THE AMBITION OF ROME by W. A. Colcord

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 12, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 18.

THE AMBITION OF ROME

By W. A. Colcord

HER HISTORY—A PREDICTION CONCERNING HER—THE WARNING SHOULD BE HEEDED

By W. A. Colcord

WHEN Daniel, in vision, saw the fourth great universal world power, he saw a great and terrible beast, which “devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it.”

Such indeed was Rome in the days of her unity and supremacy as a world empire, strong, overmastering, destructive, inexorable.

When the kingdom had been broken into ten parts, represented by the “ten horns” on the symbolic beast, the prophet saw another “little horn” arise amidst the ten, which had “eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.”

“MORE STOUT THAN HIS FELLOWS”

Describing this horn still further, the prophet said his look “was more stout than his fellows,” and that he should “wear out the saints of the Most High.” Dan. 7: 20, 25.

This likewise pictures Rome, but in its later or ecclesiastical phase, or what is commonly known as papal Rome. When Rome as a united world empire fell, Rome ecclesiastical arose. From the ashes of political and pagan Rome there arose the more extensive and the more ambitious spiritual Rome, the papacy. The seat vacated by the Cæsars was filled by the Roman pontiffs. The seven hills of ancient Rome were still held as the citadel of modern Rome. The dragon had given to the ten horned beast in its “little horn” phase, “his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Rev. 13: 2.

THE ROMANS STILL MASTERS

Speaking of the conditions which prevailed after the fall of Rome in 476 A. D., the historian Myers aptly says:

“The Romans could not forget — never did forget — that they had once been masters and rulers of the world. Even after they had become wholly unfit to rule themselves, let alone the ruling of others, they still retained the temper and used the language of masters. . . . In the absence of an emperor in the West the popes rapidly gained influence and power, and soon built up an ecclesiastical empire that in some respects took the place of the old empire and carried on its civilizing work.”—Myers’s “Rome: Its Rise and Fall,” edition 1900, pages 398, 399, 442, 443.

HIS MASTER STROKE

Wylie likewise tells of the transition from pagan Rome to papal Rome in the following graphic language:

“With Rome would have fallen her bishop, had he not, as if by anticipation of the crisis, reserved till this hour the master stroke of his policy. He now boldly cast himself upon an element of much greater strength than that of which the political convulsions of the time had deprived him; namely, that the bishop of Rome is the successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, and, in virtue of being so, is Christ’s vicar on earth. In making this claim, the Roman pontiffs vaulted at once over the throne of kings to the seat of gods: Rome became once more the mistress of the world, and her popes the rulers of the earth.”—“The Papacy,” by J. A. Wylie, page 34.

And to this day Rome still possesses this same spirit of master rule. Its temper and its language are still the temper and the language of “masters and rulers.” This is readily discernible in its every move and its every utterance. The popes still claim to be the rightful “rulers of the earth.” In every land the papacy is seeking to have its representatives fill, as far as possible, every office of trust and power.

In his essay on “Ranke’s History of the Popes,” Lord Macaulay says, “The papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor.”

HER AMBITION UNDIMINISHED

While the world at large has been made drunk with the wine of this modern Babylon, and many of the professed people of God have gone to sleep regarding the plotings and plannings, the intrigues and ambitions, of this persistent, persecuting, and oppressive ecclesiastical despotism, there have been a few wise and discerning souls here and there, who have risen above the clouds and smoke, the mist and moral miasma, of this great latter-day apostasy, and obtained a correct view of the real situation, and sounded a note of warning.

About eighty years ago Alexander Campbell, editor of the Millennial Harbinger, “a man of extraordinary acuteness of intellect, and who seemed to see into the far future almost with the eye of an inspired prophet,” put on record the following words:

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL’S PROPHECY

“Were I to be asked what is the darkest and most ominous cloud in our national heavens, unhesitatingly I would answer, ‘Slavery as now established by law.’

“Again, were I asked for the next most inauspicious and portentous cloud in our political horizon, I must, with equal promptitude, reply, ‘The rapid growth of a popish empire in the bosom of a republic.’

“Popery is naturally, essentially, and necessarily despotic, cruel, and implacable. It constitutionally claims a sovereignty over not only the secular sword, but over everything on earth, thought, language, action, spirit, soul, body, and estate. It regards itself as the heir of all earthly things, and by a right divine and irrevocable, the only earthly king of kings and lord of lords. Its motto is, ‘The empire of the globe or nothing.’ The law of gravity will cease to act sooner than this superstition sleep on this side of absolute dominion.

“It can not be the guest in any land; it must be the host. It claims to be the church, the only church in which there is salvation; and that, as Jesus Christ is in heaven head over all things for the church, so His vicar of Rome is to be—jure divino [by divine law]—the head over all earthly things for the sake of the church, in which alone salvation can be found.

“It can not be cured; man can not wash the Ethiopian white nor change the leopard’s spotted skin.

“While popery lives, it must reign. It is the soul, the very life of the system; and take away from it these attributes, and nothing remains.”

WE SEE THE CONDITION FORETOLD

These are weighty words, and are worthy of careful study, of preservation, and of wide publicity. They foretold a condition which we see rapidly being fulfilled in this country to-day. To “make America Catholic” is now the slogan of every Roman priest and prelate in the land.

SEES A CATHOLIC IN THE WHITE HOUSE

A few years ago (1889) Archbishop Ireland, in an address delivered at the centenary of the establishment of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States, stated that it was the ambition of the Roman Catholic Church “to make America Catholic.” That this ambition has not waned since that statement was made is apparent from more recent utterances of this same prelate. Addressing a notable gathering of Catholic prelates and citizens of St. Louis in the banquet hall of the Hotel Jefferson, on the evening of October 18, 1908, upon his arrival in St. Louis to lay the corner-stone of the St. Louis cathedral, Mr. Ireland said:

“There are now 17,000,000 Catholics in this country, and they are not represented in its great offices as they should be. Go to Washington and you will find perhaps two or three Catholics in responsible positions. Wherever you go you will not find Catholics well represented in public offices. What is the cause?—Timidity and a foolish fancy that the country holds them down.

“There is a chance for Catholics if they are worthy. I have heard the statement that there will never be a Catholic president of the United States. This is all nonsense. When the right man is presented, the United States will choose him, and not discriminate because of his religion, but elect him because of his fitness.

“Never again will there be a discrimination against a candidate for president because his wife is a Catholic. You may be sure that if this ever happens again the candidate who is nominated by that party will be defeated as certain as two and two make four.”—Washington Times, October 19, 1908.

To sound the warning against the Apocalyptic “beast” and his “image” and the reception of his “mark” should be the ambition and effort of every loyal child of God, and every lover of liberty in this land. The Reformation of the sixteenth century began a work which must be taken up and completed in the twentieth.

The indictment brought against the papacy by Dr. Adam Clarke in his comments upon Dan. 7: 25, needs to be repeated and sounded throughout the world. Speaking of the popes and their wonderful claims and pretentions to place and power, he says:

“They have assumed infallibility, which belongs only to God. They profess to forgive sins, which belongs only to God. They profess to open and shut heaven, which belongs only to God. They profess to be higher than all the kings of the earth, which belongs only to God. And they go beyond God in pretending to loose whole nations from their oath of allegiance to their kings, when such kings do not please them. And they go against God, when they give indulgences for sin. This is the worst of all blasphemies.”

This is a terrible but a true indictment; and, being true, it should be sounded in the ears of all men everywhere, that they may flee from this idolatrous superstition, and turn to the love of, and the worship of, and the obedience to, the only true God.

The pope is not God, neither is he Christ's vicar. God is God, and Christ is the one and only Mediator between God and man; and the Holy Spirit, whom Christ said He would send in the Father's name, is Christ's vicar, or personal representative, on earth during Christ's absence, and not the pope, the self-appointed vicar of Jesus Christ. No man has a right to intrude himself between the soul and God. Every man who knows God, may, like John the Baptist, point sinners to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

THE CLIMAX

No one need expect that Rome will cease her ambitious aims for supremacy until she reaches that place where she can say in her heart, "I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Rev. 18:7. But this will be the signal for her final downfall and her complete overthrow. Her plagues will then come "in one day, death, and mourning, and famine." Verse 8. As a great millstone cast into the sea, God will hush and put to silence that voice which for so many centuries has spoken "great words," and tyrannized over the children of men.