Chapter 15—The Bible and the French Revolution
In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible
to the people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe.
Some nations welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven.
In other lands, popery succeeded, to a great extent, in preventing its en-
trance; and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences,
was almost wholly excluded. In one country, though the light found
entrance, it was not comprehended by the darkness. For centuries,
truth and error struggled for the mastery. At last the evil triumphed,
and the truth of Heaven was thrust out. “This is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than
light.” [
John 3:19
.] The nation was left to reap the results of the course
which she had chosen. The restraint of God’s Spirit was removed from
a people that had despised the gift of his grace. Evil was permitted to
come to maturity. And all the world saw the fruit of willful rejection
of the light.
The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries
in France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible
outbreaking was but the legitimate result of Rome’s suppression of
the Scriptures. It presented the most striking illustration which the
world has ever witnessed, of the working out of the papal policy,—an
illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand years the
teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal
supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points
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also to the terrible results that were to accrue especially to France from
the domination of “the man of sin.”
Said the angel of the Lord: “The holy city [the true church] shall
they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto
my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred
and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth....And when they shall have
finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless
pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill
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