The Great Controversy
by Ellen G. White
Chapter 15: The Bible and the French Revolution
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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 the
papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance; 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. {GC 265.1}
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. (See Appendix.) 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 [266]
years the teaching of the Roman Church had been tending. {GC 265.2}
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal
supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points also to the
terrible results that were to accrue especially to France from the domination
of the "man of sin." {GC 266.1}
Said the angel of the Lord: "The holy city shall they
tread underfoot 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 them. And their dead bodies
shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom
and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. . . . 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. And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered
into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which
saw them." Revelation 11:2-11. {GC 266.2}
The periods here mentioned—"forty and two
months," and "a thousand two hundred and threescore days"—are
the same, alike representing the time in which the church of Christ was to
suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260 years of papal supremacy began in A.D.
538, and would therefore terminate in 1798. (See Appendix note for page 54.) At
that time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a prisoner, and he died
in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward elected, the papal hierarchy has
never since been able to wield the power which it before possessed. {GC 266.3}
The persecution of the church did not continue throughout
the entire period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His people cut short the
time of their fiery trial. In foretelling the [267]
"great tribulation" to befall the church, the Saviour said:
"Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved:
but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." Matthew 24:22.
Through the influence of the Reformation the persecution was brought to an end
prior to 1798. {GC 266.4}
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further:
"These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before
the God of the earth." "Thy word," said the psalmist, "is a
lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Revelation 11:4; Psalm
119:105. The two witnesses represent the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament.
Both are important testimonies to the origin and perpetuity of the law of God.
Both are witnesses also to the plan of salvation. The types, sacrifices, and
prophecies of the Old Testament point forward to a Saviour to come. The Gospels
and Epistles of the New Testament tell of a Saviour who has come in the exact
manner foretold by type and prophecy. {GC 267.1}
"They shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and
three-score days, clothed in sackcloth." During the greater part of this
period, God's witnesses remained in a state of obscurity. The papal power
sought to hide from the people the word of truth, and set before them false
witnesses to contradict its testimony. (See Appendix.) When the Bible was
proscribed by religious and secular authority; when its testimony was
perverted, and every effort made that men and demons could invent to turn the
minds of the people from it; when those who dared proclaim its sacred truths
were hunted, betrayed, tortured, buried in dungeon cells, martyred for their
faith, or compelled to flee to mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of
the earth—then the faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet
they continued their testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In
the darkest times there were faithful men who loved God's word and were jealous
for His honor. To these loyal servants were [268] given
wisdom, power, and authority to declare His truth during the whole of this
time. {GC 267.2}
"And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of
their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he
must in this manner be killed." Revelation 11:5. Men cannot with impunity
trample upon the word of God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation is set
forth in the closing chapter of the Revelation: "I testify unto every man
that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God
shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and
from the things which are written in this book." Revelation 22:18, 19. {GC 268.1}
Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men
against changing in any manner that which He has revealed or commanded. These
solemn denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead men to regard
lightly the law of God. They should cause those to fear and tremble who
flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence whether we obey God's law
or not. All who exalt their own opinions above divine revelation, all who would
change the plain meaning of Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for the
sake of conforming to the world, are taking upon themselves a fearful
responsibility. The written word, the law of God, will measure the character of
every man and condemn all whom this unerring test shall declare wanting. {GC 268.2}
"When they shall have finished [are finishing] their
testimony." The period when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in
sackcloth, ended in 1798. As they were approaching the termination of their
work 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 [269] medium
of the papacy. But here is brought to view a new manifestation of satanic
power. {GC 268.3}
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. {GC 269.1}
"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. {GC 269.2}
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. {GC
269.3}
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, [270] born
and educated in 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, ch. 17. "France is the only nation in the world concerning which
the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open
rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of
infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England, Germany,
Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world's history as the
single state which, by the decree of her Legislative Assembly, pronounced that
there was no God, and of which the entire population of the capital, and a vast
majority elsewhere, women as well as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting
the announcement."—Blackwood's Magazine, November, 1870. {GC 269.4}
France presented also the characteristics which especially
distinguished Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral
debasement and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon the
cities of the plain. And the historian presents together the atheism and the
licentiousness of France, as given in the prophecy: "Intimately connected
with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of
marriage—the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and
the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society—to
the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two
persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure. . . . If fiends
had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying
whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of
obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their
object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they
could not have invented a more effectual plan that the degradation of marriage.
. . . Sophie Arnoult, an [271] actress famous for
the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as 'the sacrament
of adultery.'"—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17. {GC 270.1}
"Where also our Lord was crucified." This
specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the
spirit of enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country
had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution
which France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel, she had crucified
Christ in the person of His disciples. {GC 271.1}
Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed.
While the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont
"for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ," similar
witness to the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses of
France. In the days of the Reformation its disciples had been put to death with
horrible tortures. King and nobles, highborn women and delicate maidens, the
pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of
the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots, battling for those rights which the
human heart holds most sacred, had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought
field. The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads,
and they were hunted down like wild beasts. {GC 271.2}
The "Church in the Desert," the few descendants of
the ancient Christians that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century,
hiding away in the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their
fathers. As they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely moor, they
were chased by dragoons and dragged away to lifelong slavery in the galleys.
The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French were
chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22,
ch. 6.) Others, more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in cold blood, as,
unarmed and helpless, they fell upon their [272] knees
in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless women, and innocent children were
left dead upon the earth at their place of meeting. In traversing the
mountainside or the forest, where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was
not unusual to find "at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward,
and corpses hanging suspended from the trees." Their country, laid waste
with the sword, the ax, the fagot, "was converted into one vast, gloomy
wilderness." "These atrocities were enacted . . . in no
dark age, but in the brilliant era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated,
letters flourished, the divines of the court and of the capital were learned
and eloquent men, and greatly affected the graces of meekness and
charity."—Ibid., b. 22, ch. 7. {GC 271.3}
But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible
among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew
Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of that
most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish
priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling
at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants by thousands,
sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the plighted honor of their king,
were dragged forth without a warning and murdered in cold blood. {GC 272.1}
As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from
Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this
horrible work of multiplying martyrs. For seven days the massacre was continued
in Paris, the first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not confined to
the city itself, but by special order of the king was extended to all the
provinces and towns where Protestants were found. Neither age nor sex was
respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the man of gray hairs was spared.
Noble and peasant, old and young, mother and child, were cut down together.
Throughout France the butchery continued for two months. Seventy thousand of
the very flower of the nation perished. {GC 272.2}
"When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the [273]
exultation among the clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded
the messenger with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo thundered forth
a joyous salute; and bells rang out from every steeple; bonfires turned night
into day; and Gregory XIII, attended by the cardinals and other ecclesiastical
dignitaries, went in long procession to the church of St. Louis, where the
cardinal of Lorraine chanted a Te Deum. . . . A medal was
struck to commemorate the massacre, and in the Vatican may still be seen three
frescoes of Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral, the king in council
plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself. Gregory sent Charles the Golden
Rose; and four months after the massacre, . . . he listened
complacently to the sermon of a French priest, . . . who spoke of
'that day so full of happiness and joy, when the most holy father received the
news, and went in solemn state to render thanks to God and St. Louis.'"—Henry
White, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, ch. 14, par. 34. {GC 272.3}
The same master spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew
Massacre led also in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared to
be an impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was, "Crush
the Wretch," meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and abominable
wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of men, the most abandoned
monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly exalted. In all this, supreme
homage was paid to Satan; while Christ, in His characteristics of truth,
purity, and unselfish love, was crucified. {GC 273.1}
"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 [274] was
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. {GC
273.2}
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of
wisdom 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 national
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. {GC 274.1}
"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. {GC
274.2}
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 thunders.
Who after this will [275] believe in Your existence?"—Lacretelle,
History, vol. 11, p. 309; in Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe,
vol. 1, ch. 10. What an echo is this of the Pharaoh's demand: "Who is
Jehovah, that I should obey His voice?" "I know not Jehovah!" {GC 274.3}
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." Psalm 14:1. And the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the
truth: "Their folly shall be manifest unto all." 2 Timothy 3:9. After
France had renounced the worship of the living God, "the high and lofty
One that inhabiteth eternity," it was only a little time till she
descended to degrading idolatry, by the worship of the Goddess of Reason, in
the person of a profligate woman. And this in the representative assembly of
the nation, and by its highest civil and legislative authorities! Says the
historian: "One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivaled for
absurdity combined with impiety. The doors of the Convention were thrown open
to a band of musicians, preceded by whom, the members of the municipal body
entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and
escorting, as the object of their future worship, a veiled female, whom they
termed the Goddess of Reason. Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled
with great form, and placed on the right of the president, when she was
generally recognized as a dancing girl of the opera. . . . To this
person, as the fittest representative of that reason whom they worshiped, the
National Convention of France rendered public homage. {GC 275.1}
"This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain
fashion; and the installation of the Goddess of Reason was renewed and imitated
throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show
themselves equal to all the heights of the Revolution."—Scott,
vol. 1, ch. 17. {GC 275.2}
Said the orator who introduced the worship of Reason:
"Legislators! Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could
not endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has
assembled beneath those gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the
truth. There [276] the French have celebrated the
only true worship,—that of Liberty, that of Reason. There we have
formed wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the Republic. There we have
abandoned inanimate idols for Reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece
of nature."—M. A. Thiers, History of the French Revolution,
vol. 2, pp. 370, 371. {GC
275.3}
When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the orator
took her by the hand, and turning to the assembly said: "Mortals, cease to
tremble before the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears have created.
Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest and
purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such as this.
. . . Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil of
Reason!" {GC 276.1}
"The goddess, after being embraced by the president,
was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to the
cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There she was elevated
on the high altar, and received the adoration of all present."—Alison,
vol. 1, ch. 10. {GC 276.2}
This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning
of the Bible. On one occasion "the Popular Society of the Museum"
entered the hall of the municipality, exclaiming, "Vive la
Raison!" and carrying on the top of a pole the half-burned remains of
several books, among others breviaries, missals, and the Old and New
Testaments, which "expiated in a great fire," said the president,
"all the fooleries which they have made the human race commit."—Journal
of Paris, 1793, No. 318. Quoted in Buchez-Roux, Collection of
Parliamentary History, vol. 30, pp. 200, 201. {GC 276.3}
It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was
completing. The policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social,
political, and religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers, in
referring to the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are to be
charged upon the throne and the church. (See Appendix.) In strict justice they
are to be charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned the [277] minds
of kings against the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown, an element of
discord that would be fatal to the peace and harmony of the nation. It was the
genius of Rome that by this means inspired the direst cruelty and the most
galling oppression which proceeded from the throne. {GC 276.4}
The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the
gospel was received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast
off the shackles that had held them bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and
superstition. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it and trembled
for their despotism. {GC
277.1}
Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the
pope to the regent of France in 1525: "This mania [Protestantism] will not
only confound and destroy religion, but all principalities, nobility, laws,
orders, and ranks besides."— G. de Felice, History of the
Protestants of France, b. 1, ch. 2, par. 8. A few years later a papal
nuncio warned the king: "Sire, be not deceived. The Protestants will upset
all civil as well as religious order. . . . The throne is in as much
danger as the altar. . . . The introduction of a new religion must
necessarily introduce a new government."—D'Aubigne, History
of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, b. 2, ch. 36. And
theologians appealed to the prejudices of the people by declaring that the
Protestant doctrine "entices men away to novelties and folly; it robs the
king of the devoted affection of his subjects, and devastates both church and
state." Thus Rome succeeded in arraying France against the Reformation.
"It was to uphold the throne, preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws,
that the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in France."—Wylie,
b. 13, ch. 4. {GC 277.2}
Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of
that fateful policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the
minds and hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance, truth,
equity, and benevolence which are the very cornerstone of a nation's
prosperity. "Righteousness exalteth a nation." Thereby "the
throne is established." [278] Proverbs 14:34; 16:12. "The
work of righteousness shall be peace;" and the effect, "quietness and
assurance forever." Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the divine law will most
truly respect and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God will honor the
king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority. But unhappy France
prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples. Century after century, men of
principle and integrity, men of intellectual acuteness and moral strength, who
had the courage to avow their convictions and the faith to suffer for the truth—for
centuries these men toiled as slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or
rotted in dungeon cells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and
this continued for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the
Reformation. {GC 277.3}
"Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during
the long period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before
the insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence, the
arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently
excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in proportion
as they replenished other countries with these good gifts, did they empty their
own of them. If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if,
during these three hundred years, the industrial skill of the exiles had been
cultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, their artistic bent
had been improving her manufactures; if, during these three hundred years,
their creative genius and analytic power had been enriching her literature and
cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding her councils, their
bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion
of the Bible strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her
people, what a glory would at this day have encompassed France! What a great,
prosperous, and happy country—a pattern to the nations—would
she have been! [279] {GC 278.1}
"But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her
soil every teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of
the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a 'renown and
glory' in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake or exile. At last the
ruin of the state was complete; there remained no more conscience to be
proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to
be chased into banishment."—Wylie, b. 13, ch. 20. And the
Revolution, with all its horrors, was the dire result. {GC 279.1}
"With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline
settled upon France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile
districts returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral
declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became one vast
almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two
hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the hands of the king. The
Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful
tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys." {GC 279.2}
The gospel would have brought to France the solution of
those political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her
king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy and
ruin. But under the domination of Rome the people had lost the Saviour's
blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had been led away
from the practice of self-denial for the good of others. The rich had found no
rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude
and degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more
apparent and oppressive. For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble
resulted in grinding extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor,
and the poor hated the rich. {GC
279.3}
In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and
the laboring classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy [280]
of their landlords and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The
burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle and
lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and by the
clergy. "The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme law; the
farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors cared.
. . . The people were compelled at every turn to consult the
exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers were
lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if they ever
dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The courts of justice
would always listen to a noble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously
accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the force
of law, by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung
from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on
the other, not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury;
the rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who thus
impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from taxation, and
entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the state. The privileged
classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand, and for their gratification
millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading lives." (See Appendix.) {GC 279.4}
The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was
little confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion
fastened upon all the measures of the government as designing and selfish. For
more than half a century before the time of the Revolution the throne was
occupied by Louis XV, who, even in those evil times, was distinguished as an indolent,
frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a depraved and cruel aristocracy and an
impoverished and ignorant lower class, the state financially embarrassed and
the people exasperated, it needed no prophet's eye to foresee a terrible
impending outbreak. To the warnings of his counselors the king was accustomed
to reply: "Try to [281] make things go on as long as I
am likely to live; after my death it may be as it will." It was in vain
that the necessity of reform was urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the
courage nor the power to meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too truly
pictured in his indolent and selfish answer, "After me, the deluge!" {GC 280.1}
By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling
classes, Rome had influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing
that the state would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means to fasten
both rulers and people in her thrall. With farsighted policy she perceived that
in order to enslave men effectually, the shackles must be bound upon their
souls; that the surest way to prevent them from escaping their bondage was to
render them incapable of freedom. A thousandfold more terrible than the
physical suffering which resulted from her policy, was the moral degradation.
Deprived of the Bible, and abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and
selfishness, the people were shrouded in ignorance and superstition, and sunken
in vice, so that they were wholly unfitted for self-government. {GC 281.1}
But the outworking of all this was widely different from
what Rome had purposed. Instead of holding the masses in a blind submission to
her dogmas, her work resulted in making them infidels and revolutionists.
Romanism they despised as priestcraft. They beheld the clergy as a party to
their oppression. The only god they knew was the god of Rome; her teaching was
their only religion. They regarded her greed and cruelty as the legitimate
fruit of the Bible, and they would have none of it. {GC 281.2}
Rome had misrepresented the character of God and perverted
His requirements, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author. She had
required a blind faith in her dogmas, under the pretended sanction of the
Scriptures. In the reaction, Voltaire and his associates cast aside God's word
altogether and spread everywhere the poison of infidelity. Rome had ground down
the people under her iron heel; and now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in
their recoil from [282] her tyranny, cast off all
restraint. Enraged at the glittering cheat to which they had so long paid
homage, they rejected truth and falsehood together; and mistaking license for
liberty, the slaves of vice exulted in their imagined freedom. {GC 281.3}
At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the
king, the people were granted a representation exceeding that of the nobles and
the clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but they
were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager to redress the
wrongs they had suffered, they determined to undertake the reconstruction of
society. An outraged populace, whose minds were filled with bitter and
long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved to revolutionize the state of misery
that had grown unbearable and to avenge themselves upon those whom they
regarded as the authors of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out the
lesson they had learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of those who
had oppressed them. {GC
282.1}
Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown.
Terrible were the results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome.
Where France, under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first stake at
the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first
guillotine. On the very spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith
were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the
eighteenth. In repelling the gospel, which would have brought her healing,
France had opened the door to infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God's
law were cast aside, it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold
in check the powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to revolt
and anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in the
world's history as the Reign of Terror. Peace and happiness were banished from
the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He who triumphed today was
suspected, condemned, tomorrow. Violence and lust held undisputed sway. [283]
{GC 282.2}
King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the
atrocities of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was
only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed his
death soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected
of hostility to the Revolution was determined. The prisons were crowded, at one
time containing more than two hundred thousand captives. The cities of the
kingdom were filled with scenes of horror. One party of revolutionists was
against another party, and France became a vast field for contending masses,
swayed by the fury of their passions. "In Paris one tumult succeeded
another, and the citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed
intent on nothing but mutual extermination." And to add to the general
misery, the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with the
great powers of Europe. "The country was nearly bankrupt, the armies were
clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving, the provinces were
laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost extinguished in anarchy and
license." {GC 283.1}
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty
and torture which Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at last
had come. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust into dungeons
and dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished or been driven into
exile. Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power of those whom she had trained
to delight in deeds of blood. "The example of persecution which the clergy
of France had exhibited for so many ages, was now retorted upon them with
signal vigor. The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys
and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors.
Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy
experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted on the
gentle heretics." (See Appendix.) [284] {GC 283.2}
"Then came those days when the most barbarous of all
codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man
could greet his neighbors or say his prayers . . . without danger of
committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when the
guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled
as close as the holds of a slave ship; when the gutters ran foaming with blood
into the Seine. . . . While the daily wagonloads of victims were
carried to their doom through the streets of Paris, the proconsuls, whom the
sovereign committee had sent forth to the departments, reveled in an
extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of the deadly
machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long rows of
captives were mowed down with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of
crowded barges. Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy
of a speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur
to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined
together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to sex or age. The number of
young lads and of girls of seventeen who were murdered by that execrable
government, is to be reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed
from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks." (See Appendix.) In the short
space of ten years, multitudes of human beings perished. {GC 284.1}
All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages
he had been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and
his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to deface and
defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and
love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds the
minds of men, and leads them to throw back the blame of his work upon God, as
if all this misery were the result of the Creator's plan. In like manner, when [285]
those who have been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve
their freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture
of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an
illustration of the results of liberty. {GC 284.2}
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks
it in a different disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the
first. When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not
through this agency lead them to transgression of God's law, he urged them to
regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and, casting aside
the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled iniquity. {GC 285.1}
The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants
of France was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom lies within
the proscriptions of the law of God. "O that thou hadst hearkened to My
commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the
waves of the sea." "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the
wicked." "But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall dwell safely, and shall
be quiet from fear of evil." Isaiah 48:18, 22; Proverbs 1:33. {GC 285.2}
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God's
law; but the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is
bound up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will not read the
lesson from the book of God are bidden to read it in the history of nations. {GC 285.3}
When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead men away
from obedience, his agency was concealed, and his work was so disguised that
the degradation and misery which resulted were not seen to be the fruit of
transgression. And his power was so far counteracted by the working of the
Spirit of God that his purposes were prevented from reaching their full
fruition. The people did not trace the effect to its cause and discover the
source of their miseries. But in the [286]
Revolution the law of God was openly set aside by the National Council. And in
the Reign of Terror which followed, the working of cause and effect could be
seen by all. {GC 285.4}
When France publicly rejected God and set aside the Bible,
wicked men and spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so
long desired—a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God. Because
sentence against an evil work was not speedily executed, therefore the heart of
the sons of men was "fully set in them to do evil." Ecclesiastes
8:11. But the transgression of a just and righteous law must inevitably result
in misery and ruin. Though not visited at once with judgments, the wickedness
of men was nevertheless surely working out their doom. Centuries of apostasy
and crime had been treasuring up wrath against the day of retribution; and when
their iniquity was full, the despisers of God learned too late that it is a
fearful thing to have worn out the divine patience. The restraining Spirit of
God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan, was in a great
measure removed, and he whose only delight is the wretchedness of men was permitted
to work his will. Those who had chosen the service of rebellion were left to
reap its fruits until the land was filled with crimes too horrible for pen to
trace. From devastated provinces and ruined cities a terrible cry was heard—a
cry of bitterest anguish. France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion,
law, social order, the family, the state, and the church—all were
smitten down by the impious hand that had been lifted against the law of God.
Truly spoke the wise man: "The wicked shall fall by his own
wickedness." "Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days
be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God,
which fear before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked." Proverbs
11:5; Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. "They hated knowledge, and did not choose the
fear of the Lord;" "therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their
own way, and be filled with their own devices." Proverbs 1:29, 31. [287]
{GC 286.1}
God's faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power
that "ascendeth out of the bottomless pit," were not long to remain
silent. "After three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered
into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which
saw them." Revelation 11:11. It was in 1793 that the decrees which
abolished the Christian religion and set aside the Bible passed the French
Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding these decrees,
thus granting toleration to the Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The
world stood aghast at the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection
of the Sacred Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His
word as the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord: "Whom hast
thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice,
and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel,"
Isaiah 37:23. "Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know, this once
will I cause them to know My hand and My might; and they shall know that My
name is Jehovah." Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V. {GC 287.1}
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further:
"And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up
hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld
them." Revelation 11:12. Since France made war upon God's two witnesses,
they have been honored as never before. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible
Society was organized. This was followed by similar organizations, with
numerous branches, upon the continent of Europe. In 1816 the American Bible
Society was founded. When the British Society was formed, the Bible had been
printed and circulated in fifty tongues. It has since been translated into many
hundreds of languages and dialects. (See Appendix.) {GC 287.2}
For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was
given to the work of foreign missions. No new societies were formed, and there
were but few churches that made any [288] effort for the
spread of Christianity in heathen lands. But toward the close of the eighteenth
century a great change took place. Men became dissatisfied with the results of
rationalism and realized the necessity of divine revelation and experimental
religion. From this time the work of foreign missions attained an unprecedented
growth. (See Appendix.) {GC
287.3}
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The improvements in printing have given an impetus to the
work of circulating the Bible. The increased facilities for communication
between different countries, the breaking down of ancient barriers of prejudice
and national exclusiveness, and the loss of secular power by the pontiff of
Rome have opened the way for the entrance of the word of God. For some years
the Bible has been sold without restraint in the streets of Rome, and it has
now been carried to every part of the habitable globe. {GC 288.1}
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said: "I am weary
of hearing people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I
will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it." Generations have
passed since his death. Millions have joined in the war upon the Bible. But it
is so far from being destroyed, that where there were a hundred in Voltaire's
time, there are now ten thousand, yes, a hundred thousand copies of the book of
God. In the words of an early Reformer concerning the Christian church,
"The Bible is an anvil that has worn out many hammers." Saith the
Lord: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn."
Isaiah 54:17. {GC 288.2}
"The word of our God shall stand forever."
"All His commandments are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are
done in truth and uprightness." Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 111:7, 8. Whatever is
built upon the authority of man will be overthrown; but that which is founded
upon the rock of God's immutable word shall stand forever. {GC 288.3}
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"The Pilgrim Fathers"
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