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In the sixteenth
century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible to the people, had
sought admission to all the countries of Europe. Some nations
welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands
the papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance;
and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences, was
almost wholly excluded. In one country, though the light found
entrance, it was not comprehended by the darkness. For centuries,
truth and error struggled for the mastery. At last the evil
triumphed, and the truth of Heaven was thrust out. "This is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light." John 3:19. The nation was left to reap
the results of the course which she had chosen. The restraint of
God's Spirit was removed from a people that had despised the gift of
His grace. Evil was permitted to come to maturity. And all the world
saw the fruit of willful rejection of the light.
The war against the Bible, carried
forward for so many centuries in France, culminated in the scenes of the
Revolution. That terrible outbreaking was but the legitimate result of
Rome's suppression of the Scriptures. (See
Appendix.)
It presented the most striking illustration which the world has ever
witnessed of the working out of the papal policy-- an illustration of
the results to which for more than a thousand
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years the teaching of the Roman Church
had been tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures
during the period of papal supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and
the Revelator points also to the terrible results that were to accrue
especially to France from the domination of the "man of sin."
Said the angel of the Lord: "The holy
city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months. And I will give
power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two
hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And when they
shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the
bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and
kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great
city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord
was crucified. . . . And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice
over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because
these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after
three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and
they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw
them." Revelation 11:2-11.
The periods here mentioned--"forty and
two months," and "a thousand two hundred and threescore days"--are the
same, alike representing the time in which the church of Christ was to
suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260 years of papal supremacy began in
A.D. 538, and would therefore terminate in 1798. (See
Appendix note for page 54.) At
that time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a prisoner, and
he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward elected, the
papal hierarchy has never since been able to wield the power which it
before possessed.
The persecution of the church did not
continue throughout the entire period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to
His people cut short the time of their fiery trial. In foretelling the
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"great tribulation" to befall the church,
the Saviour said: "Except those days should be shortened, there should
no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be
shortened." Matthew 24:22. Through the influence of the Reformation the
persecution was brought to an end prior to 1798.
Concerning the two witnesses the
prophet declares further: "These are the two olive trees, and the two
candlesticks standing before the God of the earth." "Thy word," said the
psalmist, "is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Revelation
11:4; Psalm 119:105. The two witnesses represent the Scriptures of the
Old and the New Testament. Both are important testimonies to the origin
and perpetuity of the law of God. Both are witnesses also to the plan of
salvation. The types, sacrifices, and prophecies of the Old Testament
point forward to a Saviour to come. The Gospels and Epistles of the New
Testament tell of a Saviour who has come in the exact manner foretold by
type and prophecy.
"They shall prophecy a thousand two
hundred and three-score days, clothed in sackcloth." During the greater
part of this period, God's witnesses remained in a state of obscurity.
The papal power sought to hide from the people the word of truth, and
set before them false witnesses to contradict its testimony. (See
Appendix.)
When the Bible was proscribed by religious and secular authority; when
its testimony was perverted, and every effort made that men and demons
could invent to turn the minds of the people from it; when those who
dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted, betrayed, tortured, buried
in dungeon cells, martyred for their faith, or compelled to flee to
mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of the earth--then the
faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their
testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest
times there were faithful men who loved God's word and were jealous for
His honor. To these loyal servants were
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given wisdom, power, and authority to
declare His truth during the whole of this time.
"And if any man will hurt them, fire
proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any
man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed." Revelation 11:5.
Men cannot with impunity trample upon the word of God. The meaning of
this fearful denunciation is set forth in the closing chapter of the
Revelation: "I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the
prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall
add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city,
and from the things which are written in this book." Revelation 22:18,
19.
Such are the warnings which God has
given to guard men against changing in any manner that which He has
revealed or commanded. These solemn denunciations apply to all who by
their influence lead men to regard lightly the law of God. They should
cause those to fear and tremble who flippantly declare it a matter of
little consequence whether we obey God's law or not. All who exalt their
own opinions above divine revelation, all who would change the plain
meaning of Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for the sake of
conforming to the world, are taking upon themselves a fearful
responsibility. The written word, the law of God, will measure the
character of every man and condemn all whom this unerring test shall
declare wanting.
"When they shall have finished [are
finishing] their testimony." The period when the two witnesses were to
prophesy clothed in sackcloth, ended in 1798. As they were approaching
the termination of their work in obscurity, war was to be made upon them
by the power represented as "the beast that ascendeth out of the
bottomless pit." In many of the nations of Europe the powers that ruled
in church and state had for centuries been controlled by Satan through
the
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medium of the papacy. But here is brought
to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome's policy, under a
profession of reverence for the Bible, to keep it locked up in an
unknown tongue and hidden away from the people. Under her rule the
witnesses prophesied "clothed in sackcloth." But another power --the
beast from the bottomless pit--was to arise to make open, avowed war
upon the word of God.
"The great city" in whose streets the
witnesses are slain, and where their dead bodies lie, is "spiritually"
Egypt. Of all nations presented in Bible history, Egypt most boldly
denied the existence of the living God and resisted His commands. No
monarch ever ventured upon more open and highhanded rebellion against
the authority of Heaven than did the king of Egypt. When the message was
brought him by Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered:
"Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go?
I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go." Exodus 5:2,
A.R.V. This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give
voice to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would
manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance. "The great city" is
also compared, "spiritually," to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in
breaking the law of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And
this sin was also to be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that
should fulfill the specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet,
then, a little before the year 1798 some power of satanic origin and
character would rise to make war upon the Bible. And in the land where
the testimony of God's two witnesses should thus be silenced, there
would be manifest the atheism of the Pharaoh and the licentiousness of
Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most
exact and striking fulfillment in the history of France. During the
Revolution, in 1793, "the world for the first time heard an assembly of
men,
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born and educated in civilization, and
assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations,
uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul
receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a
Deity."--Sir Walter Scott,
Life
of Napoleon, vol. 1, ch. 17.
"France is the only nation in the world concerning which the authentic
record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open rebellion
against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of
infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England,
Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world's
history as the single state which, by the decree of her Legislative
Assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire
population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well
as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement."--
Blackwood's Magazine,
November, 1870.
France presented also the
characteristics which especially distinguished Sodom. During the
Revolution there was manifest a state of moral debasement and corruption
similar to that which brought destruction upon the cities of the plain.
And the historian presents together the atheism and the licentiousness
of France, as given in the prophecy: "Intimately connected with these
laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of
marriage--the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and
the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of
society--to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory
character, which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at
pleasure. . . . If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode
of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or
permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an
assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should
be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have
invented a more effectual plan that the degradation of marriage. . . .
Sophie Arnoult, an
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actress famous for the witty things she
said, described the republican marriage as 'the sacrament of
adultery.'"--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
"Where also our Lord was crucified."
This specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no
land had the spirit of enmity against Christ been more strikingly
displayed. In no country had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel
opposition. In the persecution which France had visited upon the
confessors of the gospel, she had crucified Christ in the person of His
disciples.
Century after century the blood of the
saints had been shed. While the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the
mountains of Piedmont "for the word of God, and for the testimony of
Jesus Christ," similar witness to the truth had been borne by their
brethren, the Albigenses of France. In the days of the Reformation its
disciples had been put to death with horrible tortures. King and nobles,
highborn women and delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry of the
nation, had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus.
The brave Huguenots, battling for those rights which the human heart
holds most sacred, had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought
field. The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon
their heads, and they were hunted down like wild beasts.
The "Church in the Desert," the few
descendants of the ancient Christians that still lingered in France in
the eighteenth century, hiding away in the mountains of the south, still
cherished the faith of their fathers. As they ventured to meet by night
on mountainside or lonely moor, they were chased by dragoons and dragged
away to lifelong slavery in the galleys. The purest, the most refined,
and the most intelligent of the French were chained, in horrible
torture, amidst robbers and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22, ch. 6.)
Others, more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in cold blood, as,
unarmed and helpless, they fell upon their
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knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men,
defenseless women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth
at their place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest,
where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find
"at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging
suspended from the trees." Their country, laid waste with the sword, the
ax, the fagot, "was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness." "These
atrocities were enacted . . . in no dark age, but in the brilliant era
of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the
divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men,
and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity."--
Ibid., b. 22, ch. 7.
But blackest in the black catalogue of
crime, most horrible among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful
centuries, was the St. Bartholomew Massacre. The world still recalls
with shuddering horror the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel
onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates,
lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of
night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants by thousands,
sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the plighted honor of their
king, were dragged forth without a warning and murdered in cold blood.
As Christ was the invisible leader of
His people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his
subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs. For seven days
the massacre was continued in Paris, the first three with inconceivable
fury. And it was not confined to the city itself, but by special order
of the king was extended to all the provinces and towns where
Protestants were found. Neither age nor sex was respected. Neither the
innocent babe nor the man of gray hairs was spared. Noble and peasant,
old and young, mother and child, were cut down together. Throughout
France the butchery continued for two months. Seventy thousand of the
very flower of the nation perished.
"When the news of the massacre reached
Rome, the
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exultation among the clergy knew no
bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded the messenger with a thousand
crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo thundered forth a joyous salute; and
bells rang out from every steeple; bonfires turned night into day; and
Gregory XIII, attended by the cardinals and other ecclesiastical
dignitaries, went in long procession to the church of St. Louis, where
the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a
Te Deum
. . . . A medal was struck to commemorate
the massacre, and in the Vatican may still be seen three frescoes of
Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral, the king in council
plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself. Gregory sent Charles the
Golden Rose; and four months after the massacre, . . . he listened
complacently to the sermon of a French priest, . . . who spoke of 'that
day so full of happiness and joy, when the most holy father received the
news, and went in solemn state to render thanks to God and St.
Louis.'"--Henry White, The
Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
ch. 14, par. 34.
The same master spirit that urged on
the St. Bartholomew Massacre led also in the scenes of the Revolution.
Jesus Christ was declared to be an impostor, and the rallying cry of the
French infidels was, "Crush the Wretch," meaning Christ. Heaven-daring
blasphemy and abominable wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of
men, the most abandoned monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly
exalted. In all this, supreme homage was paid to Satan; while Christ, in
His characteristics of truth, purity, and unselfish love, was crucified.
"The beast that ascendeth out of the
bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and
kill them." The atheistical power that ruled in France during the
Revolution and the Reign of Terror, did wage such a war against God and
His holy word as the world had never witnessed. The worship of the Deity
was abolished by the National Assembly. Bibles were collected and
publicly burned with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of
God
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was trampled underfoot. The institutions
of the Bible were abolished. The weekly rest day was set aside, and in
its stead every tenth day was devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism
and the Communion were prohibited. And announcements posted
conspicuously over the burial places declared death to be an eternal
sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far
from the beginning of wisdom that it was the beginning of folly. All
religious worship was prohibited, except that of liberty and the
country. The "constitutional bishop of Paris was brought forward to play
the principal part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted
in the face of a national representation. . . . He was brought forward
in full procession, to declare to the Convention that the religion which
he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a piece of
priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth.
He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to
whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to
the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on
the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace
from the president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed
the example of this prelate."--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
"And they that dwell upon the earth
shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to
another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the
earth." Infidel France had silenced the reproving voice of God's two
witnesses. The word of truth lay dead in her streets, and those who
hated the restrictions and requirements of God's law were jubilant. Men
publicly defied the King of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried:
"How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?" Psalm
73:11.
With blasphemous boldness almost
beyond belief, one of the priests of the new order said: "God, if You
exist, avenge Your injured name. I bid You defiance! You remain silent;
You dare not launch Your thunders. Who after this will
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believe in Your existence?"--Lacretelle,
History,
vol. 11, p. 309; in Sir Archibald Alison,
History of Europe,
vol. 1, ch. 10. What an echo is this of
the Pharaoh's demand: "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice?" "I
know not Jehovah!"
"The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." Psalm 14:1. And the Lord declares concerning the
perverters of the truth: "Their folly shall be manifest unto all." 2
Timothy 3:9. After France had renounced the worship of the living God,
"the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity," it was only a little
time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by the worship of the
Goddess of Reason, in the person of a profligate woman. And this in the
representative assembly of the nation, and by its highest civil and
legislative authorities! Says the historian: "One of the ceremonies of
this insane time stands unrivaled for absurdity combined with impiety.
The doors of the Convention were thrown open to a band of musicians,
preceded by whom, the members of the municipal body entered in solemn
procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the
object of their future worship, a veiled female, whom they termed the
Goddess of Reason. Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with
great form, and placed on the right of the president, when she was
generally recognized as a dancing girl of the opera. . . . To this
person, as the fittest representative of that reason whom they
worshiped, the National Convention of France rendered public homage.
"This impious and ridiculous mummery
had a certain fashion; and the installation of the Goddess of Reason was
renewed and imitated throughout the nation, in such places where the
inhabitants desired to show themselves equal to all the heights of the
Revolution."--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
Said the orator who introduced the
worship of Reason: "Legislators! Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its
bleared eyes could not endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an
immense concourse has assembled beneath those gothic vaults, which, for
the first time, re-echoed the truth. There
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the French have celebrated the only true
worship,--that of Liberty, that of Reason. There we have formed wishes
for the prosperity of the arms of the Republic. There we have abandoned
inanimate idols for Reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece of
nature."--M. A. Thiers, History
of the French Revolution, vol.
2, pp. 370, 371.
When the goddess was brought into the
Convention, the orator took her by the hand, and turning to the assembly
said: "Mortals, cease to tremble before the powerless thunders of a God
whom your fears have created. Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but
Reason. I offer you its noblest and purest image; if you must have
idols, sacrifice only to such as this. . . . Fall before the august
Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil of Reason!"
"The goddess, after being embraced by
the president, was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an
immense crowd, to the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the
Deity. There she was elevated on the high altar, and received the
adoration of all present."--Alison, vol. 1, ch. 10.
This was followed, not long afterward,
by the public burning of the Bible. On one occasion "the Popular Society
of the Museum" entered the hall of the municipality, exclaiming,
"Vive la Raison!"
and carrying on the top of a pole the
half-burned remains of several books, among others breviaries, missals,
and the Old and New Testaments, which "expiated in a great fire," said
the president, "all the fooleries which they have made the human race
commit."-- Journal of Paris,
1793, No. 318. Quoted in
Buchez-Roux, Collection of
Parliamentary History, vol.
30, pp. 200, 201.
It was popery that had begun the work
which atheism was completing. The policy of Rome had wrought out those
conditions, social, political, and religious, that were hurrying France
on to ruin. Writers, in referring to the horrors of the Revolution, say
that these excesses are to be charged upon the throne and the church.
(See
Appendix.)
In strict justice they are to be charged upon the church. Popery had
poisoned the
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minds of kings against the Reformation,
as an enemy to the crown, an element of discord that would be fatal to
the peace and harmony of the nation. It was the genius of Rome that by
this means inspired the direst cruelty and the most galling oppression
which proceeded from the throne.
The spirit of liberty went with the
Bible. Wherever the gospel was received, the minds of the people were
awakened. They began to cast off the shackles that had held them
bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and superstition. They began to think and
act as men. Monarchs saw it and trembled for their despotism.
Rome was not slow to inflame their
jealous fears. Said the pope to the regent of France in 1525: "This
mania [Protestantism] will not only confound and destroy religion, but
all principalities, nobility, laws, orders, and ranks besides."-- G. de
Felice, History of the
Protestants of France, b. 1,
ch. 2, par. 8. A few years later a papal nuncio warned the king: "Sire,
be not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil as well as
religious order. . . . The throne is in as much danger as the altar. . .
. The introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a new
government."--D'Aubigne,
History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin,
b. 2, ch. 36. And theologians appealed to
the prejudices of the people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine
"entices men away to novelties and folly; it robs the king of the
devoted affection of his subjects, and devastates both church and
state." Thus Rome succeeded in arraying France against the Reformation.
"It was to uphold the throne, preserve the nobles, and maintain the
laws, that the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in
France."--Wylie, b. 13, ch. 4.
Little did the rulers of the land
foresee the results of that fateful policy. The teaching of the Bible
would have implanted in the minds and hearts of the people those
principles of justice, temperance, truth, equity, and benevolence which
are the very cornerstone of a nation's prosperity. "Righteousness
exalteth a nation." Thereby "the throne is established."
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Proverbs 14:34; 16:12. "The work of
righteousness shall be peace;" and the effect, "quietness and assurance
forever." Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the divine law will most truly
respect and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God will honor
the king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority. But
unhappy France prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples. Century
after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual
acuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their
convictions and the faith to suffer for the truth--for centuries these
men toiled as slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in
dungeon cells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this
continued for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the
Reformation.
"Scarcely was there a generation of
Frenchmen during the long period that did not witness the disciples of
the gospel fleeing before the insane fury of the persecutor, and
carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order,
in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the lands in
which they found an asylum. And in proportion as they replenished other
countries with these good gifts, did they empty their own of them. If
all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if, during
these three hundred years, the industrial skill of the exiles had been
cultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, their
artistic bent had been improving her manufactures; if, during these
three hundred years, their creative genius and analytic power had been
enriching her literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom
had been guiding her councils, their bravery fighting her battles, their
equity framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible strengthening the
intellect and governing the conscience of her people, what a glory would
at this day have encompassed France! What a great, prosperous, and happy
country--a pattern to the nations--would she have been!
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"But a blind and inexorable bigotry
chased from her soil every teacher of virtue, every champion of order,
every honest defender of the throne; it said to the men who would have
made their country a 'renown and glory' in the earth, Choose which you
will have, a stake or exile. At last the ruin of the state was complete;
there remained no more conscience to be proscribed; no more religion to
be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to be chased into
banishment."--Wylie, b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all its
horrors, was the dire result.
"With the flight of the Huguenots a
general decline settled upon France. Flourishing manufacturing cities
fell into decay; fertile districts returned to their native wildness;
intellectual dullness and moral declension succeeded a period of
unwonted progress. Paris became one vast almshouse, and it is estimated
that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two hundred thousand
paupers claimed charity from the hands of the king. The Jesuits alone
flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny over
churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys."
The gospel would have brought to
France the solution of those political and social problems that baffled
the skill of her clergy, her king, and her legislators, and finally
plunged the nation into anarchy and ruin. But under the domination of
Rome the people had lost the Saviour's blessed lessons of self-sacrifice
and unselfish love. They had been led away from the practice of
self-denial for the good of others. The rich had found no rebuke for
their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude and
degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and
more apparent and oppressive. For centuries the greed and profligacy of
the noble resulted in grinding extortion toward the peasant. The rich
wronged the poor, and the poor hated the rich.
In many provinces the estates were
held by the nobles, and the laboring classes were only tenants; they
were at the mercy
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of their landlords and were forced to
submit to their exorbitant demands. The burden of supporting both the
church and the state fell upon the middle and lower classes, who were
heavily taxed by the civil authorities and by the clergy. "The pleasure
of the nobles was considered the supreme law; the farmers and the
peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors cared. . . . The
people were compelled at every turn to consult the exclusive interest of
the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers were lives of
incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if they ever
dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The courts of
justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant; bribes were
notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the
aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of universal
corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by the secular
magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other, not half ever
found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the rest was
squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who thus
impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from taxation,
and entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the state. The
privileged classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand, and for their
gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading lives."
(See
Appendix.)
The court was given up to luxury and
profligacy. There was little confidence existing between the people and
the rulers. Suspicion fastened upon all the measures of the government
as designing and selfish. For more than half a century before the time
of the Revolution the throne was occupied by Louis XV, who, even in
those evil times, was distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and
sensual monarch. With a depraved and cruel aristocracy and an
impoverished and ignorant lower class, the state financially embarrassed
and the people exasperated, it needed no prophet's eye to foresee a
terrible impending outbreak. To the warnings of his counselors the king
was accustomed to reply: "Try to
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make things go on as long as I am likely
to live; after my death it may be as it will." It was in vain that the
necessity of reform was urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the
courage nor the power to meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too
truly pictured in his indolent and selfish answer, "After me, the
deluge!"
By working upon the jealousy of the
kings and the ruling classes, Rome had influenced them to keep the
people in bondage, well knowing that the state would thus be weakened,
and purposing by this means to fasten both rulers and people in her
thrall. With farsighted policy she perceived that in order to enslave
men effectually, the shackles must be bound upon their souls; that the
surest way to prevent them from escaping their bondage was to render
them incapable of freedom. A thousandfold more terrible than the
physical suffering which resulted from her policy, was the moral
degradation. Deprived of the Bible, and abandoned to the teachings of
bigotry and selfishness, the people were shrouded in ignorance and
superstition, and sunken in vice, so that they were wholly unfitted for
self-government.
But the outworking of all this was
widely different from what Rome had purposed. Instead of holding the
masses in a blind submission to her dogmas, her work resulted in making
them infidels and revolutionists. Romanism they despised as priestcraft.
They beheld the clergy as a party to their oppression. The only god they
knew was the god of Rome; her teaching was their only religion. They
regarded her greed and cruelty as the legitimate fruit of the Bible, and
they would have none of it.
Rome had misrepresented the character
of God and perverted His requirements, and now men rejected both the
Bible and its Author. She had required a blind faith in her dogmas,
under the pretended sanction of the Scriptures. In the reaction,
Voltaire and his associates cast aside God's word altogether and spread
everywhere the poison of infidelity. Rome had ground down the people
under her iron heel; and now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in
their recoil from
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her tyranny, cast off all restraint.
Enraged at the glittering cheat to which they had so long paid homage,
they rejected truth and falsehood together; and mistaking license for
liberty, the slaves of vice exulted in their imagined freedom.
At the opening of the Revolution, by a
concession of the king, the people were granted a representation
exceeding that of the nobles and the clergy combined. Thus the balance
of power was in their hands; but they were not prepared to use it with
wisdom and moderation. Eager to redress the wrongs they had suffered,
they determined to undertake the reconstruction of society. An outraged
populace, whose minds were filled with bitter and long-treasured
memories of wrong, resolved to revolutionize the state of misery that
had grown unbearable and to avenge themselves upon those whom they
regarded as the authors of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out
the lesson they had learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of
those who had oppressed them.
Unhappy France reaped in blood the
harvest she had sown. Terrible were the results of her submission to the
controlling power of Rome. Where France, under the influence of
Romanism, had set up the first stake at the opening of the Reformation,
there the Revolution set up its first guillotine. On the very spot where
the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth
century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In
repelling the gospel, which would have brought her healing, France had
opened the door to infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God's law
were cast aside, it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to
hold in check the powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept
on to revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era
which stands in the world's history as the Reign of Terror. Peace and
happiness were banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was
secure. He who triumphed today was suspected, condemned, tomorrow.
Violence and lust held undisputed sway.
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King, clergy, and nobles were
compelled to submit to the atrocities of an excited and maddened people.
Their thirst for vengeance was only stimulated by the execution of the
king; and those who had decreed his death soon followed him to the
scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the
Revolution was determined. The prisons were crowded, at one time
containing more than two hundred thousand captives. The cities of the
kingdom were filled with scenes of horror. One party of revolutionists
was against another party, and France became a vast field for contending
masses, swayed by the fury of their passions. "In Paris one tumult
succeeded another, and the citizens were divided into a medley of
factions, that seemed intent on nothing but mutual extermination." And
to add to the general misery, the nation became involved in a prolonged
and devastating war with the great powers of Europe. "The country was
nearly bankrupt, the armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the
Parisians were starving, the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and
civilization was almost extinguished in anarchy and license."
All too well the people had learned
the lessons of cruelty and torture which Rome had so diligently taught.
A day of retribution at last had come. It was not now the disciples of
Jesus that were thrust into dungeons and dragged to the stake. Long ago
these had perished or been driven into exile. Unsparing Rome now felt
the deadly power of those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of
blood. "The example of persecution which the clergy of France had
exhibited for so many ages, was now retorted upon them with signal
vigor. The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys
and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their
persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman
Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so
freely inflicted on the gentle heretics." (See
Appendix.)
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"Then came those days when the most
barbarous of all codes was administered by the most barbarous of all
tribunals; when no man could greet his neighbors or say his prayers . .
. without danger of committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in
every corner; when the guillotine was long and hard at work every
morning; when the jails were filled as close as the holds of a slave
ship; when the gutters ran foaming with blood into the Seine. . . .
While the daily wagonloads of victims were carried to their doom through
the streets of Paris, the proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had
sent forth to the departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty
unknown even in the capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and
fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were
mowed down with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded
barges. Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of
a speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from
Saumur to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked
corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to sex
or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who were
murdered by that execrable government, is to be reckoned by hundreds.
Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike along the
Jacobin ranks." (See
Appendix.)
In the short space of ten years, multitudes of human beings perished.
All this was as Satan would have it.
This was what for ages he had been working to secure. His policy is
deception from first to last, and his steadfast purpose is to bring woe
and wretchedness upon men, to deface and defile the workmanship of God,
to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief
in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and
leads them to throw back the blame of his work upon God, as if all this
misery were the result of the Creator's plan. In like manner, when
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those who have been degraded and
brutalized through his cruel power achieve their freedom, he urges them
on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture of unbridled license is
pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an illustration of the results
of liberty.
When error in one garb has been
detected, Satan only masks it in a different disguise, and multitudes
receive it as eagerly as at the first. When the people found Romanism to
be a deception, and he could not through this agency lead them to
transgression of God's law, he urged them to regard all religion as a
cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and, casting aside the divine statutes,
they gave themselves up to unbridled iniquity.
The fatal error which wrought such woe
for the inhabitants of France was the ignoring of this one great truth:
that true freedom lies within the proscriptions of the law of God. "O
that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as
a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." "There is no
peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." "But whoso hearkeneth unto Me
shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil." Isaiah 48:18,
22; Proverbs 1:33.
Atheists, infidels, and apostates
oppose and denounce God's law; but the results of their influence prove
that the well-being of man is bound up with his obedience of the divine
statutes. Those who will not read the lesson from the book of God are
bidden to read it in the history of nations.
When Satan wrought through the Roman
Church to lead men away from obedience, his agency was concealed, and
his work was so disguised that the degradation and misery which resulted
were not seen to be the fruit of transgression. And his power was so far
counteracted by the working of the Spirit of God that his purposes were
prevented from reaching their full fruition. The people did not trace
the effect to its cause and discover the source of their miseries. But
in the
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Revolution the law of God was openly set
aside by the National Council. And in the Reign of Terror which
followed, the working of cause and effect could be seen by all.
When France publicly rejected God and
set aside the Bible, wicked men and spirits of darkness exulted in their
attainment of the object so long desired--a kingdom free from the
restraints of the law of God. Because sentence against an evil work was
not speedily executed, therefore the heart of the sons of men was "fully
set in them to do evil." Ecclesiastes 8:11. But the transgression of a
just and righteous law must inevitably result in misery and ruin. Though
not visited at once with judgments, the wickedness of men was
nevertheless surely working out their doom. Centuries of apostasy and
crime had been treasuring up wrath against the day of retribution; and
when their iniquity was full, the despisers of God learned too late that
it is a fearful thing to have worn out the divine patience. The
restraining Spirit of God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of
Satan, was in a great measure removed, and he whose only delight is the
wretchedness of men was permitted to work his will. Those who had chosen
the service of rebellion were left to reap its fruits until the land was
filled with crimes too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated
provinces and ruined cities a terrible cry was heard--a cry of bitterest
anguish. France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion, law, social
order, the family, the state, and the church--all were smitten down by
the impious hand that had been lifted against the law of God. Truly
spoke the wise man: "The wicked shall fall by his own wickedness."
"Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet
surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear
before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked." Proverbs 11:5;
Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. "They hated knowledge, and did not choose the
fear of the Lord;" "therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own
way, and be filled with their own devices." Proverbs 1:29, 31.
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God's faithful witnesses, slain by the
blasphemous power that "ascendeth out of the bottomless pit," were not
long to remain silent. "After three days and a half the Spirit of life
from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great
fear fell upon them which saw them." Revelation 11:11. It was in 1793
that the decrees which abolished the Christian religion and set aside
the Bible passed the French Assembly. Three years and a half later a
resolution rescinding these decrees, thus granting toleration to the
Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at the
enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred
Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word
as the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord: "Whom hast
thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy
voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of
Israel," Isaiah 37:23. "Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know,
this once will I cause them to know My hand and My might; and they shall
know that My name is Jehovah." Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V.
Concerning the two witnesses the
prophet declares further: "And they heard a great voice from heaven
saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a
cloud; and their enemies beheld them." Revelation 11:12. Since France
made war upon God's two witnesses, they have been honored as never
before. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was organized.
This was followed by similar organizations, with numerous branches, upon
the continent of Europe. In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded.
When the British Society was formed, the Bible had been printed and
circulated in fifty tongues. It has since been translated into many
hundreds of languages and dialects. (See
Appendix.)
For the fifty years preceding 1792,
little attention was given to the work of foreign missions. No new
societies were formed, and there were but few churches that made any
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effort for the spread of Christianity in
heathen lands. But toward the close of the eighteenth century a great
change took place. Men became dissatisfied with the results of
rationalism and realized the necessity of divine revelation and
experimental religion. From this time the work of foreign missions
attained an unprecedented growth. (See
Appendix.)
The improvements in printing have
given an impetus to the work of circulating the Bible. The increased
facilities for communication between different countries, the breaking
down of ancient barriers of prejudice and national exclusiveness, and
the loss of secular power by the pontiff of Rome have opened the way for
the entrance of the word of God. For some years the Bible has been sold
without restraint in the streets of Rome, and it has now been carried to
every part of the habitable globe.
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly
said: "I am weary of hearing people repeat that twelve men established
the Christian religion. I will prove that one man may suffice to
overthrow it." Generations have passed since his death. Millions have
joined in the war upon the Bible. But it is so far from being destroyed,
that where there were a hundred in Voltaire's time, there are now ten
thousand, yes, a hundred thousand copies of the book of God. In the
words of an early Reformer concerning the Christian church, "The Bible
is an anvil that has worn out many hammers." Saith the Lord: "No weapon
that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall
rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." Isaiah 54:17.
"The word of our God shall stand
forever." "All His commandments are sure. They stand fast for ever and
ever, and are done in truth and uprightness." Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 111:7,
8. Whatever is built upon the authority of man will be overthrown; but
that which is founded upon the rock of God's immutable word shall stand
forever.
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