Kingdom Come

How can anyone miss the religious legacy of Roman culture in Christianity?

The Pantheon, which means “temple of every god”, has been in continuous use throughout its history. Built during the reign of Augustus Caesar, it was converted to a Christian church in the 7th century. To this day, English and American Christian church buildings around the world are modeled after classic Greco-Roman temples.

What is this telling us?

It is indisputable that the classic pagan religion of the Roman, empire that has moved over the two millennia from Rome, to Constantinople, to European capitals, is now settled in… Washington.

The Apotheosis of Washington – literally, the deification (or god-making) of George Washington. The fresco depicts Washington as Zeus on a throne in heaven surrounded by various gods and goddesses from classical mythology. Painted on the ceiling of the dome of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War by Vatican artist Constantino Brumidi.

The similarities between pagan idols and monuments to our national leaders cannot be coincidental. Do you really think Satan is just sitting out history on the sidelines? Wouldn’t we expect him to be wherever the greatest power is concentrated?

Both statues of Washington and Lincoln were deliberately modeled after Zeus, with Washington’s entitled “Enthroned Washington” and Lincoln’s placed in a monument expressly modeled after one of Zeus’ temples and defined as a temple on the plaque above Lincoln’s head. The timing and association of these images of Zeus is no accident of history.

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write…I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is...where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:12-14)

Asklepion is an ancient healing complex located at the base of the Pergamon acropolis in Turkey built in honour of Asklepios, god of healing…The site…was founded in the 4 ^th Century BC around a sacred spring that still flows…it became one of the best-known healing centres of the ancient world, second in importance only to Epidaurus in Greece and was also the world’s first psychiatric hospital…

According to ancient myth, the god Asklepios had the power to raise people from the dead and he himself was restored to life by Zeus: for this reason he was thought to also have a snake form.  Tame snakes were kept in his temples…

Treatments included psychotherapy, massage, herbal remedies, mud and bathing treatments, surgeries and the drinking of water, which were prescribed according to what dreams the patient had experienced – it was believed that dreams recounted a visit by the god Asklepios, who held the key to curing all illness.

Following the political transfer of power, the religious seat of Satan’s dynasty moved West from Babylon to Pergamon at the Roman Altar of Zeus.

The greatest example of Hellenistic Greek sculpture, the colossal Altar of Zeus at Pergamon…is a monumental work built…about 166 to 156 BCE. The altar is adorned with a 370-foot long marble frieze which depicts the Gigantomachy from Greek mythology. Like the Parthenon in Athens – another icon of classical antiquity – the Zeus Altar was constructed on a terrace of the acropolis overlooking the ancient city of Pergamon…in Asia Minor. However, unlike the Parthenon, it was not a temple but merely an altar…achieving excitement, wild movement and strong feeling…9-foot high frieze is alive with huge figures of gods and giants locked in mortal combat…carved in such high relief that they were almost detached from the background…portray the mythical victory of Zeus and the Gods over the Giants…All that remains of this extraordinary work of art – arguably the greatest narrative relief in the history of sculpture – is part of the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities, and can be seen at the Pergamon Museum, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

It provided the model for Hitler’s Zeppelin tribune, the megalithic grandstand for Nazi political rallies raising to power the man who took the reigns of power from the Kaiser.

I assume we don’t have a problem following a trail that leads from Zeus’ seat at Pergamon to Berlin and connects Satan to Hitler. Are we willing to keep following the trail even if it leads to an admired political leader…or a city in our own country? If “Bible believers” really believe that Daniel’s fourth world empire, the Roman, stays in power until the Rock returns and destroys it, we should be able to see it even when it is hiding in plain sight.

There is a direct parallel between writing amendments to the Constitutions that strengthened, through centralization, the power of the existing Republican governments in both Washington and Rome during

• the American Civil War resulting from the wealthy plantation owners claiming to right to own slaves
• and the Roman Conflict of the Orders resulting from the wealthy Roman aristocratic landowners claiming the right to enslave indebted plebeians.

The federal government grew enormously in power and prestige, particularly the office of the President. Abraham Lincoln’s assertion of the “war powers” of the President has been used (abused) consistently by his successors to spread American “democracy”. And which red-blooded American can argue against that most noble of objectives

A central theme of all recorded history has been the use or abuse of power — how it lurks in the shadows behind the professed idealism of politicians and the compelling reasons they expound when they bring their nations to war. Such words often cloak those who wield political power and redistribute it among themselves as a consequence of success or failure on the battlefield.

It is important in this discussion to emphasize the contrast between “rights” and “powers.” Ironically, many strong reservations about “powers” came from the Northern states during the [Constitutional] ratification debates. The Massachusetts legislature expressed a fear that the Constitution might be interpreted so as to extend the powers of Congress, and Rhode Island proposed a remarkable statement of states’ rights similar in sentiment to that used by Southern secessionists two generations later. Even New England politicians resorted to their rights and threatened secession if their demands were not met. Among the Southern states, the people of Virginia required that the powers granted the national government under the Constitution “be resumed by the states, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that the states were “not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government” but reserved “each State to itself, the . . . right to their own self-government…”

• However, the Union victory virtually eviscerated the 10th Amendment leaving the Federal (national) government with perhaps too much power. The idea of limited federal power was much older than the slavery debates of the nineteenth century and was recognized as an unresolved issue at the time. Would the united states, melted down into one nation, be practicable or consistent with freedom? Is it consistent with freedom today?

The phrase public diplomacy may not have become an official term in the popular press until World War I.But it was during the Civil War that deliberate, state-sponsored programs began attempting to influence the public mind abroad about American foreign policy.

The Civil War left an enormous imprint on the American consciousness in much the same way as World War I did on the European mindset...

During the Civil War almost the entire population of those who were of military age in both the South and North [bore arms].

The scales of the armies were enormous…in a single battle there might be 100,000 men on each side, and casualty rates ran as high as 20 to 25 percent. Cities were razed. Thousands of prisoners of war starved to death. And many were simply shot and left to die on the roadside…

The Cause of All Nations: an International History of the American Civil War…takes us through the trajectory of the intellectual and diplomatic international debate that continually evolved as each stage of the Civil War progressed…into a grander narrative about universal human freedom —and progressive enlightenment values—in a global context during the 19th century.

the public debate that was happening in Europe by prominent intellectuals of the day…saw the Civil War as far more than just internal strife between the Confederacy and the Union. They viewed it instead as an epic showdown between democracy and aristocracy. [Exactly like the founding of the Roman Republic.] It was a matter of free versus slave labour, where the winners would decide how the capitalist world would progress in tandem with modernity.

Before 1860 the United States had offered aspiring republicans around the globe a template for how a free, self-governing nation might live in peace and prosperity. And America…thus automatically became, in many European minds, a model country to aspire to when thinking about progressive ideas such as liberty, equality, and self-rule. And with the Civil War, the U.S. seemed to offer to the rest of the world a literal battle between those values and rights.