CHAPTER XI
MEASURES OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVEN TIMES.
WE must next note a number of deeply interesting facts connected with
the measures of the SECOND HALF of this great dispensational week of "seven
times "-facts which seem to indicate that the oft-repeated "time,
times, and a half"is adjusted, like the whole period, to run out
on the three astronomical scales, and to lead in a similar way, to successive
stages of the predicted historical movements. The bisection dates of the
rise of the Papacy are, as we have shown, especially the following:
A.D. 533. Justinian’s pope-exalting decree.
590. Accession of Gregory the Great.
607. Decree of Phocas.
663. Vitalian’s Latinizing decree.
Now from these dates, as starting-points, measure on the three astronomic
scales the "time, times, and a half" of the predicted duration
of the Papacy.
Lunar Calendar Solar A.D. 533 1755 1774-5 1793
A.D. 607 1830 1848-9 1867-70
A.D. 663 1885 1905 1923
The result is three groups of dates, the two first of which are all connected
with Papal overthrow in the most definite and unquestionable manner.
The first group consists of, first, Voltaire’s literary incendiarism;
secondly, the accession of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and thirdly,
the Reign of Terror. The second group gives the dates of the anti-Papal
revolutions, which caused:
1. The abdication of Charles X., after the three days’ war of the
barricades in Paris and the victory of the people. Belgium became independent
this same year; Saxony, Hesse Cassel, Mannheim, Weimar, Hanau, and Jena,
all obtained from their rulers constitutional government; and the Papal
chair was for two months vacant.
2. The remarkable set of anti-Papal revolutions eighteen years later,
1848, the year of the great revolutionary earthquake before alluded to.
3. The year 1870-the final fall of the temporal power. The four years
1866- 70, years fresh in the memory of this generation, witnessed the
final stage in the overthrow of the long-falling temporal power of the
Papacy. The first Napoleon had dealt it heavy blows, blows of such stunning
force that it seemed almost dead. But it still possessed some vitality,
and revived for a time. The injuries received had nevertheless been fatal,
and the recovery was more in appearance than reality. The powerful reactionary
policy of the allies, and the fears of the generation which had witnessed
the French Revolution, and of the succeeding one, threw back the cause
of liberty and the progress of nations for a time. The former tyrannies
were reinstated, and maintained with a vigilance born of fear; and just
as France had to submit to the old Bourbon despotism, so Rome had for
a time to submit again to the popes. The submission, however, was an unwilling
and restless one, during the whole period from the peace of 1815 to the
overthrow of 1870. Italian aspirations for national unity and for political
liberty-kindled by the French Revolution, and quickened by subsequent
ones and by the examples of other nations-formed a powerful factor in
the question. The popes adopted a line of conduct which could not have
been better chosen had they desired to secure their own overthrow. They
had learned no lesson from the adversity they had suffered. Pius IX.,
who became pope in 1846, attempted at first some liberal reforms, and
had he continued this policy he might have staved off the evil day. But
it was not to be; the long impending downfall was to reach its close during
his pontificate, and, all unwittingly to himself, he consistently acted
as if he wished to hasten it. The adversities of his predecessor, and
his own, had taught him no wisdom. Even after the revolution of 1848,
which made him for two years an exile, he pursued the same tyrannical
course. When in 1850 he returned to Rome, under the protection of French
soldiery, his policy became only more suicidal than ever. He re-established
the Jesuits, re-opened the dungeons of the inquisition, and deliberately
set himself to reorganize the European commonwealth on the model of the
darkest days of the dark ages. On his own sole authority, without the
concurrence even of a council-a thing that no pope had ever done before-he
added a new dogma to the faith of the universal Church, the foolish and
idolatrous doctrine of the "immaculate conception," which all
men were required, on pain of damnation, to receive. He reorganized a
Roman Catholic hierarchy for Protestant England, and busied himself in
canonizing saints and gathering around him in Rome numerous and imposing
bodies of bishops and dignitaries from every part of the world. He enforced
in Rome a law prohibiting Protestant worship, save at the embassies; persecuted
those who dared to read the Scriptures in the social circle; and at last
compiled and published his famous "Syllabus"; gathered his great
Ocumenical Council of the Vatican; so managed it that the assembled archbishops,
princes, cardinals, patriarchs, bishops, abbots, generals of orders, etc.,
had no liberty even to discuss the great question brought before them,
but were fraudulently forced to pronounce in favour of the superlatively
absurd and monstrously wicked dogma of Papal infallibility. This new canon
of the Roman Catholic Church was decreed July, 1870.
The blindness of the Roman pontiff and his hierarchy to the truth, to
the temper of the times, to the state of Europe, and to the doom immediately
impending over them, was complete. A strange, judicial insanity seemed
to have befallen them. Men marvelled at their madness, and Bible students
recalled the solemn statement of the apostle about this Romish apostasy-that
because they would not receive the truth of the gospel in the love of
it, therefore God would send them, in judgment, strong delusion, so that
they would believe a lie, to their own condemnation and ruin.
Very speedily was the blasphemy of this infallibility decree rebuked by
the Most High! The same day that it was published, there was despatched
from Paris to Berlin the declaration of war which sealed the fate of the
second French empire, and with it that of the temporal power of the Papacy.
July 18th, on which the pope read, amid the thunder and lightning of an
awful storm, the decree which marked the climax of Papal pretension, the
announcement of his own infallibility, Napoleon III. despatched his challenge
to Germany. We know what followed: how Protestant Prussia humbled herself
before God by a day of special prayer on the 27th, and besought His blessing
on her quickly gathering armies; how the wicked and withered and bloodstained
emperor of Catholic France, accompanied by his poor, unfortunate boy,
assumed the next day the command of the wretchedly organized French troops
at Metz; how the Germans defeated the French, both at Weissembourg and
at Geisburg, on August 4th, and on the 6th at Worth and Forbach; how they
bombarded Strasburg and defeated Bazaine, and drove him back into Metz,
gained another great victory at Gravelotte, and forced the emperor and
the entire army into SEDAN, where, on September 2nd, they had to surrender,
and were all taken prisoners; how 300,000 men marched on Paris, and establishing
their headquarters at Versailles, besieged it in September; how other
German armies overran all France; how Bazaine had to surrender Metz and
173,000 men in October; and how, before the end of the year, France lay
bleeding and prostrate at the feet of her Protestant foes, without an
army in the field or an ally in Europe. And we know also how, long before
this crisis arrived in France- Rome having been evacuated by the French
troops, which were sorely needed at home-the pontifical government fell,
to rise no more. The king of Italy forewarned the pope of his intention
to occupy Rome on September 8th, and did so in the following month. Rome
decided, by an overwhelming vote, for union with Italy, and was, with
its surrounding territories, incorporated by Royal decree with the Italian
kingdom in October, 1870.
This was the full and final fall of the temporal power of the Papacy.
It was on the day of the last meeting of the council, which had deified
a man by declaring him possessed of the Divine attribute of infallibility,
that Victor Emmanuel’s announcement reached Rome; it was on the day
that the German armies closed round Paris that the Italian general Cadorna
invested Rome. The struggle lasted but a few hours; the pope understood
that further resistance would be mere wanton waste of life, for his Zonaves
numbered but 8,000, and 50,000 Italians were arrayed against him. As soon
as a breach had been made in the walls of Rome, the word to surrender
was given.
"There, yea, there, on the proud dome of St. Peter’s, being
raised, and beginning to flutter, was the white flag; and there, unwinding
itself, did it float out upon the September breeze, and waved in the forenoon
sun- waved over pontiff and cardinal, over the circus of Nero and the
inquisition of the popes. Was it real? Eyes would be wiped to see if they
did not deceive. Eyes-ay, the, eyes of soldiers- would be wiped from thick,
hot tears. Could it he-could it ever be? Come at last! The hour for which
ages had impatiently waited, for which myriads of Italians had died. Italy
one! Her arms, outstretched from Etna and Monte Rosa, clasping at last
every one of her children; and even availing, by their returning strength,
to lift up her poor old Rome from under the load of the priest and the
stranger.
"He who two brief months before had, amid deep darkness at noonday,
read out by artificial light the decree of his own unlimited power and
irreformable law, lay down that night amid a rude and intrusive glare
streaming from across the Tiber into the multitudinous windows of the
Vatican. It came from the lights of Rome, all ablaze with illuminations
for the fall of the temporal power." [Rev. W. Arthur, MA: "The
Pope, the Kings, and the People."]
Even so Romanist an authority as Cardinal Manning admits that this fall
is unlike any of the previous preliminary temporary falls. He says: "There
is one point in which the present crisis of the Holy See and of the Christian
Church differs from all that has gone before it.. Always in the ages past,
when one or more of the European powers were in conflict with the Holy
See, one or more of the other powers were friendly and gave it protection..
Now not one stands in its defence they have all with one accord hid their
faces from the vicar of our Lord; they are all consenting to the deed.
The princes and rulers of Christendom have forsaken their Master, and
their silence in the hour of danger is flight. Never till now have all
the nations of Europe consented in the deed of the nations who have usurped
Rome. Never till now has the public law of Europe been changed to sanction
the usurpation. For the first time the HEAD OF CHRISTENDOM is excluded
from the senate of Christian sovereigns, though the temporal sovereignty
of the supreme pontiff is of Divine institution"
[The whole course of these four years was filled with events singularly
fatal to the Papacy, including overthrows of Catholic Austria, Spain,
France, and the Papal States of Italy. The decisive battle of Sadowa,
in 1866, between Protestant Prussia and Papal Austria, settled the question
of ascendancy in central Europe in favour of Prussia and Protestantism,
and that for the first time in history. The conspicuous loss of power
in all Papal countries was crowned at last, when the prophetic period
had fully run out, by the final overthrow of the secular power of the
popes in Rome itself. The year 1866 was the 1260th solar year from the
decree, and 1870 the 1260th from the death of Phocas. - Manning: "Temporal
Power," Preface, p. xiii., Third Edition.]
Chronologically the four last years of the temporal power of the Papacy
were removed from the four last years of the Emperor Phocas, whose decree
appointed the pope to the headship of all the Christian Churches, by
"TIME., TIMES, AND A HALF,"
or 1,260 full solar years. The decree of Phocas, memorialized by a pillar
still standing in Rome, was given in AD. 607, and the emperor died in
A.D. 610.
AD. 606-610 1,260 years, solar 1866-1870
Can any one suppose that these things happen by accident?
Consider what a combination is here! Far back, at the beginning of the
dark ages, a wicked usurper and murderer, thinking perhaps to atone for
his crimes, presumes to bestow a prerogative which pertains to Christ
alone-the headship of all the Christian Churches East and West-on the
bishop of the ancient seat of the empire, ROME; and the ambitious and
worldly-minded bishop dares to accept the gift, and seat himself in the
temple of God, as if he were God. Divine prophecy had foretold, more than
a thousand years before, the uprising of this power at this period, and
had foretold also that it should endure in the Roman world for 1,260 years.
We pass on through the centuries, and note how this same power grows greater
and greater, till it wields an authority mightier than that of the Caesars
at the pinnacle of their glory, for it rules over two hundred millions
of mankind, and, according to its own account, rules not in earth only,
but in heaven and in hell. We note how the saints are given into its hand,
and perish by millions at its instigation.
We note how all the monarchs of the Roman world give it their voluntary
submission for centuries, and how at last they rebel against it, and seek
to overthrow it; how they succeed in doing this time after time, though
not fully or finally, till, when eleven centuries have been left behind
us, we see this power declining and failing. Twelve pass away; it is weaker
still! Will it last out to a thirteenth? No; its duration is fixed at
1,260 years. We scan its condition more closely. Fall succeeds fall; yet
it rises again, or rather, is helped up again. The last four years are
come; it still stands trembling. The fateful year is ushered in. Its first
six months pass, and there is no sign of a crash; midsummer comes, and,
lo! the storm breaks, and before winter appears all is over-as a reigning
dynasty in Europe it has fallen, to rise no more! Is not this the finger
of God?
Another fact should also be noted here. From this notable date of the
fall of the most idolatrous, corrupt, and persecuting power which the
world has ever seen, the power which, in the ancient prediction of Daniel
vii. is represented as the cause of the destruction of the Roman world,-from
the fall of the temporal power of the Papacy, we go back "seven times";
and where do we land in the remote captivity era of Israel and Judah?
In the reign of Manasseh, whose sins are especially assigned as the provoking
cause of the Babylonian overthrow.
Of him it is said, in #2Ki 21 -
1. That he went to the greatest lengths in idolatry, introducing carved
images into the very temple of God, restoring the altars and groves which
his father Hezekiah had destroyed, making his son pass through the fire,
and worshipping and serving all the host of heaven.
2. That he imitated and even exceeded the wickedness of the heathen round
about him in their ways, and seduced his subjects to follow his example,
until they were more corrupt and abominable than the Canaanites whom the
Lord had cast out before Israel.
3. That he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood.
It is scarcely needful to point out that in all these points, idolatry,
corruption, and bloodshed, as well as in his being the cause of the ruin
of Judah, this Manasseh was a most striking type of the Papal antichrist,
who filled the Church with image and saint worship and mariolatry, with
indulgences and corruptions, and with persecution and bloodshed.
1260
B.C. 650. AD. 610. AD. 1870.
EASTERN BISECTION DATES.
If we take now the two bisection dates which have to do with the rise
of the Mohammedan power and the eastern question, instead of with the
rise of the Roman Papacy in the West, we shall find that three and a half
"times," both from the Hegira era and the Omar capture of Jerusalem,
lead down to years which witnessed stages of overthrow of the Ottoman
power. The Mohammedan calendar is, as we have said, strictly lunar, and
dates from the Hegira era, as our calendar, which is solar, dates from
Anno Domini. Measuring 1,260 years from the Hegira, we reach on the lunar
scale 1841, and on the solar 1882. [Our present year, 1887, is the Mohammedan
year 1804-1806.]
A.D. 622 1,260 lunar years 1844 A.D. 622 1,260 solar years 1882
It will be remembered that the first of these years, 1844, was that of
the Turkish Hatti Hamayoun, or enforced decree of religious toleration-a
decree, the granting of which was a proof of the complete loss of independence
of the Porte; and 1882 was the recent year which witnessed the bombardment
of Alexandria, the notable victory of Tel-el-Kebir, and the occupation
of Cairo, the total defeat of the Mohammedan rebellion, and the virtual
establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt-a movement, the whole
of which was a heavy blow to the Porte, as her authority was through it,
virtually though not nominally, brought to an end in Egypt.
From the second bisection date, the Omar capture of Jerusalem, A.D. 637,
three and a half "times" have already ran out on the lunar and
calendar scales, but not yet on the full solar.
1260
A.D. 637 lunar 1860 A.D. 637 calender 1877-8 A.D. 637 solar 1897
The first of these years was, as we have already shown, a most critical
one in the history of the Porte and in the history of the Jews. It was
the first stage in the liberation of the Holy Land from direct Turkish
rule,- an early stage in the cleansing of the sanctuary from the power
of the desolater; and it was also the year of the formation of the "Universal
Israelite Alliance," an initial step towards Jewish national reorganization.
The action of England and France in Syria on this occasion must be considered
a marked stage in the decline of the Ottoman power, as each such interference
with its governmental action is an additional demonstration to the world
of its loss of independence.
Though having mainly to do with the East, this year was, as we have seen,
a critical or in the West also. It was the year of Garibaldi’s victories
in Italy, and of the proclamation of the first Italian king who reigned
over that long-divided and priest-ridden land since the days of the old
Roman empire. The calendar termination from this Omar date is the year
1878, the year of the Berlin Conference, with its wholesale dismemberment
of Turkey. The remaining solar termination is still ten years distant,
1897. What is it likely to witness? Some more final and fatal fall of
Ottoman power? or some more distinct stage of Jewish restoration? or both?
Time will declare.
Index Preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Appendix A Appendix B
