Israel, verse 68, For he hath visited and
redeemed his people, and hath raised up an
horn of salvation for us in the house
of his servant David.
As his fate by the mouth of his
holy prophets, which have been since the world,
began, that we should be saved from our
enemies and from the hand of all that
hate us, to perform the mercy promised for
our fathers, and to remember his holy covenants
fulfilled in Jesus.
He was the first one who was born
of that promise, wasn't he?
And he's your elder brother.
And you have been born of the same
promise, isn't that right?
The same life incarnate in you.
And I think that's the most likely explanation
of the woman and her seed.
An explanation backed by scripture.
Now let's see what happens.
When Jesus died and rose again, there was
war in heaven, wasn't there?
Didn't he triumph over principalities and powers?
Was it Satan cast down?
Didn't he emerge from the battle triumphant, crying,
I have the keys of death and hell?
Yeah, there was war in heaven when Jesus
rose from the dead.
Michael and his angel.
I wonder, angels were manifest in the resurrection
against the devil, who then was manifesting himself
in this form, a red dragon having seven
heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon
his head.
The old familiar Roman Empire pattern, isn't it?
Seven heads and ten horns.
And it was a Roman cross upon which
our Lord died.
Roman soldiers nailed him to it.
A Roman declaration was put over his head.
Satan was operating through Rome against our Lord
Jesus Christ.
But notice where the crowns are.
The crowns are on the seven heads and
not, as in chapter 13, on the ten
horns.
That is its old Rome, old pagan Rome,
with its changing forms of government, that is
in power here.
Persecuting, coming against the man-child who is
caught up to God, and then coming against
the remnant of the woman's seed.
And you know how in the first three
centuries it was pagan Rome that was the
bitter opponent of the early church.
And the brethren of Christ suffered ten great
persecutions as a result of that opposition.
But Satan had a second defeat from the
heavenlies, when in the era of Constantine, the
pagan powers of heaven were cast down.
And Satan had to adopt new disguises.
No longer could he hide himself in pagan
Rome.
He changed his form and identified with the
drawing anti-Christian force.
So in chapter 13 you have the crown
on the ten heads, on the ten horns,
they've moved.
The woman was given two wings of a
great eagle, for she was persecuted for the
one to sixty years.
That is once again the period of the
great apostasy, beginning to manifest itself by the
sixth century and going on.
God took this precious gospel and hid it.
Those who loved it hid away in the
mountains in the Alps, in the mountains of
Asia Minor, in the mountains of Austria, in
the remote recesses of Britain.
God took the testimony and hid it, and
the remnant of her seed were with her.
And the earth helped the woman, and opened
up her mouth and swallowed the blood which
the dragon cast out of his mouth.
I've just been mentioning how those great papal
armies came against the Waldensian brethren in the
Alps, and time and again a whole army
was swallowed up in those mountains.
The combination of the mists and the precipices
defeated them.
A handful of men protecting their homes would
defeat a whole army.
The earth opened her mouth and helped the
woman.
Swallowed up the flood.
You know that flood is one of the
scripture symbols of an army.
Swallowed up army after army.
The dragon was broke with the woman, and
went to make war with the remnant of
her seed, which keep the commandments of God,
and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
And still, as you know, in many parts
of the world, those who love the Lord,
whom you love, who read the Bible that
you read, are still suffering from the bitter
attacks of the great dragon.
All right, let's take a break.
Five minutes.
If you have questions, keep them, make a
note of them, write them down, and I'll
try and answer them before we close the
minute.
And well, in the meantime, I'll push on
into Revelation 13.
Once again, another view back over history to
bring us up to date to the present
position in the book of Revelation, obviously the
most important position.
Chapter 13, I stood upon the sand of
the sea and saw a beast rise up
out of the sea, having seven heads and
ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his heads the names of blasphemy.
The beast was like a leopard, feet like
a bear, mouth like a lion.
The dragon gave him his power, his seat,
and great authority.
I saw one of his heads, as it
were, wounded to death.
His deadly wound was healed.
All the world wondered after the beast.
And they worshipped the dragon, which gave power
to the beast, and they worshipped the saying,
who is like unto the beast, who is
able to make war with him.
There was given unto him a mouth speaking
great things and blasphemies, and power was given
unto him to continue forth in two months,
as our period again.
And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against
God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle
and them that dwell in heaven.
And it was given to him to make
war with the saints and to overcome them,
and power was given him over all kindreds,
towns and nations.
And all that dwell on the earth shall
worship him, whose names are not written in
the book of the life of the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world.
If any man have an ear to hear,
let him hear.
He that leadeth into captivity shall go into
captivity.
He that killeth with the sword must be
killed with the sword.
Here's the patience and the faith of the
saints.
Once again we see the Roman beast in
view, now very obviously receiving his power from
the dragon, from satan.
We notice his heads, upon his head the
name of blasphemy.
You know that blasphemy in scripture isn't the
sort of oath and curse that we hear
in our civilization.
It is that thou being a man makest
thyself God.
That's what they accused Jesus of.
Why do you take up stones to stone
me?
They said for blasphemy, because thou being a
man makest thyself God.
That is the kind of blasphemy we have
in view here.
The Caesars took, demanded worship as God.
One of his hands wounded to death.
We have already seen how the Roman beast,
which was in full sway in John's time.
Let's have a look at Revelation 17 verse
10.
There are seven kings, five are fallen, one
is and the other is not yet come.
And when he cometh he must continue a
short space.
The beast that was and is not even
he is the eighth and is of the
seven and goes into perdition.
So at John's time the sixth head of
the Roman empire was in power.
And we know that was the great pagan
emperors who were ruling the world at that
time.
The seventh head then would have been the
Christian emperors who succeeded them.
They continued a short space.
The empire broke up under them and everybody
thought that was the end of it.
But out of the wreckage of decadent Rome,
the deadly wound was healed.
And it was the bishop of Rome that
pulled Europe together and formed that new ecclesiastical
empire which proved to be more powerful than
the great empire it displaced.
The deadly wound was healed.
All the world wondered after the beast.
They worshipped the dragon which gave power to
the beast.
They worshipped the beast saying who is like
unto the beast?
Who is able to make war with him?
He had a mouth speaking great things of
blasphemies.
Power was given to him to continue forty
and two months.
He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God
to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle and them
that dwell in heaven.
I better remind you of some of his
vassaries.
I have the authority of the king of
kings.
I am all in all and above all
so that God himself and I the vicar
of Christ, vicar of God have but one
consistory.
I am able to do almost all that
God can do.
What can you make of me but God?
And again there are many of those.
He was, this is Pope, Pope Pius II
was angry that the church councils were beginning
to exercise authority over the Pope because he
was so morally rotten.
And this is what he said.
An excrucible and hitherto unheard of abuse has
arisen in our time, namely that some people
in the spirit of rebellion presume to appeal
to a council from the Roman pontiff, the
vicar of Jesus Christ.
We condemn appeals of this kind by councils,
prelates and consults of divine or human law.
We denounce them as erroneous and detestable and
low and quash them and declare that they
are of no significance.
We command that nobody may dare under any
pretext to make such an appeal against any
of our sentences and commands.
It is forbidden for any man to oppose
or infringe this charter of our will by
which we condemn, reprove, null and quash the
forces.
If anyone so attempt, he shall incur the
indignation of almighty God and of St. Peter
and St. Paul.
You may be interested to know that the
Pope gave all America, North and South, to
Spain.
We give, this is the Pope Alexander, we
give a sign and concede to you, out
of our kindness, knowledge and fullness and apostolic
power, by the authority of almighty God and
by the vicariate of Jesus Christ, which we
have on the earth, all the islands and
mainlands, discovered and yet to be discovered, west
or south of the line drawn from the
Arctic to the Antarctic pole, one hundred leagues
west and south of any of the islands
commonly called Azores and Cape Verde, irrespective of
whether the islands and mainlands are in the
direction of India or of any other country,
and we strictly forbid anybody of any rank,
imperial or royal, or of any other status,
under penalty of excommunication, to dare without your
license to approach, for the purpose of trade
or for any other reason, the islands and
mainlands discovered or yet to be discovered.
This we ordain, notwithstanding any apostolic bulls or
ordinances or documents to the contrary, confident in
him from whom empires
proceed."
So there you are, Queen Elizabeth of England,
the first Elizabeth.
"...he who reigns on high, to whom is
given all power in heaven and earth, has
entrusted his holy and catholic and apostolic church,
outside of which there is no salvation, to
one person alone, that is to Peter, the
prince of the apostles, and his successor, Roman
Pontius.
He alone is appointed prince over all nations
and kingdoms, to root up and to pull
down, to plant and build, to waste and
destroy, among others assisting in the work of
abominable doctrines, is the servant of vice Elizabeth,
pretended queen of England, with whom, as in
the place of sanctuary, the most nefarious wretches
have found refuge.
This woman, acquiring the kingdom and usurping for
herself its chief authority and jurisdiction, has again
plunged that kingdom back into a wretched and
unhappy condition, after it had so recently been
reclaimed for the catholic religion and prosperity.
Therefore, being strengthened by the authority of him
who gave us this plenitude of apostolic power,
we declare the authority of Elizabeth to be
a heretic, and an aider and abetter of
heretics.
We declare her to have incurred the sentence
of excommunication.
Further, we declare her to be deprived of
her pretended claim to the kingdom of England,
and of all authority and dominion whatsoever.
We command and bid all and sundry against
her people, her lords and councillors and subjects,
that they do not obey her or her
under pain of excommunication.
In Ireland, the popes failed in their attempt
to subdue and subvert England and Scotland, but
they did better in Ireland.
In 1641, the catholic bishops of Ireland, under
the instruction of the pope, proclaimed a holy
war and incited their people to massacre the
Protestants.
Villages and towns were destroyed, rivers of Ireland
literally ran red with blood, even cattle were
tortured.
Burial of the Protestant dead was forbidden, but
many were buried alive.
Five hundred thousand Protestants were either massacred or
expelled.
Pope Urban issued this bull in commemoration of
the deeds, extolling the faithfulness and loyalty of
the catholic murderers, commending them in the name
of God, and rewarding them with full and
absolute remission of all their sins.
To all who had so faithfully and gallantly
done what in them lay, to extirpate and
wholly root out this pestilipitous leaven of heretical
contagion.
Against the scripture, Pope Gregory condemned Wycliffe as
having run into a detestable kind of wickedness
because he translated the scriptures into the common
speech.
Pope Leo X issued a bull against the
German translation, carrying the foulest language.
The bull condemns as false, shocking, scandalous and
impious and blasphemous against God and his pontiff,
the reading of the scripture by everybody.
Pope Pius VII, 1810, issued pronouncements against Bible
societies and said, any association for the promulgation
of scripture to the common people is a
crafty device whereby the very foundations of religion
are undermined.
A pestilence dangerous to Christianity, a defilement of
the faith dangerous to souls, a nefarious scheme.
Even as late as 1864, Pope Pius IX
reasserts medieval claims and says, we, the divine
vice-regents on earth, curse all who differ
from the Roman pontiff in belief and practice,
and summon the whole world to absolute submission
on pain of eternal damnation.
So you can see that the case, the
position is very very strong.
It was given to him to make war
with the saints and to overcome them, and
power was given him over all kindreds and
tongues and nations.
As to the practice of this unchangeable church,
there is not a statement in the following
quotation which history does not abundantly substantiate.
As some luxurious emperors of Rome exhausted the
whole art of pleasure so that the reward
was promised to any who should invent a
new one, so have the Romish persecutors exhausted
all the art of pain, so that it
will now be difficult to discover or invent
a new kind of it which they have
not already practiced upon those marked out for
heretics.
They have been shot, stabbed, stoned, drowned, beheaded,
hanged, drawn, quartered, impaled, burnt, buried alive, roasted
on spits, baked in ovens, thrown into furnaces,
tumbled over precipices, cast from the tops of
towers, sunk in mire and pits, starved with
hunger and cold, hung on tensure hooks, suspended
by the hair of the head, by hands
or feet, stuffed and blown up with gunpowder,
ripped with swords and sickles, tied to the
tails of horses, dragged over streets and sharp
plinths, broken on the wheel, beaten on anvils
with hammers, blown with bellows, bored with hot
irons, torn piecemeal by red-hot pincers, slashed
with knives, hacked with axes, hewed with chisels,
planed with planes, pricked with forks, stuck from
head to foot with pins, choked with water,
lines, rags, urine, excrement, or mangled pieces of
their own bodies, crammed down their throats, shut
up in caves and dungeons, tied to stakes,
mailed to trees, tormented with lighted matches, scalding
oil, burning pitch, melted limbs.
They have been played alive, had their flesh
scalped and torn from their bones, they have
been trampled and danced upon until their bowels
have been crossed out, their guts have been
tied to trees and pulled forth by degrees,
their heads twisted with cords till the blood,
or even their eyes sprouted out, strings have
been drawn through their noses, they have been
leaded out like swine, butchered like sheep, to
dig out eyes, tear off nails, cut off
ears, lips, tongues, arms, breasts, has been ordinary
sport with ronins, converters, and holy butchers.
Persons have been compelled to lay violent hands
on their dearest friends, to kill or cast
into the fire their parents, husbands, wives, children,
to look upon them while they've been most
cruelly and shamefully abused.
Women and young maids have also suffered such
barbarities, accompanied with all the imaginable indignities, insults
and shame, pangs to which their sex has
exposed them.
Tender veins have been whipped, scarred, ground, stamped,
burnt to death, dashed against trees and stones,
torn limb from limb, carried about on points
of spikes and spears, thrown to dogs and
swine.
If such treatment as this inflicted on successive
generations of disciples of Christ, for centuries together,
be not wearing out the saints of the
Most High, what could be?
History affords no parallel.
The following is one of the authorised curses
published in the Roman pontifical to be pronounced
on heretics by Romish peace.
May God Almighty and all His saints curse
them with the curse with which the devil
and his angels are cursed.
Let them be destroyed as are the landsmen
living, and let the violence of death spell
upon them.
Let them descend alive into the pit, let
their seed be destroyed from the earth, and
thirst, nakedness and all distress, let them perish.
May they have all misery, pestilence and torment.
Let them always be cursed.
Always and everywhere let them be cursed.
Speaking and silent let them be cursed.
Within and without let them be cursed.
By land and by sea let them be
cursed.
From the crown of the head to the
sole of the foot let them be cursed.
Let their eyes become blind, their ears deaf,
their mouth become dumb, their tongue cleave to
their jaws.
Let not their hands handle, let not their
feet walk.
Let all the members of the body be
cursed.
Cursed let them be, standing, lying from this
time forth for ever, and thus let their
candle be extinguished in the presence of God
at the day of judgment.
Let their burial be with dogs and asses,
their hungry wolves with none of their corpses.
Let the devil and his angels be their
companions for ever.
Amen and amen, so let it be.
The Inquisition, a name at which humanity has
learned to shudder.
In Spain alone it has been proved by
careful statistics that between the years of 1481
and 1808 over 341,000 persons were condemned
by this holy office, of whom 30,000
or so were burned alive, 17 in effigy,
nearly 300,000 tortured and condemned to penalty.
Every Catholic country in Europe, Asia, and America
had its Inquisition, and its consequent unexplained arrests,
indefinitely long imprisonments of innocent persons, secret investigations,
horrible torture chambers, dreadful dungeons, autos d'affaires,
or burnings of obsolete heretics, its thousand nameless
cruelties and injustices.
When the French took Toledo and broke open
the Inquisition prison there that we lead, graves
seemed to open, and pale figures like ghosts
issued from dungeons which emitted a sepulchral odor.
Bushy beards hanging down over the breast, nails
grown like birds' claws, disfigured the skeletons, who
with laboring bosoms inhaled for the first time
for a long series of years the fresh
air.
Many of them were reduced to cripples, head
inclined forward, arms and hands hanging down, rigid
and helpless.
They had been confined in dens so low
that they could not rise up in them.
In spite of all the care of the
surgeons, many of them expired the same day.
The light of the sun made a particularly
painful expression on the eyes.
On the following day, General LaSalle minutely inspected
the place, attended by several officers of his
type.
The number of machines for torture thrilled even
men in nearer to the battlefield with horror.
Only one of these, unique in its kind
for refined cruelty, seems deserving of more particular
notice.
In a recession, a subterraneous vault contiguous to
the private hall for examinations, stood a wooden
figure made by the hands of monks, and
representing the Virgin Mary.
A gilded glory encompassed her head.
In her right hand she held a banner.
It struck us all at first sight as
suspicious, but notwithstanding the silken robe descending on
each side to ample holds from her shoulders,
she should wear a sort of cuirass.
On closer scrutiny it appeared that the forepart
of her body was struck full of extremely
sharp nails and small knife blades, with the
points turned toward the spectator.
The arms and hands were jointed, and machinery
behind the partition set the figure in motion.
One of the servants of the Inquisition was
compelled, by command of the General, to work
the machine as he turned it.
When the figure extended her arms as though
to press someone most lovingly to her heart,
the well-filled knapsack of a Polish grenadier
was made to supply the place of the
living victim.
The statue hugged it closer and closer, and
when the attendant, agreedly to orders, made the
figure uncast her arms and returned to her
former position, the knapsack was perforated to the
depth of two or three inches, and remained
hanging on the points of the nails and
knife blades.
To such an infernal purpose, and in a
building erected in honour of a true faith,
was the Madonna rendered subject.
So on.
There's an endless array of this, and the
total number of victims was probably fifty million.
Made war with the saints.
All that dwell on the earth shall worship
him, whose names are not written in the
book of life, but the land slain from
the foundation of the world.
If any man have an ear, let him
hear.
He that leadeth into captivity shall go into
captivity.
He that killeth with the sword must be
killed with the sword.
Here is the patience and faith of the
saints.
And I beheld another beast coming up out
of the earth.
He had two horns like a lamb, and
his fate as a dragon."
Reading from my notes here.
The ten kings give their power to him.
Revelation 17.13. He blasphemes.
See John 10.33. Makes war, persecutes, receives
worship.
He is described as the man of sin
in 2 Thessalonians 2, who arises out of
the apostasy with Judas-like apostleship.
The papacy has fulfilled this prophecy with awful
depth and detail over twelve centuries of church
history.
He has indeed blasphemed in the true scriptural
sense, has made war with the saints, and
received worship.
He was aided by a second beast out
of the earth, Europe, while he himself retained
his seat in the Mediterranean.
The second beast was like him, had two
horns.
Compare the two witnesses.
So, is a witness in company, is landlike
in appearance, speaks as a dragon, deceives men,
causes them to worship the beast.
He is a prophet, a preacher, with pretended
divine authority.
You may read about him in Revelation 13,
verse 11 to 17.
And I note here what all the great
Protestant interpreters deduced.
The Catholic clergy, regular and secular, two branches,
that is the monks and the priests, a
united body, a beast within the beast, an
empire within the empire, the church within the
church, amply fulfill this prophecy.
You know that in the Roman system, if
you say joining the church, what usually means
is that you're going into the priesthood, church
within the church.
This beast causes men everywhere to make a
local image of the revived beast and worship
it.
And not many people will agree with me
here, but one of the strange manifestations of
medieval Christendom is the fact that every town,
every city is dominated by a magnificent church
building, with power or spire, something that Christ
never instructed us about.
He didn't tell us to do anything like
that.
And this church building is an object of
worship, isn't it?
Holy water is all you have to worship,
it's holy.
There's a tremendous aura of holiness about it.
It is an image, it is the local
image of the whole universal ecclesiastical empire, isn't
it?
There it is, right before your eyes, in
every village, every town.
There it is, the image of the whole
thing.
Who built it?
Ordinary people did.
Who made them build it?
The priests did.
Every town had its church, an image of
the Catholic church.
Every city its cathedral, a gorgeous image of
the seat of ecclesiastical government.
You know that the word cathedral means seat.
I expect you know that.
Seat.
When the Pope speaks ex-cathedra, that's from
his official seat.
A cathedral is a seat of a bishop.
Do you remember 2 Thessalonians 2?
He's seated in a temple of God.
The image was given life.
Nobody else can operate it.
The official church building, you have to be
one of the clergy.
It had a voice from the pulpit and
from the tower.
Isn't that right?
All medieval Christendom dominated by church bells.
What did they do?
They governed medieval life from sunrise to curfew.
You got up by it, you went to
bed by it.
With anatomists, men could be cursed, cities could
be cursed, villages be cursed.
Benedictions, you're blessed by it too.
Baptisms, marriages, burials, excommunications, interdicts, feasts and fasts.
All governed from the church.
The priesthood needed the church to be the
image through which they functioned.
They didn't have much power about it.
And there it was, men everywhere made that
local image of the beast and caused that
as many as would not worship the image
of the beast should be killed.
Over and over again it happened.
In my own town there are memorials for
two martyrs in the reign of Bloody Mary
who died there, burned at the stake outside
the city walls, because they would not submit
to Mother Church.
And all through my old country other towns
have their memorials and their record of those
who died.
And through Europe, everywhere, this thing happens century
after century.
To receive the mark, that should be a
C there, to receive the mark, there's a
mark of a beast.
Because if all both small and great, rich
and poor, free and bound to receive a
mark in their right hand, that's their deed,
or in their forehead, that's their minds.
It is a spiritual thing, as in Ezekiel
9.4. See, scripture explains scripture.
In Ezekiel chapter 9 you will find that
the prophet sees a man with an inkcloth.
Ezekiel 9.
Go through the midst of Jerusalem and set
a mark on the forehead of the men
that sigh and cry, for all the abominations
that be done in the midst thereof.
That is God, marking with an invisible mark,
which heaven could recognize.
Those who really belong to him.
It wasn't a literal thing, it was a
symbolic thing, spiritual.
It is likely that the mark of the
beast is also a spiritual thing.
But it has a remarkable counterpart in the
baptism which is done by the priest on
the side of the cross, on the forehead,
with the right hand.
If you refuse to receive that mark, you
are liable to excommunication from your village.
From about the 10th century on to the
17th century.
And in some cases later, some countries later
still.
For all those hundreds of years, you could
neither buy nor sell, if you refuse the
mark of the ownership of the Catholic Church.
Imagine a plain history.
The number of his name, I have given
you a simple little solution here.
Vicarius Filii Dei, adds up in Latin numerals
to 666.
The vicar of the there are other suggestions,
the Greek Latinos, a Latin man also adds
to 666.
But don't put too much on the number
of the name business.
Use wisdom in association with it, because you
can even turn Kissinger into 666, if you
want to.
It's surprising what you can do with numbers,
if you really try.
But essentially, it is the number of a
man.
It is the number of a man.
But being threefold, three sixes, it's the number
of a man taking the place of God.
That's it.
He that hath wisdom, let him that hath
understanding count the number of the beast, for
it is the number of a man.
His number is six hundred three four and
six.
But I'm afraid I've been a bit terrible
tonight, trying to hurry through a whole lot
of material.
And I expect your questions are so many,
that you'll scarcely know what to ask first.
And I can't promise to answer all your
questions perfectly either.
The interpretation I have set before you, is
the one I think to be the most
likely, but I might be wrong on many
points.
There is, however, as I'm sure you can
see, this tremendous parallel between the intricate visions
of Revelation and the intricate history of the
professing Christian Church down through the centuries.
I'm certainly not an infallible interpreter.
You will find in any school of interpretation
of the Revelation, whether it's Futurist or anything,
you'll get different points of view.
There are some people who believe there'll be
one rapture.
Some believe there'll be two.
I've known some who believe there'll be seven
different raptures.
They've got it by divine revelation.
It's the latest.
And some think that the Antichrist will be
a Jew.
Some think he'll be a Roman.
Cardinal Bellarmine, Roman Catholic Futurist, thinks he'll come
out of a church.
All Futurist people don't agree among themselves by
any means, even though they're getting into a
future which hasn't happened yet.
And those of us who are moral-passionate
and are inclined to follow the great reformers
in our interpretation of the scripture, also have
differences of viewpoints.
One can't always be absolutely certain what the
divine cartoon is intended to imply.
Indeed, some of us don't always agree about
the cartoons in newspapers.
And it's no wonder if we make some
little mistakes about the divine cartoons in such
a difficult subject as this.
Suffice it to say that our Lord has
warned us about the deceptions which he foresaw.
And we look back at a very hasty
glance into history and find that everything he
warned us about has been terribly and awfully
fulfilled.
And this should make us alert to our
own day.
Yes, I think the normal thing is figurative.
Isn't there a reference there to Elijah?
Wasn't he the man who called empire from
heaven?
He was testifying against the apostate court of
Ahab and Jezebel.
And it probably indicates that the witnesses would
have a similar function in their day against
an apostate court witnessing, calling down fire.
Let's see, where's that first five and six
part of fire proceeded out of their mouth
and devoured their enemies.
When, for instance, when John was led to
the stake, I told you what he said.
He said, you may kill this goose, but
in a hundred years, a swan will arise
and you will not be able to silence
him.
As he was dying, fire proceeded out of
his mouth.
A hundred years later, Luther and the Reformation
swept through Europe.
And this sort of thing happened again and
again.
These men were prophetic, especially in their dying
moments.
Do you think that there will ever be
a single man that will be the antichrist?
I'm inclined to say no.
I would say that this revelation prophecy has
been so tremendously fulfilled, that we're safer now
to look for the coming of the Lord
without an antichrist intervening between us and his
coming.
Right, most pre-revelation is due.
Yes, yes.
Do all these take place within three and
a half years?
Yes, I think it's most unlikely.
We've seen that the range of revelation is
from those early days, and right up to
the second coming.
We have seen this tremendous fulfillment.
I do think that basically what he was
warning the church about was her long and
sad trial through the centuries.
I can't tell you that there won't be,
but I don't think it's likely.
As we continue in our reading of scripture,
I can show you that some of the
things I think are likely to happen in
the future, but I can't guarantee it.
Look for the coming of the Lord, that's
the best thing.
What was Elizabeth's reaction to the papal process?
I think she had a sense of humor.
The Pope sent the Armada to enforce it,
you know.
You know about the Spanish Armada, don't you?
There were 3,000 priests on board to
bring them back to Rome.
But the Lord intervened and wrecked them.
It was a time of reformation, God's time.
This has a little bit to do with
what was said.
The other day on the 700 Club, Pat
was discussing with guests about the fall of
Iran and the coming peace in the Mideast,
and saying that these two things showed that
we would be in a war with Russia
before the 1980s ended.
Do you have any knowledge of this, or
do you agree with this?
Whatever we say about the future must be
speculative.
You're more likely to be wrong than right,
whatever you say.
Well, the odds are against, don't they, really?
But I do think that a war centered
around Israel and the Middle East is indicated
in the Old Testament, and probably the New,
and it may be the next big thing
to turn up.
One of the last signs of the coming
of the Lord.
Yes, yes, this is later on in Revelation.
We'll deal with it probably next week.
Revelation 16, verse 13 to
17.
We'll look at it later.
All right, any other questions, problems?
I was reading in another book, it said
that during the latter 15th century, early 16th
century, when Europe was, I mean, when England
was under a monarch, a Protestant monarch, that
the Catholics were persecuted in England to a
very bad degree.
Is this also indicated in Revelation that the
time that they lived there, that the Catholics
were perceived as persecutors?
Not quite that one.
The most of the Catholic persecution are, he
that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity,
that kind of thing.
We've already read that today, that there would
be a reaction.
Most of it occurred right through Europe, particularly
around the French Revolution, when country after country
turned against the Roman Catholic system.
Especially in France, thousands of priests were killed,
guillotined, and this went through several European countries.
In England it wasn't so bad, but they
certainly had quite a rough time.
You see, England didn't all turn Christian because
they broke away from Rome.
They didn't all get converted.
I don't think Queen Elizabeth was a slave
woman.
I'm fairly certain King Henry VIII had no
idea about salvation.
The Inquisition was started against the Jews, first
of all, to make them confess where they'd
hidden their money, and to force them to
become Christians.
The Jews had a terrible time under Christendom,
and it's no wonder that the Jew hates
the idea of Christianity.
Their history is terrible.
They suffered equally as much as these people
we've been reading about.
Driven from country to country, robbed, unfairly treated,
living in ghettos.
Their history is dark and terrible.
The situation is improving everywhere, but a friend
of mine at Eden told me that when
he was in Ecuador in his early days,
a predecessor Protestant minister heard someone at the
door opened it.
A man dashed in, slipped a noose around
his feet, and disappeared again.
The car started up, and the man was
dragged out through the streets until he died.
And that was not uncommon in those days.
Willie Burton of the Congo said that the
bitterest opposition he had, that his convert had,
was from the people who were taught by
the Catholic priests, who taught them to beat
up Bible believers.
But I'm sure that the situation is improving,
rapidly.
And are those Christians armed Christians?
In China?
In Chan.
There have been some, there always are several
kinds of Christians around, you know.
And many of those who died as martyrs
in Chan, some years ago, they were cruelly
treated, buried up to their necks, and left
to die with the ants eating their eyes
out.
They were genuine Christians.
But whether this war is between genuine Christians
or only professing Christians is another matter.
I can't tell you that.
Similarly, in Germany, there were those who were
true believers who were willing to suffer, and
there were those who were political Christians who
just wanted to fight.
I think everywhere this sort of thing happens.
Because, just a few years ago, things are
generally improving, and I wonder if you mean
that in the sense that the drop is
taking hold, and more people are coming in,
or that there's less of this sort of
persecution, or in some other sense?
The Catholic Church in these ages, newspapers and
so on, is being more and more careful
about what it does.
You can't do things these days as you
used to be able to do.
And I think there's a general moving of
God's Spirit among the rank and file everywhere.
The positive teaching of spiritual gifts, I think,
has only been generally recovered during the present
century.
But there always has been evidence of this
kind of thing among the elect.
For instance, in the Sedans in southern France,
at the time of the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, when hundreds of thousands of
Protestants were robbed of home and family, and
were driven out, little children were prophesying beautifully.
Even when they were oppressed by soldiers, they
were praying and prophesying.
Wonderful manifestations of the Holy Spirit there.
In Scotland, during the time of the Covenanters,
there were a few, even the Prophet, obviously,
had a divine gift.
We haven't got such good records of miracle
ministries, but there always seems to be a
little touch of it here and there.
The obvious question we all ask ourselves is,
faced with the things that which should be
withstand, and so forth, and maintain our faith,
it occurred to me that the Holy Spirit
empowers some people to be the witness that
they were.
Is there any record of, during his horrible
death, of a special empowerment of the Holy
Spirit, even through his moments of pain and
agony?
Yes, there have been a few interesting ones.
Bishop Cranmer, who was Henry VIII's right-hand
man, but a believer, he backslid a bit
under pressure, and conformed to the Roman Catholic
oppression brought on by Bloody Mary.
But later on, he repented, and he faced
the stake, and he remembered that his right
hand had signed a document renouncing his Protestant
position, and he said, let this hand burn
first, this hand that betrayed me.
He struck that into the flame, and he
held it there, and mustered in grace there,
until that hand was burned off, before he
died.
It was dying grace.
Many of them had dying grace.
But not always.
Some suffered an awful agony.
You say that there was a decrease in
the verity of the Roman Church inside Christ,
and that science was not to do that.
How would that mean?
Did you take some of the Christian from
the Roman Church to something else?
I would say decreasing.
So you would expect then, in the culture,
that something would be left?
Yes.
Would it gradually become inflated into the New
England then?
No, I, no, I don't think that.
But there will be, it isn't exactly, he
will be consumed, you remember the Thessalonian passage,
he will be consumed by the spirit of
his mouth.
Once the spirit of his mouth, surely the
word of God and the Holy Spirit working
together, would consume the anti-Christian thing.
I don't know.
I don't think we've got much longer.
Yes.
Where
are
we?
On the third page.
Yes.
All right.
You're going to send me to the wall?
Yeah.
Very definite.
Yeah, he's the prince of this world, isn't
he?
And he adapts himself to whatever guise is
convenient.
Oh yes, I'm sure he's behind communism in
some measure.
Although I think he, he makes bigger blunders
there because the Lord uses him wonderfully.
Well, that might be a blessing.
That might be a blessing in disguise.
A recent part of it, and you said
in one instance that the persecution of the
charismatic Catholic renewal would come not from these
churches, you know, that are not, that are
still called the Catholic Church, you know.
And I didn't understand that prophecy until this
passed.
It would be illogical that their persecution would
come from the very church that they are
on, you know, that they still, a lot
of it, may be the reason.
Yes.
Yes, I do think that great pressure will
be brought to bear upon the Catholic Charismatics
to conform to the great church.
Yes.
All right, all right.
I think that will do for now.
Thank you, Tim.
Let me recommend this book, Great Prophecies by
Woodrow.
It's up here if you want to get,
see where to get it from.
Okay, leave me some sound there for a
minute.
Oh, how many of you did not hear
the announcement at the beginning of class?