The Revived Roman Empire

RV165-02

The Antichrist

In Daniel 9:26, we read about this man: "After 62 weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing." That refers to Palm Sunday, when Jesus Christ was finally rejected by the Jewish people: "And the people of the prince who is to come;" that is, the gentile Romans, who were in charge of the world at that time: "The people of the prince (who is the antichrist) who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. That's exactly what happened in 70 A.D. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. The prince, who is to come as the antichrist, is descended from this group of nations and from this people; that is, he is a gentile: "And his end will come with a flood," and so on.

Also in Daniel 11:36, we have the suggestion that he might be Jewish: "And the king (that is, the antichrist) will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every God, and will speak monstrous things against the God of gods (against the true God). And he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done." He has three-and-a-half years to do his thing, and God will give him the time.

Then verse 37 says, "And he will show no regard for the gods of his father's." He will show no regard for the past pagan gods that were worshiped by Rome. Then it makes the statement: "Or for the desire of women." In the Old Testament Scriptures, "the desire of women" was an expression that referred to the desire of every Jewish woman to possibly be the mother of the Savior Messiah. It was the desire of every Jewish woman that God might grace her with this privilege of being the woman who bears the Savior. The antichrist is going to have no use for the desire of women; that is, the Savior Jesus Christ: "Nor will he show regard for any other god, for he will magnify himself above them all." So, he definitely is a gentile, but possibly with some Jewish background as well.

It is increasingly becoming clear that the business of ancient ancestry can be very tricky. It seems increasingly established now that Adolf Hitler's father was half-Jewish, and that Adolf Hitler became aware of that. As soon as he became chancellor of Germany, and now had full authority to do things, he immediately ordered that his father's home be totally burned, destroyed, and simply swept away. This was suspiciously like he didn't want any possible people making investigations of his background of parental homes to find something that indicated a Jewish background. That would have been something.

So, in any case, this great leader, the antichrist, comes on the scene, and he is seen arising basically from gentile nations, possibly with some Jewish background. John sees the antichrist portrayed as a seven-headed animal with ten horns, wearing a crown, and inscribed with words of blasphemy expressing contempt, as the result of that, for God.

This might look something like this, if you wanted to put it together as an artist's conception. You would have a strange animal with the seven heads, and with horns attached to him in some way. On each horn was an imperial crown, because these horns represent kings (rulers), and names of blasphemy upon them. It might also possibly be that the main appearance of the beast is going to be that of a leopard's body. But John, as he looks more closely, recognizes something strange. The leopard has got bears' feet. And there is something that is even more strange: He notices that each head ends up in a mouth that looks like the mouth of a lion. Also, on each head is the word of blasphemy, and on one of these heads is the seven horns with the imperial crowns on them. This total animal, as we shall see, represents the Roman Empire, and particularly the Roman Empire in its final state, where it is the seven-horn (or the seven-nation) confederacy.

The Roman Empire inherited the qualities of the previous three world empires. They were represented here by: the leopard, which represented Greece; the bear's feet represented Medo-Persia; and, the mouth of the lion represented Babylon. We found in the book of Daniel that those animals represented this kingdom that was to come.

Five of these seven heads represent past empires; one (number six) existed in John's day as the Roman Empire; and, the seventh was of an empire structure which was yet to come in the future. The beast empire that John sees possesses, in some degree, as we said, the qualities of the previous empires. The ten horns represent the future form: the seventh-head empire.

We are told in Revelation 16:12 that these horns represent kings who reigned at the same time. So, they are political rulers who are in office. The ten horns symbolize the seventh head form of the world empire of the beast as a ten-kingdom confederacy. It is a latter day form, really, of the Roman Empire, which will come into existence in this form at the beginning of the tribulation. For three-and-a-half years, the antichrist, ruling over this coalition of ten kings, will be ruling over only that Mediterranean coalition – basically European nations.

The United States in the End Times

Furthermore, the United States now has placed itself under the direct judgment of God because of the enormous number of babies which have been aborted. The Bible makes it very clear what happens when you murder human beings on a wholesale scale, as has been done now in this country. We are up into the millions. I suppose that it is approaching 20 million now. 171 babies are aborted every hour. It has now soaked this land, as the Bible says, "With innocent blood." And God has always historically destroyed a nation which deliberately, without restraint, sheds innocent blood.

There are other reasons that the United States will probably go down. With the Christians gone, you also have the people gone who are the highest quality of integrity in financial matters. So, the United States very rapidly goes down the hill.

I was amazed to hear this past week that Japan is no longer fearful of the United States economically, because the United States is no longer Japan's primary largest trading partner. The United States has been replaced by Asia. So, the Japanese increasingly don't need the United States. Come New Year's Day, 1993, when everything shifts in Europe to the United States of Europe, they will have one currency, and now one government. There will be no more borders to restrain crossing. No more passports will be needed. Everything switches gear on that one day. That European confederate, and its associated nations, will become the largest military, economic, and business bloc in the world. The United States businesses are scurrying to try to get a foothold in Europe now, because they will not be permitted to enter that trading bloc once it is established.

The Revived Roman Empire

After the rapture of the church, Satan brings this man, the antichrist, to prominence. We're told about him in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8, where the apostle Paul gives some insight (a little preview) of the nature of this man: "And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time, he may be revealed." Paul says, "You know that something is restraining the evil qualities of the antichrist, and of those who now exist who are like what the antichrist will be. Evil will be his primary characteristic. Evil will be his name. But he is restrained. That evil is restrained to this day."

Verse 7 says, "The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way." So, Paul said to the Thessalonians, "You know that the world in which you live is a very evil place. It is a place in which evil is promoted by Satan through human beings. There is a man (that he has taught them about), the antichrist, who is going to come who will be the epitome of evil." But he says, "That man cannot come until the restrainer of evil has been removed." And that restrainer of evil is God the Holy Spirit. When will God the Holy Spirit be removed from His restraining work in human society? At the rapture of the church. The Spirit of God indwells the believers and indwells the church. When body of Christ rises to meet the Lord in the air, God the Holy Spirit, who has been personally present here on this earth, will continue in His presence, but He will not continue in His actual presence. He will leave with the church. Then there won't be anything or anyone to restrain the evil of the antichrist.

2 Thessalonians 2:8 says, "And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth (that is, when Jesus comes at His Second Coming), and bring to an end by the appearance of this coming." So, after the rapture of the church, Satan brings to prominence the antichrist. He gives the antichrist political authority over a ten-nation confederacy, which in time will dominate the whole world. Satan actually gives his power to the antichrist, and he gives him the authority to use it. So, we have been reading, in Revelation 13:2, concerning this grant of power and authority to this particular form of the Roman Empire under the antichrist.

The False Prophet

There are movements today, of course, that are bringing this to reality. The United Nations is increasingly promoting world government, and the nations of the world are increasingly helping to set forth the United Nations as the champion of a new world order. The New World Order is a code term for world governments. The World Council of Churches promotes a unity of all denominations, apart from what they believe. It doesn't matter whether they are biblical or not, but they pursue unity. That's called the ecumenical movement. The idea is to bring all religious groups together. The religion they really hold to basically is humanism.

Israel

What is what is happening in the United States today? The United States government is pushing the Israeli government to make peace with the Arabs. How? By giving the Arabs back the territories that the Jews have conquered. How did the Jews get those conquered territories? They secured that territory as the result of Arab attacks against them. Abdel Nasser goes to Stockholm, and is awarded the Peace Prize that year. He comes home with his big loot (he award that he is given, and the money), and the first thing he says is, "We are now prepared to terminate the nation of Israel, and to drive the Jews into the sea." And he set off that war to do just that. Some Peace Prize winner! I mean, he comes from getting the prize, and he makes the announcement.

Well, again, as had happened in the past, the outnumbered Jews, facing odds of 50-to-1 (50 Arabs to one Jew), again under the providence and the care of God, won an enormous victory. The result of that was to find the nation expanded to borders that it could defend. No longer will the Arabs be able to sit up there on the Golan Heights and fire artillery shells on Israeli communities below. The Jews took the high ground. No longer would they be able to have the Gaza Strip as a port of entry for invaders and for terrorists. The Jews took it, and they kept it. That whole chunk of land called the West Bank, which included Jerusalem, has been taken by the Jews, and has brought them to the Jordan River, and to territory (terrain) which is defensible. The country can defend itself now. That's why the Arabs want them to give that territory back. It is so important to the life of Israel that this not be done.

When Mrs. Danish and I were visiting in Israel, the day for the trip to go to the Masada, the great final struggle of the Jews in resisting the Roman Empire on that height that the Roman Tenth Legion spent over a year trying to bring those people down. Finally, when they built a ramp up this mountain that you can see to this day, and they got to the top, the Jews had killed themselves. There wasn't anybody alive, and the Romans had nothing as the result of their effort. They had made a statement that they would not submit themselves to the authority of Rome.

This is a very famous site. Everybody wants to go visit Masada. I remember our guide saying, "Our trip today will be much more pleasant than it was a few years ago before the last war, when the West Bank was taken from the Palestinians, because they would not allow us to drive through. We used to have to take over half a day to come on a circuitous route all the way out to the Mediterranean Sea, in a horseshoe run, to be able to get down to Masada. Now, it's a straight run, and indeed it was a very pleasant journey.

This territory is very important to the Jews, and they are being pressured, even by the United States, to do the very thing that will cause them to be victimized once more. Jews all over the world realize that things are getting bad. Did you get the amazing announcement last night on TV? Did you see those airplanes coming in from Ethiopia, loaded one plane after another, as the Israeli government is evacuating the black Jews of the Eritrea province" The black Jews are fully accepted as true descendants and followers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

When the Queen of Sheba, who was black, visited Solomon, she was very impressed with Solomon, and Solomon was very impressed with her. And Solomon had a permanent 24-hour marriage chapel operating with priests on duty night and day, whenever needed. It was a regular Dogpatch marrying type of operation. They fell in love; they were married; and, a son was born – Menelik I. He was reared as a Jew, and he was a very faithful student of Judaism.

The Ark of the Covenant at Aksum

The true ark of the covenant has, for all these centuries, been under guard 24 hours a day. A seven-year old boy is selected when the previous guard dies, who will devote his entire life to guarding this great central feature of Jewish worship. There's a concentric circle of barricades that one goes through, and only certain people can go there. They meet the guard in the inner circle once a day to feed him and to take care of his needs. Then he occupies himself with study and guarding this ark.

Both Hitler and Mussolini made attempts to secure this ark. We were told that the present queen of England has been taken in and shown this ark of the covenant. The Jews are saying that it is time to bring the ark back home. But the people who guard it, and who have it under their control, say, "Yes, it should be returned to Israel, but not yet. When the Jews have established a temple, then it should go back." And the next temple the Jews are going to establish will be under the antichrist, who, as their protector, will enable them, in spite of the Arabs, to rebuild their temple.

It is amazing that the ark of the covenant has always carried with it the authority and the great power of God. Archaeologists have been researching this, and are aware of the existence of the ark. One of them was the man who was responsible for the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which the character Indiana Jones pursued the ark. It was interesting that in that movie, there was a prominent feature that the Nazis were very interested in. The truth of the matter is that they were. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler, who was deep into the occult (that's why he wanted it) were able to secure it.

So, I was amazed to see those planes landing in Israel, and these black Jews, full devotees of Judaism, getting off those planes. The Jews are coming from every place back to Israel, which is exactly what Ezekiel 38 and 39 (that we looked at last time) told you – the bones of the dead nation are coming together.

The Jews, because of the pressure that is upon them now, are being prepared to receive a strong man to protect them from the West – someone who can restrain the Arabs. The conditions are now ready.

A Mortal Wound

This word qualifies what we actually have here. It does say, "As if it were slain." The word "slain" is the Greek word "sphazo." "Sphazo" means "to kill," and this is a word that is used when you kill an animal for sacrifice. It is in the perfect tense, which tells us in the Greek language that this was done sometime in the past. This head received, at some time historically in the past, this mortal blow. It's in the passive voice, which means that it was done to this head. It was not self-inflicted. It's a principle that's being stated here. The Greek language actually has the additional words "to death:" "And I saw one of its heads as if it had been killed to death" (as if it had been slain to death). So, John sees a mortal wound inflicted on this head.

Then he says, "His fatal wound." The word "fatal" is actually this Greek word "plege." "Plege" means "stroke." It is a stroke which can be deadly.

In Luke 10:30, it's translated as "beat," as what the robbers did to the man on the road that the Good Samaritan helped. It says, "That they 'plege' him (they beat him), and they left him half-dead. The blows were such that he could have died from it, had assistance, not come to him to prevent that. The wound is actually the word "death" in the Greek Bible. It's the Greek word "thanatos." So, what you have here is literally "the stroke of death."

The Fatal Wound is Healed

What John saw was a seemingly mortal wound to one of the heads, and please remember that the heads represent the empires. It does not mean that the antichrist was will be assassinated and then resurrected by Satan. Satan does not, as far as we know from Scripture, have the power to resurrect the dead. Only Jesus Christ can bring a dead person back to life. That is explicitly stated in John 5:28-29. Jesus said, "Do not marvel at this. For an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice." Saved dead and unsaved dead will hear the voice of Jesus Christ: "And shall come forth; those who did the good deeds (the divine good as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in the saved person) to a resurrection of life; and, those who committed evil deeds (the human good deeds in a human viewpoint person who is unsaved) to a resurrection of judgment."

Some people have tried to claim that this is a wound in the head of the antichrist and that he actually is killed. One of their favorite scenarios is that he's going to be Nero, and Nero is will be resurrected as the antichrist. A few years ago, I was in a very famous church in Costa Mesa, California. It is pastored by a man that you could hear at 12:00 noon every day on your radio here in the Dallas area. I sat in a Bible class (a church service), and he was teaching the book of the Revelation. He had two-and-a-half chapters that he was teaching that night. I thought, "Boy, he's really going to be making ground here." In the process, he was dealing with this wound of the antichrist. He said, "Now, folks, I sincerely believe that there will be a resurrection here of the antichrist who in the past has lived and died, and that that will be Judas. I sincerely believe that it will be Judas." His reasoning was that in John 17:12, Judas is referred to as the son of perdition, or the son of destruction.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, the apostle Paul calls the antichrist the son of perdition, or the son of destruction. So, he was connecting the two, and saying that Paul was saying that Judas is going to be the antichrist.

Of course, a modern favorite is Adolf Hitler. But none of these things really fit the picture because, as I say, the head represents an empire. The Bible is clear about that.

It is possible that an ordinary mortal wound might be inflicted on the antichrist personally, and he does not die. There may be technology to sustain him and to heal him. This could be done also by the healing power of Satan. Please don't forget that. The devil will heal you. He has the capacity to heal. Edgar Cayce, one of the great mystics, a former Methodist Sunday school teacher, would put himself under a status of self-hypnosis. He would have somebody sitting there with a notepad, and once he was out, he was oblivious. But anybody sitting there could ask Edgar Cayce a question, and Edgar Casey would respond with the answer. He would always phrase his answer, "We would suggest," or "We understand." It was always a "we." Who was we? It was the demonic world speaking through him. On one occasion, he was being asked to prescribe medication for a man's ailments. He had done this many times. When Casey would come back to consciousness, he would ask, "What did I say?" And they would tell him what he said. And regularly, he would make a diagnosis, and then prescribe a healing (a procedure or a medication), and it worked. People were healed that the doctors couldn't help.

On this one occasion, Edgar Cayce was giving the diagnosis, and the spirits were giving him the prescription, and, all of a sudden, they stopped talking. The man standing there, making the notes, asked the question again, and they refused to answer. So they went on. Edgar Cayce thought this was rather strange. He knew the man. So, he called about him. He found that at the very moment he was in the process of getting this information from the spirit world, the man had died. The spirits knew it, and they had no more healing to offer. And they stop the reading, as Casey called it. In the spirit world, there is the power of healing. You can go to the bookstore at the mall, and you can find Edgar Casey's prescriptions for healing. You can find a book on that. And do you know what are the main ingredients that Cayce prescribes for a variety of the ailments? Coca-Cola. It is amazing. It's on page-after-page: "Take so much of Coke for this thing and that thing." The demonic world knows something about the healing business.

Well, it is possible that the antichrist himself receives this wound, and that he is restored by satanic power or by technology. This would be understandable. It is the closest thing that Satan could do to counterfeit the key evidence for the deity; the Saviorhood; and, the Messiahship of Jesus Christ; and that is the fact that the Lord Jesus has been resurrected.

In Matthew 12:39, we read, "But He answered and said to them, 'An evil and adulterous generation prays for a sign, and yet no sign shall be given to it, but the sign of Jonah the Prophet.'" He's talking about a sign to prove that Jesus is the Messiah.

Verse 40: "Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." He said, "The only sign I'm going to give you is that I am going to die. And the death is going to be so permanent, and so complete, and so precise, I'm going to be in the tomb for three days and three nights." Any part of a day or night, with Jewish reckoning, was considered a full day or night: "The men of Ninevah shall stand up with this generation at the judgment, and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here, and they would not repent." So, Jesus said, "The evidence of My deity and My Saviorhood will be that I'll come back to life."

Well, you can imagine that Satan would want to reproduce that in the antichrist. So, basically, I think what the Scriptures have here is that the wound is to the head. The heads are identified as governments, so this is a wound to some kind of a governmental entity. But if you want to say possibly it's the antichrist himself, I could see reason why it would be to him, and how he could possibly survive, under some capacities, a mortal wound, and not die from it, and for Satan to use that to try to establish what he wants to establish in the eyes of everyone – that the antichrist is God.

You remember that Satan faked the virgin birth of Jesus Christ in the Babylonian mystery religion. Semiramis was the wife of Nimrod. Nimrod had been killed, and Semiramis was a very licentious, immoral woman. She became pregnant through one of her boyfriends, in virgin purity, so to speak, since her husband's death. She claimed that the pregnancy she bore was supernatural, and people believed it. Furthermore, she said, "This is the reincarnation of my slain husband, Nimrod." So, when the child was born, the people viewed the mother and the child as divine, and thus they began making those hundreds of little terracotta figures. I've seen them myself, from the ancient world, of a mother cradling a child in her arms, the mother-and-child goddess – the Madonna and child. This has been, of course, absorbed completely in the pagan system we have today known as Roman Catholicism. This system has the worship of the mother-and-child in the same way. The people believed this, and they proceeded to worship the mother-and-child as deity.

So, Satan continually wants to reproduce what God is doing in order to establish his antichrist as the true Christ. What Satan wants is for the world to believe the deity of the antichrist, because Satan himself now is going to indwell the antichrist, so that those who worship the antichrist beast will, in effect, be worshiping Satan himself. Since the heads of the beast represent world empires, the seemingly death wound was to an empire, not to the person.

So, what has happened? The sixth head, the Roman Empire, existed in John's day, but it ceased to exist as a world power in 476 A.D. under the onslaught of the barbarian conquest. For 1,500 years, the worldwide dominion of the Caesar's has been politically dead. It has been non-existent. If you talk about the Roman Empire, it's an ancient dead empire of the past. Instead, the Roman Empire has continued today as individual nations into which the empire fragmented. Since 476 A.D., there have been attempts made to restore the imperial form of the Roman Empire with a Caesar. This idea has fascinated political and religious rulers.

Charlemagne

Otto I

Bismarck

Hitler

So, here have been attempts that have fascinated political figures over the centuries to recreate the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, it was called the Holy Roman Empire – mainly Germanic states and some Italian state which were brought drawn together under these powerful leaders.

The Revived Roman Empire

When the people of the tribulation see Imperial Rome being restored with a powerful Caesar, we're told at the end the first three, the whole earth (that is, all of mankind) was amazed, and followed after the beast. All of mankind is impressed. They're amazed by the turn of events. They all feel as if they're living in a time warp, as if they were all back in ancient times. Here is Rome with all of its magnificence, like Hitler and Mussolini used to try to reproduce with their parades, and their flags, and their symbols. Here, the ancient Roman Empire is once more in operation, and there is a seated Caesar.

The result is that the beast, the antichrist, is restored, and remember the beast and his kingdom are viewed as the same thing. The beast (the antichrist) and his restored Roman Empire are viewed with great awe. People everywhere recognize that this man has power beyond human capacities. And the antichrist himself is going to dazzle mankind with his occult powers given to him by Satan. He will bring law and order. By the middle of the tribulation, the world is going to be reeling from the plagues of God and from the death that has come. Remember that we have six billion people in the world today. By the mid-tribulation, 3 billion will be dead. People are going to have a desperate desire for peace and for relief. It is going to cause people to look upon the antichrist, and they're going to gladly receive him and worship him.

In Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman was promised as the Savior of mankind. That seed of the woman was Jesus Christ. In Genesis 3:15, there is a seed of Satan also referred to, and the seed of the serpent (Satan) is the antichrist. The antichrist is going to be Satan's final effort. After 6,000 years of trying to counterfeit the saving work of God, he will be the last substitute Christ. With uninhibited blasphemy, the antichrist will claim to be God. 2 Thessalonians 2:4 tells us that. It is interesting that the Lord Jesus observed that the condition was coming on the face of the earth, near the time of His return, that human viewpoint (which rejected Him as the Holy One of God) will find it sensible to accept the vile antichrist.

In John 5:43, the Lord says, "I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me. If another shall come in his own name, you will receive him." Since the antichrist is going to be indwelt by Satan, he will be the fullest embodiment of evil the world has ever seen. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 makes that clear. Please remember that, as Jesus Christ was incarnate God, so the antichrist will be incarnate Satan. Satan takes over, and indwells this man. So, as the Hindus say, the person is no longer operational – there's only the shell. Instead, there come the great powers such as are possessed by the gurus of India. This is why, when you meet a guru in India who really is on track authority, he will bowl you over. He will look at you, and he will tell you things about your background; about your family; and, about things that are associated with you, and you will be awed. This man, in a small way, speaks with the insight of the satanic world, which will be in an unlimited way with the antichrist himself.

True believers in the tribulation are not going to be deceived by the antichrist. So, they will become the objects of his hatred and his persecution. Even Muslims, who ordinarily will not go for a man like the antichrist, and who will not go for idolatry, at that time, will be willing to accept this man, because they believe in the coming Modi (the coming Savior). The Muslims look for the appointed one to come, and they will see in this man the final Christ character in the past historical character of Jesus, and then Muhammad, and then the antichrist will be the final one. Yes. The Muslim world, with its billions of people, will rally to this man along with everyone else.

So, the world will finally achieve unity in a world government under the antichrist as the Caesar of a resurrected Roman Empire. The preparations for this kind of a world government are so awesome today that only the most ignorant do not observe them. Next time, we shall go into those evidences.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1990

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