Memory Text: “He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” (Revelation 13:10, NKJV).
The Waldenses
The Waldenses were a people who lived in the Italian Alps and, despite living hundreds of years before the Reformation, made the Bible their only rule of faith, rejecting such papal innovations as the mass, the celibate priesthood, confession, purgatory, indulgences, and infant baptism. In fact, the Waldenses rejected the whole complex of pagan practices adopted by the Roman Church during the middle ages, and held that the Pope was anti-Christ.
Most Catholic and liberal protestant scholars have accepted the view that the Waldenses began with Peter Waldo, a rich man of Lyon, France, who, around 1160 AD, gave all his money to the poor and became an itinerant preacher.
The Waldenses themselves, however, who might better be called Vaudois, traced their religion back to apostolic times. Their historian, J.A. Wylie, notes that even some Catholic researchers admitted that the Vaudois were "not a new sect in the ninth and tenth centuries . . ." But even if they originated in the 12th century, they predated the reformation by 300 years.
Translating the Scriptures into both Italian and French, the Vaudois sent out traveling salesmen whose real mission was to witness and distribute Scripture in the people's languages. These missionaries were liable to be imprisoned or burned at the stake if Papal authorities discovered their clandestine religious mission, but they were not typically molested in their homelands, the Piedmont valleys. Notable exceptions were in the years 1400 and 1488, in which unsuccessful attempts were made to suppress them.
The most savage persecution of the Vaudois began only after the Protestant Reformation was well underway in northern Europe. A major campaign of extermination was mounted in 1561, but again met with only partial success.
Finally, in 1655, the valiant Vaudois were very nearly wiped out. The duke of Savoy sent an army of 8,000 into their villages, demanding that the local populace quarter troops in their homes. They did as he requested, but it was a ruse to give the soldiers easy access to their victims.
On April 24, 1655, at 4:00 A.M., a signal was given and the massacre began. This time, the death toll was more than 4,000. The atrocities committed against this simple and inoffensive people were too grotesque to be described in detail. The 1655 massacre was so infamous and terrible, however, that the government of England, then under the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, lodged a protest with all of the governments concerned.
John Milton was inspired to write the sonnet which begins:
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, who bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody piedmontese that rolled
Mother and infant down the rocks."
One bright spot in the story of the 1655 massacre was the remarkable leadership of Joshua Gianavello, of the Village of Rora, who mounted a successful defense of one upper valley. Gianavello has become the subject of an historical novel "Rora."
The work of extermination begun in 1655 was nearly completed in 1686, when the remaining Vaudois were either killed, imprisoned, or exiled to Switzerland and Germany. Remarkably, Henri Arnaud led a few hundred of the Vaudois back to their mountain stronghold in 1690 and reclaimed by force their ancient patrimony. Thus, the Vaudois have continued on to the present time.
Interestingly, in 1893, a company of Vaudois migrated to the United States and founded the town of Valdeses, Burke County, North Carolina. At the time, a local newspaper wrote:
"All the little Waldensian children are taught to read and write at a very early age, and their knowledge of the scriptures would put to shame many of our church people of maturer years. They speak both French and Italian very fluently, and are all apparently very bright and intelligent and very anxious to learn the language of this new country."
The Mark of the Beast
History repeats itself. The “mark of the beast” prophecy is about the final outrage in a history of religious persecution that goes back through the ages. Like the persecutions of the past, it is designed to force everyone to conform to an approved system of worship. But God will always have a people, like the Waldenses, who will not capitulate.
Last week, we studied the two beasts of Revelation 13, the first beast out of the sea, representing the papacy of the middle ages which exercised tremendous political power, and the second beast out of the earth, which will make an image to the first beast, meaning a Christian-but-really-pagan religious system enforced by enormous political power.
This second beast forces people to receive a mark:
It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. 18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
So what is this mysterious mark, our acceptance of which determines whether we will be allowed to buy or sell?
The mark being in the forehead or the hand symbolizes whether a person accepts the doctrine, teaching, or worldview behind the mark. If someone does accept the teaching or doctrine, the mark is said to be in the forehead, the center of reason and critical thinking. If the person rejects the teaching or doctrine, the mark is on the hand, which symbolizes action; in that case, the person has accepted the mark only to be allowed to buy and sell, to participate in the money economy.
But what is the teaching behind the mark? The prophet Daniel provided us with a big clue in his discussion of the beast representing Rome in chapter seven.
“Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.”
Of the four kingdoms shown to Daniel in vision, Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and Rome, the Roman Empire was the most fierce and merciless. It was different in that way, but, more importantly, different in having a pagan and a papal phase:
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.
Ten “barbarian” tribes took over the territory of the Western Roman Empire after it collapsed in 476 AD. But then we are told of another “king,” the little horn, who again is “diverse” or different from the other kings that take over from pagan Rome. He is different because he is not merely or primarily a political ruler; he is the leader of church. He is the papacy. The papacy uprooted three of those ten barbarian tribes that took over from pagan Rome: the Ostrogoths, Heruli and the Vandals, who were not seen again after 538 AD.
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.”
We discussed some of those “words against the most high” last week, including “Lord God the Pope” and “Representative of the Son of God.” But the worst sin was to interpose a human system of confession, penance, and absolution between the believer and his only true mediator, Jesus Christ, who ministers on our behalf in the heavenly sanctuary.
The time and times and half a time, during which time the saints of the most high are given into his hand, and are “worn out”—the Vaudois being but one example among an unnumbered host—is a way of saying three and a half prophetic years, which is the same time period as the 1260 days, and the 42 months; this period began in 538 and ended in 1798, as we have discussed several times.
But one thing we have not discussed is that the papacy will “think to change times and laws.” What does this mean? What laws has the papacy changed? For one, the Catholic Church re-arranged the ten commandments, doing away with the commandment about worshiping images or idols, and splitting the prohibition on covetousness into two pieces.
But there is another law, a law about a time, that the papacy changed: It changed the day for Christian rest and worship from Sabbath the seventh day of the week, to Sunday, the first day of the week. There was never any biblical justification for this change. It was done merely by the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
The church of Rome claims that Sunday is the “mark” of its ecclesiastical authority. “Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act. … And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.” — The American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883.
Catholics freely admit that the change from Sabbath to Sunday has no Scriptural warrant, and was done only on the authority of the Catholic Church. In fact, they have been able to use the fact that most Protestants continue to keep Sunday as a potent argument against the principle of Sola Scriptura and in favor of church tradition.
At the council of Trent, the Gaspar de Fosso, Archbishop of Reggio, said, “The authority of the church could not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the church had changed . . .Sabbath into Sunday, not by the command of Christ, but by its own authority.” — de Kock, Christ and Anti-Christ, p. 216.
Likewise, an anonymous 19th Century Catholic tract writer wrote:
“We blame you not for making Sunday your weekly holyday instead of Saturday, but for rejecting tradition, which is the only safe and clear rule by which this observance can be justified. In outward act, we do the same as yourselves in this matter; we too no longer observe the Jewish Sabbath, but Sunday in its stead; but then there is this important difference between us, that we do not pretend, as you do, to derive our authority for so doing from a book, but we derive it from a living teacher, and that teacher is the Church.” —ibid, 217.
The keeping of Sunday is not in the Bible, but only in church tradition. It is the mark of the Catholic Church, instituted by its authority, and it will become, in the future, the mark of the beast.
The Seal of God
In contrast to the mark of the beast, God’s true followers will receive the seal of God, which is keeping the true Sabbath. Seals were used in ancient times to attest to the authenticity of official documents. We would then expect to find God’s seal embedded in His law. Ancient seals were a distinctive individualized mark. Isaiah the prophet says, “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples” (Isa. 8:16, NKJV).
The Fourth Commandment contains three elements of an authentic seal. First, the name of the sealer: “The LORD your God” (Exod. 20:10, NKJV). Second, the title of the sealer: the Lord who “made,” (Exod. 20:11) or the Creator. And third, the territory of the sealer: “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” (Exod. 20:11, NKJV).
According to Revelation 7:1-3, the seal of God is placed only on our foreheads, a symbol of our minds. Thus, we understand that the faithful are those who “keep the commandments of God, and have the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12), and included in those commandments is the fourth. Although the beast seeks to change times and laws (Dan. 7:25), God’s commandments stand forever.