Kingdom Come

When Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s preaching to the conquered and ravaged nation of Judea failed to bring about the critical mass remnant of repentance to God, Daniel laid out the consequences.

More chastisement ON ISRAEL to come through three more brutal empires after this one.

The first message was given through Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the image depicting a total of four earthly world empires.

The second message was given through Daniel’s dream of four hybrid monsters arising from the sea of outer space.

We can understand these two perspectives as providing the human-enabled view of world history, and the spirit-empowered aspect revealed to those who have eyes to see.

“Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea [of the heaven]. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

1. The first was like a lion
2. a second, like to a bear…and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh
3. another, like a leopard…and dominion was given to it.
4. a fourth beast…devoured and brake in pieces

The phrase “devoured” indicates that each successive empire incorporates the previous empire into an ever-expanding territorial reach, reorganizing the nations it incorporates under its rule. Think Communist Russia’s incorporation of eastern European nations into the USSR after WWII.

Daniel’s detail is unparalleled in prophetic literature, and can be used as a template to clarify the players until the end of time.

• • 2300’s BC Babylon, arguably the most renowned of all cities, rebuilt on a pre-flood site by Sargon of Akkad
  • 1792 BC, Babylon became the major capital of the city-state of ‘Babylonia’ taking over ‘the country of Akkad’.
  • 1755 BC Hammurabi rules the expanded Mesopotamia from Babylon.
  • 1595 BC – 1155 BC Hittites in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, sacks and rules over Babylon. 
  • ~1300 BC Aeneas, a prince of Troy, possessed by the spirit of Aphrodite / Venus. traveled to the western frontier of civilization where he founded the settlement that would become Rome.
  • 1220 BC – 729 BC Babylon is under Neo-Assyrian control ruling from Ninevah.
  • 700’s BC – Homer’s epic poems are written down and circulated abroad to Greek colonies on the Italian peninsula.
  • 753 BC – on the Italian Peninsula Rhea, daughter of a rustic king, is impregnated by the god of war, Asshur AKA Roman Mars and gives birth to the twins Romulus and Remus. After killing his rival brother, Romulus founds his eponymous capitol city of Rome. In what was a common practice at that time, he ensured the continuity of his tribe by the Rape, AKA Abduction, of the Sabine Women. The westernmost location of this primitive outpost of Mesopotamian civilization delays the rise of Rome as an international force to be reckoned with.
  • 612 BC Assyrian Empire obliterated when its capitol and most dazzling city in the world, Nineveh is sacked and burned and buried by combined forces of Babylonians and Medes, not to be unearthed until the mid-19th century

1. 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar becomes king of Babylon.

2. 539 BCE Babylon is conquered by Cyrus of Persia who incorporates Babylon into Persia.

• • 509 BC – overthrow of the Roman kings and the early Roman Republic (509–264 BCE) 
  • 450’s BC – The resolution of a two-hundred-year civil conflict between the patricians and the commoners in in the city-state of Rome.
    • The aristocrats were wealthy by virtue / power of land ownership which they had acquired by monopolizing the priesthoods, which in those days were invariably integrated into politics.
    • The plebeians – the commoners – were sharecroppers or small land holders, increasing numbers of whom had become enslaved, often for life, to pay off indebtedness to the landowners during years of hardship.
    • The Decemviri prepared 10 tables of law based on the laws of Athens, which established the foundation for all subsequent Roman law. However, no real power was transferred to the plebs under an increasingly powerful aristocracy.
    • Unlike their Greek counterparts, Rome was able to subjugate her rival city-states and unite them…transforming Rome into a sophisticated and powerful fighting force….the Roman military machine which was able to conquer and subjugate…to eventually expand to…the largest empire of the ancient world from its western provincial boundary to the eastern-most prosperous settled territory.
  • 400’s BC – Greece is growing into maturity, creating the foundations of uniquely western civilization in all domains of culture, including philosophy, music, drama, rhetoric and even a new regime called democracy. It is not exaggerating to say that this period changed the history of the world.
    • Herodotus, Father of History, compiles first extensive Gentile written history from oral traditions, reflects Greece’s world-wide trading extent, focuses on Greco-Persian wars.

3. 331 BC Alexander the Great wins the last Greco-Persian war and incorporates Persia into Greece, rules from Babylon.

• • 300’s BC – Greek culture spread throughout Mesopotamia.
  • 168 BC and onwards, the Romans absorbs Greek city-states and culture. The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the Roman Empire. Greece – which included Asia Minor / modern Turkey – is a major crossroads of maritime trade between Mediterranean Rome and the eastern half of the empire. 
  • 146 BC The entire Greek peninsula falls to the imperialist Roman Republic.
  • 64 BC Pompey incorporates Greek Syria from Anatolia to the Euphrates, i.e. including Babylon.
  • 45 BC Julius Caesar becomes dictator of Rome during widespread civil unrest and international war.
  • 33 BC Mark Antony occupies Persian territory.

4. 27 BC the establishment of the Roman Empire by Augustus Caesar.

• • 66 AD The Roman Emperor Nero visited Greece and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation, and was honored with a victory in every contest, returning the favor by proclaiming the freedom of the Greeks, which changed their status from conquered peoples to citizens. One World Government.
  • 166 AD Trajan incorporates Babylon into the Roman Empire.
  • The influence of Babylonian religion on ancient Rome was profound. The adoption of deities, rituals, and mythological narratives reveals the shared human experiences that transcend time and culture.
    • Adopted and aligned several Babylonian deities into their pantheon, such as the goddess Ishtar syncretized with Venus.
    • Incorporated similar celebrations and adapting Babylonian rituals.
    • Adopted Babylonian advancements in astrology such as zodiac signs and divination methods.
  • 285 AD In response to the Crisis of the 3rd century, a fifty-years period during which the Empire nearly collapsed from invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression, the first division of the Roman Empire was made. Emperor Diocletian, the notorious persecutor of Christians, formed an administrative federation as the Tetrarchy, or Four [Under-]Rulers, equivalent to State Governors.

You know the Christians were expecting Christ’s return at any moment back then. And didn’t Constantine show up and save the day.

• • 324 AD – During the Crisis, a child was born, a son was given: and the government was put upon his shoulder: and his name was called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Prince of Peace, The Everlasting, Undeviating, Constant-ine – all characteristics of Apollo, Make no mistake, this was deliberate. Constantine’s father had raised himself up by his bootstraps to the rank of Augustus / god-endowed senior emperor and after his death, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against rival Emperors to become sole ruler of the Empire. This began a New World Order under the Roman Empire as Constantine the Great. Constantine relocates the primary seat of Roman government to the bridge between East and West, naming the new Roman capitol after himself / Apollo.

So that would be Nebuchadnezzar’s two-legged feature of the fourth empire, right? Legs of iron: Rome and Constantinople…

No it would not.

The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times but it remained a single polity governed by two geographically separated imperial courts as an administrative expediency.

476 – the barbarian Odoacer deposed the sitting Western Emperor Romulus Augustus Zeno, who left behind no named heir (“the Caesar” like the British “Prince of Wales”) to the Western half of the Roman Empire.

Ostensibly Bible-believing conservative Christians believe that the Roman Empire ceased to exist.

In the prophetic eyes of God, the Roman Empire…fell from world dominion but…a confederacy or union of leadership will arise out of a revival of the remains of the Roman Empire to step into the prophecy role that leads to fulfillment of the Last Days prophecies.  

The European Union has risen up from the remains of the Roman Empire so to lead the world into the Great Tribulation. 

However, biblical prophecy indicates a continuation of this fourth kingdom to the end of human rulers when the stone cut out without hands destroys them all. If this can be believed – and it is certainly credible given the Bible’s track record on foretold history for the last 2,500 years – this fourth beast must have left a trail of his scat.

It is simply our failure to recognize its essential features, despite changes in territory, incorporation of different cultures, even name changes, that leaves us unsuspecting victims of stalking and sudden destruction.

The fact is, when the barbarian Odoacer deposed the sitting Western Emperor Romulus Augustus Zeno he wisely restrained his ambitions to only being crowned King of one state in the Empire. Like Herod, who had been King of Judea,

The Senate in Rome sent an embassy to the Eastern Emperor and bestowed upon him the Western imperial insignia. The message was clear: “the West no longer required a separate Emperor, for “one monarch sufficed [to rule] the world”. In response, Zeno accepted his submission…  conferred upon Odoacer the title of Patrician and granted him legal authority to govern Italy in the name of “Rome” / i.e. Constantinople.

Odoacer settled so many Germanic tribes into Roman territories, granting them Roman citizenship, that he and his successors were henceforth called  the “King of the Germans.”

Now there’s a clue. 

Odoacer’s coins struck in the name of Emperor Zeno, testifying to the formal submission of Odoacer in the West to Zeno in the East.

From 527-565 Emperor Justinian in Constantinople devoted his reign to restoring Roman rule to all its old expanse, much of which had been seized by Germanic tribes fleeing the Hun invasion of their northern European homelands.  Justinian’s general, Belisarius, considered an equal with such military genii as Alexander, Julius Caesar and Napoleon, took northern Africa from the Vandals, reclaimed Italy from the Goths, and fought the Persians.

The Code of Justinian systematized the confused accumulation of Roman laws and remained in force for a thousand years, becoming the foundation of all modern European and Neo-European (American, Canadian, Australian) legal / i.e. political systems.

Christmas Day 1000 Charlemagne proclaimed himself the new Emperor of Rome, moving the capitol to Germany.

Nazi Germany’s holocaust of the Jews certainly fits the biblical record of Daniel’s last Chastening Agent, the Roman Empire.

But it’s not finished until the Christ returns to face off mano a mano with Antichrist.

So the question is, what is the current manifestation of the Roman Empire, and how does its relationship with Israel line up with prophecy?