It was possible, of course, for the church to decline from her
state of purity and thereby to forfeit her standing as the church.
So long as her conflict with paganism lasted and the various forms
of persecution tended to bring into exercise those principles and
qualities which distinguished her from the world, she practically
kept her first estate. When, however, the tide turned, persecutions
ceased and Christianity came into favor and to be made the state
religion of the Roman Empire, there were presented conditions
favorable to every form of spiritual decline. Christians, instead of
being longer persecuted, were protected, and to profess Christianity
became popular and easy. The divine features of the church, by which
she had been known for more than two hundred years, were lost. Every
form of corruption came in. Human rule supplanted the divine, Holy
Spirit, rule almost universally, both in the East and the West. The
bishop of Rome, in particular, rose in prominence until he was made
supreme head--pope--of the Holy Roman church. The reader of church
history knows of the long eclipse of Christianity that followed, of
the darkness and ignorance that reigned and gave to that period the
name, Dark Ages. The true church, impossible of representation by
such a colossal counterfeit as then appeared in her place and became
in turn a persecuting power, could continue only in fragmentary form,
in obscure places in the wilderness of the Roman Empire. She could
not be manifest in her evangelizing capacity, but was persecuted.
Millions of God's people, who refused allegiance to this false system
of Christianity, were slain as heretics during this period. Thus, in
the historical foreground we see, not the pure woman representing
the church of God, but we see an apostate woman seated "upon a
scarlet-colored beast," the Roman state.
"And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked
with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her
hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: and
upon her forehead was a name written, _Mystery, Babylon the Great,
the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth_. And I saw the
woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus" (Rev. 17:4-6).
The Word and the Spirit, the two divine authorities, were set aside.
In the place of the former were the traditions of the Roman Church,
and for the latter was substituted human rule and authority. These
two divine witnesses prophesied in sackcloth during those long
centuries, until such time as they should again function in their
proper sphere in the church--I say _until such time_: for we are not
to assume that in the design of God this state of affairs should
always continue. True Christianity was not to perish from the earth.
The book of Daniel prophesies of the papacy, "And he shall speak
great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of
the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall
be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of
time" (Dan. 7:25). (See the time-periods of the various epochs of the
Christian era in our chapter A Prophetic Time.) For this vast agency
of unrighteousness the time should come when the cup of iniquity
should be full and the judgments of God should be executed and his
people delivered. When Christ comes, his bride will have made herself
ready, which implies that God's people will have been gathered out of
spiritual captivity and brought again to Zion. Light and truth and
the Holy Spirit rule will have been restored as at the beginning.