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Here is an excellent post from Jon Paulines blog on the current situation between Trump and the Pope: Jon Paulien's Blog · TBOA Headquarters

So do I. The office of the Papacy played a large role in the 5th head of the beast of Revelation 13, this was focused upon in the Protestant Reformation but who continued the same beastly principles of the 5th head, but which lead to events in the Americas that moved us from the 5th head to the 6th head. Mrs. White started on this information but moved beyond it and used it as an example to point us towards what is coming up in the 7th head. Sadly, most Adventists hold back to the 5th head, and don't just see the office of the papacy that had a large role in the 5th head, but see the papacy as the entire beast, and expect the future to not move on to the 7th head but to simply return to the 5th head and the Pope playing the central role. As a review of the 7 heads based on the research of George McCready Price, and the 1976 Southern New England Campmeeting, and I understand these to be combatable to ignored insights that Stephen Haskell and Perri Windandi (spelling?) points out abut the 7 parts of the image in Daniel 2: 1. Babylon 2. Medio-Persia 3. Greece 4. Rome 5. Feet of Iron and Clay: Clay in the Bible represents what God molds and works with. However in this 5th period we find the clay not being molded by God but being molded by the iron, the state; thus indicates a church/state situation. We find historically after the Roman Empire we find church/state enforced religion over the empire. In the Middle East it became Islam (Mohammad could well have had a true conversion, wanted to go to the God of the Bible from polytheism. Was living in harsh desert conditions, saw that Judaism was incomplete without Jesus, but Christians had such veneration to not only the trinity, but also to Mary and the saints, and did not see much of a difference between all this veneration and polytheism. He fought defensive wars. After he died his followers formed two major divisions with several minor subdivisions within the two major divisions. They also became agressive conversion by sword. ) A bit farther west it was Eastern Orthodox, then Western Orthodox or Roman Catholism. Eventually there were reformed Roman Catholics i.e. Protestantism, then small communities of Judaism. Each of these had their own areas of geographic rule in union of church state. Your religion was where you lived. If you wanted a different faith you were subject to persecution and death. 6. Toes of Iron and Clay: Much of the imagration to the Americas were people wanting to get a piece of land for their specific religion. This started some changes in thinking. The state of Maryland was a Roman Catholic state for refuge of Roman Catholics from persecution from the Church of England. They did something amazing in their first settlement which grew out of how the pain from the choices of the oneness of church/state affected them in England: On one side of town they built all the public buildings. Then came the homes, then on the OTHER SIDE of town they built their church. Roger Williams had the crazy idea of liberty of conscience. There is debate between whether William Penn also believed in liberty of conscience, or did he try to make Pennsylvania a piece of property for the church state for Quakers and did not find enough Quakers to come, but either way Penn also went for liberty of conscience. As the United States formed, they did not have a one government church state, but they had many local church states even by communities. Around this time was also the French Revolution where they changed their church/state from Roman Catholic to Atheistic Humanism. When Thomas Jefferson became President he wantes all of America to become like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. People wondered if this would turn America into the same secular Atheistic Humanism as France. People hid their Bibles and expected persecution like back in Europe. Churches worried that they could not exist without the tax dollars. However, Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state ended up giving the church more freedom than she ever had. America became an open marketplace for ideas, including religious ideas. People would hear different ideas and incorporate in their lives what made the most sense. This gave America her greatness and made her Lamblike. But some things, such as how she treated the natives and slavery was a way of speaking like the dragon. From Thomas Jefferson through Jimmy Carter, liberty of conscience rulled the day. Even John Kennedy understood the difference between being the Roman Catholic candadate and being an American candadate who happens to worship in the Roman Catholic Church. The "beast" has a deadly wound as there is not one great empire rulling over most of God's people, but a bunch of independent nations. The American and French revolutions influenced the divisions. Some offering more freedom, others more control. The crowns are on the horns rather than a head. (Unlike our art work, the 10 horns are only on the deadly wound or 6th head, then shared with the 7th head.) 7. The Deadly Wound beng healed, the toes attempting to join together: In a lot of ways, the dragon and beast are opposites. The dragon is direct demonic activity based on the first deception of Lucifer that God really is not God but only a higher life form using the claim to be God to place a law over us to keep us from evolving to that high life form. That we should be a law unto ourselves. Do your own thing. You have your truth and I have mine. Your subjective existential experience is your source of truth and the final authority. (You end up becoming a slave to your feelings.) The beast is any organization that we allow to control our life. The beast tells us what to believe and what to do and we obey. The organization becomes the final authority. Starting with Ronald Reagan there was a preference shown to Evangelical Christianity. In reaction the far left began to show preference for the religion of secular humanism. The one more beast like, the other more dragon like. The second beast of Revelation 13, which we apply to the United States will get to where it is doing more speaking like the dragon, or more of a lean towards secularism, and in reaction, feeling that the freedoms in America are going too far, especially for unwanted people and thus it forms an image to the beast. Some will agree (and thus taking the mark in their foreheads) others who dissagree will find it to their advantage to simply go along with it (and thus taking the mark in their right hand). Revelation teaches that the 7th head is different from the first six. They were formed by warfare, conquest or revolution. The 7th head is the horns uniting under economic cooperation. Ellen White seems to expect the Pope to play a role, and we see it as growing more to the role the moral voice of this great economic state. With in receint weeks of this posting the Pope warned about war and kindness to strangers within our gates, and the President and Vice President (with the Vice President being a Roman Catholic) is telling the pope to submit to his place in the pecking order. The "merchants of the earth" or corporations will play the major part, and their agreement with the dragon that the final truth is what they feel like doing; but they appear to stand up as the hero for a section of Protestants, not realizing how this will backfire on them, and I fear that too many Seventh-day Adventists are so focused on the Pope being the center of everything and so focused on specifically Sunday Laws, that Satan will offer us his deceptions in a way where enforced religion seems to be on our side so that, as long as it is not directly Sunday laws, it is acceptable, and thus numb us for whenever what ever role the Sabbath/Sunday issue will show up. (What if there is debate, where in the Christian world there is a focus on Sabbath and Sunday, maybe chance for Sunday laws, but it does not fully make it into law?) I'm afraid of all who support this developmenting of the 7th head. Give me Roman Catholics who set up that first community in Maryland of the public buildings on the one side of town, then the homes, then the church on the otherside of town. Give me a Roman Catholic with the views of Church and State that President Kennedy held, and I will feel safe. Give us a sub-set of Protestants who do not see this and I am scared, but looking for the blessed hope.

Gustave, I agree. Let's step back a moment and survey the damage done in the Middle East recently. As I watch smuggled videos about Israel, it appears the area above ground is 90% destroyed. Gaza is destroyed, Lebanon is pretty much destroyed. Syria is pretty much destroyed. Iran has been damaged, but it is hard to tell how much. However, things are not over, and I think it is likely to be destroyed like the others. In our lifetime, or the last 250 years, we have never seen war and destruction like this in the Middle East. The destruction is almost as complete as Europe in the 1940s. This is very historic. The Middle East will not recover economically for another 20-30 or 40 years, if the pattern of post-war Europe is followed. What does this mean? Many people are focusing on the trees and not seeing the forest or the future.

Kevin I agree with everything you have said there. However, there is another possibility that may be at play. I have a friend who is working with American Muslims and occasionally with some American Iranians. They have both told him independently, that Christianity is badly suppressed in the Middle East. If the current governments were to fall, Christianity would flourish in the Middle East. Now, I am anti-war. However, as we read our bibles, we see God uses war to remove kingdoms. He uses war to shape events for His purpose. We don't know God's purpose in the Middle East, but considering the spiritual changes going on in other places, it is possible that God's hand is in this and that he will shape their future to His purposes.