By the time Babylon appears in Revelation 17, the powerful church-state union is in a resurrected, a reconstituted form, having survived that would-be fatal wound.
The second and third angels of Revelation 14 have already sounded their warnings about the sway of this power, and God’s call to His people to be true. The angels are referring to a world power, running on a reunited relationship between church and state. This world power will once again use political power to punish religious dissent.
However intolerant the secular left can be, it does not represent the uniting of church and state represented by the biblical text. It is not a church state union that prosecutes conservative Christians for refusing services to same sex weddings, for example. Jesus warned that the final deceptions would be in His name, (Matthew 24). In closing the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned about those who profess to do marvelous deeds in His name, but do not know Jesus.
The final apostasy that places humanity beyond the possibility of repentance and redemption creates a Jesus in our own image, and worships a counterfeit Jesus who expects His people to assert God’s authority on earth.
Boebert then made allusion to a private historical document that apparently created a smoking gun on the issue. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does” (Washington Post, June 28, 2022).
The “stinking letter” she referenced was a New Year’s letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community in Danbury, Connecticut. Members of that community had expressed concern about their religious freedoms. Jefferson sought to reassure them:
Although Christian Nationalism is a political ideology rather than a religious one, it draws strength from perverse theological strains, including Calvinism and Reconstructionism. It is a theology of exclusion—that only the “elect” few are chosen, know the will of the Almighty, and are destined to enforce God’s will upon the nation. It is accompanied by a presumptive millennialism, that by taking political power, they will establish the kingdom of God. As witnessed publicly at Reawaken America rallies across the country, supporters are engaged in a “spiritual” and “political” war that can become violent, as witnessed at our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021.
It’s one thing to be deceived by false christs at the last day, or visions and messaging by the enemy. However, we must also understand the danger of a presumption that one’s own motives and goals are those of the Holy Spirit.
The modern day emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit—to the exclusion or at least subjugation of every other teaching—has led to an explosion of self-proclaimed prophets. They boldly insist that the Holy Spirit has shown them whom God has chosen to be president of the United States. And they don’t back down, even when their chosen candidate loses. The apostles of Christian Nationalism have proclaimed a “holy” war that has occasionally broken out into actual violence. They literally demonize their political enemies, an endeavor consistent with the religion of the beast described in Revelation 13.
Christian Nationalism is a dangerous heresy, and a threat to both church and state. An astute student of history, James Madison observed the legacy of the Constantinian church state union: