The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

states that "for such Protestant expositors as see the Papacy in the scarlet woman of
Babylon, the Jezebel of Thyatira appears exactly at the right time, coincides with the
Papacy at its height, yet at the same time, with judgment at the door, in the great revolt
[the sixteenth century Reformation] which was even then preparing."
The reign of the worldly Church
This period of Church history represented in the Thyatira message is very fittingly
referred to by some writers as the period of the reign of the world-church; thus
distinguishing it from the previous period of Pergamos--the Church's uniting with the
world. It represents the period of the Papacy during which "the virgin Church was
enduring the hardships of the wilderness; while the apostate Church sat on the throne of
her royal paramour." Prophetic writers differ in fixing the exact date of the beginning of
the Papal Church. The most fitting event as marking its beginning would seem to be when,
by a decree of Justinian, the Roman emperor residing at Constantinople, a Roman bishop
was made head of all the Churches of Christendom. This decree was first made in 533 AD,
but does not seem to have been fully enforced until 538 or 539 AD. This development into
apostasy was a gradual work.
"Systematized prelacy, and Balaamism [in the Pergamos period], made the emperor
president of the church councils and the confirmer of their decrees, brought the
community of saints into conjunction with 'Satan's throne,' and so gave being to that
mongrel but mighty thing in which Pagan life was transferred to Christian veins, heathen
pomp and ceremony commingled with Christian rites and sacraments, and the professed
Bride of Christ transformed into a queenly adulteress, the harlot mother of a harlot
household. And in all history there is not another character which so completely
represents the Papal system--its character, works and worship--as the unclean wife of
Ahab, the Jezebel of this epistle. She was a heathen married to a Jew; and such is the
character of the Papal system in its main elements--Paganism joined to an absolute
Judaism. She is described as calling herself a prophetess, and as undertaking to be the
teacher of God's servants. . . . This Jezebel is also described as having 'children,' alike with
her, unsatisfactory to Christ; and whence but from that unclean source have we those
semi-Papal national religious establishments, by which the Church of Jesus is befouled,
hindered, and disgraced, even in many Protestant countries? We thus obtain from these
epistles Christ's own direct verdict upon Romanism, both in its more offensive features in
the old mother, and in its more modified forms in the daughters."
"The Book of Revelation (2:20-25; 18:7) pictures to us Queen Jezebel as representing a great
religious system of this Gospel Age which did great violence to the Truth. Ahab [king of
Israel] represented the worldly governments. His wife [Jezebel] represented a false
Christian church system married to earthly governments. As Ahab represented the
worldly governments claiming to be Christ's kingdoms, so Queen Jezebel pictured, or
typified, a false church system, which, instead of maintaining its purity as the virgin
Church of Christ, became married or united to these earthly systems. . . . As the prophets
of Baal were under the care of Queen Jezebel and under the patronage of King Ahab, so