"He Shall Speak Great Words Against the Most High"
As Daniel observed the little-horn power, he heard it speaking "very great things." The angel declared that these great swelling words were really against the Most High. And what could be more against the honor of the Most High than that to mortal man should be ascribed the titles and attributes of divinity? Here are some of the "great words:"
"All the names which are attributed to Christ in Scripture, implying His supremacy over the church, are also attributed to the Pope."—Bellarmine, "On the Authority of Councils," book 2, chap. 17.
This ruling has been actually applied through the ages. Says Elliott:
"Look at the Sicilian ambassadors prostrated before him [Pope Martin IV] with the cry, 'Lamb of God! that takest away the sins of the world!'"—"Horæ Apocalypticæ," part 4, chap. 5, sec. 2.
CHRISTIANS IN PRISON BENEATH THE COLOSSEUM AWAITING MARTYRDOM
"And shall wear out the saints of the Most High." Dan. 7:25.
"The Pope is of so great dignity and excellence, that he is not merely man, but as if God, and the vicar of God (non sit simplex homo, sed quasi Deus, et Dei vicarius). The Pope alone is called most holy,... divine monarch, and supreme emperor, and king of kings.... The Pope is of so great dignity and power that he constitutes one and the same tribunal with Christ (faciat unum et idem tribunal cum Christo), so that whatsoever the Pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of God (abore Dei)."—"Prompta Bibliotheca" (Ferraris), art. "Papa;" Ferraris's Ecclesiastical Dictionary (Roman Catholic), art. "The Pope." Quoted in Guinness's "Romanism and the Reformation," p. 16.
These are no merely extravagant adulations of the Dark Ages, to be repudiated by the moderns; these terms express the unchanging doctrinal claims of the Roman Church, that put man in the place of God. The modern Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, repeated the claim:
"We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."—"The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII" (New York, Benziger Brothers), p. 304.
Thus does the Papacy "speak great words against the Most High."