The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-10 00:00:00

Rome, and being unable to bring the masses of the popula-
tion back to Paganism, they had sufficient influence to
graft upon a Christianity, already far declined, not a few
of their heathen rites and observances,. and thus produced
the anti-christian mongrel Popery. Now we read in Rev.
xiii. 3,4, 7 :—" All the world wondered after the beast;"
again,. " and they worshipped the beast," and again " power
was given him over all kindreds and tongues, and nations,
and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him."
And again Rev. xvii. 2, " The kings of the earth," and
" the inhabitants of the earth " are represented as made
drunk with the wine of her fornication. The application
of this is to be found in the fact of the Popes in the middle
ages putting their feet upon the necks of mighty kings,
and the almost unlimited influence which Romanists
themselves boast the Pope and their clergy have over
them. Ninthly—The blasphemous names that it assumes.
Of the beast that came up out of the sea we read, Rev. xiii.
1, that he had " upon his head the name blasphemy," and
of the woman, Rev. xvii. 3, we are told she was full of
names of blasphemy." Now, to pass by such names as
our Lord God the Pope, " another God on earth," and
such like given to him and assumed by him, we refer to the
title by which he is universally known. In that most
exalted of all the visions of the Almighty with which man
has ever been favoured, that given in Isaiah vi., the highest.
of the Heaeingly hosts cover their faceswith their wings, and
cry "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts." God is said to be
" love." He is infinite and perfect in all his attributes,
but holiness is the only one that is thrice repeated, and
thus applied to him, as if to teach us that, of all the per-
fections of the Divine Being, holiness is that one pecu-
liarly and especially his. He is " the Holy One of Israel."
Well, what is the title of the Pope ? We stop not to
inquire what sort of man he is.. He. is a man, with all
the infirmities of humanity, and yet ventures to assume
the peculiar title of the Great God and to call himself
" his holiness " the Pope.—Tenthly, He usurps the pre-
rogatives and powers of God. The little horn was to
speak great worde, against the Most High, Daniel vii 25.
And as " the man of sin," " as God, sitteth in the temple
of God, showing himself that he is God." The applica-
tion of this, mark, is the fact that the Pope usurps the
infallibility of God the Father, re-enacts the perfect and
finished sacrifice of the Son, and altogether does away, by
the fires of purgatory, with the sanctifying work of God
the Spirit, and, in general, claims the powers of God upon
the earth, according to the words of Clement VII.—"As
there is but one God in heaven, so there is not, nor ought
to be of right, but one God on the earth."—Eleventh;
Persecution : The little horn of Daniel was to "wear out
the saints of the Most High." The woman was " drunken
with the !sloe/ad the saints and with the blood of the martyri
•of Jesus," Rev. xvii. 6; and, when destroyed, in her will
be " found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all
that were slain upon the earth." Rev. xviii. 51. On this
point, whether we look into the nature of Popery, or into
her principles, as taught by her infallible councils and. •
divines, or into her practices for many centuries, where
the had the power' she stands before us as the literal em-
bodiment of the language of prophecy.— Twelfth, " Doc-
trines of devils," or demons ; the demons of the heathen
being identical with the saints and intercessors of the
Church of Rome.— Thirteenth, " Forbidding to marry,"
which some Romish priest will perhaps explain.—Four-
teenth, " Commanding to abstain from meats," or the
fastings of the Papacy.—Fift,eenth, Lying wonders and
pretended miracles, Rev, xiii. 14, and-xix. 20, of which it
is not necessary to make any application.—And,
" Having their conscience seared with a hot iron," / 'rim.
iv. 2, upon which supposition alone we can account for ,
men who boast to be consistent members of the one
Catholic Church, which we are told is every where the
same, shouting for civil•aod religious liberty in England,
and, with the same breath, vindicating the tyranny-and
persecutions of the 'continent. Such are some Of the
conclusive marks by which we prove the Church of Rome
to be the Apostacy of the Scriptures. .
Our fourth pointis,that this apostacy is to be destroyed.
It is not to be reformed nor pardoned, but destroyed. Of
the little horn see are told, Dan. vii., 11, 12 : I beheld
even till the beast was slain and his body destroyed, and
given to the burting flame.. As concerning the rest of
the beasts, they had their dominion taken away; yet their
lives were prolonged for a season and a time." In Rev.
xvii. s 'The ten 'horns shall hate the woman and make
her desolate and snaked, and shall eat her fie 's-jh and burn
her with fire ." and throughout the whole of the eighteenth
chapter of Revelations her complete .destruction is re-
peatedly stated.; and in the nineteenth chapter the beast
and false prophet are " cast alive into a lake of fire burn-
ing with brimatene." It is remarkable thttin every place
the destructionis said to be by fire, from:which some have
concluded that Rome will be destroyedly a volcanic erup-
tion, and•that the judgment will be so signal as to give a
deadly him to the system throughout the world, Who,
then, shall condemn us for exposing what God.himself has
thus destined-to ruin.
The fifth point is, the period of its 'continuance.' With
ereferencg to our Lord's coming to suffer, there is but one
passagewhich gives the exact tirae,tbat with respect to
'his- coming to bring in his kingdom .and overthrow anti-
`Christ, there are many. Thus, in the eighth chapter of
Daniel, in the vision of the Persian rain and the rough
'goat, which is the King of Grecia, there is a time marked
in the 14th verse—namely, 2,300.k1ay. In reply to the
question'. put in the twelfth Chapter•cf Daniel—" Ho- long
,should it 'be to the end of these- wonders ?" There is a
three-ford answer given: "A time, times, and a half.; •
*" A thousand two hundred and itimety days :" and again, •
'4' A thousand three hundred and 'five and thirty days."
'ln 2 •Peter, third chapter, in expoalang the scofihrs who'
-denied the-promise of Christ's 'coining, he says: "One day
is with the lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
-as one day:" Apparently a calculation of some kind about •
`the coming of Christ, which these men denied, and drawn.
-from creation to which they had referred. In the eleventh
of Reveletion the two witnesses -prophecy in saekloth, " A •
thousandtwo hundred and threescore daysi." In theseme
chapter the holy city is trodden down forty-and-two
-rnonthi." In the twelfth of Revelations in two places,
the churelids preserved from the great red dragon for '
thousand two hundred and threesceore days," and for ".a.
time; times, and a half," and in the Thirteenth chapter the,
'beast out eifthe sea has power for'-"-forty-two months."
I Now, we-take " a time" to tea year of twelve months,
and a month to be thirty days -ose "a time, times, and a
half," -forty-two months, and uthoneand two hundred and'
three scoredlays, are one and theeesme period. The pro-.
-phetie language " a day" meaeaseeyear. Thus,when
ec. 4, was 'commanded to lie 290 ,dzys on his side ; and,
eagaino4o.days, he is told that it .me arts 290 years, and 40-
eyears, "each day for a year." •Thel7o weeks that Dania
'said were determined before Chrisliteshoutld come
we w
ere ten
e 490'
-years, that is, a day for a year. ere, hen,
-periods noted in different places,:bnt all about the same
time, arid referring to the same thing with a certain grin-•
-ciple of interpretation ; and the only .question is, where are,
eve to begin to reckon them. The main feature of Popery
is the power and pretensions of the;Fope ; all the rest is
-mere detail. -If, then, we can eafelyOfx them
tie when
'fire assumed his peculiar powers, the rest is a mere mat-,
-ter of calculation. About the year 530 these powers .ap-
-pear to have l r given by the Emperor Justinian, and,
-reckoning from this 1,260 yearsovill'tring us to 1790, the
• period of the French Revolution, when France, the eldest
son of the Church, rebelled against 'tins Papacy, and be
=came as a nation infidel ; 1,290 years-bring-8 us down to.
1820, the revolt of Greece, and the Iseenning of the break-
big op of the Turkish power ; and IPS to 1865, which,
• if-530 is the starting point, will undoubtedly be about the
dougdooked-for period of the coming sa our Lord, which
is to effect the utter ruin of Babylon:; 'then, 2,300 years
spoken of in connetion with the Pergian ram, if we date
from -the expedition of Xerxes to Grew, A.D. 480, will
'bring us to 1820 ; said it is worthy •of 'remark that the
language in Dan. xii., 11, where the 1;290 days is noted,
-refers '"-to the daily sacrifice," as does that of the Bth
ad 13th and 14th v., a both terminate in 1820—Turkey
'being- the power by wltich Jerusalem is trodden down, and
that yearlaeing the beginning of its end. The passage in •
2d Peter, 3, of one day being as a thousand years, and
a thousand-years as one day, in the connetion in which it
stands; would seem to countenance the interpretation that
-each day repolients a thousand years ; the beginning of
the seventh thousand worikl introduce the enillenium of
Test, during which Satan is to be bound, and Christ is to
reign. According to the Hebrew calculation, 4,138 years
passed before Christ, and 1,653 added to that:would bring
us within nine-years of the millenitun of rest. Besides all
this, the fulfilment of prophecy places us now under the
last of-the vials el his wrath that are to be reared :upon
'his enemies.
The sixth point is; that the extinction of this ..apostacy
will be effected by the coming of our Lord ; in proof of
which the lecturer quoted passages already re-
ferred -to—Daniel Ith, 2d Thee. 2,2 d Peter 8, .and to
Revelations 19th, all of which fully proved his petition.
Having thus laid down insix generalpoints the course of
events we are led. to expect from the Scriptures, namely,
that the Kingdom of Christ is destined to be universal—
that, before this, a great, desolating, and wide-spread
apostacy from the faith is to arise that the Church
of Rome is that apostacy that it is doomed to utter
and awful destruction—that before it begins to decline
1,260 years are to elapse, and 1,335 befere its final extinc-
tion, and that •simultaneonsly with its end will be the
coming and kingdom of the Lord Jesus-Christ—we come
now to eianilue the signs of the present times, as indi-
cating a near approach of that glorious period. 'Raving
simply given the view of events predicted in the Scrip-
tures, only such signs shall anew be noticed as are given
there. The first sign, of the times is drawn from the state
of the Jews, and the interest felt in them by the people of
God. In the hundred and second Psalm, the following
record is made concerning them :—That they shall be dis-
persed and judged fora lengthened period —that God will
'havemercy upon them"—that He has "a set time to favour
ur
them"—that when God visits them
heathen mercy, "
shall fear His name, and alt the kings of the
earth His glory"—that the sign of this time of blessing
to Zion will be when His "servants take pleasure in her
stones, and favour the dust thereof"—that is, exert them-
selves for the good of this dispersed peoplethen we
are told, "This shall be written for the generations to
come, that the people which shall be created may praise
the Lord." The, same view of their case is given in Ezekiel,
36th and 38th chapters -- their literal return to heir own
land being most fully and pointedly revealed tad lest
any should say that all this is long since accomplished,
Paul repeats it in the eleventh of Romans, where he says :
" If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the
diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much
more their fulness ?" " I would not, brethrenndne, much
more
in part
should be ignorant of this mystery, that bliss
is happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles
be come in"—i. e,, till the full time of the world's
conversion be come. Such is the sign. What is
the fulfilment ? Is there no- change in the position and
treatment of the Jews ? Why, for centuries no mad
seemed to care for their souls either men thong
them
not worth saving, or that it could not be done ; no attempt
was made. They were a reproach and a proverb, and a
curse among the nations. Look at them now. Politically.
they are everywhere holding up their heads. At this
moment a Jew is one of the representatives elected by
London—the metropolis of the world. A few years ago
(1838), the Church of Scotland established the first Jewish
mission, whilst now there is scarcely a church that has
not a special mission to this people, and that mission the
most favoured of the whole. In Palestine, in the last few
years, they have increased from 2,000 to 20,000; whilst
in the increased facilities of transit from place to place, it
would seem as if men were unconsciously preparing for
the fulfilment of prophecy on the return of the Jews to
their own land at the set time,
The second sign of the times is the universal preaching
of the gospel, We do not give this because it is a means