On the Revelation of Yahshua Christ, Part 22: The Woman is the Whore

In the early chapters of the prophecy of Jeremiah, namely in chapters 1, 3 and 16, the prophet is told to address the children of Israel, the scattered flock of Yahweh, who were already in the north country (1:13; 3:12, 18; 16:15). Then in Jeremiah chapter 16, in one of those references, there is a promise that Yahweh would send for them many fishers, a prophecy which was fulfilled in the spread of the Gospel of Christ as He had told His apostles, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 4, “19 … Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” But immediately following that promise in Jeremiah there is another, where the Word of Yahweh says “and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.” Christ had never mentioned the hunters, as it was apparently not yet their time.

When Jeremiah wrote those words, he was not speaking of Jews. He began his prophecy in the 13th year of Josiah, which may be estimated to around 627 BC. There were no Jews in the north at that time. But the Israelites were called Khumri in the inscriptions of the Assyrians, and that is the origin of the Greek word Kimmeroi, who in English we know as the Cimmerians, who are a historical branch of the Germanic people. Of them, the Judaean historian Flavius Josephus in Book 11 of his Antiquities of the Judaeans had explained that (Antiquities, 11:133) “there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.” As Josephus himself had explained at length beginning in Book 13 of his Antiquities, the Judaeans, the modern Jews, were an admixture of Edomites, or Idumaeans, and the small percentage of the people of Judah who had returned to Jerusalem about seventy years after the Babylonian captivity and destruction of the city in 586 BC.

Furthermore, Josephus, being a Judaean, was not aware of the origins of the Germanic people of Europe from that same group, whose migrations can be traced through the Greek and Roman Classical literature. Therefore his statement is not entirely accurate in that regard. After the passing of the Assyrians, in other languages they were called Sakae or Sakans, Scythians and Galatae or Galatians. Later, the Galatae east of the Rhine were called Germans by the Romans, while those to the west were called Gauls. But many of these, such as those called Saxons, Goths, Alans, Vandals and Huns, did not even migrate into Western Europe until after the time of Christ, and the time of Josephus.

On the Revelation of Yahshua Christ, Part 21: The Seven Last Plagues

The most important aspect of Revelation chapter 15, where we had described the sea of fire and glass as representing the fiery trials which the children of Israel would be about to suffer in this world, as the contents and consequences of the seven vials of the last trumpet are revealed, is the fact that the overcomers of this world order would sing the Song of Moses, and that song was also described as the Song of the Lamb, which is Christ Himself. We must interpret that passage to be referring to the Song of Moses found in Deuteronomy chapter 32, a song which is explicitly attributed to Moses, and not to the song of unknown authorship which Moses and the rest of the Israelites are depicted as having sung after their deliverance from the Egyptians at the crossing of the Red Sea. Then there is also a prayer of Moses in the 90th Psalm, but that is a prayer and not a song, in English, Greek and Hebrew. Yet even the prayer relates to the message in the Song, as Moses requested the blessings of God fall upon the children of Israel.

As we hope to have fully elucidated, the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 32 is a song warning the children of Israel of their sins, the consequences that were going to come because of their sins, and their ultimate reconciliation to Yahweh their God on account of His mercy. There is no other purpose of the ministry of Christ but that which is stated in the law and the prophets, and which was also stated in the Gospel in the words of Christ Himself, which He summarized where He said, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 15, that “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, as it is in the King James Version. That same profession is also expressed in the Song of Moses, and the text of the Song expresses the fact that Yahweh is the God of Israel exclusively. As it says in verse 9, “For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” Therefore that same profession is also made by the overcomers at the end of this age, as they sing that same song.

On the Revelation of Yahshua Christ, Part 19: The Harvests of God

In our last two presentations in this commentary, Of Beasts and Tyrants and The Papal Beast, we hope to have demonstrated the correlations with Revelation chapter 13 and Daniel chapters 2 and 7, and especially chapter 7, and how the entire prophecy in Revelation chapter 13 encompasses and summarizes the 2,520 years, or seven times, of the punishment of the children of Israel for their sins, in their captivity. The first half of that period is found in relation to the first beast of the chapter, in the forty and two months of verse 5. Forty-two months is a period of roughly 1,260 days, which is three-and-a-half prophetic times, or 1,260 years. The latter half of that period is not dated in the Revelation, but in relation to the little horn of Daniel chapter 7, which we have identified as the emperor Justinian and his establishment of the office of the papacy, we see in verse 25 that “the saints of the most High … shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” In that we see the second period of three-and-a-half prophetic times, or 1,260 additional years, which is very close to the period during which the popes of Rome had exercised temporal authority over the Byzantine empire, and within a short time, over all of the kings of Europe.

The number of the beast is the number of a man, and we find that number in the value of the Roman numerals represented in the title Vicarius Filii Dei, a blasphemous boast which has always been claimed as an office by those same popes. However we must also comprehend that while the pope is not the antichrist, many popes have indeed been antichrists, and as we are informed here in the Revelation, it is the Dragon, or Satan, which has historically given his power to the beast empires. So the Dragon was the ultimate source of political power behind all of the emperors and popes of history. As John had recorded in verses 2 and 4 of Revelation chapter 13, speaking of the first beast, “… the dragon had given to it his power and his throne and great authority…” and “… they worshipped the dragon, because he had given authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast…” Then in verses 11 and 12, speaking of the second beast: “… it had two horns like a lamb and spoke as a dragon. And all the authority of the first beast it practices in his presence.” But while these two beasts of Revelation chapter 13 had power for only a limited duration of time, later in the Revelation, in chapters 16 and 20, it is revealed that the Dragon himself is still an instrumental factor in the ongoing trials of the woman.

On the Revelation of Yahshua Christ, Part 18: The Papal Beast

In the opening presentation of our commentary on Revelation chapter 13, titled Of Beasts and Tyrants, we saw John describe a great beast which arose out of the sea, and among other attributes it was described as having seven heads and ten horns, and had the characteristics of a leopard, a bear and a lion. Then along with these it also shared many of the attributes with which the four beasts of Daniel chapter 7 were described. Both the beast here and the beast in Daniel had arose out of the sea, which we interpret as being the mass of the world’s people. Therefore, since the four beasts of Daniel’s vision also had ten horns, and had the features of a leopard, a bear and a lion, we should certainly understand that there is a connection between them, that they are prophesying the same phenomenon. This is further affirmed where in Daniel chapter 7 we read that “17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth” and further on in the Revelation, in chapter 17, we read: “9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” The woman representing the children of Israel collectively, which is clear in our interpretation of Revelation chapter 12, it becomes quite certain that the beasts and its seven heads represent kings and kingdoms with which the woman was associated throughout history.

But as we had also sought to explain, the scope of the Revelation concerns a much broader view of the history of Israel, past and future, rather than only the future from the time of John. The visions or statements which describe past events give us the ability to better understand the visions of the future as they have been provided by John. So where in chapter 12 we saw the vision of the dragon, Satan and his angels being cast out of heaven, because Satan is also one and the same as “that serpent of old” we know that this explains some of the circumstances of the remote past, and the events of the early chapters of Genesis. Likewise, where it says in Revelation chapter 17 that five kings had already fallen, we can examine the history of Israel to identify five great kingdoms upon which the woman had sat, at one time or another. But Daniel prophesied only of the future from his own time, whereas the Revelation is of a greater scope, so we know that we should include ancient Egypt among the five. The fallen Kingdoms of Revelation chapter 17 are therefore the empires of Egypt and Assyria, which were both past by Daniel’s time, and then the Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic Greek empires. The one which is must of course be the Roman empire, which was near its peak as John wrote the Revelation, and these last four are Daniel’s four kingdoms, in chapter 2, or four beasts, in chapter 7 of his prophecy.