And his name that sat on him was Death.—Still the same rider, the Papacy; and an apt description of its chief claim to recognition during the pre‐ Reformation period.
“Pope Innocent III. first sent missionaries to the districts in which the doctrines had gained foothold, to preach Romanism, work miracles, etc.; but, finding these efforts unavailing, he proclaimed a crusade against them and offered to all who would engage in it the pardon of all sins and an immediate passport to Heaven without passing through purgatory. With full faith in the pope’s power to bestow the promised rewards, half a million men—French, German and Italian—rallied around the standard of the cross, for the defence of Catholicism and the extinction of heresy. Then followed a series of battles and sieges covering a space of twenty years. The city of Beziers was stormed and taken in 1209, and the citizens, without regard for age or sex, perished by the sword to the number of sixty thousand, as reported by several historians. The blood of those who fled to churches, and were murdered there by the holy crusaders, drenched the altars and flowed through the streets. It is estimated that one hundred thousand Albigenses fell in one day; and their bodies were heaped together and burned. The clergy thanked God for the work of destruction, and a hymn of praise to God for the glorious victory was composed and sung.”—B. 335.
And Hell followed with him.—All the people killed by the pope went to hell, and he himself went there also; but none of them went to the kind of hell to which the pope thought he was sending them. They went to the Bible hell, which is a place quite different from what is supposed. The average man believes in hell, but thinks few people go there and that nobody knows much about it. The Bible is the only authority on the subject, and no one can know anything about it, aside from the Bible. When we consider Christ’s statement that unless a man loves Him more than “father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26), and reflect that probably not one professed Christian in a hundred has reached either this standard or the other one which He set in the same chapter, that “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:33), it should make us willing to consider carefully what is to become of the 9,999 out of every 10,000 of earth’s population that do not meet these conditions.