Approaching Religious Despotism
By Editor
SOME weeks ago in a certain section of this country, considerable space was devoted in the news columns to appeals that were made to the ministers of the several denominations in behalf of a certain political candidate. The ministers saw fit to reject those particular appeals, and to enter into the combat quite warmly and support another candidate instead. Neither the time, the place, nor the names of any of these individuals are important. But one thing is very important, and that is that we should recognize that the world is strongly setting in to make history all over again in the way of establishing an ecclesiastical despotism. More than fifty years ago, the people who are represented by this paper reached the conclusion, from the study of the prophecies of Revelation, particularly the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth chapters, that we would have a combine that would inaugurate a repetition of all the persecutions and tyrannies that the religious bigotry of the middle ages perpetrated on the world. But this last great religious oppression will be short, bitter, and decisive. And when it reaches its climax, Christ will appear in the clouds of heaven to destroy it, and the controversy against sin will be forever ended. When we first began to publish these things, there was not even a little cloud the size of a man's hand above the horizon to indicate that the prophecy would be fulfilled in this generation. But we went on teaching, from the prophetic Word, that Catholicism would regain its power and would again be enthroned in both its ecclesiastical and its civil strength, as in former days. We said, from these prophecies, that nominal Protestantism would so far degenerate and lose its strength and vigor that it would unite with and support the papacy in this world-wide ecclesiastical empire. Those who are familiar with what is transpiring, know of the marvelous progress of the papacy, particularly in this great, liberty-loving United States. They know that the papacy is making similar progress in England, western Europe, and elsewhere. And they know furthermore that the line of distinction between the papist and the Protestant is rapidly fading away. We have our great world-wide federation of Protestant churches that has reached out its hand to the papal power, and together they are organizing, not so much for the advancement of the cause of Christ by the powers of persuasion, as He directed, but that they may exert their great strength of mere numbers to rule in the political conditions of the world as well as in the spiritual. History has ever shown that whenever the church enters politics, the political side is in the ascendancy, and her religion becomes enforced, tyrannical, and oppressive. The world is moving with such great intensity in business and in social pleasures, and there has been so much of enlightenment and progress in material things, that most people believe the twentieth century has placed us beyond the bounds of religious tyrannies and persecutions. But we are not warranted in these conclusions by the trend of these times. There were never in all this world such ominous and such overawing religious combinations as those that are forming to-day. None of the religious combinations that have ever been organized in the past have had the advantages of the railroad, the steamboat, and the telegraph, and therefore they could not make their work absolutely world-wide. But this despotism that is now coming has facilities by which it will be able to reach every nook and corner of the habitable globe. The words of the prophecy are: "And his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast." "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." Rev. 13: 3, 8. This religious despotism will reach its climax and go to its doom in this generation. If you prize eternal life, do not cast this aside as unworthy of attention, but study the trend of events in the light of God's plain, prophetic word.