The Woman & the Dragon

The proposal under review

Submitted for Review

What I first wrote, tested point by point: the objection, my reply, and where each point now stands.

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✓ Reviewed by Fr. John How this site is made

The pages "as first written" keep my proposal exactly as I stated it, beginning in August 2023, before any critical review: the Antichrist, the false prophet and 666 and the mark. I leave them unchanged so that readers can see where I started. This page is where they are tested. Each entry gives the passage, the objection and its source, my reply or the revision I have accepted, and where the point stands now. Entries will be added as the review continues.

1. The first beast: his conception and the atomic age

As first written. I tied his conception, "days after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," to a "portal to Hell," and quoted St. John Damascene, through Fr. Arminjon, that the Antichrist's birth "will be saturated with the breath and spirit of Satan."

The objection. Applied to one man, those words judge his soul, and read literally they say something about his parents, who were married. These sites weigh words and deeds, never souls (CCC 1861). The timing was also off: born on June 14, 1946, he was conceived about a month after the bombings, not days.

The revision I accept.

Donald J. Trump was born on June 14, 1946, and so was conceived in the weeks after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the start of an age in which rulers would hold power over the life of the whole world. Tradition speaks of the Antichrist's origin in vivid terms: "He will be a child of fornication," says St. John Damascene, "and his birth will be saturated with the breath and spirit of Satan" (Fr. Charles Arminjon, The End of the Present World, p. 43). Damascene wrote this of the Antichrist, not of any man living, and I do not apply its words to Trump's parents or to his soul. I note the timing as a sign of the age he was born into.

Why him, and not the millions of others conceived in those same months? No one can see that at a cradle. If it can be seen at all, it is only by looking back from what a life became. In the desert Satan offered Christ "all the kingdoms of the world" if he would worship him (Matthew 4:8–9), and Christ refused. In Revelation the dragon gives the beast "its own power and throne, along with great authority" (Revelation 13:2). Satan offers; a man accepts or refuses, and no one is forced. Of all those born in that season, he is the one who rose to the most powerful office in the world, lost it, and took it back. It is in his public words and deeds, set out mark by mark on The Evidence, that I propose the offer was accepted. That is an observation about a public life, which anyone can test, not a verdict on a soul, which belongs to God alone.

Where it stands. Revised; accepted November 1, 2026. The evidence is weighed on The First Beast.

2. The second beast: "the earth" and his faith

As first written. I wrote that many read "the earth" as Israel or religion, and ended his description: "He practices Modern Orthodox Judaism."

The objection. Set beside "Israel," his faith reads as evidence: as if being Jewish were a sign of the false prophet. The Church teaches that the Jewish people are not to be presented as rejected or accursed, and deplores every form of antisemitism (Nostra Aetate 4); Standard 28 on Apocalypse 13 holds every reading to this. The reading of "the earth" as Israel is real but held by a minority: some popular futurist sources (BibleRef) and preterists who apply it to the high priests of Jerusalem before AD 70 (Kenneth Gentry). Most commentators read the second beast as the religious machinery that serves state power; in Revelation 13 the same word means the whole world (13:12, 14); and where some Fathers spoke of Jewish descent, they said it of the Antichrist, not of the false prophet.

The revision I accept. I make the argument from his role, not his faith. Revelation's second beast is the servant who acts "in the sight of" the first beast, wields "all the authority of the first beast," and gives that power a lamb's face and a religious meaning (13:11–12). No one stands closer to the first beast or acts so fully in his name: son-in-law, adviser, and envoy without an office of his own. "The earth" I read as the religious sphere and the Holy Land, where his work has been centered: peace given the name of Abraham, the patriarch of three faiths; the embassy in Jerusalem; the Board of Peace; and a decades-long closeness to Israel's prime minister. His faith is part of his life and is respected here, but it is not part of the evidence. The case is set out, with the evidence against it, on The Second Beast.

Where it stands. Revised; accepted November 4, 2026.

Awaiting my reply

These objections have been raised and will be answered here.