The Seed Of The Woman

It rises out of the sea of people - Out of the Book: "The Book of Revelation - In Thirty-Five Interesting Lectures"

This beast, or, compared with the kingdom of God, savage and unnatural ruling power, represents as a whole the work started by "the old serpent" when he led our first parents away from God's Word. Thereby the door to the paradisiacal kingdom was closed and a new ruling power, with a development pertain­ing to it, was started on the earth that God had cursed. Through the devastating work of the flood, this domain received, however, a hard blow, and it required nearly three hundred years this side of the flood before it had regained power. It was Canaan, the cursed son of Noah (see Gen. 9:25-27), who then laid the founda­tion of the beastly kingdom. His son Ham, his son and grandson, Nimrod, commenced the brick creation, which opened the door to the domain of oppression where the children of Shem ever since have been obliged to slave.

The Creator of heaven and earth prepared a paradisiacal kingdom for man, which, had man adhered to God's Word, would have spread itself under divine blessing over the face of the earth, in the proportion the human family had increased. God made man out of the dust of the ground, imparting to him faculties of understanding and development, and commanding him to have dominion to rule over and keep the earth subject to himself by means of his will power. Because of man's ability to develop, the paradisiacal kingdom would have extended in accordance with the increase of the family.

In opposition to this command, the seed of Ham, the Chal­deans, begin to build their Babilu—the kingdom, or gates of Bel, by taking clay of the earth and making brick, using it for building the tower of Babel — Bel's church — then continuing building walls and towers until the great city of Babylon and other cities are rising in power on the earth. In order to defend their walls and towers against attacking people, people they had wronged through their oppressive power, they established militarism — with spears and swords not only to defend their government and kingdom, but to attack weaker peoples and rob from them their land and property — for violence instead of the Word of God became the ruling power.

This is the kingdom of the beast, to this very day controlling the earth, and through the ages it has increased and branched out, so that now, in its complete form and according to the prophetic word, it represents a savage and unnatural beast, having seven heads and ten horns.

The heads signify principal powers which successively have governed this Chaldean creation. Seven such principal powers have arisen. 1) The Babylonian; 2) the Medio-Persian; 3) the Grecian; 4) the Roman; 5) the Papal; 6) the Protestant; and 7) the Protestant-Catholic. The last is now under formation, and anyone whose eyes are opened, so that he can discern the wonderful joining process of the two formerly contesting and irreconcilable elements, can now see how from time to time they (Protestantism and Catholicism) gradually merge into one.

The seventh head is the most powerful, and to this the following prophecy of the Lord has reference: "And her seed (the seed of the woman) ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15.) The seed is driven by the dragon till it can come no farther, then it turns about and bruises the serpent's head — the head of heads, which the prophetic number seven decides to be the seventh in order of succession.

The prophet Daniel saw the same beast, and he defines the first four principal powers thus: "The first was like 'a lion, and had eagle's wings." Both the lion and the eagle are masters over the beasts of prey. This corresponds to the voracious nature of Babylon in subjugating under itself the land and the people. The second was like to a bear, and it had three ribs in its mouth, between the teeth. This was Medio-Persia, which in its arrogant feeling crushed the weaker nations under itself, and became, after Babylon, which it had conquered, the second universal kingdom on the earth. The third was like a leopard — the cannibal. This was Greece, which through Alexander the Great became the third world power in succession. The fourth was the Roman kingdom, which, in a comparatively short time, by means of its ferocious military power crushed beneath itself the whole world. This principal power, governing the great body of the beast, cannot be compared in voracity and blood­thirstiness to any beast in the world of nature. The prophet says: "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 from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns." (Dan. 7: 7.)

This is the dreadful beast the Revelator sees and describes when he says concerning its form that, it was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. The military power of Rome subjugated the preceding powers; the state absorbed and incorporated under its dominion the whole creation the other powers had produced, hence the attributes and voracity of all the preceding beasts entered into this organization. The great body of the beast was completed under this principal power, and it controlled so fully that Rome in all its departments developed as a military state. The civil power was transformed to a martial one, which by means of military laws and rules of regulation governed the provinces under its authority. All power was vested in the emperor, and he was the head of the military power. As a result of this power taken from the people, the ten horns on the beast arose — ten representations of authority developed on the body of the beast.

It pleased the Emperor Constantine to divide the Roman empire into ten provinces, and these he distributed among his ten generals as vassalages, and, as long as the generals filled their offices as leaders of the army, they were his vassals. He denom­inated them dukes, a title inherited from father to son, and thus the foundation was laid to the division of the Roman empire into the separate kingdoms which later arose from the vassalages. Among others, England remains to this day as a ducal state with its crowned head. The dukes originate from Constantine's designation of the highest officers in the army.