Rome in Revelation

[Mr. Gary Petty] The book of Revelation prophesies of a time when there's two men, one is known as the Beast and what is known as the False Prophet. Now, these two men are to resurrect and create Babylon the Great, that leads up to the tribulation, the day of the Lord, and the return of Jesus Christ. Now, Babylon the Great is a system that is created that is both a secular system. It's a secular government with a man in charge and a religious system, and they work together. And we’ve talked about this some, but I want to look at a passage in Revelation 17 here in a few minutes that someone asked me recently, how to explain that. There was a question involving this passage. And it is a passage that seems very strange in the sort of history of what happens at the end time. To set that up though, I want to go back and just briefly cover some things that I've covered in sermons over the last couple of years. I've given three sermons, one on Daniel 2. Actually, one on Daniel 2, one on Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, and then one on Revelation 13 and went through the man of sin, and, you know, what Paul says in Thessalonians, and showed how all these things fit together.

So, let me just recap that quickly, the things we covered so we can move forward into Revelation 17 and 18, and look at this rather strange prophecy that, you know, there's a lot of speculation, what it means. And many of the times we just skip over it because it says what it says. It doesn't give us the reasons why. And so, today, I want to be able to look at some historical trends. You know, when you study prophecy, you have to study historical trends. We're going to look at some historical trends that may give us an answer, at least it will show that what happens at the end of Revelation 17 is not strange. It is actually something that has been historically going on for a long time in one form or another.

Well, the first thing we'll talk about, of course, is briefly talk about Nebuchadnezzar's image, because this is always our template. And in that image, Daniel explained what it is. You have these four succeeding kingdoms, you know, the head of gold, of course, Babylon, you have Persia, you have Greece, and you have Rome, and Rome splits into two halves. That's very important because historically, they did. You know, we often talk about the fall of Rome and the Roman empire and 476. Well, the fall of the Roman empire in 476 was just the Western half. The Eastern half existed up into the 1400s. It finally collapsed, the Ottoman Turks conquered it just before the time that Columbus was coming over here and traipsing around the new world. So, it lasted a long time.

During that time period also, there were repeated attempts to recreate the Western Roman empire. And that has a lot to do with Revelation 17 and 18, are the attempts to recreate the Western empire and to reunite the East and West together. And there's been attempts to do that over, and over, and over again. So, this is our template that we're going to be looking at these four empires set up the whole understanding of this prophetic history that lead to the Great Babylon.

Then in Revelation 13, we have the two beasts that come out of this water, which most people look at and say, well, it represents the Mediterranean because that's where the Roman empire was centered around, it was built around or grew around the Mediterranean Sea. And what we have is a beast that comes out of this water that represents a political system and a political ruler. There's one man called the Beast, but the whole system is called the beast. And this beast power—Basically, this troubled world is going to form—becomes the hero of the world, and begins to unite the world into an economic system. And also, he persecutes, and there's serious persecution on Christians who don't follow or anybody that doesn't follow this beast power.

Then there's a second beast that comes out of the sea there, and this represents a spiritual power, a religious power. And let's go to Revelation 13 and just read a verse here. So, this first beast has seven heads and ten horns. That's important in what we're going to look at in the future here. And this is just setting the stage for really what... The core of what I want to cover is actually historical to tie in the history we do know, and we're just going to cover a little piece of it. I mean, there's a huge amount of information that we have about the middle ages, specifically, that helps give us insight into Revelation 17. But in chapter 13:5… Well, no, let's go down to verse 11. Let's talk about the second beast here, because I don't want to spend a lot of time here. I just want us to remember what these beasts represent.

Revelation 13:11 He says, "Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon." And, of course, he gives power and support to this political leader. "He has horns like a lamb. He appears..." You know, and we find all through the Old Testament where lambs are sacrificed and they are symbols of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is called the lamb in the New Testament. So, this appears to be Christian, but it speaks like the dragon. So, Satan has control of this. And it speaks lies and blasphemies, and this whole chapter talks about how just evil this religious system is, okay? It's an evil religious system that's connected to and works with this evil secular system. If we went back to what Paul says in Thessalonians, you know, the first beast, the man, actually sits in the temple claiming to be divine and he's given power by this other person that is called the false prophet. So, we have these two individuals that end up ruling over the secular part of this end-time empire and the religious part.

What's important to understand, if we use Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 as our templates, what we have is an understanding that this is a revival of the Roman empire. We don't have to try to figure out which empire this is, you know, is this a Muslim empire out of a rock? Is this, you know, China? What is it? It is a revival of the Roman empire because there's only four empires in the story, okay? There's only four. So, Revelation 13 tells us how there's these two powers that come up. This is a revival of that fourth empire, that fourth kingdom. So, we know it's going to be centered in Europe. It's going to include, you know, practically the whole world before it's all said and done, just for a short period of time. This beast power only lasts three and a half years, okay? It doesn't last very long, but it's going to try to include the whole world until it ends up in chaos and war and the return of Jesus Christ.

So, this takes us to Revelation 17. I know this is a lot of information today, but every once in a while, we do need to go back through some basic prophecy. And what we're covering is pretty basic. I mean, Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Revelation 13, Revelation, 17. This is the basic understanding that we have built, you know, for the last 100 years, and you will find that Sabbath-keepers build their viewpoint of end-time prophecy on these passages. But not only Sabbath-keepers. This was the viewpoint of most Protestants if you go back 100 and 200 years ago. What we're going through today actually was a viewpoint of many, many Protestant churches that have changed. And it is not necessarily the viewpoint of most Protestant churches today, which is interesting because that is part of the prophecy. But let's go here to chapter 17:1.

Revelation 17:1 "And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me." This is with John. "Saying to me, come and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication." So, he says I'm going to tell you about this prostitute. Now, once again, it's all through the Bible. We talked about this when we went through the book of Hosea in a Bible study. How we have throughout the Scripture, a woman is a symbol of either the chaste pure people of God or a religious system that is against God, which is idolatry, and false teaching, and immorality, okay? That's called a prostitute. While a pure bride, Israel was considered a pure bride until she became a prostitute, spiritually. And, of course, the church is going to be the pure bride of Christ when He returns. So, we can see what this means. He's talking about some kind of religious system that is going to be involved with the events here right before the return of Jesus Christ because it's chapter 19 that talks about the return of Jesus Christ, 19 and 20.

Revelation 17:3 So, this angel carries John away in this spirit into the wilderness. "And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of names of blasphemy having seven heads and ten horns." Now, the beast in Revelation 13 has seven heads and ten horns. So, we have a reference point. This is that final revival of some kind of Roman empire, and this woman is intimately interacting with and actually, we’ll will see in somewhat control of certain aspects of this empire. "The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls and having on her hand, a golden cup full of abomination and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead, a name was written, mystery Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth." Verse six, "And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement." I find this interesting because at the time of John, you know, he didn't know what this meant. This was amazing to him. You know, he was amazed that there would be this religious system. Now, there was persecution on Christians in the first century. John, when he wrote Revelation, is in prison on an island because of his religious beliefs, and yet he is amazed at this vision he sees of this woman riding the beast.

Now, verses 9 and 10 are very important here, and it's a key to how we have just historically explained the importance of this woman in understanding at least partly who she is.

Revelation 17:9 "This is the mind which has wisdom." Okay? He says, now, this is going to take people who are really in tune to God to understand what he writes next. "The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. There are also seven kings." Now, mountains are usually a symbol of a kingdom. In the Scripture, it's a symbol of a kingdom. But he says here that its seven mountains... Well, he said, okay, the seven mountains are seven kingdoms. But it says, "And seven kings." In other words, there's two meanings to this. The seven heads of the beast represents, seven, as we understand it, seven successive attempts to resurrect the Roman empire. We see that in Revelation 13, we see it here in Revelation 17. But she sits on seven mountains. It is fascinating to me that for hundreds of years, almost all Protestant, not just Sabbath-keepers, but Protestant commentaries of Revelation said “Well, this is obvious, we know what this means.” Because there was one city in the ancient world that when John wrote, one city alone that was known as the City of the Seven Hills, it's still sometimes called the City of the Seven Hills, and that would be Rome.

So, it not only means seven kingdoms but there's wisdom here. You have to understand. This woman, she rests on the City of the Seven Hills. Babylon the Great is not just a system, it also refers to a city. The city that is the capital of the system. So, we look at this, we say, okay, we understand there's a religious system and a secular system. We got introduced to that in Revelation 13, we see it now here. The religious system and the sort of capital of this, is going to be Rome. Now, I'm not going to go through the seven different—I mean, specifically—the seven different times that there was an attempt to resurrect the Roman empire, which those seven hills also represent, or the seven heads, but the seven hills are important because it gives us a reference point to a place, and that place is talked about here at the end of this chapter, and this is where the question comes up.

Revelation 17:12 "The ten horns which you saw." So, there's seven heads, 10 horns. "Are the ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet.” Now, remember, Daniel, his image, Nebuchadnezzar's image, has 10 toes at the end time because it is Christ that comes back and He crushes these kingdoms. And it's those 10 toes, it says, represent 10 kings. So, these are all the same events. These are the 10 toes of Daniel. They're the 10 horns of Revelation 13, same thing. "The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast." Now, what this means is this system only lasts a short period of time. Now, we know, about three and a half years... Actually, it's falling apart before that, before Christ returns.

So, for a short period of time, these 10 kings give their power to this beast and they create the beast power. But the beast here is the man.

Revelation 17:13-14 "They are of one mind. They will give their power and authority to the beast and these will make more war with the lamb and the lamb will overcome them for He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, and those who are with him are called chosen faithful." So, when Christ comes back, He destroys them. That's what Daniel 2 says. He destroys these 10 kings who have given their power to the beast. Now, verse 15, here's where the problem arises or the question.

Revelation 17:15 "Then he said to me, the waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." So, this religious system is influencing many people throughout the world, many people throughout the world.

Revelation 17:16-18 "And the ten horns, which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot and make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire for God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God are fulfilled. And the woman whom you saw is that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth." This religious system is connected to a city and this religious system and the city in which it rules the earth is destroyed by the beast. Not by Christ when He returns, but by the beast. Now, that seems confusing, doesn't it? And when I say it's even more confusing when we get into the next chapter, because the false prophet is not destroyed. He goes along with the beast. So, the beast and the false prophet and the 10 kings destroy the city and the woman.

So, the city is Rome. And so, we've looked at that, and rightly so, and said, well, the only great religion that has been inside Rome since the fall of paganism has been the Catholic church. So, this must the Catholicism. And Catholicism and Rome are connected together. I mean, the Vatican sits right in Rome. You know, and when we think of Rome, when we think of the Catholic church, it's many times called the Roman church to make sure that you're not referring to Protestants or to people from the Eastern Orthodox churches, which claim that they are separate from Rome also. But Rome or the Vatican says that they're actually the rulers over all Christian religions. All Christian religions, really are, they won't always say they're an apostasy, but they will say that they have separated themselves from the mother church and Christ is going to have to bring them all together. So, that's how they see history. And even the current pope has made comments about how, you know, everyone should be coming together and recognize who he is, as the vicar.

So, we're a little confused now. Why would this happen? And it doesn't tell us why, but it's not surprising if you understand history. Unfortunately, especially the middle ages, is such a time of confusion. And there's times where we have whole years where there's almost no records of what went on throughout Europe. We do have a lot of records of what happened in the Catholic church, which is actually very helpful. Their records, the writers who helped produce the Catholic church, and then once they became the dominant church, they left lots of records. You look at their records, you look at the fewer historical records we have that are non-Catholic, and you can start to put together a real understanding of what happened in the middle ages in a big sense. And I can spend the next four hours going through this, but I just want to cover a few highlights to let you see and understand the trend, okay? The trend of what happened.

There's sort of a belief that when Constantine became the first Christian emperor... Well, before we go there, let me talk about really quickly what happened in the second and third centuries. In the second and third centuries, Christianity was a small, very small group of believers. They were not the major church in the empire. The Bishop of Rome didn't have that much power and they were actually separated into various groups that were constantly bickering and fighting with each other. They were persecuted by the Romans and the pagans. So, what happened though? And I gave, if you remember, 10 Bible studies on this a couple of years ago because it's the classes I give at ABC. What we have is, is for over 200 years, the Christian Church... When I say Christian, I'm just talking about this amalgamation of people who call themselves Christians. Inside there, there's even smaller groups of people who are truly following the Bible. Most Christians are semi-pagans or many of them are really influenced by Hellenistic culture. The philosophers of Greece were studied, sometimes as much as the Bible and they helped form a new way of looking at the Bible. And so, they use Plato to interpret the Scriptures in many ways. It's where the immortal soul doctrine came from. A lot of other ideas came from that.

You know, at this time period, people worshiped on Sunday, not because of the sun god, but because they despised Jews so much and they wanted to separate themselves from Jews. Of course, the Jews were revolting throughout the empire and the Romans were at war with them, so they wanted it not to be associated with them. But it's very interesting because what you have is the formation of a conglomerate of Christianity just like you have today. I mean, you have Greek Orthodox, and Syrian Orthodox, and Russian Orthodox, and Catholic. And Catholicism in one part of the world is different in some ways than Catholicism in another part. You got the Lutherans and the Methodists who have just split over the issue of homosexuality. You have the Baptists, you have Pentecostals, you have Mormons, you have Jehovah's Witnesses, right? You have all these different factions of Christianity, many of them claiming that the other ones aren't real Christians. Well, that was happening in the second and third century, except they didn't have a lot of communication. So, the interaction between these groups sometimes wasn't all that big, except in the big cities. Christianity was an urban movement. That's why pagans or people who live in the country stayed pagans. They worshiped other gods because Christianity got to them very late.

So, it's a small religion that is fragmented. This is real important because Constantine comes along. In 306, he becomes the first "Christian emperor." And I won't go through the whole story there. I covered that in those Bible studies. He was surprised when he became the first Christian emperor for a number of reasons. He understood that Christians were a small minority of his empire. He did not make it the official religion of the empire. He just said it's legal because it had been an illegal religion and since it was his religion, well, the army had to sacrifice to his God. Now, they sacrificed other gods too, but they had to sacrifice to his God. And he now looked at Christianity and said, "I’ve got to unite this.” and we're going to start a pattern here that exists all through the middle ages, even until today.

The emperor decides, "I have to unite Christianity." Constantine did not become baptized until his deathbed. And the reason why is he knew that he would have to kill people and do terrible things as an emperor and he didn't want to be baptized because if he did those things afterwards, he may end up going to hell. So, he waited and was baptized on his deathbed. Now, that's important because at the time, even among the early Catholics, you weren't a Christian unless you were baptized. Because in the Bible, in the New Testament, all Christians are baptized, every one of them. So they said, "Well, that means you have to be baptized." He refused baptism. You say, okay, what does that really mean? It was Constantine who called the first council of Nicaea and he presided over it. Not the pope, the pope didn't have much power then. He presided over the bishops. The emperor did. The bishops couldn't do anything about it because, you know, just a few years earlier, they were being hunted down and killed. Now they had churches, he gave them tax money to build churches, they had freedom. They weren't going to go against him. And so, you have the beginning of a strange relationship between the secular government of the Roman empire and the Catholic church.

He tried to create a church that was totally universal or Catholic with one central government, okay? That's what he tried to do. But he tried to do it. Popes had tried to do it before, but usually, when a pope did it before, you know what he ended up doing? Split the church. And, of course, he tried to do it, and the first thing he did was split the church. He lost almost all the Catholic churches in North Africa. They all left the Catholic church. So, trying to get them to work together was not easy, but it takes both to do it. And this relationship between civil government and the papacy becomes, they need each other. They need each other desperately in order to survive. It's not until a couple of generations later that you have Theodosius I who actually now forbids, he outlaws paganism. Theodosius outlaws Judaism. And he says, "There's only one true religion in the whole Roman empire." Now, he was never able to totally enforce that, but he tried and he could do it through the, you know, through the swords of the Roman allegiance too because he had that much power.

Theodosius, though, once again, he's the emperor and he's acting as pontifex maximus. The emperors, the pagan emperors were the heads of all religions, understand that. They were the chief priest of all religions in their empire. And so, he's acting as the chief priest and he gets into trouble. Chariot racing is the most popular form of entertainment. The Christian emperors had basically outlawed outright gladiator fights. And it was, you know, people died in the arena all the time in the chariot races, but in Thessalonica, one of the chief chariot heroes was arrested by the local government because they don't know, he was doing some lewd, it says lewd public thing. They don't know, they think it was some act of homosexuality. But the Christian leaders of that community arrested him. And when he didn't show up for the race, the people rioted. You didn't riot in Rome. I mean, against the Roman government. Theodosius was so upset, he sent an a legion and killed 7,000 people. So, he shows up in Milan where Bishop Ambrose actually seems to have more power than the Bishop of Rome. He's a very powerful Bishop at the time. And he goes in to keep services to take mass and the Bishop comes out and says, "You can't come in here. You're a murderer until you repent."

Now, Theodosius thought…he had some soldiers with him. He thought about, "Well, you try to keep me out. I'll just kill you and all your priests, and we'll just end us right here." But he realized he couldn't do that. So, Theodosius goes through a period of time of penance and then comes in and does this public repentance speech and he's allowed to come back into the church by Ambrose. Now, this in history, you think, "Well, this isn't that big a thing." Oh yes, it is. The ruler of the church is the emperor and the Bishop of Milan says, "You're not. We are, the bishops are." That, of course, the chief Bishop was Rome and the one in Rome. This battle, this conflict would go on, and on, and on, and still exists to a little bit today.

Let's go on to the next slide. I'm trying to decide what to talk about, what not because there's so much information here. But I just want you to understand this conflict between the civil rulers and the Catholic church, even though they needed each other to survive. When the Germanic tribes broke into the Roman world, they had not wanted to conquer Rome, to begin with. They had wanted to be—most of them, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths—they just wanted to become Romans, and they wouldn't let them. They really didn't like Germans. And so, they kept the Germanic tribes north of the Danube and east of the Rhine rivers. When they broke through, it's because they were starving and because the Huns were pushing them from the East and they had no place to go.

Now, the Germanic tribes are tribes. They don't work together. In fact, when they're not fighting the Romans, they're fighting each other, okay? They dress the same, they have a similar language, similar culture, similar religion, but they just fight each other all the time. And they're primitive compared to the Romans. They're illiterate, for the most part. The goths had developed some kind of written language around this time, but they were illiterate, for the most part, they live in little wooden houses, and they were a warrior society. The head of each tribe is the chief, the chieftain and his warriors are loyal to him. And the biggest tribe they know of only had 100,000 people. The Roman empire had rotted out from inside, you know, 6 million, 8 million, 10 million in Germans couldn't have brought down that entire empire, but they did. They did. And they came across.

And some of them were pagans, but some of them had become Christians. But the ones that would become Christians had been evangelized by followers of Arius. Arius was a Bishop who had taught that Jesus was a created being, He wasn't divine. He was created. Of course, that's one of the reasons for the first and second councils of Nicaea, was to create the Trinity, that He is divine. Of course, at first, they didn't know how to define the Holy Spirit, and that's why they had to have two councils. So, what happens is the pope finds himself alone because the Roman government is just collapsing all over piece by piece. And he's surrounded by Germanic tribes. Gal, which is now France is taken it over by the Visigoths and eventually the Franks, and then you got the Ostrogoths and the Lombards and others who take Italy. And there's dozens of tribes, the Allens, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, the Frisians, all these tribes just start flooding in. And sometimes they're fighting each other for a little piece of territory. And in some places like in Italy, they actually set up the Roman government again. The Ostrogoths figured out, "Hey, let's just let this run." They put everybody back in power and they just sit around and collect taxes. So, they're happy to do so. So, you have this minority of German population now that's ruling over the empire and the pope is in pretty bad shape because the indigenous peoples in Spain, in France, in Italy, those people are still Catholic, but they're ruled over by people who are either pagan or Aryans.

It's interesting, though, in England, when the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes invade England, they destroy Christianity and they just turn everybody into pagans. It's the only place where Christianity is died out, almost. I mean, there's a few pockets, but almost died out because they just made them into German pagans. So, anyways, he's in trouble because he's surrounded by, and his people, the Catholic people, are all subject to these, either pagan or Aryan rulers. So, you have in the east, because the East hadn't fallen, you have Justinian. And what Justinian does, he comes along and he tries to reunite the East and West. He retakes all of North Africa. He takes Egypt back. He takes Israel back, or what is now Israel. He takes, you know, Syria. Of course, he always had what is now Turkey. He sweeps up, he takes Italy and restores the papacy to power. But now something else has changed. The papacy is under the thumb of the Eastern emperor. They cannot ordain somebody the pope without his permission. At this point, the popes are elected by the leading Catholic families of Rome. So it's this big political moving going on, and then they all get together and they vote in the pope, but he can't become pope until he's approved by the Eastern emperor. You know, these two powers are always fighting for power.

And so, the pope, under you know, Justinian, he's in trouble all the time, he removes popes. He puts popes in, some popes go along with him, and there's always this power struggle. Justinian's empire was killed by flees, bubonic plague came in and that ended the ability to even try to reunite them back together and the empire shrunk way down as the Muslims came along and they formed and took Africa, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and, eventually, they actually ruled over Spain for a while. So, here you have this battle, Justinian goes, and now, what do you have? Well, let's see, the Lombards are there, they're Aryan. They finally, this Germanic tribe says, "Okay, we'll become Catholic. I mean, all the indigenous people here are Catholic. We'll become Catholic, but what we're going to do is make the pope and Rome..." Because Rome was considered a Catholic city. "You have to pay us taxes." Well, they didn't like that. So, the papacy now, where do you go? So, what they decided, the best thing to do was to get into England, which had been Britain before, but now it's called England because the Angles are there, and it's Angle land. They decide to go to England and make all those people Catholics and at least they'll have them on their side and they go to the Frankish people who had conquered Northern France, or Gal, and said, "We want to make you Catholics." And they did. It took a long time, but they got both of those groups to become Catholic.

And now they had somebody on their side in all this because they'd lost Spain to the Muslims. And in 800 A.D, the pope crowned Charles, who was the king of the Franks, he crowned him king, but not only king, he crowned him the next Roman emperor. There hadn't been a Roman emperor since 476. This is 800. He crowns him the Roman emperor. He's going to recreate the Roman empire. And Charles becomes Charlemagne, Charles the Great. He becomes Charles the Great. And he now goes around conquering everybody he can and creates an empire that stretches through France, much as what is today, Germany, Belgium. He doesn't get Denmark. The Vikings still have that, but, you know, he takes this area and he unites with Italy, and he has an empire. The Saxons over in Germany didn't want to give up their paganism. He beheaded 4,500 of them one day and they decided being a Catholic was a good thing. So, that's how he converted them over to Catholicism.

So, you have Charlemagne. Charlemagne did actually a lot of good too for Europe. He reintroduced literacy, science, medicine, these things had all been lost. That's why it's called the dark ages. But the first thing that happens though is the pope now crowns him. So, "I'm in charge." And Charlemagne says, "Well, in some things you're in charge. In some things, you're not." But every time the pope gets in trouble, Charlemagne sends an army down to help him. And then you have this relationship that, you know, you have to have for an empire to exist. Without this relationship, Europe just becomes independent kingdoms.

Well, Charlemagne dies, and all of Europe collapses into a feudal system where there are literally hundreds of kingdoms and you have a concept that is created that they called Christiandom. There might be hundreds of kingdoms. You know, even England was various kingdoms, different and kingdoms, and they had been invaded by the Vikings and that country was all torn apart. So, what they did, they created Christiandom. Didn't matter who your king was because your king was ordained by the pope. And because of that power, you are also citizens of the kingdom of Christ, Christiandom. And so, for hundreds of years, what you have in Europe is fighting for power among all these different Christian groups. They're all Catholic, everybody's Catholic by now. And the pope crowns them all. And the pope is the kingmaker. The papacy becomes the one who, you know, sets up and can take down kingdoms, but then they don't like him either for doing that.

The papacy collapses into a time of almost disbelief. I mean, one of the popes basically runs the Vatican as a brothel. They murder each other. There's more than one pope many times because there are different factions, electing popes. And, you know, one country will say, "Well, this is our pope." Another country will say, "Well, this is our pope." And they literally have centers of the leadership of "Catholicism" in different places in Europe, Rome still being this center. You hold Rome, you hold the Vatican, that's where the Catholic church always re-centers. And so, at one point, you know, you have this Christiandom, and a perfect example of what happens with Christiandom is the crusades. And the crusades wasn't launched by any nation or any kingdoms of Europe. It was because the pope said, "All the citizens of Christiandom, we need to go take Jerusalem back from the Muslims because Christ is coming back." They believed that Christ was coming back. They put together this viewpoint of prophecy, "He's coming back. We have to go prepare the way."

And so, tens of thousands of people joined and went down and took back Jerusalem from the Muslims and held it, waiting for Christ to come back. But there wasn't a nation that launched that. It was Christiandom that launched it. So, you have a kingdom and kingdoms, and they both need each other to survive. That's why the Holy Roman Empire forms. And it becomes centered in Germany. It moves from the center in France to the center in Germany. And as soon as he ordained Adolf I as the new Holy Roman Empire. Now you have the Holy Roman Empire, and he's the emperor of this attempt to recreate it, Adolf sort of told the pope, "Well, you can't tell me what to do in everything." And there's this tension.

You get into the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation during the Renaissance, the papacy actually became a secular government also. They had land, they were very wealthy. They even had an army and they would go off and fight wars throughout Europe. Remember, he's the kingmaker. The papacy gets very corrupt for a while. One of the strangest things is one of the popes died, the next pope didn't like him so that he dug up his decaying body and had a public trial with the corpse there where he condemned him so he could torture the body and then throw him in the Tiber River to...not kill him, because he was already dead. There's a lot of strange things that happened here in about a 300 or 400-year period, is the whole thing collapses because they become a secular power also, vying for power and they're ordaining the kings.

Protestant reformation breaks up the power of the papacy throughout Europe. They just break out…the Lutherans and the Calvinist, and the Anna Baptist break off, and eventually, you get the church of England, they break off and it just breaks the power that they have over all of Christiandom. They still claim to be the rulers over Christiandom. You know, Protestants don't think they're ruled by the Catholic church. They claim they still are. Sort of the thing that really broke the power though and changed the power back was Napoleon. Because when the pope went to crown him emperor, he took the crown and crowned himself. And basically, "You don't crown me. You don't have authority over me." And he was a Catholic, but he took the power himself. You see how this going on? And, you know, I just spent 20 minutes showing a few cases of 1,500 years of revivals of the Roman empire. The Catholic church is always involved and yet there's always a struggle, always a struggle. There's been popes. The Lombards one time didn't like one of the popes and took him and put his eyes out and cut his tongue off. But they botched the job and he actually could sort of see and he could talk, so he came back and, you know, got back into power. I mean, it's a bizarre history, but this isn't the hidden history, this is all the stuff that's in the records. This is what the people wrote who lived through these things.

Now we have modern Europe in which the papacy has very little power in many ways in Europe. I mean, they have some, but we now have, you know, most countries in Europe have some kind of democratic republic, you know, Germany, France, you still have a monarchy in England but, of course, they're not crowned by the pope. And so, it's shifted, you still have Christiandom. You still have millions and millions, you know, tens of millions of Catholics inside Europe. So, you still have Christiandom. And remember, I said it was Hellenized, Christianity was Hellenized. It was also Romanized, and so, it became the Roman church and it took on certain Roman aspects, including some Roman paganism. It became Germanized, and that's a whole interesting story, how they adapted certain German paganism into Catholicism.

They're now going through another shift. You know, people wonder why the papacy over the last few years has changed views on certain things. And the reason why is the majority of Catholics now live in central and south America. Their culture, their influences are beginning to change the papacy. It's evolved with the times over and over again. We know what we just looked at, that there's going to come a time where there's going to be another revival of the Roman empire, right? And we know Catholicism is going to be part of this. It's going to be more than Catholicism. I mean, when you look at the prophecies in Revelation 13 or Revelation 17, you see that this is also an ecumenical movement. Now, that's what some of the latest popes have tried to do, is actually set up an ecumenical movement to reach out to Hindus, even to Muslims, although Muslims and Catholics, they have been enemies for a long time. They've slaughtered each other in countless battles. And the Muslims came really, really close to overrunning Europe at one point, real close. And like I said, Spain was under Muslim rule for hundreds of years.

So, they have been, you know, mortal enemies for a long, long time. There has been some reaching out. I don't think Islam's going to be willing to, but there has been some. There has been reaching out to reunite the Orthodox churches and Catholicism. There's been a lot of reaching out to Protestant churches, and I've been surprised, over the last few years, how many Protestant churches have said, "It's time to reunite with Catholicism. You know, not become Catholic, but recognize that we're all part of Christiandom." Now, you think about the Christiandom that arises at the end time. You have an ecumenical movement of which the papacy has to be a very important part of, and you have the secular ruler who literally claims to be divine and is supported by this ecumenical movement. But think about centuries, and centuries, and centuries of how there has been war, fighting. I say occasionally war, but there's been all kinds of political infighting between the papacy and all the different attempts to resurrect the Roman empire because they needed each other to exist.

Now, what happens in the end? Let's go back to Revelation 17. What the catalyst is, I don't know, but there has to be, in the revival of this empire, the same thing that's happened for seven times that they've done it, is that there is a power struggle. There wasn't much of a power struggle between Adolf Hitler and the papacy because the papacy were just scared to do much of anything. You know, what do you do? They didn't want to be destroyed. And there were some bishops who supported Nazism. We don't know how many. So, I won't say the whole Catholic church did because it didn't, some Catholics died in opposition. But look what it says.

Revelation 17:15-18 "Then He said to me, the waters which you saw where the harlot sits are people's multitudes, nations, and tongues." So, yes, Catholicism is part of this. The false prophet may be a pope. I don't know. But they are the leaders in what goes on here. Okay? They are the leaders and they are the seven hills, okay? The city on the seven hills, right? It's a city and the woman. So, it's the religion and the woman, the religious system. "And the 10 horns which you saw on the beast, these will eat the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it in their hearts to fulfill His purpose to be of one mind and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God are fulfilled. And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth."

There is some kind of power struggle that has been going on forever. And Rome and the Vatican are destroyed by the beast and the false prophet and the 10 kings. Now, this is at the very end. This is at the very end. It's going to be fascinating to see what launches that power struggle. You know, what causes the woman who's riding, controlling the beast ends up being destroyed by the beast, but not the false prophet.

So, let's go to Revelation 19 and finish up here. I just wanted to give you an overview. I mean, don't worry, there's no test, okay? But you can see the constant conflict. And I just scratched the surface. Yet they worked together. They had to, but it was never, you know, it was never a good marriage, okay? This was never a good marriage as one side always had to try to have preeminence over the other. So, let's go to verse 17.

Revelation 19:17-21 "Then I saw an angel standing in the sun and he cried out with a loud voice saying, to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather together for the supper of the great God that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people's, free and slave, both great and small. And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth and their armies gather together to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army." This is the great stone in Daniel 2. He says, "Then the beast was captured and with him, the false prophet, who worked signs in his presence by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. And these two were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone and the rest were killed with the sword which preceded from the mouth of whom sat on the horse and all the birds were filled with their flesh."

 So, what seems like a very strange event here at the end of Revelation 17, which I don't know what causes it. I just know it's actually not that strange. It's actually not that strange in the history of the relationship between European power and the papacy as they struggle to see who really controls what. The important thing is, is that we know and we understand who that beast is, the fourth kingdom of Revelation or of Daniel, and Daniel 2 and 7. We know who it is. We know where to look. We know that they're going to unite for a little bit, almost the whole world together. We know it's got to be an ecumenical movement because not everybody's going to become Catholic, okay? There's some kind of ecumenical movement that happens in which the papacy, because Rome and the woman are there. I mean, they're in Rome, right? The woman's there. So, they have to be a very important part of this. And yet, the false prophet survives. He goes along with the destruction of the woman and the city. But we know Jesus Christ returns and He resurrects the saints, He changes those who are alive, and he sets up His kingdom on earth. And if He doesn't come exactly when He does, the beast armies and the armies coming out of the East will actually destroy the entire earth. Humankind will be on the very brink under Satan's driving and direction to total complete destruction. So, it's a good story. And we have to remember though, another instruction that's given there in chapter 18 of Revelation, "Come out of her, my people." We have to make sure that we are never deceived to become part of this Babylon that's going to form at the end time.