Rome’s Transformation: From Pagan Empire to the Healed Head

7th Semester / Week 4

As with each study of Revelation, we begin by grounding ourselves in the spirit Christ commanded—marked by love (John 13:34–35), peacefully submitting to governing authorities (Romans 13:1–2), and reserving all vengeance for God alone (Romans 12:19). Only such a posture prepares us to study the solemn movements of history that the Lord Himself has unfolded across the ages.

Revelation speaks to us of a long, carefully governed movement of God’s providence through nations, kings, churches, and empires—unfolding history according to His redemptive purposes. If we’re to understand the central conflict that shapes nearly the entire middle portion of Revelation, we must first walk through one of the most important transitions in human history: the transformation of Rome—a transformation Scripture itself anticipates and explains.

The Pagan Empire Foretold to Change

For nearly six centuries before Christ, the Roman Empire stretched its shadow across the world. It conquered lands, enforced its laws and stamped its character on the world it ruled. This was the empire Paul lived under, Peter wrote from, and John suffered beneath while receiving Revelation. It crucified the Messiah, persecuted the apostles, and for centuries embodied the most formidable civil power the world had ever known.

Yet Scripture foretold Rome would not remain as it was. Daniel’s great fourth beast—the iron empire—would fracture into ten parts, and from among them a “little horn” would arise, marked by spiritual pride, political power, and blasphemous claims. Revelation continues this same prophetic thread, describing a Beast whose authority extends beyond political control into spiritual dominion, moral influence, and religious deceit. And standing between Daniel’s beast and John’s beast is Paul’s restrainer—the force holding back the rise of the man of lawlessness.

The Deadly Wound and the Restrainer Removed

In our previous study we watched pagan Rome unravel under the seal judgments, and in AD 476 the Western Roman Empire finally fell—the sixth form of Roman government, the line of Caesars, which was brought to its historical end. Revelation 13 identifies this collapse as the “deadly wound”—a real and decisive blow to Rome’s political head. But Scripture also foretold that this wound would one day be healed, and that a revived form of Rome would emerge not as an empire of soldiers, but as an empire of priests—exercising dominion through doctrine, worship, and conscience.

To understand that healing, we must remember the pattern of Rome’s civil history. Roman writers—Tacitus, Livy, Plutarch—identified seven distinct forms of Roman government: kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, military tribunes, pagan emperors, and Christian emperors. Early Christians were well acquainted with this framework. When John wrote that five heads had fallen, one existed, and another was yet to come, believers in the first century would have immediately recognized the sixth form—the Caesars—under whom they themselves lived.

For the earliest theologians, the identity of the restrainer was no mystery. Because Paul acknowledged in Scripture that he had already explained the precise identity of the restrainer to the Thessalonians, early Christian writers testified that the restraining force was the pagan Roman Empire. Its civil order, military strength, and imperial unity held back the rise of the Church-based tyranny foretold in Scripture. Tertullian wrote that Rome was “the obstacle” preventing Antichrist’s appearance. Chrysostom observed that Paul spoke “covertly” because naming Rome explicitly would have seemed treasonous. Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Lactantius, Ambrose, and Jerome all affirmed the same conviction: Rome restrained.

This ancient testimony matters because it shows that the fall of pagan Rome was not merely geopolitical—it was prophetic. When the empire collapsed and its Western territory fractured into ten kingdoms, early Christians believed they were witnessing the stage being set for the next major act of redemptive history.

As pagan Rome fell, another Rome began to rise from its ruins—altered in form but not ambition.

From Persecutor to Protector: Rome’s Christian Turn

Here we reach the heart of our study: the transformation of Rome from a persecuting pagan empire into a Church-based power so enduring that it became the “healed head,” a revived form of Roman dominion, masquerading in Christian form. This transformation unfolded gradually—first faint, then unmistakable and eventually overwhelming.

To see how this transformation took shape, we must begin with the empire’s dramatic shift toward Christianity. Up to the early fourth century, Rome had been indisputably pagan. The emperor was both political ruler and pontifex maximus—the earthly head of Jupiter’s worship. The city teemed with temples to Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Diana, and a host of lesser gods. To refuse emperor worship was treason. Christians suffered under a power that saw itself as the earthly expression of divine authority—a power that demanded allegiance and enforced worship.

But the unexpected happened. The empire that had slain the martyrs bowed to their faith. Persecution gave way to toleration; toleration gave way to favor; and favor eventually gave way to Christianity becoming the official faith of the Roman state. Bishops who once fled from emperors suddenly advised them. Martyrs’ tombs became pilgrimage sites. Basilicas arose over the ruins of temples.

Under Constantine, Christianity became favored; under Theodosius, it became the state religion. As barbarian nations swept in and carved the empire into smaller kingdoms, the bishop of Rome—occupying the old imperial capital—became the most stable authority in a fractured world.

The Robe Changed, Roman Rule Remained

This is the moment where prophecy and history converge.

Rome didn’t simply convert; Rome transformed. Paganism didn’t vanish; it resurfaced cloaked in Christian language. The seat of Caesar became the seat of a bishop who inherited imperial posture while claiming ecclesiastical purpose. Even the pagan emperor’s own religious title—pontifex maximus, the supreme bridge-builder between heaven and earth—passed, over time, from the imperial throne into the papal office. Significantly, even Christian emperors themselves recognized the incompatibility of this title with the gospel. Gratian, the last emperor to bear the name pontifex maximus, renounced it in the late fourth century as unfit for a Christian ruler. The imperial office thus relinquished its claim to supreme religious mediation—but the authority itself didn’t vanish. It would later reappear, no longer in the hands of a Caesar, but within the Church itself. To this day, the pope is still called the “pontiff,” bearing the very name once reserved for the pagan ruler of Rome.

The question was no longer whether Rome would rule, but through whom. Who held the authority changed, but how that authority was expressed did not. Pagan temples were re-dedicated, but their architecture, symbolism, and civic roles remained. Christianity gained Rome—and thus Rome, through ritual, tradition, and authority structures, entered Christianity.

Paganism Adapted, Not Extinguished

It was in this context of transition that the early Church’s warnings took historical shape. As unconverted multitudes entered the Church for political and social reasons, true discipleship waned. Wealth poured in, rituals multiplied, liturgies grew ornate, and superstition flourished. The Church that once worshiped in homes now gathered in imperial basilicas. Apostolic simplicity became buried beneath layers of tradition, ceremonial grandeur, and philosophical speculation.

The spiritual climate of the fifth century made this possible. Without persecution, the Church grew lax; wealth increased; clerical comfort and superstition spread. Doctrines unknown to the apostles—penance, purgatory, indulgences—became commonplace. Christianity merged with Roman religious forms. James Aitken Wylie observed that “Paganism, in the guise of Christianity, has a second time triumphed.”

This corruption was not merely doctrinal; it was prophetic. Again, the apostles had warned that the “mystery of iniquity” would arise within the Church. No early theologian expected Antichrist to be an atheist tyrant outside Christianity—they expected him to be a false Christian leader within it, claiming Christ’s titles, assuming Christ’s authority, and demanding Christ’s honor.

To understand how deeply this fusion of paganism and Christianity reached, we must recall what the old heathen religion actually was, and how its remnants lingered even as Christianity spread. Therefore, we should pause and ask what paganism—or more precisely, heathenism—really means. We’ve all used those words, though few know their origin.

In the early centuries, “heathenism” referred to the ancient Latin religion—the worship of the gods of Rome: Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Cybele, Diana, and the whole constellation of deities woven into the empire’s civic identity. These were the gods of the Latins, for Rome itself was the epicenter of the Latin people and their religious world.

But as Christianity spread within the cities, this ancient Latin religion retreated into the countryside. It survived mainly in rural districts—the “pagi.” From this simple Latin term for “village” came the word pagan and paganism. In other words, paganism referred to the old heathen faith of the Latins which survived mainly in the countryside.

This survival, however, was short-lived. With the decrees of Theodosius in the late fourth century, even these remnants were outlawed. The rites of Jupiter and Mars were forbidden under severe penalties. Temples were closed. Public idolatry became illegal for the first time in Roman history. Yet especially around the Seven Hills—the ancient heart and symbolic center of the Latins—the memory of old Rome lingered. Though legally suppressed, the old Latin religious spirit refused to die completely. It waited in the shadows for some form of revival.

The Wounded Head and the Latin Revival

What happened next is striking. Once Christianity became the state religion, the imperial government abandoned the Seven Hills entirely, almost as if Rome itself were no longer fitting for a Christian throne. Constantine and his successors made their seat at Constantinople. The Western emperors ruled from Milan and then Ravenna. Rome—the ancient Latin capital—was left without an emperor. Then came the blow: Gothic invasions during the first set of Trumpets not only crushed her lingering heathen institutions but shattered her civic life. The city that had ruled the nations became a shell of itself. Her “head,” to use John’s imagery, was wounded to death—not only religiously, but politically, culturally, and administratively.

Yet this was not the end of Rome; it was the end of only one form of Rome, for as imperial power collapsed, new religious instincts were already emerging within Christianity itself.

Practices once associated with paganism—relic veneration, sacred objects, ritual pilgrimages—took root in Christian soil. Within this developing religious culture, devotion to martyrs shifted from honoring their memory to seeking their intercession, mirroring long-standing Greco-Roman practices in which deceased heroes and ancestors were believed to hear petitions and act as intermediaries. Historians describe this as a “paganizing” of Christianity and a “christening” of paganism. Arian rulers and uneducated Gothic invaders only heightened confusion, allowing superstition to flourish. The result was a Christian culture adopting the forms, instincts, and devotional habits of the old Roman world.

The Latin Church Rises from Rome’s Ruins

Into this vacuum stepped the Latin episcopate. The bishops of the West inherited the legal mind, language, and administrative genius of ancient Rome. Even the name Lateinos—“the Latin man”—identified by Irenaeus as a fitting candidate for the number of the Beast, reflected the deep Latin identity of Rome’s future. The empire died, but Latin survived. It became the Church’s sacred tongue, its legal medium, its liturgical foundation, and its badge of continuity with Rome’s past. There came a time when most people no longer understood Latin at all, yet the Church retained it as its sacred voice—binding the West together even as it widened the gap between the clergy and the common believer.

The Year Authority Became Power: 538 AD

Thus, when the last political obstacles fell in 538 AD, the Rome that rose was not the persecuted Church of the apostles but a Christianized Rome built upon profoundly Latin foundations—a structure that combined Christian religious authority with the administrative, symbolic, and universal ambitions of ancient Rome. The healed head was not a revival of pagan worship but a revival of Rome’s imperial instinct. The empire returned not wearing a laurel crown but a miter; no longer directly commanding legions but commanding consciences; not ruling from a palace but from a basilica. Rome had been transformed, baptized, and reborn in ecclesiastical garments.

It became, in Revelation’s language, the dragon’s throne—handed from a pagan empire to a religious power. Over the next 1,260 years, this power persecuted, dominated, overshadowed, and often nearly extinguished the visible witness of the true Church.

By the High Middle Ages, the papal system had reached the height of its authority. The simple gatherings of the early believers gave way to the most imposing religious and political institution in the world. Cathedrals rose where house churches once met. Priestly vestments replaced simple robes. Golden chalices replaced common cups. Incense, icons, relics, processions, and lavish ceremonies filled the landscape of Christian worship. What began as the faith of fishermen had become the faith of kings, armies, and empires.

For many centuries, sincere believers recognized the shift but lacked power to resist it. The papal system claimed spiritual supremacy—and enforced it. Canon law grew dense and expansive. Councils issued decrees governing every aspect of life. Sacraments became instruments of control. Grace was mediated through clergy, and it was taught that salvation couldn’t be found outside Roman authority. The Church wielded a spiritual sword sharper than any imperial decree.

No pagan empire ever claimed the right to judge souls, to forgive sins, or to speak infallibly. Rome had demanded civic and ritual loyalty, but it never claimed divine authority over salvation and conscience. Those were claims only the healed head dared to take for itself.

The contrast couldn’t be clearer:

• Pagan Rome persecuted Christians for refusing to bow to Caesar.

• Papal Rome persecuted Christians for refusing to bow to the pope.

The symbols changed, but the spirit did not.

This fulfilled Paul’s prophecy: the man of sin would sit in the temple of God—within the Church—displaying himself as God’s representative and the universal head of Christianity. He assumed the title “vicar” of Christ, derived from “vicarius,” meaning one who acts in another’s place as an earthly representative. This perfectly mirrors the biblical use of “anti” in “antichrist,” which likewise carries the sense of one who stands “in place of” Christ, rather than in open opposition to Him.

No apostle claimed such authority. No prophet assumed such titles. Yet papal Rome openly embraced them. Councils, canon law, and ecclesiastical tradition were declared binding upon all believers. This was not apostolic humility, but an office elevated above the Word of God.

During this era, the true Church—the spiritual Body of Christ—was driven into the wilderness. Like Israel in the desert, God’s people lived in obscurity, poverty, and vulnerability. Scattered fellowships, hidden preachers, poor translations of Scripture, and courageous but isolated reformers kept the gospel alive. Yet God sustained them. The witness was never extinguished.

Christians who resisted Rome’s claims were branded rebels or heretics. Some were punished for seeking Scripture in their own tongue. Others suffered for rejecting innovations with no biblical foundation—indulgences, priestly celibacy, the sacrifice of the Mass repeated each day. Many lost their freedom, and many also lost their lives for resisting. And yet the gospel endured. God preserved a remnant who, as had been foretold in Revelation 11:3, would prophesy in sackcloth for 1,260 days. In time, the faithful remnant came to recognize that the foretold period was not merely a literal three-and-a-half years, but instead was to be understood through the biblical “day-for-a-year” principle of prophecy—thus extending across 1,260 years of testimony and suffering.

The post-Constantinian regime—later called the Holy Roman Empire—embraced the Church, but it didn’t fully embrace the spirit of Christ or the values of His Kingdom. Rome retained its ancient habits—centralized authority, dominance, and universal rule.

But Jesus had warned His disciples: “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… It shall not be so among you.” Authority in His kingdom flows through service, humility, and sacrifice. He forbade titles of spiritual elevation: “Call no man father… you have one Father in heaven.” Peter commanded shepherds not to lord authority over the flock. Christ’s kingdom inverts worldly structures.

But the Christianized empire retained its imperial governing instinct. Religious and political authority intertwined. Councils functioned as imperial assemblies, convened and enforced by the state. Bishops increasingly served as civic administrators. Imperial decrees finalized and enforced theological disputes. Though many believers sought holiness within these forms, the structures themselves bore the imprint of Rome rather than the imprint of Galilee.

This tension between Christ’s command and Rome’s instincts soon became impossible to ignore. When the Western Empire collapsed in 476, the bishop of Rome stepped into civic and judicial roles out of necessity. Gothic rulers eventually appealed to the bishop for continuity and stability. Rome’s imperial office died, but Rome’s expectation of universal rule did not. That expectation simply shifted—slowly but decisively—from emperor to pope.

At precisely this point, prophecy and history begin to meet.

The Prophetic Convergence

We’ve seen that the pagan Roman Empire fractured into the ten kingdoms foretold by Daniel, and each of those nations Rome’s law, culture, and religion. Prophecy indicated that a new power would rise from among those specific kingdoms—one that would uproot three, exalt itself spiritually, and exercise authority for “a time, times, and half a time,” or 1,260 prophetic years. History aligns precisely. The Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths—three Arian kingdoms—were successively removed in conflicts centered around Roman ecclesiastical authority. With the defeat of the Ostrogoths in 538 AD, the bishop of Rome stood unhindered. Justinian’s earlier decree, recognizing him as “head of all the holy churches,” could finally be enforced.

Yet recognition alone was not enough. Prophecy required not merely a decree, but the removal of every rival power that stood in the way of its actual enforcement.

At this point, the prophetic timeline comes into sharp focus, and chronological precision matters. Scripture does not merely foretell the rise of the Little Horn; it specifies the moment when its authority would be fully established and actively exercised. Historicist interpreters eventually came to distinguish between the legal recognition of papal authority and the historical moment when that authority became fully operative—a distinction that resolves the apparent tension between the decree of 533 and the decisive events of 538.

In AD 533, Emperor Justinian issued a sweeping imperial decree that formally elevated the bishop of Rome as “head of all the holy churches.” More than an honorary title, this decree bound religious doctrine to imperial law and explicitly authorized coercion in matters of faith. Justinian declared that no one was permitted to oppose Catholic teaching, and that those who did so “shall bear the infamy of heresy; and when the Divine vengeance which they merit has been appeased, they shall afterwards be punished in accordance with Our resentment, which we have acquired from the judgment of Heaven.”

Here, for the first time in Roman history, theological dissent was criminalized by Christian law, and persecution was justified as both divine and imperial duty. In principle, the Little Horn had now been given the power to persecute the saints.

Yet in practice, that power could not be exercised so long as Arian kingdoms still controlled Rome.

The decree of 533 could not be enforced while the Ostrogoths—one of the three Arian powers foretold by Daniel—held the city itself. The bishop of Rome remained constrained by political realities, unable to act as supreme religious authority while hostile rulers stood between him and imperial backing. Prophecy required not merely a decree, but the removal of all rival horns.

That decisive moment came in AD 538.

When Belisarius finally defeated the Ostrogoths and secured Rome for Catholic control, the last of the three opposing kingdoms—the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths—had now been “plucked up by the roots,” exactly as Daniel foretold. Only then did Justinian’s decree become fully operative. The bishop of Rome now stood unopposed, legally recognized, politically protected, and empowered to enforce doctrine with civil penalties. For this reason, Historicist interpreters have consistently identified AD 538 as the true starting point of the 1,260-year prophetic period. It marks not merely the recognition of papal authority, but its unhindered exercise. From that year forward, ecclesiastical Rome possessed both the legal right and the practical ability to persecute, to legislate doctrine, and to rule consciences—precisely the activity Scripture associates with the Little Horn and the Beast.

Only when law and power converged did prophecy fully awaken. Thus the prophetic clock begins not when authority was spoken, but when it could finally be enforced.

This was not a ceremonial honor but a legal reality that conferred judicial supremacy, doctrinal authority, and international recognition. A new form of Roman power arose—not pagan, not imperial, but ecclesiastical and global.

From this moment, history follows a consistent trajectory—one that would shape the next thousand years of Western Christianity.

A Millennium Under Ecclesiastical Rome

From the sixth century onward, the papacy increasingly became the gravitational center of Western Christendom. Kings sought its blessing. Nations submitted to its decrees. Councils gathered beneath its authority. Canon law grew until it governed every aspect of life—marriage, property, conscience, war, and even salvation. The Church that had once been persecuted by the empire now wore the empire’s mantle and wielded its sword.

Yet the full weight of this transformation cannot be measured in political terms alone. Its most profound consequences were pastoral, ceremonial, and devotional—reshaping not merely who ruled the Church, but how ordinary believers encountered God.

Where the earliest Christians had met in homes and shared the ministry of the Word with one another, the post-Constantinian Church centralized worship in grand basilicas. Where believers once saw themselves as a kingdom of priests, the institutional Church erected a clerical priesthood with exclusive sacramental power. Where early congregations encouraged every believer to use spiritual gifts, the new structure created a passive laity listening in silence while clergy performed sacred rites. Fellowship gave way to ritual; mutual ministry to hierarchy; spiritual gifts to clerically-controlled sacraments.

To the average Christian, this was far more than simply a shift in governance. It was a redefinition of how one experienced their faith in God.

The gospel, once proclaimed as direct access to Christ through faith, became mediated by clergy. Repentance was replaced with penance. The Lord’s Supper—originally a family meal of remembrance—became a repeated sacrifice for sin. Baptism was redefined as an instrument of regeneration even for infants incapable of faith. Scripture, once central and read freely, became locked behind ecclesiastical authority. The Bible was no longer the people’s book; it was the Church’s book.

Yet even in this long season of distortion, God did not abandon His people. Many humble believers remained faithful through these centuries, clinging to the Scriptures they understood and living with sincere devotion to Christ. The problem was not individual Christians but the system—an institution claiming to represent Christ while gradually obscuring His gospel. It “spoke like a lamb,” in John’s words, yet “exercised the authority of a dragon,” assuming titles, authority, and demands belonging to God alone. It even dared to adopt the title “Holy Father.”

It is precisely this contradiction—a power bearing Christ’s name while governing with Caesar’s authority—that Revelation captures in one of its most striking images.

The Beast as Counterfeit Church

This is why Revelation’s imagery of the Beast is so penetrating. The Beast is not merely an external enemy of the Church; it is a counterfeit Church. Its power is not primarily military but theological. Pagan Rome had to force people to worship Caesar; Christianized Rome could persuade people to confuse human authority with divine authority. Its danger lay not in violence alone but in the claim to define truth by decree. Its influence rested not merely on swords, but on sacraments, laws, and spiritual coercion.

For more than a millennium—indeed, for the full 1,260 years foretold in Scripture—this system shaped Europe in profound ways. The papacy crowned emperors, deposed kings, commanded armies, initiated crusades, established inquisitions, and asserted jurisdiction over every soul in Christendom. Entire nations fell under interdict, their worship suspended because of royal disobedience. Kings waited barefoot in the snow to seek papal forgiveness. The persecuted Church of Nero’s day had become the persecuting power.

Such a system could not endure unchallenged forever—not because history rebelled, but because Scripture demanded an answer.

The Historicist Consensus and the Reformation Awakening

For this reason, Historicist interpreters have long identified this era—from the mid-sixth century to the dawn of the Reformation—as the 1,260 years, the “time, times, and half a time,” the forty-two months, the 1,260 days. In this long era the saints were worn down not by pagan rulers but by Christianized oppression—an age in which historians estimate that more than a million faithful believers were put to death for resisting Rome’s claims. Recognizing what Scripture revealed, Historicist interpreters also understood that this period was divinely limited, and they longed for the day when God would vindicate His people by bringing an end—not to the institution itself—but to its God-permitted power to persecute the saints.

The Reformers were astonishingly united on this point. Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Knox, Cranmer, Latimer, Zwingli—men from different nations, backgrounds, and temperaments—arrived independently, though not identically, at the same essential conclusion. They didn’t reach it through emotional reaction or revolt but through sustained exegesis. In Scripture they recognized a power that would exalt itself, alter times and laws, claim divine authority, sit in the temple of God, and oppose Christ while bearing His name. When they compared that biblical description with their own world, they believed the match was unmistakable.

This Historicist interpretation did not end with the Reformers, nor was it fringe. It became the Protestant consensus for centuries, shaping confessions, commentaries, preaching, hymn-writing, and missionary movements. The Reformation was not merely doctrinal renewal—it was a prophetic awakening. Believers saw their moment in light of Daniel and Revelation, understanding themselves as witnesses in the long conflict between the gospel and a counterfeit Christendom.

From this prophetic insight flowed a sober pastoral warning. Those Historicist interpreters recognized that Rome’s outward form had changed, but its inward principle remained: the instinct to dominate, define truth by decree, and claim universal jurisdiction simply reappeared in ecclesiastical dress. They saw that the empire had returned as a church-state—no longer commanding legions but consciences, ruling not with the sword alone but with sacramental and judicial authority clothed in the garments of religion. In the early centuries that followed, what began as pastoral oversight had hardened into temporal rule; spiritual unity became enforced conformity; church authority merged with civil power; and dissent was answered with exile, imprisonment, or death. That was the very danger Paul warned of—a power sitting “in the temple of God,” assuming the authority reserved for God alone. The warnings God had given in His Word weren’t meant to condemn individual believers within flawed structures, but to expose the peril of systems that clothe worldly ambition in sacred robes, prompting God’s call: “Come out of her, My people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.”

Preparing for Judgment: From Rome to the Trumpets

As that warning implied, Scripture doesn’t end with just the rise of the Beast. It also announces its decline, because Scripture never reveals apostasy without also announcing accountability. The 1,260 years form the backdrop for the next major phase of Revelation—the Trumpets and Vials. These judgments don’t appear in a vacuum. They’re God’s answer to a millennium of apostasy.

Just as the early Trumpets judged pagan Rome for shedding the blood of the saints, the later Trumpets take up their solemn work of judging Christianized Rome for corrupting the gospel and persecuting countless believers. The fall of paganism opened the way for a new ecclesiastical empire, and the rise of that empire signaled the beginning of God’s chastisement on the Western world. These judgments unfold not as random political turbulence but as deliberate acts of God—warnings, calls to repentance, and instruments by which God preserves His covenant people in a world that has forgotten the humility of Christ.

And now the narrative of Revelation stands poised for its next movement.

The restrainer has fallen.

The healed head stands.

Rome—once pagan, now Christian—governs with an unprecedented degree of power unknown even in Caesar’s day.

The stage is set for the Trumpets.

God has heard the cries of His people, and Heaven will not remain silent.

The prayers of the saints—preserved in golden censers—are about to rise again. When the angel casts fire to the earth, the Trumpets will begin to sound in history. Their echoes roll across kingdoms and continents, shaking the world that Rome sought to command. For God will not permit His gospel to be eclipsed, nor His Church swallowed by human authority.