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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please read Revelation chapter 14 from your Bible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some other interesting quotations concerning the Holy Bible:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHICH BIBLE SHOULD WE STUDY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please read Revelation chapters 13 and 17 from your Bible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please carefully consider the following quotations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***PERMISSION IS GIVEN TO COPY***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I. The Witnesses’ Ascension To Heaven.

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

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

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

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

II. The Earthquake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continued in The British Church Amongst The Witnesses

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

The papal crusade against the Albigensian Christians.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEFINITIONS (hopefully in alphabetical order):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1.] Almost never see your accuser.

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

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

[4.] You’re presumed guilty – period.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The remedy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I. The Earlier Western Witnesses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. The Earlier Eastern Witnesses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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