Appendix
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institution corresponding in nature with Christmas, Good Friday, and
other festivals of the church.” [
Cox’s Sabbath Laws, p. 281.
]
Note 2. Page 54—In the twelfth chapter of Revelation we have
as a symbol a great red dragon. In the ninth verse of that chapter this
symbol is explained as follows: “And the great dragon was cast out,
that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole
world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with
him.” Undoubtedly the dragon primarily represents Satan. But Satan
does not appear upon the earth in person; he works through agents.
[680]
It was in the person of wicked men that he sought to destroy Jesus
as soon as he was born. Wherever Satan has been able to control a
government so fully that it would carry out his designs, that nation
became, for the time, Satan’s representative. This was the case with
all the great heathen nations. For instance, see
Ezekiel 28
, where
Satan is represented as actual king of Tyre. This was because he fully
controlled that government. In the first centuries of the Christian era,
Rome, of all the pagan nations, was Satan’s chief agent in opposing
the gospel, and was therefore represented by the dragon.
But there came a time when paganism in the Roman empire fell
before the advancing form of Christianity. Then, as is stated on page
54, “paganism had given place to the papacy. The dragon had given to
the beast ‘his power, and his seat, and great authority.’” That is, Satan
then began to work through the papacy, just as he had formerly worked
through paganism. But the papacy is not represented by the dragon,
because it is necessary to introduce another symbol in order to show
the change in the form of the opposition to God. Previous to the rise
of the papacy, all opposition to the law of God had been in the form
of paganism,—God had been openly defied; but from that time the
opposition was carried on under the guise of professed allegiance to
him. The papacy, however, was no less the instrument of Satan than
was pagan Rome; for all the power, the seat, and the great authority of
the papacy, were given it by the dragon. And so, although the pope
professes to be the vicegerent of Christ, he is, in reality, the vicegerent
of Satan—he is antichrist.
The beast which is A symbol of the papacy is introduced in
Rev-
elation 13
; And following it, in the same line of prophecy, “another
beast” is seen “coming up,” [
Revelation 13:11-14
.] Which exercises
“all the power of the first beast before him,” that is, in his sight. This