Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

ditional argument to the three noted by Mr. Faber, in favor of A. D. 606 being the time for the commencement of the 1260 years; and thus in favor of A. D. 1866 being the year of the release of the Church, and of the destruction of her enemies.

Whether the above calculation will prove to be correct, or not, it is agreed I believe by all, that we are drawing near to the close of the wicked ages of the world; and that the Millennium cannot be far distant. The prophecies generally, and the signs of the times, are thought to conspire to evince the truth of this remark.

Have we not then reason to believe, that the rise of the great Antichrist of the last times, must at the present period be clearly discernible upon the stage of the world? This must be believed from the prophecies relative to that event, and from chronological calculations.

[ocr errors]

And what have the eyes of the present generation beheld? We have seen a mighty terrific Power, bursting suddenly into existence; and possessing the very characteristics noted in the prophecies, as descriptive of the origin and the first stages of Antichrist.

SECTION II..

The French Revolution.

We have recently seen a most powerful Papal nation, whose monarch was styled the eldest son of the Church, a nation of more than twenty seven millions of people, breaking every restraint, beheading their king, proclaiming war against all kings, and decreeing fraternity with all in every nation, who are in rebellion against their governments.

Revolutionary France, by national authority, not only denied the Christian Religion, but the being of God. A piece was written by Anarcharsis Cloots, a member of their national convention, and the reporter of their committee, and was accepted by the convention, and

printed and circulated by their order, in which are the following sentiments; "Man when free wants no other divinity, than himself. Reason dethrones both the kings of the earth, and the King of heaven. No monarchy above, if we wish to preserve our republic below. Volumes have been written to determine whether a republic of Atheists could exist. I maintain that every other republic is a chimera. If you admit the existence of a heavenly sovereign, you introduce the wooden horse within your walls; what you adore by day, will be your destruction by night."* This infidel Power virtually abolished the Christian Sabbath; substituting in its stead their decades, or the celebration of every tenth day, for political, or idolatrous purposes. They virtually abolished the covenant of marriage, by rendering the support of it optional with the parties. As a fruit of which national order, 1800 divorces took place in Paris, in the year 1793. They decreed that the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes is no crime.† They fixed the inscription in their burying ground, "Death is an eternal sleep." The Bible was burnt in a public square. They shut up their houses of public worship, and made only the expression of a desire that they might be opened, a great, if not a capital crime. They assumed the characteristic of disregarding the god of their fathers, by rejecting the Pope, and all his clergy. And in contemptuously abjuring the Christian Religion, they disregarded Him, who was the ancient desire of women. They denied the Father and the Son; denied the Lord, who bought them; denied the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, they in their estate, or after they viewed their revolution established, honored their God of forces, their Mozim; whether we translate it fancied gods; or military munitions. With respect to the former, the French converted the magnificent temple of St. Genevieve at Paris into a Pagan pantheon.§

*Barruel's Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 245. Dan. xi, 37.

+Kett, vol. ii, p. 253.

The pantheon was a temple in ancient Rome, dedicated, as its name imports, to all the gods.

To this they conveyed in solemn procession the bones of the arch-infidel Voltaire, and of Rousseau. The bones of the former they placed upon a high altar, and offered incense to them; while the multitude bowed down in silent adoration.

A female, dressed in fantastic hue, as a goddess to personate Human Reason, was borne upon a carriage on men's shoulders, and escorted by the national guards, and all the constituted authorities. She was placed upon a high altar, and worshipped with various religious ceremonies. She was then conveyed to the principal church, where these idolatrous services were repeated. A priest was then brought in, who abjured the Christian faith, and avowed the whole of Christianity to be an imposture. The scene closed with the burning of their religious books, and their various apparatus for public worship; multitudes dancing round the flames in Savage mirth. mirth. And an account of this whole scene was published in their national Bulletin, an official paper distributed at the expense of government.*

The images of reason and liberty were placed in a temple. Festivals were instituted to the virtues, such as reason and labor. Thus they adopted and honored the gods of their fancy.

And the French have honored military munitions, should any prefer this rendering of the term Mozim. Their unprecedented improvements in the arts of war, afford them a most distinguishing feature in this particular.

A train of other enormities are related in authentic histories and memoirs of the French revolution, too numerous to be cited in this Dissertation. "It appears, (says a writer on this subject†) that there have been two millions of persons murdered in France since it called itself a republic; among whom were 250 thousand women; 230 thousand children, beside those murdered in the womb; and 24 thousand priests, many of whom were Protestants." Marat, that great friend of the peo

*See Residence in France, N. Y. edition, p. 270.
+Kett, vol. ii, p. 252.

ple, scrupled not to assert, that in order to cement liberty, the national club ought to strike off 200,000 heads. "As for the privilege of extending mercy to the condemned, it was contemptuously disclaimed; and all applications for pardon were rejected with the declaration, that the enlightened government of republican France, possessed no such power. It was esteemed indeed a sufficient crime to be suspected of being a supicious person."* Their comedians publicly challenging and denying God; the pupils of their new republican school appearing at the bar, and declaring, that all religious worship had been suppressed in their section, and that they detested God; and, horrible to relate! their establishing a tan-yard under the auspices of government, to manufacture into leather the skins of their murdered fellow-citizens; their drowning, under guards of soldiers, their new born infants, born of lewd women kept by the officers in Gen. Jourdan's army, as related by Count Sidon, who was present; and numerous other enormities, which exclusively characterize the annals of modern France; these are things well known. And they strikingly corroborate the evidence exhibited, that we behold in that nation the rise of the Antichrist of the last time.

The succeeding predictions (Dan. xi, 38,) the French nation have precisely fulfilled. They soon fell under a military despotism; and have become a great and terrible empire. The people who magnified themselves above God, and all legitimate authorities, have received their foreign god, their emperor, from an origin, which their fathers knew not; and have honored him with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pleasant things; or with Imperial magnificence. A Corsican youth, of ordinary descent, was admitted to an under office in a company of artillery in the republican French army. His activity at the siege of Toulon, in 1793, excited the attention of the national agents; and he was advanced. His subsequent rise was rapid. Within a few years the French received him, and honored him, as

*Faber, vol. ii, p. 205

their First Consul. And his subsequent, Imperial magnificence, his victories, and his distributions of the nominal crowns of his conquered nations to his kindred, and favorites, appear fully to accord with the forecited passage, Dan. xi, 38, 39. And a god, whom his fathers knew not, shall he honor with gold and silver and precious stones and pleasant things. Thus shall he do in the most strong holds, with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory. And he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land (earth) for gain. In the whole of the passage afore-cited from this chapter, relative to the infidel Power, we find a train of particulars, which have been fulfilled, in their order, in France; but which, I believe, have never been fulfilled in this order in any other nation; and there now appears no human probability that they can ever be fulfilled in any other nation.

Have we then any reason to doubt of the correctness of applying the passage to the French nation? And es pecially considering the origin of their revolution, which will by and by be noted. When this is considered, we shall find also that in the French, as far as they have proceeded, we behold an inceptive fulfilment of the prophecy in Rev. xii, concerning the devil's com ing down to the earth in great wrath; and of the prophecy in Rev. xvii, concerning the beast, that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, and is bearing the Papal harlot to her execution. The gross Infidel system, instigated by the great dragon, in the former of these passages, has most strikingly appeared in France; and appears to be fulfilling in what has been called the Christian world. And the features of the beast in Rev. xvii, are conspicuously prominent in that nation, so far as they have proceeded. Examine the prophetic picture. Then look at the French nation. And you will be constrained to say, the picture there has its original; the prediction, its accomplishment. The seventh head of the old Roman beast, continuing a short space, has been verified in the Terrible Republic. The succeeding head, numerically the eighth, but yet of the seven; be, ing the sixth healed from its deadly wound, is now pre

« AnteriorContinua »