SPIRITUAL DECLINE
It was possible, of course, for the church to decline from her state of purity and thereby to forfeit her standing as the church. So long as her conflict with paganism lasted and the various forms of persecution tended to bring into exercise those principles and qualities which distinguished her from the world, she practically kept her first estate. When, however, the tide turned, persecutions ceased and Christianity came into favor and to be made the state religion of the Roman Empire, there were presented conditions favorable to every form of spiritual decline. Christians, instead of being longer persecuted, were protected, and to profess Christianity became popular and easy. The divine features of the church, by which she had been known for more than two hundred years, were lost. Every form of corruption came in. Human rule supplanted the divine, Holy Spirit, rule almost universally, both in the East and the West. The bishop of Rome, in particular, rose in prominence until he was made supreme head—pope—of the Holy Roman church. The reader of church history knows of the long eclipse of Christianity that followed, of the darkness and ignorance that reigned and gave to that period the name, Dark Ages. The true church, impossible of representation by such a colossal counterfeit as then appeared in her place and became in turn a persecuting power, could continue only in fragmentary form, in obscure places in the wilderness of the Roman Empire. She could not be manifest in her evangelizing capacity, but was persecuted. Millions of God's people, who refused allegiance to this false system of Christianity, were slain as heretics during this period. Thus, in the historical foreground we see, not the pure woman representing the church of God, but we see an apostate woman seated "upon a scarlet-colored beast," the Roman state.
"And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: and upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (Rev. 17:4-6).
The Word and the Spirit, the two divine authorities, were set aside. In the place of the former were the traditions of the Roman Church, and for the latter was substituted human rule and authority. These two divine witnesses prophesied in sackcloth during those long centuries, until such time as they should again function in their proper sphere in the church—I say until such time: for we are not to assume that in the design of God this state of affairs should always continue. True Christianity was not to perish from the earth. The book of Daniel prophesies of the papacy, "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time" (Dan. 7:25). (See the time-periods of the various epochs of the Christian era in our chapter [A Prophetic Time].) For this vast agency of unrighteousness the time should come when the cup of iniquity should be full and the judgments of God should be executed and his people delivered. When Christ comes, his bride will have made herself ready, which implies that God's people will have been gathered out of spiritual captivity and brought again to Zion. Light and truth and the Holy Spirit rule will have been restored as at the beginning.