The little Horn 2
Daniel 7, verse 23
From the historical testimony above cited, it is clearly established that the three horns plucked up were the powers mentioned; viz., the Heruli in A.D. 493, the Vandals in 534, and the Ostrogoths in 538. After pointing out to us the place occupied by this beast as a world power, and giving the number of the nations which he should annihilate because they oppose him (verses 23, 24), Daniel next describes the attitude of this beast toward God and His saints. 1. "He shall speak great words against the Most High." Has the papacy done this? Here are a few of the Pope's self-accepted titles: "Vicegerent of the Son of God," "Our Lord God, the Pope." "Another God upon earth," "King of the world," "King of kings and Lord of lords." Said Pope Nicholas to Emperor Michael, "The Pope, who is called God by Constantine, can never be bound or released by man; for God cannot be judged by man." Is there need of bolder blasphemy than this? Listen also to the adulation the popes have received from their followers without rebuke. A Venetian prelate in the fourth session of the Lateran, addressed the Pope as follows: "You are our Shephard, our Physician, in short, a second God upon earth." Another bishop called him "the lion of the tribe of Judah, the promised Saviour." Lord Anthony Pucci, in the Fifth Lateran, said to the Pope, "The sight of thy divine majesty does not a little terrify me; for I am not ignorant that all power both in heaven and in earth is given unto you; that the prophetic saying is fulfilled in you, 'All the kings of the earth shall worship him, and nations shall serve him.'" (See Oswald's Kingdom Which Shall Not Be Destroyed, pp. 97- 99.) Again, Dr. Clarke, in verse 25, says: "'He shall speak as if he were God.' So St. Jerome quotes from Symmachus. To none can this apply so well or so fully as to the popes of Rome. They have assumed infallibility, which belongs only to God. They profess to forgive sins, which belongs only to God. They profess to open and shut heaven, which belongs only to God. They profess to be higher than all the kings of the earth, which belongs only to God. And they go beyond God in pretending to loose whole nations from their oath of allegiance to their kings, when such kings do not please them. And they go against God when they give indulgences for sin. This is the worst of all blasphemies." 2. "And shall wear out the saints of the Most High." Has the papacy done this? For the mere information of any student of church history, no answer need here be given. All know that for long years the papal church has pursued its relentless work against the true followers of God. Chapter after chapter might be given, did our limited space permit. Wars, crusades, massacres, inquisitions, and persecutions of all kinds, - these were their weapons of extinction. Scott's Church History says: "No computation can reach the numbers who have been put to death, in different ways, on account of their maintaining the profession of the Gospel, and opposing the corruptions of the Church of Rome. A million of poor Waldenses perished in France; nine hundred thousand orthodox Christians were slain in less than thirty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted of having put to death in the Netherlands thirty-six thousand by the hand of the common executioner during the space of a few years. The Inquisition destroyed, by various tortures, one hundred and fifty thousand within thirty years. These are a few specimens, and but a few, of those which history has recorded. But the total amount will never be known till the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain." Commenting on the prophecy that the little horn should "wear out the saints of the Most High," Barnes, in his "Notes on Dan. vii. 25," says: "Can anyone doubt that this is true of the papacy? The Inquisition, the persecutions of the Waldenses, the ravages of the Duke of Alva, the fires of Smithfield, the tortures at Goa {India} – indeed, the whole history of the papacy may be appealed to in proof that this is applicable to that power. If anything could have worn out the saints of the Most High – could have cut them off from the earth so that evangelical religion would have become extinct – it would have been the persecutions of the papal power. In the year 1208 a crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III against the Waldenses and Albigenses, in which a million men perished. From the beginning of the order of Jesuits in the year 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. In the Low Countries fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, for the crime of heresy, within the space of thirty-eight years from the edict of Charles V against the Protestants to the peace of Chateau Cambresis in 1559." … (See Buck's "Theological Dictionary," art., "Persecutions;" Oswald's "Kingdom," etc., pp. 107-133; Dowling's "History of Romanism;" "Foxe's Book of Martyrs;" Charlotte Elizabeth's "Martyrology;" "The Wars of the Huguenots;" "The Great Red Dragon," by Anthony Gavin, formerly one of the Roman Catholic priests of Saragossa, Spain; histories of the Reformation, etc..) To parry the force of this mass of damaging testimony, papists deny that the church has ever persecuted anyone; it has been the secular power; the church has only passed the decision upon the questions of heresy, and then turned the offenders over to the civil power, to be dealt with according to the pleasure of the secular court. The impious hypocrisy of this claim is transparent enough to make it an absolute insult to common sense. In those days of persecution, what was the secular power? - Simply a tool in the hand of the church, and under its control, to do its bidding, And when the church delivered its prisoners to the executioners to be destroyed, with fiendish mockery use of the following formula: " And we do leave thee to the secular arm , and to the power of the secular court ; but at the same time do most earnestly beseech that court so to moderate its sentence as not to touch thy blood , nor to put thy life in any sort of danger ." And then, as intended, the unfortunate victims of popish hate were immediately executed. (Gedde's "Tracts on Popery", "View of the Court of Inquisition in Portugal," p. 446; "Limborch," Vol. II, p. 289.) But the false claims of papists in this respect have been flatly denied and disproved by one of their own standard writers, Cardinal Bellarmine, who was born in Tuscany in 1542, and who, after his death in 1621, came very near being placed in the calendar of saints on account of his great services in behalf of popery. This man, on one occasion, under the spur of controversy, betrayed himself into an admission of the real facts in the case. Luther having said that the church (meaning the true church) never burned heretics, Bellarmine, understanding it of the Romish (Roman Catholic) Church, made answer: "This argument proves not the sentiment, but the ignorance or impudence of Luther; for as almost an infinite number were either burned or otherwise put to death, Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant; or, if be knew it, he was convicted of impudence and falsehood; for that heretics were often burned by the church , may be proved by adducing a few from many examples." … Pagan Rome persecuted relentlessly the Christian church, and it is estimated that three million Christians perished in the first three centuries, yet it is said that the primitive Christians prayed for the continuance of imperial Rome; for they knew that when this form of government should cease, another far worse persecuting power would arise, which would literally, as this prophecy declares, "wear out the saints of the Most High." Pagan Rome could slay the infants, but spare the mothers; but papal Rome slew both mothers and infants together. No age, no sex, no condition in life, was exempt from her relentless rage. "When Herod died," says a forcible writer, "he went down to the grave with infamy; and earth hat one murderer, one persecutor, less, and hell one victim more. O Rome! what will not be thy hell, and that of thy votaries, when thy judgement shall have come!" "After describing the terrible career of the little horn, and stating that the saints should be given into his hand for 1260 years, bringing us down to 1798, verse 26 declares: "But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end." In verse 10 of the same chapter we have substantially the same expression relative to the Judgment: "The judgment was set." It would seem consistent to suppose that the same judgment is referred to in both instances. But the sublime scene described in verse 10, is the opening of the investigative judgment in the sanctuary in heaven, as will appear in remarks on Dan. viii. 14 and ix. 25-27. The opening of this judgment scene is located by the prophecy at the close of the great prophetic period of 2,300 years, which terminated in 1844. Four years after this, in 1848, the great revolution which shook so many thrones in Europe, drove the Pope also from his dominions, and his restoration shortly after was due to foreign aid. 8 Dec., 1854, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was decreed by the Pope. 21 July, 1870, in the great OEcumenical council assembled at Rome, it was deliberately decreed, by a vote of 538 against 2, that the Pope was infallible. In the same year, France, by whose bayonets the Pope was kept upon his throne, was crushed by Prussia, the the last prop was taken from under the papacy. Then Victor Emmanuel, seeing his opportunity to carry out the long-cherished dream of a united Italy, seized Rome to make it the capital of his kingdom. To his troops, under General Cadorna, Rome surrendered, 20 Sept., 1870. The Pope's temporal power was thus wholly taken away, nevermore, said Victor Emmanuel, to be restored; and since that time, the popes, shutting themselves up in the Vatican, have styled themselves "prisoners." His dominion was to be consumed unto the end, implying that when his power as a civil ruler should be wholly destroyed, the end would not be far off. The overthrow of the papacy in 1798, marked the conclusion of the prophetic period of 1,260 years, and constituted the "deadly wound" prophesied in Rev. xiii. 3, to come upon this power; but this deadly wound was to be "healed." In 1800 another Pope was elected; his palace and temporal dominion were restored, and every prerogative except, as Mr. Croly says, that of a systematic persecutor, was again under his control; and thus the wound was healed. But since 1870, he has enjoyed no prestige as a temporal prince among the nations of the earth." ("Daniel and the Revelation" by Uriah Smith, pp. 148, 149)
Let There Be Light / Rekindling the Reformation - Walter Veith
Let There Be Light /
Rekindling the Reformation
- Walter Veith