Tuesday, 14 April 2020

The creature said to his associates: Genesis 3:22


The creature said to his associates: Genesis 3:22

Holman Christian Standard Bible
The LORD God said, "Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever."


Genesis 11:7

International Standard Version
Come on! Let's go down there and confuse their language, so that they won't understand each other's speech."

Tell me Why would my Father be afraid of man's ability to communicate with each other?
Most of you don't know me nor do you know my Father's words:

Romans 1:25
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And they exchanged the truth of God for lies, and they revered and served created things more than their Creator, to whom belong praises and blessings to the eternity of eternities, amen.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
These people have exchanged God's truth for a lie. So they have become ungodly and serve what is created rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen!

I know your god, and you are like your father!

 I came from the Infinite! No Man has seen the Face of my Father, I Stand on the inside, being Born on the Inside, coming to your world, proving that My Father's World Exist.

Lets look at the word worship John 4:21-22

Lets look at the word worship

John 4:21-22 ►......... 21“Believe Me, woman,” Jesus replied, “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

And this is what I ask of you, do you truly know what you worship.

Please let me explain, look at these two words:

1. Acknowledgement
2. Worship

Lets look at the word worship,

Worship......to honor or respect (someone or something) as a god,

an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity.

Acknowledgement ...... acceptance of the truth or existence of something.

the action of expressing or displaying gratitude or appreciation for something.

When Christ spoke to this woman, I address the same to you, then many did not know the hidden meanings of words, so they not only spoke without knowledge but translated the text without knowledge as well.

Why did Christ say to her that " there will come a time " and that " You Samaritans worship what you do not know ".

You see brothers Christ knew and understood the difference between acknowledgment and worship, Christ came teaching to acknowledge the Father not to worship him, and to see yourself in a father son relationship ( and daughter ) that you may do this in truth.

But in worshipping it is a broad and wide net that captures a multitude things and these things have a multitude of faces and titles and beliefs.

Why should humanity trust in the stars, when they have no power of their own, or the earth which can be destroyed by men, or in some craft or magic and least of all in the Demiurge (the God of this world) that conspires with demons.

2 Chronicles 18:20-21........ 20"Then a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh and said, 'I will entice him.' And Yahweh said to him, 'How?' 21"He said, 'I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and prevail also. Go and do so.'

Brothers this is but one of the acts of this Creator God (Demiurge) against just one man, and there are other occasions where he did even worse to those that did and did not worship him, then he gave a list of rules to worship him by, new moons, summer solstice, winter equinoxes, special days, types of clothing, the offering up of dead animals, condemns mankind for making idols and erecting altars, yet he command Moses to build a box with the figures of angels atop of that box .

So to those that believe and acknowledge such things, you are Samaritans and know not of, who and what you are worshipping being blinded by the words of a creature trying to be a God and don't want you to know that there is one that preexisted him.

And yet more of you speak of blood lines, you do not know of what you have read, it was this creature that said............ Genesis 1:11 ►..... English Standard Version

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.

When he said this he was not talking about trees or plants but spoke to his sons and angels for them not to reproduce with mankind but produce exactly what they are after their own kind, but they disobeyed him and he punished mankind for his own sons and angels sins, mankind did not go where his sons or his angels dwelt but they came down to man.

And you believers of these things along with it's history call this gnosis, I don't think so!

What shall you do when all these things pass away, and the very heavens you believe in are destroyed where shall you have a place of rest, even he'll shall flee from you.

The Parable of The Receiver and The Giver Matthew 21:28-32



The Parable of The Receiver and The Giver



A wise man said to his student
“There were two people. One of them were walking along a road to discover a bag of money had fallen from the sky. They said “I will keep it for myself. For this is a gift from God.” The other person walked along another road to discover a bag of money that had fallen from the sky. They said “I will give this to the poor and needy. I will use this to serve God.” Which do you think will enter the kingdom of heaven?”
The student said, “The second one.”
“You have answered correctly. For the one who serves humanity and God will enter the kingdom, but those who serve themselves and think material gain is the gift from God shall not receive the true gift.”

Matthew 21:28-32 The Message (MSG)

The Story of Two Sons
28 “Tell me what you think of this story: A man had two sons. He went up to the first and said, ‘Son, go out for the day and work in the vineyard.’

29 “The son answered, ‘I don’t want to.’ Later on he thought better of it and went.

30 “The father gave the same command to the second son. He answered, ‘Sure, glad to.’ But he never went.

31-32 “Which of the two sons did what the father asked?”

They said, “The first.”

Jesus said, “Yes, and I tell you that crooks and whores are going to precede you into God’s kingdom. John came to you showing you the right road. You turned up your noses at him, but the crooks and whores believed him. Even when you saw their changed lives, you didn’t care enough to change and believe him. . 

Christ was the first mystery



Greetings to you all of my brothers and sisters :


While I was with you I prepared a place for you at my father's table, yet not only for but for the others that we're to come.


At the arrival of them, greet them, know them, that you may come to know yourselves, then you will come to know who is speaking.


I share with you this mystery,


Galatians 2:20 ►King James Version

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.


Here, Paul is saying that though he is alive, the life that controls his body is the life power of Christ that lives in him and he allows that, life power to lead him in all things while he continues to follow that power having faith in that power, which is the eternal love of our father.


The same was said of Christ, though Christ was the first mystery, yet there was a mystery within him.......


2 Corinthians 5:19 ►World English Bible

namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and having committed to us the word of reconciliation.


Here we see that Christ, though he was alive he himself did not live by his own life, but he had faith in the life power that was alive in him, this power was also the eternal love of our father, this is who Christ followed after.


Do you hear me, brothers and sisters?


Romans 8:11 ►Darby Bible Translation

But if the Spirit of him that has raised up Jesus from among the dead dwell in you, he that has raised up Christ from among the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also on account of his Spirit which dwells in you.


In this last passage remember, afore time, I told you of the first mystery and that there was yet a mystery of the first mystery within the first mystery, and it is that mystery that I am from.


Brothers and sisters it is by this power, the eternal love of our father that is alive and lives in you shall raise you to from among the dead even while you are alive in your mortal bodies, and as Christ stands in his resurrected body, you shall see me in mine as I see Christ in his, and look, even more brothers and sisters are asleep and waiting to join us, so welcome them then awaken them, and our father will resurrect them.


And no! I never left you, I am standing on the out side, a beacon showing them the way to come.

A Gnostic Parable Ancient Ones and the Foolish Nation


A Gnostic Parable 
Ancient Ones and the Foolish Nation

There was this Nation, in a World, that wanted to be great and strong so there would be none to it's Equal.
One day the leader of this nation, along with all of his advisers made a plan to call upon those Who were called the Ancient Ones, for it was said "Great wealth and Power would be given to the Nation that Awakens Them.
Though this Legend was great and well known throughout this world, many sought out the resting place of these Ancient Ones, but none found them til now.

When this Leader found the Ancient Ones as the Legend had said, he vowed not to share his findings with the rest of the world.

The Ancient Ones was awakened, and much knowledge was given to this leader by these sleepers, this knowledge gave the leader and his advisers a great advantage over the people in this world that he and his advisers Reign as kings and Lords.

Soon this leader became arrogant and began proclaiming himself as a "God", when the news of this reached the ears of leader of the ancient ones, this enraged him, provoking him to war against the leader who proclaimed himself King, and God.

The King and his armies wared against the Ancient Ones and their leader, bringing much destruction upon their world and many souls were lost because of this war.

Both the Leader and King, neither could advance over the other, they both suffered a great loss, the lust for power and dominion over the world fueled them both with anger and rage.
The end of the third day was upon their world, the king brought out his ultimate weapon, as did the leader of the ancient ones, at the moment these weapons were to be fired, a Great Darkness fell upon their world, all became silent, as a great light appeared in the heavens, the appearance of one dressed in a robe of Majesty and Great Power and at his side were many Great Lights, all that witness this great site fell as if dead upon their world.

The great and Majestic One standing in Glory and Brilliance of Light, commanded all to arise, in an instance all souls stood and faced the Majestic one.
" I am Light within Light Giving Light, Self Perpetuating life Within Life Giving Life"

For it was he who was true King and Lord of all Universes, at the end of his proclamation, the lights surrounding him Captured the Leader of the Ancient Ones, binding him and his Host in powerful chains of light, the king fell to his knees seeing the ancient ones bound in light.

But the Majestic One said " Bind also this king, his advisers, his armies and all those that worshiped them, but bring all the souls that suffered because of this war into my Kingdom,
wipe away this world and Universe, fold it up into nothingness and so it was done.
The King, and Leader of the Ancient Ones, with all their host, their armies and worshipers suffered eternal punishment and imprisonment, and the souls that suffered Eternal Joy and Blissfulness in the Face of Great and Majestic One.

This is the Fate of the Demiurge and all that follow after his knowledge, this is their end.

Gnosis, brings light



Gnosis, brings light


I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name. 


Gnosis, brings "light" but light separates, most fear Gnosis because the light knowledge of Gnosis brings the Soul out of Spiritual Darkness, Gnosis Breaks the bonds of darkness but the soul loves it's ties and the darkness cherishes it's servant and will not easily give that soul up. In darkness the soul believes that the knowledge, thoughts, desires ect. Is it's own, but they are not the soul has been led to believe that they are in this way the soul stays in service to her Masters as if she was a prostitute.



My brother they who was born in darkness was born also blind! They have no light they are from the shadow that the kingdom of light cast and where the primordial waters rest.

You are the light that will glorify the body you are in. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord illuminating all the inner parts of soul and body..


Gnosis is a seed of life, once it is planted and has grown it will cry out to you in the voice of the Silence,.urging you to come to know her, and when she cries out to you do not be as those who died in the wilderness, but run to her and embrace her, she is the Mother of gnosis.


Truth, is like a light of pure knowledge, if it Burns you, it separates the darkness in you from you, if you are able to stand then you shall become as great as the light that the darkness has fled from.



The Potters House Jeremiah 18:6


The Potters House Jeremiah 18:6

The Potters House:
Jeremiah 18:6 ►

GOD'S WORD® Translation
"Nation of Israel, can't I do with you as this potter does with clay? Nation of Israel, you are like the clay in the potter's hands.


In the Church:
Brothers, when i was in church, that statement was to me both, Deep and Profound.
As in a deep sleep, the Dawn came and i was awaken, and found that statement was neither deep, or as profound as I was led to believe.

The Potter and His Hands:
The Potter is the god of this world, his hands is his will, by us being inside of the clay bodies, it is as if we to are in his hands, Ignorant; he does not know that which is with-in the clay pottery, created by his hands, that is to say we are.

In the Potter's House:
2 Timothy 2:20 ►
Berean Study Bible
A large house contains not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some indeed are for honorable use, but others are for common use.

Our Birth:
In the Kingdom of our Father, we was told before we left, we were going to be hidden from the thieves and robbers, even then for most, even that Mystery was hidden from you,

The Mystery:
These bodies are the vessels, Gold and Silver; Fame and Fortune, Wood and Clay; common and poverty.

The Demiurge did not know that it was that which was with-in each vessel, caused each and every vessel in which we were in, to be honorable for all, though the vessel contain no value, the treasure with-in, transformed it into a priceless thing,

It is us that has made the vessels, whether our bodies be that of, Gold and Silver; or wood and clay, all of our vessels are priceless to our Father, but to the god of this world it is not so!

The Children of The Light Kingdom



The Children of The Light Kingdom



Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection.

Let us rejoice, all of my brothers and sisters for we exist now and evermore.


Let us rejoice for the Aeons have no power over us, for we existed before the eternal ones.


Let us rejoice those of you who are my kindred, for the immortal ones have no power over us, for we existed before the eternal mother of the immortal ones.


Let us rejoice my fellow brothers and sisters, it was because of us that the prophets came into existence, they to have no power over us, it was the immortal ones who by the will of our father was given a thought to make man in the eternal image of the first of us, but they could not, so they created man after their likeness giving man an immoral image instead of a likeness of an infinite spirit.


Let us rejoice my fellow kindred, for the aeons came into existence because of us, and it was because of the aeons that the immortal ones came into existence, and man because of the immortal ones, yet we have never been seen by any of them, nor understood by any of them, it was we who witness their coming, saw the birth of eternal aeons, it is we who are from the eternal invisible infinite realms, being eternal invisible virginal spirits as our father and mother.


It was our father who alone existed because of him our mother came forth, it was she, our mother, because of her, we came into being, not to say we did not exist before we came into being, but we were invisibly hidden within our invisible mother who was invisibly hidden within our invisible father .


My beloved ones I tell you this mystery, which was hidden from the prophets, unknown of to the aeons and unheard of by the immortals who called themselves gods, yet they knew not their beginnings rejoice my siblings for they can never know you.


So I say again to you rejoice ever more to you is eternal everlasting joy a bliss with no end, you are incorruptible though the bodies you are hidden in was made by corruptible gods it is your eternal spirit that gives life to their mortal bodies, again I say rejoice in this mystery I give into you,........... Rejoice always.

The Ineffable Pleroma Pistis Sophia



The Ineffable.

The Limbs of the Ineffable.
I. The Highest Light-world or Realm of Light.
i. The First Space of the Ineffable.
ii. The Second Space of the Ineffable, or The First Space of the First Mystery.
iii. The Third Space of the Ineffable, or The Second Space of the First Mystery.
II. The Higher (or Middle) Light-world.
i. The Treasury of the Light.
1. The Emanations of the Light.
2. The Orders of the Orders.
ii. The Region of the Right.
iii. The Region of the Midst.
III. The Lower Light or Æon-world, or The Mixture of Light and Matter.
i. The Region of the Left.
1. The Thirteenth Æon.
2. The Twelve Eons. p. li
3. The Fate.
4. The Sphere.
5. The Rulers of the Ways of the (Lower) Midst. 1
6. The Firmament.
ii. The World (Kosmos), especially Mankind.
iii. The Under-world.
1. The Amente.
2. The Chaos.
3. The Outer Darkness.


Above is a close skeletal example of the limbs of the ineffable, if you look at the third level you will see that is where earth is and the heavens of the archons, and it is those heavens they preach of in all the churches of this world and talk about in all of this world's religions, they do this mostly because of ignorance, others because they don't want the rest of the world to know, mostly because the truth of this heavens is no where near the realms that Christ spoke of when he says " let the will of the Father be done on earth as it is in heaven" when Jesus says heaven, those he was speaking to did not have the knowledge of gnosis nor did they know of realms or that there was any thing higher than the heavens they knew, nor did they know that those heavens would end and they were in darkness, in comparison to the kingdom of light.

The cosmology of the Pleroma, from Greek meaning “the fullness” (that is the “totality of Divine Powers”) is a mystical teaching of Coptic Gnostic Christianity, recorded in the story of Pistis Sophia, (lit. “Faith Wisdom”) which comes to us from several sources. This version from the Askew Codice, written in the 3rd or 4th century, one of three documenting the Gnostic tradition known to exist prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in upper Egypt in 1945. The Pistis Sophia tells us that its teachings were given by Jesus to his disciples, including three women, Mother Mary, Magdalene and Martha, for eleven years after his resurrection. We are told that for most of this time Jesus revealed only the lower mysteries until at some point he became fully enlightened and was able to transmit the higher mysteries. Gnosticism emerged from Judaic, Zoroastrianism and Neo-Platonism, particularly the cosmology of the Timaeus, merging with early Christianity in the 1st and 2nd centuries. A number of different sects developed in the middle east, each with slightly different details of the story.

The Pistis Sophia is the story of Sophia’s fall from grace and her eventual redemption. She is identified with the soul and as the opposite, the syzygy, of Jesus. thus her’s is the journey of the soul. In the Askew Codice she falls from the 13th Aeon a lofty yet not Divine position in the cosmology, to the level of the Archons, the Fallen Lords who rule the lower material realm, where she is persecuted, but with her repentent efforts and desire to serve the light, a process of awakening, she is eventually restored to her lofty position. Other version particularly the Apocryphon of John manuscript in the Nag Hammadi library, she is seen as a divine being who falls into material form. Like Jesus her mission is to bring gnosis, knowledge, to earth.
The Pleroma exist only in this galaxy, the aeons beings inhabit the galactic core. Periodically it emits cosmic substance into the galactic arms to create the lower worlds of experience. Sophis came forth as such, creating our solar system and becoming the “living matrix” in which we all exist.

Note:
The teaching and cosmology of the Pistis Sophia is unique among the mystery traditions in its straight forward recognition of the existence of the Shadow, the Fallen Dark or evil, the Archons, its effect in our lives and how to overcome it. These are inorganic conscious but souless beings formed before the earth and appearing as a pre-natal human form. Most people, even those on a mystical spiritual path, tend the deny the reality of the Dark, unable and/or unwilling to deal with it, although many of these individuals working in the astral planes have come face to face with it, usually unprepared and suffering the consequences as a result. The mystery school acknowledges its existence and trains its initiates in the art of self protection when traveling in the higher dimensions that is, building and using shields. As the teacher admonishes, “Never leave home without them.”
The purpose/agenda of the Archons is to obstruct humanity’s spiritual enlightenment which they do by manipulating our minds by influencing the way we perceive reality. They have rejected the soverignity of the divine creator, convinced that they, themselves, are the creators of the world. However, like all life forms, they must have light to survive, and so have become parasite, feeding on human subtle energies, light. and so do everything in their power to maintain control over humanity. Most of all they do not want us to know of there existence and agenda. And so they enlist the assistance of religions, corporations politicians, to implement their agenda.


Pistis Sophia The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Light

Believe in Miracles The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ

Believe in Miracles 
The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ



Greetings to you my brothers and sisters, may the true knowledge of our Father continue the flourish in you always.

One of our sisters ask me was it by fate or was it by chance that our lord and saviour was able to do the things he did, a felt that I should share this with you all as well.

It was neither Fate nor by chance, but by the will of our Father that the deeds of Christ was performed, remember the two thieves that was crucified along with Christ,............. and one of them said to Christ..... Luke 23:41-43 ►........... 1"And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." 42And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."

Well my sister and brothers here is the history of these thieves............... 


The first Gospel of the INFANCY of JESUS CHRIST. 

Chapter 8

1 Joseph and Mary pass through a country infested by robbers, 3 Titus, a humane thief, offers Dumachus, his comrade, forty groats to let Joseph and Mary pass unmolested. 6 Jesus prophesies that the thieves, Dumachus and Titus, shall be crucified with him, and that Titus shall go before him into Paradise. 

IN their journey from hence they came into a desert country, and were told it was infested with robbers; so Joseph and St. Mary prepared to pass through it in the night.
2 And as they were going along, behold they saw two robbers asleep in the road, and with them a great number of robbers, who were their confederates, also asleep.
3 The names of these two were Titus and Dumachus; and Titus said to Dumachus, I beseech thee let those persons go along quietly, that our company may not perceive anything of them:
4 But Dumachus refusing, Titus again said, I will give thee forty groats, and as a pledge take my girdle, which he gave him he had done speaking, that he might not open his mouth, or make a noise.
5 When the Lady St. Mary saw the kindness which this robber did shew them, she said to him, The Lord God will receive thee to his right hand, and grant thee pardon of thy sins.
6 Then the Lord Jesus answered, and said to his mother, When thirty years are expired, O mother, the Jews will crucify me at Jerusalem;
7 And these two thieves shall be with me at the same time upon the cross, Titus on my right hand, and Dumachus on my left, and from that time Titus shall go before me into paradise:


So you see my brothers and my sister if it we're by fate the thief would not have known and protected the Savior, and how was it that our Savior was able to communicate the future in his infant state, you see the thief and our lord remembered each other some thirty years later, this was done by the will of our father for our sake, for us to understand that the will of our father is even done in our lives even from our infancy, and not by Fate.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/lbob/lbob07.htm

Sunday, 12 April 2020

The Great Seth

The Great Seth




The Book of Jubilees Chapter 4:

  1. And in the third week in the second jubilee [64-70 A.M.] she gave birth to Cain, and in the fourth [71-77 A.M.] she gave birth to Abel, and in the fifth [78-84 A.M.] she gave birth to her daughter Âwân.
  2. And in the first (year) of the third jubilee [99-105 A.M.], Cain slew Abel because (God) accepted the sacrifice of Abel, and did not accept the offering of Cain.
  3. And he slew him in the field: and his blood cried from the ground to heaven, complaining because he had slain him.
  4. And the Lord reproved Cain because of Abel, because he had slain him, and he made him a fugitive on the earth because of the blood of his brother, and he cursed him upon the earth.
  5. And on this account it is written on the heavenly tables, 'Cursed is ,he who smites his neighbour treacherously, and let all who have seen and heard say, So be it; and the man who has seen and not declared (it), let him be accursed as the other.'
  6. And for this reason we announce when we come before the Lord our God all the sin which is committed in heaven and on earth, and in light and in darkness, and everywhere.
  7. And Adam and his wife mourned for Abel four weeks of years, [99-127 A.M] and in the fourth year of the fifth week [130 A.M.] they became joyful, and Adam knew his wife again, and she bare him a son, and he called his name Seth; for he said 'GOD has raised up a second seed unto us on the earth instead of Abel; for Cain slew him.'

Meaning of the Name
Seth his name signifies appointed. Eve's comment on the birth of this son reveals that Eve had a proper understanding of the purpose of God in him. The Hebrew word for 'appointed' (Isa. 22:7), TO PUT, TO SET, TO PLACE. (Gesenius).

According to Eve's words, Seth's name means "set", "appointed" or "placed". Seth replaced the position previously held by Abel, and therefore his name was expressive of God's mercy. Seth kept alive the principles of faith and hope that were distorted and destroyed by the descendants of Cain, introduced to us in the previous chapter. Seth commenced the genealogy of true worshippers. In him it was demonstrated that Godliness was possible among men

as she said: God has appointed another seed underneath Abel, because Cain killed him. This shows remarkable perception on Eve's part: She realised that Abel, because of his upright and godly way of life, had been the beginning of the line which would descend through her "until the seed should come". Therefore, in the birth of Seth she recognised Yahweh's guarantee that the seed would be continued until the divine purpose had been brought to fruition.
Mystic Meaning
The root idea of this name is that of a surrounding sympathetic movement that envelops a thing and defines its limits, places it, founds it, disposes of it. Some mystics have seen in the name Seth a law of destiny, that which predetermines a thing and settles its order.

by name Seth, which name being interpreted means irrigation; Philo of Alexandria On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile

F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker write (Philo, vol. 2, pp. 323-327): His name signifies "Watering," for the Mind waters the senses, as the Word of God waters the Virtues, which are symbolized by the four "heads" of the river going out of Eden. The word "heads" is used to indicate the sovereignty conferred by Virtues. The "River" is the Word of God, ever flowing for souls that love God. 
The Death of Abel and the Birth of Seth
Now afterwards, she bore Cain, their son; and Cain cultivated the land. Thereupon he knew his wife; again becoming pregnant, she bore Abel; and Abel was a herdsman of sheep. Now Cain brought in from the crops of his field, but Abel brought in an offering (from) among his lambs.God looked upon the votive offerings of Abel; but he did not accept the votive offerings of Cain.
And carnal Cain pursued Abel, his brother.
And God said to Cain, "Where is Abel, your brother?"
He answered saying, "Am I, then, my brother's keeper?"
God said to Cain, "Listen! The voice of your brother's blood is crying up to me! You have sinned with your mouth. It will return to you: anyone who kills Cain will let loose seven vengeances, and you will exist groaning and trembling upon the earth (The Hypostasis of the Archons)

And Adam knew his female counterpart Eve, and she became pregnant, and bore Seth to Adam. And she said, "I have borne another man through God, in place of Abel." (The Hypostasis of the Archons)

We lean from the Hypostasis of the Archons that both Cain and Abel made offerings to God Cain was rejected Seth becomes a priest in place of Abel

The death of Abel is made good by the birth of Seth. Seth comes to make up for the loss of Abel, and this fact parallels how God’s law works for us. This particular law of God is the one which sees to it that a compensation comes to make up for what seems to have been taken out.

the three classes of men, ‘material' or carnal, ‘soulful' or those who have not yet awakened to the higher consciousness, and 'spiritual' those who have entered into the Christ consciousness, correspond to Cain, Abel, and Seth.

Seth is therefore the symbolic Father and representative of ‘spiritual' believers.
The Birth of Seth
25 And Adam proceeded to have intercourse again with his wife and so she gave birth to a son and called his name Seth, because, as she said: God has appointed another seed underneath Abel, because Cain killed him. (Genesis 4 NWT).

Genesis 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

Seth the son of Adam and Eve born when Adam was 130 years old. Eve named him Seth because, as she said, “God has appointed another seed in place of Abel, because Cain killed him.” Seth may not have been the third child of Adam and Eve. According to Genesis 5:4, Adam had “sons and daughters,” some of whom may have been born before Seth.

And he begat sons and daughters" — Many other sons and daughters were born to Adam and Eve in addition to those named, and from these Cain and others obtained their wives. Hence the appointment of Seth to replace Abel means more than the mere birth of a son; it represented the appointment of this son to the position of privilege as legal "firstborn" with its office of priesthood and leadership within the family of Adam.

So Seth begins to look for a higher power to express in his life--he calls upon the name of Yahweh. It is the activity of the awakening of the spiritual consciousness within him that causes him first to realize the pointlessness of his human efforts to better himself, and then to recognize the one Source of all Truth.

Seth was appointed by God after the death of Abel in office of priesthood because both Abel and Seth were mediators of pre flood office of priesthood

Seth is worthy of note because through him the present-day race of mankind, descended from him, not from the murderous Cain. At the age of 105 years Seth became father to Enosh. Seth died at the age of 912 years .—Gen 4:17, 25, 26; 5:3-8; 1Ch 1:1-4; Lu 3:38.
The wife of Seth
The wife of Seth is Norea. She is the undefiled daughter of Eve who, together with Seth, gives birth to the Sons of Seth:

And Adam knew his female counterpart Eve, and she became pregnant, and bore Seth to Adam. And she said, "I have borne another man through God, in place of Abel." Again Eve became pregnant, and she bore Norea. And she said, "He has begotten on me a virgin as an assistance for many generations of mankind (the Pneumatic race)." She is the virgin whom the forces did not defile. (The Hypostasis of the Archons)

According to the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo 1:1 Adam begat three sons and one daughter, Cain, Noaba, Abel and Seth.

The Book of Jubilees 4:8 And in the sixth week [134-40 A.M.] he begat his daughter Azûrâ.
The Book of Jubilees 4:11 And in the fifth week of the fifth jubilee [225-31 A.M.] Seth took Azûrâ his sister to be his wife, and in the fourth (year of the sixth week) [235 A.M.] she bare him Enos.

Seth's sister/wife in Jub 4:11 Azura the name Azura in trun may recall Hebrew 05828 עזר  (Greek 996 βοήθεια) In the the Hypostasis of the Archons the word [assistance] or help is used this is the Greek 996 βοήθεια (A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission)

Azura was the daughter of Adam and Eve and the wife (and sister) of Seth in the Book of Jubilees, chapter 4 in the Hypostasis of the Archons her name is given has Norea.  Norea is the daughter of Eve and the younger sister of Seth; both are members of the pure race.

Norea is said to be the syzygy of Seth a female equivalent of his male savior figure

The earthly Adam and Eve begot the earthly Seth and his sister Norea. With the aid of Norea, Seth’s descendents will preserve the pneuma and gnosis in the Lower Aeons. This schema appears in The Hypostasis of the Archons and The Apocalypse of Adam.

Eleleth reveals to Norea that the Archons cannot defile her or her descendents: 

“And these authorities (Archons) cannot defile you and that generation; for your abode is in incorruptibility, where the virgin spirit dwells, who is superior to the authorities of chaos and to their universe.” (Hypostasis of the Archons)
- Again: 

“You (Norea), together with your offspring, are from the primeval father; from above, out of the imperishable light, their souls are come. Thus the authorities (Archons) cannot approach them, because of the spirit of truth present within them; and all who have become acquainted with this way exist deathless in the midst of dying mankind.”(Hypostasis of the Archons).

- Hence, the Elect are without fault, and called the “faultless ones” (Tripartate Tractate)

Image and Likeness
Genesis 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

The import of the phrase 'in the image, after the likeness' is suggested by the testimony that 'Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.' In this respect, Seth stands related to Adam, as Adam did to the Elohim ... The very same thing is meant by Adam being in the image of the Elohim ... The resemblance therefore of Adam to the Elohim as their image was of bodily form ... In shape, Seth was like Adam, Adam like the Elohim, and the Elohim the image of the invisible Uncreated, the great and glorious Archetype of the intelligent universe."

the apocryphon of John

And the two archons he set over principalities, so that they might rule over the tomb. And when Adam recognized the likeness of his own foreknowledge, he begot the likeness of the son of man.
He called him Seth, according to the way of the race in the aeons. Likewise, the mother also sent down her spirit, which is in her likeness and a copy of those who are in the pleroma, for she will prepare a dwelling place for the aeons which will come down. And he made them drink water of forgetfulness, from the chief archon, in order that they might not know from where they came.
Thus, the seed remained for a while assisting (him), in order that, when the Spirit comes forth from the holy aeons, he may raise up and heal him from the deficiency, that the whole pleroma may (again) become holy and faultless."

Seth is now called the son of man the image and likeness modeled on the pleroma "the great incorruptible Seth, the son of the incorruptible man Adamas".

Adam was modeled on the Man Eve was modeled on Epinoia now Seth born of these two is modeled on the Son of Man "the Man exists and the son of Man"

Seth is the father of the incorruptible generation

Seth is an Aeon an emanation of the incorruptible man Adamas. Seth is the father of the incorruptible generation. The ‘Great Seth' is the heavenly son of Man, the mortal Seth is an 'image' of the heavenly Son of Man

The great incorruptible Seth also plays a saviour role, for he is sent into the lower world to rescue the elect, ‘putting on' Jesus for that purpose.



From Paulicians to Albigensian

From Paulicians to Albigensian





From wikipedia 



Cathars Catharism (/ˈkæθərɪzəm/; from the Greek: καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure [ones]")[1][2] was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries.


Catharism may have had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Byzantine Anatolia and certainly in the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire,[5] who were influenced by the Paulicians resettled in Thrace (Philipopolis) by the Byzantines. Though the term Cathar (/ˈkæθɑːr/) has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debated.[6] In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men (Bons Hommes), Good Women (Bonnes Femmes), or Good Christians (Bons Chrétiens) are the common terms of self-identification

“SLAY them all; God will recognize His own.” On that summer day of 1209, the population of Béziers, in southern France, was massacred. The monk Arnold Amalric, appointed as papal legate at the head of the Catholic crusaders, showed no mercy. When his men asked how they were to distinguish between Catholics and heretics, he reportedly gave the infamous reply quoted above. Catholic historians water it down to: “Do not worry. I believe very few will be converted.” Whatever his exact answer, the result was the slaughter of at least 20,000 men, women, and children at the hands of some 300,000 crusaders, led by prelates of the Catholic Church. (The Watchtower)

What brought about this massacre? It was just the beginning of the Albigensian Crusade that Pope Innocent III had launched against so-called heretics in the province of Languedoc, south-central France. Before it ended some 20 years later, possibly one million people—Cathari, Waldenses, and even many Catholics—had lost their lives. (The Watchtower)




from Eureka: An Exposition of the Apocalypse by Dr john thomas

Chapter 12 

29. The Earth Again Runs to the Woman's Help



Now, the Puritan Woman, styled by her enemies and persecutors "the Donatists;" but by the children of her body, Cathari, or the Pure Ones; for the first 1260 years of her existence was Providentially settled in the wings of the Roman Eagle. Her remnants were not to be found in Persia, India, China, or America: but after the discovery and settlement of America, the persecutions and massacre of her seed by the Serpent-Powers of Europe caused her to seek refuge in the American wilderness, whereby the help of "the earth," which styles itself "the unterrified democracy," she is fed and nourished to the full.


"The most furious and desperate of rebels," says Gibbon, "are the sectaries of a religion long persecuted, and at length provoked. In a holy cause they are no longer susceptible of fear or remorse; the justice of their arms hardens them against the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their father's wrongs on the children of their tyrants." Such were the Circumcellions of Africa, the peasants of Paphlagonia, and such in the ninth century were the popular sympathizers with the Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces.


History styles these sympathizers Paulicians; but history is written by men who are ignorant of the principles of the doctrine of Christ, and are the enemies of "the remnants of the woman's seed, who keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of Jesus the anointed." These are neither fanatics, nor furious and desperate rebels; neither are they hardened against the feelings of humanity, nor do they seek to avenge themselves; for this they are strictly forbidden to do by Him who says, "vengeance is mine; I will repay". The furious and desperate fanatics, steeled against the Divine law and the feelings of humanity, are the serpents, the generation of vipers, in place or power, "the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies," who counsel and execute the sanguinary ferocity of the Dragon and the Beast. Providence has graciously and mercifully arranged that these insatiable shedders of the blood of His saints shall be fiercely antagonized by the indignant hatred of tyranny, and the love of civil and religious liberty, common to the Scripturally enlightened of mankind; for men may have light enough to discern the folly, and hypocrisy, and diabolism, incorporated in Church and State, and yet be very far from an intelligent belief of "the truth as it is in Jesus" by which alone they can be saved.


Of this earthly class were the "Paulicians," so called, who revolted and warred against the Constantinopolitan Catholic Dragon, A.D. 845-880. They were the militant Paulicians of the pike and gun, stirred up to deeds of blood and valor by the cruel torments of the clergy, in defense of the spiritual and real disciples of the apostle Paul, whose only fight was "the good fight of faith." This thirty-five years of Paulician warfare with the Dragon was "the earth running with help to the woman, and opening her mouth to swallow up the flood cast out of the Dragon's Mouth." They were first awakened to inflict death upon a governor and a bishop, who lent themselves to execute the imperial mandate for the conversion and destruction of "heretics." A more dangerous and consuming flame was kindled by Theodora's persecution, and the revolt of Carbeas, a valiant sympathizer, who commanded the imperial guards of the General of the East. His father had been skinned alive by the Catholic Inquisitors. This horrible cruelty determined him to abandon the service of the Dragon. Five thousand sympathizers joined him in renouncing their allegiance to anti-christian Rome, and in forming an alliance against her with the Saracen "Commander of the Faithful." "During more than thirty years," says Gibbon, "Asia was afflicted by the calamities of foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads the disciples of St. Paul were joined with those of Mohammed; and the peaceful christians, the aged parent and tender virgin (the besotted catholics) who were delivered into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief, so intolerable the shame, that Michael was compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was defeated under the walls of Samosata: and the Roman emperor fled before the heretics whom his mother Theodora had condemned to the flames." The valor and ambition of Chrysocheir, successor to Carbeas, embraced a wider circle of rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful anti-catholic Moslems, he boldly penetrated into the heart of Asia Minor. These were the times of the Moslem Woe, in which the catholics were "tormented with the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man." "The men who had the seal of Deity in their foreheads," the Paulicians, were "not hurt" by it; but, as we see, were defended by the Moslem Locusts, who, as the sword of Deity, avenged them upon "the shaven crowns" whose skulls they cleft without mercy. "In those days they sought death (or the political extinction of the State, which would relieve them of those tormenting inroads), but they found it not; and they desired to die, but the death fled from them" (Apoc. 9:4-6). The Dragon legions were repeatedly overthrown, and his edicts of persecution were responded to by the pillage of Nice and Nicomedia, of Ancyra, and Ephesus, whose cathedral was turned into a stable for mules and horses; and the Paulician sympathizers vied with the Saracens in evincing their contempt and abhorrence of the idols and relics of catholic superstition.


This was a righteous retribution encouraging to behold. Truly, as Gibbon remarks, "it is not unpleasing to observe the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which has disdained the prayers of an in-jured people." The dragon was reduced to sue for peace, to offer ransom for catholic captives, and to request, in the language of moderation and charity, that Chrysocheir would spare his fellow-christians, and content himself with a royal donation of gold and silver and silk garments. "If the emperor," replied the Paulician defender, "be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East, and reign without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants of the Lord will precipitate him from his throne." But the time for the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire had not yet arrived. The emperor Basil the Macedonian accepted Chrysocheir's' defiance, and led his army into "the land of heresy," which he wasted with fire and sword.


With the death of Chrysocheir the power of the Paulicians' defenders declined. About the middle of the eighth century, Constantine Copronymus had transplanted many of the Paulicians from the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by this emigration their doctrine was introduced and diffused in Europe. The Paulicians of Thrace struck their roots deeply into this foreign soil, where they resisted the storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their preachers, who labored, not without success, among the Bulgarians. They were restored and multiplied by a more powerful colony of Paulicians transpiated A. D. 970, by John Zimisces, from Armenia to Thrace. Their exile to this country was softened by a free toleration. They held the city of Philippopolis, and the keys of Thrace; the catholics were their subjects; they occupied a line of villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; "and many native Bulgarians," says Gibbon, "were associated to the communion of arms and heresy." As long as these Thraco-Bulgarian Circumcel lions "the Earth," were awed by power and treated with moderation, they were distinguished in the Dragon armies as volunteers; and the courage of these "dogs ever greedy of war and thirsty of human blood," is noticed with astonishment, and almost with, reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks. The same spirit rendered them arrogant and contumacious; they were easily provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often violated by the faithless bigotry of the Dragon- government and clergy. The emperor Alexius Comnenus undertook to proselyte them to the reigning superstition. Those of their leaders who were contumacious were secured in a dungeon, or banished; but their lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of the emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt alive before the cathedral of St. Sophia.


But the proud hope of eradicating the faith and testimony of the remnant was speedily overturned by "the invincible zeal of the Paulicians," who ceased to dissemble, or refused to obey. After the death of Alexius, they soon resumed their civil and religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century their head-quarters were on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, with which filial relations were maintained by the Paulician congregations of France and Italy. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries they found great favor and success in these countries, which Gibbon says, "must be imputed to the strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most pious christians (catholics) against the Church of Rome," now in the seventh century of its legal supremacy over all the spiritual affairs of the Great Roman Eagle. "Her avarice," he continues, "was oppressive, her .despotism odious; less degenerate, perhaps, than the Greeks in the worship of saints and images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous: she had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of transubstantiation; the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and the eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns the crosier, the scripture, and the sword."


Under the Constantinopolitan standard, the Paulicians were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily: in peace and war they and their sympathizers of "the earth," who were confounded with them under the same name, freely conversed with strangers and natives, and their views were silently propagated in Rome, Milan, and the newly-arisen Ten-Horn kingdoms of the Beast beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered, that many thousand catholics of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the "heresy" of Paul; and the flames that consumed twelve cathedral priests of Orleans was the first act and signal of persecution in the West. "They spared their branches," says Gibbon, "over the face of Europe." United in common hatred of idolatry and Rome; they were connected by an ecclesiastical organization of over-seers and presbyteries, usually styled elders and pastors. The French called them "Bulgarians" by way of reproach, meaning thereby "unnatural sinners". Their catholic enemies also falsely styled them Manichaeans, and charged them with contempt of the Old Testament, and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the cross or in the bread and wine. They repudiated the catholic dogmas connected with the cross and eucharist; but they took both bread and wine, discerning by "the testimony of the anointed Jesus which they held," the representation therein of his broken body and blood, shed for remission of the sins of the many (Matt. 26:28). "A confession of simple worship and blameless manners," says Gibbon, "is extorted from their enemies; and so high was their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations were divided into two classes of disciples, of those, who practised, and those who aspired. It was in the country of the Albigeois, in the southern provinces of France, that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes of massacre and uprising of "the Earth" which had been displayed in the neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the Constantinopolitan Dragon and Serpent were revived by Frederick the Second, the reigning emperor of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, which "spake as a Dragon" (Apoc. 13:11). The barons and cities of Languedoc were "the earth that ran with help for the Woman: and Pope Innocent the Third surpassed the sanguinary and murderous renown of the ferocious Theodora. It was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the Crusaders; and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by the founders of the Inquisition. The visible assemblies of the Albigensian Paulicians were extirpated with fire and sword; and "the bleeding remnant" escaped by flight, concealment, or conformity to the hated superstition of the destroyer. But the invincible spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the western world. A latent succession was preserved of "the disciples of St. Paul," who protested against the tyranny of Rome, and embraced the Bible as the rule of faith.


Thus, I have briefly tracked "the remnants of the woman's seed," under the names of Novatians, Donatists, Aerians, Paulicians and Albigenses, through a long and sanguinary period of sack-cloth-witnessing of a thousand years, against the Apostasy as by law established in "the two Wings of the Great Eagle." In this weary and heart-rending journey, we have visited the Roman Africa, Armenia, Asia Minor, Thrace, Bulgaria, and working our way up the Danube, crossed the Alps into Italy and France. But how changed is the constitution of "the Great Eagle" at the close of this Millennium of Blood! When the remnants of the Woman's seed began their anti-catholic witnessing in the African Wing, the great eagle was subject only to "the Dragon the old Serpent," enthroned in Constantinople. Then there was no Pope of Rome; no Ten-Horned Beast of the Sea; no Two-Horned Beast of the Earth; nor any Image of the Beast. Then, the simple inquiry was, "Who is like the Dragon? who is able to make war with him?" for in those days they all "worshipped the Dragon," in all the length and breadth of the Roman world. But now, in the twelfth century, we stand in the Alpine regions of France and Italy as witnesses "before the god of the earth" (Apoc. 11:4); a god unknown to the Dragon in the epoch of the woman's flight, A.D. 315-345, and his pagan predecessors, in whose times he was but the simple OVERSEER of an ecclesia in Rome. But, ere this century, he had long become a god by the grace and power of the Dragon, who had bestowed upon him "his power, and his throne, and great authority" (Apoc. 13:2). And besides this, in surveying the subjacent landscape from the Alpine heights, we see the Beast of the Earth and the Beast of the Sea intensely catholic and hostile to "the commandments of the Deity and the testimony of the anointed Jesus". Whence came these dominions? They are the results of the outpouring of the Divine wrath upon the Dragon, in retribution of his catholic worship of daimonia and idols, and of the murders, sorceries, fornications and thefts of his clergy (Apoc. 9:20,21); in other words, they are the results of the sounding of the wind-trumpets in answer to the prayers of "the remnants of the woman's seed," which, as "much incense," ascended, through their Golden Intercessor, before the throne (Apoc. 8:3,4).





But, while we have been making this millennial tour through the Wings of the Great Eagle, has it been all peace and spiritual tranquillity in the interior regions? No; from time to time, reformers started up amidst the catholics themselves; and, as pioneers, prepared the ground for more advanced believers to cultivate and sow with the incorruptible seed. Of these pioneers was Claude, Catholic bishop of Turin, ap-pointed to that See by Charlemagne. He was in high repute for his knowledge of the Scriptures and his first-rate talents as a preacher; in consequence of which, says the Abbe Eleury, "the French monarch being apprised of the deplorable state of darkness in which a great part of Italy was involved in reference to the doctrines of the gospel, and anxious to provide the churches of Piedmont with a teacher who might counteract the growing rage for image-worship, appointed Claude to the See of Turin, about A.D. 817." Though he died the catholic bishop of Turin, he is regarded as the spiritual father of the "meek confessors of Piedmont," who seceded from the catholic church, and became for many centuries a remnant of the woman's seed. Claude continued his zealous anti-Romish labors until A.D. 839, by which time the valleys of Piedmont were filled with his disciples; and, says Jones, "While a night of awful darkness sat brooding on almost every other part of Europe, the inhabitants of Piedmont preserved the gospel among them in its native simplicity, and rejoiced in the healing beams of the Sun of righteousness".


In the tenth century, that is, from A.D. 900 to A.D. 1000, there were thirty occupants of "St. Peter's Chair." When describing this period Mosheim says: "The history of the Roman pontiffs who lived in this century, is the history of so many monsters and not of men, and exhibits a horrible series of the most flagitious, tremendous and complicated crimes, as all writers, even those of the Romish communion, unanimously confess". In this dismal period, the clergy was, for the most part, composed of a most worthless set of men, shamefully illiterate and stupid; ignorant, more especially in religious matters; equally enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds.


To stem this torrent of corruption, there appeared in the south of France, in the province of Languedoc and Provence, one Peter de Bruys, about A.D. 1110. He was the founder of the petrobrusians(*). His labors were successful. He taught that "the ordinance of baptism should be administered only to adults; that it was a piece of idle superstition to build and dedicate churches to the service of God, who, in worship, has peculiar respect to the state of the heart, and who cannot be worshipped with temples made with hands; that crucifixes are objects of superstition, and ought to be destroyed; that in the Lord's Supper the real body and blood of Christ were not partaken by the communicants, but only represented in the way of symbol or figure; and, lastly, that the oblatons, prayers and good works of the living, can in no way be beneficial to the dead".


A few years after the decease of Peter de Bruys, an Italian by birth, generally styled Henry of Toulouse, arose to bear witness against the corruptions of the time. He declaimed with fervid vehemence against the vices of the clergy and the superstitions they invented. He rejected the baptism of infants; treated the festivals and ceremonies of the catholic church with the utmost contempt, and held clandestine assemblies, in which he explained and inculcated the doctrine he set forth.


Contemporary with Henry, and eight years his survivor, was Arnold of Brescia, who from A.D. 1147 to 1155, bearded the papal lion in his den. He was inferior to Peter de Bruys and Henry, neither in fortitude nor zeal, while in learning and talent he excelled them both. The zeal of this daring reformer was first directed against the wealth and luxury of the Romish clergy. He charged upon them most of the corruptions that disgraced religion, and called upon them to renounce their usurped possessions, and to lead a frugal and abstemious life on the voluntary contributions of the people. The inhabitants of Brescia revered him as the apostle of religious liberty, and rose in rebellion against their accredited bishop. Driven by persecution from place to place, he determined on the desperate experiment of fixing the standard of revolt in the very heart of Rome.


He was the Garibaldi of the twelfth century. For a time he found protectors among the nobility and gentry. He harangued the populace with his usual fervor, and inspired them with such a regard for their civil and ecclesiastical rights, that a complete revolution was effected in the city. The papal Pontifex Maximus struggled in vain against this invasion of his power, and at last sunk under the pressure of calamity. His successors, Celestine and Lucius, were unable to check the popular frenzy. The leaders of the insurrection waited upon Licius, demanded the restitution of the civil rights which had been usurped from the people, and insisted that he and the clergy should trust only for their stipends to the pious offerings of the faithful, as at the beginning. The pope survived this astounding demand only a few days, when he was succeeded by Eugenius III., who, dreading the mutinous spirit of the inhabitants, withdrew from Rome, and was "consecrated" in a neighboring fortress.


Arnold, who had withdrawn from Rome during this extraordinary insurrection, hearing of the escape of the newly-elected pope, repaired once more to the city, and animated with fresh vigor the energies of the populace. He called to their remembrance the achievements of their ancestors, and painted in the strongest colors the sufferings which sprung from ecclesiastical tyranny. He charged them never to admit the pontiff within their walls till they had prescribed the limits of his spiritual jurisdiction, and fixed the civil government in their own hands. The passions of the populace were aroused by these harangues; and, headed by the disaffected nobles, they attacked the cardinals and other ecclesiastics, set fire to the palaces, and compelled the inhabitants to swear allegiance to the new constitution.


The excesses of this ungovernable mob, "the Earth," stirred up all the wrath of "the successor of St. Peter;" who, placing himself at the head of his troops, marched against the city, into which he was admitted after making some trifling concessions. The friends of Arnold were nevertheless still numerous, and for ten or a dozen years they "shut the heaven," or continued to agitate the city. It was not till A.D. 1154, that anything like a settled peace was established. The presence of Arnold and his witnessing brethren in the very face, as it were of "the god of the earth" was the cause of all this tumult. For it was their mission to agitate the waters, and "to shut the heaven, that it rain not in their days of the prophecy; and to turn the waters into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they willed" (Apoc. 11:6). But at this date, a riot having ensued, Adrian IV. placed the city under an interdict, and from Christmas to Easter deprived it of all catholic worship. This gave a sudden turn to the public mind. Arnold and his friends were expelled from the city, and fled for protection to the Viscount of Campania. Thither the vengeance of the pope pursued them, and he instigated Frederick Barbarossa to force Arnold from his asylum in his territories. Immediately after this he was seized by Cardinal Gerard and burned at the stake, in the midst of the fickle populace, who gazed with stupid indifference on the bold and valiant champion who had fallen in defence of their dearest rights, and whom they had regarded with the highest veneration.


"We may truly say," says Dr. Allix, "that scarcely any man was ever so torn and defamed on account of his doctrine as was this Arnold of Brescia. It was because, with all his power, he opposed the tyranny and usurpation which the popes began to establish over the temporal jurisdiction of the kings of the earth. He was the man who by his counsel renewed the design of re-establishing the authority of the Senate of Rome, and of compelling the pope not to meddle with anything but what con-cerned the government of the church, without invading the temporal jurisdiction; this was his crime, and this, indeed, is such a one as is unpardonable with the pope, if there be any such".


Though Arnold, like Garibaldi, was a zealous anti-papist, there is no proof of his belonging to "the Holy City;" but much presumptive evidence that he did not. He was a strenuous advocate of civil and religious liberty, and heretical according to the catholic standard of orthodoxy. But he might be all this, and yet not a christian of the New Testament type. However, he was enlightened enough to impugn the dogma of transubstantiation, and to deny that baptism should be administered to infants. And this alone in catholic judgment was sufficient ground for his condemnation.


The memory of Arnold was long and fondly cherished by his countrymen, and his tragical end occasioned murmurs both loud and deep. His murder was regarded as the act of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy. Arnold's friends, who were numerous, separated themselves from communion with the pope's church, and by the name of Arnoldists long continued to bear their testimony against its numerous abominations, as another of "the remnants of the woman's seed".


A multitude of converts in all the southern provinces of France, and the states of Italy, resulted from the able and faithful labors of these three men. When it became aware of it, the Court of Rome became alarmed, and resorted to torture and destruction for the suppression and extermination of them, as heretics that troubled the church, or "tormented them that dwelt upon the earth" (Apoc. 11:10). "It made war upon them," and ultimately "overcame them, and killed them" (v.7; 13:7); for what was deemed a good and sufficient reason, namely, their tormenting testimony, styled by the catholic destroyer, "HERESY." The following extract from Venema's Ecclesiastical History will serve to show in what their heresy consisted:


"The chief articles of their heresy," says he, "were the following:


That the Holy Scriptures were the only source of faith and religion, without regard to the authority of the fathers and tradition; and although they principally used the New Testament, yet, as Usher proves from Reinier and others, they regarded the Old also as canonical scripture. From their greater use of the New Testament, however, their adversaries took occasion to charge them with despising the Old.

They held the entire faith, according to all the articles of the apostles' creed.
They rejected all the external rites of the dominant church, except baptism and the Lord's Supper; such as temples, vestures, images, crosses, the religious worship of holy relics, and the remaining sacraments, confirmation, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and extreme unction; "these they considered as inventions of Satan and the flesh, and full of superstition.
They rejected purgatory, with masses and prayers for the dead, acknowledging only two terminations of the present state - heaven and hell; but in what sense of these terms, Venema says not.
They admitted no indulgences, nor confessions of sin, with any of their consequences, except mutual confessions of the faithful for instruction and consolation.
They held the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist only as signs, denying the corporeal presence of Christ in the eucharist, as we find in the book of this sect concerning Antichrist, and as Ebrard of Bethunia accuses them in his book against heresies.
They held only three ecclesiastical orders - bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons - and that the remainder were human figments: that monasticism or monkery was a putrid carcass, and was the invention of men; and that the marriage of the clergy was lawful and necessary.
Finally, they asserted the Roman Church to be the Whore of Babylon; and denied obedience to the pope or bishops, and that the pope had any authority over other churches, or the power of either the civil or ecclesiastical sword".
Towards the end of the twelfth century heresy of this sort grew apace; for a new impulse was given to it by the labors of another enterprising witness against Rome, named PETER WALDO of Lyons. He was an opulent merchant, whose attention was drawn to the Holy Scriptures, which he was able to read for himself in the Latin Vulgate, the only edition of the Bible at that time in Europe. From the Scriptures alone he obtained the knowledge of the way of salvation; and being enlightened in this, he began to teach it to his neighbors. He felt the necessity of their having the word in their own tongue; he therefore, rendered the four testimonies for Jesus into French. This accomplished, he proceeded to expound their contents. Reinerius Saccho, a Romish Inquisitor, says of him, that "being somewhat learned, he taught the people the text of the New Testament in their mother tongue". "His kindness to the poor," says one of the Magdeburgh Centuriators, "being diffused, his love of teaching, and their love of learning, grew stronger and stronger, so that great crowds came to him, to whom he explained the scriptures. He was himself a man of learning; nor was he obliged to employ others to translate for him, as his enemies affirm." Be this as it may, the inhabitants of Europe were indebted to him for the first translation of the Bible into a modern tongue since the time that the Latin had ceased to be a living language - a gift of inestimable value to all who spoke French.

Animated with an enlightened zeal, he repudiated all the dogmas, rites, and ceremonies of human invention; and lifted up his voice like a trumpet against the arrogance of the pope arid the reigning vices of the clergy. In short, he seems to have taught the truth in its simplicity, while he exhibited in his own example its excellency, and labored most assiduously to demonstrate the difference between the teaching of the New Testament and that of the blasphemous clergy of the Latin church.


These proceedings of Waldo were reported to the Archbishop of Lyons, who became very indignant. He forbade Peter to teach any more on pain of excommunication, and of being proceeded against as a heretic. But Waldo belonging to a remnant of the woman's seed, was not to be silenced by archiepiscopal authority. He replied, that though a layman, he could not be silent in a matter which concerned his fellow-creatures. Attempts were presently made to apprehend him, but without success: so that he lived concealed in Lyons for a space of three whole years. At the end of these, pope Alexander III. hearing of his doings, anathematized both him and his adherents. The shepherd and his flock were therefore scattered abroad, and like the faithful in Jerusalem on the death of Stephen, "went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). Waldo retired into Dauphine, where he preached with great success. Persecuted from place to place, he next retired into Picardy. Driven from thence, he proceeded into Germany, carrying along with him "the testimony of the anointed Jesus." He at length settled in Bohemia, about A.D. 1184, where he continued witnessing until death.


His followers were chiefly called "Leonists," after the city of Lyons, where he commenced his labors: they were also frequently designated "the Poor of Lyons". Numbers of his disciples fled for an asylum into the Valleys of Piedmont, taking with them the new translation of the Scriptures. In this country they mingled with the Paulicians and other witnesses against Romish superstition previously existing there, and were afterwards known by the name of "Waldenses," or Vaudois: they also diffused themselves over the South of France, where they became known as "Albigenses;" for it is the same class of witnesses styled by these different names, according to the different countries, or districts of the same country in which they appeared. In Alsace and along the Rhine, the doctrines of Waldo spread extensively. Persecution followed in their wake. Thirty-five citizens of Mentz were consumed to ashes by the papists in one fire in the city of Bingen, and eighteen in Mentz itself. The bishops of Mentz and Strasburgh breathed nothing but vengeance and slaughter against them; and at Strasburgh, where Waldo himself is said to have narrowly escaped, eight persons were committed to the flames. Multitudes died praising God, and in the confident hope of resurrection to eternal life. The blood of the witnesses became the seed of a new generation of faithful ones; and in Bulgaria, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Rungary, societies were established which flourished throughout the thirteenth century.


It is not surprising that the great and rapid increase of the witnesses should stimulate the Court of Rome to great activity against them. Their testimony was tormenting; and it is not in human nature to endure torment without seeking relief. Rome had but one remedy, and that was persecution to the ruin of body and estate. Councils were held in continual succession, and persecuting edicts issued to check the growing evil, though with little or no effect.


The following is an extract from the fourth canon of the council of Tours, held A.D. 1163. Evidently referring to the Albigensian Remnant, it thus proceeds:


"In the country about Toulouse, there sprang up long ago a damnable heresy, which, by little and little, like a cancer, spreading itself to the neighboring places of Gascony, hath already infected many other provinces; which whilst, like a serpent, it hid itself in its own windings and twistings, crept on more secretly, and threatened more danger to the simple and unwary; wherefore we do command all bishops and priests dwelling in these parts, to keep a watchful eye upon these heretics; and under the pain of excommunication, to forbid all persons, as soon as these heretics are discovered, from presuming to afford them any abode in their country, or to lend them any assistance, or to entertain any commerce with them in buying or selling; that so at least, by the loss of the advantages of human society, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their life. And if any prince, making himself partaker of their iniquity, shall endeavor to oppose these decrees, let him be struck with the same anathema. And if they shall be seized by any catholic princes, and cast into prison, let them be punished with confiscation of all their goods. And because they frequently come together from divers parts into one hiding place, and because they have no other ground for their dwelling together save only their agreement and consent  error - therefore we will that such their conventicles be both diligently searched after, and, when they are found, that they be examined according to canonical severity".


But, while power was on the side of the oppressor, the Deity had also given power to His witnesses (Apoc. 11:3). This made their sack-cloth witnessing singularly effective, as is very plain from the following extract of a letter from the Archbishop of Narbonne to Louis VII., king of France: "My Lord the King;" says he, "We are extremely pressed with many calamities; amongst which there is one that most of all affects us, which is, that the catholic faith is extremely shaken in this our diocese; and St. Peter's boat is so violently tossed by the waves that it is in great danger of sinking"!


The god of the Roman earth was exceedingly incensed at this stormy buffeting of his bark. In A.D .1181, Lucius,. the third pope of that name, fulminated his decree against them, in which he said, "We declare all Catharists, Paterines, and those who call themselves 'the Poor of Lyons,' etc., to lie under a perpetual anathema!" All who presume to buy and sell without authority from the Roman image (Apoc. 13:17) - all who held or taught opinions concerning baptism, the Lord's Supper, remission of sins, marriage, or any of the sacraments of the church, differing from what the holy church of Rome doth teach and observe - are to be judged heretics, and anathematized. The refusal to take an oath is to be deemed a proof of heresy, and treated accordingly; and all the afore-mentioned were to be delivered up to the secular power for punishment, and their goods confiscated to the use of the church. The clergy are enjoined to make vigilant search after all such heretics, and to call to their aid all earls, barons, governors, and consuls of cities, and other places, to execute the ecclesiastical and imperial statutes concerning these matters; and any city that refused to yield obedience to these "decretal constitutions" was to be excluded from all commerce with other cities, and deprived of the episcopal dignity.


These intolerant proceedings, directed chiefly against the witnessing remnants of the Woman's seed in the south of France, drove multitudes of them into and across the Pyrenees, into Spain; in consequence of which, Ildefonsus, king of Aragon, published an edict, A.D. 1194, charging and commanding all the "Waldenses, Insabbati, who are otherwise called 'the Poor of Lyons,' and all other heretics, who cannot be numbered, being excommunicated from the Holy Church, adversaries to the cross of Christ, violaters and corrupters of the Christian religion, to depart out of our kingdom, and all our dominions." Moreover, "whosoever from that day forward, should presume to receive the Waldenses, Insabbati, or any other heretics, of whatsoever profession, into their houses, or be present at their pernicious sermons, or afford them meat or any other favor, should incur the indignation of Almighty God, as well as that of his majesty - have his goods confiscated, without the remedy of an appeal; and be punished as if he were actually guilty of high treason!" Such was the state of matters at the end of the twelfth century; and it may serve to make the reader's mind more appreciative to the appalling scenes of slaughter and carnage inflicted upon the woman's seed in the war upon them by "the Beast that ascendeth out of the abyss" (Apoc. 11:7). See Vol.3, p.268-269; and ch. 13:21.












AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)
Chapter 13 Section 1 Subsection 10 The Name of Blasphemy


Thus, the Albigenses(*) among whom the faithful may be found, in the twelfth century testified to their generation, saying, "We must not obey the Pope and Bishops, because they be wolves to the ecciesia of Christ" - quja sini lupi ecclesiut' Christi. They repudiated the Name of Blasphemy and the clerical ministers of his name, as the transformed ministers of the Satan, who pretended to be ministers of righteousness, but were really nothing more than wolves in sheep's clothing of the most ravenous and ferocious description . They protested against them as the orders of that DREADFUL AND TERRIBLE NAME OF BLASPHEMY, enthroned upon the Seven Heads of the Fourth Beast. This name they denounced as the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition - the Antichrist, because he set himself up as the VICAR OF CHRIST; that is, the Divinely deputed substitute of Christ, as indicated by the word Antichristos, from anti, in the place of, christos, the Anointed One, or Christ: they denounced this Name as the Man of sin in maturity, or full manifestation. They did not regard the Man of Sin substitute for Christ as an individual man, but as an order of ecclesiastical rulers, a Name, or Body, with its Eyes, Mouth, and subordinate members. Being an imperial spiritual human power, its chief ruler would be a man, the supreme representative for the period of his reign, of the power that created him for adoration, as "the god of the earth" - quem creant adorant, whom they create they worship. And thirdly, they denounced this Man of Sin name of Blasphemy, as the Son of Perdition; because the power, in the Scarlet-Beast phase of it, is foredoomed, "and goeth into perdition" (Apoc. 17:11): and because Paul, in writing of the same power, whom he styles ho anomos, the Lawless One, as well as the Man of Sin, terms him likewise the Son of Perdition, "whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his presence" (2 Thess. 2:8).

In the epoch of the full manifestation of this ferocious power the Two Witnesses, styled in the above decrees "heretics," had become by their influence and doctrine very formidable antagonists to the pope and his derby. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the provinces of Languedoc, Province, Catalonia, and all the surrounding countries, comprising the whole of the South of France, with the Pyrenees and a part of Spain, were peopled with an industrious and intelligent race of men, addicted to commerce and the arts, but generally fostering religious views exceedingly hostile to "the great things and blasphemies" of the Leo-Dragonic Mouth of the Image, or Imperio-Babylonish Hierarchy of Rome. They were styled Albigenses from the province of Albi, in the south of France, in which they flourished in considerable numbers. In the whole of this southern district, they not only dissented, but bore a lively testimony against Romish superstition and idolatry, and the vicious lives of the clergy. The author of the Belgian Chronicle, from Caesarius, A.D. 1208, says: "The error of the Albigenses prevailed to that degree, that it had infected as much as a thousand cities; and if it had not been repressed by the swords of the faithful, I think that it would have corrupted the whole of Europe."

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)
Chapter 13 Section 2 Subsection 32 32. The Utterances of the "Speaking Image"

But in the days of Innocent III., the great things and blasphemies spoken of by the Image, or Iconic Lion-Mouth, were something more than sound and fury signifying nothing harmful. They were terrific roarings that made all the beasts of the Roman wilderness to tremble. Lucius III. and Innocent III., by formal decrees, required heretics to be seized, condemned, and delivered by the bishops to the civil magistrates, to be capitally punished, and enjoined the princes and magistrates to execute on them the sentences denounced by the canon and civil laws. "Supported," says the Iconic Mouth, "by the presence and energy of our beloved son Frederick, the illustrious Emperor of the Romans, by the council of our brethren, other patriarchs, archbishops also, and numerous princes, who have assembled from different parts of the world, we rise by this decree against all heretics, and by apostolical authority condemn every sect, by whatever name it is designated

"In the first place, therefore, we subject the Cathari, the Paterini, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Passagini, and the Arnaldists (Witnesses clothed in sackcloth - ch. 11:3), to a perpetual anathema; and as some claim authority to preach ("buy and sell" without money or price, the Divine mission of the Saints - ch 13:7), although the apostle saith, 'How can they preach except they be sent?' all who venture to preach, either publicly or privately, without authority from the Apostolic See, or the bishop of the place, and all who dare to think and teach otherwise in respect to the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, or baptism, or the remission of sins, or matrimony, or the other sacraments of the church than the Holy Roman Church preaches and practices; and generally, all whom the Roman Church, or individual bishops in their dioceses, or the clergy themselves, when the seat is vacant, with the concurrence, if necessary, of the neighboring bishops, shall judge to be heretics, shall be bound with the same bond of perpetual anathema. All their harborers, and defenders, and all who yield them any patronage or favor, we consign to the same sentence.

"And as it sometimes happens that the severity of ecclesiastical discipline is condemned by those who do not understand its virtue, we ordain that clergymen who are clearly convicted of the aforesaid errors, shall be divested of the prerogatives of their order, deprived of their benefices, and delivered to the secular power to be appropriately punished, unless, immediately on the detection of their error, they voluntarily return to the Catholic faith, and consent publicly, at the will of the bishop of the diocese, to abjure their heresy, and make a proper satisfaction. But a layman, who is infected with that pest, unless abjuring the heresy and making satisfaction, he instantly flies to the orthodox faith, is to be left to the will of the secular power to suffer a vengeance in correspondence with his crime. They, moreover, who shall be found marked by the mere suspicion of the church, unless they demonstrate their innocence in a manner suited to the nature of the suspicion, and to their rank, shall be subjected to the same sentence. But they who, after having abjured their error, or cleared themselves in a trial by their bishop, shall be convicted of relapsing to the heresy they have abjured, we order to be left to the severest sentence without further hearing, and their goods appropriated to the churches which they served, according to the canons.

"We add, moreover, by the advice of the bishops, and the suggestion of the emperor and his princes, that each archbishop and bishop shall himself, or by his archdeacon, or other honest and suitable persons, once or twice a year, go through the parish in which it is reported that Heretics reside, and compel three or more men there of good reputation, or the whole population if it seem expedient, to swear that should any one know persons who are heretics, or any who hold secret assemblies, or differ in life or manners from the usage of the faithful, he will endeavor to point them out to the bishop or archdeacon. And the bishop or archdeacon shall call the accused before him, and unless they clear themselves to his satisfaction, or should they, after having cleared themselves, relapse to their former heresy, they are to be punished according to his judgment

"If from a superstitious objection to oaths, any of them should refuse to swear, they are on that account to be adjudged heretics, and smitten with the punishment which has been mentioned.

"We enact, moreover, that counts, barons, prefects, and consuls of cities and other places, at the admonition of the archbishops and bishops, promise under oath, that whenever they shall be required by them, they will boldly and efficiently aid the church against heretics and their accomplices, and study in good faith, according to their duty and power, to execute in the cases of which we have spoken, the ecclesiastical in the same manner as the imperial laws. And should they refuse to observe their oath, they shall be divested of their offices which they enjoy and become ineligible to others. They shall, moreover, be excommunicated, and their lands put under an interdict of the church. A city that excites resistance to these decrees, or neglects at the admonition of the bishop to punish those who resist, shall be deprived of the commerce of other cities, and divested of its episcopal rank.

"All favorers also of heretics, as condemned to perpetual infamy, we order to be debarred from the office of advocates, from giving testimony, and from all civil employments."

Similar canons were enacted A.D. 1215, by the fourth Lateran council under Innocent III., the most famous general council of the middle ages, at which over 1000 bishops and abbots attended, and ambassadors also from most of the kingdoms, in which the Lion Mouth decrees, that should a civil lord, on being required and admonished by the church, neglect to clear his territory of this heretical nuisance, let them be bound by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province with the bond of excommunication; and should he refuse to make satisfaction within a year, let it be signified to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare his vassals to be freed from allegiance to him, expose his land to be seized by Catholics, who, exterminating the Heretics, may possess it without opposition, and preserve it in the purity of the faith

"Catholics who assume the sign of the cross ('the Mark of the Beast') shall gird themselves to the extermination of the Heretics, shall enjoy the indulgence, and be fortified by the sacred privilege, which are conceded to those who go to the relief of the Holy Land."

These enactments were incorporated in the decretals of Gregory IX., and became the law of the Image-State. Thus the Latin Hierarchy decreed the ruin and sanguinary extermination of all who dissented from its superstition, and refused to pay it the honour and obedience it required.

In the epoch of the full manifestation of this ferocious power the Two Witnesses, styled in the above decrees "heretics," had become by their influence and doctrine very formidable antagonists to the pope and his derby. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the provinces of Languedoc, Province, Catalonia, and all the surrounding countries, comprising the whole of the South of France, with the Pyrenees and a part of Spain, were peopled with an industrious and intelligent race of men, addicted to commerce and the arts, but generally fostering religious views exceedingly hostile to "the great things and blasphemies" of the Leo-Dragonic Mouth of the Image, or Imperio-Babylonish Hierarchy of Rome. They were styled Albigenses from the province of Albi, in the south of France, in which they flourished in considerable numbers. In the whole of this southern district, they not only dissented, but bore a lively testimony against Romish superstition and idolatry, and the vicious lives of the clergy. The author of the Belgian Chronicle, from Caesarius, A.D. 1208, says: "The error of the Albigenses prevailed to that degree, that it had infected as much as a thousand cities; and if it had not been repressed by the swords of the faithful, I think that it would have corrupted the whole of Europe."

David Hume, though regarding them as enthusiasts, bears witness to their moral excellence. "Pope Innocent III.," says he, "published a crusade against the Albigenses, a species of enthusiasts in the south of France, whom he denominated Heretics, because like all other enthusiasts, they neglected the rites of the church, and opposed the power and influence of the clergy. And these sectaries, though the most innocent and inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances of extreme violence and barbarity."

Ebrard of Bethune, who wrote A.D. 1212, says, "they call themselves Vallenses, because they 'abide in the Valley of Tears,"' alluding to their situation as witnessing in sackcloth, in the Valleys of Piedmont. Their opinions are thus recited from an old manuscript by the Centuriators of Magdeburg:

"In articles of faith, the authority of the holy scripture is the highest, and for that reason it is the rule of judging: so that whatsoever agreeth not with the word of God, is deservedly to be rejected and avoided.

"The decrees of fathers and councils are so far to be approved, as they agree with the word of God.

"The reading and knowledge of the holy scriptures is free and necessary for all men, the laity as well as the clergy; yea, and the writings of the apostles and prophets are to be read rather than the comments of men.

"The sacraments of the Church of Christ are two, baptism and the supper of the Lord.

"The receiving in both kinds for priests and people was instituted by Christ.

"Masses are impious; and it is insanity to say masses for the dead.

"Purgatory is an invention of men; for they who believe, come into eternal life; and they who believe not, into eternal condemnation -(credentes enim, invitam ~ternam venire - come, not go, as generally translated - Author).

"The invocating and worshipping of dead saints is idolatry.

"The Church of Rome is the Babylonian Harlot.

"We must not obey the Pope and the Bishops; because they are the wolves of the Church of Christ.

"The pope hath not the primacy over all the churches of Christ, neither hath he the power of both swords.

"That is the Ecciesia of Christ which heareth the sincere word of Christ, and useth the sacraments instituted by him, in what place soever it exist.

"Vows of celibacy are inventions of men, and occasions of sodomy.

"So many orders are so many characters of the Beast.

"Monkery is a stinking carcass.

"So many superstitious dedications of temples, commemorations of the dead, benedictions of animals, pilgrimages, so many forced fastings, so many superfluous festivals, those perpetual bellowings of unlearned men, and the observations of the other ceremonies, manifestly hindering the teaching and learning of the word, are diabolical inventions.

"The marriage of priests is lawful and necessary."

The following testimonies concerning the holders of the foregoing truths, the Romanists will allow to be unexceptionable. They are the testimonies of Reinerius and Thuanus. Reinerius flourished about A.D. 1254; and his testimony is the more remarkable as he was a Dominican, and Inquisitor-General. "Among all the sects," says he, "which still are or have been, there is not any more pernicious to the Church than that of the Leonists. And this for three reasons. The first is because it is older; for some say that it hath endured from the time of Pope Sylvester; others from the time of the apostles (doubtless, 'the Saints' of ch. 13:7). The second reason, because it is more general; for there is scarce any country wherein the sect is not. The third, because when all other sects beget horror in the hearers by the outrageousness of their blasphemies against God ('the Earth that helps the Woman' in her hostility to Rome) this of the Leonists hath a great show of piety; because they live justly before men, and believe all things rightly concerning God, and all the articles which are contained in the creed; only they blaspheme the church of Rome and the clergy, whom the multitude of the laity is easy to believe."

The candid and impartial historian, Thuanus, says, "Peter Waldo, a wealthy citizen of Lyons, about the year of Christ, 1170, gave name to the Waldenses. He, leaving his house and goods, devoted himself wholly to the profession of the gospel, and took care to have the writings of the prophets and apostles translated into the vulgar tongue. When now in a little time he had many followers about him, he sent them forth as his disciples into all parts to propagate the gospel. Their fixed opinions were said to be these: that the Church of Rome, because she hath renounced the true faith of Christ, is the Babylonian Harlot (Babylonicam meretricem esse) and that Barren Tree which Christ himself hath cursed, and commanded to be rooted up; therefore we must by no means obey the pope, and the bishops who cherish his errors; that the monastic life is the sink of the church, and a hellish institution; its vows are vain, and subservient only to the filthy love of boys: the orders of the presbytery are the marks of the great beast which is commemorated in the Apocalypse; the fire of purgatory, the sacrifice of the mass, the feast of the dedications of temples, the worship of saints, and propitiations for the dead, are inventions of Satan. To these, the principal and certain heads of their doctrine others are affixed concerning marriage, the resurrection, the state of the soul after death, and concerning meats."


From these testimonies it will be easy for the reader to discern the issue formed in the thirteenth century between the Lamb-Horned Beast and his Image, of the one part, and the Two Witnesses and the Saints of the Holy City, of the other. The spread of "Heresy" so alarmed the Ecclesiastical Power, that it determined to "cause all both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark" in token of their subjection, or be exterminated by fire and sword. Hence these decrees already cited. To carry these into effect, the first crusade was proclaimed of papal idolators against what they called Heretics, and the murderous Inquisition was first erected, the one to subdue their bodies, the other to enslave their minds. "It is enough to make the blood run cold," says one, whose episcopal succession from the apostles had come to him through those mendacious and sanguinary thieves and robbers, the popes, "to read of the horrid murders and devastation of this time, how many of these poor innocent Christians were sacrificed to the blind fury and malice of their enemies. It is computed, that in France alone were slain a million. The consequences of these atrocious barbarities are thus narrated by Thuanus, himself a Romanist. "Against the Waldenses," saith he, "when exquisite punishment availed little, and the evil was exasperated by the remedy which had been unseasonably applied, and their number increased daily, at length complete armies were raised; and a war of no less weight (ch. 11:7, and 13:7) than what our people had before waged against the Saracens, was decreed against them: the event of which was, that they were rather slain, put to flight, spoiled everywhere of their goods and dignities, and dispersed here and there, than that, convinced of their error, they repented. So that they who at first had defended themselves by arms (ch. 11:5,6) at last overcome by arms (ch. 11:7) fled into Province and the neighboring Alps of the French territory, and found a shelter for their life and doctrine in those places. Part withdrew into Calabria, and continued there a long while, even to the pontificate of Pius IV. Part passed into Germany, and fixed their abode among the Bohemians, and in Poland and Livonia. Others turning to the west, obtained refuge in Britain." In short, for the details are too copious to be narrated here, the Iconic Man-Power at length succeeded in its work of carnage and death. It overcame and put to death all opposition to its authority. By the cooperation of the imperial and regal horns of Egyptian and Sodomite Europe, styled "the secular arm," it trampled the saints of the Holy City under its impious and lawless feet; and prostrated the two sackcloth witnessing prophets in political death. But their anastasis in 1789-'92, when, exactly 1,260 years from Justinian's decree imparting spiritual supremacy to the pope, they again stood upon their feet (estesan epi tous podas auton) was the death knell of the terrific Image throughout the world. Since that reign of terror the ICONIC MAN became incurably sick. The facies Hippocratica pervades his senile and idiotic countenance; and like his brother of Constantinople is tottering on the verge of an abyss; into which when he falls, he will receive a measure, heaped up and shaken down, even "double" at the hands of his innocent and unoffending victims, such as in the day of his power, he meted out to them (ch. 13:10; 17:14; 18:6,20; 15:2). "Here is the patience of the Saints"   this is what all true and genuine saints believe and are waiting for; and such are they who keep the commandments of the Deity, and the faith of Jesus (ch. 13:10; 14:12).