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The Great Controversy
in obscurity, war was to be made upon them by the power represented
as “the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the
nations of Europe the powers that ruled in church and state had for
centuries been controlled by Satan through the medium of the papacy.
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But here is brought to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome’s policy, under a profession of reverence for the
Bible, to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away
from the people. Under her rule the witnesses prophesied “clothed in
sackcloth.” But another power—the beast from the bottomless pit—
was to arise to make open, avowed war upon the word of God.
“The great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where
their dead bodies lie, is “spiritually” Egypt. Of all nations presented
in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living
God and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon
more open and highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven
than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by
Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered: “Who is
Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know
not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.”
Exodus 5:2
, A.R.V.
This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice
to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would manifest a
like spirit of unbelief and defiance. “The great city” is also compared,
“spiritually,” to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in breaking the law
of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And this sin was
also to be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that should fulfill
the specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before the year
1798 some power of satanic origin and character would rise to make
war upon the Bible. And in the land where the testimony of God’s
two witnesses should thus be silenced, there would be manifest the
atheism of the Pharaoh and the licentiousness of Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment
in the history of France. During the Revolution, in 1793, “the world
for the first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in
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civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the
European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn
truth which man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief
and worship of a Deity.”—Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1,