The Healing of the Head Wound. Is It the Same As the Return of the Beast?

There are many who think that the healing of the head wound of the Revelation 13 leopard-like beast is the same as the return of the beast, or the revival of Papal power. This is an unfortunate concept, for it is incorrect. The return of the beast out of the abyss and the healing of the head wound are not the same things.

The purpose of this web page is to help you understand why these two events are different, separate, and distinct events.

Here is how the wrong understanding comes about.

In history, Justinian, the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople, wrote a decree in 533 AD which became enforceable in Rome in 538 AD. This decree gave the pope two powers, which were:

• The right to be head bishop
• The right to punish heresy, which meant the pope could work through the state to punish heretics

The last power granted to the pope is the power that combined the church and the nations. It is this combination that created the beast of Revelation 13. Therefore, to cause the beast to be removed or to go away, one must remove the power combining the church and the nations from the pope of Rome.

1260 years after the pope was given these powers, they were removed by order of the French general of Napoleon through a legal decree that he wrote and published throughout Rome. This took place on Feb. 15, 1798. The French decree removed the Papal government from power, which in turn destroyed the combination of the church and the nations. From then on, the church was on its own. and could not legally persecute those sit considered heretics. It would have to do that without the official cooperation of the nations. Pope Pius VI was the pope on the Papal throne when this decree was published in Rome.

Because the French feared that Pope Pius VI would mount an insurrection against the French authorities, he was taken captive 5 days AFTER the decree was published on Feb. 20, 1798, and hauled off to prison in France, where he died in August of 1799.

Many look back on these two events and confuse them as one event. But that is a false concept because the decree itself removed the beast from power. It was gone the very day the decree was published. The second event, the removal of the pope from the Papal throne five days later and taking him off to prison, caused the head wound prophesied in Revelation 13.

The confusion usually arises because some believe that one of the heads was also the beast. That cannot be for though heads and beasts and horns may represent the same types of things (kingdoms or powers), they exist sequentially when on the same beast and have separate and distinct time periods for each. Thus, the beast existed during the 1260 days (but not the heads), but once that was done, it was gone. The heads cannot be the beast because they occupy a different time slot than the beast's body. However, it is true that the writer of Revelation 13 used the word beast for the whole beast because the heads and horns are obviously attached to the beast. But don't confuse the time periods each represents. They are indeed separate.

Once the beast was out of the way, which was on the very day the decree was published - Feb. 15, 1798 - then the heads began to have their day of power. Thus, when the pope was taken captive five days later, it was a Papal head, that of Pius, that was wounded. This means the beast itself, that is, the body of the beast, was NOT wounded, for it was already gone 5 days before. The Bible makes it clear that it is a head that was wounded.

The logical conclusion is that the going away of the beast and the head wound are two different, separate, distinct events of history. And yet they are related, for the head wound could NOT happen unless the beast first went away. But that is logical because the heads could not come into power until the beast was gone.

And this proves that one of the heads CANNOT be the beast, for the beast was already gone 5 days before the head wound actually occurred. If one of the heads was the beast, then the beast had to remain past the date on which the pope was taken captive. But history proves that wrong because the decree was issued 5 days BEFORE the pope was taken captive. Therefore, the beast was gone and no head could be the beast.

The problem is that many people have come to believe that the beast went away with the removal of Pope Pius VI from the Papal throne. But that is a false concept, for the beast went away with the decree removing the powers of the pope five days before Pope Pius VI was removed from the Papal throne. Thus, these are separate events so that the beast did NOT go away with the removal of Pius VI from the Papal throne. That had already happened and could not be repeated.

Now, the next logical question is this: how is the beast to return?

Since the beast was created by combining the church with the nations, logically, to bring the beast back, one must again see the same combination of the church with the nations. When that happens, then the beast will have returned.

Of course, the final logical question is this: how and when is the head wound healed?

Since the head wound was created by removing Pope Pius VI from the Papal throne, to heal the head wound one must reverse the original damage. How do you do that? The answer to that is easy: You put a Pope Pius back on the Papal throne! Of course, once Pius VI was dead, you could not restore him. It should be obvious that Pius is the name of the head that was wounded since that is the name of the pope removed from the throne, so therefore, if one wounds the head named Pius, one must heal the head named Pius.

In the prophecy given in Revelation 13, IF the head named Pius had died, then you would know that there would be no more Pope Pius' after the removal of Pius VI. Of course, John said that the wound was healed, so we know that more Pope Pius' would return to the Papal throne after Pius VI. In summary, because a Pius was removed from the throne (at the point of force, no less) to cause the wound in the first place, to reverse the wound (heal the wound) one must put a Pius back on the throne. Does this make sense to you?

Was that done? Was another Pope Pius put back on the Papal throne so that the prophecy of the head being healed was fulfilled? YES! In the winter of early 1800, Napoleon relented and permitted the Papal Cardinals to gather to elect a new pope. The newly elected pope selected the name - PIUS VII !!! The head was healed right then and there as of that moment! There was a new Pius placed back on the Papal throne just a little over 2 years after the previous Pius was removed. Thus, a Pius was taken captive and killed, constituting the head wound. And later, another Pius was elected to the throne and this healed the head wound. There would indeed be more Pius' on the Papal throne during the time of the 7 heads. There were a total of 12 Pope Pius' throughout Papal history, with six of them since Pius VI was removed in 1798. The last Pope Pius existed from 1939 to 1958 (Pope Pius XII). There will be no more Pope Pius because his name is one of the five heads that fell prior to the reign of Pope Paul VI, the pope who is the "one is" of Revelation 17:10. He will never exist again.

Now, in summary, the going away of the beast was accomplished by the decree of the French authorities which eliminated the Papal government, thus separating the church and nations. This happened on Feb. 15, 1798. Five days later, pope Pius VI was arrested and sent to France to die in prison. This last event constituted the head wound.

The head wound was healed a little more than 2 years later when the Papal cardinals elected a new Pope Pius VII. And someday in the not too distant future, the beast will return when the church and nations once again unite to persecute the people of God as before.

Hopefully, this is now clear to the reader. The healing of the head wound and the return of the beast are two different, separate, and distinct events.

The ascension of the beast referred to in Revelation 17 is another event related to the return of the beast. It refers to the gradual rise in power of the Papacy that will accomplish the return of the beast in the future (written in January of 2005). This process began with Vatican II, which occurred in the 1960s.