“In a. d. 1665, in London, 68,000 died of plague.
“In a. d. 1755, an earthquake destroyed the city of Lisbon, killing 50,000. In Mitylene, and the Archipelago, it shook down 2000 houses. It shook all the Spanish coast. The plague followed, which destroyed 150,000 persons in Constantinople.”
Doubtless the figures in the above list should in some instances be corrected to correspond with facts. But, taken as a whole, they do not nearly represent the ravages of death in their enormity. For instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica states that Hecker estimates the celebrated “black death” of the fourteenth century in the different epidemics, to have swept away one fourth of the inhabitants of Europe, or 25,000,000 people!
Persecution And False Prophets.
Martyrdom of Huss
Verses 9, 10: “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.”
Here is a brief description of the afflictions and martyrdom of the church of Christ. Thousands of the faithful followers of Jesus were most cruelly put to death by pagan Rome; yet the prophecy doubtless applies more particularly to the long period of papal persecutions, in which not less than fifty millions of Christians were put to death in the most cruel manner that wicked men and demons could devise. In these verses we are brought down over the long period of the martyrdom of the church of Jesus Christ, to near the present generation. These verses being parallel with verses 21 and 22, this subject will be noticed again.
Verse 11: “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.”