p. 315 | LEANINGS TOWARD ROME

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 26, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 20.

LEANINGS TOWARD ROME

A MOVEMENT in favor of Good Friday in one of our leading Western cities is very suggestive. Cards were printed and quite generally circulated which stated that "you are hereby requested not to shop or attend places of amusement between the hours of twelve and three P. M., Good Friday, April 10. Compliance with this request will be in harmony with the general Christian sentiment of our city." (Signed) "Observers of Good Friday Committee."

The daily papers of that city informed us that the "movement begun by the Catholic laity finds favor with leaders of all denominations," and that the "hours of agony were to be celebrated."

Things of this character are significant in that they are straws which show the way the wind is blowing. Protestantism as it was brought forth in the sixteenth century is something that is very distinct and opposite to Catholicism. Protestantism stands for the open Bible in the hands of each individual, and the individual is to be guided in his religious convictions by that Word and the influence of the divine Spirit acting upon his heart.

There are some people who think that occurrences like the one mentioned in the foregoing are indications of the "liberal spirit" which has taken possession of us in this time of twentieth century intelligence. But our Catholic friends are right in saying that Protestantism as such is weakening and coming over to them.

The papacy is not the thing that is changing; and when weakening Protestantism, through the Federal Council of Churches, finally joins with the papacy, we shall see another ecclesiastical despotism established. The prophecy concerning modern ecclesiastical power is that "he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." Rev. 13: 12.

Students have been agreed for centuries that the "beast" of the foregoing prophecy refers to the papal ecclesiastical despotism. By reading and studying the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation, we see that this despotism is to be established again just before the second coming of Christ. The last gospel message that ever goes to the world is a warning against the worship of this beast and of his image, who are seeking to enforce their religious decree. The nineteenth chapter of Revelation shows that both the "beast" and his "image" are living and active at the end of time, and go to their doom together.

Do not flout these things as visionary, but watch the trend of current events, and study them in connection with the prophetic Word. History is about to repeat itself in the establishing again of ecclesiasticism in all the world.