people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe. Some nations
welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands, the
papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance; and the
light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences, was almost wholly
excluded. In one country, though the light found entrance, it was not
comprehended by the darkness. For centuries, truth and error struggled for
the mastery. At last the evil triumphed, and the truth of Heaven was
thrust out. “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light.”(383) The nation was left to
reap the results of the course which she had chosen. The restraint of
God’s Spirit was removed from a people that had despised the gift of His
grace. Evil was permitted to come to maturity. And all the world saw the
fruit of wilful rejection of the light.
The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries in
France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible
outbreaking was but the legitimate result of Rome’s suppression of the
Scriptures.(384) It presented the most striking illustration which the
world has ever witnessed, of the working out of the papal policy,—an
illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand years the
teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal supremacy was
foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points also to the terrible
results that were to accrue especially to France from the domination of
“the man of sin.”
Said the angel of the Lord: “The holy city shall they tread under foot
forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and
they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in
sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast
that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and
shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the
street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,
where also our Lord was crucified.... And they that dwell upon the earth
shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to
another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the
earth. And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered
into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them
which saw them.”(385)
The periods here mentioned—“forty and two months,” and “a thousand two
hundred and threescore days”—are the same, alike representing the time in
which the church of Christ was to suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260
years of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538, and would therefore terminate
in 1798.(386) At that time a French army entered Rome, and made the pope a
prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward
elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been able to wield the power
which it before possessed.
The persecution of the church did not continue throughout the entire
period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His people cut short the time of
their fiery trial. In foretelling the “great tribulation” to befall the
church, the Saviour said, “Except those days should be shortened, there
should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be
shortened.”(387) Through the influence of the Reformation, the persecution
was brought to an end prior to 1798.
Concerning the two witnesses, the prophet declares further, “These are the
two olive-trees, and the two candle-sticks standing before the God of the
earth.” “Thy word,” said the psalmist, “is a lamp unto my feet, and a
light unto my path.”(388) The two witnesses represent the Scriptures of
the Old and the New Testament. Both are important testimonies to the
origin and perpetuity of the law of God. Both are witnesses also to the
plan of salvation. The types, sacrifices, and prophecies of the Old
Testament point forward to a Saviour to come. The Gospels and Epistles of
the New Testament tell of a Saviour who has come in the exact manner
foretold by type and prophecy.
“They shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed
in sackcloth.” During the greater part of this period, God’s witnesses
remained in a state of obscurity. The papal power sought to hide from the
people the Word of truth, and set before them false witnesses to
contradict its testimony.(389) When the Bible was proscribed by religious
and secular authority; when its testimony was perverted, and every effort
made that men and demons could invent to turn the minds of the people from
it; when those who dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted, betrayed,
tortured, buried in dungeon cells, martyred for their faith, or compelled
to flee to mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of the earth,—then
the faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their
testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest times
there were faithful men who loved God’s word, and were jealous for His
honor. To these loyal servants were given wisdom, power, and authority to
declare His truth during the whole of this time.
“And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and
devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this
manner be killed.”(390) Men cannot with impunity trample upon the word of
God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation is set forth in the closing
chapter of the Revelation: “I testify unto every man that heareth the
words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these
things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of
the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”(391)
Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men against changing in
any manner that which He has revealed or commanded. These solemn
denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead men to regard
lightly the law of God. They should cause those to fear and tremble who
flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence whether we obey God’s
law or not. All who exalt their own opinions above divine revelation, all
who would change the plain meaning of Scripture to suit their own
convenience, or for the sake of conforming to the world, are taking upon
themselves a fearful responsibility. The written word, the law of God,
will measure the character of every man, and condemn all whom this
unerring test shall declare wanting.
“When they shall have finished [are finishing] their testimony.” The
period when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in sackcloth, ended
in 1798. As they were approaching the termination of their work in
obscurity, war was to be made upon them by the power represented as “the
beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the nations of
Europe the powers that ruled in church and state had for centuries been
controlled by Satan, through the medium of the papacy. But here is brought
to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome’s policy, under a profession of reverence for the Bible,
to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue, and hidden away from the
people. Under her rule the witnesses prophesied, “clothed in sackcloth.”
But another power—the beast from the bottomless pit—was to arise to make
open, avowed war upon the word of God.
The “great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where their
dead bodies lie, “is spiritually Egypt.” Of all nations presented in Bible
history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living God, and
resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon more open and
high-handed rebellion against the authority of Heaven than did the king of
Egypt. When the message was brought him by Moses, in the name of the Lord,
Pharaoh proudly answered, “Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice to
let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.”(392)
This is atheism; and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice to a
similar denial of the claims of the living God, and would manifest a like
spirit of unbelief and defiance. The “great city” is also compared,
“spiritually,” to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in breaking the law of
God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And this sin was also to
be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that should fulfil the
specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before the year 1798
some power of satanic origin and character would rise to make war upon the
Bible. And in the land where the testimony of God’s two witnesses should
thus be silenced, there would be manifest the atheism of the Pharaoh and
the licentiousness of Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfilment in the
history of France. During the Revolution, in 1793, “the world for the
first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization,
and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European
nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which
man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a
Deity.”(393) “France is the only nation in the world concerning which the
authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open
rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers,
plenty of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England,
Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world’s
history as the single state which, by the decree of her Legislative
Assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire
population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well as
men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement.”(394)
France presented also the characteristic which especially distinguished
Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral
debasement and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon
the cities of the plain. And the historian presents together the atheism
and the licentiousness of France, as given in the prophecy: “Intimately
connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the
union of marriage—the most sacred engagement which human beings can form,
and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of
society—to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character,
which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure.... If
fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually
destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life,
and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it
was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to
another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the
degradation of marriage.... Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the
witty things she said, described the republican marriage as ‘the sacrament
of adultery.’ ”(395)
“Where also our Lord was crucified.” This specification of the prophecy
was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of enmity against
Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country had the truth
encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution which
France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel, she had crucified
Christ in the person of His disciples.
Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While the
Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont “for the
word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ,” similar witness to
the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses of France. In
the days of the Reformation, its disciples had been put to death with
horrible tortures. King and nobles, high-born women and delicate maidens,
the pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their eyes upon the
agonies of the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots, battling for those
rights which the human heart holds most sacred, had poured out their blood
on many a hard-fought field. The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a
price was set upon their heads, and they were hunted down like wild
beasts.
The “Church in the Desert,” the few descendants of the ancient Christians
that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding away in
the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their fathers. As
they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely moor, they were
chased by dragoons, and dragged away to life-long slavery in the galleys.
The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French, were
chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers and assassins.(396) Others,
more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in cold blood, as, unarmed and
helpless, they fell upon their knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men,
defenseless women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth at
their place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest,
where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find “at
every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging
suspended from the trees.” Their country, laid waste with the sword, the
axe, the fagot, “was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness.” “These
atrocities were enacted ... in no dark age, but in the brilliant era of
Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the divines of
the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men, and greatly
affected the graces of meekness and charity.”(397)
But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the
fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew
Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of
that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by
Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A
bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter.
Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the
plighted honor of their king, were dragged forth without a warning, and
murdered in cold blood.
As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian bondage, so
was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of
multiplying martyrs. For seven days the massacre was continued in Paris,
the first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not confined to the
city itself, but by special order of the king, was extended to all the
provinces and towns where Protestants were found. Neither age nor sex was
respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the man of gray hairs was spared.
Noble and peasant, old and young, mother and child, were cut down
together. Throughout France the butchery continued for two months. Seventy
thousand of the very flower of the nation perished.
“When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the exultation among the
clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded the messenger
with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo thundered forth a joyous
salute; the bells rang out from every steeple; bonfires turned night into
day; and Gregory XIII., attended by the cardinals and other ecclesiastical
dignitaries, went in long procession to the church of St. Louis, where the
cardinal of Lorraine chanted a _Te Deum_.... A medal was struck to
commemorate the massacre, and in the Vatican may still be seen three
frescoes of Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral, the king in
council plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself. Gregory sent
Charles the Golden Rose; and four months after the massacre, ... he
listened complacently to the sermon of a French priest, ... who spoke of
‘that day so full of happiness and joy, when the most holy father received
the news, and went in solemn state to render thanks to God and St.
Louis.’ ”(398)
The same master-spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew Massacre led also
in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared to be an
impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was, “Crush the
Wretch,” meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and abominable wickedness
went hand in hand, and the basest of men, the most abandoned monsters of
cruelty and vice, were most highly exalted. In all this, supreme homage
was paid to Satan; while Christ, in His characteristics of truth, purity,
and unselfish love, was crucified.
“The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against
them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical power that
ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, did wage
such a war against God and His holy word as the world had never witnessed.
The worship of the Deity was abolished by the National Assembly. Bibles
were collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of
scorn.
The law of God was trampled under foot. The institutions of the Bible were
abolished. The weekly rest-day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth
day was devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial-places
declared death to be an eternal sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom that it
was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was prohibited, except
that of liberty and the country. The “constitutional bishop of Paris was
brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and
scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation....
He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the Convention
that the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect,
a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or
sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of
the Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in
future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then
laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal
embrace from the president of the Convention. Several apostate priests
followed the example of this prelate.”(399)
“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make
merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets
tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” Infidel France had silenced the
reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The Word of truth lay dead in her
streets, and those who hated the restrictions and requirements of God’s
law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the King of heaven. Like the
sinners of old, they cried, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in
the Most High?”(400)
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests of the
new order said: “God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name. I bid You
defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your thunders. Who after
this will believe in Your existence?”(401) What an echo is this of the
Pharaoh’s demand: “Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice?” “I know
not Jehovah!”
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”(402) And the Lord
declares concerning the perverters of the truth, “Their folly shall be
manifest unto all.”(403) After France had renounced the worship of the
living God, “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” it was only
a little time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by the worship of
the Goddess of Reason, in the person of a profligate woman. And this in
the representative assembly of the nation, and by its highest civil and
legislative authorities! Says the historian: “One of the ceremonies of
this insane time stands unrivaled for absurdity combined with impiety. The
doors of the Convention were thrown open to a band of musicians, preceded
by whom, the members of the municipal body entered in solemn procession,
singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their
future worship, a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason.
Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed
on the right of the president, when she was generally recognized as a
dancing girl of the opera.... To this person, as the fittest
representative of that reason whom they worshiped, the National Convention
of France rendered public homage.
“This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and the
installation of the Goddess of Reason was renewed and imitated throughout
the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show
themselves equal to all the heights of the Revolution.”(404)
Said the orator who introduced the worship of Reason: “Legislators!
Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not endure the
brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has assembled
beneath those gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the
truth. There the French have celebrated the only true worship,—that of
Liberty, that of Reason. There we have formed wishes for the prosperity of
the arms of the Republic. There we have abandoned inanimate idols for
Reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece of nature.”(405)
When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the orator took her by
the hand, and turning to the assembly said: “Mortals, cease to tremble
before the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears have created.
Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest and
purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such as this....
Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil of Reason!...
“The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted on a
magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to the cathedral of
Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There she was elevated on the
high altar, and received the adoration of all present.”(406)
This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of the Bible.
On one occasion “the Popular Society of the Museum” entered the hall of
the municipality, exclaiming, “_Vive la Raison!_” and carrying on the top
of a pole the half-burned remains of several books, among others
breviaries, missals, and the Old and New Testaments, which “expiated in a
great fire,” said the president, “all the fooleries which they have made
the human race commit.”(407)
It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was completing. The
policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social, political, and
religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers, in referring to
the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are to be charged
upon the throne and the church.(408) In strict justice they are to be
charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned the minds of kings against
the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown, an element of discord that
would be fatal to the peace and harmony of the nation. It was the genius
of Rome that by this means inspired the direst cruelty and the most
galling oppression which proceeded from the throne.
The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the gospel was
received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast off
the shackles that had held them bond-slaves of ignorance, vice, and
superstition. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it, and
trembled for their despotism.
Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the pope to the
regent of France in 1525: “This mania [Protestantism] will not only
confound and destroy religion, but all principalities, nobility, laws,
orders, and ranks besides.”(409) A few years later a papal nuncio warned
the king: “Sire, be not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil as
well as religious order.... The throne is in as much danger as the
altar.... The introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a
new government.”(410) And theologians appealed to the prejudices of the
people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine “entices men away to
novelties and folly; it robs the king of the devoted affection of his
subjects, and devastates both church and state.” Thus Rome succeeded in
arraying France against the Reformation. “It was to uphold the throne,
preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws, that the sword of persecution
was first unsheathed in France.”(411)