Weren't The Pharisees The Main Group Jesus Said Had It All Wrong And Focused On All The Wrong Things? - Blog Posts

My personal take that that makes the most sense to me anyway, in light of all we know of history, scripture, context, God, and empires is this:

The Beast from the Sea is the representation of an empire's mix of Oppression/Colonialism/Capitalism

The Dragon-tounged Beast that tells the world to worship the first beast is the Empire's religion.

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Here's why:

For John of Patmos, that religion was a dragon in his future.

For us, we can look back upon the emergence of the Dragon-like Beast. We see an empire worshiping religion that twisted a beautiful, liberating story. Enslaving all the world to the Empire Beast and forcing them to worship the Empire Beast and approve or even join in on it's exploitation and oppression.

A dragon-like beast that eventually got reformed a bit here and there to become one of the most pervasive world religions today.

Forms of that reformed religion of empires and oppression are practiced all over this world. A more or less reformed religion also practiced with varying levels of reformation in America that most of us now just call "Christianity".

I wonder how reformed our dragons are.