I’ve been having exchanges with a brother in Christ who is a Futurist. He believes the prophecy of Daniel 9:27 is an Endtime event, and I believe it was fulfilled in the past. The Devil has deceived many Christians today through ignorance of history and Jesuit false doctrines that have crept into the Church to think prophecies of Daniel, Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2, and nearly all of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation are yet to be fulfilled in the future. And why would Satan do that? To stop Protestant Christians from calling Papal Rome “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” of Revelation 17:5, and to stop calling the popes of Rome “that man of sin … the son of perdition” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3.

Up till the beginning of the 20th century, sound eschatological doctrine among Bible reading Protestants still prevailed. It changed dramatically after C.I. Scofield published his Scofield Reference Bible.

Here are seven facts I shared with my friend about the Futurist interpretation of Daniel 9:27 which he holds, facts that I consider irrefutable.

1. It was my pastor who taught me the Futurist view of Daniel 9:27 and the 70th Week of Daniel about the Antichrist making a seven-year-covenant with the Jews and Israel to rebuild their temple which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. He taught me there is an undetermined gap in time between the 69th Week and the 70th Week. I first heard this from him circa 1974 when I was young and without knowing any alternate interpretations of the 70th Week. I had no reason in my mind to question him because he was more learned than I was. In 2005 an email friend told me there is no gap of time between the 69th and 70th Week of Daniel. I rejected the idea then due to my cognitive bias and because my friend was a SDA. I thought he was giving me an SDA-specific doctrine. It was 9 years later when I learned he was telling me standard Protestant interpretation of the 70th Week.
2. The very same pastor 19 years later in 1993 confessed that he got that interpretation of the 70th Week of Daniel from C.I. Scofield, a man who also taught the evil doctrines of Zionism and pre-tribulation secret rapture. These were two doctrines from Scofield my pastor threw out the window over 20 years earlier! The pastor also stated that his interpretation of the 70th Week is only a theory. In spite of that, I was not motivated at the time to search for alternative interpretations. I had no access to other resources because I was living in Japan then, a land with limited English libraries. The Internet was not yet popular. I didn’t start using the Internet to gain information until 1997, four years later.
3. It was finally in December of 2014 I learned from articles on the Internet that up to the 19th century, most Bible commentators taught that Daniel 9:27 is a Messianic prophecy that was fulfilled by Christ and His Apostles. One reason I think I received it then is because a couple years before that I learned that 19th century and earlier Protestant Bible commentators taught that the prophecy of the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2:3,4 is talking about the office of the papacy. I believed they were correct. That took me halfway to understanding Daniel 9:27.
4. Scripture interprets Scripture. Verse 4 of Daniel chapter 9 says, “keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him.” This is clearly the same covenant of verse 27! “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:” Notice the definite article “the” before covenant in verses 4 and 27? This is indicative that the covenant that was confirmed was already in existence. The covenant of verse 4 is the same covenant of verse 27, namely the covenant God made with Abraham, the covenant of grace through faith. Jesus Himself confirmed this covenant with the Jews when He preached the Gospel to them! Paul confirms this in Galatians 3:17 when he says “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ…” It was Jesus, not Antichrist, who caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease in the middle of the “Week” or seven-year period when He was crucified on the Cross of Calvary. His Apostles continued to openly preach the Gospel for three and a half more years until major persecution of the believers and followers of Christ began with the stoning of Stephen, thus ending the 7-year confirmation of the covenant with Israel and the beginning of Paul’s ministry of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles.
5. Jesuit Francesco Ribera around 1585 concocted the Futurist interpretation of Daniel 9:27 to put the Antichrist into the unknown FUTURE, to stop the Protestants from calling the popes of Rome the Antichrist. It also diverted attention from papal Rome, the so-called “Holy See” of being “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” of Revelation 17:5.
6. The Futurist interpretation of Daniel 9:27 was largely REJECTED by Protestants until the 20th century when it was proclaimed by C.I. Scofield in his Scofield Reference Bible, a Bible filled with false interpretations of prophecy that blinded the Church as to who the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 is. It and Scofield’s other dispensational doctrines such as Christian Zionism was and continues to be promoted by the prestigious Dallas Theological Seminary which wrongly influenced nearly all the popular preachers of today.
7. The false Jesuit Futurist interpretation of Daniel 9:27 is held by the majority of evangelicals today which is why many churches are apostate churches.

This is from The Secret Terrorists by Bill Hughes. If the Jesuits were that powerful in the 19th century, just think how much power they have now in the 21st! But they also failed many times. God foiled their plans and will continue to do so. As the scripture says, “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” – Romans 8:31

CHAPTER 3 PRESIDENTS HARRISON, TAYLOR, AND BUCHANAN

William Henry Harrison was elected to the Presidency of the United States in the year 1841. He was already well up in years at 67, but he was very healthy and robust. All who knew him felt that he would have no problem going through his full four years in office. However, just thirty-five days after taking the oath of office, President Harrison was dead on April 4, 1841. Most, if not all, encyclopedias will tell you that he died of pneumonia after giving his inaugural address in the severe cold of Washington, D.C., but that is not correct. He did not die of pneumonia.

When Harrison came to office a very tense situation existed in the country. Trouble was brewing between the North and the South over the issue of slavery. There was contention over the annexation of Texas, whether it would be admitted free or slave. An attempt had been made on President Jackson’s life just six years before. Harrison took office a short twenty years before the Civil War. The influence of the Jesuits was weighing heavily upon America.

As we have already seen, the Congresses at Vienna, Verona, and Chieri, were determined to destroy popular government wherever it was found. The prime target was the United States and the destruction of every Protestant principle. The despicable Jesuits were ordered to carry out this destruction.

Andrew Jackson faced the onslaught of the Jesuits via the political mine fields of John C. Calhoun and the financial wizardry of Nicholas Biddle. William Henry Harrison had also refused to go along with the Jesuits’ goals for America. In his inaugural address he made these comments:

By that statement, President Harrison had just incurred the deadly wrath of the Jesuits.

For nearly a thousand years, the Roman Catholic popes felt that they ruled by divine right, that their power had come directly from God, and that all men were to bow to their authority and control. If a ruler would not submit his position and the country he ruled into the hands of the Pope, then that person had no right to rule. When Harrison stated that, “we admit of no government by divine right,” he was declaring that he and the United States were in no way going to submit to the pope’s control. To the pope and his heinous Jesuits, this was a slap in the face that they felt must be dealt with immediately.

It was not Harrison alone that had rejected Rome’s authority, for he was simply stating what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had declared before him. Our Republic totally refused the control that the pope and the Jesuits were trying to apply. When a nation, church, or individual, refuses to submit to the authority of the papacy, they are finished. Unless God intervenes, the lives of those opposing the papacy will be terminated.

This concept is completely foreign to the thinking of people who have lived under a free, constitutional government. The inalienable rights to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience and a government without a king, are taken for granted in the United States today. We don’t realize that Harrison’s statement was a dagger aimed at the heart of the papacy’s existence. Another ruler who refused to be dictated to by the papacy was Queen Elizabeth of England. She was one of Henry the Eighth’s daughters and ruled England from 1558 to 1603. She ascended the throne following the death of her half-sister, ‘Bloody Mary,’ who ruled England from 1553 to 1558. Mary had been a Catholic sovereign, but Elizabeth was a Protestant.

Queen Elizabeth wisely rejected the assumed ‘Divine Right’ of the papacy to rule over and control the throne of England. Because of this there were at least five attempts to assassinate her. These attempts all failed because she had a superb secret service group, and her life was saved.

When the papacy realized that all their efforts to assassinate Elizabeth had failed, they turned to one of their Catholic sons, Phillip the Second of Spain. In 1580 the papacy arranged for Spain to invade England.

The famous Spanish Armada was sent to crush England because Elizabeth would not give her throne and kingdom to the pope. For thirty years, the Jesuits tried to kill Elizabeth, but failed. Finally, they conspired with Phillip the Second of Spain to annihilate her with the Armada.

Likewise, as William Henry Harrison took his oath to become the President of the United States, the Jesuits saw a man that openly opposed them and their plans. Unfortunately, President Harrison was poisoned just thirty five days into his term of office.

United States Senator Thomas Benton concurs.

William Henry Harrison became the first president to fall a victim of the Jesuits in their attempt to take over the United States, destroy the Constitution, and install the papacy as the supreme ruler in America. If any U.S. President or any other leader refused to take orders from the Jesuits, they too, would be targets of assassination. Zachary Taylor refused to go along with the destruction of America and he was the next to fall.

Taylor was known as a great military man. His friends called him ‘Old Rough and Ready.’ He came to the White House in 1848 and sixteen months later, he was dead.

Here is what would have happened if Zachary Taylor had invaded Cuba. There was Catholic Austria, Catholic Spain, Catholic France and England all waiting, ready to do battle with the United States of America if he had invaded Cuba. What chance would this young republic have had against the united powers of Catholic Europe at that time? The papacy well understood this and that is why they pushed Taylor so hard to invade.

Taylor committed another ‘crime’ against Rome. He spoke passionately about the preservation of the Union. The Jesuits were striving hard to split the nation in two, and the President was trying hard to keep it together. Jesuit agent, John C. Calhoun, visited the Department of State, and requested the president to say nothing in his forthcoming message about the Union. But Calhoun had little influence over Taylor, for after his visit the following remarkable passage was added to Taylor’s speech,

McCarty picks up the story from here,

Six years later James Buchanan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, was elected president. James Buchanan had wined and dined with the Southerners and it appeared as though he would go along with their desires.

James Buchanan didn’t have to wait long to find out what the Jesuits would do to him for double-crossing them.

James Buchanan was poisoned and almost died. He lived because he knew that he had been given arsenic poisoning and so informed his doctors. He knew that the Jesuits poisoned Harrison and Taylor.

The Jesuit Order fulfilled their oath again that they would poison, kill, or do whatever was necessary to remove those who opposed their plans. From 1841 to 1857, we saw that three Presidents were attacked by the Jesuits as outlined in the Congresses of Vienna, Verona, and Chieri. Two died and one barely escaped. They allow nothing to stand in their way of total domination of America, and the destruction of the Constitution. As they look at America the priests of Rome have stated,

When they say “Vicar of Jesus Christ” they mean the pope.

This is a sermon given in the 19th century by an English pastor. It alludes to not only the popes of Rome, but all the priests of Rome and even Protestants who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ’s Blood as being the only thing that cleanses us for our sins is an Antichrist. It alludes that anyone who is trying to take the place of Jesus Christ in our lives is an Antichrist.

Since 1971 when I got saved by our Lord Jesus Christ and began reading the Bible for myself, I have heard from preachers the terms, “that man of sin,” “the son of perdition” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 used synonymously with “antichrist” of the epistles of first and second John. Notice that antichrist is not capitalized in John’s letters. The early Protestants all interpreted 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 to be talking about the popes of Rome, but “antichrist” is not necessarily referring to only the popes of Rome for John clearly says in 1 John 2:18, “even now are there many antichrists;”. That’s what this article is all about.

My dear Friends,

Suffering from temporary blindness, I have of late been obliged to preach without notes; but, at your request that it should be printed, I have dictated the substance of my Sermon on Antichrist. The above must be my apology for any inaccuracies. I make, however, no apology for my subject. Though redeeming love be the theme on which I delight to dwell, yet I feel it to be my bounden duty to guard my people against self-deception, and any prevailing error of the present day.

The signs of the times are not to be overlooked, and as the victory of the truth approaches, the enemy of the truth will assume every form to deceive the unwary. Happy are they who are preserved in the simplicity of the Gospel. My prayer for you is, that being justified by Faith, you may have peace with God, bear fruit unto holiness, and have for your end everlasting peace.

I am,
Your affectionate Friend,

WILLIAM MARSH.

ANTICHRIST.

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
“They went out from us, hut they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” I John ii. 18, 19.

WHEN this fair world rose out of chaos, and man, formed in the image of his Maker, was invested with dominion “over all the earth,” “The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;” (Job 38:7) even the Lord himself looked down from Heaven upon every thing that He had made, and “behold it was very good.” Had man continued holy, he would have continued happy; but an enemy was at hand. Satan, the leader of that rebel host of angels who kept not their first estate, beguiled Eve through his subtlety, and thus human nature became subject to the arch deceiver.

From that first offense in Paradise commenced the fearful conflict still carried on between the powers of light and darkness, that is, between Christ and Satan. I say between Christ and Satan, because, in the threatening against the tempter, and before our first parents were sent forth to experience the bitter fruits of their transgression, a deliverer was promised who should destroy the power of the enemy; “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”(Genesis 5:15)

The Most High, having thus revealed the plan of mercy, by which he could uphold the honour of his moral government, and yet provide salvation for rebellious man, it became Satan’s object, through deceit or violence, either to prevent the knowledge of that Saviour, or to corrupt and nullify the faith which would lead to salvation through Him.

It shall therefore be my endeavour to trace the Enemy’s path in his various forms of Antichrist, from the beginning until the period of his final defeat. Let me, therefore point out to you

I. The characteristics of the opponents of Christ.

II. The best means of detecting them.

III. The evidence they afford to the truth of Christianity.

I. The characteristics of the opponents of Christ.

“Yea, hath God said,” (Genesis 3:1) was the first suggestion of the Deceiver, by which he would raise a doubt in the mind of Eve. He then proceeds to a positive assertion that “they should not surely die,” and thereby instill unbelief. His next step is to present the idea of a greater good than they at present enjoyed, and thus was Eve, by degrees, deluded into the sin of disobedience.

Human nature having transgressed, and become liable to the penalty of death, God appointed a sacrifice, by which man is taught the desert of sin, and yet the way in which, through an innocent Substitute, he could obtain mercy. Abel, in faith, brings the firstlings of his flock as an offering for sin, but Cain, “who was of that wicked one,” rejects the typical atonement, and hating the faith and obedience of his brother, deprives him of his life. Thus early, to the penalty of deaths Thus early, the leading characteristics of Antichrist, deceit and violence, were displayed.

In the family of Seth, the worship of the true God was still continued, but in process of time it was so mingled with false worship, that at length, the light remaining only with Noah, the rest of the world was swept away by the flood. Again was the olive branch of peace held forth, and at the commencement of this new era of our world, Noah approached God with the appointed burnt-offerings; but, though the light continued to glimmer amongst his descendants, it seems to have been nearly extinguished, when it was again rekindled in the person of Abraham, and he, with his descendants, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, bore faithful witness to that light until it sank in Egyptian darkness.

After a time Moses appeared, and by him it pleased God to republish the law of love, and to establish a typical dispensation among the Jewish people. Then was the malice of Satan again stirred up to defeat this gracious purpose, and by the imitation of the miracles wrought by Moses, he contrived to keep the people of Egypt in their delusion, and no sooner had the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, and escaped from the rage of their enemies, than they were led to corrupt their faith in the one true God, by worshipping Him under the symbol of a golden calf. The zeal of Moses soon put an end to this delusion, but the spirit of it seems to have remained amongst them, for in after time Jeroboam drew ten of the tribes aside to idolatry, and by substituting the calves of Dan and Bethel for the true worship at Jerusalem, provoked the Lord to cast them out.

In Judah was God still known ; but false prophets arose, “the priests bare rule by their means, and the people loved to have it so,” till at length the two remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, were sent to be purified in the furnace of Babylon. But the Most High delivered them from their captivity, because He had foretold, by the patriarch Jacob, that “the sceptre should not depart from Judah till Shiloh should come.” (Genesis 49:10) And he had also sworn by an oath to David, that He would raise up a son to set on his throne in whom it should be established for ever.

I need not dwell on the violence of the Enemy in the persecutions of Daniel and his companions; neither on the still more universal oppression of the Jews under Antiochus; nor enlarge on the opposition made by Sanballat and Tobiah, in order to prevent the restoration of the pure worship at Jerusalem. The prophet Zechariah informs us, that Satan was then seen in vision, as “standing at the right hand of Joshua to resist him.” (Zechariah 3:1)

At length the fullness of time arrived when the Son of God was to be manifested, to destroy the works of the Devil. No sooner was his birth announced than Herod, into whose hands the sceptre had now fallen, sought, both by stratagem and force, to take away his life. And when our blessed Lord was about to begin his ministry, the wily foe endeavored to lure him from his work, but in vain. Our great Deliverer in single combat foiled the Adversary, drove him from the field, and by suffering on the cross for the sins of men, virtually conquered him for ever.

But it was in the council of God, that his church should still carry on the conflict, and both the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles to the churches bear ample testimony to the violence and deceit with which the enemy tried, both to oppose and corrupt the truth. Previous to the Roman Empire professing the faith of Christ, violence was the weapon resorted to, in order to subdue the early Christians, but when that weapon could no longer avail, by mingling error with truth, he beguiled his unwary victims. Ignorance and bigotry, with ambition and violence, ranged themselves on his side, and pure Christian truth was obscured for ages, when God, (who “chooses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty,” – 1 Cor. 1:17) called from his cell the monk of Wit- tenburgh, and placing in his hand the thunderbolts of Heaven, shook the system of corruption to its center.

Such are some of the various forms of Antichrist, under which the characteristics of Satan may be traced from the beginning of time until now. St. John, indeed, alludes to those which especially prevailed in his day, such as denying the sinfulness of human nature, and the divinity, humanity, and Messiahship of our Lord but, however various or numerous their forms may be, the Christian need never be ignorant of his devices. I will therefore proceed to point out—

In the execution of the great work of redemption, Messiah was to fulfil the threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King. Whatsoever, therefore, opposes itself to Him in either of these three offices is an Antichrist. Though our Saviour may be said to have exercised the prophetic office only during his personal ministry on earth, yet it was His Spirit which spoke by all the Prophets, “testifying before hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow.”(1Peter 1:11) Every attempt, therefore, to set aside the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and every idea that would convey a doubt of their sufficiency, is opposed to His prophetic office; and every addition to them as an article of faith, or any omission by which a partial view only is taken, so that one truth is made to oppose or neutralize another, is anti-christian. “The law of the Lord is perfect, the testimony of the Lord is sure, the statutes of the Lord are right.” (Psalm 19:17)

Infallibility is to be found in the Scriptures alone; not in the (Church) Fathers, for they differed: not in Councils, for they have erred; not in any man, nor in any body of men, for they are all fallible, except the Prophets and Apostles, who never differ, never err, never deceive but are infallible, because they “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2Peter 1:21)

As to the Sacerdotal office (priests and priesthood), whatever conveys the idea of human merit, or would add any thing to the obedience unto death of our Redeemer, as the meritorious cause of our justification, is anti-christian. Jesus is the only way to the everlasting mansions, the only door to the abodes of bliss; and as there is no other sacrifice for sin than that which was once offered on the cross, so there is no other Mediator between God and man, but the man, Christ Jesus. The Scriptures are as jealous of this truth as they are of the unity of the Divine Nature, therefore whoever proposes any other medium of approach to God, or whoever directly or indirectly undermines the true advocacy of our Lord, is an Antichrist. It is the incense of this High Priest alone which perfumes our prayers; it is his blood alone which cleanses from all sin. “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

As to the Regal (kingly) office of our Redeemer, whosoever would set aside the precepts of the Gospel as the rule of a believer’s Hfe, is an Antichrist; for “The grace of God, which bringeth salvation, teaches us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.” (Titus 2:12,13) It is by the discharge of personal, relative, and social duties that we let our light shine before men, and adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour. This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and His commandments are not grievous. This is true Christianity, and if our faith thus work by love, and manifest itself in obedience, we shall be prepared to meet Him whenever He appears, to put down every Antichrist, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Now let me shew you—

We have to admire that wisdom of God by which the wrath of man is made to praise Him. We might tremble for the truth, when we consider the number, the deceit, and the violence of its opponents, were we not assured that they do but confirm it; because—

First, Their rise and fall are foretold in Scripture. The book of Psalms, and all the Old Testament Prophets, very frequently allude to the opposing power; but in the New Testament, “the Spirit speaketh expressly that in these latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their consciences seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from meats.” (1 Timothy 4:1-3) Of these characteristics we have had a long and mournful display in Christendom, and they have prepared the way for “the scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of his coming ?” (2Peter 3:3,4) and ” denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ;” (Jude 4) and thus are we entering upon “those last days, in which perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”(2 Timothy 3:1-4) All this have we seen manifested during the French Revolution, and we see its continuance in the spirit of infidelity and atheism of the present day.

Beloved brethren, perilous times are come. What is Chartism (a 19th century English political and social movement), but opposition to all human government? What is Socialism, but opposition to all moral and religious control, or Infidelity under its most dangerous form, because, whilst it approaches its victims in the garb of philanthropy, it leaves unrestrained all the sinful passions of man, and then charges on religion the evils which religion alone could mitigate or remove. And, alas ! that I should have to add, that even among ourselves men arise, “drawing away disciples after them.” From whence come the unhappy divisions in the very bosom of our own Church, but from Him who knows that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Do we not discern, in these “signs of the times,” the “mystery of iniquity” distinctly at work? Is not Satan transforming himself into an angel of light, to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect?

Beloved brethren, there is no mystery in open ungodliness and sin. There is no mystery in the drunkard over his cups, the miser counting his gold, the voluptuary seeking his pleasure, or in the midnight robber, whose hands are stained with blood: but it is a mystery when error assumes the garb of truth, and when learned and pious men are allured from the Word of God to human traditions, from the power of religion to its forms and ceremonies. It is a mystery when learned and pious men, within the pale of our Church, uphold doctrines contrary to her Articles and Liturgy, and oppose the very principles they have sworn to protect. It is a mystery when learned and pious men, who would shrink with horror from doing any thing contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, are yet allowing themselves to be drawn and are drawing others from the simplicity which is in Christ. Satan well knows, that on minds like these, the darts of temptation to sin would fall harmless. Indeed, it is worthy of notice, that those who have introduced error in doctrine have not unfrequently been men ascetic and self-denying in practice, while it is also to be lamented that some who have been correct in doctrine, have held the truth in unrighteousness but the piety of the former should not of necessity recommend their principles, because “Angels abode not in the truth.”

Adam fell from a state of innocence, and the Apostle Peter was rebuked to his face because he erred upon this very point, the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Thus we see, that through deceit, old errors are creeping in under a new name, which threaten to undermine the foundation of our apostolic Church. Let the ministers and members of that Church rise up and protest against these errors, while they affectionately exhort their erring brethren to retrace their steps, and abide by the principles of Reformers and Martyrs.

I am thankful to be able to update this website today with this article. Yesterday for a good part of the day we had a power-outage. After the power came back around sunset, Internet data from our WIFI didn’t come with it. This is reason I wasn’t able to post an article the day before this. The power company apparently in their maintenance work cut a fiber optic cable which disabled our Internet. Now it’s afternoon the next day and I found a public WIFI, “PISO WIFI” that the locals use, and it worked for me.

Introduction from James

This is from chapter 4 of William Cooper’s book, Behold a Pale Horse.

How many Americans today know about the Monroe Doctrine?

“The Monroe Doctrine is a United States foreign policy position that opposes European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States. The doctrine was central to American grand strategy in the 20th century.” – Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

The reason for the Monroe Doctrine was because the so called “Holy Alliance” of the deposed monarchs of Europe, the “Black Nobility,” conspired to undo the constitutional government of the United States of America! The Black Nobility are Roman aristocratic families who side with the Papacy.

Please read the rest of the article carefully.

SECRET TREATY OF
VERONA

Precedent
and
Positive Proof of Conspiracy

1916

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD SENATE

Mr. OWEN:
I wish to put in the Record the secret treaty of Verona of November 22, 1822, showing what this ancient conflict is between the rule of the few and the rule of the many. I wish to call the attention of the Senate to this treaty because it is the threat of this treaty which was the basis of the Monroe doctrine. It throws a powerful white light upon the conflict between monarchical government and government by the people. The Holy Alliance under the influence of Metternich, the Premier of Austria, in 1822, issued this remarkable secret document:

AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC CODE, 1778-1884

The undersigned, specially authorized to make some additions to the treaty of the Holy Alliance, after having exchanged their respective credentials, have agreed as follows:

ARTICLE 1. The high contracting powers, being convinced that the system of representative government is equally as incompatible with the monarchical principles as the maxim of the sovereignty of the people with the divine right, engage mutually, in the most solemn manner, to use all their efforts to put an end to the system of representative governments, in whatever country it may exist in Europe, and to prevent its being introduced in those countries where it is not yet known.

ARTICLE 2. As it can not be doubted that the liberty of the press is the most powerful means used by the pretended supporters of the rights of nations to the detriment of those of princes, the high contracting parties promise reciprocally to adopt all proper measures to suppress it, not only in their own States but also in the rest of Europe.

ARTICLE 3. Convinced that the principles of religion contribute most powerfully to keep nations in the state of passive obedience which they owe to their princes, the high contracting parties declare it to be their intention to sustain in their respective States those measures which the clergy may adopt, with the aim of ameliorating their own interests, so intimately connected with the preservation of the authority of the princes; and the contracting powers join in offering their thanks to the Pope for what he has already done for them, and solicit his constant cooperation in their views of submitting the nations.

ARTICLE 4. The situation of Spain and Portugal unite unhappily all the circumstances to which this treaty has particular reference. The high contracting parties, in confiding to France the care of putting an end to them, engaged to assist her in the manner which may the least compromit [sic] them with their own people and the people of France by means of a subsidy on the part of the two empires of 20,000,000 of francs every year from the date of the signature of this treaty to the end of the war.

ARTICLE 5. In order to establish in the Peninsula the order of things which existed before the revolution of Cadiz, and to insure the entire execution of the articles of the present treaty, the high contracting parties give to each other the reciprocal assurance that as long as their views are not fulfilled, rejecting all other ideas of utility or other measure to be taken, they will address themselves with the shortest possible delay to all the authorities existing in their States and to all their agents in foreign countries, with the view to establish connections tending toward the accomplishment of the objects proposed by this treaty.

ARTICLE 6. This treaty shall be renewed with such changes as new circumstances may give occasion for, either at a new congress or at the court of one of the contracting parties, as soon as the war with Spain shall be terminated.

ARTICLE 7. The present treaty shall be ratified and the ratifications exchanged at Paris within the space of six months.

Mr. OWEN:
I ask to have printed in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD this secret treaty, because I think it ought to be called now to the attention of the people of the United States and of the World. This evidence of the conflict between the rule of the few versus popular government should be emphasized on the minds of the people of the United States, that the conflict now waging throughout the world may be more clearly understood, for after all said the great pending war springs from the weakness and frailty of government by the few, where human error is far more probable than the error of the many where aggressive war is only permitted upon the authorizing vote of those whose lives are jeopardized in the trenches of modern war.

Mr. SHAFROTH:
Mr. President, I should like to have the Senator state whether in that treaty there was not a coalition formed between the powerful countries of Europe to reestablish the sovereignty of Spain in the Republics of South and Central America?

Mr. OWEN:
I was just going to comment upon that, and I am going to take but a few moments to do so because I realize the pressure of other matters. This Holy Alliance, having put a Bourbon prince upon the throne of France by force, then used France to suppress the constitution of Spain immediately afterwards and by this very treaty gave her a subsidy of 20,000,000 francs annually to enable her to wage war upon the people of Spain and prevent their exercise of any measure of the right of self-government. The Holy Alliance immediately did the same thing in Italy, by sending Austrian troops to Italy, where the people there attempted to exercise a like measure of liberal constitutional self-government; and it was not until the printing press, which the Holy Alliance so stoutly opposed, taught the people of Europe the value of liberty that finally one country after another seized a greater and greater right of self-government until now it may be fairly said that nearly all the nations of Europe have a very large measure of self-government.

However, I wished to call the attention of the Senate and the country to this important history in the growth of constitutional popular self-government. The Holy Alliance made its powers felt by the wholesale drastic suppression of the press in Europe, by universal censorship, by killing free speech and all ideas of popular rights, and by the complete suppression of popular government. The Holy Alliance having destroyed popular government in Spain and in Italy, had well-laid plans also to destroy popular government in the American colonies which had revolted from Spain and Portugal in Central and South America under the influence of the successful example of the United States. It was because of this conspiracy against the American Republics by the European monarchies that the great English statesman, Canning, called the attention of our Government to it, and our statesmen then, including Thomas Jefferson, took an active part to bring about the declaration by President Monroe in his next annual message to the Congress of the United States that the United States would regard it as an act of hostility to the Government of the United States and an unfriendly act if this coalition or if any power of Europe ever undertook to establish upon the American Continent any control of any American Republic or to acquire any territorial rights.

This is the so-called Monroe doctrine. The threat under the secret treaty of Verona to suppress popular government in the American Republics is the basis of the Monroe doctrine. This secret treaty sets forth clearly the conflict between monarchical government and popular government and the government of the few as against the government of the many. It is a part in reality, of developing popular sovereignty when we demand for women equal rights to life, to liberty, to the possession of property, to an equal voice in the making of the laws and the administration of the laws, This demand on the part of the women is made by men, and it ought to be made by men as well as by thinking, progressive women, as it will promote human liberty and human happiness. I sympathize with it, and I hope that all parties will in the national conventions give their approval to this larger measure of liberty to the better half of the human race.

Author’s (Bill Cooper’s) Note: Anyone who believes that the monarchs, after being deposed, forgave and forgot, is not playing with a full deck. Most of these families are wealthy beyond belief and may be more powerful today than when they sat upon thrones. Today they are known collectively as the Black Nobility. Just because the secret treaty of Verona was signed in 1822 does not mean that the treaty is void. It is imperative that you realize that privately, the Black Nobility refuses to ever recognize any government other than their own inherited and divine right to rule. They work diligently behind the scenes to cause conditions whereby they might regain their crowns. They believe that the United States belongs to England.

Introduction by the webmaster:

When I was in my 40s though I had been a born-again Christian for more than 20 years, I was under the influence of Dispensationalism. I was ignorant of the fact that most Christians up to the end of the 19th century looked at the popes of Rome as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Man of Sin of II Thessalonians chapter 2.

When I met a group of young Seventh Day Adventists in a park, I told them that I think Pope John Paul II is a good man. They rolled their eyes at me! I didn’t know then that the SDA church held the same eschatological views of Antichrist as the early Protestant Reformers. They all called the Roman papacy the office of the Antichrist. I didn’t come to that knowledge until some time in the early 2000s when I was in my 50s. It was based on researching the history of the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. I knew a little bit about the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther, but I had never heard of the Jesuit led Counter Reformation until I started to do my own research. It was never taught to me when I was a young Christian.

“Who Was Pope John Paul II?”

QUESTION: Who was Pope John Paul II?

ANSWER: Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920; he died in 2005. He was pope from 1978 to 2005. Upon assuming the office of pope, he quickly did two things: (1) he helped to cover up the murder of his predecessor (Pope John Paul I); and, (2) he protected then-Bishop Paul Marcinkus (who was, at that time, the head of the Vatican Bank) from the Italian authorities. (They wanted to question Marcinkus about “irregularities” at the Vatican Bank.) Pope John Paul II also presided over the greatest sex scandal in modern Roman Catholic Church history.

Author Milton William Cooper, on pages 89 and 90 of his book, “Behold A Pale Horse” (1991), tells us: “In the early 1940s, the I.G. Farben Chemical Company employed a Polish salesman [Ed.: i.e., Karol Wojtyla] who sold cyanide to the Nazis for use in Auschwitz. [Ed.: Auschwitz is a city in southern Poland that was the site of a Nazi extermination camp during World War II.] The same salesman also worked as a chemist in the manufacture of the poison gas. This same cyanide gas along with Zyklon B and malathion was used to exterminate millions of Jews and other groups. Their bodies were then burned to ashes in the ovens. After the war [Ed.: i.e., World War II] the salesman, fearing for his life, joined the [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church [Ed.: in Poland] and was ordained a [Ed.: Roman Catholic] priest in 1946. One of his closest friends was Dr. Wolf Szmuness, the mastermind behind the…experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials conducted by the Center for Disease Control in New York, San Francisco and four other American cities that loosed the plague of AIDS upon the American people. The salesman was ordained Poland’s youngest [Ed.: Roman Catholic] bishop in 1958. After a 30-day [Ed.: sic; a 33-day] reign his predecessor [Ed.: i.e., Pope John Paul I] was assassinated and our ex-cyanide gas salesman assumed the papacy as Pope John Paul II.”

Dr. Ronald Cooke, on page 14 of his book, “The Death of the Pope of Rome” (2005), tells us: “Pope John Paul II presided over the second ‘pornography of the Papacy’. He presided over the greatest, most widespread, immoral scandal of sexual perversion in church history. Never in the annals of recorded history has such a scandal been displayed for the entire world to see. Documented case after documented case in the courts of the world, joined by thousands of other cases which never came to light as the BAG-MAN, as he was called, bought the silence of thousands of young men whose cases never came to the courts. Combined with other ‘faithful’ souls who, although sodomized as children, in their loyalty to mother church never even complained.”

Dr. Ronald Cooke, on page 15 of the same book, tells us: “The late pope [Ed.: i.e., John Paul II] was the voice of a religious institution which became the reservoir of the most egregious sexual perversion known to man: MEN CALLED PRIESTS PREYING ON THEIR HELPLESS LITTLE ALTAR BOYS [Ed.: Emphasis in original] to satisfy their lust which arose in part from their enforced celibacy, which the Scriptures call a doctrine of demons. So as the chief voice of this reservoir of unnatural perversion, the late pope of Rome was surely the spokesman of a ‘Church’ which was filled with immoral priests under his authority; the spokesman for all the false doctrines of Romanism; and a man who himself claimed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, making him then without doubt the MOST INFLUENTIAL IMMORAL VOICE OF OUR TIME [Ed.: emphasis in original]. To have a REAL MORAL VOICE [Ed.: emphasis in original] one must proclaim true Bible doctrine and repudiate falsehood, false claims [Ed.: e.g., papal infallibility], and false practices.”

Let us never forget that Pope John Paul II – a man whom some in the Roman Catholic Church want to “canonize” (i.e., to make – to declare – a “saint” of the Roman Catholic Church) – participated in the cover-up of the murder of John Paul I; protected then-Bishop Paul Marcinkus (head of the Vatican Bank) from Italian authorities; presided over the one of the greatest sex scandals in Roman Catholic Church history; and, did as much as he could, with then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s help, to cover up the sex scandals involving Catholic clergy!

I have heard about Calvinism from time to time after I became a Christian, but I don’t think I truly understood what it’s all about as well as I do now thanks to the debate between Douglas Wilson and Steve Gregg that I just heard today. It was very interesting for me to hear both sides of either for or against the doctrines that John Calvin taught.

I think it all comes down to how one defines the keywords of the subject at hand. When I lived in Japan, I had an experience of a misunderstanding with a Japanese brother who defined an English word in a completely different way than I understood what that word meant. The result? Confusion and miscommunication!

This is my view. You could say I am not a Calvinist.

But I don’t call myself an Arminian because I don’t read or follow what Jacobus Arminius taught. I want to get my doctrines from the Word of God, the Bible, and not filtered through the mind of some theologian.

People with doctorates in theology don’t impress me. I talked to one recently, a professor of theology from Indonesia. He did not wholly agree with me or the Protestant view of the Man of Sin of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 being the popes of Rome. I would rather trust the views of the Protestants of the 16th through 18th centuries than what most 20th or 21st century Bible teachers teach. It was in the 19th century when the Jesuit-based false doctrine of an End-time 7-year Antichrist first infiltrated the Church.

Arminianism acknowledges God created man with free will, the majesty of choice. Calvinism teaches the opposite. Douglas Wilson elaborates greatly on that point.

In the debate, there is talk about the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The debate sounds as if it happened fairly recently after that.

Partial transcript of the debate

Douglas Wilson’s opening statement:

Thank you. It is good to be here. I’d like to thank Matt Gray and CRF for sponsoring this and doing the legwork. Thank Steve Gregg for coming up from Grangeville.

So, but overarching all things, I’d like to thank God who governs all things and in whom we live and move and have our being. And of course, we’re talking about what exactly that means, what is involved in that when we say we live and move and have our being in him. This first debate is on the sovereignty of God.

And of course, every Christian says, well, how can Christians debate the sovereignty of God? Well, what we’re debating is the definition of the word sovereignty, not the reality of sovereignty. Both I and my opponent would agree that God is sovereign over all things. But where we differ is what is entailed in that sovereignty.

In order to make clear what I’m arguing for, I want to maintain what I call the exhaustive sovereignty of God. That is, God is sovereign at the macro level, God is sovereign at the micro level. Nothing happens outside of his all-determining decree.

And this decree does not create a fatalistic machine that grinds us up like so much hamburger. This decree creates freedom for us. The more Shakespeare writes, the more sovereign he is and the freer Hamlet gets. Hamlet has freedom because Shakespeare writes. Hamlet’s freedom is not displaced by Shakespeare’s freedom. It is created by Shakespeare’s freedom.

So I want to argue for the exhaustive sovereignty of God. And of course, in the mind of an Augustinian or a Calvinist, if you want to use the contemporary nickname, in the mind of a Calvinist, to say exhaustive sovereignty is like saying sovereign sovereignty. We’re just saying, well, sovereignty involves sovereignty in the details, sovereignty in the great things and sovereignty in the lesser things.

So what I’m arguing for is exhaustive sovereignty. And I will let my opponent define his position, but his position is other than that. He does not want to say that God is sovereign in every detail.

He’s sovereign overall, but he’s not sovereign necessarily the way I am defining it in all, through all, throughout everything. When we first set this debate up, we had no idea that all of us here would still be reeling from the horrible events in New York and Washington, D.C. And we had no idea that we would have such a stark reminder of our own mortality and such a stark reminder of how great God is and how tiny we are in reference to his purposes and plans. But this is a wonderful exhibition of the sovereignty that we all affirm at some level.

These are not mere academic issues. These issues touch each of us every day at some level with every step we take, with every head check in the car, every plane we get on, get off of. We can see how a number of these people, the death toll is over 6,000 now in New York.

Every person who died in that tower made a series of trivial choices throughout the earlier part of that day. And all those trivial choices, no, I think I’ll go here first and then go to the sandwich shop. I think I’ll do this and not that.

All of those trivial choices were eternal choices, everlasting choices. There’s no such thing, I think we can see, as a small decision by a human being. There’s no such thing as a trivial move.

These are not academic issues. These are not arcane theological debates best tucked away in some book of theology in the times of the Reformation. This affects everyone.

It affects how we live our lives. It affects how we trust God. It affects how we pray. It affects how we respond to hard mercies. I first started grappling with these truths on a personal level. I’ve engaged with them on an intellectual level or a theological level in other settings.

But I first started grappling with these issues, or it might be better to say they started grappling with me, as a result of an automobile accident. It didn’t involve me or my family, but it almost involved me and my family. We were traveling on the East Coast and we decided to drive from Annapolis, Maryland into D.C. to go to the Smithsonian.

We borrowed a little crumpled car, the kind that wouldn’t take much, and we were driving into D.C. on Highway 50, and it started to rain and it got really nasty, and then suddenly this big car came across the middle strip from the other side of the highway. She had come on the on-ramp and lost control. I swerved and missed her by inches, a foot maybe, but just barely missed her, and she swerved around in the car behind us, T-boned her car, and she was killed.

I started thinking about how many life-and-death choices I had been making in the ten minutes prior to that. We have a tendency to say, well, you should really, really pray if you’re going to ask a girl to marry you, or you should really pray and get God’s guidance if you’re going to move to another state and change jobs and so forth, and it’s true, we should pray, because those are big decisions. But those are big decisions from our vantage point.

But it was born in on me with startling clarity that I hadn’t made a small decision that entire day. Moreover, I hadn’t made a small decision in my life. Every time I tapped on the brakes, every time I flipped the turn signal, every time I did a head check, every time I did these things, it was affecting what was going to happen down the road.

If I’d been five seconds faster, we may have heard sirens. If I’d been ten seconds slower, we would have been in a traffic jam, and if I’d been one second slower, we’d have all been dead. Not only would we have all been dead, but my grandchildren wouldn’t have been here, and their children wouldn’t be here, and their children wouldn’t be here, and all the tens of thousands of descendants that I hope God gives me over the next millennium or so, none of them would be here.

In other words, and all of it was riding on my lane change, and I didn’t have time to seek the will of God before I changed lanes, or moved here, or moved there. Well, the scripture says in Proverbs 16.33, the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. In Proverbs 16.1, it says the preparations of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

The Bible tells us that every step, what’s more random than the casting of lots? What’s more random than throwing a dice? What’s more random than just walking aimlessly down a sidewalk, or driving aimlessly down the road? Well, every bit of that is in the hand of God. I also have to confess, connected to this, that, and I’m not speaking for others, I’m not speaking here for every Arminian in the world, but I have to confess that before I came to grasp these truths, before I embraced them, I have to confess that I was deeply prejudiced against them. I also remember standing at one point in my living room and surrendering to God on the point.

The opening prayer I thought was appropriate and one that we should all affirm, and I think we do all affirm in principle, but I can assure you that there was a point in my life where I didn’t affirm it. I would affirm it on paper, but I didn’t want these truths to be true. I was not willing for them to be true, and I remember having to surrender to God on the point.

I did not become a Calvinist at that point. When I surrendered, I didn’t become a Calvinist, but I became willing to become one, and prior to that time, I was not willing at all. And this is the demeanor that we should all have here tonight and in the debates tomorrow.

Each of us, and I would include myself here, each of us should be willing to change, abandon the position that we believe to be the truth of God when someone shows us from the word of God that it’s not the case, that you’ve misread the scripture, thinking you understood it but you did not. All of us need to be prepared to submit to whatever the scriptures teach. So what is at stake in this debate? God is God over all things, through all things, and in all things.

He is God over how many hairs came out of my head this morning in my brush. And when Jesus says that the hairs of your head are all numbered, don’t be afraid. When Jesus says in the same breath that a sparrow can’t fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father, you can look out in the neighbor’s yard and you can see a cat stalking a bird.

You don’t have to say, you know, if that’s a sparrow, that’s in the Father, but if it’s a robin, he better watch out for himself because Jesus is using a figure of speech that invites us to spread the truth into the corners. He is not saying the hairs of your head are numbered, but the hairs on your chin aren’t, or the hairs of your head are numbered, but the hairs on your arm are. Gosh, I don’t know how many there are.

When Jesus uses that expression, he is inviting us to say the hairs of your head are numbered, the hairs on your arm are numbered. God knows how many little bits of gravel are in your driveway. He knows the number of hairs on the last yellow dog in the history of the world.

He knows everything, and moreover, he knows it with these details being dependent upon antecedent events that are also within his sovereignty. So when we say, when we as Calvinists maintain that God is sovereign over all things, it’s because, it’s not that we believe that God is a sovereign control freak and God cannot afford to let anybody else do anything or know anything, it’s that we believe that his relationship to us is like Shakespeare’s relationship to the characters in his play. His relationship to us is not like one of the characters in relation to the other character, and this is where we stumble.

We stumble because we assume that God’s will toward us is the same as my will toward another. If I push someone or if I offend someone or if I take someone’s life or sin against them in some way, as was just recently done on this grand scale, the exercise of will on the part of the terrorists displaced other wills. In other words, creaturely wills, created wills are like billiard balls.

One displaces another. If one billiard ball comes and occupies this place, then the other one has to move. And so when we act on one another, we act on one another by displacing one another’s wills.

When we act on one another the way we would describe it as coercively, when we do that, we move someone else’s will out of the way. But God’s will is not like that. It doesn’t make sense to say, now in this scene in Hamlet, how much of this is Shakespeare and how much of this is Hamlet? That’s a nonsensical question.

If two men are carrying a log, it makes sense to say, well, how much of the weight was borne by this guy and how much of the weight was borne by that guy? That’s a physics problem. But when we’re talking about the relationship of God to man, it doesn’t make sense to say, well, Shakespeare did 70% of that and Hamlet did 30%. It doesn’t make sense to go with the hyper-Calvinist and say Shakespeare wrote it all and Hamlet’s a bunch of nothing.

It doesn’t make sense to adopt the Pelagian view that says Hamlet, or the atheistic materialist view that Hamlet created himself. Hamlet writes his own play. That doesn’t make sense either.

I believe that we ought to maintain that Shakespeare does 100% and Hamlet does 100%. The more Shakespeare does, the more Hamlet does. The more God writes my life for me, the more life I have to make choices in to serve him and respond to him and love him.

We are saying that God is God over all things, including the hairs of our head, including the pebbles in our driveway, including the grains of sand on the seashore, and so forth. Our lives are lived along a razor edge. Our lives are lived along a razor edge because God has put eternity in our hearts.

Every decision we make, scratching your head, stopping for a drink at the drinking fountain, everything that you do has to be governed by God. We walk along a razor’s edge and there’s eternity on this side and there’s eternity on that side and we need the everlasting arms underneath and God’s protective hands around us in every detail because there’s no such thing as a trivial decision. There’s no such thing as a trivial act.

We’re created in the image of God and so consequently everything we do is filled with moment. Everything we do is filled with importance. Now I’ve said a lot by way of autobiographical information and definition.

I want to say a few things about what the scripture actually says. In Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10, it says, remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there’s none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure.

So of course we would both agree that God will do all that he wants to do, but I believe that it’s saying more than this. Not only will God do all that he wants to do, but he declares the end from the beginning. So when God creates the world, knowing the end from the beginning and declaring that he’s going to accomplish all his good purpose in it, then we know that when God creates the world, the world that comes into being is the world that God wanted to be here.

And this means that fundamentally I want to argue that every, you know, lots of folks won’t appreciate this, but I believe that every Christian who affirms creation from nothing, I want to, in overflow of benevolence, declare them all honorary Calvinists. Every Christian who believes that God created from nothing believes that the world is here because God put it here and he put it here because he wants it here and he wants it here this way. We can debate what his reasons are for wanting it here, but he put it here because he wanted it here and he put it here knowing what would come if he did it.

He knows the end from the beginning. In Psalm 139, verse 16, we don’t have to rest on speculation from a text like Psalm 139, verse 16, says, your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. And in your book, they all were written. The days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them. God wrote my biography before I was born in God’s book.

They were all written. The days fashioned for me. Well, the days fashioned for me were not fashioned by me. The days fashioned for me were fashioned by God and written in his book. Isaiah 45, 7, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity.

I the Lord do all these things. Now, this is where we start to stick a little bit because we really want God to be, as scripture describes him, kind and benevolent and so forth, and he is, but he’s not benevolent the same way that we are. Because his action does not displace my responsibility the way my action on someone else would do.

So God can create evil, create evil in the sense of calamity. God can create evil, the evil day, and scripture says that he does. He creates darkness.

He creates light. He makes peace and he creates calamity. Amos 3, 6 says this, and it shows the sovereignty of God, not just the sovereignty of God over nice things, not just the sovereignty of God over sweet things.

Many Christians love to give glory to God when, if it involves baskets of kittens or pussy willows or nice things, but we have trouble with earthquakes and we have trouble with disasters or this enormous calamity in New York City. We say, what’s God doing? And we struggle with that because we don’t know. We don’t affirm with the scriptures that God has authority over this.

He has sovereignty over this, over the free choices of men, as I’ve already described, and over the wicked free choices of men. In Amos 3, 6, it says, if a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there’s calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? And this is something we need to just submit to. If there’s calamity in a city, in this case New York City, will not the Lord have done it? This does not mean that the terrorists are not wicked men.

They are wicked men, and they’re not puppets. But God is in all, over all, and through all, and there’s not a hair on anyone’s head in that tower that perished apart from the will of the Father. And this is a wonderful source of two C’s, courage and comfort.

There’s a purpose in everything. God has a divine purpose in all things, and we can take courage in that, and we can take comfort from that.

Steve Gregg’s opening statement:

I want to begin by saying the admiration I have for Douglas Wilson and his wife, whom I only recently met, but I’ve read some of their writings over the years.

I especially like their writings about family life, and I was drawn to Douglas personally by reading his books. I knew we did not agree on this issue, but notwithstanding the difference we have on the matter of Calvinism, I was thinking of the many things that Douglas and I actually have had in common. We both were born the same year.

I realize he looks ten years younger than I do. I assume that’s due to clean living. We were both raised in Baptist homes, and both of us began, well, we preached our first sermons when we were teenagers.

Both of us played in Christian bands and have written music about the same time in our lives, actually. We didn’t know each other, of course. Eventually, we both went into full-time ministry, though neither of us chose to go the route of formal theological training.

Both of us were studious and studied on our own, and I know he got a formal education in philosophy, wasn’t it? I did not. But we did depart from our Baptist roots theologically in some ways. Both of us actually went in the direction of Reformed theology with reference to our eschatology.

He became a post-millennialist. I became an amillennialist. Both are Reformed views.

But we went in different directions for some reason on the matter of soteriology, the doctrines of salvation, the doctrines of grace. That’s something I have not understood very well, why people go that direction. But then some of the people here don’t know why I didn’t go that direction.

On my radio talk show, I had a Calvinist pastor call frequently and say, “Steve, you’re an odd bird.” He says, “You left dispensationalism to become Reformed in your eschatology, but why didn’t you embrace Calvinism too?” My answer is because I left dispensationalism when I found out it was a man-made system. I did not wish to choose another man-made system.

And that is what I believe Calvinism is. That’s why it took the church 400 years to come up with it. The Calvinistic doctrine of sovereignty is not the doctrine, my contention, is not the doctrine of sovereignty found in the Bible, and it is not the doctrine that anyone who is a Christian found in the Bible until Augustine, around the year 400 AD, Calvinist scholars admit this without any embarrassment.

They usually say, well, the church was persecuted during those early years, they didn’t really have time to think through some of these theological issues until Augustine’s time. Well, 400 years is a long time for the church to think through issues, it seems to me like during times of persecution are the times when the issues like sovereignty are particularly under scrutiny. I believe that’s the case in the book of Revelation, written to churches that were under persecution a book that presents the sovereignty of God about as strongly as any book in the Bible.

I do believe that times of persecution are the times when sovereignty of God is the most important issue to Christians, and it’s interesting that during the years that the church was persecuted, it never occurred to them that the Calvinistic or Augustinian view of sovereignty was found in the Bible. Augustine brought it in, as most are willing to admit, from his own mixture of his own philosophical background. He had been a Manichean (a follower of Manichaeism, a dualistic religious movement founded in Persia in the 3rd century ce by Mani, who was known as the “Apostle of Light” and supreme “Illuminator.”), but most would not admit that he brought Manicheanism into his theology, although it’s interesting that the Calvinistic doctrine of sovereignty, or the Augustinian view, is agreeable with Manicheanism, and although none of the church fathers before the year 400 ever heard of Augustine, well, maybe a little before 400 they did, they did recognize in the doctrine of total determinism Manicheanism, or they often had a hard time finding the difference between that doctrine and the pagan view of fate.

In fact, I have quotes from about a dozen of the church fathers who talk about what we call Calvinistic view of sovereignty. They didn’t call it that, of course, and they call it indistinguishable from the pagan view of fate. They call it indistinguishable from Manicheanism.

Some of the better refutations of Augustine’s doctrine came before Augustine was around by Christian fathers writing against Mani, the founder of Manicheanism. I suspect, though I couldn’t prove it, that Augustine probably had a tinge of his old Manicheanism ideas about sovereignty that came with him. Most of us bring some baggage into our Christian lives, and I suspect that that may have been the case because he introduced, for the first time, the view of sovereignty that God is all-determining.

Now, Christians all believe, as Douglas correctly said, in the sovereignty of God. I would even say that all Christians believe in the exhaustive sovereignty of God. But the definition of the word sovereignty is where we do not agree.

I have a quote from R.C. Sproul. In his book, Chosen by God, he defines sovereignty this way. He said, when we speak of divine sovereignty, we are speaking about God’s authority and about God’s power.

Well, if that’s really what Calvinists mean by sovereignty, then all Arminians would agree with them, and all Christians who ever lived would agree with them. If someone said, does God have all sovereignty, and what we mean is all authority and all power, those are the two things Sproul said actually constitute the doctrine of sovereignty. I’ve never met a Christian in my life who doesn’t believe that God has all authority or who doesn’t believe that God has all power.

Those are basic doctrines that Arminians can embrace, too. There’s another element, though, and this is what not all Christians will embrace, and it is what Augustine introduced. And that is in the same statement R.C. Sproul continues, and he says that God, in some sense, foreordains whatever comes to pass is a necessary result of His sovereignty.

That God somehow foreordains everything that comes to pass is a necessary element of His sovereignty. Why should we believe this? Because Mr. Sproul says so? Because Augustine says so? It certainly doesn’t agree with the dictionary definition of the word sovereignty. I encourage you to look it up.

If you look in the dictionary, you’ll find the word sovereign means a king or a monarch. It means one who has the highest rank and authority. It refers to a person who makes his decisions without being answerable to any other person.

That’s what the word sovereignty means. None of those things speak of absolute divine determinism, because kings are sovereigns but they don’t determine everything that goes on in their realm, do they? I’ve never known of a king that did. Now, some might say, well, kings don’t have omniscience and omnipotence like God does, and that’s why God’s sovereignty extends further.

I’m not so sure that that’s a good answer. That suggests that the only reason that all monarchs are not tyrants is because they have human limitations. And were they given the power to be tyrants, that’s what they would do.

They would determine every thought, word, and deed of all their subjects. And since God has that power, that’s what he does. But you see, when we talk about divine determinism, which is what Calvinism really means by sovereignty, we’re really not talking about what the word sovereignty means at all.

Because a father is sovereign in his home, a husband over his wife, a lord over his servants, a king over his subjects, these are all sovereign positions. But none of them determine every thought, word, or deed of those who are subject to them. There is no support from the dictionary, and there can’t be from the Bible, since the Bible doesn’t even use the word sovereign.

But when we say the sovereignty of God, if we use the word in its ordinary meaning, we mean that God has all authority, he can act unilaterally anytime he wishes to, he answers to none, and he has enough power to retain his rights and to defend his rights. But that word sovereignty does not tell us whether he determines everything or not, because that’s not part of the word sovereignty, and it’s not part of the teaching of Scripture about God. There is no place in the Bible that substitutes the concept of divine determinism for the concept of God’s sovereignty as a king.

In fact, since the word sovereignty doesn’t appear in the Bible, we have to derive it from the Bible from the ways that the Bible describes God as a sovereign. God is called a king. God is called a lord.

God is called a husband. He is called a father. All of these are terms that convey the idea of sovereignty, but none of them convey the idea of total determinism, because that’s not part of what sovereignty means.

That is the problem with Calvinism. They think, in many cases, that they are the ones who have the exhaustive view of sovereignty, where everybody who believes that God has total authority over all things believes in exhaustive sovereignty, and I believe that. What non-Calvinists do not believe is that the Bible teaches that God determines everything that happens.

Now, non-Calvinists do not put God outside his universe. To suggest that God determines how many of my hairs fall out today, or how many sparrows fall to the ground, is not a problem to the Arminian. And I use the word Arminian only as a catchword for non-Calvinists.

I don’t know if I’m an Arminian, because I’ve never read Arminius. But I would say this, I’m not a Calvinist, and that makes me an Arminian in the eyes of all Calvinists. So, an Arminian has no difficulty at all with the view that God knows the number of hairs on our head, that God orders many things in history to bring about results that he wants.

Virtually every affirmative statement that a Calvinist can say about God’s sovereignty, an Arminian would say without any hesitation, except that the Arminian does not extend the concept of sovereignty to total determinism. There’s no need to do that. No scripture teaches it.

The question we’re discussing is, is the Calvinist view of sovereignty biblical?

(End of partial transcript.)

What do you think? I agree with Steve Gregg’s view. It sounds a lot more solid biblically to me.

Audio of the debate

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This is the final section of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

Appendix

I. Postscript to Preface of Fifth Edition of the “Horae Apocalypticae;” on the Pope’s own published Testimony to the Fact of the completed Expiration in 1867 of the 1260 Predicted Years of Papal Spiritual Dominancy in the Kingdoms of Western Christendom.

THE YEAR 1867 having passed, it seems fit that a postscript should be added to this book, in reference to any light that may have been reflected at its close on my exposition of that part of the Apocalyptic prophecy which I suppose refers to the present time; whether as confirmatory, or the contrary.

Very naturally there was kept watch both by men who felt reverentially about divine prophecy, and by others who thought of it only with contempt, to see if the years 1866, 1867, which had been so long looked forward to as years of crisis to the Papacy by Protestant prophetic expositors of the old school (this being the supposed ending epoch of the great prophetic period of the 1260 years), should really develop any such events of crisis. What then has occurred to justify such view?

It was in July 1868 that there was issued the Pope’s Bull for the Convocation of an Ecumenical Council to assemble at Rome in the December of next year. And in the terms of its address there appeared on one point a most remarkable variation from the terms of address which had been used in all former Bulls of the same character. The difference was this, that whereas in those former Bulls the secular princes of Western Christendom were always summoned to attend, either in person or by deputy, as well as Roman Catholic bishops and certain other high ecclesiastics of that Church, in the present Bull it was Papal ecclesiastics alone.

The omission was too remarkable to escape notice. It was remarked on, for example, by the editor of a well-known Popish journal at Paris, L’Univers, in the passage following: “The Bull does not invite sovereigns to sit in the Council. The omission is remarkable. It implies that there are no longer Catholic crowns; that is to say, that the order in which society has lived for the last 1000 years no longer exists. What has been called the Middle Age has come to an end. The date of the Bull is the date of its death, its last sigh. Another era begins. The Church [Romish Church] and State [that is, of Roman Catholic kingdoms] are separated.”

There are some little inexactnesses (errors) in this passage; for he speaks of the regime of Roman Catholic crowns spiritually subject to the Pope as if begun only 1000 years ago, whereas it had existed above 1200 or 1300 years. Nor, again, does he refer to the temporary interruption of that régime which was suddenly and violently introduced by the French Revolution; an event, I am persuaded, not unnoticed in the Apocalyptic prophecy. But the main fact that he refers to is justly observed on by him as a very remarkable sign of the times, — remarkable, as holding out before the world, under the Pope’s own sign manual, an admission of the full ending of the predicted period of the kings of Western Christendom spiritually subjecting the power of their kingdoms to him; that is, of the completed ending of the 1260 years. For thus it had been declared in the Divine prophecy, Apoc. 17:17: “God hath put into the hearts of the ten kings to fulfill his will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the Beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled:” in other words (compare Dan. 7:25, 26), until the end of God’s appointed period of the 1260 years.

When was it that this period may be considered as begun? What the terminus a quo from which it is to be measured? It was during the course of the sixth century, as I have shown from history, that the then newly established Romano-Gothic kings of Western Christendom, one after another, recognized the Roman Pope as Christ’s Vicar on earth, and so subjected their kingdoms, in matters of religion, to him; the three last, viz., the AngloSaxons, Lombards, and Bavarians, so doing near about or soon after 600 A.D.2 And if, following the precedent of the Old Testament prophecies respecting Judah’s seventy years’ captivity in Babylon, and consequent return,3 we suppose (as I have done in the Horae Apocalypticae) a primary imperfect commencing epoch, with a correspondently primary imperfect ending epoch, and a secondary and more perfect epoch of commencement, with its own correspondent and more perfect epoch of ending — and, moreover, that royal decrees (like those of Cyrus and Darius, Ezra 1:1, 6:1) may have been had respect to by the Holy Spirit as epochal signs in his predictions respecting the great New Testament prophetic period of the 1260 years — then we have, for our primary solution of this period, the 1260 years from Justinian’s Pope-recognizing decree, about A.D. 530, to the French Revolution, about A.D. 1790; and for our secondary solution the 1260 years from Phocas’ decree, A.D. 606, according to the best modern chronologists, A.D. 607, to A.D. 1867.

After the ending of the great revolutionary and Napoleonic wars at the Peace of Paris, there had been a return on the part of certain of the kingdoms of Western Christendom to their old spiritual allegiance to the Pope, e.g., of the Italian kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples, those of Spain, Portugal, Bavaria, Austria, and indeed partially that too of France. This allegiance involved to a considerable extent the same intolerance of Protestantism, designated as heresy, and enforcement by the arm of secular power of the Pope’s decrees and laws of the Romish Church — especially with regard to Divine worship, marriage, education, and freedom of conscience and of the press4 — as had more fully characterized all the kingdoms of Western Christendom, excepting North Germany and England, in the times previous to the great French Revolution — all, in those earlier times, in fulfillment of the obligations to which the kings had subscribed by their deputies in the great Papal OEcumenical Councils.5 But within the last few years the Sardinian kingdom (not to speak of others of the re-Papalized States), after absorbing into itself Lombardy, Tuscany, Naples, Sicily, the larger part of the Pope’s own territorial domain (called Patrimony of St. Peter), and, finally, Venetia, and having so become the kingdom of Italy, dissolved everywhere tho old ties that had bound those several polities in religious subjection to the enforcement of the decrees of the Papacy. Then (the war which ended in the battle of Sadowa having, in 1866, prepared the way), Austria, so long the Pope’s main prop, found itself forced, in 1867, to renounce its Concordat with the Papacy, and to establish throughout its dominions religious liberty.

Finally, in Spain, — after that, in the autumn of 1867, there had been unsuccessfully made the first attempt at overthrowing the Bourbon Queen and dynasty, and therewith the Papal all-domineering religious power — the attempt was renewed, and with entire success, in this present year 1868. Neither the Queen’s Ministry nor the Pope were ignorant of the impending revolutionary storm, and, consequently, that. Spain was no more to be reckoned on when the Bull of Convocation was issued than the other kingdoms of Western Christendom. Hence the Bull’s omission of the Spanish Queen as well as other sovereigns. As the editor expresses it, “There are now no longer Catholic crowns in Christendom.” God’s appointed period for this having been fulfilled, the kings no longer give the power of their kingdoms to the Beast. The Pope’s own published Bull testifies to that effect, and therewith to the fact of the completed expiration of the 1260 years.

What remains between us and the consummation but the supplemental period of the seventy-five years of Dan. 12? Our present position is at the close of the sixth vial — a vial of which the fitting to our own times has been so strikingly marked, both politically by the drying up of the waters of the Euphrates, or decay of the Turkish and Mohammedan powers, and religiously by the outgoing over England and the world of the three predicted deluding spirits of Infidelity, Popery, and Priestcraft, united in the one object of acting against the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ — I say, our present era being thus marked as at the close of the sixth vial, or commencement of the seventh, with its vial-outpouring into the aerial atmosphere, significant, I conceive, of the vitiation of the very elements of thought and principle, religious, moral, and political, what remains for fulfillment under this Vial, and during the course of Daniel’s seventy-five years of the “time of the end,” but the progress of the last great predicted war of Armageddon? Hence politically a revolution is indicated as ere long to follow, more mighty than any that has occurred since the first establishment of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the Popedom in Western Europe, and resulting in their tripartition: the Gospel-voice meantime sounding forth everywhere throughout the world antagonistically to the everywhere sped forth spirits of Antichristian delusion (Rev. 14:6-10); and so both the gathering out of God’s election of grace from every people and kindred and tongue and nation, as ordained under the present dispensation, and preparation too of the Jews for their predicted national restoration and conversion;6 after which is to follow the fall of the seven-hilled Babylon; and thereupon Christ’s glorious establishment of his kingdom. “Blessed is he that cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days,” or years.

Two final observations: —

[1] Let me observe that, though the kings may not any more give their kingdom to the Beast, yet this does not imply their rejection of Popery. At the moment before its sudden fall Babylon is represented in the Apocalypse as exulting, “I shall not be a widow, or see loss of children;” and, moreover, the kings of the earth are depicted as contemplating her fall with something of sympathy as well as awe. A prediction this very agreeable with what we now see of the state of Western Christendom, and what we might thence augur as to the probable future.

[2] Let me also observe, with reference to the remarkable fact of the interval between the primary and secondary endings of the 1260 years being very nearly seventy-five years (viz, from about 1790 to 1866-67), the same length as Daniel’s time of the end — that this may have been ordered by the Omniscient Spirit with a view to keeping alive throughout that interval the expectation of the Lord’s coming as imminent at the end of it. Similarly, when Christ’s first coming was drawing near, I conceive that the accomplished ending of the seventy weeks of Dan. 9 (= 490 years), about B.C. 46, if dated (as was natural) from Cyrus’s decree, instead of from Artaxerxes’s eighty years later, may have thenceforward served to excite and keep up that lively expectation of his coming as near at hand which we know from that time did prevail among the Jews.
Sept., 1868.

It seems almost needless to suggest how confirmatory of what was above written have been the extraordinary events that have since occurred on the theater of the European world: — France, “the eldest daughter of the Papal Church,” and chief final support of the Pope’s temporal power, humbled to the dust; its military supremacy transferred to Prussia, the great Protestant Continental power; the withdrawal of all the other secular European powers from support of the Papacy continued and confirmed; Rome itself ravished from the Pope by the King of Italy; yet the words of the Papal “great mouth” still boastful and blasphemous as ever! Advance seems surely to be making towards the predicted impartition of the kingdoms of the old Papal European Christendom under the seventh Apocalyptic vial, and the mighty concurrent revolution; also to the final and most awful destruction of the Papal Antichrist “by the brightness of the Lord’s coming,” after having been previously “consumed and wasted by the breath of His mouth.”

E. B. E.
May, 1871.

II. The following paper by Mr. Bateman, affording a very striking posthumous corroboration of the truth of Mr. Elliott’s system, appeared (in the Rock, January 7, 1876) within six months of Mr. E.’s death: —

In his great work on the Apocalypse my lamented friend the Rev. E. B. Elliott thus explains the two principles on which his interpretation of that holy prophecy mainly depends: —

“In the divine foreshowing of its great subject I have felt,” he says, “persuaded, and have carried out my exposition on the persuasion, that the two following rules must have been observed: — First, that the epochs and events selected for prefiguration must have been such as are confessedly the most important and eventful; secondly, that the figuring emblems must have been, in some approved consistent sense, characteristic and distinctive.”

And there are few who will not agree with Mr. Elliott that —

“The direct evidence of truth hence arising will at once be felt by the intelligent reader, more especially when fixed by some local or geographical peculiarity strongly marked in the prefiguration” (Horae Apocalypticae, i. 112, 5th edition).

The latter principle may be illustrated from the Old Testament prophets, who borrowed the emblems under which Judah is represented, e.g., lion, vine, olive-tree, fig-tree, etc., from the plants or animals indigenous to the country in which he dwelt. According to the same rule, Pharaoh is likened to a dragon, Nebuchadnezzar to an eagle, “the Assyrian” to “a cedar in Lebanon,” etc., etc. But in the Apocalypse the local propriety of the symbols is still more striking. For not merely the animals, but the heraldic devices on the coins and other national monuments of the countries which fall within the scope of the prophecy, are all found to be marvelously appropriate, both in respect of time and place. The Roman “horse” of the first four seals, each with its peculiar badge; the Pagan “dragon” (12:3); Mohammed’s “key” (9:1); the Waldensian “candlestick” (11:4); the Roman harlot holding out the “cup” of her apostasy (17:4), or sitting on the seven hills (v. 9) — these are but a few of the multitude of objects which are figured in Mr. Elliott’s work, where they furnish characteristic vouchers for the truth of a system which they at once illustrate and confirm.

But amidst all this wealth of evidence one link was still missing. Like nearly all other commentators of repute, Mr. Elliott interpreted the “woe” of the fifth trumpet as that great irruption of Saracen hordes into some of the fairest parts of Christendom which formed the burden of the seventh century. They came from Arabia, and are therefore with strict propriety symbolized by swarms of “locusts,” which are bred in the countries watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Here is the description of them as seen in vision by St. John: —

“And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails” (Rev. 9:7-10).

We must bear in mind that in this graphic picture of the strange battalions which appeared upon the Apocalyptic scene the symbol is a composite one — like the Nineveh man-headed lions and bulls now in the British Museum, and which accord so exactly with Daniel’s description (7:4) of the “great beast” under which the Assyrian empire is prefigured. But the Apocalyptic emblem is more complex, for it includes a general resemblance to “locusts,” combined with certain other peculiarities, animal and human. The locusts in the vision were “like unto ‘horses,’”they had the “teeth of lions,” the “tails of scorpions,” the “hair of women,” and the “faces of men;” they had also “iron breastplates” and “golden crowns” (or helmets), while the whirr of their “wings” was as the sound of battle hurtling in the air. But while there was an obvious general agreement between the chief features of the Saracen invasion and the emblems selected by the Holy Spirit to depict it, Mr. Elliott, unable to adduce any specific evidence in elucidation of the fact, was compelled to resort to what he styles (i. 432) “a sketch from imagination” to explain the possible combination of details in the Apocalyptic symbol. Judge, therefore, of my surprise and delight when in looking over the illustrations in Mr. L. Smith’s admirable volume (published shortly after Mr. E.’s death), “The Chaldean Account of Genesis,” I found the accompanying plate — described among the “List of Illustrations” as “Composite figures (scorpion-men) taken from an Assyrian cylinder!”

Here was the Apocalyptic emblem with marvellous exactitude! The wings and general form were those of the “locust” — itself likened by Joel (11:4), as by St. John to the “war-horse.”7 In the figures — especially if examined with a magnifying glass — the long “hair of women” is no less conspicuous than the “faces of men.” Still more extraordinary are the “scorpion-tails,” never before seen, I believe, in any similar configuration. The creatures have helmets,8 probably of gold, “on their heads,” while something like an iron girdle or steel breastplate appears on their chests. The “teeth of lions” are, it is true, not recognizable in the figure, but the “lion” element is represented in the legs and feet. With this slight modification the identification is perfect. And the “local appropriateness” or geographical propriety of the emblem is equally unmistakable. For in the famous “Legends of Izdubar” (Nimrod) that hero gives an account of his meeting with the “scorpion-men” in the desert of “Mas,”9 which stretches — at the foot of the mountain-chain of that name — from the Tigris to the Euphrates.

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

This is the continuation of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

The Future — our Duty.

HAVING BROUGHT DOWN our remarks to that point of the Apocalyptic Visions which would seem to indicate the present position of the European nations in relation to the Church, we must pass over the remaining chapters of the Revelation of St. John as being beyond the scope of historical adaptation. Deeply interesting indeed would it be to the inquiring and hopeful Christian to search into the pages of yet unfulfilled prophecy, and, following up the principles of interpretation by which we have been enabled so accurately to trace down the course of events to this day, to investigate those speedy coming changes which would appear to arise out of the things that mark the times we live in. Having observed, by the light of God’s Word, the evil agencies now at work, and specially how they would seem but preparatory to the great political “earthquake” predicted in chap. 16:18, we feel almost tempted to venture further, and inquire whether the “angel’s pouring out his seventh vial into the air,” with the consequent “thunderings, lightnings, and voices,” may not denote the wider spread of the moral pestilence, and the renewal to a yet greater extent of those civil commotions which of late years have led to “rumors of wars,” to “men’s hearts failing them for fear,” and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth? Again, having before us the gradual wasting away of the Turkish strength, we would seem naturally led to the next inquiry, For whom is the way being thus prepared? The vast increase of commercial power and of political influence on the part of the great Protestant nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, tending to the extension of Christian truth; the advancement of science and of intellectual research and invention on the one hand, and the no less active and restless exertions of the emissaries of evil on the other, — suggest the accomplishment of the prediction indicative of the time of the end: — “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”

And thus, as we proceed with the seventeenth chapter, we think that we see the several portions of the Christian Church uniting in opinion as to Rome being the “mystery of iniquity” — “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth:” for so St. John, in his representative character, is described as seeing her, and as having at this juncture the mystery unfolded to him by the angel.

The eighteenth chapter reveals the approaching destruction of the symbolic Babylon by fire, i.e., of the Papal ecclesiastical state, previous to which a remarkable warning is given: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” From which we are led to expect a diffusion of great religious light, and the sounding forth throughout the world of strong appeals on the character and imminent doom of Rome and the Popedom, — a cry which as yet seems not to have been generally recognized or uttered, notwithstanding the decided movement out from Popery which is proceeding at this moment in Great Britain and Ireland, in Tuscany, and many parts of France. The first verse of the nineteenth chapter makes mention of a loud and joyous sound being heard, in which for the first time in this book is used the Hebrew word, Alleluia, as if intimating that the Jews, as a people, swell the chorus — uniting with the Gentiles in singing praise to Jesus. But though we earnestly mark the progress of the Jewish mind, and hail the frequent conversions from amongst that people to Christianity, we are left in ignorance as to the immediate instrumentality which is to’ act upon Israel as a body. Still further would we reach, though in perspective, and strive to fix before our view those pictures of light and glory which, like beautiful dissolving views, rise before us, and then lose themselves in others still more exquisite, wherein is pictured the Church adorned as a bride, and, clothed with spotless righteousness, awaiting the coming of her Lord; wherein is the glorious appearing of the KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS, amid hosts of his redeemed, going forth to the final battle and victory, and to the utter destruction of Antichrist and his adherents; and then the New Jerusalem, the abode of the blessed and risen saints, where all is union, peace, and love — no root of bitterness or discord, no cloud of sorrow, but all holy and beautiful, and bright and pure.

But into these scenes of transcendent glory, “surpassing fable and yet true,” it is not for us to look, save “through a glass darkly,” — not certainly with the degree of confidence which we have derived in the foregoing lectures from having had the support of historical evidence. While we read the concluding chapters of the sacred volume, it is however our privilege, as believers, to anticipate and appropriate all in hope; and, moreover, to take comfort in the assurance that “yet a little while, and our Lord himself will come, and will not tarry.” It is also our wisdom, seeing that all shall be fulfilled and speedily, to lay to heart the thought, “What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” or, if a time of conflict must needs first come, “Who shall be found on the Lord’s side?”

When one of our most distinguished warriors would inspire his men with courage and confidence for action, he gave the word, “England expects every man to do his duty.” The gallant Nelson lived just long enough to know that the victory was won; but he left it to another to illustrate, on the battlefield, in the senate, and through a lengthened course of life, the sentiment he so well expressed. Wellington, too, now sleeps in the grave; but the saying, while England lasts, will survive. Let DUTY be the Christian’s watchword.

What, then, viewing our present circumstances by the light of fulfilled revelation, may we regard as our duty, — as a Nation, as a Church, as individuals?

Nationally, we find ourselves raised to an exaltation of power, possessions, and influence, which we can only account for as being designed, in God’s providence, to be the means of promulgating throughout the world the Protestant evangelic faith. Let us beware of being again seduced by any spirit of mistaken expediency, false liberalism, or religious indifference, — lest, in our efforts to soothe party faction, we identify ourselves with Popery, or further its views, or foster its Anti-christian tenets, either at home or in our colonies. Surely we have gone far enough already in this direction. The utmost toleration, consistent with our safety as a Protestant state, has been extended. Let us take care lest, in the vain hope of thoroughly conciliating her priesthood (a matter shown by reason and history to be impossible), we abandon our distinctive Protestant character, and therewith forfeit the protection of Heaven in the great coming struggle. And as regards our children, too, we must take heed of yielding up the principle of Scriptural education. It is alike their birthright and our policy. While we sleep the enemy sows tares.

As a Church, — now that we are threatened with divisions, owing to the subtle influence of Tractarianism (also known as the Oxford Movement), — is it not our duty, before all things, to hold fast by the pure Scriptural doctrines of the Reformation, and to repudiate every modification of that system which would make religion an ecclesiastical rather than a personal and spiritual matter; which would interpose the Church, with its priesthood, services, and sacraments, between the soul and Christ, instead of asserting their right use, and using them as the great instruments for directing the soul to Christ? We must firmly hold to the Scriptural doctrine of our Articles and Liturgies, the main features of which are justification by faith in Christ’s atoning blood, and sanctification by the Spirit given from God, with a constant and steady adherence to his written Word as our rule of faith. This will expel and keep away the most specious heresies; and at the last day, when God shall make up his jewels, the eulogy given of Zion may be pronounced of our beloved Church, “that many were born in her, and the Most High did establish her.” To those dissenting brethren who differ from us in non-essentials, may we not say, “Speak not evil one of another, brethren. If God have eminently blessed our Church hitherto, and if the Word of truth still be disseminated by his blessing on her instrumentality, instead of laboring to defame and overturn her, endeavor (and so a reflex light and blessing may in return be granted to you) to hold the fellowship of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Should it be that these pages ever meet the eyes of a Roman Catholic, may they not bring a lesson in the way of duty to him also? If what has been put forth in these lectures be a correct and sound exposition of the inspired Word, how awful is the position of the members of that apostate Church! “If any man worship the beast, and his image, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation: and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” We rather turn again and urge the invitation of God himself: — “Come out of her, my people (for doubtless there are some in her communion who know not the sin, and are not of her), — come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker of her sin, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”

But that which we have most need to press is the duty of each individual. The smallest aid can make a movement stronger either for good or evil. Let not the ill-directed though well-meant zeal of those who are in error put us to shame. It is not enough that we belong to the most orthodox Church, profess the most Scriptural faith, and even be warm in its defense and in opposition to the errors of the day. The question will still remain, — Are we, as individuals of Christ’s little flock, his true, faithful, obedient followers, to whom the kingdom is promised? Have we the evidence of belonging to it? Have we received of God’s Spirit to the sanctifying our hearts, and the infusing into them the love of God and of our brethren, and the inward life, light, and spirit of holiness and adoption, which he alone can give? Is our faith fixed upon Christ as the Lord our Righteousness? Do we hold to the Word of God in life as well as in doctrine? Do we witness for Christ in an ungodly world; and seek in the spirit of holy self-denial, spiritual-mindedness, and patient perseverance in well-doing, to follow the example of our Lord and Saviour, who pleased not himself, but went about doing good? Are we improving our talents, be they great or small, as those that must give account to God? Is the thought of Christ’s coming precious to us? Do we look for him, and long for our final union with him? Doubtless many can answer with assured comfort and hope to these and such-like questions. But who can doubt that there is much lukewarmness, and much of false profession, even in what is called the religious world, — the having a name to live, but being. in reality dead?

With all of us there is, in regarding the coming future, much cause for holy fear, humiliation, and repentance. Blessed be God, though the acceptable time remaining be short, it is not ended. Though the Master seem about to rise, he has not risen, — the door is not yet shut. The period of evil is still permitted: so is the period for good. “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” But the voice of mercy and love is also heard inviting sinners to salvation: — “Let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”

So may it be that, — when, in answer to the waiting Church’s oftentimes-repeated supplication “that the Lord would shortly accomplish the number of his elect and hasten his kingdom,” the Saviour’s voice would seem to be heard, “Surely I come quickly,” — we may be able each one to respond with the inmost soul’s welcome, “Amen! even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Continued in Appendix – The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

This is a transcription of a YouTube video from Steve Gregg entitled, “The Dangers of Dispensationalism.” Because not many Christians know the meaning of “dispensationalism” (even though they are under its influence) I used the first words of the talk for the title of this article. The video is one hour and 46 minutes long. I transcribed the first 30 minutes which basically has the message of the title of this article.

I felt inspired to post this because one of my email friends in America, Annie, says that she’s in hot water with her Christian friends for not supporting Israel in its war in Gaza. It’s sad indeed that so many American Christians today have been influenced by false doctrines of Darby’s and Scofield’s dispensationalism. Bible teacher Dr. Gene Kim calls dispensationalism “rightly dividing the Word of truth.” I call it propagating the lies of the Devil.

The emphasis in the text are mine.

Transcription

All right, we’re going to continue to talk about what does the Bible say about the future of Israel? Now, one thing we saw was the Bible really doesn’t have any unconditional promises to anyone. There are times when the promise is made without, on that occasion, mentioning the condition, but God doesn’t fail to mention the conditions on other occasions. He has said, there’s a general policy I have. If I make promises to you and you break them, I’ll break the promises. So that’s why it’s so irresponsible for people to say, “Well, if God doesn’t keep his promises to Israel now, he’s an unfaithful God.” Well, wait, He did keep his promises to Israel as long as He could, and they cast them off.

Now, by the way, they did inherit the land. That did happen in the days of Joshua. And he did make Abraham a great nation and the father of many nations. So, I mean, these are things that God did for them. He fulfilled those promises, but in order for them to continue in perpetuity, they had to behave. They had to be faithful. They had to keep the covenant because the whole basis for their existence as a nation was a covenant.

And as I was saying, the nation of Israel today has no such covenant. There are more atheist Jews in Israel than there are Jewish Jews who practice Judaism. The number of atheists, fortunately, has gone down. Right now, atheists in Israel, the atheist Jews, are only about 20% now, but there’s less than that of observant Jews who practice Judaism. But that number of atheists is down. Back in, I think, 2015, the number was 65%. So it’s really plummeted, but unfortunately, those who have ceased to be atheists have not ended up in the church, or if they did, the church was mighty small beforehand because there are still hardly any Christians who are among the Jews in Israel. That’s just the statistics. You can go to Google, look as many websites, look up government websites, whatever, Israel’s websites, and yeah, I’m not making this up. This is what you’ll find. I’ve looked at many, just to make sure that I was vetting my information properly.

Now, what else does the Bible say about Israel that might have something to do with the future? Well, I’m remembering now the things I was taught and that I repeated when I was a dispensationalist. One of those is that the Bible teaches there will be continual conflict between Isaac and Ishmael. Now the Jewish people, of course, descended from Isaac through Jacob, and it is thought that most of the Arabs, or many of them, descended from Ishmael.

I say it is thought because no one really has kept a complete record of this, but it’s generally believed that many Arabs, many Arab peoples descended from Ishmael, and I’ll accept that for the time being. So is there to be inevitably constant hatred and fighting between Israel and the Arabs because of this thing about Isaac and Ishmael? Well, where do we read, first of all, about this continual conflict between Ishmael and Isaac? I remember the first time I asked myself that question because I always had said, “Oh, the Bible says that the descendants of Ishmael, they’re going to be fighting against the descents of Isaac, and that’s just the way it’s going to be to the end.” Yeah, except there’s nothing in the Bible that says any part of that.

The verse they use, and there’s only one, is in Genesis chapter 16 in verse 12. This is spoken to Hagar about her son Ishmael, and God is telling her that even though he’s been rejected from being the chosen heir of Abraham’s line to bring the Messiah into the world, he’s not going to do that, but that he’s going to be blessed too. God’s going to bless Ishmael as well, and he makes this statement about him.

He says, “Ishmael shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man’s hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Now, that same, he’ll dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Some people prefer to say he’ll dwell in antagonism with all his brethren. Maybe, I mean, I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’m not a Hebrew scholar. It doesn’t matter to me which way it reads. The point is that he’s a wild man and he’ll be hostile toward all other people. That doesn’t speak specifically of hostility toward the Jews, though the Jews are other people, so I guess that would include them, but this is a statement about Ishmael, talking about what kind of man he’s going to be.

There’s not the slightest hint that all the descendants of Ishmael are going to be like him, and this is something that I think Americans often mistake, and I think it’s because, I hate to say it, because I don’t think this is consciously true, we think of people as ethnic identities. Now, I’m not of the view that this is a white supremacist nation or anything like that. That’s not my position. My position is when we say, “Well, Jesus was a Jew, the apostles were Jews. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, and these heroes of ours, the prophets, they were Jews. So the Jews are good.” Well, that’s a non-sequitur. Whatever your ancestors may have been, doesn’t tell us anything about what you are, and Ezekiel 18 specifically says, a righteous father’s righteousness will not be imputed to his unrighteous son, or an unrighteous father, his unrighteousness will not be imputed to his righteous son. There’s no suggestion that if you have a good father or a bad father, that this somehow stamps your offering, even in the next generation, much less hundreds of generations, there’s not the slightest hint of this in the Bible.

Now, have the Arabs always been hostile toward the Jews? I don’t know. We don’t see a lot of evidence of it in the Bible. There are times when the Edomites, and times when the Ishmaelites, and time when the Midianites, all of which were descended from Abraham, by the way, when they did attack Israel in the period of the Judges, you know, these different pagan nations that were not the chosen people, they made war with them. That included Ishmaelites, but not particularly the Ishmaelites, not more than these others, there’s no particular hostility between Ishmaelites and Jews more than generic antisemitism that exists in many pagan nations.

And really, real problems between the Jews and the Arabs began largely when Jews started moving in large numbers from Europe, especially into Palestine. This was before Israel became a nation. They were moving in there for decades before it became a nation. And largely the Arabs and the Jews, many of them lived peaceably with each other.

In fact, I was listening to a YouTube the other day of an Orthodox rabbi. You may have seen it. Long bearded, orthodox, orthodox clothes. He was on an Al Jazeera interview, a Muslim woman was interviewing him, and he was saying, unbeknownst to Americans, Orthodox Jews don’t believe in Zionism. They don’t believe in the state of Israel because they believe that God said Israel has to repent first. And since Israel has not repented, they do not see this as a fulfillment of prophecy.

Now, I’m not sure if there are some Orthodox Jews that would contest that. I don’t know what every Orthodox Jew thinks, but he said there are tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews that that’s their way of seeing it. And he said he weeps for the Palestinians because of the injustice he’s done and that he’s anti-Israel, not anti-Jew. He’s not antisemitic any more than Paul or Moses were when they decried what the Jews did. But he’s anti-the-state of Israel because he knows things about it that many Americans don’t. I know some of them cause I’ve studied them in recent years more, but many Christians have no idea. And therefore Palestinians tend to be targeted or not, not as much now, but I think now too, yeah, definitely.

It happens now, just a couple of years ago, a Palestinian journalist, a woman, was shot by Israeli troops. And the next day when the Palestinians were carrying her coffin to her funeral, the Israeli troops came in and tried to bust it up because they didn’t like what she wrote. This is not a free country in all the respects that we think of a free country.

It’s true. Israel has been much more, I believe, open to the Arabs in their borders than we would have expected them to be. There are even Arabs on the Knesset. But there’s still harassment. If a Jewish (? I think he meant to say Palestinian) boy throws a rock at an Israeli tank, and there’s a notable case of this, he, his sister, and his parents are all put in jail. And, you know, it’s like the whole family’s punished because he threw a rock at a tank.

Now, was that tank endangered by a rock being thrown at it? No, they just were angry because he was hostile toward them. So they punished this whole family and took his home. This happens. This is not so long ago. Now, I do believe that we only hear about the injustices done by the other side. And there, and there may be more injustices done by the other side.

Certainly, in this recent conflict, the other side, I think, is inexcusable. I mean, punishing, killing civilians, babies, women, and so forth. I mean, there’s no question that Hamas doesn’t necessarily have the interest of the Palestinians at heart. Hamas is Palestinian in ethnicity, and Palestinians did vote Hamas into power, probably at, you know, gunpoint, but many people in Hamas or in Palestine are suffering. And many of them are Christians. I think I mentioned 7% of the Palestinians are Christians. That’s 14 times the percentage of Jews that are Christians in Israel. If you meet a Christian in Israel who lives there, the chances are 14 times greater that that person is going to be an Arab than that he’s going to be a Jew. Now, I mean, that should give us some perspective. We’re not talking here about a righteous, godly nation.

Now, this hostility between Ishmael and Isaac, there’s nothing in the Bible that says this is continual. It’s a statement about the man, Ishmael. It describes what kind of a man he was. There are no predictions that his offspring will or will not be that way.

We might say, well, there’s been some cases where it seems like the Arabs are a lot like that. Yeah, there are cases when the Jews were like that. There are cases like when Americans were like that toward the Indians. And there are certainly cases when the Indians were like that toward the European settlers. I mean, there’s been a lot of bad behavior to go around. There are no people who are always good.

But to say there’s a special hostility decreed by God, which requires us to take a stand against the Arabs because they’re from Ishmael and God predicted they’d be against Isaac and we’re on their side because that’s God’s people. That’s fabricated from whole cloth. There’s not a single scripture that would say that.

Now let’s talk about the restoration from the exile. Perhaps the most important verses that dispensationalism quotes are verses usually from Ezekiel, but there are some in Isaiah, and there are some in Jeremiah. There are some in some of the minor prophets where it says that God is going to restore the exiles from all the nations where they’ve been driven, bring them back to the land, and establish their nation again. No question. It does predict that. When were those predictions actually made? Well, when did Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel live? And the minor prophets, when did they live? They lived before or during the Babylonian exile.

In other words, Israel was already scattered or was soon to be scattered to all the nations by Nebuchadnezzar. And they spent 70 years in that condition. But before that even happened, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and then during the exile, Ezekiel predicted that God is going to gather his people back to the land and restore the nation.

He did. It was in 539 BC, a guy named Cyrus, a Persian ruler, conquered the Babylonians and gave all the nations that Babylon had taken into captivity, gave them permission to go back to their ancestral homes, including Israel. And of course, for us, the most important thing in Old Testament history is that Israel was given the right to go back in fulfillment of the promises God made. He fulfilled the promise. They went back. It was Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest that led them.

Later on, Ezra and Nehemiah, not very much later on, took a bunch of them back too. Only a remnant came back. But the prophets had said that only a remnant would come back. God never said all the Jews were going to come back. He said a remnant, the faithful remnant, would come back. And they did. Over 500 years before Christ.

Now, after that happened, the only predictions about Israel and geography that we read about are the predictions that Jesus made, that Israel is going to be conquered by the Romans, the temple is going to be destroyed, and the Jewish people will be scattered to all the lands. So we have the prophets in the Old Testament predicting the scattering of the people in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and predicting the return of the people in the time of Cyrus.

And then Jesus predicts they’re gonna be scattered again. And in my opinion, Zechariah predicted that too. He’s hard to interpret, but I think that’s what he’s talking about.

Now, when then, after that, was there a promise made that God would bring them back from that more recent scattering in AD 70, where’s the promise that they’ll come back from that? Jesus made none. Paul didn’t mention any. No New Testament writer did.

There’s nothing in the New Testament that speaks of them coming back again after 70 AD. So what if God does not bring them back in the end times? Is he unfaithful? No, he promised it in the days of Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel, and he fulfilled it 500 years before Jesus was born. No other predictions of any return of the people have ever been made in the Bible since that time.

Now, let me show you some of the scriptures that they like to use. I remember when I was growing weary of my dispensationalism because I kept finding that the Bible didn’t say what I was teaching it said, I began to wonder where are those scriptures that talk about God bringing the exiles back. Well, there’s in quite a few prophets, there’s a line here or a line there, but the main scriptures, and I found this to be true recently with every dispensationalist who’s now talking about the present situation, they always want to go to Ezekiel 36. That must be the best one for them. And 37, both of which do, in fact, talk about God bringing the Jews back and reestablish them in their land. I remember Ezekiel was along with the Jews in Babylon and in all the nations. They weren’t just in Babylon. Babylon had conquered all the nations of the region and the exiles were scattered among them. The Jews were in all the nations of the region.

And these prophecies come along and, let’s start here. Okay. In chapter 36 verse 19, God says,

Past tense. He’s not talking about a future scattering in the future from his point of view. He’s talking about a scattering that happened already, he’s using the past tense.

Now, where is the house of Israel at this time? He said to them, they’re in Babylon. Like him.

Now, did this happen? Yes. God brought them back. They had a new heart.

Now see, someone was arguing with, Oh, how do we know that the people came back with a Zerubbabel were repentant? Well, you want to read the Bible in Ezra 1:5. It says, “Sll whose hearts the Lord had touched came and went to Jerusalem.” They, they were moved by God. These were repentant people. That’s why they wanted to build the temple. That’s why they’re willing to make such a long trek through the dangerous wilderness to build their temple. And they were committed to that. Most Jews in Babylon were not. Most of them just stayed there, but the remnant came.

And now what about this pouring of spirit out? I’m going to get to that. But first, we need to look at chapter 37, because this is the other chapter that’s most often used. This is the vision of the dry bones. And we, we won’t read it all because it’s kind of a long narrative.

Ezekiel sees a vision of a wasteland, a desert, a wilderness, and there’s dry human bones scattered all over the place. And God says, “Son of man, prophesy to these bones.” And so he prophesied to the bones and they began to rattle and shake and assemble themselves. And they stood into full skeletons, and then flesh and skin and hair came upon them and they looked fully human, except that there’s no, no breath in them, the same word in the Hebrew. There’s no spirit in them.

Now here’s what God says to Ezekiel. “Prophesy now to the spirit, ruach in the Hebrew. It can be breath, it can be wind, or it can be spirit. In the previous chapter, “I will put My Spirit in you” probably means not wind or breath, but spirit. And this is prophesying the same thing that chapter 36 was, but with different images.

Prophesy to the Spirit, and then the Spirit came in and they came alive. And then God explains it. And it says in verse 11,

Not will be in the end times, are now while they are in Babylon, they are the whole house of Israel. They’re scattered away from their homeland.

That was the attitude that Jews in Babylon had.

This is figurative because they’re not literal bones. They’re people. “I’m going to bring you to life again as a nation.” He’s not talking about the resurrection of the last day here.

Now, these two prophecies, 36 and 37 of Ezekiel, say two things are going to happen. God says, “I’m going to take them from all the nations where they’ve been scattered, I’m going to bring them back to their own land.” That was signified by bones that are scattered being reassembled. They weren’t alive yet, but they were reassembled and looked fully human. There was nothing more to reassemble them. That was when Israel came back from Babylon to Israel and reestablished their nation, they were reassembled, but they weren’t alive yet spiritually. He says, “Then prophesy to the Spirit.” And he also says in chapter six, “I will put My Spirit on them. I’ll put my spirit in them and they’ll do my work.”

Well, when did that happen? Well, that happened at Pentecost. It was the returned exiles in Jerusalem that the Spirit was poured out upon on the faithful remnant who happened to be believers in Jesus Christ. Because only believers in Jesus Christ are faithful in any sense to God.

You cannot be faithful to God and reject the Messiah, the King that He sent. Jesus said, “Whoever does not honor me does not honor the Father who sent me.” You can’t honor God and reject Jesus no matter what John Hagee says.

Now, these people came back, God reassembled the nation and 500 years later, he poured his Spirit out on the remnant. It was the remnant who came back, and it was the remnant in Jerusalem that He poured His Spirit out on.

We call them the church. We call them the faithful disciples of Jesus. Only they can be called the faithful remnant remnant of Israel. The rest of Israel crucified him.

And so Ezekiel predicts a restoration of Israel in two phases. One, the regathering of the Jews to their land, which happened in the days of Cyrus, and the pouring out of His Spirit upon them subsequently, which happened at Pentecost. Now, the early Christians understood this kind of prophecy as being fulfilled in their time, because there are quite a few prophets that speak of God pouring out His Spirit, like a river in the wilderness and everything blossoming and budding and bringing forth fruit and so forth. There are lots of references, “rivers in the desert.” Isaiah especially, but other passages to talk about God pouring out His Spirit as rivers in the desert. Isaiah 35, I think it’s verses 15, 14, and 15 specifically say that these rivers of water are the Spirit poured out on them.

Well, God didn’t pour out His Spirit on the remnant when they came back from Zechariah. Maybe, maybe some of them, you know, they had a changed heart, but His Spirit was not poured out on the remnant until Pentecost. And the New Testament writers who quote verses about that outpouring in Ezekiel and Isaiah and Jeremiah, they apply it to their own time. That is the church in Jerusalem believed that they were seeing the fulfillment.

One of those prophecies was Joel chapter two, where God said, “And I’ll pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters will prophesy and your old men and young, your old men will see, dream, dream dreams, or your young men will see visions. I’ll pour out my spirit on your maidservants and so forth and they’ll prophesy.” That’s Joel chapter two, I think it’s verse 28, but Peter said, “This is that!” He said it at Pentecost, “This is that!”

There’s one outpouring of the Spirit predicted again and again in the prophets, just like there’s one return of the exiles from Babylon again and again. It’s just a common theme of the prophets. God sends them into Babylon. He restores them from Babylon. Then he’ll pour His Spirit out of them. And Peter said, “This is that.”

Now we can disagree with Peter if we want to, or we can make up things in the Bible to say, “Yeah, but there’s going to be another outpouring on Israel and there’s going to be another regathering in the end times!” Really?

Now, some people say, “Well, Steve, you’re kind of on the wrong side of the cue ball here, because don’t you know that God has in these last days restored the Jews to Israel? I mean, your interpretation is that this doesn’t mean that, but it has happened against all odds. How could you not think that’s a fulfillment of prophecy?” Well, one reason is I can’t find any prophecy that is fulfilled by it. Even J. Vernon McGee didn’t think it’s a fulfillment of prophecy. He said, “No, they got to become believers first and then they can come back.”

Now, I don’t think that’s come back at all because they came back already 500 years before Christ, and there was never another prediction of them ever coming back after that. But the truth is, what has happened there is not a fulfillment of any prophecy because there is not a covenant nation called Israel anywhere on this planet right now. Not even in the promised land. They are not a covenant people. They don’t acknowledge God. They don’t keep His covenant. They have met none of the conditions for the blessing, but they have met all the conditions for the curses to remain upon them that Deuteronomy said would be upon , and I don’t wish it on them.

I have no animosity towards Jews. Again, I’ve had many friends who are Jewish. I think they’re some of the most witty and fun people I’ve ever known. I’ve never had a bad thought toward a Jew. I’m just talking about the Bible here. If you say you’re not a Zionist and that means you don’t necessarily think the Bible teaches that this is a fulfillment of prophecy, people say, oh, you’re anti-semitic.

I’ve heard Dennis Prager say that on a show. He said, “If you’re not a Zionist, you’re anti-Semitic.” I think, well, wait a minute, Dennis, you’re a smart man. I like to listen to Dennis Prager. He’s a smart man. I agree with him most of the time but wait a minute.

Isn’t anti-Semitism racism toward Jews? Okay. What is Zionism? It’s a political philosophy. Zionism means you believe that the people of the Jews should and will come to Jerusalem and own that property. Now I can doubt that and still not be a racist. I don’t think any of you have a divine mandate to inherit any particular piece of property. I’m not against whatever race you are.

Racism is an entirely different thing. Zionism is a political movement and it was not started by godly Jews. It was started by an atheist Jew, Theodor Herzl in the 1800s. But it really got some momentum when dispensationalists jumped on that bandwagon because they believed that was supposed to happen and they pushed and they pushed and they pushed and they pushed until President Truman finally gave in. And if you don’t think that’s a correct interpretation, read books on modern Jewish history written by non-Christian Jewish historians, every Jewish historian will admit that the modern nation of Israel is largely something brought about by dispensationalist American and British evangelicals.

And my Zionist friends said, “Well, yeah, but God could use that.” He could. The only thing is He gives me no scripture to give me that interpretation of the facts.

God has not promised to do this. And if we’re talking about these passages, he hasn’t done it at all. Not only not in fulfillment of scripture, but He just hasn’t done it at all.

(End of transcription. If interested you can hear Steve Gregg’s entire talk on YouTube.

For more about dispensationalism, what it means, and what its influence is, please see the many articles about it on this website.

This is the continuation of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

The Spirits Of Infidel Lawlessness, Of Popery, And Of Priestly Tractarianism, A.D. 1830-1852.

SCARCELY HAD ENGLAND awakened to the consciousness of her proper position as the bulwark of Protestantism, and applied herself to the duty of disseminating the Gospel of Christ to the world, when the Satanic agency above described began, with an insidious but too successful effort to undermine the faith and to injure the repose of the Church.

By the very remarkable symbol of this vision there would seem to be intended some rapid, widespread, and influential diffusion of three “unclean,” i.e., unholy, principles, like in character to those from whom they are said to emanate — the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, — and resembling “frogs” in respect of the noisy and agitating agents employed to propagate them, by deluding and seducing the minds of men. As the sources thus indicated have been already explained as signifying the Devil, the Papal Antichrist, and the apostate Romish clergy, we are at no loss to deduce the three corresponding principles — 1st, of Infidel rebelliousness; 2nd, of Popery; and 3rd, of Priestcraft and Tractarianism, — three spirits of evil, which, like the lying spirit to Ahab, were to go “forth and gather” the powers of the world to the coming great day of conflict. Seeing, moreover, that these three spirits issue forth just at or after the incipient drying up of the Euphrates, do we err in regarding the last twenty years as the precise period marked out in prophecy for their development?

[I] Infidel rebelliousness. — Can we forget the furious outbreak of this unquiet spirit, when, having overthrown the reigning dynasties of France and Belgium, it exhibited itself in the great political agitations of England that attended the passing of the Roman Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bills? How the public mind was blindly impelled, almost like the herd driven by the legion of spirits into the waters of Gennesareth! And how rank and property, Church and State, were alike endangered, till the Prime Minister himself quailed and fell before the tempest! How infidel and democrat too often united in the croaking frog-like cry, “Agitate, agitate!” Can we forget how certain legislators and peers, as men infatuated, stood in their places in parliament, some advising passive resistance to the law; others, with yet clearer token of the spirit of evil, suggesting physical force, and even murder? How the Established Church was marked out as a special object of attack; its property saved -with difficulty; its prelates insulted, and even within the House of Lords itself admonished to set their house in order? How many even of the more orthodox Dissenting body were infected with the same spirit; and, instead of confining themselves, like their predecessors, to the work of evangelists at home and the promotion of evangelic missions among the heathen, became strangely known as political agitators, and appeared as the partisans of infidelity? Much, we are persuaded, was said and done under a temporary infatuation; but this shows the more how great the spirit of delusion which had gone forth. The crisis may, for the present, seem to have passed. A reaction in favor of order has doubtless, to a certain extent, had place among the middle classes. But among the lower orders this “unclean spirit” is still active. Socialism and Chartism, political unions, and such-like revolutionary combinations, with all their machinery of agitation and inflammatory haranguings, give but too clear evidence that .the evil is still abroad in the land. Moreover, the present is preeminently an age of journalism. It was calculated in 1845 that the issue of stamped and unstamped newspapers and pamphlets of a decidedly pernicious tendency from London alone was 28,862,000 yearly! The present circulation of penny or three-halfpenny unstamped pernicious publications is 400,000 weekly, amounting yearly to 20,800,000! In addition to these there is a weekly importation of French prints and novels of so indecent a character, that at one time they could only be obtained by stealth, but now they may be purchased by anyone through the vendors of the above publications.”2 If then, what now? May not the lawlessness of the present time be the fruit of such seed thrown broadcast on a population uneducated so far as religion is concerned?

The Edinburgh Review for July, 1850, gave this statement: “The total (annual) issue of immoral publications has been stated as twenty-nine millions, being more than the total issues of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Religious Tract Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Scottish Bible Society, the Trinitarian Bible Society, and some seventy religious magazines!”

Nor is the poison confined to these publications. The subtle appeal to human reason against the truths of Christianity is making its way. The German skeptical spirit, that has for a length of time past displayed the most open impieties in the mode of writing upon and criticizing Scripture, is infused into our works of literature; and German works of infidel tendency are translated and freely circulated and read amongst both the lower and higher classes of life.

In France the same character prevails, and to an immense extent tinctures alike its journals, its popular literature, novels, romances, dramas, and poetry. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the infidel spirit is combined with Popery. Switzerland too has been agitated and revolutionized by the republican principle within it.

In truth, we may say it was the working of this spirit that prepared the mine by which, in the year 1848, the whole of Continental Europe was shaken as by an earthquake to its foundation. Nor was Europe only affected. The unclean spirits were to go to the kings of the whole world. A specimen of its “going forth” may be found in the efforts made by infidels to introduce into and inundate our Indian Presidencies with the works of Tom Paine and such-like publications. The immense injury thereby done was stated by Dr. Duff in 1837. Similar reports may be given from our colonies in all parts.

[II] Nor has Popery, “the spirit” said to come “from the mouth of the Beast,” been less active or less mischievous. We turn to the Papal States for the commencement of its recently revived progress. Since the year 1815, when, the peace of Europe being established, the kings and Pope returned to their kingdoms and thrones (the latter once again in his usurped character of God’s vicegerent on earth), Popery has exhibited restored energies. The Inquisition was in some places speedily re-established, as was also the order of the Jesuits. In France, Spain, Portugal, Bavaria, and Austria the revival was obvious, although not at first so clearly united with the infidel lawless spirit as has been since developed. In two places, Ireland and Belgium, this combination was evident and palpable, and though these countries were under Protestant Governments, the success was marked. After Ireland had been for years agitated to its center by Romish priests and revolutionary demagogues, the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill was passed by our British Parliament in 1829 as a preferable alternative to civil war. The next year, through the united action of these kindred spirits, the Dutch Protestant king was expelled from. Belgium. In France the astute policy of Rome quickly adapted itself to the rule of the King of the Barricades, seeing that the latter was prepared to court Papal favor and extend its influence. Again in Switzerland the revolution of 1847 threw the Government into the hands of the so-called Liberal party; and great, consequently, has been there the increase of Popery. In the Pays de Vaud the Protestant Church has been divided, and the mass of faithful ministers obliged to leave the national established Church. And both there and at Geneva a strange political alliance has taken place between the democratic party and the Roman Catholics.

As to England, it may be well to trace its movements there more particularly. The passing, then, of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829 produced results little anticipated by the authors of the measure in strengthening the cause of Popery at home and abroad. At home the scale of political power came, with the help of the various sections of self-styled Liberals and demagogues, into the hands of the Irish Papal party, and the Government substantially devolved on its leader. Hence in the House of Commons the deference paid to Romish principles, and the discouragement of all upholding of the true principles of evangelical Protestantism. Hence the not infrequent assertion of the obscurity of the Bible, — of Popery and Protestantism being equally true, and the consequent propriety of each man following the way of his fathers, — and the approval of such assertions, shown by loud applause from both Popish and democratic members. As in the Houses of Parliament, so alike throughout the country, while Infidelity was strengthened on the one hand, Popery was upheld on the other.

The effect was soon visible. Romish chapels, convents, and colleges sprang up with increased and increasing rapidity. Conversions became frequent. The press gave its powerful aid to the cause. Romish reviews, magazines, and newspapers, — many characterized by great subtlety of argument and not a little display of learning, — as well as cheap periodicals, religious and controversial works, and tracts fitted for the multitude, obtained wide circulation amongst Protestants; and romances and novels, works on poetry, history, music, and architecture of like character helped forward the movement. Meanwhile in Ireland Popery was rampant. As the “unclean spirit,” breathing and speaking forth from the altars of Romish chapels, swayed and infuriated the blind multitude that worshipped before them, the Protestant clergy, in respect of their property and even of their lives, were treated as without the pale of the law. Nor was the merciless system exercised only against the Protestant clergy. Their institutions for education, from which Government support and Government charters were by the influence of the Papal faction withdrawn, were marked out as special objects of persecution, and forced oftentimes to give place to the unclean teachings of Popery. Incessantly the altar curse issued against teachers, parents, and children who persevered in attending Scriptural schools. Be it remembered also that a priest’s curse in Ireland is not merely “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” for it in reality exposes those against whom it is directed to personal insult, violence, starvation, and even death.

Yet again the opportunity was seized by this spirit of Popery of speeding forth in power to our distant colonies, to India, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Canada, Newfoundland; everywhere Romish bishops and priests, salaried by British funds but under the Pope’s instructions, seizing if possible on the education, influencing the press, and agitating for political power in conjunction with the revolutionist and the infidel.

Nor has France less prominently helped forward the unclean spirit of Popery. Wherever her power could be exercised she has protected Romish missionaries and upheld Romish influence. When lately Pius IX. was obliged to fly from his capital, the army of France under the Republican government speedily restored the Pope and re-established his authority.

Austria has thrown herself of late years into the arms of Rome, and given it a power unprecedented in modern history. In Tuscany the spirit of persecution is revived, and the recent accounts of the sentences, pronounced and executed in Florence against nobles and respectable families because of their having possessed or read the Scriptures are even now calling forth the sympathies of Protestant Europe. Exile, hard labor, if not death, is, in 1852, the judgment attached in Florence to such a misdemeanor! Witness the case of the Madiai and of Count Guicciardini. Well may it be asked, “Is Rome changed?”

[III] Yet again a “third spirit” is said in the text to speed forth “from the mouth of the false prophet” or apostate priesthood. Looking to our own country and our own Church, may we not find it in that spirit of clerical agitation and priestly dominancy which, issuing from Oxford, was known as Oxford Tractarianism?

Speciously putting itself forward in the first instance as the opponent of the two principles we have already noticed, this was looked upon with favor by many of the friends of order and religion. But its development has long since been sufficiently unequivocal.

The real object of Tractarianism is “to re-appropriate from Popery the doctrines which our reformers rejected, — to set up a Popish rule of faith, — a Popish doctrine of Apostolical succession, — a Popish view of the Church and Sacraments, — a Popish doctrine of sacrifice in the Eucharist, available for quick and dead for the remission of sins, — a doctrine on transubstantiation, invocation of saints, purgatory, and even on Papal supremacy, which, if not Popish, is at least so near it that it is like splitting hairs to draw a distinction between them.” Confession, as practiced at Rome, or even with more secrecy, and absolution following, is now not unfrequent in some of our churches. The Word of God is not, in the system, considered as the sole rule of faith. Reserve is recommended as to the atonement and other evangelic doctrines; and the Church of Rome is characterized as the “Saviour’s Holy Home.” The Articles of our Church are wrested from their original meaning; and a non-natural one forced on them, specially on the subject of baptism. The Reformation is considered as an unwise and unholy schism; its song, “The Lord our Righteousness,” and the glorious doctrine of justification by faith, are set aside. That the Tractarians have not yet, as a body, joined Rome, is from no want of sympathy, as their writings and practices show. Her monastic institutions and the celibacy of her clergy are the constant themes of praise. From the pulpit and the press, — in tracts, sermons, essays, reviews, romances, novels, poems, children’s books, and newspapers, — they are sounded forth. In music and paintings, in church decorations and architecture, the imitation of Rome is sedulously studied. All that can excite the imagination, captivate the senses, enchain the judgment, and mislead the mind, is at work in order to gain over all ages and classes, both the spiritual and the worldly, clergy and laity, — first to Tractarianism, and thence to Rome. Such has been the progress, that many of the original leaders in the movement profess to be surprised, and even pained, at the rapidity with which their pupils are outstripping them in the Rome-ward course. Can the extraordinary spread of doctrines so startling, so unwarranted, and in many senses so repugnant to common sense, be accounted for on any principle but that of a pervading spirit of infatuation?

The question of intensest interest, under these circumstances of the Christian world, and specially of the Church in England, cannot but recur solemnly to many, — What is to be the end of these things? That the hopes are high of all those who represent the three agitating spirits of the vision, Infidel-democrats, Romanists, and Tractarians, — that they boast of their success and anticipate triumph, is most evident. It was this confidence that induced and led the Pope and his advisers to that recent act of Papal aggression to which we have already adverted. The Bull of September 1850 expressly states it: — “That having taken into consideration the very large and everywhere increasing number of Catholics, and that the impediments that stood in the way of the spread of Catholicity are daily being removed, we judge the time come when the form of ecclesiastical government in England may be brought back to that model on which it exists in other nations.” It is the same confidence that at this time urges on the deep-laid plans and inspires the hopes and exertions of many amongst ourselves, who seek, however undesignedly, to revive the essence of Popery among us. But we may, I think, augur better things of the destiny of our long-favored land. We read in the Apocalypse of no reunion of that “tenth part of the great city,” viz., England, that was separated from Rome at the Reformation. Moreover, in the expressions of popular feeling that followed the aggressive act of Rome’s interference, — in the Protestant spirit that led to, and that manifested itself in, the numerous meetings that were held to denounce it, — in the high-toned English Christian sentiment that ever ranges itself on the side of loyalty and order, — that is loudly indignant at Rome’s persecuting tyranny abroad, and remonstrant at home against the encroachments of priestly artifice, — and, withal, that labors to extend at home and abroad the principles and teaching of a pure Gospel, which it is the object of those “unclean” and busy spirits to disfigure and destroy, — we still find ground of trust that better things are in store for England. We would adopt the language of the then first Minister of the Crown, who wrote these memorable words, “I rely with confidence on the people of England. Nor will I bate a jot of heart or hope so long as the glorious principles of the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in reverence by the great mass of the nation, which looks with contempt on the mummeries of superstition, and with scorn at the endeavors now making to confine the intellect and enslave the soul.”

However this may be, the time is critical, and calls aloud on all for Selfexamination, watchfulness, and prayer. The very fact that so many spirits of delusion are thus abroad should stir us up to seek strength against them. While the thought of the place which these occupy in the course of time, as marked in the sure word of prophecy, warns us with much distinctness of sound that the night is far spent, and that the day — the day of Christ’s coming — is at hand. If ever the solemn warning was suited to the Church, it is now, when we would seem to have arrived at the exact time and crisis where the next text follows: — “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.”

Continued in Revelation 17-22. Concluding Visions

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

QUESTION: Who were Dominic de Guzman and Sir Thomas More?

ANSWER: Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221) and Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) were faithful Roman Catholics who were later canonized (i.e., declared “saints”) by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. These two so-called “saints” have a whole lot of innocent blood on their hands!

Dominic de Guzman was born in 1170; he died in 1221. He became a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, and in 1215 he founded the Roman Catholic Dominican Order (a mendicant order of friars or nuns). Dominic de Guzman used to debate some of the Bible-believing Christian preachers of his day. Failing to persuade these Bible-believing Christians with his words and threats, Dominic de Guzman decided that the sword and the flame would be better “debate tools”. The Dominican Order that he founded was the first Roman Catholic religious order to run the “holy” Inquisition that tortured and butchered human beings made in God’s image!

Thomas More was born in 1478; he was executed in 1535. He is listed in various dictionaries as an English statesman and writer. One book describes him as an English humanist. As “lord chancellor” of England, Thomas More ran afoul of King Henry VIII for refusing to accept Henry as the head of a separate “Church of England”, and was executed in 1535. Sir Thomas More was canonized (i.e., declared a “saint”) in 1935.

David W. Daniels, on page 77 of his book, “Did The Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?” (2005), tells us this about Sir Thomas More: “‘Saint’ Thomas More (1478-1535) is honored by [Ed.: Roman] Catholics for his ‘godly fairness’, politeness, sense of humor and intelligence.

But he had only HATRED [Ed.: emphasis in the original] for Martin Luther, [Ed.: for English Reformer and Bible translator William] Tyndale, and anyone who loved Gods words! He burned Bible-believers at the stake and tortured them in his own house!

He [Ed.: Sir Thomas More] paid big bucks to get someone to betray [Ed.: William] Tyndale [Ed.: who was later executed in 1536 on the orders of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church]. In our money, it would be like a ‘million-dollar hit’.”

How could the Roman Catholic Church declare such evil monsters as Dominic de Guzman and Sir Thomas More “saints”? Can you believe the Roman Catholic Church wants to declare anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi Pope Pius XII – a man who (1) supported Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the other Fascist nations of Europe during World War II; and, (2) appointed Roman Catholic clergy to run the Vatican Ratlines, helping many Nazi and Fascist war criminals escape capture at the end of World War II – a “saint”? Can you believe the Roman Catholic Church wants to declare Pope John Paul II – a man who (1) helped to cover up the murder of his predecessor (Pope John Paul I); (2) protected then-Bishop Paul Marcinkus (then-head of the Vatican Bank) from Italian authorities concerning “irregularities” at the Vatican Bank; and, (3) did as much as he could to cover up the sex scandals involving Roman Catholic clergy – a “saint”? Torturing people, murdering people, protecting war criminals, protecting clerics accused of sexual abuse, etc. – are these some of the qualifications for “sainthood” in the Roman Catholic Church? What shameless audacity it is to declare such men “saints”!

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DOMINIC DE GUZMAN, SIR THOMAS MORE, AND OTHER ROMAN CATHOLICS WHO PERSECUTED BIBLE BELIEVERS:

1. Read the 317-page paperback book, “Rome and the Bible”, by David Cloud. To order this book via credit card, please call toll-free 1-866-295-4143.

2. Read the 159-page paperback book, “Did the Catholic Church Give Us the Bible?”, by David W. Daniels. To order this book via credit card, please call Chick Publications at 1-909-987-0771.

3. Watch the 3-hour color DVD documentary, “A Lamp in the Dark”, by Adullam Films. To order this DVD documentary via credit card, please call toll-free 1-888-780-5049.

This is the continuation of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

Religious Revival. The Era Of Evangelic Missions, A.D. 1789-1852.

HAVING FINISHED the account of the six vial-judgments, let us revert to the two passages, which we had passed over, in which is predicted the position of the true Church of Christ during the period of the French Revolution.

It was to England, we found, — insular England, — that living Protestantism seemed almost wholly confined, just before the time of that tremendous political outbreak. We observed also how lamentably, even in this country, religion during the eighteenth century had declined, and that, though still alive, the flame burned but feebly. Was England then to fall under the same righteous retribution as did the other nations? Not so. God in mercy at this very time poured out his Spirit upon our land: a religious revival took place, which showed itself in the renewed effort, — and that to a large extent, — as a missionary nation to hold forth the Gospel, and to take advantage of England’s maritime and political ascendancy in order to advance the kingdom of God. Circumstances, providentially ordered, concurred to favor the work. Fit instruments were supplied. Public opinion, public and private liberality, combination of men willing to act in union for benevolent purposes, these all forwarded the movement; and the outburst of missionary feeling, missionary action, and missionary anticipations is now among the most memorable historic facts of the era.

It was when the infection of French democratic and infidel principles had spread, plague-like, across the Channel, threatening the kingdom with similar revolutionary evils; when the sea, with its European Papal colonies, and the rivers and kingdoms of the European continent were dyed with blood, its most ancient thrones subverted, and chiefest lights in its political heavens eclipsed or darkened; when France, swayed by Napoleon, seemed with gigantic force (like Pharaoh with his Egyptian hosts on Israel’s track) ready to concentrate its efforts to overwhelm us; it was when the judgments of God were so obviously abroad on the earth, imperiling the land, that an eminent prelate of the day exclaimed, “Nothing but the interposition of Heaven can save us;”when her most distinguished statesman declared ” the commonwealth to be in extremity,” and almost in despair died of a broken heart;” it was even then that, spreading from the middle to the higher classes, amongst both clergy and laity, this wonderful outburst of missionary energy broke forth in our favored land — a land long before mercifully separated from the name, dominion, and connection of the Beast and his image.

Amongst the individuals ordained of God to be the instruments of this religious revival was one whose name will ever be remembered in connection with this interesting period — we allude to WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. He, too, like Augustine and Luther in former important junctures of the Church’s history, was, in a religious point of view, the man of the age. It was not so much his quick and varied powers of intellect, his eloquence, conversational charms, affectionate heart, and winning manners, that marked him out as one of more than common influence, and so fitted specially to lead in the work; nor yet his parliamentary elevation, his reputation as a patriot, and his friendship with the Prime Minister of the day. By themselves alone these were inadequate to the accomplishment of such an end. It was that he had experienced real conversion of heart, such as to lead him to consecrate the whole to God. This was, as he himself was wont to refer to it, the turning-point of his life.

So prepared, and viewing on the one hand the high standard marked out in God’s Word of what the life and practice of the professed Christian should be, compared with the prevailing ungodliness, worldliness, and infidelity of those around him, and, on the other, his own position and capabilities for improving them, he recognized his vocation. “God has set before me as my object the reformation of my country’s manners.” “Having accepted the commission,” says his biographers, “he devoted all his powers to its fulfillment.” His private and public life, his winning example, and unceasing efforts in the cause of truth, benevolence, and Evangelical Christianity, his oft-uplifted voice in Parliament, and the more lasting memorial of his opinions — his volume on Practical Christianity (all accompanied by intercessory prayers for his country, prayers full of devotion and humiliation) — all acted upon society with an influence and effect that can scarcely be over-estimated. The faithful ones of Christ — a little body, at the time much scattered, for the most part little known, and in general society misunderstood and despised; men such as Newton, Scott, Milner, Cecil, Robinson, Simeon, and others, members of the mystical 144,000, the “called, and chosen, and faithful;”who were all in their several spheres of duty busily taking part in the promotion of the same blessed work, — hailed with delight the influence of Wilberforce as a gift from God.

The revival of the Anglo-Irish Church also may be dated about the same time; while the efforts of John Wesley, Whitfield, and other eminent Dissenters, cooperated materially with the spiritual and enlightened of the Established Church in forwarding the cause of true religion. Higher views opened of Christian usefulness. The desire increased for united exertion toward extending the blessings now appreciated in our country. The old and waning Missionary Associations, which had feebly struggled for existence during the progress of the last century, were now revived; while new societies appeared, one after another, in quick succession, like the Swiss Alpine peaks at day-dawn, catching and reflecting on a benighted world the rays of heavenly light. The missionary angel, who at the time of the Reformation had received his commission, might now be said to ” fly through the midst of heaven with the everlasting Gospel to preach to every nation on the earth.”

It would far exceed our limits were we to enter into the origin and proceedings of these various societies which became the agents in the great work of evangelization. The Christian Knowledge, the Gospel Propagation, and the flIora’vian had been long in the field. At the close of the eighteenth century arose the Baptist, the London Missionary, the Wesleyan, and the Church Missionary. Then came that which was akin to all the rest, the British and Foreign Bible Society. By these the Word of life has, in every quarter of the world, been diffused and preached in the several native languages. Associations having similar but special local objects, such as the Irish Society, for bringing the Scriptures to that people in their own tongue, multiplied on every side. Powerfully did these combine in carrying forth to other lands the truth of Christianity; reacting again in their influence upon religion at home. And whether we consider the spirit that animated or the results that followed them, truly we must believe the judgment of Heaven to have favorably rested on their labors.

Neither must we attempt to recount the names and efforts of the several laborers themselves in the missionary field, — of Brainard, and Swartz, and Carey, — of Brown, Martyn, Heber, Morisson, Corrie, and others, of whom it may truly be said, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” How did the House of Commons itself bow before the moral greatness and evangelic spirit of one of these, when Wilberforce described Carey’s noble disinterestedness, who, having by his literary acquirements and moral worth raised himself to a highly lucrative position in the college of Fort William, devoted his whole yearly salary of £1000 to the mission at Serampore. The feelings of that man are not to be envied whose heart does not glow with admiration at the effects produced by their faithful and persevering exertions, whether in Greenland, in the West Indies, in our Eastern Empire, or in the islands of the South Sea.

It was coincidently with the rise of these societies that Wilberforce obtained from Parliament a sanction for the missionary work of evangelizing India. It was a battle hardly fought against much opposition, but eventually won. The position of England at this period was far in the ascendant above other powers, whether by sea or land. Every ocean and clime was open to her ships and her commerce. The East Indian Empire, founded by Clive and Hastings, and then under Lord Wellesley’s government, opened wide fields for the missionary enterprise of British Christians; while the increase of her wealth, as well as the progress of science, concurred to facilitate its execution. Never, in fact, since the apostolic era had there been such a spirit and such an opportunity for the work. The famous Romish missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, albeit carried on with zeal and devoted self-denial, had but spread Popery — not the Gospel; the decrees of the Council of Trent — not the Bible; the supremacy of Antichrist — not of Christ. But now, in every quarter of the world, — in the East Indies and West Indies, in South Africa and West Africa, in New South Wales and New Zealand, in the South Sea Islands and in Madagascar, in Persia and Burmah, and incipiently in China, in the polar regions of Greenland and North America, — everywhere the Gospel was preached, the Scriptures circulated, schools instituted, churches opened for the heathen, and Christian lives offered in willing sacrifice to the work.

At the same time the Almighty Spirit, who had sent forth his angel to call the world to “fear God and give glory to him,” excited amongst the heathen the desire for instruction.

In these, in every country where a mission was attempted, the cry was heard, “Come over and help us.” The Jews, God’s ancient people, were not forgotten. A society for promoting Christianity amongst them was founded in 1809, and with considerable success. It is a remarkable fact that amongst. the clergy of our English Church we number at one time no less than fifty Christian Israelites.

The Church of England, too, has been extended by means of missionary labors, and has its bishops and regular ecclesiastical organization in India, Australia, and other colonies.

From the commencement of the terrific struggle on the Continent the faithful of the Church in England still cherished the belief that our country, with all her sins, had yet the “ark” of Christ’s true evangelical Church within it, and so would be preserved. As sign after sign appeared of the revival of religion, — and specially as the Bible and Missionary Societies progressed in the fulfillment of their high commission, whereby the ark bearing “temple,” with the Gospel, its sacred deposit, was more and more “opened” to the world, — they still with stronger hope rested on the assurance that the Almighty One was for and among them. So eventually it proved. Napoleon Buonaparte was stayed in the midst of his career; a general peace was proclaimed; and from every quarter arose the sounds of a nation’s adoration and praise. But chiefly did the faithful Church joy in the anticipation of a yet wider spread of Gospel light and truth, and, touching the ” sweet harp of prophecy,” hail the time as not far off when the promises of the latter day should be accomplished, the everlasting Gospel fulfill its commission, and all nations come and worship before God: — that blessed time when it shall be said —

“One song employs all nations: and all cry,
Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us.”

But was the Dragon to be thus cast down from his dominion, or the Beast from the throne of Anti- Christendom, without a fresh Satanic effort to uphold them? We have in this lecture seen the position which our country held, and still holds. We shall in the next have to consider her danger; and so shall we have an answer to this question.

Continued in Revelation 16:13, 14. The Three Frogs

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

There are photos below the text.

On Friday, June 21st, I turned 74 years old. I’m thankful to my Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, for reasonably good health at my age, normal blood pressure, no arthritis, and no diabetes as my father had, and for being completely off medication of any kind. And I’m especially blessed to have a ministry of sharing God’s truth, His Word, and the true views that Protestant Christians used to hold before the Counter-Reformation of the Jesuits sidetracked evangelical Christians. And I’m super-blessed to have friends who value my work and the articles on this website. And I’m blessed to have a wonderful wife who supports my ministry. And I’m blessed to live in a land of peace and liberty with no crime in my area that I know of, a land where little kids walk the streets without danger of being abducted. It never gets cold but doesn’t get too hot either because of the proximity of the sea. I hardly see police anywhere. I see only armed guards at entrances to banks and any establishment where there is a lot of cash or goods at hand.

The Philippines is still a poor country as are many Roman Catholic nations. Signs advertising ice for sale are ubiquitous and are indicative of its poverty. We sell our neighbors ice for about 10 US cents a bag and use the money to buy filtered drinking water which costs roughly only USD 0.50 per 5 gallons. Our next-door neighbors do not have either a refrigerator or a stove. They cook outside over a wood fire. They do have a phone, however. A phone is the one appliance nobody seems to lack. They connect to the Internet through what’s called Piso WiFi. Put a 5 peso coin (about USD 0.10) in the slot and you get one hour of Internet. Haircuts are only about $1.00 or 60 Philippine pesos. I always give them more than they ask or about 100 pesos. This is still 7 times less than I would pay in Guam.

Households owning appliances:
Television 75%
Refrigerator/Freezer 50%
Washing machine 49.2%
Radio 35.4%
Aircon 16.1%
Stove with oven/gas range 14.2%
Microwave/oven toaster 10.5%

Source: Percentage distribution of households in the Philippines owning home appliances in 2022, by type

Photos of my area in the Philippines

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This is the continuation of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

Era Of The French Revolution, A.D. 1789-1830

IT WILL BE REMEMBERED that the several visions, which have intervened between the end of chap. xi. and this chap. xv. now before us, have been regarded as supplemental — added, as it were, on the back or outside of the Apocalyptic seven-sealed scroll. The original and direct within written series is now about to be resumed at the historic point at which it had been broken off, i.e., the sounding of the seventh trumpet.

Before entering, however, on the explanation of that vision and the eventful accompaniments therein portended, our attention is directed to the position occupied by God’s “elect and faithful” people during the destructive action of the seven vials. “A sea as it were of glass” is seen “mingled with fire;” appearing probably like vitrified lava, such as would be the effect of a volcano. It is doubtful what locality is represented; but as the Babylon of the Apocalypse is shown to be destroyed by fire, it may designate some part of the territory of “the Beast.” Moreover, it is intended to show the safety of the Church of God during the political eruptions of the French Revolution, — that great event which, in its. several developments, presents the solution of the symbol of the seven vials. The harpers, standing upon the margin of the sea and singing thanksgiving to God, would seem to represent the spiritual Israel upon their escape from the figurative Egypt, as the literal Israel did of old when delivered from the judgment plagues and from the pursuing hosts of Pharaoh. And the songs of confidence and triumph which they sung, under the guidance and direction of Moses, are here taken to express the faith in which the true believers repose in the strength of Christ, their Paschal Lamb, and the hope in which they anticipate their speedy establishment in the Heavenly Canaan — the land of his promise — when “all nations shall come and worship before him.”

And now, as was also depicted in Rev. 11:19, the “temple” is visibly “opened” in heaven, and the ark of the covenant appears, indicating that at the time there would be a manifestation of the true Church of Christ before the world as to character, principles, expectations, and influence, so as it had never before been exhibited; yet was the confluence of the nations into it, in the full extent of the promise, to be yet deferred till the vial-plagues had been first poured out. For this purpose “seven angels came forth from the temple,” denoting that all the approaching political convulsions of Christendom were ordered by the Lord’s providence; and inasmuch as the “vials of wrath” were put into the angels’ hands by one of the “living creatures,” i.e., the beatified saints, it is implied that the vindication of their wrongs and injuries is the design and intent of these judgments.

The “vial” or cup is often introduced in Scripture to represent God’s judicial inflictions upon his enemies. Thus, “In the hand of the Lord is a cap, and the wine is red. It is full of mixture, and he poureth out of the same; but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out.” (Ps. 75:8) Again, “Behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling; I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee.” (Isa. 51:22)

The similarity of the four first vials to the four first trumpets cannot escape observation. The localities, as well as other figures, are almost identical. The earth,the land division of Western Roman Christendom; the sea, its maritime colonies; the rivers, those two boundaries, the Rhine and Danube, and their valleys; the sun, the ruling emperor of one-third of the Roman earth, — all these symbols and their significations remain pretty much the same.

The time to which the prophecy appears to point as the period of the seventh trumpet’s sounding is at the outbreak of the FRENCH REVOLUTION in the year 1789. This was preceded by a short interval of warning, from the passing away of the Turkish woe about A.D. 1774, marked out by the prophetic notice, “The second woe is past; behold, the third woe cometh quickly.”

The general tranquility of Europe in that interval indicated to ordinary view no sign of approaching disturbance. Russia, although it comprehended those wilds whence long since the barbarian scourge of Christendom had poured forth, was now a civilized empire. Modern Germany, with its 2300 walled towns, presented obstacles to invasion unknown in earlier ages. The rancor of religious differences had all but subsided; and a balance of power forbade the idea of either party being strong for aggression. The late democratic revolt of America would have, it was thought, no effect on European principles; and the peace of Versailles in 1783 was supposed to augur a long repose to Europe.

There were, however, two opposite classes who watched the tendencies of events with interest. The one was that of the Infidel philosophers in France, headed by Voltaire, men who, aided by wit and science, left no means untried to effect the object for which they conspired — the overthrow of Christianity. Republican clubs and infidel cheap revolutionary publications served under their direction to undermine the principles of the different ranks of society; and, without religion to control them, the mass of the people were ready for any outbreak against government and social order. The Christian philosopher also foresaw an outbreak, not such as the former looked for, but one of wrath and judgment. The abounding iniquity must needs meet with punishment.

The unwonted convulsion of the elements which just then occurred drew the notice of thoughtful observers, and filled them with fearful forebodings. Tempests and volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes, were long, destructive, and frequent.4 It was in allusion to this unnatural state of the elements, and Specially with reference to an earthquake which lasted three years,5 from 1783 to 1786, that Cowper writes —

Thus, as in some other parts of Sacred Scripture, the literal and figurative seemed alike joined in the prediction: — when the seventh trumpet sounded, “there were lightnings, thunderings, an earthquake and great hail.” Then the French Revolution broke out. In the meeting of the National Assembly the Republican party gained the ascendancy, and at once proceeded to abolish the laws, rights, and customs of the French nation. The privileges and titles of the nobility, the tithes of the clergy, and the supremacy of the king were sacrificed to popular power and caprice. All that might have appeared most stable in Church and State was overthrown. It is at this period the vial judgments may have been supposed to begin.

FIRST VIAL. — “And the first (angel) went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the Beast,” etc.

One of the plagues of Egypt was a noisome ulcer. Here then of the spiritual Egypt the same expression is used. The angel of the first trumpet sounded, and fire fell on the earth on the same locality. The “sore” indicates the outbreak of some corruption which had been festering within, and which, breaking out, would spread its infection and produce great distress. And so it was. A tremendous outbreak of social and moral evil, democratic and popular fury, atheism and vice, characterized the French Revolution. From France, as a center, the plague rapidly spread through its affiliated clubs, and the whole of Papal Christendom soon imbibed the poison and shared the punishment.

At the first its character was by many mistaken, and the movement was hailed as the harbinger of liberty and the overthrow of despotism. But it quickly unfolded itself. First came the atrocious assault upon the palace of Versailles and the forcible abduction of the monarch. Then the National Assembly’s declaration of the rights of man, a code of open rebellion against all order and rule; followed by the confiscation of the Church estates and the ascendancy of the Jacobin clubs to power. Then another and more ferocious attack on the palace, the dethronement of the king, the massacre of the Swiss guards and of five hundred Royalists! Soon followed the trial and execution of both king and queen, with that of other royal persons, and the avowed declaration of war against all authority. Then came the reign of terror under Robespierre; the Revolutionary Tribunal; the horrid massacres at La Vendée and Lyons, — men and women drowned in couples, and vessels filled with captives and then sunk; which atrocities they termed republican baptisms and marriages; — to say nothing of the innumerable multitude shot down, roasted alive, and drowned in the mass. Lastly, as the acme of iniquity, the threat of dethroning the King of Heaven; the public renunciation of Christianity; the worship of an abandoned woman as the Goddess of Reason; the abolition of the Sabbath and all other institutions connected with religion; the sacraments profanely travestied, — a sacramental cup with wine being brought into the street, and an ass made openly to drink of it! Such was the development of the real character of the Revolution. Surely, “the whole head was sick, the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there was no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.” It was as if God had said of it, as of Ephraim, “He is joined to idols; let him alone.”

It was upon “men having the mark of the Beast” that this vial was poured out. The clergy were Romanists, and suffered fearfully, as did the Romish laity. But independently of this, the conduct of these Republicans was but the following up the example of what they had learnt to esteem of Popish tyranny; and it was now turned against those who had long and diligently sowed the seeds of oppression.

SECOND VIAL. — “And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea,” etc. Again, the second trumpet gives the clue to the local scene of this judgment. There was destruction of the maritime power and commerce of the colonies of Papal Christendom. The democratic revolutionary spirit of France and the naval force of England contributed to effect the purpose of Divine Providence. First, the Isle of Haiti or St. Domingo, the most flourishing of the French colonies, being infected by the like infidel principles, was lost after a servile war of twelve years, in which 60,000 blacks were slaughtered. Then, for twenty years, the fleet of England (preserved and directed by the same good providence of God) wasted in all directions the ships, commerce, and maritime colonies of France, and of her allies, Holland and Spain. Their fleet was destroyed in 1793, at Toulon, by Lord Hood; by whom also Corsica, and nearly all the Spanish and West Indian Islands were taken in 1794. In 1795 followed the naval victory off L’Orient, and the capture of the Cape of Good Hope. The victory in 1797 off Cape St. Vincent was quickly succeeded by that of Camperdown over the Dutch fleet. Then followed Lord Nelson’s three mighty victories of the Nile in 1798, of Copenhagen in 1801, and in 1805 of Trafalgar. Viewing the losses suffered by France from 1793 to the end of 1815, we find that near 600 vessels of war, besides numerous ships of commerce, were destroyed, together with a large proportion of their officers and men. The world’s history does not furnish such a period of naval war and bloodshed. “The sea became as the blood of a dead man.” Finally, when the maritime power of the Papal nations had been swept away by English victories, the Spanish colonies of South America threw off their allegiance, after another scene of carnage, only paralleled by those before described; the Brazils also were separated from Portugal, and so the prediction was complete: as regarded the Papal European colonies, they became ” dead.” Doubtless the judgments on many of these colonies might be considered as being retributive for the cruelties practiced in their exercise of the slave trade.

THIRD VIAL. — When the third trumpet sounded we found that the locality described was “the rivers and fountains of waters,” i.e., the Alpine fountains and streams, and the boundary rivers, the Rhine and Upper Danube. We have the same locality specified in this third vial — ” And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood.” According, therefore, to the analogy of the former explanation, this judgment was to take place on those countries watered by the Rhine and Danube, as well as upon Northern Italy. Even so it fell out. During the year 1792 war was declared by France against Germany, and the next year against Sardinia; consequently all these towns watered by the Rhine and Alpine streams became scenes of carnage. Metz, Worms, Spires, the towns formerly desolated by Attila, suffered. Another French army entered upon the countries situated on the Mouse, a branch of the Rhine; a third advanced into Piedmont, the Alpine frontier. In 1793 and 1794 war still raged in the same quarters. The French advanced to Holland. In many places the success fluctuated, but in most instances they were victorious. At last Charles of Austria drove their generals, Moreau and Jourdan, and their armies back to the Rhine.

In A.D. 1797 Buonaparte attacked the Sardinians and Austrians. The course he tracked was from Alpine river to river through Northern Italy, till he reached Venice. Every river was a scene of carnage, and he crossed seven in succession. The Alpine rivers were turned to “blood.” It was in 1797 that Buonaparte uttered the remarkable threat, “I will prove an Attila to Venice.” Before peace could be restored Austria was forced to submit; and the treaty of Campo Formio stipulated that the valley of the Rhine, one part of the prophetic scene, together with the Austrian Netherlands and Palatinate on em side of the Rhine, and Wurtemburg, Bavaria, Baden, and Westphalia on the other, should all be made over to France.

Again in 1799 the “fountains of waters” were dyed with blood, the French having suffered reverse and been driven out of all the places they occupied in North Italy with much bloodshed.

The war soon recommenced. In 1800 that terrible and decisive battle of Marengo was fought, and the Danube became the scene of judgment. One victory after another succeeded, till the memorable battle of Austerlitz completed the overthrow of the Austrian power.

The reason given by the angel for the judgment is remarkable, — “They are worthy, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.” Was it not so that the cruelties — of the French and Piedmontese and the rulers of Savoy against the Waldenses and Albigenses, the Huguenots and Calvinists, from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and of Austria against the Hussites, the Waldenses and Lutherans in Lombardy, Moravia, and the Netherlands already related — did call out for retributive justice? “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

FOURTH VIAL. — “And the fourth angel poured out his vial on the sun,” etc. The fourth trumpet again helps us to the meaning of the symbols. “The sun, moon, and stars” were on that occasion represented as being smitten by the judgment, and the Roman emperor and the subordinate authorities were the real sufferers. Even so at this time. In 1806, the year after the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon required the sovereign of Austria to renounce his title of Emperor of Rome and Germany. So the imperial sun of Papal Christendom was darkened. Most of the independent sovereignties of Europe were revolutionized, and their light eclipsed in the political heaven. Buonaparte exercised his assumed office of king-maker to the no small distress of nations. The king of Prussia was shorn of half his dominions, which was assigned to a new-made king of Saxony. Westphalia, Holland, Spain, and Portugal, and Naples were apportioned, the three former to his brothers, the latter to his general Murat. Never had there been such a subversion of old dynasties — such a shaking of the powers of heaven. And when in 1809 the Austrian emperor made a desperate effort to regain his lost honors, he signally failed; and only purchased peace by giving his own daughter, Maria Louisa, in marriage to the oppressor, and thereby his implied acquiescence in his tyranny.

The “scorching with fire” we may refer to the sufferings of the countries which were exposed to these fearful troubles. The accounts which we have received enable us to appreciate the point and truth of Napoleon’s own observation, — “The genius of conquest can only be regarded as the genius of destruction.” Conscriptions, taxation, loss of life, pillage of property, devastation and ruin, marked his course and sullied the glory of his exploits. Men were “scorched with great heat.”

THE FIFTH VIAL. — “And the fifth angel poured out his vial on the seat of the Beast.” We have already seen how in the Revolution the Romish clergy suffered. Their means of support was withdrawn by the abolition of tithes, the confiscation of the Church lands, and the destruction of monastic houses. This was followed by the national abolition of the Romish religion and the razing the churches to the ground. So was the whole French ecclesiastical establishment broken up. Twenty-four thousand of the clergy were massacred with horrid atrocities; the terrified remnant fled.

So much had the anti-Papal spirit increased, that the French army urged their march against Rome itself, and the Pope only saved himself by the surrender of several towns and the payment of a large sum of money and the best treasures of the Vatican.

At length the decree went forth for the humbling of the Beast himself. In 1809 Napoleon declared the Pope’s temporal dominion at an end. The estates of the Church were annexed to France; and Rome was degraded to be the second city of the French Empire. Surely on “the seat of the Beast” the vial of wrath had been poured out.

Subsequently the Pope was brought prisoner to France, and there, as a pensioner, he received a stated salary. True he afterwards gained back the privilege of fixing his seat at Rome. But the world had seen his weakness, and a precedent was established for the benefit of future generations.

In France the Romish religion continued only to be tolerated on an equality with other religions; in Portugal and Spain church property has been lately confiscated; and in Italy still later events have shown that the Papal authority, if unsupported by temporal power, has not any longer in itself that which can maintain its supremacy.

“They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and repented not of their deeds.” Here, too, history shows the truth of the prediction. Neither in Rome, Spain, France, or Italy has there been any national return to the true God. They felt the bitterness of revolution and bloodshed, but felt it only as coming from man. They soon revived the old superstition. The reinstated governments of Southern Europe proceeded to restore the power of the Pope, agreed again to give him support, and to consider him as their ally. To regain his favor the Bourbons dedicated the kingdom to the Virgin Mary, the Jesuits were reintroduced, and Protestants again oppressed.

In Spain the Inquisition was re-established, and the blood of heretics flowed afresh at the stake. In Austria the Jesuits were again active, and in all the other countries the mummeries and lying wonders of Romanism once more had place. The desecration of the Sabbath was continued, and no improvement appeared either in devotion or morality.

THE SIXTH VIAL. — ” And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates,” etc. The introduction again of this symbol7 directs us at once to the Turkman empire as the subject of this visitation. The Turks had long ceased to be a terror to the nations; the woe had passed. During the revolutionary wars they had been comparatively uninjured, but now their time of judgment was come.

The first appearance of trouble was in the revolt of Ali, pasha of Yanina, who, asserting independence, opened the way for the Greek insurrection of 1820. Its successful issue is well known. The annihilation of the Turkish army in the Morea and the uniform superiority of the insurgents over the Turks by sea had nearly completed their freedom, when the tide was turned against them by the Egyptian armament of Ibrahim Pasha. The battle of Navarino, however, in 1827, in which the fleets of England, France, and Russia were combined, destroyed the Turco-Egyptian fleet and saved Greece.

The revolt of the Janizaries followed, which led to the massacre of 30,000 of those ancient troops and the consequent weakening of its power. Yet was it just then that, in its infatuation, Turkey hurried into a disastrous war with Russia. The armies of the Czar were everywhere victorious, and Constantinople was threatened with investment, when ambassadors interposed and peace was made. In the same year, 1829, the French landed 40,000 men in Africa, took Algiers, and, by converting that province into a colony of France, dried up another of the sources of Turkish power.

Then came the rebellion of the Egyptian pasha, Mehemet Ali, who attacked and conquered Syria, thrice defeating the Sultan’s armies at Hems, Nezib, and Iconium. The union of the great powers of Europe, it is true, soon drove the Egyptians out of Syria, took Acre, and forced back the pasha to a nominal dependence upon his former master. Yet is the allegiance little more than nominal: the Euphrates flood is there too fast drying up.

But there were other causes of the waning of the Turkman empire, and which marked the judgment as from God himself. Earthquake, pestilence, and famine, even more than the wars we have mentioned, served to depopulate the empire. Conflagrations, too, did their part. One writes from Bagdad, “Surely every principle of desolation is operating.” Another, the chaplain of the British Embassy, says, “Within twenty years Constantinople has lost more than half its inhabitants.” On every side the process of internal decay goes on. What may yet remain to be accomplished before the Turkish nation be wholly dried up and annihilated, is only known to Him “who doeth as he will in the armies of heaven. and among the inhabitants of earth.” For the present, her only support is the favor of the princes of Christendom. A selfish policy on their part is her safety.

Who “the kings of or from the East” may prove, whose way is to be prepared by this drying up of the symbolic Euphrates, — whether, as some believe, the Jews, upon the fall of the Turkish empire; or, as others affirm, the Gentile nations, which it is promised “shall come and worship Christ;” — “kings of Sheba and Seba,” who, like the wise men from the East, shall offer gifts; or whether the way made easy for communication with the great empire of India, — is a consideration we must not attempt to solve. The question, though full of interest at this time, has reference to events still future, and therefore is beyond our limits of fulfilled prophecy.

Continued in Revelation 11:15, 19, And 16:6, 7. The Temple Opened. The Angel With The Everlasting Gospel

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae

Family Of Emperor Alexander II Of Russia

QUESTION: Who were Czars Alexander I and Alexander II of Russia?

ANSWER: Alexander I was born in 1777, and was assassinated (via the poison cup) by agents of the Jesuits in 1825. He was the czar of Russia from 1801 to 1825. Czar Alexander I expelled the Jesuit Order from all of Russia in 1820. (He had earlier expelled the Jesuits from Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1816.) For these “crimes” against the Jesuits – and because Czar Alexander I had been tolerant of all religious sects in Russia – he was hated by the Jesuits. There was another reason why the Jesuits hated Czar Alexander I. Author E.H. Broadbent tells us that in 1812 Czar Alexander I had “encouraged the establishment of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Russia, giving it special privileges…” Broadbent also tells us that Czar Alexander I had told visitors to St. Petersburg, Russia that he “had never seen a Bible until he was forty years of age, but when at that time he was directed to it he devoured it.” The Jesuits eventually succeeded in murdering this good Bible- believing Russian Czar who wanted to get God’s Holy Word (i.e., the Bible) in the Russian language into the hands of the Russian people!

Alexander II was born in 1818, and was czar of Russia from 1855 to 1881. He was assassinated in 1881 by agents of the Jesuits, who threw hand-made bombs at him as he rode through the city of St. Petersburg, Russia. His proclamation in 1861 had resulted in the emancipation of 23 million serfs. Because the Jesuits had fomented the Polish rebellion, Russian Czar Alexander II revoked Papal Rome’s Concordat with Russia. He also twice broke diplomatic relations with the Papacy (in 1866 and in 1877). For these “crimes” against the Papacy and the Jesuits – and for his other “liberal reforms” – Russian Czar Alexander II was hated by the Jesuits. They succeeded in murdering him in 1881.

Relatively few Americans are aware of the fact that Russian Czar Alexander II helped to preserve the American Union at the time of the American Civil War of 1861-65. (Emphasis mine) Because France and England were preparing to intervene militarily on the side of the South (the Confederate States of America), Czar Alexander II sent part of the Russian fleet to U.S. shores, placing those Russian naval vessels under the direct command of President Abraham Lincoln. In doing so, Czar Alexander II was sending a clear message to France and England that if they intervened militarily on the side of the Confederacy, then Russia would intervene militarily on the side of the North (the Union). Since the Papacy and the Jesuits supported the Confederacy, and since they wanted to divide the Union into two separate nations, they never forgave either President Lincoln or Czar Alexander II. Both of them were assassinated by agents of the Jesuit Order.

Abbé M. De La Roche Arnauld (a former Jesuit) stated:

“Do you wish to excite troubles, to provoke revolution, to produce the total ruin of your country? Call in the Jesuits; raise up again the monks; open academies, and build magnificent colleges for these hotheaded religionists; suffer [Ed.: i.e., allow] those audacious priests, in their dictatorial and dogmatic tone, to decide on affairs of State.”

O monstrous Jesuit Order, responsible for the assassination of so many heads of State, such as Russian Czar Alexander I in 1825, Russian Czar Alexander II in 1881, French King Henry IV in 1610, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Mexican President Benito Pablo Juarez in 1872, etc. – may many individuals continue to expose your numerous wicked deeds and crimes!

This is the continuation of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

Supplemental History Of The True, As Distinguished From The Nominal, Reformed Church.

Please read Revelation chapter 14 from your Bible.

THE SERIES of supplemental visions, written as it were on the outside of the Apocalyptic scroll, which we noticed in our Twenty-fifth Lecture as entered upon at the beginning of Rev. 12, is continued to the end of chap. 14. While the Beast, the usurper of Christ’s supremacy, had been exalting himself against God and blaspheming, — with clergy and councils aiding and abetting, with Rome for his capital, and the world wondering after him, worshiping him, and receiving his mark — there were all the while in existence, though trampled on and oppressed, another city and another people, the followers of the Lamb, with their Father’s name upon their foreheads. They had been, on the commencement of the Apostasy, depicted as the subjects of divine grace, elected out of the symbolic Israel, and sealed as the 144,000. Preserved amongst the judgments of false Christendom, and witnessing against the evils that increased around them, they yet remained indestructible, and were ultimately triumphant. These 144,000 are now again pictured to St. John, presenting a beautiful and animating contrast to the visions of the Anti-christian Beast and his people. While the latter gather around their Romish Babylon and the great Image there set up, and do worship to the work of their own hands, the true Church is represented upon Mount Zion in the presence of the Lamb himself, singing and harping before the throne of God.

We have before observed how that upon the cleansing of the figurative temple at the Reformation and the ascent of the witnesses, a voice of thanksgiving arose from the redeemed and “gave glory to the God of heaven.” It was the same occasion and the same song which is here again supplementally described. We have heard how Luther sang it: — “Thou, Jesus, art my righteousness; I am thy sin: thou hast taken on thyself what was mine; thou hast given me what was thine.” It was this doctrine of our sinfulness and Christ’s righteousness and blood atoning that was introduced, as their very essence, into the ritual and services of the Reformed Churches, and was their distinctive characteristic. Taking then this as the Reformed Church’s song, what are we to understand by there being some who could not “learn it”? Does it not seem to imply that there would still continue that nominal profession, distinct from real religion, which had before the Reformation marked the course of the Church’s progress? Let us then test this from the history of the Protestant Churches, from that period to the time of the French Revolution in the end of the eighteenth century.

We pass over Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, countries where Protestantism was never established, but was expelled as soon as discovered by the Papal weapons of the Inquisition, fire and sword, and we pause for a moment on Frame. Here the Reformation had been introduced under fair auspices, and Protestants had for more than a century been tolerated and protected. Henry of Navarre, who, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, had renounced the Reformed religion, and so procured for himself the crown, had nevertheless, by the well-known Edict of Nantes (A.D. 1598), confirmed to the Protestants, who now formed a third of the kingdom, the utmost security and freedom. But the revocation of this edict in A.D. 1685 by Louis XIV., at the instigation of the Jesuits, withdrew this protection, and exposed them to prison and to death. Forty thousand took refuge in England, while those who remained in France for the most part were obliged to conform to the Romish Church. This persecution did not, however, take place until the religious fervor of the Reformed Church had declined, and it had become in character more of a chivalrous than of a Christian body. But what of the countries where Protestantism had been cradled and established? What of Northern Germany, Denmark, Holland, England, and the Reformed cantons of Switzerland? Alas! in each of these we shall find the predictive clause but too well verified.

Take the case of Germany. Though the protest against Rome was distinct, and though much orthodox religious profession continued, yet real vital piety waxed colder and colder, and there was little of the holding forth in spirit and in act the word of life. So that, when the Thirty Years’ War had desolated Germany from 1618 to 1648, and Protestantism itself was periled, it was confessed that the judgment was righteous and well deserved. But no revival took place. Greater energies were developed, but they were the energies of a bold and intellectual spirit, judging of Scripture truth by weak philosophy, and tending to skepticism and apostasy. The neology of the latter half of the eighteenth century was its consequence. Could there be, amongst those who held these views, any understanding of the “new song” of redemption and justification through the Saviour’s blood and mediation? Certainly not. The doctrine had been cast off as the creed of a bygone age, and the Gospel itself, its inspiration denied, was considered as a book adapted only for Judaic times, and having but little to do with eternal truth or eternal philosophy.

It has been said that the want of liturgies, and creeds, and church establishments had somewhat to do with this decline of piety on the Continent. But if so, what shall be said of England and England’s Church, with her Liturgy and ritual embodying in its services and creeds all the essential doctrines of salvation, and ministered by a regulated and supported clergy? As the eye rests on the two and a half centuries alluded to in a former sketch — from the time when, under Edward VI., the Reformation was perfected, and the Liturgy, services, and articles were arranged by Cranmer and others — and contemplates the efforts made by Bishop Land to corrupt that ritual by mixing up with its pure worship mysterious Popish rites and ceremonies, then the fanaticism of Cromwell’s time, then the skepticism and levity of the laity in the reign of Charles II., and then observes the heartlessness and utter want of spirituality in the century following, specially amongst the clergy; — the inference seems plain that no human means can give real heart-piety. God’s Spirit must renew and sanctify the spirit of man, or man’s heart and man’s systems must fail. Such we infer to be the lesson taught in the vision before us, in that “no man could learn that song but the 144,000 which were redeemed from the earth.”

Very many eminent men there were who during this dark period were used by God as instruments to help forward the light of truth and keep alive the fire of true devotion. In Germany, for example, Arndt, Spener, and Franck of the Lutheran Church, besides many in the Moravian body. In England, within the Established Church, Hooker and Kenn, Usher and Hall, Leighton and Beveridge, Hopkins and Walker, Newton and Venn. Amongst the Nonconformists, Baxter and Howe, Watts and Doddridge, Whitfield and Wesley. These with many others, and “of honorable women not a few,” stand out in relief as honored by God in the promotion of his glory. America too had its burning and shining lights.

Many more doubtless there were, during these years of comparative darkness, unmarked by any save by the Eye which sees all, of whose character the Scripture gives beautiful testimony; — as to purity of heart and holiness “they are virgins,” the Lamb’s affianced Bride; as to active, practical, and self-denying conduct, “they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” These, if they did not suffer under the hostility of Popish adversaries, were yet ofttimes compelled to “go without the camp, bearing the reproach” of Christ their Lord. It was probably in contrast to the opprobrium of the world that He that “knoweth them that are his” in this place pointedly marks his approval: — “In their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault, before the throne of God.” Their record was on high. But justice has in our days been done to them. We rejoice to think that with numbers their writings are now esteemed and their memory is blessed.

As the eighteenth century advanced the voice of the 144,000 waxed fainter and feebler, and their existence might to the outward eye of man appear a doubtful matter, especially in the Continental countries and churches. In Germany neology ruled supreme; and its Spirit extended to the kindred Churches of Sweden and Denmark. In Holland a torpor that denoted the absence of all spirituality and life was the prevailing character of the Protestant religion. In Switzerland, Socinianism with its paralyzing influence had blighted the true doctrine which Calvin had once so fully confessed and taught.

Thus, though symptoms were not wanting which showed that Popery was becoming aged and reft of much of its former vigor, yet, in case of any new attack upon Gospel truth such as might arise from threatening infidelity, there appeared in the declining state of piety on all sides but little zeal or power to Oppose it either amongst the Protestant or the Romish Churches. In England almost alone it seemed the salt had not absolutely lost all savor. The light, well-nigh extinct, began to burn brighter; — elsewhere the darkness thickened.

Could it be that the blessed Reformation had ended in failure? If such a doubt had crossed the mind of St. John at this point, the next vision must have dissipated it, when the missionary angel was seen to fly in mid-heaven giving glorious token of revival and triumph to the Church, as also of warning to those who either opposed or still neglected the message.

When our blessed Lord in the synagogue of Nazareth had opened the Bible, he selected the 61st chapter of Isaiah; and when he had read the verse, “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord,” he closed the book, and giving it to the minister, he said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled;”announcing himself as the appointed prophet to deliver this message from God. To preach “the day of vengeance” was not his commission: the Gospel he declared “must first be published among all nations.” Here then, ere “the end” come, we have the angel commissioned again with the everlasting Gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and bidding every nation and kindred and tongue and people “fear God and give glory to him.” He announces also the startling fact, “the hour of his judgment is come.” He claims the reverence due to omnipotence as God’s right: — “Worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

This vision, however, as also the two following, are, in this supplementary, or without written series, given only in brief; and each is taken up afterwards in the regular, or within written course, as a separate and distinct occurrence: the former we shall have to notice in a following lecture; the two latter belong to unfulfilled prOphecy, and are consequently beyond the scope of our present design. Meanwhile there are words of comfort given to the children of God at the very first announcement of the vial judgments.

The first angel brings with him the Gospel, or glad tidings to all, before pronouncing the woe that must follow its rejection. The second angel announces the speedy fall of Babylon, that enemy and rival of the Christian Church; while a third pronounces woe upon those who still remain in her once the call is gone forth, — even the wine of the wrath of God and fiery destruction; adding, “Here is (or will be shown) the patience of the saints.” Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Before announcing the awful final judgments, another angel or voice from heaven declares, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord;”and the Spirit of God himself gives the encouragement, “They rest from their labors and their works follow them.” How terrible, and yet how precious, is the Word of God according as it is addressed to the unbelieving or to the faithful! Like the ” pillar of fire,” it is a “cloud and darkness to them, but it gives light to these.”

Continued in Revelation 15 And 16:1-12, The Seventh Trumpet, The Vials

All chapters of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae