Kingdom Come

At the time of Daniel’s and John’s prophecies, the Mediterranean Sea was the center of the warring nations, with “north” being Turkey and the eastern rim of Europe and “south” being the southern rim of Africa and Asia. Come to think of it, this hasn’t changed in the current era.

Invasions and mass migrations caused massive redistribution of power, reflected in the rise and fall of the leading nationalities within the Roman Empire.

In 800, having through military means reassembled what had been fragmented into minor kingdoms, Charlemagne, king of the Franks / French, restored the Empire’s control over borderlands lost to invading Norsemen, and in reward crowned himself Roman Emperor by proxy of the Pope at Rome in 800. While, like the German leader Odoacer who took Rome in 476, he and his heirs did not deny the title to the ruler in Constantinople, he did aspire to assume equal status to the Roman Emperor of the East as co-regent. 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, and even further back to Republican Rome which was headed by two consuls.

In 1547 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 – lost to the Moslems – 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:

1. Theology: necessity and inevitability of the unity of the Eastern Orthodox /True Church,
2. Social policy: East Slavic territories being historically joined through Christian Eastern Orthodox faith and Slavic culture,
3. 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.

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 1700’s the Spanish monarchy passed by inheritance to the House of Habsburg under King Charles I of the House of Habsburg, who also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, thereby uniting the eastern and western branches of the European Roman empire into a single Germanic Holy Roman Empire for the first time in a Millenium.

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 brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain, further consolidating both branches of the European Roman Catholic Empire.

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

1. retrospectively calling Charlemagne’s first German-centered empire “The First” Reich
2. and the renewed German Empire under Kaiser (you get that, right?) Wilhelm “The Second” Reich”.

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.

The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.

Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era…a cultural movement called humanism…promoted the idea that man was the center of his own universe, and people should embrace human achievements in education, classical arts, literature and science.

In other words, get rid of God’s authority, beginning with Genesis 1. Galileo and Descartes presented a new view of astronomy and mathematics, while Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. Early in his career he claimed “all knowledge as his province” and afterwards dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and re-structuring of traditional learning whose ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for “the use and benefit of men” and the relief of the human condition.

Bacon is one of the most influential Renaissance men whose influence extends four hundred years into modern times.

In fact, science and research is what it is today because of Bacon. The methodology of science and research, something we may not even think about as having an origin, of ever not existing, was Bacon’s brainchild. He is the father of empiricism.

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. 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.

Since the Industrial Revolution, it is not shared ideology but access to oil that drives every significant political alliance.

England’s skyrocketing rise to wealth and power was made possible in part through locally discovered oil. However, England’s industry could not be sustained, let alone grown, by petroleum sources limited to those at home. 

After diligent searches, in 1908 England found exploitable oil fields in Persia / Iran and evidence of possible fields along the Persian Gulf border of Arabia. Empowered with these resources, 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.

The first mechanized war, WWI, drove 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.

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 through an alliance with Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer controlling oil reserves.

And that’s when the story takes a sharp turn to the right. (That’s a pun in so many ways, but never mind.)

The Third Reich had the most technologically advanced and innovative weapons industries in World War 2…Nazi scientists pioneered rocket and jet-propelled aircraft, the pilotless plane, long-range rocket technology, “robot bombs”…