The previous beast was a composite beast from the "sea" of people, and portrays religios-political power that arises from among the highly populated western Roman empire, blasphemes God's name, makes war on his saints, and rules for 1260 day-years (AD. 538-1798). After that, it receives a "deadly wound" (loss of power), but this is eventually healed.
Linked to the giving of the wound is the rise of another power, depicted as arising at the same time the first beast goes into captivity. It comes out of the "earth" out of an unpoulated region of the world. It arises peacefully at first, but later speaks "as a dragon" and helps restore the first beast to worldwide prestige and power. The Papcay fell in 1798, and the United States was "coming up then."
The two horns on the lamblike beast represent the separation of church and state. The original intention was to prohibit the government from mandating a religion upon its people, not to prohibit religious morals and functions in government events and on government properties.
Nations are of this world. Their mission is not to make sinners into saints, but to keep order among sinners who will not be saints. Thus the God-bestowed police power of the state is authorized and described in Romans 13.
But churches allied with the state become coercive churches... and that's just plain wrong.
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