The End Time Church: from the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright ©2016 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 18

How Satan Rules — (and you’d better agree)

The 31 king kick-out had grown to 33.

The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were no more. Like the 31 Canaanite kings before them, they were kicked out of the Holy Land for being unholy. Both kingdoms also had sizable portions of their population moved away from the Promised Land.

After the deportation of the ten tribes by Assyria, there never was a formal reentry of those tribes back into the Holy Land. Some of them remained in the land; the apostle Paul was a Benjamite and Anna the prophetess was from the tribe of Asher. However, God did not formally bring those ten tribes back into the Holy Land, which is exactly the opposite of what he did with Judah.

Judah was deported by Babylon in three waves. The first was in 605 BCE, and seventy years after that Cyrus sent some of Judah back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. The last deportation was in 586 BCE when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, and seventy years after that the second temple was completed. Many Jews did not return to the Holy Land from Babylon, but Ezra specifically lists those Jewish families who did make a formal reentry.

The Jews did not regain their kingdom, though. Even in their own land, they were still under the kings of other nations. Israel wanted to have a king like all the other nations, and the Jews wound up being ruled by the most powerful kings of those other nations.

When Daniel was a captive in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of an image with a head of gold, chest of silver, thighs of brass and legs of iron. Daniel explained to the king that this image represented four great kingdoms of this world.

Daniel 2:37-45

(37)  You, O king, are king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory.

(38)  Wherever the children of men dwell, he has given the animals of the field and the birds of the sky into your hand, and has made you rule over them all. You are the head of gold.

(39)  “After you, another kingdom will arise that is inferior to you; and another third kingdom of brass, which will rule over all the earth.

(40)  The fourth kingdom will be strong as iron, because iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things; and as iron that crushes all these, it will break in pieces and crush.

(41)  Whereas you saw the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but there will be in it of the strength of the iron, because you saw the iron mixed with miry clay.

(42)  As the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong, and partly broken.

(43)  Whereas you saw the iron mixed with miry clay, they will mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they won’t cling to one another, even as iron does not mix with clay.

(44)  “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people; but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever.

(45)  Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God has made known to the king what will happen hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”

These four kingdoms of the world ruled in succession over the Jews, the tribe of David and the Messiah. Remember how Israel during the period of the judges had the most personal freedom of any people in history? Each family had their own property with no mortgage to pay to usurious lenders. There was no human king to tax them or take their sons and daughters for his personal use. No one forced them to follow a certain religion. Israel had maximum freedom and maximum responsibility — free choice, answer directly to God.

By contrast, notice how those four successive world kingdoms ruled over the Jews.

They began with Nebuchadnezzar. He was called king of kings, a very auspicious title indeed. After Nebuchadnezzar had been told that he was the image’s head of gold, that may have gone to his head because he set up an image of gold.

Daniel 3:1-6

(1)  Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, and its width six cubits. He set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

(2)  Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the local governors, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

(3)  Then the local governors, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together to the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

(4)  Then the herald cried aloud, “To you it is commanded, peoples, nations, and languages,

(5)  that whenever you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe, and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king has set up.

(6)  Whoever doesn’t fall down and worship shall be cast into the middle of a burning fiery furnace the same hour.”

This king of kings did not allow personal choice in belief. Everyone, including the Israelites, had to bow to his religion or be burned up. Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego refused to bow to the king’s religion and God refused to let them be burned up.

The next kingdom to rule over conquered Judah was the Media/Persian empire. Cyrus conquered Babylon and then allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Haman was a close associate of a later Media/Persian king Ahasuerus and the Jew Esther was his conscripted queen. She had been raised by her uncle Mordecai.

Esther 3:1-6

(1)  After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes who were with him.

(2)  All the king’s servants who were in the king’s gate bowed down, and paid homage to Haman; for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai didn’t bow down or pay him homage.

(3)  Then the king’s servants, who were in the king’s gate, said to Mordecai, “Why do you disobey the king’s commandment?”

(4)  Now it came to pass, when they spoke daily to him, and he didn’t listen to them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai’s reason would stand; for he had told them that he was a Jew.

(5)  When Haman saw that Mordecai didn’t bow down, nor pay him homage, Haman was full of wrath.

(6)  But he scorned the thought of laying hands on Mordecai alone, for they had made known to him Mordecai’s people. Therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even Mordecai’s people.

That king had the power of life and death. All power was centralized in him. There were no appeals when he allowed Haman to sentence all the Jews to death.

Esther 3:8-11

(8)  Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different than other people’s. They don’t keep the king’s laws. Therefore it is not for the king’s profit to allow them to remain.

(9)  If it pleases the king, let it be written that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who are in charge of the king’s business, to bring it into the king’s treasuries.”

(10)  The king took his ring from his hand, and gave it to Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy.

(11)  The king said to Haman, “The silver is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you.”

Notice the incredible centralized power of this king. Esther wanted to tell the king what Haman was doing, but she risked her life just speaking to the king.

Est 5:1-2

(1)  Now on the third day, Esther put on her royal clothing, and stood in the inner court of the king’s house, next to the king’s house. The king sat on his royal throne in the royal house, next to the entrance of the house.

(2)  When the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, she obtained favor in his sight; and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. So Esther came near, and touched the top of the scepter.

When the king held out his scepter to his wife, that meant she wouldn’t be killed for speaking to him. And she was the queen! Now that’s centralized power!

Just as with Nebuchadnezzar, this was an attempt to force religious unity: “their laws are different than other people’s,” Haman said. And just as with Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, Yahweh saved his people from that king’s power. Haman was hung on his own gallows.

The next kingdom to rule over the Jews was the Greeks, as Alexander the Great defeated the Persians. A successor of Alexander’s, Antiochus Epiphanes, ruled over Judah this way.

1 Maccabees 1:41-64 (Good News Translation)

Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people. All the Gentiles and even many of the Israelites submitted to this decree. They adopted the official pagan religion, offered sacrifices to idols, and no longer observed the Sabbath.

The king also sent messengers with a decree to Jerusalem and all the towns of Judea, ordering the people to follow customs that were foreign to the country. He ordered them not to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, or wine offerings in the Temple, and commanded them to treat Sabbaths and festivals as ordinary work days. They were even ordered to defile the Temple and the holy things in it. They were commanded to build pagan altars, temples, and shrines, and to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals there. They were forbidden to circumcise their sons and were required to make themselves ritually unclean in every way they could, so that they would forget the Law which the Lord had given through Moses and would disobey all its commands. The penalty for disobeying the king’s decree was death.

The king not only issued the same decree throughout his whole empire, but he also appointed officials to supervise the people and commanded each town in Judea to offer pagan sacrifices. Many of the Jews were ready to forsake the Law and to obey these officials. They defiled the land with their evil, and their conduct forced all true Israelites to hide wherever they could.

On the fifteenth day of the month of Kislev in the year 145 [167 BCE], King Antiochus set up The Awful Horror on the altar of the Temple, and pagan altars were built in the towns throughout Judea. Pagan sacrifices were offered in front of houses and in the streets. Any books of the Law which were found were torn up and burned, and anyone who was caught with a copy of the sacred books or who obeyed the Law was put to death by order of the king. Month after month these wicked people used their power against the Israelites caught in the towns.

On the twenty-fifth of the month, these same evil people offered sacrifices on the pagan altar erected on top of the altar in the Temple. Mothers who had allowed their babies to be circumcised were put to death in accordance with the king’s decree. Their babies were hung around their necks, and their families and those who had circumcised them were put to death. But many people in Israel firmly resisted the king’s decree and refused to eat food that was ritually unclean. They preferred to die rather than break the holy covenant and eat unclean food—and many did die. In his anger God made Israel suffer terribly.

Again, this king sought to unify his people by commanding everyone to have the same beliefs. All who didn’t agree would die. This was unity by the sword, not the spirit.

Many of the Jews went along with the Greeks. The Maccabees, though, rebelled against this tyranny and were able to function somewhat independently for about a century, from 164BCE to 63BCE. This was not a reestablishment of the kingdom of Judah, because the Maccabees, also called Hasmoneans, who ruled were not of the royal line of David but were priests.

Finally Rome supplanted the Greeks as the prime power in the civilized world and in 63BCE, Pompey took advantage of a war between two groups of Jews to subjugate Jerusalem under Roman rule. Rome was the fourth kingdom to rule over Judah. How did Rome rule? Was their reign like that of Nebuchadnezzar, the Medes and Persians, and the Greeks, trying to enforce religious unity by not allowing free choice?

You may have heard something about the Romans throwing the Christians to the lions. From 64CE to 311, Rome conducted ten periods of intense persecution of Christians, because Christians would not accept Roman gods and thus threatened the unity of the empire.

These four kingdoms of the world all ruled the same way. All were the opposite of what God set up when he brought Israel into the Holy Land. All these kingdoms were like Pharaoh in Egypt, not like Yahweh in Israel. Power was centralized in a human government. Then that centralized power, the king or emperor, used his power to attack God’s people. Those concentrated governments repeatedly tried to unify their people by requiring all to worship their gods.

Again, this is in the strongest contrast to the way that God worked in Israel. There was no king. There was no human centralized government to control the people. All the people were personally responsible for controlling themselves. Free from taxes, free from government service, and free to choose whatever religion they wanted.

But always answerable to God.

This is the way the two spirit beings rule. Yahweh God draws people to follow him with his spirit. Satan tries to force people to follow him by his sword.

Nothing could be clearer. Satan rules by totalitarian tyrants. God rules by himself.

This principle carries all through history, from the earliest kings that the world set up to the last king that the world will set up — religion by the sword or by the spirit.

The last of those four kingdoms of this world was Rome. This fourth kingdom has had the most influence on the world. When Israel asked for a king, they chose to go from a humanly decentralized government to a government where all power was vested in a man. Amazingly, that fourth kingdom, Rome, did something similar when they went from a republic to an emperor.