REVELATION 13Revelation of Jesus | Revelation of JohnT: REVELATION 13:1-1813: 1,2 THE BEAST FROM THE SEATHE SEA BEAST AND THE WILD ANIMALS OF DANIEL 7THE LITTLE HORN AND THE SEA BEASTTHE BEAST’S AGENDA—TO CHANGE GOD’S LAW13:3 THE DEADLY WOUNDTHE FRENCH REVOLUTIONTHE DEADLY WOUND HEALED13:11,12 THE BEAST FROM THE EARTH13:11 A LAMB OR A DRAGON?13:13,14 FIRE FROM HEAVEN13:15 THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST13:16,17 THE MARK OF THE BEASTOF MAN’S DEVISINGATTACK ON THE EVERLASTING COVENANT13:18 THE NAME AND NUMBER OF THE BEAST666, THE NUMBER OF DISOBEDIENCE

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The Protestants in France, known as the Huguenots, were severely persecuted by a series of kings who were urged on by the Roman Catholic clergy. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day was just one of many atrocities which resulted in the flight from France of hundreds of thousands of Protestants. The common people who remained carried the burden of supporting the luxurious lifestyle of both the nobility and the clergy, who were exempt from taxation. Centuries of anger and frustration boiled over in the French Revolution, when the people turned on their oppressors, slaughtering thousands of aristocrats and priests.[1] Churches were desecrated and the “Goddess of Reason and Liberty” became the religion of the revolution.[2]

In the meantime France under the generalship of Napoleon Bonaparte was at war with most of Europe; the Roman Catholic Church, with its Papal States in Italy and France, became an object for conquest. By the spring of 1797 all of Northern Italy, including the Papal States, had been conquered. The “Directory,” the committee which was ruling France, sent Napoleon his instructions: “The Roman religion will always be the irreconcilable enemy of the Republic...do all that you deem possible, without rekindling the torch of fanaticism, to destroy the papal Government.”[3]

The opportunity came the next year. “The French General Duphot was shot and killed, whereupon the French took Rome on February 10 1798 and proclaimed the Roman Republic. Because the pope [Pius VI] refused to submit, he was forcibly taken from Rome.”[4] Though seriously ill, he was hurried from one city to another and finally died in Valence, France in 1799, dramatically fulfilling the prophecy of Revelation 13:10, “He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity” (Revelation 13:10). The arrest and deportation of the pope in 1798 was neither the first nor the last of a series of blows to the Roman Catholic Church,[5] but the dramatic removal of the head of the church symbolizes the “deadly wound” prophesied in Revelation 13. It also came exactly 1,260 years after 538 AD, the year in which the barbarians were driven from Rome, and is thus a remarkable fulfillment of prophecy.

Continue to next section: THE DEADLY WOUND HEALED


[1] In 1789 the revolutionary assembly voted that the possessions of the clergy be placed at the disposal of the nation. The next year the religious orders were suppressed. All citizens, even Protestants or Jews, were given the right to hold church offices, and “the first obligation of the priests was to take an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, which denied to the Pope any effective power over the church” George Goyau, "French Reveloution," The Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/13009ahtm (accessed August 15, 2014). Any priest who would not take the oath, was deported to Guinea, West Africa. In 1793 “missionary representatives” were sent to the provinces to close churches, hunt down citizens suspected of religious practices, to constrain priests to marry and threaten with deportation those priests who refused to abandon their posts.

[2] Wikipedia contributors, "Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title+DechristianisationofFranceduringtheFrenchRevolution&oldid=635540 (accessed December 10, 2014)

[3] Georges Goyau, "Napoleon I (Bonapart)" The Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/1067a.htm (accessed August 15, 2014)

[4] Ibid

[5] In 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France, and he continued his war against the Papacy. A new pope, Pius VII, had been elected. At first there was an uneasy peace but as the pope refused to co-operate in Napoleon’s grandiose empire-building, he ordered the pope arrested in July, 1809. When the pope attempted to continue his political and religious directives from prison, “the conditions of the pope’s captivity were made more severe, all his correspondence had to pass through Paris, to be inspected by the Government, he could no longer receive visits without the presence of witnesses, a gendarme demanded of him the ring of St. Peter, which Pius VII surrendered after breaking it in two” Georges Goyau, "Napoleon I (Bonapart)" The Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/1067a.htm (accessed August 15, 2014). “The Church suffered enormous losses as a result of the French Revolution. For example, the great abbeys of Europe disappeared, and with them the influence of the monastic orders as the papacy’s most effective instrument of government. The Papal States were gradually absorbed by secular states. In 1870, the papacy gave up all claim to the Papal States…The French government passed anti-church laws in 1880. These laws expelled religious orders from France, banned religious education in the schools, and excluded the Church from several other areas of French life. In Italy, hostility came from the people as well as the government. This hostility led to anti-papal—and anti-Christian—laws and demonstrations” ("Roman Catholic Church," World Book Encyclopedia (Chicago, World Book) 1986.