---The lost power of the broken sword was re-won by the magic of the consoling word.
---The armies of the state were replaced by the missionaries of the church, moving in all directions along the Roman roads, and the revolted provinces, accepting Christianity, again acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome.
---The church, with the shadow of the ancient authority behind it, was the only symbol left of imperial Rome.
---Its bishop, the pope of Rome, was the city’s only recourse for leadership and protection. The Roman Empire in Europe would be replaced by the spiritual empire, which came to be temporal as well, whose reigning seigneur was the bishop of Rome” (Caesar and Christ, page 672).
The Roman Empire’s transformation from a world military power into the world’s most dominant religion of its time is undeniable. Daniel foretold the actions of the transformed colossus:
“And he shall speak great words against the most High and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time”
(Daniel 7:25).
John the Revelator takes up the sacred baton of prophetic utterance and adds significantly more detail to Daniel’s predictions. He prophesied of this enormous church-state leviathan losing its position of almost universal dominance.
(Daniel 7:25).
John the Revelator takes up the sacred baton of prophetic utterance and adds significantly more detail to Daniel’s predictions. He prophesied of this enormous church-state leviathan losing its position of almost universal dominance.
However, he also foretold that it would emerge at the very end of earth’s history to forge a regime more sinister and ruthless than any the world has ever seen.
John predicts that as it resurfaces, it will join forces with the most powerful military apparatus to advance its agenda of world domination:
“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon … And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed…And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live…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…And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:11-17)."
AubreyDuncan/AdventMessenger
