Study 6 – The book of Revelation by Neville Clark, The Eastern Leg, Daniel Chapter 2

The book of Revelation by Neville Clark –  Enfield’s Special Effort 2016

Study 6 – Daniel Chapter 2 – Daniel’s Image – The Eastern Leg

Content Summary:

1. Neville’s graphics
2. Transcription of Neville’s talk

The book of Revelation by Neville Clark

Study 6 – Daniel’s Image – The Eastern Leg

This is a chapter that you all know extremely well. In the next 45 minutes, we are going to cover 2,000 years of history, so we’ve got a fair bit to talk about. What I am going to talk about is the Roman Empire over the last 2,000 years in Eastern and Western Europe, because that is, at least as far as we are concerned, the important part of Daniel 2 for us. This is what Bro Thomas says in Elpis Israel about the image of Daniel Ch 2. He says: “The future movements of Russia are notable signs of the times because they are predicted in the Scriptures of Truth.

That means the Bible predicts what Russia is going to do in the future.

“The Russian autocracy in its plenitude, and on the verge of dissolution, is the image of Nebuchadnezzar, standing on the mountains of Israel, ready to be smitten by the stone.”

When the Russian government builds its empire up to a climax, and that empire is in control of the land of Israel, that is, after Russia invades Israel, at that point, the image of Daniel Chapter 2 stands, and it will be destroyed on the mountains of Israel.

“When Russia makes its grand move therefore for the building up of its image empire, let the reader know that the end of all things as at present constituted is at hand.”

When Russia looks like they are going to try to establish a world empire, and invade the land of Israel – when it looks like it is going to do that, then get ready, because Jesus Christ is on the way, and the kingdom of God is on the way.

That’s what it means when Bro Thomas says, that the “dissolution” or the end of all things as at present constituted is at hand, that is the end of this age. The end of society is at hand when Russia starts to do that.

Well, Russia is beginning to do that and that’s why we say that the Lord Jesus Christ is not very far away. Here is what Daniel Ch 2 looks like. The image we just spoke about abounds that Bro Thomas speaks about is that image there which I am sure you are all extremely familiar with. That is the image of Daniel Ch 2.

This image has five component parts to it.

It has a “head of gold” which was the Babylonian Empire.

A “chest and arms of silver” which was the Medo-Persian Empire.
A “belly and thighs of brass” which was the Greek Empire,
and “legs of iron,” Roman Empire,
and “feet of iron and clay,”
that is the empire of today, the European empire of today.

And then, of course, you can see, we’ve got right to the bottom of that image, after the divided empire of iron and clay, we’ve got the kingdom of God. That’s the story of Chapter 2. You will recall, young people, how the stone came out of a mountain, cut out without hands, and it smote the image upon the feet, toppled the image, broke it to pieces, and then ground it to powder. Then the wind came and blew that powder, the dust of that powder, away, and that stone became a mountain and filled the whole earth, speaking of the fact that Christ’s kingdom would become a world-wide kingdom, for the next thousand years.

So that’s Daniel 2.

Now I am not going to tell you any more about that because you probably know all of that. I am going to show you one other feature when you compare Daniel Ch 2 to Daniel Ch 7 and this is a very important point.

How many empires did we just describe in Daniel Ch 2, before the kingdom of God comes? How many? Five? There’s five, is that right, or is that wrong? Right, we did describe five. The Gold, Babylon,  Persia, Greece  Rome, and then the divided empire and then the kingdom of God, so five empires before the kingdom of God. Now you will be aware that Daniel Ch 2 is the Kingdom of Men, from Nebuchadnezzar’s point of view, in his dream. So that is how man sees the kingdom of Men. This great image, this great warrior, shining and bright, bullet-proof!.

Now how does God see the kingdom of men?

Well, he sees it in four animals in Daniel Ch 7.  The Lion, the Bear, the Leopard, and the fourth beast, the unnamed beast of Daniel 7:7. That’s what Daniel saw, and that’s God’s view of the kingdom of men. It is a bunch of wild animals. So here’s the question: How many phases of the kingdom of men do you see in Daniel Ch 7, prior to the kingdom of God? Not very hard is it? Four? Ok. So Daniel 2 says it’s five, Daniel 7 says its four. What is the answer to the riddle? Can you see that Rome and the divided empire are both the same thing?

The Roman Empire existed 2,000 years ago and as far as Daniel is concerned, that empire will be the empire that exists when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, because that’s what Daniel 7 says. Therefore, the critical point is, that the Roman empire is a 2,000-year empire, and all you are waiting to see prior to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a “resurrection” of the Roman empire, the “last days phase” of the Roman Empire. That is why the book of Revelation has, beast, beast, beast, with ten horns, because the Roman empire has gone through many different phases since the early days when it was first established, and there is a phase of the Roman empire that will exist in our day also. That’s what Christ will destroy when he comes. Now, why am I laboring the point?

You do not expect the rise of a big Muslim empire for example, before Christ comes. You do not expect the rise of a big Arab empire before Christ comes, or a Chinese empire, or any other sort of empire. Why not? Because if he were to do so, there would have to be another beast. You see, but there is no other beast.

Christ will destroy the Roman beast when he comes, we are not looking for the rise of any other empire, we are looking for the resurrection, if you like, of the Roman empire in the last days. Very simple, Daniel Ch 2 compared with Daniel Ch 7.

Ok, now what happens? The Roman empire took for itself a certain insignia, a badge, a symbol which it used. And you read about this when you Deut 28, and you read Mat 24. Because in Deut 28, Moses told the nation, many, many hundreds of years after my death, he says, “you won’t serve Yahweh your God, therefore, you will serve your enemies which Yahweh your God will send against you, and he will put a yoke of iron upon your neck.”

You see, the Roman empire was an empire of iron and in 70 AD the Roman empire took the nation of Israel captive into its empire and depopulated the land of Israel and they were scattered abroad throughout eastern and western Europe in the confines of the Roman empire. They had “a yoke of iron” upon their neck, and then “Yahweh,” it says, “will bring against you from the far end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose tongue you won’t understand.”  So in come these Romans, holding banners of eagles, because that was the military ensign of the Roman empire, and they destroyed the nation of Israel in 70 AD.

And Jesus said, in Matt 24:28, “And where so ever the carcass is,” that is, wherever the Jewish carcass is, by which he meant the Jewish nation, in other words, he is going to kill the nation and it will be like a dead body, wherever that carcass is, there will be eagles gathered together. The Roman empire fed, if you like, on the corpse of the decaying nation of Israel. They ruled it for a certain time and the Jews kept revolting and uprising, so eventually, they just destroyed them and took the people into captivity as slaves, killed many hundred thousand of them, and took the rest into slavery throughout the empire.

That eagle looked like that. That’s what that eagle of the Roman Empire looked like. What’s strange that you see about that eagle? It’s got two heads! Why did the Roman eagle have two heads? I’m going to begin to use the whiteboard because you have to be able to see this. Why did the Roman eagle have two heads?  No, not quite two empires. Let’s say, two capital cities, one on the east, and one on the west. One head looks east and one head looks west, so it’s an empire of two halves, with two capital cities.

What was the western capital of the Roman empire? Rome! And what was the eastern capital of the Roman empire? Constantinople! What’s the modern name for Constantinople? and where is it? In Turkey, right. So there were two capital cities, one in the east and one in the west of the empire, that’s why the eagle has two heads because he looks both ways and controls the whole of Europe, East, and West.

Now, just clean this off and check on the next slide. There are those two cities, one on the east and one on the west.

Rome in the West and Constantinople in the east.

That’s what the Roman Empire looked like. Well, then history takes over you see because over there in the west by 476 AD this capital was overtaken by the barbarians, by one of the Gothic nations you see, in 476 AD they took the capital city of Rome and they held it for 60 years. What happens is that the Roman empire in western Europe actually broke to pieces quite slowly. If you like, it dissolved over time.

Historians have to decide when an empire sort of falls and declines, what year do we say that it actually dies? Well, they say, when the capital city has been taken and held for more than a day or two, or a week or two, like sixty years! That’s it, that’s the official end of the Roman empire in western Europe. So, if I go back one slide, you see, see the capital Rome there, that red empire died in 476 AD but the purple empire, that was controlled from Constantinople, absolutely impregnable! Extreme military strength, the enormously powerful capital city in Constantinople, in that yellow dot. It could not be taken, at least, not then. And so the invasion of all these tribes if you can see all those different arrows, invasions of barbarians, they took off from western Europe and destroyed the western leg of the Roman empire. They cut off one of the heads of the double-headed eagle, that’s what happened in 476 AD. So 476 AD, we’ve got Rome and the Ostrogoths took the Roman empire in the west.

Over here in the east, no problem, nothing can really go wrong in the east, well, not much until what year? What year did the eastern Roman Empire die, what year was the other head of the eagle cut off? Any takers? What year did Constantinople fall? 1453! And who did it fall to? The Ottoman Turks. And they took it, and they called their country Turkey, eventually. So this is what happened to the two sides of the Roman empire.

This empire was taken by the Goths in 476 AD but they only held it for six years, and then the Italians took it back, and it lumbered along as a disorganized country if you like. Western Europe was extremely disorganized for a few hundred years until a very significant thing happened. A certain man stood up who was from France, in fact, he was the king of France, and he decided to help the Pope. Now what had happened is, all these invasions that I spoke to you about, that came into western Europe, they were called barbarians. They were called barbarians because the Romans thought they were uneducated – they were quite educated in fact and were very good soldiers.

The problem was that the Roman citizens got very lazy, and they decided that if you were a Roman citizen you didn’t have to join the army, you didn’t have to pay tax, “What we’ll do is that we will hire people into the army, we’ll call them mercenaries, and we will pay them to fight our wars for us.” Well, by about 450 AD the Huns started to come across, which was an extremely ferocious and powerful barbarian tribe, and all the other barbarians ran for their lives into the Western Roman Empire.

They said the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, can we come across the Danube River and can we have sanctuary in the Roman Empire, and they said, “No, you can’t.” “But we are all going to get killed!” And then they said, “All right, come across the river.”

So into the Western Roman Empire come all these barbarians, and then they said, “Now we are here, can we have some land? Because, you know, we’ve been fighting your wars, for you.” And they said, “Well, we’ve paid you to fight our wards and you are not Roman citizens, and so you can’t have land.” And they said, “Hmm. Well, we are going to take it, so what are you going to do, bring out the Army? We are the army! ” And so of course, the barbarians began to take land and of course the Western Roman Empire fell because no one could stop them because the Roman Army itself, in fact, was comprised mainly of them.

Well, they were different to the Pope. You see they were Christians, they had adopted many of the customs of the Roman Empire, but they weren’t Trinitarian, they were Aryan. That means they believed in one God they didn’t believe in three Gods. You see they’d come down into Rome and they took Rome and that’s where the Pope lived and they at various times had decided that they might actually get rid of the Pope.

So you see the Pope was extremely worried and so the Pope said, “I need help, I need to stay alive and what will I do?” Well, “I’ll ring one of my friends, and I will get him to bring his army to France and help me,” and what was the name of that friend? 800 AD?  Charlemagne! Charles the Great. Charles, Charles, Magne, is magnus, meaning large, or great. In 800 AD Charlemagne and the Pope held hands and they formed what is called The Holy Roman Empire.

It was an allegiance of Church and State, and allegiance when Church and State got together and formed an Empire. That empire began in Aachen in Germany, the capital then moved to Frankfurt and the capital finally ended up in Vienna, when this empire was destroyed. But this empire would last for how long? I am going to call it the HRE, the Holy Roman Empire would last how long? Very powerful empire?

What year did it die approximately? 1783? I am going to say, approximately the year 1800. And who killed it? Another very famous Frenchman. Another very famous Frenchman who was a soldier, who killed the Holy Roman Empire, what was his name?  Napoleon Bonaparte. So for 1,000 years, this Holy Roman Empire existed in Western Europe until Napoleon Bonaparte dropped it on its head and killed it. That’s what he did in the year 1806 after the battle of Auerstadt.

Well, you see that was what was happening in Western Europe. Now, anybody got any idea who that fits? Charles, this is Charlemagne, look at what he is wearing, what’s that pattern he has got on his jumper? The two-headed eagle? Not quite, the One-headed eagle. Can you see, It’s actually got one head, why? because he only ruled the Western Roman Empire. he doesn’t rule both sides, he only rules in the West. Can you see, he’s a Roman. Now he came from France, he helps the Pope get his life back, but, he’s a Roman, and he’s using the Roman symbol for his soldiers and for his armaments.

Well, we’ve got down into the 1800s in the Western Roman Empire,

Now let’s come and talk about the Eastern Roman Empire.

We’ve got to 1453 and the Ottoman Turks now control Constantinople. What happened to all the Romans? what happened to all the Christians in Constantinople after the Ottoman Turks took over Constantinople? Well, in fact, they all fled! And historically there were three Romes.

The first Rome, see that little square at the very top, actually, I have a better picture of that, there you are. The first Rome is Rome, Constantinople, when it was formed by Constantine in 300 AD was called Nova Roma. What do you think Nova Roma means? New Rome. It is like York, and New York, or Hampshire and New Hampshire, Rome and New Rome. But after Constantine’s death, they said, “No, No, he is far too important a person not to have a city named after him, let’s call it Constantinople or The City of Constantine. That’s what it was called. Well, what happened, of course, is the Turks came into Constantinople, and they weren’t Christian, they were Muslim.

And there was a big problem, you see for the Christians in Constantinople, because of the Turks, well, they didn’t have a very good time, and particularly the Royal Family, the Roman Royal family who lived in Constantinople, had a very tough time under the Turks.  In fact, they weren’t even prepared to give it a go. What did they do? They fled from Constantinople straight to Rome when the Turkish armies came against Constantinople and took it. They quickly left the city and got out to save their lives. They thought they would go to Rome and then a remarkable thing happens.

In 1472, there was a certain Russian gentleman called Ivan the Great, and he was looking to expand his Russian Empire, he was quite an aggressive military soldier, and he was looking to expand his empire. Now he wasn’t very attractive so he had to go on the hunt for a wife for quite a long time, and lo and behold, he turns up in Rome, and he says to the Pope among other things, “Well, you know, at some point I would like to have an heir, a descendant, and for that, I am going to need a wife, do you have any recommendations?”

Now he didn’t want to just marry anybody, he wanted to marry a queen of some kind. He was a king, you see, of Russia. The Pope says, “That’s a funny thing that you ask, because, do you know in 1453, the Turks took Constantinople.” Ja, Ja,” this Russian would say, “I know, I know.” “Listen to me,” said the Pope, “they took Constantinople, and do you know what happened? The Royal Family from Constantinople came to me, to Rome, because they just came from one capital to the next capital, and I’ve got this young lady living in one of my apartments, and she is called Sophia, Sophia Palaiologina, she is the niece of the last Roman Emperor of Constantinople. She is a Queen, and maybe you could marry her?” Ivan says, “Well let’s see her?” So he walks in and he says, “I’ll marry her.”

Now the Pope had a plan, you see, he thought, “Ah, this will be pretty good.  I get Ivan to marry Sophia, and Sophia will go back up to Russia with Ivan, and she will keep her Roman Catholicism and that will make my Empire even bigger, then I will control all the Christians in Russia as well as Western and Eastern Europe.”

Well, the plan didn’t really work. There is no question, Ivan married Sophia, and he took her back to Moscow, that’s certainly true, what religion was she? What denomination? What sort of Christianity did she believe, however, before she came to the Pope? Well, she came from Constantinople, she believed in a brand of Christianity called Eastern Orthodox, which is just Eastern Roman Christianity, but it is slightly different from Roman Catholic Christianity. And probably the only difference, the main difference is that their priests wear black and the Roman Catholic ones wear white, pretty much everything else was the same. Well, it’s a little more complicated than that but let’s leave it there.

Sophia marries Ivan and he takes her back to Moscow, and

Moscow becomes the 3rd Rome.

Now, this is what you need to understand, let me show you. Daniel’s image has two legs because there are two capitals of the Roman Empire. So when Daniel dreamed of his image, he could see one leg on Rome, in the west, and one leg on Constantinople in the east. Now, the Turks took Constantinople, right, they captured that capital and the Queen, where did the Queen shift to? The Queen of Constantinople, where did she live after the Turks? Well, yes, she went to Rome, but you could think of it like this, now both legs are in Rome.

So then, where did she go? Moscow!

So can you see, today, because Constantinople is still under the control of a Muslim country, that as far as Daniel’s image is concerned, the left leg is standing on Moscow, and the right leg is standing on Rome? Can you see, therefore, that in order for Daniel’s image to stand again in the last days, this left leg has got to come back and stand on Constantinople?

Do you think that that means that Russia one day would want to invade Turkey?

Do you think the Russians even care about Turkey?

Think of it like this – when Sophia married Ivan and went to Moscow, well a large proportion of the Christian population of Constantinople followed her straight to Moscow, and their money, and their culture, and their art, and their learning. So today, you could think of it like this, that the Russians would believe that as least as far as their culture is concerned they were born in Constantinople. As far as their blood is concerned they say, “We were born in Kiev, we were born in the Ukraine.” As far as our culture is concerned, we come from Constantinople. And there is no question that the Russians will want to take Constantinople.

So when you see Russia in Syria today, and the Turks going and doing a silly thing like shooting down a Russian fighter jet, and then Putin trying to educate the Turkish president and provoke him into a military conflict, you can see exactly what Putin wants to do. He wants a reason, he just needs a reason to go in and invade Turkey. He’s tried it before you know, not Putin, but previous Russian presidents, or Tsars, have tried it before.

Okay, we are in Moscow, and there are history books you can read, called “The Three Romes,”

There is no question in history. There are three Romes

Rome, Constantinople, Moscow. And there are three pictures on the front of that book by Russell Fraser, of the three Romes. Absolutely clear, no question at all in history. What has happened, therefore, in 1472, Ivan the Great, is going to take the capital over here, Moscow. So here we are, I’ll call it Ivan, 1472. So now we’ve got a capital over here in Rome, and we’ve got a capital over here in Moscow, and the Muslims are in control of that capital there, it is no longer under the control of a Christian Roman Empire.

OK, now come with me to Daniel Ch 2. What do you expect to happen next? Daniel 2:41, Let’s now talk about this last phase of the Roman empire. Look what it says in V 41. “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, part of potter’s clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided and there shall be in of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as you saw iron mixed with miry clay.” What is that saying? It is saying that the feet and toes of this image are part of iron and part of clay. The only way that that particular phase of the empire has any strength is because of the iron.

The clay is very weak, it can’t actually form an empire it is clay it is just like pottery. But the iron? That’s very strong. So what he is saying is that the iron and clay in those feet, if it wasn’t for the iron, there would be no empire, whatsoever. Because the clay has no power to make an empire, it is just crumbly stuff. Look at V 42. “And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” It will be strong inasmuch as it is made of iron, and it was broken, or brittle, inasmuch as it was made of clay. “And whereas you saw iron mixed with miry clay, they, that is the iron, shall mingle themselves with the seed of men,” that’s the clay. “but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

What Daniel is saying in very simple terms is, that unless there was iron in these feet and toes, there would be no empire of Rome in the last days whatsoever, because the clay has got no power to form an empire. All right, what would you expect to see, therefore? If you cast your mind back to Daniel Ch 2, we’ve got a progression of metal, Gold, Silver, Brass, Iron and Iron, and clay. That’s what the metals are. Those metals get less and less valuable. Gold is the most valuable, then silver, then brass, then iron, and then iron and clay.

We would look at that and say, “Ah, there’s a decline in the value of the metals and that means that the Governor of that empire is getting less and less powerful. Nebuchadnezzar who was the gold, the king of Gold, could make any law he liked and he could keep it if he wished or he could break it if he wished, whomsoever he kept alive and whomsoever he would he killed, he could do whatever he liked. He was a complete dictator.

Then you come down to the silver, the Medo-Persians. The king of the Medo-Persians, he could make any law he liked, but you know the law of the Medo-Persians in Daniel Ch 6, whatever law the King makes, he’s got to keep. That’s why Daniel found himself in the lion’s den, remember? So the authority of the governor or the king of that empire was a little less.

The Greeks? Well, there were four empires of Greece, four divisions of the Greek empire, four generals, if you like, who all warred against each other. By the time you got to Rome, you had a Caesar, sometimes he was strong, sometimes he wasn’t, he had to obey the Senate, oftentimes, which was like a big committee.

So what do you think it means then?

What do you think it means then when you come to the iron and clay?

We’ve got a declining authority in the nature of the ruler of the empire as the quality of the metal gets less and less precious. What does it mean when you’ve got an empire of iron and clay? Well you know what iron is, iron in the last days must be Rome, and the only portions of the Roman Empire that are left today are the Roman Religion. So in the iron and clay of the feet and toes, the iron portion is Catholicism because that’s all you’ve got left of the Roman empire today, it’s Catholicism. What’s the clay? Well, it’s the seed of men, but that doesn’t really help you.

Let me ask you this – if the whole point of Daniel’s image is that the metals get less and less precious and therefore the ability, or the authority of the ruler of that empire gets more and more diluted, why doesn’t it say, Gold, Silver, Brass, Iron, Lead? Lead is less precious than iron? Why not say lead? Why say clay? Well, the point that Daniel is making is this, if there was lead there … if the empire of the last days was a coalition of iron and lead, then the iron could help form an empire and so could the lead. The lead could be like a solder.

What he is saying here is, “No, the empire of the last days exists on the basis of a common religion and a common religion alone. There is no political unity in the empire of the last days. It’s clay, it’s brittle, it crumbles. If it wasn’t for the iron, if it wasn’t for the fact that Western Europe was Catholic, they would have no alliance whatsoever. If it wasn’t for the fact that Catholicism and eastern orthodoxy and Russia or Russian Orthodoxy, are basically the same religion, there would be no unity between Russia and western Europe whatsoever. There is no political similarity. And so what we are expecting to see in the last days is a coalition of countries who come together on the basis of a common religion, not because they have any political similarities.

Now what that means is, well look at V 44, “In the days of these kings,” plural. There many kings in the divided empire of the last days. What that simply means is that France is going to retain the French language and go into war under its own colors. The Germans will speak German, and they will go into war under their colors. The Russians will speak Russian and go into Armageddon under their colors, and they will be united only on the basis of a common religion. So what we would expect to see therefore in the last days is an empire that gets them off the ground, which is a resurrection of the old Roman Empire, united on the basis of a common religion, and a common religion alone, because clay has got no power to unite the empire. Can you see, therefore, the enormous significance in the Pope meeting Patriarch Kirill on Friday. The head of the western Christian Church meeting the head of the Eastern or the Russian Christian Church. It is the iron that will bring eastern and western Europe together.

Now, what do you think of that? Ivan the Great, his dynasty, died off and they were replaced by another Russian dynasty, or another great Russian family called the Romanoffs. And the Romanoffs took for their symbol, what? A double-headed eagle. Can you see that the Russians are really Roman? What do you think the ‘Rom’ in Romanoff stands for? It’s Roman-off, isn’t it?

The Russians are Roman, they believe that they are Romans, they think of themselves as Romans. Well, they are. Though eastern Romans, culturally from Constantinople, that’s all they are. That’s what the Russians are, you see. And, there are our two sides of the Roman Empire, we’ve got Rome in the east and Rome in the west, we’ve gone down to Napoleon in the west, he’s just toppled the Roman empire there, and we’ve got Romanoffs in the east.

Well, blow me down! It didn’t last long. And there was a fellow called Otto Von Bismarck, and he was a German Chancellor in the late 1800s. He decided that he would try to revive the Roman Empire in the west, and as a consequence of Bismarck’s actions, World War 1 began.  Bismarck was the pioneer of the idea that Germany could reestablish the Holy Roman Empire, and Germany could control Western Europe. Well, it didn’t work, but they had another try in 1939, and who started the 2nd World War, and what’s his name?  Adolf Hitler, absolutely., and do you know what Adolf Hitler dressed his soldiers up, looking like? Like the Nazis? Like an Eagle! Do you know why an eagle? Why not an eagle? Could it have been anything but an eagle, is the question?

So Hitler marched his boys in the war under the banner of the single-headed eagle because he represents the Western Roman empire. He was trying to revive the Holy Roman Empire. Do you know what the German word for empire Is? Reich! And what “Reich” did Hitler want to establish? The Third Reich, and what was the 2nd Reich? what was the 1st Reich? Well, Hitler wouldn’t agree with Charlemagne because he was a “frog” right, so he would say there that Barbarossa, Frederich of Barbarossa, about 1200 AD, the first German ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, that would be the 1st Reich as far as Hitler was concerned.

Bismarck tried to establish the 2nd, and he would establish the 3rd Reich in 1939, a kingdom by the way that he expected would rule for 1,000 years. Where did he get that from? He got that straight out of Revelation Ch 20. He wanted to establish the kingdom of Hitler on earth, that’s what he wanted to do. Well, it all went very badly for Hitler, of course; it went very badly for a lot of people, actually, but he lost the 2nd World War and, well, Europe was carved up, until 1989. Well, they’d built the Berlin Wall, and they split Germany in two and the and the allies ruled half of Berlin and the Russians ruled the other half of Berlin.

Then in 1989, east Germany and west Germany started talking, they said, “Look, a generation has passed, let’s stop this nonsense, let’s take down the Berlin wall and let’s reunite Germany. Now, why would Time Magazine publish it like that? Because the eagle, the western Roman eagle, has just come back to life! That’s why. Germany is united, can you see, and the Roman empire in the west has just come back to life in 1989. Unbelievable!

A very famous Russian came on the scene

Well, we got to 1989. What’s happening down here. Well, very bad things are happening to the Romanoff family, actually. In 1917, a very famous Russian came on the scene and ordered a revolution. He ran a revolution, what was his name? No, not Putin, but same first name. Not Nicolai, No. Vladamir Lenin!  And what did Lenin do? Well, he shot the Romanoffs, didn’t he? He took them to Ekaterinburg and shot them all, and began the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution.

He got rid of that double-headed eagle that the Romanoffs used to use, and what did he put up in its place? Well, he put up a hammer and sickle because, of course, he represented the working man. Well, he was a working man, and in comes communism into Russia for the best part of 80 years, until 1989. And what happens in 1989? Well this Russian President called Michael Mikhail Gorbachev comes on the scene and introduces democracy, and he pulls down the hammer and sickle and he puts up a different flag, a white, blue and red flag, and that’s the flag of Russia today.

Do you want to know what the symbol of the Russian Federation is? What is the coat of arms of the Russian Federation? That’s it there in the background, I got that from the Russian embassy, way back in the 90s just after it happened. I said, “Would you please give me a copy of the emblem of the Russian Federation, that’s why it is not really good quality. Well, here it comes, blow me down, it’s the old Romanoff eagle!!

What are these Russian’s doing? They’ve reinstalled the eagle of the Romanoff empire. Why?  Because they want to recreate a Tsar. They want to revive the Eastern Roman Empire. How about that? Unbelievable!

This National Geographic of 1983 is extremely illuminating. See, “In claiming the Byzantine birthright,  Russia has looked possessively, obsessively south,” so what does that mean. Well, the empire of Rome and Constantinople was called the Byzantine Empire. Before Constantine made Constantinople the capital it was called Byzantium. It was just a little Greek fishing town, called Byzantium. Well Russia, claims the Byzantine birthright and she has “looked possessively south” and she has always wanted to go back and take Turkey.

Like the Greeks, Catherine the Great, a Russian Queen, had her own great idea, she said, “I’d like to have a restored Byzantine Empire in the Balkans, ruled over from a re-conquered Constantinople, by my grandson Constantine. Would you believe, Russians call their children names like Constantine? That’s a Roman name. Why would Russians call their children Roman names?  They are Romans, you see. She even hired John Paul Jones, an unemployed naval hero to command a Russian flotilla fighting that cause in the Black Sea. And so there was one Crimean war. There was a second Crimean war as Russia tried to invade Turkey but the allied powers, the Anglo and French powers, rebuffed her and stopped Russia from coming into the Middle East because France and Britain wanted to control the middle east themselves.

Ironically, look at how scary is this. Russia came within a hair’s breadth of gaining Constantinople and the Straits in World War I.  The allies promised them to her upon Turkey’s defeat. and the revolution knocked Russia out of the war, scuttling that prospect. When did World War 1 finish? 1918. One year before the completion of World War I, Vladimir Lenin comes in and institutes the Bolshevik Revolution of Russia, knocks Russia out of the War. If Lenin had come one year later, Russia would have won the war and they would have owned Constantinople in 1918. If Russia had owned Constantinople in 1918,  they would already own Israel by now.

What did the angels do? What was the purpose of the Russian Revolution then? Because all that has happened is that we had the Romanoff dynasty up until Lenin in 1917, from 1989, well we have just basically reinstated the Russians that were here, so what was the purpose of communism. Well, it put the whole progress of the Russian Tsardom on ice for about 80 years. What critical fact happened in the Middle East during those 80 years? Well in 1948 we created the state of Israel.

Russia can’t attack Israel until Israel exists.

They were all set to do it after the 1st World War. They would have done it with Britain’s blessing after the 1st World War, the angels would say “Woh, that can’t happen,” they wheel in Vladimir Lenin, he destroys the place for 80 years and they say, “OK, Israel’s back in the land, they’ve got established,” hit pause, fast forward again, off we go with the plan for Russia to invade the Middle East. Here’s somebody, he’s getting a bit older now, but he would have liked to be the President of Russia, and he wrote a book.

You probably can’t read that, let me show what that book says. Now here’s a book called “The Last Leap South.” Here is somebody, and he’s still alive in our day and writing books, and this is like Hitler writing “Mein Kampf” He’s written a book called “the Last Leap South.” Where does he plan to leap to? He plans to leap into the Indian Ocean, not just Turkey, all the way south. How does he plan to get there? Well, he is holding it under his left arm.

This is the Russian dream, you see. We take Turkey, we don’t just stop after Turkey, What has to happen for all this to occur is that eastern and western Europe have to hold hands. They can only hold hands as far as Daniel Ch 2 is concerned on the basis of a common religion. Well, this is the Pope meeting the Patriarch of Constantinople. Now that means the leader of the eastern orthodox Church of Constantinople meets the Catholic Pope, and this meeting took place in 1964 in Jerusalem. That was the first time for the best part of 1,000 years that the Roman Catholic pontiff had met with the leader of the eastern orthodox Church. That was a ground-breaking relationship that began again in 1967. Those two at that point revoked the mutual bulls of ex-communication that they had executed against each other in about 1054 AD.

So after the best part of 1,000 years, all of a sudden, the patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome are talking again.

Now let me tell you something about the eastern orthodox Church.  Now the Catholic church in western Europe, we know quite a bit about that, the Pope controls everything, and they all do what he says. In eastern Europe, it is a little bit different. Each country has its version of the eastern orthodox church, and those individual churches are like ecclesias, they all believe the same thing, but they have a fair amount of autonomy.

Any idea of how many Catholics there are in the world? Roughly? 1.2 billion! That’s what the Pope controls in western Europe.

Any idea how big eastern orthodoxy is in the world? About 220 million.

So when these two men meet each other, the fellow on the right is much, much more powerful than the fellow on the left. But in the eastern orthodox world, every country has its own church, its own system, so there is Greek Orthodox in Greece, there is Turkish Orthodoxy in Turkey, there is Russian Orthodoxy in Russia, and they have a certain amount of autonomy. This meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, how powerful do you think the Patriarchs going to be? I mean he’s running the eastern orthodox church and he’s in a country that is controlled by Muslims, he’s not going to be that powerful.

If you are going to try to unite east and west, in the terms of religion, the Pope’s really got to meet the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, because of that 220 million, Russia has 160 million. Well, that’s why we make such a big deal about the meeting on Friday. For the first time in 1,000 years, the Pope met the Patriarch of Moscow. That’s the eastern orthodox patriarch you’ve got to meet, and that is the man who can do whatever is required to be done. Why? Why did that meeting take place? Well, you see Pope Francis has been, for years now, asking to meet the Patriarch of Moscow, and the Patriarch of Moscow has said, “No,” because he thinks the Pope is recruiting on his territory. He thinks the Pope wants to take over his church.

Well, you can see that the Pope’s a very powerful man. He does want to take over his church. Then what changed? Why did the Patriarch of Moscow, all of a sudden, last week, agree to meet the Pope? Because he was told to. Who told him to? Vladimir.  All Russians are called Vladimir. And why did Putin tell the Patriarch to go and meet the Pope? Because they’ve got the greatest persecution of Christianity in the Middle East today that has happened for decades. And if east and west don’t hold hands and get together, we could face the rise of another Muslim empire, called ISIS. The last time a Muslim empire rose, they attacked Constantinople, and as far as Putin’s concerned, he says, “The only reason Constantinople fell in 1453 was because the western Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, did not come to the rescue of the east.”

That will never happen again. East and West will unite against the possible formation of an Islamic empire, and they will destroy it. Therefore, “You go and meet il Papa, kiss him three times on each hand and be friends.” The Pope owns his own little country in Italy – Vatican City. When the Pope goes to Moscow, he doesn’t own anything. he does whatever the President says, he does whatever Putin says, and Putin says, “Make sure you come out friends.” That has just happened, two days ago. Unbelievable! It must be and can only be, by the power of united religion, that the Roman Empire will rise again in the last days.