A Definite Period of Persecution
By Calvin P. Bollman
Millions Put to Death During That Time—The Forces of Intolerance Were Curbed—“Those Days Shall Be Shortened” We learned last week that the time of great tribulation foretold by our Saviour in Matt. 24:29 and parallel scriptures refers to the 1,260 years of papal supremacy beginning in 538 and ending in 1798. During this time, or within this time, there was to be tribulation so great as to threaten the total destruction of God’s people. The question naturally arises, Was there such a period of tribulation at that time? The answer to this question must be in the affirmative; for it is admitted, even by Catholics themselves, that during the years between 538 and 1798, not less than fifty millions of people were put to death in the interests of “the church.” This was charged by Alexander Campbell, in his debate with Archbishop Purcell, in Cincinnati, in 1837, and was admitted by the archbishop; the difference between Mr. Campbell and the archbishop being that whereas Campbell called those who suffered death “martyrs,” the archbishop styled them “heretics,” claiming that they suffered only the just deserts of their apostasy from the “true faith.” It is not claimed, by any one, that all who suffered death at the instance of the papacy were true Christians. Political and religious controversies were so intermingled, during the long period of papal supremacy, that it is difficult to draw the line between deaths inflicted for religious reasons and those inflicted for political reasons. But between the two, it is certain that whole nations were destroyed. Three Kingdoms Overthrown
The prophecy of Dan. 7:8, 20, and 24 indicated that of the ten kingdoms to be established in the territory of Western Rome, three were to be overthrown and destroyed in the interests of the papacy. These were the Heruli, in Italy; the Vandals, in Africa; and the Ostrogoths, in Italy. The first of these kingdoms was overthrown in 493, the Vandals in 533, while the Ostrogoths did not become nationally extinct until about 553, though their power was broken by a crushing defeat before the city of Rome in 538, from which some writers date their overthrow. Vitiges, their king, was taken prisoner in 539, and carried a prisoner to Constantinople by Belisarius. Except Those Days Be Shortened
Among the so-called heretics, against whom the papacy waged unrelenting warfare from the eleventh century down well into the eighteenth, were the Hussites, the Bohemians, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots. Space forbids more than a mere mention of these witnesses for the truth of God—for such many of them undoubtedly were, though Rome hunted them like wild beasts, and all but exterminated them from the face of the earth. Indeed, so cruel and unrelenting was the persecution waged by the papacy against dissenters, that our Saviour Himself said of the long period of papal supremacy, “Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” Matt. 24:22. Now it would be manifestly impossible that a definite time period should be shortened. Twelve hundred and sixty years must be just that many years. The “days” could not be shortened in the sense of having them cover any fewer years; but the days of actual persecution could be and were shortened. This solution of the apparent difficulty is suggested by Mark 13:24, “In those days, after that tribulation,” etc. Through the influence of the Reformation, the discovery and settlement of America, the rapid growth and influence of the liberty-loving and progressive English nation, and the liberality of Holland, religious persecution had almost entirely ceased by 1776, the year of American independence. The Reign of Terror and the Papacy
Still the spiritual and ecclesiastical power of the papacy was seemingly unbroken. The pope yet reigned not only as a temporal prince over the states of the church, from Rome, his capital city, but Catholic princes received their crowns from him, and to quite an extent held them subject to his will. The end of the 1,260 years of unbroken papal supremacy was, however, approaching. In 1793 occurred the Reign of Terror in France. The common people of that country suffered much in the way of oppression at the hands of both the state and the church. The church owned or at least held a very large part of the landed property of the kingdom, deriving from it immense revenues, but paying no taxes, the burden of supporting the government falling almost entirely upon the toiling masses. The States General (the national legislature), which had not met for more than a century, was convoked by the king in response to a demand so insistent that Louis XVI dared not disregard it. The States General, once assembled, soon took all power into its own hands. The king, attempting to flee, was arrested, tried on the charge of conspiring with the enemies of France, and was executed. Conscious that the Catholic Church was in large measure responsible for the wrongs the people had suffered, the States General decreed the abolition not only of the papacy, but of Christianity itself, and established in its stead the worship of Reason. Church property was confiscated, and the priests were deprived at once of their offices and of their support. The Pope Was Taken Prisoner
All this, however, left the papacy outside of France as strong as ever. But in 1798 the French Directory sent an army into Italy, with orders to abolish the papacy in Rome itself. This army was under command of General Berthier, who captured the city of Rome by assault, took the pope prisoner, declared the papacy abolished, and upon its ruins established a republic. As briefly stated last week, these several events, following one another in rapid succession, have been justly held to mark the end of the 1,260 years of papal supremacy, the5giving of the deadly wound prophesied in Rev. 13:10: “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” Pope Pius VI, as also was stated last week, was carried a prisoner to France, where he died the following year. Thus the bishop of Rome, the very embodiment of that politico-ecclesiastical system that had led so many thousands into captivity during the long centuries of its supremacy, was himself led into captivity. The papacy, which had caused millions of so-called heretics to be killed with the sword, was itself destroyed by the sword, literally fulfilling the prophecy in every particular. Next week we shall continue the study of our Lord’s great prophecy of the twenty-fourth of Matthew, beginning with the event which His words, as recorded in Mark 13:24, declared should occur “in those days, after that tribulation,” and which, as we shall see, did actually occur between the close of the persecution about 1776 and the end of the days in 1798.