The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

outbreak of evil at its close. This false notion had fatal consequences. While these
interpreters, in common with the generality of Christians at that period, were looking for
the advent of the 'man of sin' in the distant future, he stole unperceived into their midst
and usurped the place of Christ over His unwatchful flock."
Just before 1000 AD Gherbert of Rheims said of the pope that he was "Antichrist sitting in
the temple of God." In the eleventh century Berenger affirmed the Roman See to be "not
the Apostolic seat, but the seat of Satan."
During this whole period, however, there were little companies of believers, separated
from civilization, as it were, who saw clearly in the succession of Roman bishops, the
Antichrist of the Apocalypse. The Waldensian Christians claimed that their forefathers left
the nominal Church in the days of Constantine in the fourth century. However, we do not
begin to have mention of them by that name in history until about the twelfth century.
They have been generally called the "Israel of the Alps." They lived in what is known as
the Waldensian valleys. "They were true Protestants long before the Reformation. They
were lovers and students of prophecy from the oldest times. There is in existence a faithful
history of this people written two hundred and fifty years ago by one of their pastors,
Leger by name." It will be foreign to our purpose here to relate the terrible persecutions
that these Christian confessors suffered at the hands of Rome. These matters are well
authenticated events of history. The question before us is, How did these suffering saints
interpret the Apocalypse? A noted writer of the nineteenth century, referring to Leger's
history of the Waldenses, thus writes:
"Leger tells with simple clearness the story of the Waldenses from the earliest times,
quoting from ancient and authentic documents. He gives in full their confession of faith,
and narrates the history of their martyrdoms. . . . In this book of Leger's is their Treatise on
Antichrist, written in the year 1120, eight hundred years ago. It is written in a language
now extinct; Leger gives a French translation in parallel columns. In simple, telling terms
that treatise brands the Romish Church as the harlot Babylon, and the Papacy as the 'man
of sin,' and Antichrist. That was the faith and confession of the Waldenses."
Another body of Christian confessors commonly called the Albigenses, lived in the south
of France, in Provence and Catalonia. History informs us that they were a civilized and
highly educated people. In the year 1208, we have mention of them as undergoing terrible
persecution at the instigation of the Papacy. Among these people there sprang up an
extensive revival of true religion, and one of the natural effects was a bold testimony
against the abominations of apostate Rome. Sismondi, the great Italian historian of whom
it is said that "his mind was to the last open to truth; neither fettered by prejudice nor
blinded by self conceit, and whose feelings on religious questions were especially intense,"
having on one occasion heard a sermon in an English church on eternal punishment,
vowed never again to enter another church holding the same creed; and, to quote his own
words, "never to contribute to spread what the English call their reformation; for by its
side Romanism is a religion of mercy and peace." (International Encyclopedia.) This man was
an unprejudiced historian. In his history of the Albigenses, on page 7, he relates how these