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

About 15 years ago I began to read through the entire Bible each year, from Genesis (the first book in the Old Testament) through Revelation (the last book in the New Testament). I wish I had started that process at least 50 or more years ago! Why should folks read through the entire Bible each year? One reason for reading the entire Holy Bible is that it is the “operating manual” for the human soul. Pastor Ron Hembree explains in the following quotations from his book, “A Daily Joy”, why folks should read, study, and heed the Words of Holy Bible:

“God’s Word: [1.] Gives us wisdom. [2.] Teaches discipline – necessary for any success. [3.] Instructs us how to live on planet Earth. [4.] Helps us to use the resources God has given us. [5.] Teaches us discretion – the ability to say and do the right things.” (“A Daily Joy”; Page 208)

“God’s Word gives light, showing us how to walk so we will not stumble and fall. …God’s Word brings joy – not sorrow. …God’s Word helps us know the kind of worship our Lord desires.” (“A Daily Joy”; Page 166)

“Faithfully following God’s laws protects us from the evil one and assures success.” (“A Daily Joy”; Pg. 33)

“If we read and heed God’s Word, we will rule our spirits and greatly impact our world.” (“A Daily Joy”; Page 210)

“God’s Word strengthens and lifts us. [Ed.: The Apostle] Paul notes that we should always desire God’s Word. Scripture gives enormous strength and encouragement.” (“A Daily Joy”; Page 341)

“God’s Word defeats the devil’s devices. Jesus [Christ] always used the SCRIPTURE in its proper context to overcome the vicious attacks of the evil one.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 288)

Here are some other interesting quotations concerning the Holy Bible:

“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” – George Washington (1732-1799; 1^st President of the United States; commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution)

“…For so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy – that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens of their country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their parents… I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year… It is essential, my son, in order that you may go through life with comfort to yourself, and usefulness to your fellow-creatures, that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper… It is in the Bible [that] you must learn them, and from the Bible how to practice them. Those duties are to God, to your fellow-creatures, and to yourself. …The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God. It contains the history of the creation of the world, and of mankind… It contains a system of religion, and of morality, which we may examine upon its own merits, independent of the sanction it receives from being the Word of God…” – John Quincy Adams (1767-1848; Sixth President of the United States) (These excerpts were taken from a letter that John Quincy Adams wrote to his son in 1811.)

“God’s Word must have prominence in our lives. The words of Moses [Ed.: i.e., the words given to Moses from God] were put in the Ark of the Covenant to show the importance that God places on His Word.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 33)

“God’s Word is relevant to all generations for all time.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 204)

“Life’s greatest guide is God’s Word. It never leads us astray.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 188)

“There are wonderful things hidden in the Bible…” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 204)

“It is a wise society that takes God’s Word as the basis for justice; a foolish country ignores it. Modern society is now witnessing the tragic consequences when men throw out God’s Word or simply ignore it.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 63)

“…The [Ed.: Holy] Bible, although old, is so relevant. It has proved to be a book for all times because of the divine wisdom found within its pages. In our fast-changing world we now need, more than ever, the unchanging Word of God. …God’s Word was ‘alive’ in the long ago and is still ‘alive’ today. The [Ed.: Holy] Bible is not only spiritual but PRACTICAL, and only foolish people ignore it.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 213)

WHICH BIBLE SHOULD WE STUDY?

The answer to the above question is quite simple: the 1611 Authorized [i.e., the “old”] King James Version. And why should we study the 1611 King James Version of the Bible? The answer to that question is two-fold:

1. The 1611 King James Version is the only Bible in the English language (that is readily available and reasonably priced) that uses the correct Greek manuscripts [i.e., the Textus Receptus – the Received (Majority) Text] for translating the New Testament from Greek into English. The other, so-called “newer” versions use from two to five corrupt Greek manuscripts (e.g., Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, etc.) for translating the New Testament from Greek into English. (Note: The five corrupt Greek manuscripts that are used as the basis for the New Testament translations in the “newer” versions DISAGREE with each other in thousands of instances! On page 38 of his book, “Did The Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?”, author David W. Daniels tells us: “Those ‘scholarly’ Bibles [Ed.: the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus Greek manuscripts] disagree over 3000 times in the 4 Gospels alone! They are what you call ‘false witnesses’.”)

2. The 1611 King James Version uses a verbatim [i.e., word-for-word] translation technique for translating both the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament text and Greek Textus Receptus New Testament text into the English language. The so-called “newer” versions use what is called a “dynamic equivalency” translation technique for their translations of the Old and New Testaments. (The translator using this “dynamic equivalency” translation technique writes down what he “thinks” the original writers “intended”, rather than rendering a word-for-word translation!)

Please carefully consider the following quotations that deal with the topic of which Bible to use for study:

“It is my own personal conviction and belief, after studying this subject since 1971, that the WORDS of the Received Greek and Masoretic Hebrew texts that underlie the King James Bible are the very WORDS which God has PRESERVED down through the centuries, being the exact WORDS of the ORIGINALS themselves. As such, I believe they are INSPIRED WORDS. I believe they are PRESERVED WORDS. I believe they are INERRANT WORDS. I believe they are INFALLIBLE WORDS. This is why I believe so strongly that any valid translation MUST be based upon these original language texts, and these alone!” – Dr. D.A. Waite (“Defending the King James Bible”; 1992; Pages 48 and 49; all emphasis is by Dr. Waite)

“The King James Bible is the only Bible in print today translated on a Verbal Equivalency [Ed.: word-for-word] basis. Every other version in America is based on a [Ed.: translation] technique of Dynamic Equivalency.”

James Lloyd (“The King James Controversy: Which Bible Is The Word of God”; 1998; Pages 19 and 20)

“This Textus Receptus that underlies the King James Bible New Testament, was basically Beza’s 5^th edition of 1598. …It is called the Traditional Received Text, or the Byzantine Text, or the Syrian text, or the Textus Receptus. It is the best, and only foundation as far as I can see, to use to translate the New Testament from the Greek language into English or any other language.

…The vast majority of extant [Ed.: i.e., currently or actually existing] New Testament manuscripts all used the Received Text. This includes about 99% of them, or about 5210 of the 5255 manuscripts.” – Dr. D.A. Waite (“Defending the King James Bible”; 1992; Pages 40, 46, and 47)

Note: For more information on this topic: (1) Please read my article, “The Real Bible”, that is posted on Internet website www.toughissues.org. (2) Purchase a copy of the 159-page paperback book, “Did the Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?”, by David W. Daniels [$12.10 postage paid to U.S. locations; call 1-909-987-0771].

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

Supplemental History Of The Adversaries Of The Church Continued. The Papacy. The Papal Hierarchy The Papal Councils.

Please read Revelation chapters 13 and 17 from your Bible.

THE PRECEDING CHAPTER represented Satan, the animating spirit of old Paganism, as in great wrath, plotting the destruction of Christ’s Church. Though he had failed in a direct attack upon the divinity of the Lord Jesus, he had indirectly, by means of superstition, succeeded in driving the true and primitive Church into banishment. This furnished him with a new plan of attack, which we shall find developed in the figurations of this 13th chapter, and also in the further description given in chap. 17. This latter vision we have also prefixed to this lecture, though it forms rather the subject of unfulfilled prophecy.

[I] The symbol of the “Wild Beast rising out of the flood” is one of the most important predictions of the Apocalypse. We shall endeavor, in the first place, to treat of the prophetic symbol itself, and then to set forth its historical fulfillment.

The description of this Beast, with its “seven heads and ten horns,” would seem to mark a certain resemblance with that of the Dragon in the twelfth chapter. And having in our last lecture explained this Dragon to be the monster under its seventh head, we would view the present figuration as depicting the same monster in a yet further development, under a new and eighth head, or the seventh head restored from its deadly wound.“ Identifying it, as there is evident reason to do, with the scarlet-colored Beast from the abyss, mentioned afterwards in the seventeenth chapter, we treat of the two visions together; and we behold in them the same persecuting heathenlike power which we have already seen described in Rev. 11:7 as making war upon and killing the two witnesses. This Beast then, the same with the little horn of Daniel’s fourth beast, (Dan. 7:8, 20) and with St. Paul’s man of sin, (2 Thess. 2:1-12) we hold to signify that masterpiece of Satanic craft and enmity, THE ANTICHRIST that was to come: who (according to the strict meaning of the word Antichrist), while assuming the character, occupying the place, and fulfilling the functions of the Saviour as a Vice-Christ, was to do more than any other adversary toward injuring the cause, and practically denying God, as to all real spiritual effect, and as to the very essence of the Christian system. As the Dragon symbolized the Pagan imperial dominion of Rome to the time of its overthrow by Constantine, so in the present symbol of the Wild Beast we have depicted the ROMAN PAPACY; to which the Dragon gave up”his power, and his seat, and great authority.” As the seventeenth chapter describes the Beast as emanating from the abyss or “bottomless pit,” thereby showing the true infernal origin from which it took its rise; so here the monster is regarded in respect of the apparent circumstance which conduced to the establishment of its dominion, viz., “the sea,” or the Arian and Gothic flood, which history proves to have mainly contributed to the confirmation and support of the Papal supremacy.

There is a second mystical signification assigned to the “seven heads” of the Beast by the interpreting angel in Rev. 17, viz., the scum hills on which the woman carried by the Beast was seated. And since the woman is there designated as “the city which at that time ruled over the kings of the earth,” these hills could only mean the far-famed seven hills of Rome. In this we have consequently a corroboration of the sense in which we apply this symbol of the Beast to the Pontificate of Rome.

But a further point which we have to notice in the description is the mention of “the ten horns” of the Beast, representing, as we are taught in chap. 17:12, certain kings or kingdoms of the Western Roman territory, which were to be established about the same time that the Beast should enter on his dominion. Looking at the state of Roman Christendom — after that the Western Empire had been extinguished by Odoacer, and when, in the subsidence of the Gothic flood, there began the reappearance of order and settled government, ere the irruption of the Greek imperial army had again unsettled that arrangement by the setting up the Greek Exarchate of Ravenna, — we observe ten distinct kingdoms, into which the Western Roman Empire had been resolved about the period A.D. 532. These ten kingdoms were the Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, the Allemans, tho Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Suevi, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Bavarians, and the Lombards. These Gothic kingdoms were governed by their own several kings, who, in token of distinct sovereignty, had assumed the diadem, with which each of the ten horns appear crowned in the Apocalyptic vision. But while each claimed a distinct political independence, they were all avowedly subservient to one Head, which henceforth continued to arrogate universal supremacy, — the POPE OF ROME. Such is Müller’s testimony: — “With the exception of the Papacy they had no point of union.” Thus, as we see the deadly wounding of the last Pagan head of the old Roman monster begun by Constantine and perfected by Theodosius, — when the latter had in full senate proposed, “Whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans; and on a regular division Jupiter was condemned and degraded by a large majority;” — and further, when the old imperial headship of the seven-billed city was extinguished by the Gothic sword, — so do we also see the “deadly wound healed,” and the “vital principle restored,” when “in the Pontificate Rome received a second birth, and all nations venerated the Pope as they before obeyed the Emperors.”

We have now to observe how fully the character ascribed in vision to this Apocalyptic Beast has been exhibited in the pretensions and actions of the Papal Antichrist.

[1] “There was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.” This was surely fulfilled when the Pope assumed the title of Christ’s Vicar on earth. For let us see what it involved. Could he who represented the Judge of all be amenable to man’s judgment? No, he was above all law. And this privilege was claimed from an early date. At a Council convened by Theodoric at Rome, A.D. 501, to consider certain charges against Pope Symmachus, it was ruled that the Council was incompetent, the accused being above all jurisdiction. Another synod, soon after, at which Symmachus presided, solemnly adopted the assertion that ” the Pope was JUDGE IN PLACE OF GOD, and could himself be judged by no one.” The claim was maintained by the Popes of succeeding ages.

Again, could he regard the kings of the earth as his equals? Was he not head over all, — supreme? It was his to make and unmake kings. So Zachary proceeded to depose the race of Clovis of France, and Gregory VII. took the Empire from Henry and gave it to Rodulphus. The Pope’s exaltation above all royal majesty was said to be “as the sun above the moon;”and princes were expressly required to kiss his feet. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of arrogance was that of Celestine III., A.D. 1191, at the coronation of the Emperor, Henry VI. “The Lord Pope sat in the pontifical chair, holding the golden imperial crown between his feet, and the Emperor bending his head received the crown, and the Empress likewise, from the feet of the Lord Pope. But the Lord Pope instantly struck with his foot the Emperor’s crown, and cast it upon the ground.” Nor was our own country exempt from like assumption. “Is not the king of England my bond-slave?” was the demand of Innocent IV. And in this spirit one Pope pronounced the deposition of King John, and another Pope fulminated his bull against Elizabeth, declaring, “God hath set me as prince over all nations, to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to build.” The very promises of millennial glory made to Christ were cited as made to this king of kings, — ” All kings shall fall down before him, all nations do him service.”

As the impersonator of Christ, every prerogative, office, and title of the Lord was appropriated by the Pope. Julius, in his bull to the fifth Lateran Council, styles himself the good shepherd. Paschal II. is named the door of the sheep. Was Christ “the Truth”? The canon law asserts the Pontiff’s power of deciding contrary to both New and Old Testament decisions, “Holy-Scriptures deriving their authority from him.” Was Christ “the Holy One”? so was his Holiness pronounced by the Council of Rome to be “pure from all sin.” Was Christ the “Husband of the Church”? The marriage-ring of his inauguration declared him tho same, even, as Bellarmine explains, “to the exclusion of Christ.” As “the Lamb of God,” he “takes away sin” by the efficacy of his Papal indulgence; even, as was asserted by Tetzel, “surpassing Christ in the range of his mercy.” As with the power of “all judgment committed to him,” he by his anathema doomed rebels to hell. Angels were by Clement VI. “commanded” to do his bidding; and saints, canonized at his will, were made objects for living men to “venerate and adore.”

Nor did these “great things and blasphemies” stop here. The sacred name of God must be adopted by this Antichrist. Not only were men taught to style him “our Lord God the Pope,” — not only was an inscription permitted to be graven on the gate of Tolentino, “To Paul III., the best and greatest God on earth;”but Papal decrees expressly argued his right to be called God, — ” God, as being the vicar of God.“ And so the Papal casuists, —”The honor which is due to Christ, inasmuch as he is God, is due to the Pope.” Repeatedly did the Roman Pontiff suffer himself to be addressed by the name of the lord’s Christ; and men were specially required to “bow at his name, as at the name of Jesus;” while the canon law enacted, and Pope Sixtus distinctly affirmed, that “to bring an accusation against the Pope was to sin against the Holy Ghost.” Such was, and such still is, the arrogant claims of the Roman Antichrist. Behold him on the day of his consecration sitting upon the high altar of St. Peter’s to receive the adoration. of mankind, — “sitting in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” Verily, great was the mystery of godliness, — GOD HUMBLING HIMSELF TO BE MAN! Great, too, is the mystery of iniquity, — MAN, SINFUL MAN, EXALTING HIMSELF TO BE AS GOD!

[2] But will men yield submission to pretensions so arrogant and impious? ’Even so; for it was written, “These kings have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.” And again, “All the world wondered after the beast;”and “power was given him over all kindreds and nations.” Already in the eighth century this was Gregory II.’s boast to the Greek emperor, “All the kings of the West reverence the Pope as a God on earth.” Nor was this boasting vain; for when Pope Stephen entered France, Pepin and his subjects received him, we read, “as a Divinity.” Kings and even emperors bound themselves by their coronation oath to ” be submissive to the Pope and Roman Church.” They took from his hands their crowns, and at his word again resigned them. They hold his stirrup, and lead his palfrey. They prostrate themselves, and kiss the foot he offers. Who has not heard how the Emperor, Henry IV., was driven by Papal interdict to humble himself, barefoot and in sackcloth, three wintry days and nights, without the city gates, till the proud Hildebrand relented? And as with princes so with people. It was ruled by the bull of Boniface VIII., “That it was essential to the salvation of every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” And so men believed. The people, said Gerson, “think of the Pope as the one God, who has all power in heaven and earth.” Look at the thronging thousands on. pilgrimage to Rome seeking his salvation. See the hard earnings of the poor given in the purchase of his indulgences. Behold the Sicilian ambassadors prostrate at his feet, crying to him, “Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world!”

[3] But what of those excepted from this prostration, — “the remnant of the woman’s seed,” God’s “tabernacle,” “whose names are written in the true Lamb’s book of life”? It was given to the Beast to make war with the saints and to overcome them. How perseveringly, how relentlessly and cruelly, this part of his character he has sustained, the history of the Inquisition, — of the crusades against Christ’s witnesses, — of the murder of French Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day, — of the many martyrdoms too faithfully recorded, may tell in part, for these were done in public; but who can tell the many many heart-rending scenes of sorrow, suffering, and shame which have embittered private life, shut out from human eye and sympathy, but recorded by Him who is and ever has been the grand object of the hatred and wrath of ANTICHRIST? ” Shall he not visit for these things?” “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” “If any man have an ear, let him hear.” For this is the word of the Lord concerning the Beast and his accomplices: “He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” “He goeth into perdition,” — “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”

[II] A second wild beast appears, — a lamb-like beast; subordinate to the former, but exercising his authority, and by force and by fraud causing men to worship the first beast. The symbol was applied by our Lord himself to false teachers. “Beware of them who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” And it is expressly so termed in this revelation, when the lamb-like beast is also called ” the false prophet.” The figuration denotes the PAPAL CLERGY, a body deserving a distinct place in prophecy, as having claimed for themselves a distinction of class from the laity, united under the Pope in a corporate character, and using all their influence toward the support of the Papal Antichrist.

Let us view the ecclesiastical relations of the Pope and the priesthood as these originated. Till the close of the second century the Churches were independent of each other, and under the government of their proper bishops, being of equal rank and authority. But about that time the bishops of each province began to assemble together in councils to discuss matters of doctrine and for the well-ordering of their respective Churches. A president, for the sake of order, was chosen, who was generally the bishop of the metropolis or chief city. This distinction, at first but temporary, became a settled rule in the Church; and a canon was enacted that “nothing should be done without the cognizance of the metropolitan bishop.” Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria were capital cities; and so to their bishops, and specially to that of Rome, superior rank and privileges were attached.

On the union of Church and State taking place in the Roman Empire, their privileges were enlarged and confirmed. These bishops were called patriarchs. The Roman emperors ere long ordained that the clergy should submit to their immediate superiors; but in case of disputes, the Bishop of Rome should decide between the parties (A.D. 398). These encroachments the clergy resisted again and again, but imperial decrees silenced their resistance. At length they became regularly subjected to their own bishops; the bishops to the metropolitan bishop; and the metropolitan to the Pope, or Peter himself — the head, as they assert, of the Romish Church.

About the close of the sixth century the rule was further enforced that no metropolitan bishop might exercise his functions without the Pope’s license; and at the beginning of the eighth, the German and Frank clergy were induced to make a vow of implicit obedience to the Sec of Rome. The custom of making this vow soon became general amongst the Western clergy, insomuch that, up to the Reformation, the common style of a bishop was bishop by the grace (not of God, but) of the Apostolic See. The subordinate priesthood thenceforth acted as his agents for evil, — whether in spreading false doctrines, “having horns, harmless apparently, like a lamb;”or in persecuting the Church, “speaking like a dragon.” All the Papal injuries done to the children of God were inflicted by their influence or agency. By them were conducted the lying miracles of Popery, such as transubstantiation, and the many marvelous cures professed to be wrought by relics, etc. By them were evoked the judgments of Heaven against such as were bold enough to gainsay or oppose them. In all “the deceivableness of unrighteousness” they were helpers — “deceiving and being deceived.”

The language of the prophecy — their “making fire to descend from heaven,” is adapted from Judaic precedents; and as the circumstance of old indicated either the divine favor or wrath, according as it fell upon the sacrifice or upon the persons of men, so does it imply the assertion by the Romish priesthood of a power both of conciliating the Majesty of heaven by a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, and of hurling into eternal punishment by their excommunications. Never was there seen a more extraordinary instance of the latter than when the Papal interdict fell upon a whole kingdom; and when the entire body of clergy united to give effect to the sentence by causing the churches to be closed, the services to be stopped, the sacraments unadministered, and the dead unburied!

The second Beast, it is written, “caused that the inhabitants of the earth should worship the first Beast.” “The monks,” writes Mosheim, “who, from their supposed sanctity, had the greatest influence with the multitude, held up the Pope to their veneration even as a God.” “The Jesuits,” says he again, “have turned the Roman Pontiff into a terrestrial deity, and put him almost on an equal footing with the Saviour.” All ecclesiastical history testifies to the same.

[III] A third prophetic symbol introduced is that of “the image of the Beast;” which, taking the word image in the signification of a representation of any person or thing, we may properly apply to the PAPAL GENERAL COUNCILS — the professed representatives of Roman Christendom. These, in a figurative sense, fulfilled the several things stated in the vision. Originating with the Pope as the head of the clergy, they were summoned by the instrumentality and at the call of the priesthood (the Lamb-like Beast); who thus gave effect to the Papal orders, making the Council to or for him. It was from the priesthood also that the Council derived its voice — the Laity, though present, not being allowed to vote. And what the Councils decided in their canons they were said to speak; and for their decisions they required the strictest obedience and reiteration. from the Christian world. Though decreeing oftentimes contrary to the Word and will of God, they anathematized all who refused implicit submission. The extirpation of heretics was a professed object for which they were usually assembled, and the sentence of death. was often directly pronounced and enforced by them. Thus the third Lateran Council proceeded against the Publicani; and the fourth and fifth stirred up crusades against similar alleged heretics. Thus also the Councils of Constance and of Basle pronounced sentence on the martyrs Huss and Jerome; and even in that of Trent in the sixteenth century, the same power was asserted, and all heresy similarly denounced. Distinctly also was it enacted by these Councils — especially by the Lateran — that no man should harbor or traffic with such as were judged guilty of heresy. The Synod of Tours in the like prohibition applies the very words buying and selling; the Papal mark of subjection being required in order to the interchange of the commonest acts of social kindness. How rigidly the Romish clergy have urged the execution of this system of exclusive dealing whenever they have deemed it requisite or found the opportunity is notorious. Ireland, even in our own day, presents many a sad illustration.

Two points only remain to be noticed — the “number” of the Beast, and the commencement of the 1260 years of his foretold duration. Of the many solutions proposed for “the number 666,” that which (following Irenaeus) applies it to the word Lateinos (the Latin man), expressed in Greek numerals, appears the true one. And when we remember how the Romanists “Latinize everything, mass, prayers, hymns, litanies, canons, bulls, yea, even the Scriptures,” we shall see a. peculiar appropriateness in the use of the word to characterize the Beast — the Papal Man of Sin.

With respect to the other point, we adopt the principle of taking “days” in prophetic language to denote years: and we would mark as the primary commencement of the Papal Beast’s years of supremacy the date A.D. 529 and three following years, wherein we have combined the historic facts, — 1st, of Christendom emerging from the Gothic flood in the form often kingdoms; secondly, of the Roman Pontiff’s assumption of the blasphemous title of Christ’s Vicar, or Antichrist; thirdly, of the imperial confirmation to the fullest extent of the Pope’s supremacy. A secondary commencement may be found, A.D. 604-608, in the decree of the Emperor Phocas acknowledging the Papal primacy; in the gift by him of the Pantheon for the worship of the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs; in the completion of the tenth or Lombard kingdom. We need .scarcely say that the consideration of a primary and a secondary commencement will involve that of similar double termination to this predicted period of 1260 years.

Continued in Revelation 14:1-20. The Song Of The 144,000

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

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that one of the greatest haters of civil and religious liberty is the Roman Catholic Church. This ignorance of Roman Catholic hatred of liberty is largely the result of a century-long assault on American history textbooks and encyclopedias, whose pages have been stripped of almost all things “negative to Papal Rome”! Priests and/or their representatives got themselves on textbook selection committees, and told the companies producing history textbooks to remove negative things about the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican, or no sale! (Companies selling encyclopedias in the USA were no doubt told the same thing.) The result was that history textbooks in public schools and colleges were, for the most part, purged of nearly all things negative about Papal Rome’s bloody history and her great hatred of liberty. (Students in Roman Catholic parochial schools in the USA, of course, found little – if anything – in their history textbooks about Papal Rome’s hatred of liberty!) Immediately below are statements made by two popes, an American Roman Catholic archbishop, and two official Roman Catholic publications that reveal Papal Rome’s great hatred of civil and religious liberty:

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

Supplemental History Of The Adversaries Of The Church. Satanic Agency of Pagan Rome.

IN REV. 11:7, we have seen mention made by the Covenant Angel of “the Beast that ascendeth out of the abyss.” But it was requisite, in order to St. John’s understanding who this enemy was, that a supplemental and more explanatory prophecy should be given. As soon, then, almost as the history of the witnesses is finished, this supplemental prophetic sketch is supplied, and, with a view to greater distinctness, it is introduced by a preliminary notice of the chief previous enemy which the Church would have for its persecutor, namely, the “seven-headed Dragon,” or the devil inspiring and acting in the Pagan Roman Empire. As the seven-sealed book, originally seen in the hands of Him who sat upon the throne, and which contained the whole fateful prophecy respecting the destined fortunes of the Church and the world, was described ’as a scroll written within and on the outside, so we may justly suppose this supplemental prophecy to have occupied the outside of the scroll. It will be presently seen that it involves the same famous prophetic period of the 1260 days or years, which the continuous prophecy of the seals and trumpets had done before.

The new development opened beautifully with the vision of a woman clothed with the sun in the Apocalyptic heaven or sky, the moon sandalling her feet, and a coronet of twelve stars on her head. She represented evidently the faithful Church, being defined as the mother of “those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” But wherefore so exalted in the figurative vision, and when does history record such exaltation? The state of things depicted answers to the time when Constantine had become the supporter of Christianity and of the Christian Church. Then for the first time she appeared before men with the lustre of the imperial power, like as of the sun in the heaven; having the moon, or other chief rulers in the empire, subordinate to her; while the stars that crowned her head may be explained to be the ministers or bishops of the Churches, now recognized as dignitaries before the world: the number twelve corresponding with that of the twelve tribes of the symbolic Israel.

As to the man-child which the woman was about to bring fort-h, its meaning is well explained as defining the line of Christian emperors, by the language of ecclesiastical writers of the time to which we refer the vision. They styled the emperor, when baptized, a “son of the Church.” And it was just at the crisis when Constantine was about to be baptized, and so before the world to become professedly the son of the Church, that Roman paganism, through the instrumentality, first, of the Emperor Maximin, then of Licinius, made its last attack on the Christian cause.

And this too is strikingly prefigured by the other great symbol in the vision, viz., the seven-headed ten-horned Dragon, which was represented as seeking to devour the woman’s man-child as soon as born. For we must needs assign to the seven heads and ten horns, when upon the Dragon, the same explanation as that which was given of them afterwards by the angel in chap. xvii, when they appeared (with a certain small and defined difference) on the Beast, the Dragon’s successor. This explanation was to the effect that the seven heads had the double mystical meaning both of Rome’s seven hills, and of the seven ruling heads that in succession administered the supreme power of the Roman state. These were kings, consuls, dictators, decenvirs, military tribunes, and emperors; the emperors, beginning with Augustus, being thus the sixth head, agreeably with the angel’s statement (Rev. 17:10) that “five are fallen and one is.” It was added by him that a seventh should succeed, whose power should continue but a short time; and as the beast which succeeded the Dragon was declared to be the monster under its eighth head, the Dragon, as depicted in the vision before us, must be the monster under the short-lived seventh head. It is seen, on referring to history, that shortly before the last persecution of Christianity by Pagan Rome a change was made in the form of government; instead of one sole emperor as heretofore, four being constituted joint rulers, each with his own division of the empire, but with Rome as the common capital. It appears, moreover, that the diadem of pearls was then adopted as the chief imperial badge, instead of the laurel crown. And very remarkable it is, and very confirmatory of the view here given, that in the Apocalyptic vision the Dragon was pictured with diadems on his heads, not crowns. There is yet a third very curious coincidence between the representation of the Dragon and the facts of history to which we refer it, viz., that first Maximin, and then after him Licinius, were rulers over the Eastern third of the Roman Empire; and there persecuted the Christian ministers and bishops, while they made war against the advancing Christian army from the West: just as the Dragon, in double position of attack, is said to have drawn with his tail the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth, when standing in hostile attitude before the woman with intent to devour the man-child that she was about to bring forth.

The result, as prefigured, was that the man-child was born, and caught up to what is called “God’s throne,” with the destiny assigned to him of after a while “ruling the Gentiles with a rod of iron.” The result, as realized in history, was, that Constantine, after conquering Licinius, and so becoming ruler over the whole Roman” Empire, was baptized, and thus recognized before the world as a son of the Christian Church; that in this character he and other orthodox Christian emperors after him, especially Theodosius, professed, like David and Solomon, to be seated as his earthly vicegerents on the Lord’s throne; and that at length, with the severest laws, they oppressed, and ere the end of the fourth century all but extinguished, the Pagans and Pagan worship throughout the Roman world.

Before the Dragon’s prefigured downfall, however, there was to be “war in heaven.” And accordingly under Julian, called “the apostate,” from having renounced Christianity for Paganism, there was renewed the struggle against the true Christian cause and Church. But it was not of long continuance, Julian’s reign having lasted scarcely a year and a half. Moreover, after his fall the Dragon is said to have “persecuted the woman that brought forth the man-child;”a statement fulfilled in the fact of the Arian persecutions of the orthodox Christian Church and its chief champions, such as Athanasius;“ for the spirit of Paganism was declared by both Christians and Pagans to have revived in Arianism. And now, both on this account, and on account of the superstitions which began also at this time very manifestly to corrupt the doctrine and practice of professing Christians, there was fulfilled the symbol of the woman, or faithful orthodox Church, seeming to”fly” more and more from the visible scene “into the wilderness.” Against Arianism, Theodosius, with the help of a great general Council gathered from the two great divisions of the empire (like the “two wings of the great eagle” in the vision), effectually helped the Church. But superstitions continued to strengthen and multiply.

While the woman was thus retiring towards the wilderness, the “flood” was sent forth by the Dragon. This symbol was fulfilled in the fact of Emperor Valens and others of the Pagan or Arian remnant inviting Gothic hosts into the Roman Empire, thus endangering the faith newly established. But the “earth helped the woman, and swallowed up the flood.” These nations one after another became nominally Christian. In fact, the mass of the inhabitants of the Roman world, more numerous by far than their invaders, remained firm in their adherence to the orthodox faith; and at length, as the fifth and sixth centuries passed, the flood of Pagan and Arian renown was swallowed up.

But “the woman” — the faithful, united, and spiritual Church — though preserved alive, was to pass away for a long season from observation. She was to remain “in the wilderness for’ 1260 prophetic days,” i.e., for so many years was she to be insulated from the world, obscure and desolate (the expression in the fourteenth verse, “for a time and times and half a time,” being, as in Daniel, used to denote the same period). Of such being the state of the true Church of Christ during the many dark centuries that followed, we have already shown that history furnishes abundant evidence. The outward progress of ecclesiastical rule and ordinances was by no means a criterion of its real condition. The distinction between the sealed and the unsealed henceforward became more important, as we have traced in our Eighth and Ninth Lectures. Milner states that the impression left on his mind from the account which Eusebius gives is, that the general appearance of the Church did not present much of a spirit of godliness. “If we look,” he says, “at the external appearance of Christianity, nothing can be more splendid. Pompous apparatus, augmented superstitions, unmeaning forms of piety, much show, but little substance… External piety flourished; but faith, love, heavenly-mindedness appear very rare. The doctrine of real conversion was very much lost, or external baptism placed in its stead; and the true doctrine of justification by faith, and the true practical use of a crucified Saviour for troubled consciences, were scarce to be seen at this time… While superstition and self-righteousness were making vigorous shoots, the real Gospel of Christ was hidden from the men that professed it.”6 Again, speaking of the Council of Antioch in Valens’ reign, at which 146 bishops were present, “These pathetically bewailed the times, and observed that the infidels laughed at the evil; while true Christians, avoiding the churches as being new nurseries of impiety, went into deserts and lifted up their hands to God with sighs and tears.”

When, then, the opening inquiry of these lectures is asked, Where was our religion before the Reformation? we have here the answer. The very question implies what prophecy had declared — its temporary invisibility. It was in the wilderness; hidden, but not lost; cast down, but not destroyed; exhibited amongst the few; known to God, though mostly unknown to men; like the seven thousand whom Elijah knew not of, who had not bowed the knee to Baal: some in secret, insulated from those around, even as in “a barren and dry land where no water is,” pouring forth their fervent prayers, sighing and crying to God; some, fewer still, prepared to act a bolder part, and stand forth as Christ’s confessors and martyrs before professing but false Christendom. The Romish Church maintains its own ubiquity and visibility at all times; consequently, never having experienced this predicted wilderness life, it could not for this very reason be the true Church of Christ. While history, moreover, tells of the songs “in heaven” — the triumphant rejoicings and congratulations with which the high places of the Roman world exulted in the overthrow of Paganism and the establishment of Christianity under Constantine, and to which exultation the previously suffering Christians were publicly exhorted by the imperial decrees of that day — we are enabled likewise to understand the force of the added warning, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” While the mere outward and earthly-minded observers were indulging in anticipations of external power and glory for the Christianized Roman world, the heavenly-minded and spiritually-taught might foresee predicted times of coming judgments — Arian heresies and Gothic scourges, wherewith the devil would seek to revenge himself on those who had not only terminated his long-maintained Pagan ascendancy, but had even numbered the days of Pagan toleration.

Continued in Revelation 13 And 17. The Beast From The Sea, Etc. The Lamb-like Beast. The Image Of The Beast.

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

QUESTION: Who are the “International Banksters” – and who are the greatest accumulators of wealth in the world?

ANSWER: “International Banksters” is an expression that I use to describe the Jesuit-controlled financial cabal that controls the leaders and governments of many of the nations on planet Earth – especially here in the West. Some people allege that “the Jews” run international banking; however, my research has shown me that Jesuit-controlled Papal Rome (i.e., the Jesuit-controlled Roman Catholic Church-State) is by far the number one financial entity in the world! Jesuit-controlled Papal Rome rules the financial world through the Vatican’s banking and financial interests (e.g., in Rome, throughout Europe, and in the USA), through the wealthy Jesuit-controlled Knights of Malta Order, and through many other Jesuit-controlled financial subgroups.

As Dr. Stanley Monteith, on page 58 of his book “Brotherhood of Darkness” (Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), tells us: “Some sincere people believe that the Jews, or the Jewish bankers, are behind the world conspiracy. There are many clues that lead people to that conclusion, but I can assure you that the evidence has been planted to divert attention away from the truth.”

Indeed, some folks like to point to the Rothschild banking dynasty as proof that “the Jews” run international banking; however, one of the titles of the Rothschilds, according to author F. Tupper Saussy, is “Guardians of the Vatican Treasury”. Some folks would argue that the Rothschilds should be labeled as “Court Jews” of Jesuit-controlled Papal Rome, i.e., “Papal Court Jews”.

F. Tupper Saussy, on page 160 of his book “Rulers of Evil: Useful Knowledge about Governing Bodies” (First HarperCollins Edition, 2001), tells us: “Aware that the Rothschilds are an important Jewish family, I looked them up in [Ed.: the] Encyclopedia Judaica and discovered that they bear the title ‘Guardians of the Vatican Treasury’… The appointment of Rothschild gave the Black Papacy [Ed.: i.e., the hierarchical leadership of the Jesuit Order] absolute financial privacy and secrecy. Who would ever search a family of orthodox Jews for the key to the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church?”

Gary Allen, on page 40 of his book “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” (1971; Third printing of Concord Press, Rossmoor, CA – April, 1972 edition), tells us: “Actually, nobody has a right to be more angry at the Rothschild clique than their fellow Jews. The Warburgs, part of the Rothschild empire, helped finance Adolph Hitler. There were few if any Rothschilds or Warburgs in the Nazi prison camps! They sat out the war in luxurious hotels in Paris or emigrated to the United States or England. As a group, Jews have suffered most at the hands of these power seekers. A Rothschild has much more in common with a Rockefeller than he does with a [Ed.: Jewish] tailor from Budapest or the Bronx.”

Some folks believe that the Knights Templar Order was the first international banking cartel. When the Knights Templar Order was suppressed in the early 14th century by King Philip IV of France, the Hospitallers – later known as the Knights of Malta (a Roman Catholic religious-military order controlled today by the Jesuit Order) – “absorbed” a sizable portion of the great wealth (especially the lands and estates) of the Knights Templar. (The Knights Templar order was officially dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312 at the Council of Venice – and Templar property was confiscated.) Many of the world’s richest bankers have in the past been – and most likely will continue in the future to be – Jesuit– controlled Knights of Malta.

The Jesuit-controlled international banksters have fomented and orchestrated – and helped to finance – many of the revolutions and wars of the last three to four centuries (including two world wars) – and have profited nicely from the maiming and murder of millions of people!

Please carefully consider the following quotations:

“Like Rome itself, Vatican wealth was not built in a day…

The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic faith’s claim to uniqueness is valid. It is the only religious organization in the world which has as its headquarters an independent state, Vatican City, which is a law unto itself…

The modern wealth of the Vatican is based on the generosity of [Ed.: Italian Roman Catholic Fascist dictator] Benito Mussolini [Ed.: whom powerful Roman Catholics, such as Jesuit Don Luigi Sturzo, had put into power in Italy]. The Lateran Treaty, which his government concluded with the Vatican in 1929, gave the Roman Catholic Church a variety of guarantees and measures of protection.

The Holy See [Ed.: i.e., the center of authority of the Bishop of Rome – i.e., the pope’s “seat”] obtained recognition of itself as a Sovereign State. It was exempted from paying taxes both for its properties and its citizens, exempted from paying duty on foreign goods; it had diplomatic immunity and accompanying privileges for its own diplomats and those accredited to it by foreign powers. Mussolini guaranteed the introduction of [Ed.: Roman] Catholic religious teaching in all State High Schools and the entire institution of marriage was placed under Canon Law, which ruled out divorce. The benefits for the Vatican were many, not least the fiscal ones.

[Ed.: Under Article One of the Lateran Treaty of 1929 Italy paid] the Holy See…the sum of 750 million lire…[Ed.: and handed over] Consolidated 5 per cent State Bonds to the bearer for the nominal value of one billion lire.

At the 1929 rate of exchange this package represented 81 million dollars. A 1984 equivalent figure is approximately 500 million dollars. ‘Vatican incorporated’ was in business. It never looked back.” – David A. Yallop (“In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I”; Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York; 1st edition 2007; Pages 82, 83)

“The CIA profited as well, discovering through Mooney’s [Ed.: i.e., Chicago Mob boss Sam “Mooney” Giancana’s] bribe-friendly contacts new avenues for diverting their own ‘dirty money’, funds garnered from illicit CIA activities.

To courier the millions of dollars that would soon pour across U.S.-Mexican borders, Mooney [Ed.: i.e., Chicago Mob boss Sam “Mooney” Giancana, who at one time had had a private audience in Rome with Pope Paul VI] called upon the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1958, Cardinal Stritch left Chicago to accept a position in the Vatican. Stritch’s successor in Chicago, Cardinal Cody, proved in Mooney’s [Ed.: i.e., Chicago Mob boss Sam “Mooney” Giancana’s] estimation to be a stellar replacement. Mooney said [Ed.: Cardinal] Cody was a corrupt man who enjoyed the trappings of wealth and, therefore, welcomed a close relationship with him.

Father Cash, the Chicago [Ed.: Roman Catholic] priest Mooney utilized as a courier, had traveled under Mooney’s orders across the nation and to Europe for close to two decades. With Mooney’s move into the southern hemisphere, [Ed.: “Father”] Cash was told to add Latin America to his itinerary.

During Mooney’s [Ed.: i.e., Chicago Mob boss Sam “Mooney” Giancana’s] tenure outside the United States, Chuck [Ed.: Giancana] heard talk among Outfit [Ed.: i.e., Chicago’s organized crime syndicate] men that millions of dollars flowed to Continental Illinois, a bank then heavily invested in Finibank, a Swiss bank owned in part by the Vatican and controlled by financier Michele Sindona [Ed.: who was a Sicilian Mob financial wizard and a Vatican consultant], Mooney’s Gambino [Ed.: i.e., New York Mob boss Carlo Gambino] connection. Some was couriered by Mooney’s trusted lieutenants to Washington, D.C., where it was converted to bonds and then forwarded to Finibank or another Sindona- controlled European shell, generally in Rome, London, or Athens. But still more was carried out of Chicago to Mexico, under the safety of the priest’s robe, to be placed in banks scattered throughout South and Central America, but most often in Panama. Often these funds were then diverted to Milan [Ed.: Italy] and on to the Vatican Bank in Rome, where they were easily transferred to Finibank in Switzerland – and straight into the hands of Michele Sindona and an up-and-coming Chicago [Ed.: Roman Catholic] priest residing in the Vatican, Paul Marcinkus. The CIA, eager to improve its own financial position, was said to have followed suit, dealing frequently and closely with [Ed.: Paul] Marcinkus [Ed.: who became the head of the Vatican Bank] and [Ed.: Vatican consultant Michele] Sindona.” – Sam and Chuck Giancana (“Double Cross”; Warner Books, 1992; Pages 470 and 471)

“In October 2000 police in Palermo, Sicily, arrested twenty-one members if a criminal group, including some with direct links to the Mafia. The gang had succeeded in cloning a replica of the computer system used at a branch of Banco de Sicilia. Preparations to divert $500 million were well advanced and included telephonic negotiations with members of staff at the Vatican Bank where the money would have been transferred onward to banks in Portugal and Belgium.

Doubtless the Mafia in Sicily knew that the Vatican Bank regularly features in official global top ten money laundries. [Ed.: “Money laundries” are places, e.g., banks, where money is exchanged or invested in such a manner as to conceal how the money had been improperly or illegally obtained.] A 2001 report placed the Vatican at number eight, and estimated the annual amount laundered through the Vatican Bank at $50 billion. This almost certainly explains the absence of the Holy See among the list of members of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering and its absence among the list of international bodies and organizations that have observer status with the Task Force.” – David Yallop (“The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican”; Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York; 1st edition, 2007; Page 440)

As to the “greatest accumulators of wealth in the world”, please consider the following quotations:

“Most [Ed.: i.e., a quite sizable chunk] of [Ed.: Papal] Rome’s wealth has been acquired through the sale of salvation. Untold billions of dollars have been paid to her by those who thought they were purchasing heaven on the installment plan for themselves or loved ones. The practice continues to this day… [Ed.: “Purgatory” is a fabricated, fictional place, and it is an immense money-making Roman Catholic doctrine that is found nowhere in either the Old Testament or the New Testament!]

…There are the further [Ed.: Roman Catholic Church] abominations of corrupt banking practices, laundering of drug money, trading in counterfeit securities, and dealings with the Mafia (fully documented in police and court records), which the Vatican and her representatives around the world have long employed. Nino Lo Bello, former ‘Business Week’ correspondent in Rome and Rome bureau chief for ‘New York Journal of Commerce’, writes that the Vatican is so closely allied with the Mafia in Italy that ‘many people…believe that Sicily…is nothing more than a Vatican holding’.

The Roman Catholic Church is by far the WEALTHIEST institution on earth.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon; 1994; Pages 75, 76) (To order a copy of this 544-page paperback book via credit card, please call The Berean Beacon at 1-800-937-6638.)

The following seven quotations have all been taken from Avro Manhattan’s book “The Vatican Billions” (Chick Publications; 1983). (Please remember that the figures given below are over two decades old!)

“The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, [Ed.: and] with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions in shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines [Ed.: i.e., IBM], T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the USA alone.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million dollars ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one Million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the USA, some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely ‘that his church probably ranks second only to the United States government in total annual purchase.’ Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. ‘The Catholic Church’, he said, ‘must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T. &T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States government.’” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. …The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican’s financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“The Vatican’s treasure of SOLID GOLD has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. …But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications; 1983)

“The Jesuits are one of the largest stockholders in the American steel company, Republic and National. They are also among the most important owners of the four greatest aircraft manufacturing companies in the U.S.: Boeing, Lockheed, Douglas, and Curtis-Wright.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”; Chick Publications, 1983; Page 184)

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE “INTERNATIONAL BANKSTERS” – AND/OR ABOUT THE GREAT WEALTH OF PAPAL ROME:

1. Read the 186-page paperback book, “The Vatican Empire” (Simon and Schuster, New York; 1968), by Nino Lo Bello. To obtain a copy of this book, please check with your local bookstore or local library, or do an Internet search for it.

2. Read the book, “The Vatican Billions” (Chick Publications, 1983), by Avro Manhattan. To obtain a copy of this book, please check with your local bookstore or local library, or do an Internet search for it.

3. Read these two books by David Yallop: (a.) the 343-page paperback book, “In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I” (Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York; 1st edition, 2007); and, (b.) the 530-page paperback book, “The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican” (Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York; 1st edition, 2007). To obtain copies of these two books, please check with your local bookstore or local library, or do an Internet search for them.

***PERMISSION IS GIVEN TO COPY***

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

Note: This lecture is not taken from the Horae Apocalypticae, but is deemed advisable as a continuation of Church history.

HAVING, in the preceding lectures, confined our view of the Witnesses to the twofold Eastern and Western lines, illustrated in the history of the Paulikian, Waldensian, and other confessors of Christ, it may be interesting to us as English readers to digress from the direct course of Apocalyptic inquiry, and examine what may have passed during the long period reviewed by us in the religious history of our own country.

In our primary lecture we alluded to the fact that Popery was not the first form of Christianity introduced into England, but that previously there existed an Apostolic Church in these islands; and that consequently the Reformation was but the rooting out of those noxious weeds which had overrun and all but choked the plant of true Christianity.

We have already supposed that St. John, from his lonely isle, taking a survey of the religious state of the surrounding world, might have seen a tinge of light on his distant horizon, which had told him that Britain had received the Gospel, and might already be numbered amongst the rising Churches.

The first introduction of Christianity in all probability was effected early in the apostolic times, and, as such, partook of primitive purity and simplicity. Some time previous to the birth of Christ, Julius Caesar had by conquest opened an intercourse with Britain and numbered it amongst the provinces of the Roman Empire. A door was thus providentially opened, which doubtless the missionary zeal of early Christians was not slow to take advantage of. Whether Thomas or Paul first preached the Gospel here is a point undecided; but tradition more usually attributes it to the former. Eusebius merely states that “some of the apostles crossed the ocean to the British Isles.” Certain it is that there are sufficient notices on record that Christianity had made considerable progress as early as the middle of the second century.

A.D. 167. — The venerable Bede, whose Church History is well known in our own days, records that a British king called Lucius was in this year converted, and exerted himself for the dissemination of the Scriptures, which, we are also told by Prideaux, were in use in A.D. 168.

A.D. 234. — Origen writes: “The power of God our Saviour is even with them in Britain, shut out from our world.” A similar observation was made by Tertullian of places of the British Isles inaccessible to the Romans, but which had become subject to the dominion of Christ; and by Chrysostom, “that even the British Isles have felt the power of the Word, for there too Churches have been raised up.”

Of the consideration to which the British Church had attained at an early part of the fourth century, an evidence appears in that its bishops appeared as deputies at several of the councils. Thus at Nice, A.D. 325, in the reign of Constantine, we find a British bishop; also at Sardica in the year 347, and at Ariminium in 359. But perhaps a still surer test of its progress is in the circumstance of its having been called to endure persecution. Thus, at the beginning of the fourth century, in the reign of Diocletian, thousands of the British perished; — amongst others St. Alban. And what persecution had begun the Saxon invasion well-nigh finished. Dean Waddington says of the year 542, “The Saxons almost swept Christianity from Britain.”

A.D. 432. — But the truth, while it declined in England, flourished in the sister island. Succathus, better known as St. Patrick, was educated and consecrated bishop (it is believed) in France. He appears about this time, as an Irish bishop, to have founded the See of Armagh, which has ever since continued as the Primacy. His missionary labors, with the assistance of many who united with him in the work, were crowned with success; the Church was enlarged, and numerous bishoprics and churches were founded. Though in later days erroneously supposed to have been a maintainer of the superstitions of the Romish Church, his “Confessions” show that he held the pure faith of the Gospel, and he specially enforced the importance of making the Holy Scriptures the foundation of Christian doctrine. He died in A.D. 492.

Many other preachers and missionaries are reborded as laboring during this century; in the latter part of which, a Briton, named Pelagius, is said to have introduced opinions which still bear his name, and which deny the inheritance of ’ a sinful nature from Adam. From this heresy, which for a long time troubled the British Church, one good at least arose; inasmuch as it led to the establishment of schools for instructing the people in the nature of the true religion.

One eminent man, Columber, was long remembered in these isles. After having founded many churches in Ireland, he preached as a missionary in Scotland, up to that period in Pagan darkness. There he founded a college in Iona, or Icolmkill, near the Isle of Mull, which was resorted to for education until the eighth century, and then destroyed by the Danes. The ruins still remain, and were surrounded with a wall by the Duke of Argyll about fifty years since. Columba made copies of the Scriptures, and circulated them; insisting in his preaching ” that they must be held as the rule of faith.” He died in A.D. 551.

During this sixth century there were good men and bishops also in Wales, amongst whom St. David of Caerleon and Julius were preeminent. Pelagianism, Arianism, and superstition had not left these British Churches altogether untouched; but we have no proof as to what extent they were infected.

In A.D. 635 we read that Oswald, king of Northumbria, sent to Scotland for teachers to instruct his people in religion. Accordingly Aidan, a Scotch bishop, who had been educated in Ireland, fixed his residence at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, accompanied by two of his countrymen. It was by their means that the North of England was evangelized. That which now constitutes the diocese of London was Christianized by the exertions of a British bishop called Chad. In fact, every county from Edinburgh to London, Norfolk and Suffolk excepted, owes the first light of the Gospel to the ancient British Church, independently of all connection with Rome.

It was about the year 570, while a pure doctrine was being extensively preached in Ireland, as also in Wales by Kentigern and Asaph, that Bertha, a Christian princess of France, was married to Ethelbert, king of Kent. Under her influence, when Augustine, a Romish missionary from Pope Gregory, arrived in this country, the king received him favorably. This was the first introduction of Popery into England. Augustine came in the full pomp of Papal authority: a crucifix was carried before him, and twenty monks waited on him with devotion. The king of Kent was baptized, and 10,000 of the people were in one day admitted by the same sacrament into the nominal Church of Christ. After establishing the Romish religion at the Kentish court, Augustine went through the country, endeavoring, with zeal worthy of a better cause, to convert the inhabitants, and to bring their clergy and bishops into union with Rome. Towards Wales the Popish missionary bent his course, and on his way stopped for some time at Worcester, where he called a synod. It is said that several English bishops were present, and they silently waited for Augustine to begin. After some deliberation he demanded with a haughty air, “Whether they were prepared to concede three points to Rome? First, that Easter should be kept as at Rome; secondly, that baptism should be according to the Romish ritual; thirdly, that there should be a union with the Popish missionaries in preaching to the Angles.”

To these demands the English bishops replied that they were willing to render equal submission to the Pope as to any godly person; but that they were under the Bishop of Chester as their overseer, “to cause us,” they said, “to keep the way spiritual.”

The irritated missionary revenged the insult when opportunity served. He stirred up the king of Northumbria against them. A battle ensued, and 2000 of the British clergy were massacred on one occasion, surrounded with their flocks, who tried to defend them; the clergy, by prayers and exhortations, encouraging them to hold out to the last.

The bad leaven introduced by the monk Augustine rapidly worked its way, and Southern England, with but few exceptions, joined Rome. Although much might have been wrong in practice before he came, the Bible had been nevertheless upheld as the standard of faith. But thenceforward the adoration of images, saints, and relies, with all the other marks of apostasy, began by degrees to be visible in England’s churches.

In A.D. 854, King Ethelwulf, hoping thereby to win the favor of Heaven, settled a pension on the Pope out of the royal domains; and would have given over himself, his kingdom, and people to the same control, had not his subjects risen up indignantly and dethroned him. This gave a check to the Romish encroachments; and Alfred the Great succeeding, refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, and disallowed all the Papal pretensions. He read the Scriptures himself, and wished them to be read by the people. One error he made, however, in the case of Oxford, which from an early date had been a seat of learning. The Saxons having pillaged and burnt it, King Alfred rebuilt several of the colleges, but unfortunately introduced the Romish monk, Grimbold, as a professor, which caused much dissension, and the latter was obliged finally to retire. Until then the university was uninfected by Popery, but from that time it partook of the general corruption.

William the Conqueror, in like manner, withstood the claims of Rome’s supremacy. When summoned to do homage for his kingdom, he declared that he held it from God and by his own sword.

When William Rufus came to the throne, though he rejected Popish interference, he hesitated not to sell the vacant benefices, bishoprics, and abbeys to the highest bidder.

At length, in the reign of Henry II., the triumph of Rome was complete. Having quarreled with Thomas a Becket and degraded him from his archbishOpric of Canterbury, the latter appealed to the Pope and fled from England. Henry at first renounced the Pope’s authority and resisted his interference. But when, on the assassination of Becket, the kingdom was placed under an interdict, the king made full submission, and was reconciled to Rome.

The following degrading humiliations to which the king of England submitted make us turn with indignation against Popish assumption, the more in the ascendant ever the more intolerant and mean in its tyranny. Some of the conditions on which absolution was obtained were these: — 1st, Never to oppose the Pope’s will; 2ndly, never to hinder appeals to Rome; 3rdly, to unite in the crusade to the Holy Land; 4thly, to restore the property taken from the clergy. Further, to walk barefoot tn the tomb of Becket, there to receive on his bare shoulders five stripes from each of the five prelates, and three stripes with knotted cords from each of the eighty monks of Canterbury. He was then required to kneel on the cold stones for the length of a day and night clothed in sackcloth. To all this Henry yielded; and thus the monarchy and Church of England, after upwards of a thousand years’ struggle, became part and parcel of Papal Rome.

The Papal triumph was still incomplete while Ireland remained unconquered and free in government and religion. The Church there had long kept up a protest against Rome’s pretensions, and the Sacred Scriptures were freely read. Bishop Bede (who afterwards translated the Bible) says in his History, “That the knowledge of Latin was kept up in that country by the meditation of the Scriptures.”

Henry having resolved to add Ireland to his dominions, the Pope readily gave his sanction. We have seen before that, as Vicar of Christ, he deemed himself entitled to give any part of the world to whom be pleased. Pope Adrian IV. therefore thus writes in A.D. 1172 to Henry of England: — “Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to our well-beloved son in Christ, the illustrious king of the English, etc. …Your highness, in contemplating the laudable design of gaining fame on earth and augmenting the recompense of bliss awaiting you in heaven… We cannot but hope success will attend your mission. Certainly there is no doubt but that Ireland, and all the islands on which the Sun of Righteousness hath shined, do belong of fight to St. Peter, and the holy Roman Church: for which reason we are the more induced to introduce into them a holy stock, etc., etc. …You have signified your desire to enter Ireland, and your willingness to pay St. Peter an annual tribute of one penny for every house there, and to preserve the ecclesiastical rights of the land uninjured, etc.” Then follow good wishes for success, concluding thus: “That you may so obtain a higher recompense from God, and upon earth a name of glory to all generations.”

The story is well known how Henry conquered the country. and returned not to England until the Irish Church, long since deteriorated and fast waning in light and truth, had been formally made over to the Church of Rome. The priesthood, infected with superstitions introduced by Popish emissaries from England, were but too ready to betray their trust; and having convened a synod, agreed to yield the required submission. Whereupon the Pope wrote a letter of congratulation to the Irish bishops, in which he declared himself ” thankful to God, who had granted such a noble victory to his dearly beloved son in Christ, the king of England.”

Years passed on, and for nearly two centuries no protesting cry was publicly heard against Popery. Rich and poor, laics and churchmen, were devoted to the building of churches; and monasteries, nunneries, abbeys, convents, and cathedrals studded the kingdom. The reason and conscience of the nation, it might be said, were enslaved.

In the beginning of the fourteenth century a cry rose from Oxford of loud Opposition, the echo of which died not away until it was lost in the still louder-raised voice of opposition to Popery at the Reformation. Edward III. of England demurred to the Pope’s asserted right of naming the clergy to fill the vacant benefices, and refused to do him the homage that John had consented to render. JOHN WICKLIFFE, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, had supported the king by writing in favor of his views. On his return from a personal interview with the Pope’s Legate, he boldly proclaimed the Pope to be the man of sin spoken of in Scripture, and denounced him as Antichrist.

Wickliffe was accused of heresy, and again and again the University received the Pope’s order to deliver him up. On its repeated refusal, Wickliffe fearlessly appeared at St. Paul’s, where a council had been summoned to condemn him. But the council suddenly broke up, and no sentence was pronounced. A spark of inquiry, however, had been struck, and persecution fanned it into flame.

Wickliffe translated the Bible, and copies in manuscript were circulated; but though the price was too high for the middle and lower classes, this did not stop the progress of truth. A load of hay, or its worth, was not unfrequently given for even a small portion of the Holy Book.

Ever jealous of the circulation of God’s Word, Popery opposed its progress by all possible means. In vain. The people had begun to feel its value; and, hiding the pages, used to meet together at night to read it in secret.

After withstanding all the endeavors of the enemies of truth to crush him, Wickliffe was allowed to retire in old age to Lutterworth, and there died. The doctrines of the Lollards, now identified with his followers, continued to take root and spread; his writings also circulated and were translated.

In the subsequent persecution which raged against these witnesses, A.D. 1399, many were burnt alive, — amongst others Lord Cobham. Inquisitors being sent to Oxford with special orders to destroy all the books of the heretics, numbers of these were found and committed to the flames. But while the wrath . of man was destroying, the providence of God was preparing a new means of advancing the circulation of His Word; and the art of printing, from its first invention, gave a mighty impulse to the cause of the Gospel. No sooner had the Reformation begun to move the minds of men in Germany, than its doctrines were openly professed also in England. Persecution revived, and the fires of Smithfield blazed again and again around God’s faithful martyrs. But the spirit of resistance to Roman tyranny was by God’s goodness implanted in the breasts of our countrymen; and the throwing off of the Papal yoke was the first national evidence of that Christian liberty which has been at once the glory and safeguard of Britons.

The Reformation might be said to have been finally accomplished when the people were enabled to approach God in public worship in a language which they could understand, and when a liturgy was adopted which, retaining a form of sound words, directed the worshipper to the inspired volume, as to the source from which it in spirit derived its origin and excellence. The Book of Common Prayer was compiled, partly indeed from whatever little was found Scriptural in the Roman Missal, but still more from the Ancient British Liturgy, and from the spiritual writings of the German Reformers. Thus, purified and refreshed from the corrupt inventions of Papal priestcraft and the incrustations of dark superstition, pure Christianity shone forth again, — had free course and’ was glorified. The prediction of the divine revelation was fulfilled; and England ceased to be numbered among the ten kingdoms of the great Apostasy.

Before we close our notice of the witnessing Churches, it may be well to remark that there were other parts of the world in which, while they cannot be included amongst our lines of witnesses, being beyond the pale of Romish usurpation, there yet were to be found, not only individuals and families, but even communities and regularly formed Churches, which would appear to have from a very ancient date held fast the pure truths of Christian doctrine. As an instance of this, we know that a large Church existed in India at the end of the fifteenth century, with its congregations and pastors, its sacred buildings and pure sacraments, which never had, at any time, connection with the Church of Rome. The number of these Syrian Christians then amounted to 300,000 souls.

Upon the discovery of the Malabar coast and the landing of the Portuguese, the latter proceeded to claim these churches and countries for their own, in the name of the Pope and by virtue of a deed of gift from him. The asserted pretensions of an ecclesiastical potentate of whom they had never before heard was at once resisted by the whole body. Their own apostolic orders they considered as derived from the Apostle Thomas; — a tradition which subsequent researches seem to confirm. Their manuscripts are evidently of great antiquity.

It was not long ere the usual means for forcing submission to the Papacy were largely brought to bear on this simple people. The burning of their books, persecution to the death, and finally, the establishment of the Inquisition at Goa, at length affected to a small extent the required obedience. Nevertheless, at a Council held A.D. 1599, at Diamper, near Cochin, the following, among other particulars, were laid to their charge:- — That they received no images; that their priests had wives; that they acknowledged but two sacraments; that they neither invoked the saints nor believed in purgatory.

Dr. Buchanan, in his “Researches,” about the beginning of the present century, gives a full and interesting account of these Christians. Albeit the leaven of superstition has worked much mischief among them, they have continued, as a Church, to maintain their independence.

Continued in Revelation 12:1-17. The Great Red Dragon

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.

Political Establishment Of The Reformation. Separation From The Papacy. A.D. 1552-1790.

THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT, having brought his retrospective account of the two witnesses down to the point of his own intervention, has ceased to speak. Excellent manuscript authorities, instead of the expression “they heard,” read “I heard,” in the first person. This reading seems preferable; and hence we infer that at this place the Apocalyptic figurations were resumed before St. John in their former regular course. The direct series of visions, as at the end of our Nineteenth Lecture, and this supplemental narrative of the Angel, present to our view the witnessing Reformers in a firm attitude of consolidation, united in a public Confession of Faith, under the well-chosen name of PROTESTANTS. This was their situation at the close of the year 1530, and continued to about A.D. 1543, when the prophecy unfolds further particulars, to which we now proceed. And first —

I. The Witnesses’ Ascension To Heaven.

Judging of this symbol by former prophecies, before explained, we take the “heaven” here mentioned to denote some political ascendancy, to which at that time the witnessing body should be advanced; and the call, “Come up hither,” as proceeding either from Divine Providence, or from persons in a position of high political authority and eminence. That the heaven of their elevation is only figurative seems plain from what is afterwards said of them, namely, “Their enemies beheld them.” But could it be that men so lately objects of extermination should be called, as with an audible voice through Europe, to political ascendancy? Such was indeed the fact, and that within little more than twenty years from the anti- Protestant decree of Augsburg. We will briefly notice the means which God’s all-ruling providence made use of for the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Upon Charles V., head of the Germanic Empire, did the Popes mainly trust to crush the rising heresy; and had the state of affairs continued as it had been, there was both inclination and power on his part to gratify them. But a threatened Turkish invasion of the Empire made it a point of necessity to reconcile the Protestant states, and induced from the Emperor and Diet a decree called The Pacification of Nuremberg, by which full toleration was given to Protestantism until the assembling of a General Council. “Thus,” says Robertson, “from having been viewed hitherto only as a religious sect, the Protestants came thenceforth to be considered as a political body of no small consequence.” It was their first step, at the imperial call, to political ascendancy. Other embroilments of nations and invasions succeeded, and hindered the embarrassed Emperor from calling the expected Council; concurrent with which was the reluctance of successive Popes to the convening such an assembly at the time. Thus for thirteen years toleration prevailed. But when peace was resumed amongst the contending nations, all was again changed. The Emperor now deemed that the time was come for putting down the Protestants. Their requisition for permanent toleration was rejected, and a hostile decree soon followed. The Council of Trent assembled, and a month after Luther died. The threatened war broke out: the Protestants were defeated, and their chief supporters, the Saxon Elector and Landgrave of Hesse, were made prisoners. All these things seemed against them. But, as not unfrequently is the case, the time of depression is but the introduction to a more conspicuous elevation, through God’s gracious overruling for his people. New agencies appeared. Maurice, Duke of Saxony, who had previously betrayed the Protestant cause, was now led to espouse it.

This turned the tide of war. Then followed the surprise of the Emperor at Innspruck and. his rapid flight; consequent upon which was the Peace of Passau, in August 1552 — that celebrated peace whereby the fullest toleration was secured to the Protestant body. Equally with Romanists, they were admitted to sit as judges in the Imperial Chamber. This was their political ascension in Germany. And almost cotemporarily they attained like privileges in Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark. It is written also, “Their enemies beheld them.” And truly-it was so. At the passing of each decree by which they rose to ascendancy, in the Diet and in the Council, their enemies were present and beheld them. As they sat in the supreme chamber, they beheld them. The song of thanksgiving from these ascending witnesses might well have been that of another witness for God in long earlier times: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” (Ps. 23:5)

But what of the cloud in which the witnesses ascended? For in the original Greek the definite article is used — “the cloud.” Now as the only mention of a cloud has been that in which the Lord Jesus, the Covenant Angel, had been clothed in his descent from heaven, in the first verse of the tenth chapter, must we not take this to be the same? But for what can this have been so specified? Probably — 1. To show that the witnesses’ ascent was the direct result of Christ’s special intervention; and, 2. To identify yet further the cause and triumph of the witnesses with that of the Reformation.

II. The Earthquake

That followed is the next point to be noticed. “And at the same time there was a great earthquake.” The adoption and established profession of Protestantism by different countries must have involved a considerable separation from the Papacy. In Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark the Reformed doctrine became the state religion. But all these countries lay beyond the north boundary line of the old Roman Empire. They constituted no part of the ten kingdoms, of which, in Apocalyptic prophecy, the great city was composed. We are therefore to look elsewhere for that which is represented in the vision — “The tenth part of the city fell.”

And is it true that history records the fact of the falling away of one of the original ten kingdoms of Papal Christendom from the Roman Church, overthrown by Protestantism? Surely it points to England, — to England, one of the most notable of those ten parts of the great apostate city. The story of this revolution may be told in few words. Certain Lutherans had visited our shores soon after Luther’s departure from his Patmos, by whose teaching, with that of the surviving Lollards and Wicklifites, the smoldering sparks were rekindled, and men’s minds prepared to seek a change. Outwardly the political preceded the spiritual movement here. By the passions of men God was working out his great designs. The imperious and licentious Henry VIII. was king of England when Luther began the Reformation. He had even come forward to dispute with Luther as the champion of the Papacy, for which the Pope honored him with the title of Defender of the Faith. Ere ten years had passed other motives swayed him. Dissatisfied with his queen, Catherine, he sought from the Pope a divorce. This being refused, he summoned his Parliament, and the memorable Act was passed by which Papal supremacy was renounced in England, and the king declared temporal head of the Church. As yet, however, the Reformation was not established. During Henry’s reign Popery lay in ruins, but no evangelical Protestant edifice was erect-ed in its stead. But in Edward’s reign, which succeeded, this was effected; and though for a few years threatened again by the efforts of the bigoted Mary, was, thanks be to God, fully organized and established. Thenceforth the Protestant or Witness Church of England has been fixed in the heaven of political exaltation.

But another result of the earthquake is given: — “There were slain seven thousands (chiliads), names of men.” Observe, that it is not the numeral adjective that is here used, but the substantive chiliads. The term is originally Jewish, denoting a subdivision of a tribe. “So Moses chose able men, rulers. of thousands,” (Exod. 18:25) etc. Henceforth the chiliad, being about onefiftieth of a tribe, became noted as a subdivision in Israel. To these chiliads land was afterwards allotted; and each became a district, like the hundred in an English county, and gave “a name,” or distinctive title, to its chief ruler.

Bearing, therefore, in mind that the whole population of Roman Christendom had been symbolized in the Apocalypse by the figure of the twelve tribes of Israel, we have only to turn to history again, and to see whether any subdivisions of Western Christendom were in fact separated from Papal Rome, and so might be considered politically destroyed at the time Papal England fell, and by the same agency, viz., that of Protestant principles. What then do we find? We read that during the reign of Elizabeth the seven Dutch United Provinces were emancipated from the Spanish yoke, and at the same time the Papal rule and religion were destroyed in them.

The first constitution of these as provinces was at the time Roman Gaul was conquered by the Franks. The Netherlands, including French and Dutch Flanders, formed part of the Frankish Empire. They were divided into seventeen provinces, each being a territorial domain assigned to some Chieftain, like the territorial chiliads assigned to Israel on their settlement in Canaan. In the course of the seven hundred years between Charlemagne and Charles V. many changes occurred affecting them. Having been transferred from one emperor to another, they passed to Charles V., and from him to Philip II. of Spain.

Into these provinces of the Netherlands Protestant doctrines had soon found their way; and here also martyrs, to the number of 100,000, sealed the truth of what they preached with their blood. The arm of power and dread of the Inquisition long prevented an open outbreak. But under Philip II. political was added to religious oppression, and war commenced in A.D. 1569. Thus the earthquake, under which England, the tenth kingdom of the Popedom, had just fallen off, began to threaten its supremacy in these lesser districts. While some of the provinces adhered to Spain and the Papacy, some separated; and the union of the Seven United Provinces in A.D. 1579 was formed by deputies from Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen, Overyssel, and Guelderland. Their success against Philip might well have appeared hopeless. His was the mightiest monarchy in Europe, and they but a small people in territory and population; besides being badly organized and indifferently armed. But the energy and fortitude imparted to them by religion was not to be overcome; nor was the purpose of God to fail. After a thirty-seven years’ war, the impossibility of recovering the seven provinces to itself and the Popedom was recognized by Spain. The seven chiliads of the Papal city were overthrown; and out of their ruins arose the Protestant Republic of Holland.

Such were the two principal and permanent changes that rose out of the earthquake attendant on the Reformation. It was fondly hoped by the French Protestants — when Henry IV. of France obtained the crown, he too being Protestant — that such also would have been the result in that kingdom. But no prophecy had foretold such an event. On the contrary, Henry, after his accession, abjured Protestantism; and though by his Edict of Nantes in A.D. 1598 civil liberty and rights were secured to the Protestants, yet the restrictions were such that it could not be said that there the witnesses had ascended into the political heaven. Ere the predicted results had received their full accomplishment in Northern Germany and England, this Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV., and Protestants were thenceforward put out of the pale of the law in France. In Germany also the Emperor Frederick II. issued an edict in A.D. 1629, by which Protestants were required to restore to the Church of Rome all the possessions they had become masters of in that country in consequence of a religious peace concluded in the preceding century. This was called the Restitution Edict. A war thereupon arose in defense of Protestant liberties, in which Gustavus Adolphus fell victorious at Lutzen, A.D. 1632; but it was not till 1648 that Protestant rights were firmly established by the Peace of Westphalia.

In England, Charles II., and still more his brother, James II., made efforts to restore Popery; until in 1688, through God’s gracious favor to this island, William of Orange superseded James, and the Protestant ascendancy was permanently confirmed in England, and eventually in Holland also.

In every case, whether in England or Holland, “the remnant,” i.e., the Papists who remained, “were affrighted.” Penal enactments were passed against Romanists. The popular tide of feeling set in against them. At times they dared scarcely be seen, and soon large numbers conformed to Protestantism.

On the other hand, the ascended Protestants everywhere “gave glory to the God of heaven.” In England again and again sounded forth the thanksgiving song. On the death of the persecuting Mary and the ascent of Elizabeth to the throne, — on the defeat of the Spanish Armada sent to re-subjugate the kingdom to Rome, — and again long after, on the commencement of the third William’s reign, solemn thanksgivings, individual and national, were rendered, not as hitherto to the Virgin Queen or to the saints, but to the God of heaven. Sovereign and people in each case publicly acknowledged that it was THE LORD’S doing, and gave HIM their praise. As in England, so in Germany and Holland also were offered by the Protestants thanksgivings for the successes given to them. The expression of the text marks a sign of the times — a sign that the vindication of God’s honor had begun.

Nor did the sound cease till the echo of thanksgiving was waited west and east to the continents of America and Asia. Commercial power soon flowed in on England and Holland after their overthrow of the Papal religion; and numerous and large dependent colonies were formed in those distant regions. We may now see why the rainbow-crowned Covenant Angel had in his descent set his right foot on the sea as well as his left on the mainland. Insular England was, even in Elizabeth’s reign, the bulwark of Protestantism; and seemed preparing, too, as a colonial power, to be the chief propagator of its doctrines beyond the seas, in opposition to that of the numerous Romish missions. At length, in William’s reign, was established the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, being the first Protestant Missionary Society. We might go on and show how, a century later, on a scale as mighty as that of the Papal Antichrist’s pretensions to universal dominion, similar societies were multiplied, which carried far and wide the claims of the name of Jesus, as of him to whom every knee should bow. This was our highly favored island’s work, the severed tenth of the Roman Empire: as if the impulse of the angel’s foot-press still continued, and there had never ceased within it the influence and blessing of his visitation.

But though in the ascendant, the sackcloth robe of the witnesses had not been entirely put off. The 1260 days were not finished. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal the Inquisition might still count its thousands, barbarously murdered. Neither in Austria was toleration fully granted till A.D. 1783. In France the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day in A.D. 1572 showed the feeling of kings and nobles, priests and people, against the Huguenots or Protestants; and sad indeed is the picture of their miseries up to the year 1788, just before the Revolution. England and Holland could not be said to have put off their sombre garments while ever their sister Churches were thus oppressed. One member of the body suffering, all sympathized with it.

One only subject remains here for consideration: — “The second woe is past.” We have already had occasion to observe how the Saracenic and the Turkish woes had been designed against “the men that had not the seal of God upon their foreheads.” Mohammed’s asserted commission had been against idolaters; and, as such, the apostate nations of Christendom (especially in the Eastern third of the Roman Empire) had been chiefly exposed to the shocks. We have also observed how the Turkish irruption, which had threatened the Emperor Charles V., had, in a remarkable manner, served to protect and advance the interests of the Reformation. But no sooner is the Reformation accomplished than the agency of judgment begins to be removed. It was in A.D. 1571, just a year or two after the severance of the Seven United Provinces from Rome, that the great naval battle of Lepanto interposed an effectual barrier to the Turkish arms; and this was followed, about thirty years after, in their ejection from Transylvania. It was not, however, until the latter end of the seventeenth century, and the victories of John Sobieski and of Prince Eugene, that the woe could be regarded as near its end. This latter was immediately consequent upon the final settlement of the Reformation in England on the accession of William III. Thenceforward the decay of the Turkman power progressed. The next war of A.D. I7 70, signalized by victory after victory on the part of the united forces of Austria and Russia, proclaimed to the world, in language not to be mistaken, that the Turkmans were no longer a woe to Christendom, but Christendom to the Turkmans. The second woe had passed away.

Then follows, in the Apocalyptic prophecy, the announcement of the speedy-coming future. No new external judgment, no changes worthy of prefiguration were to intervene before the breaking forth of the Third Woe — that woe of the Last Trumpet. Into the particulars of this part of the prophecy we shall have to enter at length when it will come again in course before us. And since the unfulfilled future is beyond the purpose of our lectures, we shall close, for the present, with the words of the vision: —

Continued in The British Church Amongst The Witnesses

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

The papal crusade against the Albigensian Christians.

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

Papal War Against Them. Their Death And Resurrection. A.D. 1163-1530.

THE SAME VOICE of the Lord Jesus himself, as the Angel of the Covenant, must still be considered as addressing the Evangelist; and St. John, still in his representative character — at this time as if one of the Reformers — receives from him retrospectively the history of the struggles and sufferings of Christ’s faithful witnesses.

“The Wild Beast” is evidently the same as that mentioned afterwards in chapter 13; — identical also with that Beast long previously represented to Daniel in vision as constituting the last and most fearful form of the Roman Empire, the persecuting Papal power.- Of this Beast more hereafter.

The time and occasion of the war against the witnesses, i.e., “when they shall have completed their testimony,” has occasioned no small trouble to expositors. In the authorized version, as above, the words “finished their testimony” would seem to refer to the end of the 1260 years of witnessing; but that this cannot be the meaning is clear, inasmuch as that duration would bring them to the end of the Wild Beast’s reign, when he would have no longer power to persecute. May we not rather regard it as having respect to the perfecting their witness and full protestation against all the leading errors of the great apostasy; the putting the sacraments in the place of the Holy Scriptures as the source of life and light to the soul; the substitution of the mediatorship of departed saints; the idolatry, demon-worship, sorceries, thefts, fornications, and murders; and the headship of the system in the Pope of Rome, with his seven thunders and voice of Antichrist? We have already traced the noble protests maintained by both Eastern and Western witnesses against all the former of these errors; but against Rome and its bishops as head of the apostasy, for centuries they protested not. By degrees the Christian mind was prepared for this last step; and ere the termination of the twelfth century, the Antichrist was fully developed before their eyes, and the united Paulikians, Waldenses, and other sectaries boldly denounced the man of sin, and the Babylon and harlot of the Apocalypse. Then did the Papacy, as a body, rouse itself against them, and proceeded to declare and to wage a war of extermination.

It was not until the religious supremacy of Rome was established in every state of Christendom, and the temporal power subjected to its spiritual domination, that Rome could command the secular sword, and use it to the striking down whatever is called heretic. Old as its pretensions were, it was not until the eleventh, or the beginning of the twelfth century, that Papal supremacy was universally established. Then did this ten-horned Beast, wielding the power of the ten kingdoms of Christendom, appear in his maturity; then was he openly testified against by the Christian witnesses; and then did he turn in fierce rage upon his bold assailants.

A.D. 1163. — First, at the Council of Tours, Pope Alexander III., after noticing the detestable Albigensian heresy everywhere spreading, interdicts all from yielding the heretics refuge; — from buying or selling, or otherwise holding converse with them.

A.D. 1179. — Next followed the decree of the third Lateran General Council against Cathari, Patareni, Publicani, and all other heretics, pronouncing anathema, and forbidding that any should harbor them, or when dead should give them Christian burial.

A.D. 1183. — A bull was issued by Lucius III., denouncing them and all that should favor them; giving them over for punishment to the secular arm, and directing that inquisition (a fearful word, new first broached) be made for their detection.

A.D. 1198. — Innocent III., in the very first year of his pontificate, addressed letters to various prelates, charging them to gird themselves for the work of extirpation, and to employ the arms both of princes and people. Then followed his mission of inquisitors to Toulouse under Dominic, the sainted founder of the accursed Inquisition; then, at a few years’ interval, the proclamation of a Crusade with all its horrors. A specimen of these horrors may be seen in the storming of Beziers (linked to Wikipedia article about it). To one that asked how Catholics were to be distinguished from heretics in the massacre about to take place, “Kill them all,” was the reply; “God will know his own;”and 7000 of all persuasions indiscriminately suffered.

A.D. 1215. — The fourth Lateran General Council re-urged all former plans of extirpation, and gave new powers and privileges to the Crusaders against heretics, the same as to those who joined in the crusades to the Holy Land. The Councils of Narbonne and of Toulouse followed, in which, besides other methods of detection, even children were compelled to inform against heretics; and, besides other methods of suppression, the Holy Scriptures were strictly forbidden to the laity.

During the remainder of the thirteenth and the following century the same Papal anti-witness war continued without cessation. Bulls, councils, inquisitions, crusades, Dominicans, and Franciscans everywhere pursued and tracked with bloodhound spirit these faithful martyrs of their Lord, — not in Piedmont and Dauphiny alone, but in Spain and Calabria, in Germany, France, and Flanders, — not the Waldenses only, but Wickliffites and Lollards in England, and Hussites in Bohemia. And yet, in spite of racks and prisons, of the sword and of the flame, their voice was still raised in protestation against the lies of Popery, and for the truth as it is in Jesus. At length, however, towards the close of the fifteenth century, after a furious crusade against Waldenses and Hussites, the Papal object seemed almost attained and its triumph complete. The prediction was about to be verified, “The wild beast from the abyss shall overcome them and kill them.”

There is, by the common consent of historians, but one period in European history in which the voice of Anti-Papal testimony was wholly suppressed, and the symbol of DEATH might be properly taken to describe the complete stillness that prevailed. It was the opening of the sixteenth century, just before the Reformation. In vain the Bohemian Churches sent deputies to search through Europe for any of kindred feeling whom they might hail as brethren. The deputies returned unsuccessful. They had only, it is related, to implore God’s mercy on fallen Christendom. “The prospect,” says Milner, “was most gloomy in the eyes of every true Christian. Europe, though Christ’s name was everywhere professed, presented nothing that was properly evangelical. The Waldenses were too feeble to molest the Popedom, and the Hussites, divided and worn out by contentions, were at length reduced to silence.”

But it must needs be that “their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city,” wherein “for three days and a half” they of the people and nations should see the dead bodies of these slain witnesses. The character of this passage is evidently shown by the word “spiritually,” as figuratively applied to the description of this Sodom or Egypt. This great city is clearly the same which is afterwards called Babylon, the city which then reigned over the kings of the earth, i.e., that Roman ecclesiastical empire comprehending its ten kingdoms subordinate to its sway. The very terms Egypt and Sodom had often been applied to it by Romanists themselves, as well as by the early witnesses and later Reformers — the former name on account of its sorceries, darkness, and oppression of God’s people, the latter because of its moral impurity and abominations. But the name which this great city assumed for itself was that which properly had belonged to New Jerusalem, the holy city, in marked contrast with which it is introduced in the Revelation; the resemblance, however, only holds good to apostate Jerusalem, in that it is the scene in which their Lord (i.e., the witnesses’ Lord) has been continually “crucified afresh.”

In this last remark we may see an intimation of their Lord’s sympathy with their sufferings — even as if he regarded himself as crucified again in them, his members. Have we not also, in the resemblance of the great city to Egypt, Sodom, and apostate Jerusalem, an intimation of its impending punishment — Jerusalem’s curse, Egypt’s plaques, and Sodom’s burning?

By the “street” (lit., broad place or open square) of this great city, the place of concourse, we must understand the chief seat of the Papacy, Rome, to be pictured. Here the defeat and death of the witnesses was to be publicly exposed, and rejoicings in consequence to take place amidst assemblages from all nations.

Marvelously does the history of the period bear out the symbolic statements of the Apocalyptic vision. Such a gathering of the deputies of ” people, and kindreds, and tongues: and nations,” were met together in this city of Rome upon occasion of the Lateran Council held from A.D. 1512-17 under the pontificates of Julius II. and Leo X. One of its principal objects was the total extirpation of heresies; and upon the last-named Pope’s accession no time was lost in proceeding against the only heretics supposed to be surviving — the Bohemian Hussites. By a Papal bull these were summoned to appear before the Council at its next session, and the 5th of May 1514 was fixed for that important event.

Thus was the crisis come which was to try the faith of this little remnant of witnesses and exhibit its vitality or death. And would they then face their Lord’s enemies? Would they brave the terrors of death and plead his cause, like many of their noble predecessors, before the Legate and the Antichristian Council? Alas! no. The day arrived. The Council met. But no officer announced the arrival of deputies from Bohemia to plead before it. Not a whisper was heard from any quarter in support of the long-continued heresies. No witness appeared. The orator of the session ascended the pulpit, and, amidst the applause of the assembly, uttered that memorable exclamation of triumph — never heard before or since — “There is an end of resistance to Papal rule and religion: there is none to oppose.”3 And again, “The whole body of Christendom is now subjected to its Head, i.e., to Thee.” Alas! there was but too much cause of triumph. The witnesses were silent! They were dead! From this day, for three and a half years (i.e., prophetical days), were the maintainers of the truth of Christ to be as dead corpses in the face of apostate Christendom. Let the day be remembered. It was May 5th, 1514.

From the well-known and customary punishment of heretics — and which, among other things, was literally enjoined in an edict issued on that very day for the exclusion of their corpses from burial — was the figure taken to signify the keeping before the public observation, during that interval, the fact of the death of the witnesses or of the suppression and defeat of all so-called heretics. It was not to be put out of sight; but every means was adopted of preserving the recognition of the fact by the mutual congratulations of the members of the Council — by the making merry and interchange of gifts. And here we have again only to open the page of history in order to see how all this was fulfilled. The magnificent Eastern presents to Leo, the gift of the golden rose to the king of Portugal, the splendor of the festivities of the cardinals at the close of this Council, unequaled since the days of Rome’s ancient greatness, is specially recorded by the historian of Leo. In fact, the joy of their triumph told most plainly how the memory of past vexation and injury from the testimony of these faithful men of God still troubled and disturbed these dwellers on the Roman earth. Loud indeed were their congratulations, but not long continued.

The next thing we behold is the wonderful RESURRECTION of THE WITNESSES. ” And after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet.” As to the great event to which this figure applies, history admits of no doubt or hesitation. Never, save in the resurrection of Christ himself, has there been such an instance of the sudden and triumphant resuscitation of his cause and Church from deep depression as was exhibited in the protesting voice of Luther and the burst of the glorious Reformation. The sudden contrast forces itself both on Romish and Protestant writers. Hear one of the former: “The fire, ill-smothered at the close of 1513 and 1514 (in allusion to Leo’s Council), was blown up again by Luther’s bellows, and spread its flames far and wide, more than ever before.” A modern writer, Mr. Cunninghame, whose prophetical explanation of the passage accords not with ours, thus describes the transition: — “Europe reposed in the deep sleep of spiritual death, under the iron yoke of the Papacy; when, suddenly, the voice of an obscure monk was heard, the sound of which rapidly filled Saxony, Germany, and Europe itself, shaking the very foundations of the Papal power, and arousing men from the lethargy of ages.”

But does the chronology suit? For three days and a half the witnesses were to be looked on as dead. In other words, there was to be an interval of three and a half years between the public recognition of their extinction and their revival. That memorable day of the ninth session of the Lateran Council on which the orator exulted over all extinguished opponents, was, as we have seen, May 5, 1514: the day of Luther’s posting up his theses at Wittenberg (the well-known epoch of the Reformation), was October 31, 1517. The interval is precisely, to a day, the period predicted in this wonderful prophecy. Then “the breath of life from God entered into the slain witnesses, and they stood upon their feet!” One hundred years before, the martyr Huss, foretelling from his dungeon the future progress of the Gospel, spoke: — “And I, awakening as it were from the dead and rising from the grace, shall rejoice with exceeding great joy.” Strange that Leo’s successor, Pope Adrian, should have used the like expression: — “The heretics Huss and Jerome are now alive again in the person of Martin Luther.”

“And great fear fell on those that beheld them;” it is not said, on them that killed them. The Council had separated before Luther’s protest appeared. Pope Leo, in his regal palace, treated at first any disturbance arising from so mean an origin as a mere passing ebullition of feeling on the part of the monk of Wittenberg. Not so Tetzel, Eck, and others, who looked on with trepidation. They saw that the very foundation of the Papal system was assailed, and that there was a power in the movement that they could not withstand.

Pope Leo, as we have said in a former lecture, at last realized the danger, and his seven thunders were issued. But it needs not again to recount how the intrepid Reformer disregarded danger and threats; how Gospel preaching was again resumed, the Romish Church declared apostate, and a pure Reformed Church established With the rod of civil power in various countries of Europe. At each step in its advance, the fear of those who beheld it increased in anxiety; nor was it allayed when, after ten years of opposition, the Reformers united themselves together at Smalcald, under the glorious name of PROTESTANTS; a name which, according to its Latin etymology, signifies WITNESSES!

Continued in Revelation 11:12-14. Ascent Of The Witnesses. Great Earthquake

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

DEFINITIONS (hopefully in alphabetical order):

“Eucharist” (Per Dave Hunt; “A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Page 522): “A special form of bread (tiny wafer or host) and ordinary wine which is believed to be the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ by having been consecrated by a [Ed.: celibate Roman Catholic] priest and thus having been ‘transubstantiated’ through a special formula and power which [Ed.: Roman] Catholic priests alone possess. The offering of this miraculously constituted ‘Christ’ upon [Ed.: Roman] Catholic altars is the principal part of the ceremony or ritual known as the ‘Sacrifice’ of the Mass and is believed to be efficacious in the remission of sins.” [Ed.: Many Bible-believing Christians were burned at the stake for refusing to affirm the unscriptural Roman Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation”!]

“Heretic” (Per Darryl Eberhart, Editor of ETI & TTT): “As concerns historical Roman Catholic use of this term: A ‘label’ applied by the Papacy to anyone who dared in the past, or who dares today, to question either (1) papal authority, or (2) any of the unscriptural doctrines based solely upon ‘tradition’ that have been promulgated by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, such as ‘transubstantiation’, ‘indulgences’, ‘papal infallibility’, ‘purgatory’, ‘worship of images’, ‘a celibate priesthood’, ‘auricular confession to a priest’, etc. In past centuries, Papal Rome has also applied the label of ‘heretic’ to those individuals possessing, printing, or distributing Bibles.”

“Inquisition” (Per Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language; Meaning #4): “In some [Ed.: Roman] Catholic countries, a court or tribunal established for the examination and punishment of ‘heretics’. This court was established in the 12^th century by ‘father’ Dominic, who was charged by Pope Innocent III with orders to excite [Roman] Catholic princes [Ed.: i.e., rulers] and people to extirpate [Ed.: i.e., destroy completely] ‘heretics’.”

Papal Rome’s so-called “Holy” Inquisition ran officially, according to some scholars, from 1203 A.D. to 1808 A.D., and was responsible for the murder of up to 50 million innocent people. Many of its victims were brutally tortured. Many of its victims (including a large number of women) were burned alive at the stake, often using green or wet wood to prolong the agony of the poor victims! Please carefully consider the following quotations:

“The desire for worldly power began to manifest itself in the [Ed.: early] Church, on a broad scale, in the 4^th century, when the [Ed.: Imperial] Roman Empire ceased its persecutions, and made [Ed.: the Roman Catholic version of] Christianity its State religion. The spirit of Imperial Rome passed into the Church [Ed.: i.e., Papal Rome]. The [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church gradually developed itself into the pattern of the Empire it had conquered.

[Ed.: Imperial] Rome fell. But Rome came to life again, as a world power, in the name of the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church. The popes of Rome were the heirs and successors of the Caesars of Rome. The Vatican is [Ed.: located] where the Palace of the Caesars was. The [Ed.: Roman Catholic] popes have claimed all the authority the Caesars claimed, and more. The Papal Palace, throughout the centuries, has been among the most luxurious in all the world. Popes have lived in pomp and splendor unsurpassed by earthly kings. In no place on earth is there more ostentatious pageantry and show of magnificence than at the coronation of a pope.

…The horrors of the Inquisition, ordered and maintained by the popes, over a period of 500 years, in which unnumbered millions were tortured and burned, constitute the most brutal, beastly and devilish picture in all history.

…The city of Rome, first pagan, then papal, has been the dominating power of the world for two thousand years (200 B.C. to A.D. 1800).

…It is inconceivable that any ecclesiastical organization, in its mania for power, could have distorted and desecrated and corrupted, for its own exaltation, the beautiful and holy religion of Jesus [Christ].” – Henry H. Halley (“Halley’s Bible Handbook”)

“One thinks immediately of the Inquisitions (Roman, Medieval, and Spanish) which for centuries held Europe in their terrible grip. In his ‘History of the Inquisition’, Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary to the Inquisition in Madrid [Ed.: Spain] from 1790-92 and had access to the archives of all the tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded three million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Page 79)

“The Medieval Inquisition had flourished for centuries when Pope Paul III, in 1542, gave it permanent status as the first of Rome’s Sacred Congregations, the ‘Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Inquisition’. Known more recently as the ‘Holy Office’, its name was changed in 1967 to the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’ – quite appropriate inasmuch as the public burnings were known as autos-da-fe or acts of faith. The persecution, torture, and killing of [Ed.: so-called] heretics has never been repudiated by the Roman Catholic Church and has continued into modern times…” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Page 261)

“Roman Catholic apologists deceitfully try to absolve their Church of any responsibility in the actual burnings of [Ed.: so-called] heretics. They claim that the Inquisition was the work of the State.

…The penalties were [Ed.: indeed] executed by the civil authorities, but only as the secular arm of the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church…

…If the [Ed.: civil] authorities refused to execute the condemned [Ed.: i.e., those individuals condemned by the Roman Catholic Inquisition], they would themselves be brought before the [Ed.: Inquisitional] Tribunal and consigned to the flames. [Ed.: In other words, the “Church” compelled the “State” to execute the “heretics”!]

It was the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] popes themselves who invented the Inquisition and saw that it was carried out.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Pages 244 and 245)

“The popes themselves were the authority behind the Inquisitions. They wielded the power of life and death even over emperors. Had any pope opposed the Inquisition, he could have stopped it during his papacy at least. …The Roman pontiffs, who originated and directed the Inquisitions, threatened excommunication against any who failed to carry out the inquisitors’ decrees.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Page 247)

“When confronted with ‘heresy’, she [Ed.: i.e., the Roman Catholic Church] does not content herself with persuasion; arguments of an intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient, and she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, [Ed.: and] to torture.” – H.M.A. Baudrillart (Rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris)

“The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church has the right and duty to kill heretics because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be extirpated [Ed.: i.e., exterminated].” – Jesuit Marianus de Luce (1901)

“Roman Catholicism was born in blood, has wallowed in blood, has quenched its thirst in blood, and it is in letters of blood that its true history is written.” – Baron DePonnat (French statesman; 1940)

“From the birth of Popery [Ed.: i.e., Papal Rome] in 600, to the present time [Ed.: then 1845], it has been estimated by careful and credible historians that more than FIFTY MILLIONS [Ed.: emphasis in original] of the human family have been slaughtered for ‘the crime’ of ‘heresy’ by popish [Ed.: i.e., Roman Catholic] persecutors – an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of Popery.” – John Dowling (“The History of Romanism: From the Earliest Corruptions of Christianity to the Present Time”; 1845)

“History records the appalling story of suffering and martyrdom endured by untold millions across the centuries at the hand of the PAPAL MACHINE.” – Wilson Ewin (“You Can Lead Roman Catholics to Christ”; 1981; Page 33)

“[Ed.: The Inquisition’s] methods of terror and persecution have been used and abused up to the present day. These methods were not only new, but also so successful that they have been copied by totalitarian regimes ever since. The main features of these methods are:

1. Making the denunciation of fellow citizens an obligation that takes precedence over ties of family and kinship;
2. Extracting confessions by imprisonment and torture;
3. Making the naming of fellow conspirators an essential part of confessions;
4. Defining the retraction of extorted confessions as a ‘relapse’ and therefore a proof of guilt; and,
5. In some cases, separating the proof of ‘heresy’ or opposition from the execution of the penalty. The Inquisition handed over its convicted ‘heretics’ to the secular arm for punishment just as, hundreds of years later, during Stalin’s purges of the Communist party, party members were often deprived of their membership and then handed over to the NKVD for punishment.” – Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn (“The History and Sociology of GENOCIDE”; 1990; Pages 114 and 115)

“Disregarding the maxims and the spirit of the Gospel, the papal Church, arming herself with the power of the sword, vexed the [Ed.: true] Church of God and wasted it for centuries, a period most appropriately termed in history, the ‘dark ages’. The kings of the earth gave their power to the Beast.” – John Foxe (Elizabethan historian; 1516-1587; “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs”)

“THE INQUISITION: The Horror Begins – With each council the level of terror increased:

1184 – Synod of Verona: Burn heretics at the stake.

1215 – 4^th Lateran Council: Burn heretics and take their property. The ‘Inquisition’ is formed.

1220 – Inquisition is handed to the newly formed Dominican Order.

1229 – Synod of Toulouse makes the Inquisition a systematic process – [Accused are] guilty until proven innocent!

1252 – Pope Innocent IV: Torture is doctrinally acceptable to make an accused heretic ‘confess’.

1484 – Pope Innocent VIII publishes ‘Summus Desiderantes’ to support his inquisitors.

1486 – [Pope] Innocent VIII publishes ‘Malleus Maleficorum’ (Witch-Hammer), the systematic guide to detect, torture and execute a suspected ‘witch’. But the deck was stacked against you:

[1.] Almost never see your accuser.

[2.] Never know why or of what you are accused.

[3.] No lawyer. You have to prove your innocence.

[4.] You’re presumed guilty – period.

[5.] They promise anything, but kill you anyway!” – David W. Daniels (“Did the Catholic Church Give Us the Bible?”; 2005; Page 86)

“What history shows is that, for more than six centuries without a break, the papacy was the sworn enemy of elementary justice. Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on, not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine.” – Peter De Rosa (Roman Catholic historian; “Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy”; 1988; Pages 175 and 176)

“The Inquisition is peculiarly the weapon and peculiarly the work of the popes. It stands out from all those things in which they cooperated, followed or assented as the distinctive feature of Papal Rome. It was set up, renewed, and perfected by a long series of acts emanating from the supreme authority of the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church. No other institution, no doctrine, no teaching, no ceremony is so distinctly the individual creation of the papacy, except the dispensing power [Ed.: i.e., the power to administer the Inquisition]. It is the principal thing with which the papacy is identified, and by which it must be judged. The principle of the Inquisition is the pope’s sovereign power over life and death. Whoever disobeys him [Ed.: i.e., the pope] should be tried, and tortured, and burnt. If that cannot be done, [Ed.: then] formalities may be dispensed with, and the culprit may be killed like an outlaw. That is to say, the principle of the Inquisition is murderous, and a man’s opinion of the papacy is regulated and determined by his opinion of religious assassination.” – John Acton (1843-1902; English Catholic historian)

“One of history’s most malevolent persons died on this day [Ed.: i.e., September 16] in 1498. Tomas de Torquemada, as Inquisitor General of Spain, ordered more than 10,000 people to be burned at the stake because they didn’t agree with his religious views. He used the Inquisition for religious and political reasons, believing punishment of [Ed.: so-called] ‘heretics’ and non-Christians – chiefly Jews and Muslims – was the only way to achieve political unity in Spain. Greatly feared and hated by millions, he persuaded [Ed.: Spanish King] Ferdinand and [Ed.: Spanish Queen] Isabella to rid Spain of Jews. More than a million families were driven from Spain during that time. The country never recovered from the resulting decline.” – Ron Hembree (“A Daily Joy”; Page 272)

Ed. Comment concerning the preceding quote: The Inquisition was not used only for “religious and political reasons” – it was used also to loot and plunder land and possessions of Bible-believing Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. Many Bible-believing Christians were accused of being “heretics” simply because they held the Holy Bible to be of higher authority than the Papacy, and because they would not submit to corrupt Papal authority. Bible-believing Christians were targeted for centuries as entire villages and regions (to include men, women, and children) were exterminated like rats. Papal armies exterminated an entire Christian population group – the Albigensian Christians – in South France. Indeed, torture, brutality, and mass murder were the “hallmarks” of the so-called “Holy” Inquisition.

“To wring out confessions from these poor creatures [Ed.: during the Inquisition], the Roman Catholic Church devised ingenious tortures so excruciating and barbarous that one is sickened by their recital.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”; 1994; Page 80)

“The most ghastly abomination of all was the system of torture [Ed.: within the Inquisition]. The accounts of its cold-blooded operations make one shutter at the capacity of human beings for cruelty. And it was decreed and regulated by the popes who ‘claim’ to represent Christ on earth…” – Bishop William Shaw Kerr (Church historian)

“For rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, Christians were burned at the stake by Roman Catholics by the hundreds of thousands. Church historian R. Tudor Jones writes that ‘the majority of the martyrs were ordinary people, including many women…’

John Foxe [Ed.: Elizabethan historian; 1516-1587] was an eyewitness and earnest historian of the fierce persecution in [Ed.: then-Roman Catholic] England in his day. His ‘Book of Martyrs’ gives detailed accounts of many public trials and executions of those whom the Roman Catholic Church judged to be ‘heretics’ worthy of death. His descriptions of Christians being burned at the stake tell of their inspiring bravery in the face of such a horrible death and of the determination of Roman Catholicism to exterminate everywhere true Christians who opposed her.

Similar records have come down of the massacres of Jews at the hands of the Roman Church.” – Dave Hunt (“A Cup of Trembling”; 1995; Page 160)

“It is so very hard today to imagine how anyone could watch and inflict systematic tortures [Ed.: as occurred during the so-called “Holy” Inquisition] designed to bring its victims the most severe and agonizing pain, to the very point of death, yet denying death, and then start the process all over again – even on an animal, much less another human being.” – John Daniel (“The Grand Design Exposed”; 1999; Page 13)

Ed.: During the “holy” Inquisition medical doctors were brought in to make sure that the victims did not die while under torture. Medical treatment was often provided to ensure that the victim revived sufficiently so he or she could be put through additional torture (supervised and conducted by the agents of the “Church”). The most horrible atrocities and barbaric acts were committed on human beings “in the name of Christ” by the Roman Catholic Church. What kind of organization uses “torture” on its enemies, and has, at times, even used the threat of torture to keep its own adherents “in line” – i.e., to prevent further defections from the ranks of the “faithful”? And does history repeat itself? Could a “Holy” Inquisition ever take place here in America? Religious genocide took place in Croatia in the 1940s, orchestrated by Roman Catholic clergymen. The result: up to 1 million innocent Serb Orthodox Christians were tortured and murdered by Roman Catholic Ustashi “killer units” led by Franciscan priests, monks, and friars!

“Through relentless torture, starvation, genocide, massacres, burning at the stake, against every conceivable fury of [Ed.: Papal] Rome, they [Ed.: i.e., the ‘seeds of protest’] could not be extinguished. History estimates that over one hundred million people lost their lives during that time of [Ed.: Papal] Roman tyranny. Is it any wonder that God graphically describes this onslaught of [Ed.: Papal] Rome as her being ‘drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus’ [Ed.: Revelation 17:6], and calls her the ‘Beast’?” – John Daniel (“The Grand Design Exposed”; 1999; Page 27)

“The kind of brutal government the papacy ran through the Dark Ages is the kind the devil and the papacy promote in the earth today. A satanic government has these characteristics:

[1.] It is controlled by a few; it is dictatorial.

[2.] It gives no freedom to the people.

[3.] It joins the church and the government together. [Ed.: This occurred throughout Europe during the official 605 years of the “Holy” Inquisition, and occurred as recently as 1941-45 (during World War II) in the Roman Catholic Fascist State of Croatia.]

[4.] It persecutes anyone who does not comply.” – Bill Hughes (“The Secret Terrorists”; 2002; Page 143)

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

Middle Age History Of The Joint Lines, A.D. 1000-1200.

THERE WERE NOT WANTING during the eleventh and twelfth centuries eminent Christian teachers to bear witness to the truth, some of whom appeared publicly as professed confessors for Christ before the several Councils of Orleans, Arms, Toulouse, Oxford and Lombers. With respect to some of these, their Paulikian origin is undoubted, being decisively marked; in regard of all it is very possible. Most probably the Paulikians, migrating from the East, intermingled with similar reputed heretics of native Western growth, the descendants of those who had adopted the views of Claude and others already mentioned. Some distinct notices of them will be interesting, it being remembered that they are wholly derived from the reports of their enemies.

Of those who witnessed before the Council of Orleans in A.D. 1022, the heresy, it is said, originated from a woman of Italy, who exerted such singular influence as to seduce not only simple persons, but even the more learned of the clergy to her opinions. During a temporary sojourn at Orleans she corrupted two canons of high repute, who, in their turn, endeavored with zeal to propagate the new creed. The report of these things having reached the ears of a certain knight of Rouen named Arefaste, he, with the sanction of the king and clergy, went to Orleans, feigned himself a disciple, and was admitted among the community, the better to betray it. The instructions he received from them were based upon the words of God’s own book, the Bible. They taught him, amongst other novelties, that baptism had no sacramental efficacy to wash away sin, — that the word of the priests could not convert the elements into Christ’s body and blood, — that prayers to saints and martyrs were vain, and all attempts to purchase heaven by merit were superfluous. “How then,” asked Arefaste, “can I be saved?” They told him that it was in their power to point him to a way whereby he would be cleansed from every spot of sin, revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures; whereby also he would be spiritually enlightened, have fellowship with God, and never know want again.

Information of these things being given by the false knight, a Council was convened, and the two canons summoned before it. Confronted with Arefaste, they confessed their faith; while ten or twelve other clergy eagerly pressed forward to declare their accordance with them. Neither arguments nor threats of a torturing death could induce recantation. They asserted their confident belief that sooner or later all the world would acknowledge the truth of their doctrine. Their final answer to the Council is full of life and character: — “Ye may say these things to those whose taste is earthly, and who believe the figments of men. But to us, who savor nothing but what we have learned from God, ye speak in vain. Put therefore an end to your words. Do with us even as you wish. Even now we see our King reigning in the heavenly places, who with his right hand is conducting us to immortal triumphs and heavenly joy.” On this, after insults and violence from the people, — and specially from the Queen herself, who was present, and with a stick struck out the eye of one of these martyrs, formerly her own confessor, — they were stripped of their clerical vestments and burnt at the stake. From twelve to fourteen suffered; two only recanted. At the same time the corpse of another canon, who had died three years before in the same heresy, was by the bishop’s order exhumed, and, in token of indignity, cast in the highway.

Before the Council of Arras in A.D. 1025 certain illiterate persons were brought and examined. They stated themselves to be the followers of one Gundulph from Italy, who had instructed them in the precepts of the Gospels and Apostles. When questioned respecting the established religion, they declared themselves opposed to the efficacy of sacraments and penances to atone for sin, to the doctrine of purgatory, and the use of masses for the dead; that they disapproved of the adoration of images, relics, saint-worship, altars, incense, bell-tinkling, and chanting — in short, of the priesthood, doctrine, and discipline of the Romish Church. “Our rule of life,” they said, “is to renounce the world, to restrain the lusts of the flesh, to injure none, to show love to all.” Whatever were their sentiments, these simple people failed of being witnesses for Christ, as, either from ignorance or fear, they signed, it is said, a confession of faith drawn up by the Bishop of Arras, and were dismissed in peace. Others holding similar doctrines were condemned at the Council of Charroux in A.D. 1028, and that of Rheims, A.D. 1049.

It was in A.D. 1045 that the celebrated BERENGER first excited attention by opposing the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation. He was a man of brilliant talent, learned, pious, and eloquent, esteemed by the clergy and venerated by the people. His opinions were condemned by different Councils, and he was deprived of his benefice. Still, however, professing and promulgating his doctrine, he was summoned in A.D. 1055 to another Council at Tours, where the famous Hildebrand attended as Papal Legate, at which he seems to have retracted. The retractation, in terms more or less dubious, was repeated a second and third time in the course of the thirty years following — not from conviction, but under the influence of fear. In every case he reasserted the same doctrine after quitting the Council, employed poor scholars to disseminate it through France, and died in 1088, a penitent and in sorrow — not, as it has been said, on account of his heresy, but on account of his retractations.

From notices in the history of Aquitaine, and in that of Treves, we hear of like doctrines prevalent in A.D. 1101.

In A.D. 1126 PETER DE BRUIS was burnt to death near Toulouse, and “so passed,” says his charitable historian, “from temporal to eternal fire.” The account is given by the Abbot of Clugny. The charges brought against him are much the same as those previously laid against others, viz., the inutility of sacraments without personal faith, and the unscriptural nature of most of the prevailing and established practices of the Church of Rome. After his death his opinions were propagated by one named HENRY, an Italian by birth. With flowing eloquence, and admitted sanctity and benevolence, this man went through Provence and Languedoc preaching everywhere — the WHITFIELD of his age and country. So great was his success, that when the noted Bernard was called in to stem it, he found, to adopt his own words, “the churches without people, the people without priests, the priests without reverence; churches reckoned but as synagogues; the sacraments not held sacred; pilgrimages, invocation of the saints, oblations for the dead, and festival days neglected; infants being unbaptized precluded from salvation, and men unshrived dying in their sins.” Bernard was successful in restoring the Romish faith. Henry was seized and convicted, and soon after died; whether by a natural death or by the flames, is a point disputed.

The year of his death, A.D. 1147, was signalized by the burning of other heretics also at Cologne. The inferior members of the sect had declared that, if their teachers failed to make good their cause, they would return to the Catholic Church. Accordingly two of these teachers maintained their heresy before the assembly from the words of Scripture so successfully, that the greater part continued steadfast. Three days afterwards these faithful confessors were brought to the stake. “And what is most wonderful,” writes Evervinus to St. Bernard, “they entered to the stake and bare the torment of the fire, not only with patience but with joy and gladness. Holy Father, I wish your explanation how these members of the devil could with such courage and constancy persist in their heresy, as is scarcely to be found in the most religious of the faith of Christ.” These witnesses, it is clear, were all a part of the same great family of Paulikian origin, afterwards known as the Cathari. Continuing to abound in the neighborhood of Cologne up to the year 1160, they were persecuted without mercy by those who were unable to reply to their Scriptural arguments, and endured death with a martyr’s constancy.

The account given by William of Newbury of the Publikani condemned by the Council of Oxford, A.D. 1160, is to this effect: “About the same time certain vagrants came into England of the class called Publikani, in number about thirty. They entered the country peaceably; their object however being the propagation of their pestilent heresy. One Gem-rd was looked up to as leader: the others, both men and women, were illiterate rustics, of Teutonic origin. They could not long be hidden. Being foreigners, they were seized and kept in custody. The king, unwilling to punish them without trial, ordered a Council to assemble at Oxford. Being brought before it, they answered rightly indeed concerning the substance of the Heavenly Physician, but perversely concerning the remedies whereby he deigns to heal man’s moral infirmity, i.e., the divine sacraments; expressing detestation of holy baptism, the eucharist, marriage; and wickedly derogating from the Catholic unity to which these divine assistances attach… When urged to retract, do penance, etc., and be united to the Mother Church, they rejected the advice, applying to themselves our Lord’s words, ‘Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, since theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Then, the bishops having pronounced them heretics, they were branded on their foreheads, beaten with rods (their garments being cut down to their girdles), and whipped out of the city. Nevertheless they went with light steps, rejoicing; their teacher at their head singing, ‘Blessed’ shall ye be when men hate you.’ After which, through the inclemency of the weather, they perished wretchedly.”

Another company of Paulikians, denominated Boni Homines, were condemned at the Council of Lombers in A.D. I 165. Their examination and confession but little varied from that of their predecessors; but the general accordance of their doctrines with the evangelical standard of the Scriptures enables us to regard them as a part of this line of faithful witnesses for Jesus, — not abominable heretics.

And now as to the WALDENSES, called by some the Poor Men of Lyons. It has been often stated that they derived their name from Peter Waldo, a Lyonnese merchant, who, about A.D. 1170, having sold all he had and distributed to the poor, became head to certain bands thence called Waldenses. Recent examination however of the earliest and best authorities has proved that the merchant’s appellation was not Peter Waldo, but Peter Valdes; which word Valdes is not a proper name, but a designative of country or religion, precisely corresponding to Valdensis. Whence Peter derived this does not appear. It was possibly from the Pays de Vaud, possibly from some religious sectaries already bearing the title. However this may have been, the fact of Peter having himself become in heart and mind a true Bible Christian is indubitable. And what he had learnt himself he resolved to impart to others. So he became a missionary evangelist. In his ministrations he made the Scriptures the sole ground of his teaching, and effected for his followers a translation into their own language. The numbers thus congregated began to attract notice. Persecution followed so severe that Valdes and his disciples were driven from Lyons. But the consequence was the further dissemination of evangelic truth. Anathematized by the Pope, the reformer labored with such success, that, ere the end of the century the Waldenses or Leonists had formed churches of proselytes in Spain and Italy, and throughout France, Flanders, Germany, and Bohemia: in which last country Peter Valdes himself, about the year 1180, is said to have ended his truly apostolic career. After his death, the Word of God, by the agency of the Waldenses, grew and multiplied. Under different appellations, — as Vaudois in the valleys of Piedmont and Lombardy, — or Albegenses when united to the descendants of the Paulikians near Albi and Toulouse, — or again as Bohemians in the land of Bohemia, — they spread abroad the Gospel. But the sufferings they everywhere endured marked their prophesying as in sackcloth. Yet “neither fire nor sword, nor the most cruel inventions of merciless persecutions, could damp their zeal or entirely ruin their cause.” Along the Rhine the Gospel was accompanied with a powerful effusion of the Holy Spirit, which drew down on this people the vengeance of the enemies of truth. At Bingen thirty-five persons were burned in one fire, and at Mentz eighteen. No less than eighty suffered in like manner at Strasburg. These died praising God, in assurance of a blessed resurrection. In some instances statutes were enacted forbidding under severe penalties the showing any hospitality to a Waldensian. Throughout Europe their doctrines spread and followers multiplied; at one time diffused over Northern Italy, they made Milan their head-quarters; but as the persecution grew fiercer, they drew again towards their Alpine valleys, still constant and faithful to their witness for Christ.

As to the doctrine of the Waldenses, while the inconsistencies of the calumnies brought against them are a sufficient refutation in regard of these, their own’ writings will be the best evidence of their real opinions. Many interesting manuscripts were brought to England by Cromwell’s ambassador in A.D. 1658. Others exist in Geneva. Of these the most remarkable is a poem called ” The Noble Lesson,” which in its commencement gives evidence of its date, that it was written somewhere between A.D. 1150 and 1180:—

It is written in rhythmical verse, like the Provencal romances of the Troubadours, and sets forth with much simplicity and beauty their Scriptural tenets, — the fall of man by Adam’s sin, and redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ; the cooperation of the three _ Persons of the Trinity in man’s salvation; the spirituality and obligation of the moral law; the duties of prayer, watchfulness, self-denial, unworldliness, humility, and love as “the way of Christ;” — enforced moreover by the prospect of death and approaching judgment; by the narrowness of the way of life and the fewness of those that find it; as also by the hope of glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Besides which, it contains a protest against the Romish system, as one of soul-destroying idolatry; — against masses for the dead, purgatory, the confessional, and the asserted power of priestly absolution; — with a half-expressed suspicion that Popery may be one form of Antichrist. This last point is yet more fully treated in another of their writings, A Treatise on Antichrist, in which they charge the Papal system with the guilt of defrauding God of his worship by rendering it to his creatures; of defrauding Christ by attributing justification and forgiveness to other saviours; and of defrauding the Holy Spirit by the invention of sacramental regeneration and sanctification. The origin of this system they trace to the infancy of the Church in apostolic days; but, now increased to full manhood, they regard it as being sustained by the covetousness of the priesthood. Nevertheless they regulated the internal government of their own body by the Scriptural precedent of bishops, presbyters, and deacons: they held needless divisions and schism to be a great evil; and that even separation from Rome was only admissible on the principle that what agreed not with the Word of God was to be rejected and avoided.

To these religious views of this remarkable people we have only to add that their practice was unimpeachable, their enemies themselves being judges. Reinerius, a Dominican and Inquisitor-General, speaks thus of their moral character: “They are sedate and modest. They have no pride in clothes. They avoid falsehood, oaths, and frauds. They do not multiply riches, but are content with what is necessary. They are chaste and temperate. They avoid revelry, restrain anger, abstain from levity, and are always at work, learning or teaching.”

The Bishop of Cavillon at one time commissioned a monk to go amongst the Waldenses in order to convince them of their errors. But the monk returned in confusion, owning that he had never known in his whole life so much of the Scriptures as he had learned in the few days passed amongst these heretics. One of the confessors of Louis XII. was so struck with the holy character of this people, whom he had visited by the king’s order, that he declared, in the hearing of many persons, how he wished he were as good a Christian as the worst inhabitant of that valley. Another writes, “When they sit at table they bless thus, ‘He who blest the barley leaves and fishes to his disciples, bless us.’ And after table, ‘Blessing, and honor, and wisdom, and glory to God for ever;’ always holding their hands and eyes lifted to heaven.”

Nor are they to be thought of as poor ignorant people. Far from setting aside human learning, the choicest of their young men were sent to Paris for instruction, the better to meet their enemies on their own ground in argument, and to propagate more soundly and efficiently the doctrines of God’s Word. As time passed on, God raised up protection for them, by not a few Counts and Barons in Southern France and Lombardy espousing their cause. So was the prophecy fulfilled, “I will give power to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy;” — albeit, owing to the numbers and hostility of their adversaries, they must needs be in sackcloth.

Thus, as in a former lecture, we showed that there was in the Paulikian sect a line of witnesses for Christ’s truth of Eastern origin from the year 653, who testified against the prevailing apostasy; as also that there was a witness-line of Christians in France, Germany, and North Italy of Western origin, who bore their testimony for Christ: moreover, that the oneness of these in spirit was proved by their occasional interminglings, — once as early as the eleventh century, and again more markedly about the end of the twelfth century; at which time, as one body, they obtained the name of Waldenses — so in this lecture we have shown how, united, they continued to bear the marks which Scripture ascribes to the two witnesses, viz., their protestation against the apostasy; their holding the Scriptures as the rule of faith; and their sackcloth clothing, a state of mourning or depression proceeding from their comparative smallness of numbers and their bitter persecution from the Church of Rome.

We may finally mention that a curious illustration of the fact of these Waldenses constituting in part the predicted Apocalyptic witnesses is presented in the circumstance that the heraldic arms of the people, and of their chief town Lucerna (thence also so nominated), was the precise Apocalyptic symbol of a lighted candlestick amid surrounding night, with the motto, “The light shineth in darkness.”

Continued in Revelation 11:7-12. Retrospective View Of The Two Witnesses – Part III

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

Note from the webmaster: This article is an opinion piece from the author of Rulers of Evil, F. Tupper Saussy, who passed away from a heart attack at 70 years old in 2007. It’s for information purposes only. I’m not telling you to not give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. I just find his insights interesting. All emphasis is from the author unless otherwise indicated.

The Apotheosis of Washington is the fresco painted by Greek-Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

(From part of the fresco.) A grant from the trickster Mercury, “the Trickster,” Roman god of commerce and evildoers, hands a bag of gold to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, highest government official under the Articles of Confederation. This remarkable transaction was painted into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda by Vatican artist Constantino Brumidi in 1866. It lucidly visualizes the well-known Golden Rule of political economies, “He who holds the gold . . .rules.” Rulers of Evil demonstrates how Brumidi actually depicted historic truth about Roman influence over the formation of United States government.

Many Americans are legally forced, beyond their desire or ability, to work for powerful foreign operators.

Consider the American farmer whose crop prices in his own country are permitted by Congress to be undercut by imported grain that must be sold here to keep a foreign bank’s debtor from defaulting.

Or the American taxpayer whose home is seized by the IRS, its value going to compensate the International Monetary Fund for some middle-eastern loan that went bad.

Could it be that the coercion of American citizens into an international economic agenda is the logical outworking of a religious manifesto?

The problem

A manifesto known as “Vatican II” — the Roman Catholic “Constitution On The Church” propounded by the Second Vatican Council in 1964 — summons Roman Catholics who hold office in secular government to “vigorously contribute their effort so that the goods of this world may be more equitably distributed among all men.”

Many Americans who know little and care less about Roman Catholicism elect to important public offices men and women subject to Vatican II. In so doing they place their fortunes at the disposal of Vatican internationalism.

The truth is, American secular authority clings to a Catholic infrastructure which the celebrity newscasters give us only occasional glimpses of.

We caught a fleeting glance eight years ago in Carl Bernstein’s remarkable Time Magazine article on how the President of the United States “conspired” — Bernstein’s word, not mine— with Pope John Paul II to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union. (Two weeks later, Time published the shocked response of a University of Massachusetts sociology professor:

Bernstein noted that the leading American players behind the secret Reagan/Holiness conspiracy were all “devout Roman Catholics”— namely CIA Director William Casey, National Security Advisors Richard Allen and Judge William Clark, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters, and Ambassador to the Vatican State William Wilson.

But he failed to mention that the entire Senate Foreign Relations committee was governed by Roman Catholics as well — specifically, Senators John Kerry (Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications), Daniel P. Moynihan (Near Easter and South Asian Affairs), Paul Sarbanes (International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans & Environment), and Christopher Dodd (Western Hemisphere and Peace Corps Affairs); not to mention that American domestic policy was under the leadership of Roman Catholics George Mitchell (Senate Majority Leader) and Tom Foley (Speaker of the House of Representatives)

Indeed, when Bernstein’s story hit the stands, there was virtually no arena of federal legislative activity that was not directly controlled by a Roman Catholic senator or representative.

Each and every one of these legislators was a Roman Catholic layperson subject to Vatican II’s instructions to use his or her secular offices to advance the cause of Roman Catholicism. Vatican II calls upon Catholic politicians, “whoever they are…to expend all their energy for the growth of the Church and its continuous sanctification” so as “to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them can it become the salt of the earth” (IV, 33).

Catholic politicians having secular monetary and taxing authority (“by their competence in secular disciplines and by their activity”) are called upon to redistribute worldly goods according to the Church’s design — “[to] vigorously contribute their effort so that…the goods of this world may be more equitably distributed among all men, and may in their own way be conducive to universal progress in human and Christian freedom” (IV, 36).

Nothing in American law forbids this from happening. The “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects a religious establishment’s right to encourage its believers not only to ensconce themselves in secular government, but also to use any legitimate means to subject otherwise uncooperative fellow-citizens to its agenda of internationalizing private American wealth.

When legislators, executives, and judges seem to put the welfare of other nations ahead of their own, it may not be treason they are committing. They may well be freely exercising the Roman Catholic religion of Vatican II.

The remedy

But what of those millions of Americans who do not believe they are looking to Roman Catholicism for their moral guidance? Is there some legal or theological premise that requires non-Catholics to part with large portions of their income annually in order to underwrite Vatican II’s international agenda?

I can’t speak for all moral disciplines, but I know that the Bible urges the followers of Christ not to pay self-assessed taxes. When Jesus and Peter arrived at Capernaum, the customs agents asked Peter “Doth not your master pay tribute?” To which Peter replied, “Yes.” Although the New International Version distorts the context of Matthew 17:24-27 to Rome’s advantage by rendering Peter’s crucial reply as “Yes, He does,” the fact remains that Peter was affirming a negative. “Yes, He doth not” is the grammatically correct inference. Jesus was not a taxpayer.

Tribute, in law, is a sum paid to a superior potentate to secure his friendship or protection. Since the potentate for whom the Capernaum agents were soliciting— Tiberias Caesar— was not superior to Jesus, our Lord took Peter aside and lectured him briefly on why the children of God are not required to pay tribute.

Having excluded himself and Peter from taxation, Jesus then defined the law of tribute: “However, lest we offend them,…give unto them.” If excluding ourselves offends the potentate, we give to him. And if the potentate is not offended by our exclusion, we are free to dedicate our resources to the family of God.

The American potentate, which the facts identify as Roman to the core (emphasis mine), demands tribute through uniform excise taxes on a wide range of objects — petroleum, chemicals, alcohol, hazardous waste, insurance, tires, etc. We secure its friendship and protection by paying these taxes without flinching.

But the potentate makes no such demand on income earned by United States citizens from sources derived within the nation’s borders. It is as though Internal Revenue law was written by biblical scholars impeccably well-versed in Matthew 17! For the law denies the potentate the right to be offended by the exclusion of the children of God from income taxation. Indeed, just as Jesus declared, “the children are free.”

However, many U.S. citizens, among whom are huge numbers of nominal Christians, have empowered the potentate to demand tribute. They have done this by making themselves liable for taxation on domestically-sourced income by that process the IRS calls “voluntary self-assessment.”

Since the assessment does not arise from the potentate but from the citizenry, the potentate rightly takes offense when a citizen attempts to renege on his self-assessment.

There is important Christian scripture on self-assessed tribute, the ignorance of which I believe has robbed American Christianity (as opposed to the Body of Christ) of the power of God.

The precept, given at II Kings 20:12-18, is that if sanctified resources are voluntarily disclosed to a potentate, God authorizes the potentate to capture those resources and dispose of them at its pleasure.

Until those who profess Christianity begin examining and exercising the U.S. citizen’s miraculous exclusion from income taxation, America will continue suffering under the divine curse that attends voluntary self-assessment.

American Christianity will continue, as Paul put it, “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof…”

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

Early History Of The Eastern And Western Lines. A.D. 600-1000

WE NOW COMMENCE an account given by the Covenant Angel of certain witnesses, who throughout the long-continued apostasy would have kept up a testimony for him and his truth. The review is brought before the Evangelist just after his receiving the reed for the measurement of the mystic temple. And on looking to history, we find that it was precisely at the period following the actual reconstitution of the Church (so symbolized) that the attention of the Reformers was directed retrospectively to the investigation of the same subject. Many learned researches began then to appear, unfolding the history of the martyrs of the past dark ages, — how they had maintained the truth with fidelity and boldness, and sealed their testimony with their blood. So chronologically accurate is the agreement of the facts with this wonderful prophecy.

In the Angel’s description of the two witnesses we may remark —

First, Both the term designating them and the actions ascribed to them, imply that they are persons, and not merely things inanimate. There can be no reasonable doubt that living confessors were intended.

Secondly, The speaking of them by the Angel as “My witnesses” points out that the Lord Jesus himself was the subject of their witnessing — his glory, his grace, his salvation; even as it is said of the faithful seed in the end of the 12th chapter, “Which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.”

Thirdly, They are described as “the two olive-trees, and the two candlesticks, or lamp sconces, that stand before the Lord of the whole earth.”

The candlesticks are explained by Christ himself to symbolize Christian Churches, i.e., communities, large or small, whether as nations or families, which unite together in true Christian profession and worship. In the present instance the description indicates paucity of number and depression.

The olive-trees are the emblems of all faithful ministers and preachers who supply the needful spiritual nourishment to the Churches, inasmuch as from the olive was derived the oil that supplied the temple lamps. To this effect is the explanation given of the emblem in the Prophet Zechariah. (Zech. 4:11-14) From the union of lamps and olive-trees in this vision we may infer that both preachers and Churches were alike included in the Apocalyptic witnesses.

Fourthly, The number, two, would seem to indicate, in accordance with the requirement of the Mosaic law of testimony, that while their witness would be sufficient to bear evidence to the truth, their number would be the smallest that was admissible for such evidence. As in other parts of the Apocalypse the representative system is followed; not two individuals, but two separate lines of witnesses being intended.

Fifthly, “They shall prophesy clothed in Sackcloth,” i.e., in suffering and tribulation; sackcloth being with the Jews the universal emblem of mourning. We may well suppose that their righteous souls would be vexed with the prevalent apostasy and irreligion around them: besides which, the cruel persecution they would suffer from the enemies of Christ’s truth might properly give occasion for a garb of woe.

Sixthly, We may observe also the averaging power given them against their enemies. Like the supernatural power that attached to God’s eminent prophets of old, — as to Moses and Aaron, who turned the Nile waters into blood; and to Elijah, who commanded fire from above, and who stayed the clouds of. heaven that they gave no rain for three years and a half, — so these figures apply to the spiritual, and perhaps national judgments, which should, sooner or latter, follow upon the rejection and persecution of Christ’s witnesses.

Seventhly and lastly, The commencing time of their 1260 days-testifying in sackcloth, coinciding as these evidently do with the forty-two months of the apostasy and treading under foot of the Holy City, must be dated from the rise or establishment of that dominant system of error, viz., about the close of the sixth or the opening of the seventh century. Which having premised, we turn from the figures of the vision to the facts or real history. And first of the historical notices of —

I. The Earlier Western Witnesses.

A.D. 600. — At or about this date we properly begin our search for the true apostolical succession of “faithful men,” who should continue Christ’s witnesses throughout the dark-fated period of 1260 years. Sufficient, though detached, evidence remains to prove that the doctrines of God’s free grace which AUGUSTINE had advocated, and the firm protests which VIGILANTIUS had maintained against the encroachments of error, exercised a powerful influence in favor of truth in Western Christendom. After the failure of the Gothic scourge to induce repentance or amendment, it needed to unite, in a measure, the doctrine and the spirit of these two eminent men of God to give a character to the testimony of after-years; — the clear Spiritual discernment of Scriptural truth which Augustine so richly experienced and exemplified, and the godly jealousy of evil which induced Vigilantius to denounce the fast-multiplying abuses of the Roman apostasy. The principles of the former had taken deep root in the south of Gaul: the Gallic Churches of Languedoc (probably extending eastward to Dauphiny and the Cottian Alps beyond, so famous afterwards as the seat of the Waldenses), were the sphere of the latter’s bold protestation.

Nor were there wanting men of high position in the Church to uphold their tenets. About a century after Augustine we find CAESARIUS, Bishop of Arles, in Dauphiny, uniting with twelve other bishops in laying down, on the ground of inspired Scripture, as the healing doctrine for man’s soul, the truth as held by Augustine. His Christian excellence did not exempt him from trial and persecution. At one time he was calumniated as a traitor, and imprisoned; at another he was suspended from his bishopric; in either case his innocence was soon acknowledged. He spoke of the world as a wilderness, and thirsted for a draught from the water of life.

Nor should we omit the similar cotemporary witness of FULGENTIUS, and many other African bishops and ministers. On occasion of the Arian persecution by the Vandal Hunneric, from their exile in Sardinia they wrote a letter of joy, they said, and sorrow. Joy, because those they addressed held fast the true view of God’s grace in Christ; sorrow, because others exalted against it man’s free will. They concluded with urging the study of Augustine, and asserting his doctrine, — that God gives his elect grace and perseverance, so that in the way of grace they receive eternal life. We do not hold up all the views of these men as perfect, but in these essential doctrines they maintained a witness for Christ amid prevailing darkness.

Proceeding with the seventh century, at the outset we meet SERENUS, Bishop of Marseilles, protesting against image-worship, and ordering the destruction of the images set up in the churches of his diocese. From this time we find this species of worship becOming the popular error of the apostasy; as if Satan had discovered how the presenting distinct human forms to the eye of the worshipper would serve better than relics to gratify the imagination, to turn the thoughts from the disembodied and the spiritual, and to chain the affections to earth. Images likewise gave to the priesthood the opportunity of playing off their juggleries on credulous devotees, even as did Pagan priests before.

As by Serenus in Southern France, so by the ancient Church in Britain was a long protest kept up against this particular innovation. After that the Anglo-Saxons had received the form of Christianity reintroduced from Rome, the Britons refused either to eat or drink with or salute them; “because they corrupted with superstition, images, and idolatry the true religion of Christ.”

A.D. 650. — We have certain obscure but interesting notices of heretics (?) from beyond the seas, convicted of that crime by the bishops near Orleans, although with difficulty, and finally expelled. The progress of opinions opposed to the image-worship of Rome had made such progress about Chantilly, near Paris, some time after, that a Council was there convened expressly to discuss the subject.

A.D. 794. — In this year was held the great Council of FRANKFORT, under Charlemagne, when, in opposition to the Popes, no less than three hundred bishops joined with the Emperor in protest against image-worship. Nor was this all. By the Council’s reception amongst its members of Alcuin, preceptor of the Emperor, and its eulogium upon him contained in its canons, it identified itself with his published opinions; in which there was set forth, says Bishop Newton, “doctrine respecting the sufficiency of the Scriptures, the worship of God alone, prayers in the vulgar tongue, the Eucharist, justification and repentance, pretended visions and miracles, and other like points, such as a Papist would abhor and a Protestant would subscribe;”adding that in his writings, and in those of Louis the Pious, there was enjoined the reading of the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, without regard to human and apocryphal traditions, and the forbidding of private masses and other similar superstitions. With these sentiments, therefore, we may consider the bishops of Western Christendom to have admitted their agreement at this Council of Frankfort. One of these, Paulinus of Aquileia, had previously set forth the true doctrines of Christ, after the model of Augustine; and several others are also named, all of whom, seeing that the errors they opposed were upheld by the power and influence of Rome, must have exposed themselves to persecution. The witnesses must needs have prophesied in sackcloth.

A.D. 810 — 841. — The testimony of AGOBARD, Archbishop of Lyons, is worthy of record among the witnesses of Jesus. His protestation against image-worship was but a small part of his evangelic Protestant doctrine. An able treatise against the invocation of saints, in which he supports the dogma that “there is no other mediator to be sought for but he that is the God-man,” has long received the distinction of a place in the Roman Index Expurgatorius. In one treatise, “Against Antichrist and the Merit of Works,” he combats error with the zeal and force of Calvin. Of another, “On the Truth of the Christian Faith,” it has been well remarked: — “It has CHRIST for its subject.” His general uprightness, abundantly evidenced, could not save him from the consequences of his faithful reprovings of the growing apostasy. He experienced, as he himself declared, the truth of Scripture, that ” all that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution.”

A.D. 817 — 839. — But the most conspicuous of the witnesses of that age was CLAUDE, Bishop of Turin, called by way of eminence the Protestant of the ninth century. Charged by his enemies with the accustomed crime of heresy, he has left writings sufficient not only to refute the charge, but to prove him a true, fearless, enlightened, and spiritual witness for Christ’s truth and honor against the superstition and the wickedness of his times. “It is no marvel,” writes he, in the bold style of Luther long after, “that Satan’s members should say these things of me, since they proclaimed our very Head himself to be a seducer and a demoniac. I, who hold the unity, and who preach the truth, am teaching no new sect… Sects and schisms, superstitions and heresies, through God’s help, I will never cease to oppose… But when, finding all the churches at Turin stuffed full of vile and accursed images, I alone began to destroy what all were sottishly worshiping, therefore it was that all opened their mouths to revile me. And, truly, had not the Lord helped me, they would have swallowed me up quick.” But while he declaimed against all the leading errors of Romanism, the written Word was, with him, the one standard of truth. The least departure from a simple and spiritual interpretation of it was the essence of heresy in his sight. On that Word he wrote several commentaries. From that Word he loved, and labored beyond all things, to set forth Christ, and divine grace through him, as the all in all in man’s salvation. He constantly represented Christ as very God, and as the one Head of the Church. The great doctrine of justification he taught with clearness, fulness, and unreserve. At the same time he enjoined the duty of practical godliness. “Christ Jesus did not command us to worship the cross, but to bear it — to bear it by renouncing the world and ourselves.” Nor has his own personal holiness ever been questioned. Opposed as Claude was by bitter and powerful foes, which marked his prophesying as in sackcloth, he yet escaped the extremity of death, which in a later age, and in a country more exposed than Turin was to the tyranny of Rome, had been the unfailing attendant upon the faithful martyr. Perhaps too, under God, the protection of the French court saved him from violence. Whatever it was, he died in peace. But the effect of his labors and the influence of his ministry were felt, as said his opponents, through Italy, Germany, and France, and survived, we have reason to believe, centuries after in the Waldensian Churches of Piedmont.

A.D. 846. — It was in or about this year that GOTTESCHALCUS left his monastery at Orbais with the object of preaching the Gospel. Born in Germany, he had been from early life a monk, and had devoted himself to theological studies. The writings of Augustine deeply interested him, and under the teaching of the Holy Spirit he cordially embraced the doctrines of grace. On his return from a missionary expedition in Pannonia, he seems to have given free expression to his sentiments before certain ecclesiastics, who unfortunately possessed the power to persecute what they had not the wisdom or the grace to value or understand. Willfully or in ignorance, they charged Gotteschalcus with opinions which he never held, and these obtained his condemnation. Sent back to the North of France to answer before his own bishops to the heresies which were laid against him, he was again condemned, degraded, beaten with rods, and imprisoned. Here this faithful witness of his Lord endured further tortures and trials, and lingered for twenty years, constant amid his sufferings to the truths he maintained. In vain his persecutor, Hincmar, urged him to retract when at the point of death; the cruel Archbishop’s only satisfaction was in denying the martyr Christian burial. It is of this period that the historian Milner writes, — “The spirit of Christianity was much decayed, but there were doubtless a number of persons to whom Christ and his grace was precious, and the influence of evangelical truth was still so strong, that all the cruelty, activity, and artifice of one of the most subtle politicians of that age — for such was Hincmar — were not able to extirpate it.”

A.D. 855. — While Gotteschalcus lay in his prison there were many who remonstrated loudly against the barbarity with which he was treated. His doctrine gained him followers. Many distinguished ecclesiastics espoused his cause, among others REMIGIUS, Archbishop of Lyons, who with his whole church vindicated his opinions. The controversies to which this gave rise led to the assembling of the COUNCIL OF VALENCE in Dauphiny in this year, where and when the Augustinian doctrines of gram and election were solemnly reasserted and approved. And the subsequent Councils of Langres and Toul seem to have confirmed the same, and to have supported the cause of the persecuted Gotteschalcus.

A.D. 909. — It is worth remarking that at the Council of Trosly, near Soissons, in the year specified, a confession of faith was set forth which included none of those superstitions which constitute the essence of Popish doctrine.

A.D. 945. — About this time also there is mention made of certain heretical (?) teachers, popularly known by the name of prophets, who, as Atto, Bishop of Vercelli, near Turin, complained, “Taught diabolical error, inducing men to forsake their priests and their Holy Mother, the Church.” In the estimate of divine truth how very different was probably the judgment concerning these maligned persons, witnesses, it may have been, faithfully dispensing to the multitudes in heathen darkness the light of that Gospel which had made its way to their own hearts; possibly the followers of Claude of Turin, scattered in the rural districts of Piedmont and Lombardy.

A.D. 1030. — Such likewise we may with yet more probability consider to have been the sect which we read of as discovered a century later at Turin; of which it is said that they received the Holy Scriptures alone as the rule of doctrine, rejected the formal observances and rites of the Romish Church, followed a strict rule of life, and suffered even unto death in witness to their faith. Nor must we overlook such men of discernment as ARNULPHUS of Orleans, president of the Council of Rheims, who feared not to affirm that the Roman Pope, when elated with pride on his throne of state, was Antichrist sitting in the temple of God. Of these in most cases their Romish enemies have been the only historians; and careful are they to set down the sore punishments inflicted upon the heretics. But what were these but the cruel persecutions which marked how truly and constantly the witnesses prophesied in sackcloth?

Having thus brought down our notice of the early Western witnesses to the close of the tenth century — a period which has been sometimes styled the ultimate point of Christian depression — we shall return to take a view of that separate line of confessors for evangelic truth, who, during the same time, had kept up a testimony for Christ and God’s Word in the East, and who, about the eleventh century, appear to have migrated and intermingled with their brother witnesses in the West.

II. The Earlier Eastern Witnesses.

It was in the year 653, soon after the Saracenic conquest of Syria, that an Armenian named CONSTANTINE of Samosata received from a deacon to whom he had showed hospitality the present of two volumes, then very rare, the one containing the four Gospels, the other the Epistles of St. Paul. The perusal wrought in. total change in his principles and course of life. Separating from the Manichean heresy, to which, as some say, he was attached, as well as from the now apostate Greek Church, he applied himself to form a distinct Church of such as, like himself, might be willing to found their faith and practice on the simple rule of those sacred books. In his indefatigable missionary labors he likened himself to a disciple of St. Paul. Hence the name, which his disciples thenceforth assumed, of PAULIKIANS. It was a noble purpose: we can readily conceive how it must have exposed him to persecution. But the bitterest trial was to have his sincerity impeached, to be deemed a hypocrite, and to have it asserted that his secret object was to propagate the more easily his former heretical principles. Nevertheless, his enemies admit that while he burnt his old books he made it a law to his followers that they should read no other than the New Testament Scriptures; and, moreover, that these were preserved amongst them perfect and unadulterated.

For thirty years Constantine continued his ministrations. Then at length the increase of the sect attracted notice. An edict was issued against him and his followers, the execution of which was entrusted to an officer by name Simeon. Constantine was stoned to death, an apostate from his Church giving the mortal blow. He prophesied in sackcloth. But observe the providence of God! As from the stoning of the first martyr, Stephen, so now from that of Constantine a new witness arose to fill his place. SIMEON returned to his home deeply impressed with the evidences of divine grace in the sufferer; and, after three years of retirement, presented himself as a new head to the Paulikians, under the name of Titus. After some time, during which he ceased not diligently to teach, the cry of heresy was again raised; and, not far from a heap of stones which marked the spot where his predecessor suffered, Simeon and his disciples, refusing to renounce their opinions, were burnt alive!

Again, as from the ashes of those martyrs, the heresy, as it was called, revived. One PAUL, who with his two sons contrived to escape, and after him other teachers, perpetuated the sect through the eighth century, during which it is worthy of remark these Paulikians originated the great movement against image-worship, which soon became general. At the close of this century a teacher appeared more eminent than any before, named SERGIUS. His conversion from the established, but now apostate religion, is attributed to the pointed appeal and arguments of a woman, who, accosting him while yet a young man, inquired of him why he read not the sacred Gospels, and boldly charged upon the priests the willful perversion of Scripture and the putting themselves in the place of the Saviour. “In this way, running through sundry passages of the Gospel,” says the historian Petrus Siculus, his bitter enemy, “she gave a perverted sense, and so corrupted his mind as to render him in a little time an apt instrument of the devil.” The same writer says of him: — “His worst point was his semblance of virtue, — the wolf disguised as a sheep, a tare like wheat.”

For thirty-four years did Sergius, by the name of Tychicus, expound and propagate the doctrines of truth. So laborious were his missionary exertions that in one of his letters, written in later life, he thus expressed himself: — “From east to west and from north to south I have run preaching the Gospel of Christ, laboring upon my knees.” This expression his enemy adduces as a proof of his boasting; at the same time that he bears this testimony, that the object of Sergius was to deliver his countrymen from what he considered their fatal error, and that success attended his laboriousness in that the sect multiplied greatly.

A severe persecution now began against these Christians by the imperial command and instigated by the patriarch. Retiring into Cappadocia, the Paulikians, now grown numerous, resisted. In this they derived protection from the Saracens, who, be it remembered, were designed to be a scourge only to those who “had not the seal of God upon their foreheads.” (Rev. 9:4) Sergius earnestly dissuaded his followers from resistance; but he was himself accidentally killed by the axe of a woOdcutter — ” a just punishment,” observed the bigoted Petrus, “for one who led divided the Church of Christ, besides the greater punishment of being sent into unquenchable fire.” This happened in A.D. 830.

The trials which the Paulikians endured from the death of Constantine have been acknowledged by Milner in his History of the Church: — “For an hundred years these servants of Christ underwent the horrors of persecution with Christian patience and meekness; and if the acts of their martyrdom, their preaching, and their lives were distinctly recorded, there seems no doubt but this people would appear to have resembled those whom the Church justly reveres as having suffered in the behalf of Christ during the three first centuries. During all this time the power of the Spirit of God was with them; and they practiced the precepts, as well as believed the precious truths, contained in the doctrines of St. Paul.”

Again, a persecution yet severer visited this people after Sergius’s death. By direction of the Empress Theodora, the great patroness of image-worship, Asia Minor was ransacked in search of them; and she is computed to have killed by the gibbet, by fire, and by sword, 100,000 persons. Then, at length, their faith and patience failed. They fortified themselves on Mount Tephrice in Armenia, and maintained a war of various success, until at length reduced by Basil I. And is it to be wondered at if they sometimes retaliated the cruelties of their injurers? Multiplied, as they had now become, into a powerful community, there were doubtless very many among them who had lost the spirit of true religion. They only can be properly set down as Christ’s witnesses who still acted, like Sergius, in the true evangelic spirit.

The subsequent history of the Paulikians is European. From time to time they had detached colonies with missionary objects to Thrace, where “they still corrupted many with their heresy.” At length the rest, about A.D. 970, were removed by the Emperor Zimisces across the Bosphorus, and the city and district of Philippopolis was given to them in possession. There they are described as residing in the twelfth century, when attempts were vainly made to reconvert them to the apostate Church. There in A.D. 1204 the Crusaders found them, under the name of Popolicani. There, about the valleys of Mount Haemus, a part of them existed even to the end of the seventeenth century; but others of them, migrating to the West, had already, at the commencement of the eleventh century, under the appellation of Publicani, begun to excite the attention and to draw on themselves the persecutions of Western Europe. Of these persecutions, says Gibbon, “the flames which consumed twelve canons at Orleans (A.D. 1022) was the first act and signal.”

Thus have we brought down this sketch of the two lines — of the Western and the Eastern witnesses — to the same epoch. We shall now have to trace, in the records of these lines conjoined and intermixed, the further history of Christ’s two witnesses — still prophesying in sackcloth.

Continued in Revelation 11:3-6. Retrospective View Of The Two Witnesses – Part II

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

She is arguably the most observed, the most seen, artifact in the world. Her statue is broadcast in millions of media impressions every day.

Rich in legal importance, she defines the relationship between American government and anyone in the world contracted to it.

She is officially classified as “the only authorized Symbol of American heritage.” Yet of the millions who see the Mystery Woman on a daily basis, very few have ever really seen her.

Yes, the Mystery Woman stands atop the U.S. Capitol dome.

The act of standing upon property is an aggressive legal demonstration. Standing upon a thing is an ultimate proof of ownership in adverse possession.

Could it be that the Capitol’s mystery woman literally… owns the entire facility she crowns? Could the United States Congress belong to her?

Officials named her Freedom because her classical identity, Persephone, was meaningless to most Americans.

Persephone was a Graeco-Roman goddess abducted by Saturn’s son Hades, who enthroned her as queen-consort of his dominion, the underworld. She rules over the earth’s interior, particularly the metals and minerals.

America’s Freedom is the Goddess of Petroleum, a fact one should bear in mind when examining her government’s military presence in the Middle East.

How on earth did Saturn’s daughter-in-law acquire the supreme place of honor over Washington? Who put her there? When? Why? Under what circumstances? What is the theological history of this “only authorized Symbol of American heritage”? What is her future?

Answers to these and many more questions about America’s extraordinarily mysterious origins will be found in Rulers of Evil.

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

Reformation Of The Ministry And Of The Church.

IN THIS PASSAGE we have prefigured to us the two next great steps of advance in the Reformation: — first, the re-commissioning by Christ of faithful spiritually-prepared ministers to preach his Gospel in various countries and languages; next, the authorized constitution of evangelical and reformed Churches, to the exclusion of the apostate Church of Rome.

[I] The first is contained in the charge to St. John, in his representative character, “to take and eat the little book” which the Angel delivered to him, and so to go forth as the Lord’s ambassador and preacher to all people. The word “prophesy,” too frequently understood only in its restricted meaning of predicting future events, has properly a far more extended signification. Both in Hebrew and in Greek the term implies to tell forth, announce, speak as an ambassador. Thus it includes the making known God’s mind and will, the explanation of his mysteries, the pleading his cause, and, in this, the exhorting, instructing, reproving, warning, and expostulating with a rebellious people. In the New Testament the same meaning is attached to it; and it is specially applied by St. Paul to the expounding the written Scriptures and exhorting from them. (1 Cor. 14:3) That this general signification of preaching the Gospel is that which is here intended is clear from the symbolic act connected with it, — the taking up and digesting the little book as the subject-matter of that preaching: just as in the parallel instruction given by the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel; (Ezek. 2:3-8) as also in the case of Jeremiah. (Jer. 15:16) The “little book” in the present instance was the doctrine committed by Jesus to his disciples, — the New Testament, which they were to “preach to every creature;”and which injunction, both as to reading and expounding amongst heathen and Christian congregations, continued to be observed for three centuries as the constant part of Christian Sunday-worship, until, in progress of time, the professed Church could no longer “endure sound doctrine,” and, as they departed from the faith, discontinued the practice.

At the end of some four hundred years, Christianity, as we know, became nominally the religion of Christendom. Two centuries later the Goths, who had invaded as heathen or Arians, settled down into orthodox Christianity. Thus the world was in outward profession identified with the Church. And what then followed? By degrees the Scripture lessons were abridged; legends of saints were introduced in the place of the Bible; the Psalms, the chief Scripture lessons remaining, were chanted by the priests, instead of being read to the people; and, as language changed, owing to the inter-mixture of the Goths with the Romans, the services, being in Latin, were no longer understood. Preaching too became rare. For though to certain of the deacons and presbyters in the cities permission to that effect was given, yet was it considered that the obligation appertained only to the bishop; consequently the great mass of the rural population was left in ignorance. Homilies from the early Fathers, translated by the bishop or other more learned person, were for a while enjoined to be used instead of sermons; but even these were after a while neglected. Besides which, a restriction was imposed on the free preaching of the Gospel, no presbyter being allowed to preach unless expressly authorized by the bishop; and further, even bishops being required by the canons to avoid breaching any Opinion diverse from what was received as orthodox or from “the divine tradition of the Fathers.” In the ministration of sacraments and ordinances the essential duties of the priesthood were considered to terminate. The invention of transubstantiation but increased the evil, and confirmed the clergy more than ever in their neglect of the work of the evangelist. What need to preach the Gospel of salvation when at any time the priest could offer up Christ anew as a real and sufficient atonement for sin?

And so darker and darker these Middle Ages grew on. Here and there we read of some attempts to revive preaching — as in England by King Alfred, and by Archbishops Egbert, Elfric, and Peckham. About one hundred years after the latter came Wickliffe. Regarding this neglect as the “foulest treason” to Christ, he not only himself set the example of preaching, but he translated the Bible into English, and sent forth poor priests for missionary work. As Wickliffe in England, so Huss in Bohemia. But both Hussite and Wickliffite preachers were soon excommunicated as heretics, and nearly suppressed by the terrors of the sword. And so this most important part of the Christian minister’s duty — the addressing the hearts and consciences of the people from the Word of life, the setting forth God’s grace and love through a dying, risen, and interceding Saviour, — was again neglected, and all but unknown, until the close of the fifteenth century, and until Luther began the Reformation. At this very period the word went forth, as from the Angel to St. John, “Thou must prophesy again,” etc.

It is true that at Luther’s ordination as deacon an old and primitive custom had been followed. The book of the Gospels being placed in his hand by the bishop, he was charged thus: “Take authority to read the Gospel in the Church of God;” and words were added respecting his not only “assisting the priests in ministrations at the altar,” but also of “declaring the Gospel and other Scriptures of the New Testament, and of preaching the Word of God.” Although afterwards, when ordained a priest, the paten and the chalice were given to him, and he was empowered to sacrifice (i.e., in private masses and the sacramental rite) for the living and the dead — a higher function too generally thought to supersede the previous charge — yet did he deeply feel his Scriptural obligation to preach. What to him that the common practice was for the deacon to read a few words in an unknown tongue? Had his priestly office annulled his deacon’s vows? He felt not as others felt. Taught by the Spirit of God, he looked through the appointment by man to Him in whose name he was ordained; and from his earliest call, and with but partial enlightenment from above, he recognized the duty, and gave himself to do the work, of an Evangelist, as one appointed even by the Lord Jesus himself. The Vicar-general’s order encouraged and confirmed him in his plan; and so the Church of Wittenberg, as before observed, heard the strange sound of a revived Gospel preaching.

Luther not only preached, but be circulated evangelic writings and taught by personal communications. As the Vicar-general’s substitute he held a visitation of the Augustinian convents in electoral Saxony, and in this way was unconsciously preparing others of the monks and clergy to become preachers in the Church soon to be established. No sooner did he discover the Antichristian tendency of the restrictions relative to preaching, which we have noticed, than he set them aside. In his final letter to the Pope he declares, “There must be no fettering of Scripture by rules of interpretation. The Word of God must be left free.” And both he and his brother Reformers acted on the feeling.

When Luther had proclaimed the Papal oracle to be the voice of Antichrist, and persisted at Worms before the Emperor in rejecting it, the severest condemnatory decrees were issued against him and his fellow-laborers. By these they were excommunicated from the Church and degraded from their ministry in it; and, on pain of confiscation of their goods, imprisonment, and even death, they were interdicted from preaching the Gospel. Luther was outlawed; and his friend, the Elector of Saxony, to save his life hid him in a lonesome castle in the forest of Wartburg.

In this remote solitude, called by himself his “Patmos,” he had time to reflect, and to devise what could be done for the cause and Church of Christ. Would he now bow to the storm and abandon the work? Let us but follow out the Apocalyptic figure. “The voice said, Go, take the little book out of the Angel’s hand.” Luther’s chief occupation in his year of exile was the translation of the New Testament into German. He felt this was what was wanting in order to diffuse the light of truth among ministers and people, and for the overthrow of Papal superstition.

It was a work in which he delighted, and he expressed annoyance whenever controversial writing obliged a temporary interruption. He might be said to taste its sweetness, however bitter to him personally might be the immediate consequence of preaching it. It was now with him as with St. John, when having “ate the little book,” he found it “in his mouth sweet as honey.”

“Thou must prophesy again.” Full well did Luther feel that the Gospel was still instrumentally the power of God unto salvation; that to its long neglect was owing the establishment of the great apostasy; that by the renewed preaching of it (“prophesy again”) that apostate power was to be broken; and that on them who had been spiritually enlightened with divine truth devolved the obligation of accomplishing a Reformation. Could the Pope annul his ministerial orders or alter the obligation consequent upon them? Could Antichrist cancel what Christ had communicated? Tracing upwards, Luther felt it was from Christ his commission had come, and that its revocation by the Pope was impossible. Nor could his deference to “the powers that were” move him on this point, so that the Emperor’s interdict was ineffectual. Confined in his Patmos, regardless of royal and papal orders against preaching, he wrote urging Melanchthon and his coadjutors to go forward, and to continue to exercise their powers in evangelic preaching. It was the repetition of the angel’s command, “Thou must prophesy again.”

No sooner was the translation of the New Testament finished, than he himself felt he could no longer remain silent. A crisis had arrived which seemed to call for his assistance. Persecution had begun against his fellowlaborers in Germany; besides which, a sect called Anabaptists had arisen, styling themselves Christians, but in truth bringing discredit on the name they professed. Melanchthon urged his return, with a view to heading the little body of Reformers in the fulfillment of their ministerial, it might be said their apostolic, commission. At the risk of his proscribed life, as if impelled by a ‘voice’ from above, he returned to Wittenberg. In excuse he wrote to his patron, the Elector, “The Divine will is plain, and leaves me no choice: the Gospel is oppressed and begins to labor.” Again, “It is not from men I have received my commission, but from the Lord Jesus Christ. Henceforth I wish to reckon myself his servant and to take the title of Evangelist.”

In pursuing the history, we find how successful was the aid which Luther gave on his return, and how God opened the door for the spread of the Gospel, whether by means of the translated Word or by his preaching. It was in A.D. 1522 that Luther arrived in Wittenberg; and within the two or three next years the message of salvation was heard by princes and people, not in Germany only, but in Sweden, Denmark, Pomerania, Livonia; in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy also, though with less general acceptance, and, last mentioned but not least, in England. Preachers were raised up on every side, and translations of the Scriptures were multiplied. The prediction was in course of fulfillment. “Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and languages, and kings.”

And here occurred an important point for decision, on which the continuance of this renewed evangelic preaching materially depended. Cut off from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, from whose hands were the ministers of the Reformation to receive ordination? Was the work so happily begun to cease for want of pastors? Surely not. Luther felt that where Scripture had not shut up the apostolic ministry of the early Church by an express prohibition of other non-episcopal ordinations, the very necessity of the circumstances justified a departure from the usual practice. He renounced the title of priest and doctor given him by Papal authorities, and styled himself simply preacher. This was in A.D. 1523. A year or two after, the function of ordination was formally taken into their own power by the Reformed Churches. In the German Churches it was vested in superintendent presbyters; in the Swiss Churches simply in the presbytery. On the other hand, in England, through God’s providence several of the bishops having united themselves with the Reformed Church, the regular medium of ordination was continued; all, however, in Christian fellowship with their reformed sister Churches on the Continent. Of course the want of direct episcopal ordination in some cases, and the previous excommunication of the ordaining bishops in others, raised a cry amongst opposers as if the Reformed Church had no regular ordination for its clergy.3 Regarding, however, this interpretation of the passage before us to be the right one, we have in the fact of St. John’s being made the representative of the faithful ministers of the Reformation a direct intimation of their being all in the line of apostolic succession; and in the angel’s words, “Thou must prophesy again,” of their being commissioned by HIM who commissioned the Apostles — the COVENANT ANGEL, the LORD JESUS.

One remarkable change in the ritual of ordination was now introduced by the Reformers. Instead of the words, “Receive thou authority to sacrifice for the living and the dead,” as was the Romish form, a solemn charge was given to “preach the Gospel.” Preaching had been so long neglected that they must begin again the preaching of Christ.

There was a change of symbol, too, as well as of words, the presentation of a chalice and paten being abolished, and instead thereof in many Churches being substituted the delivery of the New Testament, or perhaps of the whole Bible, now through the art of printing made “a little book.” Our English ritual especially — in the authority presented to deacons and priests “to read” or “to preach the Word,” and the injunction to bishops to “take heed to the doctrine” and to “think on the things contained in this book” — may be said to perpetuate the Apocalyptic commission. Surely the fact is remarkable. Nor would it be uninteresting for such as are ordained to remember this pre-enactment of their ordination in the visions of Patmos. They might not only thus derive strength and comfort in the consciousness of a direct divine commission, but, moreover, be wholesomely impressed with the duty of making the GOSPEL the grand subject both of their personal study and of their public preaching, and of maintaining a constant and faithful testimony against all superstition, sin, and error, — specially against those of the apostate Church of ROME.

[II] The latter part of the Covenant Angel’s charge is contained in that which appears with our Bibles as the first verse of chap. xi, but which is evidently only a continuation of the same scene as that with which the tenth chapter closes; the same Angel continuing to speak to St. John, and giving him a further direction. The temple, which we have already shown to represent the Christian Church, is again introduced with a new feature superadded, viz., its outer court, or court of the Gentiles. The altar-court is still used as the symbol of that part of the Church visible which faithfully adhered to the true worship indicated by the altar; while the outer court (which under the former dispensation was given to such heathen as professed Judaism, but too often apostatized) is now applied to represent those who, while they professed Christianity, had virtually adopted an idolatrous worship.

It would almost seem impossible for the Apostle not to view, in these outer-court worshippers, that line of apostasy described in earlier visions, which in one scene, under the name of Christ’s Israel, had been satisfied with another life-giving, another sealing than that of the Angel of life; which in another is described as forsaking the great altar of sacrifice, and, again, as rejecting Christ’s reconciliation and adopting other mediators; and yet once more — when the third part of men had been slain, as continuing in demon-worship and heathenish idolatry, — that line against whose head the cry of the Angel had gone forth in majestic wrath, and from whose seven-hilled metropolis had issued forth, in defiance of it, the seven Antichristian thunders.

This premised, the meaning of the clause will readily approve itself. St. John, representing at this epoch the Reformed Church, was desired to “Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles.”

These four several points would seem to be signified, viz., first, that Luther and his brother laborers were directed, as from heaven, to a reconstitution of the Reformed Church, for the measuring implies the edification and constitution, as well as definition, of what is measured. Secondly, that they should define as the proper members of the Church such only as in public profession recognized the doctrine of justification through the alone efficacy of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, and through Christ’s alone mediatorship. Thirdly, that the Romish Church must thence be excluded or excommunicated as apostate and heathen. Fourthly, that for this purpose a certain ecclesiastical authority would be officially given to them, it being said, “There was given me a reed like unto a rod.” The more frequent use of this word rod in the New Testament is as the ensign of official authority. On two occasions when the Jewish temple-worship had become corrupt and needed reform, viz., under the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, it was the royal mandate that empowered the priesthood to carry out the purification. The original call was, of course, from God; but it was the regal authority which immediately enforced the act. Agreeably with these precedents, in a reed like unto a rod, which was given to St. John, was shadowed forth the support which Luther and his fellow-reformers would meet with from the royal and other ruling powers of those times.

And now for the historical fulfillment of this part of the vision. At the time of his leaving the castle of Wartburg, in March 1522, to resume. his ministerial labors, despite the interdicts of Pope and Emperor, the established religion in Saxony was still the Roman Catholic. Nor did Luther at that time wish for much more than the liberty of preaching the Gospel, expecting that this in itself would be sufficient for the overthrow of error, and that consequently the Papacy would fall to ruins. The measuring rod had not yet been officially given to the Reformers to authorize their reconstitution of the Church.

But it soon became evident that some plan of ecclesiastical discipline must be observed for the proper ordering of the Reformed services, the prevention of possible divisions, and the general support of religion. Luther’s personal influence was, as yet, the only visible cement of union. He had appropriated to the maintenance of ministers, hospitals, and schools the revenues of certain old canonries of Wittenberg lately become vacant. Still authority was wanted. At length, after another year, the Elector Frederick, convinced that the Reformation was accordant with God’s will, determined to give the required sanction; but before it was done he died. His brother and successor, the Elector John, assuming that supremacy in ecclesiastical matters was the right of every lawful sovereign, as maintained by the Reformers alike in Germany, Switzerland, and England, proceeded at once to exercise that right by forming new ecclesiastical constitutions. New forms of worship were introduced, drawn up by Luther and Melanchthon on Scriptural principles. Romish images and superstitions were removed; the ecclesiastical revenues of the electorate were appropriated to the support of the Reformed religion; and a fresh supply of ministers received their ordination, altogether independently of the Romish hierarchy. This was in A.D. 1525. Soon after a general visitation of the electorate by Luther and other of the Reforming fathers was made on the Prince’s order, to see to the execution of the new system, and to complete the establishment of a separate evangelical Church.

The example was followed by the ruling powers in the Reforming states of Germany, in Denmark, Sweden, and soon in England. And here let us notice that the principle acted upon in them all was precisely that which was laid down by the Angel in vision for the measurement of the Apocalyptic temple, viz., to make salvation through Christ’s meritorious death and mediatorship (that which the Jewish altar symbolized), the prominent characteristic of Reformed worship; and to exclude those who, forsaking that alter, had made to themselves another method of salvation, and given themselves to heathen superstitions and idolatries; in other words, the votaries of the false Church of Rome. Charged by the Romanists as schismatical, the principle was solemnly avowed and justified. At the first Diet of Augsburg, held A.D. 1525, a Defense, or Apology, written by Melanchthon, was presented by the Elector, in which the following points were insisted on: — First, that every minister of God’s Word is bound by Christ’s express precept to preach the leading doctrine of the Gospel, justification by faith in Christ crucified, and not by the merit of human performances; whereas men had, by the Romish doctrines, been drawn from the cross of Christ to trust in their own works and in superstitious vanities. Secondly, that it became the princes (to whom authority rightly belonged) to consider whether the new doctrines were or were not true, and if true, to protect and promote them. Thirdly, that the Pope, cardinals, and clergy did not constitute the Church of Christ, albeit there were some apparently amongst them who opposed the prevailing errors, and really belonged to the true Church — the latter consisting of the faithful, and none else, who had the Word of God, and by it were sanctified and cleansed; while, on the other hand, what St. Paul had predicted of Antichrist’s coming and sitting in the temple of God had its fulfillment in the Papacy. Which being so, and God having forbidden, under the heaviest penalty, every species of idolatry and false worship, of which class were the sacrifice of the mass, masses for the dead, invocations of saints, and such like, — things notoriously taught in the Church of Rome, — the Reformers were not guilty of schism in having convicted Antichrist of his errors, or in making alterations in their church worship and regulations, whereby Romish superstitions were cast out.4 Such was the manifesto of the Reformers to the first Diet of Augsburg. In the second Diet, A.D. 1530, the celebrated articles and confessions of faith were presented to the same effect. These and other confessions which were elsewhere “adopted differed, as might be expected, in some nonessential matters; but they agreed in all main points, viz., the preaching of the Gospel being charged on their ministers, — justification by faith in Christ being held forth as the only true method of salvation, — and a separation from the Romish Church being indispensable.

Bearing in mind that all this wonderful and blessed consummation was being effected just at the period of that memorable scene, the Papal triumph at Rome, described in a former lecture, let us observe how every point of triumph displayed by the USURPER was met and counteracted by HIM whose place he had so usurped.

The Bible, condemned to be shut up, was ’now translated, printed, and circulated. The Gospel, forbidden to be preached, was now, freed from all the glosses of the Fathers, proclaimed by hundreds. The Pope himself was openly declared to be Antichrist, which name he had forbidden to be named; and the day of judgment was held forth as a day fixed and coming, when his reign and power would terminate. As he too had excommunicated the Reformers, the true followers of Christ, so was he now, and his whole religious system and retainers, cast out of the real Church.

The wretched Leo lived not to see the separation accomplished, as we have described. But he lived to hear his bull against Luther met with stem defiance by this champion of truth. “As they curse and excommunicate me for the holy verity of God, so do I curse and excommunicate them: let Christ judge between us, whose excommunication, his or mine, shall stand approved before him.” He lived to see the failure of every means set in order to stop the progress of the Reformation. It remained for his successors to see this great revolution ecclesiastically and politically accomplished, a pledge of what yet awaits the Popedom, when “He that shall come will come,” and by “the brightness of his coming” at once totally and for ever destroy the man of sin and his whole kingdom.

Continued in Revelation 11:2-6. Retrospective View Of The Two Witnesses – Part I

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.

Chronological Notice Of The Reformation.

[5] And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,
[6] And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
[7] But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. (Rev 10:5-7)

ANOTHER GRACIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT, revealed at the same juncture, proceeding from the same Divine Messenger of the Covenant, and bearing the attestation of his own solemn oath! And to what end? Is it not that they “might have a strong consolation” who have fled to Jesus, the hope anew set before them? At a time when truth was struggling to emerge from long-continued darkness — when the conflicting principles and forces of Christ and Antichrist were gathering for the battle, and fresh trials and tribulations were preparing for the faithful witnesses for Jesus — how consolatory to these to be assured by God’s own Word that the desired consummation was drawing nigh, and that yet a little while, and the great mystery of God in providence and in prophecy shall be accomplished! How solemn and quickening too the thought! For time, it was said, would be extended no further (such seems the meaning of the clause) to the Antichristian tyranny whose thunders had just before echoed on the scene; but that in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, at what time soerer he might be destined to sound, all would be consummated according to the glad tidings declared to the prophets.

Truly it must have cheered the heart of St. John in this prolonged vision of good overborne by evil, and of the flock of Christ harassed and persecuted by the world of ungodliness, to have been enabled to mark, as it were, on the chronometer of heaven the advance of the hour of deliverance, and to have the assurance of his Lord himself that the longed-for day was approaching. But here, as in other places, the Apostle must be considered in his representative character; and the inference follows, that there ought to have been at this period, both with Luther and amongst the other fathers of the Reformation, a strong and prevailing expectation of the approaching end. We have seen in former visions how impressions were widely and deeply experienced in the Church that corresponded with the solemn chronological notices ’on the Apocalyptic scene. According to the intimation under the fifth seal given to the souls under the altar, the Church at the epoch corresponding did expect, we saw, that a new and distinct period of martyrdom would intervene before the end. Again, agreeably with the cry of “Woe to the earth by reason of the three trumpets yet to sound,” occurring just before the blast of the fifth angel, there was at the corresponding date a very general portending of the world’s end, and of fearful trials accompanying it. In like manner, correspondently with the intimation here made to St. John, we learn that a strong persuasion existed just at the time of the Reformation, not only that the era was remarkable, but that a new dispensation was near at hand. The burst of intellect and of literature consequent on the invention of printing, the discovery and so-called Christianization of a new world, excited expectations among all, and Papists said the glory of the Pope’s kingdom was about to be extended over the world.

Very different truly, and grounded chiefly on very different considerations, was the expectation of the true Church, though in it too high anticipations were raised. Once that Antichrist had been discovered to exist, and that in strength and power, they looked for his downfall; and now that the Bible was drawn forth from its concealment, they expected that Papal superstition should fall by means of the “breath of the Lord,” as well as by the “brightness of his coming,” according to the Scriptural predictions referred to in the angel’s oath. (Dan. 7:26; 2 Thess. 2:8) Specially then did Luther and the German Reformers look forward with hope to the fulfillment of these promises; while the Reformers of England and Switzerland seized on this very passage of the Apocalypse, and, calculating that the chronological place then reached in the prophetic history of the Church was that of the sixth trumpet, waited in expectation of the sounding of the seventh, and the consummation consequent on it.

In answer to the Pope’s bull of condemnation Luther writes, “Sure that our Lord Jesus reigneth, I fear not thousands of popes. Oh, that God may at length visit us, and cause to shine forth the glory of Christ’s coming, wherewith to destroy that man of sin!” Writing to Staupitz the next year he says, “The abominations of the Pope, With his whole kingdom, must be destroyed; and the Lord does this without hand, by his word alone.” Again, “The kingdom of Antichrist, according to the prophet Daniel, must be broken without hand; that is, the Scriptures will be understood by and by, and every one will preach and speak against Papal tyranny from the Word of God, until (and here he quotes St. Paul) this ‘man of sin’ is deserted by all his adherents, and dies of himself.” Again, to the Duke of Savoy, on hearing that he favored the Reformation; — “Let those who sincerely preach the Gospel be protected; this is the way in which Christ will destroy Antichrist by ‘the breath of his mouth;’ and thus, as it is in Daniel, ‘he shall be broken without hand,’ whose coming is with lying wonders.” Nor did the adoption and misuse of the same idea by fanatics alter his views. It only seemed to him quite in accordance with the usual device of Satan to attempt to overthrow truth by counterfeit. As be advanced in life, he only gathered that some things yet remained to be accomplished before the end, — some wasting away of the Papal power through the Gospel word, some temporary apostasy possibly of the Protestant body, and consequent brief revival of Papal ascendancy; perhaps, too, some confederation of Pope and Turk against Christ’s faithful protesting ones. To the last (though baffled in attempting to fix a date in accordance with Scripture), the idea did not forsake him, and this thought cheered him in his dying hour, that soon the coming of Christ should appear. Melanchthon’s views were very similar. Like Luther he explained the apostate king of Daniel 11, in respect of his “abomination making desolate,” his pride, tyranny, and fated end (as well as the little horn of Daniel 8), to mean the popes and popedom. He also used the chronological argument, long noted before his time by Christians, of the seven days of the creation being a type of the duration of the world. “Six thousand years shall this world stand, and after that be destroyed, 2000 years without the law, 2000 years under the law of Moses, and 2000 years under the Messiah; and if any of these years he not fulfilled, they will be shortened on account of our sins, as intimated by Christ.” He felt persuaded that the protest against Antichrist, and the consequent Reformation, was that very consumption of the enemy predicted by Daniel and St. Paul to occur just before his end and final destruction at Christ’s coming.

The Swiss Reformers contemporary with Luther and Melanchthon wrote in the same strain. One of these, Leo Juda, in A.D. 1552, in a commentary on the Apocalypse, applying the charges of murder, idolatry, sorceries, fornications, etc., in the ninth chapter to the then Church of Rome, and the tenth chapter generally to the Reformation, writes of the passage before us, “Christ taketh an oath, and sweareth by God his heavenly Father, even with great fervency, that the time of his coming to judge the quick and the dead is now nigh at hand, and that when the victory that was prophesied to be fulfilled of Antichrist (which victory the seventh angel must blow forth according to his office) were once past, then should altogether be fulfilled what all prophets did ever prophesy of the kingdom of Messiah the Saviour, which is the highest mystery.” Bullinger, in A.D. 1555, speaks in similar terms and with a like application; — “Christ swears that there is but one trumpet remaining; therefore let us lift up our heads, because our redemption draweth nigh.”

In Britain, that isle of the sea, on which the Angel planted his right foot, we find Bishop Latimer expressing the same hope; — “St. Paul saith the Lord will not come till the swerving from the faith cometh, which thing is already done and past. Antichrist is known throughout the world. Wherefore the day is not far off.” He also takes the chronological view of the world’s endurance to be 6000 years, and says, “So there is now left but 448 years, and even these days shall be shortened for the elect’s sake.” Moreover, in an Advent sermon he says, in allusion to the shortening of the days, “So that peradventure it (the second Advent) may come in my days, old as I am, or in my children’s days.”

Another example is furnished by Bale, afterwards Bishop of Ossory. In a commentary on the Apocalypse he applies the passage before us to his own time, A.D. 1545, as being then in the sixth age of the Church, and the seventh trumpet only as being yet to come. Again, on Rev. 20:3, after recounting a list of Christian confessors, including Luther, Melanchthon, etc., by whom Antichrist’s tyranny had been disclosed, he says, “I doubt not but within few days the breath of Christ’s mouth, which is his living Gospel, shall utterly destroy him.”

We need not adduce more to establish the fact that, from the time of Luther’s and Zwingle’s discovery of the Antichrist of prophecy being none other than the Roman Popes, the conviction was strongly impressed on their minds, as by divine communication, that the time of Antichrist’s destruction, though not yet come, was not far remote, and therewith an expectation of the coming of Christ’s kingdom and the ending of the mystery of God.

Nor did this prophetic chronological discovery die away through the whole of this and the subsequent century. Indeed from it, as from a point of light, Protestant interpreters have made their way to the solution of other parts of the Apocalyptic prophecy, even to the present day.

Not the Reformers only, but numbers of the Lord’s faithful and tried servants ever since that time have found in the Angel’s information, thus conveyed, a source of comfort and encouragement most influential and practical, suited above all things to animate them for the great work they have had before them, — the doing and suffering, in all their subsequent conflicts, as the Lord’s witnesses, with Antichrist, the world, and Satan. Must we not see and admire the goodness and wisdom of God in this revelation?

Continued in Revelation 10:8-11 And 11:1-2. The Covenant Angel’s Commission

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

U.S. Army Brigadier General Thomas M. Harris was a member of the 12-man military commission that tried eight of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. (Four of the conspirators were executed!) Harris later wrote a book entitled “Rome’s Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”, which was first published in 1897. (His book exposes Papal Rome’s – and her Jesuit Order’s – involvement in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.) Brigadier General Harris gave a warning to the American people at the beginning of his book, and I believe that it is as applicable today as it was when written at the end of the 19^th century. Here are some excerpts from his warning:

“…A foreign political power [Ed.: i.e., Papal Rome]…has gotten a lodgment [Ed.: a military term for a foothold that has been gained or seized in the enemy’s territory] in this land of Liberty [Ed.: i.e., the American Constitutional Republic], and…is evidently bent on the destruction of our free institutions, and substituting for them Papal despotism: a despotism that lords it over the minds, the consciences, and the actions of its subjects – and thus renders them incapable of loyalty to any other government.

…It is evident that a crisis is even now upon us – a crisis in which the world-old contest between freedom and despotism is to be definitely and finally settled. This is an old fight. The cause of liberty seemed to have achieved the victory when our forefathers achieved their independence through a successful revolution and founded our government on the principles for the first time formally announced in our Declaration of Independence – securing to our people the natural rights of man: freedom of the mind and conscience, freedom of worship, freedom of speech and of action, and protection in the exercise of these rights. [Ed.: Various popes and high-level Roman Catholic prelates throughout history have anathematized, condemned, and denounced the very freedoms that we Americans cherish.]

…The cause of human liberty is in danger… Is this all imaginary, or is there a real danger hanging over us like a cloud? Is the Roman Catholic Church the friend, or the foe of liberty? Is it a branch of the Church of [Jesus] Christ, in common with the various Protestant denominations, laboring in common with them, for the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth? If we answer this question in the light of history, in the light of present experience, in the light of the monstrous claims of the Pope, and in the light of the spirit by which it is everywhere and always animated, and in the light of its present efforts in our country, and in all lands, we must say that it does not, in any degree, bear the marks of a church of [Jesus] Christ. It [Ed.: i.e., the Roman Catholic Church] is, in fact, only a compact, well-organized, and powerful political machine, wielded in the interest of the greatest despotism that has ever cursed the earth. …It has never manifested the spirit of Christ in all of its past history, and so is not a Christian church at all; and as [Ed.: i.e., since] it has always been grasping after temporal power, and civil domination, and is now, as it has always been, laboring for civil supremacy all over the world, we are surely warranted in calling it a huge and dangerous political machine… But are our institutions in danger from this foe? Have we any cause for alarm? …Yes, my fellow countrymen, there is cause for alarm… Every citizen, and every sojourner in this country, who is loyal to the Roman Catholic Church, is an enemy to our government, of necessity, for he yields his highest allegiance to the Pope of Rome, a foreign potentate, who has time and again anathematized every fundamental principle of our government. He has denounced liberty of conscience, freedom of speech and of press, freedom of worship and of teaching, as pestilent and damnable heresies – destructive to order, and to the peace and welfare of society. [Ed.: For an excellent example of papal hatred of civil and religious liberty, please read Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors.] The highest dignitaries of this so-called church have declared their purpose to make this [Ed.: the American Constitutional Republic] a Roman Catholic country…”

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

Discovery Of Christ The Saviour. Discovery Of Antichrist The Usurper, A.D. 1513 — 1521.

[1] ¶ And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:
[2] And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,
[3] And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.
[4] And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. (Rev 10:1-4)

[II] IT HAS BEEN well remarked that “the Reformation passed from the mind of Luther into the mind of Western Europe,” and that its “different phases succeeded each other in the soul of Luther, its instrumental originator, before its accomplishment in the world.” Hence the importance of tracing its development in the history of the Reformer himself, the master-spirit, under God, of that great revolution.

Of these phases, the two which gave rise to all the rest were, the discovery of Christ in the fullness of his grace and truth, and the discovery of the predicted Antichrist in the Papal apostasy. These two appear to have a distinct and direct prefigurement in that portion of the vision which we have already in part considered, and which is repeated as the heading of this Lecture.

[1] Luther, the son of a poor miner of Mansfield, was born A.D. 1483. In his early boyhood, when at school both at Magdeburg and at Eisnach, he had often to beg his daily food, with the pitiful cry, “Bread for the love of God;”and was indebted to a burgher’s wife for the means of pursuing his studies — almost for his preservation. Grown to manhood, he passed four years at the University of Erfurt, where his intellectual powers and learning excited general admiration. But just as the honors and emoluments of the world seemed about to be opened to his attainment, he suddenly, to the dismay of his friends, renounced the world and its brilliant prospects, and betook himself to the solitude of an Augustine monastery. Thoughts deeper and mightier than affected others around him were then pressing on his soul and induced this strange step.

Luther had found a Bible hid in the shelves of the University library. Till then he had known no more of the Scriptures than what were given in the Breviary or by the preachers. He was at once riveted by what he read. It increased, even to intenseness, the desire of his heart to know God. At the same time he found therein descriptions of man’s sinfulness and of God’s holiness which awed and alarmed him. Providential occurrences following soon after confirmed and deepened the work on his conscience. An illness which had nearly proved fatal brought death to his view. He saw a beloved friend cut off with scarce a moment’s warning. He was overtaken in a journey by a terrific lightning storm; and he associated it with the judgment of an angry God, whom he felt unprepared to meet. How shall I stand justified before God? What will it profit me if I gain the whole world and lose my own soul? These were now the absorbing thoughts of his mind. Thenceforth the world was to him as nothing. But while he longed to know God, neither his own understanding nor the philosophy and learning of the University yielded him the light he needed. He longed to propitiate him, but his conscience told him how inadequate for the purpose were his best performances. It had long been a notion that the convent was the place where, by penances and prayers, the favor of God was most surely to be attained. He gathered his friends around him, ate his farewell meal with them, then sought the monastery. Its gate opened and closed on him. He was an Augustinian monk.

But was his object gained? Did he find the holiness or the peace with God that he longed for? Far from it. In vain he practiced all the strictest rules of the monkish life; in vain he multiplied prayers, and penances, and self-mortifications. He found that in changing his dress he had not changed his heart. The consciousness of sin remained, its indwelling power, its guilt, its danger. “O my sin! my sin!” he was often heard to exclaim. Pale and emaciated, behold him at one time fallen down in his cell, apparently dead, from the exhaustion of the mental anguish, yet more than of sleeplessness and fasting.

There was a copy of the Bible chained in the monastery. With eagerness he renewed his intense study of it, but still found no consolation. Even the Gospel seemed but to increase his terrors, inasmuch as he found the wrath of God therein revealed against the ungodly.

It was at this time he met with Staupitz, Vicargeneral of the Augustins, who at once distinguished from the rest the young monk of Mansfield, with his eyes sunk in their sockets, his countenance stamped with melancholy, his body emaciated by study, watchings, and fastings, so that they might have counted his bones. Staupitz could almost divine the cause of such suffering, having himself in secret gone through somewhat of the same conflicts, until in the Gospel, rightly understood, he had found a Saviour. He sought and gained the confidence of Luther. He entered with him on the subjects of his anxiety. The Bible lay open before them; Staupitz unfolded to him from it the love and mercy of God to man as exhibited in Christ crucified. He spoke of his death as the expiation for penitent sinners; his righteousness and perfect justice of life as their plea and trust — that perfect and inherent righteousness being accepted by God vicariously, and so called “God’s righteousness,” in place of the imperfect and defiled performance of penitent sinners; just as his death was also vicarious and expiatory of the guilt of their sins.

When Luther still objected his sinfulness, it was answered by Staupitz, Would you have merely the semblance of a sinner and the semblance of a Saviour? And when he objected again that it was to pendent sinners only that Christ’s salvation belonged, and that how to obtain this he had, with all his self-mortifications, sought in vain, Staupitz replied, “It is from the love of God alone that true repentance has its origin. Seek it not in those macerations and mortifications of the body! Seek it in contemplating God’s love in Christ Jesus! Love him who has thus first loved you!”

Luther heard the words, and received them, not as the voice of the Vicargeneral, but as the Divine Spirit speaking by him. It opened the Gospel to him and showed him the two things he sought — the principle of justification before God and the principle of godly penitence and sanctification within. The light of the glory of God in Christ began now to shine upon him. With the eye of faith he beheld the Sun of righteousness shining on a lost world; and the dark clouds of mental conflict which he had passed through served but to reflect, as it were, the rainbow of covenant mercy. In the sunshine of this forgiving love he found sweet sensations. “O happy sin, which has found such a Saviour!” The subject of repentance was now a delight to him. He sought out in a Bible, given him by Staupitz, all that related to it; and these passages, he said, seemed as if they danced round his emancipated soul. He was no longer inactive; the love of Christ constrained him. From the view of Jesus he drew strength as well as forgiveness. Inward and outward variations and some severe illnesses confirmed his faith. On one occasion indeed, being sent on a mission to Rome, he had yielded to the influence of early associations, and for a while returned to superstitious observances. He made the round of the churches, celebrating masses in them, as that which might yield a blessing. He even climbed on his knees the Pilate staircase, near the Lateran, brought, it was said, from Jerusalem, to which penance was attached an indulgence and remission of sin. But while in the act a voice as from heaven seemed to him to sound in his ears, “The justified by faith shall live; they, and they only.” He started up, and from that time the superstitions of his old education had never power to obscure his view of the Sun of righteousness. Thus was Luther inwardly prepared to enter upon the work designed for him, as God’s chosen minister, of showing to others what he had himself experienced. And the way was soon opened. He was nominated, by Staupitz to a professorship in the university at Wittenberg, recently founded by the Elector of Saxony. There, in A.D. 1512, being appointed doctor of divinity ad Biblia, and having to vow on his appointment to defend the Bible doctrines, he received his vocation as a Reformer. Forthwith, in his lectures to the students and in his sermons to the people, he began to preach the Gospel that had been opened to him, and to set forth the glory of JESUS, mighty to save. His letters and conversations were imbued with the same subject. “Learn,” he would say, “to sing the new song, Thou, Jesus, art my righteousness: I am thy sin; thou hast taken on thyself, what was mine; thou hast given me what was thine!” Against the doctrine of man’s ability and strength to attain to righteousness he published theses, and offered to sustain them. Thus, as has been well said, he attacked rationalism before he attacked superstition, and proclaimed the righteousness of God before he retrenched the additions of man.

Multitudes crowded to hear a doctrine so new, and maintained with eloquence so convincing. “It seemed,” said Melanchthon, “as if a new day had risen after a long and dark night.”

Hitherto all had gone on without disturbance, the revelation of Jesus being confined to the few at Wittenberg; but now the conflict between Christ and Antichrist was about to commence. Tetzel came with his sale of indulgences near to VVittenberg, and the spirit of the Reformer was kindled. He published his celebrated ninety-five theses against indulgences, affixing them, as was customary, on the door of the principal church, and offering to maintain them against all opposers. The truths put forward most prominently were — the Pope’s insufficiency to forgive sin or to confer salvation; Christ’s all-sufficiency, and the true penitent’s participation by God’s free gift, not merely in the blessing of forgiveness, but in all the riches of Christ, irrespective of Papal absolution or indulgence. To these he added other declarations also, as to the Gospel of the grace of God, and not the merits of saints, being the true treasure of the Church, and against the avarice of the priestly traffickers in indulgences; and, moreover, an exhortation to real Christians to follow Christ as their chief, even through crosses and tribulation to the heavenly kingdom.

The evening of their publication — the 31st of October, All Hallow Eve — has been remembered ever since as the epoch of the Reformation. With a rapidity, power, and effect unparalleled, unexpected, unintended — even as the voice of one mightier than Luther, and so felt by him — the report echoed throughout Christendom. It was felt by friends and fees to be a mortal shock to that whole fabric of error and imposition which had been built up during ten centuries of apostasy, and a mortal blow too, though unperceived by him who struck it, to the Papal supremacy. The minds of men were prepared to recognize Christ’s headship and rights in the Church; and it was soon seen that the overthrow of Papal dominion, and the erection of the Gospel standard (already by the contemporary teaching of Zwingle and other Reformers accomplished in some of the Swiss cantons) would be accomplished in England and some of the Continental kingdoms. Thus was the Angel’s placing one foot on land and the other on the sea, and uttering his voice as when a lion roareth, fulfilled. From that time the light increased to the full exhibition of Christian truth, and more especially by the thousands in our own favored land, to the full discovery of Christ the Saviour.

[2] We have now to consider that which formed the second great movement of the Reformation — the discovery by the Church of Antichrist in the Papal usurper; and this we find prefigured also in the vision before us. “And when he had cried, the seven thunders uttered their own voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their own voices I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.”

What mean these seven thunders? The difficulty in the way of most commentators is the command that they should be sealed, as if it were the intention that no mortal should know their import. But had this been so, why were they named at all? It is clear that some intimation was by the revelation to be conveyed to the Church, of which John, who heard the sounds, was the representative. Certain points are here very observable: —

First, these thunders are said to utter voices and to speak, evidently in a manner intelligible to the Apostle. This peculiarity distinguishes them from those which are elsewhere mentioned as proceeding from before the throne, and appearing to be the echoes of judgments passing on earth.

Secondly, they uttered (lit) their own voices — not the voice of God, nor of the Angel of the covenant, whose word had just preceded them, but in dissonance with, and opposed to the voice of Christ. Does not this suggest the voice of Antichrist?

Thirdly, the prohibition “Write them not.” Three times was the Apostle desired to write the words spoken on other occasions. But in every such instance the reason is annexed. The words to be written are “true and faithful;”they are “the sayings of the Spirit” — “the true sayings of God.” (Rev. 14:13; 19:9; 21:5) The inference, therefore, to be drawn in this place from ” Write not,” is that the voices of these thunders are not true; they utter their own voices; they are not from heaven, but rather self-called thunders. Doubtless St. John was but too familiar with the imperial decrees or fulmina (thunders), for he was then suffering banishment in Patmos by reason of one of them. May it not be from the same quarter that these will proceed? he might naturally conclude. May they not be Roman thunders pretending to inspiration, terrific in their threatening and effects? Again, why seven thunders? Like the two-topped lightning of the Grecian poets, because issuing from the two summits of Parnassus, do not these also point to the locality whence they proceed? And are not the seven famed hills of Rome directly alluded to in the seventeenth chapter of this Revelation? The very expression, “A septenary of voices,” has been used by Roman poets when speaking of a voice from that city. -Clearly, then, we are to regard these seven thunders as fulminated from the mock heaven of the Papal Antichrist’s supremacy — ” The seven thrones of the Supreme Pontificate.”

And, lastly, the use of the definite article, the seven thunders, denotes their notoriety and pro-eminence. The Papal anathemas were emphatically the thunders, and the Pope the thunderer. Invested with which terrors by the prevailing superstition throughout the long Middle Ages, where was the prince or the kingdom that had not trembled before them?

Thus, then, is the signification evident. No sooner had the voice of Christ been heard declaring the great truths of the Gospel, and speaking by the lion-like mouth of the great reformer, than the Vatican uttered its bulls condemning the bold movement; which, said John, “I was about to write.”

And here, in tracing the historical fulfillment, we must bear in mind that the Evangelist witnessed these Apocalyptic visions in a symbolic character; not as an individual man. What was seen and heard by him appeared to be that which would be seen and heard by the faithful who should be in existence at the very time of the evolving of each successive scene of the advancing drama. Hence the inference follows that each particular seen or done by the Evangelist in vision must be taken to symbolize something correspondent in the views and actions of those Reformers, re-awakened at the crisis before us, by the apostolical spirit outpoured again upon the Church. Luther was now the leader of the Reformation. We will give his own account of what he felt at this time. “When I began the affair of the indulgences, I was a monk and a most mad Papist. I would have been ready to murder anyone who should have said a word against the duty of obedience to the Pope… The popes, cardinals, bishops, monks, and priests were the objects of my confidence… If I had then braved the Pope, as I now do, I should have expected the earth to swallow me up alive like Korah and Abiram.” It was in this state of mind, A.D. 1518, that he thus wrote to the Pope: “Most blessed father! prostrate at the feet of thy Blessedness, I offer myself to thee with all I am and all I have. Kill me or make me live, call or recall, approve or reprove, as shall please thee. I will acknowledge thy voice as the voice of Christ presiding and speaking in thee.” Thus when the seven thunders uttered their own voices, “I was about to write,” i.e., recognize, publish, submit to them, even as if they had been what they pretended to be, an oracle from heaven.

But at this critical point, a real message from heaven was conveyed to his mind and preserved him. Summoned to appear before the Papal Legate, when the Pope’s judgment was pronounced in favor of indulgences and of the efficacy of the sacraments irrespective of faith in the recipient, he saw its opposition to the word and spirit of the Gospel, and resisted it. It was the Spirit’s whisper, “Write not!” Yet more; when, in preparing for a public disputation, he had been under the necessity of examining into the origin and character of the Papal supremacy, the true character of the whole system began to open to his view. Thus he wrote to a friend about the close of 1518, — “My pen is ready to give birth to something greater. I know not whence these thoughts come to me. I will send you what I write, that you may see if I have well conjectured in believing that the Antichrist, of whom St. Paul speaks, now reigns in the court of Rome.” The thought was fearful, and some time after he wrote again, “To separate myself from the Apostolic See of Rome has not entered my mind.” But still the scruples returned. The Elector of Saxony who befriended him was startled with hearing, “I have been turning over the decretals of the Popes, and would whisper it into thine ears that I begin to entertain doubt (so foully is Christ dishonored in them) whether the Pope be not the very Antichrist of Scripture.” Further study of Scripture, and further teaching of the Holy Spirit helped forward the suspicion; and when, in A.D. 1520, the Papal thunders of excommunication were issued against him, accordantly with that monitory voice which had bade St. John “seal them up” (the very phrase of the times for rejecting Papal bulls), Luther electrified Europe. Having summoned a vast concourse of all ranks, he kindled a fire outside the walls of Wittenberg; and by the hands of the hangman, the hull, with the Papal decretals and canons accompanying, was committed to the flames. In his public answer to the bull he poured contempt on the Papal thunders, calling them the infernal voices of Antichrist.

Once convinced, no earthly power could induce Luther to a recantation. When summoned before the Emperor, the Legate, the Germanic princes and nobles at the Diet of Worms, he strengthened the cause by a bold confession. A goodly company had now joined him; — Melanchthon, Carlstadt, Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, and many others, fathers of the Reformation. In the German towns and universities, by priests, monks, students, and people, the new doctrines were enthusiastically received. The work was fast progressing in Switzerland. The effect was confessed by the astonished Legate, when, in traveling through Germany to Worms, instead of the wonted honors and reverence of his high office, he found himself disregarded and shunned as an agent of ANTICHRIST. A mighty revolution had begun, and who could foresee its issue?

Continued in Revelation 10:5-7. The Angel’s Oath

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 Epoch Of Antichrist’s Triumph, A.D. 1513.

[1] ¶ And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:
[2] And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,
[3] And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. (Rev 10:1-3)

GLORIOUS APPEARANCE! What a vision to rejoice the heart of the Evangelist! Who this bright and cloud-robed Being was he must have known full well, and what his mission he could easily anticipate. Is it not evidently the Lord Jesus, the Covenant Angel that now appears, come to vindicate his own cause, to assert his power, and by a renewed revelation of his grace and gospel to begin the consumption of Antichrist’s usurped dominion? The rainbow must have betokened to St. John an interposition in support of the covenant of mercy, radiating from the Sun of Righteousness himself: in the roaring of the Lion of Judah was heard the voice of authority rebuking the enemies of God; and in the open volume he beheld the great means of effecting the divine purpose, the Bible. From all he must have gathered that at this juncture, when the power of darkness and corruption should be at its height, some sudden, striking, and direct intervention of Providence would take place, such as we cannot hesitate to recognize in the REFORMATION, with which the sixteenth century opened.

And here we observe another remarkable instance of that allusive contrast of which we have before spoken; the circumstantials of this vision of Christ’s revelation to his Church having at the same time a pointed reference to several particulars attending the display of Antichrist’s pretensions to Christendom at this very period.

[1] To those latter we shall first refer, and inquire what is taking place at Rome, that central metropolis of the world, as well as of the visible Church of Christ. History has fully preserved the record of the high festival. It is the month of March, A.D. 1513. From the window of the conclave of cardinals an announcement is made: “I tell you tidings of great joy: a new Pope is elected, Leo X.;” and loud and joyous are the acclamations. Immediately the coronation begins at St. Peter’s; but the grander ceremonial of his going to take possession of St. John Lateran — the church by the bishopric of which, as “mother and mistress” of all others, he is to be constituted universal pontiff — was delayed for a month that pompous preparation might be made. And now the day is come. Visitors from all parts fill the city. Besides the hierarchy of Rome, there appear many of the independent princes of Italy, ambassadors also from the states of Western Christendom, and the various deputies who represent the Church universal in the General Council now holden at the Lateran. The concourse from early morn has been to the great square of St. Peter’s. Thence formed on horseback, the procession, crossing the bridge of St. Angelo, traverses the city to the Lateran church. First in order a troop of cavalry, then a long line of nobles and gentry, succeeded by the senators of Rome, Florentine citizens and other provincials; next the Pope’s bodyguard, with another file of barons and gentry. Envoys from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other kingdoms follow; then abbots, bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, above 250; then the cardinals wearing jeweled miters in rich costumes, with streaming banners as on a day of jubilee. At length, closed in by a troop of military, the Hero (is it not rather the God?) of the day — the POPE comes. He rides on a white horse; a cope of richest broidery mantles him; the ring of his espousal with the universal Church glitters on his finger, and on his head the regno or imperial tiara of three crowns. A canopy is borne over him by the chiefest Romans. Beneath him the streets are strewed with tapestry and flowers; and, as he approaches, the multitude fall on their knees to receive his benediction.

“It seemed to me,” said the Romanist narrator of the pageant, “that it was the Redeemer of mankind going to Jerusalem, there being substituted only for ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ the cry ‘Life to the Pope, the Lion!’” But is it really the case that the people regard him as filling the place of Christ to them? that they look to him as their Redeemer and Saviour? Even so.

Every mouth dwells on the high station of the Pope as divine rather than human. Every tongue tells of Leo’s personal virtues, his fitness for the office of CHRIST’S VICEREGENT; and as with Christ, so now with the advent of Leo, they anticipate a new era of happiness to man.

On every side the splendid devices and paintings, and other decorations for the occasion which meet the eye, while they prove the revival of the arts in Italy, may be taken as the most faithful exposition of the general state of thought and feeling regarding him. In these the history, titles, and offices of Christ Jesus are applied to Leo, and with a singular adaptation to the prophecy before us. In one, in the Genoese arc, the azure heaven is represented. Refulgent with glory as the new-risen sun, the Pope is portrayed on the horizon: a rainbow reflects its radiance on an animated landscape, seen as if just emerging out of night and tempest; below which is the sentence, “The world hath been unveiled to light ,the king of glory has come forth!” Another painting in the are of the Florentines represents the Pope with one foot on the land, the other on the sea, having a key in his right hand with which he opens heaven, and in the other another key (of hell, or perhaps of purgatory); with the legend beneath, “In thy hand I behold the empire of earth, and sea, and heaven.” Yet again the lion appears as a symbol in these devices. For instance, in the are near the bridge of St. Angelo there appear two lions, each with one foot on the Papal insignia, to designate that it is the Pope they symbolize, the other on the mundane globe, with the inscriptions, “The prey is worthy of my glory!” and, “To me the charge belongs!” Various other devices might be instanced; such as Leo receiving the homage and offerings of the Magi; sitting a youth in a cardinal’s dress disputing with the doctors; impersonating Christ at his baptism; one while surrounded by his cardinals sacrificing, with the scroll, “Tanquam Aaron;”then opposite, a leader among his armed men, “Tanquam Moses;”or, lastly, as a fisherman exercising Christ’s prerogative, separating the good fish from the bad, returning the good into the river and casting the bad into a burning fire.

Such is the exaltation of the great usurper of Christ’s place, the Papal Antichrist. While, shut up in a small box covered with gold brocade, guarded by some five-and-twenty attendants, the consecrated wafer is carried to swell the procession. That, they tell you, is CHRIST! Oh, foul dishonor to their Lord! A state-prisoner to add to the brilliancy of the pageant, a puppet in the hands of the priesthood!

Meanwhile, with every eye fixed upon him and every’ knee bent before him, the Pope reaches the Lateran. Here the studied mimicry of Christ is continued. Dismounting at the vestibule, Leo takes a lowly seat for a moment in assumed humility; then, amidst the chanting “He raiseth up the poor from the dust to make him inherit the throne of glory,” he is raised by the officials, carried up the nave, and seated on the throne within. They call it his assumption or taking up, as if, like Christ, his elevation was to a heavenly glory, with all power given to him in heaven and earth.

These were not merely the exaggerations of popular excitement. The devices signified realities acted out in the history of Papal pretensions. As the sun in its effulgence, he claimed to be the dispenser of light to the world — the light of truth and of salvation. In all disputed matters of faith the appeal was not to the Bible but to the Pope, the very statements of the Bible being supposed to derive their authority from him, not he from them. One of the decretals burnt by Luther was, “The Pope has power to interpret Scripture and to teach as he pleases, and no one may interpret differently.” And the rainbow emblematized his prerogative of mercy to dispense indulgences, whereby all punishments of sin, temporal and eternal, were remitted, its guilt blotted out, and innocence restored to the sinner. It is impossible to over-estimate the tremendous efficacy of these claims in support of such a system of superstition and error.

And so it was that immediately after Leo’s assumption an opportunity arose for the exercise of this prerogative of mercy. The design had been proposed by his predecessors of building the Church of St. Peter’s, and the execution of it devolved on him. Artists were ready. Everything needful was procured save money. But whence was money to be provided? He must draw upon the credulity of the people. He resolved upon an issue of indulgences, the proceeds of which were to be given to the church.

In Germany more especially the sale went forward. Tetzel, a Dominican, was the vendor employed. As he traveled with pomp from town to town, a herald announced his approach, “The grace of God is at your gates.” Forthwith magistrates, clergy, monks, and nuns were formed into procession, and with wax-lights, standards, and the ringing of bells went out to meet him. The Papal bull was carried on a velvet cushion, a red cross elevated by the commissary near it, and amid the chanting of hymns and fuming of incense it was borne to the principal church and received with sound of organ. The red cross and Papal arms having been placed by the altar, the commissary mounted the pulpit and thus addressed the crowd: “Now is the heaven opened, now is grace and salvation offered. Christ, acting no more himself as God, has resigned all power to the Pope. Hence this dispensation of mercy. By virtue of the letters bearing the Papal seal that I offer you, not only is the guilt of past sins remitted, but that of sins that you may wish to commit in future. None is so great but that pardon is ensured to the purchaser, and not sins of the living only, but of the dead in purgatory. As soon as the money sounds in the receiving box, the soul of the purchaser’s relative flies from purgatory to heaven. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. Who so insensate, who so hard-hearted as not to profit by it? Soon shall I shut the gate of heaven and extinguish the bright sunbeams of grace that shine before you. How shall they escape that neglect so great salvation?” Then the confessionals are set, each with the Pope’s arms attached. The confessors dilate on the virtue of indulgences. Crowds come to the purchase. Some of the more thoughtful question, “Can the grace of God be bought?” and turn away. With others the doubt is silenced by the reflection that it comes from the Pope. Can the Vicar of Christ err? So they, too, come to the purchase. The price is from twenty-five ducats to a half-florin (i.e., from £5 to ls.), according to the rank and opulence of the purchaser. The monk’s money-box full, he deducts his wages, pays his reckoning at the inn with an indulgence, and transmits the surplus to the Prince-Archbishop of Mayence, whose agent he is, and at whose commands he acts, and passes on to the next town to perform the same blasphemous part again. An agreement had been made between the Archbishop and Pope for the division of the receipts, and so the moiety flows to Rome — the price of the merchandise of souls. Thus the cheat is consummated. Meanwhile the deluded purchasers live, and perhaps die, with a lie in their right hand. And as regards the Saviour, robbed by the usurping Antichrist of his own attribute of mercy, who can tell the magnitude of the insult offered to him, the true Sun of Righteousness? So was the first picture acted out in the history of Leo. ’

Moreover the representation of the Pope in the Florentine arc, fixing one foot on the sea and another on the land, had its direct fulfillment. In the second year of Leo’s reign an embassy arrived from the king of Portugal. Now observe what passed. The ambassador was a general celebrated for his part in the late conquests of the Portuguese in the far Indies. In testimony of them he brought, amongst other presents to the Pope, certain animals hitherto unknown. Great was the admiration as these were led through the streets of Rome, and more especially when, on reaching the pontifical presence, the elephant stopped, and, as if with more than instinct, knelt and three times boWed down before him. Then the orator speaks. “Fear and trembling,” he says, “are come upon me, and a horrible darkness has overwhelmed me.” Then, reassured by the Pope’s serene aspect towards him, — “That divine countenance, which, shining as the sun, has dispersed the mists of my mind,” — he proceeds to narrate the Eastern conquests of the Portuguese arms, addresses the Pope as the supreme lord of all, and speaks of these conquests as the incipient fulfillment of God’s promise, “Thou shalt rule from sea to sea, and from the Tiber river to the world’s end. The kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts to thee; yea, all princes shall worship thee, all nations serve thee,” and under thy auspices “there shall be one fold and one shepherd.” He concludes in the same style, “Thee as the true Vicar of Christ and God, the ruler of the whole Christian republic, we recognize, confess, profess obedience to, and adore, in thy name adoring Christ, whose representative thou art.”

We must bear in mind that this acknowledgment of the Pope’s supremacy was no new thing. Four centuries before Gregory VII. had claimed authority over the kingdoms of the world. Again, A.D. 1155, Pope Adrian IV., in the exercise of the same pretensions, gave Henry II. permission to subjugate Ireland, on condition that one penny per house should be paid as an annual quit-rent into the Roman coffers. In the fourteenth century Clement VI. gave Lewis of Spain the grant of the Canary Isles. Subsequently the Portuguese having made large discoveries on the coast of Africa towards India, Prince Henry of Portugal applied to the reigning Pope, requesting that, as Christ’s Vicar on earth, he would give the grant of these lands to him, and promising to convert the natives. A bull was issued accordingly, granting to the Portuguese all they might discover. In 1493 Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain obtained a similar grant relative to the discovery of America by Columbus, care being taken not to interfere with the previous grant to the king of Portugal. All promised to have the Pope acknowledged as universal bishop over their dominions, the judgment of the princes of Christendom consenting in each case to these pontifical grants being an unimpeachable title. In this manner did Leo place one foot on the sea, the other on the land, usurper of the rights of Christ, to whom had been promised “the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession!”

Once more let us see Leo acting out the emblem of the Lion. We must again visit St. John Lateran, and hear what is passing in a grand council there assembled. There are sitting in ordered array above 300 bishops and archbishops, arrived from England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Savoy, and the lesser states of Italy, together with ambassadors, generals of religious orders, the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and not a few other ecclesiastics from beyond the seas, the whole, under Pope Leo’s presidency, constituting the representative body of the Universal Church! The bishops are in splendid dresses and miters, and the Pope sits on a throne high and lifted up, robed in scarlet and gold, and wearing on his head the badge of universal empire. Truly he was “as God sitting in the temple of God.” (2 Thess. 2:4) This council has been summoned for the extirpation of heresy and the union and exaltation of the Church. Before the business of each day mass is celebrated, the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” chanted, and a sermon preached. One preacher paints on this occasion the Church as in desolation, seeking refuge with the Roman Pontiff, and prostrate at his feet addressing him, “Unhappy, degraded by wicked hands and defiled, I come to thee, my true lord and husband, to be renewed in beauty. Thou art our shepherd, our physician — in short, a second God upon earth.”5 Another figures the Church as the Heavenly Jerusalem in present desolation, and says, “But weep not, daughter of Zion! God hath raised up a Saviour, the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath come, and shall save thee from all thy enemies. On thee, 0 most blessed Leo, we fix our hopes as the promised Saviour.” And then other orators unite, “Vindicate the tent of thy spouse, purify what is polluted in thy Church. By the fire and the burning of the pastor’s office extinguish schism and heresy, that so, the renovation of the Church accomplished, the golden age may revive, and, in fine, that prophecy be fulfilled, ‘Thou shalt rule from sea to sea, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.’” And now hearken to the lion’s voice. Accepting all this praise, this deification as his due, his first act in assertion of that sovereignty over the world which had been assigned him was to denounce as schismatics the Pisan Reform Council, mentioned in the previous lecture as being held at this time under the authority of the king of France; and straightway, behold, the two schismatic cardinals and the French king hasten to make public humiliation and ask absolution. The absolution is granted, and on the submission of the whole of Western Christendom to the Papal supremacy the schism is healed. His next lion’s roar is against the Bohemian heretics, the only ones apparently remaining. These are cited to appear, but with promise of pardon in case of submission. And when, as was triumphantly avowed by the preacher in the next session, no heretic or opposer of the Pope’s opinion was forthcoming, but all hushed in submission, then the Papal lion issues his voice of command: — First, that forasmuch as printing, that wonderful art just invented, might be used to disseminate heresy, no books be printed without consent of the Pope’s inquisitor in the district. Second, that no preaching be allowed, or explanation of the Scriptures, except in conformity with that of the recognized fathers and doctors of the Church; no mention to be made of Antichrist, or inquiries as to the time of the final judgment. Third, that the Inquisition fail not in searching for and rooting heresy out of the Church. As to reforming the Church, a few externals were to be corrected; and for its exaltation, the solemn bull was repeated and confirmed in which the Church is defined as one body under one head, the Roman Pontifi’, Christ’s representative, and of which this is the conclusion, “We declare, define, and pronounce that it is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be subject to the Roman Pontiff;”with the prefix thereto, “Whosoever obeys not, as the Scripture declares, let him die the death!” So roars the Papal lion, and the assembled Church assents. After a Te Deum of thanksgiving the members separated, each having received from the Pope a plenary remission of sins and indulgence, once in life, and in the article of death.

Such was the character of the Papal assumption of the functions of Christ at the time represented in the Apocalyptic vision. And now we are prepared to turn to the text with advantage. For so it was, that just when this Antichristian usurper was acting out the character of Christ before admiring and applauding Christendom, and was professing to exercise in regard to both worlds his prerogatives and functions, opening heaven to all believers in his magic charms, however laden with guilt, and exhibiting himself as the dispenser of covenant mercies, the fountain of grace, the saviour, the justifier, the sun of righteousness; —

Just when, as lord of the universe, he received the homage of its princes, and granted the kingdoms of the earth to whom he would; —

Just when, at his enthronization, there were exhibited paintings on which art seemed to have lavished all its ingenuity in order to depict him in these his threefold assumed offices as Christ’s vicar and impersonator, — in one as the sun with a rainbow reflecting its brightness, in another as planting one foot on the land and the other on the sea, in a third with the world in his grasp, even as when a lion roareth over his prey; —

Just when, after assuming Christ’s title of Lion, he had begun to rage against and threaten every opposer, uttering forth his own voice to the shutting up and denouncing the Book, the Word of God, —

Just then was fulfilled another symbolic figuration — devised by higher than human art, and evidently in purposed contrast to the former — which 1400 years before had foreshown in the visions of Patmos Christ himself as now at length intervening, revealing himself as the true Covenant Angel of light and mercy, putting the world under his feet, and making his mighty voice to be heard, and opening again that long-forgotten and .now forbidden Book of God. All this had been foreshadowed, and was now to be done. It is ” when the enemy shall come in like a flood that the Spirit of the Lord ” will ever “lift up a standard” for his people. “If the Lord himself had not been on our side, they had swallowed us up quick when their wrath was kindled against us. Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. (Psalm 124:1-6)

Continued in Revelation 10:1-4. The Epoch Of The Reformation

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.

A.D. 1057-1500.1

[20] And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
[21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. (Rev 9:20-21)

THE REMARKABLE EVENTS which we have noticed in these last lectures, consummated by the destruction of the eastern third of Roman Christendom, were well calculated, we should have imagined, to arrest the other portions of the professing Church in their course of error and ungodliness and to have induced repentance and reformation. But the subsequent history of the West affords evidence to the accuracy of that prophetic announcement which had been given to the Evangelist, how that the long-prevailing doctrinal perversions and moral iniquities of men would continue wholly unaffected by these warning judgments of their Lord.

It was an awful, but a true picture — “The rest of the men repented not.” Compared with the history and fate of her sister in the East, the case of the Western Church resembled that of treacherous Judah, whose guilt was even more unpardonable than that of backsliding Israel.

The announcement made in the vision is twofold; 1st, as implying the grievous corruptions which had existed in Western Christendom during the progress of these woes; and secondly, as declaring the continuance of the same after the fall of the Greek Empire.

[1] The period embraced by the advance and decline of the Turkish woe, — “the hour, day, month, and year,” — from A.D. 1057 to 1453, is well worthy of observation in the general history of Christendom. The kingdoms of Western Europe had been slowly assuming those territorial forms and limits which, in the main, they have ever since retained. The Christian remnant in Spain, after having for a length of time confined the Moors within the kingdom of Grenada, had in the year 1452, under Ferdinand and Isabella, completely conquered and expelled them. The central Frank or French kingdom had subordinated to itself by degrees the several principalities which had been broken off. England, which, previous to the Norman conquest, had been subdivided into small states, had become united in government, and had attached Ireland and Wales to its dominion. Both France and England, thus aggrandized, had begun that rivalry of centuries which, while it gave occasion to prolonged wars, served at the same time to develop their national resources. The elective Germanic Empire, after a partial diminution of strength and glory through its wars with Rome and Switzerland (the latter having become independent), now under the house of Austria extended on the one side over Hungary and Bohemia, and on the other to the Baltic Sea. Italy, after witnessing for two or more centuries the short but brilliant course of the Lombard republics, had been subdivided into several small states. The temporal sovereignty of the Bishops of Rome had become firmly established through Central Italy, and was now fully recognized in European polity as the ecclesiastical state, or, as it was in part singularly called, the patrimony of St. Peter.

Moreover, with the political progression of these great European confederations there had been a steady advance from barbarism to comparative civilization. Chivalry had exercised a beneficial influence on outward manners. Internal trade, and still more maritime commerce, had led the way to civil liberty; so that many free towns had been established, and feudal servitude had gradually disappeared. Intellectual energy had also awakened from a long slumber. Universities had risen up. Oxford and Cambridge, Paris and Montpellier, Bologna and Padua, Salamanca and Prague, were crowded with students. A yet more extended range was opened for learning when in A.D. 1440 the art of printing was invented. The scholars of Greece, fleeing before the Turkish woe, had brought their Stores of classic lore before the Western literati, who now eagerly engaged in the study, and everywhere knowledge and science was pursued.

Again religions zeal was a feature of the times, if such term may be applied to the Crusaders, and to those who exercised their powers in building those magnificent ecclesiastical structures, cathedrals, etc., which still remain and excite the admiration of all beholders in England, France, Germany, and Italy. Certainly with those who raised them such zeal could not be called lukewarm.

Thus much for the progress in power, freedom, refinement, intellectual energy, and religious zeal of the western division of Europe. Would we next inquire what the character of religion had been during the same period? The Scripture in the few lines before us tells the tale. The first clause says, “Men repented not of worshiping demons.” The term demons was used in St. John’s time, both in Roman literature and Scripture language, to express the heathen gods, and also those malignant evil spirits which entered into or possessed demoniacs. Such being its double meaning, the Apostle might infer, from the words of the vision, that there would be established in the nominally Christian Church a system of demonolatry, the counterpart of that of Greece or Rome — a fact, as before observed, for which he was prepared by the gradual apostasy from the faith of Christ’s mediation and atonement; that imaginary beings would be worshipped, and the spirits of dead men deified; also that moral virtues would be attributed to them, in about the same proportion of good and bad, as to ’the heathen gods; that, like them, they would be supposed to act as guardian spirits and mediators; and that this false system would be, in fact, an emanation from hell, as was its precursor, malignant, hellish spirits being the suggestors, actors, and deceivers in it. All this the Scriptural meaning of the word demon might well imply.

Of the fulfillment of the prophetic declaration no well-informed Protestant is ignorant. The decrees of the seventh General Council, which established image worship, remained in force during this period, more and more superseding the spiritual worship of the one great God and Christ in his mediatorial character. The evil was not confined to more mental worship, inasmuch as visible images of different value were made, so as to suit all grades, from the palace to the hovel; and before these all men, high and low, rich and poor, laics (pertaining to a layman or the laity) and ecclesiastics, did, in contempt of the positive command of God, bow down and worship, just as did their Pagan forefathers. Added to this, as might be gathered from the vision, the grossest dissoluteness prevailed alike among priests and people. Indulgence for crimes not even to be named might be purchased for a few pence. This system of indulgences, the journeyings of both sexes to the same places to perform the same penances, generally at the shrine of some saint, the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, the increase of nunneries, and the practice of auricular confession — these are named by various writers as some of the means and incentives which tended too surely to include licentiousness amongst the effects of superstition.

When we feel wonder at such practices being admitted amongst professed Christians, we must call to mind that the Bible was at that time almost unknown, and that the priests supported the religion they taught by magical deceits and sorceries, whereby they worked upon the imaginations of their credulous followers. Who that has ever read the history of these times knows not of the impostures through which miracles were said to be wrought; — relics of saints made to perform wonderful cures; — images that could neither see, nor hear, nor walk, made to appear as though possessed of human senses, and as restoring sight to the blind, strength to the lame, and hearing to the deaf? Who knows not the stories invented of purgatory, and the happy effects of masses and prayers purchased on earth upon the souls suffering therein? This was the work, not of ignorance, but of deliberate deceit. These were the sorceries specified among the unrepented sins of Papal Rome. Amongst these were also included thefts. But wherefore all these impositions? Doubtless, while ambition, pride, and blind superstition combined, each in large measure, the love of money was yet the root of the evil. By payment to the priest, full license was obtained for sin, and impunity guaranteed, both then and thenceforward. In order to appease God, it was only necessary to make pilgrimages, and to lay offerings on the shrines of the saints; all then was well. In A.D. 1300, Pope Boniface established a pilgrimage to Rome, instead of to Jerusalem, by virtue of performing which every sin was to be canceled, and the pilgrim’s salvation ensured. The sale of Church dignities and of episcopal licenses for the grossest immoralities swelled the funds of the Church. But enough upon this subject!

To these is added the charge of murders. The blood of their fellow-men — of Petrobrussians, Catharists, Waldenses, Albigenses, Wickliflites, Lollards, Hussites, Bohemians, — not dissentient heretics only, but the genuine disciples of Christ, was shed abundantly during the latter half of these four hundred years. It was guilt enough to incur death in that they were opposed in anywise to the pretensions of the Church of Rome.

In the twelfth century a few persons began to read and explain the Bible. The cry of heresy was forthwith raised, and the extermination of the whole people urged as a meritorious act. The innocence of these Waldenses was admitted; but the Book itself was condemned by Pope and priesthood, and partially suppressed.

In the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, a Crusade was proclaimed against them, and plenary absolution of all sin from birth to death was promised to such as should perish in the holy war. “Never,” said Sismondi, “had the cross been taken up with more unanimous consent.” Never, we may add, was the merciless spirit of murder exhibited more awfully in all its horrors. It was followed by the Inquisition, having Gregory IX. for its apparent author, — the spirit of hell its unseen one. That horrid tribunal, from which no man could feel safe, was supported by the princes of the West. The same murderous spirit was manifested from A.D. 1360 to 1380 against Wickliffe in England, and against Jerome and Huss in Bohemia, who, forty years after, endeavored to revive the spirit of true religion, and were martyred. But more of these hereafter.

Such is a sketch of the so-called religion of this period in Western Europe; so characteristic was the description, “idolatry, sorceries, fornications, thefts, murders,” as identified with its state during “the hour, day, month, and year,” up to the fall of the Greek Empire.

There are some who would paint those times as ages of faith, and others as periods of illumination in the Church; but the religion of the majority of such persons is obviously that of the imaginative and external, and not what the Bible recognizes of heart-cleansing, practical godliness. There are who extract passages from mystic writers of the day adorned with some beauty, and more or less of truth, and hold them up as specimens of the spirit of the age. But the appeal must be made to history for the truth; and history accords in every iota with the wonderful prophetic description in the text as expressing the real state of faith and conduct existing at that time.

[2] “Men repented not.” We have seen what history records as to the state of morals and religion up to the fall of Constantinople; and as the prophetic voice indicates that after that woe men continued unrepentant as before, so, turning to history, we shall find it. Not a word is there about reformation or repentance, but we do find every sin continued. Demonolatry increased. In A.D. 1460 came the renewed use of the rosary (see footnote), a mechanical method of devotion specially used with reference to the Virgin, which soon became the rage in Christendom, and was embraced alike by clergy and laity, being consecrated by Papal sanction. In A.D. 1476 Pope Sixtus gave sanction to an annual festival in honor of the Virgin’s immaculate conception. The canonization of saints continued. In A.D. 1460 the enthusiast Catherine of Sienna was sainted. In 1482 Bonaventura, a blasphemer, who dared to parody the psalter by turning the aspirations there addressed to God into prayers to and praises of the Virgin Mary, was added to the list. In 1494 Archbishop Anselm was canonized by Pope Alexander VI., who on that occasion declared it to be the Pope’s duty thus to choose out and hold up the illustrious dead for adoration and worship.

Sorceries and thefts increased. Rosaries were for sale. Each canonization brought devotees and offerings to a new miracle-working shrine. Nor did Rome accord canonization without itself first receiving payment. ” With us,” says a Roman poet of the age, “everything sacred is for sale: priests, temples, altars, frankincense, the mass for the living, prayers for the dead, yea, heaven and God himself.”4 The pilgrimage to Rome was decreed by Paul II. to take place every twenty-five years, thus accelerating the return of that lucrative ceremony. Relics were sold to those who were not able to travel, and indulgences retailed by numerous hawkers; with which latter practice the name of Tetzel was, at the opening of the sixteenth century, infamously associated, presenting the crowning example of thefts and sorceries.

Impurity, chiefly among the priesthood, glaringly advanced. The Popes led the way. Alexander VI. was a monster in vice. “All the convents of the capital were houses of ill-fame;”5 and one German bishop, according to Erasmus, declared “that 11,000 priests had paid him the tax due by them to the bishop for each instance of fornication.” We may not enter further on this subject.

Finally, murders ceased not. Anti-heretical crusades were proclaimed on a large scale. The Bohemians and Waldenses were the chief victims. Paul II., who had been elected Pope in order to check the Turks, turned his energies against the Bohemians, and offered to the Hungarian king the crown of Bohemia as a reward if he should succeed in exterminating the Hussites. This was only attained at last by dividing the poor persecuted people amongst themselves; and after seven years of unsuccessful war this civil strife proved their most severe suffering.

In the years 1477 and 1488 Innocent VIII. commanded all archbishops, bishops, and vicars to obey his inquisitor, and engage the people to take up arms with a view to effect the extermination of the Waldenses; promising indulgence to all engaged in such war, and a right to apply to their own use all property they might seize.

Then 18,000 troops burst upon the valleys; and had not the sovereign, Philip of Savoy, felt compunction and interfered, the work of extinction would have been completed, even as it was at Val Louise in High Dauphiny. “There the Christians,” says the historian, “having retired into the caverns of the highest mountains, the French king’s lieutenant commanded a great quantity of wood to be laid at the entrances to smoke them out. Some threw themselves headlong on the rocks below; some were smothered. There were afterwards found 400 infants stifled in the arms of their dead mothers. It is believed that 3000 persons perished in all on this occasion in the valley.” Is Rome changed?

In 1478 the reform, as it was called, of the Inquisition took place, the Pope and the king of Spain agreeing in the arrangement, whereby it became a still more murderous instrument for persecution than before. In the first year alone 2000 victims were burnt! It is computed that from its reorganization up to 1517 there were 13,000 persons burnt by it for heresy, 8700 burnt in effigy, and 169,000 condemned to penances. It was in 1498 that Savonarola, a Dominican, was burnt at Florence for preaching against the vices at Rome, and this too by order of Papal emissaries. We might say, Look at Florence now; but we shall have more to speak on this subject hereafter.

Thus does history, upon the clearest authorities, abundantly bear out the truth of the statement that after the fall of the Greek Empire “men repented not of their idolatry, sorceries, fornications, thefts, and murders.” Relative to idolatry, there is a singular proclamation by Mohammed II., issued in A.D. 1469, which will show how the Christian worship of that day was regarded by Mohammedans. “I, Mohammed,” he says, “son of Amurath, emperor of emperors, prince of princes, from the rising to the setting sun, promise to the only God, Creator of all things, by my vow and by my oath, that I will not give sleep to mine eyes, etc., till I overthrow and trample under the feet of my horses the gods of the nations, those gods of wood, of brass, of silver, of gold, or of painting which the disciples of Christ have made with their hands.”

So closed the fifteenth century. Hopelessly wretched seemed the then state of the Church, the more so because remedies for bettering its condition had been tried and failed. At the commencement of these four and a half centuries Charlemagne tried, by augmenting the temporal power of the priesthood, to soften and civilize the minds of the people under its control; but pride, ambition, covetousness, and immorality, rife among the leaders, were not likely to lead to reform amongst their followers. The attempted remedy only increased the evil during the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century the Dominican and Franciscan orders rose up, proclaiming that riches had caused the corruption of the clergy; and binding themselves by a vow of poverty, they set forward to preach the Gospel of Christ. For nearly two centuries the tide of popularity set in in favor of the friars. They, it was said, exhibited simplicity and self-denial in practice; they alone were the true ministers of Christ. At length this delusion also vanished; the lying fables palmed on the credulous were unmasked. But it was found more difficult to get rid of these orders than to establish them. The Pope gave them encouragement, and, who could resist the Pope? So matters were not improved.

Councils were called, and it was hoped that this would be a sovereign remedy. The Council of Constance in A.D. 1414, showed that it was ready to assist the Papal tyranny by its decree against Huss and Jerome. Again, in the middle of this century, in the Councils at Florence and Ferrara, the Pope was decreed to be superior to any council; and at the close of the century it was almost universally received that, as God on earth, he could not err and might not be controlled. So little was success attendant on this effort at reform.

Literature was next tried. But what could it do?

Without the Bible it might make men infidels but not Christians, and at that time the Bible was unknown. The superstitions believed by the people were fostered on the priest’s part for interest-sake, though known by these to be false; and the penalties against heresy forbade any public objection on the part of the laity.

The character given of the last Pope of the fifteenth century was in a measure applicable to the cardinals and hierarchy of Rome gathered round him. It was an atheist priesthood; and its hypocrisy was deliberate, systematic, avowed, and unblushing before the face of God and man.

Thus the various efforts for reform acknowledged to be needed had apparently failed. As the sixteenth century opened, there were some who still looked for change even from councils. In fact, supported by the French king, but opposed by the Pope and cardinals, one reform council was gathered at Pisa; but it was too weak to oppose the current of evil. Apostasy from their God and Saviour constituted the essence of the disease; and for remedy nothing but the republication of his own gospel of grace, and the power of his Spirit accompanying it, could effect the cure.

Dark and dreary was this time to the true but secret Church of the “hundred and forty-four thousand.” Amidst these days of desolation one and another had lifted up the voice of witness (as we shall treat of in a subsequent lecture on “the witnesses”), and many prayed and wailed, in hopes that He, whom to know is life and light, would reveal himself and interfere for his Church. But time went on; the first watch of the night, the second,and the third watch passed, and their strength was spent. Their hopes waxed fainter. Persecuted, wasted, scattered, it seemed as if “God had forgotten to be gracious,” and that the promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against his Church had become a dead letter. But was it really so? Did St. John so see the end of the Church and the triumph of the foe? No! He says, “I looked, and saw another mighty angel descend.” That intervention of the Lord for his people so long waited and prayed for was come, and the next scene in this wonderful drama is that of the REFORMATION.

To the foregoing we may add a word or two as to the state of the English Church during these last centuries. The tale is soon told. It partook of the general corruption. One or two instances will suffice relative to a part of the charges made against Rome. Thomas a Becket’s shrine was one of the places of pilgrim-resort. A jubilee was celebrated to his honor, and plenary indulgence given to such as visited his tomb, of whom 100,000 have been registered at a time. In the Cathedral at Canterbury were three shrines, one to Christ, one to the Virgin Mary, and one to the saint. The offerings on each, in A.D. 1115, were computed as follows: —

So much for Demonology! Wickliffe was then raised up, who protested against the errors, and exposed so ably the fraud of the friars as to cause them to be detested throughout the land, where they had gained immense influence. In A.D. 1305, Edward I. wrote to the Pope to have the Bishop of Hereford canonized because “a number of miracles had been wrought by his influence.”

Footnote:

The rosary is a string of beads used by Roman Catholics in devotion, often as an act of penance. Each large bead being counted, the Pater Noster or Lord’s Prayer is repeated; and, after each small one, an address to the Virgin. A Romish catechism, approved by the Popes, has this question and answer: “Why repeat the Ave after the Lord’s Prayer? Answer. — That, by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, I may more easily obtain from God what I want.” There are ten Aves to each Pater Nestor (Latin for our Father).↩

Continued in Revelation 10:1-3. Intervention Of The Covenant Angel

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