THE BROODING PRESENCE OF THE IMAGE TO THE BEAST

The United States of America is irrevocably set on the course to become a theocracy in full conformity with the prophecy of Rev. 13:14-18. Anyone who doubts that the Image to the Beast is already formed and has begun to speak is sadly mistaken, and evidently not paying close attention to the march of events. The following report is more revealing evidence of what is taking place:-

From [I]@yahoo.com:

57% Of Republicans Say Dismantle Constitution And Make Christianity National Religion

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) national survey conducted between February 20th and February 22nd of Republican voters, found that an astonishing 57 percent of Republicans want to dismantle the Constitution, and establish Christianity as the official national religion. Only 30 percent oppose making Christianity the national religion.

Although the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” GOP voters want to cast aside that provision and impose Christianity as the official American religion.

While a number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the United States into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s crosstabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among Mike Huckabee (94 percent), Rick Perry (83 percent), and Ben Carson (78 percent) supporters.

It is such abysmal ignorance of what is at the heart of the American Constitution, (or deliberate disregard of it by the propagandists who have been set on destroying the separation of church and state from the very beginning,) that has laid the foundation for the final deadly theocracy predicted in Rev. 13. It should be a matter of profound embarrassment to Seventh-day Adventists that Ben Carson professes to be a member of the faith.

Elder Wm. H. Grotheer pointed out during his lifetime that exegetically Rev. 13:14 points to the making of an image to the beast by a democratic electoral process. It is worthy of note that the context clearly points to the process being initiated by leaders of the nation, and not by grassroots demand of the people. The minds of the electorate would be conditioned to respond positively to the proposition. This is precisely what has happened. The book Facts of Faith by Christian Edwardson contains a chapter on the Jesuits, in which the author provides a well-documented history of this religious order, and points to danger of their being allowed to carry on their work without hindrance in the United States. In the chapter titled Making America Catholic he documents how well advanced this project of the Church of Rome already was when his book was published in 1943. Read the chapter for yourselves and understand how the foundation was laid by the Roman Catholics, and the Jesuits in particular, for the Image to Beast to be formed in the United States of America.

The prophecies of Rev. 13:11-18 are confirmed by the march of prophetic events.

With Seventh-day Adventists like Ben Carson in the forefront, it is also a well- known fact that large numbers of SDAs have been voting Republican in recent elections precisely because they consciously or unconsciously have been captivated by the new popularity of religion in politics. There is ample literature which proves that this contradicts the basis on which this nation was founded, of which the following are two:

The first is a scholarly essay so tightly reasoned that it seems a travesty to select only some passages for quotation. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this web page this is unavoidable. For this reason the visitor to this page is urged to read the entire essay which commendably is published by the "Church State Council, a religious liberty ministry of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists" -

Religious Pluralism and America's Christian Nation Debate

It can be said that how a nation interprets its own historical development—or tells its national story in the minds and hearts of its people—will determine its ultimate success or failure. This is how nations are sustained and often how revolutionary convulsions are born. Indeed, as George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”[4]

This is no less true in the United States today where the greatest threat to our constitutional system comes from the temptation of a few overzealous souls to reinterpret our nation's constitutional history in a way that suits their own desire for political power.

For example, encouraged by their popular following on radio and television, there has been a plethora of politically and religiously motivated individuals challenging America’s well-researched and articulated constitutional history. Since the late 1980’s, beginning with the widely sold video and DVD productions by David Barton of Wallbuilders, Inc.—and advocated by very powerful and persuasive spin doctors like Newt Gingrich [Roman Catholic convert,] Dr. D. James Kennedy, Judge Roy Moore, and Attorney Jay Sekulow—there has been an enormous amount of money, time, and energy put into blurring the distinction between the Puritan and Constitutional founding periods. This has caused many unwary American citizens to believe that the United States Government was specifically intended by our nation’s Founders to be constituted on the basis of Christianity and literal Scriptural commands.

However, at the heart of this revolutionary tactic is the desire for extraordinary political power, not an objective pursuit of truth. An honest examination of history will not advance their interests. Instead, they are subtly, and quite successfully, rewriting America's constitutional history in the minds and hearts of the people, particularly among evangelical Christians who are the most vulnerable. They hope by reinterpreting and rewriting the Constitution, to establish the Christian Constitution and Christian State, or Government, they have always cherished. Recognizing that they may end up falling short of rewriting the Constitution, they have even contemplated what it would take to influence “We the people” to abolish it altogether in a special edition of Richard John Neuhaus’ First Things journal (a leading Catholic journal) back in 1996.

One of the means that has been employed has been the proposal of so-called Constitution Reform Acts at the state level, including a Pledge of Allegiance Act at the federal level. These acts are specifically worded in a way that would bar state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court, from hearing cases involving acts of religious expression in the public square that are sponsored by the government, thus giving state legislative bodies and the U.S. Congress a blank check to pass whatever the popular will of the people wanted. This in turn would effectively limit courts from interpreting the Constitution over an entire realm of jurisprudence—namely church-state and religious liberty case law. This would represent a dangerous precedent and a major constitutional revolution with potentially devastating consequences to our country's constitutional separation of powers, its system of checks and balances, and the constitutional separation of church and state based on the no establishment provision of the First Amendment. That is the path that historical revisionists seek to take America.

The Christian Nation Debate

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 71% percent of Americans consider the United States a “Christian nation.”[5]

But in what manner is the United States a Christian nation? According to the same Pew Research poll, secularism and atheism are on the decline while 82% percent of Americans claim to be Christian. Of this 82% percent cited by the Pew Research Center, 25% percent are conservative evangelical Catholics and 29% percent are evangelical Protestants. This means that 54% percent are conservative evangelical Christians, leaving approximately 28% percent in the mainline liberal Protestant churches. All other people of faith make up 9% percent (i.e., Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.). The remaining 8 to 9% percent range from secularists with no particular antagonism to institutional forms of religion, to atheists, who make up less than 2% percent of the American population.[6]

From this, one could reasonably conclude that demographically and culturally America remains a predominantly Christian nation in the midst of a competitive and diverse religious landscape. But it also represents a cultural divide where today, pitched struggles over the proper place of religion in the public square—whether it be over the celebration of Christmas in public venues, God in the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in public schools, the legality and propriety of same-sex marriage, courthouse displays of the Ten Commandments, and the status of biological evolution in education (i.e., the teaching of Creationism or Intelligent Design along side evolution)—spill rivers of ink and spawn endless litigation. But this is not all: abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research are hotly debated. Popular TV and radio talk show host Bill O’Reilly [Roman Catholic] is a frequent agitator of these conflicts, encouraging America’s Christian traditionalists—whom he calls “cultural warriors”—to fight against secular liberalism.

There are some interesting paragraphs which seem to be informative on the raging subject of same-sex rights. There is a fine line between recognizing and enforcing the civil rights of individuals and invading the religious liberty of those of us who are guided by the Bible's condemnation of aberrant lusts and sexual practices:

A few years ago, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in a speech at the University of Northern Ireland, argued that America’s Constitutional Founders understood the potential for either extreme to strangle its experiment in freedom and the development of a democratic form of government. She said that today it is no different: “The religious zealot and the theocrat frighten us in part because we understand only too well their basic impulse. No less frightening is the totalitarian atheist who aspires to a society in which the exercise of religion has no place.”[8] . . .

The First Amendment, in part, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” But today, many evangelical Christians seek to reinterpret the no Establishment provision separating Church and State in ways that would require government to financially support their institutions and enforce their religious dogmas in the public square so as to solve the moral ills of the nation. They seek to restore America to a time—a pre-constitutional period—in which government directly supported the church, and thus by default established it. In this case, instead of establishing a particular Christian faith or creed or denomination, it seeks to establish Christianity and its values as a whole.

But there are others, mostly on the Left, who seek to marginalize the Free Exercise of Religion in favor of placing a higher level of protection on lifestyles that are not viewed favorably by a society that is predominantly made up of moral and social traditionalists (i.e., evangelical Christians), specifically when it is perceived that any proposed religious freedom legislation competes with same-sex rights.[10]

Both of these approaches are unnecessarily divisive and extremely harmful to our nation’s constitutional health. However, the Nation’s Founders anticipated this tension, creating an internal check and balance within the very wording of the First Amendment in order to prevent America from being overrun by either extreme in the great church-state debate (a puritanical vs. godless society). Remove this balancing safeguard and I believe America’s constitutional guarantees will be lost, and with it its civil and religious freedoms.

Same-sex rights and abortion are issues which threaten to bind together true Bible Christians with Rome and Romanized apostate Protestants. It is well to keep in mind the inspired statement of Ellen G. White:

I have been shown that Satan has not been stupid and careless these many years, since his fall, but has been learning. He has grown more artful. His plans are laid deeper, and are more covered with a religious garment to hide their deformity. The power of Satan now to tempt and deceive is ten-fold greater than it was in the days of the apostles. His power has increased, and it will increase, until it is taken away. (2 SG, p. 277; emphasis supplied.)

So thorough is the essay above, that the following article is almost superfluous. However, the passages quoted merit the attention of the reader:

Dispelling the myth of a ‘Christian nation’

Religious divisions among the many Protestant sects in 18th century America were deep and abiding. Anglicans, Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists and many others fought bitterly over what it meant to be “Christian” although almost all could agree that “Papists” (Roman Catholics) were followers of the anti-Christ.

In other words, religious diversity at America’s founding made a necessity of religious freedom because no one group had the power or the numbers to impose its version of true faith Christian or otherwise on all others.

It is worth remembering, however, that principles as much as practical politics inspired many of our founders to define religious freedom as requiring no establishment of religion.

Roger Williams, to cite the earliest and best example, founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636 out of his conviction that only by erecting a “wall or hedge of separation” between the “garden of the church” and “the wilderness of the world” would it be possible to protect liberty of conscience as required by God.

Religious freedom, Williams argued, is itself a Christian principle.

Any attempt to establish a Christian nation, therefore, always has been and always will be unjust, dangerous and profoundly un-Christian.

Rejection of the "Christian principle" is now pervasive in the body politic of the United States. The end result is predicted in Rev. 13.