By Brannon S. Howse
A woman riding the beast is now a symbol used within the European Union. A quick internet search reveals numerous pictures of a woman riding the beast. The image has made its way onto Euro coins, postage stamps, phone cards, and even into an elaborate painting inside a government building and a statue outside the European offices in Brussels. In The New Unholy Roman Empire, Alan Franklin describes the situation:
[quote] Another demonic biblical symbol that is being used in conjunction with the European Union is the one from Revelation 17 where a “great harlot” is depicted riding a beast. For some strange and unknown reason this symbol is being used to represent the EU! For example, when Britain issued a stamp to commemorate the first European Parliament elections in 1979, the picture on the stamp depicted a woman riding a beast. According to the Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley, a Northern Ireland Protestant minister and member of the European Parliament, the woman on a beast is now the official picture of the EU. He points out that the multi-million dollar new parliament building in Brussels, Belgium, contains a dome with a colossal painting, three times life size, of a woman riding a beast. In Strasbourg, France, the rival parliamentary building (the one with the Tower of Babel) features a mural of a naked woman riding a beast. Likewise, the new Brussels headquarters of the Council of Europe contains a bronze statue of a woman riding a beast, and the beast is depicted riding on waves, just as in Revelation 17. [end quote]
The European Parliament building itself, in Strasbourg, France, was specifically designed to look like an uncompleted Tower of Babel. The key players behind the coming religious Reich are very aware they are building a world government devoted to unity and power, just as Nimrod and his people did in Genesis 10 and 11 in rebellion against God.
The Coming Holocaust of the Religious Reich
Revelation 17:6 offers this shocking statement: “I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”
While this image could represent all the Christians killed throughout the ages, it more likely is describing Christians who will be martyred during the tribulation. A holocaust will occur under the coming religious Reich that will make Hitler’s version pale in comparison, but Hitler’s is not the only holocaust that will have to be outdone.
Jesus foretold a time when Christians would be killed by people who thought doing so would be a service to God:
[quote] They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. (John 16:2-4, KJV) [end quote]
To fully grasp how bad the coming holocaust will be, you have to understand how bad true Christians have had it in the past—especially at the hands of those who think killing believers is a service to God. The Roman Catholic Church has made many martyrs of those who oppose it. Even the Catholic Dictionary documents that the Church of Rome has killed her enemies: “At the Council of Siena, in 1425, a plenary indulgence was offered to those who took arms against the Hussites…Waldenses…Albigenses.” And on December 22, 1560, during the Spanish Inquisition, Julian Hernandez was burned at the stake as an arch-heretic because “through his great efforts and incomprehensible stealth he introduced into Spain prohibited books [Bibles and New Testaments] that he brought from far away places [Germany] where they give protection to the ungodly [Protestants].”
Historians have calculated that around 50 million Christians have been murdered by the Church of Rome. In fact, a key researcher in the field, University of North Carolina professor Dr. David A. Plaisted, concludes that the number is over 50 million. His report includes numerous documented sources such as follows:
[quote] Halley’s Bible Handbook, 1965 edition, page 726, referencing many older works on church history states―Historians estimate that, in the Middle Ages and Early Reformation Era, more than 50,000,000 Martyrs perished.‖ Furthermore, speaking of Innocent III, Halley writes [p. 776]―More Blood was Shed under his direction, and that of his immediate successors, than at any other period of Church History, except in the Papacy‘s effort to Crush the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. In his introduction to [Berg, Lectures on Romanism, D. Weidner, Philadelphia, 1840, p. 6], Brownlee writes, “―Rome has been drunk with the blood” of fifty millions of martyred Culdees, Waldenses, Albigenses, Bohemian Brethren, Wicklifites, and Protestants! This at least gives a listing of those included in one of the computations of fifty million killed. [end quote]
In The Roman Catholic Religion Viewed in the Light of Prophecy and History, historian Charles K. Moore adds to the data:
[quote] The best writers enumerate fifty millions of Christians destroyed by fire, and the sword, and the inquisition; and fifteen millions of natives of the American continent and islands; and three millions of Moors in Europe, and one million and a half of Jews. Now, here are sixty-nine millions and five hundred thousands of human beings, murdered by―the woman of the Roman hills, who was drunk with the blood of the saints. And this horrid list does not include those of her own subjects, who fell in the crusades in Asia, and in her wars against European Christians, and in South America! [end quote]
John Wesley similarly wrote of 45 million killed, and the 50 million is documented by Professor James MacLean of the Department of French and Spanish at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Dr. Plaisted documents 15 million killed from 1518 through 1548. Halley’s handbook documents 14 to 18 million killed in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) started by Ferdinand II for the purpose of suppressing Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire. Halley’s handbook documents that Ferdinand II had been educated by the Jesuits and with their help undertook to suppress Protestantism (p. 792). Then 5 million killed by the persecutions in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and elsewhere. Then, as Dr. Plaisted documents, 3 million were killed in the conflict in Bohemia and 4 million in France, then 900,000 killed in the persecution of the Waldenses, then 1 to 2 million Albigenses killed in Southern France. Then you have those killed by the Vatican before the Reformation that would include the 10 million killed in the Hundred Years’ War from 1337-1453.
Some consider the 50 million-plus Christians killed by the Church of Rome from 606 A.D. to about the mid-1800s to all be part of the Inquisition, while others believe it is divided into two descriptions: the formal inquisition and the informal inquisition. Regardless, the point of the Inquisition was to stop the spread of biblical Christianity. In his classic book History of Romanism, John Dowling writes:
[end quote] From the birth of Popery in 606 to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than fifty millions of the human family, have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of popery. [end quote]
Sadly, many evangelicals and some evangelical radio hosts have downplayed the 50 million number and have regurgitated the Church of Rome lie that only 3,000 Christians were killed in the 600 years of the official Inquisition. What these evangelicals are doing, whether they know it or not, is helping to rewrite the history of Rome. John MacArthur calls them out in his sermon, “The Persecution and Endurance of Christians, Part 2”:
[quote] The Holy Roman Empire, the false form of Christianity, began to persecute the true church. In the most massive persecution yet came during the Middle Ages. When I say massive, I mean massive. According to historian, John Dowling, a reputable historian, the Roman Catholic Church put to death 50 million heretics between A.D. 606 and mid-1800’s, many of them true Christians...50 million. Murderous was that period of time.
The Reformers came along, denounced the Catholic system of indulgences and works righteousness. In the time of the Reformation, the 1500’s, the response from Rome was vitriolic and violent. And, of course, added to the 50 million that were slaughtered during that time godly leaders like John Huss, Hugh Latimer, William Tyndale, Patrick Hamilton, George Wishert, many others, martyred for their faith. It was Huss secured to a stake where he would be burned, said with a smile, “My Lord Jesus was bound with a harder chain than this for my sake, why then should I be ashamed of this rusty one.” When asked to renounce, Huss declined, saying, “What I taught with my lips, I now seal with my blood,” and gave testimony to the glory and honor of Christ and the truth of the gospel in his death. [end quote]
Even the 50 million figure does not include the millions murdered through the Church of Rome’s involvement in the Nazi Holocaust. While this may come as a surprise to some readers, volumes of books have been published that document its culpability. The Church of Rome embraced virulent anti-Semitism for hundreds of years prior to the rise of Hitler and his Nazi regime, so its involvement in Hitler’s holocaust was merely a continuation of what the church had been doing for centuries.
The writings of the Roman Church confirm its support of Hitler. Fr. Franjo Kralik in a 1941 Zagreb Catholic newspaper said, “The [Nazi] movement for freeing the world from the Jews is a movement for the renaissance of human dignity. The all-wise and Almighty God is behind this movement.”
The overall history of the church’s anti-Semitism is unquestionable:
[quote] During the brief pontificate of Pope Paul IV (1555-9), the population of Rome was decimated by almost half, with the Jews the main victims. Three hundred years earlier the church had put Jews in ghettos and “obliged them to wear on their chest, to their public shame, a yellow circle of cloth.” [end quote] source: Gerard Dufour, La Inquisicion Espanola (Montesinos, 1986), 16-17.
Dave Hunt expounds on this same period of history:
[quote] But enforcement of that edict had become lax. Pope Paul IV issued, on July 17, 1555, a landmark anti-Semitic bull, Cum nimis absurdum. It returned Jews to their ghettos, forced them to sell their property at huge losses, and reduced them to the status of slaves and rag merchants.
Marriage between a Christian and a Jew was punishable by death. One synagogue was allowed in each city; the others were destroyed, seven out of the eight in Rome suffering that fate. While still a cardinal, Paul IV had burned the Jews’ books, including the Talmud, and no replacements were allowed. These are only some of the indignities and crimes the Jews suffered by this bull, which set a pattern that lasted for another three centuries. [end quote]
To be sure, some Roman Catholics opposed Hitler, and some today combat anti-Semitism. However, the anti-Semitism and murderous actions of the Church of Rome is unknown by most Catholics and other Christians. Catholic revisionist history, combined with their historical animosity toward the Jews and the Protestant belief in replacement theology (the belief that the church has replaced Israel), is one of the reasons why another holocaust will happen again. Anti-Semitism has increased greatly in both Europe and America.
On November 16, 2011, worldviewweekend.com ran a column by Jimmy DeYoung that detailed the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany:
"Police in Germany have uncovered a gang of extremists which is believed to be the tip of the iceberg in the existence of a brown shirt faction symbolic of Hitler’s brown shirt police who stalked the streets of Germany after Hitler’s ascension to power and his persecution of the Jews."
This report is evidence that the hate for Jews in this world has not gone away, but may well be on the rise again. Bible prophecy does tell of a time in the future when two out of every three Jews on the earth will be killed simply because they are Jewish (Zechariah 13:8). This future Holocaust will be the worst ever because Hitler’s Holocaust only killed one third of the Jews at that time. Satanic forces will endeavor to kill all Jews during the coming time of Jacob’s Trouble (Revelation 12:7-17).
The plan of Satan is to kill all Jews, thus keeping God from fulfilling His promises to the Jewish people to make them a nation and give them a land forever.
After confirming a peace treaty between the Jews and Palestinians and eventually setting himself up in the Temple in Jerusalem to be worshipped, the Antichrist will turn on the Jewish people and slaughter untold numbers throughout the world. The religious Reich will have been made possible by leaders of every false religion from Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, Mormon, Word of Faith, New Apostolic Reformation, and other groups. History, trends, and biblical descriptions point to the fact that the Church of Rome and apostate “evangelicals” will be the ones who give aid and comfort to the Antichrist who perpetrates on the Jewish people a second holocaust as described in Zechariah 13:8:
“And it shall come to pass in all the land,”
Says the Lord,
“That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die,
But one–third shall be left in it.”
Describing this holocaust, Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum writes:
[end quote] This will be fulfilled during the persecutions of the Great Tribulation when Israel will suffer tremendous persecution (Matthew 24:15-28, Revelation 12:1-17). As a result of this persecution of the Jewish people, two-thirds are going to be killed. The question is: What is meant by the expression, in all the land? The Hebrew word can be translated to mean the land of Israel, and if that was the intent, then it means that two-thirds of the Jewish people in the land of Israel will be killed. However, the same word is often translated in reference to the whole world, and if that is the meaning, it means that two-thirds of the world Jewish population will be killed. By the time Armageddon begins, one-third will be left….The one-third Jewish remnant still living is going to be saved, both spiritually and physically. [end quote]
If two-thirds of the world’s Jews are killed, just how many would that be? Based on the 2014 world population of over 14 million Jews, this would mean that more than 9 million Jews will be killed. Hitler, by comparison, killed six million. Satan continues to use the same playbook over and over.
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