Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org

How Shall We Tell The Children?
By Edward Chamberlain

Table of Contents

ANTICHRIST: THE POLITICS OF HIS KINGDOM

It is most difficult to separate the various aspects of the kingdom of Antichrist from his politics, his person, his economics, and his religion into distinct scriptural references because nearly all scripture that speaks concerning any one of those Antichristian aspects will also speak of other aspects. For this reason we will often have to repeat a particular scripture with a different emphasis as we look at a different aspect.

About 603 B.C. God gave the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, a vision of all Gentile history that covered the times from Nebuchadnezzar's reign until the end of the age of the gentiles. So at the very beginning of the age of the gentiles, God gave us a picture of the ensuing age and told us how these Gentile Empires would flourish and be terminated at the end of the age. This vision came in a dream, and it greatly troubled Nebuchadnezzar.

In all, there are three visions and one angelic revelation in the Book of Daniel concerning these Gentile empires which will ever have existed in the ensuing years, or will come into existence before the Lord Jesus Christ returns and sets up his everlasting kingdom. The three visions are in general agreement concerning the nature of the succeeding Empires; only one differs to some extent, in that it the Babylonian Empire is omitted because it was already history at the time of that vision, and it also seem to omit the Roman Empire. That particular vision is recorded in the 8th chapter of Daniel, and it was the second vision given to Daniel concerning the succession of Gentile Civilizations or Empires.

Daniel's first vision is recorded in Chapter 7 and is very comparable to the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2 in that all gentile civilizations were represented. But in the vision recorded in the 8th chapter, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire, and the four kingdoms into which the Grecian Empire was divided upon the death of Alexander, are the only empires mentioned before the last empire of the "abomination that maketh desolate" is mentioned separately. This vision omits the Babylonian Empire which had already been defeated by the Medes, and it also leaves the Roman Empire out of the picture. But this vision came to Daniel after the vision he'd seen in Chapter 7 which did show him both the Roman Empire and the empire of the abomination that maketh desolate, and so, there must be a reason why God gave Daniel a second vision about the same subject but displayed it in a different manner.

The Book of Daniel is written in two languages, Chaldean and Hebrew. From the beginning of the book through chapter 2 verse 3, the language is Hebrew. Then from chapter 2 verse 4, to chapter 8, the original text was written in Chaldean, a Gentile language, then from chapter 8 through to the end of the book, the language of the original text returned to Hebrew once again. It seems most obvious that the chapters written in Hebrew were given for the Hebrews, and that the chapters written in The gentile language were given for the gentiles. Since Hebrew is the language of chapter 8 through the rest of the book, this vision is given for the Hebrew perspective.

From the beginning of the Book of Daniel to chapter 2 verse 4 the divine preservation of a perpetual remnant of the Hebrew nation of Israel during the age of the gentiles is being symbolically portrayed in the preservation of Daniel and his friends within the Babylonian court. Since this message is sent to all Hebrew exiles it is written in Hebrew.

Beginning with chapter 2 verse 5 the intended recipients of the message and the symbols of the Book of Daniel are gentiles. It is extremely important to note that the knowledge of the gentiles (i.e. the science of Babylon) fails to understand the visions of God, and that God has to send them understanding through revelation to his messengers. It will be so throughout the gentile age and those who would attempt understanding must seek it out from beyond the science of the gentiles and the language of the gentiles. Also note about the Jew, for he is much advantaged in every way for unto him was given the Oracles of God (Romans 3:1-2), and that also includes almost all of the New Testament with the probable exceptions of Luke and Acts, if St. Luke is assumed to have been pure Greek.)

Therefore, the revelations of chapters 2 and 7 are given to gentiles to be understood from their perspective. Then beginning with chapter 8, the language becomes Hebrew again, symbolizing the ultimate restoration of Israel as the covenanted people of God. The vision of chapter 8 is once more for the Hebrew exile, as is the angelic revelation of chapter 11 concerning the coming of the abomination of desolation into Israel.

Romans 11:25-29
"For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."

The above passage from Romans says explicitly that Israel, who is now spiritually blind, will, none the less, be divinely protected through out the gentile age, and when that age ends, God will once again restore the kingdom of Israel and keep all his promises he made to her.

Therefore the revelation of Daniel chapter 8 is portrayed differently from the revelation in chapter 2 because it is for the Hebrew perspective, and from the Hebrew perspective it does not matter that there would be a Roman Empire following the Grecian since the continuity being revealed is one of western civilization as it developed from Grecian thought, philosophy, art, politics, and culture, and the Hebrew is being warned of the abomination that will come out of that culture.

Nebuchadnezzar's vision is recorded in the 2nd Chapter of Daniel, and it both mystified and frightened the king to the point where he told his astrologers and diviners that if they could not tell him what the dream meant, he would kill them.

Since the king wanted to be certain of the meaning of the dream, he refused to tell the "magicians" about the dream, and the implication is that if they truly had supernatural powers, they could tell him about both the dream and the meaning. They could do neither, and through a series of events recorded in the 2nd chapter of Daniel, Daniel found out about what was happening, and he told the King that he likewise would not be able to do anything in his own power, but Daniel also told Nebuchadnezzar that there is a God in Heaven who can do all things. God told Daniel about the dream, and Daniel told king Nebuchadnezzar what it meant.

Nebuchadnezzar's vision is described in the passage below. Read it carefully at this time, for the entire history of the age of the gentiles is included within this vision and its interpretation. Even the democracies of western civilization are included.

Daniel 2:31-46
"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."

It is important to notice what has been given by the God of heaven to the King of Babylon. "Wheresoever mankind shall dwell" has been given to the "King of Babylon" during the gentile age. The actual kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar never extended any where near that far. God knew that it would not do so, and we know that it didn't. Therefore God either lied to us, or expected us to understand he was speaking of Nebuchadnezzar as a type. Kingdoms will come and kingdoms will go but they will all belong to the one of whom the King of Babylon is a type. The vision declares that all earthly kingdoms will proceed from the king and the kingdom of which Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon was a type, and that all such kingdoms will belong to the king of Babylon. Who, then, is the real King of Babylon? We will see shortly that he is the king of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the prince of darkness. Nebuchadnezzar was only a type of the king who is being indicated here, and this little Babylonian Empire that belonged to Nebuchadnezzar, was only a type of the Babylonian Empire to which all men have been made subject.

Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar the head of gold on the image represented his own Babylonian Kingdom, and that a lesser kingdom, represented by the breast and arms of silver, would come after the Babylonian Kingdom. The Medo-Persian Empire superseded the Babylonian empire in 539 B.C., approximately 50-60 years after Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's interpretation thereof. Next, on the image of Nebuchadnezzar's vision, there was a brazen belly and thighs. Daniel said that this represented the third kingdom in succession of Gentile Empires. This empire then was what would be the Grecian Empire of Alexander the Great, because the Grecian Empire defeated and replaced the Medo-Persian Empire around 334 B.C.

Next in the image comes two legs of iron, and two feet of a mixture of iron and potter's clay, and lastly, (ten) toes from the same mixture. The two legs of iron represented the Roman Empire which supplanted the Grecian Empire approximately 400 years after God's revelation to Daniel. The Roman legions defeated the Macedonians (Greece) in Thessaly at a place called Dog's Head in 197 B.C. Previously the Romans had driven the authority of Greece from Italy in a series of battles between 295 and 275 B.C. In 146 B.C the Romans ended all Grecian challenges to their authority by capturing Corinth and burning it to the ground. Of all that had been the Grecian Empire, only the schools and culture of Athens were saved and nurtured by the Romans, but this was exactly enough to preserve and perpetuate the Grecian Culture which had already taken hold within the Roman Empire.

In fact the Roman Empire was actually a Greco-Roman empire; it was a mixture of Grecian philosophy, architecture, art, and religion, etc. and Roman religion, politics, diplomacy, engineering, statesmanship, and military science. The philosophy, religion, customs, and culture of ancient Greece gradually enveloped and became enmeshed with the Roman customs and culture to such an extent that they replaced them almost exclusively within the aristocratic classes.

We are shown in Nebuchadnezzar's vision that the gentile empires will begin to be divided during the ascension of the 3rd, or Grecian Empire, where the brazen belly splits into two thighs. Now history has shown that the Grecian Empire was politically divided into 4 sections at the death of Alexander, and so this division shown by the two thighs cannot be those political divisions. There is not a doubt in my mind that these divisions are philosophical and represent the principals of the two opposing philosophic notions that originated in Greece and that have plagued all subsequent gentile kingdoms ever since. The two philosophies are of course those of the Stoics on one thigh and the Epicureans on the other. Since the Roman Empire is shown by way of being represented as two legs, it is shown as coming to power in an "already divided" condition, and it seems to me, that it must show that same philosophic division because the Roman Empire was not politically divided until Diocletian's reign which began in 284 A.D.

Since every downward transition of the image represents a change of some sort, the transition between the legs and the feet represent the political division of Rome, and the iron and clay mixture within the feet represents a new transition in the philosophical division. Then this politically and philosophically divided Empire will be followed by an empire of multiple nations in which the same philosophic mixture will exist. This politically and philosophically divided empire, represented by the (ten) toes of the two feet will endure until it is destroyed by the stone that is cut out of mountain by supernatural means. This stone will then itself become a mountain and fill the entire earth.

Now look at Daniel's vision described in chapter 7 and notice that the four beasts he sees are all different from one another and that all four come up from out of the sea. Verse 2 says that the four winds of Heaven were working upon the sea, and then, these four beasts come up from out of the sea where the four winds have been at work. It is pointless to resist the efforts of these four winds of Heaven, but what are they?

The word "winds" translates a Chaldean word that is also used to mean "spirit." This Chaldean word corresponds to an identical Hebrew word for spirit or mind. In the book of Daniel the word is used in every case, except one, to apply to the gentile notion of multiple gods. In the case that it is the exception, Daniel applies it to himself as the spirit of man. (See Daniel 4:8, 4:9, 4:18, 5:11, 5:12, 5:14, 6:3, and 7:15) These four winds then are spiritual forces at work upon the sea. The sea represents the same thing here that it does in the 13th Chapter of the Revelation where John saw the beast rise up out of the sea. In explaining what was meant by the sea in that vision in The revelation, the angel told John that it represented people of the earth. However, I believe that the "seed of Abraham," are not included in either of these representations of the sea, but rather the Hebrews are represented during the age of the gentiles as "the sands of the sea," (See Gen. 22:17, Gen. 32:12, Isa. 10:22, Jer. 33:22, and Hosea 1:10).

The four beasts of Daniel's vision, and the Beast of The Revelation are the results of spiritual forces working upon the minds of gentile mankind. We must never forget this. It is useless to resist spiritual forces with physical means; the pen truly is mightier than the sword. The course of prophetic history has been ordained, and those who aspire to grand philosophical, commercial, and political schemes become the unwitting agents of that destiny. If we are to have any effect upon that ordination, it will only be through spiritual warfare that it will happen. We must also remember that the Bible teaches that there are two kinds of spirits and that we are to test them to see what type we are dealing with when we get a "bright idea."

As has been previously stated, all of the visions in the Book of Daniel provide a remarkably accurate outline of world history as it has been molded by the most notable or dominant empires during the times spoken of in the Bible as the "age of the Gentiles." We will look more at these visions as we go deeper into the prophecies, but for now it is important to fix the succession of these empires in our minds. The visions start with Babylon, progress to Medo-Persia, then to Greece and Alexander the Great, then to the four divisions of the Grecian Empire which came at Alexander's death, then to Rome which became the divided Roman and Byzantine Empires. It was the Byzantine empire that was conquered and overrun by the Ottoman Empire, which was a definite type of Empire of the Antichrist. Then, at the last, these two become an empire that separately develops out of the two feet but are both of the culture of the Greco-Roman Empire. This last empire is represented in the Holy Prophetic Scriptures as horns, and as feet, and as toes. Just as surely as two feet spring from two legs and ten toes proceed from two feet, and just as surely as horns develop from heads, this empire of Antichrist is going to develop from these empires of western civilization.

If you wonder where history is at in fulfilling the prophecies of Daniel, we are still at the two feet where the remnants of the Roman Empire and Ottoman Empire vie for position but we getting very close to seeing the ten toes. Many of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire will at some point form a united confederation with many of the remnants of the Roman Empire, and a confederation of republics will emerge which will dominate the rest of the world economically, politically and religiously. When that happens, the eastern nations of the orient will also unite to counter this block and its virtual oil monopoly, and things will really begin to heat up on earth. I believe that the United States is going to be left completely out of this picture and suffers an economic collapse, or worse, about the time that Antichrist invades Israel.

Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the fourth kingdom in his dream would be as strong as iron and that it would break in pieces and subdue all things. The Roman genius for conquest is documented in history. Basically they employed a simple and direct form of expansion: March the Roman legions into the territory to be conquered and dispatch the opposing armies; march the legions into the cities of the defeated kingdoms and ensure that the citizens saw and felt the might and brutality of those legions. Then they would reinstate the defeated kings and their satraps as provincial administrators under the watchful eye of whatever Roman was in charge of the legions. From that time on they would use the threat of the legions to exact tribute from the defeated provinces and send the wealth back to Rome, or at least some of it. There is no end to the efficiency with which an Empire can expand when it is not encumbered by any concept of eternal judgment.

The taxation of the occupied nations was the life blood by which Rome financed an increasingly debauched lifestyle. But the tax burden she placed upon her provinces became a festering sore to manage in the provinces. The cost of putting down continuous rebellions, plus a citizenry of wastrels, and a privileged class marked by avarice and dissipation exhausted her resources, and she decayed and rotted in her own fouled nest. That which succeeded Rome in the western part of her empire was what we today know as western civilization in Europe. Rome was succeeded first by the Byzantine Empire in the eastern half of her empire which was then defeated by the Ottoman Empire.

The last world dominating empire that will exist when the Lord Jesus Christ returns is represented by the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's vision. This last empire will proceed from the division of the Roman Empire which preceded it, and it will be politically, economically, and philosophically similar to the republic of Rome when Rome Defeated Greece. It can be seen that this empire which will develop from out of the two feet will endure until the return of Jesus. This is evident from Dan. 2:34-35 where it says:

"Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."

The stone that is cut out from a mountain without hands is the Rock of Ages, the Stone that the builders rejected. When Jesus comes back, he will crush all of the kingdoms on earth and bring them under the subjection of his reign. The Bible says that he will rule them with a rod of iron. The visions of The Book of Daniel show that the Empires which the Lord Jesus Christ crushes are those that are represented by the feet and the ten toes in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and which are also represented by the fourth beast with the ten horns in Daniel's vision. Daniel says that all other preceding forms of empires will dry up and blow away. The last form of empire will remain in dominion until the return of Jesus Christ.

When Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he said in chapter 2, verses 41-44 that an empire will come out of the two separate empires represented by the feet, and that empire will endure until the end of the age:

"And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."

When Jesus Christ returns all preceding forms of government that mankind has ever produced will be destroyed by him out of hand, and that includes Western Democracies and the offsprings thereof.

When God's people first complained against him concerning their desire to have a king to rule over them, the prophet Samuel was greatly disturbed by their desires; 1 Samuel 8:6-7 says: "But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them."

All forms of government, from Babel to Western Democracy are the result of, and have been made necessary by, man's rebellion from God, and when Jesus returns to rule the nations with a rod of iron, as prophesied in Revelation 19:15, there will be no other government except Christarchy. Those who will not live under His authority now surely won't find it attractive then.

It is explicit then, in the preceding passages, that what ever the political philosophy may be of these last kingdoms which are represented by the toes and the two feet which have developed from the Greco-Roman Empire, that political philosophy is going to endure through out the remainder of the age of the gentiles until The Antichrist appears and sets up his empire from within that empire that has immediately preceded him. It is this empire of Antichrist's that Jesus smashes when He returns and sets up the everlasting kingdom of His reign. Within the context of the prophecy, and as has been borne out by subsequent history, it is apparent that this political philosophy will be western style republican democracy. It is this western style of republican democracy in the remnants of the Roman and Ottoman Empire's that will eventually degenerate into a republican tyranny and that will give itself over to the reborn Imperialism of the Abomination of Desolation.

In the 7th chapter of Daniel God sends the prophet himself a vision of this same age of the gentiles that Nebuchadnezzar had seen, but this time the imagery involved the use of various animals to depict the succession of the gentile kingdoms. The Babylonian Empire was represented by a lion, and the Medo-Persian Empire was a bear which raised itself up first by one side and then the other, and the Grecian Empire was represented by a leopard which had four wings upon its back, and then a fourth beast, which Daniel did not recognize, but which he said was "dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and break in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it and it had ten horns." (Dan. 7:7)

In this vision Daniel was shown the duality of the Medo-Persian Empire in that the bear raised first one side (the Medes) and then the other (the Persians). He was then shown that the Grecian Empire would rapidly conquer the world but was going to be split into four kingdoms, which happened when Alexander the Great died. But the fourth beast was an entirely new kind of "critter" to Daniel. It broke all that came before it into pieces. After this very different forth empire, there will be two separate empires which will be contemporary with each other and which will proceed from out of the fourth empire which was the Roman Empire. These separate empires are represented by the feet in both Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's vision. In Daniel's vision it is the feet that stamp upon and destroys all the residue of those pieces from the former empires. Remember, the last world dominating political administration represented by the toes will come from the separate empires, but it is the separate empires represented by the feet that are going to destroy all other forms of government before them. The form of government in these two separate empires is going to be the same as that of Rome when Rome defeated Greece.

It is said of the fourth beast in Daniel's vision that it had ten horns. The number ten is often used in the Bible to represent completeness and horns are symbolic of authority, or kings, or power. Again be sure to notice that whatever the type of government that is represented by the ten toes is going to be, it is going to destroy all the other types which came before it.

As we noted earlier, Daniel said that all of the four empires were different from one another, but here he singles out this 4th beast, or empire, as being exceptionally different (diverse) from all of the other empires that had existed before it. In what way was Rome exceptionally different from all preceding Empires at the time that she replaced Greece as the world super power?

Rome became a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC in 509 B.C. and remained one, more or less, until 82 B.C., and that is why I say that the form taken by the two separate empires will be that of democratic republicanism. Nebuchadnezzar's dream occurred around ninety years before Rome became a Republic, but God revealed the nature, and the strength, and the destiny of the Roman empire to Nebuchadnezzar through His prophet nearly a hundred years before the world first saw it even begin to take shape. I believe that it is very important to note that while Rome was a Democratic Republic at the time that she replaced Greece as the world dominating empire, she had degenerated into a Military-Aristocratic Republican Tyranny¹ by the time the world rejected the Lord Jesus Christ at his first advent. I believe this to be the single most important lesson to be learned from all of history for all peoples who love liberty and who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Ancient Grecian Democracy was overwhelmed and defeated by the Macedonian Monarchy of Philip and Alexander the Great because the Grecian belief in a degenerative parochial self interest had led them into forging a life of self serving materialism. The Roman Democratic Republic degenerated into a Military-Aristocratic Republican Tyranny because of the self centered dissipation of her citizens. Western Democracies will fair no better, for even now democracy is being dissipated into anarchy, and no one in authority can tell us the truth of why this is happening. We are all being slowly conditioned to the idea that we need to be governed by some benevolent dictatorship.

But before Rome appeared, all of the other world dominating gentile empires represented in Daniel's vision had been monarchies at the time of their ascension to power, including Greece which had earlier been a true democracy but which became an empire under the dictatorial rule of Philip and Alexander. But at the time that Rome defeated Greece in 197 B.C., Rome was still a Republic and the ultimate authority for government at that time resided with the people of Rome.

In 82 B.C. a Roman General by the name of Sula turned the legions of Rome against the authority of the citizens and invaded a debauched and dissipated Rome. He declared himself to be a perpetual dictator. In 81 B.C. he enacted laws which transferred supreme power from the people to the senate, but the senate was unable to hold this power for long because of the constant collusion and collision and intrigue within its body. (Sound familiar?)

Rome, then, was a republic, with the ultimate political power residing with the people, from 509 B.C. until 81 B.C. This was certainly a different kind of beast from any of the others which Daniel had seen, and this was why God represented it to Daniel as something he would not recognize, because in 600 B.C. democracy had not yet formed in either Greece or Rome.

How do you suppose that a Hebrew teenager, who was a slave in a gentile land, could figure out there would one day be an empire founded upon democratic republicanism that would dominate the known world, and leave the world an enduring legacy even after it had itself collapsed? How do you suppose this same teenager understood that the form of the empire which would then proceed from the collapsed rubble of that Greco-Roman Empire would endure until the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth?. How do you suppose that he knew these kinds of things about democratic republics when there had never been one on earth at the time that he "saw" one?

Democracy took shape in Athens around 500 B.C. In Rome the struggle for democracy began between the citizens and the kings about the same time, and Rome had become a republic by 509 B.C. But in 600 B.C. there had not yet been a democracy for Daniel to see; he had never seen such a form of government. But it is this republican type of democracy which the Bible says will destroy all other types of government in the last days before the empire of the Abomination of Desolation or The Antichrist appears.

Sula, the "perpetual dictator" in Rome remained in power around two years (so much for man's perpetuity). From that time onward until the Empire finally collapsed into the nations of Europe and Byzantium, she was ruled by whom ever the Roman legions declared their allegiance to as Caesar. It was the idea of an armed military deciding upon who will be the king over an unarmed population that was so repugnant to the founders of the American Republic. That is why they gave the people the right to bear arms. Those who would restrict, regulate, or otherwise diminish this right are accomplices of the spirit of tyranny either knowingly or unwittingly.

It is a fact of history that self centered humanity can not govern themselves, for they will bankrupt all resources in pursuing their own comfort, pleasure, and desires. When the system has been thus bankrupted, the segment of the population that controls the most violent physical power will determine the leadership for the rest. Constant intrigue, struggle, and warfare between armed brigands will ensue. Today it is almost academic that we still have the right to bear arms because the military and police structure with which the citizens would be opposed to in any struggle against tyranny would be so much better armed than we that the outcome would be almost foreordained. None the less, an armed population, willing to die and fight for liberty, is the only protection against tyranny in a humanistic republican democracy, and that is why we were given the right to bear arms. The only other solution to maintaining the republic is that the citizens give up their selfishness and that has never once happened completely.

The history of Rome as a Republic was one of almost constant warfare but that was not the reason she declined. If warfare had been her only concern she would not have collapsed because warfare was her life's blood. The problem which she was never able to solve, in nearly 500 years of democratic republicanism, was the steady and inevitable degeneration of the moral strength of her citizens while they simultaneously and continuously intruded themselves into every facet of the government. The republic became a government of the mob, by the mob, for the mob. And the mob steadily became more unruly and insatiable.

In the last days of the Empire there were only two classes of citizens and both were addicted to the life of ease. The poor had their "free bread and shows," or "panem et circenses," as it was called (every thing is sounding so familiar), and the wealthy had their Epicurean banquets and orgies. It was all financed by the wealth extorted from the conquered provinces which were being taxed by the legions of Rome. Rome had become a factional, fractious, and a factitious mob of unruly self interest at the time Sula brought them under control with the might of the military.

The fundamental Stoic values of the old Republic of reverence for the family, reverence for the state, and reverence for the gods were constantly eroded away and replaced by the self centered and self indulgence of the ancient Grecian Hedonistic, Epicurean philosophies, until these virtueless endeavors became the total concerns of the citizens of Rome. America and all western democracies are even now on the same spiraling slide downward and are but awaiting a Sula to forcefully reinstitute the necessary Babylonian controls and virtues in order to maintain the state.

The images of Rome in both the 2nd chapter and the 7th chapter of Daniel is that she is not conquered by another empire but that she becomes something else. In chapter two Rome starts off as two legs, and then becomes two feet which then become ten toes; in chapter 7 she evolves from a head into ten horns. Rome was first divided into two political empires by Diocletian, who also eliminated all republican freedoms and eliminated the power of the senate by reducing this once proud, but now corrupt, body to the status of a city council. When Constantine moved his capital to Byzantium the decline of old Rome was complete, and the city of Rome was left to rot in her own generated filth. Even as the power and glory of Rome was fading in the west, her culture, which was inherited from ancient Grecian philosophy, politics, art, engineering, mathematics, etc. was being preserved in the kingdoms, and monasteries, and universities of both the Byzantine Empire and the kingdoms of Europe where it awaited its destiny to be "rediscovered" by the humanistic, "enlightened scholars" of the Renaissance.

From the time of Constantine (330 A.D.) until the 11th century Christianity was the state religion of both the eastern and the western legs of the Roman Empire. In the eastern portion, Christianity was the mandated state religion; in the western empire it was the official religion of the state, and it got its power after the fall of Rome by lending its spiritual authority to authenticate the aristocracies of Europe. Both situations made for corrupt politics and materialistic churches.

In the 11th century hordes of horsemen invaded western Asia from Turkestan and established an Islamic state within the Byzantine Empire. From this state in the region of Anatolia they launched numerous and incessant invasions of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071 they defeated the army of the Byzantine Empire and took possession of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The Byzantines appealed to the Pope in Rome for help in recovering this territory and the crusades were launched. For the next two hundred years European Christians fought the Mohammedan Turks unsuccessfully.

Some time around the turn of the 14th century a fresh wave of Turkestani horsemen invaded the area again, and this time they were even better organized under the leadership of Othman the 1st. Othman founded the dynasty known as the Ottoman or Turkish Empire that reached its height under Solyman the Magnificent in the early part of the sixteenth century. By the end of that century the Ottoman Empire controlled all of the lands from Algeria on the west end of the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, on through Egypt and down both coasts of the Red Sea southeastward through Arabia and along parts of the Arabian Sea, and from there northward to the Caspian Sea, and then westward along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and northward to the Black Sea and into the region of modern Poland, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.

Islam is fundamentally a masculine, warrior's religion, and the missionary message of its adherents was simple: "Convert or die." Because Christianity had been a "state religion" in Byzantium with little or no intellectual or spiritual conviction or foundation, Islam had little difficulty in persuading "Christians" to choose Islam over death. Much the same type of choice will once again be afforded to the church in the days just prior to Jesus' return. Islam soon replaced Christianity within the growing empire of the Ottomans.

The ethnic cleansing that is being seen today among the Croats, the Serbs, and the Bosnians has much of its origins of hatred in this Ottoman Empire that was established in these lands when these Muslim invaders took children for hostage and raised the strongest and brightest of these children in the Mohammedan Faith to be warriors, or Janizaries, for the Faith and for the Sultan. This practice was continued until a Janizarian revolt in 1826 almost overthrew the sultan. The revolt was put down and thousands of Janizarians were slain when the Sultan abolished the corps.

The Turks fought on the side of Germany in World War I, and after they and Germany were defeated, most of their vast empire came under Arab control under the influence of Europe again. A Turkish revolt led by an army officer, Mustafa Kemal, resulted in a republican government in Turkey.

But the thing to note is that in spite of all of history in the between times, dominance of the middle eastern area was once again returned to the remnants of the Roman Empire. Except for Israel, most of these areas are today independent Islamic nations whose parochial hatred for each other is only exceeded by their common hatred of the Jew. Many from this group of independent nations will one day be united into the federation of nations that the politically charismatic Antichrist will forge through lies, deceit, and supernatural persuasion. Using secret and hidden promises to these nations, he will promise them the ultimate destruction of the both the Jew and Christianity if they will join with him in his imperial ambitions. It is not necessary that these Arab Nations be republics at the time when they ally themselves with the Empire of Antichrist, but they may be. The cry for democracy within many of these nations is growing daily. However, the both Ezekiel and Daniel indicate that the Arabic nations are still independent nations who will enter into an alliance with the reborn Roman style Republican Aristocratic tyranny of Antichrist that will exist in Europe, Russia, Siberia, and north western Asia. It is this political and economic alliance that is forming even before our eyes that will become the dominate force on earth, and the oil of the middle east will be its lifeblood.

At first these nations will ally themselves to this one willingly. But soon he will have trouble with Egypt and when he invades Egypt, he will begin to have trouble with Syria. In all, three nations will soon revolt and one by one this "Emperor" of the new world order will bring the rebellious under control by his growing military strength. But the thing that must first be understood about this situation is that before any of this happens, republican democracy has to have gained dominance within the western regions of the former Roman Empire, and then it must subsequently become weak and conditioned for tyranny because of corruption of the individual.

The history of the western portion of the Latter Roman Empire and ancient Greece is familiar to most of us, and most would agree that the nations of modern Europe, the New World, and Russian Asia can trace their origins back to that Empire, and through that empire back to Ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece tried democracy and its citizens became corrupt. Rome was a democratic republic until its citizens became too corrupt to function. ¹ The fall of Rome did not signal the beginning of that darkness that is called the dark ages, and Christianity did not cause that darkness; the fall of Rome was the result of the darkness that had already crept into the empire and its institutions through a millennium of cultural adherence to the Hedonistic and Epicurean philosophies and political ideologies preached by ancient Grecian materialists. The dark ages did not come upon Europe because of the church, but it came when Rome fell because a debauched Roman aristocracy had had no interest in developing the kingdoms of the empire beyond their potential for taxation. The dark ages continued to exist because a materialistic church tolerated and supported the political and commercial institutions that had caused and perpetuated that darkness for fear that the church would die from political and financial weakness if it did not advocate and support them.

It is unreasonable to fear that the church will die when Jesus said that it would endure until his return. If Christianity is dependent upon commercial, political and philosophical support, and if their opposition can cause Christianity to die out, then Jesus was not true in the first place, and it ought to die out.

When the authority of Roman government evaporated, the church hierarchy remained in place in Europe and continued to authenticate the various monarchies that rose to replace the authority of Rome in each location, and since churchmen had already been conditioned to political and commercial alliance with Rome, they forgot where their kingdom exists and they began to make spiritual decisions based on political and economic expediency. They believed that if the church were going to survive, it had to join itself to the developing political monarchies left behind by the collapse of Rome. It was nearly fatal to the church.

We need to understand once and for all that Jesus said that HE would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The preservation of the church is not left to depend upon our efforts, but upon His. If he cannot preserve his church, he lied; he is not supreme, and it does not make any difference what supersedes him. I am content to wait upon him to demonstrate his deliverance or die waiting because I despise the world that must exist if Jesus has not been true.

With both the Grecian and Roman Republics to study, it is not so difficult to understand why so many intelligent and learned men from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries considered democracy at its best to be riddled with unseen perils, and at its worst to be the devil's own form of government.

Before you cringe in horror at that statement, let's step aside for a moment and look at democracy from a perspective that is isolated from the self perpetuating institutions of democracy.

In 1952 Whittaker Chambers wrote in his biographical book, "Witness" that the generations then alive were living on the turning point of all civilization. He believed the destiny of all future generations, whether they would be democratic or communist would be determined within decades of 1952.

A scant four decades later, by the 1990's, it has become obvious that the struggle he predicted has been won by the forces of democracy. It is readily apparent today that the world is going to turn more and more to democracy. It is apparent that the world is going to be made safe for democracy. It is not apparent that it is going to be made safe from democracy, and the blinding speed with which the newly emerged democracies of the old Russias are being prepared for the tyranny of the new world order is alarming. The problem is that democracy was dumped almost overnight upon an unprepared population. The rate at which evangelization within this populace is truly wonderful, but much of the evangelism concerns the perpetuation of western culture instead of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and even that evangelization is almost negligible by comparison to the suddenness with which communism came apart.

Chambers truly saw that democracy and communism would engage in a global conflict to determine which force would ascend over the hearts of mankind for the ordering and structuring of society. As a former communist who had deserted the party, Chambers understood the goals of communism much better than did his critics, and when he said that communism declared, "Philosophy has explained the world; it is necessary to change the world," he knew that he was conveying to Americans the peril that those changes would entail for democracy. Chambers came to believe in the "goodness" of democracy and the "badness" of communism, just as most of the world's population have also come to believe likewise during the last forty plus years.

Saying communism is evil and democracy is good, is like saying my left hand is bad, but my right hand is good. The available facts will not support the premise. The facts are that regardless of which side had won in the struggle between communism and democracy, conditions in the world would not have been much changed. The single most enduring attribute of wealth would have remained scarcity, the single most abiding characteristics of politics would have remained deceit and guile, the greatest strength in the exercise of power would have still been clandestine lawlessness, and the most profound sentiment of religion would still be voiced in the people's demand for equality.

Democracy and Communism are but the right and left hands of a body of materialistic belief stretched, in opposite directions, toward the rational conclusions of logical extremes. They are but opposite directions of humanism proceeding from a common point of origin founded in materialism. Both sides believe that philosophy has explained the world and that it is necessary to change the world. Christians are not under a commandment to change the world but to sojourn through it fearing God, and not man, while bearing witness to, and making disciples of people, not governments. Christianity changes people, not governments.

The struggle between democracy and communism is not about deciding how, or if, to redistribute wealth. That is going to happen whichever side ultimately wins in this struggle. The struggle is about deciding for all future generations who will be the ultimate and final authority of appeal for enforcing and authenticating the manners and mechanics of civilization. Will that authority rest upon the state and the elite, or upon religion, or upon the people.

Communism is not inherently evil. One has only to read Acts 2:43-47 to see the truth of this. Democracy is not inherently good, one has only to read American newspapers to see the truth of that. The former Soviet Union had no large problems with organized crime, or drug abuse, or citizen violence while the communist regime was in power. The problems in the Soviet Union were with the officials of the state who were few in number in comparison to the multitudes of the citizens who are now becoming the problem.

When CBS newsman, Dan Rather, interviewed a communist mayor in China who was supporting the economics of capitalism, Mr. Rather asked the mayor why he still did not favor democracy politically. The mayor's answer was that when government gives up control of the people, the manners of civilization collapse.

The most democratic nation that the world has ever known is the nation whose citizens are the most violent, the most vicious, the most vehement, the vengeful, and the most vindictive and among the most vile in the earth. Yearly in America there are around 23,000 murders, 140,000 battered women, 87,600 reported rapes (who knows how many unreported ones?). 671,000 children are abused every year and the number grows daily. Pedophilia is even now being advocated as a loving and caring way to teach and show affection by a few degenerate humanists who teach in American Universities. Every day another 10,800 children drop out of American schools. Over 1600 children will die today in America because they are guilty of being too poor to live, often because their parents have no self discipline to deny themselves the pleasure of material intoxicants instead of providing the necessities of food, shelter, and clothing to their offspring.

The average child watching cable television or video will witness 32,000 murders, 40,000 attempted murders, and 250,000 acts of violence before they are 18 years old. An accumulative total of the acts of immorality committed in front of their eyes would soon rival the national debt. Americans make millionaires out of selfish, violent, aggressive men whose most obvious contribution to our manners is to teach our youth how to break bones, bats, backboards, and contracts, while we allow 40,000 children starve daily somewhere in the world.

It is by no means certain that the "good" side has won in the struggle between democracy and communism. It is more likely that there was no good side involved in this conflict.

But the battle is all but over and the victor will be democracy. Henceforth the manners of all people, whatever those manners turn out to be, will be authenticated by the majority, and right behavior will be determined by the opinion of the majority. This is not a good thing for mankind. In fact it is the most tragic fact of history, and the reasons why this is so are explained below:

The American Republic was founded upon the principles of ancient Grecian humanism which were overlaid by principles imagined by the philosophers of the materialistic enlightenment. Briefly these principles can be stated as follows:

a) If there is such a thing as God or the gods, they are beyond the capacity of man for discovery and therefore God can be disregarded concerning the explanation of manners in mankind.

b) There is no such thing as truth, but there is utility. Man can discover for himself the utility of anything and therefore man does not need any god. The application of this principle is why America is not a truly scientific nation, but is, rather, a technological nation. Technology is primarily concerned with the application of science, which is what utility is all about, while pure science is concerned with the search for the truth. One of the foundations of the enlightenment was the premise of technology which is based upon utility; therefore, utility has replaced truth in the "enlightened view." It is this fact that explains why much of science, "falsely so called," has become so overwhelmed by philosophy and is completely devoid of the search for Truth in western culture.

c) These enlightened founders also believed mankind to be fundamentally good willed, and that he could be relied upon to work for his own benefit and for that of his neighbors' anytime he was shown that such conduct was in his own self interest.

There were also some political axioms held to be self evident such as:

a) "The right to rule rests in the consent of the ruled."

b) "All men are created equal with possession of certain inalienable rights among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Actually the original wording of this proposition stated that all men held the right to the pursuit of property instead of happiness. I believe this was because it was property that had always been the basis of wealth. It had been the restricted rights to property ownership that had perpetuated the aristocracies of Greece, Rome, and Europe, and which had led to the feudal system. I do not know why the earlier premise came to be changed from the pursuit of property to the pursuit of happiness in America, but I suspect that the institutions of elitism and slavery had something to do with it.

That there was a double mindedness in this assimilation of principles is also evident from the premises concerning God, truth, and utility, and the other premises which invoked the authority of a creator even as the principles which deny him were likewise being invoked. We were doomed to instability from the start.

The American Revolution was a war of rebellion by Englishmen against an English Sovereign whom they believed had forfeited his right to rule because he had violated the consent of those he ruled. Such a thought would have been absurd before the 12th century, but by the 1700's it was an accepted principle of government. Slowly, but inexorably, the power to govern was being delivered into the hands of the people, not because they were the repositories of greater truth, or the mediators of better judgment, or even the better handlers of great power, but simply because men were coming to believe in an idea whose time had come. This idea was the inevitable conclusion of the union between the politics and commerce of Rome and the Christian Doctrines of freedom and equality in Christ.

This idea had been gaining in favor ever since the middle ages when Henry I (1100-1135 A.D.) officially introduced the English people to the idea that there was a legal status for their rights. When he issued "The Charter of Liberties", which would become the basis of the Magna Carta, he relaid a foundation of an ancient, Anglo-Saxon belief in political rights and liberties which had been held by these peoples since the times they had dressed in animal coats, and gathered around cave fires before recorded history, and by which they had ruled themselves until the Romans defeated them. It must be noted here that these ancient Anglo-Saxon tribal democracies worked because everyone within them subjected themselves to ancient tribal rules and beliefs about their tribal gods. The Native American system likewise worked in the same fashion and just as tribally. But all such parochial tribal rights and liberties had to be destroyed in order to fulfill the destiny of western civilization of one world community, under one world commerce, under one world religion.

When the English King, John, was forced, by all the barons, towns people, and churchmen, whom he had alienated, to sign the Magna Carta, on June 15, 1215 in the meadow of Runnymeade, the idea that a sovereign reigns by the consent of those he governs was inscribed indelibly into the hearts and minds of subject and monarch alike, and it began to replace the previously held doctrine that monarchs ruled by "Divine Right" which the church had previously supported.

There has never been any proof to validate this belief that the governed must give their consent to be governed, and it was therefore necessary to appeal to some authority as its source. At that time the source was once again given to be the Creator, today it depends upon the majority for its validation. There still remains no proof; it is just a kind of boiling over of human nature.

But make no mistake, be sure that this belief was then, and is now, ordained to sweep over the world, spreading like a flood from one generation to the next, until it culminates in a world dominating federation of democratic republics where truth, law, justice, commerce, morality, and ethics, and religion are regulated through a process of arbitration in which the guiding principles are set, not by God, but by the majority. Whoever would get in its way will be swept out of history like thistle down in a hurricane. Democracy was not then in 1952, and is not now, in permanent danger of losing out to dictatorial communism. But democracy is forever in danger of losing itself to tyranny through the dissipation of its citizenry.

The Englishmen who settled in colonial America were almost universally disciples of John Locke whether they actively confessed such or not. Locke was the first modern scholar to openly teach that the right to rule rested in the consent of those being ruled. As we noted concerning the ancient Anglo-Saxons, the principle is as old as tribal man, and in fact was seen being practiced by the American Indians. If a sovereign should lose that consent, he lost his right to rule over that people. The logic, if not the desirability, of this is readily apparent if, instead of applying it to many people, one applies it to only one person. The American Indian sometimes did just that when a single warrior would leave the tribe in a dispute over a ruling of the chief.

However, the American Indian had a place to exist when he left the tribe as long as he avoided the tribe. Today we can not do that because all places in which we may exist are claimed by some sovereign power. But if the Axiom represents Truth, it should not matter to whom, or how it is applied. The civil war would not have been fought over the secession of the southern states if the northern ones had truly believed this axiom represented some kind of truth. It would appear rather, that the Nation which founded itself upon that principle, holds to itself the right to violate it whenever its own sovereignty is in question; it is ever so with the humanistic mind.

Locke also believed and taught that good laws made a nation of good citizens, and that, if men were given just laws in which to order their lives, they would just naturally live in peace and harmony with each other. If Locke had been a baseball player, he would have been 0 for 2.

In 1783 Patrick Henry defended the people of Virginia against the established Church in a case which came to be known as the parson's cause. The historical importance of this case was not the case itself, but the platform which it provided for Henry to publicly proclaim for the record, for the first time in America, that "when a king vetoes the acts of a colonial legislature which are beneficial to the people represented by that legislature, he has degenerated into a tyrant, and has forfeited all rights to his subjects obedience." This argument could as well be used against every American President who has ever vetoed a bill that was beneficial to some segment of American society.

The public rationale for the American revolution was more the inflammatory oratory from the hearts of rebellious men than it was of any eternal substance. The simple truth is that these men rebelled because they were rebels. I do not deny the truth that a few of their causes did need some righteous remedy, and using those causes, they managed to inflame and arouse the natural rebellion in all men to convince the majority of Americans of the righteousness of their purpose. Had they not, they would not have succeeded in engaging them into a war. But let's face it, most of what they hated was not the injustice of it all but the subjugation of themselves. You will not convince me that men who truly hated injustice, and loved liberty, and believed in equality would have continued the custom of slavery. Just as you will not convince me that men who truly hate iniquity, and love righteousness, and believe in divine judgment will continue the practice of sin.

In 1774 this same Patrick Henry stood as a member of the first Continental Congress and gave his famous "give me liberty or give me death" speech. Yet in 1788 he refused to sign his name to the ratification of the constitution which he had fought so enduringly to procure. He asked who had authorized the framers of the constitution to say, "We the people," instead of "We the States." He said the language of the constitution would result in "one great consolidated, national government of the people of all the states," instead of a republic of democratic states.

Henry's objections, and those of a great many others who agreed with him such as Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, sound "plumb" strange to Americans today who are completely accustomed to that one great consolidated national government of the people of all the states of America today. What one of us does not think of himself as an American instead of as a citizen of one its states? When the civil war broke out, Robert E. Lee chose to fight with the "country" of his citizenship, Virginia. Tomorrow, our descendants will think of themselves as Earthlings or Worldlians, or Terra Firmans, or something of similar global connotations instead of as Americans. The seeds have already been planted; the vines are up and have flowered; they are beginning to bear fruit even now. Man has been on a long and steady march toward one world government, one world commerce, and one world religion since the humanistic philosophers of Ancient Greece tutored Alexander the Great.

Today we complain about the political wheeling and dealing and compromising, and closed-door, political maneuvering in Washington D.C. without ever stopping to realize that such is a necessary part that is built into the system. How else is a representative from South Dakota going to get a delegation from New York or California, for example, to vote for him to spend federal dollars on some needed project in South Dakota without first having agreed to vote for something they also want? The Federal system demands compromise, and compromise is a admirable quality only among those who know no standards. You would not buy a house built by someone who had compromised every horizontal, vertical, square, and linear measurement; why then would anyone insist on a government and a society built in that fashion? Such compromise begs corruption, and that corruption is now bearing its fruit.

Historians say that when Henry and Adams and Hancock and others opposed the ratification of the constitution, the "wiser counsel" of men like Washington and Madison and Jefferson prevailed. It is true that they prevailed. History is beginning even now to call into question their wisdom.

When the constitution was ratified as it was written, the power to rule was passed into the hands of the majority even though they were unaware of it at the time. The civil unrest of the last half of this century has been but a rather timid testing of that power, which came into their hands in 1788, but which they had neither thought about using, nor known how to use, until American Christianity had been intellectually compromised, and the general public was shown in the 1960's that they could energize this power without personal consequence.

Unless there is a change in the manners of the majority, politics in the next century will consist of reading and responding to the puerile mood swings, trendy opinions, amorphous ideology, and whimpering whims of a devilishly unstable and railing majority.

In 1831 an aristocratic young Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville toured America and studied American Democracy up close. He wrote a book of his observations which he titled, "Democracy In America". In this book Tocqueville noted with certainty that Americans would tend to place more and more faith in the infallibility of the majority to the extent that a new type of tyranny would eventually develop if it were not continuously checked. He said that faith in the majority would become a new kind of religion in America and the majority would be its ministering prophet.2 That description of faith in the majority, is the essence of cultism which is essentially faith in the minister of faith instead of faith in the source of faith to which the minister points. American faith in the majority has, in fact today, become a cult worship.

In America today, in the social and civil arena, we are seeing such things as truth, obscenity, morality, and ethics being delivered into the hands of the majority for administration, and we are beginning to see this majority intrude itself into the administration of criminal justice as well. Take for example the Los Angles riots that followed the trial and acquittal of the four policemen who had been charged with the beating of a man named King. Because of those riots, the four Policemen, who had been acquitted, were subsequently retried on Federally sponsored charges that they had violated King's civil rights. It does not make any difference from a constitutional point of view whether the population is incensed over a jury verdict or not; to deliver a defendant into court a second time for the same crime is unconscionable and unconstitutional (If it was not the same crime, how could they use the same evidence?). The constitution forbids the second use of a fact that has previously been tried by a jury. But this law was enforced for the sole purpose of placating an unruly mob. If the violation of civil rights is the charge that the authorities wished to bring against those four policemen, then that is what they should have tried them for in the first place.

Afterwards, in a related trial, another jury, which tried two other men who had expressed their disagreement with the original verdict in the "King Trial" by dragging a truck driver from his truck and brutally beating him, was so intimidated by the threat of another round of riots that they could not function constitutionally.

I do not say that these seven men were either guilty or innocent, and the Lord will avenge all that sort of thing when he returns. I say that because the mobbish majority has begun to intrude its unruly self into the administration of all justice, we are none of us safe. Neither the law, nor the courts which administer the law, nor the constitution which protects and anchors the law, can protect us from ourselves.

The weight of public opinion intrudes itself into every aspect of life, dictating every decision from fashion to Faith, from health to history, nothing is left unaffected by the always vehement, and often violent vision and revision, of the surging, pulsating, demanding majority. This pressure, which the young have not been equipped to resist, they call peer pressure. Indeed are they not being equipped to resist; they are being pressed into compliance.

In a play he wrote called "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE", Henrick Ibsen said that it took 50 years for the majority to be right, and then it was never right unless it did the right thing. The premise of that play was that self interest would always stand in the way of the majority doing the right thing. The problem also seems to me that even if the majority does eventually learn to do the right thing, by the time it learns what's right, its in the minority. This is because of our nature where our thirst for meaning begins small and grows as we get older, but our selfish motivations are with us in full flower when we are born. Because the young will always make up the majority of the population in every generation, I have no doubt that the efforts to continually lower the voting age within democracies is the result of Satanic inspiration, in order that he may more readily use our selfish motivations at a time when our thirst for meaning is small.

There is real and predictable danger from allowing truth to be determined by a self centered majority within a society of equals. Tocqueville saw this and rightly predicted the mind set which equality would incubate in humanity. He postulated, that since all men held themselves to be equal, none were better at judging the truth than any other, and each person would therefore eventually assign to himself the authority to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, ethical and unethical, and good manners and bad. Since each person was the authority individually, nothing could be more logical than that the majority will invariably reflect the truth at every particular time on every particular subject. Absolutes would dissolve into thousands of shades of gray depending upon the way the Majority "felt" at any particular time.

One of the problems associated with truth and the majority is that since the majority is made up from self centered individuals, truth is going to be determined by what is in the best selfish interest of the majority. Another problem is that the majority usually does not "believe" at all, but rather "feels" its way along. It is not at all uncommon to hear someone who otherwise has good sense say some thing like, "I feel this is the best thing to do." I have intentionally felt of a lot of things in this life trying to see what "best" feels like, and I cannot tell you the first thing about the feeling of "best." The notion that "feeling" is more real than knowing or believing is another result of "enlightened materialistic thought," which both the stoics and the Bible disavow, but which has gained much sway with the majority without their awareness. This notion of "feeling" instead of believing has its origin in the idea that the mind of man is nothing more than a chemistry, and it is by his environment that his emotions are stirred by this chemistry, and that he only becomes alive to himself through his feelings. By this line of "feeling," no one is responsible for their actions because we are all products of an environment that stirs our chemicals and boils our emotions and produces uncontrollable feelings within us.

Even if there is no such thing as Absolute Truth, life based on feelings is terminal both to the individual and to the whole body of man. There is no other animal that has the capacity for such brutality, as an expression of his self interest, to all other members of his kind, as does man. When feelings are what gives life meaning, the joy of the kill is how they will ultimately be expressed and experienced.

Any real dangers from such an ideology can only be appreciated if there is such a thing as an absolute truth that does not conform to this philosophy, because if there is no absolute truth there is no truth of any sort. If there is no absolute truth, then it does not matter that man's mind would be a detrimental, extraneous piece of dead weight. And it does not matter that public opinion can be, and most usually is, persuaded into the most illogical of beliefs merely by manipulating the "feelings" and soliciting the sympathy of an emotional populace through some dramatic exposition that is entirely fictional and pointedly biased. How else can you explain the juvenile sensuality that elected a president because he could play a saxophone? But if there is such a thing as absolute truth (And I confess that there is), it matters a great deal that men can be so easily persuaded to deny it to become animals of passion.

There was a reason why the framer's of the American Republic chose not to elect the President by popular vote - They did not trust the whims of the majority. There was a reason why the framer's of the constitution did not afford universal suffrage - It had something to do with having the ones who are paying the bills making the decisions. There was a reason why the founders did not give the courts the blanket authority to pass on all legislation but only allowed them to pass upon that which has been brought before it by the complaint of some citizen - It had something to do with concentrating the power of the republic in elected officials.

Since public opinion now shapes the "rightness" of all actions, and is even now beginning to intrude itself into even criminal law; it is just a matter of time until it takes unto itself the functions of the Supreme Court. Indeed, this effort is already afoot among the "righteously indignant." This appropriation will be accomplished, I believe, through a constitutional change which will bring the Supreme Court under the power of the electorate. Indeed such sentiment already exists within a great deal of the population because of the many insane interpretations the courts have placed upon the constitution. I want to warn ourselves to strenuously resist any such action, because if a few men can make a few bad choices, the multitude can make all bad choices, and having already been shown by the courts how to circumvent the constitution through interpretation; the majority will reduce this last bastion of Liberty to a mulligan stew of verbiage, the meaning of which will change from whim to whim, when it takes unto itself that power. As long as the Supreme court is aloof of the popular majority, there is always hope that it can be turned around to righteousness. When it is under the control of a self centered majority, all hope is forever lost.

The Supreme Court is powerless to act upon any law, until some individual decides for himself that his individual rights take precedent over that law. There is not a law that does not violate someone's liberty, and rebellion in the heart of man is what challenges the law. If we persist in applying public pressure on the courts, the result will be lawless anarchy. I emphasize that the Bible teaches that the law is not made for a righteous man but for the unrighteous. If we do not learn to keep the spirit of the law because we want to, there is no power on earth persuasive enough, or prevalent enough, or pervasive enough to force us to keep its letter.

But it has been decided, and I believe because it was ordained, the structure of society, the ordering of lives will be determined by the majority. The "righteousness" of all law, of all literature, all religion, all art, all science, all truth, all manners, all politics, and all culture will be determined by the majority, and they shall all dissolve into the dreary sameness of glorifying the mediocre. One need only compare the juvenile "art" and so called music of today with that of the middle ages to see the truth of this. The only virtue will be conformity, the only sin will be difference. Truth will be determined by election, and falsehood will equate to rejection. The multitude will mill majestically, but mindlessly, as it grinds all resistance exceedingly small.

It is this form of democracy which has won the earth. It is democracy unrestrained by any concept or vision of absolute truth, or of eternal judgment. It is a democracy of unmitigated materialism and selfishness with no sense of an eternal God who loves by grace and judges in wrath.

But the democracy which Tocqueville observed in 1831 was functioning splendidly, so much so that he said it should be the model of all future democratic regimes. But Tocqueville issued some stern warnings concerning the pitfalls into which America could fall if she did not stay constantly alert, and he made comments upon how to avoid them.

Tocqueville saw the single saving grace in American Democracy to be in the unquestioned faith in Jesus Christ of the individuals who made up the majority at that time. It was this element of faith in Jesus Christ and the restraints that Christianity places upon the passions of men that he saw as the rudder of the ship of state. In 1831 it made no difference what liberties the law allowed its citizens if most of them answered to a higher law that required them to defer themselves to their neighbors. There was no need for excessive and detailed laws to regulate and govern every aspect of life since most citizens and most judiciaries, and most administrators carried within their hearts the laws of Divine Justice and committed love, which demanded, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self."

That saving grace has been steadily eroded away from the conscience of the American majority, and it now exerts hardly any influence at all upon the conduct of the individual American. Individual conduct is now becoming increasingly unrestrained, unethical, unmannerly, and uncivil in its passionate pursuits. Society is daily becoming more passionate and less civil and less reasonable, and ever more rebellious and sensual in its activities.

Tocqueville wrote that he was convinced that Christianity had to be maintained at any cost within the heart of democracy, and that he believed that the only effective means by which that could happen would be if government officials would daily demonstrate to the general population the belief that all men would one day have to give an account of their actions to Almighty God. Tocqueville said that he thought that it was only by careful submission to religious morality in great affairs that government officials could hope to teach the general population to know, and to understand, and to obey such things.3

But it was Thomas Jefferson's concept of a wall of separation between the church and the state which has risen to preeminence by interpreting the first clause of the constitutions' first amendment to have primacy over its second clause. It is not the first amendment's anti-establishment clause upon which Tocqueville and Jefferson would have disagreed, for Tocqueville believed that state religions invariably resulted in dead churches even though they were of some temporal expediency to the government.4

Rather, it is at the restrictions now being placed upon the realization of the guarantees of the second clause of the first amendment, which says in part that the government may not in any way restrict the free exercise of religious liberty, where Tocqueville and Jefferson would part company. For Tocqueville saw that the only way in which democracy could survive was if the passions which it loosened in the souls of men were continually moderated by the belief in a higher and impartial Justice in which all the deeds of this life would be called into account in the next. And the only way he saw for this belief to be maintained in the minds of all persons within a democracy was if the officials of the government exercised their official duties every day in such a manner as to remind all men, great or small, that we will all one day give an account of our deeds before that Highest Court.

The utter nonsense of a wall that separates the church and state speaks volumes concerning the double-minded materialism of those who advocate it. Neither the church nor the state is a material structure which can be cordoned off into compartments. Both the state and the church are made up from individuals who simultaneously exist within the boundaries of the state and church. The boundaries of the state are geographical, political, and philosophical in nature. Of the three boundaries of the state, only one is material. The boundaries of the church are entirely spiritual. How does the state propose to divide me? Is it only my body which is subject to the state? How then shall I get my mind to the assembly of the saints on the Lord's day, and must I leave my mind at home when I vote? The Bible says that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways, and it is evident that the concept of a wall of separation between the church and the state is the product of double minded, unstable men, and instability within both the church and the state has been the result of that concept.

The constitution never mentions nor alludes to a wall separating the church and the state. In fact, neither of the words, "separation" nor "church" appears anywhere in the constitution. The term comes from a separate, informal document written by Jefferson illustrating his explanation of the First Amendment. The problem with holding such a document to be binding in our courts is that the neither the U.S. Congress nor any state congress ever ratified that document. I am not at all interested in what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the First Amendment after it had been submitted to the people for ratification. If he had wanted to talk about placing a wall between the church and the state he should have done it in the verbiage of the first amendment, and not in his private explanation of the first amendment. I believe it is obvious that the reason he did not do so was because he knew that it would have been expunged immediately by Christian opposition.

It should be evident that this "wall" interpretation is the reason that the official government now precludes all citizens being taught the doctrine of Eternal accountability of the soul. Just as that same interpretation now allows statesmen to teach the citizenry to disrespect the doctrine of the accountability of the soul through unscrupulous conduct. Indeed we not only allow it, we demand it.

In America today it is "illegal" to daily involve government with the doctrines of Christianity, or of any other religion, except those of the secular humanism of ancient Greece and western culture, and it is for this reason that the majority in American is now made up of self centered, materialistic, humanists caught up from birth in the doctrine of "self interest rightly understood." Much of what is called the church is made up of these same individuals who have neither repented of, nor come out from this doctrine.

Tocqueville said that the principle of self interest rightly understood was not a noble one, but that it was easy to understand and hold. He said that while it did not have for its target high and noble aspirations, it did easily reach all of the baser ones at which it was aimed. He said that this doctrine was easy to teach and learn and that men of any capacity could grasp and hold it because it was admirably suited to our nature and as such it was sure to gain universal dominion. 5

Tocqueville ambiguously believed that this doctrine was the best of all the philosophical theories which had ever been applied to the concerns of man because he thought that the passions it empowered would be counteracted by the disciplines it implied in regular habits, temperance, moderation, etc. It has today become evident that implied disciplines can not overrule powerful, passionate selfishness whatever it is called or named, and however it is disguised. It is evident that the "regular habits" which Tocqueville observed in 1831 were not the result of the implications of the doctrine of self interest rightly understood, but of the Christian ethic. It is also just as evident that these habits dissolved as the Christian faith lost primacy in the hearts of Americans.

As noted above, today much of the church is made up of "saved humanists" who are hedging their bets. Something tells them there has to be more to life than what they have been taught by secularism, but they are unsure of what has been left out. They have no faith in a Bible which teaches doctrines of origins, sin, death, judgment, Hell, and salvation so utterly contrary to the "learned" opinions of the majority. They come hoping to learn of some magic, or sorcery, or incantation which they can invoke which will allow them to live by their desires in this life, and then continue doing so in the next. They are filling their pulpits with preachers who will preach to their "itching ears."

An example of this type of "preaching", and of the intrusion of majority opinion into Biblical interpretation, can be found in the October 1993 report released to the Associated Press by a task force appointed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). This report argued that even though the literal meaning of passages in Leviticus and Romans condemns homosexuality, "responsible biblical interpretation" would strongly support the acceptance and the blessing of homosexual unions if such unions were made with love and commitment. This report went on to advocate the acceptance of people living together outside of the sanctity of Holy Matrimony. And while it condemned promiscuity, it urged the acceptance of premarital fornication (providing of course, that it is not promiscuous). This acceptance of unwed cohabitation included elderly couples who live together for economic reasons. It also advocated masturbation as a means of self pleasure, and teaching teenagers the use of condoms as disease prevention.

These recommendations were not (at the time of this writing) adopted by the bishops of this denomination, and similar proposals have also recently failed to be accepted by other Protestant denominations but the uproar by the gay rights advocates within those denominations have caused "new studies" to be undertaken.

The chairman of the Lutheran study advocated the acceptance of the document even though she recognized there would be many voices who would say the church was not ready for such a step. Such rhetoric of course betrayed her belief that there will come a time when the church will be ready, so why not now? She argued that the issues would not go away even if the church rejected the positions of the document.

Here then is the rationale for such arguments to the church: Sin is both persistent and popular. The world is much in favor of sin. If the church is to be popular and gain the favor of the world, she must become the advocate of sin.

There can be no compromise with sin. One of the most disbelieved lessons in scripture says, that if we go on sinning willingly after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains "no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." (Heb. 10:26-27)

It is real Christianity's refusal to compromise with the egalitarian demands of the lusting majority that will bring upon her the hate of the world and the apostate church, and which will cause many of the carnal to leave Christianity altogether in search of more permissive religions. Even now they are finding such religions in the seeds of ancient Babylonish philosophies which are beginning to flower into the neo-humanistic pantheism of the New Age.

Tocqueville thought that the principal effect that democracy would have on philosophy would be that it would foster a propensity for pantheism through its concepts of unity and equality. The pantheistic belief that "all is God and God is all" is the most natural religion for a people who are united and equal. It makes no difference that it is a twisting of a half truth.

It is not the American democracy of 1831 that is seen as the pattern for the budding democracies of the world. It is the democracy of 1990's America. It is the humanistic, rudderless democracy devoid of any sense of direction except inward. The allure of America's past material success is too great for these new nations to see her spiritual failure. Material success is almost always equated to spiritual wellness in the eyes of the carnal. Look at who the men of prominence are in any church (regardless of how fundamental) and you will seldom find custodians or garbage collectors included among their ranks. Even the Gideons do not allow non-professional men within their ranks. If the church can not readily distinguish between material success and spiritual maturity, how much more difficult will it be for the world to do so? The world lusts for America's material success, and blindly runs after her despite her growing spiritual depravity. ¹ Tim. 6:3-5 says,

"If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."

Nations the world over are beginning to emulate America and her humanized democracy. If they do not see the danger in this, they shall be caught in the same downward spiral as America. The Scottish poet and scholar, Alexander Tyler, after studying both the Grecian Democracy and Roman Republic, came to believe that democracy could never exist as a permanent form of government. He said that the voters would soon learn how to vote their own gratuities, and the politicians would soon learn how to promise those gratuities, and the entire system would bankrupt itself.

The American voter has already learned this, and we are now bankrupt. We are a nation in an economic collapse just waiting for our creditors to find out that we have neither the resources nor the will to cover our debt. When bankers lend money, they evaluate two things, the borrower's capacity to repay and his will to do so. America no longer has the capacity to repay with anything of real and intrinsic value, and the degradation of her character has even now destroyed her will to make the sacrifices that are required to redeem her debt in any honorable fashion.

The knowledge that democracy has innate and fatal weaknesses usually comes as a surprise to a people who have been "indoctrinated" within the institutions of that democracy. The educational system in America is not at all interested in the search for truth, but is totally and blindly involved in the substantiation and advancement of the global ambitions and humanistic principles of western civilization which, as we mentioned earlier, date back to the ancient Greeks.

We have been indoctrinated to accept without question the proposition that democracy is a kind of divine expression of government (even by those who do not confess the Divine). And that faith in our fellow man is our only hope for survival. The truth is this: all governments of man proceed from corruption, instead of becoming corrupted, because man is corrupt. Democracy is merely that last form of government which has been ordained to sweep over the earth preparing the people for the tyranny of the empire of the Antichrist as the age of the gentiles comes to a close. The only hope we have as citizens for maintaining a stable republic and a safe society is for true Christianity to be revived in the hearts of all citizens.

Democracy is the remnant of the Greco-Roman Empires that will replace all other forms of government that have come before it. It will be world wide in its dominion before the appearance of the Antichrist and the subsequent return of Jesus Christ. Democratic mankind will become so corrupt that he will welcome the tyranny of the Antichrist to keep him from self destructing.

Tocqueville's mistake in his evaluation of American democracy was not in failing to see its the dissipative qualities, but rather in over estimating the regulatory effects that the doctrine of self interest rightly understood would have within it, and in his evaluation of the endurance of the Christian Faith in American institutions. He could not have known the strength of the attack which Satan would launch against that Faith in the name of freedom through an unredeemed, liberated race entirely taken captive by the "self."

Tocqueville saw very well how unrestrained democracy would lead man into a downwardly spiraling trap of self fulfillment from which there would be no escape. He said that materialism was a dangerous mental sickness within any political system in which it was found, but that it was especially dreadful within democracies because the material passions inspired by democratic principles were the very ones which democracy had no means to restrain. He said that if not checked by some means, these material passions will always lead mankind to believe that the only reality is the material reality, and that men would thus pursue these material pleasures with increasingly wanton abandon until they could no longer control their descent. This descent, of which Tocqueville spoke, we have herein seen as a downward journey that has no bottom floor.

I believe it was the contemplation of this endless descent into degradation that eventually drove Nietzsche insane, because he knew that natural man could not contain himself, and he recognized no authority external to natural man. The continual advancement of the hedonistic agenda is today accomplishing the normalization of homosexuality even as it advances its next agenda of pedophilia, and bestiality will follow. Euthanasia will follow Abortion, geriatricide will follow euthanasia, execution will become the norm for all crimes, including those that are against the environment and that are politically incorrect. There is no bottom floor upon which to land or stand unless there is an absolute truth beyond mankind that authoritatively sets some standards for his manners, and prescribes some punishment for violation of those standards. Indeed if there is no cause for such standards, there can be no reason to embrace then. That society may need or desire such standards is insufficient cause for them, because as such they are only the result of human rationalization and would have no authority beyond the opinions of some man, or group of men, and we are back with Nietzsche sliding downward into eternal, depraved insanity.

Therefore, because democracy has no means within itself to restrain these material passions, this restraint must come from some source external to, and superior to, the humanistic principles of democracy. If there is no source for that restraint, or if that restraint is not applied, democracy will "self" destruct.

People in these unrestrained circumstances become trapped by their own insatiable appetites, and gradually, humanity and society are reduced to an existence of mindless reaction to sensory perception and physical gratification. Such was the darkness that destroyed Rome. Such is the darkness sweeping across America. Such is the darkness that will soon engulf the entire earth.

None of the three things which Tocqueville believed would moderate these tendencies in American Democracy have had any permanent effect. He believed that America's isolation from Europe, her body of law, and her manners (which were, at that time, founded in the Christian Faith) would all work together to maintain a working democracy. Our isolation has been technologically and philosophically eliminated, our laws have been reinvented hundreds of times without success, and those manners which he observed have been all but destroyed through Satanically inspired psychological, philosophical, political, and educational attack.

Even though the church has failed to believe that the nature of our warfare is spiritual, Satan's secular world has not, and while the church has been out wasting its breath to the world about gambling, and drinking, and dancing, and smoking, etc., the secularists have been instilling philosophical ideas into the hearts of our youth, and they have been doing it in their church organization which is the American school system, and I have been forced by law to fund that agenda.

It should be obvious by now that good laws are not going to protect and maintain a working democracy as Tocqueville had hoped. The Lochean formula that good laws make good citizens has not worked for good reason. The Bible said it would never work. The Bible says that man can not be made righteous by the law because the law was not made for a righteous man but for the lawless. (Gal. 2:16 & 1 Tim. 1:9) Even the fact that we must have laws proves that we are not innately righteous, and as God demonstrated in Eden, simply enacting a law will never keep mankind from breaking it, but will in fact even present him with a challenge to see if he can do so with impunity.

If neither our laws, nor our customs, nor our geography can keep us from descent into darkness, what will happen? In trying to predict the characteristics of a people who would once again allow tyranny to appear, after having been free, Tocqueville wrote that any multitude of men who believed in equality rather than in liberty would eventually find themselves trapped in a mindless dependency to their government. This government would itself encourage this dependency and endeavor to procure the petty and paltry material pleasures with which they would incessantly glut their lives. This government would stand above this culture of men as its great, benevolent equalizer and teacher, and would take upon itself to be the sole provider and definer of happiness to its citizens in order to equalize their existence and provide for their material and physical gratifications. This government, he said, would watch over the fate of all its subjects and decide for them all of the uses that a man should have for his life and for his being. Tocqueville believed that this teacher/government would be like the authority of a parent except its intent would not be to train up its children for adulthood, but rather would aim to keep them perpetually and forever its dependents.

Tocqueville said that such circumstances would continually render free agency less and less useful to mankind, and would contain the will of man in smaller and smaller circle of self fulfillment until he became the witless captive of his government. Tocqueville believed that the thing which would allow men to accept and endure these circumstances, and which would even condition them to desire them, was the belief in equality. 6

This notion is alien to everything we have been taught concerning a system that has been developed to bring about and to perpetuate that very dependency about which Tocqueville spoke. This degradation and dependency has already overtaken us, as we, even now, pursue this world of self centeredness without self responsibility. Tocqueville believed that the highest passion inspired by democracy was not for liberty but for equality. The events of the last half of this century would certain bear that out. It is far more important to today's generations that their ways should be equalized than that they should be free.

It usually comes as a surprise to most Americans to hear someone say that there is a difference between equality and liberty because they have been conditioned to equate the two as either identical or at least as complementary. But the raw truth is that they are nothing alike, and that they are even antagonistic toward each other.

The difference between liberty and equality is more apparent when the dangers of each have been contrasted. The dangers of equality we have just seen. The dangers of liberty are this: When all men are completely free to make of their lives what they will, circumstances of intellect, physiology, geography, nature, and supernatural intervention (chance, to those who don't believe) will invariably be more favorable to some than others. Some will fail; some will die, but whatever his fortune, every person alone is civilly responsible for how he conducts himself within his circumstances. Plus, he is economically responsible for himself and for those who depend upon him. To most people this is an intolerable burden to bear and to risk for liberty, and so, men had rather give up some, or even all freedom, if their ways can be equalized, and the risks can at least be evenly ameliorated, if not removed altogether. For this reason, plus the fact, as Tocqueville also noted, that the dangers of equality are not as apparent as the dangers of liberty, men more readily choose equality than liberty, and the majority will inevitably gravitate toward that perpetual state of mindless, irresponsible equal dependency just described.

In the light of Tocqueville's prediction that democratic people would forever be in danger of becoming the witless captives of their government, and that the government would forever be trying to relieve us of the use of ourselves, it is interesting that the Bible predicts that just before the end of this age, men will be saying, "Peace and safety (security)" as the central points of their political philosophy. (1 Thess. 5:3)

Also, even though the desire for equality exists in all regimes, it has no proper energy except in democracies, for democracy not only feeds it, but has no means to control it.

This passion for equality is a passion older than sin, and it has Satan for its origin. Equality has been the cry of Satan since before the creation, when God judged him in this fashion, "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I WILL BE LIKE THE MOST HIGH" (Capital letters added for emphasis).

It was the passion for equality that caused Satan's fall in the Spiritual reality, and it was the passion for equality that provided the motive for disobedience to God when the serpent told the woman, "And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And the woman told her husband, and he ate. Mostly, men will tolerate any form of deprivation, slavery, or oppression as long as they believe everyone else is being "treated" the same. Listen to someone who is being prosecuted for breaking law that a lot other people have broken. They never think it is "fair" that they are being prosecuted, and all of those others got away clean. It seems as if they would be perfectly happy to be prosecuted if they only had some company. As long as everyone is treated alike, men will be joyfully equal slaves. This "joyful" equality in slavery to sin is what Satan had to offer in Eden and it is what he is offering today.

In the 18th chapter of Ezekiel, men accused God of not treating all people equally. They complained that the fathers had eaten "sour grapes" but that it was children's teeth that were set on edge. God answered them and said that they would never again be able to use that proverb against him because he would judge every soul individually, and the soul that sins shall die.

This then is the fair, impartial, and equal treatment of all. The soul that sins shall die. This is the immutable law of sin and death. Men can break man's laws, and men can break the regulations and ordinances within God's law, but no one can break the law of sin and death. The soul that sins will die! Just as no one who believes in the law of gravity will jump off of a tall building unless it is their intent to die, no one who believes in the unbreakable "law of sin and death" will intentionally jump into the dark abyss of sin unless their intention is to kill themselves.

It is an equality, but what a hopeless equality, for we can never be without sin. To be perfect we must have always in the past, and always in the future: "love the lord thy God with all thy heart (kardia = figuratively, the inner man), and with all thy soul (psuche or psyche = the personality), and with all thy strength and all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke 10:25-28).

"Thyself" in the above passage is translated from an accusative pronoun, i.e. it points a finger, plus the word "auto," which is the self that Jesus said must be denied. The law, then, points its finger at the core of my sin problem, and it is my "self." I must love my neighbor (the near one, thus whoever is at this time near me) as myself. If I have ever failed, or ever do fail in this, even for one moment, to love who ever is near me all the time and to the depth that I love myself, I am done for by the law and I will die.

And that, my friend, is the easy part of the law; the hard part is that I must also forever more love God with all my inner man; I cannot allow a moment to pass when my inner being is not completely devoted to God. I must love God with all my personhood; I must never allow a second to pass by when my personality is not completely absorbed in total love for God. I must love God with all my strength (the idea of my will and my vitality in unity). I must love God with all my will and vitality in all purposes and at all times of my life. Never may I willfully use my life for any thing but the love of God. Then I must love God with all my mind (the channel of the thoughts) Every thought must be directed toward God, by the love of God, for God.

Friend, I have to tell you that I have sinned even as I wrote this. And you have sinned even as you read it. By the law we are both equally dead. But praise God, it is not the law in which we have hope, and faith, and trust, and peace. "For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." (Gal.2:16) But rather, our confidence is in the "law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit" (Rom. 8:2-4).

Equality then is the cry of the unrepentant who will not trust the Lord God to deal with us as individual sinners. Peter had this problem after Jesus had told him to feed his sheep. Peter looked up and saw John coming and asked, "What about this fellow, Lord? What does he have to do?" What parent has not heard it? The demand for equality is the source of all envy, jealousy, hatred, and emulation.

It is our passion for equality that makes the story of the woman of Canaan so unpalatable to us:

Matthew 15:22-28
"And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour."

The scripture says that Jesus ignored her pleas, and volumes have been written trying to explain this away. The truth of the matter is that it is our passion for equality that is offended; it swells up within us and troubles us. It is difficult for democratically indoctrinated people to accept inequality, and unequally is how Jesus treated that woman. He treated her to his purpose and not to her's, or to our's, and we always will have a problem with that until we deny ourselves and trust Jesus completely. We really need to learn once and for all that if we confess Jesus as Lord and Master, we belong to him for him to use as it pleases him, and not that he belongs to us to use as it pleases us.

Jesus told her it was not proper to take food from the children's table and give it to the dogs. Moderate that by any rationale you can conjure and it still won't be equality. I used to trip over those verses also until I realized that with those crumbs that fall from His table I am receiving so much better than I deserve, and so much more than I had, that I will take those crumbs and be glad for His generosity. Praise God, He provided some crumbs for worms like me!

It is the passion for equality that has directed men through history from Adam until now. The passion for equality is the political imperative in man. It has not been the love of liberty, but the lust for equality that has driven men to overthrow every restraint on their way to achieving democracy, and it is now threatening the eventual suffocation of democracy. What will survive?

To answer that question we need to return to the Book of Daniel to examine the image of the "ten toes" and the "ten horns", and look at the beast with the "ten horns" from the 13th chapter of The Revelation. Daniel 2:43 says of the ten toes (see vs 42),

"And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave to one another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."

To understand what this means we need three pieces of information:

- What is represented by the iron?

- What is represented by the clay?

- What is the seed of men?

Both the iron and the clay are subsequently personified as "they" in the verse above, and "they" are both said to "mingle" themselves with the seed of men. The word translated as "mingle' means to "commingle," or in other words, both the iron and the clay are each active in mixing with the seed of men, but they are not compatible with each other and they will not "cleave" or stick to each other. This mingling of mankind into an Empire then, is a process of a fomentation that is in constant flux with the iron and the clay contending constantly with each other for the heart of each man individually, and the hearts of all men collectively.

The seed of men are the offspring or the ensuing generations of gentile mankind, and in Isaiah 64:8 clay represents the people that God is reshaping:

Isaiah 64:6-8
" But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."

The iron is that which survives from out of the previous Greco-Roman Empire and which is to be carried over into that which will eventually evolve into the final Empire of Antichrist. Therefore, the iron must represent that Greco-Roman humanistic philosophy which when personified above, refers to the humanists who adhere to that Greco-Roman political philosophy inherited from the Roman Empire. Is it not possible to see in this image the double mindedness with which western democratic civilization has been pursued during the church age as the clay has mingled itself turbulently with the iron, not only in civilization, but in the hearts of each of us individually?

The image then of the ten toes and of the iron and the clay mingling "themselves" with the seed of men is a picture of the final democratic republics that will immediately precede and which will last until the tyranny of antichrist that will spring from these degenerate democracies. This clay and iron will be molded into a civilization that is mixed with, but not congruent with, the complete law of God, and that while they do not adhere together within either individuals or civilizations, these two are in continual flux with each other, striving for the faith, not only of individual hearts, but also the corporate faith of the multitudes.

While the seed of men in general represents the generations of men that are to exist under this civilization, I believe it also specifically designates the source of the beast which rises from the sea in The Revelation chapter 13 verses 1-2 where it says,

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority."

John says he saw a beast rise up from among the sea. Just as Daniel saw the four spirits of heaven working in humanity to bring forth the Empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and that of subsequent Western Civilization, John now sees another Empire rise from out of the sea. As we noted earlier, we are told in the 17th chapter of The Revelation that this sea, from which the beast rises and upon which the Babylonian Whore sits, represents all of gentile humanity. This beast is not the Antichrist as many believe it to be. This beast represents a type of empire and culture. This beast is shown as having evolved from out of all of the earlier types of empires and cultures that have preceded it. In that it arises from the sea it is represented as an empire and culture that arises out of all of gentile civilizations. Can there be any doubt of what kind of civilization rises up out of all gentile cultures? This beast represents the culture of Western Democratic civilization that is even now dominating the earth, and the ten horns on this beast represent the federation of republics which will give their authority over to the antichrist when he appears.

John said that this beast overall looked like a leopard (The leopard represented Greece in Daniel's vision in 7th chapter of Dan.), and it had feet (that which it stands upon) like a bear (The bear represented the Medo-Persian Empire in Daniel's vision.), and it had a mouth (the part that devours and talks) like a lion (which represented Babylon).

Both the Grecian and the Roman Empires represented by the beasts in Daniel incorporated within themselves many of the gentile cultures and customs of the civilizations which they had conquered, and from which they had issued. This beast that rises from humanity looks like the Grecian Empire because of its philosophical and political disposition. Its foundation resembles that of the Medo-Persian Empire because the Median and the Persian Empire sprang from the peoples who subsequently peopled most of Europe. This beast that rises from the sea, has for its founders the same people as the Medo-Persians who were of the Indo-European race. But this beast rises over all of humanity after its founding. Indeed has already done so. The world dominance of the democracies of these Indo-Europeans, which was prophesied nearly 2000 years ago, is a matter of fact today.

And this last beast has a mouth like the lion of Babylon. Babylon's most enduring contribution to civilization has been her code of law. In the 1700's B.C. Hammurabi issued the code of law which was the first body of civil law known to history. It has been the model for civil law in virtually all subsequent western civilizations.

The lion-like mouth of the beast in Revelation 13:2 refers to the source of that body of Babylonian law which resembles in some respects the Law of God, but it originated with man and not with God, and the Babylonian code of law has been used as a model in all world dominating empires subsequent to Babylon. It is from the mouth of the law of that beast that the people of God are devoured and the God of Creation is blasphemed. God told us over two thousand years ago that Satan would use this law to wage spiritual warfare against all that is Godly. Today it is simply a matter of noting current events to see this prophecy being fulfilled in front of our faces.

John saw himself standing "upon the sand of the sea". As we mentioned earlier, the "sand of the sea" represents the "seed of Abraham" at the time that God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled. The sand of the sea is the place between the earth of the curse and the sea of gentile humanity. It is a line of demarcation, a place of separation. John saw himself standing upon the dividing line of all humanity, looking out upon all the vast ages of mankind. This is the same as the burden of the prophet Joel which we spoke of earlier from Joel 3:14 where it says, "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision."

The dividing line of mankind is the Cross of Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham through which all of the earth will be blessed. The cross of Jesus Christ is a line drawn in eternity, a line at an apex so steep that it can not be straddled. All will fall to one side or the other or be cleaved into two parts by it. Through out history all mankind will be faced with the necessity to decide about the Cross. The generation in which Jesus Christ is rejected, not just by the heathen, but also by the apostate church, is the generation of multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, from which arises the Abomination of Desolation.

Another very important point to notice about this vision and its explanation, is that the whore is not present on the beast when the beast first rises from the sea and appears in Rev. 13, but when her judgment is revealed to the church in Rev. 17, the great whore is riding the beast that stands upon the people. I believe this indicates that democracy as a concept is not at fault, even though it is Satan's choice over all other governmental forms. Rather it is the nature of man, and the Babylonian whore of false religion that man has conjured trying to restrain the passions released by democracy, that is at fault.

We need to look now at the beast itself, because every political event in history has pointed to this "government from out of the people" which John sees rise from gentile humanity in this vision. The rise of this beast is inevitable, all that need happen is for God not to interfere, because it is driven by the same egalitarian principle that was the cause of Satan's rebellion to God. It is this principle which is now being worked out to its logical conclusion in this reality, which drove the creation of this reality in the first place. We are given the vision of this beast first in Chapter 13, then the vision is explained in chapter 17. Therefore we will look at these two chapters together.

Rev. 13:1 says that this beast that rises up from out of the sea has seven heads and ten horns. We have already shown where beasts are representative of political empires and cultures, and as we have seen this one is no exception. We are told in chapter 17, verse 9, that the seven heads are seven Mountains, and verse 10 says that there are seven kings. A mountain represents more than a king, or a kingdom or even a simple empire; a mountain is an Imperial civilization. In Daniel 2:34-35 a stone is supernaturally cut out of a mountain, and then after this stone destroys all of the Imperial civilizations that existed before it, it becomes a mountain itself and fills the earth: This means that the Imperial civilization of The Lord Jesus Christ is going to be the last civilization on earth after he wins the struggle with Satan. If you want to be a winner in eternity, you have to be on the side of Christ and look like a loser in temporality. Mountains then are used to represent the world wide ambitions for dominion of a civilization, and includes the politics, commerce, and religion or manners of that culture or civilization. The heads on this beast are said to be seven kings. Kings are normally men, but these are also said to each represent a mountain or an Imperial civilization of world conquest.

Verse 10 says that of these seven kings, five were already history at the time that John received the vision, and that one of these civilizations was in existence at that time, and that one was yet to come. It says that when this last empire comes it will endure but for a short time. In verse 7, the angel told John that he was going to show him what the mystery, represented by the vision of the woman and the beast, meant. The woman the angel was talking about is the woman described in chapter 17, verse 1 through 6. First, notice that the woman rides a scarlet colored beast which has seven heads and ten horns. This is obviously the same beast, or at least the same kind of beast, as the one that rose from out of the sea in chapter 13. But where was the woman when it rose up out of the sea? By the time of the judgment of Babylon in chapters 17 and 18 the woman has become so much a part of the political and commercial process that she is herself Identified as "BABYLON THE GREAT." In other words, she has become absolute in her authority over this system. But the woman was not riding the beast at the time that the beast developed from humanity. She must therefore, "mount up" at some later time. She does this by becoming the authority for the system of Babylon. She becomes, at some time, its authenticator by prostituting herself and her "body" to the majority of humanity for the material wealth, comfort, and power that this beast can offer.

Revelation 13:2 says that this beast gets its power, and its seat, and its authority from Satan. The power of democracy is the egalitarian principle, the seat or throne of democracy is the heart of man, and its authority is itself. Democracy gets all of these from Satan, they are each his to bestow. Democracy is the Devil's design for political power that will bring mankind to deny Jesus Christ and glorify Self, and worship his Antichrist, and bring man into eternal subjection to Satan. When the church uses her authority to promote any political regime, she is prostituting herself to the one who owns all such regimes. But when she prostitutes her self because of democracy, she becomes the instrument of Antichrist.

In case you still are doubting that this beast represents democracy, verse 8, says that this beast had existed before, but that at the time that John was given the vision it was history, (the beast that was, and is not) i.e. it was no longer in existence at the time that John saw it rise up out of the sea in the vision. Then the angel says, this beast shall ascend out of the bottomless pit (the pits of Hell itself), which is to say that this beast had exist once before John's vision, but it did not exist when John saw it in the vision, but sometime in the future from the time that he saw it in the vision, it would come into being again through demonic inspiration. And lastly, the angel said that this beast would go into "perdition." Perdition translates a word that usually means spiritual, physical or eternal, ruin. I think it is meant to convey all three senses in this context. I believe that the ordained destiny of this beast is that it will be ridden toward increasingly greater and greater physical degradation and spiritual ruin until it is ridden into the jaws of eternal Hell. If you are one of those humanists whose hope and trust is in democracy and your fellow man, you are sitting astride of a dangerous beast that is running headlong into Hell.

That same verse says that all the world will wonder when they see this beast that existed before, but that did not exist at the time of the vision, but that would exist again, or as the angel said it, "that was, and is not, and yet is." We have previously discussed the history of democracy, that government that is of the people by the people, for the people. We have seen how democracy developed in Ancient Greece and died because of self centered parochialism, and how it was ALSO Born in the Old Roman Republic and died from corruption. We have seen where the Roman Empire began as a democratic republic that incorporated many of the philosophical notions of the Ancient Greek culture it defeated. We have seen how democratic republicanism has been "born again" during the age of the material enlightenment in western civilizations. At the time of the vision of The Revelation, democracies had at one time existed, but none existed at that time. History has demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that democracy is now going to encompass and dominate the world. We can certainly see that the form that this world dominating democracy is taking in its dominion is completely unrestrained by the necessary disciplines demanded of a Sovereign God who judges in wrath. It is the plan of Satan that democracy will so corrupt herself that men will come to his religion of tyranny for restraint. The Revelation says the beast from the abyss will be the supernaturally empowered world leader of this movement. He is called the "fa