And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
Revelation 17:16
And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings.
Revelation 17:12
As noted elsewhere in our reviews of Isaac Newton’s commentary on Daniel and Revelation, as was true of other Historicists from his era, the “antichrist” kingdom was set to end in 2016 AD with a breaking up process between the “clay mixed with iron” as it was seen in Daniel’s vision (Daniel 2) – this after a period of “Great Tribulation,” oppression, and apostasy of 1,260 years. This period began with the Donation of Pepin in 756 AD which created the Holy (sic) Roman Empire as a continuation of “mystery Babylon” and the evil kingdom depicted by the biblical prophets (see The Great Convergence).
Isaac Newton recognized that this kingdom would lose its identity in terms of territorial boundaries to become, instead, a global power working in secret – hence, the meaning of the biblical term “mystery,” as something which is occult or hidden from view.
It can be argued that the British Empire was the first, and perhaps the only, truly global empire, which while having experienced a process of decolonization and divestment in the 20th Century, yet nevertheless, was able to retain control through its secret societies, global corporations and its international banking cartel.
These “ten kingdoms” – as seen by John the Revelator and specifically identified and enumerated by Newton in his Observations – shall rule “for one hour” with the “mother of harlots,” will come to hate her rule and then seek to overthrow it (17:12, 17). We are in this period right now.
It began with the Brexit vote in 2016 and the election of “The Great Disrupter” as President of the United States. If mystery Babylon has an identifiable seat of power today, it would have to be the United States, as it is that nation which is in charge of world trade through the dominance of the petrodollar, the international payment system, and enforced by the CIA’s many mercenary surrogates. If now a rebellion has begun, then the stripping of power from the “mother of harlots” – the period of “eating her flesh, and burning her with fire” – has also now begun. We think this period will last until the Great Eschaton of 2046 AD, the end of the 1,290 days – from the 1,260 days as a thirty year period or “half hour” of silence in Heaven (8:1) as the social convulsions on Earth run their course.
The pesher for “eating her flesh” (as it refers to the life of nations) would mean the seizing of colonial assets:
[T]he flesh [is put] for riches and possessions (Newton, Observations, p. 7).
“Burning her with fire” would mean destroying her power base in a politically destructive immolation. This would be the pesher or as Newton would say,
[B]urning any thing with fire, is put for the consuming thereof by war; a conflagration of the earth, or turning a country into a lake of fire, for the consumption of a kingdom by war. p. 6
For Bible commentators who are still waiting for a future rise of the Antichrist, world government, the Mark of the Beast, et al, ad nauseum, I’m sorry to tell you, you are very late to the party. The party is actually over. Evangelicals were captured by the Antichrist and received the Mark of the Beast a long time ago. In fact, an argument can be made that American Evangelicalism was itself the final iteration of the “false prophet” which called down “fire from heaven” and gave life and power to the Beast (Revelation 13:11 ff). Without them, world government would not have been possible. The so-called “New World Order” so feared by Fundamentalists has been with us for generations and is actually now coming to an end, Bible thumpers from the Appalachians notwithstanding.
As will be explained in a coming Cambrian Pesher, “the old-time religion” of Southern Fundamentalists, which in the Post-Bellum diaspora became a peculiar millenarianism of the entire American nation – with zealous missionaries spreading it worldwide – it is really “the old-time Gnostic religion” of navel introspection, escapism, and the sweet bye-and-bye. The doctrine of the Rapture as taught by these neo-Darbyists has done more to enable mystery Babylon than any other doctrine which can be imagined. More bitter fruits of America’s ongoing civil war.
“The Mark of the Beast” in the Historicist and Idealist (or Soteriological) Schools would be defined as the marks of citizenship required by nation-states, no matter what they would be. Slave owners have tattooed, branded, mutilated and otherwise marked their slaves for thousands of years to create a means of total control over them and to psychologically destroy the hope of escape. In recent centuries, nation-states have relied upon other methods: various forms of licenses, permits, photo-IDs, fingerprinting, census reports, and controlled borders, and so on. But it is the notion of “citizenship” itself which is the principal rival doctrine and a continuation of the Babylonian/Latin system.
While the notion of a “civil body politic” exists in Scripture and relies upon land tenure and a relationship with the “covenant man” who has the right to enter “the congregation of the LORD,” secular states rely upon different criteria which fit their peculiar humanistic objectives for population management.
As for the Book of Revelation, what that “mark of the Beast” might mean as interpreted by the superstitious among us is immaterial to its correct relevance. Tattoos, bio-chips, genetic-altering vaccines, and any other indicia which the imagination might conjure, the operative and pivotal point in Revelation is that one cannot engage in commerce without it:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark . . . (13:17)
It is the presumptive sovereignty over commerce which is the damning feature of the system.
Unlike the laissez faire age of the Biblical Patriarchs who freely moved about in the open land and conducted commerce with silver pieces (in weight not by superscription), nation-states which require documentation and permission to engage in commerce are antichrist kingdoms. It represents the aspiration and prerogative of Empire with a top-down doctrine of sovereignty. Even in America and the modern republics, while kings have been replaced by the collective body of “the People”: sovereignty is ostensibly retained by the People. The problem is a misappropriation of the messianic office. The tyranny of the majority has replaced the tyranny of despots. It is the claim of sovereignty itself which is the “antichrist” apostasy and the Babylonian doctrine. And it is imprinted on our coin and currency of exchange as the imprimatur of that sovereignty, which Christ himself condemned in the overthrowing of the money changers in the Temple (Matthew 21:12 ff).
It is difficult for American Evangelicals to surrender their love of country, for they confuse “patriotism” with loyalty to the nation-state. “Patriotism” is a misnomer, because the etymology of “patriot” refers to the love of the father, not the state. There has been no greater anti-patriarchal nation that has ever existed than the United States, even from the days of its inception with its sterile “Founding Father,” then to its republican ideological war against property in the justification of the property tax, and finally to its churches with their apotheosis of “preachers” as the true holy men of their religion, proved by their excommunication of fathers who administer the sacraments to their own households. [See Newton on the Mahuzzim heresy, e.g. “Pesher for St. Stephen’s Day, 2021 The Cult of the Dead.”]
And as for the notion of the “lake of fire” found in the final chapters of the Book of Revelation, Newton says it refers to a total destruction of war (see above), not a cosmic furnace where people are burned for eternity. Evangelicals join the Papists in a Moloch religion with its doctrine of eternal hell-fire damnation.
In contrast, the Typological/Idealist School tells us that the Beast, the false prophet, and Satan (as a class of adversaries), along with all sentient beings which support that system, will receive a total and final destruction in God’s holy war: His fire from Heaven in the Great Eschaton. No trivial matter.
You are in harm’s way. This period will be violent. It will be the setting of civil war in all nations, certainly in the “ten kingdoms” depicted in the visions of the biblical prophets. It will result in World War III. In fact, World War III has already begun. As anticipated by Myron Fagan’s interpretation of Albert Pike’s Masonic vision for the three world wars which would destroy all religions so that the “Luciferian principle” should triumph – nothing happens without the assistance of Heaven:
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. . . Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel . . . Psalm 2:5,9-10
Contrary to the advocates of the Luciferian principle – the doctrine of polarities which so fascinated 19th Century thinkers – it is the Messianic doctrine of the Triune Godhead which shall prevail. What passes for Christianity today will burn up in the conflagration of God’s Great Eschaton, so that the pristine doctrine of “the Only Begotten of the Father” shall emerge with all its glory.
In the United States, the harlot cannot resist her provocations of the nations, within and without her borders. These will continue and will escalate until the world rages against her.
Have faith . . . but you need to get out of the way.
— JWS, August 29, 2022