Revelation 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

In prophecy a beast is symbolic of an earthly government. In Revelation 13 there are two beasts. The first beast described in Revelation 13:1-10 is the government of Papal Rome and with her the governments of Christendom that did her bidding. The second beast described in Revelation 13:11-18 is another earthly government which we aim to identify. To understand when this second beast should appear, we must date the verse previous to its appearance. “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword” (Revelation 13:10). This verse was fulfilled when the Pope was led into captivity by the French Army in 1798.  John now beholds another beast coming up out the earth. For the specifications of prophecy to be fulfilled another earthly government must come into existence by 1798. The second beast of Revelation 13 comes up out of the earth. Compare this with the beasts in Daniel: “Behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another” (Daniel 7:2,3). The beasts of Daniel arose to power through wars of conquest, represented as winds striving upon a turbulent sea of peoples.  However, this beast arises in a different manner. It grows up out of the earth peacefully and gradually, without wars of conquest. It grows up in a region of few peoples, not a sea of peoples. Therefore it could not arise in the crowded struggling peoples of the Old World. It must arise in a sparsely populated region such as the New World, the Americas. There it could arise peacefully and gradually through colonisation rather than through wars of conquest. Who colonised the New World? The British began to colonise the Americas in the early 1600’s. These colonies grew peacefully and gradually for many years until the late 1700’s at which time we should look for another earthly government in the Americas. The British were part of the Papal beast. They were a crown or a monarchy that had supported the Papacy. They are one of the ten crowns of the Papal beast (Revelation 13:1). So in order for British colonies in North America to become another beast they had to break away from the previous beast. They had to become independent of the British monarchy, independent of this crown.  Read the rest of this entry →