Part 20 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOVE OF POWER
”He shall speak great words against the Most High.” Dan. 7:25.
THE POWER OF LOVE]
One further set of specifications remains for study:
_The Work._--Of the nature and work of the power represented by the little horn, the prophecy declares:
”He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Dan. 7:25.
Do we find in the record that the Church of Rome has fulfilled these specifications also? The Scripture prophecy is absolutely a word-photograph of the workings of the papal church. Look at the main features:
1. Speaking great words against the Most High.
2. Wearing out the saints of the Most High.
3. Thinking to change the times and the laws of the Most High.
Every count in the indictment may be clearly proved, and that by testimony from Roman Catholic sources
”He Shall Speak Great Words Against the Most High”
As Daniel observed the little-horn power, he heard it speaking ”very great things.” The angel declared that these great swelling words were really against the Most High. And what could be more against the honor of the Most High than that to mortal man should be ascribed the t.i.tles and attributes of divinity? Here are some of the ”great words:”
”All the names which are attributed to Christ in Scripture, implying His supremacy over the church, are also attributed to the Pope.”--_Bellarmine, ”On the Authority of Councils,” book 2, chap. 17._
This ruling has been actually applied through the ages. Says Elliott:
”Look at the Sicilian amba.s.sadors prostrated before him [Pope Martin IV] with the cry, 'Lamb of G.o.d! that takest away the sins of the world!'”--_”Horae Apocalypticae,” part 4, chap. 5, sec. 2._
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTIANS IN PRISON BENEATH THE COLOSSEUM AWAITING MARTYRDOM
”And shall wear out the saints of the Most High.” Dan. 7:25.]
”The Pope is of so great dignity and excellence, that he is not merely man, but as if G.o.d, and the vicar of G.o.d (_non sit simplex h.o.m.o, sed quasi Deus, et Dei vicarius_). The Pope alone is called most holy,... divine monarch, and supreme emperor, and king of kings.... The Pope is of so great dignity and power that he const.i.tutes one and the same tribunal with Christ (_faciat unum et idem tribunal c.u.m Christo_), so that whatsoever the Pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of G.o.d (_abore Dei_).”--_”Prompta Bibliotheca” (Ferraris), art.
”Papa;” Ferraris's Ecclesiastical Dictionary (Roman Catholic), art. ”The Pope.” Quoted in Guinness's ”Romanism and the Reformation,” p. 16._
These are no merely extravagant adulations of the Dark Ages, to be repudiated by the moderns; these terms express the unchanging doctrinal claims of the Roman Church, that put man in the place of G.o.d. The modern Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, repeated the claim:
”We hold upon this earth the place of G.o.d Almighty.”--_”The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII” (New York, Benziger Brothers), p. 304._
Thus does the Papacy ”speak great words against the Most High.”
”And Shall Wear Out the Saints of the Most High”
All through the Dark Ages we catch glimpses of the ruthless hand of Rome laid upon simple believers in G.o.d's Holy Word; but plans for wholesale wearing out of the saints of G.o.d were devised as the Waldenses and others rose to a widespread work of witnessing, heralds of the dawn of the coming Reformation,--
”These who gave earliest notice, As the lark Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate; Who, rather, rose the day to antedate, By striking out a solitary spark, When all the world with midnight gloom was dark-- The harbingers of good whom bitter hate In vain endeavored to exterminate.”
--_Wordsworth._