The fourth beast is most troublesome because it is not like any other beast in existence. Lions, bears, leopards are all animals known to mankind, but this fourth beast defied description related to a known animal. Daniel needed to know more about this beast different from all others.
Teeth made of iron. Nails made of brass. It devoured and broke into pieces and even stamped on what was left of its prey. This beast had ten horns. But not forever. Three of those ten horns are displaced but a little horn that had eyes and a mouth that could speak.
We need to know positively what this fourth beast represents and if you read yesterday's study you have a pretty good idea.
We know Rome came up after Greece and Rome divided into ten kingdoms. More history proves three of those ten kingdom were displaced because they defied Papal Rome. IT'S HISTORY, not me making up nonsense to fit some silly theory.
Synopsis-(Their existence was prophesized - their reality came to pass) Babylon, Medes Persia, Greece, Rome (Pagan & Papal)
All of this was prophesized! We aren't taking weird puzzle pieces and trying to force them into our puzzle to complete it. These puzzle pieces are falling into their proper places.
Let's continue on and have the Bible speak for itself in so many ways, and prayerfully we are all guided only to truth!
(Little Horn) Remember this little horn is the horn on the fourth beast that displaced three of its ten horns- that fourth beast, that fourth kingdom that came into power after Greece was Rome. Rome has two distinct phases... Pagan and then Papal.
Dan 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
Dan 7:26 But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.
Dan 7:27 And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
Dan 7:28 Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart
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"He shall speak great words against the Most High."
Has the papacy done this? Beyond a doubt it has.
Look at such self-approved titles of the pope as "Vicegerent of the Son of God," and "Lord God, the Pope."- See gloss on the Extravagantes of Pope John XXII, title 14, ch. 4, "Declaramus." Said Pope Nicholas to Emperor Michael, "The pope can never be bound or loosed by the secular power, since it is plain that he was called God by the pious prince Constantine; . . . and it is manifest that God can not be judged by man." - Decreti Prima Pars. Distinctio XCVI, Caput 8.
Is there need of bolder blasphemy than this? Truly we cannot claim this is ANCIENT history and that it means nothing today. It means that no matter how ancient it is, it is history! It happened! Don't bury your head in the sand simply because the papacy today wants to pretend their past means nothing at all. If that past answers to prophetic history it cannot be tossed aside, it just can't.
Note also the adulation the popes have received from their followers without rebuke. Lord Anthony Pucci in the fifth Lateran, said to the pope, "The sight of thy divine majesty does not a little terrify me;,for I am not ignorant that all power both in heaven and in earth is given unto you; that the prophetic saying is fulfilled in you, 'All the kings of the earth shall worship him, and nations shall serve him.' " (See Oswald's Kingdom Which Shall Not Be Destroyed, pp. 97-99.) Again, Dr. Clarke, on verse 25, says: "'He shall speak as if he were God.' So St. Jerome quotes from Symmachus. To none can this apply so well or so fully as to the popes of Rome. They have assumed infallibility, which belongs only to God. They profess to forgive sins, which belongs only to God. They profess to open and shut heaven, which belongs only to God. They profess to be higher than all the kings of the earth, which belongs only to God. And they go beyond God in pretending to loose whole nations from their oath of allegiance to their kings, when such kings do not please them. And they go against God when they give indulgences for sin. This is the worst of all blasphemies."
Little Horn to "Wear Out the Saints of the Most High."
Has the papacy done this? Again, beyond a doubt it has. For the mere information of any student of church history, no answer need here be given. All know that for long years the papal church has pursued its relentless work against the true followers of God. Chapter after chapter might be given, would our limited space permit. Wars, crusades, massacres, inquisitions, and persecutions of all kinds, - these were their weapons of extinction.
Scott's Church History says: "No computation can reach the numbers who have been put to death in different ways, on account of their maintaining the profession of the gospel, and opposing the corruptions of the Church of Rome. A million of poor Waldenses perished in France; nine hundred thousand and orthodox Christians were slain in less than thirty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. The Duke boasted of having put to death in the Netherlands thirty-six thousand by the hand of the common executioner during the space of a few years. The Inquisition destroyed, by various tortures, one hundred and fifty thousand within thirty years. These are a few specimens, and but a few, of those which history has recorded. But the total amount will never be known till the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain."
Commenting on the prophecy that the little horn should "wear out the saints of the Most High," Barnes, in his Notes on Dan. 7 : 25, says- " Can any one doubt that this is true of the papacy The Inquisition, the persecutions of the Waldenses, the ravages of the Duke of Alva, the fires of Smithfield, the tortures of Goa, - indeed, the whole history of the papacy, may be appealed to in proof that this is applicable to that power. If anything could have worn out the saints of the Most High, - could have cut them off from the earth so that evangelical religion would have become extinct, - it would have been the persecutions of the papal power. In the year 1208 a crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III against the Waldenses and Albigenses, in which a million men perished. From the beginning of the order of Jesuits in the year 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. In the Low Countries fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, for the crime of heresy, within the space of thirty-eight years from the edict of Charles V against the Protestants to the peace of. Chateau Cambresis in 1559. Eighteen thousand suffered by the hand of the executioner in the space of five years and a half, during the administration of the Duke of Alva. Indeed, the slightest acquaintance with the history of the papacy will convince anyone that what is here said of ' making war with the saints' (verse 21), and ' wearing out the saints of the Most High' (verse 25), is strictly applicable to that power, and will accurately describe its history." (See Buck's Theological Dictionary, art., Persecutions; Oswald's Kingdom, etc., pp. 107 - 133; Dowling's History of Romanism; Fox's Book of Martyrs -, Charlotte Elizabeth's Martyrology; The Wars of the Huguenots; The Great Red Dragon, by Anthony Gavin, formerly one of the Roman Catholic priests of Saragossa, Spain; Histories of the Reformation, etc.)
To parry the force of this damaging testimony from all history, papists deny that the church has ever persecuted any one; it has been the secular power; the church has only passed decision upon the question of heresy, and then turned the offenders over to the civil power, to be dealt with according to the pleasure of the secular court. The impious hypocrisy of this claim is transparent enough to make it an absolute insult to common sense. In those days of persecution, what was the secular power? - Simply a tool in the hand of the church, and under its control, to do its bloody bidding. And when the church delivered its prisoners to the executioners to be destroyed, with fiendish mockery it made use of the following formula- "And we do leave thee to the secular arm, and to the power of the secular court; but at the same time do most earnestly beseech that court so to moderate its sentence as not to touch thy blood, nor to put thy life in any sort of danger." And then, as intended, the unfortunate victims of popish hate were immediately executed. - (Geddes's Tracts on Popery; View of the Court of Inquisition in Portugal, p. 446; Limborch, Vol. II, p. 289.)
But the false claims of papists in this respect have been flatly denied and disproved by one of their own standard writers, Cardinal Bellarmine, who was born in Tuscany in 1542, and who, after his death in 1621, came very near being placed in the calendar of saints on account of his great services in behalf of popery. This man, on one occasion, under the spur of controversy, betrayed himself into an admission of the real facts in the case. Luther having said that the church (meaning the true church) never burned heretics, Bellarmine, understanding it of the Romish Church, made answer- "This argument proves not the sentiment, but the ignorance or impudence of Luther; for as almost an infinite number were either burned or otherwise put to death, Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant - or if he knew it, he was convicted of impudence and falsehood; for that heretics were often burned by the church, may be proved by adducing a few from many examples."
To show the relation of the secular power to the church, as held by Romanists, we quote the answer of the same writer to the argument that the only weapon committed to the church is " the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." To this he replied: "As the church has ecclesiastical and secular princes, who are her two arms, so she has two swords, the spiritual and material; and therefore when her right hand is unable to convert a heretic with the sword of the Spirit, she invokes the aid of the left hand, and coerces heretics with the material sword." In answer to the argument that the apostles never invoked the secular arm against heretics, he says, " The apostles did it not, because there was no Christian prince whom thy could call on for aid. But afterward, in Constantine's time, . . . the church called in the aid of the secular arm." - Dowling's History of Romanism, pp. 547, 548.
In corroboration of these facts, fifty million martyrs - this is the lowest computation made by any historian - will rise up in the judgment as witnesses against that church's bloody work.
Pagan Rome persecuted relentlessly the Christian church, and it is estimated that three million Christians perished in the first three centuries, yet it is said that the primitive Christians prayed for the continuance of imperial Rome; for they knew that when this form of government should cease, another far worse persecuting power would arise, which would literally, as this prophecy declares, "wear out the saints of the Most High." Pagan Rome could slay the infants, but spare the mothers; but papal Rome slew both mothers and infants together. No age, no sex, no condition in life., was exempt from her relentless rage. "When Herod died," says a forcible writer, "he went down to tbe grave with infamy; and earth had one murderer, one persecutor, less, and hell one victim more. 0 Rome! what will not be thy hell, and that of thy votaries, when thy judgment shall have come! "
Of note today- http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0029.html
Issue: What role did the inquisition play in the Catholic Church?
Response: According to Pope John Paul II, "The Inquisition belongs to a tormented phase in the history of the Church, which . . . Christians [should] examine in a spirit of sincerity and open-mindedness."1 To assess the Inquisition properly, we must distinguish between the principle which undergirded it, and the actions of those responsible for implementing the principle. The principle - that the Church must guard the faith against deviations - is an obligation of divine law (cf. Mt. 18:18; 2 Tim. 1:14). The actions taken to implement the process sometimes were questionable and even deplorable. Yet, because of centuries of misinformation, we must take care to distinguish fact from fiction.
Assessing the Inquisition
The principle upon which the Inquisition was built is entirely defensible; indeed, Catholics everywhere have the duty to defend it. The Church was given by Christ Himself the mission of safeguarding the deposit of faith from distortion or corruption (cf. Mt. 28:16-20; Mk. 16:14-20; Jn. 21:15-19; 1 Thess. 2:13; Jude 3; Catechism, nos. 84-90, 172-75, 813-16).
To torture? To kill? To by any means get people to follow? No where in the Bible does Jesus ask anyone to get people to believe in that manner. So while the Catholics defend their position on the inquisition today by believing they were ordained to do so, it only further exemplifies the fact the papacy even today believes itself to be like the 'Most High'. They reaffirm what was prophetically foretold by Daniel thousands of years ago. How they distort the word of God to suit their purposes. It's more proof that indeed the papacy is that little horn speaking such great and blasphemous things.
Little Horn to "Think to Change Times and Laws." Beyond doubt another Papal action that fits perfectly.
What laws and whose ? Not the laws of other earthly governments; for it was nothing marvelous or strange for one power to change the laws of another, whenever it could bring such power under its dominion. Not human laws of any kind; for the little horn had power to change these so far as its jurisdiction extended; but the times and laws in question were such as this power should only think to change, but not be able to change. They are the laws of the same Being to whom the saints belong who are worn out by this power; namely, the laws of the Most High. And has the papacy attempted this? Yes, even this. It has, in its catechisms, expunged the second commandment of the decalogue to make way for its adoration of images. It has divided the tenth commandment to make up the number ten. And, more audacious than all! it has taken hold of the fourth commandment, torn from its place the Sabbath of Jehovah, the only memorial of the great God ever given to man, and erected in its place a rival institution to serve another purpose. See Catholic catechisms
To be continued….