From this day there began a perfect reign of terror on the earth, for the vast bulk of the people who had yielded utter allegiance to the "Beast," and to his worship, became heretic-hunters. Natural affection appeared to be actually absent from the world, and sons and daughters betrayed fathers and mothers, husbands betrayed wives, wives husbands, and the friend his friends.
Thousands were beheaded every month, taking the earth over—men, women, and children, who had learned to trust God, and who waited for the coming Kingdom of Christ, when, having put down all enemies under his feet, he should begin his reign of a thousand years. These saved ones, and martyred ones, were "an innumerable multitude saved out of T H E great tribulation, from all nations, kindreds, and peoples, and tongues."
[1] This creed, in its essence, and often in its terminology is taken from a book already published, in which the religion of Humanism exalts man to the place of God. (Author.)
CHAPTER XVII.
A GATHERING UP.
At this stage it seems well to the writer to gather together in a brief—but necessarily very fragmentary fashion—some of the chief events of the second half of Anti-christ's reign, and those immediately preceding the millenial reign of Christ. The object of this little volume, as well as its predecessor—"In the Twinkling of an Eye"—being chiefly to incite in the readers of the two books, a desire to look into the wonders of the "After Events," we can only touch upon these things in the most disjointed fashion, many events, from necessity of space, being untouched altogether.
The two scenes recorded in previous chapters—the torture and beheading of Isaac Wolferstein and his beautiful fiancee, Miriam Cohen, and the beheading of three at St. Paul's—were duplicated many thousands of times, every town and city of the wide world had its own hideous tale of torturing and of death.
The effect upon the bulk of the people was to deepen "the strong delusion," as to Anti-christ, under which they laboured, so that they fed upon "The Lie," and became abject slaves in their wills and worship of the "Man of Sin."