THE WOUNDED HEAD

Catholicism, though acclaimed to be the only true Church of the living God, is a man made system of religion structured to capture the souls of its followers, siphon their resources to enrich the vast treasures of the system and set the stage for the pope to become world ruler. That may sound strange to a lot of you; but the time is close at hand for some of you to see that very thing put into motion. Most people today could never imagine a sweet, baby kissing, peace loving pope of the Roman Catholic Church ever becoming the tyrant one such man is destined to become in the very near future. That is why God is giving those who have ears to hear the truth a chance to be ready for what is coming down the road. When you look at modern Christianity and compare it to how the first century Christians were, what they believed and the lifestyle they built their life after, you cannot help but realize something has gone wrong through the years of time since the Church had its beginning in the book of Acts. Therefore, as we look at prophecy in the light of 1992, and in the light of this article I have already read to you about the Catholic writer interviewed in a radio broadcast, we cannot just turn away from it all and expect reality to just fade away and let us go on about our everyday business undisturbed. No. Our lives are soon going to be shaken by the very things we are talking about in this message. The man who spoke of this Fatima vision and of how this present pope is looking at it is not a Protestant. He is strictly a Catholic philosopher that has been taught Catholic theology. What I heard on that taped interview caused me to know for sure that what I am looking at here in the scriptures is shortly to be world news headlines. What we have known for years, is now being confirmed by those whose system of religion will be at the forefront of all that will take place. I am carrying a grocery sack full of history books, old history books. They are histories that were printed in times when mankind in general was not against the Bible being mentioned. It is an absolute fact that a lot of historians today would like to throw the Bible away. Therefore, they write secular history much of the time with a lopsided view. On the other hand, most of these older histories acknowledge the fulfillment of scripture in certain events. In fact, one of them was printed in 1835 and include the writings of many of what we call the early reformers, such as Luther, Swingley, Huss Calvin, Knox, and men like that. All of these men had lived under that Catholic system of religion and knew how the system was supposed to have functioned; and also how the priestly hierarchy functioned within the communities and cities their diocese was in charge of. The reason I like these old histories is because those men that wrote them had lived in an hour when there was a great move of coming out from under the soul capturing influence of that old spiritual whore system. They had first hand information and experience that caused them to know how to expose the system. It is a shame that the religious movements called Protestantism today and called that because their founding fathers protested that antichrist dogma, have now fallen into the same rut as the mother system their founders came out from. Their doctrines are basically the same; and many of them today are actually patterning their so called worship services after that of the old mother system. Why? Because they no longer have the leadership of the Spirit that caused their founding fathers to protest that thing. All they have left is a form of religion and a lot of man made doctrines the apostle Paul would not touch with a ten foot pole, so to speak, if he were alive today. Saints, I am not just imagining the things I am saying to you. They are all foreshown in the Bible. What I have already read to you about the present pope and how this Catholic man writes and testifies to a modern religious world about the pope’s plans, ought to let anyone know this is not just a dream he has; it is scripturally vindicated that the Antichrist will come from his office. Whether the present pope is the actual man or not remains to be found out later; but this certain man is not afraid to sit in on talk shows and radio interviews and let his views on the whole thing be known. He is plainly voicing it to the religious world that the pope, the present pope is the one that has definitely coined the phrase (as he puts it) “The new world order.” I thought when the Gulf War was being fought and we heard President Bush in his various talks with Gorbachev, that they were the ones that cooked up this new world order agenda. No. They just picked it up somewhere, having heard it discussed. They are the ones, from a political standpoint, that are ready to help foster and execute it.

WHAT ABOUT THIS NEW WORLD ORDER?

I was reading from another man’s writings that shed even more light on what is going on in the world today. You would be surprised to know that behind the scenes, this very country we live in, the United States of America, which is now an independent and free nation, and has been for a little over 200 years, is being maneuvered by politicians into a place where the constitution our founding fathers laid out will be as worthless as last year’s news. I remember when I was drafted into the army in WW2, every person that was drafted was asked to raise his or her hand and swear that they would do everything in their power to uphold the constitution of the United States and that they would not participate, collaborate, condone, or be a part of anything that advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States of America. Many soldiers who were taken out of their places of work and out of the fields of agriculture, went off to wear the uniform for this country that somehow or other has lived and existed for almost two centuries since the founding fathers founded it under God, a nation endowed with liberty and freedom and justice for all, only to find out now that we have political leaders behind closed doors that are selling it, trading it off for a new world order that will be a charter and constitution that takes away your individuality. The day when you could be known as an American, a citizen of the United States, with a constitution guaranteeing you certain rights, is soon to be a thing of the past. I cannot give you every detail of what is going on; but behind closed doors, both in the religious realm as well as the political realm, Satan has set the agenda and set in motion a plan he will introduce to apostate Christiandom that will look like an era of tranquility, peace, brotherhood and love for all; when in fact it is none other than a Satanic plot to bring humanity under the control of Satan instead of God, as is described in the Bible Satan will rule through the Antichrist; and the Antichrist will be none other than the pope of the Roman Catholic Church. By the help of the Spirit of God, we intend to explain what we read, prophecy in the Bible concerning the beast the apostle John saw coming up out of the sea, in Revelation 13:1-18. What we are actually looking at is the revived and revised version of the old Roman Empire, with Rome still in control. We are looking at a beastly system that basically is symbolized in ten certain divisions of Europe. That is why there were ten horns seen on the beast when we read about it in Daniel 7. We realize also, that in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, there is seen seven distinct heads on that same beast which Daniel did not see. God had no reason to show Daniel the inner workings that would take place within the governmental structure of Rome, that would in time put seven heads on the beast. When it had at one time ruled all of Europe and the Middle East as the old imperial system founded by the ancient Caesar, it only had one head, even coming on through the advent of Christ and down through the last imperial Caesar which was Nero. When he died, three histories I have in my possession tell us there was not another kinward person that could be appointed to take Nero’s place. This set in motion an opportunity for the eventual decaying of the authority of the Roman government. For centuries, up until the end of Nero’s hour, those Roman emperors had been able to crack a whip wherever their armies went. It was known that the earth trembled at the advance of the Roman army. However, when Nero died, that marked a point in time that the old imperial government that had been established by the Caesars was destined to begin to deteriorate. That is what opened the way for the ten horns and seven heads to materialize on that beast system of government. Only John saw all of that. John was allowed to be conveyed in the spirit where he could stand and watch it all materialize into its end time form and where he could watch the whole thing come to its end and redemption for mankind completed. Because John was allowed to see that old beast coming up for these last days, we are given a Biblical picture of how to look at it. Therefore, as we go back to histories which have already been written, we can learn from the written pages how the downfall of Rome came about and how out of that evolved seven distinct, major imperial powers which are symbolically referred to as heads on the beast. Each one though was weaker and less effective than the former. Rome initially got its recognition from the one gigantic head that was represented by the old Caesars from Julius and Augustus right on down through Nero. It was how they lived and functioned to build the imperial power structure that they were recognized for. That is why you cannot place these seven heads all over Europe as the Seventh Day Adventists do. They teach that they are territorial heads; but if you will look at your Bible right, they are not territories, but forms of government that has always had its seat in Rome Italy. They are symbolized as being forms of government. Anybody ought to realize if you are looking at a beast such as John described, if you could see it the way John saw it coming up in Revelation 13, you would see that it covers all the ancient territories around the Middle East; because it had the body of a leopard, feet like a bear, and a mouth like a lion. That description along with what we read in Daniel, lets us know the territories of all the other three world empires are represented in this one beast. First notice Rev. 13:2. “And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as (the feet) of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Now notice Daniel 7:12, what he was told concerning the first three beast. “As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.” That explains John’s description of the beast. Babylon was represented by the lion, the Grecian empire by the leopard, and the Persian empire by the bear. Remember Daniel’s description of the fourth beast. Let us just read it. (Chapter 7, verse 7) “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse (different) from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.” That was a description of the Roman Empire. Daniel 7:23 lets us know that. “Thus he (the angel) said, The fourth beast (We know that was the Roman.) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.” I am showing you how scripture explains scripture when you get it together right; so let us read Daniel 7:24 so you can see what the horns are. “And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; (We will show you later that this king was an ecclesiastical horn, the bishop of Rome, the pope of the Roman Catholic church.) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.” Each of those four beast powers had their day of glory, so to speak, and the Roman Empire, the fourth beast, is destined to finish Gentile time. She is restored and ready for her end time role in prophecy. The head will always be Europe because that is where Rome is; but the overall body still encompassed the peoples and areas of the three former empires when John saw it rise up out of the sea. Their dominion (meaning the hour to be a controlling world power) is taken away from them; but their lives (meaning the spirit and the identity of those people) is prolonged (kept in existence) for a season and a time. That means when this beast system in these last days reaches that point in time to fulfill the last verses of prophecy of the Bible, even the Islamic element of the people will eventually have to sign an agreement with the pope of Rome. That is what Daniel 9:26-27 is pointing to, a time when a covenant is signed by many nations with the prince that shall come; and that prince will be the prince of the people that destroyed Jerusalem. It was Roman soldiers that destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. under the leadership of Titus who later became emperor of Rome himself. That is one clue we have to let us know what office the Antichrist is coming from even if we did not have anything else. Yes, when the antichrist system controlled from the papacy reaches out to spread this new world order, it will be as the modernists are now saying, Necessity will cause the Islamic world to eventually have to sign an agreement with him also. He will confirm a covenant with many nations the Bible says for one week; but God is the only One keeping time on that. Then in the middle of the week, which we know is a week of years, the Antichrist himself will break the covenant with Israel and begin an all out persecution of Jewish saints that will reach out to include Gentile foolish virgins also. That martyred multitude are what we see in the 7^th chapter of Revelation; for John was told, These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They are from every nation, kindred, tongue and tribe. That means Jew and Gentile. The Antichrist and his international police force will endeavor to eliminate everyone and every thing that speaks of the true and living God; for he (the Antichrist) will be sitting in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem claiming that he is God.

We are hearing much today about this new world order. Not just from politicians, but from apostate religious leaders also and I am not just talking about Catholic priests only; but Lutheran bishops and all the rest. We are living at the threshold of the coming of Christ and preachers the world over are caught sound asleep. Some of them do not even care. In fact, they are in just as bad a shape as some of these Mafia characters in the underworld. I have to use that association to convey to you the pitiful shape denominational religion is in. It is a shame to say that one believes in Jesus, when it is so obvious that they have so little regard for the true revelation of the word of God. It has become a popular thing to identify with some kind of religious belief, just as long as one does not get too fanatical about the things of God; and most of that kind do not even consider the fact that we are living right at the threshold of the coming of the Lord. We have a lot of apostate religionists today that do not even want Jesus Christ to return. Do you know why? They are having a good time living it up. They are caught up in the rat race of this materialistic world that views and measures everything in the term of dollars and cents. That is why you see a lot of TV evangelists go berserk. It is simply because they have built a materialistic empire around the offerings and things they can build a program out of. It looks good to natural minded mankind; but in the true redemption plan of God it is worthless. Jesus Christ the Lord of glory is not glorified in any of these carnal programs; no matter how beautiful they are to the natural eyes. Their kind of programs only glorify human flesh; those who want to use all this monetary, materialistic thing to enjoy the things of this material world. Well saints, after having said this much, the question may be asked, How did this thing called the power of the papacy get to be what it is? We know the pope claims to be the successor of St. Peter, the disciple to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given; but as I have said so many times, Why is his doctrine not the same as what the apostle Peter preached? I know there is the possibility that this video may be viewed or the audio tape heard by some doctor of divinity or theologians of various degrees; but I remind you of this one thing, You may have your degrees in theology, but you are blind when it comes to looking at history and seeing the scriptures fulfilled. You think because you can look at present day current events and see certain things going on in the religious world that look like it has to be the Spirit of God at work, that it should override the picture of prophecy; but prophecy of the scriptures was never meant for educated people to monopolize nor for the Congress of the United States to vote on it. God is in complete control of all prophecy of the scriptures. He will fulfill every single one when the time is right whether we as individuals are ready for it or not. He always has some who are prepared to walk with Him though, in every age of time. Just look at all those prophecies of the Old Testament that spoke of the first advent of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and then ask yourselves, Who was ready to receive Him when He came? It was not the religious leaders of that day that first believed on Him and followed Him. They had their chance and missed it because He did not come to them like they thought He should have. I am talking about the Scribes and Pharisees who were looked to as the main body of leaders of the Jews’ religion in that day. When the time came for Jesus to come, were the priests looking for Him? You do not find that there was even one of them looking for Him. Were the Scribes looking for Him? There is no record of it in the Bible. Who was looking for Him? Men like Simeon, women like Anna, common people like the sheep herders that were watching their flocks by night. There were even some wise men somewhere in ancient Babylon that came looking for Him; but not a one of those who should have been the first were even willing to admit that this was the very Messiah their old prophets had spoken of. Those wise men were from that part of the earth that somehow or other through centuries has produced this type of men. That goes back to what I was talking about earlier in the message when I brought in that part about Buddhism. Buddha was the man that had rode all over various portions of India. We are talking about all the way back to the 5^th century B.D. when there was no such thing as Christianity. He had watched their gurus. He had watched their people who sat cross legged, with crossed arms, taking deep breaths to meditate. That portion of the world produced people who studied the stars. They will sit in caves and just meditate. The societies of India will look upon them as learned ones, enlightened ones. I tell you saints, For as long as man has been upon this earth, the devil has produced his quota of followers. No, I am not talking about those who call themselves Satan worshipers. I am talking about the many multitudes Satan has deceived. Those multitudes that worship pagan gods and idols of every sort; but know nothing at all about the ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD, the great Creator. Buddha’s hour came. He lived from 563-483 B.C., and Buddhism flourished for close to a thousand years before it began to decline. I was checking on some of these things a while ago, because at a certain point in our message, I am going to read from the histories I have of the personal experiences some of those men had. The experience they had and the things they saw equipped them with something that caused them to go out and deceive masses of people. Well, here is how you judge these things. It takes a spiritual mind of course, because a knowledge of the true God is what exposes those things that are of some other spirit. Every experience anyone has is brought about by a spirit. Therefore, if we are able by the scriptures to judge that the thing in question is not in harmony with what the Creator would do, we know it is something inspired by and projected by the devil for the purpose of deception. It is man’s nature to worship some kind of something as his god; therefore, Satan always looks for an opportunity to get attention focused on something other than worshipping the true and living GOD. When the God of the Christians became an accepted deity for Romans to worship, He was just added to the long list of gods they already worshiped. Well, we know the Holy Spirit leads people to worship only ONE GOD; so it ought to be clear to anyone that the spirit which leads people to worship any other god is that spirit of Satan, the adversary of the great Creator.

We brought in already that the Roman Empire has always been a city empire which did not identify any one particular race of people. The empire was identified by the fact that it was ruled from a city and that there was an imperial government seated there. Once those old Caesars took that position, it was believed by the masses that they had been placed there by the gods. The Romans were suspicious and superstitious people. They had all kinds of gods for everything. Since they were an empire that had reached out and conquered everything far and near, they had subjects with every kind of belief known to mankind in their kingdom. If you could just see a giant map stretched out in front of you that showed all of Europe and all the way over into Asia, you could see what the Roman Empire in its great day of earthly glory really controlled. When Rome first came up as the great imperial city, there was no such thing as ten nations in Europe. I have three different histories here and according to them, in the first century A.D. there was no nation called Italy. In the first century A.D. there was no nation called Spain, nor France, nor Germany, nor the Netherlands, nor Belgium, nor England, Ireland or Denmark. None of them were known. What does history call this area of the world? “Gaul”. A region of mountains, and of barbaric, ruthless cut throats. Some of them existed as tribes. Yes, they had their villages and small cities, but they were looked upon as barbarians. Some of them lived a very ruthless life; yet Rome ruled them. In Luke 3, where it speaks of Jesus of Nazareth being baptized by John the Baptist in the 15^th year of the reign of Tiberias, at about 30 years of age, do you know what the emperor of Rome, Tiberias, was doing at that time? Building a wall across a certain portion of the British Isles. Portions of it are still there today; but that place was not called England or Ireland then. In the Middle East and around that area, there were other nations that already had their identity prior to Rome’s hour. There was Greece, Mesopotamia, Persia, and many other places we have all read about; but when you look at western Europe, there was no such thing as ten nations in that area. All of that came about later. The advent of Christ began to play an important part in the future of the Roman Empire. That Roman imperial system was affected by the influence of Christianity in its then known society. From the city of Rome, on the peninsula which we call Italy today, that vast domain was ruled. In other words, even those nations that were in power before the Roman Empire existed owed their allegiance to Rome; because the Roman armies had conquered them. Some had been defeated in war and some came under Roman jurisdiction by signing leagues and pacts. However it came about, Rome was in control. Rome was in control when Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. Rome was still in control when the Church was born in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost fell upon those who had obeyed Jesus’ instructions. Rome was still in power when the apostle Paul, under the anointing of the Holy Ghost, began to be led out on his missionary journeys from the regions of Antioch, which is in Syria today. He was led into the regions of Asia, which is what that whole land mass of what we call Turkey today, was called back then, Asia. Paul went right back to that area because he had been raised up in a coastal city called Tarsus. He went back to the region he had been raised up in, just like anyone would have a desire to do. We know this, it was prophesied that the apostle Paul was to be a light to the Gentiles. Let me say to the Catholic hierarchy, bishops, priests, whoever you may be. You say the pope is the successor of St. Peter. How could he be? You will find no authority for such an idea in the scriptures. It is nowhere written that St. Peter was to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Your traditions give place for many things that cannot be vindicated by the written scriptures. You will not find written, that the apostle Peter was ever in Rome; yet your traditions speak otherwise. All anyone need to do is read the scriptures to know it was the apostle Paul, not Peter, that was chosen of God to be the apostle to the Gentiles. I will call your attention to two verses in particular. In the 9^th chapter of Acts, we read the account where the apostle Paul, who was known as Saul of Tarsus, a chief figure on the Jewish Sanhedrin court at the time when Christianity was born in an upper room in Jerusalem, how he became very hostile toward this new faith. He was on his way to Damascus with a letter of authority to arrest some of those Jews living in that area that had been converted to Christianity and was struck down in the road by a great light that blinded him. Out of that light a voice spoke to him. It was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. (I say to you, it was not the virgin Mary that spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus. I will get to that point later.) You then find the Lord instructing a man named Ananias to go pray for him, that he might receive his sight and when Ananias hesitated, the Lord said, He is a chosen vessel. (Acts 9:15) Let us read it. “But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” Then in Acts 13:47, we find Paul testifying of his calling, saying, “For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.” Catholicism wants their pope to be the successor of the apostle Peter simply because of what Jesus said to Peter in the 16^th chapter of Matthew when Peter confessed by revelation who he believed Jesus to be. In verses 18-19, you find Jesus answering Peter, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock (this rock of revelation) I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” It was not Peter himself that the New Testament Church was built upon it was built upon the revelation Peter had. That revelation (that can only come by the Spirit of God) of who Jesus the Christ really is, is the rock the Church is built upon. That is why the gates of hell cannot prevail against it: Once you have it by a revelation of the Spirit, instead of from some Sunday School Bible story, there is no possible way the devil can get that revelation away from you. It is as much a part of you as the very members of your own physical body. That is where eternal security of the believer comes into the picture. Not everyone who confesses to be a Christian has eternal security never to be lost. Only those to whom the Spirit of God has been allowed to give this wonderful revelation have eternal security; and the reason for that is because what you believe is in your spirit instead of just in your head. When a person is just believing something with the mind, before it becomes a spiritual revelation, the devil can get it away from your mind by giving you something that sounds better. That thought brings me to what I want to say about one of his great deceptions concerning Mary, the mother of the man Jesus.

When I made the point that it was not Mary, the mother of Jesus, that spoke to Saul of Tarsus out of that great light, I have a reason for saying that. Catholics today are believing Mary has some important function in their prayer life and that she is speaking to various ones about various things here in the end of the age; but I want you to know that Mary is resting in Paradise, awaiting her time of resurrection with the rest of the saints and that she has no active part in anything God is saying to believers today. Those who believe she does will never take the time to indulge in the records of church history long enough to find out the facts and come face to face with the reality of the whole thing. I want you to know fur sure, the early centuries of Christiandom would never have had a thing to do with trying to elevate Mary to the position that the Catholic Church has her elevated to today. On one hand they will tell you they do not believe she is a priestess; while on the other hand they cannot pray and say a thing to God without having Mary in it. You have heard it, Hail Mary, so on and so forth, pray for us now, and one and on their prayers go. Why? Simply because of their ties to ancient paganism. Ancient paganism has always had a female goddess to run parallel to every male god they had. In certain parts of the old world where they worshipped Baal, a male god, they would have their female goddess also. What a shame! Christianity was founded by the power of God, having allowed His only begotten Son to offer His own life as a sacrifice for the sins of lost mankind: that those who would believe from the heart in what was done for them, might be saved and delivered from Satan’s devises; to still have such pagan practices attributed to Christianity. In all the teachings of Jesus, you will never find one place where Jesus elevated His mother above any other Christian woman. Furthermore, I challenge anyone to show me one place in the scriptures where Jesus Himself ever invoked any other name in His prayers to the Father. He needed the help of no female goddess or priestess to approach His heavenly Father. Why would you think then, that just because Mary was a virgin woman chosen by God, the creator of heaven and earth, that she should be elevated to such a position, when she has been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years and her body has completely decomposed? She was not raised from the dead to ascend into heaven as Catholic dogma claims. Search the histories. I have their book, The Glories of the Mother Church, written by their own bishops from Rome. They have their version of the early years of Christianity of course; but what I find most helpful to me is the writings of the antinicean fathers. That includes the writings of Barnabas that you read about in the book of Acts, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin the martyr, and many more. They were men that knew what they were talking about. You can find out from reading their writings, that wherever the Church went preaching the gospel in those first centuries of Christianity, she was always persecuted by those pagans; Rome being no exception. Yet the more it was hated and persecuted, the more the power of God moved to convict them of their pagan ignorance and cause them to find this great faith, this mystery of how the spirit of man called Jesus Christ could actually come to live in their own lives. When those apostles went out preaching the gospel, signs and outstanding miracles of every sort were manifested to vindicate that what they were saying was the truth. For the first, we will say, three centuries it was ridiculed and persecuted by all the pagan world. The church at Rome, which was not founded by an apostle, as the Catholic Church claims, was founded by some of those who witnessed what took place in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost when the true Church was born. You need not tell me Peter was the first bishop of the assembly in Rome. I already knew there was no scripture to back up that idea; but then, back in the late 50's, an archaeologist digging in the Jerusalem area suddenly uncovered a grave. As they explored that find and looked at the inscription, they came to find out it was the tomb of the apostle Peter, buried near where Mary and Martha and Lazarus of Bethany had been buried. When this archaeologist (who was not even digging to find something to criticize the Catholic Church) contacted the Vatican and presented to them this finding, the reply he received was, We will have to look into this, we cannot discuss the matter now. That is the way Catholicism has always stayed in the fore front. They will play ignorant when they are put in the corner. But when they think they have the advantage of someone’s ignorance, they are ready to come on strong. It is not even proven in church history. I have the books, the writings of the antinicean fathers right on up to the fourth century. None of them show or record that Peter was ever in Rome. Therefore, those bones they say were Peter’s bones, on which St. Peter’s Bascillica is built, in all probability are just a few bones left over from some pagan that was buried in an obscure grave yard before Rome ever became a so-called Christian center.

As those first century Christians passed from the scene, those great patriarchs of the Christian faith were no longer on hand to hold a line on that true revelation the early Church carried; so various men began to come upon the scene with varying interpretations of what the apostles had written. They were not necessarily evil men; but what they were doing was antichrist, when you give it a literal interpretation. People are guilty of it all the time. Anything taught by anyone that is contrary to the true revelation taught by the apostles of Christ is literally antichrist teachings, no matter who the teacher may be. Those who began to deal with the understanding of the Godhead, really started the Church on a roller coaster ride, so to speak; for it has only been in this Laodicean Church Age that the true revelation of the Godhead has been restored to the Church. Oh yes, there were some oneness elements that thought they had it; and some of them were close, but none of them had it completely as it was originally understood until God sent a prophet messenger to this Age to untangle it and set it straight. When you have what is supposed to be the Church of the living God as mixed up as the church world has been for centuries of time, there is no way the bride of Christ could be perfected. Her garment would not be completely free of spots, wrinkles and blemishes. When you have some believing there are three persons in the Godhead, others believing there are two persons, then others believing Jesus the Christ is all there is of God, you have a very distorted picture of the Great Creator which has never been a person. He has always been a sovereign Spirit, able to take on a visible form for various reasons down through time, but never assumed any permanent bodily form for Himself. A bodily form cannot be omnipresent. It is limited to being only one place at a time. If you will just think about that, I am sure you would not want to stand in line for your chance to speak to Him in prayer. Only a spirit can be omnipresent. Jesus is looked upon as God; but you must realize it is not the man Jesus that is God, it is just that the great Creator chose the flesh of His only begotten and perfect Son to display His limitless attributes; and JESUS is the family name the great Creator chose to be called by; but the man Jesus, the person, is not God. Did He not tell believers to pray to the Father in His name? That is the reason. Jesus the man, is a person. We are ever to pray to that sovereign, omnipresent Spirit that fills all of His Creation. It is true, that Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth;” but that did not mean the Father is left out of the picture. No. The true understanding of that statement is that He was given all power in heaven and earth concerning the redemption plan of the Father; because it was all designed with Him being the key figure; but the apostle Paul made it clear in 1^st Corinthians 15:27-28 that the Father, the sovereign Spirit still retained sovereignty. Notice, “For He (the Father) hath put all things under His (the Son’s) feet. But when He saith, All things are put under Him, (the Son) it is manifest (or evident) that He is excepted, which did put all things under Him. (That would say to us, that the Father is excepted from the all things.) And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, (Jesus the Son) then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him (the Father) that put all things under Him, that God (that sovereign Spirit) may be all in all.” We understand this terminology of the scriptures; because we have been blessed to see the whole picture; but there are yet many well meaning people who do not see the picture clearly; so they cannot preach and teach a pure revelation. Anyhow, history reveals that there were varius squabbles among believers, concerning the essential doctrines taught by the early Church; and the thing got so intense that a Roman Emperor by the name of Constantine intervened in the matter. We will get back to this later; but right now I want to get into the events that set the stage for what John saw and wrote about in the 13^th chapter of the book of Revelation. In those histories, it tells of the squabbles that caused Nero the Roman Emperor to send troops to Jerusalem to put down a revolt; and also of the turn of events as Rome went into a decline for lack of leadership. Nero died or committed suicide in June of A.D. 68, before the Roman army got to Jerusalem to deal with the insurrection among the Jewish people. Vespasian, the Roman General chosen by Nero to lead that great army, was summoned by the Roman Senate to return to Rome to sit in the seat of the emperor. However, he was not the next to follow Nero. There were three other men that sat on that throne before Vespasian. All of them in the year 69. Galba was after Nero and was assassinated shortly thereafter. The next was a man named Otho. He committed suicide. Then Vitellius who was also assassinated, all within the year 69A.D., before Vespasian ascended to the throne. When Nero died, there was no nephew, no cousin, no uncle, nor grandson of Nero’s kinward line in existence to take the position; so that left the throne up for grabs. Those commanders over various troops were ready to step into that exalted position; but their reigns were short lived. Vespasian took the throne in 69 and established what became known as the Flavian line of emperors. He ruled until 79 and his son Titus sat in his seat for two years, then Domitian, the younger son took the throne until 96 A.D., when he was assassinated. That brings us to the year the apostle John, on the Isle of Patmos, was caught up in the spirit and allowed to view the things he wrote of in the book of Revelation. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who himself was a military leader of a group of the Jews who were trying to help put down the divisions among them, and had been having to endure a lot of attacks upon himself by those who wanted to assassinate him because of his influence when Vespasian began to break through the walls, he told his men, I feel it best that we surrender. Somehow or other, whether he had seen it in a dream or vision I do not know, but he approached Vespasian the Roman general saying to him, (It is written in the histories that he cried out to him these words.) Oh Vespasian, knowest thou not that this day thou shalt be Caesar, and thy son shall take thy place? The histories bring out that Vespasian, as he looked at him, thought he was trying to flatter him; but not too long afterward, a Roman courier came, telling Vespasian to return to Rome to assume the responsibilities of emperor of the Roman Empire. Vespasian took Josephus back to Rome with him and he was given high favors with the Roman officials. He was treated well, kept alive, and was not made a slave. In his captivity there in Rome, he wrote the great volumes of the history of the Jews leading up to the wars that brought demolition to the temple and the city. I bring all this in because I know we have a bunch of characters out here in this religious world that think this church here on Potters Lane, in Jeffersonville, Indiana knows nothing worth listening to. It is true that I did not go to Harvard; nor to Wilmore to learn how to preach. I am just a farmer boy that loves God and appreciates the grace of God that has been bestowed upon my own life. I claim no titles in this life; but I know I have a citizenship with the other saints in the household of God and I am very thankful that my heavenly Father saw fit to reveal His word to me in the measure He has. Therefore, I gladly preach and teach what he has revealed to me; but I feel no responsibility to try to force anyone to believe what I preach. I am persuaded by the scriptures that every predestinated seed of God will believe the truth in his own appointed time without anyone having to force it upon them. God has let the learned men of the world have their hour. Now He is going to show a few people of the world that He can use a few little farmer boys and maybe some fishermen, like He did to start with, to put this redemption picture together in an understandable way and wind this thing up. Jesus is coming soon, coming for those who are ready to go with Him to the marriage supper; but I assure you, He will not be taking anyone with Him that has rejected the true revelation of the word of God, no matter how important they may have been in this present life. The Bible is very specific about what He is coming back for; a Church without spot, wrinkle or blemish, or any such thing. A Church that is properly dressed in a true revelation of the word o God. He will not accept a garment of denominational traditions. If that is all you are wearing when He comes, you will end up in the great tribulation: wishing you had taken heed when the truth was preached to you.