Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents
From Here to Forever - Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    Results Reaped in Blood

    Instead of holding the masses in blind submission to her dogmas, Rome's work resulted in making them infidels and revolutionists. Romanism they despised as priestcraft. The only god they knew was the god of Rome. They regarded her greed and cruelty as the fruit of the Bible, and they would have none of it.HF 175.3

    Rome had misrepresented the character of God, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author. In the reaction, Voltaire and his associates cast aside God's Word altogether and spread infidelity. Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel; and now the masses cast off all restraint. Enraged, they rejected truth and falsehood together.HF 175.4

    At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the people were granted representation exceeding that of nobles and clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. An outraged populace resolved to revenge themselves. The oppressed wrought out the lesson they had learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of those who had oppressed them.HF 175.5

    France reaped in blood the harvest of her submission to Rome. Where France, under Romanism, had set up the first stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first guillotine. On the spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. When the restraints of God's law were cast aside, the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible stands in world history as the Reign of Terror. He who triumphed today was condemned tomorrow.HF 176.1

    King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities of a maddened people. Those who decreed the death of the king soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. France became a vast field for contending masses, swayed by the fury of 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. ... 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.”HF 176.2

    All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and torture which Rome had so diligently taught. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished or been driven into exile. “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)HF 176.3

    “Then came those days ... 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. ... Long rows of captives were mowed down with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges. ... 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)HF 177.1

    All this was as Satan would have it. His policy is deception and his purpose is to bring wretchedness upon men, to deface the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purpose of love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts, he leads men to throw the blame on God, as if all this misery were the result of the Creator's plan. When the people found Romanism to be a deception, he urged them to regard all religion as a cheat and the Bible as a fable.HF 177.2

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents