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The Christian History of the Four Beast Empires--Final

After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., the Eastern Empire, with its capital in Constantinople (Istanbul), continued for nearly a thousand years until 1453. It was then overthrown by the Muslim forces, who used cannons and gunpowder for the first time in war.

They had learned to make gunpowder from the Mongols, who had conquered Baghdad in 1258. But this marked the high point of their conquest, for they soon were pushed back from the Middle East. In the interim, however, their contact with Islamic civilization imparted two important technologies from China: gunpowder and the printing press. Islam accepted gunpowder, but rejected the printing press. Europe accepted both, and the printing press revolutionized Europe, making the spread of knowledge inexpensive.

Whereas up to that point, Islam was the center of science and technology in the world, their rejection of the printing press soon shifted the scientific center of gravity to Europe. It also made the Bible affordable to the average person, sparking the Protestant Reformation. The first Bible was printed in 1452 while Constantinople was under siege.

After Rome fell in 476, chaos ensued in the West. But in 529 the Roman emperor in Constantinople replaced the entire Roman legal system with Orthodox Christian law. Because of changing times, as Will Durant tells us in his book, The Age of Faith,

“The whole vast body of Roman law had become an empirical accumulation rather than a logical code” (p. 111).

It was in serious need of revision. Justinian did this in 529 AD, calling it the Codex Constitutionum. All Roman legislation and laws up to that time were nullified. There was to be only this new system of law. Four years later, after getting the opinions and responses from other Roman jurists, he revised the Codex and published it in 533 under the Latin title, Pandectae. This complete overhaul of the Roman legal system was extremely important, for as Will Durant informs us again,

“This Code . . . enacted orthodox Christianity into law . . . All ecclesiastical, like all civil, law, was to emanate from the throne” (p. 112).

This event established the Church as a political organization. Justinian was attempting to establish the Kingdom of God, and with this ideal, I am in sympathy. However, the overall time frame since the day of Pentecost had been a prophetic manifestation of the Kingdom of Saul, rather than the Kingdom of David. Recall that Saul himself had been crowned on the day of wheat harvest (i.e., Pentecost) in 1 Samuel 12:17. Saul’s kingdom was thus a type of the political Church under Pentecost.

For this reason 529-533 marks the establishment of the “little horn” as a political and legal entity. Unfortunately, Pentecost is a leavened feast (Leviticus 23:17), and the fire of the Holy Spirit had been mostly lost and forgotten. The baptism of fire would have kept the leaven of sin from multiplying, but few experienced it by the sixth century. The leaders claimed to be led by the Spirit, but in practice, they were nearly always led by political expediency.

The little horn was given 1,260 years in which to establish his kingdom. Daniel 7:21 and 22 says,

²¹ I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them ²² until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.

Daniel 7:25 says the little horn would be given “a time, times, and a half a time.” This is clarified in Revelation 13:5 as being “forty-two months.” This is the equivalent of 1,260 days (or years), based on a thirty-day prophetic month.

And so we see from history that the French Revolution eclipsed the power of the Roman Church from 1789-1793, precisely 1,260 years after Justinian’s legal system had been set up in 529-533. The French Revolution saw about 30,000 Roman priests killed, along with the Catholic monarchs and much of the aristocracy. After that revolution, in 1796, a rising star named Napoleon was given command of the army and assigned to invade Italy.

In 1798 he took Pope VI captive and brought him to the convent of Saint Augustine in Tuscany. He remained there for three months until an earthquake destroyed the convent. He was then moved to the place where he died August 29, 1799.

“They placed at once at his disposal a country house called ‘The Lower Regions,’ which induced sarcasms of the irreligious, and made them say that the holy father was at last in his place.” (Louis Marie de Cormenin, History of the Popes, (1850), Vol. II, p. 416)

It looked as if the papacy had come to an end. Napoleon’s death-blow, however, proved to be temporary, for Revelation 13:3 had prophesied,

³ And I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast.

The papacy was restored so that Napoleon could be crowned by someone worthy of making him Emperor. This was done by Pope Pius VII in 1804.

Nonetheless, a new beast had arisen, according to Revelation 13:11, “And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth.” This is described as a banking beast. The Rothschild family came to represent this beast, for in 1798 Nathan Rothschild first was sent to London to begin his business of banking on behalf of the Rothschild dynasty. (Each of the five Rothschild sons had been sent to different cities in Europe.)

This beast soon came to dominate the monarchs of Europe and to spread its influence worldwide. Its power eclipsed that of the previous beast, but because the Roman beast had been healed of its wound, both powers remained on the earth simultaneously. We are now living, I believe, at the end of the age when both are being brought to their moment of truth.

The kings of the east have arisen, and they are knocking on the gates of Babylon. Reports tell us that the Eastern Kings have given ample opportunity for both beasts to repent, particularly in their financial dealings, wherein they have stolen enormous assets and have destroyed the earth with chemical pollution, drugs, and wars.

At the present time, it appears that Pope Francis is in the unique position of trying to reform the Vatican Bank. I do not think he will succeed, because the popes themselves lack the political power to overthrow their own bank officials. As for the Rothschilds, I believe that most of them will also fight to the end and will have to be overthrown completely. When that day comes, the world will learn of their crimes against humanity, and the world as we know it will never be the same.

One way or another, all of these beasts have bowed their knees to Jesus Christ. God has proven Himself to be capable of making this happen. But the Scriptures tell us that the overthrow of Mystery Babylon will see the coming of the Messiah and the rise of the Stone Kingdom.

It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds. Some questions are yet unanswered. Prophecy does not always reveal the manner in which God intends to fulfill His word. Men assume that they know, but God has ways of fulfilling His word that we cannot imagine. The original overthrow of Babylon was accomplished by a type of Messiah, Cyrus, the king of Persia. How will this play out at the end of this present age?

The way history is developing, it is clear that the Dragon families of the East (various colors) are God’s agents raised up to overthrow the Red Dragon of the West, led by the Rothschilds (“Red Shield”), whose head is in The City of London. The Eastern Kings bring with them a new asset-backed banking system, and their plan is to restore prosperity in the earth.

They are fulfilling prophecy, like Cyrus, without knowing the full biblical picture, for God has raised them up with partial blindness in order to establish the fact that He is sovereign. We also believe that we will see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a worldwide scale, without which no kingdom, however well intentioned, would be able to succeed.

In conjunction with this outpouring, we believe that we will see the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles, which promises the manifestation of the sons of God. These are the saints who will be given top authority in the Stone Kingdom, as Daniel prophesied. Daniel himself was made top governor in the new government (Daniel 6:2), and he serves as the prophetic example of how his prophecy will be fulfilled in our time. Daniel 7:27,

²⁷ Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.

For this reason, we have nothing to fear from the rise of China and Russia and their allies. Only those who are too attached to Babylon, its culture, and its system have reason to fear. We can rejoice that the word of God is true and righteous altogether. We can take courage in the fact that we live at the end of the four beast empires and their extensions. God has provided us (through Daniel and John) with an outline of history, so that the saints in every generation might know how to conduct themselves while under the dominion of each beast empire.

I believe that we are living in those final days, and for this reason we, like Daniel, have been called into spiritual warfare to participate in that final victory over the last beast.