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5. Spiritual and Martial Dimensions of the Common Market, and of Daniel's Fourth Kingdom

a. The Convenient Church

The point is however that that very fact fulfils the prediction concerning the nature of this fourth kingdom, made by the prophet Daniel.

We have had occasion to consider and will consider other elements where Christianity has been persecuted, in the fourth kingdom and its various phases: its partly strong and partly weak aspect, its partly patent and partly latent areas, its partly hale and partly broken history, as predicted by Daniel (Daniel 2:31-34,40 ff., cf. the fourth kingdom in Daniel 7). Where is it now ?

Not only are there communistic contributions as to the spirit and method to be employed, and Nazi contributions as to the scope and the religious vagrancy involved, but Roman Catholic contributions in that these inspired Hitler (who devoutly admired the organisation of the Jesuits and indicated this): these are centred in central Europe, and the current Pope is explicitly seeking one religion for the new and 'united' Europe which so splendidly fits the fourth empire in its continuation. It is for this reason that the doctrine of Rome, and its contradiction of the Bible and of Christ required, does require and will require analysis (e.g. pp. 1040-1086, cf. 1032-1040 infra), so that the fourth kingdom will be seen operative in all its dimensions. In particular, this will include its contribution in quality and trend, to predicted events, yet to come.

Another reason, of course, as dealt with elsewhere¹ is the relevance, to our apologetic field, of the principial use of force in the subduing of those who will not believe what is wanted, relative to alleged salvation. This in turn requires us to research the statements and practice of Rome, historically, on such use of violence (e.g. in Chapter 10, Section 2A , and pp. 913 ff. infra), enabling both of two necessary points.

What are these ? The first is this: that Rome's use of force here is contrary to the construction of man, in God's image: the Bible does not signify force for conversion purposes. God pleads, exhorts, asseverates, thunders, protests, judges, but does not make force the means of 'conversion'; and of course Jesus stated that His kingdom does not belong to this world. It will be seen that this, apart from Biblical contradiction, rules out both the Moslem heresy and that of Rome, each of which employs a different 'Christ', re-defined. It does more than this. It helps to define the nature of the cruelty which Daniel (7:7,19) predicated of this fourth Empire, in which Rome has played so substantial a part, in its ecclesiastical format, in the Church of Rome.

The second is this: that Rome, with its force is part (as we have developed and will develop this theme) of a predicted apostasy from Christianity. It is not at all apologetically relevant as a negative (as if Christ now offered violence, crucifying, no more satisfied with being crucified); but is relevant as a positive item, in that it is a predicted perversion of the purity of the Saviour, carried out in His name. (See Chapter 10, infra.)

Thus Boniface VIII, so long occupied in conflict with Philip the Fair of France, had some words echoing with divine sovereignty:

How shall we assume to judge kings and princes, and not dare to proceed against a worm! Let them perish forever, that they may understand that the name of the Roman pontiff is known in all the earth and that he alone is most high over princes. (Italics added. Address to the Cardinals against the Colonna: Schaff - History of the Christian Church, Vol.VI, p. 16.)

He who is greatest among you will be your servant ... and he who exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Further, as Schaff also observes (loc. cit.), in view of this exaltation of the Bishop of Rome alone, it is notable that, in recognising the Emperor, Albrecht, Pope Boniface declared that "as the moon has no light except as she receives it from the sun, so no earthly power has anything which it does not receive from the ecclesiastical authority". God, for His part declares:

It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers... He brings the princes to nothing: He makes the judges of the earth useless (Isaiah 40:22-23).

Small wonder Boniface I, another bishop of Rome (*5) once sent a humble petition "to the emperor to provide some remedy against the ambitious contentions of the clergy concerning the bishopric of Rome" (Foxe, in his Book Of Martyrs, p. 12); whilst Gregory 1 (op. cit., p. 15) detested the vulpine vulgarity of 'universal bishop' as a title. This is merely the flesh and the spirit, as so often, at war: the one aspiring, the other adoring Christ. Thus of Gregory I, Foxe writes:

In his epistles how oft does he repeat and declare the same to be directly against the gospel, and ancient decrees of councils, affirming that none of his predecessors did ever usurp to himself that style or title and concludes that whoever does so, declares himself to be a forerunner of antichrist.

I Peter 5:1 tells us that Peter is a fellow elder, and 2:25 that Christ is operative "bishop of our souls".

Verbally to arrogate that title is to derogate deity!
To assume such a role is to imitate deity in His majesty; to suffer it, is to allow idolatry!
To embrace it in the heart, is idolatrous.
We must agree absolutely with Gregory I in his assessment, in the early springtime of his office.

Wrote Gregory: "As for me I seek not mine advancement in words, but in manners: neither do I account that any honour wherein the honour of my brethren I see to be hindered... my honour is the full and perfect vigour of my brethren. Then am I honoured when to no man is denied the due honour which to him belongs... Let these words therefore go, which do nothing but puff up vanity, and wound charity..." (Foxe, loc. cit.).

In the grip of these ungoverned pontifical pretensions, long an object lesson in grasping at the sceptre of God, Pope Leo Xlll (Sapientae Christianae) could say:

Union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will { to God ? no... } to the Church, and to the Roman Pontiff, as to God Himself. This obedience, however, should be perfect, because it is enjoined by faith itself, and has this in common with faith, that it cannot be given in shreds.

'Appalling blasphemy' is the sense of the "abomination of desolation" which is to be "standing in the holy place" (Matthew 24:15); and this is in Blasphemy Avenue, en route to such a blasphemy as that. There is little in development, then, at this level, before the 'man of sin' in person; but Rome, as we will see, can here only make her not insignificant contribution.

It is the fact that it is significant, that currently concerns, as an avenue to the fulfilment of prophecy, already in type meeting the case.

To revert, however, to Leo XIII: The popes, said he, 'hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.' This unevasive declaration is found in his encyclical The Reunion of Christendom (1885).

The New York Catechism, as quoted by Professor Lorraine Boettner in Roman Catholicism (p.127) states:

The pope takes the place of Jesus Christ on earth.

As Christ (Colossians 2:9) has the fulness of the Godhead in Him bodily, this means the pope takes the place of God; and that is not merely logically impossible for a sinful creature, but the pontifical erection of an idol, distinguished only by this, that it is the pope himself, who is so transformed (cf. II Corinthians 11:13). He proceeds even beyond the false apostles of Corinth; for he is 'replacing' Christ rather than merely misteaching Him; but while replacing, also misteaching... so we progress (cf. II Thessalonians 2:7). Paul (1 Corinthians 5:11) even prohibits fellowship with such persons.

The point is this: we have progressed in precisely the predicted direction, and it is within the premises of the fourth kingdom of Daniel, with its ecclesiastical appurtenances, that this has occurred, already.

Let us not however neglect Pope Innocent III, who as Avro Manhattan (Vatican Imperialism In The Twentieth Century, p. 52) points out, made this claim on his own coronation (Christ's crown was rather different) in the accompanying sermon:

Now you may see who is the servant who is placed over the family of the Lord; truly is he the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter, the Christ of the Lord ... greater than man; who judges all, but is judged by none.

Since then no man is to be called master but Christ Himself only, then by this papal act, Christ is displaced. What then, the increate, sinless, possessor of everlasting Deity as we have seen (cf. John 17:3, 8:58, Colossians 2:9, Revelation 1:8,11,18) can have a stand-in, albeit a temporal, sinful, created, dependent being! Sin substitutes for purity, incandescent deity is bundled out in favour of polluted flesh (Hebrews 1:3); the finite, behold, it operates as the infinite, the created as the Creator, the partial as the total (John 1:14, 3:34... Romans 12:3).

But here, in the New York Catechism as in the other claims noted, we learn from the spiritual sagacity of this sinner that Christ (who statedly made His requirement excluding any other, forbidding to call any man on earth Master because one is our Master, even Christ - Matthew 23:8-10 - and any Teacher because one is our Teacher, even Christ) can be flatly contradicted. He is to be replaced on earth by one emphatically not Christ. Such a one will be both the teacher and the master. It is at least a rollicking rebellion.

After all, the Pope was not born of a virgin, did not carry the sins of Christians in his own body on the Cross, did not rise from the dead, is not the saviour, did not enjoy glory with the Father before the world was... There is no slightest risk of confusion between pope and Christ, of substitutability, of a mortal sinner acting in the place of God, who in Christ did all these things. Not Christ, though he incontestably be, this papal aspirant calls himself, in acute derogation of the very reality of deity:

the head of the entire church, the father and teacher of all Christians (sic). He is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas (sic), the author of and judge of councils; the universal ruler of truth (sic) the arbiter of the world, the supreme (sic) judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God himself on earth. (Italics added. Taken from New York Catechism.)

If the intention had been to show defiance towards an aggressive king called Jesus Christ, then this series of statements would be 'telling Him', breaking all He says, reason and common sense as well. Yet God is not available for mimicry, far less through an epidemic of contradiction. Christ on earth endured the contradiction of sinners, and it is clear this unholy hoax is making an art form of it: doing it while masquerading in His own name! Alas, no pope or other can bring himself back in time to the point before time, and bring it about that he... was there! It is... too late now.

A man is God; a creature is - if the terminology is to be taken even slightly seriously, and all is serious in this sphere - Creator. A subject is ruler; and one who is exhorted to follow the rule of being 'subject to one another' (I Peter 5:5) by the very apostle whose name is used, is subject to none!

Our task, then is done. The Roman papacy has long been in the business of showing itself that it is God (cf. II Thessalonians 2:4). That is a precise format: showing itself. It uses words, descriptions, phrases, terminology that builds up, with absurd pretentions, the whole pageantry of papal power by means of paper images. That is long past; new Christs, gods from the ground, we have seen in their paranoid way in pathology.

The past has introduced the way, the present multiplies it, and the future trend, based on the past and the multiplying present, looks ripe for the final annunciation in the Temple. It has several historical preliminaries; they churn and then surge into the stage where the figurehead will come, as Daniel says, scarcely perhaps realising the pantomine folly of such pompous philosophy and proud vagrancies, with so much former history to... help:

On the wings of abomination, he comes desolating, till the judgment appointed is poured on the desolator.

Political ? Here we revert to the European Common Market. Coming like a monster from the sea (Revelation 13 uses this symbolism), it stands, still shivering a little, but by now a very little, on the threshold of fate. It has the place, Europe, the broad spread of Romanism (*6) and numbers of its nations (the Pope at about the time this was written, was addressing Europe's parliament); it has the continuity with the past empire that once, in its mood of greater 'iron', occupied its place.

In this Roman mode, or aspect, it is of particular interest how quickly after World War II, this ... dalliance made itself clear. As Avro Manhattan indicates:

In Europe, only a few years after the Second World War, reborn political Catholicism was at the head of ten European governments, west of the Iron Curtain - i.e. Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Holland, Eire, Spain and Portugal - whereas in Eastern Europe Catholic Parties, although greatly reduced and, indeed, suppressed, continue to be the centers of the fiercest opposition to the communist governments... (colour added, op. cit. p. 158).

The theme also occasions us to ponder the close Roman Catholic involvement which greatly simplifies the concept of the renewed and continuing Roman Empire, though partly weak. It is partly clayey - there is not the same unified smiting power, at least in appearance. The Papacy, in its diplomatic but powerful corridors, and the governments when they are RC in control, both bring about, in conjunction with the area of the Common Market 'rule', the fulfilment at this stage.

b. The Convenient Community- Considerations of Clay and Iron

For all the clay compartment, there is iron as well. There is an increasing space technology to add to Euratom; France has its own force de frappe, nuclear arm; West Germany is exceedingly rich and industrially strong and the potential of 350 million marketeers is a thought that seems, as we shall see, to locate in the midst of decreasing Europessimism, with increasing pragmatism, as already pondered (Chapter 8, *18 supra). With East Germany giving the West German economic power an opportunity for new bases and breadth, and to the French balance of payments, redress in the process of West German mothering of her 'lost' segment: the 'child' of the European unity seems well on the way to being born, though there has been a somewhat difficult delivery.

All that precisely fits the two-sided nature of this Empire at the last, as traced in Daniel. Partly strong and partly broken, as prophesied, partly clay and partly iron, it has been and remains... till the final phase, short though this be. (Cf. Daniel 2:40-43: Following this empire's division - correctly predicted in Daniel 2:41 - this partial weakness is predicted; and that follows the fall of ancient Rome, and moves beautifully aptly over the whole history of Europe since, till this very time, when its unity potential at last is becoming more obvious than a few short-lived dictators could make it. Its fearful potential remains.)

This post-World War II rebuild of the U.S. - Europe is of course far more than that - has a very decided character of its own. As to numbers, the Bible predicts ten kings and the Western European union (*7) has currently nine. This is where the financial power and military link to NATO may form, as we shall see in the note. Augmented by one, this power group could become the relevant ten (and now has - see p. 958 infra); or again, the ten, who for so long were the Common Market, may be all that is intended. The addition of some may be disregarded for the purposes of influence and power, or may simply be a phase of the history of the matter not considered; again, an internal economic union within the Common Market gives a further perspective, soon to be considered, relative to the 'ten'. In a long range forecast, it is not necessary to trace every phase and feature, if the pith and point is to be kept.

The important point is this: ten were predicted and ten remained for long enough to become a well-known characterising feature of the European renewal and form. It has happened. It does not prophetically need still to do so. What next must happen is that the small, dynamically virulent 'king' (Daniel 7:24-25) or leader is to arise outside that ten. That is quite clear and highly specific. He is to overthrow three of the original ten.

Thus whether that 'ten' is to be the famous first ten, or is to be made up of the Western European power bloc, with financial clout and military access, adding one more such member, or through some union of smaller members, or any members, or other, we do not know. One such union of smaller members is already extant. What we do know is that to this point all has happened exactly as foretold and in this regard, two primary features remain. The 'little horn' or leader of small base, outside whatever of the 'ten' possibilities will manifest itself as the characterising body: this force will conquer three of the ten.

As to that, the Austrian anschluss (1938) - a constrained union - with Germany may be a good example of the combination of force and composition that may be used. In that the little horn is to uproot the three (Daniel 7:8, 24), this absorption, or assimilation without residue, may indeed be the method; and it may not appear so at the first. (Deceit, we have seen, was part of the character of the anchor man of evil, the devil's 'messiah'). Not all 'marriage' is for love; and what is not, does not always declare itself at the outset... for what it is.

As to the possibilities of some new groupings or alignment, or power nucleus in the Market, it is notable that Thatcher was not happy with the strident overtones of the 1992 Economic Union, and that there are tensions concerning agricultural subsidies and apportionment of 'dues', doubts about the probably at least partial, or perhaps even total, loss of national sovereignty which created concern in parts of England, and which can haunt sections of other peoples. There are still some reservations about the yieldings that the spreading concept of European unity may imply, portray... or require! Such matters could stir many vexed questions such as Britain's place, its exact nature, or that of others into a coming degree of negativity which may affect the names of the eventual main operators. 1993 has been turbulent.

Nevertheless, the appeal, the sense of destiny, of composite dignity in the whole group, of trading strength and common action, of international power and security, of a useful and stable unity (together as so often with the frustrated sense of brotherliness, which without God will often force the hand of the heart that is lost): all this keeps the engine of European unity surging on the rails to realisation. As noted, with the resistant Mrs Thatcher's movement from the Prime Minister's post, the vexed questions, though not perhaps the vexation, may decrease; and the end more speedily approach.

Yet whatever may be the technique of the eventual revealing of such minute details, the fact is that the whole scope of the prophecy over thousands of years is fulfilled, and that our concern with interpreting such fine detail, only the more emphasises the spectacular splendour of the forecast. It is all eminently testable and is currently eminently, amazingly, devastatingly fulfilling the parameters of the Danielic fourth (and final worldly) kingdom, its placement, its potential and its numbers. Nothing is awry, amiss; questions of curiosity remain, but the historic career of Europe has followed the Biblical parameters, from the days of ancient Rome, its genesis, to now, as if 'hooked'.

The stage then is set, has been set, the battle is on and the prediction is surging towards its final fulfilment with that grand authority (*8) which does it in its own way, amazes with precision, and is beyond all second-guessing. Perhaps this lS to emphasise how much is involved in predicting it all long-range from 2000 or so years ago. Meanwhile, clearly seen is the movement towards increasing contemporary power in Europe. The USA has lost its economic dominance and, moving in the eighties from the post of the world's greatest creditor to world's greatest (gross) debtor, owes large sums to Japan (an exquisite irony).

Unexpected it might be, but the event seems in direct line with the force of the European base envisaged in the prediction. Russia (or part of what is now the Union of Independent States) as we have seen, is marked prophetically for doom in its predicted surge against Israel, perhaps with the support of certain Moslem nations - a similarly utterly apt fit with the current trends, as shown in detail in investigating some of the recent history of the area (pp. 516-520 ff. supra).

Russia, with whatever new name or format, in economic and financial weakness, already apparent in 1991, its productive vitals eroded by years of Communist misuse, appears before the world with strong appeals for aid. This, together with the power vacuum which would result from such a debacle as that to which desire (and some of the military) may entice (Ezekiel 38:8-12), at once suggests an open door to the old European dominance, one at first sharpened by the old concordat consciousness of Rome. That is the ecclesiastical body which had concordats with many nations, giving a 'vision' of worldly grandeur and rule, to militance.

She had such concordats, intimate agreements and 'arrangements', with Franco and Mussolini in one brief era; with Hitler - another coup - stressing his allegiance to Rome while Franco called him a son of the Roman church, at his death, for whom the Spanish dictator saw... 'victory', for his Rome-related life! (*9 - cf. Smokescreens, pp. 20, 23. On the latter page, the direct quotations from Hitler are of acute interest, including this: 'As A Catholic I never feel comfortable in the Evangelical Church.') As ever, this concordat consciousness angles to control the dictators who control the world. In this, one is reminded forcibly of Revelation 17:2 - "With whom (*6) the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication." Let us ponder the German case a little.

The close co-operation of Hitler with the Von Papen (*9) envoy who negotiated with the Vatican (with such 'special' and specially good terms, we read in The Secret History Of The Jesuits, by Edmund Paris, p. 130); the Concordat intimacy (I933); the interesting papal failure to make incisive public protest about the plight of the Jews, and the intimate co-operation of the notorious Pavelich in Yugoslavia, with the Roman Catholic Yugoslav Archbishop Stepinac, in the days of the massive exterminations (*10), tortures and butcheries of Russian Orthodox Serbs in that land: all alike are alive with this intoxication to which Revelation 17:2 refers predictively, and which we note in verification.

This intoxication ? it is called in Revelation 17:2, 'the wine of her fornication' - the admixture of worldly ways and ambitions, exactly as between Stepinac and Pavelich, in Yugoslavia's other mass murder. It may be that the present one, which is in reverse as between Serbia and Croatia, is a sentence on a regime where in the Roman headquarters, both Pavelich and Stepinac's vicar-general were cordially received, at the height of the atrocities, and on the same day; while compliments were exchanged in Croation newspapers at that time between Pavelich and pope (Paris, op. cit. p. 145).

The old Pope-Emperor syndrome has its modern counterpart of mutual encouragement or even admiration. Thus Pope Pius Xl, described Benito Mussolini as "the man whom Providence allowed us to meet." Within this field, Avro Manhattan gives some detailed data in his Vatican Imperialism in the Twentieth Century (esp. pp. 350 ff., cf. Paris, op. cit. pp. 126 ff., with Susan Zucotti's intimate and very detailed recent work, The Italians And The Holocaust, pp. 130 ff.). This prophesied closeness and the 'intoxication' (*10) both of spirit and with blood, both theological and persecutory (cf. Revelation 17:1,4), yes and political in the power play involving a papacy (in the 'saddle' of the beast) laying explicit formal claim (p. 911 ff. supra, and 984-986, 1070-1072 infra) to govern the world through its kings, has all come to pass.

It may help to introduce some of the atmosphere of the political level papal dealings with the following very significant papal contribution to the outbreak of World War I. It is largely a matter of papal designs on and interest in this world, with the pronounced prestige of Jesus Christ as a sort of entourage. We recall the words of Boniface V11 about having no fear to proceed against a worm (some prince or other, like the King of France, perhaps), and that 'he alone is most high over princes'. With such a background, the observable atmosphere is not hard to understand.

Thus Paris relates the account of the World War I entry time relative to the Pope like this. Baron Ritter, Bavarian Charge d'affaires to the Vatican, had written to his government:

The pope agrees with Austria dealing severely with Serbia. He doesn't think much of the Russian and French armies and is of the opinion that they could not do much in a war against Germany. The cardinal secretary doesn't see when Austria could make war if she does not decide now.

With such aims and claims, such participation in kingdoms of this world, and such advice, contributing to such consequences, with such flows of blood, through the duly exercised power over princes, small wonder we can read in Revelation 18:24, where there is reflection on the predicted physical destruction of this Rome:

And in her was found the blood of prophets and of the saints and of all slain on the earth. (See pp. 749 supra and 948 infra.)

Let us then review the prognosis, based so substantially in present fact, and in justice.

The beast, according to Revelation 17:15-16, is to turn on Rome and then dispossess her of her ingenious position of power (i.e. on the 'back' of the beast). The ten kings will instead resolve, leaving Rome (the physical destruction of which is forecast in chapter 18 with little joy to merchants), to form and have a different basis! Instead, with Rome 'bucked' off its back (one is reminded of the vernacular charge: 'Get off me back!'), the kings are to resolve to give their power direct to the beast itself, with no woman driver:

These are of one mind and they will give their power and authority to the beast - Revelation 18:13.

It does not need any prompting, this mood. Henri Spaak, a former active European 'community' leader, has been noted before, and is significant:

What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all the people, and to lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and be he god or devil, we will receive him.

They use, in the Common Market arena, the language of vague unity, like some of the uniting churches, uniting with one knows not what, but diverging from the word of the Lord, at any rate. A sort of communal haze remains from the communist phase, which in turn held some of the potent madness of Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hegel and others, laced with Darwin, Freud and Wagner, with a little Spencer left from earlier: somehow, being one will be wonderful! This is its thrust; and a sort of psychological substitute in masses, for the realities of one Creator, begins to command the instincts meant for God, in a way reminiscent of the manic-depressive: perpetual exaltation and depression, as misplaced hope alternates with grounds for despair. It is like trying to drive a car with no tyres; it doesn't really work; but you move a little, amid much smoke, here and there.

Thus the Council of Europe, Article 1 (a), in the interstices of these things, (as quoted in A Special Study Of The Moves Towards The Political And Economic Union Of Europe - Intelligence Digest) states:

The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising their ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.

It is not just, as is sometimes thought, an abandonment of sovereignty to other countries, it is a sharing of other people's sovereignty as well as a pooling of our own.

There is in all this a dynamic for change and absolutism, which Spaak merely felt; and these early pronouncements for an indivisible Europe, are now far more explicitly pondered and pronounced upon, moved as if drawn.

What however are the 'ideals and principles' which loom in a 'common heritage'? The rule of the force of a Hitler ? of a Bonaparte ? of a Mussolini ? Is it then the ungodly horror of pope and (Holy Roman) Emperor, striving for supremacy, the one over the other, for so long as to leave a... tradition! Is it their use of material power to implement (Roman) Catholic imperialistic ends (the term is just: the explicit claims are already noted). And what have these ends, these aims, involved ? not only the elevation of the pope at the expense of Christ, but the effectual belittling of the commands of Christ in the Bible, in the interim. The interim ? that until He personally returns, as He so clearly and so often stated, to deal with King impersonators and disbelievers; for they cannot stay, who will not stay with God, for God remains (cf. Zechariah 9:7, and pp. 623 ff. supra). And He remains God, and He alone (Isaiah 45:21-25). Even among the sons of the mighty, there is none like Him... not even like Him! (Psalm 89:5-6.)

Is this occasion of war - on Christ, on Christians (cf. Revelation 19:19), is this the 'common heritage', is it found, this communal past, in the Inquisition - so astonishingly long-lived, as we saw, with its ferocity still so readily unleased in 'new ways', even this century ? Is it here, perchance! Is the torture of Christians, the butchery, no less, by Romanists to be seen in the light of a common heritage, as if blood reduces all, and being drunk with it effaces thought ? Forgiveness is not stultification... Is it like a game, with both sides part of the whole show ? Which side, then, is death, in union ?

6. The Illusions of Unity and the Marshalling of the Marketeers

Ever new, this dogma reaches to the very heavens, where last century they installed Mary complete with a sinless life, having loaded her with blasphemous titles such as redemptrix (i. e. female redeemer, versus Acts 4:12, Hebrews 9:12-28, 10:26-29, Luke 2:23-24 with Leviticus 12:8 and Hebrews 9:15; Psalm 49:6-7,15, Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8-9, Hosea 13:14, Isaiah 43:11), queen of heaven and sundry pagan insults to the very name of God and indeed to Mary (Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:15-30) who did nothing to earn this abuse of her name (Isaiah 26:13, 1 Timothy 2:5-6, Ephesian 1:10, Hebrews 10:20,29, Matthew 12:46-50). The category of redeemer of the soul of man is herein, by the word of God, shown to be exclusive to God, to a non-sinner, and once again Rome confuses Creator with creature, insulting the purity of Christ. This function of redemption excludes all help, aid, or work, but that of the one God Himself!

Is then political pragmatism and religious innovation (versus Galatians 1:6-9 which damns it) deemed a common heritage ? Is the infallible word of the unchanging God, Himself alone the mediator in the form of man, who once was in the form of God (Philippians 2) and now has a name above every name, by which alone salvation is to be found (Acts 4:12): Is this, leading to pure and sacrifical adherence to the scriptures, to be put with that!

Do we cast the beauty of freedom from
the threefold papal crown with all its political assertions and worldly, carnal pretensions (versus Philippians 2:8; 2:20-22; Matthew 5:5; 18:1-5, 20:24,27-28, 23:11 Ezekiel 31:10-18, II Corinthians 10:5, Isaiah 2:10-11, 1 John 2:27, Luke 22:26, John 13:14-15!)
into one common pot
with the rule of the 'spiritual' OVER the temporal, of Pope over prince (verses John 18:36):
as the accepted tradition of ALL!

This rugged, and all but comic craze, sent Europe almost reeling for centuries as Emperor and Pope pursued their unseemly quest for dominance, with grandiose papal bulls scouring the heavens for further means of higher exaltation of that name which is not "above every name": since it was never that of Jesus (Acts 4:11-12, Philippians 2:9); and has not been so elevated, since no pope did ever, leaving the form of God, take the form of a man, a servant, to the point of becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5-9), the cited Biblical preliminary for such exaltation of Him who alone will be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:10-11).

It is this same Jesus, who sinless, unlike every pope (1 Peter 2:22-25) or invention of the pope, or of his dogmas, did not need to first pay for His own sins (Hebrews 7:27), as do all sinners, who must be redeemed, men and women (Romans 3:23), all other members of the human race whatsoever: but by the body of His flesh through death redeemed all sinners who are His, those wholly dependent on His unique act (Colossians 1:22-23, Romans 5:1-10, 8:32, John 10:26, 8:24). That act depends, as Colossians there shows, on His unique post as co-Creator of all that was created, and His having all the fulness of the Godhead dwell in Him (Colossians 1:19-23, 2:9).

Indeed, He "in all things has the pre-eminence", it is here scripturally stated, because it so pleased the Father that this Person, with His plenary place before and with God, should so humble Himself and so act, in life and in death on earth. His is no meretricious exaltation: He was God, and HE humbled Himself to become a servant. He did not exalt himself to become a Lord, from the status of a creature; but, quite the reverse, as God assumed the status of man, so that He might bring us back to God, from whom He came.

This in its magnificence of uncreated humility, a common heritage with pope and emperor challenging and humiliating each other, in the way so famous from the medieval era, so 'infallibly' enshrined within the Roman church's structure of power and concept and Trent itself: is this 'common' to all!

Will unity then come because Rome will repent ? Yet in modern times from John Paul in his 'ecumenism' to the present Pope, there is constant reiteration of Trent! It is like Lenin to the Marxists. Must one be blind and deaf not to hear the Popes, per se, constantly reiterate this dogmatic determination to stay what they are: with their bundle of traditional infallibility, like a bionic electrode, sticking into their very beings. Do not mistake. This is one example only of tension and empty words, in a full program and agenda for that Europe, with its special emphasis on Rome that Daniel foretold as being the kingdom of the end. In Europe it is; and Rome is the name for it, the exemplar and the base in history to which Daniel refers (*11).

Where there is room for such an example of illusory European 'unity', there is room for a further, a more developed illustration of the unity resolution. Any makeshift mischief may be 'found' to be mandatory and obvious, to bring Europe to the power of dictatorial unbelief which makes up a 'beast'. Where 'ideals' for this Common Market are formulated in high-sounding words, where in fact there is such a morass of contrariety and divergence, from a history of such still unresolved terror and evil, not formally repented of... what would the REPARATIONS BE, for the countless slain of the INQUISITION ?... such ideals can still be 'interpreted' as may seem best for the great objectives.

If scripture is now almost routinely, rankly interpreted by contradiction, how much more are mere historical facts alone and vulnerable, without Him! Where God is not in explicit rule, then man, with such dominion as the Common Market countries envisage (and with first increasing, but then decreasing resistance from Britain as 1992 approached), can invent any form of control, as if it were the very criterion of freedom.

Indeed, such activity has long since ceased to be merely comic and tragic in Russia, where religious freedom 'of course' had to abide by the 'required'... criteria of the glory of the State and the necessity of Communism. For a time such corruption can seem to prevail, before God countervails; but the lesson on temporary obliteration of truth in the interests of convenience, suppression and distortion aided by misplaced quasi-morals about 'ancient hatreds', miscalling unchanged facts which may indeed be forgiven: this challenges all weakness. The 'guidance' of official corruption must never be accepted, let the muscle of its temporary might be what it will!

The Communist State has either learned lessons from Rome... or from the same source in Satan, whose aim to have dominion is manifest (Isaiah 14:13, Matthew 4). Hitler counted the Jesuits an outstanding example of organisation. Rulers look at rulers... Even Gorbachev does not seem to appreciate lectures from foreign mentors. Yet the Helsinki accord on freedoms has been violated in Russia for so long, and with such tragic travesties as Solzhenitsyn has exposed in his many books, that it becomes crassly illusory to promote the 'perfect look', where the power base is polluted in irrational confusion. So the blasé belittling of man (by man!), which is a hallmark of Communism, exhibits the religious and anti-personal character of the lust for power.

No matter that Marxism, immersed in contradiction, teaches that laws of nature assuredly and predictably push nations along from a basis of 'chance', to its own unhallowed liberation! What does it matter what it teaches, however irrational at the outset, when its theories are not fulfilled and yet are deemed 'scientific.'

The 'unripe' Russia was taken over by force, despite the absurd 'democratic' pretensions; and force is as readily implemented by slick political tricks, as by most other things in this world. The theoretically 'ripe' Germany, however, 'ready' for the predicted style of revolution, did not suffer it. Further, the State forces of repression, predicted to die away, grew far worse in Russia, than before, with communism.

The timing was out just as the stage was 'wrong', by the theory. Yet pressuring particulars including the exhaustion of a world war and slow help from outside led to a revolution anyway. Moreover, the form was wrong; there was estrangement between two wings of Russian power, so that the army did not act as it might; and measures of reform, were viciously replaced by a pretence as colossal as the Gorbachev era now shows it to have been (cf. *14), more recently, in this land. Russia was a tired giant in a war-weary world: manipulated by a band of revolutionaries who were helped by a crushing defeat of the Russian power and prestige abroad and a lust for deliverance which was powerfully - if irrationally - sold to a yearning people. Many were expecting land availability as they deserted from the Army, but what were soon to be found were, instead, were small landowners dispossessed and reduced to a state worse than serfdom, and this in the name of a 'social justice' which communalised property, misused resources, manipulated the not unexpected famine and terrorised the populace.

The State with its powers of oppression was 'scientifically' sure to wither away with the 'heaven' of no class conflict (whatever the actual 'classes' (*12) may have been in personality, morals and faith - all of which vary enormously in a given income group or even profession). This 'heaven' was to unfold itself by allegedly scientific processes. Come ? come it would with the inevitable power crunch of a grandiloquent Communism, fated to come, with no 'fate', on its own basis, to make it do so!

Did 'it' come ? Small wonder the foul three, Marx, Lenin and Engels are called 'the three dishonoured prophets' in Nicolas Rothwell's article, 'The Facts Crawling Out From Under Russia's Secret Rocks', in The Australian, October 19-21, 1991. Less wonder still when even Tass, the official Russian newsagency, is reported in The Times, January 1992, as acknowledging that nearly 4,000,000 people were prosecuted for 'counter-revolutionary activity' in the period 1921-1954, with over 3 millions sentenced to death or sent to prison or camps for up to 25 years... the article continuing to note that estimates of 'those who lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of Soviet communism - including collectivisation and the famine that followed, enforced industrialisation and the camps - range from 25 million to 40 million.'

In fact, the oppression and size of the Russian State police, informers, intruders, officials, KGB and all the types and brands of manoeuvrers, torturers, psychiatric manipulators and the rest has appeared quite unprecedented, as if to anti-fulfil the prediction on something near the vastest scale imaginable. What nation has specialised more in the instruments of oppression than this one, under this atheistic management! Solzhenitsyn is merely one of its testifiers (*13)! The prophecy is not only unfulfilled; the exact opposite has not only come: it has come with a vengeance which, the gruesome apart, would qualify as comic... The true ruler of the nations has allowed, in His wisdom, a colossal and comic irony to occur - the 'liberators' are the worst oppressors of all (though it is to be acknowledged, their 'glorious' system has had South-East Asian and Asian followers who may yet surpass their Russian prototype in massive cruelties, giving further testimony of the wonders which Communism can perform before our very twentieth century eyes)!

That this farce has been preached as a twentieth century 'gospel', complete in China with obsessively present loud-speakers blasting the ears of the victims, perhaps lest thought had time to cerebrate: that is almost as devastating a critique of the follies of the mid-and-late twentieth century trends of the human race as any. Here again is brisk and vigorous verification of the Biblical predictions that, in the deteriorating times to come, many would be turned to fables (II Timothy 4:4). FEW MORE MACABRE FABLES, more sombre flirtations with fancy HAVE EVER OPPRESSED THE HUMAN SPIRIT; and it is no small phenomenon, but has governmentally CAPTURED IN CHINA ALONE, AROUND 1/4 OF THE EARTH'S PEOPLE! That Biblical fulfilment is massive ...

On the contrary such a 'theoretical' and 'scientific' result is not even in the direction of the Marxist predicted trend. A cry, thought or protestation of 'calm' is Biblically predicted and this before the eyes of the world (1 Thessalonians 5:3), and first Krushchev and now Gorbachev allow the sight of some of the Communist realities, so often researched before, to be made plain to all. It was a tornado of oppression which this wonderful and liberating system of peace procured. Its devotees, for example in the Red Army, a place not without significance, are still not without some means of provoking or precipitating peril, while putsch and counter-putsch is contemplated or conducted. Even yesterday (January 1992), the news report was to the effect that Russia is not the sole repository of nuclear power in the former U.S.S.R., and so many reports, now this, now that, indicate the strain, the stress, the complications, combinations and surreptitious preparations that desire may form, with means at hand.

Nevertheless, now that Yeltsin tells the world from Russia, that the missiles are being trained away from the U.S.A., enemy no longer [and so helpful as it is with food], a cry of peace, End of Cold War, of hope arises! A delusive interim is predicted Biblically, only to be ruptured by the realities of unbelief which war on peace, and procure slaveries to sin: political, social and military. ''They shall not escape!''

This period may yet be that which arrests man with hope, before his failure to repent, shows its inoperability. The ersatz character of the coming 'peace' is to appear as clearly as Communism has shown the failure of esoteric European philosophy to make headway by standing on its own head, as if it were the rock of its creation and salvation. It has, alas, only to burst an artery.

Such oppression is the testimony of this evil system; and the non-withering away of the long-tried Communist State, instead aggrandised with instrumentalities of torture of mind and body (indulged in by their species of 'liberated' freedom, if not wanton abandon indeed) - with all the impressive repressive mechanisms - leaves behind all rational claim for science (*13). This result is persistent, through all their vagaries, insistent, radical and to the root of their whole operation; and it is resistant to any variety of situation, relative power or position: for an essentialised remoulding of man, when man does not like it, and the vision of wonder is replaced by the horror of 'scientific' and observable reality. This is how the ideology has fared. It has not tended to be fulfilled; it has sustained itself as it first advanced itself, by delusion to prepare the field, and by force to take it.

It said one thing: it did another, torridly. As for what it said - these were not its mechanics, these were not true grounds, this was not its nature: the civilisation of man is vastly otherwise, constantly inviting devils and dupes, deceivers and deceived, to dispense with God and... do something! Communism's special feature was its arrogance, and this has enabled the fulfilment of yet another Biblical prediction, one of a different kind, simultaneously: ''Whosoever exalts himself shall be abased'' (Luke 14:11, 18:14 - cf. II Corinthians 10:5). In this it must join with Rome.

Moreover it scorned God; but now its President is to be seen in a religious service. It mocked God, but now its churches multiply. It went on record to be great without God, predicting, performing and being blessed. It did none of these things; and is itself mocked by the abyss between its words and its performance: as earlier seen, between its claims and logic. It has served however: for its mockery, as what is lowly exalting itself, serves by contrast to focus the word of God which is exalted, being constantly, consistently and differentially fulfilled, with an exuberance which neither ignores detail nor fails to encompass profound realities with éclat.

Similarly, the assumptions of atheism and historicism (an assured base for social prediction based on the past, with no God over all, one ground out in the bosom of 'chance') were irrational from the first. Popper notes this latter point on historicism and that of the woefully deficient 'withering away' with some address (in his Open Society and Its Enemies, pp. 108-9, 142-3, 320-8 et al.).

Yet why is all this mentioned here ? Not least, it is for this reason. One cultured, traditional, European country has already, if you like, tried the experiment in moral, idealistic words on a no-visionary base. A nation (the partly European U.S.S.R.) committed to descriptive attitudes in an atheistic philosophy, has sought, clown-like, to enshrine ideals (from nowhere, logically, for a theory which is merely descriptive of 'what is'): to focus things which one ought to do, as if human mechano sets ought to do anything. But woe to the participants (reluctant, chained at times), if they do not see what the vision requires!

You can try to force men, when the vision does not fit their design. Then, and of course you may do this: and that is precisely what they did. You cannot do this with physics; but with men... it is tried. In the end, it does not work either. God who did the making has said how it works; alternatives lack the blessedness of working!

The Biblical prediction, then, for the European experiment, if this is that time - and the criteria are fitting perfectly - is this. Force is going to be used (just as it has been used in Russia). Recently, in 1989, China has confirmed this vicious vortex, inherent in the system, using its Army to war against its own young in its Capital, rather than warring through its young, as with the Red Guard formerly. The 'god of forces' (*14) certainly abounds, foreshadowing the character of the antichrist as predicted. What then of Europe and its trend; of Europe and its unity... so carefully formulated, so long adumbrated, so codified ?

To forge a 'common' or joint consequence for all, from utterly disparate and divergent concepts of God, to take that alone, and to 'make it work' as Europe is set to do, suggests... what ? The normal and here traditional method is only to be expected: the use of force on the one hand, and of devious devices with words on the other. Marxism has shown it par excellence in one land; we await a 'broader' attempt with a broader base in a broader way, perhaps flush from the anti-success of Communism and 'trying harder', to seek to control the heart of Europe... or as much of it as may be seized... Not merely land, but people are prey.

As a matter of fact, the prediction of Daniel regarding Spaak's 'man' is just that: we read of a 'mouth speaking pompous words'. This is the ultimate arrogance on earth, the devil's messiah, survival of the fittest at its zenith, a man trying to survive as if god: and his fall will epitomise the folly of these wild and recent thrusts of history, which seem to prepare for it, so that such madness of spirit would seem but a natural result. The syndrome is very mature already.

In short, he will exalt himself above all that is called God (II Thessalonians 2:4), and the Lord will slay him with His word, as He created, by His word. When you have power, a word is enough.

For the present, the pressure for union in more depth, from which such 'solutions' may be baked with a fine crust, is mounting. Paul Kelly (Weekend Australian, August 13-14, 1988) in his: The New World Order, writes:

Western Europe's impending economic union will be a watershed in modern history. But for some members of the emerging European super-State (*7), the loss of sovereignty this will entail will be a bitter pill to swallow despite the obvious advantages.

Europessimism is a story of the past: 1992 has given Europe confidence in its destiny. This is important for Europe, but not less for the international economic system.

Kelly speaks of the Euro-zealots who "want a central bank for Europe, the eventual shift to a common currency and tax standardisation..." and notes the centrality of the question of a "new European defence system". While Euratom proceeds with its toils and the European Parliament makes its wranglings heard, the Churchillian concept of a United States of Europe is becoming closer. More to our point is the Biblical instruction that the final world power would be a Roman related (*15) European Empire, where a religious Rome would work till near the very end (cf. pp. 948-956 infra), and a multinational political corporation would writhe into existence with emphatic economic directives by means now being technically advanced for use.

The scope of this current union is not unlike that of the earlier Roman Empire. It inherits both the violence and the name, a name made of primary importance because of the political claims and actions of the papacy in the past. Much may be learned from the new United Europe's commencement in security and material welfare, lightened by a vision of cultural unity which is not there. Only by an initial denial of that actual and historic Jesus Christ of which the Bible speaks, can there be conceived any worldly resolution of Europe's antinomies, antagonisms, in infinitely different ideals, and the pompous claims of the papacy. Such a denial, if taken in the end, to the exclusion of Rome itself, in the highly indicated move for a 'new unity', one in which the clashes of the past are submerged into mere deep sea currents: this would perfectly fulfil the Biblical prediction, past all the current trends, locational, psychological, economic and technical.

Meanwhile, in another aspect, it was the Treaty of Rome, signed in Rome in 1957 which established the European Economic Community (Common Market).

The original 6 members soon became 10 when de Gaulle resigned his post in France, so that to France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg (these 3 last = Benelux, by separate agreement for economic union, effective 1960), in 1970 were to be added Great Britain, the Irish Republic, Denmark and Norway: and these extra four countries signed the treaty of accession. In 1972 however Norway withdrew, because of popular negative sentiment. The ten then re-emerged on January 1, 1981 with the entry of Greece (the E.E.C. so operating, 1981-1986, Spain and Portugal entering Jan. 1, 1986). If Benelux (*16) may now be viewed as a unity, via its name, dynamic and internal agreement, then 10 units continue to this day; so that the number ten has figured strongly in the developing Common Market situation, and that in different respects, over the years. (Cf. contemporary footnote, p. 958 infra.)

The yearning for a leader to bring unity, utilised by Hitler, voiced by Spaak, but felt by many, stirred by fear perhaps of Russia, and its derivatives (*17) now, and grasped, when it is found with admiration (cf. Revelation 13:4-5), bids fare to become the net which will take Europe. Indeed, despite delays, currency fibrillations, riots, national reactions and damages to governments, the Maastricht Treaty, on 'European Union' (that title no longer merely 'economic' as in the former E.E.C.) duly came into force throughout the European Community on November 1, 1993.

Just as the Bible accurately and astonishingly predicted the Christ, whose actions and words met all the exceptional criteria imposed in scripture, just as His predictions move remorselessly to entire fulfilment before our very eyes (Prophecy Part 1), so do the macabre portents of the antichrist (*18) proceed in the predicted site of a newly re-unified Europe. Plus and minus, good and evil, all is covered, all breaks (*19) into fulfilment (*20), like a giant plunging, tossing ocean wave.

{See now also the later listings on EMPIRE and within this, EUROPE, in this Index.}

Page 931 continued in the next section

Footnotes:

1. E.g. pp. 50, , 58ff. - see also Index, Freedom; and Ch. 10, Sect. 2A, pp. 1032 ff. and pp. 913 ff.; ; 973Ainfra.

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