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 At the same time, the Great War, as it was then called, opened the way for the United States to emerge distinctly as part of the Anglo-American World Power. For the first years of the war, public opinion kept the United States out of the conflict. But as historian Esme' Wingfield -Stratford wrote: "It was all a question of whether, at this hour of supreme crisis, Britian and the United States would sink their differences in the realization of [their] of their overmastering unity and common trusteeship." As events turned out, they did. In 1917 the United States contributed her resources and manpower to bolster the war effort of the staggering Allies. Thus, the seventh head, combining Britain and the United States, came out on the winning side. 

The world after the war was vastly different. Satan's earthly system, although devastated by the death stroke, revived and became more powerful than ever and so won the admiration of humans because of its recuperative power.

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 For the dominant seventh head of the wild beast, that war was a major disaster. Along with other European nations, Britain lost its young men in traumatic numbers in one battle alone, the Battle of the River Somme in 1916, 420,000 British soldiers died, along with 200,000 French and 450,000 German-more than 1,000,000 fatalities! Economically, too, Britain-together with the rest of Europe-was shattered. The huge British Empire staggered under the blow and never fully recovered. Indeed, that warm with 28 leading nations participating, sent the entire world reeling as if by a deathblow. On August 4, 1979, just 65 years after the outbreak of World War I, the Economist, of Longdon, England, commented: "In 1914 the world lost a coherence which it has not managed to recapture since. 

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 What was the death stroke? Later, it is called a sword stroke, and a sword it a symbol of warfare. This sword stroke, administered early in the Lord's day, must relate the first world war, which devastated and drained Satan's political wild beast. (Revelation 6:4, 8; 13:14) Author Maurice Genevoix, who was a military officer during the war, said of it: "Everyone agrees in recognizing that in the whole history of mankind, few dates have had the importance of August 2, 1914. First Europe and soon after almost all humanity found themselves plunged into a dreadful event. Conventions, agreements, moral laws, all the foundations shook; from one day to the next, everything was called into question. The event was to exceed both instinctive forebodings and reasonable anticipations, Enormous, chaotic, monstrous, it still drags us in it wake." -Maurice Genevoix, member of the Acade'-mie Francaise, quoted in the book Promise of Greatness(1968).

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Chapter Twenty-Eight/Contending With Two Ferocious Beasts - The Death Stroke

 Early in the Lord's day, calamity strikes the wild beast, John reports: "And I saw one one of its heads as though slaughtered to death, but its death-stroke got healed, and in all the earth followed the wild beast with admiration." (Revelation 13:3) This verse says that one head of the wild beast received a deaths stroke, but verse 12 speaks as though the entire beast suffered. Why is that? Well, the beasts heads are not all in ascendancy together. Each in its turn has lorded if over mankind, particularly over God's people. (Revelation 17:10) Thus, as the Lord's day begins, there is only one head, the seventh, acting as the dominant world power. A death stroke on that head brings great distress on the entire wild beast. 

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 The wild beast comes out of "the sea," which is a fitting symbol of the turbulent masses from which human government springs. (Isaiah 17:12, 13) This wild beast began to emerge out of the sea of turbulent humanity away back in the days of Nimrod (about the 2oth century B.C.E.), when a post-Flood system of things, opposed to Jehovah, first manifested itself. (Genesis10:8. 12; 11:1-9) But only in the Lord's day has the last one of its seven heads fully manifested itself. Notice, too, it is the dragon that "gave to the beast its power and its throne and great authority." (Compare Luke 4:6) The beast is Satan's political creation among the masses of mankind. Satan is truly "the ruler of this world." - JOHN 12:31. 

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 The wild beast has "upon its heads blasphemous names," making claims for itself that show great disrespect for Jehovah God and Christ Jesus. It has used the names of God and Christ as a sham to achieve its political ends, and it has played along with false religion, even allowing the clergy to take part in its political processes. For example, the House of Lords in England includes the bishops. Catholic cardinals have played prominent political roles in France and Italy, and more recently, priests have taken political office in Latin America. Governments print religious slogans, such as "IN GOD WE TRUST, " on their bank notes, and on their coins they claim divine approval for their rulers, stating for example, that these appointed "by the grace of God." All of this is actually blasphemous, for its attempts to involve God in the sullied nationalistic political arena. 

Note: This garbage is all disapproved of by God and Jesus Christ. Neither one of them had anything to do with being money hungry or political or garbage the Government is saying or doing. They are using his name for their own selfishness and greed and prestige and any other garbage they want to do. And in the right time, they will be dealt with. 

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 The wild beast has ten horns on its seven heads. Perhaps four heads had one horn each, and three heads had two horns each. Moreover, it had ten diadems on its horns. In the book of Daniel, fearsome beasts are described, and the numbering of their horns is to be interpreted literally. For example, the two horns on a ram represented a world empire made up of two partners, Media and Persia, while the other four horns on a goat represent the four coexisting empires that grew out of Alexander the Great's Greek empire. (Daniel 8:3, 8, 20-22) On the beast that John saw, however, the numbering of the ten horns appears to be symbolic. (Compare Daniel 7:24; Revelation 17:12.) They represent the completeness of sovereign states making up the entire political organization of Satan. All these horns are violent and aggressive, but as indicated by the seven heads, headship resides in only one world power at a time. Similarly, the ten diadems indicate that all sovereign states would exercise ruling power simultaneously with the dominant state, or world power of that time.

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 Is it not shocking to identify the ruling political powers with a wild beast? That is what some opposers claimed during World War II, when the status of Jehovah's Witnesses, as an organization and as individuals, was being challenged in law courts around the earth. But stop and think! Do not the nations themselves adopt beasts or wild creatures as their national symbols? For example, there are the British lion, the American eagle, the Chinese dragon, and the Russian bear. So why should anyone object if the divine authority of the Holy Bible also uses beasts to symbolize world powers? 

Moreover, why should anyone object to the Bible's saying that it is Satan who gives the wild beast its great authority? God is the Source of that statement, and before him, 'the nations are a drop from a bucket as film of dust.' Those nations would do better to court Gods favor than to take offense at the way his prophetic Word describes them. (Isaiah 40:15, 17; Psalm 2:10-12) Satan is no mythical person assigned to tormenting departed souls in a fiery hell. No such place exists. Rather, Satan is described in Scripture as "an angel of light"-a master deception who exercises powerful influence in general political affairs. - 2 CORINTHIANS 11:3, 14, 15; EPHESIANS 6:11-18.

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 By the end of the first century C.E., however, many in this early congregation had fallen away from the truth, and true Christian wheat, 'the sons of the kingdom," had been largely choked out by weeds, "the sons of the wicked one." But when the conclusion of the system of things arrived, anointed Christians again appeared as an organized group. During the Lord's day, the righteous ones were due to "shine as brightly as the sun." Hence, the Christian congregation was organized for work. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) By then, the Roman Empire, was no more. The huge British Empire, along with the powerful United States of America, held the center of the world stage. This dual world power proved to be the seventh head of the wild beast.

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 It is clear, therefore, that the Author of the inspired Bible regards the political powers of the earth as beasts. What kind of beasts? One commentator calls the wild beast of Revelation 13:1, 2 a "brute," and adds: "We accept all connotations that [the~ri'on, the Greek word for "beast"] conveys, such as that of a cruel, destructive, frightful, ravenous, etc., monster. How well that describes the bloodstained political system by which Satan has dominated mankind! The seven heads of this wild beast stand for six major world powers featured in Bible history up to John's day-Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome-and a seventh world power prophesied to appear later. - Compare REVELATION 17:9, 10. 

True, there have been other world powers in history besides the seven-just as the wild beast John saw was made up of a body as well as of seven heads and ten horns. But the seven heads represent the seven major powers that have, each in its turn, taken the lead in oppressing God's people. In 33 C.E., while Rome was ascendant, Satan used that head of the wild beast to kill the Son of God. At that time, God abandoned the faithless Jewish system of things and later, in 70 C.E., allowed Rome to execute his judgment on that nation. Happily, the true Israel of God, the congregation of anointed Christians, had been forewarned, and those in Jerusalem and Judea had fled to safety beyond the Jordan River. - MATTHEW 24:15, 16; GALATIANS 6:16. 

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