The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Interpretation of the Reformers.383that unborn Jew. And so they puffed at the reformers, and scoffed at the martyrs,and scorned and derided and despised them, and went on in their proud tyranny,and abated nothing of their blasphemous pretensions and bloody persecutions.Which think you were right in their interpretations of Scripture? Thoseproud popes, those curel inquisitors, those inhumanmonsters who magled the bodies of holy men andwoman in their torture chambers, those scantimoniousmurderers who stirred up all the might of Christendom,from century to century, aginst the gospel and againstthe faithful witnesses of Jesus; or those pure and persecutedsaints, those faithful Waldenses and Wicliffites, those earnest Hussitesand Lollards, those self-sacrificing Lutherans and Hugenots, those nobleconfessors, reformers, and martyrs? With one mind and mouth all theseProtestants agreed in the substance of their protest. To them Rome wasBabylon, and its proud head the antichrist. Were they allmistaken, deluded, and their cruel, tyrannical oppressors and persecutors correct?What think you?Perhaps you say, But was Rome right in nothing? Must a doctrine be wrongbecause Rome holds it? Does not Rome hold the truth as to the divinity ofChrist, and as to some other points of importance? I grant Rome holds sometruths. It would have no moral power unless it did. Even the Mohammedanshold some great truths, and the heathen also. But mark, this is a question ofRome‘s judgment concerning herself, and the bearing of prophecy on herown history and character. It is here in this judgment that the Futurist claimsthat Rome was right, and the reformers in the wrong. And the consequences aremost serious, for we are living in an age of revived Papal activity. Not only isthe Papacy exerting an enormous influence in the outside world, not only has isformulated and decreed its own infallibility, not only is it attacking Protestantismin its strongholds with every weapon in its reach, political, civil, religious, but theprinciples and practices of the system it guides and governs have been introducedinto the bosom of the Protestant Church, and planted securely within its walls,and are working most disastrously for its corruption and overthrow. Never wasthere a time in the Church‘s history when she more needed the barriers whichprophecy has erected for her protection. And now when they are so sorely needed,they are not to be found. Futurism has crept into the Protestant Church, andbroken down these sacred walls. Romanists, Ritualists, and Protestant Futuristsare all agreed as to the non-applicability of Scripture prophecies to the Church ofRome and the Papacy. The Romanists are two hundred millions, the Ritualists arehundreds of thousands, and Protestant Futurists are many thousands in number.They all deny these prophecies their place and office. They remove these barriers.What then is to keep out the incoming Papal flood? The word of prophecy in itssolemn warnings of the dangers the Church ahs to encounter, the foes it has toresists, is asserted to be silent as to this. Why then should this be feared? Thereformers were mistaken; the popes were right. Charles V. and Charles IX., Philipof Spain and Mary of England, the Duke of Alva and Louis XIV., and all the tribeof Innocents and Leos, Gregories and Clements, Pius IV. and Pius IX., - all these