Daniel saw a pagan Roman Beast with 10 horns

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The beast was the corrupt and powerful Roman Empire

Ten barbarian tribes helped destroy the Roman Empire and establish the Roman Catholic church on the ruins of the Empire.

The powerful European Union today finds that its unity is being threatened by a flow of refugees and migrants.

The powerful western Roman Empire was also threatened by barbarian refugees, migrants, and invasions.

Barbarians began to migrate into the western Roman Empire as it was very prosperous. Immigration and invasions finally led to the downfall of the western  Roman Empire.

On the following map the western Roman Empire is shown in green. The Eastern Roman Empire is shown in yellow. The Huns came from far away in Asia. Revolts in China caused people to flee and they pushed against the Huns who then pushed other barbarians into the western Roman Empire.

DANIEL 7:7   After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake 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.

Daniel saw a corrupted pagan Roman Empire as a horrible, awful monster. Ten horns, representing ten barbarian tribes, were seen on its head.

The little horn would become the power of Vatican City

DANIEL 7:8   I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

This beast represented the Roman empire that had grown powerful but perverted. Emperors ruled as dictators. Emperor Tiberius was a sadistic child molester, emperor Caligula was insanely drunk on power and thought he was God. Emperor Nero massacred Christians to blame them for his own action of burning Rome. This Roman monster was so corrupt that it looked like no natural animal.

Ten horns appeared on its head. Three horns or barbarian tribes were eliminated to make room for a little horn which represented the rise of the Catholic church until the Pope ruled from the Vatican which is the smallest city state on earth. A horn represents the power of an animal. Ten barbarian tribes would assist in breaking up the Roman empire and then they would help, some times inadvertently, to establish the rising power of the Pope over Italy, then Europe, then overseas.

The little horn or power represents the Vatican City State which is less than one square kilometer in area, has about 800 citizens of whom half live elsewhere. Thus it is the smallest state or country on earth. The Vatican is in Rome, near the seven original hills of Rome. The blue line represents the wall that was built around the original seven hills that formed the city of Rome.

The Vatican is the main part of the Roman Catholic church but officially, the headquarters of the church is the Lateran Palace and basilica (or big church) on the Caelian hill (shown as a violet rectangle). There  the Pope, as the only western Europe dictator, rules a world-wide Roman Catholic church by means of man-made doctrines and traditions. This religious indoctrination of unscriptural church beliefs has spread out world-wide and also traps Protestants as well.  Thus denominational church beliefs, first set up in Rome, has put the world on the slippery downward path to the final judgement.

DANIEL 7:9   I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.

:10   A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

Judges used to wear a white woolen wig to symbolize their submission to the laws of the land.

The Ancient of days is Jesus Christ Who wears the woolen wig to show His submission to the Word of God.

Trinitarians claim that the Ancient of Days is God the Father. But "God the Father" is never mentioned in the Old Testament.

JOHN 5:22   For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:

Thus, the only Person Who is to be the supreme Judge is Jesus.

JOHN 12:48   He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

If we want to escape Judgement Day then we have to make sure that we stay strictly Scriptural.

Father and Son represent the two great manifestations of God as both Creator and Redeemer. No other man could combine these two great ministries in one Person.

That is why pagans had many gods because they never thought that one person could create and redeem and judge. Thus the pagans developed trinities of gods so that they could share the responsibilities.

In order to rise to power amongst the pagan barbarians, the church preachers between AD 200 and AD 300 began to develop a Two-Person Godhead of Father and Son (similar to the Jehovah Witnesses). Then by the time of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 they began to include the Holy Spirit as a third Person. This took further centuries to refine and define but always remained contentious. However, the Twoness and Trinity (or Threeness) beliefs were very acceptable to the heathen who believed in many gods and thus the heathen barbarians began to accept the religious leadership of the church. Then the Pope claimed to be the head of all the churches so that he could have power over the barbarians who had invaded the Roman Empire.

The rise of the little horn (the Vatican church hierarchy) due to dictatorial human leadership and man-made beliefs is represented as “a mouth speaking great things”. Man-made religious traditions claim to offer salvation to the masses. The church would rise to power by offering indulgences and relics and devotion to Saint Peter for the forgiveness of sins. Eyes speak of intelligence. Eyes of man speak of human intelligence that proposes salvation by the performance of certain good works and the belief in man-made church traditions.

The main antichrist deception that Daniel was concerned with was the destruction of the Roman Empire and its revival as the Roman Catholic Church which rose on the ruins of the Empire and then spread worldwide.

Tribe 1   The Huns

The stage was set for the collapse of the Western Roman Empire by the fiercest Asian tribe called the Huns. Revolts in China caused massive upheavals that produced a domino-like effect as Chinese tribes crashed into Asian tribes, driving them away from China towards Rome. The most savage and merciless of these tribes was the Huns.

Their greatest and cruelest leader was Attila. From AD 375 the Huns pushed barbarian tribes into the Roman Empire and built up a huge empire of their own next to the Roman empire. The streams of refugees fleeing from the cruel and savage Huns created a humanitarian crisis as these mass migrations saw the barbarians occupying large parts of the Roman Empire. Being a nomadic tribe the Huns attacked in different places making it very difficult for the Romans to defend their borders.

Attila kept invading the Roman empire as shown by the blue lines on the above map. Attila left a trail of destruction that included about 70 devastated and looted cities. Romans called him the Scourge of God. In AD 452 Attila devastated northern Italy and turned towards Rome. The Romans had no defense against him and Pope Leo I went up from Rome to meet him and paid him a huge bribe from church funds. Attila turned around and Rome was saved.

When Attila rode away the reputation of Pope Leo was hugely magnified. Thus Attila the Hun probably contributed, inadvertently, more than anyone else towards the establishment of the Pope’s status amongst the Roman and barbarian people.  The people did not know about the bribe. They thought the Pope had supernatural power over that fiercest of barbarians, the mighty Attila, who died soon afterward.  Leo I thus established a legendary foundation for the most powerful position in the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages, the Pope-king of Rome.

Fifteen years after Attila’s death, the Hun’s empire disintegrated. But they had started the downfall of the Roman empire by driving so many barbarians into the Roman empire.

By turning away after speaking to the Pope, Attila the Hun gave the Pope huge credibility in the eyes of the people as a strong leader in the western Roman empire.

Tribe 2  The Heruli were plucked up by the roots

In the chaos that combined the barbarian invasions of the Roman empire with a torrent of barbarian refugees and migrants that were migrating and settling in the empire, a number of tribes would join forces or else small groups of different tribes would join a bigger tribe.

Two smaller tribes, the Heruli and the Scirii, joined forces to become a single tribe and chose a barbarian Odoacer who had risen to the rank of general in the Roman army as their tribal leader and declared him to be king of Italy.

The Eastern Roman Empire is shown in yellow.

The Heruli were already in Italy so it was easy for Odoacer to send the young emperor Romulus Augustulus into retirement in AD 476. Odoacer ruled Italy until he was killed in AD 493.

So Odoacer who was head of the Heruli tribe officially ended the western Roman empire.

The green area on the above map showed the territory that the Heruli ruled.

The eastern Roman empire under the emperor Zeno who ruled from Constantinople is shown in yellow.

His problem was that the Heruli were Arian Christians who believed in a Twoness Godhead and did not believe in the Trinity as the Pope did. The Pope had no desire to be ruled by what he called heretics.

The emperor Zeno then told Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who lived between Zeno and the Heruli to go into Italy and eliminate the Heruli. This was the first of the three cases of tribal ethnic cleansing that eliminated non-Trinitarian barbarians. Between AD 489 and 493 Theoderic and his Ostrogoths, in a brutal campaign, destroyed the Heruli tribe.

Thus one non-Trinitarian horn, the Heruli tribe, was plucked up by the roots so that the Pope could spread his Trinity teachings. But alas for the Pope, Theodoric was also a non-Trinitarian who believed in the Arian doctrine.

Theodoric was too powerful a warlord for the eastern emperor to attack. So the Pope had to live under the “heretical” Ostrogoths until Theodoric died in AD 526.

In AD 527 Justinian became emperor in Constantinople and he set out to re-conquer the western Roman empire.

Tribe 3   The Vandals were plucked up by the roots

The Vandals had followed a long migration through the Roman empire (illustrated by the blue arrows in the next map)  before they crossed the Mediterranean sea into North Africa where they conquered and established themselves as the rulers.

In order to re-conquer Italy, Justinian’s general Belisarius first invaded North Africa by sailing from Constantinople in AD 533 (shown by the violet arrow) and defeated the Vandals in a few months of very brutal fighting.

What was interesting, is that at this time there were only two non-Trinitarian Arian tribes left, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths.

By eliminating the Vandals in North Africa, Belisarius plucked up the second non-Trinitarian horn that was in opposition to the Pope. The Arian Vandals and the Arian Heruli disappeared from history, and thus their non-Trinitarian beliefs vanished with them. The historian Procopius said that up to 5 million people died due to the war, famine, and pestilence in North Africa.

Tribe 4   The Ostrogoths were plucked up by the roots

The area of the western Roman Empire that was occupied by the Ostrogoths is shown in green on the above map.

Now Belisarius sailed to Sicily and then attacked Italy in what was to be a 20-year war of savagery and destruction as fighting raged ruthlessly up and down Italy. Some 15 million Ostrogoths and people were killed according to Procopius, as the third Arian (or non-Trinitarian) horn was brutally plucked up.  Famine and a terrible worldwide plague that swept over Europe in waves for about 200 years killed between 50 million and  100 million people and Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages as the Pope got the last of his non-Trinitarian opposition wiped out. Europe went into about 900 years of Dark Ages as the Light went out and Trinity became the established church doctrine owing to a complete lack of any opposition. That is why Trinity is so well established in church circles to this day.

In the chaos and misery of the Dark Ages, the Pope of Rome began to run the administrative functions in Italy that the eastern Roman emperor was less able to perform. The Pope did much charitable work and paid civil servants out of church funds to keep things running. So people began to look up to the Pope as a natural political and religious leader in the West.

The plague of Justinian between AD 541 and 542 wiped out more than half of Constantinople. Rats on ships spread it around the Mediterranean countries killing a quarter of the people and it even reached England and Ireland in AD 549.

Many people in England died which made it easier for the Angles and Saxons to invade and take over large portions of England.

Tribe 5   The Anglo-Saxons made north Europe Catholic

The Angles and Saxons entered England when the western Roman empire collapsed and established themselves as the Anglo-Saxons.

God’s fourth church age messenger Columba was a bright light that appeared just before the fourth church age started in AD 606. That was the age of darkness, so Columba could not be present in the actual age as his light would have meant it was not a dark age.

In AD 563 Columba set up a monastery or abbey on the island of Iona, just off the west coast of Scotland. This was free from the plague as no ships called in there. He was basically a missionary to the Scots (who were also called Picts) where he spent most of the rest of his life. His followers went on missionary trips down into England throughout most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as well as into Europe, especially amongst the Franks, where monasteries were built. The arrows shown on the next map indicate where his influence spread. Columba had a powerful ministry and it was difficult for anyone to withstand him.

He died in AD 597.

Now the Devil had to close down Columba’s influence so that the Dark Ages could set in.

Bertha, the Roman Catholic wife of the king of Kent persuaded the king to allow the Roman Catholic, Augustine to begin preaching at Canterbury in AD 597.

Columba’s teachings from the north of England and the Pope’s teachings from the south of England clashed in 664 AD at Whitby, a monastery that was run by the abbess Hilda. The king of Northumbria was there and he decided that his kingdom would join the Roman Catholics because they had a clever reason.

They claimed that because Jesus gave Peter the keys to heaven, only Peter could open the door to heaven for a person. Because the Pope claimed to be a successor of Peter (by falsely claiming Peter had been in Rome) the Roman Catholics claimed that Peter would only open heaven’s door for people who were in submission to the Pope. Columba’s followers could not compete with this. Northumbria and southern England, which were Anglo-Saxon territories, thus converted to Catholicism.

Notice Daniel’s prophecy:

DANIEL 7:8   I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

The Arian Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths had been completely uprooted. There was no longer any opposition to the Trinity doctrine of Rome in Europe anymore.

Eyes speak of intelligence. The eyes of man. One main man was emphasized, Saint Peter. The Pope claimed that you had to look into Peter's eyes when you died and ask him to open heaven's door. So you find yourself being looked at by saint Peter who has the keys to heaven’s door.  You cannot fool Peter. He can look right through you.  He knows if you have been subject to his successor, the Pope, or not.

Notice the cunning deception. Jesus is the Door to heaven. But He is no longer the Saviour because Peter has the keys to the Door. Peter decides whether you go in or not. Peter has replaced Jesus as the one who decides if you enter heaven or not.

“A mouth speaking great things”.

"Great things".

The Trinity doctrine could spread unopposed during the Dark Ages. The people were so indoctrinated that when the Protestants broke away from the Catholics in 1520, they just continued with Trinity, Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter eggs because these and other Catholic errors had been thoroughly brainwashed into them by hundreds of years of endless repetition.

Great things. Salvation depends on obedience to Peter and the Pope. Jesus has been neatly bypassed.

This was the awful doctrine of Catholicism that was going to spread through the pagan world of Europe.

Salvation by works. Do what the Pope tells you to do. Buy your place in heaven by donating to the Catholic church in terms of land or money. Each family should give a son or daughter as a priest or nun.

Obey the Pope as Peter’s successor and Peter will open the door for you when you die. It was foolproof.  The pagans would fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

Now good, upright, honest Anglo-Saxons must go from England to Northern Europe to take the news of Peter and his willingness to open the door to heaven for those who obey the Pope. All their dedication was being used to corrupt people.

By being messengers of the Pope, the Anglo-Saxon missionaries automatically had authority in the eyes of the pagans.

The Pope’s teachings moved up into England from Canterbury and took over Northumbria (shown in green on the above map) after the council of Whitby in AD 664.

This was the fourth church age of Thyatira which means a dominating woman. A woman symbolizes a church as the true church is the bride of Christ. The Roman Catholic church was going to dominate Europe during the Dark Ages. It is interesting that two women,  Bertha and Hilda, played a key role in establishing the Pope’s authority in England and helping to stamp out the influence of Columba, the fourth age messenger, in England.

Two great Roman Catholic missionaries, Boniface and Willibrord who were both Anglo-Saxons, worked tirelessly to spread the Pope’s influence throughout northern Europe. The above map indicates some of the areas where Boniface labored.

The next map indicates the travels of Willibrord as he energetically spread Catholicism.

The main value to Rome of the Anglo-Saxons was the hard-working and dedicated missionaries that they sent out to northern Europe who established monasteries. This was a great advert for the Roman Catholic church. These monasteries were the centres of learning in the Dark Ages. The barbarian leaders often killed their way to power and lived short and dangerous lives. The barbarians were impressed with the Roman Catholic church that falsely claimed to have been started by St Peter and which had survived about 500 years.

To the short-lived barbarian rulers, this was real stability. A line of Popes going back for 500 years was an incredible achievement in the eyes of the barbarians. To gain influence among the endlessly fighting barbarians, the monasteries played smart and subjected themselves to the Roman Pope. He was a far-away figure that impressed the pagans in northern Europe. And the Pope was linked to Peter, the only man who had the keys to heaven. To the pagans that was incredible. Peter had supreme authority in the eyes of the pagans. He held the keys. The Popes in the Dark Ages went through a very corrupt period but the monasteries were too far away to realize this, as they were on the other side of the Alps mountains, and these monasteries gave much credibility to the tarnished Popes.

The Alps formed a formidable mountain barrier. So the people that Willibrord and Boniface worked with were usually totally unaware of the corruption that was going on in Rome. They judged the Catholic church by the good example and lifestyle of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries in northern Europe. Later a famous monastery was built at Cluny and those Burgundian people were also sheltered by the Alps from the corrupt lifestyle of the church regime in Rome.

So the Anglo-Saxon monasteries established Roman Catholicism in northern Europe and thus boosted the prestige of the Popes amongst the pagans when the Popes were actually losing their prestige in Italy due to their scandalous lifestyles.

Tribe 6   Lombards and the Name or Number of the Beast

When the Constantinople army under brilliant general Narses destroyed the Arian Ostrogoths by 554 AD, the Lombards waited until Narses left Italy aged 86 years old.

Then in AD 568 the Lombards invaded northern and central Italy as the Roman Empire was crumbling in Italy and they took over most of the territory that the Ostrogoths had ruled.

Rome and a small area around the city still belonged to the emperor in Constantinople. The Pope in Rome remained in submission to the emperor in Constantinople who became of less and less help to the Pope. More and more, the Pope had to make his own decisions and pay for Roman expenses out of church funds.

In AD 752 the Lombards made the mistake of threatening to take over the little bit of territory, shown in red, that was left to Rome.

The eastern emperor in Constantinople refused to help, even though he was in charge of this territory around Rome.

Thus the key role that the Lombards played in the rise of the Roman Catholic church was to break the Pope’s dependence on the emperor in Constantinople and force the Pope to begin political involvement with the barbarian tribes. The most powerful barbarian tribe was the Franks.

In AD 751 the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mainz, Boniface, created history by anointing a barbarian Pepin as king of the Franks.

Pope, Cardinal, and Archbishop are all unscriptural titles.

Then Pope Stephen II left Rome and went to Paris to ask Pepin for help against the Lombards.

Pope Stephen took a fraudulent document with him that would have big repercussions. It was called the Donation of Constantine which claimed that Constantine had given all the land in the west to the Pope.

In this document, the Pope claimed to be the representative of Peter and that Peter was the chief apostle who stood in the place of Christ.

Once again, the logic of doing the Pope a favour meant you were doing Peter a favour, and it was Peter who had the keys to open the door to heaven. Giving land and protection to the Pope would ensure that Peter would let Pepin into heaven. Christ is the Door to heaven. But the Pope claimed that Peter stood in the place of Christ because Peter had the key to the Door and thus it was Peter who decided whether to open the Door or not. Salvation thus depends on Peter, rather than Christ.

In AD 754 Pope Stephen crowned Pepin as king of the Franks on condition that the Franks would protect him from the Lombards.

In AD 756 Pepin forced the Lombards out of the territory near Rome and gave a big chunk of territory to the Pope. This extra donation of Pepin is shown in red on the above map. Because Pepin gave him the territory, the Pope now claimed to be in charge of the territory, which completed his break with the emperor in Constantinople.

The Pope was now an independent church power making political alliances with the barbarians. Religion and politics were combining and they were to form a toxic brew.

So the Pope now had the authority to crown barbarian kings. This gave him great prestige among the barbarians. The Franks now became the protectors of the Pope, making him very powerful.

The mark of the Beast.

The forged “Donation of Pepin” established a legal basis for the Pope to own land which became known as the Papal States.

But three words in this forged document called the Donation of Constantine were to have huge implications.

The wording on this document, written in Latin, is critical.

.. ut sicut B. Petrus in terris VICARIVS FILII DEI esse videtur constitutes

... as the Blessed Peter is seen to have been constituted vicar of the Son of God on the earth.

In Latin, there are various letters that can also represent numbers.

In Latin  I = 1,   V  =  5,  X  =  10,  L  =  50,  C  =  100,  D  =  500.

This is the only time in history that VICARIVS FILII DEI  was written down in a document and it applied to one man, Peter.   Peter is not to blame. He never made the claim.

In Latin, a  U  is represented by a  V as a  V  is easier to carve on stone since it has straight lines.

We still pronounce  W  which is  V V  as "double U".

V  I  C  A  R  I  V  S     F  I  L  I  I        D  E  I

5  1              1  5            1 50 1 1     500   1

This all adds up to  666.

The end-time man of sin will be the final Pope.

Romulus founded the city of Rome.  Augustus was the first emperor in Rome.

The last emperor was Romulus Augustulus.

So the last emperor in Rome inadvertently took the names of the first rulers.

Catholics claim that the first Pope was called Peter.  Thus the last Pope will most probably be called Peter II.

REVELATION 13:17    And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

So Peter II  will be the name of the final beast, because as the Pope he will be the figurehead of the whole beastly denominational church system.

The name Peter was linked to VICARIVS FILII DEI which in Latin has the number 666.

The mark of the beast is denominational religion. Believing the doctrines of man, rather than the written Scriptures. Believing the opinion of church leaders makes our sincere worship of God an exercise in futility.

MATTHEW 15:9   But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

REVELATION 13:18    Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Wisdom is the first gift of the Holy Spirit.

I CORINTHIANS 12:7    But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.

:8    For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;

Wisdom enables us to join the Scriptures together so that we can have the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.

The evidence of the Holy Spirit baptism is the ability to understand the truth of the written Word of God.

JOHN 16:13   Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Tribe 7   The Franks give military strength to the Pope

The Franks were the strongest of the barbarian tribes.

They were the first tribe to use their military power and strength to defeat the Pope's enemy, the Lombards, and then to give some of the Lombard's land to the Pope as a new kingdom the Papal States. About 200 years after being given this kingdom,  the Pope began to think that he was entitled to be given a crown too, just like other kings.

The white horse of religious deception with its antichrist rider moved down through church history.

A bow, with no mention of an arrow, is a bluffer or deceiver.
REVELATION 6:2   And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

In 774 AD Pepin’s son Charlemagne, who had become king of the Franks,  conquered the Lombards and absorbed them into the kingdom of the Franks.

So the Lombards faded out of history but they had paid the chief role of turning the Pope away from dependence on the emperor at Constantinople, and making the Pope now get involved with the barbarian tribes who would form the future nations of Europe.

The Lombards caused the Pope to gain the use of the military power of the very strong tribe of the Franks.

By crowning their kings, the Pope gained much authority amongst the barbarians.

Around AD 860 the powerful Pope Nicholas I began to wear a crown himself to show that he was the equal of any king. By  1315 this crown had evolved into the triple crown that the Popes wore for over 600 years until 1963.

The year that brother Branham revealed the 7 Seals was the last time that a Pope got crowned. The spiritual light from that deep revelation caused the Catholic Pope to take off the crown and never use it again.

In AD 800 Pope Leo III gained huge fame when he crowned Charlemagne, the greatest of all the barbarian kings, as Roman emperor. By crowning the emperor, the Pope could now claim to be supreme as he was above the emperor.

Thus began the Holy Roman Empire in the West. Voltaire, the famous atheist declared that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy as Charlemagne in one day beheaded 4500 Saxons who refused to convert to Catholicism. It was not Roman as it was German, and it was not an empire as it was a scattered collection of states that could only be held together by brute force. Gaining control by means of brute force was typical of the Roman beast.

So the Franks made the Pope powerful and famous. Charlemagne, king of the Franks,  conquered Saxony, most of Italy, and a portion of Spain. The Papal States that the Franks gave to the Pope, to make him a landowner in Italy, are shown as a red band across the middle of Italy.

After conquering a territory Charlemagne wanted to colonize it. So he sent in Catholic missionaries to convert the heathen. The Pope was happy to supply monks to be missionaries and build up monasteries in these new areas.

As Charlemagne’s conquests spread, so the influence of the Pope spread into those areas as well.

Tribe 8   Burgundians spread control over monasteries

The Burgundians built many monasteries but insisted that they all be under the centralized control of the Pope.

The Burgundians migrated into the western Roman Empire and then got badly beaten by the Huns. They then went further west and settled in the area now known as Burgundy in France.

They converted to Catholicism and played no significant part until a monastery was built in AD 910 in Burgundy called Cluny. The leaders of this monastery were impressive men and their influence spread far and wide.

They introduced a new idea of making the new monasteries subject to the original “mother” monastery of Cluny.

They reached their peak by 1150 when up to 1400 other monasteries were dependent on Cluny. Until then monasteries had been reasonably independent. Now a system was established to put one monastery in charge of all the others.

To get authority over the other monasteries, Cluny made itself subject to the Pope.

Thus Cluny used the reputation and authority of the far-away Pope to gain power over the other monasteries that were being built. After the death of Columba in AD 597, there was no independent preacher in Europe who could match the prestige of the Pope amongst the pagan barbarians.

This model, whereby power over many monasteries was put into the hands of a human leader, was later copied by other Catholic groups like the Jesuits. More and more monasteries came to be in subjection to the central authority of Rome and thus the iron grip of organized religion spread its darkness over Western Europe.

This was one of the main reasons for the rise to power of the Roman Catholic church over western Europe during the Dark Ages. A centralized dictatorship, run by the Pope, who was establishing the power centre of the church in Rome and bringing the monasteries that were scattered over western Europe into obedience to Rome, was a very effective organizational technique for the growth of the Catholic church.

The leaders at Cluny were usually impressive men that the pagans respected. Their example built up the reputation of the Catholic church far away from Rome during the 150 years, from about 900 to 1050, when the Roman Popes themselves degenerated into a disgustingly corrupt lifestyle.

After 1050 the influence of Cluny faded as the negative effects of wealth and power took their toll.

But Cluny had established the formula of organized denominational religion under the centralized dictatorship of the Pope that would carry the Catholic church into the future.

When Protestant churches separated from Rome after 1520, then these daughter churches would imitate the mother church by establishing their own centres of religious power that were subject to the authority of human leaders whereby each denomination enforced their own beliefs and traditions over their scattered converts.

If Roman Catholicism is called the beast or centralized power of denominational religion under human leadership, then the smaller Protestant denominational organizations are effectively an image or an organizational copy of the beast with different human leaders.

Tribe 9  The Suevi became the Portuguese

Having established the power of the Roman Catholic church in western Europe, it was then time to spread the power of the church around the world.

The Suevi became the modern-day Portuguese.

Two of the original barbarian tribes, the Suevi and Visigoths, did a long migration across the length of western Europe and settled on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal. They slowly developed from migrant barbarians into modern European states.

They were educated for 800 years by the Muslim Moors who invaded from North Africa in AD 711 and ruled Spain and Portugal during the Dark Ages. Under Moorish rule, there was universal education while virtually all the rest of western Europe were illiterate. They had 70 public libraries while the rest of Europe had none and 17 universities compared to the two universities in the rest of western Europe. The Moors introduced paper and replaced the clumsy Roman numerals with our modern Arabic number system. They introduced much mathematics as well as the compass to aid navigation at sea.

Thus, Catholic Spain and Portugal would take the lead in opening up the world to the influence of the Pope.

Thus the Moors developed the Catholic Visigoths and Suevi educationally so that after their long migration to the ends of Europe, they were finally equipped to launch out onto the deep Atlantic ocean and discover the rest of the world so that Catholicism could spread worldwide.

The Portuguese were exploring the coast of Africa by 1419 and began slave trading in 1441. The Portuguese reached India in 1498, and Brazil in 1500. They built forts and trading posts along many coasts and soon established a worldwide empire, as shown in red on the next map.

Each Portuguese settlement became a centre for spreading the Roman Catholic religion, which rapidly formed a worldwide church that was in submission to the Pope.

Tribe 10   The Visigoths became the Spaniards

The Visigoths eventually became the Spanish. They had done a long migration to reach the end of western Europe.

The Spanish then set out to cross the Atlantic ocean and conquered much of the Americas as well as the Philippine islands in the east.

Huge amounts of gold and silver flowed back to Spain from the Americas. As the Spanish conquered to find more wealth, so Catholic missionaries followed the soldiers and converted the indigenous people to Roman Catholicism. The huge Spanish empire produced a large number of Catholic converts on a worldwide scale. The gold and silver from the Americas that went back to the Pope helped to replace his financial losses when northern Europe accepted Martin Luther’s Reformation and pulled away from the Catholic church.

This map, in yellow, shows how much of the Americas had been conquered by Spain.

The violet portion was Brazil which the Portuguese had conquered.

The Dark Ages were over when the Reformation started in 1520.

The true church then had to be restored back to the early apostolic church. Martin Luther in Germany took the first step when he preached salvation by grace through faith.

But the Catholic church had a firm grip on southern Europe and thanks to Spain and Portugal the Catholic church had spread over vast portions of the earth.

Thus these ten barbarian tribes that had helped to break up the Roman Empire, had also established Roman Catholicism on the ruins of the Roman Empire and helped it to become a worldwide church. The head of the Roman Empire (which was the Capitoline Hill in Rome with its temple of Jupiter) that had been wounded to death by the barbarians when it lost all its authority.

But the Pope has recovered this power because the Lateran Palace on the Caelian hill is the official headquarters of the worldwide Roman Catholic church.

The Pope replaced the fallen Roman emperor, and now exercises worldwide control over the Catholic church. The Catholic denominational system of a human leader in charge of a church has also swept through the non-Catholic churches.

As the non-Catholics copy the Catholic Church (the beast) so they form an image of the beast system.

The power of the little horn, the Vatican hierarchy, keeps growing.

DANIEL 7:9   I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.

DANIEL 7:10     A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

DANIEL 7:7    and behold a fourth beast… and it had ten horns    : the judgment was set

Rome conquers its conquerors.

Ten barbarian tribes had helped to destroy pagan Rome and also helped to establish the Roman Catholic Church which is taking the world to judgement.