The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

"fountains and rivers," and note the effect this "falling star" had in the scattering of its
poisonous substances upon the same. It should be noted also that it could not represent a
reformer in the Church. The Reformers, Luther, Zwingli, Reuchlin, Calvin, and others,
came out of the fallen Romish church system, and their teaching, as all Bible students know,
had the effect in a measure at least, of purifying or sweetening the polluted waters, instead
of embittering or poisoning them. The Papacy, long before the sixteenth century opened,
had so perverted and distorted the Truth, that one could hardly recognize it as the pure
Gospel given to the Church in the apostolic days.
It is our conviction that the Roman Catholic Bishop, the Pope, and his successors are
represented by the notable "star" of this third trumpet symbol. The Prophet Daniel was
caused in prophetic vision to see the rise of this great ecclesiastical Bishop, the Pope.
The fountain or source of all truth is the ransom sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a
positive fact that the so-called doctrine of the Mass has so polluted or poisoned this great
fountain truth that it no longer has any effective power to cleanse the conscience of those
who are deceived by it from dead works to serve the living God.
"Christ's continual sacrifice was not actually canceled or abolished by Papacy, but it was set
aside by a false doctrine advanced by that system--which gradually, but in the end fully
and completely, set aside the merit of Christ's sacrifice as a continual and ever-efficacious
one. This false doctrine is known as the Mass, or Sacrifice of the Mass.
"Protestants in general totally misunderstand this so-called sacrament. They suppose it to
be merely a different form of celebrating the Lord's Last Supper, adopted by Roman
Catholics. Others get the idea that it is a sort of special prayer. But these ideas are quite
erroneous. The Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass is this: The death of Christ, they
claim, canceled Adamic or original sin, but is not applicable for our daily shortcomings,
weaknesses, sins, and omissions; it is not a continual sacrifice, ever meritorious for all our
sins, ever sufficient and efficacious to cover as a robe every sinner and every sin, so as to
permit the contrite one to come back into union and fellowship with God. For such sins
the sacrifice of the Mass was instituted: it is esteemed by Papists as a further development
of the Calvary sacrifice. Each time the Mass is offered in sacrifice it is, they claim, a fresh
sacrifice of Christ, for the particular persons and sins to which the priest offering it
mentally applies it. The Christ to be thus sacrificed afresh is first 'created' from wheatbread
and wine by the officiating priest."
While it is true that this pollution of the foundation truth of God's Plan of salvation began
to be manifest in a measure before Papacy came fully into power, yet it was Papacy that
made a belief in it and the practice of it compulsory upon all Christians, as we learn from
their own records:
"If any one shall say that the Mass is only a service of praise and thanksgiving, or a bare
commemoration of the sacrifice made on the Cross, and not [in itself] a propitiatory
offering [i.e., a sacrifice which itself makes satisfaction for sins]; or that it only benefits him
who receives it, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins,