Part 19 (2/2)

”The Papacy was extinct: not a vestige of its existence remained; and among all the Roman Catholic powers not a finger was stirred in its defense. The Eternal City had no longer prince or pontiff; its bishop was a dying captive in foreign lands; and the decree was already announced that no successor would be allowed in his place.”--_”Rome and Its Papal Rulers,”

p. 440._

”No wonder that half Europe,” the Jesuit writer says, ”thought Napoleon's veto would be obeyed, and that with the Pope the Papacy was dead.” But he adds that ”since then the Papacy has been lifted to a pinnacle of spiritual power” unreached before.

The stroke dealt the Papacy by the French Revolution was not to be the ending of it, by any means, according to the prophecy. These events proclaimed the ending of the prophetic period of special supremacy.

Another prophecy distinctly indicates that following the deadly blow there would come a revival of the Papacy's influence, just as the Catholic writer describes it. The prophet John, speaking of this same power, says:

”I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.... And they wors.h.i.+ped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” Rev. 13:3, 4.

We see the healing process still going on, with evidences multiplying that the world is more and more wondering after the papal power.

A New Era of Liberty and Enlightenment

With the ending of the 1260 years of papal supremacy, a new order was ushered in. The Papacy had stood for absolutism in state as well as church. Now the power of absolutism was broken. ”Absolute monarchy,”

Edmund Burke said at the time, ”breathed its last without a struggle.”

There came the dawn of an era of greater religious liberty and enlightenment, that has spread blessings over all lands.

The prophecy had said of the Papacy, that the saints and the times and laws of the Most High were to be ”given into his hand” for 1260 years.

As foretold in Christ's prophecy (Matt. 24:22), these days of the tribulation of G.o.d's saints were ”shortened.” The power of the Reformation weakened the oppressing hand, even before the prophetic period ran out. And when the full 1260 years closed, the world saw the grip of that papal hand yet further loosened, and G.o.d's providence at work preparing the way for a world-wide proclamation of His gospel, bearing witness against the perversions of the papal apostasy, and restoring to men the Word and laws of the Most High.

The record of history witnesses that this time prophecy of the 1260 years of papal supremacy was exactly fulfilled. The Lord speaks in prophecy that men may know that He is the living G.o.d. In these time prophecies of His Word, He gives a.s.surance not only that this troubled world has not escaped from the hand of its Maker, but that its times are in His hand also; and that when the time of His divine purpose fully comes, He will surely cut His work short in righteousness, and end the reign of sin on earth.

As the prophetic period of Dan. 7:25 meets its fulfilment in the history of the Papacy, even so, we shall see, the work of the Roman Church answers to the further specifications regarding the doings of this ”little horn” of Daniel's prophecy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRIPLE CROWN

The Pope's Tiara, from a photograph taken in the Vatican at Rome.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUGUENOTS IN PRISON FOR THEIR FAITH

”Others had trial ... of bonds and imprisonment.” Heb. 11:36.]

THE WORK OF THE ”LITTLE HORN” POWER

The prophetic picture of the rise and work of the ”little horn” finds its exact counterpart in the history of the Roman Papacy:

_The Place._--The little horn was seen by the prophet rising in the field of the Roman Empire. That was the very place where the great kingdom of the Papacy appeared, taking the name of Roman.

_The Time._--The rise of the ecclesiastical kingdom of the little-horn power in the prophecy followed the breaking up of the Roman Empire into the ten kingdoms. Just so the ecclesiastical kingdom of the Roman Papacy rises to view in history immediately following the division of the empire.

_The Period of Supremacy._--The prophecy allotted 1260 years to the full supremacy of this power. History responds that from the beginning of the papal supremacy, in the days of Justinian, a period of 1260 years brings us into the stirring events of the last decade of the eighteenth century, that gave to the Papacy a deadly wound.

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