelled something fishy from early. Paul was beheaded during the reign of Nero and he saw the mystery of iniquity that was developing (2 Thessalonians 2:7-9). It is suspected that Paul died because of the actions of emperor Nero following the great fire in Rome in 64 AD. Paul should never have died and John recognised that and pointed to the person ultimately responsible as an example of the evil power that was prophesied.

What does all this mean

Revelation 13:17 says that these people had the number of his name. Had is translated from Strong's G2192 Greek: echo. It is defined as to hold (such as possession, ability, contiuity, relation, or condition). Revelation 15:2 says that it is something that the saints get the victory over. Revelation 13:16 reveals that it is something to receive in your right hand or forehead. I submit that having this number resolves to a type of heart or attitude that conforms or submits to and accepts the ways of Nero. You can be identified by how you regard him (your forehead) and how you act as a result of him (your hand). In your forehead it identifies that your mind submits or conforms while you right hand shows that your actions submit or conform. We cannot let people like that be in control of our actions or thinking. When you reach the stage that you do not resist a Nero you are really far gone and it appears that God puts you through something drastic to snap you out of it. Where do you or I draw the line when it comes to a leader's character?

Two-factor authentication

If the Bible is talking about a system that requires something that you know (forehead) and something that you do (hands, feet etc.) for accountability, it may well be that people are over dramatising the situation while it has already taken place right under their noses. Two factor authentication has already been implemented around the world and is becoming increasingly prominent with on-line shopping and worst: social media. The western world now has Amazon and the east has Ali Baba. Two factor authentication is implemented by something that you do (insert or scan your card) and something that requires you to exercise you intellect (remember your pin). Every time you use an ATM you have to know your pin (EXERCISE INTELLECT) and you have to insert or swipe (SOMETHING TO DO) in order to access your card. If you are not given a card you cannot participate. The card is not yours but is owned by whoever implements the system and can be recalled or deactivated at any time. For many years now major countries have desired to use two-factor authentication for passports because it allows for automation and cost savings. In some cases you do not swipe a card but present your eye or fingerprint. This prevents someone from killing you and using your body parts alone because they still have to know your key-phrase. The problem has so far been that the US wants to use one system while Europe has another. What if a time is coming when it will be unified? The motivation for unity seems to be business (the Bible uses the term merchants) and part of the mechanism is social media with digital tracking. It looks like all the data that China, Britain and others including the social media moguls of the US have collected over the years on profiling people will be consolidated. The driving force will be money and power for big-business. The number is just a means of identifying you and your data from among the trillions that it has stored. The authentication system will satisfy the requirements of what is called non-repudiation. It is defined by one source as Assurance that the sender of information is provided with proof of delivery and the recipient is provided with proof of the sender's identity, so neither can later deny having processed the information. In other words it provides assurance that two persons involved in a transaction are who they claim to be. The problem is that anything with an ID is trackable and anything implemented digitally is programmable and hackable. Programmable means that it can be built with an automatic bias tantamount to behavioural censorship. Hackable means that it can be abused. Not all hacking is about manipulating information in cyberspace. Hacking also involves something called social engineering. Social engineering is all about manipulating individuals on an interpersonal level. At some level it involves a predator gaining their victim's trust. The next step is to persuade them to provide access to sensitive information. This information can then allow them to control the digital resources owned by their prey and in a totally digital society that means everything that they are. The personality of the priest-king makes him ideal for abusing hacking and introducing programming bias to control society.

It does not appear as though Christians will be able to demonstrate their will to accede to the beast of the church-state. This may deny them the privilege of participating in the authentication system.

Digital Currency

One place that you can read of central bank digital currency (CBDC) is at https://hedera.com/learning/tokens/what-is-a-central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc. What is the fear of CBDC? The UK government has published a set of Public Policy Principles:(1) G7 Public Policy Principles for Retail Central Bank Digital Currencies and (2) G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Statement on Central Bank Digital Currencies and Digital Payments. On page 12 of the pdf. for number (1) we find CBDC might also support new innovative financial activities by facilitating new capabilities for payments such as programmability and micro-payments. To take account of current and likely future needs, any CBDC should be developed in consultation with end-users, financial institutions, technology and other service providers and merchants. What do they mean by programmability? Programmability provides for agreements that prohibit the use of the currency in ways that the central bank does not like to be enforced by programming logic connected to the currency. If they do not want you to buy from x then the currency will not work for those transactions. Which tool do you know of the politicians have had access to and did not use to promote their political agenda and their view of what is the establishment? Is the establishment always right? Has the establishment ever targeted minorities or preyed on the weak? In the United States there is the practise of lobbying. Is it conceivable that the interests of other service providers and merchants will be to the disadvantage of the masses?

Can you imagine having a digital programmable currency during the recent COVID19 farce? People insisted that they know the science and that people who disagreed with them should lose jobs etc. History has shown that they did not know and in spite of it set out to coerce people by employing at times illegal and unconstitutional means.

Breakdown of Revelation 13 [KJV]

The chapter is broken into three main parts:

The order that John records the heads in is the reverse of Daniel and I suggest that this is a clue. Daniel was looking forward into the future but John was looking backward in to the past. In Daniel 7 he saw lion, bear, leopard and finally the fourth terrible beast with 10 horns. John looks backwards from the Day of the LORD and saw the 10 horns first. This beast with 10 horns is the same as the fourth beast of Daniel 7 which is the Roman Empire. Remember that the fourth beast was the seventh head because the Greeks that came before had four heads. This is the head that received the deadly wound and was healed.

A head was killed and the beast resurrected but not the head. This beast will blaspheme God's name.

This is the sense of the wound. You do not recover from it. It is really a Satanic trick. The way that the empire operated outlived its usefulness so the leading hegemon was sacrificed to build a new way. It seems to switch from unipolar to multi-polar at this point and people rejoice.

•     El Shaddai (Lord God Almighty)
•     El Elyon (The Most High God)
•     Adonai (Lord, Master)
•     Yahweh (Lord, Jehovah)
•     Jehovah Nissi (The Lord My Banner)
•     Jehovah Raah (The Lord My Shepherd)
•     Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals)
•     Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is There)
•     Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness)
•     Jehovah Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You)
•     El Olam (The Everlasting God)
•     Elohim (God)
•     Qanna (Jealous)
•     Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide)
•     Jehovah Shalom (The Lord Is Peace)
•     Jehovah Sabaoth (The Lord of Hosts)

A religious beast that appears harmless enough but is actually deadly.

Revelation 13

^*** note on the IMF. The framers of the Bretton Woods regime created an international price-fixing arrangement using gold to be enforced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). When it became counterproductive to the US, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, effectively ending the fund's original mission of supervising a system of exchange rates pegged to a gold standard. Looking for a new mission, the IMF quickly re branded itself into a financial saviour for developing countries. The Hoover Institution in an article The Case against the International Monetary Fund Monday, November 1, 1999 charges that their . . . institutional reforms, are at best ineffective and at worst incentives for imprudent investment and public policy decisions that reduce economic growth, encourage long-term IMF dependency, and create global financial chaos.