In the 7th century the Arab Empire incorporated the previous three empires – the Ancient Greek homeland of Anatolia, Persia/Iran and Babylon/Iraq under the rule of monotheistic Allah, challenging the Jews’ YHVH and the Eastern Orthodox Christians’ paganized Trinity. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, called Christian Europe the “Romans”, and called for jihad – imposition of Allah’s righteous rule over the earth through conquest.
Is this any different than the US waging war to impose humanistic democracy?
In 800 the current King of the Germans, Charlemagne crowned himself Roman Emperor by proxy of the Pope at Rome. While, like Odoacer, he and his heirs did not deny the title to the ruler in Constantinople, unlike Odoacer, he did aspire to assume equal status to the Emperor of the East as their co-regents. This was a not uncommon practice when internal or external circumstances called for more leadership than one person could deliver. There was specific precedent during the Tetrarchy, or Four Rulers, in AD 285 by Diocletian, in response to the same desperate circumstances facing waves of Eastern invasions, plague and dire economic straits.
Charlemagne established diplomatic ties with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, Harun-al-Rashid, a relationship nurtured by the fact that these two rulers shared common enemies, the Byzantine emperors and the Umayyad caliphs in Spain. Charlemagne enjoyed a vague role as protector of the Christian establishment in Jerusalem. And his presence was felt in the affairs of Anglo-Saxon kings of Mercia and Northumbria in England. Through successful warfare and effective diplomacy Charlemagne had become a world figure.
In 962 Otto I was crowned, likewise, in German, a “Römisch-Deutscher Kaiser” of his western section of the Roman Empire.
In 1157 under the German Frederick I Barbarossa the word “Holy” was added to reflect Frederick’s ambition to dominate Italy and the Papacy. In 1512, following the fall from power of Byzantium’s Eastern Orthodox capitol, the name was officially changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
This reflects the jostling for power for one of the “co-regents” to become the “first among equals.”
Although we refer to Republican and Imperial periods of the Rome, Republican values were still paid lip service during Augustus’ reign and beyond. A semblance of democracy, although more of a façade, was reverentially upheld under Augustus and subsequent Emperors.
The Republic came to a practical end with Julius Caesar, but it was actually more a process of wearing away than an outright switch from patrician semi-democracy to wholesale monarchy. It seems that instability and war were suitable reasons or excuses for entering an authoritative political phase, but admitting to the end of the Republic was an idea that the people and senate would need getting used to.
Augustus’ solution was to create a system of government often referred to as the ‘principate’. He was Princeps, meaning ‘first citizen’ or ‘first among equals’, an idea that was in fact incongruous with the reality of the situation…
he consolidated the powers of the military and tribunal, became head of the state religion and gained the power of veto of the magistrates.
Primus inter pares is a Latin phrase meaning first among equals…
After the fall of the Republic, Roman emperors initially referred to themselves only as princeps despite having power of life and death over their “fellow citizens”.
Various modern figures such as the chair of the United States Federal Reserve System, the prime minister of parliamentary countries…the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court…the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Anglican Communion and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church fall under both senses: bearing higher status and various additional powers while remaining still merely equal to their peers.
There is always – always – the use of religion to empower politics. Latin-speaking Western Europeans allied with Rome began to claim superiority over Eastern Greek-speaking Constantinople, and disputes arose over church boundaries and control.
In 1054, after six centuries in the making, the Great Schism occurred between the church of Constantinople and the Church of Rome, creating the Roman Catholic Church vs the Greek Orthodox Church.
In 1204 total alienation of the two churches occurred during the Fourth Crusade when Christian knights on their way to save Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims were diverted to attack and capture Constantinople. Thousands of Orthodox Christians were murdered, churches and icons were desecrated, and undying hostility developed between Eastern and Western Christian Churches.
A change in religion from
- Classical Pagan Rome to
- Roman Catholic under Constantine to
- Eastern Orthodox after the Great Schism
- to Islam
didn’t change the identity of the Fourth Empire any more than changing demographics in the United States changes our essential identity.
In 1453 Mehmet II “the Conqueror”, took Constantinople, the gateway to Europe, and Islam surged into Christendom.
Like conquerors before him, with the taking of the capitol city Mehmet II also claimed the European title Kayser-i Rûm, i.e. Caesar of Rome, and emperor. All subsequent Sultans of the Ottoman Empire kept Kayser-i Rum as one of their many titles.
The Islamic ruler is absolutely the equivalent of the Christian ruler.
In simple English, the title Caesar / Kayser is a showdown between
- Western European Roman Catholics and their Protestant offspring,
- Eastern European Orthodox Churches much more set in their traditions,
- and Muslims.
But that’s three legs!
Not when alliances are formed creating two combatants, the standard MO as with the Allies and Axis Powers.
Keep in mind these three main claimants as we continue to wander through the maze of intervening history. Names, geographical boundaries and alliances constantly shift, but the root identities and destinies don’t change of “the king of the north (European)” and “the king of the south (Middle East (Muslim) don’t change.
The element of religion serves to whip up national support for war in the Middle East.
Since the 4th century and particularly since the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, the defense and promotion of Christianity has been a key driver of Imperial identity. After that date, however, the territorial scope of the Empire or any of its continuating entities has never exactly coincided with that of Christendom, and the discrepancies led to enduring conflicts of legitimacy…
- to this day, Rome remains the seat of the Catholic Church,
- and Constantinople (Istanbul) that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate…within the Eastern Orthodox Church…
- The Imperial connection extends, through the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, to Islam as well. Istanbul was also until 1923 the seat of the only widely recognized Caliphate of the last half-millennium…
Based on Daniel, the essential identifier of the Fourth Empire is not religion, but politics – any Empire – coalition of nations – that controls Jerusalem.
We will recognize – and anticipate, a ruler of the Fourth Empire by his role at Jerusalem as savior of the Jews. He is a liar and a murderer. He will slaughter the Jews.
The prototype of this individual is Herod the Great. As the on-site, local representative of Caesar he can accurately be identified with the title “king of the north”. Initially presenting himself as protector and benefactor of the Jews, especially by building the temple, this temple becomes the means of their destruction.
- Rome: The Western European Roman Catholics split into Protesting religious factions and expanded into the Americas.
- Byzantium: The capitol of the Roman Empire that moved east to better wage war against waves of invaders from the eastern steppes, maintaining the older Greek culture and language in what it called “Orthodox” Christianity.
- The Ottoman Empire whose power was broken into many Islamic substates after WWI. All of them continue to aspire to reclaim their glorious history and power through various alliances with western and Eastern European powers.
The following account is an extremely abbreviated history from the fall of Constantinople, providing just the broad strokes, bringing us to a biblical understanding of the current king of the north’s invasion and occupation of Jerusalem.
In 1547, acknowledging the long-term loss of Constantinople and surrounds to the Ottoman Turks, and in defiance of the European rulers’ claim, the Russian ruler assumed the title of Caesar / Tsar. Supported by the Orthodox / True Christian Church’s opposition to the Roman Catholic / Universal Church’s expanding power, Russia transferred the seat of the eastern government of the Roman Empire from Constantinople to Moscow as the Third Rome.
“Moscow, Third Rome” is a theological and a political concept which was formulated in the 15th–16th centuries in the Tsardom of Rus. In theology as a political concept, three interrelated and interpenetrating fields of ideas can be found:
- Theology: necessity and inevitability of the unity of the Eastern Orthodox /True Church,
- Social policy: East Slavic territories being historically joined through Christian Eastern Orthodox faith and Slavic culture,
- State doctrine: the Moscow Prince is a supreme ruler and defender of the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church which facilitates the execution of his divine right to rule as God’s representative as an autocrat.
Note – this historical analysis differs greatly from Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth which sold over 35 million copies and was the ‘number one non-fiction best-seller of the decade’ according to the New York Times.
Lindsey’s book popularized the Rapture, geopolitics, prophecy, and the Apocalypse as key themes in evangelical culture…which are now ‘strangely informing American geo-political debates’ (Casanova, 2001, p. 416). In an attempt to make sense of the nuclear age, Lindsey… recognized the global political significance of…the USSR…or what he often calls ‘Russia’ because he equates it to the Biblical ‘Rosh’ in Ezekiel 39:1.
Hermeneutically, a single interpretation of scripture cannot stand. Additionally, focusing on Russia as a single entity overlooks the unquestionable portrayal of the last empire as being a two-legged alliance.
Back to the past:
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Tsar’s competing heir to the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine throne, Andreas Palaiologos, found refuge in the West where his title and claim to be a rightful Emperor of Rome was recognized, of course, by the Christian Western powers opposed to both the Russian and the Muslim claimants. Desperate for living expenses, like Esau he sold his inheritance, including his title and imperial rights, to the French kings, where they gathered dust, then bequeathed them at his death to their greatest rivals for power, the Spaniards.
This officially elevated 
King Ferdinand, married to Queen Isabella / Jezebel, into a legal Emperor of Rome.
These are the rulers who expanded the Empire’s dominions into the New World after funding Christopher Columbus’ voyages. (Map shows Spanish Empire in red and Portuguese in blue during union of their empires 1581-1640.)
Following the Spanish conquests in the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru, the crown established high courts…and viceroyalties…with the viceroy (vice-king) and the Audiencias the effective administrators of royal policy.
In the early 1700’s the Spanish monarchy passed by inheritance to the House of Habsburg under King Charles I – who just happened to be also the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V, thereby uniting the eastern and western branches of the European Roman empire into a single Germanic Holy Roman Empire.
In 1806
Napoleon Bonaparte conquered the Germanic Holy Roman Empire’s territories, shown in the map in blue with green allies. He also forced the Spanish king to abdicate, and placed his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. This further consolidated both branches of the European Roman Catholic Empire under Napoleon.
While modestly calling himself Emperor of France, Napoleon identified himself as Emperor of Rome by having himself crowned with both a replica of Charlemagne’s Roman Emperor crown and a Roman laurel wreath. He also conferred on his son the title King of Rome, which is, like the official designation of the heir to the throne of England ,”Prince of Wales,” the official designation of the heir to the Roman Empire.
After Napoleon was frozen out of his bid to incorporate the Russian sector of the Roman empire, then lost the western to the British at the Battle of Waterloo, the Germans fought to control all of Europe. They bolstered their historical dynastic right by
- retrospectively calling Charlemagne’s first German-centered empire “The First” Reich
- and the renewed German Empire under Kaiser (you get that, right?) Wilhelm “The Second” Reich”.
Proving that economics is as important as military means of asserting dominance:
By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world’s leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent…
The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history. Comparable only to humanity’s adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement…Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants.
In 1908 England found exploitable oil fields in Persia / Iran and evidence of possible fields along the Persian Gulf border of Arabia. By 1913 the British Empire had become the foremost global power and was by far the largest empire in history, controlling 23% of the world’s population and covering 24% of the Earth’s total land area.
However, as the first mechanized war, WWI had driven home the immense amounts of oil needed, and dramatically altered priorities from sourcing manpower to sourcing oil. Germany’s shortage of oil supplies led in part to their defeat in WWI.
And that’s when the story takes a sharp turn to the right. (That’s a pun in so many ways, but never mind.)
England’s skyrocketing rise to wealth and power was made possible in part through locally discovered oil. However, industry could not be sustained, let alone grown, by petroleum sources limited to those at home.
Since the Industrial Revolution, it is not shared ideology but access to oil that drives every significant political alliance.
The 20th century was primarily a series of wars among competing empires, all of them grounded in the ideology of the template modern revolution – the atheist, humanistic French Revolution, of which it was astutely predicted: “From this place, and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world.“ (Goethe)
And humanism is simply the oldest lie every told – You don’t need the Creator to set limits on you – you can become a god yourself and soar to any accomplishment you can imagine.
This is the ultimate sudden death tournament for any aspirant to supreme power by displacing the Creator / Singularity.
When in 1938 vast oil reserves were finally discovered, Middle Eastern political relations were altered forever. The British Empire had secured the boundless petroleum resources in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer controlling oil reserves.
Second only to America’s.
What? You didn’t know that America held the largest oil reserves, the energy resource guaranteeing power?
So why do American consumers keep paying higher prices for gas imported from the Middle East?
Ahh, because American oil is reserved for wartime power.
America’s “New” World Order is just a re-serving of the oldest. War.
In 1948 America became Israel’s primary ally by securing Jerusalem against Moslem incursion.
That tells us everything we need to know about America’s current role and future role in the Fourth Empire.
there shall stand up a vile / despised, contemptible person. And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.
The President of Russia, a “small” people after the breakup of the USSR.
He shall enter peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.
And both of these kings’ hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table…and have intelligence with them [in Israel] that forsake the holy covenant. And arms shall stand on his part…And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries.
[Published in 2019] Russia and “Israel” are allies, so much so that one can even speak about them as a singular political entity nowadays using the neologism “Putinyahu’s Rusrael“. The hyperlinked source in the preceding sentence is chock full of proof supporting this assertion, but the smoking gun if one was even needed at this point came on Monday during the Herzliya Conference, a yearly security forum held in the self-professed “Jewish State”. Mossad chief Yossi Cohen made it clear just how important of an ally “Israel” regards Russia as being when he credited “channels of communication with the Kremlin” for contributing to what he described as the “one-time window of opportunity” to clinch an “Israeli”-Arab peace deal “for the first time in Middle East history”
You see, the American President only procured an Israeli-Egyptian peace deal, leaving much undone.
Kingdom Come 