Revelation 17

The ruling world powers through history, culminating in the United States and the Powers that will Succeed it

The Late Great USA: Revealing the Seven Kings of Revelation 17

Revelation chapter 17, like every chapter of the Bible, witnesses to the great struggle between good and evil. One of the themes of this chapter is one we saw in Revelation 13, the evil of the church mingling with the state.

America’s epoch-making Constitutional creation involved what James Madison called the “experiment” of separating the church and state. In the whole of human history rulers had known only one formula: to combine the power of priest and prince, pope and president. Not paying your tithe would be punished equally to stealing from your neighbor. America, destined to be the “land of the free”, made an experimental and monumental decision for the government to let go of the reigns of religion. Instead of forcing its citizens into the strait-jacket of a state church, the model that had been followed in every other epoch of world history, it would grant them the “free exercise” of their religious faculties. It has proven to be one of the most profound governmental decisions in the history of the world. Religious expression in America has had a flowering and vitality unknown to European nations with a history of state churches.

It will be our purpose in examining Revelation 17 to continue with our quest to find the place of the United States in Bible prophecy. Once the prophecy has been analyzed it will be seen to dovetail with what we have seen already in Daniel 8 and Revelation 13.

The great harlot of this chapter is a symbol of God's church, gone astray. God uses the symbol of a harlot throughout the Bible to represent His errant people. See, for instance, Ezekiel 16: 35:

Now then, Jerusalem, you whore! Hear what the LORD is saying.

The beast, upon which the harlot rides, is the state. We have seen before that beasts represent nations. The description given by the angel who comes to John to help him understand this vision makes it plain that this conglomerate beast is waging war against God and His people. It appears that the seven heads of this beast represent seven succeeding earthly powers because the angel says of them that “five are fallen, one is, and one has not yet come.” (verse 10) This implies that one came and ruled, then fell away to be replaced by the next, and so on. Satan is called by Jesus “the prince of this world.” Until the age to come, when God’s rule will replace the rule of Satan, it is Satan who rules this world. He wrestled the Garden of Eden away from Adam and Eve, and he has not quit grappling since.

It is likely then that the seven heads of this beast indicate that Satan has had seven different earthly nation-states at seven successive periods of earth's history as his puppet rulers.

Thus we have a picture of God's church--those who should be the salt of the earth, convicting it of evil--in league with the world, the state, riding upon it. The church is going the broad way. She has no quarrels with the world. She is content to go along with the beast to perdition. Verse 7 says that the beast "carried her." Unpacking the cartoon metaphor that the Bible has chosen here, we are being told that the church is not in charge of her actions, not directing her own path. She is, instead, being “carried” by another power, indeed, a beast. She should instead be off the beast, separate and distant, finding her way through the guidance of God’s Spirit, dispensing warnings and offering a different path for the monster. The correction, counsel, and admonishment that the church owes to a sinful world she relinquishes to Satan in the person of the present ruling powers. Thus the church, instead of being the “light of the world” is being extinguished by the darkness of Satan and the "Kings of the earth" (verse 2).

The early Christian Church did not get its power from the Roman government. The New Testament does not reveal the need for the church and believers in the living God to make deals with presidents and kings of this earth. They need instead to bear witness to those same kings about a much better kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Jesus did this with the Roman procurator Pilate, Daniel did it with Babylon’s leader Nebuchadnezzar, and Paul did it with the Roman emperor Nero. God’s messengers here were not on the same team with the rulers to whom they witnessed.

The pages of church history unread by modern Christians hungry for earthly power, bear voluminous testimony about the evils of a heavily flirtatious relationship between the church and the state. The very foundations upon which true freedom is based, civil and religious liberty, are destroyed by the inevitable compulsion that arises in a "religious" state. If America had not the history of Roger Williams, and had not its beginnings on a Mayflower fleeing religious intolerance, and did not have an Establishment Clause leading off the Bill of Rights, the actions of the modern church, attempting to cuddle with the state, would not be so inappropriate.

The harlot is described as being clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned in gold and precious stones and pearls. She is rich, clothed with prosperity theology. The teaching goes like this: God wants you increased in worldly goods, just like Abraham was. This prosperity theology neglects one very important truth: we have one much greater than Abraham who says, "Follow me." And He was poor. Was He born in the Bethlehem Hilton?

The harlot in this chapter is clothed in purple, the color of kings. But the King of kings did not wear ostentatious purple in the days of His flesh, except when a purple robe was forced on Him by Roman soldiers. Not content with His example of humility, the modern church wants this world's finery, and wants royalty without paying the kingly price. She wants to be clothed with worldly fashion, rather than with the pure, spotless wedding garment woven for her in the purity and courage of the Savior's life. Not content to be dressed in the promises of God by which one becomes a partaker of the divine nature, she wants the purple dress and precious stones and pearls now. But these exotic outer garments are but showy and quick substitutes for the pearl of great price and the polished jewel of character which could be hers by patience and faith.

Verse 9 offers a challenge to the Bible student:

"But here is the clue for those who can interpret it."

Perk up. Put on your thinking cap. Jesus is going to reveal something to the wise: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are seven kings. The woman sits on seven mountains. History tells us that Rome is a city built on seven hills, and that on those hills sits one of the world’s major ecclesiastical institutions. Thinking of the Inquisition, Pope Innocent’s brutal crusade against the godly Albigensians, brutalities such as the massacre of St. Bartholemew's, the Counter-Reformation and the stories of which Foxe's Book Of Martyrs is replete, would it not be fair to say of this power, at least in its past, that it was "drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses' of Jesus?" (Rev. 17:6)

Thus one visible, large church seems especially singled out here. She is called the “Mother,” a term this institution has used to describe itself. But a mother has children. What has she taught her children, the Protestant churches? She has refused to exercise discipline. The inhabitants of the earth have been "made drunk with the wine of her fornication." (17:2) She has nurtured them the wrong way. They have observed how this church, professing great holiness, divine insight, and special connection with heaven, has been indulging the same lusts--greed, sexual perversion and sexual abuse, striving for power, pride--that the world indulges. So what's the difference? But there is more to the revelation before us than just these seven Roman mountains. The seven heads are also seven kings. Here is the deeper key.

The bulk of the biblical history of God's people, Old Testament and New, is that they have, except at rare times, gone astray. They have played the harlot and gone seeking for other lovers than God Himself. It is only natural to expect dull and fallen humans to be attracted to images rather than to a God they cannot see. In the Bible’s record from Eden to Laodicea the story is the same. Isaiah scolds the Jews and Paul scolds the Corinthians. The fallen, guilt-laden nature inherited from Adam has always kept God's people from fully embracing their reconciliation to divine favor. The ways of the nations have always been overpowering. The seven different heads of the beast are chronologically successive powers that have run this earth, directed at first by God, but, in the end, by Satan. Each one of these powers finally fell due to its failure to fulfill God's plans.

Only the second Adam, the Lord Jesus, fully fulfilled God’s plans. He ruled the wind and the sea and every power of the enemy, and His own flesh. He was perfect, undefiled, without sin, unscathed with evil in His victorious life over Satan. He won the title deed for the new earth, which Adam had sacrificed through disobedience, with the humility of His crucifixion. He purchased what had been lost. He repossessed Eden. He won, with sweat and blood and tears the right to be King of kings and Lord of lords in the age to come. And in the selflessness which characterizes who He is, He gives back all that He has dearly bought to those for whom He died! This is the gospel that forms the cornerstone of the Christian faith. The virtues of One stand in the place of the vices of all.

"…This calls for wisdom and understanding. The seven heads are … seven kings: five of them have fallen, one still rules, and the other one has not yet come; when he comes, he must rule only a little while.” (Rev 17:9-10)

Let us follow through the Bible the outworking of these seven successive kingdoms, five of whom have fallen, one which is, and another which is to come. The first one here is a preface to the seven, because the Bible indicates that it reigned before them.

DEATH.

Paul writes in Romans 5 that "death reigned from Adam to Moses." Death reigned on this earth. It was king. God had, in this period, entrusted the stewardship of His truths to individuals: Adam, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham.[i] He had specially chosen no nation at that time. Because of man's tremendous misuse of his free will and very poor stewardship of divine truth the voice of God through men was rare and nearly obliterated. Death reigned. Satan had corralled even the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob so that they were a slave people to the idolatrous Egyptians. The truths of God were but a faint whisper in a world given up to the same man-made religious and spiritual lies that had brought a flood upon their forefathers. But a faithful seed, a daughter of Zion in truth, Jochebed, prayed for her child earnestly. God heard and she providentially had occasion to teach and direct his development. The result was that one young man stood as a sturdy oak for the true and living God.

Moses believed in the living God against all the allurements of the Egyptian sophistries. He counted the reproach of Christ a small price to pay in comparison with the pleasure of sin for a season. A faithful mother's work was to cause a great change in the history of the world. Death reigned from Adam to Moses because death reigns where law and divine justice are wanting. But now God is going to move into a new plan, a new dispensation of His eternal grace. He is going to choose an entire nation to make them repositories of His law, and objects of His power before the eyes of the world. He is going to make them His witnesses. They will be a peculiar people whose destiny is to be the crown of the world. They will obtain as a people what Adam had lost. They will exercise dominion of the earth, in a way that will bring prosperity to them and their neighbors and bring glory to God. God's rules, His laws, His methods will display their superiority through man's faithfulness.

Why did Paul not write that “Death reigned from Adam until now?” Certainly that would be true. Death will always “reign” until death is done away in the age to come. But Paul tells us that death was only king from Adam to Moses. What happened with Moses, which offered the world an opportunity to get out from underneath the reign of death? It was that God was going to give His law to a nation. A knowledge of sin, Paul tells us, would be given to those who had God’s law. Once they got that knowledge it would help them to stop sinning. Once they stopped sinning death would no longer reign over them. This formula may seem simplistic, but it is really the only way to explain Paul’s words that “death reigned from Adam to Moses” (and not “Adam until now.”)

1. ISRAEL.

So Israel is chosen by God. Death had been King, but now God gives rulership of the earth to Israel. Israel is the first king. Israel is given God’s law, and is given the opportunity to use the power of people united, the power of government, to appropriate this law into a citizenry that can be an embodiment of what God wants, a people that live out who He is. It is surely God’s intent that Israel be a “holy nation.” God will be now with Israel as a nation as He had been with Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as individuals. God’s plan is making a quantum shift with Moses, and the people of Israel with whom he was entrusted.

Under Joshua the Promised Land is taken. The people fluctuate in faithfulness under the judges, but with the leadership of Samuel and then the example of David, the way is prepared for Solomon to lead one of the most glorious kingdoms the world has ever seen. The glory of Israel under His reign, though largely hidden from the world's archaeologists and historians was every bit as prosperous as the Bible indicates. Israel was by far the wealthiest and wisest nation on the face of the earth, to whom all paid tribute.[ii] This time in Israel's history is a type or symbol of the glorious reign of the Lord Jesus in the age to come. When Solomon's temple, the most beautiful of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was built, God promised that His name would be there forever. Four centuries later the temple was destroyed mercilessly by the Babylonians. Had God forgotten His promise? Where was the God of Israel when the temple of Israel was demolished? Here is where the Revelation of Revelation 17 comes in:

"Five are fallen."

It was not God's purpose for the first nation He chose on this earth, Israel, to fall. His intention was for it to prosper, fill the whole earth with knowledge of His glory, and bring on the consummation of all things. But Satan entered in. Satan blotted out the divine purposes from the minds of God's professed people. Slowly the character of Satan worked its way into the leadership and populace of Israel. Where Satan is not resisted, God works no miracle, because it is His intention that the strength of His government be founded on free will. He will gently persuade and reason, but He will not force. He sends prophets with warnings that His people may turn from their wrongdoing by their own choice.

God sent Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah to warn the backsliding Judahites and Israelites before the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. But when God had done everything that He could within the "limits" of His holiness and the people still would not turn, the people were left to themselves (and thus Satan) by their own choice. Isn't this what happened to Saul?

The Spirit of the LORD had left Saul, and an evil spirit…was terrifying him. (1Sa 16:14)

Was not this what happened to Judas?

Right then Satan took control of Judas. Jesus said, "Judas, go quickly and do what you have to do." (John 13:27)

Your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How have the mighty fallen!

God was forced to withdraw from Israel for the people would not have Him. This was symbolized by the removal of the Shekinah, the token of God's glory and presence. Israel had failed to serve the divine purposes. As Amos had reasoned with the people,

"How can two walk together except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3)

For individuals there was the hope of the chastening correction of Assyria and Babylon, but the nation deserted God and was deserted of Him. The prophet Ezekiel declared:

"Thus says the Lord God: Remove the diadem, and take off the crown;..." (Ezekiel 21:26)

Here the Lord uses the metaphor of a “crown” to indicate that He is about to take world rulership from Israel. Since she is no longer displaying the divine graces, she is in no position to be guiding and inspiring other nations.

The crown removed from Israel passed successively to the kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.

Here is the crown of Israel being taken away. Number one has fallen.

"Cut off your crown and cast it away...for the Lord rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath." (Jeremiah 7:29)

2. BABYLON.

The word of God makes quite plain to whom the crown which Israel sacrificed was given. At Jeremiah 7:26, an oracle given in the year 609 B.C., in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the Lord says,

"And NOW I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnessar King of Babylon, my servant..."

Just as David was anointed as king of Israel before he actually became king, God here calls Nebuchadnezzar “King of Babylon” even though he had not yet been crowned as king. God dates the time He says He is giving “all these lands” into Babylon’s control. This date corroborates with a prophecy from Jeremiah about the 70 years of Babylonian captivity:

This whole land will be ruined and become a wasteland. These nations will serve the king of Babylon for 70 years. When the 70 years are over, I will punish the king of Babylon. (Jer 25:11-12)

Jeremiah writes that after serving the King of Babylon for 70 years, the Jews would see the King of Babylon punished. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon, was killed in 539 B.C. as recorded in Daniel 5. This is the chapter with the remarkable story of the handwriting which appears on the wall. Daniel interprets the famous writing by telling the king, just before he is killed, that he has been weighed in the balance and been found wanting. His kingdom will be divided to the Medes and Persians. This was exactly 70 years from the time that God gave Babylon Israel's forfeited crown.

Table 1. The 70 Year Prophecy of Jeremiah 25: 11-12

609 B.C. ← 70 years → 539 B.C.

Beginning of the 70 year prophecy: End of the 70 year prophecy

God gives Babylon the land. King of Babylon “punished”

God's purpose for Babylon, now that she had received the crown of rulership, was the same as it had been for Israel. God wanted a nation to appropriate and then spread knowledge of His glory to all the earth. God worked vigorously for the fulfillment of His own purposes in Babylon's affairs just as He works to fulfill His plan for every individual. God brought Daniel to the court of Babylon soon after the “crown” was transferred, so that the "cream of the crop" of Judah would have advantages in the new earthly capital for God's work, and that they might prepare the way for the Jews who were yet to be exiled to Babylon. Daniel's personal witness to the heathen king, which was instrumental in his conversion (Dan. 4:37), stands as a profound testimony, even to us two millennia later, as a guideline for personal evangelism.

It is important to note here that Nebuchadnezzar was soundly converted at about the same time the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was totally reprobate:

But Zedekiah became so stubborn and so impossible to deal with that he refused to turn back to the LORD God of Israel. (2 Chronicles 36:13)

This is mentioned here because the idea that Israel is God’s “chosen nation” no matter what happens is an idea so widespread in evangelical circles that the idea that God’s plans for Israel were now being carried by a different world power --a “heathen” one at that-- would be to them shocking and heretical. To get over the shock, they should think of Jesus’ parable of the “good Samaritan[iii],” and His statement that Elijah was sent to none of the widows in Israel in his day[iv]. Jesus was plainly teaching that the “heathen” were more righteous than His professed people.

God wanted Daniel in Babylon so he could prepare the way for his people who would come later, and because Babylon was the “new hope” for the human race. Nebuchadnezzar, who controlled the power of the nation, was converted. But Babylon squandered her God-given blessings and fell as had Israel. Here is number two of the "five are fallen." The figures of sin in Babylon had reached their heaven-set limit and the handwriting went on the wall, as it will soon in America.

3. MEDO-PERSIA.

The Bible is equally plain to whom the crown passed next. First, Daniel tells the king of Babylon in Daniel 5 that his kingdom will be given to Medo-Persia. Daniel’s interpretation of the handwriting on the wall states:

"Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians." (Dan. 5:28)

Furthermore, Ezra 1:2 reads:

"Thus says Cyrus, King of Persia, 'The Lord, the God of Heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth...'"

Though initially directed by the wise leadership of Cyrus, the Persians, like the Israelites and Babylonians, fell. The crown passed from this third power to the fourth, Greece.

4. GREECE.

The leopard beast in Daniel's dream recorded in Daniel 7:6 has been traditionally interpreted by Jewish and Christian expositors as Greece. The leopard with four wings represents Alexander the Great's lightning-like charges: the four heads represent the eventual division of this kingdom into four parts, one each to Alexander's leading generals. This traditional interpretation certainly represents an apotelesmatic fulfillment of Daniel 7. That is, the fulfillment of Daniel 7 in Alexander’s time is a foreshadowing, a rehearsal, for how it will be fulfilled in its final and ultimate fulfillment. In that final fulfillment of the text of Daniel 7, the leopard represents modern third world countries in Africa, India, and China.

It is written of the leopard beast:

"And dominion was given to it." (Daniel 7:6)

This Scripture thus points not only to Greece as the fourth power in this sequence, but also the eighth, as we will find out below, when Satan impersonates Christ and gets the world to follow him. This "dominion" is the dominion we have been tracing from the Bible record. Jesus refers in Luke 21 to the "times of the nations." This is a reference to the times over which God has given certain nations the responsibility of “crown-rulership” of this planet according to His laws and for His purposes. Greece was the fourth such national power. It too fell, though obviously many of the cultural effects of Greece are still all around us.

Which power succeeded Greece as the power with potential to fulfill God's purposes to reach the world? Who was God's "chosen nation" after Greece?

5. ROME.

Rome’s General Paulus utterly defeated Greece in 168 B.C., beginning the rise to unequaled prominence enjoyed by the Roman Empire. Rome used its power to build an empire like none before her, but it did not last forever. Rome crucified the Lord of glory, literally and figuratively. Rome’s decline and fall is proverbial. Except for cultural and calendric vestiges Rome is gone, her glory fallen. There is no more laughter in her coliseum. The Christians eaten by her lions are awaiting their change to eternal life at the Lord's return. The Bible quietly yields its verdict:

Five are fallen. (Rev. 17:10)

Now the prophecy reads "one is." God has a “crown power” on earth now, just as surely as God has had one on earth in every age of the past. This statement "one is" is a trumpet call to the present hour. It shows that before the Revelation could ever be fulfilled in its fullness, the fifth power would have to be reached in time, and fallen. While there is Biblical indication that the first disciples, including Paul, expected the return of the Lord in their day, they lived at the time of the fifth power, Rome. It had not yet fallen.[v] The apostle John, who was given the Revelation by Jesus in the first century A.D., was shown things which were to take place "after those things." (Rev. 1:19) He was thus taken ahead in time to the present. The vision given John in Revelation 17 is thus one in which John is "alive" now. This interpretation makes sense of the first verse of the book of Revelation which says that these things "must shortly take place." (Rev. 1:1)

That is, it has been two thousand years since John wrote that word “shortly.” Two thousand years cannot, from the perspective of a human life of 70 years, be considered a “short” time. But we see in the Revelation that John was brought forward in time to be shown things by God. If he was transported ahead to the present, then when he writes about things that “must shortly take place”, he is writing about things that are not two thousand years away, but just before us.

"One is." Who is this one?

6. THE PAPACY.

Remember that the seven heads are seven mountains. The Roman Catholic papacy arose from the ashes of the fall of the Roman Empire. It cannot be denied that the greatest earthly power in the Middle Ages was invested in the Papacy. The potential existed (and exists) in her to fulfill God's purpose of filling the earth with knowledge of His glory, His mercy toward each repentant believer in Jesus Christ. But as with all man-made religion, greed, lust, power-hunger, and jealousy have entered in. The same things which so corrupted the other crown powers have corrupted the Papacy. Indulgences, forgiveness through human priests, Mary-worship, and the ceremonial power of Roman Catholicism have clouded the pearl of great price, the central doctrine of the Christian faith, justification by faith in Christ Jesus. True human peace, pardon, and freedom are often obfuscated by all the Roman Catholic religious paraphernalia. Religion without the liberating Spirit of God is nothing but spiritual bondage.

It must be said here that the Scripture is speaking in collective terms. When Babylon fell, there were certainly righteous people in Babylon such as the prophet Daniel. It is certain that that there are individual Catholic believers who are in Christ and right with God. But any honest Catholic who has studied history knows that some of the darker moments in the Catholic annals are not the work of God. The Inquisition, the ruthless treatment of natives in Latin America by the conquistadors, and forced conversions to the Church are not God’s way of operating, any more than bullying Iraq and Iran is the way of Jesus.

Some Bible scholars have said that the seven messages of the second and third chapters of Revelation are chronologically symbolic of the seven church-ages since Christ rose from the dead. If so, then the Thyatiran message of Revelation would be analogous to the Papal church of the Middle Ages. There we read Jesus' words to her:

I gave her time to repent; and she does not want to repent of her immorality. (Rev. 2:18-29)

This indicates that Jesus is still ready to use the Papacy to His purposes, since the time of the "one is" is still the present hour. Jesus is giving her time to repent. But she is going on as if she is on the right program, as if the program of the church is the program of heaven: but it is not. The Pope labors to bring an international, carnal peace to a torn world, a peace which can ultimately be only outward. In so doing he masks and denies the work of the True Prince of Peace, who, in letting His own body be torn, has already brought peace to the whole world. Jesus said that He did not come to bring outward peace, but a sword; a sword of truth that will cut away inner turmoil and guilt and bring inner peace. This comes not by leaders of state shaking hands but by humble citizens of Heaven bowing before God. No, the crown cannot remain with a power that has followed the ways of the world more than the ways of God. To whom will the crown be passed?

"And the other is not yet come."

Who is this other that is soon to come? Revelation Chapter 13 describes two beasts. The first, as we have seen, with lion-bear-leopard features, is a conglomerate picture of the present world's power structure. The leopard body represents the increasing influence of the third world, especially Africa, India, and Asia. The legs of a bear symboliize the power of communism. The mouth of the lion is a symbol of the voice of the world's chief primate--the Pope. Thus we see represented the entire Eastern hemisphere through the combination of communism, Catholicism, the third world. But what of the West?

The second beast of Revelation 13 rounds out the world's power picture. The second beast, as we have seen, is described as having two horns "like a lamb," yet speaking as a dragon. Here is the United States of America. Since John did not name this two-horned beast, but did name the lion, leopard, and bear, it is probable the beast which he saw was unknown to him. Some have suggested this beast was a bison. The buffalo had two small horns, and yet could be ferocious when making a mad charge. The buffalo is also native to North America, and would thus be an apt symbol for the United States. The two horns must symbolize two great strengths of U.S. because a horn is a consistent Biblical symbol for power of some kind. What are the two great powers or strengths of the U.S.?

One possibility is that they represent Canada and the United States, two national powers with strong Christian roots. Another possibility is that represent two great American strengths.

The famous French observer De Tocqueville, when he came to America attempting to chronicle the American experience, claimed that a most distinguishing feature was the righteousness proclaimed from American pulpits. Without question, America's Protestantism, her position as recipient and carrier of the Reformation heritage, is a cornerstone of her strength. It is only in the recent past that some kind of nameless pluralism has attempted to blur the true Protestant roots of American development. America's moral outlook, her commitment to the Calvinist habits of hard work and thrift, her implicit and explicit faith in the God of the Bible, are part of the Protestantism that built the strongest country in the history of the world. John describes these horns as being "like a lamb." A lamb is a Biblical symbol for Christ and thus this short expression prophesies a "Christ-like" or "Christian" nation.

America's second pillar of strength, or "horn," is undoubtedly her epochal constitutional government with its written commitment to protect the sanctity of the individual conscience by the full power of the national government. This was a grand and unique advance in mankind's search for political freedom. For the first time in world history no Pope was to regulate faith, no Caesar was to punish heresy, no monarch, royalty, king or state was to dictate morality. There was to be

"No religious test...required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution.)

The congress was forever prohibited from establishing any religion or "prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" (Amendment 1 of the U.S. Constitution).

Revelation 13 goes on to describe this two-horned beast in verses 12-17. Verse 14 indicates that the U.S. will make an "image to the beast." Here is a sad prophecy. The nation which has protected individual liberties like no other in history's record will mimic the beast. That is, the U.S. will repudiate her heritage as defender of the individual conscience and instead use governmental power to coerce outward religious conformity. The crescendoing echoes of this new change can be heard in the religious right's increasing vociferousness in the political forum, the moralistic and condemnatory tone of the anti-abortion and prayer amendment camps, and the action on the part of Congress in appointing an ambassador to the Vatican, the only religious power so honored by American diplomacy.

What can it mean that the U.S. will make an “image to the beast?” One way would be by enjoining increasing religious compulsion and increasingly removing and denying the liberties that have been guaranteed in the constitution of the U.S. For the beasts which the U.S. could "image"—whether Roman, Babylonian, or Papal—all are characterized by various species of church/state combinations. This inevitably leads to the persecution of the nonconforming minority, no matter how God-fearing they may be. And the ultimate "image of the beast" the U.S. could create, an " image" shuddering to contemplate, an "image" seemingly impossible to arise in this land of liberty, is one in which there is a single, visible, religious head. A protestant figure or body which takes on the ecclesiastical authority of a "Pope". An image looks like that of which it is a reflection. The Babylonian, Papal, and Roman systems all operated with a single, powerful, religious center.

The stage seems to be setting up for the "image to the beast." The events of September 11 provide a case study in how this image could be set up. Polls show that a large number of Americans are willing to give up some of their rights in exchange for increased security. If there are other terrorist attacks on American soil, the historic American protections of civil and religious liberties will surely become a relic from the past.

The September 11 attacks demonstrated that the country is willing to gravitate in a conservative direction, ready to rally around a new “patriotic” center with a fuzzy national religiosity, and forget about the fact that true American patriotism comes from energizing and protecting civil and religious freedoms.

The prophecy gives an interesting detail in that it says, in verse 14, that this new “image” power performs “in the sight of the beast.” Babylon was not contemporary with Greece, nor was Rome contemporary with Israel. The five fallen powers arose separately in time. That will not be true for the final powers. There will be a “double crown,” with two beasts existing simultaneously, in each others presence. To speak plainly, the image power, based in traditionally protestant America, will be powerfully functioning at the same time as the "beast," the papal-centered world system.

7. PAPAL-U.S.

These two powers, the Papal beast and the protestant false prophet are mentioned, along with the devil, as the main coalition against God in the battle of Armageddon. (Rev.16:13) Traditional views of Bible prophecy make Russia the leading nation in an axis-of-evil which attacks Israel. There is a great likelihood that Arab nations will someday launch a massive strike on Israel. But the two sides in the battle of Armageddon are God and Satan, not Russia/Arabs and Israel. Armageddon is not a battle of one axis of earthly nations pitted against another. The whole world will be outwardly united, not divided by war, under the Antichrist. The united world is Satan's side. The true believers who will be persecuted make up God's side. A historical type of Armageddon would be Nazi Germany with Hitler as the antichrist, and the Jews as the persecuted believers. It will probably take a limited nuclear exchange, a sort of "false Armageddon" for the world to get to the point where it will unite politically. It is thus the work of apostate Protestantism acting on the government of the U.S. that fulfills the prophetic words of Revelation 13:16, 17:

He forces everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, the name, or the number of the beast.

The advance notice of this totally regulated economy, in which no one can buy or sell without the proper mark, is discernable in the universal product code stamped on goods sold in America, the sophisticated computer technology that the government already daily utilizes, and the increasingly paperless utilization of money through electronic funds transfer.

As hard as it may be to believe it now, the Bible record warns that this apostate power, this "image of the beast," will order anyone who will not worship the "image" "to be killed." (Rev. 13:15) This fits the record of all the other crown powers. Every one of them engineered a death decree of some kind upon innocent people of God. Israel ordered Jeremiah killed, Babylon ordered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be thrown in the fire, Medo-Persia sought Daniel's death in the lion's den. Greece under Antiochus committed terrible atrocities, Rome put the Prince of Glory Himself on the cross, and the Papacy has exterminated untold thousands for heresy. If the indications of the exposition in this little book are correct, American Protestantism, or some governmental configuration inaugurated by the U.S. will be next in this lineup. While God’s government is built and founded on free choice, the free choice of Jesus to willingly die for a fallen race, and the willingness of believers to offer themselves in service to Him, the work of the kingdom of darkness is built on coercion and manipulation, the opposite of free choice. Satan’s ultimate argument against free choice is murder, death. Jesus was crucified because He could not be forced to deny His father. And so it will be with earth’s final elect. The only way that Satan will be able to stop their testimony is by a death decree. Such a possibility is unthinkable in current America. But the September 11 phenomenon has spawned a new equation: Americans are willing to grant increasing penalties and restrictions of freedom in response to increasing acts of terrorism.

And a death decree is also more likely in an America that has not only suffered from increased terrorist attacks, but also has suffered from declining economic health. More severe decrees are issued by more sorely depressed nations.

Thus this interpretation of this “image” beast fits in with the picture of the U.S. and its future painted in the previous chapters of this work. It is certainly not a future Americans like to think about. We take pride in being the greatest country in the history of the world. We are thankful for the bounty and material abundance which we enjoy.

But Americans must look more soberly at the words of Henry Kissinger who once said that as a diplomat he had to work for world peace, but as a historian he had to realize it would never come. Egypt ruled the world, and declined. Assyria fell, Babylon fell, Persia fell, Rome fell, the British Empire declined…why does anyone think that history will treat America better? Even without the exposition here it is plain that American culture has left the upright Protestant values which once were an honored guiding national star, and replaced them with a new age potion of postmodern, post-Christian valueless relativism which can never anchor a society. The moral quotient of America is probably at an all time low. Rome was once a valiant republic, but as it increased in wealth and power, opulence, sloth and various forms of depravity became norms. Rome fell. If, as almost all historians affirm, history repeats itself, Americans had better awaken to the signs of the times.

When this persecuting power does appear, in whatever form it may take, it will "continue a short space," for so Revelation 17:10 tells us. This Protestant/Papal duo will not be the "crown" power for long. There will be no 500 year reign as with Israel or Rome. No, with modern technology and telecommunications these final events will be rapid ones. Who will replace this duo who reigns for a short time? Here is what the Bible says:

The beast who was, and now is not, is an eighth king, He belongs to the seven, and is going to his destruction.
(Revelation 17:11)

8. SATAN.

Here is a prophecy of Satan appearing as a powerful world leader; as the Antichrist, probably claiming to be Christ Himself. He will receive world-wide homage. Satan is the only possible power who could "belong to the seven" because he has been alive at the same time that all the crown powers have been around. When Israel was rebelling from God, he was there. When Nebuchadnezzar wanted to kill Shadrach, Mechach and Abednego, and when Romans were throwing Christians to the lions he was certainly there.

The seventh crown power, the one which combines the beast and the image to the beast, the one which involves the U.S. as part of a conglomerate beast, collapses. Something causes its legitimacy, power and control to end after a short period.

Satan will walk into the power vacuum. It may be that he causes the fall of the seventh power by proclaiming something better, something more spectacular, something more miraculous. The world will be ripe for Satan's master delusion, when he appears as a charismatic, black messiah, rousing the world, especially the third world, to his allegiance. He will claim to be Christ returned.

There are Islamic prophecies about the return of Christ, and there are obviously prophecies in the Bible and throughout the Christian world about the return of Christ. There will be world wide excitement, world wide expectation. Satan will finally have what he has been fighting for since Eden. He will have control of planet earth; he will be its outward ruler. At least it will look that way.

He tried to get Jesus to bow down to him when Jesus was fasting in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry. But Jesus would not bite on his sophistry the way the world will when Satan becomes the eighth world ruler. There will be some who will not be deceived. They will have followed Jesus and they will see the counterfeit. They have read the Bible’s warning that

…Satan himself is transformed into the angel of light. (2Co 11:14)

They will know he has planned this master deception for the world ever since he failed in his wilderness temptation of Jesus:

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (9) And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (10) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matthew 4:8-10)

Satan offered to Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. He acted as if they were his. He is incapable of shedding his deceiving nature. They were not his to give, but by his lie to Jesus he shows his desire is to own and control them. Jesus was not deceived, but obviously most of the people of the world will be when Satan impersonates Christ. Jesus Himself predicted that this delusion would be powerful:

For there shall arise false Christs… and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Matthew 24:24)

In this deception Satan will likely be black because there are many worldwide prophecies about the returned Messiah being black, and because we read earlier in Daniel 7 that “dominion” was given to the leopard beast.[vi] That “dominion” is the dominion of world leadership. The leopard symbolizes the third world which is largely made up of people of color. But this master deception of Satan is, for now, in the future. It comes after the fall of the U.S.

While bombing Iraq may feel like some kind of just recompense for the terrorism of September 11, it is a path whose ultimate fruit will lead to more, not less, terrorism. And so with the bombing of Iran. The insolence of the Iranian leaders toward Israel and the United States may lead some to feel bombing Iran is justified, but if the exposition in this book is correct, it will be one of the final events that help usher in the economic collapse of the U.S. It is a step which should not be taken lightly and probably not taken at all.

9. JESUS.

We have looked at Revelation 17’s listing of the eight world rulers. There is a teaching in the Hebrew Talmud that there will be nine world rulers. Who does the Talmud say the ninth will be? The Messiah! The eighth and false Messiah Satan, impersonating the Lord, will be replaced by the true and rightful heir of the throne of this Planet!

"Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus."

There are several more chapters of Daniel to look at so that we might gain a more complete view of the Bible’s prophetic revelations for America. In the final two chapters we will be studying, Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, we will get a closer look at the structure of the book of Daniel, and continue with our inspection of the place of the United States in Bible prophecy.