The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Protestant Interpretation Gathers Momentum

I. Papal Wound Introduces New Era

When Pius VI fell ill in 1797, Napoleon gave orders that in the event of his death no successor should be elected to his office, and that the Papacy should he “discontinued.” ¹ Rickaby ob serves, “No wonder that half Europe thought Napoleon’s veto would be obeyed, and that with the Pope the Papacy was dead.” ² Leopold Ranke similarly says: It “now seemed that the papal power had been brought to a final close.” ³ PFF3 327.1

The dethronement and captivity of Pope Pius VI, in 1798, by the sword of Berthier, had ended the 1260-year span from the elevation and liberation of the usurper Vigilius, in 538, by the arms of Belisarius and the gold of the Empress Theodora. ⁴ And when Pius VI died in French captivity, without a successor in sight, the outlook for the future of the Papacy seemed dark indeed. Thus G. Trevor wrote of it: “The papacy was extinct: not a vestige of its existence remained; and among all the Roman Catholic powers not a finger was stirred.” ⁵ PFF3 327.2

However, Christian G. Thube, as noted in Volume 2, had warned that this was only a wound that would be healed. ⁶ And George Richards, in his Bampton Lecture for 1800, at Oxford University, on The Divine Origin of Prophecy Illustrated and Defended, pointed to the close of the 1260 years as a most striking fulfillment of prophetic exactness. ⁷ Thube says: PFF3 327.3

“The French with the sword in their hands have exiled the pope and his cardinals totally iron) Rome, have destroyed the whole Slate of the Church, and erected a so-called Roman Free-State.... The present state of the papacy is this: that it has a wound from the sword, and nevertheless remains alive. How long this state will last thus, and in what the life of the papacy yet continuing will consist: that cannot yet be determined with certainty. The deadly wound will become healed again sooner or later. But how and by what it will be healed again, that likewise, we do not know before it will happen.” ⁸ PFF3 328.1

Many others, as noted in Volume 2, declared that the 1260 years had ended. A new wave of prophetic study and exposition PFF3 328.2

broke forth, and there was a general conviction among such students that mankind had entered upon a new era-the time of the last things. PFF3 328.3