four
hundred or more years ago, it was demonstrated by Jannes and Jambres
that there is a supernaturalism of the Devil, as well as of God,
_against_, as well as _for_ God.
Both Anti-christ and his subaltern, the false prophet, dealt largely in
the miracle of fire. The _two witnesses_, who had testified that they
had come from God, had consumed their persecutors, again and again by
fire, and the Hell-born imposters felt the necessity of showing that
they, too, could command fire.
Utterly destroyed by the ten kings, the world was without an organized
religion, and was ready for the fouler, fuller rule of Satan--the
worship of Anti-christ, and his image.
As God had ever had a Trinity of personality and power in Himself, so
Satan in his damnable, deceivable counterfeiting has now _his_ trinity.
Himself (Satan) the embodiment of evil, the suggester, creator,
energizer, he makes a _mock_ Christ--Apleon, the Anti-christ, answers
to the second Person of the divine Trinity. While Apleon's chaplain,
the false prophet, answers to the third person of the divine Trinity.
Energized by Satan, even as Anti-christ himself is, the false Prophet
becomes a mighty force among the world's peoples, persuading them that
Apleon really is God, and worthy of worship. The whole world has seen
and heard of the marvellous miracles of "The Prophet," as he is called.
The infatuation of all the world for the Man of Sin, Lucien Apleon, was
almost absolute and complete. He ruled the world, every department of
it--social, political, commercial, religious. He blasphemed God. He
blasphemed the translated Church that occupied the Heavenlies with her
Lord.
Day by day, week by week, month by month he grew bolder, more impious,
more cruel, more persecuting to the saints that were then living to God.
And through all this time Enoch and Elijah continued their "witness"
for their Lord. As judgment prophets, they had been sent in this age
of judgment, to resist the awful, the gigantic blasphemies of
Anti-christ, and to give to the poor, vain, deluded world its last
awful warning. For bad as had been the apostate Church, so recently
destroyed, the worship of Anti-christ himself, would be infamously more
impious.
The world hated them, yet _feared_ the two witnesses. More than once
when blatant blasphemers, agents of Apleon, had openly opposed them,
and cursed them and their witnessing, these witnesses of Jesus Christ,
"_the faithful and tru
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