hange taking place. Instead of the church representing
all the truth to the world, we find the beginning of a great apostasy,
which in time was to eclipse and well nigh extinguish the light and
glory of primitive Christianity by substituting in its place the
darkness of the apostasy born in ages of ignorance and superstition.

That such a change in the history of the true church should occur
was predicted by Christ and the apostles. Jesus said, "And because
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24:12).
Peter said, "There shall be false teachers among you, who privily
shall bring in damnable heresies" (2 Pet. 2:1). Paul said, "Also of
your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw
away disciples after them" (Acts 20:30). To the Thessalonians who had
been troubled with the report that the second coming of Christ was
then near at hand, Paul said, "Let no man deceive you by any means:
for that day shall not come, except there come _a falling away first_,
and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth
and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is
worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, and showing
himself that he is God.... For the mystery of iniquity doth already
work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of
the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the
brightness of his coming" (2 Thess. 2:3-8).

The reader can scarcely consider these texts without perceiving
clearly that change which came over the primitive church resulting
in a transition from her glorious state of innocent beauty to the
full-grown papacy--the "mystery of iniquity."

CHAPTER XII

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

The fact of history pertaining to the true church which Paul described
as a "falling away" is represented by the Revelator by the symbol of
the woman fleeing into the wilderness. The other fact mentioned by
Paul pertaining to the rise and development of the man of sin is
represented in the visions of the Revelation as follows:

[Sidenote: The ten-horned leopard-beast]

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out
of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten
crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which
I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a
b