2:35, 44). The four cherubim of Revelation 4 and 5 are not "beasts" as the KJV identifies them, but "living creatures" (Gk. 'Zoon'), God's Throne guards, who represent Christ's Bride grafted into the Root of the cultivated olive tree and tamed to the Gospel. The word "beast" (Gk. 'therion'), signifies a wild beast; metaphorically, a brutal, bestial man, like Paul's opponents at Ephesus, savage, ferocious and untamed to the obedience of Christ (Romans 8:7; I Corinthians 15:32). The "harlot" Roman Church is seated on the beast. She is controlling the last, or fourth empire. With the world church system under her Rome will be controlling, and her once Protestant image will be obedient to Rome because Rome controls the gold of the world. The First Seal opened by the living creature with the face of a Lion was effective from Pentecost and during the Ephesian, Smyrnean and Pergamean Church Ages (AD53 ? AD606). It represents the elect who were Spiritually redeemed through the revelation of the Messages to those dispensations, which reproduced the nature of the living creature who called "Come," when the Lamb opened the First Seal. In the Old Testament the Lion adorned the standard God lifted up against the enemy from the East and represented the tribe of Judah aided by Issachar and Zebulon. The Light of the Gospel came out of the East and has shone even to the West (Matthew 24:27). Under the Gentile dispensation the world power is Rome, and as Rome will rule