The European Union in Prophecy The EU in Prophecy I | Page 39

The European Union in Prophecy
tormenting flames. By such means did Rome fill her coffers and sustain the
magnificence, luxury, and vice of the pretended representatives of Him who had not
where to lay His head. (See Appendix.)
The Scriptural ordinance of the Lord's Supper had been supplanted by the
idolatrous sacrifice of the mass. Papal priests pretended, by their senseless mummery,
to convert the simple bread and wine into the actual "body and blood of Christ."--
Cardinal Wiseman, The Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ
in the Blessed Eucharist, Proved From Scripture, lecture 8, sec. 3, par. 26. With
blasphemous presumption, they openly claimed the power of creating God, the
Creator of all things. Christians were required, on pain of death, to avow their faith
in this horrible, Heaven-insulting heresy. Multitudes who refused were given to the
flames. (See Appendix.) In the thirteenth century was established that most terrible
of all the engines of the papacy--the Inquisition. The prince of darkness wrought with
the leaders of the papal hierarchy. In their secret councils Satan and his angels
controlled the minds of evil men, while unseen in the midst stood an angel of God,
taking the fearful record of their iniquitous decrees and writing the history of deeds
too horrible to appear to human eyes. "Babylon the great" was "drunken with the
blood of the saints." The mangled forms of millions of martyrs cried to God for
vengeance upon that apostate power.
Popery had become the world's despot. Kings and emperors bowed to the decrees
of the Roman pontiff. The destinies of men, both for time and for eternity, seemed
under his control. For hundreds of years the doctrines of Rome had been extensively
and implicitly received, its rites reverently performed, its festivals generally observed.
Its clergy were honoured and liberally sustained. Never since has the Roman Church
attained to greater dignity, magnificence, or power. But "the noon of the papacy was
the midnight of the world."--J. A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism, b. 1, ch. 4. The
Holy Scriptures were almost unknown, not only to the people, but to the priests. Like
the Pharisees of old, the papal leaders hated the light which would reveal their sins.
God's law, the standard of righteousness, having been removed, they exercised power
without limit, and practiced vice without restraint. Fraud, avarice, and profligacy
prevailed. Men shrank from no crime by which they could gain wealth or position.
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