Apr 16, 2015

In my spare time in the evenings, I have been re-reading Lord of the Rings. I have not read the series since 1969 while I was in college. In contemplating the nations that (I believe) are represented by the main characters, I decided to look up look up Pepin the Short, as he is called (or in German, Pippin der Kleine).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepin_the_Short

In my view, he is Pippin the short Hobbit, who, along with his best friend, Merry, represent the Austria-Hungarian Empire.

Pope Stephen III called on Pepin the Short to help him overcome the Lombards who were in control of Italy in 750 A.D. It was the first time that a Roman Pope had ever crossed the Alps. Pepin raised an army, overthrew the Lombards, and then donated his realm to the Pope. This “donation” gave the Pope temporal power over lands that came to be known as the Papal States.

This arrangement lasted until 1870 when they were incorporated into the new nation of Italy. From 1870 until 1929 the Popes were virtually confined to the Vatican itself, as if under house arrest. This ended only with the Donation of Mussolini, where, in return for political support, Mussolini gave an $85 million “Donation” to the Pope to pay for the lands taken in 1870. That money was used to establish the Vatican Bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Pepin

The "Donation of Pepin", the first in 754, and second in 756, provided a legal basis for the formal organizing of the Papal States, which inaugurated papal temporal rule over civil authorities. The Donations were bestowed by Pepin the Short only three years after he became the first civil ruler appointed by a Pope, about the year 751….

On July 28, 754 Pope Stephen anointed Pepin, as well as his two sons Charles and Carloman, at Saint-Denis in a memorable ceremony that was recalled in coronation rites of French kings until the end of the ancien regime in the French Revolution of 1789-1799.

In return, in 756, Pepin and his Frankish army forced the last Lombard king to surrender his conquests, and Pepin officially conferred upon the pope the territories belonging to Ravenna, even cities such as Forlì with their hinterlands, laying the Donation of Pepin upon the tomb of Saint Peter, according to traditional later accounts. The gift included Lombard conquests in the Romagna and in the Duchy of Spoleto and Benevento, and the Pentapolis in the Marche (the "five cities" of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona). The Donations allowed the Pope to reign for the first time as a temporal ruler.

Pepin confirmed his Donations in Rome in 756, and in 774 his son Charlemagne again confirmed and reasserted the Donation.

The prophetic importance of this “Donation” is that it was a secondary step toward increasing the power of the “little horn” of Daniel’s visions. I have already shown many times how Daniel 7:25 prophesied of the beginning of the little horn. The 1,260 year period (time, times, and half a time, or 360 x 3 ½) was to begin with his “alterations in times and in law” when Justinian the Great changed the calendar and the laws of the Roman Empire.

He made his alterations from 529-534 A.D. So 1,260 years later came to the parameters of the French Revolution (1789-1794). The Wikipedia article above mentions that the ancient coronation rites going back to Pepin and his son, Charlemagne, were revived in 1789 in the French Revolution.

In the past two years, I came to see that the 1,260 years ended with the French Revolution, followed by the “fatal wound” given to the Papal system when Napoleon took the Pope captive in 1798. But since the fatal wound was healed (Rev. 13:3) in 1804 with the re-instatement of the Pope, it was obvious that the Papal system was given an extension of time before the rise of the Stone Kingdom. In September of 2013 I came to understand that this time extension was to last until the end of 2014, which gave the Papal system 1,480 years in all (534-2014).

Now I am seeing a double witness to this, as we so often see in prophecy. Just as Justinian (inadvertently) gave the Pope spiritual and legal power over the empire in 534 by establishing Church law as the law of the land, so also the Donation of Pepin in 754 gave the Pope temporal power. First law and then land. Historians are unanimous in telling us that this was a game changer in the history of the church.

From the new Law in 534 to the overthrow of the French Catholic monarchy in 1794 is exactly 1,260 years.

From the Donation in 754 to the end of the time of the little horn in 2014 is exactly 1,260 years!

Hence, we have two cycles of 1,260 years, each with a different beginning point, ending 1,260 years later. The first cycle ended with the French Revolution and the “fatal wound.” The second cycle ended in 2014, which was also the end of the 1,480 “Christ” cycle.

534-1794 = 1,260 years

754-2014 = 1,260 years

534-2014 = 1,480 years

I will have more to say about this and how it confirms the overall prophecies of Daniel as we proceed in our series. But I thought it good to let you know this ahead of time.