VIAL 1 - A NOISOME GRIEVOUS SORE

"And I heard a great voice out of the Temple, saying to the Seven Angels, Go your ways and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the Mark of the Beast, and upon them which worshipped his image." (REVELATION 16:1-2)

THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1789

Before examining the symbolism of the "noisome grievous sore", let us look at the state of France in the years leading up to the Revolution. Lardner's Encyclopaedia on the state of Europe, gives us this description: -

"A court, corrupt and profligate, beyond perhaps any which Europe had yet witnessed, had utterly degraded the minds of the upper classes…the middle orders were disgusted and galled by the privileges of the noblesse and their excessive pride and insolence; the scandalous lives of the clergy and the writings of the philosophers had shaken their reverence for religion; the abuses and oppressions of arbitrary and extravagant government were keenly felt."

To understand how such a situation had developed in France, we need to go back one hundred years to 1685 when Louis XIV, the Sun King, revoked the Edict of Nantes. This action virtually cut his reign into two sections and the intelligent student of French history will note the disappearance of the great men in France after this. In the years that follow 1685 we become conscious of a dull, dead level of subservience, and conformity to the desperate will of a king so haughty that he would go on to declare: -

"The State, I am the State."

Louis XIV trampled underfoot civil and religious liberty, strength, genius and the Gospel of Christ; freedom of thought and action were ruthlessly suppressed and the writer, Buckle, makes the apt comment that the king had: -

"survived the entire intellect of the French nation."

By his act, the great Protestant universities of Saumur, Montauban, Nimes and Sedan were suppressed and their professors fled to other lands, taking their learning with them. Bibles, hymnals and devotional books were burned, not merely under Louis XIV but as late as 1727 his successor, Louis XV, was ordering that those who had been compelled to convert to Roman Catholicism, surrender all their books within fifteen days to be publicly burned. Libraries were put out of action, and all across France great bonfires were lit in towns and cities in which tens of thousands of valuable books, including Bibles, were destroyed.

In the century that followed, the intellectual genius of France perished and the state sank into a form of national paralysis. There were no more great statesmen after Colbert, the great military victories of Conde and Tureanne predate 1685, and the campaigns, which followed, ended in disaster and disgrace for the very soldiers whom Louis had used to hunt down and slay the Huguenots.

A barrenness fell upon the literary world with the passing of Moliere, Racine, Corneille and La Fontaine. Literature, science and the arts almost died out. The industry and skill of the Huguenots which had contributed to the greatness of France, was taken to other lands as they fled the cruel persecutions heaped upon them by Louis.

Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church in France had grown immensely rich and powerful by the property seized from the Protestants and by Royal gifts and grants. The papal clergy held one fifth of the landed property of France in their hands on the eve of the Revolution, and they still held many of the people in the same state of serfdom as did the aristocracy. Even the Roman Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc, on page 226 of his book on the French Revolution states: -

"The Bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their body to be loose livers, or in some cases openly presenting their friends to their mistresses as might be done by any lay noble around them."

This was the true state of France when the noisome sore, which had been festering for years, burst forth into Revolution.

THE SYMBOL OF THE NOISOME, GRIEVOUS SORE

The word used in the original Greek of the New Testament to describe the noisome, grievous sore which afflicted those who had the Mark of the Beast, actually means a boil or ulcer, a painful, infectious, suppurating tumour. It is of more than passing interest to note that for the final thirty years of the Eighteenth Century, a literal plague of smallpox afflicted the French Royal Family. Louis XV died from the disease, whilst Louis XVI caught the malady on ascending the throne, and it spread to and affected many other members of the Royal Family and the Court of Versailles.

 It is also very significant that the Papacy, the Beast System of prophecy, should have used the very same symbolic language to denounce the spreading of the Scriptures in the French language, some years earlier. Pope Clement XI in his Bull Unigentius condemned the Evangelical Propositions of Quesnil and the publishing and circulation of the New Testament in French. In that Bull, the Pope called upon the Bishops of France to use strong remedies to suppress the "increasing disease", by which he meant the free circulation of the Bible to the French people in their native tongue. He expresses his fears that what he calls a "contagion" would "break out into worse effects", and he actually commenced the Bull by declaring that he had learned of the French New Testament with "the most deep bitterness of our spirit."

Soon the Papacy would live to eat those very words of blasphemy. The French people, denied access to the Scriptures and the Gospel of Salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, would turn to atheism and blasphemy. France, her monarchy and nobility, which had faithfully upheld the Papal Beast System for centuries, would suffer the bursting ulcer of bloody revolution, which would eventually engulf all of Roman Catholic Europe like a contagion which could not be controlled. In the natural realm, the breaking out of ulcers and boils implies internal impurities in the body of the victim. So, the horrific events which characterize the French Revolution were the outcome of centuries of the most loathsome, moral, social and religious corruption and impurity imaginable. The sore festered, came to a point, and burst.

OTHERS IDENTIFIED THE BOIL

Lest any reader think that we are stretching the symbolism of the Scriptures when we say that the bursting of the noisome sore or boil represents the French Revolution, the fact is that many historians of that period likened events then taking place to the outbreak of an ulcerous disease.
 

EDMUND BURKE denounced the Revolution as: -

"A malignant French distemper."

"An infectious plague requiring the most severe quarantine."

FITCHETT in the book "How England Saved Europe" tells us that the European powers regarded the French Revolution as: -

"A political pestilence which threatened all Europe and which must be stamped out at any cost."
 

SIR WALTER SCOTT in his "Life of Napoleon" described the state of French affairs during this period as: -

"The disclosure of wasting sores, useless and disgusting unless when shown to a surgeon for the purpose of a cure."
 

LAMBERT who was a French Dominican monk, and himself an eyewitness of the Revolution described it as:

"A horrible ulcer."

"The ulcer of infidelity."

"A sick man covered with ulcers."
 

NIEBUHR the great historian and at one time an ambassador to the Papal Church, says: -

"The Revolution of 1789 was the breaking out of a local disease peculiar to the Roman Catholic nations and governments of Southern Europe. The immense triumphs of the Revolution in Roman Catholic countries were owing to the despair created by an effete aristocracy and a hypocritical priesthood…This was peculiar to the countries where it was indigenous, France and the South of Europe."

SIMILARITY TO THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT

As already stated, there are similarities between the Vials of Judgement and the Plagues visited upon Pharaoh's Egypt. One of those Plagues was that of boils or blains and we read that the magicians of Egypt: -

"Could not stand before Moses because of the boils for the boils were upon the magicians and upon all the house of Pharaoh." (EXODUS 9:11)

This judgement came because Pharaoh and his idol priests and magicians would not heed the word of the Lord God, by Moses His messenger. Israel was exempt from the plague, and this is all the more significant when we realize that the Anglo-Saxon people are the re-gathered Israel of Bible Prophecy, the so-called Lost Tribes. Britain threw off the yoke of Papal bondage at the Reformation and embraced the open Bible and the pure Apostolic Gospel, in consequence of which our island home was spared the horrors of the Revolution, which, beginning in France, engulfed the rest of Europe. France, which rejected the Reformation, persecuted the Huguenots and upheld the Papacy, received the full fury of the boil, the plague of infidelity, revolution and bloodshed. Just as the Plagues of Egypt afflicted the priestly magicians, so the Roman Church and its hierarchy were to endure the full severity of the noisome, grievous sore.

SIMILARITY TO THE TRUMPET JUDGEMENTS

There is a very close similarity between the Trumpets of Judgement in Revelation chapters 8 and 9 and the Vials of God's Wrath in Revelation 16, both in their nature and their location. Just as the Trumpets heralded the doom of Imperial Rome, so the Vials foretell the downfall of Papal Rome. The First Trumpet Judgement was upon the earth at the hands of Alaric and the Goths and especially involved the Roman province of Gaul, modern France, and the North of Italy (see our book "Opening The Seals of The Apocalypse"). In like manner the First Vial Judgement was upon the earth, by the hands of the French Revolutionary forces. Now let us examine: -

THE TWO-FOLD NATURE OF THE NOISOME, GRIEVOUS SORE

The boil, ulcer or sore which burst forth into the French Revolution, can trace its roots to two evil, corrupting sources.

THE INFIDELITY OF VOLTAIRE

The late Mr. Hilaire Belloc M.P., himself a Roman Catholic, rightly stated in his book "The French Revolution" that: -

"It is impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given to the religious problem."

It was indeed the religious problem, which created the circumstances for Revolution. A people denied the Bible, turned to atheism. A nation from which the best and most industrious section of the population had either been slaughtered or driven into exile, was reduced to poverty and groaned under tyranny. The atheist Revolutionaries were to hold up to hatred and contempt the only form of Christianity permitted to exist in France, Roman Catholicism. Their cry was to be "Ecrasez l'infame" or "Crush the Wretch" as they sought the utter rejection and destruction of religion.

From 1758 - 1770 infidel, atheistic literature flooded into France. The circulation was enormous and was often printedon cheap paper and distributed in vast quantities among the lower classes. Amongst the writers of this material were such men as Rousseau, Didoret, D'Alembret, Condorcet, La Harpe, Boyle, Robinet, and the best known of all, Voltaire. This apostle of infidelity was born nine years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and his brilliant yet ungodly teachings were to rush like a torrent into the void created the expulsion from France of the Gospel and the Huguenots who proclaimed it. For fifty years Voltaire was regarded as the leading intellectual in Europe, gaining the friendship of many of the crowned heads of Europe and such was his baneful influence that it has not ceased to this very day.

Like many other initiates of the secret societies of his era, Voltaire was not an open atheist, but rather a deist. He did subscribe to a belief in one Supreme Being, but to Voltaire, Christ was no better than Buddha or Mohammed. He exposed the gross corruption and superstition of Roman Catholicism, but he failed to recognize truth and hence he put nothing in the place of that which he tore down. His concept of the Supreme Being quickly degenerated into the worship of the creature and his reason and intellect. The revolutionary leader Robespierre was later to declare: -

"If there be no God, we would invent one."

Those who followed Voltaire were not Deists, but for the most part Atheists. The infidel propaganda, which Voltaire poured forth for so many years, totally undermined all religion and moral standards, breeding a contempt for, and hostility to authority and thus paving the road to Revolution. Just as the poisons within the body build up for a long time before bursting out in a boil or sore, so there were many years during which the poison of atheism, infidelity, godlessness and immorality was building up in France, before the noisome sore burst in 1789.

It is of interest to note that Voltaire once boasted to his friends: -

"It took twelve ignorant fishermen to establish Christianity, I will show the world how one Frenchman can destroy it."

But within thirty years of his death, his home was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society and became a Bible storage building, whilst his infidel printing press was used to print an entire edition of the Bible.

ADAM WEISHAUPT AND THE ILLUMINATI

The second source of the noisome sore which gave rise to the French Revolution was an evil genius named Adam Weishaupt who is credited with the founding of modern Illuminism.

Weishaupt was born on 6th February 1748, in southern Germany, and is believed to have been of Jewish extraction. He was trained as a Jesuit and rose to occupy the chair of Canon Law at Ingolstadt University. In 1774 the Jesuit Order was suppressed by Pope Clement, because of its many crimes, and the complaints made against it by the monarchs of Europe, including the French King. However this fierce militaristic and highly secretive Order of Catholicism was not so easily disposed of. The Jesuits vowed to be avenged on the Pope and the French Monarchy and within a short space of time Clement died in suspicious circumstances, believed by many to have been a victim of poison.

On May 1st, 1776, Weishaupt officially brought into existence his secret revolutionary movement known as the Illuminati. Significantly, Communists and Socialists around the world still commemorate May 1st as Labour Day, and sadly this has now become a national public holiday, even in Britain. The choice of name for his movement was by no means novel. Illuminism was being mentioned in Spain as far back as 1492, and some have traced its origins back to the Knights Templar, and the Gnostic cults of the early centuries of the Christian era. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was himself arrested by the Spanish authorities in 1527 and questioned regarding his activities as an "Enlightened One" or member of the Illuminati. Weishaupt was described by the Nineteenth Century French Socialist, Louis Blanc, as being: -

"One of the profoundest conspirators who has ever existed."

Weishaupt joined forces with a Cabalistic Jew from Egypt named Kolmer and soon a network of Illuminati groups existed all over France. Shortly before the French Revolution broke out, the Marquis de Luchet wrote that the Illuminati were: -

"A subterranean fire smouldering eternally and breaking forth periodically in violent and devastating explosions."

"This society aims at governing the world. Its object is universal domination."

Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins and many other Revolutionary leaders, were all Illuminati and the bloodthirsty Jacobin Clubs, which played such a prominent part in the Reign of Terror, based their network on the Illuminati. One of Weishaupt's affectionate titles was "Patriarch of the Jacobins." Every fundamental principle of the Illuminati may be traced through the French Revolution down to present day International Communism. Karl Marx, the grandson of a Jewish Rabbi and the recognized father of Communism, edited his teachings from the writings of Weishaupt, and the first Communist Manifesto published in 1848, the so-called Year of Revolutions, embodies within it the guiding ideals and spirit of Illuminism.

THE NATURE AND VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION

As this article in no way purports to be a detailed history of the French Revolution, but rather an outline of events, viewed from the standpoint of prophecy, I shall set out a table of the major events which took place, and then proceed to describe the horrors enacted, together with some comment upon the character of the Revolutionaries, and upon those who were the victims.

TABLE OF MAJOR EVENTS DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1789	May 5th	Meeting of States General.
	June 20th	The Tennis Court Oath
	June 27th	One Chamber National Assembly recognised
	July 14th	Fall of The Bastille
	August 4th	Abolition of Feudal Rights
	October 5th - 6th	Women's March on Versailles Royal Family brought to Paris
1790		National Assembly attacks Church Rights and property holding Growing militancy of Revolutionaries
1791	June 20th	Attempted escape of the Royal Family
	September	King Louis accepts the new Constitution
1792	April	France and Austria at war
	August 10th	Storming of the Royal Palace - The Tuileries - by Paris mob The Monarchy suspended
	September 2nd - 6th	September Massacres of Royalists in Paris
	September 21st	France proclaimed a Republic
	December	Trial of King Louis XVI
1793	January 21st	Execution of Louis XVI
	February	France and Britain at war
	March	Revolutionary Tribunal created
	June	Arrest of Girondins Committee of Public Safety set up
	October	Reign of Terror begins Execution of Queen Marie-Antoinette Massacre of Royalists at Lyons
1794	March	Fall of Hebertists and Dantonists
	April 3rd	Death of Danton - Robespierre supreme
	July 28th	Fall of Robespierre End of the Terror
1795	October 5th	Coup D'Etat of Vendemaire - Convention dissolved Directory set up - Emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte

The initial calling of the States General was in order to deal with a financial situation with which King Louis XVI and his ministers, including Necker, had proved themselves unable to cope. The States General was made up of Three Estates, Nobles, Clergy and Commoners. If they had voted separately, all chance of Reform would have been hindered. However the Third Estate, led by Mirabeau, demanded that they must have a joint sitting and vote together. On June 17th, 1789, they declared that single voting chamber to be the National Assembly.

Shut out of their hall, they took the famous Tennis Court Oath and on June 27th King Louis accepted their demands. The Storming of the Bastille in July and the forcible return of the Royal Family to Paris in October, all mark steps down the road to anarchy and bloodshed.

After an apparent period of harmony in 1790, agitation broke out again. The Royal Family was arrested at Varennes, attempting to escape from France. The Revolutionaries now provoked war with the Queen's homeland, Austria, and the storming of the Tuileries by the Paris mob led on to the massacres of Royalists as the Reign of Terror began. The year 1793 witnessed the execution of the Royal Family, amongst tens of thousands of others, especially as the various Revolutionary factions waged war upon each other. Truly, no better description could have been given to these events than that of the Apocalypse, for they were as the bursting open of a sore, full of poison. Let us look at the most terrible period of the French Revolution.

FLIGHT OF THE ROYAL FUGITIVES ARRESTED AT VARENNES

"THE REIGN OF TERROR"

It has been estimated that during the French Revolution some 1,240,000 people perished, of whom 900,000 were men, 250,000 women and 90,000 children. Amongst the victims were some 24,000 Roman Catholic clergy. In Thomas Carlyle's work "The French Revolution", we read of the fate of some of the victims as follows: -

"And still the prison fills fuller, and still the guillotine goes faster. On all the high roads march flights of prisoners wending towards Paris…chained two and two they march…they rest by night in unutterable noisome dens, crowded to choking, one or two dead in the morning. Some 400 priests of whom also there is a record ride at anchor on the roads of the Isle of Aix…ragged, sordid, hungry, wasted to shadows, eating their unclean ration…choked in horrible miasma."

Let us read some other accounts of the Reign of Terror as given by Archibald Alison in his work "The History of Europe during the French Revolution."

"The massacre of priests was but the prelude to a general massacre at the Abbaye, the horrors of which exceeded anything hitherto witnessed in the Revolution. Wearied at length with the labour of hewing down so many victims, they fell upon the plan of instituting a mock tribunal with the murderer, Maillard, for its president. The priests were removed to the prison of the Abbaye amidst the yells and execrations of the mob, and no sooner had they arrived than they were surrounded by a furious multitude, headed by Maillard, armed with spears and sabres…after going through a form of trial they turned them out to be massacred by the maddened people who thronged the prison doors, clamoring for their share in the work of extermination. The cries of these victims who were led out to be hewn to pieces by the multitude, first drew the attention of the prisoners in the cells to the fate which awaited themselves…The forms of justice were prostituted to the most inhuman massacre. Torn from their dungeons, the prisoners were hurried before a tribunal where the President Maillard sat by torchlight with a drawn sabre before him and his robes drenched with blood; officials with drawn swords, and shirts stained in gore, surrounded the chair. A few minutes, often seconds, disposed of the fate of each victim. Dragged from the pretended judgement-hall, they were turned out to the populace, who thronged around the doors, armed with sabres, panting for slaughter…no executioners were required, the people dispatched the condemned with their own hands…in the upper chambers of the building the other prisoners endured the agony of witnessing the prolonged sufferings of their comrades; a dreadful thirst added to their tortures and the inhuman jailers refused even a draught of water."

Similar scenes were being enacted all over France during this Terror. Alison states again: -

"At Lyons the scaffold opposite the Hotel de Ville, where the trials were conducted, was kept in ceaseless employment. Around its bloody foundations large quantities of water were daily poured, but they were inadequate to wash away the ensanguined stains or remove the fetid odour…at length a guillotine was placed in the middle of the bridge at Morand in the centre of the Rhone, into which the stream of blood at once fell, and into which the headless trunks and severed heads were precipitated."

Describing what became known as the Noyades, he states: -

"At Nantes, a Revolutionary tribunal was formed under the direction of Carrier…their principle was that it was necessary to destroy en masse all the victims. Boats were loaded with victims and taken out into the river and sunk with all on board. Couples were tied together and thrown into the River Loire and drowned. These were termed Republican Marriages and Baptisms…on one occasion a hundred priests were stripped of their clothes and precipitated into the waves…women big with child, children eight, nine and ten years of age were thrown together into the stream….the reason given was that they were little wolflings who would grow into wolves…the Noyades or drowning en masse at Nantes amounted to twenty-five, on each of which occasions up to one hundred and fifty people drowned. Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of the river was so infected as to render a public ordinance necessary forbidding use of it by the inhabitants…birds of prey flocked to the shores and fed on human flesh, while the very fish became poisonous. From Saumur to Nantes…sixty miles, the Loire was for several weeks dyed red with human blood. The multitude of corpses it bore to the ocean was so prodigious that the adjacent coast was strewn with them."

Such was the nature of the Revolutionary Reign of Terror. Now let us look at:-

THE VICTIMS

Initially, those, who fell victims to the Guillotine, were the aristocrats, the clergy and the members of the Royal Family, as in the painting in the previous section, which depicts the execution of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the one in this section depicting the earlier execution of her husband, King Louis XVI. This comes as no surprise as the noisome sore was to afflict the upholders of the Papal Beast System. The Roman priesthood and hierarchy had incited the persecution of the Huguenots, and the aristocracy had enforced it at the behest of the Royal Family. When Louis XVI and his Queen Marie-Antoinette met their fate at the hands of the Revolutionaries, they were representative of the two European Monarchies most responsible for the Counter-Reformation and the slaughter of Protestants. The French Royal Family had initiated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Dragonnades. Persecution had continued right up to the 1760's and between 1750 and 1762, fifty-eight persons were sent to the galleys for their Protestant faith. In 1759 Marguerite Robert was arrested and condemned in the diocese of Uzes for having been married to Joseph Vincent by a Protestant minister.

Marie-Antoinette, daughter of the Empress Marie Theresa of Austria, was a Hapsburg. This Royal Family, both in its Spanish and Austrian branches, had been responsible for the most inhuman barbarities against the Protestants of Bohemia and the Netherlands. Whilst many of those who perished by the guillotine may have been relatively innocent, there can be no doubt they were suffering for the sins of their fathers. As the Revolution took its course, the horrible work of destruction afflicted all classes of society. Lists of the Revolutionary tribunals show tailors, hairdressers, butchers, farmers and labourers amongst the victims. Anyone could be accused of counter Revolutionary activity, especially if they had land, money, property or a business to be confiscated. The French Revolution was the example and forerunner of all future Communist Revolutions, and the bloody events of the Reign of Terror have had their counterparts in Russia, China, Hungary and Cambodia, to name but a few places. It was little wonder that Madame Roland declared: -

"O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name."

Having looked at the Terror and the Victims, let us examine:

THE LEADERS OF THE REVOLUTION

Modern historians have tended to eulogize the leaders of the French Revolution. Portraying them as noble-minded champions of freedom. The truth is very far removed from such a rosy picture, and as we shall see from the following brief character sketches, they were bloodthirsty tyrants and sadists without morals or the qualities of mercy and compassion.

MARAT

One acquaintance described him in these words: -

"Marat had the burning eyes of a hyena, marked by spasmodic convulsions of his features and a rapid jerky walk."

Another description says: -

"His countenance was toad-like in shape, marked by bulging eyes and a flabby mouth, his complexion of greenish, corpselike hue. Open sores, often running, pitted his countenance."

Dr. Rabanes, his physician, said: -

"Eczema, in one of its more revolting manifestations…maddened him with torment…headaches, pain and fever tormented his spirit."

The doctor concluded him to be in the last stages of syphilis, and the career of this vile monster, largely responsible for the Reign of Terror, was only ended by the courageous act of his assassin, Charlotte Corday , who, as the picture illustrates, killed him in his bathtub.

DANTON

In origin an impoverished lawyer, he became notorious for his corruption whilst a leader of the Revolution. His physical appearance was no less revolting than that of his colleague Marat. He is described as being: -

"Pockmarked, hideous, his mouth distorted by a scar."

Madam Roland wrote of him: -

"I have never seen anything which so perfectly expressed the violence of brutal passions…half veiled by an air of great joviality."

Held largely to blame for the September Massacres, he, himself, was to die by the guillotine on the orders of his former associates. Arrogant to the end, he told his executioner: -

"Show my head to the people, it is well worth seeing."

ROBESPIERRE

One of the leaders of the Jacobins, his name is synonymous with the Reign of Terror. He was responsible for inaugurating the Festival of the Supreme Being. Totally without mercy for his victims, he, too, would die by his own instrument of terror, the guillotine, along with twenty-two of his supporters. Shot in the jaw during the struggle which surrounded his arrest at the Assembly, when Samson the executioner ripped the bandage from his wound, he screamed in agony before being beheaded, according to the claims of the spectators.

The above are but three of the Champions of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

THE COCARDE

THE PRINCIPLE OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION

In all the bloodthirsty events which surrounded the French Revolution and all of the wars, uprisings, revolts and civil disturbances which followed in its wake, one Biblical principle is clear for all to see - that of DIVINE RETRIBUTION. Thus we read in the Apocalypse: -

"And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shall be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy (or, they deserve it). And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgements." (REVELATION 16:5-7)

STORMING OF THE ROYAL PALACE - THE TUILERIES

As we have seen earlier, the victims of the French Revolution were the Royal Family, the aristocracy, as well as the priesthood and hierarchy of Roman Catholicism, who had been responsible for the cruel persecution and genocide of the French Protestant Huguenots. Two especially bloody crimes perpetrated by these people called down the retributive judgement of God upon them.
 
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

During the summer of 1572, tens of thousands of Huguenots were lured to the city of Paris to witness the wedding on August 18th, of Henry of Navarre, leader of the Huguenots, to Margaret, the sister of the French King. This royal marriage alliance was supposed to end the wars of religion that had plagued France. Between two and three in the morning of 24th August, the Popish Feast Day of St. Bartholomew, the Papists rose up in a predetermined plan to slay the defenceless Protestants. Wearing white arm-bands, and with white crosses in their hats for identity, they began their work of slaughter as the bell started to toll on the Roman Catholic Church of St. Auxerrois. The most prominent victim was the Huguenot leader, Admiral Coligny, whose body was mutilated by the assassins. For three days the Protestants were hunted down and slain in the streets of Paris until the River Seine ran red with blood, corpses blocked doorways and mutilated bodies lay in every street and lane. By the fourth day the fury of the assassins was satiated as almost every Protestant had been murdered and a dead silence fell over Paris. Then the massacres began in other major towns such as Lyons, Rouen, Dieppe etc. It is estimated that one hundred thousand Huguenots perished, and when the news of this butchery reached Rome, there were scenes of wild jubilation, a Te Deum was sung and the Pope Gregory XIII issued a medal to commemorate the Massacre. This medal depicted an angel offering the Huguenots the choice of death by the sword or worship of the crucifix.

Lest anyone should challenge these statements, we reproduce from the Library of Oxford, as translated by Jesuit priest Bartolli,

THE POPE'S OFFICIAL PROGRAMME, SEPTEMBER 8th 1572 A.D.

"ORDER OF THE MOST SOLEMN PROCESSION MADE BY THE POPE IN THE CITY OF ROME WHEN THE MOST HAPPY NEWS CAME OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HUGUENOT SECT."

"As soon as the Pope received the news of the death of the Admiral (Coligny) and other Chiefs of the Huguenot sect, before ordering a general procession, he requested the Cardinals then in Rome, to assemble in a solemn consistory, where letters from the Papal Nuncio at the Court of France referring to the destruction of the Huguenot sect were read. Immediately afterwards, His Holiness, with all the Cardinals in most beautiful order, went to the Church of St. Mark, where the best singers sang a most beautiful Te Deum Laudamus. This done, the Pope solemnly consigned the cross to the most illustrious Cardinal Ursini for the French Legation and ordered that on Monday next, the Feast of the Nativity of the most glorious Virgin Mary, at twelve o'clock, a solemn procession be held …then followed the religious orders, then the parish priests…bishops and the most illustrious Cardinals, all clothed in pontifical robes and surrounded by Swiss guards. The ambassadors of the foreign powers to the Papal Court came next and last of all, the Pope under a canopy of silken velvet…the Cardinal of Lorraine together with the French Ambassador received the Pope at the door of the Church (St. Louis, the Church of the French nation) with a most joyful look on his face and gave him the cross to kiss… Cardinal Jenses sang high mass as a thanksgiving for the great favour the French nation had received from our Lord God…the mass was responded to by the musicians of our Lord the Pope…the city of Rome was filled with great joy."

Here is the Pope's own prayer of thanksgiving for the Massacre of Protestants: -

"Almighty and eternal God we give Thee devout thanks and sing unto Thee songs of praise because…Thou hast granted unto the Catholic people a glorious and joyful victory…we beseech Thee mercifully to continue what Thou hast faithfully begun."

As we shall see, both France and the Papacy would pay dearly for this crime against humanity.

THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES

On October 17th 1685, King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given civil and religious liberty to his Huguenot subjects. New laws authorized the wholesale conversion to the Roman Church of Protestant children who were virtually kidnapped from their parents. Protestant property was confiscated, churches demolished and Protestant ministers banished. The King's soldiers were billeted in the homes of the God-fearing Huguenots. They stabled their horses in the houses, broke up the furniture, tied the sons, brothers, husbands and fathers and then violated mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in their presence. Thousands of Huguenot men were sent as slaves to the galleys, hundreds of women were imprisoned in the living hell of Rome's convents and at least one million Huguenots fled from France taking their skills with them. All of this was again celebrated with special medals, Te Deums were sung and processions held. The Roman Church praised Louis: -

"You have strengthened the faith, You have exterminated the heretics, King of Heaven preserve the King of Earth."

How dreadful, as we have seen and will see, were the judgements that fell on the descendants of those responsible for these crimes.

"BLOOD FOR BLOOD"

The atheistic Revolutionaries of 1789-93 were well versed in the deeds, which shamed the history of their country. They actually caused the scenes from the St. Bartholomew's Massacre to be acted out on the theatrical stage. Burke in his work entitled "Thoughts on the French Revolution" says: -

"In this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion of blood? No, it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of the clergy, to an alacrity, in hunting down their Order to destruction, to stimulate their cannibal appetites, and to quicken them to an alertness in new murders and massacres."

Just as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's began with the tolling of the great bell, so also did the massacres of the Revolutionary era. The streets of Paris, which had been dyed red with the blood of the innocent Protestants, now witnessed the slaughter of their persecutors. Thousands died by the Guillotine, others were roasted in ovens as the Huguenots had been, and others were tied together and thrown into the River Seine. The aristocrats and Roman Catholic Clergy, even the King and Queen were taken to their death in the tumbrels, even as the Huguenots, loaded with chains, had been paraded through the streets in carts. The last act of the deposed Louis XVI was his attempt to speak a few words to his subjects before his execution. His voice was drowned out by the beating of drums - exactly what had taken place at the martyrdom of the Huguenot Pastor Fulcan Rey years before. The Roman Catholic clergy, who had been responsible for the awful fate of the Huguenots, now suffered in identical ways. Many were guillotined, others were sent in chains as prisoners to Rochelle and the Isle of Aix. As a group of priests stood in chains at Limoges, they were compelled to watch a procession of asses in vestments led by a pig wearing a mitre. Many Roman Catholic clergy died along the very roads that once their Huguenot victims had been forced to march. The Revolutionaries converted the Cathedral of Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason and a prostitute was there enthroned as Goddess of Reason. The crucifix was burned, the consecrated hosts, Rome's wafer gods, were trampled underfoot and a donkey was made to drink from the chalice. Events in Paris were re-enacted all over France, the districts, which had witnessed the Dragonnades of the Protestants, now witnessed the Noyades of the Royalists. Nantes, where the famous Edict of Toleration, later revoked, had been granted, saw some of the worst massacres. It is said that the guillotine was worked until the headsman sank exhausted, and then mass butchery took place. Areas, which had been prosperous in the days of the Huguenots, were reduced to ruin and starvation. Let me conclude this section by quoting from a book written at that time by a Non-conformist minister, J. Bicheno M.A., entitled "The Signs of the Times; and the Overthrow of the Papal Tyranny in France, the Prelude of Destruction to Popery and Despotism, but of Peace to Mankind" : -

"In the history of France, of its persecutions and punishments, we see a picture of what we may expect to see in other countries soaked with the blood of the martyrs. When we read the history of the sufferings of the French Protestants in the reigns of Charles IX and Louis XIV and compare the horrors there perpetrated with recent events, we cannot but be struck with admiration at the ways of Providence. In the south and West of France especially, what torrents of Protestant blood have flowed! Nothing but the late slaughters (French Revolution) can equal the horrors. The massacres at Lyons and Toulouse are famous in history, but nowhere have there been so many and such horrible massacres, Paris excepted, as in the neighbourhood of the Loire, Nantes, Angers, Orleans, Bourges; and all the chief cities and towns situated on or near this river…the River Loire was purpled with the blood of the Huguenots and heaps of their dead bodies were left to rot on the fields, and to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey. And as if singled out by special interposition, these very cities and counties have experienced during the conflicts and horrors of the Revolution, distinguished calamities; and that river above all others, once so deeply stained with Protestant blood, has been swelled with the blood of the advocates of despotism and superstitions, and choked with the dead bodies of the very orders of men that had been the chief instigators and perpetrators of the horrors of the last and preceding age. The guilt of their murders is not to be extenuated; but God is righteous."

The horrors of the French Revolution were the direct outcome of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. God had truly given the persecutors of His people blood to drink. It was Divine Retribution. The Huguenots had been avenged.

THE DIVINE TIME FACTOR

The manifestations of God's judgements which commenced with the outbreak of the French Revolution were for an appointed time in history. They could not have begun any earlier, nor could they have been delayed any longer. The Scriptures declare: -

"And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come and the time…and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." (REVELATION 11:8)

The nations of the Roman Earth of prophecy, that is the Roman Catholic nation of continental Europe, had become a seething cauldron full of wickedness, which having reached a climax, finally began to overflow, thereby calling forth Divine Retribution. The idolatries, superstitions, abominations and conspiracies of centuries had reached high water mark, and just like a flood bursts forth upon the earth sweeping all before it, so did the judgements of god come. Symbolically speaking, the iniquity of the Amorites was now full and it was time to avenge the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. Let us look at the time factors involved in these events. According to Scriptural Prophecy, the Papal System was to exercise persecuting power and authority for the following time periods: -

"And he (the Little Horn) shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High…and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and dividing of time." (DANIEL 7:25)

"But the Court which is without the Temple, leave out and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the Holy City shall they tread underfoot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score (1260) days, clothed in sackcloth." (REVELATION 11:2-3)

"And there was given unto him (the Beast) a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months…to make war with the saints and to overcome them." (REVELATION 13:5-7)

Thus the Papal System, spoken about symbolically as a "Little Horn", a "Beast" and "Gentiles" was to persecute the people of God for a period described as: -

1260 DAYS
42 MONTHS
TIME, TIMES AND DIVIDING OF TIME

Now we shall see, using our key to interpretation below, that those three periods are one and the same era of time, marked by Papal power, persecution and blasphemy.

KEY TO INTERPRETATION:

"And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years…each day for a year shall ye bear your iniquities." (NUMBERS 14:33-34)

"I have appointed thee each day for a year." (EZEKIEL 4:6)

Having established by the Scriptural double witness above, the principle that ONE Day equals ONE YEAR, we can see that a 30-DAY MONTH would equal 30 YEARS, while a 360-DAY YEAR (or ONE FULL, COMPLETE CYCLE OF TIME) would be 360 YEARS in duration.

THEREFORE: -

TIME MEASURE 1:

TIME MEASURE 2:

PROPHETIC STUDENTS RECOGNIZED WHAT WAS TAKING PLACE

Just as for over a century, prophetic students had predicted the outbreak of the French Revolution, so there were those, like Bicheno, whose work we have already examined, who quickly recognized in the current events of their day the fulfilment of prophecy: -

 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY (1733 - 1804) - Famous not only as an expositor of the Word of God, but also for his scientific research, he preached a famous sermon at the Gravel Pit, Hackney, entitled: "The Present State of Europe Compared with Ancient Prophecies." This was delivered at the very height of the French Revolution and in his message he declared: -

"Look back to the ancient prophecies and compare them with the present state of things…this great event of the late Revolution in France appears to me and many others to be not improbably the accomplishment of the following part of Revelation chapter 11 v. 13. "And the same hour there was a great earthquake and the tenth part of the city fell." An earthquake, as I have observed, may signify a great convulsion and revolution in states; and as the papal dominions were divided into ten parts, one of which…was France, it is properly called a tenth part of the city or mystical Babylon…it is further remarkable that the Kings of France were those who gave the Popes their temporalities and the rank they now hold among the princes of the world. And it is foretold, Revelation 17 v.16, those Kings who gave their power unto the Beast, "these shall hate the Whore and make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will and to agree to give their Kingdom unto the Beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled." May we not hence conclude it to be highly probable that what has taken place in France will be done in other countries."
 

THE EDINBURGH MISSIONARY MAGAZINE FOR 1796 - In reference to the recent Revolution in France stated: -

"By the general consent of prophecy, the reign of Anti-Christ is now hastening to an end."

 GEORGE BELL writing in the London based EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE of 1796 on "The Downfall of Anti-Christ" says: -

"One of the ten kingdoms under the dominion of Rome would fall or revolt from her jurisdiction; have not we seen in one of the ten kingdoms (France) a most amazing Revolution? Have we not seen that kingdom fall off of the Papal jurisdiction?"

Thus, there was a godly remnant in Christendom, during the French Revolutionary era, who clearly saw the outworking of Bible Prophecy in the political events taking place around them, and were encouraged to look forward to the ultimate destruction of the Papal Anti-Christ and the establishment of Christ's Kingdom on earth.

VIAL 2 - BLOOD UPON THE SEA

"And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living soul died in the sea." (REVELATION 16:3)

SIMILARITY TO TRUMPET JUDGEMENTS

As we have already learned, there is a similarity between the judgements, which fell on Imperial Rome under the Seven Trumpets and those, which fell on Papal Rome and its adherents under the Seven Vials. So just as both the First Trumpet and the First Vial affected the Earth, so the Second Trumpet and the Second Vial both affect the Sea. Just as the Second Trumpet had heralded the destruction, by the hand of Genseric and his Vandals, of the maritime Empire, and the naval power of Imperial Rome, so, in like manner, the Second Vial concerns the destruction of the naval power and the overseas Colonial Empires of the Papal nations of Europe, France, Spain and Portugal.

TWOFOLD NATURE OF THE JUDGEMENTS

The judgements, which fell on the Colonial territories of these Roman Catholic nations, were twofold in nature: -

BY REVOLUTION:

The contagion of the French Revolutionary spirit soon spread beyond the seas and it was not long before the most flourishing of the French West Indian Colonies was rocked by a revolt, inspired by the same Illuminati principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. From 1792 - 1804, the island of San Domingo experienced a blood chilling civil war, made all the more vicious by the racial factors involved in the struggle. The result was the death of some 60,000 Black inhabitants and the all but total extermination of the entire White French Colonial population. The territory was ultimately lost to France, becoming the Republic of Haiti, a land steeped in poverty, ignorance, violence, voodoo witchcraft and Roman Catholicism to this very day. Some of the most appalling outrages took place during this period, some too terrible to relate. Lothrop Stoddard in the classic book: "The French Revolution in San Domingo" tells of the butchery and bloodshed in Port-au-Prince: -

"All without exception have been massacred down to the very women and children…a young mulatto named Fifi Pariset ranged the town like a madman, searching houses to kill the little children. Many of the men and women were hewn down by sappers, who hacked off their arms and smashed in their chests. Some were poinarded, others mutilated, others passed on the bayonet, others disembowelled with knives and sabres, still others stuck like pigs. At the beginning a great number were drowned."

The Revolution was soon exported into the Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Empires in Central and South America, especially after Napoleon's invasion and conquest of the Iberian peninsula and the installation of his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as puppet king of Spain. By 1820, these Papal nations had lost almost all of their overseas possessions, and the maritime and commercial power, which the Beast nations had enjoyed for over two centuries, had been broken; independent Republics had emerged in place of the French, Spanish and Portuguese Empires, and these in their turn, to this present day, have continued to suffer from the revolutionary spirit, with coup following coup, and revolution following revolution. Today, this self-same spirit finds expression in the so-called Liberation Theology, the unholy alliance of Roman Catholicism with the forces of World Revolution, as seen in Nicaragua, Salvador etc. The Papal Colonies had died and the Sea had indeed been turned to blood.

BY WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN:

With the dawning of the year 1794, there began the fateful naval duel between Revolutionary France and Great Britain. By 1795, nearly all the French and Spanish West Indian islands had passed into British hands, and in 1797, the great naval victories of Camperdown and St. Vincent added to British prestige. Napoleon, who was now ruler of France, was not prepared to let matters rest. He dreamed of a mighty Empire under his control, and since Britain stood in his way, it must be destroyed. The plans for Britain's destruction are exemplified by the medal, which we have reproduced below.

As an immediate descent on the British Isles would have proved too hazardous, Napoleon determined to move first towards the East and seize the vast wealth of Britain's developing Indian Empire. His dreams were soon to be shattered when the British Navy annihilated the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Undeterred, Napoleon regrouped his forces, and having crowned himself Emperor in 1804, he assembled 2,000 vessels at Boulogne for an attempt at a direct invasion of Britain. This never took place and Napoleon's ambitious plans for conquest by sea met their doom in 1805, when the combined French and Spanish fleets were destroyed by the British under Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. Truly the sea had been turned to blood for the Papal nations, France, alone, losing 600 warships in addition to many commercial vessels, as the trans-Atlantic Colonial Empires of the Beast nations came to death and destruction between 1792 and 1815.

THE RETRIBUTIVE PRINCIPLE:

The breaking of French naval power was indeed a Divine judgement, for one of the most common punishments imposed on the Huguenots, was to sentence them to serve as galley slaves, chained to the oars of the great French ships which traded between Europe, America and the West Indies. No mercy was shown to the poor Protestants - not even on account of youth or old age. Admiral Baudin, a prefect at Toulon, records a boy of twelve being sentenced to the galleys for the crime of:

"having accompanied mother and father to the preaching."

whilst David de Caumont, Baron Montbelon, was sent to the galleys at seventy years of age and Morlier at seventy-one. Even Louis de Marolles, celebrated counsellor of the King, was sent to the same fate, and on the express orders of the ungrateful monarch, he was to wear a heavy chain around his neck.

Truly, the cries of the Huguenot galley slaves had been heard in Heaven, and judgement had been fully carried out on their persecutors by the ruin of the naval and colonial wealth and power of France.

VIAL 3 - BLOOD UPON THE RIVERS AND FOUNTAINS

"And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood." (REVELATION 16:4)

SIMILARITY TO THE TRUMPET JUDGEMENT

The Third Vial continues to follow the pattern set by the previous two, and, just as under the Third Trumpet, judgement had come upon the Alpine regions, the river valleys and fountains of waters, especially of Northern Italy, by the hand of Attila the Hun, during the break-up of the Roman Empire, so, in like manner, judgement came upon the same areas by the hand of Napoleon Bonaparte. Advancing on the city of Venice, and totally unaware of the role of destiny he was fulfilling as the agent of Divine Retribution, Napoleon exclaimed: -

"I will prove to be an Attila to Venice."

THE NATURE OF THE JUDGEMENT

Revolutionary France had declared war on the German states in 1792 and on Sardinia in 1793. Soon the towns of Metz, Worms and Spires which were watered by the River Rhine, the very localities once wasted by the Huns, again became the scene of carnage and bloodshed. Piedmont and the river valleys of Northern Italy, the very areas, which had witnessed the cruel slaughter of the Waldensian Protestants (the Israel of the Alps), now witnessed scenes of awful violence. Milton's poetic prayer: -

"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints,

Whose bones lie scattered

On the Alpine mountains cold."

was being answered a century and a half after those words were penned. I will once again quote from J. Bicheno's book "The Signs of the Times and the Overthrow of Papal Tyranny in France, the Prelude of Destruction to Popery and Despotism, but of Peace to Mankind" to illustrate the fulfilment of the Third Vial: -

"If the dominions of the House of Austria and the North of Italy be especially intended by the Rivers and Fountains of waters, as I verily believe they are, how apposite is the episode here introduced…what family, unless that of the Capets, and what government, unless the old government of France, has shed half the blood as that of Austria? The House of Savoy, too, is deep in blood. Read the histories of the Waldenses and Vaudois, who inhabited the valleys of Piedmont and who were among the first witnesses against anti-Christian corruptions and usurpations…the most horrible scenes of violence and bloodshed were exhibited in this theatre of Papal tyranny, and the small number of Waldenses, who survived, are indebted, for their existence and support, to the continual intercession made for them by the English and Dutch government…alas, all the waters of rivers have been purpled with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. But the time of retribution is come. I have read the names of cities and towns, of mountains and rivers in the reports of the marches and battles of the French armies; and of the flight of monks, priests and nobles, and I recollect the scenes, which there passed in the last preceding years, when the excellent of the earth there sealed their testimony with their blood and almost wearied the malice of their holy and ennobled butchers, and I am impelled to exclaim "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets and Thou hast given them blood to drink for they are worthy."

The fall of Milan to Napoleon, the defeat of the Austrians at the bloody battle of Marengo, the fall of Northern Italy to the forces of Revolutionary France, with the subsequent losses suffered by the monarchies of Sardinia and Austria, along with the Roman Catholic Church, the three-fold persecutors of the Waldenses, all these were the fulfilment of the Third Vial.