FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
How France, One of the Ten Toes of the Western Roman Empire Fulfilled Very Specific Prophecies
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Those who make war on heaven make graves for themselves.”
– George Storrs, Midnight Cry, 1843.
The forty and two months of Rev. 11: 2 is the same prophetic period denoted as “three days and a half.” Rev. 11: 11. A day in prophetic time is equivalent to a literal year of 360 days. That we have amply shown earlier in (a) the reckoning of flood in Genesis and (2) the time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, all within and ending on the year 1844 of the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8: 14. These will be summarized later in this series, and may even be used as an easy reference when studying the prophecies under the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit and guidance and protection of the ministering angels.
Now back to our series on this issue focusing on the Two Witnesses’ prophetic resurrection, their amazing results and a background on how France got to this terrible point of its history as a nation, and finally fulfilled this specific prophecy:
VERSE 11 And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and fear fell upon them which saw them.
Bible’s Witness Restored. – “In 1793, the decree passed the French Assembly suppressing the Bible. Just three years after, a resolution was introduced into the Assembly going to supersede the decree, and giving toleration to the Scriptures. That resolution lay on the table for six months, when it was taken up, and passed without a single dissenting vote. Thus, in just three years and a half [1793-1797], the witnesses ‘stood upon their feet,’ and great fear fell upon them which saw them.’ Nothing but the appalling results of the rejection of the Bible could have induced France to take her hands off these witnesses.” – Ibid.
We quote from Uriah Smith,’s classic Daniel and the Revelation, pp. 539-541:
“On the 17 of June, Camille Jourdan, in the Council of Five Hundred,’ brought up the memorable report on the ‘Revision of the laws relative to religious worship.’ It consisted of a number of propositions, abolishing alike the Republican restrictions on Popish worship, and the Popish restrictions on Protestant.”
“1. That all citizens might buy or hire edifices for the free exercise of religious worship.
“2. That all congregations might assemble at the sound of bells.
“3. That no test or promise of any sort unrequired from other citizens should be required of the ministers of those congregations.
“4.That any individual attempting to impede, or in any way interrupt the public worship should be fined, up to 500 livres, and not less than 50; and that if the interruption proceeded from the constituted authorities, such authorities should be fined double the sum.
“5. That entrance to assemblies for the purpose f religious worship should be free fro all citizens.
“6. That all other laws concerning religious worship should be repealed.
“7. Those regulations, in comprehending the whole state of worship in France, were, in fact, a peculiar boon to Protestantism. Popery was already in sight of full restoration. But Protestantism, crushed under the burden of the laws of Louis XIV, and unsupported by the popular belief, required the direct support of the state to ‘stand on its feet.’ The Report seems even to have had an especial view to the grievances of the Church; the old prohibitions to hold public worship, to possess places of worship, to have ingress, etc.
“From that period the Church has been free in France. . . . “The Church and the Bible had been slain in France from November, 1793, till June, 1797. The three years and a half were expended, and the Bible, so long and so sternly repressed before, was placed in honor, and was openly the book of free Protestantism.’ – George Crowley, The Apocalypse of St. John, pp. 181-183.
VERSE 12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them.
“’Ascend up to heaven.’ – To understand this expression, see Daniel 4: 22: ‘Thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven.’ Here we see that the expression signifies great exaltation. Q. Have the Scriptures attained to such a state of exaltation as here indicated, since France made war upon them? — They have. Shortly after, the British Bible Society was organized [1804]; then followed the American Bible Society [1816]; and these, with their almost innumerable auxiliaries, are scattering the Bible everywhere.” – George Storrs, Midnight Cry, May 4, 1843, Vol. IV, Nos. 5, 6, p. 47/ D & R 541. Before 1804 the Bible had been printed and circulated in 50 languages.
“Up to the end of December, 1942, the Bible in whole or part has been translated into 1,050 languages and dialects.”
“No other book approaches the Bible in inexpensiveness and the number of copies circulated.. The American Bible Society reported having printed and circulated, in whole or in part, 7,696,739 portions in 1940; 8,096,069, in 1941; and 6,254,642, in 1942. The British and Foreign Bible Society reported for the year ending in the middle of 1941 a circulation of 11, 017, 334 copies; and in 1942, 7,120,000 copies.
“A conservative estimate places the number of Bibles printed annually by commercial houses at six million. Hence the annual output of Bibles and portions has reached the enormous total of twenty-five to thirty million copies a year.
“From its organization up to and including 1942, the American Bible Society had issued 421, 951,266 copies; and the British and Foreign Bible Society up to March 1942, had issued 539, 664, 024 copies making a total of 861,000,000 copies put out by these two societies alone. The American Bible Society said in May, 1940: ‘It is estimated that nine tenths of the 2,000,000,000 people in the world right now [world census as of 1940], if they turned to the Bible, hear it read in a language they can understand.’ The Bible is exalted as above all price, as, next to His Son, the most invaluable blessing of God to man, and as the glorious testimony concerning that Son. Yes, the Scriptures may truly be said to be exalted ‘to heaven in a cloud,’ a cloud being an emblem of heavenly elevation.
VERSE 13 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.
From one of the ten kingdoms of the Western Roman Empire. – “‘What city? (See Revelation 18: 18): ‘The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings [kingdoms] of the earth.’) That city is the papal Roman power [in contrast to previous pagan state lorded by the emperors]. Now, “France is one of the ‘ten horns’ that ‘gave their power and strength unto the [papal] beast;’ or is one of the ten kingdoms that arose out of the Western Empire of Rome, as indicated by the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Daniel’s ten-horned beast [Daniel. 7: 24], and John’s ten-horned dragon {Revelation 12: 3.] France, then, was a ‘tenth part of the city,’ and was one of the strongest ministers of papal vengeance; but in this [French] revolution, if ‘fell,’ and with it fell the last civil messenger of papal fury. ‘And in the earthquake were also slain of men [margin, names of men] seven thousand.’ France made war, in her Revolution of 1789 and onward, on all titles and nobility. . . . . ‘And the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.’ Their God-dishonoring, Heaven-defying work filled France with such scenes of blood, carnage, as even made the infidels themselves to tremble, and stand aghast; and the ‘remnant’ that escaped the horrors of that hour ‘gave glory to God’—not willingly, but the God of heaven caused this ‘wrath of man to praise Him,’ by giving all the world to see that those who make war on heaven make graves for themselves; thus glory redounded to God by the very means that wicked men employed to tarnish that glory.’ – George Storrs, Midnight Cry, May 4, 1843, Vol. IV, Nos. 5, 6, p. 48.
The Real Origin of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror in France
From Ellen G. White’s great non-fiction classic, Great Controversy, 1911 ed., pp. 271-273:
”Where also our Lord was crucified.’ Rev. 11: 8. This specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of enmity against Christ had been more strikingly displayed. In no country had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution which France visited upon the confessors of the gospel, she had crucified Christ in the person of His disciples.
“Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont ‘for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ’ similar witness for the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses of France. In the days of the Reformation, its disciples had been put to death with horrible tortures. King and nobles, high-born women and delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots, battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred, had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field. The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads, and they were hunted down like wild beasts.
“The ‘Church in the Desert,’ the few descendants of ancient Christians that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding away in the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their fathers. As they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely moor, they were chased by dragoons, and dragged away to life-long slavery in the galleys. The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French, were chained, in terrible torture, amidst robbers and assassins.’ (Scott, Sir Walter, ‘Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,’ Vol. I, ch. 17 (ed. 1854). Others, more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in cold blood, as, unarmed and helpless, they fell upon their knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth at their place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest, where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find ‘at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging suspended from the trees.’ Their country [France], laid waste with the sword, the axe, the fagot, ‘was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness.’ ‘These atrocities were enacted . . . in no dark age, but in the brilliant era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men, and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity.’- Wylie, b. 22, ch. 7. – Great Controversy, 1911 ed., pp. pp. 271, 272,
(Continued next week)