Bible Readings — Bible Questions Answered

The Papacy and God’s People

How was the little horn to treat God’s people? BR-ASI9 146.5

“And shall wear out the saints of the most High.” Daniel 7:25. BR-ASI9 146.6

Note.—“Under these bloody maxims [previously mentioned] those persecutions were carried on, from the eleventh and twelfth centuries almost to the present day, which stand out on the page of history. After the signal of open martyrdom had been given in the canons of Orleans, there followed the extirpation of the Albigenses, under the form of a crusade, the establishment of the inquisition, the cruel attempts to extinguish the Waldenses, the martyrdoms of the Lollards, the cruel wars to exterminate the Bohemians, the burning of Huss and Jerome, and multitudes of other confessors, before the Reformation; and afterwards, the ferocious cruelties practised in the Netherlands, the martyrdoms of queen Mary’s reign, the extinction, by fire and sword, of the reformation in Spain and Italy, by fraud and open persecution in Poland, the massacre of Bartholomew, the persecution of the Huguenots by the League, . . . and all the cruelties and perjuries connected with the revocation of the edict of Nantz [Nantes], These are the more open and conspicuous facts which explain the prophecy, besides the slow and secret murders of the holy tribunal of the inquisition.”—Rev. T. R. Birks, M. A., The Four Prophetic Empires, and the Kingdom of Messiah (1845 ed.), pp. 248, 249. BR-ASI9 146.7