The Witness of the Stars

by E. W. Bullinger

Summary.

Man has ever sought to rob Christ of His glory. He has long since done his best to obliterate His name and His work from the Revelation which had been written in the stars of light. When He humbled Himself, and came as the promised Seed of the woman, men “saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him.” And these were religious men. It was religious men, not the common rabble, whom the Old Serpent made use of to wound Him in the heel. The Devil could not touch Him himself; he must use them as his instruments; and it was only religious men that could be so used.

It was the “chief priests and scribes,” men learned in the Scriptures, whose very knowledge of the Word was used to compass His death amongst the babes at Bethlehem (Matt. ii. 4-6).

It was the same priests and scribes who were used to put Him to death, and give the long-prophesied wound in the heel.

Religion without Christ is enmity against God! Knowledge of the Scriptures where the heart is not subject to Christ, and where Christ is not seen in them, is powerless and lifeless. It is true of the Scriptures, as it will be of the heavenly Jerusalem—“the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. xxi. 23).

The Church of Rome has been used of the great enemy to rob the Lamb of God of His promised glory. Jerome, in his Latin translation of the Bible (405 a.d.), wrote “ipse,” He, in Gen. iii. 15, as the “bruiser of the serpent's head.” And, in spite of the fact that Jerome himself so quotes it in his commentary, and that it is masculine in all the other ancient translations of the Bible, Rome has first corrupted Jerome's Vulgate by changing the “e” into “a,” and putting “ipsa” (she) instead of “ipse” (He); then she has so translated this corruption and perpetuated this perversion in various languages! So that in all her versions, in her pictures and statues, in the decree of Pope Pius IX., which promulgated the dogma of the “immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary,” this lie of the Old Serpent has been foisted on unnumbered thousands of deluded souls, who have thereby been deceived into putting Mary in the place of Jesus; the “co-Redemptress” in the place of the Redeemer; the creature in the place of the Creator; the woman in the place of the woman's Seed;—until the outcome is reached by emblazoning, in huge gilt [pg 173] letters, on the outside of a large church in Rathmines, Dublin, “MARIÆ PECCATORUM REFUGIUM,” to Mary the Refuge of Sinners!

So complete has been the success of the subtlety of the Serpent, that he has beguiled thousands of Protestants to unite in circulating these corrupted versions as the Word of God, thus giving currency to the Devil's lie. This is done on the plea of expediency, in order that these versions might come to many as Protestant truth instead of Popish error; but thus misleading those who were seeking for light, while confirming Papists in their darkness.

But through all the “wisdom of the Serpent” we can detect his lie. It is very thinly veiled, and the Old Serpent has not succeeded in blinding the eyes which the Spirit of God has opened. True, we see in all Rome's pictures and statues the foot of Mary, on the Serpent's head, but the foot is not coming down, nor is the head crushed! Rather is the woman's foot resting on its head; and the woman herself supported by the Serpent.

The whole system of Mary-anity is thus seen to be the outcome of the Serpent's wisdom in opposition to the true Christ-ianity.

How different are the primeval star-pictures of the heavens. There, the club is lifted up, the foot is coming down, yea, the foot is actually planted upon the enemy, treading the Scorpion under foot.