Unto Caesar, and Unto God

How Church and Empire Joined Hands, the Man Who Was Bought to Sit Between Them, and the 1,260 Years Daniel Foresaw

“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” — Matthew 22:21 (KJV)

Author’s Note on Terminology: This paper uses the traditional Christian terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” for clarity. The author recognizes that the books of the Old Testament are the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, which Jewish tradition holds as complete Scripture in its own right, and quotes them with respect for that tradition.

A note on what follows. The interpretation in this paper is my best understanding of Scripture, reached by following its own examples and patterns. Where I draw a conclusion of my own, I say so plainly. The paper is held to one rule above all others:

Rule 1: No Scriptural conflicts. No conclusion here may contradict any passage of Scripture. Where Scripture does not settle a detail, I say so plainly.

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pronouns for God and Christ are capitalized in the author’s own words; KJV quotations are left as written.

A note before we begin. This study is about a system of power and what Scripture says about it. It is not about any person’s faith. Faithful believers have lived inside every church on earth, and God’s last call is addressed to “my people” still inside the system He judges: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).

How to read this study. Sections 1-3 set out what Scripture says: the line Jesus drew between God and Caesar, Daniel’s vision of the little horn, and what its features mean. Sections 4-8 follow the history: how church and empire joined, the man who was bought for the seat, why 538 is the turning point, the 1,260 years, and 1798. Section 9 places those dates on the Jubilee calendar. Readings of this research are labeled, and anything taken from history rather than Scripture is marked, with its source listed at the end. This paper and all the others in this research are free to read at https://scripturescjc.com.

In Brief

1. Two Kingdoms That Jesus Kept Apart

When Jesus’ enemies tried to trap Him with a question about taxes, He asked whose picture was on the coin. “They say unto him, Cæsar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

“Caesar” was the Roman emperor, the government. Jesus did not tell His followers to overthrow it. He told them to give it what belonged to it. But He drew a firm line: the government does not own what belongs to God. When Pilate asked Him if He was a king, He answered, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” (John 18:36). That does not mean God has no army. He is “the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3), and when Christ returns, “the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses” (Revelation 19:14). But those armies are heaven’s, under His command, and He holds them back until He comes. When Peter drew a sword to defend Him, Jesus said, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:52-53). Until His return, His church is not to spread or defend the faith with the government’s soldiers and prisons: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

The apostles lived by that line. Paul wrote, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (Romans 13:1). But when the rulers ordered the apostles to stop preaching, Peter answered, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The government had its sword. The church had the gospel. Neither was to take the other’s place.

The first time the line was crossed was at the cross itself. The religious leaders had condemned Jesus, but they had no power to execute Him: “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death” (John 18:31). So they joined their verdict to the government’s sword. When Pilate asked, “Shall I crucify your King?”, “The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cæsar” (John 19:15).

That is the danger this study is about: religious leaders deciding who is God’s enemy, and the government’s sword carrying out the sentence.

2. What Daniel Saw

About 550 years before Christ, the prophet Daniel saw a vision of four wild beasts rising from the sea (Daniel 7). An angel explained it to him. Prophecy uses picture language, but Scripture explains its own pictures, so we don’t have to guess.

The key to the pictures, from Scripture itself:

Then Daniel saw something different:

“I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” (Daniel 7:8)

The angel told him what this little horn would do:

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:25)

How long is “a time and times and the dividing of time”? Revelation answers. It describes God’s people, pictured as a woman, hiding in the wilderness for “a thousand two hundred and threescore days” (Revelation 12:6), and calls the same period “a time, and times, and half a time” (Revelation 12:14). That is 1,260 days. At a day for a year, this research reads it as 1,260 years.

An important rule: years before 1994, literal days after. Not every prophetic “day” is a year. This research applies the day-for-a-year rule to the long prophecies that run while the Jubilee calendar is still counting, up to its seventieth Jubilee in 1994. After that, the end-time periods are literal days, because the same people live through them from start to finish. Scripture shows this in how those periods are described: the days are “shortened” so that people survive them, “except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22); the same men are “tormented five months” (Revelation 9:5); crowds watch the two witnesses lie dead “three days and an half” (Revelation 11:9); and a blessing waits for the one who lives to reach the last day of the count, “Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days” (Daniel 12:12). No one lives 1,335 years.

Why the seventieth? In Scripture, seventy marks a full, completed measure that God sets. Judah served Babylon “seventy years” (Jeremiah 25:11), until the land “kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years” (2 Chronicles 36:21). Daniel’s prophecy was “Seventy weeks” (Daniel 9:24). “All the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten” (Genesis 46:27). God told Moses, “Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel” (Numbers 11:16). Jesus “appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two” (Luke 10:1), and told Peter to forgive “Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). A full human life is “threescore years and ten” (Psalms 90:10). Seventy Jubilee cycles, counted from the calendar’s starting point, complete the count in 1994. This research reads that as the close of the age of long, year-for-a-day prophecy: once God’s Jubilee count is complete, the prophetic clock shifts from years to the literal days of the end. (The paper The Five Exoduses traces the seventy Jubilees in full: https://scripturescjc.com/five-exoduses.html)

Revelation 12 shows why the rule matters, because it contains both kinds of time. The chapter is a recap. It steps back to Christ’s birth (Revelation 12:5), then covers the woman’s 1,260 days in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6, 14), which this research reads as the 1,260 years of persecution, 538-1798. Then it looks ahead to the very end, when the devil comes down “having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (Revelation 12:12) and goes “to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17). That last war belongs to the end-time, when the periods are literal days. So the 1,260 “days” of Revelation 12:6 and 12:14 are years, but the 1,260 days of the two witnesses (Revelation 11:3) and the forty-two months of Revelation 13:5 are literal, and still future.

3. What Kind of Power Is the Little Horn?

Daniel gives the little horn five features. Read with Scripture’s own definitions, they point to a religious power, not just a political one.

1. It is “diverse” from the others. “And another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings” (Daniel 7:24). The other horns are ordinary kingdoms. This one is a different kind of power. This research reads the difference this way: it claims God’s role as well as Caesar’s.

2. It has the eyes of a man. In Scripture, eyes picture God’s watch over His people: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3). Scripture calls Christ “the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25). The word “bishop” means overseer. (That point is from the Greek, outside the KJV text.) This research reads “eyes like the eyes of man” as a man claiming to oversee souls in Christ’s place.

3. It has a mouth that blasphemes. It speaks “great words against the most High” (Daniel 7:25). Scripture defines blasphemy twice, and both are religious claims: a man making himself God (“because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God,” John 10:33), and a man claiming to forgive sins (“who can forgive sins but God only?” Mark 2:7). A cruel king is not a blasphemer. A power that claims what belongs to God is.

4. It makes war on God’s people. “The same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them” (Daniel 7:21). Its enemy is not another nation but believers.

5. It thinks to change God’s law. It shall “think to change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). Only God “changeth the times and the seasons” (Daniel 2:21). Jesus said His Father’s law would not change: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18).

Put together: a power unlike ordinary kingdoms, claiming to oversee souls, speaking as if it held God’s authority, persecuting believers, and changing God’s law. In other words, a power that took both Caesar’s sword and God’s place, the very two things Jesus kept apart.

Revelation uses the same pictures with the same meanings. It shows a woman (a body of worshippers) riding a beast (a political kingdom): “I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy” (Revelation 17:3). She is “that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18), and she is “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6). Religion riding on government, and turning its power on believers.

4. How the Church and the Empire Grew Together

This section is history, not Scripture. Sources are listed at the end.

The joining did not happen in a day. Here is how it unfolded, step by step.

313: Toleration. Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians. For the first time, the church had the emperor’s favor.

380: A state religion, with punishment for dissent. Emperor Theodosius ordered all his subjects to follow one form of Christianity. Those who did not were declared “foolish madmen,” to be “branded with the ignominious name of heretics.” They would suffer “the chastisement of the divine condemnation,” and also “the punishment of our authority.” Now the government was punishing people for what they believed about God.

494: Two powers, and the church’s is “weightier.” Pope Gelasius wrote to the emperor: “There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled,” and “that of the priests is the more weighty.” The church now claimed to stand above the emperor in matters of God.

527: Heretics punished by Justinian’s law. Emperor Justinian came to power and condemned those who disagreed with the official creed: “we order all such persons to be subjected to proper punishment as confessed heretics” (Code 1.1.5).

533-534: The bishop of Rome made “head of all the churches” by law. Justinian wrote to Pope John II, “We have therefore hastened to make all priests of the whole Orient subject to the seat of Your Holiness,” and called him “the head of all holy churches” (Code 1.1.8). The pope replied: “That this seat is truly the head of all churches, is stated both by the regulations of the fathers, as well as by the statutes of emperors.” He approved the emperor’s law against heretics: “we confirm it by our authority.”

In the same letter, the pope decided who belonged to God’s church:

And he asked the emperor that, once such men submitted and were let back in, “you will no longer let them feel the stings of your indignation.” The pope declares who is outside. The emperor’s punishment falls on them until the pope readmits them. This is the scene at the cross all over again: a religious verdict, carried out by Caesar.

Scripture gives that verdict to God alone. “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth” (Romans 14:4). “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). The names that count are written in “the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27), not in any man’s register. And Jesus warned that His followers would be condemned by men who believed they were serving God: “whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service” (John 16:2).

The law was published in Justinian’s revised Code in November 534. But it could not yet be enforced in Rome. Rome was ruled by the Ostrogoths, a Germanic kingdom that held a different creed (Arianism) and opposed the bishop of Rome’s authority. Something had to change before the law could take hold in the city itself.

5. Vigilius: The Man Bought for the Seat

This section is history, not Scripture.

Who he was. Vigilius came from a powerful Roman political family. His father held the rank of consul, one of the highest titles in the empire, and his brother was a senator. He became a deacon of the Roman church in 531. That same year, Pope Boniface II tried to name Vigilius as his successor, but the opposition was so strong that Boniface withdrew the decree and burned it.

How he was bought. Vigilius was later sent to Constantinople, the emperor’s capital, as the pope’s representative. There the Empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife, made him an offer. She wanted a pope who would serve her side in the church’s quarrels over the nature of Christ. The Catholic Encyclopedia records that she “promised him the Papal See and a large sum of money (700 pounds of gold),” and that Vigilius agreed to her plans. Scripture’s verdict on trying to buy a spiritual office is plain: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money” (Acts 8:20). And Scripture says a bishop must be “not greedy of filthy lucre... not covetous” (1 Timothy 3:3).

How he was seated. When Vigilius reached Rome, there was already a pope, Silverius. In 536 the emperor’s general Belisarius had taken Rome from the Goths, and in March 537, while the Goths were besieging the city, Belisarius removed Silverius on a charge of plotting to betray Rome to the Goths. Ancient accounts say the charge was false and that Vigilius helped bring it, even producing false witnesses. God’s law says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). It is the same method used against Jesus: “the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death” (Matthew 26:59). Vigilius was enthroned on 29 March 537. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia says “the manner of his elevation to the See of Rome was not regular.”

What happened to the man he replaced. Silverius was handed over to Vigilius’s custody and confined on a small island, where, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, he died “in consequence of the privations and harsh treatment he endured.”

What he stood for. One ancient writer, Liberatus, says Vigilius secretly wrote to the empress’s party agreeing with their teaching, while publicly holding the opposite. Most Catholic scholars consider those letters forged. Either way, Vigilius’s whole career swung between the emperor’s will and the church’s teaching. In 545 the emperor had him seized during a church service and shipped to Constantinople; as he left Rome, some of the people cursed him and threw stones. He was held there for eight years, reversed his position more than once under pressure, and finally submitted to the emperor’s council in 553-554. He died on the way home in 555.

Why he matters. Vigilius is the bishop of Rome chosen by an empress, paid for with gold, seated by a general, and kept in office by an army. In one man, God’s things and Caesar’s things were joined.

6. Why 538 Is the Pivot

Three things came together in 538.

1. The last obstacle withdrew. The Gothic king Vitiges had besieged Rome for a year. On 12 March 538 he lifted the siege and retreated. The Goths had been the power standing between the emperor’s law and the city of Rome. Now the emperor’s army held Rome, and the emperor’s law could be enforced there.

2. Vigilius became the only lawful bishop of Rome. Until Silverius died, Vigilius held the seat while his predecessor still lived and had never been lawfully removed. The Dictionary of Christian Biography says Silverius’s death was “certainly not earlier than June 20, 538.” After that, the Roman clergy accepted Vigilius, and Justinian wrote recognizing him as pope.

3. He began ruling beyond Rome. On 6 March 538 he wrote to the bishop of Arles in France about the penance owed by a Frankish king. On 29 June 538, days after Silverius’s death, he sent a ruling on church practice to the bishop of Braga in what is now Portugal; years later a church council there ordered Mass said “according to the ordo sent from Rome to Profuturus.”

This research’s reading: 538 is the year the third “horn” was plucked up from Rome, the emperor’s law naming the bishop of Rome head of all the churches became enforceable in Rome itself, and the man the empire had bought for that seat became its only lawful holder. From that year the saints were “given into his hand” (Daniel 7:25). Notice the word “given.” The power was granted for a set time and no longer, as Jesus told Pilate: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11).

The structure kept growing after 538:

The three horns. Daniel says three horns were “plucked up by the roots” before the little horn (Daniel 7:8). The three most often named are the three kingdoms that held the opposing creed and stood in the way: the Heruli (ruled Italy until 493), the Vandals (North Africa, fell in 534), and the Ostrogoths (lost Rome in 538).

7. The 1,260 Years

The events in this section are history, not Scripture.

From 538, the church-and-state power Daniel described grew for centuries. A few landmarks:

Daniel’s words describe this period: the little horn “made war with the saints, and prevailed against them” (Daniel 7:21). Revelation 12 shows the other side of the same 1,260 years. God’s people, pictured as a woman, “fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days” (Revelation 12:6). Persecuted, but never destroyed, and fed by God the whole time.

8. 1798: The Dominion Taken Away

Daniel said the period would end in judgment: “But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end” (Daniel 7:26).

The events below are history, not Scripture.

From 538 to 1798 is exactly 1,260 years.

How this fits Scripture. The pope’s death in captivity makes the match with Scripture’s words closer, not looser:

9. What the Jubilee Calendar Shows

God gave Israel a calendar of sevens. Every seventh year the land rested, and after seven of those cycles came the Jubilee: “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you” (Leviticus 25:10). The Continuous Jubilee Calendar (CJC) counts those 49-year cycles without a break. Like Scripture’s own year, a CJC year begins in spring: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2). The Jubilee itself is announced that autumn: “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land” (Leviticus 25:9).

An unbroken chain of Jubilees. The calendar is not a guess fitted to one date. It is a single continuous count, mapped mathematically from at least 702 BC, every 49 years without one break, to the last completed Jubilee in 1994, the seventieth. Along that chain, the Jubilees land on events Scripture itself marks:

From 702 BC to 1994 is 2,695 years: exactly 55 cycles of 49 years. So 1798 is not placed on a Jubilee by choosing a convenient starting point. It falls there because the same unbroken count that marks Hezekiah’s deliverance, Daniel’s decree and the close of the seventy weeks reaches it.

Where the 1,260 years fall on that chain. Both ends fall in late winter, just before the spring new year:

The pope’s death, on God’s calendar. Critics sometimes say the pope’s death in 1799 falls outside the 1,260 years. On the ordinary January calendar it looks that way. On Scripture’s calendar the picture is clearer. Daniel’s 1,260 years end when the dominion is taken away, in February 1798, in the final sabbatical year of the cycle. The very next year is the Jubilee. Counting by Scripture’s months (each year beginning with the first new moon of spring, the seventh month six months later), the Jubilee trumpet sounded on the Day of Atonement in the autumn of 1798, and the Jubilee’s year of rest ran to the next Day of Atonement in the autumn of 1799. Pius VI died a prisoner on 29 August 1799, inside that Jubilee year. So the 1,260 years end with the captor taken, and the year of liberty that follows ends with the captor dead. (Calculated from the new moons of 1798 and 1799: depending on which spring new moon begins the year, the Day of Atonement fell in September or October, and in 1799 either date comes after 29 August.)

So 1798 has the same shape as 702 BC: a sabbatical year followed straight away by a Jubilee, two years of rest in a row. In 702 BC the double rest marked Jerusalem’s deliverance from the Assyrian oppressor. As this research reads it, in 1798 it marked the release of the saints from the power that had worn them out for 1,260 years. The captor is led away in the final year of a cycle, and the next year is the year God commanded to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).

How strong is this? It is a real pattern, but not proof by itself, and it is weaker than the Calendar’s evidence for Daniel’s seventy weeks. The seventy weeks are 490 years, exactly ten cycles, so Scripture’s own numbers require them to run from Jubilee to Jubilee. The 1,260 years are not a whole number of cycles, so only one end can touch a Jubilee, and any given year has about a 1-in-49 chance of falling just before one. What gives the 1798 Jubilee its weight is that it sits on the same unbroken chain as 702 BC, 457 BC and AD 34. The pattern agrees with the history. It does not replace it.

(The CJC formula: B = year + 1437 for AD years, or 1438 - year for BC years; Cycle = (B - 1) / 49 rounded down, + 1; Year = B - (Cycle - 1) x 49. For an event in the winter months, use the previous year’s number, since a CJC year begins in spring.)

Check the math yourself. The full method, its anchors, and every test are free to read:

10. Questions Readers Ask

“Weren’t the Goths still fighting after 538?” Yes. They retook Rome briefly in 546 and 550, and their kingdom ended in 553. But 538 is when they lost their hold on Rome and on its bishop, who from then on owed his seat to the emperor. This research also anchors the 1,260 years at their firm end, 1798, and counts back.

“Didn’t the emperor control the pope, rather than the other way around?” In Vigilius’s day, often yes; Caesar had him arrested and shipped away. But Daniel’s concern is the joining of the two powers against believers, not which partner led at a given moment. Over the following centuries the balance moved toward Rome, until Unam Sanctam claimed both swords for the church.

“Justinian’s law wasn’t formally applied to Italy until 554.” True. The question for the start of the 1,260 years is when the saints were first “given into his hand,” not when the last law was in place. 538 opened Rome to the emperor’s law and gave it a bishop of the emperor’s choosing; 545 and 554 built on that.

“Do historians call 538 a turning point?” Historians record the events of 537-538: Silverius removed, Vigilius seated, the siege lifted. They do not usually call 538 a turning point for the papacy. That emphasis comes from students of prophecy. This research’s claim is narrower: Scripture names the events, and history dates them.

“No one agrees on the list of ten horns.” That is true. Scripture requires only ten divisions of Rome, three of them removed before the little horn. The three usually named share the trait that matters: they held the opposing creed and stood in the way.

“Isn’t this an attack on Catholics?” No. It measures a system’s claims against Scripture. God has people in every church, and His last call is “Come out of her, my people” (Revelation 18:4).

11. Summary

  1. Jesus kept God’s authority and the government’s apart (Matthew 22:21; John 18:36).
  2. Daniel foretold a power unlike other kingdoms, with a man’s eyes and a blaspheming mouth, that would wear out the saints for 1,260 years (Daniel 7:8, 25).
  3. Over two centuries, church and empire grew together, until the emperor’s law named the bishop of Rome head of all the churches, and the bishop’s verdict on who was outside the church was backed by the emperor’s punishment (533-534).
  4. Vigilius, from a political family, was bought by the empress with the promise of the office and 700 pounds of gold, and seated by the emperor’s general in place of a lawful bishop who died in his custody.
  5. In 538 the Goths left Rome and Vigilius became the only lawful bishop of Rome: the pivot.
  6. 1,260 years later, in 1798, the dominion was taken away, at the opening of a Jubilee on the same unbroken chain that runs from 702 BC to the seventieth Jubilee in 1994.

“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). We must allow Scripture to unfold as it states.

References

History (outside Scripture)

Related papers in this research

All papers are free to read at https://scripturescjc.com.

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