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We are in the midst of lecture #20. Beginning with chapter/lecture #17, we have been tracing and expounding the rise of the Stone Kingdom (although all were not titled as such).
Since this lecture was first presented at our Bible Conference in St. Louis, and many attendees had not had benefit of the previous lectures, I decided to spend time to give a brief review. I would expect that regular readers of these blogs will also benefit from this review.
I had recapitulated our nation’s founding as a republic (in sharp distinction from a democracy), and our nation’s rise to greatness on the world stage as God has blessed America in so many ways.
But now here in 2011 (and even more so in 2020), look how far we have fallen, and the end is not yet. Why? Because as great a form of government as it is—or was—even our republic and Constitution were fatally flawed from the outset.
So we look forward to God’s Stone Kingdom…not to restoring the Constitutional republic. Please do not misunderstand me. Restoring the republic and the Constitution would be progress in the right direction. I am not opposed to it. On the presidential level, I would vote for a candidate like Ron Paul, and even though his solution to replace the Fed is also flawed, it would still be progress.
My study of the Scriptures convinces me that we are on the threshold of the perfected Stone Kingdom. If I am wrong, yes, then certainly, I would take the restoration of the Republic any day!
Beginning with lecture #5, we have studied the rise and fall of the kingdom-empires prophesied in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7; namely, ancient Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and then the pagan Roman Empire.
Then we spent 3 lectures dealing with the papal Roman Empire, and predictably, it drew some sharp responses from those whose faith in the Roman church is so blind that—well, here is a quote from one letter we received after those lectures had aired on our radio program.
He wrote: “…let your conscience dwell on the fact that God created only one Church in the beginning and for all time. That Church is the Holy, Roman and Catholic Church…You must be very careful regarding which Church to degrade over the air today!
“Unless and until you come back to that Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith, of which Christ promised to be with until the end of time, you will never experience peace and tranquility in your nation, nor in your personal life. In Christ, our Lord,” and then he signed it.
He and I agree as to what he termed elsewhere in his letter as “the harlot that occupies Rome today,” but if he is what I suspect, a traditionalist Catholic, then we have a wide disagreement there, because the traditionalists, in essence, believe that the Catholic church was just fine until the second Vatican council came along in the 1960s and perverted and corrupted it and took it over.
No, my friends, as we have seen, the Roman Catholic Church has been corrupt right from the get-go in about the sixth and seventh centuries. We don’t put a definite date on its inception because it very gradually rose to power. And the idea that the church of Rome goes all the way back to the apostle Peter is simply not true, as we have shown and discussed elsewhere.
Nonetheless, I respect this man (1) as a fellow believer in Christ our Lord, and (2) that he would have the courage to sign his letter and give his return address.
It is amazing the number of letters I receive from cowards who take issue with me on this or that, and send their material to me anonymously. When I receive something anonymously, I rarely glance at it before pitching it in the trash. Now, given that I have stated that, in its simplest form, this whole series is about which government will we have man’s or God’s.
Therefore, what I found interesting from a “God’s sign language” perspective, and I just had to grin at the way our Father winks at us, is that this man’s last name is Mann! If he hears this on radio, he is likely to scoff at that, but those of us who hear our Father speaking everywhere certainly see the irony in that!
Oh, and not only that, but on the envelope, he had typed “Attention: Dr. James Bruggeman, followed by the PO Box and our city, state and zip code. But when he typed the line above my name, either Mr. Mann could not understand our radio announcer—whose magnificent broadcast voice is very professional and which earned him a living for decades—or Mr. Mann simply mistyped when he spelled out Stone Kingdom Ministries as S-O-N Kingdom Ministries. So again, I grinned and said, “Thank you, Father, for letting this Mann witness that your Stone Kingdom is also all about Son-ship.”
Next, we followed the papal Rome lectures with a message entitled The Rise of Financial Babylon. There is much more to come on that topic in the near future, but after introducing Financial Babylon, we then devoted the past three lectures to what could collectively be entitled The Rise of the Stone Kingdom.
This is now the fourth lecture devoted to this topic and I am calling it The Judgment of Uncle Sam.
Now for a brief bullet-point summary of the past three lectures, we have seen:
Isaiah 11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD [Yahweh], as the waters cover the sea.
Since 100 percent of the seas are covered by water, it seems to me that 100 percent of the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Yahweh. Kinda sounds like global government to me. That is the kind of one world government I would welcome with high praises of “hallelu-Yah!”
Alright… Let us look at Daniel, chapter 7, once again for more clarity on the concept of the ancient of days. We have shown in the previous three lectures how, contrary to what most Christians believe, the ancient of days is not a reference to Jesus at His second coming; nor does it refer to God the Father.
We contended and I showed quite clearly that the “ancient of days” is a prophetic name for America, for the Kingdom of heaven. In one of the prior lectures, we had been analyzing Daniel chapter 7, which is the only place in Scripture where the phrase “ancient of days” occurs, and it occurs there three times.
During that lecture we did not have time to analyze and parse every phrase. I know we left some ideas dangling, so let us pick up again in Daniel 7 and verse 8. As we now understand, verse 8 concerns the papal Roman empire, and it spans an era of centuries, up to and beyond the European settling of America.
Daniel 7:8 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.
9 I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, …
Right there is where we stopped in our analysis of that verse and we went on to the next occurrence of the phrase “ancient of days.” We explained previously the meaning of the thrones being cast down, and we have identified the ancient of days, but let me add one more thing now, and that is that little word “sit.”
It is the Aramaic word yeth-eeb’ (Strong’s Reference Number H3488) and it means 1) to sit, or to dwell, or 1a) (P’al) to be seated.
In this context, we can understand that it means that as the Kingdom in America grew into superpower status, that in a figurative sense, of course, this nation took its seat on the throne and began to judge the world.
Let us go back a moment to Daniel 2 because this verse here is a parallel of verse 44 in Daniel 2. This is a verse we have read countless times now, it seems, so we will extract only the first portion to show you the parallelism.
Daniel 2:44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…
There are several parallels but the one we are showing at this point is how the kingdom being set up over a period of time in this verse is the same as being described in Daniel 7 as “the ancient of days did sit.”
I am not saying that the word “sit” is the same as “set up” in this verse; they are not the same word. Yet the concept is similar. The kingdom is set up and established over several centuries, and this kingdom also ascends to and sits on a throne—in other words, it is a superpower which judges the world.
We are all familiar with this statement by Paul.
1 Corinthians 6:2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
If you are like me, that verse has always brought up a picture in my mind of the overcomers meting out judgment in the perfected kingdom. But I think we are missing something if that is the only way we see that.
Because I believe that it also refers to the present time—the time prior to the perfected kingdom when we, the saints, the Christian-Israel of God, are judging the world—albeit very corruptly and unrighteously—under the suzerainty of Mystery Babylon!
Furthermore, I think we sometimes forget that throughout history, God has almost always delegated judgment to governments and tyrants of all sorts: from the book of Judges itself to Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar who judged Israel, to Alexander the great, to the Roman Caesars, to the popes, to the present rulers of Mystery Babylon, who are currently judging Israel.
Simultaneously, Israel is judging the world. Prophecies are being fulfilled on several levels while overlapping each other.
(To be continued.)
