All Roads Lead from RomeIt is said that “all roads lead to Rome.” But in the great contest between the Lamb and the sea beast with its kings (6:15-16; 19:11-21), the paths of conflict and of the “DNA strands” making up the commercial military corporation all lead from Rome.
This presents us a dual story line behind the rise and final fall of the global corporation now unfolding. The first is the spiritual story of the Lamb’s direct conflict with Rome. The second is the actual earth history of the modern corporation traceable back to Rome. In this section we begin with the spiritual story.
The Lamb vs. the Head of Rome
It is no accident that, of the seven heads of the beast John saw, the one in earthly force at his time was that of Rome, ie, the Roman Empire. As noted before, the prince of Rome succeeded the princes of Persia and Greece which God’s angel fought in Daniel’s time.
But John’s vision is given during Rome’s reign. For this is the head that, in the fullness of that very time, the Incarnate Lamb central to John’s revelation has just fought in the manifest world. The Lamb’s direct challenge of Rome’s prince is a world game changer like no other pre-incarnate contest with any earlier head.
This first earthly face off with Rome at Calvary was predestined from earth’s beginning. In the original Genesis 3:15 foretelling, the Lord God issues His edict against the serpent and his beastly seed:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He will bruise your head and you will bruise His heel.
Fulfilling this edict, the serpent’s Roman head indeed bruised the Lamb’s “heel” at Jerusalem via its puppet procurator Pontius Pilate. The Lamb dies and descends to the grave. The nether Prince of Rome is jubilant!
The Fatal Wounding of Rome’s Head
Nevertheless, in the only scripture testifying to the bruising of a satanic head since Genesis 3, John opaquely reports the Lamb’s reverse wounding of Rome’s head—a wounding accomplished by the powerful quick edge of His Word. Here, in context, is how it goes down:
1:16 In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; ….. 17 …And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, 18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. 5:6 And I saw between the throne … and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, …. 13:3 [And] I saw one of [the beast’s] heads as if it had been slain,… 14 … the beast who had the wound of the sword…
At the start of the vision, John had first met this One with the saber sharp Voice, whom he later sees as the “Lamb as if slain.” Then still later, in mirror language, John sees the head of the beast “as if it had been slain” by “the sword.” This sword is none other than the sword of the Lamb—the same sword in fact by which the Lamb will yet conduct his final war with the armies of the beast (19:20-21).
But it is here in the chapter 13 wounding of the head of Rome, that we witness the long awaited fulfilment of the Lord God’s original edict to the serpent. The Gen. 3:15 reciprocation is at last completed!
But if so, then why is the vision of this Roman head wound by the Lamb so veiled? Why so prophetically muted?
The origin of the wound is muted because the wounding actually occurs under the surface of the history. It happens “under water,” down in the abyss, hidden from human view, before the beast has surfaced in history. Remember that when John sees this, the sea beast still has yet to “ascend from the Abyss” to be fully manifest on the earth. Surface history lags in revealing the results and effects of netherworld conflict. (It would yet be over 400 years before the evidentiary fall of Rome.) This is because spiritual salvation always precedes natural salvation. It is how all salvation functions.
Though shrouded in the vision, the Lamb’s underground wound to the beast’s head at Rome is shown us in the combined words of Paul and Peter following Calvary:
Eph. 4:8 Therefore it says, "When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives…..”9 Now this expression, "He ascended," what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? Col. 2:15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him— I Pt. 3:19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient…
See how that by proclamation, the sword of the Lamb’s voice resounds throughout hell upon his descent to the grave! In this place He openly declares His victory over the nether principalities and powers. And it is thus here where His Voice fatally slices the prince at Rome lately responsible for His crucifixion.
Earth’s Incipient Salvation from Military Commercial Corporatism
The Lamb’s triumphal subterranean declaration through the cross secured the release of His captives from the grip of the netherworld, including from its earthside artificial entities still to ascend in history. This release has continued forward to all generations through the preaching of the true identity-severing gospel. Listen to Paul’s greater description of this deliverance:
Col. 2:13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
We understand being saved from our sins as transgressions. But what is this canceling of “the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us”? What certificate? What debt? What decrees?
Hear this in prophetic context of all the Lord has shown us about the sea beast. This debt canceling is not just of our spiritual sins. And it is not just about the Mosaic Law (Paul’s letter was written to Gentiles who were never under that law.) In this cancellation, Paul is describing no less than the keys to freedom from death and hell’s corporatist prison—keys now held by the Lamb.
This debt certificate and its decrees are legal terms referencing hostile netherworld intent and action against humanity exercised by the power of their fictional corporations already operating on the earth (what the world refers to as "hostile corporate takeover")! This is all court terminology as effected every day upon a damned society. We are talking about decrees relating to commercial debt and corporate governmental control. We are talking about the legal decrees of unjust courts usurped by commercial law accomplishing theft by deception of human identity and labor every day around the clock!
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The short of all this is that Christ’s deadly undersea shout against the satanic head of Rome secured spiritual life and freedom for us out from under the edicts of principality-infested corporations, however they were still to ascend to the end of the age.
By His reverse wounding of Rome’s head, the Lamb bought our salvation from the beast in all the generations to His Return, securing the release of a People from the prison of the incorporated netherworld governance. This wounding paved the way for all future deliverance to be obtained by the Lamb’s later followers unto the final climactic victory over and destruction of the beast.
Thus, this primary fulfilling of Gen. 3:15, though not the only prophetic fulfillment of what John saw here, holds incalculable fundamental meaning for those of us who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb shed at Pilate’s hand.
The Beast Rises Again?
As powerful as His blow was, the Lamb’s bruising of the beast’s Roman head was not to be the immediately manifest end of the global story! Had it been so, the times of the Gentiles would have suddenly come to an end there and then. But as John tells us, and in agreement with Daniel’s earlier visions, the beast was yet to defy that crushing to ascend forth in its own greater fullness from the abyss:
13:3 I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast; 14 … the [sea] beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.
See how we are following a set of counterpoint actions in the war between the Lamb and the beast since Calvary—point matched by point:
First, the Lamb is slain by the beast.
Yet, the head of the beast is then slain by the Lamb, fulfilling Gen. 3:15.
Then the Lamb rises again.
Yet, the head of Rome is then healed and upon the back of the beast rises again thereby…
awaiting final contest displaying the ultimate victory of the Lamb and His army over the entire beast.
It is an indescribably long and intense world history that follows Calvary between the Lamb’s resurrection to glory and the anti-resurrection of the beast in its slow ascent to completely cover the earth. And as we will go on to see, it is the “healing” of this head of Rome through the reinvestment of new artificial Roman corporate life into the cultures of the world that gives the global beast its ultimate drawing power in the end times—long after the original empire’s manifest fall in 476 AD.
The Mandate to Overcome
But why was this anti-resurrection to be and to become such as it is now in our day—threatening earth’s imminent takeover by military-backed commercial corporatism? Why was not and could not the Lamb’s heroic triumph spell the end of this nether force upon the earth right there and then? Why must He have to wait under the words, “Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet”? Why the “until” spanning now two milleniums?
This delay through the beast’s anti-resurrection has been allowed for the sake of developing the Lamb’s bride—a development requiring the full ages of these “last days” to form a co-equally fit body to be joined to the Head, one who must replicate His same victory over the beast. This is the connection between our remaining struggle today and the Lamb’s victory 2000 years ago.
We must understand that the deliverance purchased 2000 years ago against Rome is one that all the body must first embrace by overcoming faith before it ever appears in final fact on the earth. It is the same as when we confess before seeing it “by His stripes we are healed.” It is to such faith every generation in the development since Calvary has been called, for whose sake John’s vision was given--and why therefore no generation has yet seen it.
While on this topic of overcoming faith, let’s especially point out how that by His underground victory, the Lamb actually accomplished everything Israel had wanted from Him in desiring freedom from Rome. Yet all they could understand was what they could see. The Lamb knew however that, like everything else in the Father’s harvest-based patterns, the only way to destroy Rome and all beastly manifestations to come was at its hidden nether world source, as a “seed” victory—long before its “much fruit” was ever to be seen on earth’s surface in the ages to come (Jn. 12:24).
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So it is that this rising of the beast post Calvary sets the stage for all the overcoming John says is required of all future generation saints through the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, as this netherworld power and presence mushrooms on history’s surface—the story to be detailed in our next section. As such, and as we shall see, the earthly presence of the corporate sea beast begins in earnest as a Roman creation. It is a Roman beast.
Following then is the little known 2500 year story of the satanically inspired “artificial person” known as the legal corporation, its slow but steady resurrected rise to world dominion through commercial sea law in our times, now in sight of branding all men with its trademarked NAME.
Next: Part VI
(This series remains under construction and is to be continued at a future time.....)
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org8/17
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Page updated August 27, 2018
