At the memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 21, 2025, White House official Stephen Miller declared that the assassination had “awakened a dragon” [1]. Unwittingly, we can be sure, Mr. Miller directed students of Bible prophecy to what we find in the 13th chapter of Revelation, how a beast power that begins as a lamb morphs into a dragon—Revelation’s symbol of Satan himself (Rev. 12:9; 22:2).

The day following the Kirk memorial, a CNN online article appeared with the title, “The U.S. veers toward Christian nationalism,” featuring overtly religious statements delivered by Cabinet and White House officials at the Kirk memorial service [2]. The article noted how church and state are becoming "increasingly fused” in the current U.S. presidential administration [3]; one participant in the Kirk memorial insisting that “we are on the side of goodness; we are on the side of God” [4].

Praising the current administration as one characterized by “godly government” [5], one conservative podcaster stated, “God has given them power over our nation and our land” [6].

The Lamb That Becomes a Dragon

The second beast power depicted in Revelation 13 is stated to have “two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon” (verse 11). Repeatedly in the book of Revelation, Jesus Christ is symbolized by a lamb (Rev. 5:6,12,13; 6:1,16; 13:8; 14:1,10; 21:9,23,27; 22:1,3). Elsewhere the Bible uses this symbol to refer to Christ's followers (John 10:14-15).

Besides this second beast in Revelation 13, no nation is represented in Scripture as a lamb. And this beast is obviously a political power, because it exerts the power of life and death over people (Rev. 13:15). Only a political power can do this.

Why, then, is this power represented as a lamb?

The late U.S. presidential historian Theodore White, in his provocative book on the fall of Richard Nixon, speaks as follows regarding the uniqueness of the American experiment:

All civilizations rest on myths, . . . A myth is a way of pulling together the raw and contradictory evidence of life as it is known in any age. . . .

Other states may fall or endure, they may change or refresh their governing myths. But Frenchmen will always remain Frenchmen, Russians will be Russians, Germans remain Germans, and Englishmen--Englishmen. Nationhood descends from ancestral loins. . . .

But America is different. It is the only peaceful multi-racial civilization in the world. Its people come from such diverse heritages of religion, tongue, habit, fatherhood, color, and folk song that if America did not exist it would be impossible to imagine that such a gathering of alien strains could ever behave like a nation. . . .

For so mixed a society to extend over a continent, to master the most complicated industrial structure the world has ever known, to create a state that has spread its power over the globe—that would be impossible unless the people were bound together by a common faith. Take away that faith, and America would be a sad geographical expression where whites killed blacks, blacks killed whites, where Protestants, Catholics, Jews made of their cities a constellation of Belfasts [##7|Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975), pp. 322-323.##].

I don’t think Teddy White understood just how truly prophetic this statement was.

Regarding the habits of sheep and shepherds, our Lord stated:

To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.

And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and they follow him, for they know his voice (John 10:3-4).

America is likened to a lamb in Scripture because like Christ, America has given its people freedom of choice, and like Jesus' followers, we are identified not by ancestral descent, like nearly all other nations, but as Theodore White said, by choice and destiny.

In the Bible, horns represent not only kings and kingdoms Dan. 7:24; 8:8,20,22), but power and strength (Deut. 33:17; Zech. 1:18-19; Lam 2:3,17). The two great strengths of America have always been civil freedom and religious freedom, what Ellen White identifies as republicanism and Protestantism [##8|Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 441.##]. The United States is the first society in human history to grant its citizens these liberties. Again, in Theodore White’s words:

These words (of the Declaration of Independence) were written by men who had taken the best ideas of their English-speaking heritage and made them universal. Such language was almost incomprehensible to the non-English-speaking peoples who were drawn to America in ever-growing numbers seeking the promise. But the ideas were compelling, and still compel. . . . They could be robed in legal phrases, or judicial admonition against illegal search and seizure; guarantees of right to trial; guarantees of freedom of assembly, free speech, free press; and, for the first time in history, the guarantee that the state would support no “establishment of religion” [##9|Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith, p. 323.##].

America started out like a lamb, giving people freedom. And despite recent assaults thereon, we still have much of this freedom left today. But according to Revelation 13, our country will one day abandon liberty, setting aside the methods of the Lamb for those of the dragon. The Lamb’s methods are those of persuasion and volition. In the message to the church of Laodicea, Jesus offers this invitation:

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me (Rev. 3:20).

The dragon’s method, by contrast, is very different:

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest: and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.

And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.

Then goeth he, and taketh seven other unclean spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first (Luke 11:24-26).

Notice we find no mention of knocking at the door here. The devil is like the hotel thief going down the hallway, looking to see if anyone was foolish enough to leave their door unlocked. He doesn’t ask for admission; he barges in without asking. We see this same contrast in the methods employed by the two women depicted in Revelation: the bride of Christ and the harlot of Babylon. The bride, like her heavenly Groom, invites voluntary loyalty:

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely (Rev. 22:17).

But the harlot, like her master Satan, employs force to secure allegiance. The second angel’s message of Revelation 14 makes this clear:

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication (Rev. 14:8).

Ellen White describes how the lamblike beast evolves into a dragon when she writes as follows:

The lamblike horns and dragon voice of the symbol point to a striking contradiction between the professions and the practice of the nation thus represented. The “speaking” of the nation is the action of its legislative and political authorities. By such action it will give the lie to those liberal and peaceful principles which it has put forth as the foundation of its policy. The prediction that it will speak “as a dragon” and exercise “all the power of the first beast” plainly foretells a development of the spirit of intolerance and persecution that was manifested by the nations represented by the dragon (pagan Rome) and the leopardlike beast (the papacy). And the statement that the beast with two horns “causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast” indicates that the authority of this nation is to be exercised in enforcing some observance which shall be an act of homage to the papacy. . .

The founders of [America] wisely sought to guard against the employment of civil power on the part of the church, with its inevitable result—intolerance and persecution. The Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.” Only in flagrant violation of these safeguards to the nation’s liberty, can any religious observance be enforced by civil authority [##10|Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 442.##].

Notice carefully that what motivated the founders of the American republic was the need to forestall the use of civil power by the church. It was not the secular state controlling the church which concerned them, the way it concerns so many conservative Christians today. Rather, it was the church controlling the state. Secularism has rarely threatened Christians the way an intolerant church has. The Bible spends little time warning against overt godlessness, other than to call the one who denies God’s existence a fool (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).

Prophesying the ultimate doom of free America, the modern prophet is clear that a church dominating civil government, not government dominating the church, will be freedom’s final peril:

Let the principle once be established in the United States that the church may employ or control the power of the state, that religious observances may be enforced by secular laws; in short, that the authority of church and state is to dominate the conscience, and the triumph of Rome in this country is assured [##11|——The Great Controversy, p. 581.##].

Christian Internationalism

The inspired forecast is clear that while Christian nationalism will begin in the once-free republic of the United States, it will spread from America throughout the world. The lamblike beast, according to Revelation, “causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed” (Rev. 13:12). The harlot woman, representing apostate Christianity, compels all nations to consume her wine (false doctrines) through illegitimately appropriating the power of civil government for her purposes (Rev. 14:8; 17:2; 18:3). Thus will the Christian nationalism originating in the United States become Christian internationalism, enforcing its will on the entire globe.

This act is called spiritual fornication in the Bible because Jesus declared that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Like an unmarried couple experiencing ultimate intimacy prior to marriage, the church’s use of governmental power before the government is placed on Jesus’ shoulders at His second advent (Isa. 9:6) is condemned as spiritual immorality. Only when Jesus comes as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16) can church and state legitimately unite on this earth.

Conclusion

Stephen Miller is right that a dragon has likely been awakened by the recent tragic and unconscionable murder. But the use of the dragon’s methods by professed Christians will bring neither revival nor reformation to human hearts. The U.S. president declared at the Kirk memorial, “To have a great nation you have to have religion” [12]. (A strange pronouncement, to be sure, from one who claims never to have asked God for forgiveness [13].) But enforced religion produces neither greatness nor holiness, but rather, intolerance and hypocrisy.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church must proclaim with ever-increasing fervor the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14, warning against the false revival and tyrannical consequences of church-state unity and assembling at last the final generation of victorious Christians for whom their Savior waits, who will “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12).

REFERENCES

1. “Charlie Kirk’s death has ‘awakened a dragon’: Stephen Miller, ABC News, Sept. 21, 2025 https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/charlie-kirks-death-awakened-dragon-stephen-miller-125796373

2. Zachary B. Wolf, “The U.S. veers toward Christian nationalism,” CNN, Sept. 22, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/politics/kirk-funeral-trump-christianity-government-analysis

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975), pp. 322-323.

8. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 441.

9. Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith, p. 323.

10. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 442.

11. Ibid, p. 581.

12. Wolf, “The U.S. veers toward Christian nationalism,” CNN, Sept. 22, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/politics/kirk-funeral-trump-christianity-government-analysis

13. “Donald Trump: ‘I haven’t asked God for forgiveness,’” YouTube, July 19, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLVIm7Q0IQ