The Mark of the Beast Part 20

Looking up suddenly, he startled Ralph by the bitterness of his tones, as he said:

"G.o.d forgive me! But I could find it easy to curse our clergy, our ministers, our bishops, our teachers, for that when we looked to them, and _paid_ them, to tell us the right, the true thing, they let us go on deluded by the belief that attendance upon the _outward form_ was sufficient to make us sure of Heaven in the future. Why, Bastin, good fellow, do you know that more than half of the clergymen with whom I was _well_ acquainted, are among those whom G.o.d has left behind, and not one of those whom I know, thus left, has a mite of concern about their state, but seem to have gone right over to the Devil, if I may so say it. What does it all mean?"

Ralph began to speak kindly, sympathetically to him, but the old man suddenly interrupted with:

"And yesterday's article in 'the Courier' upon the opening of that Temple at Jerusalem, with all that about the 'Mark of the Beast;' that mock (I suppose it was _mock_) miracle, with the fire consuming the sacrifice, and then that awful portent of darkness, thunder, and lightning--but no rain. It reminded me of the scene at Calvary, when the Christ was crucified. What _does_ it all mean, Bastin?"

"What I have said in that article, I believe, Sir Archibald. The events in Jerusalem, during the last three days are the beginning of the reign of Anti-christ. For years, blinded by Satan whom most of us, unknowingly, served, and blinded by what we termed the 'Progress of the Age,' and of the World, but which ought to have been recognized for what it really was, the growing of the Apostasy, which has now begun to be avowed and absolutely universal--blinded, I say, by all this, Sir Archibald, we suffered many mighty forces to stealthily, powerfully work together so that the climax that has come upon us, was made absolutely easy.

"If we had known our Bibles only a t.i.the as well as we knew our newspapers, we should have seen that all we were glorying in, under the name of 'Progress,' was but a perfecting of human systems, leaving G.o.d, and His purposes, and His plans utterly out of the question. We went to our churches, our chapels, we had a '_form_ of G.o.dliness,' but we tacitly, and controversally, in print and speech, 'denied the _power_ thereof.' We not only made it possible, but easy 'for one man of Master-mind to a.s.sume universal dominion, and to be the object of universal wors.h.i.+p, as Apleon, the Anti-christ, soon will be.'

"And now, Sir Archibald, we are on the eve of a gigantic blend of all religions, with all commercial undertakings. The more I study G.o.d's word in the light of all that is happening, the more clearly I see this.

"How often, in the old days--say from the mid-eighties--professing Christian men, when expostulated with as to the difference between their professed creed of the Sunday, and their daily practice in business, would say, 'oh, bos.h.!.+ religion is one thing, business is another!' Then, as the years moved on, all kinds of trading concerns sprang up professedly religious, and conducted on professedly religious lines. But even the truest Seers in the Church of G.o.d would hardly have dared to predict that in a comparatively few years the final outcome of this trend in events would be an absolute coalescence into one vast system of the world's many religious systems and of the world's commerce. The most that the Seers of G.o.d, in His church, dared to say of the future was that the _principle_ of such a _combined_ system was suggested by the text of Rev. xiii. For the second Beast 'caused the earth and them that dwell therein to wors.h.i.+p the first Beast . . . . And he had power . . . to cause that as many as would not wors.h.i.+p the image of the Beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, and _that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name_.' Here, for nearly two thousand years, was the principle of this h.e.l.l-devised, Devil-developed combined system of religion and commerce, prophesied, but now few even of G.o.d's choicest saints realized all that would mean.

"The nineteenth and early twentieth century Christendom had lost the Bible ideal of Christianity, and had subst.i.tuted a very material idea for G.o.d's idea. The two decades--last of the nineteenth, and first of the twentieth centuries--were marked by immense religious activities, but while a merely religious movement might manufacture a Christendom, it could never make Christians.

"To be religious is one thing to be a Christian quite another thing.

The vast bulk of the members of the so-called Christian Churches of those years, had never been born again from above.

"Christian in name (by virtue of members.h.i.+p in a Church; or by virtue of their subscription to a creed; or by a careful attendance upon the forms of their own particular church) they were yet _only religious_, because G.o.d's word regards those only as _Christians_ in whom Christ indwells, and none can be indwelt by Christ save those into whom He has come in the birth from above. ('Born again' ones.) '_Except_ a man be born again, he CANNOT _see_ the Kingdom of G.o.d' much more live in it.

"'That which is born of the _flesh_ is flesh,' and 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of G.o.d,' but only those _spiritually_ born--born from above. We only become Christians by _re_-generation.

"In the years immediately before the 'Rapture,' _professing_ Christians, and even _professedly_ Christian ministers, men who had taken vows before G.o.d to preach the 'whole counsel of G.o.d,' and who received their salary avowedly for this purpose, scouted, and often publicly denied the necessity of the New Birth. Blind leaders of the blind, they surely will have the greater punishment.

"But to return to the other thought.

"The last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and more so the first ten years of the twentieth century, was marked as an age of centralization and concentration of all kinds of interests, commercial, and religious. Each year, the trusts and monopolies in the commercial world became more and more concentrated, until it has become perfectly easy for Lucien Apleon, Emperor-Dictator of the World, to govern and control (from that beautiful, h.e.l.lish city, Babylon the great,) every business interest in the world.

"Two days ago, at Jerusalem, the 'Covenant Sign'--so called--but which G.o.d calls the 'Mark of the Beast'--was donned by three or four million people, in the _holiday_ spirit. But what was donned voluntarily, in a holiday spirit, forty-eight hours ago, will have to be _branded_ on every one's person in the universe in three and a half years time--or less--or else the refuser of the degradation will have to seal his or her loyalty to G.o.d by their life.

"In three and a half years from now, Sir Archibald, the image of Lucien Apleon, will be set up in the Temple of Jerusalem, and, I believe, in every other great religious centre of the World--St. Peter's, Rome; St.

Paul's, London; and so on in all our great cities, and world centres.

I have been studying this subject naturally, and I find that one great scholar (Hengstenberg) says, that though _one_ image is spoken of, yet having regard to the sense of the original, 'a mult.i.tude of images is meant.'"

"But _religiously_, Bastin, religiously?" cried the old man. "How did the condition of things in the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, help to make it possible for all the world presently to _wors.h.i.+p_ the Beast, and his image?"

There was an almost childish querulousness of tone in the old baronet's questioning.

"All those years," began Ralph, "were marked by a wonderful activity on new lines of deliverance for the human race, from the ills that had grown up around the vast bulk of that race. G.o.d's plan was for man's _regeneration_, a change of heart and life--a working from the centre to the circ.u.mference. But the churches--_all_ denominations--of the years we are speaking about, began endless schemes of deliverance that the man, as they hoped, might be changed from the _out_side--that is to say, man's idea of benefitting man was by an _outward_ reform.

"They failed to recognize the fundamental fact that all the 'Ills of Humanity,' so called, proceeded from man's natural depravity, from man _himself_, and not from his environment. We failed to see that a _reformed_ race would only mean a perpetuation of all the old natural l.u.s.ts, and presently, bring about a return to the old condition of things, while a _regenerated_ race would hold reform in it, and that that reform would not only be perpetual, but ever increasing in its perfecting.

"Then, too, the great religious denominations became fired with the idea of a consolidating, unifying process that should smelt down all denominations into one. To do this every type of religion should find a place. What would it matter if one or more of the religions denied the Deity of Christ? that others did not accept the Bible as the Inspired word of G.o.d and so on? 'The doctrine of Christ,' was gradually eliminated from almost all preaching and the doctrine of a divine humanism--'The divinity of man,' became largely the new cult.

"I believe, from all that I can gather, one of the first steps towards this elimination of 'the doctrine of Christ,' could be traced in the continued elimination from the various denominational hymn-books (as _new_ ones were issued beginning as far back as the late seventies) of hymns relating to the facts of the Atonement and other kindred subjects, and the subst.i.tution of odes, poems, etc., in which aspiration took the place of experimental religion. The hymn-books of more than one, or two, or three denominations, showed this retrograde movement, through their several successive issues.

"Then, side by side with this _Anti_-christian movement, there went on silently that gathering out from the world, and from the merely professing Christian church, those who were, by virtue of their New Birth, through faith in Christ, the recipients of Eternal life, and who, when that glorious 'Rapture' took place awhile ago, were caught up into the air as a _body_ of living believers to be joined for ever, to their head--Christ; thus robbing the world of what Christ Himself called 'the salt of the earth.'"

With a groan, Sir Archibald cried:

"G.o.d help us, Bastin! What fools we were!"

Then with a weary upward look into Ralph's face, he rose to his feet, saying:

"I must be going. I've arranged to meet the lawyers in half-an-hour from now. Good-bye, dear fellow. I will come up to town to see you, or you must come down to see me, before the wind-up of the paper.

Good-bye."

The two men wrung each other's hand, then parted.

Ten minutes later George Bullen and Rose arrived. Amazed to see his friend with an extraordinary beautiful girl, Ralph was presently listening to all the wonderful story of their meeting, etc.

Later on, when, for a moment or two, the two men were alone together, in the inner room, Ralph asked George what he proposed to do with the beautiful girl?

"There is but one thing I can do," he replied. "I must marry her, and that soon. It is no time, in the ordinary sense, to be thinking of 'marrying and giving in marriage,' yet, under the circ.u.mstances, I can do no other. I care for her already, as I never cared for any woman, and her affection for me is touching in its clingingness."

He smiled a little sadly, as he added:

"It is well that there is a little company of us here in London, Believers in G.o.d, and therefore believers in marriage."

George Bullen and Rose were married within the week of their landing in England. The ceremony took place in a little company of believers, who gathered on Sunday (old-count of time) and once on a week-night, in a little hall that had been used for a Sunday School in the old days.

Sunday Schools, like many of the other religious inst.i.tutions, of the old days before the "Rapture," were quite a thing of the past.

Marriage was one of the things of the past. Some years before the "Rapture," a booklet ent.i.tled "We-ism" had been published, in which the author had unblus.h.i.+ngly declared: "Women, _absolved from shame_, servitude, and inequality, shall be enfranchised, owners of themselves * * * We believe in the sacredness of the family and the home, _the legitimacy of every child_, and the inalienable right of every woman to the absolute possession of herself."

The doctrines and practice of "affinity," the "problem" plays, and "s.e.x" novels, of the first decade of the twentieth century, had all materially helped to make the unregenerate mind and heart ready to receive "free love" in its widest, grossest forms. While a certain teaching of "Christian Science" had had an overwhelming power in the same direction.[1]

All these forces had helped to make the doctrine of illicit love acceptable in these early days of the Anti-christ reign, so that it was only among the little gatherings of true Believers, that marriage was sanctified into the sacrament it had been in the _good, true_ old days.

[1] We prefer, in a book of this character, to keep back the actual terms of the filthy statement. Author.

CHAPTER XIII.

"THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION."

The three-and-a-half years since the Covenant with Lucien Apleon, on the night before the opening at the Temple in Jerusalem, had been signed, had practically expired.

G.o.d's judgments had been seen in many ways upon the earth during these forty-two months. The position which Apleon now held, as the "World's Dictator," had not been the work of a day. Wars, no longer local, but practically universal had, for many long months at a time, been the order of the history of the world. "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."

These wars occupying only months at this period, would have occupied scores of years had they been events of the mid-nineteenth century.