Whore is Identified by Her History, The

The Whore is Identified by Her History

The whore is identified as Roman Catholicism by her history, from her inauguration some centuries after John until the present day. The history of Romanism is that of Christendom from its beginning, through the gathering of local churches into an organization, and culminating into the one great religious apostate system known today as the Roman Catholic Church.

During the first century the churches were composed of small groups of believers in a heathen community. Most of them were poor, outside the local congregation at Rome, which included believers of the higher social rank. Everywhere Christians were distinguished from the heathen by their brotherly love, moral earnestness and purity, confident gladness in Christian teachings, hope of the Lord's coming, etc. They were hated for these differences and from the time of Nero (54-68 A.D.) the Roman Government was hostile to them and tried suppression. Their worship was informal and was generally held in private houses. In the public meetings the services were carried on by the people, who took part as the Spirit moved them. Prayers, testimonies, singing of psalms, reading of the Old Testament and the writings of the apostles were all a part of the worship. Sometimes there was such eagerness to take part that disorder resulted. They often had a love feast or a common meal, the symbol of brotherly love, from which the unbeliever was barred. They did not have creeds or formal statements of belief. The so-called Apostle's Creed was not used before the second century. All Christians held that they belonged to the universal church, for all were one in Christ. There was no general organization having control of the scattered churches. The apostles exercised certain authority over them but it was not formal or official as in an organization. Each congregation managed its own affairs. The churches had elders and presbyters, sometimes called bishops, meaning one who has oversight, whose duties were the pastoral care, discipline, and financial affairs. They also had deacons which performed subordinate services of the same kind.

During the second and third centuries prior to the reign of Constantine, Christianity spread in many places and among all classes and ranks, through the medium of traveling missionaries, apologists or literary defenders of the Christian religion, teachers, and Christians generally. The Christians were persecuted in the first three centuries by the Roman Government, not only for their clean lives which were a standing condemnation of the prevalent religious customs and moral conduct, but also because they would not honor the state religion by paying worship to the statutes of the emperors. The churches went through ten persecutions until the time of Constantine who established religious liberty, chiefly for the benefit of Christians. He caused a radical change in Christianity, raising its position in the empire and changing the standard of admission to the churches until thousands of pagans were admitted with all their pagan ideas and superstitions. Through this supposed liberation of Christianity by the emperor, who entered actively into the affairs of the churches, endeavoring to settle doctrinal disputes, and exercising authority among Christians, certain errors crept into the churches.

Rise of the Roman Catholic Church

The churches by this time had become organized so that Constantine could deal with an organization. In the second century, a loose federation of churches sprang up, having one form of belief, expressed in confessions much like the Apostles Creed, and one form of local church government. These churches in this federation called themselves the Catholic Church-Catholic meaning universal. There were many churches which differed from this Catholic Church in belief and government. The statement of faith became the test of membership. The test of man's Christianity became, not so much his loyalty to Christ as his agreement with the church as to doctrine.

Distinction between the clergy and laymen, unknown in the apostolic age, was marked. Bishops, presbyters, and deacons were separated from the members of the churches. As the sacrificial idea of the Lord's Supper grew, the clergy were more and more called "priests." The office of bishop was magnified and those in that office sometimes thought they had authority from God to correct error and to forgive sins. The idea that asceticism was the way to holiness grew and led them to believe that the clergy ought not to marry. Later came the idea that when several churches were established in one town they should be under a bishop and naturally, the bishops of larger towns rose to importance over those of the smaller towns. They were called "Metropolitans" and each of them began to rule over several bishops and their districts or dioceses. By a further centralization, five bishops rose to a higher rank, that of patriarchs. These were the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch.

In the fifth century, Augustine taught his doctrine of the nature of the Catholic Church, which was generally accepted. He believed that the first bishops of the church were appointed by the apostles, that the apostles received from Christ the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the care of the church, who, in turn gave them to their first successors, the first bishops; that the successors of the first bishops held the original faith and could give Christian teaching which brought salvation; that only in the Catholic Church, the Church of these bishops in apostolic succession, was there salvation. Augustine was not the first to teach these ideas but he worked for their acceptance more than anyone before him.

There came another step in the centralization of the government of the Catholic Church. Among the five patriarchs, the two most prominent were those of Rome and Constantinople, the two principal cities of the world. Several causes concurred to raise the Roman bishop to the higher place, the greatest being the fact that he was bishop of the ancient capital of the world. For centuries Rome had ruled the world. The bishop of Rome naturally had an authority that none other had, or could have. Another cause was the custom which sprang up making the bishop a court of appeal in church disputes. This was brought about by the influence of the emperors of Rome who encouraged the centralization of the church in Rome. From the fifth century, the so-called Petrine claim was accepted, which made the bishop at Rome head of the church by divine right, since he was supposedly the successor to Peter, the first universal head of the church. The general acceptance of this made it as certain as if it were really true. Then the policy of the Roman bishops of holding all the authority that this claim bestowed upon them and claiming still more, and taking every opportunity to use this power to further the elevation of the Roman bishop over all others was carried on. Leo I, sometimes called the "first Pope" (444-461) asserted his universal authority in the strongest terms and claimed the right to give commands to bishops everywhere. His claims were denied by the bishop at Constantinople and were resisted somewhat in the West, but opposition helped to increase his power as the universal bishop. The word "pope" was used in the fourth and fifth centuries as the title of any bishop, but it gradually came to be reserved for the bishop at Rome.

The full title of "Roman Catholic Church" did not come into use until the power of the Roman bishops as the universal head of the church was fully recognized. Thus, out of the independent churches of the apostolic age, grew the Catholic Church, having its complete graded organization, its clergy possessing spiritual authority over the people together with a definite creed calling those who would not accept their rule, heretical. This Catholic Church later became the Roman Catholic Church, completely dominated by the bishop of Rome.

The centralization of the church continued toward Rome until about 600 A.D. Gregory I was crowned and recognized the first universal bishop and pope. The popes were for some time chosen by the emperors, but that order was changed when Hildebrand procured the establishment of the college of cardinals with power to elect the pope. The power of the emperor diminished so much as to be negligible from 1058-1061 A.D. Hildebrand also conceived the idea that the pope should be the supreme temporal ruler of the world as well as the absolute head of the church. The Roman Church reached the height of its power during the jurisdiction of Innocent III, who made and set aside rulers and did according to his will in the affairs of all the kingdoms of western Europe.

During the thirteenth century the church became master of the Holy Roman Empire and ruled without a rival. In 1294 A.D., after the papacy had lost much influence, Boniface VIII came to the throne. He attempted to surpass Hildebrand and Innocent III in manifestation of his power, endeavoring to excommunicate Philip of France, who answered him by sending men-of-arms and taking him prisoner for three days. This act of flagrant rebellion and humiliation broke the temporal power of the papacy and the popes went into "Babylonish Captivity" for sixty-nine years at Avignon, which is just across the Rhone River from French territory. Then the pope went back to Rome and the French cardinals elected a pope who set up his court at Avignon and two popes occupied the papal chair for a period of thirty years, being in opposition to each other during that time. A meeting for reconciliation was held and a new pope was elected, but the other two indignantly refused to resign and so there were three popes for a short time. The general council called at Constance, five years later, deposed two, caused the other to resign, with a closed breach resulting. Martin V was elected and acknowledged by the whole church in 1414 A.D.

The popes continued to wield an influence upon temporal rulers until the reformation gained such headway that the Emperor Charles V came to Germany to settle the religious dispute. He failed and despairing of a doctrine of love, at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, the Roman Catholic majority decreed that the Protestant cause should be put down by war. The war started in 1546 and the emperor was victorious on all sides until Maurice drove him out of Germany. Then the emperor gave the German affairs of the empire into the hands of his brother Ferdinand, who made peace at Augsburg in 1555. The reformation spread to many lands until today practically all lands are blessed with freedom of worship.

The opening of the nineteenth century saw the papacy in great humiliation. In 1801 Napoleon, then ruler of France, concluded a concordat with pope Pius VII, which was a treaty defining the relations of the Roman Catholic Church and the government in France. By this "the church was harnessed to the state" being made in part subject to the government, yet also supported by it. These terms involved a serious loss of authority for the pope, but he was helpless before the all-powerful Napoleon. When the pope, as sovereign of the Papal States, disobeyed his wishes in a matter of European policy, Napoleon entered Rome with an army, annexed the Papal States and made the pope a prisoner in 1809. After Napoleon's downfall (1814) pope Pius VII returned to Rome and re-established the Papal States.

The rulers then controlling Europe were favorable to the church which seized upon this opportunity to acquire much power. The church set its face against all modern progress and attempted to develop its medieval elements. The order of the Jesuits, the soldiers of the papacy, strove to gain the absolute supremacy of the pope and was successful. Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) outlined the policy of the Roman Church which exists today, assuming with gross bigotry, that limitless authority was his by divine right. He thus took upon himself the power and right to define doctrine, which, in the past had been exercised only by the general councils. The Council of Trent (1545) determined the complete statement of doctrine for the church. The Vatican Council was the next held (1870) which added more decrees and gave the pope unlimited and immediate authority in every part of the activities of the church and made him infallible in defining the doctrines and morals of the church.

In 1848 a movement began to free Italy from the papal supremacy and bring her under one standard. By 1860 both the northern and southern parts of Italy came under the rule of an Italian king, Victor Immanuel, of Piedmont. The Italians recognized that there could be no united Italy as long as the pope held full sway over the Papal States, stretching from sea to sea and with a population of 3 million. In 1870 the king added Rome and the Papal States to his domain, thus uniting the whole of Italy.

The pope was no longer the temporal ruler of Rome. Since then, it became the policy of the popes to remain voluntary prisoners in the Vatican and never walk the streets of Rome, for to do so, it was said, would be recognizing the claims of the government that ruled. Much was said and done concerning the restoration of the Papal States and finally on February 11, 1929, the Lateran Treaties were signed, the ceremony taking place at the Vatican Palace, which ended the long conflict between Italy and the Holy See and freed the popes from voluntary imprisonment.

One treaty, solving and eliminating the "Roman Question," which had existed since the loss of temporal power in 1870, and a second, a concordat designed to regulate the relations of the church and state in Italy, were signed. The canon law which is the subject of three of the four parts of the concordat was completed in 1917. It contains 2,417 canons, or rules regulating faith, morals, conduct, and discipline of church members, which have been gradually added by the church throughout the centuries. These treaties were ratified May 14 and 25 and became effective June 7, 1929.

The pope is again temporal ruler and sovereign over a territory the size of a town of 20,000 people, known as the Vatican State or State of Vatican City. It now has power to coin money, issue bank notes, postage stamps and do as any other sovereign state. The pope has his own railway station, wireless station, aviation field, army and navy, etc. He is to receive indemnity from the Italian government of $87.5 million. This is a great boon to Romanism, for she now has a "free" pope to enter personally into world affairs. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with many nations.

"Father" Phelan in a recent sermon on the greatness of Romanism said, "The Catholics of the world are Catholics first and always: they are Americans, they are Germans, they are French, or they are English afterwards." The political aspirations of the pope and his legions are known to every thinking person. Even in this country, preparation for the impending conflict is being made through which it is hoped that the schools, and every vestige of human rights and liberties will be destroyed.

According to "Father" Chiniquy, the Jesuits have organized many secret Catholic societies into military ones which are scattered over the United States. They number nearly 1 million soldiers, who under the name of United States Volunteer Militia, are officered by some of the most skilled officers of this Republic.

Stores of ammunition are laid away in secret places for use when necessary. Many boastful statements may be found in Catholic papers for which there is not space to mention, but these few facts will suffice to show the purpose of this great whore in all lands. Whether she will be successful in other lands or not, we do know from Rev. 17 that she will be master once more of the nations of Revised Rome and those the whore will control until the middle of the Week when she will finally be destroyed by these nations.