The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Double Foreview of the Reformation.425and she surveyed them with exultation from her golden palaces." "Theassembled prelates separated with complacency and confidence, and with mutualcongratulations on the peace, unity, and purity of the apostolicChurch." "The power of Rome was de facto paramount in the Church." SoNeander says: "The edifice of an unlimited Papal monarchy had at that time comevictoriously out of all the preceding fights, and established itself on a firm basis.In the last Lateran Council at Rome, the principle of an unlimited Papal power wasestablished, in opposition to the principle of general councils, and the Waldensesand Hussites had no more any importance to fight against the Papacy." Soanother writer (CUNNINGHAME) says: "At the commencement ofthe sixteenth century Europe reposed in the deep sleepof spiritual death. There was none that moved th wing,or opened the mouth, or peeped."The witnesses were dead ! Never before, and certainly never since,was Rome able to congratulate herself that heresy was extinguished and hereticsexterminated from the face of Christendom. It is a fine, striking hieroglyph ofthe crisis that the prophecy presents. There stands the fierce wildbeast monster from the abyss ! He has prevailed against hisdefenceless human victims. The struggle has been long and hard ; it has made himall the more savage and impatient : but it is over at last ! His jowls still dropwith gore, his claws are red with blood as he stands glaring with his fierce eyes onthe pale, cold, silent corpses of Christ's two witnesses, so long empowered fromabove to resist and defy all his might.As John watched the sad scene, did there not recur to his mind scenes in theamphitheatres of pagan Rome, scenes such as Doré has imagined and painted forus, scenes with which the exile of Patmos was all too familiar? The arena strewn inthe pale moonlight with the cold, stiff corpses of the faithful witnesses of Christ ;and the victorious wild beast, glutted and sufficed with their flesh and blood,standing guard over the remains ! That was the symbol. The reality was -witnessing Churches [Editor: the spiritual temple of thefaithful men] silenced by long and bloody persecution.The time - A.D. 1514, the close of the last Lateran Council, which proclaimed tothe world in a formal, official manner the fact that all opposition to Rome hadceased.Now note the sequel: In 1517 the Reformation began - the movement which,like a snowball growing ever greater as it rolls along, has in the year 1887 onehundred and fifty millions of adherents, all professing the faith of Christ inopposition to the apostasy of Rome ! Witnessing Churches - protestant Churchessprang up everywhere, and have been multiplying ever since [Editor: but inthat time, 1887, many protestant Churches were falling before the face ofYAHWEH, why? Because they had not hold all commandments of YAHWEH,the God, the Elohim of the Bible!].What shall we say? Is not this a resurrection of the witnesses? Rome hadcrushed them, had she? So she tought! But she knew better before fifty yearshad rolled by! She knew better when Germany threw off her yoke, and