An on-going work to restore the Roman Colosseum has reached a new stage of development.

The Italian billionaire and shoe-maker Diego Della Valle has personally undertaken the next step in restoring the Roman Colosseum to its ancient glory. Valle has said that he wants to fix the monument because he is an Italian. “I am very proud to be Italian,” he said. “This is the most important Italian monument and symbol.”

This newest stage is more about its international image than ever before. Signor Valle is quite right when he exclaims that the 2,000 year-old Roman Colosseum is a symbol, the most important one at that, of Roman Imperial glory.

Signor Valle has ponied up $32 million dollars to help restore that glory. The Colosseum, voted by an international vote as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007, is now being fast-tracked to be dressed in all its former splendor. The primary plan is to wash off the centuries of dust, pollution, and grime from off the arcades which ring the Colosseum. Its slighting has already been modernized, its structure shored up and its public image changed and polished.

The very delicate operation of giving it a face-lift and a general makeover is now being undertaken by a large staff of beauticians of an industrial sort. Using a fine chemical watery mist and light brushes, carefully considering that no irreparable damage will be done to the world treasure during the restoration process, workers are carefully at work on the old monstrosity. The workers have already peeled away some of the caked on crud and have exposed graffiti and colorful frescoes from the days of its youth that lay beneath its aging concrete skin. There are 80 arcades encircling the arena, each arcade scheduled for its time under the brush and mist. Earthquakes, pillage from robbers and businessmen, the ravages of smog, and the shaking of the nearby subway have done damage that can be reversed, but only with great attention and a beautician’s soft touch.

Five arcades at a time are being isolated. So tedious is the work, that each section will be cordoned off allowing approximately three months for completion. Behind the scaffolding tarp, hundreds of jets spray the arcade limestone for a few hours at a time. The closer to ground level the longer the spray because of the amount of grime and dirt accumulated over the years. When the spraying is finished technicians in waterproof suits use soft-bristled brushes, toothbrushes and delicate hand tools to apply ammonium bicarbonate to remove the layers of gunk. Specially trained restorers use hammers and chisels to chip away at plaster and cement applied poorly in past repairs.

The makeover should also reveal secrets of how one of the world’s most famous, and often neglected, monument remained standing for 20 centuries. Visitors will find that the monument’s Travertine limestone is once again a vibrant dark ivory as it appeared in its first days. In general, the current restoration is targeted for shoring up of the body structure and preparing the aging giant for another thousand year service to the Roman cause. But assurance of its future is not the only object of the clean-up. Putting a modern face on the house that Rome built is critical. It is figured that the money from Signor Valle will buy two or three years of cosmetology for the celebrated relic and will improve its image in more ways than one.

The cleaning is slated to end sometime in 2016, Valle’s donation will also fund some structural restoration in the interior of the Colosseum.

It’s All About Image
The greatest work of restoration is being done beyond the stone and paint, deep in the dark psyche of the perceiving world. The old image of original Roman Imperialism is in dire need of a makeover. One that will give it a gentler more benevolent face more suited to the demands of freedom and a government that cares for the life, liberty, and happiness of its people.

The shoe-maker has been clear that his greater purpose in sponsoring the makeover is a duty to the world and mankind. The walls and dungeons of the 2,000 year-old emblem of Imperial Rome aren’t the only things that need to be refurbished, cleaned and brightened up so that it can sit at the table smiling alongside the other unified new world nations.

Signor Valle has said that it is the people of Italy’s responsibility to preserve and promote the ancient glories of Imperial Rome to spur on modern generations. But the prophecies about the growth and revival of the Roman Empire make it necessary that spirits of the Antichrist are equally fast at work trying to scrub away the grimy scars left behind by brutal Roman legions and that ‘old time religion’ of the worship of the Emperors of old. The fascist stain of the last century must be washed away. The icon of Rome, the Colosseum, is being called upon once again to declare the glory of Imperial Rome but for this it must reshape its image.

Make no mistake, the revival of the ancient antichrist beast of Rome, that greatest of world power which dominated the nations for better than a millennium, has been in full gear since just before the start of World War I. The Antichrist Empire was built over time through four historical successions beginning with Babylon, then Persia, Greece and ultimately through the efforts of Roman Imperialism. The process of domination of the world is described in the book of Daniel. It took a thousand years until Roman culture and power had spread forth – north, south, east, and west – out from the boot of Italy, its iron heels stomping to dust all opposition with brutal force wherever it chose to venture.

Without argument, the Colosseum is the most recognized monument to the beast of world domination and empire. It has been undergoing a slow but steady restoration of body, soul, and spirit for the last century and a half with efforts stepping up dramatically in the last 40 years. First, it was structural and a mere house cleaning to help restore its public image. Mussolini cleaned out the basement in the 1930’s, the 1970’s revival shored up its footing, enhanced its lighting, and took steps toward a life suited for the 21st century. Now the two thousand year-old brute is getting a manicure and a facelift – a full makeover. At the start of the new millennium, the two thousand year-old emblem of power was voted by international acclaim as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. The announcement, if you will, is that the brute has changed its stripes; kinder, democratic, by no means aggressive.

After the fall of the Roman Empire the beast lay dormant, but never died. It continued to evolve through the powers of Europe and into the new world, but always obstructed by God’s prophetic word until it would be time for it to rise from its partial slumber. Now, according to prophecy, it is time for the spirit of Rome to be revived. We see the rising tide of revival in her makeover. In fact, it has been awakening for the last one hundred years. In this year, the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I we see evidence that we are living in the days of the fulfillment of God’s prophecies concerning the rise of ‘Rome’. When the Berlin Wall, for example, came down it was a signal that the Roman Empire was no longer to stay divided. Ever since that day in 1981 the process to bring the empire to a unified power has been moving toward that prophesied end.

Now the Beast, to use the Biblical image, rises up out of the sea of mankind, reviving its ruthless spirit once again, readying itself to stomp and crush the world under its feet of iron and clay. This is not to say that it is Rome or Italy alone that is being revived. It is the conglomerate nations of antichrist neo-Rome in the modern form that rises up. All those that are Roman-like, wherever they are to be found, whatever part of the globe in which they live and believe. The iron symbolizing the means it has to subdue men by force, the clay being that the monstrous oppression of life and freedom it ultimately exerts will be doomed to ultimate failure when Christ comes to liberate the earth.

Papal Ambitions Can Be Seen Circling the Arena
For years the Papacy has kept support alive by making regular holy visits on Good Friday during Easter season and carrying a crucifix around to stations-of-the-cross which it had set in place around the former arena of death. Popes of the 19th and 20th centuries initiated an array of projects ranging from clean up details to structural projects.  At Papal instigation the walls were reinforced with triangular brick wedges in 1807 and 1827, the inside arena was shored up and repaired in 1831, 1846, and in the 1930s. The arena substructure was partly excavated in 1810–1814 and 1874 and was fully exposed under the church champion and Fascist leader Benito Mussolini during the pre-war 1930s who wanted to restore the massive stadium that in its heyday held 80,000 wild spectators in their seats for gladiatorial fights, replications of famous naval battles and gruesome pageants of Christian martyrdom, slaughters of exotic animals and executions of unfortunate prisoners of war. Mussolini’s alliance with the Pope, and their mutual political motives to restore the Colosseum gives those who look at the politics of the Colosseum’s past no sense that the Popes’ connections with the iconic stadium have ever been anything but self-serving moves that were politically, and never honestly, motivated. The Church wants to baptize the Colosseum for its own public relations purposes, ignoring the fact that the three Emperors responsible for building the Colosseum, Vespasian, and his successor sons Titus and Domitian, used the enormous booty from the destruction of God’s Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD to completely fund its entire construction between the years 70-90 A.D. From the perspective of Christian’s this fact alone should cause an eternal disdain toward ancient Roman Imperialism and the Colosseum itself. Whether Roman authorities, the Papacy or the shoemaker, realize it or not the Colosseum is much more than a money maker, church pulpit, the poster-boy for EU tourism, or a stool on which some shoe-maker can ballyhoo his good works. Actually it all adds up to being a symbol of the resurrection of the desire for world peace and unity as romanticized in the political minds of the West, of which the EU is only a part. It is the spirit of Rome, the father and god of this earth, the Papa of a possible One World – and then some. It is the polished version, modernized and updated for universal appeal, scrubbed down and dressed up to fit a gentler humanistic vision, one in which law and order rule properly over peoples and nations with their hands joined. It is a billboard for the New World Order; a kinder gentler Pax Romana, the hybrid of even the Pax Britannica, and the next step in the evolution of Pax Americana. The Colosseum stands as the symbol of all this, which is the real revival that is taking place internationally. In a great PR move, the Colosseum has become a symbol of the international campaign against capital punishment, which was abolished in Italy in 1948. Several anti-death penalty demonstrations took place in front of the Colosseum in 2000. Since that time, as a gesture against the death penalty, the local authorities of Rome change the color of the Colosseum’s night time illumination from white to gold whenever a person condemned to the death penalty anywhere in the world gets their sentence commuted or is released, or if a jurisdiction abolishes the death penalty. Most recently, the Colosseum was lit up in gold when capital punishment was abolished in the American state of New Mexico in April 2009. The Colosseum could be reckoned as the original worldly candle set on the city of the seven hills, the competition to Christ’s famous analogy of His radiant light shining into the dark crevices of men’s hearts and then outward to light up the world. But in these final hours, the Colosseum serves the world as a sort of candelabra into which new candles are set. This is why the rest of the West is interested in the Colosseum as a symbol it can use – and never mind what actually went on in the place. Symbols like flags are important pieces of propaganda to encourage the soul to nod the head yes, to inspire the spirit to believe.  It can suggest that the spirit of Imperial Rome means well. Yes, there may even have been a Nero or a Caligula along the way but they are the exception, not the rule.

New Pretty Face, Same Old Spirit?
The legendary methods of administering law and order, vulgar and harsh, the violence and guile Imperial Rome used as instruments to manacle the nations to impose an enslaved brand of world peace, is now being resurrected in 21st Century form. The Colosseum and its restoration charges up the propaganda trail seeking full revival of the Roman Empire. It will be couched in modern humanistic terms and phrases. The polishing of the Colosseum is calculated by spirits to make an appeal to our hearts, so that we should long for the good old days of the two hundred year world peace during the Age of Augustus. The soft spray of a cleansing mist, the cleaning motion of the delicate hand bring to the fore the colors and days of glory insinuating that the world can once again realize the glories that were the golden days of Rome. People within reach of the modern Neo-Roman empire (those nations known ubiquitously as the West, and briskly moving into regions beyond), people who would be aghast at those who squeeze too tightly the wrist of a child about to run across the street, are glorying over the brightly colored frescos and drawings of gladiators, those men who were waiting to hear the words “You who are about to die, we salute you!”. It is a gentle misting spray making it appear dazzling, things that brush aside thoughts of reasonable folks and beguile the soul. Now the aged Colosse is being given a bath; because it must be sanitized. It is reckoned by the consent of the world to be a modern wonder of the world because it lives, partly because it not only lives after so many centuries, it speaks to the world.  It has gone through an arduous metamorphosis. It claims to be a beacon of life now, reformed from wilder, crazier days; now it is a humble sanctuary of forgiveness; a shrine to which those who love life can make blessed pilgrimage.

But not so fast. Being an arena of death and despair its sins cannot be expunged by a little water and a few people wielding some toothbrushes. The scent of blood still fills its dungeons. Though it has been baptized and is a place of memoriam, it remains malodorous, a place where throats were cut without so much as a whimper from those enjoying the bread and circuses at the Emperor’s expense. And now it is no longer abhorred as a cemetery, a place of torture, a place built with looted booty, a prison of human carnage and blood shed, of animals slaughtered for human entertainment, a place of outrageous pride and inglorious oppression, of monstrous whole where pain was inflicted with joy on the defenseless, of mothers’ grief for dying children, of bewildered slaves dying for who knows what. Has this spirit reformed? If not, then maybe we should not be quick to clap when we hear of anything that has to do with Rome being revived. Unless it is because we perceive it is a fulfillment of a vision of God’s prophecy. What if this makeover is nothing but a disguise to help gain its former spiritual and worldly prowess by stealth? The revival of the Colosseum as a virtuous advertisement for a reformed Roman Imperialism is nothing but propaganda. As the ancient Roman proverb says: it is a – fraus est celare fraudem – a fraud within a fraud.

The sanctification of the beastly Colosseum is rather like polishing up an old slave block, making it look nice with colors and appealing signs of nostalgic good ol’ days, and then setting it up on Main Street in Charleston, S.C. to be revered as a holy Christian site.

In a famous prophecy, a medieval monk known as the Venerable Bede wrote that “Rome will exist as long as the Colosseum does; when the Colosseum falls so will Rome; when Rome falls so will the world.”

Today the spirit of Rome exists side-by-side with its iconic symbol – the Colosseum. That part Mr. Venerable Bede got correct. The part about the two falling simultaneously seems also a likely scenario at this stage of things. As for when Rome falls so shall the world? If he meant that Imperial Rome will fall and at the same time the spirit of the World shall be conquered by the return of Christ, then the Venerable Bede got that right also. We may surmise that he also was saying that the Colosseum is an iconic symbol of Imperial Rome, a candle lit on the seven hills of Rome, a light of the apostate World Spirit which shall someday soon be extinguished forever along with the empire of antichrist Rome. If that’s what he meant then the Venerable Bede was four for four on his prophecy about the beast of Rome.