What elements of church and of state are described in Revelation 13?
What current struggles are revealed there? The elements of the Seventh-day Adventist view of Revelation 13 are not all new. From the Reformation on, expositors identified the papal power as the ten-horned beast, the successor to Imperial Rome. Our identification of the lamblike beast as the United States has its roots in recognition of historical fulfillment. Le Roy Edwin Froom writes of “a long background of antecedents developing over a course of centuries before Seventh-day Adventists entered the picture.” Page 1093. The 1,260-year prophecy (Rev. 13:5) points to the years following 1798 as a time of conflict for God’s people. The first and second beast will then unite efforts at the time of the end to enforce the mark of the beast and to destroy God’s remnant church (Rev. 13:12, 15). When in 1899 Ellen White wrote about the mingling together of church craft and state craft, the National Reform Association, founded in 1863, was seeking a religious amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
