Sunday, December 5, 2021

The Restrainer : the Roman Emperor


This may seem counterintuitive. Isn't the Restrainer the Holy Spirit? Or the Church?

Isn't Rome the Fourth Beast of Daniel?

The restrainer is "taken out of the way" at a certain moment, and that's close to the end times, isn't 476 or even 1453 too early?

Now let's answer these in turn.

The Holy Spirit is always present in the Church, in the lives of the faithful. The Church is present until the end of time. In Matthew 28:20 Our Lord said "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." But the world is not consumed seven or 3 and a half years before Doomsday, therefore the Church is always present. The unbelieving Jews (who are such for the moment) and who come to faith, will be parts of the Church, not of a separate end times covenant. And as the Church is always present, so is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not the restrainer, since the restrainer is taken out of the way and the Holy Spirit isn't.

Senatorial Rome was the fourth beast, and Antiochus IV Epiphanes came as a vassal of the fourth beast. Yes, he had been hostage to Rome, and bowed down before the Roman Senate. The third beast, Greece, had come in the time of Alexander. This means, Caesar restraining the haughtiness and selfishness of the Senatorial nobility became a restrainer of the fourth beast. Even more so Constantine, since the first Roman persecution of Christians had been according to Senatusconsultum de Baccanalibus and since Constantine put an end to persecutions, at least relatively speaking.

In 476, only Western Caesars were taken out of the way, and in 1453, only the Eastern ones, after 476 there had been a new continuity of Western ones since 800, and 1453 was also followed by a new continuity of Eastern ones:

In 1547, Ivan IV assumed the title of “Tsar and Grand Duke of all Rus'” (Царь и Великий князь всея Руси, Tsar i Velikiy knyaz vseya Rusi) and was crowned on 16 January,[19] thereby turning the Grand Duchy of Moscow into Tsardom of Russia, or "the Great Russian Tsardom", as it was called in the coronation document,[20] by Constantinople Patriarch Jeremiah II[21][22] and in numerous official texts,[23][24][25][26][27][28] but the state partly remained referred to as Moscovia (English: Muscovy) throughout Europe, predominantly in its Catholic part, though this Latin term was never used in Russia.[29]


I'm not going to bother about all the footnotes of this welldocumented wiki. The most interesting ones are 20 to 22, since they speak about a coronation document signed or commented on by Constantinople Patriarch Jeremiah II.

20 Чин венчания на царство Ивана IV Васильевича. Российский государственный архив древних актов. Ф. 135. Древлехранилище. Отд. IV. Рубр. I. № 1. Л. 1-46
21 Lee Trepanier. Political Symbols in Russian History: Church, State, and the Quest for Order and Justice. Lexington Books, 2010. P. 61: "so your great Russian Tsardom, more pious than all previous kingdoms, is the Third Rome"
Barbara Jelavich. Russia's Balkan Entanglements, 1806-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2004. P. 37. Note 34: "Since the first Rome fell through the Appollinarian heresy and the second Rome, which is Constantinople, is held by the infidel Turks, so then thy great Russian Tsardom, pious Tsar, which is more pious than previous kingdoms, is the third Rome"

Obviously, I do not consider First Rome fell by Apollinarian heresy but the point to be taken is, Christians with more affection for Constantinople than for Rome have accepted Moscow as Third Rome. This means, after 1547, there were two representatives of Rome, of Caesarian Rome, of the restrainer, in the World, in Vienna and in Moscow, and they were only taken out of the way much more recently than that, when "contemporary history begins" - within five years from Gavril Princip shooting archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, both Charles I of Austria and Nicolas II of Russia were taken out of the way.

Some have considered the nec plus ultra of lawlessness as pogroms against Jews. Now, German pogroms have been either within one area, of which both Strassburg and Zurich had ceased to be under Habsburgs prior to 1914, or within two or three periods of upheaval. That the First Crusade involved a People's Crusade that did plunder Jews (whereon Peter the Hermit, who had preached the Crusade, left it) is certain, but whether they went as far as killing isn't. The two other periods would be Rex Rintfleisch, 20th April to 19th October, in the year 1298 also featuring a fight between two Ceasars, between Adolf of Nassau, deposed by the Princes Electors, and Albert I of Habsburg, defeating him, protecting Jews, and then after another Habsburg had been defeated and an Adolf had replaced him (without any Imperial crown), after that non-Caesar Adolf had come to Vienna in 1938.

In Russia there were pogroms in the civil war following the Communist Revolution, and the Czarist forces were not the most prominent culprits. I read in Rivarol, 24th November, that the responsibilities were : 40 % Ukrainean Nationalist, 17 % Russian Whites or Czarists (the leaders tried to restrain this) and 9 % Red Army. 40+17+9 = 66, so 34 % were by either unknown or none of these armies, if the percentages are correct. The pogrom on 400 Jewish families in Odessa (January 1918) seems to have been Communist, Red Army or Communist Civilians, since some have argued they were targetted for their riches and not for being Jewish. That motivation and getting some kind of good press from Commies, suggests the perpetrators in that case were Commies. I have not asked Sylvain Rousillon for details, so far.

But we need not be in two minds that lawlessness has increased manyfold since the end of World War I. If Caesarian Rome lasted to then, the restrainer could well have been taken out of the way after Austria and Russia ceased fighting in that war.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Second Lord's Day of Advent
5.XII.2021

"The Restrainer" is in Douay Rheims "he who now holdeth" in II Thessalonians 2:6, 7

[6] And now you know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed in his time. [7] For the mystery of iniquity already worketh; only that he who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way.

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