PAPAL DIVISION OF BABYLONIAN APOSTASY
By R. C. P.
Its Creed Borrowed from Pagan Babylon—Would Tolerate No Rivals—Sought to Overthrow Opposition by Destroying Those Who Opposed—The Reformation Launched Protestantism Against the System This is the third of four articles in which Mr. Porter is telling the story of how the creed and pagan doctrines of old Babylon have been the basis of all great apostasies. His first article spoke of the intolerance and persecuting principles of the Babylonian creed. His article last week showed how these principles operated through paganism in the old dispensation. It also spoke of the counterfeit sabbath observance that is an invariable accompaniment of these apostasies. This week, he shows how this corrupting influence of Babylon has worked through the papacy. Next week, he will tell how the wine of the false doctrines of Babylon is imbibed by organized and professing Protestantism. At the time of the introduction of the papal division of the great apostate Babylonian system, the pagan division was not obliterated. It was merely superseded. The great apostolic gospel movement was followed by an apostasy into a more crafty and cunningly devised counterfeit of the spiritual system of faith that had been presented to the world in the life and teachings of Christ. In the city of Rome, there was developed, in the days of the apostles, a Christian church whose “faith” was “spoken of throughout the whole world.” Rom. 1:7, 8. From this pure443Christian church in the city of Rome, there began in Paul’s day an apostasy (2 Thess. 2:7) which later developed into the most notable apostasy of history. “And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.” Rev. 17:5, 6. That the papacy—the supreme division of the great Babylonian apostasy—is here emphatically designated, is as plain as if it were written in letters of fire upon her forehead. The papacy’s entire creed was the counterpart of that of the pagan apostasy. THE PAPAL CREED BORROWED FROM BABYLON
As in the development of paganism, forms took the place of faith; and all the religious orders, ceremonies, and holidays of the pagan system were adopted under the name of Christianity. From the pope downward, all can be shown to be radically Babylonian. “The college of cardinals, with the pope at its head, is just the counterpart of the pagan college of pontiffs, with its pontifex maximus, or sovereign pontiff, which had existed in Rome from the earliest time, and which is known to have been framed on the model of the grand original council of pontiffs at Babylon.”—“Two Babylons,” page 206. The sovereign pontiff of the Babylonian system was believed to be incapable of error. (Wilkinson’s “Egyptians.”) So also the pope claims infallibility. The pagan system had its priests, monks, and nuns. The papacy has the same. Paganism had her madonna and child. The papacy has her Virgin Mary and Child. Paganism had the sign of the cross, infant sprinkling, relic worship, purgatory, prayers for the dead, sacrifices of the mass, extreme unction, Christmas and Lady Day, Easter, image worship, and a host of religious holidays. The papacy has the same. Paganism had the Sunday sabbath as a rival of the Sabbath of the Lord, decreed by civil enactment by Constantine in A. D. 321. The papacy accepted this edict as her creed. “At a later period, carried by the current of opinion, he [Constantine] declared himself a convert to the church [A. D. 323]. Christianity then, or what he pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A. D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.”—“Sunday and the Mosaic Sabbath,” by Groombridge and Sons, page 4. The papacy exalted itself above God, claiming the power to change His law. The Roman Catholic Church boldly asserts that it has changed the Sabbath day, as shown in “Doctrinal Catechism,” page 352; “The Catholic Christian Instructed,” pages 202, 203; “The Douay Catechism,” page 58; “The Christian Sabbath,” published by the Catholic Mirror Publishing Company, pages 30-32; Hartford Weekly Call (Kansas), February 22, 1864; Cardinal Gibbons in the Catholic Mirror; etc., etc. Thus the papacy has followed in the path of the pagan division of Babylon, which was so severely arraigned by the Lord through the prophets of old as an apostasy from the true faith. After God has so clearly exposed the falsity of the Babylonian system in the pagan division, all are without excuse if they follow this false system to their destruction under the second and third divisions. Fifty millions of martyrs of the Christian faith will arise in the Judgment and convict the papacy as a persecuting power. And the Master will say in that day, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Matt. 25:40. The representative head of the papacy, bearing two swords, one a civil, the other a religious, will find no way of escape from the verdict of guilt as charged. Through a union of church and state, she stands before the world as the climax of the Babylonian apostasy. In the fifteenth century, the papal division, in the height of its power, setting its feet upon the necks of kings as an exhibition of its temporal power over nations, with the Inquisition in full operation to proscribe and deal with heretics, confronted Martin Luther at Wittenberg in the person of Tetzel, its representative, selling indulgences to sin as common merchandise. Martin Luther well knew that the fifth council of Toledo, Canon 3, had declared that “whosoever hereafter shall succeed to the kingdom, shall not mount the throne till he hath sworn among others to permit no man to live in his kingdom who is not a Catholic.” THE WORD FEARLESSLY LAUNCHED
But awakened by this unholy traffic in the souls of men, he fearlessly launched the word of God as the only basis of hope for a lost world. While bulls thundering their anathemas at Luther from the Vatican at Rome were burned at Wittenberg, and inquisitions sought for him as their lawful prey, a reformation movement based on the eternal word of God spread over Europe, overturning the faith of empires, and arousing greater indignation at the Vatican. The great Protestant reformation movement restored to the world once more the pure gospel. There was given to the world another call to universal reformation. The tremendous shock of the reformation movement sweeping over the world inflicted a deadly wound upon the papal division of the Babylonian system. Rev. 13:3. Unmasked, it fell humiliated before the triumphant advance of the great Protestant Reformation. It was not killed, but superseded, by this new world-wide movement.