The Prophecy of Daniel 7 by w. a. s.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 7, 1915

The Prophecy of Daniel 7

By w. a. s.

Part 5. The Work of the “Little Horn”

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

1. 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.

2. The time. The rise of the ecclesiastical kingdom of the little-horn power in the prophecy followed the break-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.

3. The period of supremacy. The prophecy allotted 1260 years to the full

supremacy of this power. History responds that from the setting up of the special 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.

One further set of specifications remains for study:—

4. The work. Of the nature and work of the power represented by the little horn, the prophecy declares:—

“And 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.

1. 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 titles 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’s “On the Authority of Councils,” book 2, chap. 17.

This ruling has been actually applied through the ages. Says Elliott:—

Look at the Sicilian ambassadors prostrated before him [Pope Martin IV] with the cry, “Lamb of God! that takest away the sins of the world!”—“Horæ Apocalypticæ,” part 4, chap. 5, sec. 2.

The Pope is of so great dignity and excellence, that he is not merely man, but as if God, and the vicar of God (non simplex homo, 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 constitutes one and the same tribunal with Christ (faciat unum et idem tribunal cum Christo), so that whatsoever the Pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of God (ab ore Dei). . . . The Pope is as God on earth (papa est quasi Deus in terra).—Pope Boniface VIII, quoted in Guinness’s “Romanism and the Reformation,” page 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 God. The modern Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, repeated the claim:—

We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.—“The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII,” New York, Benziger Brothers, page 304.

Thus does the Papacy “speak great words against the Most High.”

2. “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 God’s Holy Word; but plans for wholesale wearing out of the saints of God 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.

Pope Innocent III gave orders concerning them as follows:—

Therefore by this present apostolical writing, we give you a strict command that, by whatever means you can, you destroy all these heresies and expel from your diocese all who are polluted by them. You shall exercise the rigor of the ecclesiastical power against them, and all those who have made themselves suspected by associating with them. They may not appeal from your judgments, and, if necessary, you may cause the princes and people to suppress them with the sword.—Quoted from Migne, 214, col. 71, in Thatcher and McNeal’s “Source Book for Medieval History,” page 209.

As the truth spread, so also the papal church redoubled its efforts by sword and flame. The historian Lecky says:—

That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. The memorials, indeed, of many of her persecutions are now so scanty, that it is impossible to form a complete conception of the multitude of her victims, and it is quite certain that no powers of imagination can adequately realize their sufferings.—“History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” Vol. II, page 32.

Motley, in his “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” tells how Philip II, of Spain—who declared “he would never consent to be the sovereign of heretics”—sent the Duke of Alva to take over the Netherlands:—

Early in the year the most sublime sentence of death was promulgated which has ever been pronounced since the creation of the world. The Roman tyrant [Nero] wished that his enemies’ heads were all upon a single neck, that he might strike them off at a blow; the Inquisition assisted Philip to place the heads of all his Netherlands subjects upon a single neck for the same fell purpose. Upon the sixteenth February, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named, were excepted. A proclamation of the king, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the Inquisition, and ordered it to be carried into instant execution, without regard to age, sex, or condition. This is probably the most concise death warrant that was ever framed. Three millions of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in three lines.—Part 3, chap. 2.

Roman Catholic writers admit that the papal church has sought to exterminate what it calls heresy by the power of the sword.

The Western Watchman (St. Louis) Dec. 24, 1908, says:—

The church has persecuted. . . . Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the church authorities. We have always defended the persecution of the Huguenots and the Spanish Inquisition. Wherever and whenever there is honest Catholicity, there will be a clear distinction drawn between truth and error, and Catholicity and all forms of error. When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it.

Prof. Alfred Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, says:—

The Catholic Church is a respecter of conscience and of liberty. . . . She has, and she loudly proclaims that she has, a “horror of blood.” Nevertheless, when confronted by heresy, she does not content herself with persuasion; arguments of an intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient and she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, to torture. She creates tribunals like those of the Inquisition, she calls the laws of the state to her aid, if necessary she encourages a crusade, or a religious war and all her “horror of blood” practically culminates into urging the secular power to shed it, which proceeding is almost more odious—for it is less frank—than shedding it herself. Especially did she act thus in the sixteenth century with regard to Protestants. Not content to reform morally, to preach by example, to convert people by eloquent and holy missionaries, she lit in Italy, in the Low Countries, and above all in Spain, the funeral piles of the Inquisition. In France under Francis I and Henry II, in England under Mary Tudor, she tortured the heretics, whilst both in France and Germany during the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century if she did not actually begin, at any rate she encouraged and actively aided, the religious wars.—“The Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism,” London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1908, pages 182, 183.

She has done it—the Church of Rome has worn out the saints of the Most High. The prophet in vision saw an ecclesiastical kingly power rise among the kingdoms of the divided Roman Empire. Its look was “more stout than its fellows,” and the prophet heard it speaking “very great things,” and saw it wearing out the saints of the Most High through the long centuries.

“Guilty!” is the clear verdict of history, against the Church of Rome on these two counts of the prophetic indictment.

w. a. s.

(To be concluded)