Beast of Revelation.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Beast of Revelation
44
But the episcopal chair was solicited, especially in the great and
opulent cities of the empire, as a temporal rather than as a spiritual
dignity. The interested views, the selfish and angry passions, the
arts of perfidy and dissimulation, the secret corruption, the open
and even bloody violence, which had formerly disgraced the freedom
of election in the commonwealths of Greece and Rome, too
often influenced the choice of the [supposed] successors of the
apostles [Triumph of Christendom in the Roman Empire, p. 336].
The problem with the Catholic Church was not that it had an
organized hierarchy—for that’s a God-ordained pattern (cf. 1 Cor.
14:33; Ex. 18:21–26). Rather, the problem here was that the
Roman Church substituted a human political structure—a model of
the old Roman Empire—in place of the government of God. In
God’s government, elders are to be appointed—based upon their
“fruits”—by those Christ has already set as leaders in His Church
(cf. Titus 1:5–9). God’s government, based upon His law, is validated
by positive fruit being borne (Matt. 7:15–23; cf. Num.
17:7–10)—such as the carrying out of God’s will as revealed by
His Word. In this way, God makes it plain whom He is working
through, and we submit to those human leaders as long as they continue
to follow Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).
But, as portrayed in Revelation 13, the large, visible church
demanded total allegiance to its governmental structure—the
“image of the beast.” This allegiance basically amounted to idolatrous
“worship” because adherents were required to unquestioningly
obey the church government, even if it went against the Holy
Bible and sought to “change times and law”—which it would
(Dan. 7:25). Those who refused, it would “cause” to be killed
(Rev. 13:15). Remember the death penalty for keepers of the original
Passover date and the seventh-day Sabbath during the Late
Roman Empire? Neither then, nor during the Middle Ages, did the
Roman Church normally carry out the punishment directly.
Rather, those who refused to follow the system were declared
heretics and anathema (cut off) from Christ by the church. Those
so branded were considered enemies of the state and were, more
often than not, punished by the civil government.