Chapter Twenty-Eight/Contending With Two Ferocious Beasts- Waging War Against the Holy Ones

 The wily Satan had plans for the manipulating the wild beasts to his own ends. John explains this: "And a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies was given it [the seven-headed beast] and the authority to act forty-two months was given it. And it opened its mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his residence, even those residing in heaven.  And there was granted to it to wage war with the holy ones and conquer them, and authority was given it over every tribe and people and tongue and nation. And all those who dwell on the earth will worship it; the name of not of them stands written in the book of life and of the Lamb who was slaughtered, from the founding of the world." - REVELATION 1:5-8.

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

 Worship in what sense? In the sense of putting love of country ahead of love of God. Most people love the land of their birth. As good citizens, true Christians also respect the rulers and the emblems of the country where they reside, obey the laws, and make a positive contribution to the welfare of their community and their neighbors. (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:14-17) They cannot, however, give blind devotion to one country as against all others. "Our country right or wrong" is not a Christian teaching. So Christians who worship Jehovah God cannot share in giving prideful patriotic worship to any part of the wild beast, this would amount to worshiping the dragon-the source of authority of the wild beast. They cannot ask admiringly: "Who is like the wild beast?" Rather, they follow the example of Michael-his name meaning "Who is like God?"-as they uphold Jehovah's universal sovereignty. At God's appointed time, the Michael, Christ Jesus, will do battle with the wild beast and conquer it, even as he triumphed in expelling Satan. 

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 Mankind has even gone beyond admiring the wild beast, as John next states: "And they worshiped the dragon because it gave the authority to the wild beast, and they worshiped the wild beast with the words: "Who is like the wild beast, and who can battle with it?' "(Revelation 13:4) While Jesus was here on earth, Satan claimed to have authority over all the kingdoms of the earth. Jesus did not dispute this; in fact, he himself referred to Satan as the ruler of the world and refused to participate in the politics of that day. John later wrote of the true Christians: "We know we originate with God, but the whole world is lying the power of the wicked one." (1 John 5:19; Luke 4:5-8; John 3:16; 14:30) Satan delegates authority to the wild beast, and he does this on a nationalistic basis. Thus, instead of being united in bonds of godly love, mankind has become divided by pride of tribe, race, and nation. The great majority of people worship, in effect, that part of the wild beast having authority in the land where they happen to live, Thus whole beast gains admiration and worship. 

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Historian Charles L. Mee, Jr., writes: "The collapse of the old order [caused by the first world war] was a necessary prelude to the spread of self-rule, the liberation of new nations and classes, the release of new freedom and independence."  Leading to the development of this postwar era was the seventh head of the wild beast, now healed, and with the United States of America moving into dominant role. The dual world power took the lead in advocating both the League of Nations and the United Nations. By the 1980's, U.S. political power has led the more privileged nations in creating a higher standard of living, in fighting disease, and in advancing in technology. It had even placed 12 men on the moon. It is no wonder, therefore, that mankind in general has followed the wild beast in admiration." 

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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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Chapter Twenty-Eight/Contending With Two Ferocious Beasts

 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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