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

QUESTION: What were the Vatican Ratlines?

ANSWER: The “Vatican Ratlines” was a nickname given by U.S. Army Intelligence to the underground escape route set up and run by Papal Rome (i.e., the Vatican) to help Nazi and Fascist war criminals avoid capture at the end of World War II. These Nazi and Fascist war criminals, including no small number of Roman Catholic clergy, were hidden in monasteries and convents – even in Rome itself – until they could safely travel under disguise with counterfeit identity papers to such locations as the USA, Argentina, and other Latin American countries.

Some of the Nazi and Fascist war criminals that the Vatican helped to escape Europe at the end of World War II included such “human monsters” as Adolf Eichmann (head of the Nazi SS Department for Jewish Affairs), Klaus Barbie (Nazi Gestapo chief in Lyons, France), Franz Stangl (commandant of the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka in northeast Poland), and Ante Pavelic (Fascist Croatian fuehrer who was responsible for the mass murder of up to one million innocent Serb Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Gypsies).

Let us never forget that pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Pope Pius XII – a man whom some in the Roman Catholic Church want to “canonize” (i.e., to make – to declare – a “saint” of the Roman Catholic Church) – was the “boss” of the men who supervised and operated the Vatican Ratlines!

Dave Hunt, on pages 310-315 of his book, “A Woman Rides the Beast” (1994), tells us: “Having failed to do anything on a significant scale to rescue the Jews, the pope [Ed.: i.e., Pope Pius XII] would exert great effort to save their murderers. …The pope let it be known in the [Ed.: European] refugee camps [Ed.: near and at the end of World War II] that the Vatican would shelter [Ed.: Nazi and] Fascist fugitives.

…A steady stream of Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist] war criminals began to flow through an underground escape route which was quickly set up by the Vatican. The network would be known as the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines. Investigative reporters Mark Aarons and John Loftus…write in their remarkable book ‘Unholy Trinity’: ‘Under the direction of Pope Pius XII, Vatican officials such as Monsignor Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI) supervised one of the greatest obstructions of justice in modern history…facilitating the escape of tens of thousands of Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist war criminals] to the West…’

Most [Ed.: Roman] Catholics would have been shocked to know what the Vatican was secretly doing – and most of all to know that the escaping [Ed.: Nazi and Fascist] war criminals included a large number of [Ed.: Roman Catholic] clergy, from priests to archbishops. Nor was the Vatican ignorant of their [Ed.: i.e., the fleeing Nazi and Fascist war criminals’] crimes but had actually given them its blessing with full knowledge of the awful facts…

…This underground network [Ed.: i.e., the Vatican Ratlines] of [Ed.: Roman] Catholic offices, seminaries, monasteries, convents, and residences provided not only shelter on the escape route but false identities and passage to South America and other safe havens. The most infamous mass murderer of them all, Adolf Eichmann…head of the SS Department for Jewish Affairs and in charge directly under Hitler of the entire Holocaust, was among the tens of thousands who were carefully smuggled by [Ed.: Roman] Catholic officials with Vatican blessing down the Ratlines.

The [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines began with diplomatic pressure applied by [Ed.: Pope] Pius XII to allow his personal representatives to visit prisoner-of-war camps to minister religiously to [Ed.: Roman] Catholics. The real purpose was to identify and smuggle out Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist] war criminals. It can hardly be a coincidence that the man Pius XII chose to head this outrageous obstruction of international justice was his close adviser, [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Bishop [Ed.: Luigi “Alois”] Hudal, whom almost all of Rome knew was a fanatical anti-Semite and pro-Nazi…

[Ed.: Roman Catholic Bishop Luigi “Alois” Hudal] faithfully carried out a secret mission [Ed.: i.e., overseeing the Vatican Ratlines] in service of the pope and his beloved [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church. After he was replaced, that work continued under Vatican sponsorship. The new men in charge were even more overtly evil than [Ed.: Bishop] Hudal. Like him, they were [Ed.: Roman Catholic] clergy who believed they were serving God and knew they had the pope’s blessing.

…To help finance the Vatican’s escape network [Ed.: for Nazi and Fascist war criminals], [Ed.: Walter] Rauff [Ed.: a Nazi war criminal and mass murderer of Jews] enlisted a former SS colleague, Frederico Schwendt, one of the most talented counterfeiters of all time. His genius supplemented Vatican funds during the early days of the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines. Later operations were supported in large measure from the sale of some of the Nazis’ ill-gotten treasures, including hundreds of pounds of gold smuggled out to the West and laundered by [Ed.: Roman] Catholic prelates.”

Eric Jon Phelps, on page 1285 of his book, “Vatican Assassins” (Third Edition, 2007), tells us: “Jesuit-trained Pope Pius XII, advised by Bavarian German Jesuit Robert Leiber, ruled the Order’s Vatican Ratlines. He appointed his close personal friend, Austrian [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Bishop Luigi ‘Alois’ Hudal (1885-1963), a former consultant for the Holy Office of the Inquisition…to control the Vatican’s escape routes over the Brenner Pass into Italy. [Ed.: Bishop] Hudal, intimate with [Ed.: German] Knight of Malta Franz von Papen and Nazi officials, used Jesuits guiding [Ed.: Nazi] SS Lt. Col. Walter Rauff to help other top Nazis out of Europe including Heinrich Mueller, Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), Martin Bormann and Joseph Mengele. Once out of Europe the Nazi Jesuit Coadjutors were then protected by [Ed.: Pope] Pius XII’s Sovereign Military Order of Malta through employment within its international business consortiums – under the guise of the Cold War!

…Monsignor Montini [Ed.: who was Pope Pius XII’s Under Secretary of State] was the master of Bishop Hudal, responsible for the Pope’s international affairs. This included his direct supervision of the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratline’s Caritas Internationalis, which issued passports to fleeing Nazis. The director of Caritas in Vienna, and later in Rome, was one of the Pope’s monsignors – Jesuit Karl Bayer! The Company [Ed.: i.e., the Jesuit Order] shuttled over 50,000 Nazis to foreign ports…”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VATICAN Ratlines:

Read the 544-page paperback book, “A Woman Rides the Beast”, by Dave Hunt. To order this book via credit card, please call The Berean Call at 1-800-937-6638 (orders only; 8 A.M. – 5 P.M. Pacific time).

Read the 236-page paperback book, “The Vatican’s Holocaust”, by Avro Manhattan. To order this book, please make check or money order payable in the amount of $12 (includes S&H to U.S. locations) to “Ozark Books”, and mail it to: Ozark Books // P.O. Box 3703 // Springfield, MO 65808.

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

The Turco-Muslims, A.D. 1063

WE HAVE SEEN in the last lecture that in the year 934 the Caliphate at Bagdad was stripped of its temporal dominion in the east, and that in the west, though not until towards the end of the tenth century, the Moslem power was reduced to act wholly on the defensive. The date A.D. 985 might be fixed as about the period when the woe had totally passed away.

About this time a strong persuasion was abroad that the final consummation of all things was at hand. It was preached of and listened to by breathless crowds. Under the impression that Christ would descend to judgment at Palestine, numbers made over their properties to monasteries, and traveled away to the Holy Land. Others devoted themselves as servants to the churches and priests, so as to have milder sentence, as being the dependents of Christ’s servants. Buildings were let go to ruin, it being supposed they would be thenceforth useless; and, on occasion of eclipses, etc., the affrighted multitudes fled to the rocks and caverns for refuge. But the time of the end was not yet. In the decrees of Heaven it stood written, “One woe hath passed; behold there come yet two more woes after them.” The dreaded 1000th year came and went without any great attending calamity, and gradually expectation died away.

But the Sixth Trumpet was about to sound. Would its woe fall on western Christendom, which had long been settling down into the idolatrous worship of departed saints and its accompaniments — priestly fraud, avarice, superstition, and gross immorality, insomuch that afterwards this period was denominated the Iron Age? Or was it to fall on Rome itself, where these impieties were still more rife, particularly amongst its popes, cardinals, and bishops, so as to be compared by certain writers to Sodom? Not so. Antichrist was not yet fully matured, its time was not yet come., The approaching woe was again designed to fall on the eastern division.

Basil II. was then on the throne of Constantinople. Had it been at the time foretold to him that woe was at hand, he might not unreasonably have discredited the prediction; for looking around over the known world, no enemy appeared formidable, nor did approaching storm threaten from any quarter — least of all, perhaps, from the Euphrates and Bagdad. That power once so fearful was fallen. Could it be again raised up and become terrible?

So might the royal Basil have spoken. Devoted to Greek superstition, all the evils before named were unchecked in his empire, and he reckoned not that they would surely bring down vengeance from God. Fearful was the word which was now fulfilled, “They shall be given to strong delusion to believe a lie.” How differently would real Christians have looked upon the state of things; — such as were represented on the Apocalyptic scene as God’s sealed ones. These would in the features of the time foresee the coming woe; and that, while men were saying “Peace, peace,” judgment was even at the door.

From the quarter least expected the danger impended. The agencies were prepared; the trumpet-note again sounded; and the four angels, newly commissioned to destroy, loosed from the Euphrates.

Observe whence issued the “voice” mentioned in the vision — from the four horns of the altar of incense. Had it come from the throne in the inner temple, it had been from God; or if from an angel specially sent, the same idea would attach to it. But when a voice proceeded from any other place invoking judgment, it would rather seem to indicate guilt connected with that locality. In Gen. 4:10, when Cain had struck Abel to the ground, we read, “Thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground;” in James 5:4, “The hire of the laborers who have reaped your fields crieth;” in Isaiah 66:6, “A voice of noise from the city! a voice from the temple! a voice from the Lord that rendereth recompense.” The ground, fields, city, temple, whence in each case the cry, were in each case also the scene of guilt. Just so as to the cry from the four horns of the golden altar. It seemed to indicate sins in Roman Christendom, involving the profanation of that mystic altar and its golden horns. Now the projecting horns of the altar, as noted in Lev. 4:7, were appointed for sacrificial blood-sprinklings expiatory of the sins of priests and sins of people. On this rite’s due performance, in Hezekiah’s time, both priests and people, after previous apostasy of God, were reconciled. (2 Chron. 29:20) A voice then went forth from the altar, not of judgment but of mercy — of mercy through Him, thus typified, whose blood was to be shed as “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.” Sennacherib’s army, which was then approaching, was bidden back, and the city for that season was spared: — a contrast to the voice which, in the vision before us, went forth calling for judgment. What then, when St. John heard its sound, would be the interpretation he would put on it? Would it not be that both priests and people of Roman Christendom, in spite of former judgments, persisted unrepentant in their old sins: — still abandoning Christ in His character of the one divinely appointed propitiation for sin; still adopting other means of atonement, and other mediators? So, it would seem to him, their sins were registered, as it were, on the horns of the symbolic altar; and that the High Priest himself was forced to pronounce from thence the decree of judgment, “Loose the four angels to slay the third part of men.” The opportunity for repentance had past altogether unheeded by Greek Christendom. The guilt of inveterate Antichristian apostasy was stamped at the time spoken of on their ritual worship. Indeed, the mariolatrous impress of the national coinage still testifies of it to the eye of the numismatist.

But who were these four angels? Surely the same that had formerly let loose the winds and tempests; and who might seem to have been stayed in their commission, when the Saracen woe inflicted by them ceased, and where it ceased (like as in the case of the angel-inflicted pestilence, 2 Sam. 24:16); even at Bagdad, by the Euphrates. To prove how this was, I must take up the history of the Turkmans.

We mentioned Basil as being the emperor at Constantinople. He died A.D. 1025; as did, three years after, Mahmoud, the Caliph at Bagdad, whose empire then began to fall to pieces. Many Turkman tribes had been established during his lifetime at Khorasan, near the Caspian Sea. It was these that were now to become a woe to Christendom. Proceeding to assert independence, they killed Mahmoud’s son; chose Togrul Beg as their commander; and stood forth as the chief power in Central Asia.

Originally idolaters, they had lately become Mohammedans, and were called into Bagdad, A.D. 1055, to assist the Caliph on occasion of domestic danger. After subduing the factions and overthrowing the weak dynasty of the Bowides, who had ruled in Persia since A.D. 933, Togrul Beg became lieutenant to the Caliph; thus being constituted, in effect, temporal lieutenant of the Prophet’s Vicar, and head of the secular power of Islam.

Animated by the same spirit from hell as their Arab precursors, a holy war against Greek Christendom was now resolved on. Togrul dying, he was succeeded by his nephew Alp Arslan, who passed the Euphrates, A.D. 1063, at the head of the Turkish cavalry, and the loss of the kingdom and frontier of Armenia was, Gibbon says, “the news of a day.” The Greek emperor, Romanus, having invoked the Virgin Mary’s aid, the chief object of his worship, hastened to oppose him. But in vain. At Malazgerd he was defeated, taken prisoner, and the fate of the Asiatic provinces sealed irretrievably. Alp Arslan was succeeded by Malek Shah, who continued the victorious career of the Turks. In A.D. 1074 Asia Minor came into their hands, and then Nice became the capital. This, remarks the historian, was the severest loss the empire had sustained since the first conquests of the Caliphs. Asia Minor, called also Roum, became an independent kingdom after its conquest by Malek’s general, Suleiman, who had gained the name of Holy Champion for his zeal against the infidels (i.e., Christians). Throughout the whole extent of the new empire Mohammedanism now preveiled; mosques were built even from the Euphrates to Constantinople. Alexius the emperor trembled on his throne, and begged assistance from Western Europe; representing that, unless some succor were sent, his division of Roman Christendom must fall. “The third part of men would be destroyed.” Succor was sent: — the Crusades began. Yet through two centuries the Turkish Sultany of Roum was preserved in its vitality. In the first crusade, A.D. 1097, the Turkmans were defeated; but in 1147 the leaders of the second crusade had to tell that their power was unbroken; and how the bones of Christian hosts lay bleaching among the Pamphylian mountains. In the third crusade, the Emperor Frederick I. lost immense numbers before he stormed Iconium, and made the Sultan sue for peace. It was not till the next century that the Moguls subdued the Seljukian dynasty, and partially interrupted the Turkish sway. But Othman soon furnished a new head to the Turkman host; the Moguls declined, while the Ottoman Empire rose and progressed. As to the rest, the history of the Sultans Othman and Orchan, Amurath and Bajazet, is well known. Their victorious armies crossed the Hellespont; and scarcely aught but the city of Constantinople remained for the eastern Roman emperor. Even this they surrounded on all sides.

Let us observe some of the characteristic national features of these Turks.

[I] AS TO THEIR NUMBERS.

In the vision it is said, “The number of the army of the horsemen was myriads of myriads.” This implies a large but indefinite number. The peculiarity in the description is their being horsemen. In European armies at that time foot soldiers were numerous and cavalry few; but just the reverse prevailed with the Turks, with whom literally the number numberless was cavalry. There may be a reference also in the expression to the method in use amongst them of counting by myriads.

It is added, “I heard the number of them.” St. John heard it in his representative character. Just at that period went forth the cry that alarmed Europe and led to the Crusades. From the Patriarch of Europe came letters to all princes and churches: “Jerusalem has been besieged, ransacked, and taken. What may the rest of Christendom promise to itself? The strength of the Turks is daily increased. We call on you for help, as Christians. Ere the tempest thunder, ere the lightning fall on you, avert from yourselves and children the storm hanging over your heads. Deliver us, and God shall requite you.” So the report ran throughout Europe; the ferment rose, and the Crusades ensued.

[II] THEIR APPEARANCE.

“I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire (i.e., of fire color), and jacinth, and sulphur.” This, it is said, is exactly the ornament of apparel which these people assumed. ” From their first appearance the Ottomans affected to wear warlike apparel of scarlet, blue, and yellow.” It needs but to see the Turkish cavalry to be struck with their rich and varied colorings. The word hyacinthine or jacinth fixes the meaning of the other two words, fire-like, sulphur-like, necessarily to color; these words, fire and sulphur, having no indistinct bearing on other characteristics of the Turkish armies, as we shall presently see.

[III] THE HEADS OF THE HORSES.

“The heads of the horses,” the Evangelist observes, “were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths goeth forth fire, and smoke, and sulphur. By these were the third of men slain, — by the fire, and by the smoke, and the sulphur which proceedeth out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouths.” The heads of the horses, being unnatural, are clearly symbolical; the symbol being constantly used to designate the leaders of the people, and that of lions we take to signify the lion-like haughtiness of their characters and bearing. But it is of the new destroying agents, “fire, smoke, and brimstone,” we are now to speak. It was entirely by the use and force of artillery that Constantinople was destroyed, and with it fell the Greek Empire. Eleven hundred years it had stood and repelled Goths, Huns, Avars, Persians, Bulgarians, and Saracens, one after another, its walls remaining impregnable. Hence the anxiety of the Sultan Mohammed to find a force still stronger. “Canst thou,” he said to one, “find a cannon of sufficient size to batter down the walls of Constantinople?” Gibbon gives, in his “History of the Fall of the Greek Empire,” the account of the new invention of gunpowder, — “that mixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal.” He describes how, in the siege, the arrows were accompanied by the smoke of fire of the musketry and cannon: — how, “as from the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; the camp and city, the Greeks and Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke which could’ only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Greek Empire:” — how the walls were rendered by the cannon a heap of ashes; and so “Constantinople was irretrievably subdued, her empire subverted, and her religion trampled in the dust by her Moslem conquerors.”

[IV] Next as to the horses’ tails. These were seen in the vision as having heads, and so associated with that which the head symbolized — rulers or governing authorities. But when did a horse-tail ever denote a ruler? One historical fact must answer in part the question. It seems that in the time of their early career the standard having been once lost in the course of the battle, the commander, cutting off his horse’s tail, lifted it as a rallying ensign, and won the day. Hence this ensign became among the Turks, and them alone, a badge of authority. The number of one, two, or three horsetails still marks the Turkish pasha’s dignity, from the grand vizier down to the lower governors of provinces.

“And with these they do injustice.” Where is the historian of Turkish conquests or the traveler through Turkish scenes who has not to tell of cruel tyrannies and heartless oppressions? The writer of the Horae Apocalypticae describes his feelings on seeing, as he traveled in that country, the terror of the inhabitants when one of these horse-tailed pashas was near. After noticing the procession of horsemen and retainers, shining in red, blue, and yellow, and how the ensign of two horse-tails was carried before the pasha to mark his dignity, he tells how he entered a village which a few days before had been deserted; and how a straggler, coming from his hiding-place, informed him that men, women, and children had fled to escape the oppressive visit of a neighboring pasha.

One point more remains to be explained, viz., the time within which the commission to destroy was to be accomplished. “The four angels were loosed, which were prepared for, or rather after, an hour, and day, and month, and year, to slay the third part of men.” That is, that the slaying, the national slaying, should occur or be completed at the end of these portions of time added together.

Now, counting up these several parts of time, we have, according to the prophetic principle of a day for a year —

It was on the 18th day of January, A.D. 1057, that the Turco-Moslem power was loosed from the Euphrates; in other words, when Togrul Beg, the acknowledged head of Islamism, with his Turkmans, quitted Bagdad to enter on a long career of war and conquest. It was on the 29th of May, A.D. 1453, that Constantinople fell and the siege ended. The interval coincides with the prophecy exactly in years, being 396; and very nearly in days, being 130. In effect the prophetic period expired nearly about the middle of the siege, — as nearly as possible at the very critical turning-point of defeat or victory.

Four hundred years had passed; generation after generation had lived and died; one power after another had been held back from overthrowing the Greek Empire; space had been given for repentance; but at length the predicted period arrived. When the Sultan Mohammed pressed the siege, no intervention occurred to delay the catastrophe, either from the east or the west — from the Crusaders of Christendom or from the savage warriors of Tartary. On the dial-plate in heaven the pointing of the shadow-line told that the fatal term had expired, — the “hour, and day, and month, and year.” Then could no longer the fate of the unhappy Greeks be averted. The artillery of the Ottomans thundered, the breach Was stormed, and amidst the shouts of the conquering Turkmans from the Euphrates and the dying groans of the last Constantine, Constantinople fell! The third of the men were slain!- The Greek Empire was no more!

Continued in Revelation 9:20-21. The Unrepentant State of Western Christendom

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.

Mohammed And The Saracens, A.D. 612-755.

WE HAVE ALREADY, in the preceding lecture, remarked the geographical propriety of the selection of the various symbols of Scripture prophecy, serving, as it does, in a great measure to designate the particular country to which the vision points us. Sometimes the imagery is of that general character which belongs alike to every part of the world, but at other times a slight attention to the emblem will convince us that the same Divine mind that has given to different lands their characteristic objects, has expressly designed the introduction of those objects into the figurative descriptions of the prophecy in order to confine the application to its true locality. It is on these grounds that we are able at once to infer, from the passage before us, the identical country whence this woe was to have its rise, the agents and their commission to destroy, and the particular individual also who was to constitute their prophet and leader.

I. The Country and People.

First as to the peculiar country and people whence it was to originate. The locust, the groundwork of the symbol, is wholly Arabic. It was the “east wind which brought the locusts” on Egypt (Ex. 10:13) — a statement distinctly pointing to Arabia as to the land upon the east of Egypt. The Syrians, we are told by Volney, “have remarked that locusts come constantly from the deserts of Arabia.” The terms Arab and locust are in Hebrew almost the same. The symbol is elsewhere in Scripture used with like appropriateness; “They (the Midianite Arabs) came as grasshoppers,” meaning locusts. (Judges 6:5)

Great peculiarity attached to these monsters in the vision before us; they were half beast, half man. Their coming, locust-like, in destructive swarms is in accordance with the figure, but their shape was like horses. The horse was peculiarly Arabian, and seems to indicate hordes of cavalry; they were, it is said, “prepared for battle.” They had teeth like lions, — savage destroyers of life; and they resembled scorpions in their poison stings, implying that they would be the tormentors of those whose lives they spared.2 The scorpion is of the same native locality: witness the words of Moses when reminding the Israelites of God’s goodness to them throughout their forty years’ wanderings, “Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions.” (Deut. 8:15) Thus the zoology is all Arabian.

Next, as to the human appearance of these locusts — their faces like men, their hair as the hair of women. What people could be thus pictured? Neither to the Greeks and Romans, nor yet to their Gothic invaders, will the whole of the test apply, the former having had repugnance in John’s time to the feminine appearance of long hair in men, (1 Cor. 11:14) while the latter were remarkable, as is noticed by Jerome, for the unmanlike shaven smoothness of their faces. There was, however, a nation to which the whole of the descriptive symbol was literally applicable. Pliny, St. John’s contemporary, speaks of the Arabs as wearing the turban, having the hair long and uncut, and with the mustache too on their upper lip — that “venerable sign of manhood,” as Gibbon calls it. In the Arabian poem “Antar,” written about Mohammed’s time, we find the beard and the moustache, the long flowing hair and turban, all specified as characterizing the appearance of the Arab. And the turban of the Arab was often noted as a crown. So Ezekiel spoke of “Sabeans (Arabs) from the desert with beautiful crowns upon their heads.” (Ezek. 23:42) One of their national proverbs also tells that turbans were given by God to them instead of diadems.

The breastplates of iron worn by these creatures are also noted in the vision. The Saracen policy was the wearing defensive armor, their coats of mail being repeatedly mentioned by historians.

Thus, on the whole, these concurrent symbols point to Arabia as the country whence the woe was to originate. And if we turn from prophecy to history we find, at the opening of the seventh century, a fact notoriously verifying the prediction. A mighty Saracen or Arab invasion is the chief event which it records.

II. The Abyss.

But what of the abyss out of which these locusts are said to have issued? The word is often used in Scripture with reference to hell, or the place of the departed wicked. And in the New Testament it is likewise introduced as “the deep,” into which the devils entreated of our Lord that they might not be sent; and in the Revelation as “the bottomless pit,” where “that old serpent, the devil,” is bound. Moreover, as the natural light of the sun is a fit emblem of the spiritual illumination that comes down from the God and Father of lights, so may we infer that whatever is described as darkening the atmosphere, even as smoke from a pit, must be meant in the opposite sense of a moral or spiritual pollution. This smoke, then, in the Apocalyptic vision, we consider to be an emanation from Satan issuing from the pit of hell, i.e., some system of false religion which should obscure truth or dim the light of heaven.

And was it even so? Did it so happen, at this particular juncture, that such a system of pestilent error rose up? And if so, did it take its rise from Arabia?

To these inquiries we reply, Who has not heard of Mohammed, that false prophet, and of the spread of his too popular creed? This deadly evil came out from Arabia at the very time we speak of, a creed the invention of fanaticism and fraud. In its system the blessed God is described as cruel and unholy; and in its morals pride, ferocity, superstition, and sensuality are held up for admiration, and show palpably whence it had its origin. It was just after embracing Mohammedan principles that the Saracens, as “locusts from the abyss,” issued forth on Christendom. It was the adoption of this creed, the creed of Mohammed, that made them what they were; that united these hordes as one; that gave them the impulse to fly, locust-like, to propagate their faith over the world, and that imparted to them, as to raging lions of the desert, their destructive fury of fanaticism. Their scorpion venom was thereby prepared to torment such of the Christians as they should bring under their yoke, while the hope of gross licentiousness to be indulged in both here and hereafter added sensualism to their ferocity. Well does the Saracen history accord with the prophetic emblem concerning them!

III. “Hurt not the grass or trees…”

We have to observe the peculiar nature of the commission, “Hurt not the grass or trees, but only the men who have not God’s seal on their foreheads.” Mohammed expressly declared that his mission was against “idolaters;” and such he considered Christians. But in urging forward his followers against them, the Caliph Aboubeker did but fulfill the precept of the prophet when he gave the command, “Destroy no palm-trees, nor any fields of corn: cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle.” It was the dictate of policy, not of mercy; for by following this plan the Saracens had, soon after their conquest, formed flourishing countries round them. It was a marked peculiarity, for in other invasions, as the Gothic, fire, sword, and devastation tracked the invader’s progress, and was accordingly prefigured in the Apocalyptic imagery; but with the Saracens it was the very reverse, and this reverse still more connects it with the prediction now before us.

IV. “A Star”.

We have so far identified this passage with the Arabian heresy and irruption that the inference we clearly deduce is, that Mohammed was the star, or ruler, referred to. But why is this impostor mentioned as a star? and why, still more, since success followed his course for such a length of time, is he said to be a fallen star?

To answer this question we must trace Mohammed’s history back to his birth. His origin was princely, being descended from one of the noblest families in ‘Arabia’. Gibbon says, “The grandfather of Mohammed and his lineal ancestors appeared in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of their country.” They were, in the view of the Syrian Greeks, as among the stars on the political horizon. But just after the prophet’s birth his father died, and soon after his grandfather. Then the governorship of Mecca and keys of the Caaba (or holy place of religion amongst the Arabians) attached to the office passed into another branch of the family. Thus Mohammed became a star fallen from power. He says of himself that at the opening of the seventh century “he was a desolate orphan.” He was indeed fallen, when, as a poor widow’s servant, he used to traffic in the markets of Damascus.

Mohammed, however, was imbued with a spirit calculated to struggle against and triumph over misfortune. That was already stirring in his mind which was to raise him far above a mere prince of Mecca, the scheme of reascending to the station he had lost by introducing a new system of superstition. About three miles from Mecca was a cave called Hera; it was a secret and a desolate spot. There he withdrew every year to consult, as he said, a spirit who was wont to visit him in his solitary hours and hold converse with him. Gibbon well calls it “the spirit of fraud and enthusiasm, whose abode was not in heaven, but in the mind of the prophet.” This cave has aptly suggested to interpreters the idea of the pit of the abyss, whence the pestilential fumes and darkness were seen to issue.

When, privately at first, and then more publicly, he began to announce his creed, for awhile his uncle and the elders of the city affected to despise the orphan’s presumption. They chased him from Mecca, and his flight marks in history the era of the Hegira, A.D. 622. Seven years afterwards was seen in Mecca’s streets one to whom all bowed down in honor, whose words the multitudes revered, to whose command armies were obedient, who swayed the minds of men that they yielded implicit faith to his wild or crafty imaginations. The “fallen star” had come forth again. The key of office was restored to him. “The fugitive missionary was enthroned as the prince and the prophet of his native country.”3 The key of God, asserted in the Koran to have been given to Mohammed to open the gate of heaven to believers, continued to be borne by his followers both as a religious and a national emblem, and may still be seen sculptured on the proud gate of justice in the Alhambra or palace of the Moors. Even so in allusive contrast it is written in Revelation, “The key of the abyss” was given to him, and truly the smoke that arose upon his opening, was as the pestilential fumes and darkness of hell.

Having thus endeavored to illustrate the suitableness of these emblems in the vision to the rise of Mohammedanism, and of the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century, let us follow on and try whether their subsequent history will verify the other intimations respecting them.

“There came out locusts on the earth.” It was in A.D. 629 that the Saracens first issued from the desert and proclaimed war against Christendom. The year 639 saw Syria subdued, and the Muezzin, calling to prayer, soon after sounded from a mosque built on the site of Solomon’s temple. There is he still heard to this very day, when the appointed hour comes round for remembering the prophet. The subjugation of Egypt followed quickly on that of Syria; then, some few years after, that of the African provinces; then, at the commencement of the eighth century, that of Spain. All this was within the limits of Roman Christendom, and consequently within the sphere of the Apocalyptic vision. But beyond this their conquests extended far and wide with terrible rapidity. Two short statements from history will give some idea of the progress of the Saracens, and of the desolations caused by them, of whom it might be said, as was said of the desolating force mentioned in Joel, “The land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.” The one, — that in ten years, i.e., from A.D. 634 to 644, they had reduced three thousand six hundred castles to ruins, destroyed four thousand churches, (see footnote) and had built fourteen hundred mosques for the exercise of the religion of Mohammed. The other, that at the end of the first century of the Hegira, the Arabian empire had been extended from the confines of India and Tartary to the shores of the Atlantic.

Bitterly did the Christians feel the scorpion sting. They were deprived of the use of their arms, and, like slaves of old, made to pay annually a life-redemption tax. They were required to stand up always in presence of their tyrants, and were called by the names of opprobrium, as “infidel dog, Christian dog,” etc. In further token of contempt of their religion, to which the Christians still clung with fond attachment, no new churches were permitted to be built, no church bells to be rung, while the scoffing Moslem had free access, even during divine worship, to all those which were allowed to exist. Insults of the grossest kind were continually offered to Christian females, and undefinable acts of oppression practiced on all. Every inducement was offered to apostasy, and the punishment of death was inflicted on any who, after apostasy, again professed the Christian faith.

These locusts, it is said, had a king over them, whose name was “Abaddon,” or the “Destroyer.” Mohammed professed that the spirit of the cave had dictated to him the Koran; this was accordingly the law that governed the Saracens. The Caliphs, or chief governors, held rule only as vicars of the false prophet. What the doctrine of the book was, as acted out by them, appeared on the field of battle. There when we see not only the loss of bodily life resulting, but also the ruin of souls from the poisonous precepts of Mohammedanism, we cannot find more fitting title to express the perpetuation of the prophet’s character in each successive Caliph than that of the “Abaddon,” the “Destroyer” of Christians!

There was, however, a term and limit prescribed to these locusts, both as to effect and as to duration. For observe, they were not to kill, i.e., to annihilate the men of Roman Christendom as a political body, but “only to torment them.” And this woe was to last 150 days, i.e., in prophetic language, 150 years.

Vain, accordingly, were the Saracenic efforts to destroy the State. Twice did they attack Constantinople, the capital of the eastern division of the Roman empire; they were defeated with ignominy and obliged to retire; the last of which repulses was in A.D. 718. Again, in the West, when they sought to destroy Pelayo and his band of Goths in the mountains of Asturias, they were twice driven back with disgrace, A.D. 711. Still more remarkably, when they attempted to subjugate France in 732, they suffered signal discomfiture from Charles Martel; though he did not succeed in driving them from Provence and Lyons till fifteen or twenty years after. Still, though hindered from driving further conquests, the locust-swarm remained to torment, and was united under one head. About the middle of the eighth century, however, a division took place among themselves. The Caliphate was divided; one Caliph being set up in the west, and an opposing Caliph in the east.

The eastern Caliph, resolving to build a new capital, laid the foundation of it at Bagdad, and thither the head of the locust tribe and the swarm took their flight. Once settled at Bagdad, the Saracens began to decline from the warlike spirit which had animated them. Gibbon says, “The luxury of the Caliphs relaxed the nerves and terminated the progress of the Arabian Empire.” In the west, the son of Charles Martel drove back the Saracens beyond the Pyrenees, A.D. 755. Again, in the year 761, the Christian remnant in Spain turned back the tide of war on their oppressors.

The termination of the Saracen woe, at least in intensity, may date at this period, i.e., A.D. 762.

Observe now what had been the length of time occupied in these transactions. We date from the period when Mohammed publicly announced his mission to propagate his religion by violence and with the sword — a mission which made his followers a woe to all countries, but specially to Christendom. The destroying commission might be said to commence at that period when Mohammed, addressing his assembled followers, inquired, “Who will be my lieutenant?” Ali, called by him “the Lion of God,” replied, “O prophet, I will be thy lieutenant. Whoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip him open. I am the man. I will be thy vizier.” Mr. Hallam justly observes, “These words of Mohammed’s illustrious disciple are, as it were, a text upon which the commentary extends into the whole Saracenic history.”

Thus then, reckoning from A.D. 612 to A.D. 762, when the Caliphate was removed to Bagdad, we find the intervening period to be precisely 150 years.

To two remarkable coincidences which occurred during this period we should give attention. It has been observed that the apostasy of the Church was the assigned and predicted cause of this judgment. Now Mohammed’s asserted commission was specially directed against idolaters; and it was in that character, as an idolatrous people, that Christendom appeared when the Saracen woe fell upon it. Up to the close of the seventh century, the reproach of image-worship might seem deservedly to give cause for the scourge which they suffered under the Moslem sword; but about the year 717, the Isaurian family ascended the throne of Constantinople. For sixty years its princes, supported by many real Christians, though opposed by the Popes and the masses of the people, resisted image-worship, and endeavored to overthrow it. Mark, then, it was during this period of resistance to the error that the Saracen horde received its first defeat at Constantinople.

Again in A.D. 754 Constantine Copronymus called a council in order to condemn the idolatrous image-worship. It passed a solemn judgment against it; and, behold, it was the very next year that the Caliphate was divided, and the intensity of the Saracenic woe was brought to an end.

But, alas! the efforts of these emperors availed but little. In the year 781, the Queen Irene succeeded to the throne, having murdered her image-destroying husband. She convened what is called the seventh general council; and by a solemn act of the Catholic Church the worship of images was declared lawful. Just then the Saracenic woe seemed for a time to revive. The Arab forces swept through Asia Minor into Greece, again and again bearing down all before them. Was there in all this no warning from God? The Eastern Church, however, persisted. In A.D. 842 the struggle ended under the reign of the Empress Theodora, and image-worship became indisputably established; Through the ninth and tenth centuries it so continued; yet such was the long-suffering of God, no judgment seemed to follow. But the time of retribution came at last.

Here we close as far as regards this vision. But a fact or two relative to the downfall of the Saracenic power may be added. Luxury, we have said, weakened its strength. In A.D. 841 the Caliph, distrusting his guards, was forced to hire a protective force of 50,000 Turks. These, like the Praetorian guards at Rome, in their turn became tyrants, and accelerated the sinking of the Saracens. At Fez and Tunis, in Egypt and Syria, in Khorasan and Persia to the east, new and independent powers were formed. A third Caliphate arose at Cairo. The Persians, in A.D. 934, stripped the Caliph of Bagdad of all temporal power, and left him only the title of Pontiff of Islamism. In the west a century after the Saracens were driven out, and though they continued as marauders, and even gained victories in Crete and Sicily, the woe might be said to have passed from Christendom.

Footnote

The number of churches destroyed may at first sight appear incredibly large; it may be well, therefore, to form an idea of the extent and power to which the nominally Christian Church in these parts had extended in the early centuries. In Palestine alone were 74 bishoprics, and 50 in Phoenicia and Arabia. The ruins of churches and cathedrals shew how great their grandeur had been. Antioch itself had 360 churches. Between this city and the sea is a hill called Ben-ki-liseh, or the thousand churches, from that number being erected on it. The see of Antioch exercised power over 203 bishops, besides 12 archbishops, etc. Exclusive of this, attached to Tyre were 13 bishoprics; to Ahamea, 7; Hierapolis, 8; Seleucia, 24; Damascus, IO; Caesarea, 19, etc. Many other similar lists are given in Roland’s History of the Episcopal List of the Three Palestines, alluded to in Dr. Keith’s Land of Israel p. 187, from which the foregoing is extracted. Edifices of Saracenic structure, scattered over Syria, show that these invaders sought to perpetuate their conquest, and made it their work to build as well as to destroy.

The ecclesiastical tyranny, which continued for centuries after, had at this period reached to great power; church architecture and church offerings forming a large part of church religion.↩

Continued in Revelation 9:12-19. The Sixth Trumpet

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

Today, June 4th marks the first full year since my wife Tess and I moved from Guam to the Philippines, now the third country I lived in outside the USA for more than one year. There are so many unusual sights here I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world that I thought the regular visitors of this website might like to see them too.

One of the most inconvenient things about life in the Philippines is frequent power outages. I don’t know about Manila or other large cities, but where I live in the province of Northern Samar, power outages are frequent. They can occur anytime, and when they do, we also have no WIFI to connect to the Internet. I keep my laptop charged so I can still do some work on articles even without an Internet connection.

See more photos of my area in the Philippines on Scenes of the Philippines

Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the state religion.

My good friend Reinhard from the Netherlands wrote this and shared it with me.

Many Protestants believe that the Romanization of the Early Church occurred in phases and steps over the centuries; say, in the 4th to the 6th century. And, in a way, it did! But there was certainly a turning point in church history when a switch was definitively turned. It is not clear to many that a fatal decision was taken at a council convened by Emperor Constantine (306-337), who was present there as president. What should a government servant do at a church meeting? He had put an end to the persecution of Christians, but the Church was fettered and a gross error was introduced (Ephesians 4:14). Even most Protestant church history books don’t mention what comes next!

But the book “The Two Babylons” by Alexander Hislop (late 19th century) gives a clear account of this. By the two Babylons is meant, firstly, the idolatry of ancient Babylon and secondly, the Roman Institute, which has taken over a great deal from it under “Christian” or otherwise names.

It is about the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. There a heretic, Arius, who denied the eternal divinity of Christ, was justly condemned, but at the same time the Orthodox Church was hijacked by Roman Catholicism, although that appellation did not then exist, but was of Gnostic origin. The Egyptian participants, called the Melchites of Alexandria, brought up the concept of “Theotokos.” (Alexandria was a hotbed of gnostic schools.) Theotokos was concerned with the designation of Mary as being the one who gives birth to God, i.e. “the God-bearer”.

Here the “Mother and Child Worship” was introduced and soon also the image service. So the heretic Arius was cast out through the front door, but Babylonian idolatry was brought in through the back door. The truth is that Mary is not the mother of God, but Jesus took on her flesh and blood. And again, that Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost so that our Lord was the Man-God. True God and true Man. That is why we do not speak of Mary as the mother of God (God Triune was eternally earlier than Mary!) but as the mother of the Lord. The “Mother and Child Worship” of ancient Babylon had been adopted, and with it the Early Church ended up in the waters polluted by false teachings. When, at the end of the 4th century, the bishop of Rome took the title “Pontifex Maximus” (until then the title of the Roman emperor), the first pope, named Siricius from 384-399, was appointed. This made the Roman Institute a ‘fait accompli‘ (an accomplished fact)! These facts mark the transition from the Early Church to the papacy. Another 11 centuries would pass before the Reformation would break through and the Light of God’s Word would be put back on the candlestick. A huge breach was made in the fortress of the antichrist. God’s people were delivered and brought out of their Babylonian captivity! The Roman Institute is not a Christian church, and Roman Catholics are not Christians.
 
Note: “Gnosis”, is the Greek word for ‘Knowledge’. A religion for initiates, whose pseudo-Christian movement gave a different interpretation to the truth of the Gospel and denied that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. I John 4:1-6 and II John 7.

They adhered to a doctrine of higher and lower gods (Roman Catholic saints) produced by the great goddess, whom they called the “Virgin Mother.” This is the ancient idolatry of Babel. They taught another trinity: the Father, the Madonna, and the Son. The Blessed Virgin (Mary) is then the incarnation of the Spirit of God. This is the basis of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. This has actually been adopted by Roman Catholicism. Until 325 A.D., this doctrine was alien to the Early Church and has no basis in the Bible.
 
R. Sheep.

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

A.D. 565-612.

THIS VISION, coming between those of the fourth trumpet and the fifth, corresponds with that period of time in history between the extinction of the old government at Rome and the rise of Mohammed — from the Emperor Justinian’s death, when the Lombards settled in Italy, to the beginning of the seventh century, the usually admitted period of transition from ancient to modern history.

From the angel flying through mid-heaven we may infer that his message of warning was one that might be recognized by all who observed the signs of the times, and in the Church of Christendom doubtless there were those who at this crisis were not insensible to the forebodings of evil. From the time of St. Paul through the different centuries following, we find in the writings of the Greek and Latin fathers that the expectation of the Church was, that with the fall of the Roman Empire the coming of Antichrist in power might be looked for. Jerome, about the time when Alaric took Rome, wrote again and again, “The Roman world rushes to destruction and we bend not our neck in humiliation, the hindrance in Antichrist’s way is removing and we heed it not.” Many were the writers, in different centuries who had sent forth from their retirement, some from their monasteries, their note of warning. Well might they regard that as being Rome’s downfall, when the name of Roman emperor had been extinguished in the west by Odoacer, and then (in A.D. 550) that of consul and of senate by Justinian’s generals. From Rome prostrate the solemn voice seemed to rise and echo through the world, “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, by reason of the judgments now pending.”

There was in the chronology of this particular time also that which favored the idea that the consummation of all things approached, it having been universally believed, both amongst the Jews and the Christian fathers, that the present world was designed to last but 6000 years, at the end of which the expected Millennium was to commence. But according to the Septuagint, the reckoning of which was generally received by the Romans, these 6000 years were at this period nearly completed.

There was also something in the outward aspect of affairs that omened ill. All the empire seemed affected. The newly founded Gothic kingdoms were still in commotion in the West. Another barbarous horde, the Lombards, had seized on many parts of Italy. The Avar Tartars had settled themselves in Hungary. War from Persia likewise threatened the Eastern third. Nor were they the terrors of man’s wrath only that tended to alarm. Pestilence during fifty-two years infected the greater part of the empire, by which many cities were depopulated and made desert. At Constantinople 5000, and at length 10,000, died daily. At Rome, in a solemn procession for imploring the mercy of Heaven, no less than eighty persons in a single hour dropped dead from the infection of the pestilence.

The greatest man of that age, the then Pope of Rome, Gregory the Great, gave out a warning cry of what he too thought to be portended by the state of the times. His forebodings are on record. “We know from the Word of Almighty God that the end of the world is at hand, and the reign of the saints which shall have no end. In the approach of which consummation, all nature must be expected to be disordered, seasons deranged, wars raging, and famines, earthquakes, and pestilences. If not in our days,” he concludes, “we must expect it in those following.” Was it not like the angel flying in mid-heaven, and crying, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth, by reason of the judgments about to come”?

Nor was it only concerning the coming of the Lord as being near that Gregory raised his cry: he spoke of Antichrist’s being at hand also. In consequence of the Patriarch of Constantinople having taken the title of “Universal Bishop,” Gregory wrote, at intervals from A.D. 580 to nearly the end of the century, letters to emperors, bishops, etc., declaring before Christendom that whosoever claimed this title was the likeness, the precursor of, and the preparer for Antichrist; that he bore the same characteristic of boundless pride and self-exaltation; that the tendency of his assumption, if consented to, was to withdraw all members of the Church from its only true head, Jesus Christ, and to connect them with himself. His letters state or imply that he considers such title as the name of blasphemy connected with the ten-horned beast of the Apocalypse; the self-exaltation above his fellow-men, as that predicted by St. Paul of the man of sin; (2 Thess. 2:4) and the consenting to it, as that departure from the faith and the apostasy named by the same apostle. (1 Tim. 4:1) What would this wise observer have said had he but foreseen that, before fifteen years after, this title should be adopted by the Bishop of Rome, his successor, and extended even to that of universal episcopal supremacy over the whole professing Church on earth — an assumption never to be abandoned? Surely the fact was well calculated to excite the misgivings of thinking men, and to awaken the inquiry, whether, in truth, the very Antichrist of prophecy was not even then in existence.

We have, in a former lecture, observed the gradual progress in the Church visible of these anti-christian tendencies; and we have seen the grievous judgments commissioned by God against the portion of the Roman world in which these errors had become more flagrant. What then, we may ask, had been the moral effect of these warnings and judgments which the Gothic wars had so distinctly pronounced? Had they led to the rooting out the growing evils? Alas! no. Those evils had gone on advancing; old superstitions continued, and new were added. The Baptismal sacrament was still regarded as having the mysterious efficacy of a charm for man’s salvation; and the Lord’s Supper was held up in nearly the same light. The saints and their merits were still invoked, and in the best authorized liturgies set forth as the most powerful mediators and the best pleaders with God, and their relics and pictures more than ever venerated. One Christian bishop, Serenus of Marseilles, having cast out the saints’ images from his churches, on account of the idolatrous worship paid to them by the people, Gregory the Great took part with the people, and had them retained. This same Pope Gregory just then gave his authority to the doctrine of purgatory. This arose from the custom of thanksgivings for the dead. Originally it alone applied to martyrs; but in time more doubtful characters were solemnly remembered; and church prayers were offered for the remission of punishment, and for the purification of those souls which had departed in sin. Then came with this error, and as a part of it, curious questions relative to the purifying of the soul by fire; and now Pope Gregory, at the close of the sixth century, fixed authoritatively the awful and false doctrine of a purgatorial fire immediately after death. This was done on the presumed evidence of recent visions and revelations. The Bishop of Capua asserted that he had himself seen the soul of Paschasius the deacon boiling in the hot baths of St. Angelo!

We noticed the power put into the hands of the priesthood by the sacramental error, and that of saint and relic worship. About the middle of the fifth century private and particular confession to priests instead of public general confession was substituted; after this came indulgence for sins, granted by the priest, as well as remission from their guilt, and from penance. Now the doctrine of purgatory increased the priestly power — a power fearful to contemplate. They (the priests) were forbidden to marry, and thus detached from the ties of the world. Ecclesiastical power was their sole ambition; and this, when their morals, like their knowledge, were debased and low. The use made of this priestly power was to come between Christ and the. Church, and to shut Christ more and more out of the ecclesiastical system. When, after all this exaltation of the priesthood, one among them not only assumed the title of “Universal Bishop of the whole Church,” but a still higher title ascribed to him by the Italian bishops and priesthood in council, viz., “Christ’s Vicar,” or “God’s Vicar on earth,” must it not again have struck the thinking mind of every real Christian that herein was the very likeness of that “man of sin” referred to in God’s Word?

Except in the religious murders, there was not a single sin in the catalogue mentioned in the ninth chapter of Revelation, verses 20, 21, as the cause of these woes, which was not to be found at this time in the Roman Church. There was the worship of demons, or saints canonized, and of images of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood, which neither could see, nor hear, not walk; there were the sorceries, or lying miracles: and there was licentiousness, and priestly religious-thefts. Must not all these have seemed to an enlightened Christian to cry to heaven for vengeance against apostate Christendom? Might he not well have anticipated the angels cry, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth,” by reason of the other judgments yet to come upon it? By the world, however, the interval of warning was neglected, and soon passed away; and the trumpet sounding again gave sign to the Apostle that judgment was once more aroused, and the threatened woes about to begin. Previously to our entering upon the consideration of the coming vision, let us endeavor to mark the limits of its infliction.

We find no express intimation as to the particular division of the Roman earth that was now to be visited. But it may be inferred that the eastern or Asiatic third, as the one nearest to the Euphrates, was to be the scene of suffering under the fifth as well as under the following trumpet. To this portion, comprehending Asia-Minor, Syria, and Egypt, the former troubles reached not. Its religion had been sinking deeper and deeper into superstition. In its controversies, the characteristic of the Greek ecclesiastical history of the times, we look in vain for the Christian spirit. Now its hour was come. But what the scourge, and whence? The answer is conveyed in Scripture by means of locally figurative and characteristic symbols, which will require an attentive consideration before we enter on the explanation of the fifth trumpet.

It must strike an observant reader how often in Scripture symbols are taken from either the plants, the animals, or the people of the country prophesied of, so as to identify it in respect of its geography, natural history, or national habits. Thus, is Judah symbolized? We find the olive, the fig tree, and the vine-trees peculiar to that country. “The Lord called thy name a green olive.” (Jer. 11:16) “He hath barked my fig-tree.” (Joel 1:7) “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt.” (Ps. 80:80) If Egypt be characterized, Isaiah describes Rabshakeh as saying, “Thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt;” (Is. 36:6) and again Ezekiel complains, “They have been a staff of reed to Israel,” (Ezek. 29:6) the reed being characteristic of the banks of the Nile. So David indicates his own land. “The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” (Ps. 92:12)

With the same local appropriateness animals are used as symbols. Judah is again and again depicted as a lion; — “Judah is couched as a lion.” (Gen. 49:9) “Ephraim also is like a silly dove,” (Hosea 7:11) the dove being constantly used in the Jewish sacrifices. Judah in sorrow is “like a pelican in the wilderness.” All animals well known in these countries.

The personal appearance, the dress and armor in general use, is sometimes taken to indicate the nation intended. Take that beautiful personification of Judah as a female child brought up to womanhood, affianced to God, and then faithless. (Ezek. 16.) Here the long hair, the anointing with oil, the broidered dress, the jewels and other ornaments, are all appurtenances of the Jewish female of olden times.

Many other examples will readily occur to each Bible reader, but these will suffice to enable us intelligently to enter upon the coming subject.

We may take this opportunity of noticing an objection which has been taken to the admixture of literal and figurative language, so apparent in the foregoing explanation of the first four trumpet visions, as also in those we have yet to consider. But are there not in truth numerous instances of the like throughout the Scriptures? Take the prophetic description of our Lord’s sufferings: “They pierced My hands and My feet,” in immediate connection with ” strong bulls of Bashan have beset Me round:” (Ps. 22:12, 16) — this figurative, that literal. See also Ezek. 27:2 5; and Ps. 80:8.

Continued in Revelation 9:1-11. The Fifth Trumpet

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.

Irruption Of The Goths, Etc., A.D. 395-565

THE TRUMPET was of God’s own appointment to Israel, to be used in the tabernacle or temple by the priests that “stood before God.” (Num. 10:1-10) Its purpose was twofold. 1st, As regarded the Israelites, its use was to proclaim the advance of time — the Sabbaths and other festivals, to summon the congregations for prayer and praise, and to direct the movements of the camp in their pilgrimage. 2nd, As regarded their enemies, to proclaim war, as from God himself, in token that the Lord was about to fight for Israel.

Similar to these would seem to be the objects indicated by these symbolic trumpet-soundings in the Revelation. As one after another uttered its solemn and far-echoing clang, his own Israel, the true Church, might look upon the sign as one would note the strikings of the dial, to mark each epoch of progress toward the consummation. So, also, to the opponents of the truth, each successive blast was a denunciation of war and troubles about to come upon them. An interesting analogy might still further be observed between the mode of these Apocalyptic soundings and the trumpetblasts at the fall of Jericho, commemorated up to the Apostles’ time in the annual feast of tabernacles, when a palm-bearing procession, with trumpets blowing and chanting hosannas, were wont to visit the temple. Thus might the saints of God, even amid those forebodings of woe to the earth, direct their hearts in bright anticipation to their final victory over every enemy, when the glorious antitypical feast shall be celebrated in the kingdom of Christ.

The first four trumpet-visions, like those of the first four seals, are connected together by certain features of resemblance. They depict a series of tempests about to affect in succession the third part of the Roman earth, of the sea, of the rivers, and of the heavenly luminaries; each having sufficiently distinctive characteristics to fix the application of the symbol to the precise epoch of historical events.

For the explanation of the peculiar tripartite division of the Roman world here intended we are necessarily confined to that which will suit its application, not to one, but to all these four visions, in which the same, or corresponding third part is evidently designated.

And thus we are directed to that trisection of the empire which occurred just before the establishment of Christianity, when the entire provinces were apportioned between the three emperors, Constantine, Licinius, and Maximin. To Constantine there attached Gaul, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Africa; to Licinius, the vast Illyrian preefecture, which embraced the rest of Roman Europe; to Maximin, the Asiatic provinces and Egypt. This division continued geographically and historically recognized even after the well-known bi-partition of the empire into Eastern and Western, the intermediate third province of Illyricum being subject to frequent alterations, sometimes belonging to the Eastern and again to the Western Empire, until, after the death of Theodosius, it became so detached, by Gothic occupation, from the rule of both Eastern and Western Empire as to require that it be henceforth treated of in distinct and separate history.

It will tend much to our comparison of the prophecy with the history if we endeavor to place ourselves in the situation of the Evangelist, and trace, as we may believe he was enabled to do, these successive visions as locally affecting each its assigned portion of the Roman world. The living, though miniature, landscape was stretched before him, with its triple divisions and boundaries, each portion including its third of the Mediterranean or Roman Sea, as well as its third of the land, and each one also its own characteristic stream of the three great frontier rivers, the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates. It is the Western third to which the first four trumpet-visions alike refer.

Observe the vision. The Angel-priest has come forth from offering the incense of the faithful. He goes again to the great altar and refills his censer with the burning embers, not now to bless, but to destroy. He casts them upon the professing but apostate world below, devoting the land to a curse. Heaven and earth, animate and inanimate creation, feel the shock. From the cloud of glory issue thunderings and lightnings. The four angels have loosed their hold of the winds, and the tempests burst forth. The Roman earth quakes through its vast extent, and everywhere, from suffering or fear, men’s faces gather blackness. And now the angel sounds

The FIRST TRUMPET. Lo, coming from the bitter north, from the countries beyond the Danube, a tremendous tempest, charged with lightning and hail, appears driving westward. Its course is over the continental provinces of the Western Roman Empire. It touches the Rhaetian hill country, and sweeps over the Italian frontier. Other terrific thunder-clouds from the north-west intermingle with it; and once and again passing the Alps and the Apennines, spread in devastating fury over Italy. Dividing, a part bursts over the imperial city, and passes to the southernmost coast of Bruttium. Another part, driven backward, takes a westerly course over the Rhine into Gaul, causing devastation far and wide; then, crossing the Pyrenees, pours its fury on the Spanish provinces, nor spends itself till it has reached the far shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Throughout the whole the lightning-fire runs along the ground, as of old-in the plagues of Egypt, burning up country and town, trees and pasture. Moreover, “blood mingles with the hail;” life is destroyed. The third part of the land is desolated. A short pause ensues; then presently

The SECOND TRUMPET sounds; another trumpet blast of judgment. Now is the visitation of the western third of the Mediterranean Sea, including its islands and the marine province beyond. A giant mountain-rock, blazing like Etna with volcanic fires, is upheaved from the southernmost point of Spain and cast into the sea. The waters are agitated by it. The burning ashes are scattered, for hundreds of miles round, on sea and mainland, coasts and islands; first on the shores of Africa, then opposite from Gibraltar Straits along to the head of the Adriatic. Ships are on fire in harbOur and at sea, and blood, as before, marks the loss of life. Over the whole maritime scene of its ravages all that is habitable is destroyed. “The third part of the sea becomes blood,” etc.

THIRD TRUMPET. The volcano is not yet fully spent when another angel sounds. Just where the Theiss, pouring itself into the Danube, marks the center of the Illyrian boundary, a portentous meteor, like a blazing torch trailing its red line of light ’behind it in the northern skies, descends, and taints the rivers in its downward course. Tracking the line of the Upper Danube and the Rhine, it poisons the waters even to the Belgic lowlands. Thence it shoots westwards; but, repelled by some counter-force, it turns south, and falls on the fountains of the European waters, even on the Alpine glaciers. Rivers and streams are “made bitter,” and the dying and dead lie along their banks. “The name of that star is Wormwood,” etc. So having done its part, it shoots back toward the Danube, there blazes for a moment, and is extinct.

FOURTH TRUMPET. Hitherto, while land, sea, rivers, and fountains had been in vision desolated, yet had the sun continued to shine on the Western Empire. Now this too is affected. One third of its orb is eclipsed, and the darkness of night supervenes; then the moon and the stars of the symbolic firmament, all that are in that third of the Roman sky, are darkened also.

Such, we may imagine, was the manner in which these successive visions passed before the Evangelist. Nor need we doubt the natural interpretation he would attach to them. Surely he would consider them as prefiguring the ravages of some terrible invaders from Northern Germany, which should desolate the Western Empire successively in its continental and maritime provinces, followed speedily by a fresh scourge on the Illyrian prefecture, thence ravaging the countries of the Rhine and of its Alpine source, and, finally, symbolizing the extinction of the imperial dynasty of the West, and even of its inferior governments. In such manner, we believe, must St. John have interpreted these prophetical pictures. It remains for us to see the historical fulfillment of them.

And here, while expositors have with somewhat general consent designated the great Gothic destroyers of the empire, Alaric and Rhadayaisus, as well as Genseric, Attila, and Odoacer, as having in a remarkable degree answered to the prefigurations in these trumpet-visions, it is worth while tracing farther back the agreement with the prophecy of the events preceding their irruptions.

We have already remarked on the “silence in heaven,” the stillness which supervened on the death of Theodosius, A.D. 395. It was but of short duration. “Before the winter had ended,” says Gibbon, “the Gothic nation was in arms.” In 396 the fearful tempest bursts upon Thessaly and the Grecian provinces. The march of ALARIC and his hosts was traced in blood. The land seemed to tremble. Nay, strange convulsions of nature gave literal portents of evil to come, uniting their voices with the voices of men2 in sounding a solemn alarm.

Then was a pause, while “the angels prepared to sound.” Then was Alaric preparing himself for his task. Through the infatuation of the Emperor Arcadius he had been made master-general of Eastern Illyricum, and thus was furnished by the Romans themselves with arms for their own destruction. There, seated in authority, between the two empires, be for four years meditated, like an eagle of prey, on which half of the devoted carcass he should fall, until his preparation was complete in his formal exaltation as king of the Visigoths.

This era of the first trumpet extended from about A.D. 400 to A.D. 410, or somewhat longer. Alaric was arrested suddenly by death while meditating further conquests, reserved however for another hand and another trumpet.

To the Vandal, GENSERIC, it appertained to follow up the scourge by smiting the maritime provinces of Africa and the islands which Alaric had left untouched. Scarcely had Italy begun to recover in part from its ravages, and while Gaul and Spain continued to be rent by the quarrels of the conquerors, Africa was made to feel that its time was come. In the year 429 the Second Trumpet had sounded. Genseric had transported his force across the Afric sea, and, like the noted volcano of that very age, entered on his rapid work of destruction. Hippo fell before him and was burnt; then Carthage. Resistance was at an end. The fire did indeed “mingle with blood,” till all that province was Vandalised. Then did Genseric cast his eyes on the sea. He created a naval power and claimed the empire of the Mediterranean. Sicily and Sardinia, all that was in the third part of the sea, sweeping from Gibraltar to the Adriatic, with their adjoining coasts, were mercilessly ravaged. When asked by his pilot what course to steer, “Leave the determination to the winds,” was his reply; “they will transport us to the guilty coast whose inhabitants have provoked the divine justice.” Twice, on memorable occasions, the Roman navies were gathered to oppose the Vandal’s progress, but in vain. Fire-ships were driven among them, and the prediction was fulfilled, “the third part of the ships was destroyed.”

This second-trumpet era reached till A.D. 477, when this sea-tyrant died. Ere that period, however, another plague had been commissioned against the devoted empire in ATTILA THE HUN, — “the scourge of God.” Alone of conquerors, ancient or modern, he united under his sway the two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia. The superstition of the times regarded him as more than mortal, and their chroniclers tell how a blazing meteor in the heavens, with other fiery northern lights, boded ruin and war when Attila entered upon his conquests. Having made himself lord of the Lower Danube about A.D. 450, he crossed the Rhine and traced this great frontier river of the west down to Belgium, massacring its inhabitants and wasting its valleys; until, having burnt its principal cities, and left behind him a scene of desolation and woe, he was arrested in his course and repulsed in the tremendous battle of Chalons. Thence turning upon a new scene of predicted ravage, he fell upon “the European fountains of waters” — the Alpine heights and Alpine valleys. “From the Alps to the Apennines all was flight, depopulation, slaughter, slavery, and despair.”3 Men fled into the sea for refuge, and then it was that Venice was built out of the deep — a standing memorial of Attila the Hun. And now that all Italy lay exposed before him, we might well ask what hindered that he should not have advanced in his career of slaughter? But his prescribed work was ended. The third of the rivers and fountains of waters had been made bitter by his means. An embassy from the Emperor Valentinian and the Roman bishop Leo sufficed to deprecate his wrath. He suddenly withdrew from Italy, recrossed the Danube, and the very next year, A.D. 453, was cut off by apoplexy. The meteor was extinct. The power of the Huns was broken; the woe of the Third Trumpet had passed away.

Little now pertained to Rome’s empire but an empty title. Its glory had long departed; its provinces had been rent away; its power by sea annihilated; its country had become desert. The time was now come when Rome’s imperial title was itself to come to an end. ODOACER, chief of the Heruli, a barbarian host left by Attila on the frontiers of Italy, gave command that the name and office of Roman Emperor of the West should be abolished. The command was obeyed. Romulus Augustulus abdicated. The insignia of authority were sent by the senate to Constantinople, with a profession that one emperor was sufficient for the whole of the empire. Thus the western third of the imperial sun was darkened — to shine no more. Still a shadow of authority remained at Rome. The senate assembled and consuls were appointed yearly, Odoacer himself being named governor. Thus the inferior lights, the moon and stars, for a while appeared not wholly extinguished. Before fifty years more had elapsed, these also were to pass away. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, destroying the kingdom of the Heruli, ruled in his own name till A.D. 526; then, on the reconquest of Italy by Belisarius, the Roman senate was dissolved and the consulship abrogated. In the prophetic words of Jerome about a century before, “The world’s glorious sun has been extinguished,” or, as our modern poet has, in like Apocalyptic imagery, expressed it —

till not one star remained to glimmer on the vacant and dark night.

So the Fourth Trumpet sound died away.

Meanwhile, amidst all these troubles, the elect and sealed of God were preserved. Searching and trying indeed must those times have been to them, and not from the secular afflictions alone of the world around them, but yet more, be sure, from the advancing apostasy in the professing Church. By many even of the most eminent of the teachers and rulers of the Church superstitious practices were encouraged, and their influence and talents zealously and most lamentably exercised for the upholding of grievous errors. Sulpicius, Paulinus, Jerome, Martin of Tours, contributed each his aid in so helping forward the apostasy at the end of the fourth century, and others still succeeded in the fifth. But the influence also of Augustine continued. He had himself died in peace the very year Hippo was burnt, and then been numbered with the Church above. But his doctrine, his holy doctrine, died not.

Continued in Revelation 8:13. Forewarnings Of Coming Woe

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 Incense Vision. Saint-Worship Begun, A.D. 324-395.

IN THE LECTURE upon the sealing vision we had to notice the intimation given to St. John of apostasy and unfaithfulness, begun and carried forward to a large extent in the professing Christian Church from the time that Christianity became the national religion of the Roman Empire.

But could such falling away occur and judgment from God not follow? And whence did such judgment arise, as we might justly anticipate?

There stood the four tempest-angels, prepared to execute the order and let loose the blasts. In other words, there stood waiting on the frontiers the barbarian hordes, ready to execute the work of desolation on the Roman Empire. There was silence in heaven. No trumpet-blast had sounded. All was serene, tranquil, and silent. It was the stillness before the storm; and while such stillness lasted what vision came before the eyes of the Evangelist? “Another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer.”

There are three points here to be specially noted in the passage: — First, the angel-priest ministering. Whom can we suppose to be here intended but the Lord Jesus? For he is “the great High Priest over the house of God passed into the heavens.” In that character he appeared in the opening of the first chapter. None but the high priest in the Jewish temple used a golden censer; the common priests used one of silver. This angel, who goes into the holy place and afterwards scatters altar-fire over the apostatizing land of Roman Christendom, must be the same as the sealing-angel whom we saw to be Christ Jesus, but now in his priestly and mediatorial character about to present as an offering the prayers of his people.

Secondly, we must note the position of the Angel. He stood at the altar, and much incense was given him. The Jewish law was, that the high priest should stand, receive the incense from the worshippers, and then, taking coals from the altar on his censer, should carry the coals and incense together into the sanctuary; and, after laying the latter on the golden altar before the veil, burn it with the sacred fire. Any other than this was called strange fire; for using which Nadab and Abihu, though sons of Aaron, were instantly struck dead by God. And why such particularity? It was that a deep mystery was shadowed forth in this Mosaic ordinance, viz., that the prayers and praises of God’s people, unless purified by and associated with the meritorious atoning-sacrifice of the Lamb of God, could never rise up acceptably before the mercy-seat of Jehovah. In the symbolic vision before us, the Angel’s standing by the altar and receiving and offering up the incense shows that such association here too was necessary. Association with Christ in his twofold character, both as sacrifice and as priest, is figured out, even as the true Christian’s privilege is stated: “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (i.e., an intercessory priest), and he is the propitiatory (or sacrifice) for our sins.” (1 John 2:1,2)

Thirdly, who were, and who were not, the offerers that gave him incense? The offerers were “the saints,” i.e., the 144,000 — the sealed ones. The prayers of “all these,” we read — and mark well, of these alone — rose up. Here comes in the force of allusive contrast. No other offerers came, no other prayers rose up. So it is expressly noted, for we read of wrath soon after being poured out on the earth, i.e., on the inhabitants of it, showing that they were not present at this service in the altar-court.

Had then the members of the professing Church indeed forsaken the altar-court? had they indeed renounced the privilege of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice and his mediatorship? Such seemed truly the meaning of the symbol. It appeared as if some renunciation of this privilege would about this period of time become apparent, not only in private but in public worship, and that the saints would be distinguished from the professing Church by their adherence to Christ’s mediation and propitiatory atoning sacrifice for acceptance with God. This first step in apostasy was about this time taken by the visible Church.

If we consult history, we shall see how the invocation of saints and martyrs and new means of propitiating God had just then come into fashion among the inhabitants of the Roman world, and that while professing to be Christians, they were rapidly falling back into Christ-renouncing idolatry. This was, in fact, the second step into Antichristian apostasy, and the more to be marked as here the invisible world was called in to strengthen the delusion. A recent writer of Church history describes well the then state of things. Speaking of the horror with which the early Christians viewed idolatry, he says: “So definite and broad was the space which in this point separated between Christianity and Paganism, that it seemed impossible that a compromise should be effected between principles so hostile. Yet the contrary result took place. A reconciliation, which in the beginning of the fourth century could not easily have been imagined, was virtually accomplished before its termination. Those who had sealed a Christian’s faith by a martyr’s death were exalted above men and enthroned among celestial beings. Superstition gave birth to credulity. Those who sat among the powers of heaven might (it was thought) sustain by miraculous assistance their votaries on earth… Hence the stupid veneration for bones and relics. People were taught that prayer was never so surely efficacious as when offered at the tomb of some saint.” Gibbon gives a sketch of the state of public worship then prevailing. “If in the beginning of the fifth century some of the primitive fathers had been suddenly raised from the dead to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian. congregation. As soon as the doors of the Church were thrown open, they must have been offended by the smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused at noonday a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, a sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the altar, they made their way through the prostrate crowd… (whose) devout kisses were imprinted on the walls and pavement of the sacred edifice; and their fervent prayers were directed (whatever might be the language of their Church) to the bones, the blood, or the ashes of the saints, which were usually concealed by a linen or silken veil from the eyes of the vulgar. They frequented the tombs of the martyrs in hope of obtaining from their powerful intercession every sort of spiritual, but more especially of temporal blessings. (Were their wishes fulfilled,) they again hastened to the martyrs’ tombs to celebrate with grateful thanksgivings their obligations to the memory and relics of those heavenly patrons. The walls were hung round with symbols of the favors which they had received, — eyes and hands and feet of gold and silver, and edifying pictures which could not long escape the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, represented the image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint.” Such is Gibbon’s account of the state of public worship at this epoch, A.D. 395: this being the very time we are now arrived at in symbolic history, when the angels were about to let go the wind, and the time also in Roman history of the commencement of the Gothic irruptions after the death of the Emperor Theodosius.

Let it not be supposed that it was only the young, the weak, and the ignorant who thus ran into folly and superstition. The highest of their bishops and doctors led the way, and the multitude followed. Pagans, of whom a few were left, as well as heretics, ridiculed the heathenish character of the new worship. In the year 396, Eunapius, the Pagan, exclaims, “These are the gods the earth nowadays brings forth; these the intercessors with the gods, — men called martyrs, before whose bones and skulls, pickled and salted, the monks kneel and lay prostrate, covered with filth and dust.” The Manichaean heretic, Faustus, A.D. 400, says, “You have but exchanged the old idols for martyrs, and offer to the latter the same prayers as once to the former.” The monk St. Jerome did truly step forth to repel such charges. He disclaimed idolatry, but he admitted and maintained that the dead saints were omnipresent, had influence with God, could hear and answer prayer, and even work miracles in behalf of the suppliant, as also punish neglecters and torture demons. He spoke of them as intercessors and mediators and ministers between God and man. Thus was Christ set aside; for how could these saints act as successful mediators, except as having a stock of merit of their own sufficient to propitiate God? How is Jesus Christ a prevailing Advocate with the Father, except as being “Christ the righteous,” who hath made atonement for our sins?” (1 John 2:2, 3) But to the merits of departed saints, as we have seen, were added the merits of the living Church; gifts and calms-deeds were offered at the saints’ tombs. So was the true offering of incense at God’s altar forsaken. In the language of the prophet, “They had forsaken God, the fountain of living waters, and hewn to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that could hold no water,” (Jer. 2:13) committing thus two evils. And the sad apostasy went forward. For whether it be the sacraments, or the Church forms, or tradition, or the dead saints, or the living priests; whatever it be that interposes and hinders the direct personal communion of each sinner’s soul with Christ as its Mediator, atonement, righteousness, and Saviour, it is altogether contrary to the written Word of God, taken in its simple unperverted sense. Had the early Church but kept fast to this written Word for its guide and rule, nothing could have misled it.

How innocent, nay, more, how even amiable, were the first steps that led to martyr-worship! What more natural than that the remains of those who suffered for Christ’s sake should be carefully preserved, and their birthday into eternal glory annually remembered! What more natural than on these days to have a service at their tomb! Are they present? Do they hear us and see us? How natural to speak to them, and ask their prayer! Here began the danger of interfering with the mediatorship of Jesus. Had not the word of prophecy spoken of the worship of demons or deified dead men as being one mark of the apostasy? (Rev. 9:20) As it was, the warning note was neglected. One Council, indeed, forbade the worship of angels, but dead saints were not to be considered as such. In this distinction appeared the deceit of Satan, the bold and crafty deviser of all this mischief. The angels could not be connected with a particular spot or edifice on earth: the dead saints were more readily associated with the priestly functionaries of the church built over the place where their bodies were entombed. Who so effectual a helper to the saints’ favor as the priest that watched the saints’ relics? Hence it arose that the priest also in the eyes of the populace became a mediator, and a dispenser of the favor and wrath of Heaven. He was regarded with superstitious awe as holy and elect, and as having connection with the invisible world: — a regard tending too surely to increase pride and vanity amongst the clergy. Thus saint-worship, like the former error of baptism, became abiding. The great step in Antichristian apostasy was taken. The infidel Gibbon and the Christian writer and bishop, Van Mildert, speak alike “of heathenism as revived in the empire.” To use the words of Coleridge, “The pastors of the Church had gradually changed the life and light of the Gospel into the very superstitions they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganized Christianity in order to Christen paganism.” Well might the Apocalyptic prophecy speak of these heathenized Christians as of the rest of the world, under the title “the inhabitants of the earth.”

But were there no true worshippers left? None who acknowledged and held close to their High Priest and Intercessor, Jesus Christ? Far from it. “There was given to the angel much incense, that he should offer it, with the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar before the throne.” And the names of some of the number remain on record. “Whom shall I look to as my mediator,” said Augustine; “shall I go to angels? Many have tried it, and deserve to be the sport of the illusions they loved. A mediator between God and man must have the nature of both. The true Mediator, whom in thy secret mercy thou hast shown to the humble, the man Jesus Christ, hath appeared Mediator between mortal sinners and the immortal Holy One; that by his divine righteousness he might justify the ungodly. He was shown to ancient saints that they might be saved by faith in his future sufferings, and we by faith in the same sufferings already past. How hast thou loved us, O Father, delivering up thy Son for us, for whom he our Priest and Sacrifice, was subjected to death! Well may my hope be strong in such an Intercessor.” Nor was Augustine singular. We may hope those members of the Laodicean Council, of which we before spoke, were influenced by love to Christ in forbidding angel-worship. Mention is made of Jovinian and Vigilantius, the latter called “the Protestant of his age,” who, even more prominently than Augustine, protested against the prevailing errors. They were cast out as heretics by their fellowmen, but can we doubt their acceptance with their Lord? “Their prayers ascended with the incense smoke out of the angel’s hand unto God.”

And for the earthly ones in Roman Christendom, — what of them? The angel took the censer, and filled it with fire, and cast it (the fire) upon the earth.” The signal was given. “And there were thunderings, and lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake. And the seven angels prepared themselves to sound.”

Continued in Revelation 8:6-12. The First Four Trumpets

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 Final Salvation Of The Elect. The Doctrines Of Augustine. Fourth Century.

WE HAVE ALREADY in a great measure anticipated the main explanation of this vision; but there is one point not touched on, and which requires attention, namely, the position which the true Church held on earth as to the Apostolic character of her ministry, symbolized by that which the Evangelist himself held during the visions which he saw. It may be well to mark very particularly this latter, since it will serve as an explanation to some difficulties: and in confirmation of the view being one recognized in Scripture, we need only refer to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, for similar examples.

These ancient prophets, we may observe, prophesied not merely by word, but by action. The acts that were required of them were meant to show on a larger scale what God proposed to do. They were, in other words, types; and in this way the prophets became typical or representative persons. Take for instance the passage in Isaiah: “Behold, I and the children that God hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts.” (Isa. 8:18) Again, the Lord had said to Isaiah, “Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years, for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot,” (Isa 20:2-4) etc. When Jeremiah made yokes and wore them by the Lord’s command, he is then desired to send them to the kings and peoples of Moab, Edom, Tyre, and Sidon, to cause them by this action to understand that they were to be brought under the yoke of the king of Babylon. (Jer. 27:3) When Ezekiel, by God’s command, had drawn on a tile a picture of the city of Jerusalem, he is told to build a fort, and set battering-rams against it, etc., (Ezek. 4:2) a sign of the approaching destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar’s besieging army. Again, when he publicly prepared. his stuff by day, and digged a hole, and carried it in the twilight, etc., he is told to say to Israel, “I am your sign: like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them: they shall remove and go into captivity.” (Ezek. 12:11)

Isaiah, like St. John, was rapt into vision, wherein we find him receiving a command, “Make the heart of this people fat and their ears heavy,” etc. On which he puts the question, “Lord, how long?” and receives for answer, “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitants,” etc. (Isa. 6:11); showing that the period of the vision extended to a time beyond the prophet’s life. Again, in the vision of the dry bones we may see Ezekiel typifying to Israel the Gospel preachers of the latter day, his successors in the prophetic office. (Ezek. 36.)

In the same way St. John is to be regarded as a representative individual during his visions, a figure of the true Apostolic ministry that was to be continued in the Church on earth, and those views that he received as representing the light to be given to the Church on various points and at different times, to the end of the present dispensation.

The view which was permitted to him in the present vision was that of an elect number, who, being sealed, were to go through tribulation; and being victorious, and having in their hands palm branches as symbols of their victory (a Judaic as well as a Roman symbol), were to arrive, in white garments washed in the blood of Christ, and in countless multitudes, at the throne of God. No change had taken place in the scenery round about. There was the Roman earth; there stood the four tempest-angels holding the winds; and afterwards followed a series of events, all which tend to show that this vision of the palm-bearers was, by anticipation, a prospective glimpse into futurity, vouchsafed at this juncture to the faithful for their encouragement.

Let us examine, then, whether there was at this period any revelation made to the true Church, or to any of its principal ministers, of this doctrine of electing and saving grace. Does it appear that anyone did observe the distinction between the professing and the real Church, and did mark it out so publicly as that it formed an era in Church history, and therefore a fit subject for prefiguration to St. John by the angel?

To Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in the year A.D. 395, is the Church acknowledged to be so much indebted, that the time of his ministry has ever been considered as furnishing a remarkable epoch in its history. He was born near Hippo, in North Africa, A.D. 354, in the reign of Constantius. He went to Rome, and thence to Milan, A.D. 383, 385. There he heard its bishop, Ambrose, preach; he was converted and baptized. In A.D. 388 he returned to Carthage, was ordained a presbyter, and in A.D. 395 Bishop of Hippo. His life was continued for nearly thirty-five years after, till the time when the Vandal irruption into Africa took place.

His views of divine truth were peculiarly full on two points, — the same that we have considered, as being the two most strongly marked in the visions just before us: 1st, that of Christ’s true Church being composed of spiritual believers alone; and 2nd, that of the origin and increase of this true Church being the work of God’s sovereign grace; — of grace electing, preventing, quickening, illuminating, adopting, saving; — saving alike from sin’s dominion and from all other real evils of this life, and saving too unto the end. Doubtless the manner in which he was himself called into this true Church led him to feel its value, and prepared him zealously to advocate this truth. Born of a Christian mother, and at one time anxious as a youth to be baptized, his wish was not complied with; the danger of sin after baptism, according to the error of the day, constituted an objection in the minds of his parents; so he grew up not even in profession a Christian. In his Confessions he tells us how he was led into vice and error, — error of a nature to lead him still further into vice, as it led him to disbelieve the holiness of God and the responsibility of man. It was in this state of heathenism, sensuality, hardness of heart, and philosophic pride and darkness that he visited Milan, heard the truth, and was converted. Thus previous to his baptism he experienced the truth of God’s free, song. reign, and converting grace; and we find him soon afterwards preaching zealously and writing on this very subject, as well as on the spirituality of the true Church; and yet again on the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, which was soon added to his other views of divine truth.

A few years after he opposed the Pelagian error, which had arisen in the Church, asserting man’s free will; and by his direction councils were induced solemnly to condemn the heresy, and at the same time to recognize the doctrine of grace. Further, on occasion of the capture of Rome by Alaric, A.D. 410, Christianity having been reproached by the heathens as the cause of the calamity, and the Christians being in bitterness and disappointment at their hopes of speedily-coming blessedness being frustrated, he wrote his great work called the City of God. It was his plan in it to draw a line between the professedly baptized and the really baptized Church, — the kingdom of this world and the kingdom or city of God. He sought to distinguish the elect, — their character, that of love to God, as distinct from the love of self and the world; their privilege, that of being enlightened, quickened, sanctified, and saved even to the end, by the same divine grace; their state in this world, that of strangers, with tribulation and warfare here appointed them, but with the assurance of future glory. In short, it was the very tracing out historically the past and prophetically the future fortunes of the 144,000 of the Apocalypse, as distinct from those of the unsealed Israel. Indeed, he speaks of the citizens of this heavenly city as “God’s twelve tribes of election out of Israel’s professing tribes.” He notes the number as definite, yet large in the aggregate, as a number numberless. He speaks of their being gathered out of all nations and kindreds and tribes; also of the Church’s tribulation and Antichrist’s persecution as by no means so short as many expected it to be. He writes too of the alone cleansing blood of Jesus as washing them from sin, and of the final victory and triumph of these redeemed in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Such were the views put forth by Augustine on the subject of divine grace; — views obtained, he says, from the Apostolic Scriptures, and under the immediate teaching of the Holy Ghost. As regards the doctrines of the election of grace and the final perseverance of the saints, it is evident that not only the sealing and vision, but also the prospective palm-bearing vision was needed; and both were revealed at corresponding epochs in the history of the Church as a prophecy to the representative of the earthly Church, St. John, and as the fulfillment of such prophecy to Augustine — to the one, previous to the great tempest blasts let loose by the four angels; to the other, previous to the irruption of the barbarian nations over the Roman world.

Augustine’s views relative to baptism are interesting, and were well calculated to serve as an antidote to the errors of his day. He distinguished carefully between baptismal regeneration, and the regeneration or conversion of the heart, to which last change personal faith in Christ was deemed by him essential. He was convinced, from observing those around him, that men did not obtain spiritual life by the washing of water, and he felt from his own experience, as well as from the Scripture account of the Ethiopian eunuch and others, that spiritual life may be begun before baptism. Yet he entertained a high opinion of the benefits often conferred in baptism by the Divine Spirit, i.e., if rightly performed, and followed by faith in the person receiving it. It was thus that his doctrine of electing and preserving grace obtained a general sanction in the Church; Rome itself at one time assenting, and reckoning Augustine amongst its saints. But the contrariety of Augustine’s doctrine to that system of ecclesiastical salvation begun by the priest in baptism, and carried on simply by virtue of Church ceremonies and ordinances, was too decided to remain unfelt; and Rome soon eschewed its former direct approval, and substituted a kind of mongrel system of ecclesiastical semi-Pelagianism in its room.

And so, after the barbarian irruption, a twofold stream of doctrine was perpetuated in the visible Church through the centuries following — the one, the ritualistic ecclesiastical doctrine of religion, maintaining that Church ceremonies are in themselves meritorious; the other, the Augustinian spiritual doctrine of saving grace. Thenceforth also a corresponding twofold view prevailed respecting the Church of Christ — one party regarding it as the earthly visible Church under a vice-Christian priesthood; the other, as being the little flock, simply and alone, who are united by living faith to Christ, the living Head.

The Augustinian light, which then shone, continued to glimmer on through the dark ages down to the Reformation. Indeed we may trace Rome’s opposition to it and God’s blessing on it to the present day in our own English Church. Our 17th Article is an epitome of much that we have gone over in the last two lectures in point of doctrine. Speaking of the elect, it says: “They which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God (predestination to life), be called according to God’s purpose, by his Spirit working in due season; they through grace obey the calling, they be justified freely, they be made sons of God by adoption, they walk religiously in good works, and at length by God’s mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.” In the prayer used in our burial-service there is likewise a reference to these called ones, where we are taught to pray that God would “speedily accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten his kingdom.”

Milner in his Church History gives a testimony to Augustine’s usefulness very similar to that already adduced. He says, “It is evident that real Christianity, notwithstanding its nominal increase under the emperors, must soon have been extinct, if God had not interposed with a second great effusion of his Spirit. This involves the private life of Augustine. The effects of this effusion were solid, though never brilliant. The light from Augustine’s writings never broke out into a vivid flame, but shone with a moderate brightness at first, and afterwards through many ages, even down to the Reformation.”

Why Rome ever tolerated or titled Augustine has excited surprise. It may have been because he was an opposer of the Pelagian doctrine of free-will, an error in its essence Opposed to the Romish system of chaining down man’s mind and conscience. Our Article (10th) On Free-will puts the doctrine in a Scriptural point of view: “We have no power of ourselves to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.”

It has been said by some that there are passages in the writings of Augustine which would seem to favor the errors of the times in which he lived, and since we have mentioned him in a manner so commendatory, it is but right to admit the fact. He seems to have been in some respects tinctured with the superstitions with which the age was infected. For he credulously believed in miracles being performed by relics of saints, 650. His humility and charity disposed him to be credulous. However, he distinctly disavowed any belief in the omniscience of departed saints, or that they were able to afford any aid, temporal or spiritual; and he as distinctly avowed that whosoever directed men to any other “mediator than Christ must be esteemed an Antichrist.”

Continued in Revelation 8:1-5. The Seventh Seal

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

Abraham Lincoln blamed the cause of the American Civil War on Rome!

The following quotes are from the book, “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome” by Charles Chiniquy, who was a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for 25 years and later left the Roman church and became a Presbyterian pastor. He was a close friend of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln and had several personal interviews with him. The following are quotes from Abraham Lincoln during one of his talks with Charles Chiniquy. Read http://www.biblebelievers.com/chiniquy/cc50_ch61.html for the entire text. The emphasis in bold and comments in italics are mine.

Also see:

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

An Election. The Faithful Distinguished Amidst Increasing Apostasy, A.D. 300-400.

IT IS OBVIOUS that the earthquake had past, inasmuch as it is said in the first verse that “The winds should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea;”and in the twelfth verse of the next chapter, the sun, moon, and stars are spoken of as again having shone forth. Still further proof is this that the earthquake, spoken of in our last lecture, was a symbolic scene, and not “the great day of the Lord’s second personal coming.”

In continuance of this sixth-seal vision, the Apostle saw four destroying tempest-angels under temporary restraint; the command being given from the angel of the Lord to “hurt not” anything on the Roman earth for a certain time. The intent of this figure is explained in his unintentional manner by Gibbon, when, speaking of the Gothic invasion, he says, “The threatening tempest of barbarians, which so soon subverted the foundation of Roman greatness, was still repelled or suspended on the frontiers.” When so great a revolution in favor of Christianity had just taken place, we naturally feel inclined to ask why such a judgment should now be threatened? In seeking a reply to this, we are brought to a deeply interesting subject of inquiry, namely, what had been the progress of vital and spiritual religion when the outward and professing Church was thus exalted and fostered?

We have to look into the state of things and feelings in the now Christianized empire; and, first, as to the change effected in the temporal position of Christians at this period. The cross, once so despised, was now everywhere had in honor; justice was done to the memory of the martyrs, and their righteousness was acknowledged in public edicts. The living confessors of Christ were restored from mines and dungeons, and brought in triumph to their homes. Instead of caves, vaults, and catacombs in which to worship God, there arose in all directions magnificent churches, and the services were celebrated with much pomp and outward solemnity. Instead of apostasies, which had not been unfrequent under the late terror of persecution, candidates were now daily added to the throngs who crowded round the churches for baptism; and at the festivals of Easter and Whitsuntide, these newly baptized neophytes, in their white vestments, appeared in groups round each Christian edifice. The professing Church Catholic began to be assembled in general councils under imperial sanction, at which representatives attended from every province and tongue in the great empire. The palace gates were open to the holy delegates. The Emperor bowed down before them in respectful deference, prepared to render to them both the watchful care of a father and the dutiful obedience of a son. On a medal struck at that era appeared a Phoenix, all radiant with the rising sunbeams, representing the empire as risen into new life and hope.

Such being the outward prosperity of the Christian Church, can we wonder at its general exultation, or at the high-raised expectations then formed of Rome’s future prospects, now that it had become a Christian nation? Nor was this expectation altogether unnatural. The remarkable tranquility which prevailed throughout the empire, immediately consequent upon Constantine’s establishment of Christianity was recorded as the token of predicted latter-day blessedness. They thought they were become, as Israel of old, God’s covenanted people — that both the present and future temporal blessings promised to Israel would attach to them; and, forgetting the warnings that Antichrist must first come, even some of the most eminent of the bishops spoke of these glories as about to be realized.

“What so many of the Lord’s saints and confessors,” said Eusebius, “before our time desired to see, and saw not, and to hear, and .heard not, — that behold now before our eyes! It was of us the prophet spake when he told hon w the wilderness and the solitary place should be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the lily. Whereas the Church was widowed and desolate, her children have now tn exclaim, Make room! enlarge thy borders! the place is too strait for us. The promise is now fulfilling, ‘In righteousness shalt thou be established; all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.’” So, too, with respect to other prophecies in his Commentary on Isaiah.

Such were the hopes of the professing Church. Can there be a greater contrast than existed between this prospect and that seen by the Apostle in the true perspective of future events? “I looked and saw four tempest-angels,” or four destroying agents or powers, holding back the four winds indeed, but only for a time; and then ready at the word of command to let them go: this temporary restraint, it seemed, having soon to be withdrawn, and the Roman earth to be then desolated. But wherefore?

So the question rises as to the state of religion in this fourth century, and whether indications had already arisen of unfaithfulness to their Christian profession on the part of the newly converted proselytes from the Roman world to the Christian Israel.

I purposely so apply this term “Israel,” because by it the Christian Church is evidently designated in the Revelation. To those who have observed what has been before noticed relative to the temple in the Apocalyptic vision, this name will not appear out of character. A high priest in Israelitish dress, an Israelitish altar, an Israelitish temple, will almost of necessity imply a correspondent Israel for the congregation. And as the former has been before shown to be symbolic of the Christian Church in the Apocalyptic scenery, so must the latter be explained, not of the literal Israel, but of the professing Christian Church. In the Church of Christ converted Gentiles were engrafted into the flock of the believing Israel, and are so spoken of in several places in Scripture. For example, by St. Peter the temple, sacrifices, and priesthood are all spoken of figuratively as designative of the Church of Christ. “Ye are an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices;” and again, “A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.” So too St. Paul to the Gentile Christians of Galatia: “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise;” and again, “As many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and on the Israel of God.” (Gal. 6:16) In the Epistle to the Church in Philadelphia we read, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God;”and some of the false professors of the gospel at that place are described and reproved as they ” who say they are Jews, and are not.” (Rev. 3:9, 12) Moreover, in that same address to a Gentile Church, it is intimated that such of them as shall overcome shall be citizens of the New Jerusalem; while at the close of this book it is distinctly implied that the ” Holy City ” shall only be for the twelve tribes of Israel. (Rev. 21:12) Further proofs to the same effect might be multiplied, but these will be deemed sufficient.

In accordance with these views, our own Church, in her Collect for Good Friday, uses the same language. After praying for Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, we are taught to say, “And so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved amongst the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold, under one shepherd, Jesus Christ;” — in other words, numbered amongst the 144,000.

We find that the angels were desired to “hurt not the earth, etc., until these 144,000 servants of God should have been sealed in their foreheads.” What division of Israel then was this, this 144,000 to be sealed out of all the tribes? It is clear there is a distinction here implied. The true translation from the Greek is not, “of the tribe of Simeon, — of the tribe of Levi,” etc.; but “out of the tribe of Simeon,” etc. If then the twelve tribes signified the whole professing Church, what meant this sealing out of them? We must view it as pointing to the true spiritual body of Christ’s elect people, undistinguished by man, but marked by the eye of the all-seeing God, however mixed up and involved they might apparently be in the world around them. Their interests and citizenship being in heaven, their affections are set on things above, in contradistinction to the worldly and the thoughtless, the lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, however these latter may be styled by a Christian name and enrolled in a Christian Church. And thus, “Hurt not — until the servants of God are safe,” intimated to the Apostle that all were “not Israel who were of Israel,” and that unfaithfulness was to be found in the body of men publicly recognized as the Church of believers.

And was that which was thus intimated to this servant of God in accordance with the actually existing state of things? We have seen that, after the overthrow of Paganism, the whole Roman Empire, with the emperor as head, became nominally Christian. No longer in any fear of persecution, men soon began to abuse the bounty of God. Hypocritical accessions to the faith were so numerous as to draw the notice of historians of the day; amongst others, of Eusebius, whom we found a short time before anticipating such glorious things for the Church. Arianism spread so fast that the saying, “Many are called, but few chosen,” was only too true, according to the concurrent teStimonies of living witnesses. More and more distinct, from this time, became the two bodies of nominal and real Christians; and henceforward, through the whole of the Apocalypse, this distinction is more clearly marked.

And here let me call your attention to a species of indirect evidence of much value, of which we shall find several instances in this part of Scripture. This principle has been termed allusive contrast. It may be thus illustrated. If, in the course of history, we read of any peculiar laws and penalties having been at any time enacted against certain specified crimes or habits, we feel at once that at that particular period there must have prevailed, to some extended degree, the habitual practice of the very evils which those laws were intended to correct. The description implies the corresponding opposite. So when Ezekiel spoke of the righteous man that “hath restored to the debtor his pledge,” and “spoiled none by violence,” etc., (Ezek. 18:7) it implied, by allusive contrast, that injustice and oppression characterized Judah in those days, and that violence and fraud were Special sins that then called for God’s rebuke.

Let us bear this principle in mind as we advance in the history of the sealed and unsealed Israel. We cannot doubt its having been the Saviour, the Angel of God, who gave the command, “Hurt not — till we have sealed the servants of God.” There is a description by St. Paul of the seal of God. It is said to bear this motto, “The Lord knoweth them that are his;”and, “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” (2 Tim. 2:19) With this seal they were sealed in their foreheads, in token of their Lord’s approval of their open and consistent course of holy walk. Illuminated by the Saviour’s influence and registered in his Book of Life, they were thus marked as for himself; and this sealing was given to them individually, as. a preservative unto eternal salvation; and as a collective body, in token that a living succession of these sealed ones should be continued in all ages of the Church as the lights of the world and the witnesses for God.

The sealed ones are identified with the palm-bearing multitudes afterwards mentioned; and in this manner a glimpse is given in vision of their future blessedness. After coming out of a great tribulation, which was just then commencing, they are seen in perspective through the duration of time, in numbers numberless, with all their accumulated generations, safe arrived in the blessed presence of God. The palms they bore indicated their triumphant issue from the conflict; their white’ robes, washed in the blood of the Lamb, were emblems of their justification through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. A welcome greeting sounded forth from the twenty-four representatives of the Church; and, from the angels, a united song of thanksgiving and praise to the Lamb, — the Author of his servants’ redemption. But we must not anticipate. More of these hereafter.

We might here ask, and not without reason, Did not all the Church consider themselves as being of the number of the elect — of those whom the Holy Spirit sanctified? Else, why were they called Christians? But this general supposition, so often wanting support in fact, did it not in itself show that even at that early time no small deception had been progressing? Must there not have been some Antichristian principle which had taken root, and had led men to imagine that, without any real vitality, there might be a religion which would be equally efficacious; some ceremonial system, which, while less strict inwardly, would be outwardly more formal, and would equally serve to conduct them to the same termination?

Now let us see if, at that very period to which we have advanced, we can find an explanation of this distinction we have made, or rather, which was made by the angel, as before mentioned.

An esteemed writer of Church history says of these times, i.e., just after Constantine had established Christianity, “There was much outward religion, but this could not make men saints in heart and life. The true doctrine of justification by faith was scarce to be seen, and that of real conversion very much lost, or eternal baptism placed in its stead.” Such is the testimony of many other able historians too numerous to be inserted here, but all telling the same story.

Our attention is particularly drawn by them to errors relative to baptism, which, partially in the third, but more eminently in the fourth century, became apparent, and may be considered as an essential development of the Antichristian apostasy. So far as the outward rite, all was in due order. Members were regularly admitted into the congregation of the visible Church by the bishops and presbyters. And thus far it was well. But we do not read of these newly baptized looking in faith to Jesus, as the soul’s Light and Life, whereby alone to secure the spiritual blessings shadowed out in the sacrament. We read nothing of this. But we do read that exaggerated and unscriptural notions widely prevailed of the virtue attached to the outward rate, as of itself sufficient to secure these blessings, i.e., when duly performed by the presbyter or priest, as it became the custom then to call him. Titles of honor had accumulated which led the way to these errors. One writer tells us that “baptism was called the seal, the illumination, the preservative, the investiture from corruption, the salvation.” A bishop of that time says, “It was the ransom to captives, the remission of offenses, the death of sin, the regeneration of the soul, the garment of light, the holy seal indissoluble, the chariot to heaven, the luxury of paradise, the procuring of the kingdom, the gift of adoption.” Not only was a magical virtue attached to it for the washing away of sin, but all evil was supposed to be averted by it, as by a charm. New ceremonies too were added. It is said the candidate turned to the west, while the priest uttered words of exorcism, by which it was supposed he was delivered from the power of the Prince of darkness; then to the east, to receive with the immersion the illumination of the Spirit. He was then enrolled in the church register as one of the number of the Christian Israel. A crown was borne by him in token of his victory over sin and the world; a white dress put on to denote one washed from sin and robed for immortality: in this he was led up to the altar, and received with psalmody, in foretaste of future hymnings of the blessed. When first admitted as a candidate he was called ” chosen,” now was further added the title of ” saint and faithful; “and so were called all who entered into the Church by baptism.

Another error likewise relative to baptism, which followed on those already named, was the practice of delaying the ceremony often till death was near. “This was done,” says Neander, “that men might the longer give themselves to sin; and yet in the hour of death, being purified by the magical annihilation of their sins, might be received into eternal life.” It was, in fact, what may be called “the extreme unction of that day.” We cannot but regret that Constantine the Great fell himself into this error.

One of the most fatal mistakes which the Church at that period committed was “the holding reserve relative to God’s written Word.” It was made part of a religious system to observe a close reserve, except to the baptized, relative to one of the most important doctrinal truths, viz., the propitiatory atonement of the Son of God, as the great object of justifying and saving faith.

Beyond all this, it had begun to be deemed allowable, for approved ends, to pervert Scripture. Silent and slow advance had been made towards this point, by permitting tradition to supersede the written Word. No wonder then that the only true source of light, life, and justification to the soul should have been forgotten. No wonder that there arose a superstitious exaltation of the ceremonial; that misapprehensions of the proper functions of the clergy prevailed; the communion table changed into an altar; the commemorative supper into something approaching to a sacrifice of the mass. So did Judaism mix itself up with heathenism, and, as we shall soon see, serve materially to help forward the Antichristian and apostatizing principle to a fuller development; one, indeed, the grand object of which was (and ever has it been followed out with admirable consistency by its designing originator, the master spirit of evil), that it should, within the Christian Church itself, while professedly exalting Christ and his institutions, practically set him aside out of its system, the priesthood, in one and all its offices, being substituted in his stead.

These were the great and growing evils which were marked out, in allusive contrast, by this significant action of the Apocalyptic angel. To these 144,000, and to these alone, were given the titles “called, and chosen, and faithful;”and these alone are said to have received God’s seal on their foreheads, even the seal of baptism by the Holy Spirit. The nominal Church took these titles in virtue of outward rites; the spiritual Church through the direct ministry and revelation of Jesus Christ, made to them by himself, and were enrolled by him in his own register, — the Book of Life. Instead of an outward charm against evil, the Lord is himself their guard: “Hurt not the earth, till my servants are safe.” Instead of white garments before men, they have the angel pointing them out as the blessed company who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and are received, but not until after a victorious conflict, with the triumphant emblem of palms in their hands, into the heavenly presence, amidst the hymnings of angels and their own hosannas of praise to their Saviour and God. Nor should we omit to notice that the professing Church, moreover, had its palmbearing; a practice already become customary. On the Sunday preceding Easter, the congregations used to go forth with palms and with hosannas to give greetings to their bishops and presbyters, the authors of their supposed salvation; and not without similar anticipations of future happiness, to place their palms on the altar and hymn Alleluias.

We have noticed Constantine as amongst those who fell into the error of deferring baptism until the immediate prospect of death. It will be interesting, before we conclude, to hear the account of this great man’s last hours. The history is given by Eusebius. On finding his health declining, Constantine gathered the bishops round him, and declared his wish to have the rite of baptism administered, as that whereby all the sins of his past life were to be cleansed and washed away. “This,” said he to them, “is the time so long looked for by me, thirsting and praying that I might partake of the salvation of God. This is the time for my enjoying the seal that confers immortality. I had wished to have partaken of this washing in the Jordan, where the Saviour was baptized as an example to us; but God, who knows what is best, has ordered that it should be here. Now then let there be no hesitation. If the Lord of life and death will that my life be prolonged, and it be once settled that I be numbered amongst His people, I promise I will lay down to myself a rule of life becoming.” Then they, after the usual ritual, imparted to him the holy mysteries. ” And thus Constantine, alone of Roman emperors, in the Church of the martyrdom of Jesus, was regenerated and made perfect; and, having the divine seal impressed upon him, he rejoiced “in spirit, and was filled with heavenly light. Then, after the other ceremonies, he put on a dress of white, bright as the light; for he would no more touch the purple; and raising his voice, he thanked God, and spoke of his happiness as having been thought worthy of eternal life. Then having admitted some of the generals and captains of his troops, as they wept around him, and wished him years of prolonged life, he answered them that he had now been made partaker of that which was the true life; that none but himself could be aware of the blessings he had received; and that he was fain to depart, and not delay his passage to God! All this took place at the Whitsuntide festival; and on Whitsunday itself, at the noontide hour of the day by the sun, Constantine was received up to his God.”

It is clear that the writer of the foregoing account had, as well as Constantine, imbibed in no small degree some of those pernicious errors. Eusebius was Bishop of Caesarea in A.D. 313. He was the intimate friend of Constantine, and wrote his life. He opposed the doctrines of Arius. He also wrote an Ecclesiastical or Church History, from which we often make extracts in these lectures.

Continued in Revelation 7:9-17. The Palm-Bearing Vision

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.

Dissolution Of The Pagan Firmament — Constantine Establishes Christianity.

AS THE LANGUAGE of this passage is very highly figurative, it may be well to call in mind what has been said relative to the figures used in this book, and the meaning attached to them. A few examples from other parts of Scripture will illustrate the subject.

When Joseph dreamed that the sun, moon, and stars made obeisance to him, his father and brethren at once understood that the paternal government was intended by the sun; and so of the other parts of the family. Jacob answered, “Shall I, and thy mother, and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee?” (Gen. 37:10) These eleven brethren were to be rulers, or rather founders of kingdoms, or heads of distinct tribes.

We find in Jeremiah the symbol of an earthquake. The prophet saw in vision the destruction of the Jewish kingdom by the Babylonians. “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. — For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black — The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks.” (Jer. 4:23-29) So also in Ezekiel, prophesying of the overthrow of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, “When I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God.” (Ezek. 32:7) In Zephaniah, speaking of the destruction of Judah, “The great day of the Lord is near, a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress.” (Zeph. 1:14) In Isaiah, prophesying of the overthrow of Babylon by the Medes, “The day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger; the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” (Isa. 13:9)

Again, for the hiding in dens and rocks of the earth, look to Hosea treating of Shalmanezer’s attack upon Israel: “They shall say to the mountains, Cover us: and to the hills, Fall on us,” (Hos. 10:8) i.e., not to crush, but to hide them.

Have not these quotations anticipated the explanation of the text?

When St. John looked from the altar and its crowd of white-robed martyrs to the landscape, which he had before seen all tranquil, what met his eye? Agitation and trouble. Lo, a great earthquake! The mountains and island rocks sink beneath the shock. The sun becomes black, and the moon blood-red, as in a total eclipse. The stars fall from heaven like figs from the tree during a windy tempest. Kings, warriors, freemen, slaves, all appear in flight, and seek to find shelter in caves and holes. Then goes forth a cry, “Hide us from Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.”

Could St. John have doubted the import of these emblems, familiar as he was with Scripture and Scripture symbols? Surely he must have foreseen a revolution of no common kind. No partial change — only such a change as the entire destruction of heathenism before the progress of Christianity could be implied.

Did, then, such a change, in fact, take place at this period of time as will warrant the application?

When the time came that God would deliver his people Israel out of the hand of their oppressor in the land of Egypt, Moses was. born. (Acts 7:17-20) Again, when about to deliver them out of Babylon, Cyrus was raised up. (Isa. 44:28) So, when about to raise his Church to a state of power, Constantine appeared.

Constantius, father of Constantine, died at York, in our own country, and appointed ” Constantine the Great ” as his successor. This prince was already known as a favorer of the Christians, while yet Maxentius was in possession of Rome — the son of the persecuting emperor, Maximian. Ere Constantine (A.D. 306) bore down against Maxentius, he avowed his belief in and his adherence to Christianity. We are told (and before his death he asserted it) that on his march toward Rome, as the sun was declining, there appeared suddenly in the heavens a pillar of light in the form of a cross, with this inscription, “In this overcome.” Constantine immediately adopted the cross as his ensign; that object of hatred to the Pagans was seen “glittering on the helmets, engraved on the shields, and interwoven into the banners of his soldiers.”2 The emperor’s own person was adorned with it. Moreover, there was displayed on his principal banner this once accursed emblem, above which was set a crown of gold and gems, and the initials of Him who suffered on the one and now wears the other were inscribed upon it.

“By this ensign thou shalt conquer.” Well was the promise fulfilled to Constantine. Army after army, emperor after emperor, were routed, and fled or perished before the warriors of the cross. The terror of Maxentius and that of his army, in their flight over the Milvian bridge across the Tiber, is portrayed in sculpture, which may still be seen at Rome on the arch of Constantine. Similar was the terror of the other two commanders, Maximin and Licinius. As memorials of the persecution just before, the two joint emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, had medals struck of themselves, in the characters of Jove and Hercules, destroying the hydra-headed serpent monster, Christianity! Their successors had adopted these titles. When Maxentius went forth to battle, he went fortified by heathen oracles, and in the character of “the champion of heathenism” against “the champion of the cross.” Again, when Maximin and Licinius were about to engage in battle, the former vowed to Jupiter that, if successful, he would extirpate Christianity. Licinius again, haranguing his soldiers, ridiculed the cross, and staked the falsehood of Christianity on his Success. In the hour of danger and death, however, his boldness forsook him. ” Licinius,” says Gibbon, “dreaded the power of the consecrated banner, the sight of which animated the soldiers of Constantine with invincible enthusiasm, and scattered terror and dismay through the adverse legions.”

The dying terrors of these persecutors have been recorded. A dark cloud brooded over the death-beds of Maximian and Diocletian; the former of whom, oppressed by remorse, is said to have strangled himself, and the latter to have died raving mad. Galerius, from an agonizing death-bed illness, sent to entreat the Christians to pray for him; and Maximin confessed his guilt in his last moments, and called on Christ to compassionate his misery.

Thus did a sense of the wrath of the Crucified One, the Lamb of God, now seated in glory, lie heavy upon them. When, then, we combine these terrors of the death-bed with those of the lost battlefield, in which all ranks, high and low, must have participated, routed, flying, and perishing, there was surely that in the event which answered to the symbols of the vision, wherein kings and generals, freemen and slaves, appeared fleeing from the face of Him that sat on the throne of power, even from “the wrath of the Lamb.”

This was the first shock of the earthquake. The sun of the Pagan power had been darkened; but all the stars of the Pagan firmament had not yet fallen, nor had the Pagan firmament itself passed away.

When Constantine first triumphed, he at once gave liberty to the Christians to exercise the rites of their worship, but heathenism was still tolerated. When he became sole emperor, however, he issued edicts for the entire suppression of Pagan sacrifices and the destruction of Pagan temples, and no toleration was allowed for any but Christian worship. His successor followed up the same object, and attached penalties to the public profession of Paganism. Before the century ended the stars of Pagan power were fallen. Its heaven, or political religious system, had vanished; and on the Roman earth its institutions, laws, rules, and worship had been all but annihilated. Pagans were now obliged, in fear of death, to seek for dens and caverns wherein to hide their devotions, as appears from the history of the reign of Theodosius.

The passage of Scripture on which we are now commenting has been by many supposed to refer to the day of judgment; and indeed there appears a strong resemblance here to the phraseology used in describing the terrors of that awful day; but a closer examination will show a marked discrepancy between them.

The clearest passage in the Bible descriptive of the final judgment is in 2 Pet. 3:10: “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat: the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up;” and the Apostle adds, “We look for new heavens and a new earth,” etc. Nothing of this is said in our text. In such a conflagration the sun would not be black as sackcloth, nor the moon become blood-red; still less could the stars fall on the earth. St. Peter speaks of a real destruction, a real conflagration, an end of the earth. A passage somewhat similar to this of the sixth seal occurs also in the sixteenth chapter, but still not exactly alike. In the sixth seal the earthquake is said to be great: in the sixteenth chapter, “such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great;” accompanied, moreover, by division of Babylon into three parts. And while in the sixth seal men fly and hide themselves, and express great fear of God and of the power sent by him, in the sixteenth chapter, after the earthquake they blaspheme God, when the plague of hail follows. It appears then, that there is a lesser earthquake and a greater described, naturally alike in some things, but differing much in others. Gibbon says, “The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness, and restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night.”4

The question may be asked, Was it from Constantine sitting on his throne, or from Christ on the throne of heaven, that the runaways are supposed to hide themselves? The passage will admit of either sense. It may mean, Hide us from this conqueror, who with the banner of the Lamb of God is coming to destroy us. But we have seen enough in the repentance, remorse, and terror expressed by the dying persecutors to justify in preference the other construction. We cannot fail to mark what a contrast is thus presented between the deaths of the martyrs of Jesus and those of their persecutors. Truly we would say. in reviewing it, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” Sin is, and has ever been, the only sting of death. Thanks be to God, who gave them the victory through Christ Jesus.

Continued in Revelation 7:1-8. The Sealing Vision

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.

Last Pagan Persecution Of The Church, Diocletian. A.D. 303-311.

A SCENE QUITE DIFFERENT from any that he had yet contemplated met St. John’s eye on the opening of the fifth seal. It is no longer the Roman earth which he sees before him, but the symbolic temple-court, from whose altar proceed, — not the voices of living worshippers, presenting their sacrifices for atonement, or thanksgiving and free-will offerings, but the cries of departed and martyred saints, who had been slain for their testimony to the word of God.

We have brought the history down to that division into four parts by Diocletian which terminated the Roman Empire as it had hitherto been constituted. The era is one famous in Roman history. His four immediate predecessors had kept the empire in existence, and even helped, in some degree, towards its elevation; yet was this emperor considered as the founder of a new empire, and a triumph was decreed to him at Rome in the year A.D. 303. Here, then, for the present, we must turn from the history of the Roman world to take a survey in retrospect of the persecutions that had passed on the Christian Church during three centuries, before we notice the persecutions which marked the reign of Diocletian.

I adverted before to the spread of religion in the year A.D. 96, in the sketch of what must have passed before St. John’s view in Patmos. Small as was its first beginning, Christianity had made considerable progress. Its founder had taught his disciples to expect that so it would be; but he had at the same time warned them that hatred and persecution from the world would mark its course: “In the world ye shall have tribulation.”

The first imperial persecution was in the reign of Nero. This cruel tyrant, having himself set fire to Rome, laid the odium of it on the Christians, in the hope that the hatred already existing against them would give currency to the charge. Fearful sufferings then ensued. Some of the condemned were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and in that disguise devoured by dogs; some were crucified; others burnt alive. “When the day was not sufficient,” says the historian, “for their tortures, the flames in which they perished served to illuminate the night.” Nero looked on for his amusement. In this persecution, it is said, St. Paul was beheaded and St. Peter crucified. These martyrdoms took place before St. John’s death.

The next great persecution was during the reign of Domitian. It originated more from jealousy than from wanton cruelty. Besides the charge of Atheism brought against the Christians, the sect were said to be seeking a kingdom. To hinder this, the emperor slew his own cousin, a Christian of the highest rank known; and summoned also the existing relations of Him who was regarded as the Christian’s king; but finding that these were but poor men, not looking for a temporal inheritance or earthly grandeur, be dismissed them with contempt; sending the last of the apostles, John, in banishment to Patmos.

In Trajan’s reign a law was for the first time issued against Christians because they were Christians. An old law was in existence which decreed that no god should be worshipped unless admitted and recognized as such by public authority. This edict Trajan was advised to enforce. He, however, mildly declared that no inquisition should be made for the Christians; but that, when brought before the magistrates in the regular course of law, if they should refuse to sacrifice to the gods, they must needs suffer.

This edict, intended to prevent the search for Christians, and so rather to favor them, had a contrary effect, as it pronounced the profession of Christianity illegal, and left it in the power of any governor or other person to persecute them; and so it proved. Numbers were added to the martyr band, and many more souls gathered under the altar. Amongst others, Ignatius, the venerable Bishop of Antioch, joined his brethren there before this reign had closed. In writing to the Church of Smyrna he says, “Wherefore have I given” myself up unto death, to fire, to sword, to wild beasts? The nearer I am to the sword, the nearer to God. When I am among the wild beasts, I am with God. In the name of Jesus I undergo all, to suffer together with him.” A little time after, in the great amphitheater of Rome, to which city he had been sent for execution, he was thrown to wild beasts amidst the exultations of assembled myriads.

Again, in the reign of the second Antonine, after a time of rest, persecution recommenced, and every form of cruel torture and death was exhibited to the Christians. Amongst other sufferers, Polycarp and Justin Martyr were; executed; and they too went to their waiting brethren. Many also of the confessors of the faith at Lyons met the same fate.

An interval elapsed, and then oppression of the Church began afresh in the reign of Septimius Severus, which specially fell on the Churches of Africa and Egypt. Some boldly appealed against these persecutions, and many apologies for Christians, as these writings were called, were put forth.

Again, in the reign of Alexander, though that prince professed to respect the Christians and their morality, yet one and another laid down his life as the penalty of his faith in Christ; — among them, Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto. Maximin renewed the royal edict, and specially directed his persecution against the bishops and pastors.

Hitherto these unjust measures had been carried out against one Church here, and another there; but Decius determined upon crushing Christianity. His edict compelled inquisition to be made for them, and decreed torture and death to all Christians. Great now was the consternation. The Church had lost its first zeal and love. There were those who dared not to confess their creed, yet would not apostatize. Bribes of money were offered to and accepted by the magistrates, and thus the conflict was spared to the offerers. The sword of the Goths struck down this persecuting emperor, and left his cruel work to be continued by his successor, Valerian, whose aim, in like manner, was against the bishops and presbyters, and the worshiping assemblies of Christians. Then Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, was added to the noble army of martyrs.

Valerian, who followed in the same course, was cut down by the Persian sword; and his son, Galienus, trembling under his judgments and fearing the Christians’ God, issued the first edict of toleration, A.D. 261. Their churches and burying-grounds were restored, and their worship allowed to have place unmolested.

Such, briefly, is the history of persecution up to the reign of Diocletian. During the reigns of four emperors who preceded him, viz., Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus, there was a respite. Churches were built, and worship in them legalised. Diocletian, we have seen, founded a new empire, and had his triumphal day at Rome, A.D. 303. Early, however, in that year, a secret council was held in the palace at Nicomedia between Diocletian and his partner on the throne, Galerius, to whom he had given the most easterly division of the empire. The destruction of Christianity was the subject. ” Perhaps,” says Gibbon, “it was represented to him that the glorious work of the deliverance of the empire was left imperfect so long as an independent people, i.e., the Christians, were permitted to subsist and multiply in it.” on the 23rd February an armed force destroyed the church of Nicomedia. This was the signal; and for a period of ten years the direst persecution that had yet taken place raged against Christianity.

Diocletian declared his intention of abolishing the very name of Christian. Their blood was shed mercilessly through the whole empire. This period is called the “era of martyrs.”

Before the ten years had expired, Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximian agreed to raise pillars as monuments to commemorate their success in the extirpation of Christianity. These pillars are still extant.

Whoever visits Rome may still see the Catacombs, and will be shown there the quiet resting-places of the bones and ashes of the martyrs of this season. Earthen vases, inscribed with the word blood, still show how precious was even this remembrance to their mourning friends. There, too, will be seen the larger cavities below, where the excavated and rude chapel served as a house of prayer, and where a faithful Church assembled far below the level of the city. The only public testimony then given by the people of Christ was in their martyrdom. In vain did Pagan power try to destroy the Holy Scriptures. Copies had so multiplied, and been so carefully hid, that inquisition for these failed.

But we would draw attention to the next clause in the text, “How long, O Lord, Holy One and true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

This cry for vengeance seems scarcely in accordance with the feelings of the first martyrs, who “rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.” But it is their cry in the ears of the survivors. It was said by the Lord of Abel, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground;”and the vengeance of God on his enemies and on the enemies of his people is often adverted to in the Epistles. Thus, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19.) And for this requiting vengeance the Church in the third century was wont to look. Thus Marianus, an African martyr, “as if filled,” we read, “with a prophetic spirit, warned his persecutors and animated his brethren by proclaiming the speedy avenging of his blood.”

Year after year did they wail and long for some turn in their favor. From those long, narrow passages, on either side walled with their dead brethren and martyred children, as we before noticed, in the Catacombs of Rome, — from those subterranean houses of prayer, as they looked on the vases of blood drained from the death-wounds of all dear to them, their cry was wont to ascend to heaven. Did not the wailing souls almost seem to impeach the justice of God, and his other attributes: “How long, O Lord, holy, just, and true, dost thou not avenge our blood?”

“And white robes were given to each of them.”

Just as their condemnation in the view of their fellow-men is depicted by their being under the altar, so would their equally public exaltation and justification before the world be expressed in their being robed in white.

And so it was. The historian tells us that the Emperor Galerian issued an edict, agreed to by the two other emperors, confessing (at least by implication) that he had wronged the Christians, putting an end to the persecution, and entreating “that they would pray to their God for him.”3 This was indeed an act of justification not less applicable to the memory. of those gone before than to the character of those still surviving. It was a moral triumph of the Christian religion over Paganism. So while the three preceding seals showed the decline of the Roman Empire, this seal showed the corresponding decline of Paganism as a system.

These waiting souls were told that they should rest yet a little while till their brethren should have joined them. This probably referred to another line of witnesses, of whom more hereafter.

I have named Polycarp as one of the sufferers by martyrdom during this era. Unwilling to interrupt the narrative, I omitted to transcribe a passage from the Acts of his Martyrdom which is of much interest. “Having his hands tied behind him, and being bound to the stake, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘O Lord God Almighty, the Father of thy well-beloved Son, Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of thee, I give thee hearty thanks that, at this day and hour, I should have a part in the number of thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ, unto the resurrection of eternal life; amongst whom may I be accepted this day before thee as an acceptable sacrifice. I praise thee, I glorify thee, my God and my Saviour.’”

Continued in Revelation 6:12-17. The Sixth Seal

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.

Oppression Of The Empire, Military And Civil, And By God’s Four Sore Judgments. Commodus to Diocletian, A.D. 180 — 284.

IN THE SECOND SEAL the emblematic horse and its rider again appears; but the color is seen changed from white to red — from the emblem of peace and prosperity to that of war and bloodshed. Moreover there is in the rider’s hand, instead of the Cretan bow, a great sword, a military emblem; and it is declared of him that he was “to take peace from the earth, and that men should kill one another.”

We turn to history, and what find we for some ninety years after M. Aurelius to have been the state of Roman affairs?

Commodus began his reign well; but after a time changed his course of conduct and began a system of oppression and misrule, till at length in an insurrection he was assassinated. Pertinax succeeded, and in a month met a similar fate; then Julian, but was soon assassinated. Next came a four years’ civil war, which raged from east to west, and through which Severus fought his way to the throne — a throne established on the defeat and slaughter of his competitors, Niger and Albinus. Then came a fourteen years’ interval of internal peace (such as it was); but followed, on the accession of Caracalla, son and successor of Severus, by the murder of his brother and co-regnant emperor Gata; and then Caracalla’s own murder by Macrinus. A civil war ensued which crushed Macrinus and raised Elagabalus to the throne, who in his turn was assassinated. Then, after a partial interval of peace during the reign of Alexander Severus, came the murder of that prince. Civil wars followed against his murderer and successor Maximin, wherein two emperors, Gordian and his son, perished the same day in Africa. Next, Maximin himself and his son were murdered at the siege of Aquileia. Subsequently, Balbinus and Maximus, joint emperors, were put to death at Rome; and, not long after, the younger Gordian. Then came the destruction of the Emperor Philip and his son at the battle of Verona, which, in the year A.D. 249, decided the civil war between himself and Decius. Can the history of any other empire exhibit such a fifty years’ record of civil strife and bloodshed? Truly “peace was then taken from the Roman earth, and men had power given them to kill one another.” What followed for thirty or forty years was only an aggravation of the same evil, though with the accession of other evils noted in the next seals. “With Commodus’s death commenced a most disastrous period,” says Sismondi; it lasted ninety-two years, from A.D. 192 to 284. During that time thirty-two emperors and twenty-seven pretenders to the empire alternately, by incessant civil warfare, hurled each other from the throne.”

Having seen the evil, let us now examine its cause. By the great sword given to the rider or ruling power in the symbolic vision, we might, as this was a military badge, infer that the agency prefigured as causing all these calamities was a military agency. And on looking into history we shall find the idea correct. During the era of peace, prosperity, and triumph, described in our former lecture, the power of the senate and magistracy of Rome was predominant. To enforce the laws the military aid was useful and necessary, but it was kept in check by the civil authority. With Commodus began the fatal change. He first exalted the Praetorian guards and their Prefect to despotic influence. So great did their control become, that on occasion of his death they proceeded to sell the empire, as their right, to the highest bidder. This shows, as Gibbon says, that “the power of the sword” had begun its reign. The rule of the military became a pure despotism. In the reign of the first Severus the licentious Praetorian band that overawed Rome was quadrupled; and under his son-in-law, Plautian, to whom he gave the command, the city, we are told, was “made to tremble.” The senate he utterly set at nought, saying, “That he would have no such power come between him and his army;” and he bequeathed this maxim to his son, “Enrich the soldiery, despise the people.” The soldiery exercised supreme law, set up whom they pleased, put down whom they pleased, and murdered whom they would. “The sovereignty had passed into the hands of the legions.” These caused the imperial murders, and the civil insurrections and wars.

Dion Cassius, a historian of the time, speaks of this disastrous change from the former era of prosperity, peace, and triumph, continued down to the commencement of the reign of Commodus, in this manner: “It was a change from a golden age to one of iron;” and he paints, in strong colors, the then established military license and despotism as the great evil of the times.

Observe, now, it was by girding a man with a sword that he was admitted to the military profession among the Romans, none but a soldier being permitted to wear it. Further, to his chief generals, when appointed to the high office of the imperium, with power of life and death over the military, a sword was publicly presented, in token of it, by the emperor in person. So to the Imperial Lieutenants, invested with military command in the provinces, in a ceremony outside the walls of Rome; and to the Praetorian Prefect, in a ceremony inside the walls. Thus we read that the Emperor Trajan, on. presenting a Praetorian Prefect with this sword-badge of power, addressed him with the words: “Use this for me, if I rule well; if not, against me.” St. Paul too, you may remember, alludes to the custom: “He beareth not the sword in vain.” (Rom. 13:4) The symbolic sword-bearing rider may therefore represent generally the military power, whose, badge was the sword; or, more especially, the military generals, with power of the sword, whether Praetorian Prefects at Rome, or the Imperial Lieutenants of the provinces.

But military despotism could not be established in a country without other evils following soon in its train. The next two seals depicted graphically the great successive aggravations.

THE THIRD SEAL. — Hitherto I have omitted all critical arguments, considering it better to state the facts where I think them proved satisfactorily, than to go over the grounds by which such proofs have been arrived at. I must in the present lecture deviate, in some little measure, from this plan.

Most expositors have explained the emblems in this seal to mean famine. The color of the horse being black (opposed to the white, which symbolized prosperity and happiness), might seem at first sight to favor this solution; while the balance in the rider’s hand has been explained, in accordance with the view, to foretoken a time of such scarcity that bread should be eaten in each family during its continuance by measure.

It has been shown, however, that the Roman denarius, = eightpence of our money, was the daily wages for a man in the time of St. John; also that a choenix of corn, = one quart in measure, or two pounds in weight, was considered a day’s sufficiency of food for a man. And could it be a famine price when three times this amount of barley bread might be procurable by a laborer’s daily wage?

Nor, again, as to the balance in the rider’s hand, does it appear to be here used with reference to the measuring out of bread by a parent to his children, but in relation to the buying and selling of corn; in which relation it would always be necessary, and might as well be an indication of plenty as of famine. At this present time, on a baker’s monument outside one of the gates of Rome, a pair of balances appears sculptured as one of the designations of the trade.

Moreover, the charge “injure not” (if we take that rendering of the Greek phrase), said relatively to wine and oil, the two articles of consumption next most important to bread at the time and in the empire alluded to, all but precludes the idea of scarcity.

Notwithstanding, then, the black color of the horse, and the balance, this is not a famine scene.

No doubt the black color is figurative of distress and affliction in the Roman body politic; and to see what distress, we have only to look into the history of the times, and to compare the prophetic symbols.

It appears, then, from history, that at an epoch following some thirty years after that of the commencement of the second seal, an aggravation of taxation was established which pressed most heavily on every part of the Roman Empire; the object being, with the money raised therefrom, to support the licentious soldiery and the lavish and profligate military government.

From the time of Augustus there had been a difference between the taxation of the provincials of the Roman Empire and of the Roman citizens at Rome and in Italy. The provincials were obliged to pay tributes of produce in kind, of corn, wine, and oil; and also a capitation tax, i.e., a tax on each head. The taxation of the Roman citizens consisted of excise and legacy duties. About A.D. 215, the provincial taxation was most oppressively increased by the celebrated edict of Caracalla, which, with apparent Liberality, gave the provincialists the rights of Roman citizens, but of which the real intent was to add the burden of Roman taxation to the provincial, already too burdensome. The edict was compulsory, and its corrupt administration made it still more oppressive. Gibbon says, in recounting the history of Caracalla, “The great body of his subjects was oppressed by the aggravated taxes, and every part of the empire crushed under the weight of his iron sceptre.” Under Alexander Severus a check was attempted to the corrupt and oppressive fiscal system; but only partially, and in vain. He could not stop the evil. The soldiery, the real masters of the state, must be satisfied. “Am not I he,” said he to his mutinying troops, “who bestows upon you the corn, the clothing, and the money of the provinces?” He struggled nobly but vainly against the oppression of the age, and paid his life as a forfeit to his efforts. After his murder the evil increased. Italy soon shared the fate of the provinces. Gibbon, in speaking of the empire thirteen years after, under Philip, says, “The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted under a long series of oppression.” The evil went on under Gallienus, Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus; until, in fine, Diocletian developed the system yet more fully, and increased the oppression and desolation of the provinces.

One main constituent of the provincial taxation, I have said, was that of produce in kind. Gibbon says, “We shall be too often summoned to explain the land tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of corn, wine, oil, and meat, exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital.” So the very items specified in the Apocalyptic seal are noticed. And again, as if in illustration of the black color of the horse under it, “The evil, like a noxious weed, sprang up again with most luxurious growth; and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade.”

Let us now consider whom the rider, or governing power, was meant to indicate. Agreeable with what has been above said, it might seem to refer to the provincial rulers, by whatever name called; for to them was committed the exacting of the taxes. And the very words spoken from the throne, the seat of equity, in monition and rebuke to the rider, and also the badge of the balance that he bore in hand, is confirmatory of this. For sometimes, to prevent injustice, the price at which the governor should rate wheat and barley was prescribed, with a view to prevent injustice and oppression by the government at home. In one remarkable instance under the republic, the Cassian law, in its order to the Proconsul, was expressed literally thus: “A measure of wheat for a denarius!” So too with the justice-loving emperors: whether they did it successfully, like Trajan and the Antonines, or the reverse, as Alexander Severus. Again, as to the balance in the rider’s hand, it was an official badge of those who had the administration of justice in their hands; such as the Roman praetors and provincial governors. Under the old republic they were wont to have a balance over the magisterial chair, on coins struck in honor of their appointment to their high office; and sometimes also an ear of corn, with reference to their duty of collecting the corn produce. In imperial times the emperors had the supreme power; whence the ascription to them of the balance of justice. But the propraetors had it delegated to them. Nor ought we to omit that, in sending a provincial governor to his province, a horse was presented him for his use, and he went forth mounted from Rome.

Notwithstanding the monitions given them from time to time, the injustice of the Roman provincial governors was so notorious that they were called by M. Aurelius and Alexander Severus “robbers of the provinces.” Throughout what remained of the third century, whatever laws were made against extortion and injustice they may be looked upon as records of crime rather than preventives of its commission. A general internal wasting of the state resulted from it. The agriculture of the provinces was insensibly ruined, and preparation made for the terrible famine and pestilence which (as we shall see in the next seal) soon followed.

Can any picture, then, be more correctly, as well as graphically, drawn than the one before us? “When he opened the third seal, I beheld, and lo! a black horse; and he that sat on it having a pair of balances in his hand! And I heard a voice (from the throne) in the midst of the living creatures say, A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choanixes of barley for a denarius; and see that thou wrong not with regard to the oil and the wine!”

There is yet one remark to be added relative to the price of the wheat specified in the prophecy. Owing to the adulteration of the denarius, then begun (a fact well known to numismatists), as well as to changes in the market price of grain, it will be found that “a choenix of wheat for a denarius” was the enunciation of the fair market price of wheat in the times of Alexander Severus, to which we refer the third seal.

In THE FOURTH SEAL Scripture is its own interpreter. The rider is Death! His badge Hades, or the grave. Four agencies of destruction were committed to him; and the horse on which he rode (still emblematic of the Roman Empire) appeared of a livid hue, — a symptom of approaching dissolution.

Well did the pictorial prophecy prefigure the misery of this period. About fourteen years after the death of Alexander Severus, beginning with the reign of Philip, about A.D. 248, Gibbon speaks of the twenty years of “shame and misfortune, of confusion and calamity,” that then ensued. And, all unconsciously speaking the voice of Scripture, he says that at that time “The ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution.” Yet more, in continued accordance with the prophecy, he depicts the agencies of destruction at work. The sword! “Every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants;” — the sword from without and the sword from within — Famine! “A general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind (i.e., than certain other calamities superstitiously ascribed to the era); the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present and hope of future harvests.” — Pestilence too! Gibbon continues: — “Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. But other causes must have contributed to that furious plague, which, from the year A.D. 250 to 265, raged without intermission in every province, every city, and almost every family in the empire.” He adds, that during a part of that time 5000 persons died daily in Rome; and many towns that had escaped the hands of the barbarians were entirely depopulated. Speaking of the provinces he says, “We might suspect that war, pestilence, and famine, had consumed, in a few years, the moiety (half) of the human species.” (Note: The Merriam-Webster dictionary on my phone uses this sentence from Edward Gibbon as an example of usage of the word moiety.)

Does not this well answer to the prophetic picture: “Behold a livid horse! And his name that sat thereon was Death; and Hades followed after him: and power was given to him to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with the pestilence, and with the wild beasts of the earth.”

The fourth destroying agent specified has not indeed been yet alluded to, viz., wild beasts. But here, too, history is the verifier of prophecy. We have it on record that at an epoch twenty or thirty years after the death of Gallienus the multiplication of wild beasts of prey had arisen to such an extent in parts of the empire as to become a crying evil. Arnobius, the Roman writer, alludes to wild beasts as one of the plagues with which the land was then afflicted, viz., in A.D. 296, near thirty years after the death of Gallienus.

And this reminds me of the necessity of showing that in that thirty years’ interval the evils depicted had by no means passed away, though by the almost supernatural efforts of certain able emperors, attended by victories very remarkable in those terrible times, the actual dissolution of the empire was prevented. It was in A.D. 260, then, after the Emperor Valerian had been defeated by Sapor, king of Persia, and at length cruelly murdered, that Gallienus, his son, succeeded to the throne. During his reign the empire was broken by different usurpations into fragments. Of these, the most were ephemeral. But three of them maintained for several years each a part of the empire for himself, beginning in the several years A.D. 258, 261, and 263, viz., Odenatus and Zenobia in the East; Aurcolus in Illyricum; Posthumus in Gaul and Britain; while Gallienus himself ruled in Italy. A fact this very remarkable! For it exhibits the empire as at that time divided into four parts, just as the Apocalyptic verse (according to Jerome’s reading) represents the Roman Empire under the fourth seal; and those divisions precisely the same that Diocletian saw fit to establish by law afterwards.

After the death of Gallienus in 260, Claudius was elected, and made a struggle to raise the fallen fortunes of his country. He was, however, cut off by the pestilence five years afterwards, whilst engaged in fighting bravely against an immense army of Goths. So the sword and the pestilence were still doing their work.

Aurelian was next elected emperor. In continuing the war against the Goths, he found it necessary to cede to them the province of Dacia. Then came an irruption of the Allemanni. Three great battles were fought: the first near Placentia, which was accompanied by such loss on the part of the Romans, that the historians say, “The immediate dissolution of the empire was expected.” In the two others, the Emperor Aurelian was victorious, and thus the fate of the empire was suspended. But in the year A.D. 275, after setting out to repel a Persian invasion, he was assassinated by one of his own generals.

Had the color of the livid pale horse yet changed? or were the destroying agencies of the fourth seal yet stilled? Let Gibbon tell in few words what followed. “The strength of Aurelian had crushed on every side the enemies of Rome, but after his death they seemed to revive with an increase of fury and numbers.” In the following year the Alani spread themselves over Pontus, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Galatia, and traced their course by the flames of villages. They were repulsed by the Emperor Tacitus; but he died afterwards suddenly, or was murdered; and so too his brother Florian, who succeeded him.

Under Probus, the next emperor, the Roman arms were victorious; and one condition of the peace that followed is remarkable. The barbarians were bound to supply them with 16,000 recruits. “For,” says Gibbon, “the infrequency of marriage and ruin of agriculture had affected the principles of population, and had not only destroyed the strength of the present, but interrupted the hopes of future generations.” After several victories in various parts of the empire over the Franks, and in Gaul and Egypt, in the year A.D. 281, all enemies seemed vanquished. Probus was honored with a triumph at Rome; but presently afterwards he was assassinated. Carus succeeded, and after several battles was killed — some say by lightning, some by assassination — A.D. 283.

Then followed civil war, three candidates fighting for the crown of the empire. One of them, Numerian, was murdered by Aper; and he again by Diocletian, who in a decisive battle defeated Carinus, and was elected emperor.

Then Diocletian divided the empire on system into four parts, under two chief and two subordinate emperors; deeming the empire too large and dangerously circumstanced to admit of the rule of one man. The empire, however, was still considered as one, and Rome as the one great capital of the whole empire.

I will only add the testimonies of three great historians, singularly illustrative of the accuracy of our prophetic picture as to the state of things at this period of time. One, Sismondi, says: “Diocletian put an end to a long period of anarchy. But such a succession of invasions and civil wars, and so much suffering, disorder, and crime, had brought the empire into a state of mortal languor, from which it never recovered,” adding, “the deserts spread with frightful rapidity.” Another, Niebuhr, speaking of the same time, relative to the plague in the reign of Probus: “The empire was suffering from general distress, and its condition very much like that which followed after the cessation of the black death in the Middle Ages.” Again, another, Schlegel, remarks: “The division of the empire amongst several sovereigns appeared then (in Diocletian’s reign) an unavoidable and necessary evil. In other words, the several parts and members of the vast body of the Roman Empire, which approached nearer and nearer its dissolution, began then to fall to pieces.”

Continued in Rev. 6:9-11. The Fifth Seal

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.

Prosperity and Triumph of the Roman Empire in the Era Next Following After the Visions in Patmos, Nerve to Commodus. A.D. 96-185.

THE SYMBOL of an animal is not unfrequently used in Scripture to represent a power or a nation. In Daniel we find it said, “The ram that thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. The rough goat is the king of Grecia (Dan 8:20); and accordingly on Persian coins a ram is still to be seen, and on Macedonian coins a goat, attesting the propriety of the emblems. Similarly on ancient coins of the Roman people a horse was stamped on the one side, and on the other Mars, the reputed father of Romulus and the Roman people, to whom the warrior horse was sacred. Hence the propriety of the horse in the visions of the first four seals to depict the Roman people or empire; while the colors white, red, black, and livid pale, figured its state at the time symbolized; and the riders the ruling agencies in that state, whether favorable or adverse.

In the first seal the color of the horse was white, indicating prosperity and triumph; and the rider had a laurel crown given him, the distinctive badge in St. John’s time of ruling emperors. So the vision indicated that new emperors would arise, in character quite contrasted with the then ruling emperor, Domitian, and would be the main causal agencies in the foreshadowed prosperity and triumph.

In further illustration of the imagery of this seal, there may be noted the frequent Roman custom, when an emperor was going to war, and success augured to him, of the senate striking a medal, whereon the emperor was depicted galloping forth on horseback, and striking down the enemy, with the motto underneath, “Augustus going forth.” Further, if success really attended him, the plan was to represent him on an arch going forth between trophies and captives; with Victory personified, either crowning him, or crown in hand preceding him. Such a medal was struck for Claudius when he conquered Britain.

Such being the purport of the symbols of the first seal, as we believe St. John must have read it, it is our part now to follow up his graphic prophecy by showing its historical fulfillment.

The date, as before observed, of St. John’s writing was A.D. 96: the Emperor Domitian then reigned, but died that same year, and was succeeded by Nerve. Trajan followed; next Adrian; and after him the two Antonines; until the accession of Commodus, A.D. 180.

In order to see whether the character of their reigns agreed with the figuration of the first Apocalyptic seal, turn we to Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, our best standard English work upon the subject, and peculiarly valuable as the testimony of an infidel. For, somewhat remarkably, his history commences with this very period.

He represents the period then as “a golden age” of prosperity, union, civil liberty, and good government; “unstained by civil blood, and undisturbed by revolution:” a period remarkable, both at its commencement and at its close, for very wonderful and almost uniform triumphs in war, whereby the glory of the empire was illustrated, and its limits extended; while the intermediate time was generally a time of profound peace. And he thus strikingly sums up the view: — “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” As to the causes of this happiness and prosperity, he adds, with reference to the five successive emperors whose reigns filled up the period, “The delight was theirs of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors.”

We said that there were triumphs, too, indicated in the vision; for the rider “went forth conquering and to conquer.” It was the same in the history. We read even in the short reign of Nerva of a triumph over the Pannonians. More especially the reign of Trajan was memorable in history for its triumphs. Dacia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and other provinces were then added to the Roman Empire. And though for some forty-three years afterwards there was for the most part honorable and happy peace, i.e., during the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, yet there were victories in the few brief wars that occurred; via, a victory gained over the Jews by the former, and some smaller ones over the frontier barbarians by the latter. These wars, says Gibbon, “just served to exercise the Roman legions.” After some sixty or seventy years, however, it appeared for a time as if the character of “conquering and to conquer” was about to change. The whole of the barbarian world, especially from the east and from the north, burst the frontier barriers, and sought to overwhelm the Roman Empire. The result, however, was to show the truth of the Apocalyptic symbol, “He went forth, not only conquering, but with the destiny that he should still (to the end of the first seal) conquer.” After one defeat at first, the Eastern war was ended in the capture of Artaxata, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon. Again, in the north, victory after victory attended the second Antonine, till the German barbarians were driven to their forests and reduced to submission. On occasion of the Trajanic and earlier series of victories, a column, still standing at Rome, was erected to Trajan; and on occasion of those of the latter times of the seal, another was erected to M. Antoninus.

But there is one symbol in the vision yet unexplained, and which to anyone conversant with Roman customs might appear strange. It is the bow in the hand of the rider. Romans were not wont to be so represented on medals. A javelin or sword was the weapon in their hands. How then, it may well be asked, can this be a Roman emblem? To solve this we must refer back to the time when the bow was first invented. The fable is that the Grecian god, Apollo, first discovered it, and then instructed the inhabitants of the island of Crete with its use. Subsequently the Cretans, of all the Grecian people, were most famous as archers; and their manufacture of bows, too, was in much repute. Cretan medals still extant illustrate this; and ancient military history, both Greek and Roman, strongly attests it. Hence the apparent Cretan significancy of the emblem in question. Let me add a further and curious confirmation of this from the still extant epitaph or epigram on the tomb of a Greek female. The epitaph consists of a set of emblems: a magpie, some wool, a cup, and a bow; with an express explanation of them to this effect: that the magpie sculptured was to mark the loquacity (talkativeness) of the deceased; the cup, her proneness to drink; the wool, her diligence in work; the bow, to signify that she was a Cretan! But how does this apply to the five Roman emperors, who succeeded one another, as we have seen, for the space of some eighty or ninety years? Observe, the crown did not descend then, as now, in hereditary succession from father to son. The reigning emperor might adopt his successor, who, in virtue of this adoption, was, according to the Roman law, regarded precisely as his son. This being so, Nerva adopted Trajan; he, Hadrian; Hadrian, Antoninus; who, in turn, adopted Marcus Aurelius. So indeed inscriptions still extant illustrate to us. There is one, for example, in honor of Marcus Aurelius, which reads thus: “To the Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of Antoninus Pius, grandson of Hadrian, great-grandson of Trajan, great-great-grandson of Nerva.” Thus they were to be all regarded as of Nerva’s family. What, then, was Nerva’s own country and extraction? Aurelius Victor, and our best-known modern historians after him, relate that Nerva was in respect of family extraction a Cretan!

Thus, then, is the enigma solved. Had a sword or javelin been pictured in the conquering rider’s hand, it would have indicated nothing peculiar or characteristic. But He who cannot err, and who knew that the very year this prophecy was given a foreigner in respect of extraction should for the first time govern Rome, with a distinctness peculiar to all these pictures, gave the precise badge to mark the country of his ancestry.

Continued in Revelation 6:3-8. Second, Third, and Fourth Seals

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.

IN OUR LAST LECTURE we mentioned these several points —

1st, That the writer of the Apocalypse was St. John.

2nd, The geographical position and state of religion in the Churches.

3rd, The state of Jerusalem at the time St. John wrote, now that its city, temple, and services had passed away, and given place to one spiritual structure.

4th, The expectation of an anti-Christian power, before that the Lord should again visit the earth.

5th, We saw the commencement of those two kingdoms, between which a long struggle was to go forward for supremacy: the one headed by the persecuting pagan Domitian, the last of the twelve Caesars; the other by St. John, the representative of Christ’s Church, and the last of the twelve Apostles, at that time suffering in exile.

In chapter 4. the scenery changes, or the Apostle’s eyes are directed from it to that of a very different character.

When Moses drew near to the burning bush the Voice said to him, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” Let us, not without a deep reverential feeling as of being in the presence of God, survey with St. John what we have now read in description.

The first and the grandest object exhibited in the vision is Jehovah, King of kings, seated as Lord of all on the throne of the universe. As if to encourage the Apostle, there appeared round about the throne that well-known and lovely memorial of the covenant of mercy — the rainbow, in sight like unto an emerald. There were seen seven lamps burning before this throne, in allusion to the seven Churches or candlesticks, said in chapter 5 to be the seven Spirits of God; hence showing the influence of the third Person in the Trinity as the inspirer of what is holy and right in His people. Our Church adopts this idea in the hymn used in the ordination service —

“Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire!
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
That dost thy sevenfold grace impart.”

We take the four living creatures round the throne to be the representatives of the Church then in Paradise, and for this reason; — they sung a song of thanksgiving, and the chorus was, “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tribe, and nation.” Such likewise were the twenty-four elders seated round the throne. Habited as priests, on thrones, having crowns on their heads, they sung, “Thou hast made us to God kings and priests;” and afterwards joined in the chorus, “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” We should therefore say all these glorified beings represented the Church in its triumphant state to be accomplished hereafter.

Some think the number twenty-four represented the twelve Patriarchs and the twelve Apostles; the one body as founders of the Jewish, the other of the Apostolic Church. To explain definitely what all those living creatures meant may be impossible; but, generally, we may judge by the song that they were “the spirits of the just made perfect.”

Such was a part of the company seen on this occasion; besides which we read there were angels attendant, in number ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, who united with these other spiritual intelligences in singing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, gives a lively description of this Church of Christ as begun on earth, and seen through all its prospective changes until it is lost in eternity. After showing how all the old saints lived by faith, and died, and are witnesses by which we are compassed about, he says, “Ye are come to Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, — To the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.”

We come now to that part of the vision which relates to this Mediator. Around the throne was the concourse described as looking on; and, behold, there was a book in the hand of Him that sat on the throne: but it was closed and sealed. And when a strong angel proclaimed, “Who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals?” not one of the assembled throng was able to stand forth. As St. John, the representative of the Church on earth, was weeping because no man was found worthy to open it, One of a higher nature stepped forth and took the book; and the elder said to St. John, “Weep not; the Lion of the tribe of Juda hath prevailed to open the book,” And when the SAVIOUR, — for he indeed it was, the Lamb as it had been slain — had taken the book, the whole angelic company burst forth into acclamations of praise, and heaven rang with the song, the new song, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals: for thou hast redeemed us to God, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests.”

Before we enter into the examination of the subjects contained in this book of the future, I would beg you to observe the scenery of the vision which appeared to surround St. John. This must be understood in order rightly to decipher the emblematic language of the Revelation.

The first scene remained stationary throughout, viz., the interior of a temple similar to the Jewish temple. In one place it is called the “temple of God;” in another, at a later stage of the prophecy, “the temple of the tabernacle of witness.” (Rev. 11:19; 15:5) In the innermost part there was the throne of God, and voices are described as proceeding from this throne.

Three divisions were noted in the Jewish temple: — 1st, the most holy place, in which was the divine glory and the ark of the covenant: 2nd, the holy place, separated by a veil from the most holy, and in which stood the golden altar of incense, seven-branched lamp, etc.: 3rd, a court with a great brazen altar for sacrifice, wherein the priests ministered, while the multitude worshipped at its entrance. There was also an outer court for proselytes. These places are variously alluded to in different parts of the Apocalypse. We have already looked with the Apostle into the innermost; for no veil now separated it from the holy place. (Compare Matt. 27:51; Heb. 9:8, etc.) In chap. 6:9, there is allusion to the altar: “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain,” etc. In chap. 11:2, the outer court is referred to: “The court that is without the temple leave out, and measure it not.”

Further, as the Apostle looked round, landscape scenery broke on his view. Near him stood Mount Zion; and Jerusalem too, no longer a ruined heap, but a new and holy city bearing the much-loved name; — then, stretching far and wide, beneath and around, the miniature Roman world. Yet all was so placed that while Mount Zion and the temple appeared elevated above, the outer court seemed accessible to the inhabitants of the world below.

The object in view being to portray the future state of the Roman world, its changes and revolutions, decline and fall, together with the agencies that caused them, whether from within or without, and also to combine at the same time the history of the Church, adverse or prosperous, whether internally pure and holy, or verging towards apostasy, whether externally enlarged and protected, or persecuted and in distress — could any arrangement be better suited for the purpose than the one described?

To represent Christ’s worshiping Church, there was the symbolic temple. In its most holy place symbolizing heaven, was the enthroned Saviour, with the spirits of the just made perfect. In its holy place (or passage to the most holy), the spirituality of the Church on earth was figured out, as seen and judged by Christ; while the temple-court showed what was observable to the eye of beholders in its visible and outward worship; and the court without the temple, the Gentiles that truly or untruly might conform to Christianity. (Rev. 11:2) To depict the Christian body in its citizenship, there was the Mount Zion, its base on earth, its summit reaching towards heaven. Besides which, in order to represent the true Apostolic line of the Christian ministry, there was St. John in his representative character, present all through upon the scene to take his assigned part in the figurative drama as it proceeded.

In landscape around the heaven, with the sun, moon, and stars, symbolized, as we have noted elsewhere, the secular powers, whether exalted or cast down, shining or eclipsed. The atmospheric changes, storms of hail, overflowing rivers, etc., from without the landscape, might suitably figure foreign invasion; while its earthquakes depicted commotions and political revolutions within. There was furthermore a certain geographical resemblance to the Roman earth in the general landscape, with its four quarters, its frontier rivers, its inland seas, etc., which allowed for the visibly marking any particular place affected.

As to the book, it was probably a roll, a very common form amongst the Romans, and almost universal amongst the Jewish sacred books. It was written within and without. Thus, it would appear, additional particulars and details might be supplied without breaking the thread of the history. It was visibly sealed with seven seals — seals to be successively opened in order. On the breaking of the seventh seal there appeared seven angels with trumpets to evolve its events; each of which trumpets had its symbolic visions and peculiar history successively exhibited: all with correspondent writing or painting in the inside of the unfolding roll. Besides which there was superadded a writing on the outside, constituting a necessary and most important supplement to the prophecy. Once more, in evolution of the seventh angel’s trumpet, a succession of seven vials was announced as to be poured out on the earth, filled with judgment; the last of them detailing events that are still future, and reaching even to the period when the present dispensation shall close, and time shall be no more.

In the days of St. John there had been dramatic displays and acting at Rome with all that imperial power and wealth could impart of pomp and splendor. But, in the comparison, how poor and mean! The grandeur and dignity of this drama who can express? Its subject — nothing less than the conflict between the Church and the World to the end of the age; its moral — that however now the ungodly may prosper, and however scorned and persecuted the people of God may be, yet will success and glory be eventually transferred to the Church, and Christ shall reign for ever. And then such music, such actors, such an audience!

Let us observe also the difference between the way in which we regard events, seeing only the ejects, and the way in which they were revealed to St. John, with the secret springs and motives that originated them in the secret recess of the holy of holies, the Divine presence. As he beheld what passed in the inner temple, he would observe that nothing done on earth was there unknown or unobserved. Thither came up for a memorial the sins of its inhabitants, each with its call for judgment; thither, in striking contrast, whatever concerned the Church militant. Not a sigh could escape from its members, not a suffering vex them, but its vibration was heard and its perturbations felt there. Thither rose up the cries of the martyrs from beneath the altar; thither, as the sweet incense, the prayers and adorations of the saints. And mark the results! It was when the cry of his persecuted Church rose up that the sentence was given for the supremacy of the oppressing power to pass away. And, amidst all the judgments denounced against mere false professors in Christendom, provision was seen to be made that no real evil should assail the faithful.

We find in this book also much as to the ministry of angels. They are the actors throughout in the scenes described. They direct the tempests, sound the trumpets, pour out the vials, scatter the fire, gather the vintage; just agreeably with what is said of the angelic offices in other Scriptures.

St. John, we must bear ever in mind, was the representative of the true Church, or rather of its chiefest minister, at the time of each vision of the drama, as the drama went on. In this his character angels interpreted to him, and the saints of the Church triumphant showed their fellowship of spirit. Were not the words of our poet truly written —

Continued in Revelation 6:1, 2. The First Seal

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

Quotes from Wikipedia:

As the title of this article says, this is an “abridgment” meaning a condensation of Edward Bishop Elliott’s four-volume work, 2500 pages of his work condensed to only 273 pages! My good friend Steve sent it to me. You can find it in PDF format on Lutheran Library.org For those of you who are new to this website, I’m posting it in sections in HTML web format to make it easily readable from a phone.

The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae. An Introduction to Church History.

by Edward Bishop Elliott

Preface by Lutheran Librarian

In republishing this book, we seek to introduce this author to a new generation of those seeking authentic spirituality.

EDWARD BISHOP ELLIOTT (1793-1875) “graduated from Cambridge in 1816 and he served in various positions as a minister for the Church of England. He ultimately settled at St. Marks Church in Brighton. He was of the Evangelical school… A first rate scholar, he was deeply interested in bible prophecy and devoted his lifetime to its study. His Horae Apocalypticae is the greatest HISTORICIST exposition of the Apocalypse ever written. Begun in 1837, it ran for five editions between 1844 and 1862.

The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry finds, restores and republishes good, readable books from Lutheran authors and those of other sound Christian traditions. All titles are available at little to no cost in proofread and freshly typeset editions. Many free e-books are available at our website LutheranLibrary.org. Please enjoy this book and let others know about this completely volunteer service to God’s people. May the Lord bless you and bring you peace.

Preface.

THE FIFTH EDITION of the Horae Apocalypticae being almost exhausted, it has been suggested that now is a proper time to send out a Third Edition of the Abridgment.

It has no merit as to originality or research, being only intended to bring before those persons who have not access to the larger work the views which it contains in a simple form. Omitting the learned and elaborate arguments, the writer has kept almost verbatim to the text in Mr. Elliott’s work. Not many months before his lamented death he looked over the little book, and expressed an approval of it similar to that in his preface to the Second Edition, which is subjoined.

It was his express wish that the views he held as to future events should be but briefly touched on in the Abridgment. For references and authorities the reader must be referred generally to the Horae Apocalypticae itself, no fact being stated in the smaller book which is not fully verified there.

The Postscript — giving his latest thoughts on the unfulfilled portion of the prophecy — is placed at the end of the volume. It expresses his views as to how the events then passing verified his historical explanation of the Apocalypse, and furnished a key to the meaning of those prophecies yet unfulfilled.

To James Bateman, Esq., the writer is indebted for an interesting paper in the Appendix; and to the Rev. Christopher Bowen, late Rector of St. Thomas’, Winchester, for having kindly edited this Abridgment; which — if it shall please God to bless to the directing to further inquiry into prophetic truth, and the fuller study of those portions of His Holy Writ — the purpose designed by its publication will have been attained.

H. E. E.

Recommendatory Notice By The Author Of The “Horae Apocalypticae.”

HAVING BEEN REQUESTED by the writer of this Abridgment of the Horae Apocalypticae to revise it preparatorily to the issuing of a Second Edition, I have done so.

I can recommend it as faithful, correct, and well calculated, I think, to bring usefully before the minds of the young, for whom it was chiefly intended, those lessons in Church History, as well as in Prophecy, contained in the Horae Apocalypticae. The former — I mean the history of the Christian Church — is that which, nowadays more especially, must be considered an essential in education.

EDWARD BISHOP ELLIOTT.

Revelation 1, 2, 3. St. John in Patmos.

View of the Infant Church, A.D. 96. — The Seven Churches of Asia Minor.

WHAT IS THE CHURCH? Where was the Church of England before Luther? Where was the Church in the Middle Ages, etc.? These are the sort of questions by which some may be perplexed, and, for want of a little knowledge of the history of former times, may be silenced.

I propose therefore to give a course of lectures on Church History, connecting it with the prophecies of St. John in the Book of Revelation, and so with early Roman history. I begin from the Apostles’ time: and hope to outline the principal events (such at least as may suit my purpose) down to the present day.

One object I wish to bear specially in view, viz., to prove that the Reformation in England was not a schism; that Popery was not the first religion of England, but rather a system forced upon her, grafted on to our ancient Apostolic Church, and only pruned away by the Reformers. Would that not a fiber of doubtful origin had been left!

In the Acts of the Apostles we have the history of the Churches which they founded, as Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, Colosse, etc. “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”

The Churches were congregations of faithful men gathered together, whether in public buildings,(Acts 3:1) in the open air,(Acts 16:13) or in private houses.(Col. 4:15) Amongst these, the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were faithfully administered, and men ordained as pastors — bishops, elders, and deacons. To these ordinations various allusions are made in the Epistles. Mention is also made of several persecutions of the infant Church raised by Pagans, and of errors which early infected the congregation.

It was during one of these early persecutions that St. John, the only surviving Apostle, was banished by Domitian, the reigning Roman emperor, to Patmos, an island in the Archipelago, now called Patino. There it pleased God to reveal to him the future destinies of the Church in a series of visions. This series is called the Apocalypse, or Revelation. It is upon these visions I propose to comment.

ST. JOHN opens with a passage from his own history, and designates himself as the writer of this book. As if he said, “I, John, who was the companion of the Lord Jesus, who heard his words, saw his miracles, was witness of his transfiguration, shared in his privations and beheld his sufferings, — I, who leaned on his breast at his last supper, stood by his cross of agony, received from him the legacy of his afflicted mother, heard his parting word and dying groan, — I, who saw him at the grave, and conversed with him after his resurrection, — I, who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that I saw, — — I have again seen him, and declare unto you from him that ‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein.’ I, John, who also am now become your brother and companion in tribulation, was in the isle called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

Sixty years had well-nigh run their course since this beloved disciple had seen at the Mount of Olives a cloud receive the Lord from the sight of his disciples, — since he and they had heard the angelic question, “Why stand ye here gazing up to heaven?” and heard the promise, “That same Jesus, whom ye saw go into heaven, shall so come in like manner from heaven.” Year by year had they and the Church looked and longed for the accomplishment of this promise. Other prophecies had been fulfilled; those specially which related to Jerusalem. The Jews had neglected every warning. In vain there were great sights seen, and earthquakes felt, famine and pestilence doing their work, wars and rumors of wars desolating their country, false Christs, wonders in heaven above, and signs on the earth below, — signs even in the sanctuary, as if to force on them consideration of the prophecies against them. Even just after Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and James in his Epistle, had sent a last remonstrance to them, the war began; then the siege, and with it those horrors foretold by the Saviour.(Matt. 24:5-28.)

The Christians suffered not. Following the plain command, when they saw “the abomination that was to make desolate,” spoken of by Daniel,7 i.e., the Roman army, — approach, they fled, and so escaped destruction. The history of this siege is given by Josephus, himself a Jew, and authenticated by the emperors Vespasian and Titus. The memorial of its truth is still standing at Rome, namely, the arch of Titus, on which is sculptured the table of shew-bread, the book of the law, and the seven-branched candlestick. This told, and tells at Rome, the story of the conquest. But where was Jerusalem’s temple? Not a vestige to give response. Where the beautiful city, its towers and fortresses? Desolate and destroyed! Blood-stained ruins and rubbish alone remain.

What then had taken Jerusalem’s place? what the places of her altar and her temple?

It has been said by Jesus, “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and sowed, — which is indeed the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches.”(Matt. 13:31)

From a small and despised beginning a better dispensation had been striking its roots far and wide; with a temple whose worship is spiritual, and whose High Priest and sacrifice is Christ himself, the Lamb of God; whose members are God’s elect children of grace, gathered by degrees out ’ of the world; — now, perhaps, despised, persecuted and scattered; but at the appointed time to form a company, a glorious body, some to come with their Lord, some to meet him at his coming.

Mighty were the efforts made by Satan to stop the progress of this religion, but in vain. Persecution hindered it not; “the blood of the martyrs proved the seed of the Church;”and however severely treated, the cause seemed still to strengthen.

Let us observe what was the state of this increasing body, when from the rocky summit of his “island prison” the Apostle, with a mixture of joy, sorrow, and anxiety, had looked round on the coast of Asia, and then on the shores of Thrace and Greece, with their gulfs, their islands, and their bays.

His eye would rest on the sites of Christian Churches; first, those of Asia Minor, where Timothy had labored and fallen asleep, and the faithful Antipas had been martyred, and where Polycarp still lived a witness for Christ; — these under St. John’s own superintendence. Then, the Macedonian and Greek Churches of Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth. He knew that in the far west on one side, and on the south and east towards the other, there arose from Christian congregations the incense of prayer and praise to the Lamb of God. There was a little band gathered fondly round the ruins of Jerusalem, where the aged Simeon presided. One at Antioch, with its faithful bishop, Ignatius. There were the Churches of Alexandria and Egypt, founded by St. Mark; of Cyprus, where labored Barnabas; and that of Crete, “set in order by Titus.” His mind’s eye would catch the break of light in Spain, Gaul, and in our own islands, even the British group. It would turn to Rome, that Church where Paul and many others had sealed their testimony by martyrdom, and where the leaven had reached even to the palace of royalty; for some of the household, and even of Caesar’s relatives, had there professed the Christian faith. Clement, whose name St. Paul mentions as in “the book of life,” fearless of persecution, presided over its Church. Another Clement, cousin to the emperor, had just been executed for conscience sake; and his wife, Domitilla, in a desolate island now endured exile.

Persecution, however, was not the worst enemy the Apostle knew to be at work to injure the rising Church. Corruption had begun within: some had erred from the faith, and false tradition had been mixed with the pure word of God. The Gnostics, — a sect of whom one division denied the humanity, and another the divinity of Jesus, — had sprung up like a noxious weed in the congregations; and in one way or other Christ Jesus had been superseded in his character of man’s only Mediator, Atonement, and Righteousness. The enemy had already largely sowed the tares amongst the wheat.

St. John knew that one notable enemy would arise, mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Thessalonians as “the man of sin to be revealed.” St. John calls him Antichrist. I say notable, because his profession was unlike that of other impostors, who said, “I am Christ.” The word Antichrist is a word expressing a Vice- Christ; — indeed, made to express it: one who, acting as usurper in the professing Church, would be in effect Jesus Christ’s superseder in it. Such, in some sort, was the nature of the Gnostic heresy; for its chief professors, while confessing Jesus Christ openly, practically set him aside; declaring themselves to be the wisdom, power, and salvation of God. St. John’s first Epistle is directed mainly against these erroneous views.

This dreaded Antichrist was evidently the same power foretold by Daniel as the little horn of the fourth Beast, or Roman Empire, and which was to be the great enemy of Christ and his saints. This little horn was to rise not till after the empire’s division into ten; whence it was well understood in the Church that till this empire was divided the reign of Antichrist should not be developed.

Nor indeed, notwithstanding Rome’s apparent glory, were symptoms wanting which to a discerning eye might seem to indicate the possibility of Rome’s fall or disruption being not so very distant. The population were alienated from their rulers, being disgusted with their tyranny, vice, and folly. Fierce barbarian hordes, especially those at the north of the empire, were hovering on the frontiers; and had more than once shown their power by defeating the Roman legions.

From this view we may suppose that the holy Apostle retired with joy, anxiety, and grief; — joy that the Saviour’s Church was extending; sorrow that the seed was sown within it which might after a while issue in the apostasy of Antichrist; and anxiety to know how long the time should be till the kingdom of the Lord he loved should be established. We doubt not earnest prayer would mingle with his meditations not unfrequently. The Redeemer had given his promise, “I will send my Spirit, and he will show you things to come;” so would the exiled prophet plead the promise; and in answer to such prayer, and in fulfillment of such promise, may we not believe that the revelation was given. “I was in the Spirit,” he writes, “on the Lord’s day. And I heard behind me a great voice saying, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.’” It was the voice of Jesus; and he gave this injunction, “Write the things which are, and the things which are to happen after them.” These things then were written to be read; and the blessing was pronounced beforehand, “Blessed are they that read the words of the book of this prophecy.”

St. John seems to have been then abstracted from all that was around him; and though himself in the isle of Patmos, the scenery he describes is Jewish. He sees a temple, and the interior of it is open to his view. There are seven lamps burning: Jesus Christ, habited like the high priest, though with marks of divinity attaching to him, overseeing all.

These lamps are explained to be emblematic of the seven Churches then in Asia Minor; and throughout the Revelation we shall find Jewish scenery and emblems, all familiar to St. John as a Jew, used to show forth the Christian Church. The seven stars are said to be the angels or chief pastors of the Churches. It is well to mark these emblems, as again and again they occur through the book we are about to study.

It is not my intention to enter upon the practical lessons that may be derived from the exhortations to these Churches, if personally applied, and which would furnish rules for living and dying applicable to the children of God to the end of time: the warnings and encouragements being as signposts to keep each in the right way on his pilgrimage heavenwards; and the object held forth that we shall, if we overcome, “inherit all things, and dwell in the temple of God to go no more out.” However useful and pleasant this, my present purpose is to follow St. John, and to show what the things were then existing, before proceeding to show what was to follow. These Churches, I imagine, were specimens of the whole state of religious society and practice then in existence, with the mixture of good and evil, tares and wheat; — the budding of that evil which St. Paul had stated would go on working until it ended in general apostasy.

The promoter of all this mischief, hidden and subtle, and undiscernible on earth, is shown to be the devil. He is described with his mimic synagogue (Rev. 3:3) as at work to injure the growing good. He is designated as the instigator of persecution, “Behold Satan shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried.” Again, he is called “the devil, the old serpent, and Satan, which deceiveth the nations;” (Rev. 12:9; and 20:2, 3.) and in the same chapter, “the accuser of the brethren.” It is only a repetition of the power attributed to him in other Scriptures, “the father of lies,” “the roaring lion seeking whom he may devour,” “a murderer from the beginning,” “the enemy that soweth tares.” Moreover, he remains in his enmity unchanged, and has had six thousand years of experience in his dealings with man to increase his devilish wisdom. Who could withstand him if it were not for power stronger than his, and that the power of an almighty, all-seeing, ever-present God? St. John shows in his Epistles that an antagonistic Power would finally conquer him: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8) The call, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches,” shows us that the instructions and warnings given to them were to apply to all that should ever after hear or read them. The distinct blessing pronounced on “those that hear and keep the words of this prophecy” or teaching shows that it is our duty to study and diligently lay them to heart, both for encouragement and warning.

There is a very marked connection between the promises to the seven Churches and the blessings described as belonging to the saints in the New Jerusalem at the close of the Revelation. Thus to the faithful ones in the Ephesian Church it was promised, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God;” while in the description of the New Jerusalem it is said, “On either side of the river was there the tree of life;” (Rev. 22:2) and, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life.” (Rev. 22:14) To the conquerors in the Church of Smyrna, “He that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second death,” a promise correspondent to that, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power.” (Rev. 20:6) To the victorious at Sardis it was said, “They shall walk with me in white; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life:” the former of which was seen by St. John as fulfilled when he beheld the multitude clothed in white, with palms of victory in their hands; (Rev. 7:9) and again is mentioned at the end of the Revelation, when to the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, was given to be “arrayed in white,” which white robe “is the righteousness of the saints:” (Rev. 19:8) the latter refers to those whose names will be found written in the book of life at the last and final judgment. (Rev. 20:12 — 15) A similar correspondency exists with regard to the promise to the Laodicean Church, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne;”and that to the New Jerusalem, “They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” (Rev. 20:4; 22:5)

Thus, he that gave the promise at the beginning gives the picture of its realization at the end. How consolatory to those who are struggling forward, engaged in withstanding publicly the inroads of evil in the Church and in spreading abroad the Gospel; or having to bear in private the scorn and persecution of the cross, often unseen save in the narrow sphere of daily life, contending against inbred corruptions of the heart, and endeavoring to bring the thoughts into subjection to the obedience of Christ; — how consolatory, I say, to know that the victory will assuredly be given, and that the final end will be blessedness.

And so the scene passed away. The messages were sent and reached the ears of thousands; — a message in each case direct from God, and sent to each Church by the appointed minister: God thus recognizing the ministerial order and office. And what may have been the effect? Probably that which every faithful minister finds to be his experience in the congregation where he delivers his message, viz., “some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” Eighteen hundred years have gone since then. We have the list of warnings and promises to read; but where are those to whom they were first sent? And, when a few more years shall have passed away, Where will those be to whom we now reiterate them?

Continued in Revelation 4, 5. View of Scenery As It Appeared to St. John

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

One of the frequent visitors of this website shared with me a chapter of a book entitled “The Revolutionary Movement: A Diagnosis of World Disorders” by John Findlater and published by Lutheran Library.org. It gives insights into the book of Revelation I never heard before. Yes, you can call it another interpretation but so are all the other commentaries I have read about the book of Revelation. This one, however, is based on Historicism and is undoubtedly more accurate than interpretations based on Futurism. I think we will fully understand the Book of Revelation only after chapter 22 has come to pass and we are together with our Lord Jesus in His Kingdom.

Heavenly Light

THE REMARK OF A FRIEND that, liking greatly to converse with Christians who often read the Book of the Revelation, he yet tried to give as wide a berth as possible to any who claimed to be able to expound it, was not so paradoxical as might at first sight appear. For in that Book, as in the realm of Nature around us, there are elements of two vastly different kinds, some perfectly intelligible to every reasonable being, others whose constitution and meaning are wrapped up in the deepest mystery. We speak of those earthly things as the plain facts and the mysteries of life. But in the things of the Book of the Revelation there is a third class also, belonging in part to each of those two categories though it cannot fairly be said to lie between them. It is composed of the mysteries whose unfolding is the main purpose of the Book — the mysteries it does in fact reveal to every sincere Christian believer. This third class is made up of the facts of faith.

If then in closing these articles we can link up some of the facts of faith as they appear in the Book of the Revelation with some of the plain facts of life, our brief study may be to our great advantage.

The divisions of the Book into chapters and verses is comparatively modern, made for convenience’ sake. It does not belong to the original. Yet in it these divisions seem to correspond wonderfully well with its subject matter.

Its habitual readers must have noticed there are broader divisions also. At the beginning there are three chapters which constitute the prologue of the Book. And the three chapters at the end form its epilogue. The former deals with things existing at the time the Apostle John wrote the Book. The latter relates events to take place subsequent to the coming again of Christ with power and great glory. The intervening sixteen chapters contain a prophetical survey of the course of the Christian Church between those two termini.

Attentive readers of the Book can scarcely have failed to observe that these sixteen chapters are themselves divided up, at the end of the eleventh, into two fairly equal portions. For in the eleventh chapter, as again in the nineteenth, the future coming of our Lord to take possession of the kingdoms of this world is expressly foretold. If then we now assume hypothetically this division of this the main part of the Book, it is to be observed that, whereas in the first half (chaps. 4 to 11) we read of the opening of the seven seals and under the seventh seal the sounding of the seven trumpets, in the second half (Chaps. 12 to 19) we hear seven mighty angels uttering their great voices and under the seventh great voice the pouring out of the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth, which in the expending complement the fury of the Divine vengeance on disobedient and evil men.

A close comparison of the two halves with one another will leave little or no doubt that, from different angles, they give two views of the same subject. But the full force and meaning of this can be felt only when each pair of symbols — a seal and a great voice; a trumpet and a bowl — is set side by side. It will then be seen that every pair relates to one and the selfsame subject, usually presenting two different chronological parts, and in one case two antithetical parts. Let them be briefly stated here: —

Such is the skeleton framework of the building whose plans are given in the main portion of the Book of the Revelation. It is but a skeleton, consisting of two rows of pillars, one on what may fitly be called the eastern side of the building and the other on its western. Or it might be termed a twofold sketch of the Church of Christ, from two quite different points of view outlining the things which would befall it from the end of the first century till the still future return of our Lord. The first portrait presents the Church as being primarily Israelite in character, and only secondarily Gentile. The innumerable multitude of Gentile martyrs follow, both in the divine order of precedence and in point of time, the hundred and forty-four thousand of the twelve tribes of Israel. But in the New Testament is not this the view of the Church uniformly presented, as consisting of a Hebrew nucleus with a Gentile body surrounding that nucleus? A close study of the Apostolic Writings cannot fail to create what further study will but help to deepen — an impression that this is the truly divine order of the Church’s constitution. The seals and trumpets appear to foretell the lot of the Church so constituted up to the time when Christ will come again to take possession of the kingdom.

In Chapters 12 to 19 we see the Church from a very different point of view. The narrative opens with the birth of the man child. As to the meaning of that Bishop Newton has noted a most significant fact, perhaps decisive even. The Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity in 313 A.D., just 280 years from the time when the Church received the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Now, “as the time of gestation from the conception to the birth of a child is known to be 40 weeks or 280 days”, says Bishop Newton, “so, according to the prophetical reckoning of a day for a year, from the first rise of our Saviour’s kingdom in 33 A.D. to the year 313 was exactly 280 years If this is the true interpretation of Rev. 12., it suggests several things — that the Emperor Constantine, in his capacity of protector of the Christians, was Heaven-sent; that his term in that office was but short; that his successors in office adopted a different policy — Chapter 13. tells of the rising of the first beast from”out of the sea“, followed by the rising of the second beast, also called”the false prophet“, from”out of the earth“, indicating that the early promise of Constantine’s time had been nipped in the bud; that under his successors the nominal church became officially perverted, while the real Church was driven out”into the wilderness”; and that the view of the official church given in this second half of the prophecies concerning it shows how it sank to the status of one of the kingdoms of this world.

To put those two views of the Church side by side again — we have the history of its eastern face presented in Chapters 4 to 11, showing the vicissitudes through which it must pass in its original and diviner character; and in Chapters 12 to 19 we trace the course it was to follow and did follow on the western front, where it adopted a policy of earthly sensual devilish wisdom, and became just the reverse of all our Saviour intended it to be.

Our space limits do not permit any detailed survey of the facts of faith embodied in this main portion of the Book. But there is a historical interpretation of the meaning of “the seven bowls of the wrath of God” which will greatly interest most readers and ought not to be omitted. In the year 1701 the Rev. Robert Fleming, then a minister of the Church of Scotland in London, published a little book entitled “Rise and Fall of the Papacy”, giving an exposition of the meaning and application of the Seven Vials or Bowls. In it Mr. Fleming, having explained the previous stages of the execution of God’s wrath upon the Latin Church up to that time (1701), from Rev. 16:8-9 (the pouring out of the Fourth Bowl upon the sun) drew “a conjecture” that the French Monarchy, the mainstay of the papacy for about a thousand years, would be extinguished not later than the year 1794 — that is, 1260 years from 534 A.D., when the Emperor Justinian had appointed the Bishop of Rome chief spokesman of the whole Christian Church, Many years after Mr. Fleming had gone to rest from his labors that “conjecture” was verified to the letter.

The outpouring of the Fifth Bowl “upon the throne of the beast” was due, he thought, to culminate in 1848 — in retrospect seen as one of the most memorable years in European history, when the Pope, dreading the revolutionary forces threatening him on all sides, fled from Rome disguised as a lackey. That period, covered by the Fifth Bowl, appears to terminate in 1870, the very year in which the Pope’s Temporal Sovereignty was extinguished.

In the next period (Sixth Bowl) God’s judgment’s on the Moslem Power are executed. As to when the Turkish Caliphate would be abolished, Mr. Fleming has no conjecture. But he has stated his full conviction that immediately after its destruction the agents of “mystical Babylon” would succeed in creating a great League of Nations germane with “their idolatrous and spurious Christianity” — a League aiming at complete dominion over the whole world. Then, says Mr. Fleming, “when the forces of this apostate confederacy shall have been brought to that place of battle which is called Armageddon — that is, the place where there will be a most diabolically cunning and powerful conspiracy against Christ’s followers — then immediately will the seventh angel pour out his vial, to their utter ruin and destruction.”

Heaven’s multitudes then lift up their voices (Rev. 19:6-9 ), “saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.

“And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. 135″And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are bidden to

THE MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB.”

Crime scene in Philadelphia, one of the most Catholic cities in the USA. Philadelphia consistently ranks above the national average in terms of crime, especially violent offenses.

It’s been 10 years since I first posted this article. A Catholic priest read it and didn’t like it! He wrote a comment in the comments section. Please read what he wrote and my reply. Just scroll down until you see it.

In the list below, 41 (82%) of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world are in Roman Catholic Latin America areas. The 5 American cities in the list all have a heavy Roman Catholic influence. New Orleans, St. Louis, and Baltimore were founded by Roman Catholics. So if you add the 5 American cities to the 41 Latin American areas, it results in 92% of the most violent cities in the world under Roman Catholic influence.

And why are these cities so violent? They are all economically depressed. Consider the fact that Roman Catholic nations tend to be poor whereas Protestant nations have prospered economically. Protestant Northern Europe is definitely better off than Southern Europe which has a stronger Roman Catholic influence.

Of all the Roman Catholic countries I know of, only Poland is doing well economically. The reason I think is because Poles are hard-working people. All of my grandparents were born in Poland! I had the opportunity to visit Poland for 3 weeks, and I loved it. It’s a clean and beautiful country and its infrastructure was much better than Russia at the time (1997) in spite of the fact it was dominated by Soviet Communism from 1945 to 1989.

The United States of America was strongest economically when Protestantism was strongest. Can you see the relationship? Since a flood of Roman Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Poland, and Latin America, Roman Catholic influence in the American government is stronger, and the economy is weaker!

Is the Roman Catholic church secretly controlling American politics? If you don’t think so, explain why President Obama wants to change the immigration laws to give citizenship to illegal Mexican immigrants. They are mostly Roman Catholics! The more Catholics in America, the more the Roman Catholic Church gets to influence the vote!

The source of this list was taken from http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-violent-cities-in-the-world-2013-11?op=1

1. San Pedro Sula, Honduras had 169.30 homicides per 100,000 residents.
2. Acapulco, Mexico had 142.88 homicides per 100,000 residents.
3. Caracas, Venezuela had 118.89 homicides per 100,000 residents.
4. Distrito Central, Honduras had 101.99 homicides per 100,000 residents.
5. Torreón, Mexico had 94.72 homicides per 100,000 residents.
6. Maceió, Brazil had 85.88 homicides per 100,000 residents.
7. Cali, Colombia had 79.27 homicides per 100,000 residents.
8. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico had 72.85 homicides per 100,000 residents.
9. Barquisimeto, Venezuela had 71.74 homicides per 100,000 residents.
10. João Pessoa, Brazil had 71.59 homicides per 100,000 residents.
11. Manaus, Brazil had 70.37 homicides per 100,000 residents.
12. Guatemala, Guatemala had 67.36 homicides per 100,000 residents.
13. Fortaleza, Brazil had 66.39 homicides per 100,000 residents.
14. Salvador (and RMS), Brazil had 65.64 homicides per 100,000 residents.
15. Culiacán, Mexico had 62.06 homicides per 100,000 residents.
16. Vitoria, Brazil had 60.40 homicides per 100,000 residents.
17. New Orleans, United States had 56.13 homicides per 100,000 residents. 36% Catholic
18. Cuernavaca, Mexico had 56.08 homicides per 100,000 residents.
19. Juárez, Mexico had 55.91 homicides per 100,000 residents.
20. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela had 55.03 homicides per 100,000 residents.
21. Detroit, United States had 54.63 homicides per 100,000 residents. 32.5% Catholic
22. Cúcuta, Colombia had 54.29 homicides per 100,000 residents.
23. São Luís, Brazil had 50.16 homicides per 100,000 residents.
24. Medellin, Colombia had 49.10 homicides per 100,000 residents.
25. Kingston, Jamaica had 48.48 homicides per 100,000 residents.
26. Belém, Brazil had 48.23 homicides per 100,000 residents.
27. Cape Town, South Africa had 46.04 homicides per 100,000 residents.
28. Cuiabá, Brazil had 45.28 homicides per 100,000 residents.
29. Santa Marta, Colombia had 45.26 homicides per 100,000 residents.
30. Recife, Brazil had 44.54 homicides per 100,000 residents.
31. Valencia, Venezuela had 43.87 homicides per 100,000 residents.
32. Chihuahua, Mexico had 43.49 homicides per 100,000 residents.
33. San Juan, Puerto Rico had 43.25 homicides per 100,000 residents.
34. Goiânia, Brazil had 42.01 homicides per 100,000 residents.
35. Port-au-Prince, Haiti had 40.10 homicides per 100,000 residents.
36. Victoria, Mexico had 37.78 homicides per 100,000 residents.
37. Pereira, Colombia had 36.13 homicides per 100,000 residents.
38. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa had 36.02 homicides per 100,000 residents.
39. Maracaibo, Venezuela had 35.44 homicides per 100,000 residents.
40. St. Louis, United States had 35.39 homicides per 100,000 residents.
41. Baltimore, United States had 35.03 homicides per 100,000 residents.
42. Curitiba, Brazil had 34.08 homicides per 100,000 residents.
43. Oakland, United States had 33.10 homicides per 100,000 residents.
44. San Salvador, El Salvador had 32.48 homicides per 100,000 residents.
45. Macapá, Brazil had 32.06 homicides per 100,000 residents.
46. Durban, South Africa had 30.94 homicides per 100,000 residents.
47. Monterrey, Mexico had 30.85 homicides per 100,000 residents.
48. Belo Horizonte, Brazil had 29.74 homicides per 100,000 residents.
49. Brasilia, Brazil had 29.73 homicides per 100,000 residents.
50. Barranquilla, Colombia had 29.41 homicides per 100,000 residents.

The Philippines is a Roman Catholic nation and I hear crime is higher in the capital, Manila, but crime in the provinces (countryside) is thankfully low. Businesses that make a significant amount of money all have armed guards who act as greeters at the entrances. Armed guards are certainly a good deterrent against crime! Since moving from Guam to the province of Northern Samar Philippines in June 2023, I have yet to hear of any robberies or any theft at all! Crime in Guam is not as high as in the mainland USA, but higher than here. People leave their motorbikes on the streets with the keys in the ignition, and they’re still there when they return. My nice bike in Guam was stolen though it was tied to a tree with a cable. The thief cut the cable with a cable cutter and left the cut cable on the ground. 🙁 Guam is also predominately Roman Catholic due to Spanish influence. All of the Micronesian islands are Catholic with a few Protestant churches.