Endtime Prophecy and the European Union

Well that's a complicated question that hinges around the definition of 'nation'. I think it's safe to say there has never been a Nation of Italy, since the capitalisation implies that this is some sort of official designation, which has never existed. Nowadays it's the Italian Republic.At the time that Revelation was written, Italy certainly existed. It was a province of the Roman Empire, and Italy also existed in a sense as a nation - in the sense of a shared identity as Italians. Germany and Spain also both existed as geographical concepts to the author of Revelation, and Cyprus was at the time a Roman province too (with the same name).Not that any of this is relevant, but your post seemed a bit disingenuous to me.

quote:

---

Sorry but at the time Revelations was written I doubt anyone identified themselves as Italians or French or Germans or Spanish. There were Franks and Huns and Goths and Romans and many other designations but you are right about Cyprus.

---

Certainly no one identified themselves as French. German and Spanish I'm not sure - these were exonyms applied by Latin writers, so 2nd-century Germans probably didn't think of themselves as German.'Italian', though, certainly was in use at the time (or Latin and Greek equivalents, anyway). Book V of Strabo's geography begins thusly:

quote:

---

After the foothills of the Alps comes the beginning of what is now Italy. For the ancients used to call only Oenotria Italy, although it extended from the Strait of Sicily only as far as the Gulfs of Tarentum and Poseidonia, but the name of Italy prevailed and advanced even as far as the foothills of the Alps, and also took in, not only those parts of Ligustica which extend from the boundaries of Tyrrhenia as far as the Varus River and the sea there, but also those parts of Istria which extend as far as Pola. One might guess that it was because of their prosperity that the people who were the first to be named Italians imparted the name to the neighbouring peoples, and then received further increments in this way until the time of the Roman conquest.

---

Strabo was writing more than 100 years before the Boof of Revelation was written.

To be fair to the other Paul's prophecy, if Revelation is taken to have been written in the time of Domitian, then there were, indeed, five Caesars who had died by violence.1) Julius Caesar was assassinated 44 BC.
2) Caligula was assassinated 41 AD.
3) Nero supposedly got his friends to help him commit suicide, so as to avoid assassination, in 68 AD.
4) Galba was assassinated by the Praetorian guard a few months later.
5) Otho stabbed himself in the heart the same year.You may want to add Vitellius, but if we're being pedantic then, according to Suetonius, Vitellius was never actually called Caesar:

quote:

---

...he very eagerly accepted the cognomen of Germanicus, offered him by the unanimous consent of both armies, but deferred assuming that of Augustus, and refused for ever that of Caesar.

---

I'm a bit unsure where you're getting the figure of eight from. Are you counting Claudius as being assassinated?

Lest it seems that my only contribution to this thread is nitpicking, I have a more substantive question. I've seen similar claims about the symbols connected to the EU throughout this thread but, unless I haven't been paying attention, no one's actually elaborated what they mean. The only offering was the Neighbourhood Policy, which is not a seven-year agreement as claimed; and the fact that only 10 EU powers have vetos, which is untrue.Different decision-making procedures are used in the European Council for different policy areas. Some things, like foreign policy, require unanimity - meaning everyone has a veto, including Malta. Some policy areas, mostly administrative, require a simple majority of states, meaning no one has a veto. Others require a qualified majority, which means at least 55% of member-states representing at least 65% of the population (with the condition that at least four states are required to vote against something to block it). Again, no one has a veto. The top ten working together could veto anything, but they couldn't pass anything without support. And, for that matter, the three largest plus the smallest are sufficient for a veto.Any chance you could fill us in on any of these signs of the EU's involvement in the End Days?

Thanks for sending some specific answers! There is, indeed, a statue of a woman riding a beast in front of the European Parliament. She doesn't quite match the description in Revelation though:

quote:

---

3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

​

4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

​

5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.

---

The statue is monochrome, the beast has only one head with two horns and the woman is, conspicuously, naked, on account of the fact the bull is kidnapping her to rape her (I've always thought it an odd choice of symbolism to represent the EU, but there you go). She's not wearing any pearls, nor carrying a cup, and nothing is written on her head. That's not the case. The original European Coal and Steel Community had 6 members. The European Union had 12 members at it's founding. The only time the EC had 10 members was the five year period between 1981 when Greece joined, and 1986 when Spain and Portugal joined. There is no way I can see to make ten a figure in any way relevant to the European Union. How is Greece foundational but not Spain? I'll give you this one. That is, indeed, the same symbol. I'm not sure of the prophetic relevance of an organisation using a symbol they copied from the prophecy. I don't think Revelation talks about someone masquerading as the Virgin Mary. They copied the Colosseum, a symbol of European civilisation. Someone else copied this to make a painting of the Tower of Babel. To the best of my knowledge, the Tower of Babel isn't even mentioned in Revelation, so I'm not sure what significance this has.

But the point we've been trying to make is that it's a stupid connection. It may remind you of the words 'woman riding a beast' but it is clearly not the woman described in Revelation. You can only make a connection if you ignore all of the words describing the woman and the beast.Now, if I spent all my days rereading Revelation over and over again I could look at this statue and say it reminded me of the woman in Revelation, simply because it's a woman. And I'd be correct - because I'm obsessed and everything reminds me of something in Revelation. You, however, would be quite correct if you pointed out to me that it clearly has nothing to do with Revelation since the woman in question is not riding a beast. Similarly, we are correct in pointing out to you that, whatever connections your brain makes and regardless of what something reminds you off, the statue of Europa clearly has no connection to Revelation, since it is not at all like the description in Revelation in any respect.

No, I've explained what trumps what these particular Christians believe. I'm not sure why you're having difficulty grasping it.The woman in Revelation is clothed. The statue of Europa is naked.The woman in Revelation is carrying a cup. Europa is empty-handed.The woman in Revelation is bedecked in precious stones. Europa isn't.The beast in Revelation has seven heads. Zeus, in the statue, has one.The beast in Revelation has ten horns. Zeus, in the statue, has two.In short, the statue of Europa differs from the description of the woman riding a beast in Revelation in every single named detail.

Well, obviously this argument isn't going to get us anywhere. I just don't understand how this can be a matter of opinion. There's a description, and there's a thing that doesn't match that description. I'm at a loss what more to say, so I'll just leave you with this promotional phonecard from the 1990s, which I find unaccountably hilarious.

Not everything is a matter of unverifiable opinion, you know. We don't have to rely on mere hearsay. Some facts can be easily checked. You can download the seating plans for both European Parliament buildings here on the Europa website, like Dr. Adequate already did upthread.This is Eva Lichtenberger, MEP for the Austrian Green Party. For this session of Parliament, she has seat 666 in Brussels: This is Petru Constantin Luhan, MEP for the Romanian Liberal Democrat Party (which, lest you be confused by the contradictory political terminology of Europe, is in fact a centre-right party allied with the Christian Democrats). He has seat 666 is Strasbourg. It worries me that you're still listing as potential supporting evidence something that we checked and established to be clearly and uncontroversially untrue. What sort of evidence would it take for you to change an opinion?

I'm unable to find the seating plan from 1999 anywhere, so I'm not sure what to make of hateful bigot Ian Paisley's claims. I'm having difficulty finding out how many seats there actually were inthe Strasbourg building in 1999. Paisley claims 680, but now there are almost 800. The Parliament was smaller in 1999, but expansion talks were well under way, so it seems a bit odd to me if the newly designed building wasn't prepared with enough seats to handle the 2004 elections. I'll see if I can figure this out later. Yes, I assume the seating plans do change from time to time, certainly at election times, but if this Stuart B. was correct two years ago, apparently in between. Mr. Mastella sits in 672 in Strasbourg at the moment, while Ms. Rivasi is in 65 at Brussels. Well, he's not a Christian Democrat, Romania has no Christian Democrat Party. The European People's Party, the main centre right grouping of which the Romanian Liberal Democrats are a member, contains 14 parties with the word 'Christian' in their title. It's difficult to say which ones are Catholic, since many of them have both Catholic and Protestant members. At least four (the Dutch Christian Democrat Appeal, Swedish Christian Democrats, Finnish Christian Democrats and the largest party - the German Christian Democratic Union) are overwhelmingly Protestant, though.ABE: So, I've done some trawling through the webs, and have discovered that the Strasbourg Parliament building was, indeed, built with 750 seats in the plenary chamber, to accommodate the expanded European Parliament that would come into being when new countries from Eastern Europe joined. There were, in 1999, on 626 MEPs, meaning that about 100 seats were left vacant (some being reserved for commissioners). Seat 666 was one of the hundred or so empty seats, whether this was just coincidence or whether it was done for the same reasons that some buildings don't have a floor 13, I have no idea.Since the big expansion of the EU in 2004, seat 666 in Strasbourg has been continuously occupied.Oh, and one erratum. Romania apparently does have a Christian Democratic Party, but they are small and don't have any representation in the European Parliament.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

He was replying to the OP, written in 2005. That's why the question about Solana is in quotation marks.The OPs question was posed 12 years ago, however, and was the poster's sole contribution. I don't think he's still awaiting a reply.