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THE KING OF MODERN BABYLON EXALTS HIMSELF AGAINST GOD

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 21, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 34.

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THE KING OF MODERN BABYLON EXALTS HIMSELF AGAINST GOD.

By William Warren Prescott

The prophecy says of the little horn that “he shall be diverse from the former” kings. The ten horns represented “ten kings,” and so “another horn” would be another king, and yet this power was to be diverse from the preceding. From the work ascribed in the prophecy to this little horn, it is evident that it combines the office of priest with that of king, and that it would therefore claim to exercise both temporal and spiritual dominion. As a king, it was to be small, a little horn, but in its spiritual jurisdiction it was to be satisfied with nothing short of putting itself in the place of God. As a temporal ruler, the papacy has never extended its territory beyond narrow limits, and in 1870 it was deprived even of this; but as a spiritual ruler, this modern Babylon “is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
In that perversion of the gospel, in which the visible is substituted for the invisible, so that “the mystery of godliness” became “the mystery of iniquity,” the circumstances demanded that the pope in his assumed office of “true vicar of Christ” should be a priest-king. Of the Messiah it was prophesied: “Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne.” The “King of glory” was also to be “a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” And when the gospel has completed its work, the praise will all be given unto: “Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father.” It is a fundamental teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that “the pope is the representative of Christ on earth,” the visible head of the church; and in assuming this rôle, he must necessarily conform, at least in outward appearance, to the pattern that he imitates—the true Head of the church. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should be a priest-king, and the prophecy has so declared it.
The “mouth speaking great things” and the “look . . . more stout than his fellows”—haughtiness both of speech and of aspect—were prominent characteristics of the little horn, and the presumptuous words are not simply directed against man, but “against the Most High.” While claiming to act for God, and to be his vicegerent in the earth, yet he “opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” While pretending to take the place in the earth of him who is “meek and lowly in heart,” he has for many centuries, against king and subject alike, uttered his great swelling words, pronouncing his anathemas upon any one who declined to submit mind, soul, and body to his absolute control. These utterances he himself calls “thunders,” as if claiming equality with the Deity, even as “God thundereth marvelously with his voice,” “he thundereth with the voice of his excellency.”
In the titles that the Roman pontiff assumes, he arrogates to himself the honor due to God alone. He has permitted himself to be called “The Holy Father,” “The Most Holy Father,” “His Holiness,” “God on earth.” And as the climax of all his blasphemous claims and assumptions, by the action of the Vatican Council it was taught and defined as “a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, . . . is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith and morals.” “The new doctrine was promulgated July 18, 1870, in the midst of a storm that darkened the church of St. Peter’s. Within a few hours there burst over Europe a storm of war, which stayed not until it had swept away the throne of the infallible pope from underneath him.”
It was this crowning act of blasphemy which attracted the attention of the prophet, and which he thus describes: “I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake.” This was after “the judgment was set, and the books were opened.”
What an astonishing situation is revealed by these facts! At the very time when the conduct of men is being investigated, and their character weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, and tested by the eternal law of God, the papacy, which had for centuries warred against the kingdom of God in the earth, and had poured out like water the blood of the subjects of that kingdom, and had even openly changed the law of the kingdom, by a formal, weighty decree claimed for its head an attribute that belongs only to “God that can not lie.” Was the name and the character of God ever more openly blasphemed?
On that last night in the history of Babylon of the Chaldæans, Belshazzar exalted himself against God, and offered insult to his face by using the vessels from the house of God, in which to drink the wine of Babylon, while he praised the false gods. To do this after the knowledge of the true God had been revealed, and the gospel of the kingdom had been proclaimed, sealed the fate of the king and his kingdom. To exalt himself then instead of glorifying “the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways,” was a sufficient cause for the handwriting on the wall. And so in adopting this dogma of infallibility, which renders impossible any repentance for the past, and reform for the future, the papacy has sealed its own destruction. Individuals who now hold the teaching of the papacy may be saved through their personal repentanceand faith, but this modern Babylon is doomed. And so the call is even now being sounded, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
Other powers have caused the death of thousands and hundreds of thousands of men, but the remarkable thing about this little horn is that it shall “wear out the saints of the Most High.” “The same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them.” John saw in vision this same power under the symbol of the beast “having seven heads and ten horns,” to whom it was given “to make war with the saints.” Rev. 13:1–7. And again he saw the woman, who wore the title, “Babylon the Great,” “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Rev. 17:5, 6. “The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,” but the “universal chief pastor (shepherd), the Roman pontiff,” has reversed this, and has taken the lives of the sheep. For hundreds of years any who were unwilling to accept the word of God as interpreted by popes and councils, or the traditions of the church in the place of the word of God, were anathematized as heretics, and their lives and their property were forfeited. “The duty of putting heretics to death is among the infallible and irrevocable decrees of its general councils, like those of the mass and purgatory; and when Luther dared to say that it was against the will of the Holy Spirit to burn with fire men convicted of error, the court of Rome, in its bull Exsurge, placed this declaration among the number of the forty-one propositions for which it condemned Luther, and ordered, under severe penalties, that he should be seized and sent to the pope.”
To the woman taken in open sin, Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” In what marked contrast with this has been the course of the self-styled vicegerent of Christ! From city and country, from mountain and valley, from palace and dungeon, from rich and poor, through the long night of the Dark Ages there comes a volume of testimony, so terrible as to be almost incredible, and yet unimpeachable, which is the answer of history to the statement of the prophecy, he “shall wear out the saints of the Most High.” W. W. P.