FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
THE LITTLE HORN ‘WEARS OUT THE SAINTS OF THE MOST’ BECAUSE OF ‘HERESY’
Prophecy warns God’s people of the last days that the bloody and dark chapters of church history will be repeated, this time by the final threefold union and divinely-forbidden global confederacy of “Romanism, apostate Protestantism and Spiritualism.”
The little horn power, in “speaking great words against the Most High,” would also “wear out His saints.” Dan. 7:28. That is, as we have already seen, persecute the saints of the Most High, not the ‘saints’ canonized by the papal church, till they were literally ‘worn out’ to death.
Edwardson says: “Has the Papacy fulfilled this part of the prophecy? In order to do ROMAN CATHOLICS] NO INJUSTICE, we shall quote from unquestioned authorities among them. And, since they PERSECUTE people for ‘HERESY,’ we must first let them define what they mean by ‘heresy.’
“In the New York Catholic Dictionary, published by the Universal Knowledge Foundation, a Roman Catholic institution, New York, 1929, we read:
‘Heresy (Greek hairesis, choice), deciding for oneself what one shall believe and practice.’- Art. ‘Heresy, p. 440. According to this definition anyone who will not blindly subject to papal authority, but will read the Bible, deciding for himself what he shall believe [according for the dictates of his conscience] is a ‘HERETIC.’
Q. “What official stand has the Catholic Church taken in regard to such ‘heretics?’
Ans. “This we find stated in the Catholic Encyclopedia in the following words:
“In the Bull ‘Ad extirpanda’(1252) Pope Innocent IV says: ‘When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the CIVIL power [state] by the bishop or his representative [church], or the INQUISITION, the ‘podesta’ or chief magistrate [civil power] of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them….. Nor could any doubt remain as to what CIVIL regulations were meant, for the passages which passages which ordered the BURNING of impenitent heretics were inserted in the PAPAL DECRETALS from the IMPERIAL constitutions ‘Commissis nobis’ and ‘Inconsutibilem tunicam.’ The aforesaid Bull ‘Ad extirpanda’ remained therefore a FUNDAMENTAL DOCUMENT of the Inquisition, RENEWED OR REINFORCES by several popes: Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicolas IV (1288-92), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities therefore, were enjoined by the popes, UNDER PAIN OF EXCOMMUNICATION to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the STAKE [called ‘auto da fe’]. It is to be noted that the excommunication itself was NO TRIFLE, for, if the person excommunicated did not free himself from excommunication within a year, he was held by legislation of that period to be a HERETIC, and incurred all the penalties that affected HERESY.’- Vol. VIII, p. 34.” – Christian Edwardson. Facts of Faith, pp. 62, 63. Southern Publishing Asso. Nashville 8, TN 1943.
The Christian life is not a cakewalk. It is a battle, a march, a race for immortality and eternity. As the apostles truthfully declared, “It is through much tribulation that we must enter the kingdom of God” and “All that will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution,” that is, “for Christ” and “righteousness’ sake.”
More tomorrow. Bless all, NMF