We are living in days were we are daily seeing a battle in the U.S.
over Church and State, and this battle involves 2 extremes, those
without God who would out law religion and morality and those in a
vocal moral majority who in the name of God would have their religion
and morality established by law. Each points at the other to justify
their stance and the many get so causght up in either side they've
lost, I fear, sight of the big picture, and what is actually being done
here.
--- " In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as
their bill of rights--the Declaration of Independence-- they declared:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit
terms, the inviolability of conscience: "No religious test shall ever
be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the
United States." "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
"The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle
that man's relation to his God is above human legislation, and his
right of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to
establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosom. It is
this consciousness, which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so
many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God
was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no
authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which
nothing can eradicate." ---
According to this, both sides battling it out in this Country are wrong
and not acting according to American principles. And with each tiny
victory of either side the result is the same. Both are chewing away at
and are actually working to destroy the very ammendment that insures
that they, and you and I can be free to follow our own conscience to
worship and live and teach as we see fit. Those rights were written in
our Constitution to keep these shores and our people free from the
godless bloodshed that soaked the soil of Europe for over a millenia,
and yet our Constitution will be repudiated and rejected-- We know
this Because
The Bible tells us a time of trouble is coming such as never has been
since there was a Nation
Can we learn something from studying the past?
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In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible
to the people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe.
Some nations welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In
other lands, popery 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." [JOHN 3:19.] 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 willful 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. 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 [the true church] 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." [REV. 11:2-11.]
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 with the
establishment of the papacy in A. D. 538, and would therefore terminate
in 1798. 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." [MATT. 24:22.] 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 candlesticks standing before the
God of the earth." "Thy Word," said the psalmist, "is a lamp unto my
feet, and a light unto my path." [REV. 11:4; PS. 119:105.] 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. 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." [REV. 11:5.] 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." [REV 22:18,19.]
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
lightly regard 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." [EX. 5:2.] 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 fulfill
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 fulfillment
in the history of France. During the Revolution of 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
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 the Deity." "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."
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 licentiousness of France, as it is 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 a state of mere
civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might
engage in and cast loose at pleasure. . . . If fiends had set
themselves at work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying
whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and
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.'"
"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 mountain-side 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." 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 mountain-side 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 ax, the fagot,
was converted into a vast, gloomy wilderness." These atrocities were
not committed during the Dark Ages, but in that brilliant era "when
science was cultivated, and letters flourished; when the divines of the
court and the capital were learned and eloquent men, who greatly
affected the graces of meekness and charity."
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. The great bell of the palace, 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.
Satan, in the person of the Roman zealots, led the van. 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 extended to all
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.
"The pope, Gregory XIII., received the news of the fate of the
Huguenots with unbounded joy. The wish of his heart had been gratified,
and Charles IX, was now his favorite son. Rome rang with rejoicings.
The guns of the castle of St. Angelo gave forth a joyous salute; the
bells sounded from every tower; bonfires blazed throughout the night;
and Gregory, attended by his cardinals and priests, led the magnificent
procession to the church of St. Louis, where the cardinal of Lorraine
chanted a Te Deum. The cry of the dying host in France was gentle
harmony to the court of Rome. A medal was struck to commemorate the
glorious massacre; a picture, which still exists in the Vatican, was
painted, representing the chief events of St. Bartholomew. The pope,
eager to show his gratitude to Charles for his dutiful conduct, sent
him the Golden Rose; and from the pulpits of Rome eloquent preachers
celebrated Charles, Catherine, and the Guises as the new founders of
the papal church."
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 upon the Bible as the world had never
witnessed. The Word of God was prohibited 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 enacted 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 in 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."
"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?" [PS. 73:11
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?" 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?" [PS. 14:1.]
And the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the truth, "Their
folly shall be manifest unto all." [2 TIM. 3:9.] 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 hand 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."
Said the orator who introduced the worship of reason: "Legislative
fanaticism has lost its hold; it has given place to reason. We have
left its temples; they are regenerated. Today an immense multitude are
assembled under its gothic roofs, which, for the first time, will
re-echo the voice of truth. There the French will celebrate the true
worship, that of Liberty and Reason. There we will form new vows for
the prosperity of the armies of the Republic; there we will abandon the
worship of inanimate idols for that of Reason-- this animated image,
the masterpiece of creation."
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, veil of
Reason
"The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted
on a magnificent car, and conducted, amidst an immense crowd, to the
cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. Then she was
elevated on the high altar, and received the adoration of all present."
This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of
the Bible. And "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 the
breviaries of 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.'"
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.
A writer, speaking of the horrors of the Revolution, says: "Those
excesses are in truth to be charged upon the throne and the church." 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 bondslaves 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 1523: "This mania [Protestantism] will not only
destroy religion, but all principalities, nobilities, laws, orders, and
ranks besides." A few years later a papist dignitary warned the king,
"If you wish to preserve your sovereign rights intact; if you wish to
keep the nations submitted to you in tranquillity, manfully defend the
Catholic faith, and subdue all its enemies by your arms." 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."
Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of that
fateful policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the
minds and hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance,
truth, equity, and benevolence which are the very corner-stone of a
nation's prosperity. "Righteousness exalteth a nation." Thereby "the
throne is established." [PROV. 14:34; 16:12.] "The work of
righteousness shall be peace;" and the effect, "quietness and assurance
forever." [ISA. 32:17.] He who obeys the divine law will most truly
respect and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God will honor
the king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority. But
unhappy France prohibited the Bible, and banned its disciples. Century
after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual
acuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their
convictions, and the faith to suffer for the truth,--for centuries
these men toiled as slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or
rotted in dungeon cells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in
flight; and this continued for two hundred and fifty years after the
opening of the Reformation
"Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during that long
period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before
the insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the
intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule,
they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the land in which they found an
asylum. And in proportion as they replenished other countries with
these good gifts, did they empty their own of them. If all that was now
driven away had been retained in France; if, during these three hundred
years, the industrial skill of the exiles had been cultivating her
soil; if, during these three hundred years, their artistic bent had
been improving her manufactures; if, during these three hundred years,
their creative genius and analytic power had been enriching her
literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been
guiding her councils, their bravery fighting her battles, their equity
framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible strengthening the
intellect and governing the conscience of her people, what a glory
would at this day have encompassed France! What a great, prosperous,
and happy country--a pattern to the nations--would she have been!
"But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every
teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of
the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a
'renown and glory' in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake or
exile. At last the ruin of the State was complete; there remained no
more conscience to be proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to the
stake; no more patriotism to be chased into banishment." And the
Revolution, with all its horrors, was the dire result.
"With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon
France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile
districts returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and
moral declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became
one vast almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of
the Revolution, two hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the
hands of the king. The Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation,
and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons
and the galleys."
The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those
political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her
king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy
and ruin. But under the domination of Rome, the people had lost the
Saviour's blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They
had been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of
others. The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor,
the poor no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness
of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive.
For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble resulted in
grinding extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor, and
the poor hated the rich.
In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and the
laboring classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy of their
landlords, and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The
burden of supporting both the Church and the State fell upon the middle
and lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and
by the clergy. "The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme
law; the farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their
oppressors cared. . . . The people were compelled at every turn to
consult the exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the
agricultural laborers were lives of incessant work and unrelieved
misery; their complaints, if they ever dared to complain, were treated
with insolent contempt. The courts of justice would always listen to a
noble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously accepted by the
judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the force of law,
by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung
from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the
clergy on the other, not half ever found its way into the royal or
episcopal treasury; the rest was squandered in profligate
self-indulgence. And the men who thus impoverished their
fellow-subjects were themselves exempt from taxation, and entitled by
law or custom to all the appointments of the State. The privileged
classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand, and for their
gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading lives."
The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little
confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion
fastened upon all the measures of the government, as designing and
selfish. For more than half a century before the time of the
Revolution, the throne was occupied by Louis XV., who even in those
evil times was distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and sensual
monarch. With a depraved and cruel aristocracy and an impoverished and
ignorant lower class, the State financially embarrassed, and the people
exasperated, it needed no prophet's eye to foresee a terrible impending
outbreak. To the warnings of his counselors the king was accustomed to
reply, "Try to make things go on as long as I am likely to live; after
my death it may be as it will." It was in vain that the necessity of
reform was urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the courage nor the
power to meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too truly pictured
in his indolent and selfish answer,--"After me the deluge!"
By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling classes,
Rome had influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing
that the State would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means to
fasten both rulers and people in her thrall. With far-sighted policy
she perceived that in order to enslave men effectually, the shackles
must be bound upon their souls; that the surest way to prevent them
from escaping their bondage was to render them incapable of freedom. A
thousand-fold more terrible than the physical suffering which resulted
from her policy, was the moral degradation. Deprived of the Bible, and
abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and selfishness, the people were
shrouded in ignorance and superstition, and sunken in vice, so that
they were wholly unfitted for self-government.
But the outworking of all this was widely different from what Rome
had purposed. Instead of holding the masses in a blind submission to
her dogmas, her work resulted in making them infidels and
revolutionists. Romanism they despised as priestcraft. They beheld the
clergy as a party to their oppression. The only god they knew was the
god of Rome; her teaching was their only religion. They regarded her
greed and cruelty as the legitimate fruit of the Bible and they would
have none of it.
Rome had misrepresented the character of God, and perverted his
requirements, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author. She
had required a blind faith in her dogmas, under the pretended sanction
of the Scriptures. In the reaction, Voltaire and his associates cast
aside God's Word altogether, and spread everywhere the poison of
infidelity. Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel; and
now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in their recoil from her
tyranny cast off all restraint. Enraged at the glittering cheat to
which they had so long paid homage, they rejected truth and falsehood
together; and mistaking license for liberty, the slaves of vice exulted
in their imagined freedom.
At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the
people were granted a representation exceeding that of the nobles and
the clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but
they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager to
redress the wrongs they had suffered, they determined to undertake the
reconstruction of society. An outraged populace, whose minds were
filled with bitter and long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved to
revolutionize the state of misery that had grown unbearable, and to
revenge themselves upon those whom they regarded as the authors of
their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out the lesson they had learned
under tyranny, and became the oppressors of those who had oppressed
them.
Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. Terrible
were the results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome.
Where France, under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first
stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up
its first guillotine. On the very spot where the first martyrs to the
Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first
victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In repelling the gospel,
which would have brought her healing, France had opened the door to
infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God's law were cast aside,
it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the
powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to revolt and
anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in
the world's history as "The Reign of Terror." Peace and happiness were
banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He who
triumphed today was suspected, condemned tomorrow. Violence and lust
held undisputed sway.
King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the
atrocities of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for
vengeance was only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those
who had decreed his death, soon followed him to the scaffold. A general
slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was
determined. The prisons were crowded, at one time containing more than
two hundred thousand captives. The cities of the kingdom were filled
with scenes of horror. One party of revolutionists was against another
party, and France became a vast field for contending masses, swayed by
the fury of their passions. "In Paris one tumult succeeded another, and
the citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed intent
on nothing but mutual extermination." And to add to the general misery,
the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with the
great powers of Europe. "The country was nearly bankrupt, the armies
were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving, the
provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost
extinguished in anarchy and license."
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and
torture which Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at
last had come. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust
into dungeons and dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished or
been driven into exile. Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power of
those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of blood. "The example
of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for so many
ages, was now retorted upon them with signal vigor. The scaffolds ran
red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the prisons, once
crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors. Chained
to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy
experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted
on the gentle heretics"
"Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was
administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man could
greet his neighbors, or say his prayers . . . without danger of
committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when the
guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the jails were
filled as close as the holds of a slave-ship; when the gutters ran
foaming with blood into the Seine. . . . While the daily wagon-loads of
victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris, the
proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had sent forth to the
departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the
capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow for
their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed down with
grape-shot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was
turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death
was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to the
sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined
together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to sex or age. The
number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who were murdered by
that execrable government is to be reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn
from the breast were tossed from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks."
In the short space of ten years, millions of human beings perished.
All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had
been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and
his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to
deface and defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes of
benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in Heaven. Then by his
deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw back
the blame of his work upon God, as if all this misery were the result
of the Creator's plan. In like manner, when those who have been
degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve their freedom,
he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture of
unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an
illustration of the results of liberty.
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in a
different disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the
first. When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could
not through this agency lead them to transgression of God's law, he
urged them to regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible a fable;
and casting aside the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to
unbridled iniquity
The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of
France was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom lies
within the proscriptions of the law of God. "O that thou hadst
hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and
thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." "There is no peace, saith
the Lord, unto the wicked." "But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell
safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil." [ISA. 48:18, 22; PROV.
1:33.]
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God's law;
but the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is
bound up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will not
read the lesson from the book of God, are bidden to read it in the
history of nations.
When Satan wrought through the Romish Church to lead men away from
obedience, his agency was concealed, and his work was so disguised that
the degradation and misery which resulted were not seen to be the fruit
of transgression. And his power was so far counteracted by the working
of the Spirit of God, that his purposes were prevented from reaching
their full fruition. The people did not trace the effect to its cause,
and discover the source of their miseries. But in the Revolution, the
law of God was openly set aside by the national council. And in the
reign of terror which followed, the working of cause and effect could
be seen by all.
When France publicly prohibited the Bible, wicked men and spirits
of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so long
desired,--a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God. Because
sentence against an evil work was not speedily executed, therefore the
heart of the sons of men was "fully set in them to do evil." [ECCL.
8:11-13.] But the transgression of a just and righteous law must
inevitably result in misery and ruin. Though not visited at once with
judgments, the wickedness of men was nevertheless surely working out
their doom. Centuries of apostasy and crime had been treasuring up
wrath against the day of retribution; and when their iniquity was full,
the despisers of God learned too late that it is a fearful thing to
have worn out the divine patience. The restraining Spirit of God, which
imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan, was in a great measure
removed, and he whose only delight is the wretchedness of men, was
permitted to work his will. Those who had chosen the service of
rebellion, were left to reap its fruits, until the land was filled with
crimes too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated provinces and
ruined cities a terrible cry was heard,--a cry of bitterest anguish.
France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion, law, social order,
the family, the State, and the Church,--all were smitten down by the
impious hand that had been lifted against the law of God. Truly spake
the wise man: "The wicked shall fall by his own wickedness." "Though a
sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely
I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before
him; but it shall not be well with the wicked." [ECCL. 8:11-13.] "They
hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord;" "therefore
shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their
own devices." [PROV. 1:29, 31.]
God's faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power that
"ascendeth out of the bottomless pit," were not long to remain silent.
"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." [REV. 11:11.] It was in 1793 that the decree which
prohibited the Bible passed the French Assembly. Three years and a half
later a resolution rescinding the decree, and granting toleration to
the Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at
the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred
Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and his Word
as the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord, "Whom hast
thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy
voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of
Israel." [ISA. 37:23.] "Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them
to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they
shall know that my name is Jehovah." [JER. 16:21.]
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: "And
they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, come up hither.
And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld
them." [REV. 11:12.] Since France made war upon God's two witnesses,
they have been honored as never before. In 1804 the British and Foreign
Bible Society was organized . This was followed by similar
organizations, with numerous branches, upon the continent of Europe. In
1816, the American Bible Society was founded. When the British Society
was formed, the Bible had been printed and circulated in fifty tongues.
It has since been translated into more than two hundred languages and
dialects. By the efforts of Bible societies, since 1804, more than
187,000,000 copies of the Bible have been circulated.
For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was given to
the work of foreign missions. No new societies were formed, and there
were but few churches that made any effort for the spread of
Christianity in heathen lands. But toward the close of the eighteenth
century a great change took place. Men became dissatisfied with the
results of rationalism, and realized the necessity of divine revelation
and experimental religion. The devoted Carey, who in 1793 became the
first English missionary to India, kindled anew the flame of missionary
effort in England. In America, twenty years later, the zeal of a
society of students, among whom was Adoniram Judson, resulted in the
formation of the American Board of Foreign Missions, under whose
auspices Judson went as a missionary from the United States to Burmah.
From this time the work of foreign missions attained an unprecedented
growth.
The improvements in printing have given an impetus to the work of
circulating the Bible. The increased facilities for communication
between different countries, the breaking down of ancient barriers of
prejudice and national exclusiveness, and the loss of secular power by
the pontiff of Rome, have opened the way for the entrance of the Word
of God. For some years the Bible has been sold without restraint in the
streets of Rome, and it has now been carried to every part of the
habitable globe.
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said, "I am weary of hearing
people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I
will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it." A century has
passed since his death. Millions have joined in the war upon the Bible.
But it is so far from being destroyed, that where there were a hundred
in Voltaire's time, there are now ten thousand, yes, a hundred thousand
copies of the Book of God. In the words of an early reformer concerning
the Christian church, "The Bible is an anvil that has worn out many
hammers." Saith the Lord, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall
prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou
shalt condemn." [ISA. 54:17]
"The Word of our God shall stand forever." "All his commandments
are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and
uprightness." [ISA. 40:8; PS. 111:7, 8.] Whatever is built upon the
authority of man will be overthrown; but that which is founded upon the
rock of God's immutable Word shall stand forever.
------------------------
.... A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be
favorable to the success of popery. It will yet be demonstrated that a
day of great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success.
In past ages, when men were without God's Word, and without the
knowledge of the truth, their eyes were blindfolded, and thousands were
ensnared, not seeing the net spread for their feet. In this generation
there are many whose eyes become dazzled by the glare of human
speculations, "science falsely so-called;" they discern not the net,
and walk into it as readily as if blindfolded. God designed that man's
intellectual powers should be held as a gift from his Maker, and should
be employed in the service of truth and righteousness; but when pride
and ambition are cherished, and men exalt their own theories above the
Word of God, then intelligence can accomplish greater harm than
ignorance. Thus the false science of the nineteenth century, which
undermines faith in the Bible, will prove as successful in preparing
the way for the acceptance of the papacy, with its pleasing forms, as
did the withholding of knowledge in opening the way for its
aggrandizement in the Dark Ages.
In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure
for the institutions and usages of the church the support of the State,
Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are
opening the door for popery to regain in Protestant America the
supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. ... If the reader
would understand the agencies to be employed in the soon-coming
contest, he has but to trace the record of the means which Rome
employed for the same object in ages past.
Quoted- The great Controversy Chapter 15. - The Bible and the French
Revolution. . pp 265-288 & 572-3
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