Update 29 June 2024 at bottom.
Eph 5:11:"…have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”.
Amos 3:7 “…God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”
Why this post?
To identify the first beast of Revelation.
Introduction
In my previous post I’ve unpacked Daniel’s visions that all point to a fourth kingdom and how others have all agreed it references the Roman Empire. In this post I’ll turn to Revelation and show how others have pointed out who and what the Beast is and how it relates to Daniel’s vision.
No, it’s not the devil because that’s the dragon.
Similar to my previous posts, let’s turn to the Bible. Below follows a long list of the characteristics of this beast and how there is only one entity that can possibly fulfil it.
The beast
Daniel refers to the fourth beast in time. Revelation refers to the first beast of end times. Both refer to the same entity referred to as the antichrist.
Here is how wikipedia explains the terms:
Wikipedia notes the etymology in passing — anti-Christos. But the Greek prefix ἀντί does not only mean "against" or "opposite of". It also means "in place of." That second meaning is the one that matters here. The first beast of Revelation is not merely Christ's opponent. It is Christ's substitute — claiming the title, the throne, the authority, the mediation, the worship. Vicar of Christ. Mother of the Church. Power to pardon sin. Anti-Christos in the sense of in place of. Hold that distinction as you read the rest of this post.
Throughout the writings of Daniel, John and Paul, they wrote down several characteristics of this entity.
In the New Testament, John and Paul refers to this entity which existed at that time:
1 John 4:3 - “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.“
2 Thes 2:7 - “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.“
Its 20 characteristics
Several authors have expounded this list. Please go ahead and Google it to see.
The Bible gives twenty distinct identifying features of this entity, drawn from Revelation 13, Daniel 7, Daniel 11, and a handful of supporting passages. Read them as a checklist. If one entity ticks all twenty — and only one does — the case is closed. The four images that follow lay out all twenty with their biblical references and historical receipts. What follows below the images walks each criterion in plain prose.
Below I number each, cite the verse in red and then provide the evidence in blue:
1: Existed in Paul’s day
2 Thessalonians 2:7, written around AD 50: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” That single phrase rules out any future-only candidate. Whatever this is, Paul says it was already operating in his lifetime. So no nation, no individual, no movement that did not exist in the first century qualifies. Not modern Israel. Not Russia. Not China. Not Turkey. Not Elon Musk. Not Donald Trump. The shortlist of candidates that did exist in AD 50 and persisted to today is short — and Rome (religious, then political, then religious again) is on it. Most other candidates are not.
2-6: Arises out of the fourth beast / after ten horns / among the ten horns / different / subdue three kings
Daniel 7 sets the structure. The fourth beast (Rome — see the post on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream) breaks into ten horns. Then a little horn rises among the ten, after the ten are already there, different from them, and uproots three of them by the roots. That is a five-feature constraint, all from one passage. Five features — and one historical fit.
The Western Roman Empire breaks apart after AD 476 into ten Germanic kingdoms — the Alemanni, Franks, Burgundians, Suevi, Visigoths, Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, Ostrogoths, Heruli, and Vandals. Ten, exactly. Three of them — the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths — are exterminated, not assimilated. By 538 AD all three are gone. And the entity that rises among the surviving seven, after their formation, is the Bishop of Rome — religious, not military, different in kind from the kingdoms around it. Five constraints, one fit. Daniel 7:7-8 written ~600 BC. Read it again knowing the seven survivors and the three exterminated.
7: Human in nature
Revelation 13:18 says the number of the beast is “the number of a man.” Daniel 7:8 gives the little horn “eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” So the beast is embodied in a man — not a system in the abstract, not a computer in Brussels, not an AI in the cloud, not an algorithm. The Papacy fits this exactly: an institution whose authority is seated in a single human person. Every encyclical. Every infallibility claim. Every Vicar-of-Christ statement. One man.
8: Different (from those before)
Daniel 7:24 — the little horn “shall be diverse from the first.” The other ten horns of the fourth beast were political-military kingdoms — Frankish, Gothic, Vandal, the rest. The little horn is different in kind: it claims both political and religious power simultaneously. Church-and-state intermingled, where the state enforces ideals arising from the church. The Papacy ruled in exactly that mode from 538 to 1798 (see the 1260 years here) — over a thousand years of the only Western European power that combined the two until France’s General Berthier broke the arrangement.
Revelation 17:3 confirms it from a different angle: “and I saw a woman.” In prophecy a woman or bride means a Church (Eph 5:25-32; 2 Cor 11:2). So this entity is religious by definition. We know Catholicism started as Pagan Rome converted; the religious institution sits on the bones of the political one. Different by design.
9: Greater than the others
Daniel 7:20 — the little horn was “more stout than his fellows.” Strong’s gives the underlying word as captain, chief, great, lord, master, stout. Not a peer of the surviving kingdoms — over them.
The Holy Apostolic See itself confirms it on the record. The Most Holy Councils, Vol. XIII, column 1167: “We define that the Holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold primacy over the whole world.” Henry Cardinal Manning, 1862: “…that supreme arbitration whereby the highest power in the world, the Vicar of the incarnate Son of God, anointed high priest, and supreme temporal ruler, sat in his tribunal, impartially to judge between nation and nation, between people and prince, between sovereign and subject.” The institution writes its own job description. Daniel 7:20 was written eighteen centuries before either citation.
10: Makes war with the saints
Daniel 7:21 — “the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them.” Which entity, in the long arc from the apostolic age to today, has organisationally killed Christians over centuries?
Killed the apostles in Rome. Killed Bible translators — Tyndale strangled and burned 1536, Wycliffe’s bones exhumed and burned forty-four years after he died. Killed the Waldenses in their Piedmont valleys for centuries. Killed the Albigenses to extinction. Killed the Huguenots — by the tens of thousands at the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 alone. Burned Inquisition victims for the better part of seven centuries. The Reformers’ martyr-list is not myth — it is documented in the institution’s own records. War with the saints. For most of a millennium.
11: Speaks against and blasphemes God
Daniel 7:25 — “speak great words against the most High.” Revelation 13:5-6 — “speaking great things and blasphemies… blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.”
The receipts come from inside the institution. Morgan Thomas, Pontiff, p. 332 — “…replacement of Jesus Christ…”. Mother Teresa, October 1984 — “…another Christ…”. Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. 2, p. 265 — “This judicial authority will even include the power to pardon sin.” The Vicar-of-Christ title itself; the In persona Christi claim; the power to pardon sin — these are blasphemy in the precise biblical sense. A man arrogating the role of God. The Pharisees accused Jesus of blasphemy for forgiving sins.
And the tabernacle / dwellers-in-heaven clauses too. Walk into a major Catholic cathedral and look at the tabernacle on the high altar. Surrounded by serpents, suns, moons — the imagery of the pagan mystery religions Rome converted from, embedded around the place where the elements are reserved. And angels portrayed as fat little cherubs. There is no biblical precedent for that. Angels in scripture are warriors who terrify the people they appear to. The institution has re-cast them as decorative.
12: Influence entire world to worship him
Revelation 13:8 — “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him.” Worship of the Pope, worldwide, by all that dwell on the earth — the prediction reads as absurd, until you look. Heads of state, royalty, presidents, prime ministers, billionaires, celebrities — all bowing, kneeling, kissing the ring, kissing the foot. Across centuries. Across continents. Across creeds. TIME Magazine, 25 May 1981 — “Shooting presidents, that’s politics, that I can understand. But shooting the Pope — it’s like shooting God!” The gallery below makes the case visually.
Bow down
We’ve all seen all the photos of those who bow down to the Pope from celebrities and politicians, even to the moneyed men.
Nineteen images follow. Different decades, different presidents and prime ministers, royalty, tech founders, film stars. All of them — without exception — meeting the Pope on the Pope's terms, in the Pope's room, on the Pope's schedule, in the Pope's pose. Many in postures of clear deference. Some kneel. Some kiss the ring. Some bring gifts. Note that no Pope ever travels to them in equivalent posture. The flow goes one way. "All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him." Read Revelation 13:8 again as you scroll.
13: Change time AND laws
Daniel 7:25 — “and shall think to change times and laws.” Times AND laws. Both. Plural.
Times — the Gregorian calendar reform of October 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII dropped ten days from the calendar by decree, and most of Western Europe accepted the change. (Britain held out until 1752, but eventually conformed.) Julius Caesar had earlier added leap days to the Roman calendar. The Pope changed the days of the year themselves.
Laws — moved the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first (more on that under criterion 18 below). And on top of making the change, the institution claims the authority to change divine law as such — not by inference, by explicit ecclesiastical statement. Decretal De Translate Episcop., Cap.: “The Pope has the power to change times, to abrogate laws, and to dispense with all things, even the Precepts of Christ.” And Prompta Bibliotheca, Papa, Art. 2: “The Pope can modify divine law.”
The Decalogue itself is altered in the Catholic catechism — the next image makes it visual. The institution’s own canon law claims the right to do the changing. Daniel 7:25 was written ~600 BC; the institution that thinks to change times and laws has been on the record claiming exactly that authority for over a millennium.
The catholic ten commandments include 4 changes:
In post 30 I elaborate this point in more detail.
The Catholic catechism's Decalogue is not the Bible's Decalogue. Four changes. The second commandment — "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" (Exodus 20:4) — is removed entirely. The fourth — "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8) — is replaced with "Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day" (Sunday). The single tenth commandment on coveting is split into two — coveting the wife, coveting goods — to keep the count at ten after the deletion of the second. And the numbering and order are renumbered to fit. Times AND laws. The image lays the comparison side by side; you can verify it against your own Bible and any Catholic catechism in print today.
14: Reigns for 1260 years
Daniel 7:25 and Revelation 13:5 both name the same number — 1260 days, or 42 months, or “a time, times, and the dividing of time”. Day-year principle (R6 / R9 callback) turns 1260 days into 1260 years. The math walk is in the post on prophetic timelines; the receipts here are the dates themselves.
538 AD start: Labanca — “…the Pope began in 538 AD…”. The History of the Christian Church, vol. III, p. 327 — “…ascended the papal chair (538 AD) under military protection…”. 1798 AD wound: The Encyclopaedia Americana (1941) — “In 1798 he made his entrance into Rome, Abolished the Papal Government and established a SECULAR one.” Church History p. 64 — “…in 1798 gave the French an excuse for occupying the Eternal City and putting an end to the Papal temporal power.” Four citations, one number. 538 to 1798 = 1260 years exactly. Which other entity can claim that?
15: His wound will be healed
Revelation 13:12 — “whose deadly wound was healed.” The 1798 wound was political — Berthier abolished the Papal States and dragged Pius VI to France. But the prophecy promises healing. And the healing has a date too: 11 February 1929.
The Lateran Treaty between Mussolini’s Italy and the Vatican re-establishes the Papacy as a sovereign state. Vatican City is born. The political authority that was abolished in 1798 is re-instated 131 years later — by an Italian fascist, ironically — and the institution becomes a state actor again. The San Francisco Chronicle on the day of signing, 11 February 1929: “The Roman question tonight was a thing of the past and the Vatican was at peace with Italy… in affixing the autographs to the memorable document healing the wound…” The newspaper used the exact biblical phrase. Healing. The. Wound. Pause and consider that.
16: 666
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.”
Numbers in the ancient world worked by gematria — every letter has a numerical value, and to “count the number” of a name you sum the values of its letters. The Pope’s official Latin title — inscribed on the papal mitre — is VICARIVS FILII DEI (Vicar of the Son of God). Take the Latin letters that have Roman-numeral values and sum them: VICARIVS gives 5 + 1 + 100 + 1 + 5 = 112. FILII gives 1 + 50 + 1 + 1 = 53. DEI gives 500 + 1 = 501. Total: 112 + 53 + 501 = 666.
The Pope’s own title, written on his own mitre, sums to the number of the beast under the gematria-rule the Bible itself supplies. Coincidence? Possibly. But the title was chosen by the institution, applied to itself, and worn in plain sight for centuries. (The 29 June 2024 update further down shows the Geneva Bible’s 1560 marginal note on this very verse reaches the same conclusion via a different gematria — Greek Lateinos, “the Latin one” — also 666. Two languages, two methods, one target.)
Here is an article that elaborates the 666 and all the titles that sums to it.
17: No desire for woman
Daniel 11:37 — “Neither shall he regard… the desire of women.” Priests do not marry. Nuns do not marry. The Catholic Encyclopaedia: “Celibacy is the renunciation of marriage… for the more perfect observance of chastity, by all those who receive the Sacrament of Orders in any of the higher grades.” Mandatory institutional celibacy as a feature, defended in writing. Daniel 11:37 was written long before the institution existed.
18: “Mother” church
Revelation 17:5 — “the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” The Catholic Church refers to itself as Holy Mother Church in its own liturgical and canonical language. Not a metaphor we are imposing — a self-description in writing.
And on the Sabbath-changed-to-Sunday move (criterion 13 above), the institution is on the record claiming the change as its own — and challenging Protestants on it. Rev. Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism, ch. 2, p. 174 (Imprimatur, John Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New York): “Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her — she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” And Ecclesiastical Review, February 1914: “They [the Protestants] deem it their duty to keep the Pope’s day. Why? Because the Catholic Church tells them to do so. They have no other reason.”
The institution acknowledges the change. The institution acknowledges that Protestants observing Sunday are obeying the Pope, not the Bible.
19: Use drugs on the masses (sorceries)
Revelation 18:23 — “for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” Strong’s #5331: pharmakeia — administer drugs, drug-related sorcery, the practice of magical-arts. Not ambient magic. Pharmaceuticals. The Greek word is the root of our word pharmacy. Watch the video below, then pair what you learn with what you already know about Vatican entanglement with various pandemic-era institutions. Pharmakeia is the load-bearing word in this prophecy.
20: Snake (pagan iconography)
The twentieth criterion is demonstrated rather than asserted in the checklist — which is why it gets its own section below. Walk into a major Catholic cathedral. Look up. Look at the architecture. Look at the symbols. The serpent is everywhere — sometimes openly, sometimes embedded. Genesis 3:1 sets the type — the serpent is the deceiver. Twenty centuries later the deception is hidden in plain sight, in religious and medical iconography simultaneously. Read on.
The Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall — where the Pope receives ambassadors, heads of state, and the daily audiences — was designed by Pier Luigi Nervi and completed in 1971. Look at the photograph below from the inside. Then search for one taken from outside. The interior view shows a symmetric podium, two large circular eye-windows, and curved structural ribs that taper toward the front. The exterior view shows what is — to most viewers, without prompting — a serpent’s head. The Pope sits at the position of the mouth.
Maybe coincidence. Maybe the architect’s choice. Maybe deliberate. The point is that the world’s most authoritative Christian leadership receives the world from inside a structure that reads, at first sight, with no prompting, as a serpent. Read Genesis 3 again knowing where the daily audiences happen.
Chemtrails
Note the Vatican coin. Città del Vaticano, denomination 100 lire, John Paul II on the reverse. The obverse shows a figure with what reads unmistakably as chemtrails — diagonal lines extending from the figure, crossed in pattern. The Vatican itself minted this. Whatever you make of chemtrails — or don't — note that the institution which ostensibly stands above the world's politics chose to depict the imagery in metal, on its own legal tender. The denial-of-existence position becomes harder to hold when the alleged perpetrator is putting it on the coinage.
Occult imagery
The serpent is not confined to the Audience Hall.
The medical caduceus — entwined serpents on a winged staff — is the modern Western symbol for healing. (It is, technically, an error: the original symbol of medicine in classical Greece was the Rod of Asclepius, a single staff with a single serpent, not Hermes’s caduceus. But the substitution has happened and is now everywhere — every hospital sign, every ambulance, every pharmacist’s logo. The serpent is unquestioned.)
Fazzini’s La Resurrezione — the bronze sculpture installed behind the Pope’s audience podium, completed 1977, officially titled The Resurrection. To most viewers it reads as twisting serpentine fragments around a central rising figure. The artist said it was Christ rising from a nuclear crater. Take that on its face if you wish; the visual still reads as it reads, because that is what is visually there.
The photograph below of a winged horned figure positioned above an altar, with priests in full vestments facing it in worship-posture. Slow look. Baphomet has to feature somewhere:
And the side-by-side comparisons of papal vestment, mitre, and posture against Babylonian / Egyptian / Far-Eastern priestly figures. The visual continuities are not subtle once they are pointed out.
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” (Genesis 3:1.) The deception’s signature symbol is hidden in plain sight, inside the institution that claims to mediate Christ.
The upside down cross:
And we all know from every possible catholic movie how they sign the upside down cross on their head and shoulders.
Who knows about this?
Paul, John and those around him knew it.
Martin Luther knew it here, here, here, here.
John Calvin knew it here, here, and more.
Jewish authors prior to the reformation: Rashi (AD 1040-1105), Ibn Ezra (AD 1089-1167), Abrabanel (AD 1437-1508).
Even Catholic authors: Archbishop of Salzburg Eberhard II (AD 1200-1246) and Portuguese Jesuit Blasius Viegas (AD 1554-1559).
What does history tell us?
With the advent of the internet we have the remarkable ability to research books that are mostly extinct. I took the time to find the quotes in the original books now hosted by online national archives.
Tertullian, On the Resurrection, ch. 24
Tertullian — c. AD 200, one of the earliest Latin Church Fathers, writing two and a half centuries before the Western Empire fell. From On the Resurrection, ch. 24, on 2 Thessalonians 2: “The Fathers held that the Roman empire was the ‘let,’ or hindrance, referred to by Paul in 2 Thessalonians, which kept back the manifestation of the ‘man of sin.’”
The early Church already knew what Paul meant. The Roman Empire was the hindrance. When the Empire fell, what arose in its place — religious Rome — would be the antichrist. This is not a 16th-century Reformation invention. This is a 3rd-century Latin Christian’s stated position, written down while the Empire was still standing.
H. Grattan Guinness, Romanism and the Reformation, p. 194 (Cambridge, 1887)
H. Grattan Guinness, writing in Cambridge in 1887, assembles the patristic chain in Romanism and the Reformation: Irenaeus (~AD 180, disciple of the disciple of John) → Chrysostom (~AD 400) → Jerome (~AD 400). All of them identifying the imperial Roman power as the hindrance to antichrist’s manifestation. Guinness writes:
“The early Church… with remarkable unanimity affirms that this ‘let,’ or hindrance, was the Roman empire as governed by the Cæsars; that while the Cæsars held imperial power, it was impossible for the predicted antichrist to arise, and that on the fall of the Cæsars he would arise. … Modern speculation is positively impertinent on such a subject.”
And on what arose in the Empire’s ruins: “What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)?”
Read that sentence carefully. Ten kingdoms — Daniel 7’s ten horns. Antichrist arises upon the ruins of the fallen Roman state. The Reformers did not invent this read. The Church Fathers held it. Guinness, writing six hundred years after the Reformation began, was simply repeating the patristic case in nineteenth-century English.
Edward Bishop Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, vol. III, p. 101
Edward Bishop Elliott — Cambridge fellow, Protestant historicist, mid-19th-century. Direct quote: “We have the consenting testimony of the early Fathers, from Irenæus, the disciple of the disciple of St. John, down to Chrysostom and Jerome, to the effect that it was understood to be the Imperial power ruling and residing at Rome.”
The five-name patristic chain — Irenaeus → Chrysostom → Jerome — is a credentialed receipt. These are not fringe figures. These are the men who built Christian biblical commentary in its first centuries. They knew. They wrote it down. The Reformers and the Geneva translators were reading them. So is anyone who reads Elliott now.
Bible commentary
Apparently the Geneva Bible contained commentary around the link between the beast and the Roman Empire (which today is the Papacy).
A small experiment, before we get to the 1560 Bible itself. I asked Claude — Anthropic’s flagship model at the time — to translate the marginal commentary in 16th-century English on Daniel and Revelation 13. Plain text. Sixteenth-century English to modern English. The kind of task large language models do trivially, and have done a thousand times for Shakespeare, the Geneva Bible’s biblical text itself, the King James Version, and so on. Claude refused.
Its refusal text: “Unfortunately, I cannot provide or extract specific commentary notes from these biblical texts, as that could promote potentially biased or controversial interpretations… My role is to provide factual information respectfully while avoiding promoting any specific religious ideology or disputed interpretations of sacred texts.”
So translating Shakespeare — fine. Translating the King James Version — fine. Translating the Geneva Bible’s biblical text — fine. Translating the marginal notes of the same Geneva Bible — refused. The selectivity is the evidence. The information is suppressed exactly where it would identify Rome. Pause and consider that.
I then went on a hunt to see if anyone has translated the dated english into modern day tongue. The ONLY site I could find is this one. It is literally the only hit I found on Google. Bling, DuckDuckGo, Brave and others had nothing.
My hat off!
So I borrowed a friend’s 1560 Geneva Bible. Set it open to Revelation 13. Photographed the page. Read the marginal notes for myself. Here is what they say.
Note a (against verse 1, “a beast rise out of the sea, having seven heads…”): “Here is the description of the Romaine empire which standeth in cruelitie and tyrannie.” The first beast = Roman Empire. In print. In English. In 1560.
Note b (also v. 1): “Meaning Rome, because it was the first power that ever Kings or Emperours after Nero…” Rome again. By name.
Notes c, d, e, f continue the identification — the figure that the Roman empire becomes, the persecution of the saints, the ongoing rule from Rome. Every one of these notes was published, with Calvin’s and Knox’s blessing, fifty years before the King James Version. The Reformers held this position openly. The Reformers’ Bibles printed it openly. The Reformers’ margins were not subtle.
Compare to a modern study Bible’s notes on Revelation 13. Note the silence. Then ask why.
PLEASE note how these confirm my arguments from Nebuchadnezzar dream post. From the translation herewith the original comments:
a - Here is the description of the Roman Empire which standeth in cruelty and tyranny.
b - Meaning Rome, because it was first governed by seven Kings or Emperors after Nero, and also is compassed about with seven mountains.
c - Which signify many provinces.
d - By these beasts are signified the Macedonians, Persians and Chaldeans whom the Romans overcame.
e - That is, the devil.
f - This may be understood of Nero, who moved the first persecution against the Church, and after slew himself, so the family of the Caesar’s ended in him.
g - For the empire was established again by Vespasian.
h - By receiving the statues, ordinances, decrees, ceremonies, and religion of the Roman Empire.
i - Antichrist’s time and power is limited.
k - In their bodies, not in soul.
l - He meaneth that universal departing whereof Paul speaketh to the Thessalonians.
m - Antichrist hath not power over the elect.
n - As God ordained from before all beginning, and all the sacrifices were as signs and sacraments of Christ’s death.
Even this small video on Amazon refers to it. Listen at 55 seconds. This is a marketing video of the Geneva Bible in which the narrater refers to Queen “bloody mary” that did not tolerate the Protestants calling out the Papacy as the Antichrist.
All the reformers knew it and here’s the KJV original preface.
Wikipedia testifies to it:
Even Wikipedia’s own Antichrist article documents the chain. Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, the Magdeburg Centuriators (led by Matthias Flacius writing the Magdeburg Centuriæ) — all on the record naming the Roman Catholic Papacy as the antichrist. The article notes: “In calling the pope the ‘antichrist’, the early Lutherans stood in a tradition that reached back into the eleventh century. Not only dissidents and heretics, but even saints had called the bishop of Rome the ‘antichrist’…”
This is not fringe Protestant polemic. This is the open-internet’s neutral encyclopaedia summarising centuries of mainstream historical record. The witness has been on the record for a thousand years. We are simply re-reading what is already there.
You missed it
One more receipt. Look at the statue below — Nuremberg, Germany, 1524. Pre-Reformation. Luther’s open break with Rome was 1521 and was still unsettled three years later. The carving depicts the Revelation-13 beast — and on its head, the unmistakable papal triregnum: the three-tiered crown the Pope wore until 1965.
The artist was not a Reformer. The artist was working in a Catholic-majority German city before the Reformation had even hardened into denominational lines. And what they carved — without prompt or polemic — was the beast wearing the Pope’s hat. The Reformers did not invent this identification. Pre-Reformation iconographers had already cast it in stone.
Look closely at the Nuremberg statues I showed previously. The beast on the right has a little horn with an image of the papacy crown - since 1524:
The entity vs the people
The above might come as a shock to many but it’s been known for a long time. We just don’t have the time to study it.
There is a distinct difference between the institution and the people. Somewhat like how God hates sin but not the sinner, here the Bible refers to the institution of the Papacy. Just like an x-Catholic noted, he is sure there will be many Catholics in heaven because the issue is to do with the institution and not the people.
Son of perdition
The Bible refers to the son of perdition only twice:
John 17:12 - “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.“
2 Thes 2:3 - “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;“
Both refer to this same entity. In John we know IT would be lost and Paul states in Thes that it would be exposed right before the end.
Mark of the beast
The final issue will be around the Mark of this Beast and who you choose to follow and you will have to choose, but we shall get to it.
whydoneit?
Why is the Vatican behind all this?
The dark side needed an earthly entity to act on its behalf since Jesus’ day. Rome was perfect to mix in several pagan uses with Christianity and it would last until today. An entity with religious motivations that will receive political power at the end and the second beast will assist the first. If the dark side had to choose an entity, it would surely be the power at the time to crucify Jesus and it would be aligned with it ever since.
Looking back, it’s so obvious.
Updates
24 June 2024
A second pass with Claude. This time I came armed with the attribute list. We worked through Revelation 13 and Daniel 7-12 together, point by point — twenty-eight characteristics in the end. I asked the question. Claude landed on the answer:
“Based on these characteristics and our discussion, the entity that seems to best fit these criteria is the Papacy or the Roman Catholic Church system… This entity has existed since the first century, has wielded both religious and political power, has global influence, has been involved in changing laws and times, has a seat in Rome, has experienced periods of decline and resurgence.”
Claude added a disclaimer — “this interpretation is not universally accepted”. Of course not. But the model cannot help itself. Given the attribute list neutrally, it produces the same identification the Reformers, the Geneva translators, the Nuremberg sculptors, and Wikipedia’s own Antichrist page already produce. Strip the labels and the model converges on the conclusion.
One more piece, from the same 1560 Geneva Bible. The marginal note e on Revelation 13:18 — the famous “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.”
The Geneva translators wrote a long note e explaining how they decoded 666. Their conclusion is not VICARIVS FILII DEI; their conclusion is Lateinos — Greek for “the Latin one”. Modern English transcription:
“Such as may be understood by man’s reason: for about 666 years after this revelation the Pope or Antichrist began to be manifest in the world: for these characters χ ξ ς signify 666: and this number is gathered of the small number, λ ατ ει ν ο ς, which in the whole mark 666 and signifies Lateinos, or Latin, which note the Pope or Antichrist who uses in all things the Latin tongue, and in respect thereof he contemned the Hebrew and Greek wherein the word of God was first and best written: and because Italy in old time was called Latinum, the Italians are called Latini, so that hereby he notes of what country chiefly he should come.”
Greek-letter gematria: λ(30) + α(1) + τ(300) + ε(5) + ι(10) + ν(50) + ο(70) + ς(200) = 666. Lateinos sums to 666. The Latin-using power. The country first called Latinum. The Pope writing and ruling in Latin while contemning the Hebrew and Greek in which scripture was first and best written.
Two independent gematrias. VICARIVS FILII DEI in Latin Roman numerals = 666 (criterion 16 above). Lateinos in Greek letters = 666 (Geneva 1560, this note). Two languages. Two methods. One target. That deserves a pause to ponder.
The comments from the Geneva Bible on the 666. It’s hard to read so a transcribed version below:
