As the bishop at Constantinople denounced wanting any kind of position of recognition, yet the bishop of Rome wanted to enforce and flourish his image and took opportunity like that. One time it was said, If the world can be ruled by the king or emperor of Rome, then Christianity ought to be ruled by the bishop of Rome. That sounds good to some people’s minds, but it depends on what the motive is.) At length, in the commencement of the seventh century, the emperor Phocas conferred upon Boniface III, bishop of Rome, the title of ecumenical or universal bishop. (This is where it started) This title had been usurped by the bishop of Constantinople; but it was now in this public manner taken from him and conferred upon the bishop of Rome, and this too, by one of the most odious tyrants that ever lived. What they had thus obtained, the Roman pontiffs used every effort to hold; and they did hold it, a power which no other earthly potentate ever possessed. It is from this grant of Phocas that many date the establishment of the papal power, though the most decisive marks of antichrist, idolatry, and false doctrine, did not appear until a later age. But the period of her establishment was not the period of her full growth. On the contrary, she was as many centuries gaining her astonishing dominion, as she had been rising to the point at which we can now view her. An account of some of the great causes which contributed to her enlargement, and of the various steps by which she marched on to the summit of power, will give a general view of the ecclesiastical world from the seventh tot the fourteenth century. The world was sunk in Egyptian darkness. (That was when education began to be viewed as a curse. Universities began to be closed down. That is why they call it today, even back then, the darkest of the Dark Ages, when knowledge, and all enlightenment was shut out. The Bible was no longer read. Young people no longer went to schools of higher learning because the church believed all of that was sinful and evil.) The cultivation of the human intellect was abandoned. The incursions of the barbarous nations from the north, had driven everything like literature into the cells of the monasteries. Books were unknown among the common people; and had they been known, they would have been useless, for few were acquainted with the art of reading. The great mass of the clergy were incapable of reading the Apostle’s creed. Even the bishops in general were unable to compose anything like a sermon and delivered to the people insipid homilies, which they had taken from the writings of Augustin and Gregory. Such an age was exceedingly favorable to artful and daring men, who continually made pretensions to authority which few had the ability to question.”

I will read no more of that. There is another short sketch I want to read though. Here we see how corrupt it then became. Keep in mind, when freedom of the mind to choose, and when freedom to read the Bible and pray is cut off, the world will eventually go into ignorance. When our institutions in America and the world in general shut God completely out, and if God was to let the world go on another two hundred years, there will be a small category of the human race that will live in the top of the tree of knowledge, the intellect, the rest will slump into total ignorance. That is simply because there would be no potential for the average individual to achieve anything. That is why I keep hounding and pounding, you do not need a college education to push hamburgers across the counter. You do not need a college education to drive a semi down the highway. That is only a gimmick. It gives teachers a high paid salary, but an awful lot of their students never put their education to any meaningful use. Let me read now.

READING

“But the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff was never to be compared with its spiritual. For a long time, bishops and councils endeavored to maintain some authority and influence, but they were ultimately all trodden in the dust. (Here is the way the writer points to the pope.) The Man of Sin came, as Paul said he would, after the working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness and unrighteousness int hem that perish.” He arrogated to himself god-like titles and attributes, (meaning that is what the pope began to claim, He called himself these things.) King of kings, Universal Father, Master of the world; set himself above all laws, human and divine; by taxes and massacres, he oppressed and wore out the saints; he changed times and laws.”

That is what the pope did for five hundred years before the Reformation struck. Europe was held in the clutches of a mystical power that was ruling its society and its vast territory, a system that was supposed to be Christianity. It was certainly not true Christianity, but it claimed the name. It was in reality an institution of the devil If a Jew would hear this, I remind you, it was in the 11^th and 12^th, and on into the 13^th century that the Catholic power in Spain ordered an Inquisition. Jews were rounded up and mistreated terribly. They were accused of being this and that, just anything in order to torture them. I have a book about it in my library. It is gruesome to read of the torture and barbaric things that took place. They would go into homes and take the female members. They used those tactics to bring mom and dad to their knees and show how powerful they were. It told what they did to one beautiful lady from a wealthy family. They brought her to this inquisition place, into the underground chambers. There they tied her on a table and tortured her by different means. Then they held her nose tight and then forced an instrument into her mouth so she could not close it, then made her drink water, water, and more water, then they jumped up and down on her stomach, hoping it would rupture and make her recant. She did not recant. I would have to say, Pat Robertson, all you men, you turned your head the other way. I challenge you to read the history of the Dark Ages. You will buddy up to the present popes as though he is not a part of that old system. I did not say this present pope is the antichrist, but this present pope has said that the man that follows him will be a rascal. Therefore I am saying this, Pat Robertson, and all the rest of you, There will be a pope sitting in Rome one day that will not be a baby kissing pope, nor a foot washing one. He will have a philosophy of life that will make every Catholic tremble. Do not ever think all Catholic bishops believe in God like you and I do. You have Catholic cardinals today that are as ornery as some of the Methodists dignitaries. In the Presbyterian Church, in the Methodist Church, in the Episcopal Church, there are clergymen today, young men going to these seminaries that do not even believe that Jesus was divine. They do not believe He was born of virgin birth. They do not even believe He rose from the dead. I say, If you deny those things why believe anything at all about Him? You have Catholics trotting along right behind them, disbelieving basically the same things. Let me read a little further here at this time.

READING

“The most powerful monarchs (That means temporal kings.) were powerless before him. (The pope.) Emperors led his horse and held his stirrup. (They esteemed it an honor to hold the horse of the pope. I wonder who held the apostle Paul’s horse, if he came into town on a horse? If Peter came on the back of a donkey, I wonder who held his animal. Do you see the picture? From humility, from nothing, which the apostles were, to the Dark Ages, and the head of all apostles, the successor of Peter was a tyrant. He had elevated himself above every temporal kingdom. He wanted to be elevated. He wanted to be worshiped. Hold my stirrup while I put my foot in it.) For refusing to surrender to him the right of investiture, the right ever claimed by the princes of Europe, of conferring the most important places in the churches and monasteries upon whom they pleased, by the ceremony of presenting the ring and crozier; Hildebrand, Gregory VII, a pope haughty and arrogant in extreme, drove Henry, (You see here, how your ecclesiastical historians are coming right along and talking the same as secular historians were.) emperor of Germany, from his throne and compelled him in the winter of 1077, to cross the Alps and stand three days in the open air at the entrance of the pontiff’s palace, with his bare feet, his head uncovered, and no other garment but a coarse woolen cloth thrown around his naked body, and implore forgiveness and restoration to his dominions.”

No wonder Daniel said this little horn that comes up in the midst of the ten will exalt himself. It was not just one man in one year’s time. It was a gradual, very slow process of the power of Satan, that used to be embodied and enthroned on the imperial throne of the old caesars, but when that power began to lack, the people lost respect for the emperor. All the time, Satan was bringing up a decoy. That is why as the emperor’s office got weaker, this man’s office grew greater. The same spirit, the same devil was seeing to it. They worshiped the devil through the caesars because they threw their garlands int the street and adored the caesar as he went through on his golden chariot. Eight hundred years later men were carrying the pope on their shoulders in a golden plated chair and people again were throwing garlands in this street and worshiping the same devil through him. That is Catholicism for you, an earthly man accepting worship that belongs only to God.

CARNAL MINDED MEN WITHOUT REVELATION

These modern preachers today are trying to say the Roman Catholic Church is not wrong, and the pope is not wrong. You have to wonder what people like that actually do believe. Think of what Billy Graham said a few years back, that he (the pope) is the most holy man on the face of this earth. Billy Graham, you are a back slidden Presbyterian, and you are spiritually blind concerning the day and hour we are living in. The Presbyterian Church is what he came out of. I read his testimony after I came home from WW2. He was first a Presbyterian. Somehow or other his father influenced him, so if I remember right he went to a Baptist seminary. Then the Baptists began to embrace him. Billy Graham stated it like this, That he used to pray as a young man going to college, Lord, I want to be the greatest evangelist that has ever been. He reached that goal but it was not because he was walking in the light of revelation concerning the scriptures. He took just enough of the gospel to be liked by all denominations, both Catholic and Protestant. He will not speak one word that causes anyone to feel offended. That is why a person like me saying these things is viewed as a crazy man. They say I am narrow minded and naive. Yes, and if Jesus were still here today you would say the same thing about Him. He stood one day looking at a bunch of Pharisees, elaborate, adorned professors of Pharisee theology and said to them, You whited walls. That was really speech terminology that meant they were hypocrites. Back then they did not have latex paint, they had something they called white wash. They could make everything look white and nice for a little while, but that stuff had no enduring ingredients. Neither did they bury people in wooden boxes back then: they buried them in the ground until their body decomposed, then went in later and collected the remains. They sometimes would put that in a clay vase and re-bury it in some kind of stone structure. Then they would go and white wash that thing. They did the prophets that way. They thought by polishing and painting them, this was doing great service to holy men. That is why Jesus said to these Pharisees, because they were so elaborately attired in their robes, He said, you whited walls. I still have a few more words to read to you.

READING

“For sanctioning, as was supposed, the violent death of Thomas A. Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, a man who acquired, by his pretended sanctity, a most amazing power, Henry II, king of England, was compelled by Pope Alexander, to walk barefoot over three miles of flinty road, with only a coarse cloth over his shoulders, to the shrine of the murdered saint, where eighty monks, four bishops, abbots and other clergy who were present, whipped his bare back with a knotted chord, compelled him to drink water mingled with Becket’s blood, and to give forty pounds a year for tapers to burn perpetually before the martyrs tomb.”

Am I doing wrong reading the history of Catholicism fro an hour when the world was held in darkness? These modern interpreters want to say the coming antichrist is to be a man according to the scriptures, that is to rise in the last days and will subdue three kings. In other words they are teaching that the three kings are yet to be subdued. I have to say they missed out by failing to read history. That is why they have to take such a present day approach to this thing. Also, as I said earlier, these same supposed-to-be men of God say the ten horns on that old Roman beast no longer represent the ten major nations of Europe, but that the entire world will eventually, under the world antichrist, be broken up into ten different domains, saying that Europe, where the ten horns are, will probably be the first horn. The other horns will be different sectors of the total universal earth, in their line up of the ten. In some other circles, it is being said that the ten kings of that kind of confederacy, will be ten of the wealthiest men on the face of the earth, and that they will be given the authority to set over these ten territories. That sounds good to modern, twentieth century, college diploma people, that have no Biblical knowledge of history. I want to show you something though. It is when you go to Revelation 13, where John who was an apostle, and was banished to the Isle of Patmos, and was the last one of the old saintly patriarchs left alive, was given a vision and told by the Spirit to write it, that you really get something to go hand in hand with what Daniel wrote. Paul was dead. Peter was dead. John was an elderly man, exiled to the Isle of Patmos, and God showed him this vision recorded in what we call the 13^th chapter of the total prophecy of the book of Revelation. John saw this old beast coming up for the end time. John had already lived in its heyday, when it had just the one big head. How many realize that in 96 A.D., the time John actually lived in, the ten horns had not yet evolved out of that territory? John was a man that was very familiar with the imperial power of the caesars. However what he saw coming up in chapter 13, was how Rome will be restored back to the full beast that she was potentially set in motion to become. IN other words the first three beasts only covered a period of time close to two thousand years. We notice there, that when John saw this beast coming up for the last days, it now had ten horns which fully have their positions. That points you backwards. Spain is Spain today because she got that position many hundreds of years ago. You must agree with me on that? France is a horn today because she got that territorial position recognized to her many centuries ago. Therefore that is nothing new. But when it comes up here for the last days, there is something different about this one huge head of old, it has become seven heads, each one smaller than its predecessor. As we look at it here, it is not pointing ahead, it is pointing us back. This Jew we have been speaking of states that this beast is fulfilled in different stages. Naturally the last one is that universal state, but if you will follow me as I try to describe this thing for the last days and show you by the grace of God, it does not cover the universal earth. It only covers the prophetic earth because the whole thing stems around a central object. Israel was captured when the Babylonians came into power. The whole time piece is destroyed when the Jewish Messiah, the stone cut out of the mountain, brings an end to all of this. That is why this is just an hour glass. In the days of those kings, when the sands of time is all down here in the toes, shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom that shall fill the whole earth. Knowing that, we cannot help but realize Rome is gradually coming back. WE notice this, John saw one of those heads as though it were wounded to death. These modern interpreters are putting the wounding of that head in the future. If you only knew history you would see how that head is not a stage within the total realm of territories, but it is how the old imperial government of old ancient Rome, politically evolved and went through stages within Rome itself. It was not what was taking place out in the mountains, like in the Alps, that changed this head: It was what was going on in Rome itself that began to affect the power that men could have, in that they could control all Europe. That is why when we begin to look into histories of the past, here is how it ran. You must allow me a little more tile to read something else to you. I have to establish it in this manner. Everyone has read about Nero, how he played his violin the night Rome burned. They blamed it on the Christians. That caused many to be rounded up and dealt with, and this secular history writer has it like this concerning the fire. Just notice, as I read.

“During Nero’s reign half of Rome was laid in ashes by a great fire, which raged for a week. But a new Rome speedily arose. It was a much finer city than the old, with wide streets instead of narrow alleys, and with houses of good stone in place of wooden hovels. Except for the loss of the temples and public buildings, the fire was a blessing in disguise. After the death of Nero the dynasty that traced its descent form Julius and Augustus became extinct.”

This marks a precise point in time. Rome was destined to fall. IT was not the stones coming down, it was that imperial power from within Rome, and the throne of Rome that began to decay. The history shows that in 69 A.D. when Vespasian the Roman army general was pursuing the conquest of Jerusalem, just before the final fall of Jerusalem came, he received word from Rome to return. You can read this in the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Josephus had a vision seeing when Vespasian approached Jerusalem, parts of the city had already fallen. Josephus had decided how he will surrender to the Romans. As he has had this vision, as he walks out and signifies to the Romans and General Vespasian, who sat there on his horse, as he approaches Vespasian he said, O Vespasian, knowest thou not that this day thou shalt be emperor in Rome. Vespasian thought Josephus was just flattering him. Shortly after that however, a messenger came with a message asking him to return to Rome. Vespasian returned to Rome and found that Nero was dead. Now the old imperial government that once ruled the vast domain of Roman territories is destined to be hit with all kinds of political upheavals. I am going to take you to another little reading. You remember in the book of Revelation, the 17^th chapter, the angel says to John, Come hither, I will show you the judgment of the great whore. Well in 96 A.D. the whore was not even in existence. But John, though physically living in 96 A.D., was lifted up in the Spirit and projected into the 20^th century where he sees her coming up for the last days. Then he said, I will give to you the meaning of the beast that carrieth the woman. Then he tells John how these seven heads got their recognition. You just have to keep in mind that there were many emperors that ruled over the Roman empire after Nero’s death, but only seven of them were counted as a head on the beast. Those heads are not territories and they are not mere stages of time, but it is how the power of the ancient caesars begin to dwindle after Nero’s death.

THE BEGINNING OF ROME’S DECAY

“After the death of Nero, the dynasty that traced its descent from Julius and Augustus, became extinct. There was no one who could legally claim the vacant throne. The Senate, which in theory had the appointment of a successor, was to weak to exercise its power. The imperial guard and legions on the frontiers placed their own candidates in the field. The Roman world fell into anarchy, and Italy became once more the seat of civil war.”

What was going on? The beginning of the fall of Rome. It was not stones coming to the ground, it is the authority, how a man once sitting on a throne, used to rule that vast domain, now it is in disarray. We are going to watch something. Following Nero was Vespasian, a military general. He was followed by Titus, his son, and then his other son Domatian followed him. Vespasian and both of his sons sat in that emperor’s seat. Three military men, emperors yes, but they were not caesars. They acted as emperors. They were transitional leaders, while the evolutionary political process moved along. Following those three men comes what is known as the five good emperors. That is why in Revelation 17, the angel was bringing John along in future tense. As he explained the seven heads, keep in mind, he said the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. We all know Rome is a city of seven hills. But he said also, there are seven kings, which means kingdoms. This is pointing not to territorial kings, but it is political kings or governmental kingdoms that all evolved out of the one imperial headship of Rome. Therefore following Nero and the military men, we come to the next group of men. From 96, right at the time John was having his vision, to the year 180 A.D. That was the period of the five that had fallen. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, are called in history the five good emperors. They are known for the systems of education, beautifying of the city and so forth, but notice what the history says, “After the death of Marcus Aurelius the empire entered on its downward course again.” That tells you that this once monstrous head which was single, and ruled the Roman domain with imperial power, was struck a blow by the death of Nero that it never recovered from. This great head would begin to shrink and die from its original power and authority, and would be followed by other men who would try to establish another line of caesars like the first ones, but would not succeed. Five of them are called good emperors, but in Christian history, under some of these men, more Christians were sent to the arenas and butchered than space would allow us to tell about. Christians could not call them good emperors, but they marked a precise period in time, of the evolutionary decay of the old imperial head. After Marcus Aurelius’ death, the empire entered on its downward course. That happened in 180 A.D. From then until we come to the hour of Constantine, which was in 300, Rome went through a period of chaos. I will not attempt to read it all because it would bore you, but it is right here in front of me and I have read it many times. Emperor after emperor was elected to the throne, live a few days, and then be gone. Some were assassinated, some left the throne because they were fearful for their lives and so forth. On and on it went like that, right on down to 300 and something. That is what caused, in the period between 100 and 325, when Constantine came on the scene, Rome to begin to lose the vast domains in the east. The territory ruled by Roman power was beginning to shrink. She was backing away from the Middle East. Keep in mind, time, that is symbolized in this hour piece, always goes west, never back east. How many understand that? Yet it is the eastern areas that come into the picture right here at the end time. We have seen the first five heads of that old beast, so now we want to go to this sixth head. When we come to this sixth head, it is a period that covers the years between 180 and 395 A.D. I am going to pick up in this reading right here, about Constantine.

“Two emperors were left, Constantine in the West, Licinius in the East (at Constantinople). After a few years of joint rule another civil war made Constantine supreme. The Roman world again had a single master.”

WHEN THE ROMAN ARMY BECAME CHRISTIANS

This was the time that Constantine, at the head of his army, as he was striving to put down some kind of insurrection and revolt somewhere over here in the east, saw a vision that changed the circumstances of Christians in that part of the world. Marching eastward with his army, and knowing at that time that the Christian people throughout every nation of the old Roman area were being persecuted and massacred, one evening as he made camp he sent his men out to do some kind of pagan ritual in sacrifice and to offer some kind of burning of incense and stuff, Constantine was supposed to have seen a vision in the sky. He saw the sign of the Christian cross, and he heard these words spoken to him, “By this thou shalt conquer and thou shalt overcome.” The next morning as Constantine arose to speak to his generals and military men, he gives his testimony to the vast army. He said, I believe the God of the Christians has told me that if I will accept this sign of the Christian faith, we will be victorious in this engagement. Other histories relate that there was a mass baptism in the first source of water they could find. Mass conversions took place like we have today in our modern evangelical revivals, which is without any repentance. Army generals, with sabers clambering, shields and armor on, walked into the ocean and there they were baptized. They painted the sign of the cross on their shields. This has become the emblem of the Knights of Columbus. When Constantine went into the battle he was victorious. He came home a triumphant leader. That is when he made the decree, a law, From now on no Christians will be persecuted. Their faith will be accepted and recognized in the Roman society along with all the others. He did not do away with other religions: He just made the Christian faith another religion recognized by Rome. While some will say that is when the Church was married to the Roman state, that really was not when the church was married to the Roman state. That is only when he, being the sixth man in that period of time, did something that put the church on equal status with paganism and it brought a breathing spell so that Christians began to sigh, set down and take it easy. That introduced the Christian faith to the pagan, Roman state for courtship. From that time Christians and pagans could walk the same street side by side, knowing they were each one recognized by the same imperial power. Of course as we consider the reign of Constantine, we discover that he was head number six on that old Roman beast. We are counting only those emperors that were able to establish a form of government that somewhat resembled that of the old line of caesars. However after his death the Roman world again plunged into more political chaos. I am talking about this great geographical block of territory, which is also symbolized here in the continent of Europe. You have to keep the power in Rome. It does not go to Frankfurt Germany, nor Madrid Spain, nor London England. You have to keep it in Rome. When we come on over to about 800, e come to the hour of Charlemagne. He was a German. What a brilliant leader. By that time political men and ecclesiastical men have been walking side by side for quite some time. Emperors were going to the pope to be blessed by him, as well as popes going to the emperors to be recognized for the position they held. When you read the histories in Charlemagne’s hour, you discover that he became such an admirer fo the pope and of the church of Catholicism, that at the point of the spear and the sword, through the towns and villages of Europe, that once were just barbaric, pagan people, those that had not been converted by priests in preaching their gospel, were forced at the point of a sword to become Catholic Christians. Through Charlemagne’s hour, every domain, every person throughout northern Europe was sooner or later visited by the power of Charlemagne’s army. When it came to the hour that everyone had become converted to the Catholic faith, this became the beginning of what was known as the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne brought the power of the papacy into a state of recognition. We read earlier, over in Revelation 17, about the beast that was, and is not, and yet is, and I assure you, It does sound like a riddle, but it is all easily explained. Nevertheless the fact that it says, And yet is, lets you know that John stood over here in the twentieth century and saw that beast rising up for its end time role in these last days. The angel said to John, The beast that was, so I ask you, Can we agree that the beast used to be old Rome? Yes we can. Then it was not, so what happened? That was the period beginning with the Reformation, which started in 1520 A.D., when Martin Luther made his bold declaration; and here we are facing the year 2000. So almost five hundred years have passed since then. The beast that once was, just slowly dwindled away. The angel said it shall ascend out of the bottomless pit. Well saints, you know no living man comes out of the bottomless pit. No church system comes out of the bottomless pit, so what does come out of the bottomless pit? A spirit. Therefore the kind of spirit we are looking at is that ecclesiastical power that used to be on the popes. That is what became wounded through the Reformation. Naturally that caused the spirit of that power to just leave the scene. Int hat time the world has lived long enough, now we have a total generation of people that knew nothing about it when it was the beast. That is why they want to rewrite history and re-interpret the Bible to fit modern ideas. Yes it shall come out of the bottomless pit and the end of it is perdition. Notice, when it comes up, the angel said he is the eighth, yet is of the seven. Revelation 17:11 “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” This ought to make sense to you. If the mystery horn was the power of the papacy coming up through the Dark Ages, and that spirit that came out of the bottomless pit is referred to as the eighth, yet is of the seven, then that is pointing back to the time when that head was wounded. When that head was wounded, it took all this time for it to be healed and made ready for its end time role. I will read the history of that wounding later. Following the seventh, Otto the Great was the eighth man. He is called the transition man. He is called the pope maker. He was the man, though a political leader himself, that had such great admiration for the pope of his hour. It tells you in history what he did. That is why they nick named him the pope maker, because he is the transition man. He did the very thing that eventually caused papal power to take over the last form of political, temporal power. That made church over state instead of state over church as it had been. That is why the last three hundred years of that Dark Age period was that pope cracking the whip, doing these diabolical deeds. That is the head that the Reformation wounded. Here is Wycliffe, martyred. Here is Martin Luther with the sword of the Spirit, the gospel of Jesus Christ. God was with him because he allowed the same country, King Henry V, or something, to rise up and defend him, while King Henry IV was dethroned. Martin Luther was on the go. John Knox, George Fox, then it passed the English Channel. Here comes John Wesley out of the church of England and the Reformation is in full swing. But to show the final stroke that caused the wound that made it look like that head was dead, yet it was destined to live again. I believe it was in 1789, that Napoleon of France sent his army to the papal palace in Rome and had the pope taken off the throne and brought to France and put in jail. The old pope died and a younger man was put on the chair. From that time until just a few years back the popes of Rome have been more or less a figurehead. They have been mixed up in politics. It goes to show that for a period of time nobody looked at Rome as being the beast anymore. That is why they do not want to preach it anymore, but I have news for them: That head is alive and well and it will soon enter into its prophesied position in that seventieth week of Daniel.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES OF THE ROMAN BEAST

I have this map here behind me, so I want to just draw a little rough sketch of what made up the old territory of Rome: in other words, the old Roman Empire, which was signified by the one big head as Daniel saw it come up without the horns. (We will not be able to show in the Contender right now, what Bro. Jackson is pointing to on the map. – editor) Right here is the natural boundary lines of the old Roman Empire, coming around like this, and then it comes across through here and comes through the Middle East. It comes down like this and takes in all this part of the old world. It crosses over and take in the whole of North Africa. When we talk about the head of the beast, naturally we are looking at this, (Rome) but we have got to see it from a two fold standpoint. The head primarily signifies the city of Rome which is right here. That is on the peninsula of the country called Italy. However we must realize also, that you have to take the head and move it to the empire, which is a domain, or a territory. Therefore you have to see it take in all this geographical part of Europe. The part that I traced over this way as it comes over in through here, that is the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which would be represented in the two legs. It is true as the Jewish man brought out in his illustration of the beast, he is using these to denote the two areas of the Roman Empire in its territory. That is true up to a point, but we have to realize this also, and this is what throws many of our modern day prophetic students off course in trying to come to a fixed point when the question is asked, What is the antichrist, where does he originate, where does he come from? There, is the part we have to get right. We must realize that we have to wind up in the western part of what was the old Roman Empire, which is basically Europe. We know this, Time and progress always moves in a westward way. Even the gospel has proved that, for it started in the Middle East, then it first spread this way (using the map) up here into Turkey where Christianity was first spread by Paul. Then it gradually spread westward. The first four centuries of Christendom had preeminence in the eastern sectors of the world, of the old Roman Empire. I am not talking about the eastern sectors over here in the Orient. The eastern sectors of the old Roman Empire would be what we call Asia in the Bible. That is why Turkey was basically the center of Asia where the seven churches mentioned in the 3^rd chapter of Revelation were located. The gospel light was first seen in Ephesus where Paul preached for part of three years, and the other six were lit from the fire of that one church. In Acts 19:10, it says all they that dwelt in Asia heard the gospel preached. “And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.” As we moved from the fourth century, preeminence began to change from the eastern sector of the territory fo the Roman Empire toward a westward direction. It was not an instantaneous thing: it was a gradual transition period of preeminence, or importance. It was the way Christianity began to flourish and bloom in the western part of the Roman Empire, which now puts us in Europe. We realize, as Daniel in the 7^th chapter sees this monster coming up out of the water, he sees the head first, therefore he is looking at the rising of the Roman Empire. It had its B.C. beginning. At first there were no horns on it, just this giant head. The giant head could be symbolized in secular history as the rise of the imperial power of the caesars. There is something about those caesars, when you study about their influence, the way they ruled and the way the controlled things, that made this Roman empire something ferocious. Here is something else we notice, Some of these modern teachers of our day are looking down through time and only seeing the antichrist coming here at the end. Therefore I want you to turn to Daniel 7, where we will begin reading in the 23^rd verse. The angel is talking to Daniel and say these words, “Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, (the Roman Empire) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, (That means different than the other three that were before it, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian and the Grecian Empires.) and shall devour the whole earth, (While this Jewish man is saying this is going to be the entire, universal planet, I have to say that is not a justifiable picture to look at. If we will look at this Roman beast right, we are talking about the prophetic earth, because the Mediterranean remains to be the focal point. It is the sea out of which all four came, ‘Daniel 7:3 and four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.’ Therefore if God is going to bring some kind of beast system into the picture that did include the entire universal earth, then I do not believe He would have put all of them in relationship to the Mediterranean Sea. I think he would have used one of the other great bodies of water, because when you look at it in the proper contents there are many more millions of people in this part of the world today than there is in that part. Let us finish that verse.) and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.” In verse 24, notice, Daniel is watching those horns. They represent not necessarily a man, but they do represent a territory of Europe that is beginning to get its growth, or its independence from the head. Where do horns grow from? Not the shoulder or the back, but from the head. The horn symbolizes territories that are being allowed or permitted to get their separate identity, apart from the territory controlled by Rome. Therefore there had to be a king represented in each one of those horns that eventually gained their independence. However they did not all spring up suddenly. It was a gradual process, that those horns begin to appear. We can probably say if we could have seen this the way Daniel saw it, he did not see all ten of the horns growing simultaneously, having the same length. He no doubt saw them in different sizes and structures. Notice this next verse. “And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: (In the end they will have a king ruling over that territorial nation.) and another shall rise after them.” I just have to say, I hope I can say it in a proper way: You modern day prophetic teachers, for some reason are trying to tell the world the antichrist is going to come out of some kind of New World Order. I want to ask you, What have you done with your history books? You have got to accept the fact that the horn Daniel saw coming up in the midst of the ten, is not something he saw coming up way over here in 1988, out of a New World Order. It is true, the end time antichrist will be the man in the pope’s seat in that hour, but he is only the end time fulfillment of that little horn Daniel saw rise up and gain such power that he was able to pluck up three of the ten. He is only the climaxing instrument of what that horn established back in the Dark Ages, to produce and project out here at the end of the Age. You have got to keep that horn and the man of sin, which IS the antichrist, connected together. The horn is not some mysterious thing that occurs all of a sudden here at the end of time. The horn is definitely something that slowly began to rise amid the ten horns while they were getting their growth and their position within the territory of Europe itself, to make itself known. As we said earlier, it did not put eleven horns on the beast, because it was not a political horn: It was a mystery horn, a horn (or power) that does not deal with geography. Yet in its final conquest it is seen controlling all this vast territory, not from a political standpoint, but from a mysterious or ecclesiastical standpoint. That is why these people that have looked upon the Catholic Church and the office of the papacy, all of that, as some hocus pocus gimmick that was put together by a bunch of fanatics in the Reformation, are totally blind concerning what is coming down the road. All they can do is guess about who the antichrist will be and where he will come from. I just have to say it once again, It is the modernists of this hour of time that have become the fanatics, and that are blinded to reality. History proves, (and this is one of them that I am holding up before the camera, and I have many more: I could have brought a box full but you would all get very bored with page after page and box after box of these all showing the same thing) that the Catholic Church is what this little horn points to: the system of religion and the man that sits at the head of it ruling the souls’ of humanity. Different men have wrote of what the Catholic Church became, what it did, and how it was looked upon by society, but for my purpose I choose to use these small books, simply because the small size is convenient for carrying them with me. I can read from certain sections of these and give you a brief summary of what all the other history books have in them.

THE PRINCE THAT SHALL COME

While your modern prophetic scholars want to scoff at those of us who believe as we do there is one thing sure, They will not have to wait much longer to find out who has the proper revelation of the fourth beast and the antichrist. They try to make the beast and the antichrist some new thing put together by politicians. They say it is going to be done by the devil. Sure it is a work of the Devil, but it is not something new. This thing we are talking about is absolutely a product of the devil himself. It is his masterpiece, but he started working on it many centuries ago. My point is, Do not think of this little horn as being something that got its identity established in the twentieth century. No. It began to appear on the head as the other ten horns began to appear, all coming out of the head. We just have to go to our history books and watch the entire scene unfold through the centuries of time. Now we can say this, If the antichrist is to come out of the west, from the city of Rome, that matches what we read in Daniel 9:26. It is in this chapter of Daniel that we find the scriptures on the seventy weeks of Daniel, and in the 26^th verse the prophecy declares this, The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Who were the people that destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary? They were soldiers of the Roman army, so it is a Roman prince that shall come. Naturally this was pointing to the rising of the Roman Empire, and it was the Roman Empire that was in power at the advent of Christ when the 69^th week terminated. Then verse 27 says, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” When we say it was Romans that destroyed the city, that simply means it was the Roman army, and I am well aware of the fact there were soldiers in that Roman army that came from different territories of this gigantic area of Europe. The main thing is, they came to Jerusalem under the control of the military power of Rome, under the leadership of Rome’s military ability, to put down any kind of insurrection that might occur. Therefore you have to say it was a Roman army, while there might have been Irish, there might have been French, there might have been Spanish, there might have been men from different areas of Gaul, they all marched under a Roman flag and under Roman authority. Just think about it now, if the people of that prince that shall come were Romans doing their work under Roman supervision, under Roman design, then what about the prince that shall come? Are we saying he was to be a Roman? Not necessarily. We are not saying he was to be born in Rome no more than those men of the Roman army that came two thousand years ago and destroyed Jerusalem were all Roman men. We will say this though, If the army that came two thousand years ago and destroyed the city and fulfilled that part, were moving under Roman command, Roman supervision, then the prince, the antichrist that shall come, must be a man that is tied to Rome by a certain office that is related in that horn that we read about here. Let us finish reading. “and another shall rise after them; (He is the mystery horn) and he shall be diverse from the first, (This goes to show that the first horns were political or temporal horns, but this mystery horn is not a temporal, political horn, he is an ecclesiastical, religious horn) and he shall subdue three kings.” Those three kings have already been subdued, and that part will not be repeated. I brought that out earlier, so we know that is not something to be done over here in the end of time. Those who are picturing this to be something that will take place over here at the end, prove that they do not even know how to read history. The reason they do that is because they close their eyes to the reality that the Catholic Church, the power of the papacy is it. When you close your eyes to that, then you have to close the actual readings and look for something yet in the future. Right there, is where God has pulled a trick on them, simply because they have no love for the truth. “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High.” It is true, according to Revelation 13, that when this whole thing is revived it will continue on and fulfill the scriptures, but may I say this, Since WW2 there has been a gradual reviving, or restoring of the old Roman territorial system. You have got to read it from the standpoint of Europe. The European Common Market, NATO, when you look at it in that light then you can say the territory is gradually being restored and revived. Since the end of WW2, these horns began their reconstruction, and it was not to carry out conquests against one another as before, but to begin to work in cooperation with one another. Fifty years have went by since the end of WW2. In that fifty years, the horns of Europe have not fought one war against each other. That is longer than at any other span of history. With that in mind, we have to begin to accept the fact that as time moves on closer to the start of the seventieth week of Daniel, those horns are all in an economic alliance ready to fulfill the beast part of prophecy for the end time. In the image Daniel saw, time is moving down toward the feet, and the two feet here do not represent two different parts of the Roman Empire. You have to look at the toes, because it is what the toes on the feet represent that is important now, simply because the toes correspond to the ten horns of Europe. No. Not ten horns of the eastern sector. We are going to see as we go on into this message, that form the 4^th century into the 5^th century, we are moving preeminence of Christendom from the eastern part of the world and pulling it into the western sectors. This was necessary in order to begin to establish the office of the man that would eventually be known as the man of sin, because he has to be brought forth from Rome, to fulfill all scriptures, he will come out of the western part of Europe, not out of the eastern part of the old Roman territory. When it says here, “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High.” I think it is a good time for me to read a page here to show you that the rise of the papacy did not occur in a night’s time. It was a gradual process. Once preeminence leaves the eastern sector of the old Roman Empire of the east and preeminence is lying in the west, in Rome, as we brought out earlier, this great territory of Europe which is signified in the ten horns, was all a bunch of barbarians. There was no such thing as France, England, and all that, just barbarians. The barbarians were known in their early beginning like the Lombards, the Francs, and people like that. IT was only after those people fought, rebelled, and did everything they could against Rome, as they began to get their territorial freedom, out of those initial stages began to grow a racial people speaking a certain dialect that began to identify themselves as a country people. AS those barbarians began to attack Rome, in the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th centuries, it has been referred to as the fall of Rome. What that really amounted to, was that for various reasons the power of the caesars that used to control all of this vast domain, was so weakened they could no longer hold control. The leadership and the senate, which makes up the government, the representatives, were against one another just like our Congress and Senate seem to be in this country. This then made Rome vulnerable to the attacks of the Gauls. That is what those people were called. Keep in mind, after the Constantine period, it was permitted that the gospel be preached in all of those areas, and there were converts, Christian people in all those barbarian territories. This is where the political leadership within Rome itself, when the Roman city began to be constantly harassed by barbaric tribes, invading hordes of the Gauls, it was apparent that the political men, the emperors that were then seated, could no longer control things, certain politicians began to call on the pope, use your influence out there among those nations of people that are constantly coming against us. Use your influence to help quell this constant onslaught. That is where even the histories prove it, the popes took advantage of this. They saw what they could use their office for. Over a process of a century or two the popes began to see the position that they held in Rome. This is how you begin to see the power of the papacy accelerate, which was the little horn Daniel saw come up. It was never a territorial horn, but it is a mystical horn rising in Rome, a horn (power) that little by little became very dictatorial. Eventually, as he exalted himself above his fellows, the predecessor territorial horns, he did this because more and more people were being converted to Christianity than they were to Roman politics and to Roman heathenism. All of that was a trick of the devil, because the same devil that comes out of the bottomless pit, and that used to sit on the caesars chair and rule the Roman Empire through the power of those caesars, was now sitting on a different chair, the papal throne. Oh how powerful those caesars were. They demanded to be worshiped. Can you not see Augustus and all those men riding through Rome in their golden chariots, and people coming out, falling prostrate before them as the chariot went by? Think of it, and then think of another man a short distance from the palace of the emperors, in another place, being carried on a gold plated chair, on the shoulders of men, and Roman subjects coming out and falling prostrate on their face before him. Who? The pope. It was the same spirit: It just changed form one throne to the other. Men like Pat Robertson and all the Trinity Broadcast people of today, of they should ever hear me talking like this, would laugh and say, He is a naive, narrow minded, arrogant fellow: Stay away from him: He does not know what he is talking about. If they would read the same histories I read, I believe they would have to get the same picture. It goes to show, if you are going to teach a false doctrine form the Bible from one standpoint, why should God be obligated to let you see the truth in prophecy. When they uphold the same trinity that the Catholic Church does, and they want to justify everything the Catholic Church does today, keep in mind, the Catholic Church may have been going through a lot of ecumenical changes, that is only a disguise, or only a decoy. That is a decoy to get all the Protestant churches, which in reality are her daughters, to forget about their former differences and come on back home to Mama, and join the fellowship of ecumenicalism. That is what it means: They are all coming back together, yet it goes to show also that right at the very end, that last pope that goes in office will be a man who will think politically, who will think religiously, as well as socially and economically, an altogether different kind of man than any of the rest of those that have forerun him. It is because Satan will make him think different. Keep in mind, When Judas Iscariot, who was a Jew, began to follow Jesus, I do not believe he went around with a smirk on his face thinking, Just wait until I get my chance. was not an atheist, he was a Jew, but when Satan tempted him he became very greedy. When he first began to follow Jesus, I believe he was as serious about it as the others were. I say he had followed Jesus very patiently, but along the way something was said that somehow began to give the devil an opportunity to work on his spirit. When those thoughts began to be played in Judas’ mind, it was in those final weeks and days that caused Judas to fulfill the scriptures, betray his master for thirty pieces of silver. Think of it. While he was in the process of meditating, thinking what he would do, he knew exactly who to go to, to get the job done. He felt no remorse or anything. He at the Passover supper with the disciples. You notice how the scripture goes, when Jesus said to the disciples, Verily I say unto you, there is one among you who shall betray me. They all began to say, Is it I, is it I? Jesus said, the one that dips the sop with me, the same is he. Immediately Jesus took a piece of bread, dipped it, and handed it to him and said, What thou doest, go do quickly. The disciples did not understand what Jesus meant by that. The Bible says immediately Satan entered into Judas. We are going to have to accept the fact that the devil has not yet entered into the man who will be the man in the pope’s office for the last days, because that spirit is just waiting for the right hour of time. With this in mind, I am going to read here, for this tells how powerful the pope’s became and how they began to twist things around to suit their purposes.

READING FROM HISTORY

“They commanded all priests to abstain from marriage, as is consistent with the sanctity of their office. They held over all who in any manner opposed them, the threat of excommunication from the Church; (this shows how the power o the church, the clergy, began amidst society to hold the church superior in all matters.) a judgment, which, in that age, was tenfold worse than death; for the whole community at once united in executing the sentence, some from thinking it the sentence of God, others fearing that if they in the least favored the excommunicated person, they should be subject to like consequences. But a still more terrible scourge, by which the saints were worn out, and the dominion of the pope was maintained was the Inquisition.

THE INQUISITION

(How many have heard of the Spanish Inquisition? No Protestant today can read of the Inquisition and not realize that in that hour the Catholic Church had power. No one can read about the Inquisition, and tell me that those people were Christians. They were not. I have a book on it, from which I learned the truth. There is nowhere in the four gospels where Jesus ever even indicated that Christendom, through its earthly growth and journey in time, was ever to become so powerful that they could literally excommunicate and execute people just because of some heretical thing they believed, in the line of teaching. Let us continue reading.) This was established in the 13^th century, and has continued a tremendous engine of power to this very day. It was occasioned by the increase of heretics as they were called, inclusive ov men who dared to think for themselves, call in question the power of the pope, and view him as the Antichrist predicted by John. (History goes to show, especially from the eastern sectors of the old Roman territory, which now no longer were ruled by Rome, especially in Greece and those areas where Christianity first got its beginning, that when the bishop of Rome slowly began to elevate himself above the bishop of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Cairo Egypt, the bishops of the eastern sectors of Christianity were the first to speak out against this type of superiority. The growth fo the pope was a slow process, but it was designed by the devil and destined to ascent beyond all the other horn.) These were numerous incidents in Gaul, and Innocent III sent some Legates in 1204 A.D. to bring an end to them. Those blood hounds, having Dominic at their head, were called Inquisitors; and so serviceable were they found to the papal cause, that the pontiffs established inquisitors in every city. A tremendous court was erected by them, first at Thoulouse, and afterward in the various cities, embracing three inquisitors or judges, a fiscal proctor, two secretaries, a magistrate, a messenger, a reviewer, a gaoler, an agent of confiscated possessions, several assessors, counselors, executioners, physicians, surgeons, door keepers, familiars and visitors, all whom were sworn to secrecy. By this court men were tried not only for heresy, or opposition to the court of Rome, but for magic, sorcery, Judaism, witchcraft, and either imprisoned for life, or put to the most lingering and tormenting death. To give it authority, the emperor of Germany and the king of France were induced to grant it protection and maintenance, and to commit to the flames such as were pronounced by the inquisitors worth of death.”

I have a book at home that tells how a certain princess and her escorts arrived in a certain city, and as they did they were notified that there was going to be an execution of certain victims that had already been tried by the court of inquisition. They were asked to stay. It tells how those people were brought out and tied to the stakes and bundles of wood placed at the bottom, all waiting their turn. This young woman of royalty became so disgusted at the brutality, that for some reason she could not help but see the innocence of some of those people. When she saw the spectators coming to view this, that only turned her feelings about it to that much more disgust. To think in the Roman society of that hour, that late in the centuries, people had become so blood thirsty, and people who for some reason had been falsely accused by the courts of Rome, the Vatican, whether they were heretics or not, they were condemned as that, and could not prove themselves otherwise. This woman, eventually, in political affairs, as she was related to this royal family, she was one that helped bring an end to some of this terrible killing of people just for gratification of Roman subjects who watched just for entertainment. I just have to say, I want to say to modern religious preachers of end time prophecy, You will not see the Catholic Church as being anything at all like it really is, if you become blinded to what they did in the past, so that you think it has to be something different here in the end time. I have to say this, You are not much better than they were, because it is evident that the same spirit that blinded them, and made them do such terrible things, through ignorance on your part, has blinded you also. You have refused to read the facts of their record. I was telling my wife the other night about another history I have. It tells about a man in France, a military man, a man that helped go through territories and bring an end to the inquisition. They had heard about this monastery, and they felt like a lot of people had been taken to that monastery and were never seen anymore. So here is this French general at the head of a detachment of soldiers, and he goes to this monastery and merely asks for the monastery to be opened so that he could take a look. Of course all the priests very ceremoniously, and ever so gladly said, Oh yes your honor. They invited them in, opened the doors and said, Help yourself. The men go through every corridor, every room, up and down, they cannot find anything that gave evidence that the Inquisition had been carried on there in any manner. When soldiers, one by one, began to come back from their tours of the building and the grounds, each one saying they could not find a thing, the general stopped momentarily and looked at the floor. In that area, were huge marble, polished slabs, and as he looked it over, he reached over and pulled a sword from one of the soldier’s scabbard. He began to go around all these huge slabs of marble, just punching. Eventually he came to one that he stuck his sword into and began to pry, and that marble slab moved upwards. He could see there was not a foundation under that, it was hollow. He had his soldiers tear the floor up. When they did they found a stairway leading to an underground tunnel that went a long distance. Rooms were on each side. One of the most horrible odors came from there. Men had been chained in a cell and allowed to die there, starved to death. Their skeletons were still there, chained to the bars. People were tortured. People were laid on a table, their hands tied and they were tortured by pulling their joints until finally their legs were pulled out of shape. I could go on and tell incident after incident that I read. I thought, How in the name of common sense can an institution like that say so boldly to the world today, We are the original Church? Then we have a bunch of Protestants that are so blind, and so ignorant concerning the truth, that they fall for that type of lie. I cannot see true Christianity becoming so blinded that they would stoop to such demonic things. Let me finish this part we were reading.

“Thus was the inquisition established, the guardian of superstition, a most horrible tribunal, an engine of death, indescribably terrific, which has done more than anything else to keep whole nations in subjection to the papal dominion, and has shed an ocean of innocent blood. Holding emperors and kings in subjection, the popes also frequently called out monarchs with their armies to subdue the rebellious and keep the world in bondage. But men were bound by stronger chains than these. Superstition was increased by every art and device until reason was lost and the world raved in an awful mania with the utmost hardihood, and a success which is altogether unaccountable. The pontiff and monks continually imposed upon the credulity of the multitude by presenting to them pretended relics of ancient saints, (Listen to this,) a skull, a finger, a jaw, a bone, a tooth. They even held up to the admiring crowd the clothes in which Christ was wrapped in His infancy, pieces of the manger in which he was laid, of the cross on which He was hung, of the spear which pierced his side, of the bread which He brake at the last supper, yea, portions of the virgin Mary’s milk, and of the Savior’s blood. (You modern, ecumenical Christians of today, you want to unite with an institution which believes in such as that, how can you even call yourselves Christians?) Having induced them to adore the relic, it was easy to lead them to adore the spirit of the saint: and hence proceeded the work of Canonization.” With these things in mind, here is another chapter. Image worship, which is none other than painting an icon of saint this or saint that. When we were in Moscow a few years ago, we were in a couple of churches there. You step inside and see people admiring these beautiful gold embellished paintings by various artists that were painted hundreds of years ago. We would call them murals. They call them icons. You can see the Russian people in their looking at these icons. I thought to myself, That is what became Christianity to them hundreds and hundreds of years ago. What good does that stuff do? You do not find anything like that in the Bible. Image worship is completely out fo the picture in true Christianity. That is why it was written, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make any graven image like unto God. If it was wrong in the Old Testament, do you not think it is still wrong today? If you think the Catholic Church has changed its mind, you are very wrong. If they had really changed their mind and repented of what they had done in the past, they would go tear up all of those statues and images. We know this, When Israel did go against God and do some of the things they did, when there came a king that was determined to restore the people back to true worship of God, what did they do? They tore down all those altars they had erected for the worship of other things, and they tore up all those relics and idols that the people had been using. That is the only way you can restore yourself back to true faith in God. We have go tot see that the Catholic Church is not the true Church of God at all. It is an institution established by a slow process of the devil’s planning, blending people, deluding them, misleading them, which in the end caused that institution to stray from the word and go completely over to traditional things, rituals and ceremonies. That is exactly what the Catholic Church did. With that in mind, when the Catholic Church got to where image worship dominated, plus all this other stuff I have read about here in these books, the Catholic Church had become a power source on the main continent of Europe. Therefore as preeminence left this part of the world and went this way, then this part of the old Roman territory began to stand out in full preeminence. Now you are looking at this as the ten horns begin to make their appearance. We know, that in the 8^th century A.D. communication between the eastern church and the western church in Rome was broken, because the bishops of the eastern world would not accept the infallibility of the pope, the superiority of the pope, so there was a break between them. When that break was established, communication broke down. Time did not stop there though, the sands kept on flowing. As it did, then right here the little horn was rising. Prophecy is in the making. That is why from 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D., which was one thousand years, in the west, Satan saw to it that as he lost his control on the old caesar’s imperial chair, that spirit of Satan leaves, goes into the bottomless pit, only to await his hour to make a return on another chair. As I said before, Keep in mind the power of the papacy did not come overnight. It was a slow gradual process. When that spirit sees that the hour of time has arrived, he knows exactly when to make his move. We know this is according to Revelation 17. I want to turn there and read it again.

DECOYS ARE FOR DECEPTION

It is important that we understand the transition and how this mystery horn Daniel saw was able to do what he did. Keep in mind, the 17^th chapter of Revelation is an understanding picture of how you and I today, in 1996, are able to review and see the restoration of the Roman Empire as it is slowly coming back, being restored, coming back to a revived state, while there are yet many mysterious things at large. That is what makes these preachers want to say, Hey, it is the New World Order, it is no longer the ten horns of Europe. I have to say this, because you hear politicians talk about the New World Order, THAT IS A DECOY FOR SURE. That is a decoy designed to keep nominal people from learning the truth. Sure politicians are talking about New World Order. But keep in mind, God’s word says, in Zechariah 12, that in that day He will tear up the nations, He will literally break them to pieces, those that come against Jerusalem. That should let you know, no matter what the New World Order nations, up to a certain point, try to use their influence for, their power, their ideas of peace for the world and so forth, when it comes to Israel, they are going to have to stay out of the picture. I have to believe that right there is where God brings an end to the New World Order. From there on we are going to see God, how He deals with Israel. Then, because of that, right then is when we will see the power of the office of the pope begin to show itself. In the 8^th verse of the 17^th chapter of Revelation, where it speaks of the beast that was, how can anyone read this, the beast that was, and not be able to realize what that is referring to? It was every bit right in here where we have been reading. It was Rome. Do you not agree with me, that the beast that was, the beast this is referring to, was a Roman beast? It was Rome, and it will still be Rome. What does it mean, and is not? What does that mean? IT means that time has elapsed, and that beast has passed through a period where it was wounded as unto death. We can look back into the histories, and see that the Reformation did that. Then, even though it was wounded as unto death and was not, IT YET IS. Let me read that 8^th verse of Revelation 17. “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, WHOSE NAMES WERE NOT WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF LIFE FROM THE FOUNDATION FO THE WORLD, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” What does that tell you? IT tells us that the devil that was in this beast coming up in the Dark Ages, that ruled, reigned, terrorized and perverted the word of God and held people hostage, when the Reformation wounded it, and it looked like the wound was unto death, it did not die. No. It is like the dream or vision Bro. William Branham had about the snake. Some of the men said, Isn’t it pretty? They were playing with it. Bro. William Branham said, leave it alone, then he shot it. He saw that snake crawl off amidst the reeds in the water. He said to himself, It will die. Well saints That snake did not die. It is alive today and it has affected this movement of Branham followers ever since then. They have defied the man, more than they did then. They have spread that teaching all over the world. It certainly did not die. Well if that can be a fact, then you have got to see this Roman beast that ruled through hundreds of years in the Dark Ages the same way. I do not have the time to quote from histories all that I would like to, but during the pyramids of Egypt, after the 2^nd century, Egypt came under the influence of the gospel and churches were built. The society had become Christianized, if that is an acceptable word. In the 4^th century, before the split between the western and eastern, Roman Christianity suddenly got the idea that a big education is sinful. All the writings on the Egyptian pyramids that had been put together by historians of the past, there are libraries in Cairo telling all about the pyramids and the writings of those ancient historians. When the 4^th century comes, (It is all right in here) the Catholic Church began to say, Too much education causes people to begin to think for themselves and it produces heresy. Intelligent men want to read the Bible. Therefore they began to say, It is wrong for you to read this. It is wrong for you to study it. That is where the Bible began to be replaced by Catholic tradition. In the 4^th century all through Egypt, every library was broken into and thousands of Christian people, as they thronged these libraries, they took out every writing and burned them in the streets. All those ancient histories about the pyramids and the historians who wrote them were destroyed. That is why from the 4^th century, on up until the 8^th century, it was like that. That is when Mohammad the Great came out of Saudi Arabia and came into Egypt for the purpose of destroying Christianity. That was actually an act of God’s judgment upon apostate Christendom that had lost their vision and died. Mohammad the Great, after he conquered Egypt, tore down some church buildings and turned others into Moslem prayer towers, and executed by beheading, Christian after Christian. Yet he did allow some Christians to remain alive. It was Mohammad the Great who did not believe it was a sin to get an education. With many of his military men, they finally dug and forced their way into the great pyramid, Cheops. Once they dug down, they then dug up and they finally found the channel that goes right back to the entrance stone, and if all those books had not been burned by Christians, it would have told them that stone was on a hinge, and it would have told them exactly where it was. I just put that in there to say this, No wonder Europe was plunged into an era of mental darkness. Whatever the system of art was when they went in, that is exactly the same as they had when they came out. Whatever the system of travel was, it remained the same all the way through the Dark Age period. Whatever the system of reading, or anything, that is the same they had when they came out. It was called the Dark Ages. Roman Catholicism, which was supposed to be the true mother church, did it. I know what Catholicism is guilty of, so I do not want any of these modern day prophetic preachers to waste any of my time trying to convince me of something they cannot back up by the written histories. If they want to keep their own eyes closed to the truth that is their business, but I trust that God will deal with many of those who have been mislead by those characters, and they will go seeking the truth before time runs out. God knows how to reach His predestinated ones: I am sure of that. Anyhow, let me rehearse a few points of verse 8, before we move on. “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; (That is the period of the Reformation, we can say it has almost covered five hundred years) and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and (in the end shall) go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, (Here comes predestination.) WHOSE NAMES WERE NOT WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF LIFE FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, when they behold the beast (not a New World Order, but the old Roman system under papal power) that was, (That is the last stage of the Roman Empire when it was under papal power.) and is not, (Right now Europe is not ruled by the papal power.) and yet is.” That means it is going to be revived and restored back to what it was before it was wounded. Why? Because that spirit comes out of hell and anoints it. As we look at the 9^th verse, we can see that the angel is giving John a little description of how to interpret this thing. “And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, (That geographically fixes it, Rome is the central picture where this beastly power will be executed from in the last days, just before the coming of Christ.) on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: (These seven kings are to be kept apart from the other kings that make up the ten horns. We realize there are kings in the other horns, but these kings are not kings related to the other horns, they are kings or governmental kings that stand out vividly as the political process of the Roman imperial government evolves and goes through all of its political evolution. I am sure all of you know what evolution is. It speaks of how something might appear one time one way, but in time it seems to re-adjust and appear another way.) five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast (The beast here, is in reference to the spirit of that old system.) that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” We said earlier, that the eighth does not put eight heads on the beast, and that is because the eighty is of the seven. Here is how we have to look at it. Charlemagne was that seventh, and final stage of political government that put head number seven on the beast, and that falls to the final phase of what papal power took over. I am going to read about Charlemagne. Charlemagne was a man that admired the pope so greatly that the pope crowned him to be king. Charlemagne is the man that married Christianity to the Roman state.

READING HISTORY

“Charlemagne, the champion of Christendom and the foremost ruler of Europe, seemed to the men of his day the rightful successor of the Roman emperors. (Keep in mind, the Roman emperors that preceded him, such as Caesar Augustus and those, ruled all this vast domain. But in Charlemagne’s hour the east is out of the picture: It was basically in a European setting because time moves westward and the antichrist must come out of this Roman area, now here else.) In the year 800 A.D. the Frankish king visited Rome to investigate certain accusations made against the pope, Leo III, by his enemies in the city. Charlemagne absolved Leo of all wrong-doing and restored him to his office. Afterwards on Christmas day Charlemagne went to old St. Peter’s church, where the pope was saying Mass. As the king, dressed in the rich robes of a Roman patriarch, knelt in prayer before the high altar, the pope suddenly placed on his head a golden crown, while all the people cried out with one voice ‘Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, the great emperor of the Romans, crowned by God!’ Although Charlemagne appears to have been surprised by the popes act, we know that he wished to become emperor. The imperial title would confer upon him great dignity and honor, though not greater power, than he possessed as king of the Franks and of the Lombards.”

WHEN CHURCH AND STATE WERE UNITED

I will not read any more at this time, I will just explain some things. You will just have to accept it, or go read the rest of it for yourself. What Charlemagne, he married the Christian church to the pagan, Roman state. This put the pope and the political emperor on equal footing. But that was not the final picture, for we must remember that Charlemagne was the seventh head. That was the slow beginning of what we would call the Holy Roman Emperor, but a hundred years later we come to another man by the name of Otto the Great. I want to show you how to read this 17^th chapter of Revelation, where it says the beast that was, and is not, shall ascend out of the bottomless pit. You and I know, no man comes out of the bottomless pit. Therefore we must look at that like this, The seventh head was state government: It still had its separate place apart from church government. Yet they were on equal footing. This was a diversion of the devil. When we come on over to Otto the Great, after Charlemagne’s hour, it plainly tells us there was a gradual slump in the power of the emperors, the power of politicians just kept weakening more and more. Otto the Great began to rise, and he was a politician that was determined to see that the pope became a man that was really followed. That is why he is referred to as the pope maker. When he came on the scene, (Otto the Great, that pope maker) had the same spirit on him that used to be on the old caesars, but not it is projecting this office of the papacy, so watch. The power of Satan that used to be on the old caesars, where does it go to? Back to hell, which is also called perdition. But when it comes back up, it is waiting for a certain hour. He sees what Otto the Great did. Keep in mind, Even though we might say Otto was the eighth, you do not add an eight head to that beast. The reason is, His form of political rulership was the same as the seventh. Otto the Great did exactly what Charlemagne did. That is why verse 11, says the eighth is of the seventh, because it was still the same thing as before. He did not establish a new, outstanding form of political rulership. (17:11) “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” When he came along and did exactly as Charlemagne had done, he was the man that caused the pope to rise supreme above the emperors. That is why they call him the pope maker. That is where the power of the papacy began to start. From then on the pope ruled. That should let you know why it says the beast that was, and is not, shall ascend out of the bottomless pit. Therefore according to history, all of this has already been done once, but when that papal head that ruled above all emperors, was wounded, the spirit that was on him went back to the bottomless pit for a period of time while the Reformation continued on, but now he is just waiting to once again assume that same place of rulership in whatever pope is on the papal throne when that hour of time arrives. When the time is right, this pope will not have to wait for an Otto the Great to elevate him. No, That old spirit just waits for the right pope to take that throne, (and that will be when it is time according to God’s calendar, for this evil Age to finish out) and all the politicians of the world will be forced to pay respect to him. Where does it go to this time? Keep in mind, when it was wounded, the spirit went to the bottomless pit, but this time as it comes up and shows itself in another pope, when his work is concluded, that spirit will be sent to destruction, not back to the bottomless. I saw something on CNN the other night, when a man was talking about the power of the pope in these last days. I want you to know, the pope is the only living man who holds an office that has outlived all other governmental offices on the face of this earth. Right now, it is not recognized that the pope holds such a position, because the world at large does not see the pope as anything more than a holy, authoritative, spiritual leader. However let some earth shaking situation arise and you will see a completely different picture materialize just like when Reagan was president. Time Magazine and Reader’s Digest wrote articles about what helped bring the fall of Russia. President Ronald Reagan, the pope of Rome and the bishops of Catholicism in the various nations, along with the Russian man Gorbachev, worked it all out. Through the instrument of the papal power of the Catholic Church helping out, that group brought about a fall to Communism in Russia and the communist regjme. All of this establishes a picture of what is ahead. I am not saying this present pope is the antichrist. He is getting too old for me to think he will still be around and able to fulfill the prophesied part the antichrist will play at the end of this Age. However if we are at the threshold of that man of sin coming on the scene, then there is going to be some political changes very soon. God will force conditions to bring political changes and disrupt certain trends political wise. God will see that certain demonic minded leaders of the Catholic system will elevate a man to the pope’s throne that will be capable of fulfilling all that is prophesied of him. No doubt he will be a much younger man. He will not think as much like Pope John has. There is no doubt he will have certain political ideas of his own, and when Satan anoints him, do not be surprised when you hear him say things you would not have heard a pope say this side of the Dark Ages. If any of them had spoken like he will, a few years back, the Catholic Church would have condemned him as a heretic. That is because we are approaching the end of time.

A LOOK AT THE DARK AGES – AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHURCH

I am going to ask you to look once more into  Revelation 13, but before we go there, let me say a few more things about what we have been looking at. As we looked into the 17^th chapter, we dwelt mostly on the eighth verse, the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. When you read a little further, you see that John was told by the angel, how to understand the seven heads and so forth, and we explained that transition, but maybe we can still clear up a few things. I hold here, this early European history. It was used at one time in our American schools. It covers the entire picture of the Dark Ages. It covers the era of the apostasy that worked its way into Christendom, and what Constantine did that actually caused Christianity to lower its standards, making way for such apostasy. When that happened, God began to withdraw the spirit of Revelation from them. When He did that, those who professed to be Christians were eventually drawn into traditional rituals and ceremonies. They did not stop being religious, but they stopped being realistic from a revelatory standpoint. This history gives you a thorough picture of how the power of that papacy rose up to where it had the preeminence. It is very strange that this history is written in such a way that it vividly brings out the five emperors which comply with the 17^th chapter of Revelation, the five that have fallen. It is because they were the ones that tried their best to restore the ancient caesar rulership. When Nero died, he was the last of the genetic line of that family of caesars. It was left up to some other emperor to try to start a new line of caesars, which each man in his own right, and five of them tried it. In between Nero and them, there were the interlinking military men who did not even try to establish such a caesarship. They were emperors, and you might say they were the transition. When we come to the five men that were counted as heads on the beast of seven heads, history calls them the five good emperors, but in reality they were far from good. Christianity suffered much during the time they ruled and reigned. Neither one was able to establish a particular line of caesars of their own kinward kind, but each of them tried. When these five are all dead, that is what was meant when the angel said, Five are fallen. This goes to show that the angel had John in the future tense of time. Try to understand, that in 96 A.D. when John was shown these things, Those five emperors had not yet come on the scene. In 96 A.D., the first one of those fie was just appearing on the scene. Between 69 and 96 A.D., soldier emperors filled the slot. Then came the five so-called good emperors from 96 to 180 A.D., and we know the angel had John standing somewhere in time well beyond that point. When he said, Five are fallen, he was not even talking about the era of Vespasian, Titus or Domitian. He is pointing to those five. That is found in Revelation 17:10. “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, (That is referring to Constantine, and Charlemagne was the one that had not yet come at that time.) and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” In 180 A.D., the five were already fallen and Constantine did not come into the picture until many years later, around 300 and something. There, again, was another decaying political uprising. This little history shows it all. I relate that to try to prove to the brethren and ministers overseas, those who do not have access to the actual histories themselves. There is no way I can send this history to you in its entire contents. You just have to believe that I hold the books I read and quote from, and that I have no reason to misrepresent any of it to you. The ones I use are not even in print any longer. It is true there are history books today in print, but I am sure the writers of them will not break these events down and put it in the profile these histories are written in. That is why ignorance is a very real part of our modern era of education. No one has any intentions of writing anything in the light of Bible prophecy any more. Anyhow from 180 A.D. until we come to the third century, there was a long period of political upheaval. Christianity had suffered much during that time. In Constantine’s hour, after the western hemisphere had fallen and no longer did preeminence lay astride the two sources of the empire, like illustrated in the two legs, things changed considerably for Christians of that hour. Let me remind you that those two legs do not represent geographical territories. They only represent periods of time. Therefore when Constantine became the sole commander of the Roman Empire, he was the man that in 325, made the decree that the Christian faith would become recognized by the Roman imperial power of government. I spoke earlier of how he was supposed to have had a vision, seeing the sign of the cross in the sky, and judged that he had the favor of the God of the Christians.

 A MASS CONVERSION

There was mass conversion within the ranks of Constantine’s army, followed by baptism, after he made that decree. Imagine military men of various ranks all walking into the water to be baptized into this new faith. That is why Constantine was considered to be the sixth sage of Roman imperial rulership, which would put head number six on the beast. When Constantine became the sole commander, he did establish a system of imperial rulership, and though it was not like what had been tried under the five, but it was a restoration of peace and calmness under a stabilized government. The empire had already suffered such by the time he came to power, but once again, it was stabilized. I am saying Constantine, a carnal emperor of Rome, under a false pretense instigated by Satan, declared Christianity to be a religion that would no longer be persecuted by the empire. Catholics would not like to hear it, but I will say this, and I am not pointing my finger at any Catholic person, just their system of religion, It is a religion that is made up of a composition of ancient pagan tactics on the principles of New Testament teachings, which have been changed into a tradition. It disguises the point where the old pagan things leave off and the new blends in. Those pagans worshiped images. That is why they made them in different forms of statues. When the Christians came along and painted them on the ceilings of the Cathedrals and stood in awe looking at St. This and St. That, and make the sign of the cross, that is not Christianity, Apostolic Christianity was never like that. I am not saying all the people that lived in that era went to hell, because I know they did not. We have to understand, that when the world was held in darkness for a thousand years, under the sway of Roman Catholicism, God did not look upon the ignorance of the people and condemn them: He looked upon the sincerity of their hearts. With that in mind, Constantine was that sixth head that blended and brought the church into a courtship with the pagan, Roman imperial state. So from the third century, 325 on, Christianity ceased to be persecuted by the Romans. However after Constantine left the scene, against he Roman Empire plunged into political chaos, wars, upheavals, assassinations, unrest within the senate and all such like. Many modern histories will not break it down like that. This one I am reading from sure does. It gives you many times in brief detail some of the assassinations and things that really took place. Unrest and upheaval prevailed. During all the time that unrest was prevailing, Rome, being in supreme power, God was allowing the office of the pope to gradually rise in preeminence: Satan was causing the pope to take advantage of the opportunity that he saw being extended to him. He was using this in a political way to win confidence among his territories, basically in Europe. That is talking about Europe in this sense of the word, because here is where preeminence will begin to shine. While preeminence points to the power of the papacy, ignorance became the product of Catholic influence. Why? Because from the fourth century, through the hour of the Reformation, Europe was held in the clutches of ignorance. It is very strange that while Europe was groping its way through darkness, materialistically and spiritually, over in the Mohammad world, the Arab world, prosperity and enlightenment was flourishing. In the 12^th century, which was the last ear of the crusades from Europe, Baghdad was a metropolitan city of commerce and trade. First I will say, Mohammad did not condemn education. He called it enlightenment. Wherever the Islam religion went, it brought advanced stages of whatever they had learned. They had modern irrigation going on throughout the Arab world, when Europe was still stooped in darkness. When the Mohammad form of religion crossed the straits of Gibraltar and invaded southern Spain, they brought into Spain some of the technology they had learned in the Mohammedan world, while the rest of Europe staggered on in darkness. When we come from Constantine’s hour, Christianity was in complete darkness: The Bible had been laid aside. The Catholic Church condemned people for reading it. Because of this, Europe staggered in darkness like a drunk person, not having insight on anything. Nevertheless when we come to the time of the Reformation, God used this very thing to wound the head of the beast. Right now though, I want to show you how that head was established. Rome reeled and staggered as the power of the papacy was rising, and the emperor of Rome and the kings of all these territories was very weak and in total disorder. When we come to 800 A.D., which was Charlemagne’s hour, he was the seventh head, meaning the evolutionary stage of the decay of imperial politics and government had evolved seven major times, decreasing all the time. I hope you understand my illustration. From such an imperial power, here is the last form of what was once imperial power, (Charlemagne) but now it is over here, basically in the European area. This is where the caesars used to rule this vast domain from, but now the emperors in the Middle Ages, basically it is Europe itself. Charlemagne was the seventh head. Some people could question me, but I have to say this for the sake of those educated historians. When you read the 17^th chapter of Revelation, the angel is telling you how to interpret it. It is the 13^th chapter that shows you where it got its wound. It was necessary for the prophecy to be written in that fashion. Now watch, as you keep in mind, The caesars that used to be the imperial power, when that office began to weaken, the spirit from that went back into the pit it came up from. It is sort of like the devil doing a sleight of hand trick. He knew that there would be another man he would elevate, a man that would one day sit where the great caesars had sat. Charlemagne, the emperor, though a politician, was a man dedicated to Roman Catholicism of that hour. It tells you just how he loved the Catholic Church, and what he thought about it. With the point of the sword, his army went throughout Europe, all of the ten horns area, through villages, towns and cities, executing every person that refused to accept the Catholic faith and baptism. He was the man that married the church and state, after many years of courtship. He literally marries the church to the pagan state and demanded that the European society pay homage to it. This was the beginning of the laying of the foundation of what history later calls the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was not a product of politics. It was the product of ecclesiastical witchcraft. After Charlemagne’s hour in the eighty century, the political structure again began to be shattered. Nevertheless as time continued on for another hundred years, the devil had made sure that the office of the pope had truly played it all in a wise way, because each pope that followed in succession had less and less devotion to the way the Bible teaches, and he began to have more and more ambition to be recognized as a world leader, a man to be looked up to. In that one hundred years between Charlemagne and Otto the Great, you have the period of time when the beast that was and is not, applies, and he is the eighth and is of the seven. You simply must look at it from this standpoint, if you are going to understand how that spirit came out of the bottomless pit, waited its appointed hour when he saw to it that the office of the pope which was absolutely recognized by the European society, played its part in politics. Otto the Great was not looking for the pope to crown him king, like Charlemagne was crowned by the pope. Otto the Great was looking for the hour that he could literally bless the pope of that hour. That is why this history calls him the pope maker. Watch, the eighth, which is absolutely Otto the Great, you have got to look at the eighth as a transitional thing, because it did not put an eighth head on the beast. He is the man that turned the political scene from state to church, but it did not put another head on the beast. It was absolutely the devil’s way of causing Otto the Great, to be called the pope maker. He exercised his influence to elevate the supremacy of the pope. First the church was brought in for courtship with the state. It was still state over church until time reached the hour the church was married to the state, so to speak. This put the church on equal footing with the state. Then when you come to the eighth stage, this is the transitional stage. This is where the devil made sure the pope had power enough, power given to him by the devil himself, that because of the weakness of emperors his subjects would listen to him. That does not put eight heads on this beast. It is just the way the pope was used to take over the last decaying remains of the political government, so that it became church over state. That is why when we come to 1000 and something A.D. until 1520 when the Reformation began to break out, the seventh head in its final stage was church over state, instead of state over church as he had been. That is why the world, for the last five hundred years before the Reformation started, was plunged into utter chaos and more blood was shed by the power of the popes than had already been shed by the caesars when the Roman Empire, or territory was ruled by paganism. Eternity will show the blood of the innocent victims of that era. The popes and their means of execution was brutal. Therefore I have to remind Pat Robertson and his type, and I am not condemning you, but I have seen you on your TV programs, and you talk like wise men, but a lot of things you say show total ignorance. You refuse to touch history, the part that brings out of the closet the things that were done by popes of the past. You want the modern world of the 20^th century to believe that the Reformation somehow was an unjustifiable era when naive, ignorant men got out of line. Had the Reformation never occurred, you would not even have Television today. The new world was discovered precisely at the time the Reformation was ready to break forth. In that Dark Age period, it was church over state, cracking the whip over Europe. It is true her influence in the eastern countries had been cut off. There was no communication. Everything was in the west, because time is always moving that way.

WHY THE TEN HORNED BEAST IS SUCH A MYSTERY

Let us now turn back to the 13^th chapter of Revelation. When we did reach the 15^th century, God himself saw to it, that the time had come that light must again spring forth. However since the world in general had spent at least five hundred years from the birth of Christianity to 500 A.D., while the church gradually drifted into apostasy, it is reasonable to expect that God allowed approximately that length of time for society and humanity to come out of this long Dark Age struggle. When we read about this head that was wounded unto death, and was healed, I remind these modern preachers, You do not see that head on a New World Order. The New World Order is barely fifty years old, as it was stated by the United Nations. It has no such thing as a wounded head. Let us just read some of this 13^th chapter and refresh our memory on what we are dealing with. The bride saints must see this as it is. Revelation 13:1-9, “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, (This is the same beast Daniel spoke of in chapter 7, but he was shown only the ten horns and the other little horn, not the seven heads.) and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. (2) And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: (This description shows that this beast John saw incorporates all of that which was represented in the first three beasts of Daniel 7) and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. (3) And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: (That healing puts time all the way out to the end of this Age.) and all the world wondered after the beast. (4) And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him? (5) And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. (This is the time of the great tribulation, which is the last half of the seventieth week of Daniel.) (6) And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. (7) And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. (8) And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (9) If any man have an ear, let him hear.” I just do not see how anyone who knows anything at all about the scriptures can interpret these scriptures into a New World Order, no matter how much our politicians may talk about such a thing. Sure, I know it is a decoy designed by Satan, but you would expect that some of these men who have been dealing with Bible prophecy for years would at least know better than to fall for a trick like that. Looking into history, it all seems so clear. When God saw that the world was so stooped in ignorance, he began to allow men to raise up against that spirit that had brought it about and look what happened to Catholicism. Here came St. Francis. They called him the poor man of Assissi. Then there were others that followed later. All these were the fore runners of the Reformation. IT was God’s way of giving Roman Catholicism a chance to repent. It all had its effect, but none of those forerunners of the Reformation ever managed to wound the head of the beast. Huss, Swingley and those other men were all executed before Luther’s hour. When we come to 1520, right out of the very country that had been used to begin the rise of the power of the papacy, another man came forth to raise the sword of the Spirit against that old beast. The man God raised up was a Catholic man by the name of Martin Luther, who was a priest. He was not learned in all the wisdom of the world’s learning, but he had studied all the things the Catholic Church had available. In his final hours of trying his best to find something that would speak peace to his heart, he was climbing a staircase on hands and knees, to kiss the statue of the virgin Mary at the top of the steps. In every writing I have read, it said the toes of this image were almost worn away, from the thousands of lips that had kissed the through the centuries of time.