The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

new beginning. For a brief space of time prior to this, Christ had seemingly no organized
effort to represent Him that could be called evangelical.
The few of the Lord's true saints, who had fruitlessly protested against Jezebel's doctrines
and blasphemous claims, became scattered and ceased entirely for a short time to bear
witness. "Worn out" (this is the language of the Prophet--Dan. 7:25) by a long series of
bloody persecutions, the object of which was to exterminate them and thus silence the
voice of protest against the Jezebel system, these witnesses of Christ became discouraged,
cast down, and needed some special, some supernatural help from the Divine Master to
give them new life, that they might again stand on their feet and resume their divinely
appointed work. Let us hear the historian as he portrays the conditions existing just before
this time:
"About the commencement of this century [sixteenth], the Roman pontiffs lived in the
utmost tranquility; nor had they, as things appeared to be situated, the least reason to
apprehend any opposition to their pretensions, or rebellion against their authority; since
those dreadful commotions, which had been excited in the preceding ages by the
Waldenses, Albigenses, and Beghards, and more recently by the Bohemians, were entirely
suppressed, and had yielded to the united powers of counsel and the sword; . . . none had
the courage to strike at the root of the evil, to attack the Papal jurisdiction and statutes,
which were absurdly, yet artfully, sanctified by the title of canon law, or to call in question
the ancient and most pernicious opinion that Christ had established a vicegerent at Rome,
clothed with His supreme and unlimited authority. Entrenched within these strong holds,
the pontiffs looked upon their own authority and the peace of the church [?] as beyond the
reach of danger, and treated with indifference the threats and invectives of their enemies.
Armed, with power to punish, and abundantly furnished with the means of rewarding in
the most alluring manner, they were ready on every commotion, to crush the obstinate,
and to gain over the mercenary to their cause."