SRR #57 | Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 2

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

These are wolves. Wake at night, trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion. It's not hate. It's history. It's not fashion. It's the Bible.

Jesus said, woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. As opposed to, blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Daniel 7 and the Fourth Beast

In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, I saw in my vision by night and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.

The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. Then as I looked, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man. And the mind of a man was given to it.

And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, and it was told, arise, devour much flesh. After this, I looked and behold another, like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back.

And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this, I saw in the night vision and behold a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet.

It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little horn, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by its roots.

And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things. Daniel chapter 7, 1 through 8.

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Responding to the Charge of Personal Bias Against Rome

We are back with Tim Coffman. My name is Tim Shaughnessy and this is Semper Reformanda Radio. I hope that you got something out of last week's episode. I know that I listened to it probably about three times.

Tim, I think there was somebody else who said that they listened to it at least twice and they said that it was fantastic. So, hey, I'm really grateful that you're here, that you've put in all this time, work and effort and I know that you've been studying this stuff for years.

So, I'm really grateful that you're here. We're going to pick up on part two of looking at the Danielic timeline or chronology. The focus of our text was Daniel chapter 7 and we're going to be looking at the fourth beast in particular.

But before we get into that, and I'm going to ask you to give a little bit of a recap, but before we get into that, I want to pose a question to you that we've talked about before and I realize that we didn't address this last week, but that's this.

Do you, as a former Roman Catholic, find Roman Catholicism in the text just merely because of a personal bias against Rome because you came out of Roman Catholicism? Because I think that sometimes we do have a tendency to do that.

I know I've heard the same thing about Islam. People who convert out of Islam, they want to see Islam as the great antagonist, as the Antichrist. And so, what we're going to be doing, a lot of it does pertain to Roman Catholicism.

We are going to be saying things like we do believe that Roman Catholicism is Antichrist. We do believe that the Roman Catholic system, the Roman Catholic Church, has a role to play in the text of Scripture.

And so, I want to ask you and give you an opportunity to respond to the notion that there might be a personal bias on your part because you are a former Roman Catholic.

Well, thank you, Tim. I appreciate the question. I appreciate the warm welcome I always receive. I'm glad that people are listening to the episodes and enjoying them. I think that the question is a very reasonable one and it's one that I've encountered many times.

It's probably important to note that if I were to address the eschatology matter in ignorance, never having experienced Roman Catholicism, people might say, well, you don't know what you're talking about because you were never Roman Catholic and you don't understand.

If I address the eschatological matters from the perspective of knowledge and experience, having been a Roman Catholic, then people can dismiss it saying that you are only doing this because you're angry about Roman Catholicism.

You feel like they defrauded you and now you want to get your vengeance and get back at them. And this is just a personal vendetta against them. And the reason I offer those two extremes of a spectrum of responses is that I am never going to win the ad hominem argument.

It's just, you know what, if someone doesn't want to believe this, they're going to find a reason to discredit it. And I accept that. There's no use in going down the path of the ad hominem argument because then I start talking about how even though I have never been Roman Catholic, I am eminently qualified based on the diligence of my studies, etc., etc.

And then suddenly the whole conversation is defending me and my studies. Or, if I say, yes, I did come out of Roman Catholicism, I wanted to be a priest, I was taught Marian devotion from a very young age, a cradle Catholic, and when I moved to Alabama in 1989, I was a defender of Roman Catholicism to the great irritation of many of my Protestant friends.

And then I have to start defending the vastness of my experience and knowledge of Roman Catholicism. In the end, the question and the objection ends up shifting the conversation from the text of Scripture and the historical record and has it back on me.

And, you know what, if people want to assign some sort of personal bias to my conclusions, there's nothing I can do to stop them. It's an ad hominem argument. And I want to simply get back to the facts.

And the facts is what we'll be talking about today. I've often pointed out that almost all of the Reformers, if not 100 of them, at least the major ones, thought that Roman Catholicism was Antichrist, the beast of Revelation 13, the little horn of Daniel 7.

And when I raise that, people will say, yeah, but the Reformers all had a personal bias against Roman Catholicism too, and so they would be inclined to conclude that Roman Catholicism was the beast of Revelation 13.

And, you know what, we could go forever trying to deny personal bias or embellish our credentials to show that we're eminently qualified to discuss it. But this isn't about me. It's not about a personal bias.

It's not about having been experienced at Roman Catholicism or not having experience in Roman Catholicism. It's about what the apostles warned about and what ended up happening. And that's what we're talking about today.

Well, and I'll just go ahead and add to that, that I am not persuaded by you because of a personal bias. And I've said before that I came out of the Roman Catholic Church, and I know that last week I said that.

I also said that I grew up Baptist, and I used to watch Dr. Jack Van Empey late at night. And it might sound contradictory, but my dad's a Roman Catholic. My mom was a Baptist. And my parents actually sent me to a Baptist private school because they were both teachers and they appreciated what the private school was doing.

And so they chose for me to go there. And so as a Roman Catholic coming out of that, while in the private school, I became engrossed in dispensational theology. And eventually I basically stopped calling myself a Roman Catholic, and I basically became a born-again Christian.

And for years I rejected the views that you're talking about because I was coming to the table with my own presuppositions about what the Antichrist was going to look like. And I remember that I had a cousin who said, you know, I believe that the Pope is the Antichrist.

And I immediately rejected it. And I was like, no, this guy's not going to do everything that I saw happen in the movie Left Behind or whatever. And I was like, this guy's not a Nikolai Karpathia or whatever that guy's name is.

And I just absolutely rejected it. And once again, I point back to the Trinity Foundation. We talked about that last week where I read an article by John Robbins, and I started to realize that this is where the Reformers landed.

And so we're going to get into all of that. But this was a view that I actually rejected for a number of years after I became converted. And now I'm absolutely convinced of it. And so we're just going to jump right into where we left off last week.

I believe it was we were looking at the ten horns of the fourth beast and the little horn that comes up and removes three. So Tim, I'm going to ask you to lead us in our discussion if you want to give a recap or just wherever you want to take us.

We'll just give it off to you.

The Thirteen Horns and the Little Horn of Daniel 7

Okay. Well, thanks for that introduction. So this is the second half of the first episode, I suppose, because we ended up last week at the point where the Roman Empire was divided 13 ways. And this matters to us because, as we mentioned last week, when we read in Daniel 7 that the fourth beast had ten horns, and then the little horn arises and has removed three of the horns, the way that has traditionally been read, and it's been read this way for maybe 2 ,000 years or longer, that the little horn is going to take three of the ten horns.

And that's actually something that Daniel never says. He says the little horn comes up among ten, having removed three. And if you look at the text, you'll see that he never actually says that the first horns were a total of ten, and he never says that the little horn removes three of the ten horns.

He says he removes three of the first horns. And the reason that we were able to go back through the text and understand that is because we saw, as we walked through each of the four beasts of Daniel 7, that it was depicted at the conclusion of its reign as an empire just prior to the rise of the next empire.

So we see the lion is after Nebuchadnezzar has been given his reason back, and he stands on two feet like a man, and his heart is given back to him. This is being revealed in the first year of his successor, who ends up being the last king of the Babylonian Empire.

And then the bear is lifted up on one side, and we saw and understood, based on Daniel 8 and our understanding of the two horns of the ram in Daniel 8, that the bear being lifted up on one side was evidence that the Persians are already reigning and the time of the Medes are well behind them.

In other words, it's the end of the reign of the Medo-Persian Empire. And then we saw the Greek Empire was depicted with four heads long after the death of Alexander the Great, who was the first head.

That head is gone, and now there are four remaining based on Daniel 8. We know that it started as one horn, it was broken, four came up in its place. So we end up looking at the leopard of Daniel 7, seeing that the Greek Empire is depicted in its final phase before the rise of the Roman Empire.

And so we get to the Roman Empire, which is the fourth terrible beast, and it has ten horns. And we notice that the next horn that comes up, has removed three, comes up among ten, and that is the next empire on the earth.

It is the fifth empire of Daniel's visions. And so each one is depicted as it stood just before the next empire took over. And what we'll find when we examine history today, we'll find that in the end, the little horn did in fact come up, uprooted three of the thirteen horns, and came up among the remaining ten.

The reason we know that Daniel was aware of, and in fact knew of, thirteen horns in Daniel chapter 7, is because if the little horn of Daniel 7 had removed three of the ten horns, there should have only been seven horns remaining.

And yet what we find in Revelation chapter 17, when the lamb returns, according to the description there, the beast and ten horns have gathered to make war against him. If there had only been ten horns total, and the little horn removed three, because that little horn is the beast of Revelation 13, if there had only been ten, and little horn removed three, then in Revelation chapter 17, we should have seen the beast and seven horns gathered to do battle with the lamb.

But instead there are still ten horns. And this goes back to our discussion on how we approached the text here, is that it has to make sense, it has to be consistent, it has to be logical and coherent, and the only way you can end up with ten horns at the very end when the lamb returns, and the little horn removing three prior to coming up, is for there to have been thirteen horns, and a little horn comes up, removes three, and then comes up among the remaining ten for a total of thirteen horns.

So the reason this is very, very significant to us today, because we concluded the last episode by saying that in the latter part of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was in fact divided thirteen ways, and there was in fact someone who came up and claimed three of those thirteen geographic regions for himself.

And that's the guy we're warned about. And it has been historically missed, because historically people have been looking for a ten-way division of the Roman Empire, and they were thinking, and this is very consistent in the historical record, among the Church Fathers and even among the Reformers, that as soon as the Roman Empire was divided ten ways, that would be the sign that Antichrist was about to rise, and then he would remove three of the ten, and then history would continue just the way it was predicted in Daniel 7 and Revelation.

The reason this was missed is because they were expecting a ten-way division. When a thirteen-way division occurred, nobody took note. And because of that, they missed that there was a guy who came up and claimed three of the thirteen for himself, and came up among the remaining ten.

And that's where we're going to start today. So what happened in history that caused the Roman Empire to be divided thirteen ways, and when that happened, who claimed three of the thirteen dioceses for himself?

And that's where we pick up today. So, what we're going to start with is why the Roman Empire ended up in a place that it had to be divided at all. And it starts in 226 AD, where Rome finds itself facing, Rome the Empire, finds itself facing an enemy to the east, the Sasanian Empire.

They started making incursions in 226 AD, and troubled the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire for centuries beyond. After the Sasanian Empire arose to the east and started troubling Rome, the Roman Empire, from there, the Roman Empire started having internal troubles as well.

Historically, it's been called the Crisis of the Third Century. And it's a period from 235 to 284 AD. And during that period of about fifty years, twenty-seven different men claimed to be emperor of the Roman Empire.

It was a state of continuous civil war. One after another was coming in, taking over Rome, and claiming to be emperor. Now, in 284 AD, Diocletian came to power, and he decided that he needed to reorganize the empire to stop the ceaseless civil wars, because it was going to be the absolute ruination of the Roman Empire, unless somebody did something about it.

So what he did, he decided that the administrative center of the empire could no longer be Rome, the city. And he divided the empire into four separate sections, each one with a capital city. And this is the beginning of the Tetrarchy.

And the four capital cities were split between two Caesars and two Augusti, and the purpose was to make it absolutely impossible for an army to conquer the empire simply by invading a single city. In other words, he removed the vulnerability of the Roman Empire.

It was vulnerable because anybody could march on Rome, and once they marched on Rome, Rome has a new sheriff in town, and then they start all over again. And then the next person comes, and he wants to be in charge of the empire, so he invades Rome.

Well, what Diocletian did was make that impossible. He created four separate capital cities, and it was ruled by four Tetrarchs in the four Tetrarch capitals. So Nicomedia, which is in modern Turkey, Insermium, which is in modern Serbia, Mediolanum, which is modern-day Milan in Italy, and Augusta Trevororum in modern-day Trier in Germany.

Now, each of those four Tetrarch capitals was in charge of three dioceses. So four Tetrarch capitals, each one has three dioceses for a total of 12 dioceses. And this was intended to separate the administrative responsibility of the empire from Rome, placing the administrative responsibility at the four capitals.

So each diocese had a vicarious, or a vicar, and the vicar was responsible for managing the diocese and reporting to his assigned Tetrarch emperor, either a Caesar or an Augustus, depending on which city he was reporting to.

Now, just to give an example, Antioch was the capital city of the Diocese of Oriens, which literally is the Diocese of the East, and that stretched from Libya all the way to Syria. But that capital city had a vicar, or a count, sometimes it's recorded as a count.

That count was responsible for administering the Diocese of the East and reported to his Tetrarch leader. Milan was the capital city of the Diocese of Italy, and this is very important. I want to make sure we understand this.

From the time from about 296 AD, when the reorganization took place, until the latter part of the 4th century, Rome, as a city, was not the capital of the Diocese of Italy. It's very important to notice that.

Milan was the capital city of the Diocese of Italy, and the vicar of Italy resided in and ruled from Milan, and Milan was also one of the Tetrarch capitals. Now what's interesting about this, if you think about the way the Roman Empire was divided under Diocletian, is that there were top-tier metropolises, or metropoli, like Sirmium, Milan, Trier, and Nicomedia.

Then there were second-tier metropoli that were the capital cities of the respective dioceses, like Antioch and Milan. Rome was granted titular honors, and in fact had a vicar of its own who administered a few suburbs of the city of Rome.

In fact, we see this reflected in the earliest Latin version of the Canons of Nicaea, where it is shown that the bishop of Rome is only responsible for a few suburbs adjacent to the city. He's not actually in charge of the entire diocese.

What's very interesting over this period is we see a correlation between what happens in the administration of the empire in the civil sense and also the administration of the empire in the ecclesiastical sense, where the bishops who resided in the diocesan capitals, the metropolises of the diocese, ended up being very, very prominent.

So the bishop of Antioch was quite prominent. The bishop of Milan was quite prominent. And in fact, the bishop of Rome was relegated to a third-tier metropolis when it came to how the total empire was administered from an ecclesiastical perspective.

So the point of emphasizing that, it is Milan, not Rome, that is the capital city of the Diocese of Italy. And this information is recorded for us in what's called the Latriculus Veronensis. It is simply an administrative document from the early part of the 4th century showing that Diocletian had divided the empire into 12 geographic units.

Now, over the course of the next century, the Tetrarchy faded away. And there were several administrative changes and reorganizations that took place. Some dioceses were combined, others were split in two, and the end result was a 13-way division of the Roman Empire.

And that is recorded for us in what's called the Notitia Dignitatum from the latter part of the 4th century, and it shows 13 dioceses as the final division of the Roman Empire. And this is a point that's worth emphasizing.

Historically, people who are trying to understand Daniel have been looking for a 10-way division of the Roman Empire. This process of Diocletian dividing the Roman Empire into 12, and then over the course of the next century it being reorganized as some dioceses are combined, others are split for a final result of 13 dioceses.

Nobody would have taken notice because they were looking for a 10-way split. And so the 13-way division actually occurs and nobody stands up and takes notice. And the reason was is that they had not harmonized Daniel 7 with Revelation 17.

Daniel 7 says that there were 10 horns and a little horn came up who had removed 3. And in Revelation 17 it says the lamb returns and the beast and 10 horns, not 7, have to make war with him. And that shows that Daniel knew about 13 horns.

He knew the little horn had removed 3 of the first horns, which were 13, leaving 10 because each beast in Daniel 7 is shown just before the next empire rises up. And it turns out that 3 of those horns or 3 of those dioceses had been basically aggregated by a single entity just before the Roman Empire handed off the administration of the empire to the successor.

And so I want to emphasize that this 13-way division can actually be pinpointed in history to a single decade between 373 and 383 AD. And as late as 373 AD the Roman province of Egypt was still located within the civil diocese of Orians.

And so Alexandria was actually a lower tier city within the diocese of the east, which was administered from Antioch. But by 383 AD we have a Roman communication making formal reference to the diocese of Egypt because the diocese of Egypt had been created by splitting the diocese of the east in two.

And so you have the final division of the Roman Empire 13 ways between 373 and 383 AD with Egypt being administered from Alexandria, the diocese of the east being administered from Antioch, and the diocese of Italy being administered from Milan.

Okay?

So that final 13-way division of the empire happened at the latter part of the 4th century. Now, students of church history will also notice that a very important church council took place during the same time period.

And that was the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. The church at Constantinople had called a council and in the third canon of the Council of Constantinople they declared that because Constantinople is New Rome the Bishop of Constantinople is to enjoy the privileges of honor after the Bishop of Rome.

Now, this again, the reason that it even declares the canon even addresses the issue of New Rome is because the administrative capital of the empire had shifted. And so, having risen in prominence by the end of the 4th century, Constantinople dared to claim that it had privileges of honor like that, like the Bishop of Rome, and possibly second only to the Bishop of Rome.

Well, that created a bit of a stir in Rome and Rome responded with a council the next year. And this is the point at which Roman Catholicism rebuffs Constantinople for claiming that it is equal with Rome or second only to Rome in the empire.

And the Bishop of Rome responds saying that only the three C's of Peter can claim that privilege and honor and among them Rome is the first. Okay, so this is the response of the Council of Rome in 382 A .D., the following year.

And this is basically a rebuttal and basically a rebuffing of the Church at Constantinople for thinking above its station, so to speak. So, here's what the Council of Rome said.

It says,.

We have also thought necessary to say although the universal Catholic Church diffused throughout the world is the single bride of Christ. However, the Holy Roman Church is given first place by the rest of the churches without the need for a synodical decision but from the voice of the Lord our Savior in the gospel obtained primacy.

That is, citing the words of the gospel is that you are Peter and upon this rock I shall build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So, here the Council of Rome, I'm speaking parathetically, of course, the Council of Rome is saying, hey, Rome enjoys its prominence because the Lord said he would build his church upon Peter.

Okay?

So, continuing now with the Council of Rome,.

It says,.

Therefore, first is the seat at the Roman Church of the Apostle Peter having no spot or wrinkle or any other defect. However, the second place was given in the name of Blessed Peter to Mark, his disciple and gospel writer at Alexandria and who himself wrote down the word of truth directed by Peter the Apostle in Egypt and gloriously consummated his life in martyrdom.

Indeed, the third place is held at Antioch of the most blessed and honorable Apostle Peter who lived there before he came to Roma and where first the name of the new race of the Christians was heard.

Okay?

So, he's using the Latin term for Rome which is Roma. And notice what was said at that council and this is 382 A .D. It's right smack dab in the middle of this section between 373 and 383 A .D. that Constantinople was claiming to be equal or second in prominence to Rome and Rome responds and says, No, Jesus said he would found his church on Peter and Peter came to Rome and died here and Peter sent his disciple Mark to Alexandria and Peter went to Antioch which is the place where people were first called Christians and therefore the seat of authority in the church is possessed by the seeds of Peter, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch.

Now, in the next century, a couple centuries later actually Pope Gregory the Great described these Petrine Seas and when I say the Petrine Seas it basically means literally the seats of Peter. He described them as a single entity claiming that they were in fact a sea of one and he recites the thinking of the Council of Rome in 382.

He says,.

Wherefore, though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself, the sea of the prince of the apostles alone has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the sea of one.

For he himself exalted the sea of Rome in which he deigned even to rest and end the present life. He himself adored the sea of Alexandria to which he sent his disciple Mark as evangelist. He himself established the sea of Antioch in which, though he was to leave it, he sat for seven years.

It is the sea of one and one sea over which by divine authority three bishops now preside. That's from Gregory the Great, Book 7, Epistle 40 to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria. So here the Bishop of Rome is saying there are three bishops who rule jointly the Bishop of Rome owning the preeminence all three of them being a sea of one because they all trace from Peter and therefore the church is ruled by a sea of one which in fact in three places is a sea of one all three of which trace themselves to Peter in some way.

And this is not just an ancient doctrine that has long since been forsaken by the church. Pope Benedict in his book, Pope Benedict XVI he confirmed Rome's claim to continuity through Petrine succession and made reference to those same Petrine seas.

He says it was to be a written record of the continuity of apostolic succession which was concentrated in the three Petrine seas Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria among which Rome as the site of Peter's martyrdom was in turn preeminent and truly normative.

That's from his book Called to Communion the Petrine Succession in Rome that's from that chapter. So here we have a situation where the Roman Empire we have narrowed down a single decade when the Roman Empire was divided 13 ways based on our understanding of Daniel chapter 7 this was the point in time when we should take notice we should identify someone who raises himself up and claims three of them what we have seen is that the Roman Bishop claimed as sitting in the sea of Peter at Rome he ruled over the entire church along with the Bishop who sat in Alexandria and the Bishop who sat in Antioch and what we've noticed and this will become significant in just a moment Alexandria of course by then was the metropolis of the Diocese of Egypt.

Antioch of course was the metropolis of the Diocese of the East but Rome wasn't really the metropolis of the Diocese of Italy. Milan was and we're going to in a few minutes walk through how the Roman Bishop ended up subsuming the three capital cities of the Diocese of Italy, Egypt, and the East under himself in order to establish that sea of one thus claiming three of the thirteen dioceses of the Roman Empire and rising up and ruling among the remaining ten so are you with me so far Tim?

Yeah it's a lot of good stuff right there. I'm going to have to push rewind and listen to that again. I just want to remind everybody this is some heavy stuff but Tim has also written an article on this on his blog whitehorseblog .com.

The article that we're referring to is titled A Sea of One. So you can just go to the search column and type in A Sea of One. And then another article which I think might be of interest. We referenced a point earlier in which Tim was saying that this has been missed.

And I think that this article written by Tim is also of interest. It's titled What the Fathers Feared Most and so go ahead and check out that article. The fathers feared that they might miss the Antichrist coming and he does a great job of documenting that from history.

So yeah I'm with you. I've gone through this stuff before so that's just for our listeners to hang in there with us. And really Tim there's really nothing that I can add to what you're saying so I'm just going to get out of the way so that way you can continue on.

Roman Catholicism as a Civil Power in the Late Fourth Century

Okay so well this is a lot of interesting information and I hope people can digest it. Perhaps they'll have to listen to it a few times. The notes and other information. Basically the essence of the historical documentation for all this can be found on the blog under the various articles.

But let's address two important issues here the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 is to assume civil power. All the beasts that we have seen in Daniel chapter 7 has civil power. The Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire ends up being fragmented based on our harmonization of Daniel 7 and Daniel in Revelation 17 we understand that there were in fact 13 horns to start three of them were subsumed under a single little horn which came up among the remaining ten.

But that little horn is supposed to take on civil power and authority. So we have to ask when did Roman Catholicism become a civil power? Now in addition to three horns being uprooted and in this case right now we're talking about the three horns of the Diocese of Italy Egypt and the East.

Daniel chapter 7 also says that this little horn will subdue three kings and if the bishop of Rome had in fact been the bishop of the Diocese of Italy then we would have a problem because he doesn't really uproot himself or subdue himself because he's basically the king of that diocese.

What we'll find when we go through our analysis of how Roman Catholicism, particularly the pope at Rome, the bishop at Rome subdued three kings. We'll walk through Milan, Alexandria, and Antioch and show how each one in succession had a primacy of which Rome would be jealous and therefore Rome had to remove it from the equation and we're going to walk through that in a second but I think something that will be very interesting to our listeners is that this is about the time this latter part of the 4th century is about the time that the bishops of the empire began to take on increasing civil responsibilities and this is what led them to become a civil power to be reckoned with throughout the empire.

And what we find is by the end of the 4th century the whole empire is basically being ruled by monks and bishops and that's the civil power that we were supposed to watch out for because this little horn in Daniel chapter 7 was going to come up and take civil power and so we're going to look at both of those things when did Roman Catholicism become a civil power and when did Roman Catholicism subdue three kings.