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The Great Controversy
“The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war
against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical
power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of
Terror, did wage such a war against God and His holy word as the
world had never witnessed. The worship of the Deity was abolished
by the National Assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned
with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was
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trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The
weekly rest day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was
devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the Communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial
places declared death to be an eternal sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wis-
dom that it was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was
prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The “constitutional
bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the principal part in the
most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a na-
tional representation.... He was brought forward in full procession,
to declare to the Convention that the religion which he had taught so
many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no
foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn
and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he
had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage
of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table
his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the
president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed the
example of this prelate.”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and
make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two
prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” Infidel France had
silenced the reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The word of
truth lay dead in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and
requirements of God’s law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the
King of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried: “How doth God
know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?”
Psalm 73:11
.
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests
of the new order said: “God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name.
I bid You defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your