Revelation 13:14

Living image of the first beast the Popedom, Revelation 13:14-18.

14. Deceiveth All these miracles were deceptions.

Power to do Either by aid of Satan or by ample means of combination and juggling machinery.

In the sight of the beast For his benefit and great approval.

Saying The clergy are the counsellors of submission to the spiritual empire.

They should make The pope is elected, indeed, by the clergy; but the popedom, and so every pope, is created by the popular superstition under the teachings of the clergy. That it is by the two-horned lamb, the clergy, that this is effected, is notorious. Says Mosheim, on the second century, “The monks, who from their supposed sanctity had the greatest influence with the multitude, held up the pope to their [the people’s] veneration, even as a god.” And of a later date he says, “The Jesuits have turned the Roman pontiff into a terrestrial deity, and put him almost on a footing with the divine Saviour.” He adds, “It may be easily proved that the Jesuits did no more in this than to propagate the doctrines as they found them to have been before the Reformation.” Down to our own hour Pius IX. claimed all the two-horned beast conferred on the image. To a Belgian delegation, who presented him a tiara, That pope said, “You offer me gifts a tiara, a symbol of my threefold royal dignity in heaven, upon earth, and in purgatory.” He denounced the Old Catholics as heretics, “for they refuse to recognise the divine prerogatives of the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and to obey his supreme jurisdiction.” To another set of visitors he said, “The voice which now sounds in your ears is the voice of Him whom I represent on earth.”

All the power which the pope once possessed of dethroning monarchs and disposing of kingdoms arose from the fact that the popular mind, under the clerical influence, firmly supported the pope as above emperor or king, being the representative of God and entitled to be called God.

An image A concentrated representative of, and likeness to, the spiritual empire. He was to be its living executive miniature. At the same time he was to be an idol to be worshipped. The symbol of an image is supposed to be based upon the custom of the Roman emperors to place their statues in a temple or other public place requiring divine honors to be paid to them. But here, 1. It is the spiritual empire itself that is to be imaged, and no individual person. 2. Powers and actions of a great living agent are attributed to it. 3. The images of the emperor were multitudinous, and set up in all parts of the empire; this is a single image. If the seer had intended the countless images, for instance, of Nero, he would naturally have used the plural, and expatiated on their great number.

An image to the beast, which… did live As an image, all the qualities and powers of the pontifical empire are gathered and impersonated in him. He is symbol and representative executive; and so ruler; not as hereditary sovereigns are, by natural inheritance, for he is made, not born, an image. And so most of the predicates made applicable to the beast are also applicable to the pope, and vice versa. The pope is one of the clergy, and so goes to make up the two-horned lamb. He is part of the papal empire, and so is one with the beast. The name, whether Latinus, Latin, or otherwise, belongs to beast and image that is to pope or papal Church alike. The image fitted to the beast after he did live from his deadly wound, and his persecutions and exploits, are after his living from his death. If the beast therefore be, as some think, Nero, then most of Nero’s persecutions were after his imaginary resurrection. But the resurrection never took place, and so the persecutions could never take place. The persecutions, though predicted, were as imaginary as the resurrection. If the beast was the supreme Roman power, then it was after its death in the Emperor and revival in the Pope that the persecutions took place. That is, the persecutions were papal, not pagan. The persecutor was not the emperor but the pope.