BIBLICAL ROME IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
FROM THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TO INTERNET
THEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE CONTINUATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
© Carlos Padilla – October 2024
The contemporary world was changing at an incredible speed; however they did not know yet how much it would do. Biblical Rome, the mystical Babylon which was starting to develop in the whole world perpetuated the tentacles of the Roman Empire which at the same time was political, then imperial, afterwards religious, with a new amalgam of political-religious and social power which mixes with everything and with all which would end up being part of the UN (United Nations) and of the European Union, but which also, after the Holocaust, at the end of the World War II, of the support of the creation of the State of Israel. All this, is the historical panorama which is the anteroom for the fulfilment of the end times prophecies, before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ – Yahshua.
From the European empires to the kingdoms, and after to the democracies of the West, and through that Christianity without Christ which is more ecumenical, of the type of a NGO, thank of the Church of Christ, it will be forging to adapt to what that mystical Babylon of Revelation 17 and 18 will become. Materialism and the industrial reform, communism and the socialist totalitarianism, modernism, the two World Wars, liberalisms and capitalism. In two centuries we see a social earthquake, the industry starts to replace the working class, but overall in the convulsive XX century, the Cold War and the loss of the true spirituality in spite of the business of the experiences disguised of spirituality of the eastern movements, until the appearance of computers, mobile phone and Internet, which would change it all. The continuity until the end of the Biblical Roman Empire which becomes the mystical Babylon, we will end up seeing it in this study, which is before the last which arrives to the beginning of postmodernism and the digital era. Keep reading…
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL
1948 saw the birth of the State of Israel, a Biblical prophecy of the end time which then almost no one believed possible, and that others saw in the final millennium. The voting in favour of 33 countries of 57 which were members of the United Nations approved on the 19th of November 1947 the creation of the State of Israel. As we are seeing, the Biblical Roman Empire has perpetuated in the West through Byzantium, first, and then through the Sacred Roman Empire which was Germanic, it would do in many kingdoms, like the Spanish, whose king boasts the title of King of Jerusalem under his crown until today.
After the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance and until the Enlightenment, it would adapt in its influence and control of as many western kingdoms as possible, many in the new continent, especially in the countries under the kingdom of Spain, which started to become independent and which in its majority are still Catholic, and in one way or another they have debated between those who have embraced the Jewish brothers, and those who have rejected them. In the contemporary era, with the industrial and technological revolution, the Jews provided great scientists and thinkers:
Einstein, and the theory of relativity, Max Born, and the theory of quantum mechanics, Oppenheimer and Teller, fathers of the atomic bomb and of hydrogen. Jonan Salt, invented the polio vaccine, Isidor Isaac Rabi, discovered the nuclear magnetic resonance, or Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalysis. Karl Marx, and his communist manifesto, and the socialist economy, philosophers like Martin Buber and his philosophy of dialog, Baruch Spinoza and his modern Bible critic, excommunicated by Jews and Catholics.
All of them have contributed and served to the history of the West, and the West is linked to them, who have carried their people until the State of Israel. The Biblical Roman Empire, which at this point in history transforms into the mystical Babylon, continues to recuperate the authority over Jerusalem, even though it has the crow of the Holy City, it does not yet have it, but it is part of the project of the end, where many are waiting for the third Temple.
THE HISTORICAL INFLUENCE OF THE MATERIALISM AND THE EXISTENTIALISM IN THE BIBLICAL ROME AND VICE VERSE
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776, followed by the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte in named emperor of France in 1804, and the Hispano-American colonies start their independence in 1810. The Industrial Revolution brought the search of progress and prosperity, families were immigrating to industrial areas and individualism was growing. Bourgeoisie and the working class, or Darwinism, would be the social changes that would provoke philosophical currents of thought that would answer the result of these changes, like materialism, positivism, and existentialism. Romanticism was seeking that feelings and emotions would be the guides, instead of the knowledge of the period of the enlightenment.
Evangelical movements brought great positive changes, like the abolition of slavery, first in the British parliament, thanks to the fight of the Christian parliamentary William Wilberforce; the rest of countries would follow. Christian movements of social aid would surge, like the Salvation Army, to alleviate the working class in precarious situation, and Comte would propose the social reformation, a social socialism that many Christians would support. But it would be Karl Marx, whom, with his Communist Manifest would take the cause to a radical and political level against religion, and the revolution of the proletariat, a complete challenge for the Church. Freud would add his study of the mind, and of the subconscious. All this amalgam of thoughts centred in matter, the mind and the spirit were the beginning of the XX century. World War I in 1914, the Great Depression in 1930 would make mere existence to be reconsidered and thought to enter in the search of the spirit.
The convulse XX century saw the birth of several social movements that were answering the previous. Ideas like those of Hegel and pure reason, and that God must be in the day to day, not far away, or like Kierkegaard who returns to the Christianity of Christ, the interior the soul. Now, after the two World Wars, the pacifist movement would surge, but also drugs, free sex and aids, and debauchery. Civil rights (Martin Luther King), the rights of the workers, the feminine movement, and finally climate change. Before, in the XIX century were romanticism, modernism, both against materialism and its currents of thought, like atheism, idealism in opposition to metaphysics.
Communism caused 100 million deaths carried out by the ideology of their totalitarian dictators who abused their people. Hungers created on purpose, forced labour. Karl Marx has his theory, but when taken to practice by man in power, who falls into temptation of the sin of pride, anger, hate, the result is chaos. Totalitarian dictators like Stalin when the raise of the USSR, who executed 40 million people in his ideological purge and forced the rest to create his world power, or Mao Sedong, who executed eve more than 70 million Chinese to raise his Chinese Popular Republic. Today, socialist national republics, as was the Nazi Germany, creators of fascism (from the Italian fascio) faction, of the ally regime of the Italian dictator Mussolini, who began in the Italian Socialist Party; totalitarianism was being imposed which would take to World War II.
And when the world thought that the worst was over, after World War II, it got immersed in the Cold War between the USSR and the USA after the crisis of the missiles in Cuba en 1962, which was at the verge or igniting World War III, nuclear and final, but it was avoided in the end. Now they would concentrate in the conquest of space, who would get to the moon first? That was a way of defeating the Soviet Union in the mind of the North American president John F. Kennedy, because Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had already been put in orbit in 1961. On the 20th of July 1969 mission Apollo 11 from Nasa took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon, the last remained in the spacecraft. By the way, Aldrin took bread and wine to be the first Christian in taking the Holy Supper on the moon. The XX century will be remembered as the beginning of human exploration of space, and the mission to the moon of the Apollo 11 as the most important event of the century. Finally that polarization of the Cold War would vanish with the fall of socialism and communism in the West represented by what has become in one of its symbols, the fall of the Berlin wall on the 9th of November 1989.
Capitalism, on the other extreme, though with its defects, managed to create richness and prosperity for all social classes in the large democracies, like the American Dream, in the US. Books like “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, of Max Webber, explains how liberalism has managed to achieved that the entrepreneur can raise a business, create jobs and enjoy quality of life in freedom, something that even in the XX century has not been seen by the majority of countries in the world, especially in the southern hemisphere, in Africa and in South America. Social rights were promoted, the right to free health, to education, to a pension, etc.
From the baroque and rococo art, to neoclassical, and the avant-guard architecture, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, for the Universal Exhibition in 1889, or the sky scrapers in New York, like the Empire State, or the Chrysler Building, both Art Deco, in the battle for the tallest. Art and music would transform. Painters of loose brushwork like Monet, Renoir or Pizarro, would be followed, after impressionism, by Van Gogh, and abstract and cubism would arrive, Picasso. Music would also suffer a enormous change, variety and styles. From classical music, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Listz, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Verdi, Albeniz, Debussy, Strauss, and many others, to new styles. Jazz would appear, then gospel, soul, pop, rock and heavy metal. But worship would adapt always to the style in fashion, always carrying the glorification of God from the heart of who worships Him.
Science and scientists of the XIX century like Lamarck and Darwin postulate evolutionism, which appears at the time of the idea of progress, and it was associated to any species that evolves, being understood then and under that context that the more suitable improve the species, until the discovery of DNA and mutations as a detriment and not as an improvement in the XXI century. After electric light, Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla, came the telephone, Graham Bell, and the radio, by Marconi and maybe Tesla.
The XX century saw so many progresses in all the fields that we can only expose some relevant general discoveries, like the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, antibiotics, penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming. The Wright Brothers and aviation, today we fly to the entire world. Automobile, with its first proposal by Karl Benz in the XIX century would be taken to the masses by Henry Ford, Volkswagen, and others. After the telegraph, television, the telephone, the mobile phone came by the hand of Motorola, and Martin Cooper. Nuclear energy and the first reactor, by Nobel price Enrico Fermi. Personal computer, Jobs and Gates. Then came Internet to the personal user, a system of connection of servers invented for university use and to share scientific advances, the of for the government, and which will end up embracing all. In 1974 Khan and Cerf created the first TCP/IP, but it would not be until 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee would create the first web, www, from the CERN.
In the theological field, the religious contemporary thought was facing great challenges. However, the industrial revolution saw itself accompanied by great spiritual awakenings in both centuries. Every 80 years, according to historical dates, the US has experienced a great awakening, as it was in 1885 and in 1965 with the “Jesus Movement”, will there be another one in 2045? The American Bible Society was started, the Salvation Army, and many evangelical denominations.
Religion, and especially Christianity, would also see great changes in the how its liturgy and how the Message of the Gospel was being transmitted, in the streets; today in Internet and Youtube. Roman Catholicism suffered a great adjustment of its traditions which imposed to the society, having to adapt to the liberty that was being demanded from society, though it rejected the modern ideas and condemned them, Protestantism would adopt many of them and evolved with the nations that were progressing. Finally the Biblical Rome would achieve to maintain its influence in society and in governments providing its II Vatican Council.
This Council adapted its theology to the world and changed the liturgy from Latin to the vernacular languages, accepting evolutionism, but theistic, and trying to adapt the theology to the society of its time for this way, try to avoid suffering the massive amount of members leaving. True theology does not need to adapt to any time, because it is always actual. The problem is that the theology of Catholicism came from having departed from true doctrine, and after the II Vatican Council it departed again in pos of the world, to try and win the world. Now Protestants and Evangelicals were not considered condemned, who were growing exponentially, especially the Pentecostals and charismatic, to whom also they invited to the Council. Some matters were accepted about the universal priesthood of all believers, which Martin Luther proposed, giving more value to the laics than before. They still teach that the baptism in water immerses in the Holy Spirit, when it is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which does it, through faith, and then the believer express it publicly through the one of water, as taught by Master, our Lord Jesus Christ – Yahshua. The Holy Supper, they still continue with bread, without wine for those present, when the Lord taught both substances representing His body and His blood. It seems that it only achieved to get close ecumenically to try and absorb the Protestants and execute domain over them, as it does today with other religions.
The Evangelical Church has also seen reforms and changes in Christianity and in religion in this era. At the beginning of the XX century it is considered that the awakening of the Azusa Street, in Los Angeles is the beginning of Pentecostalism, which makes emphasis in the gifts and in praying in spiritual tongs. Both World Wars questioned how to act before that barbarism being Christian, defend your country with arms. Science and faith between evolutionism and creationism being taught in public schools. Just before the Vatican Council II, the World Church Council was founded in 1948, in Amsterdam. The theology of liberation in the 80s, in South America, is a fight of the church against social injustice, but it got mixed with the political revolutionary left.
In 1992 a joint declaration about the Doctrine of Justification was signed, another ecumenical step between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. Missionaries have already reached all the points of the planet. The translation of the Bible takes it to 95% of the world’s population, but the number of Christians martyred in the XX century is greater than the one of all the times in history together. The participation in services declines all over the world, and Christianity in China and South Korea grows rapidly. Darwins suffers a decline before the scientific discoveries and the interest on creationism and Biblical archaeology returns, after the discovery of the manuscripts of Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Great evangelists and TV preachers are raised. Billy Graham and his crusades all over the world, now limitless with Youtube for all, still call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ with fidelity to the Biblical message of the Gospel of Jesus. But other Protestants would go around the bush from the original theology, being carried by what they call a literal hermeneutics when they want to justify their believe, like the Scofield Bible and dispensationalism, and the 1000 year Kingdom of Christ on earth and the leadership of the Jews in that millennium, but they were confronted with the Jews were already in their nation in 1948, which fulfils part of the prophecy of the Bible, and it is not he millennium.
We could close this block concluding that social movements provoke philosophical movements as a reply of the first, and vice versa, because in the case of the Contemporary Era, society was impacted by materialism and existentialism, mostly, as was the Church in all its denominations. But, in the same way, the answer of the churches which are loyal to the Bible, provide a theological answer which always feeds the soul which hungers and thirsts God, preaching that matter is a creation of God, which cannot exist by itself, for not having life in itself, nor energy has intelligence, reason why theology, and philosophy will argue the need of God as creator, provider of the laws of the universe and of nature through its intelligent design. The existentialism, Heidegger, Sartre or Unamuno, will debate about life and death, God in man or outside of him, God and our circumstances. You may read more about the impact in the thinking of the different times and its repercussion in the Study: https://www.yahshua.net/philosophical-and-existential-questions-to-christianity/
Contemporary man has moved from a theological mentality, to a metaphysical one, and from this one, to a scientific, believing that this is an evolution, until he finds out that all of them are contemporary.
PROPHECY OF THE CONTINUATION OF THE BIBLICAL ROME IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
The Biblical Rome has tried to survive in the XIX and XX centuries through Roman Catholicism, and its loyal critics who advocated for a modern church according to the contemporary ideas, received answer, though limited, in the II Vatican Council. An obstacle to the Christian unity was to add the worship to Mary in 1950 the dogma of the Assumption, but yet they were not answering about the obligatory celibacy, which Protestantism had long left behind, among other ecclesiastical matters. They were not realizing that what they needed was to receive the Reformation, at least in what in the Biblical context, in reference to theology and doctrine, and leave behind the theological deviations fruit of traditions.
The tentacles of the Biblical Rome, which represents the fourth prophetical empire of the prophecy of Daniel, the Roman Empire, which already, in this era was transforming in part of the Mystical Babylon, continued to maintain power and political influence in the world, a religious-political power which mixes with everything and with all and which has taken the Vatican to be part of the UN (United Nations), as observer, and to give shape to the creation of the European Union. It got to support Nazism at the beginning, through Pius XI, of what he repented later after seeing the horrors, writing encyclicals against Nazism and against communism. He also supported the regime of Franco in Spain, having great power being declared a Catholic country, until little ago. Pius XII tried to avoid World War II without achieving it, and though he did not do a front against the persecution against the Jews, he did permit organizations of Catholics who helped flee many of them and to receive them. He faced the unexpected creation of the State of Israel, which fulfils part of a prophecy of the New Testament in Romans 11, as it was revealed to the apostle Paul, and they tried to have control and influence, as they always do, until today. He battled against communism excommunicating those Catholics who would support it, while the Soviet Union was being created, and China united to communism, places where churches were numerous, many Catholic. Its political influence is important, and it remains, it looks as it is still interested more on the power than in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible.
Other churches Protestants, Orthodox and others, as soon as they deviate from the Biblical theology, they become part of the Mystical Babylon even though they are not Roman, for they also influence the power system in the societies in which they participate, and it can be seen clearly in the growth of ecumenism, which seems to be the common denominator of churches and religions, in spite of making man greater and to not loose members, before pleasing God.
THE MATERIALIST AND THE EXISTENTIALIST SPIRITS
The spirit of materialism reminds us of the theological battles of the Sadducees of the Sanhedrin against the Pharisees, because these last ones believed in miracles, the spiritual, the angels, and in life after this world, while the first ones did not, they were only worried about their power and control of the Law over the people. This presents the problem both in the Israel in times of Jesus Christ, as well as in the Greece of the thinkers and philosophers like Socrates and Protagoras, who already focused in the problems of man, its existence, in opposition to the metaphysical problem that Heraclitus studied. The existentialism, already in the XX century, the search of understanding our existence, but by doing it without God arrives to an existential anguish; was the reaction and consequence of materialism, like Democritus and the epicureans to which the apostle Paul referred to in his discourse in the Areopagus of Athens; Acts 17:16-34.
Contemporary ethics considers situations that come from the technological progress, machines, the industrial era, until the arrival of computers, robotics, but they will not get to be so evident as in the XXI century, where we will see the co living with robots and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. We see that in each era of history, human thought always arrives to having to choose between two ways: The metaphysical vs. the material, the spirit and the soul vs. the matter and the energy, believers and atheists. But in this contemporary era a growth of the agnostic concept appears to which those who do not have well rooted beliefs, hang on to when they face the battle between science and faith, between traditional values and the philosophical and technological revolutions.
There are only two positions in reality: atheist and believer. But the believer must be of the true God, and know Jesus Christ – Yahshua. The materialistic spirit, although it is defined as atheist, it does indeed believe in something, it believes that from nothing or from matter, or from energy intelligent design has surged, the laws of nature, the universe, and the complexity of biological life. Therefore when science proves that materialism and evolutionism cannot be sustained, it fights searching for objections to reveal against God, because they do not love Him, nor does it accept Him as sovereign, nor as his creator, before Whom, in the last day, all of us shall give account of our deeds.
CONCLUSION
The contemporary world changed in a vertiginous way. The Biblical Rome, the mystical Babylon is already present at a political and religious manner, and participates in the UN, and influences the European Union from Rome, but every time looks more like an NGO than the Church of Jesus Christ. Israel received its state in 1948 when no one believed it, fulfilling part of the Biblical prophecy. The Biblical Rome is still interested in Jerusalem, and even thought the Spanish crown holds the one of the Holy City, does not yet have dominion over it, the Third Temple is not there yet which many think will be usurped.
Materialism and the industrial reformation, communism, the two World Wars, liberalism and capitalism, caused a social and mental earthquake, a spirit that feeds atheism, but which is defeated, once again by the faith in Jesus Christ – Yahshua and His saving work. The Cold War made that many would seek the spiritual truth, but this was being offered as experiences disguised as spiritual and oriental movements. Computers, mobile phones and Internet changed everything, but the true Church has managed to use them all as tools for evangelism. Mean while the Biblical Rome, the perpetuation of the Biblical Roman Empire which converts in the Babylon of Revelation 17 and 18, continues to influence the world and preparing its revelation to the society of a globalized and ecumenical world which does not follow God the Creator.
Jesus Christ will come in His second coming and will catch up the loyal Church, and the world will be transformed in a new creation, after the fall of the mystical Babylon that will no longer deceive the world. “And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.” Revelation 18:4. Amen.
Links to all the Studies of this series about the four empires of the prophecy of Daniel:
BABYLON – BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY
MEDIA AND PERSIA – BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY – DANIEL – EZRA – NEHEMIAH
GREECE – BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY – THE LOGOS AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
ROME – BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Studies about the continuation of the Biblical Roman Empire in the different periods of history, from the fall of Rome until the end:
BYZANTIUM – BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE OR ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST
