Queen Elizabeth II who at her Coronation promised “to maintain to the utmost of her power the Laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law” visits Pope John Paul II, wearing black, which is symbolic of the Anglican Church’s submission to the Church of Rome.

Michael de Semlyen was a Christian author and historian. He went to be with the Lord on February 5th, 2019. He was a contributor to Richard Bennett’s Berean Beacon website. You can read more about his bio from the article Tribute Michael de Semlyen.

I’m very excited to find this author! Michael de Semylen puts great emphasis on the importance of knowing history. He explains why and how the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation destroyed Protestant Churches today. The name “Protestant” hardly means anything to most people anymore. Candace Owens certainly must not know the history of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s reaction to it in the Counter-Reformation. If she did, I think she wouldn’t have decided to convert to Catholicism.

Michael de Semylen is British. When he writes, “an irresponsible abandoning of our tried and tested constitution centered on the Protestant Throne” he’s referring to Great Britain.

Preface

“The Anti-Historical Church and Nation”

“We don’t usually in this century go back to the 13th century to decide how we should continue to run things.” So said Mrs. Barbara Mills, the Director of Public Prosecutions, in supporting restrictions on trial by jury in July 1993. “Magna Carta was enormously important in its day, but we aren’t still in 1215, and talk of ‘inalienable rights’ is largely irrelevant.’” As a Sunday Telegraph editorial observed, “… the problem with Mrs. Mills and her kind is not that they are historically inaccurate but that they are anti- historical.”

In a small booklet, The Monarchy in Peril, published by Spirit of ‘88 in 1994, and included in the appendix of this book, it was argued that our country’s participation in the Maastricht Treaty (the foundation treaty of the European Union) is anti-historical It is hard to represent this treaty, at odds with the hard-learned lessons of our past, as anything but an irresponsible abandoning of our tried and tested constitution centered on the Protestant Throne. Ironically, lessons from that same spurned thirteenth century and the unhappy reign of King John have caused many who look to learn from such things to draw another comparison.

Two years before Magna Carta, in 1213, King John, under considerable pressure from across the channel, had ignominiously placed the crown of England at the feet of the Pope’s legate. On the very same date, May 21, in 1993, the Maastricht bill passed through the House of Commons after its Third Reading. Her Majesty’s Accession Oath was dispensed with, as the “Crown in Parliament” was in a very real sense laid at the feet of those who rule in Brussels. Ironically, it was two other men named John—the Prime Minister, John Major, and the late Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, John Smith—who were primarily responsible for this.

With Parliament’s assent to Maastricht, Britain carelessly threw away the true crown jewels and discarded those great principles centered on the institution of Monarchy and the Protestant Throne, which have safeguarded and guided our integrity and very existence as a nation for several centuries.

The years have passed, and another government is in power, one now led by a Prime Minister who is contemptuous of our nation’s institutions, and whose “New Labour” administration is thoroughly anti-historical. Maastricht has led on to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Nice, and Nice to the proposed EU Constitution, signed by Tony Blair, but stalled by its rejection by French and Dutch voters.

Restrictions on trial by jury have been extended. “Habeas corpus”, the presumption of innocence in our justice system, would not long survive the implementation of Corpus Juris. Magna Carta, fount of our freedoms, scarcely merits mention in our professedly “free” press, nor does The Bill of Rights. The prospect of our ancient liberties being altogether subsumed into a Roman-Catholic-dominated federal Europe, anti-historical as this would be, looms large.

Foreword

The current controversy between the KJV in English and the modem bible versions is the same old conflict fought by the early church with the Gnostics and in the Middle Ages by the Waldensians with the Papists; as well as by the Protestants with the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. The battle over God’s Word, its providential preservation, and the correct identification of Antichrist is a crucial one. It is the spiritual battle fought by followers of Christ against followers of Antichrist, the true faith against the counterfeit, the Reformation versus the Counter-Reformation.

The abandoning of the Protestant identity of our nation is reflected in the loss of patriotism and by an increasing disregard for our history and heritage. There has been departure from the certainties of our only truly Protestant and Authorised Bible, now replaced by a plethora of corrupted modem versions, and further undermined by the repudiation of the doctrines of grace by a man- centered gospel. The rejection through the centuries of the old orthodoxy by influential Arminians such as Archbishop Laud, John Wesley, and Charles Finney paved the way for the successes of the Counter-Reformation and the “ecumenical” acceptance of the old spiritual enemy, the Church of Rome. Through it all we no longer know quite who we are and what we stand for. Our established Church is losing its identity, as is our nation. Together with our sovereignty and independence, we are abandoning our hard-won freedoms; and few people know or seem to care.

The King James Version of the Bible was conceived at the Reformation and given birth soon after in 1611. The Revised Version of the Bible of 1881, which has spawned the many modem versions, was the product of an era during which Darwinism, Liberalism, Higher Criticism, and the Romanising Oxford Movement were in fashion among opinion formers in the Church. That revised Bible has proven to be an historic break-through for the Counter- Reformation. Largely lost in its rendering is the prophetic and historical identification of Papal Rome as the Antichrist. The differing renditions of the Scriptures, based on manuscripts that were rejected by the Reformation, obscure and conceal the true meaning of the prophetic passages; instead exonerating Rome and substituting a Futurist identification of Antichrist. The importance of Church history therefore is difficult to overestimate. Faced with such widespread ignorance in today’s church, we set out in this book to demonstrate just how important the knowledge of history is. For if we ignore the lessons of History we are destined to repeat its mistakes.

Introduction

“New Lamps for Old”

A feature of the future-orientated times in which we live is a remarkable lack of knowledge of history, especially among younger people. In the age of the sound bite and the TV image, for most people there is little time for reading books of any kind, and even less patience for the application and study that history requires. Besides, the spirit of the age reassures us that we’ve graduated from our past. What is now, and even more what is to come is seen as innately superior to what was then; after all, we have evolved as well as progressed. In this spirit, the twentieth century’s doyen of consumerism, Henry Ford, made his best-known contribution to twentieth-century thought by announcing that, “History is more or less bunk.” Orwellian “designer babies” are now joining designer cars and clothes. New products in a new age are conditioned with a new philosophy and life-style, and we can dismiss the past.

Sadly, this subtle and alluring new thinking has greatly affected the church. Very few Christians have more than a scant knowledge of Church history or of the precious legacy of our Christian heritage handed down to us by our forefathers. The Charismatic movement is convinced, in step with the New Age movement, that the Lord is “doing a new thing.” Renewal, it is thought, has rescued us from our past, from the unpleasantness, the strife and the bloodletting. The old conflicts over doctrine and error are no longer relevant nor is the collection of them acceptable. The mere use of the word heresy, a word that is so central in all of Church History, has been deemed divisive, as well as intolerant and unloving, and has nearly been eliminated from the modem versions of the Bible. Today, the term heresy could hardly be more “politically incorrect.” (The King James Version has the word heresy (or heretic) in five different books of the New Testament; the NIV, in only one (2 Peter 2:1).)

Despite a wealth of evidence in Scripture to the contrary, many Christians, especially those in the Charismatic movement, are convinced that the Lord is “doing a new thing.” The verse of Scripture often used for justifying this view is Isaiah 43:19, which says, “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

But the teaching of the Word of God again and again points us back to our past, to our roots and heritage, as well as reminding us that “there is no new thing under the sun.” -Ecclesiastes 1:9b

“And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.” – Isaiah 58:12

Isaac knew where to find the living water.

“And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.” – Genesis 26:18

“For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name.” – Psalm 61:5

And that great Scripture from Jeremiah:

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.” – Jeremiah 6:16

New lamps are preferred to old.

Like Church, like nation, we feel that we have little or nothing to learn from so much that was unsavoury in our past, when tolerance and unity were in such short supply. There is no need to think or talk about the old battles for the faith, nor for our children to learn about them in school. We need no longer “walk in the old ways.”

This was not so in previous centuries. Followers of Christ believed that it was essential to be well informed and knowledgeable about the past in order to maximise understanding of the Scriptures. They were convinced that without history they could not understand prophecy, and without Scripture they would have only a superficial understanding of history.

It is the belief of this writer that the future-orientation and modernising motive of the church and the world today has, to a considerable extent, stemmed from the conversion of most of the church from historicism to futurism—that is, from an historical to a futurist understanding of Bible prophecy.

As this book will attempt to show, the abandoning of the interpretation of Scripture as revealed in History has taken place only during the past one and a half centuries or so. Before then Christians were much less prone to speculate about future events, which they regarded as in the province of God alone. They were more inclined then to look back into history for the fulfilment of Bible prophecy, and to look forward in expectancy to the return of the Lord.

History may be seen as “His Story”, the revealing throughout the Christian era of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, through the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and through His Word. As such, its study was held in great respect, and gave much encouragement, most especially to those who placed their faith in Him.

“We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old. ” – Psalm 44:1

29 October 2004 – Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sign the European Constitution treaty under the dominant bronze statue of Pope Innocent X. (1645-49).

US President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, and former US Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton before the Catafalque of Pope John Paul II at his funeral on April 4, 2005.

.. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication…”

Her Majesty (Queen Elizabeth II), who at her Coronation promised “to maintain to the utmost of her power the Laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law” visits Pope John Paul II, wearing black, which is symbolic of the Anglican Church’s submission to the Church of Rome.

People at an Ecumenical Charismatic session, laughing hysterically,
barking like dogs, grunting like pigs and rolling on the floor.

Charismatic priests from many different movements meet at the Vatican
October 1990. Source: Inside the Vatican, March 1996.

Next chapter: The Historical View of Prophecy and Antichrist

All chapters of The Foundations Under Attack: The Roots of Apostasy

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