was repudiating this apostate church (which set up saints
and images in the place of the Son of God, exalted works of merit
instead of the cleansing power of the blood) continually cried aloud
the glorious doctrine of justification by faith, and whose supreme
watchword was--"The Bible and nothing but the Bible"; who, under
such conditions as these, would have had the courage to proclaim
that in the closing hours of this age, this aggressive and biblical
Protestantism should break up by self-division, become fragmentary,
its leading thinkers and teachers repudiating the Bible as the
infallible Word of God? Who would have dared to say that Rome would
come back, ascend into the place of authority, sit upon the throne
of the world's respect and receive its honors? Who would have said
that this church which has set itself up above the Bible, claimed
the right to change times and seasons in defiance of a "thus saith
the Lord," and has burned men at the stake for their love and
devotion to this very Bible, should, at the last, by reason of the
infidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and its
indifference to a "thus saith the Lord," come forth as the defender
of the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of the
sacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against the
shame and indecency of divorce?

Yet these prophecies are written on page after page of this book,
and their complete and amazing fulfilment looks us in the face.

What a picture is painted for us in the words that follow:

"This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers,
incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors,
heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,
having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."

"The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine: but
after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having
itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth,
and shall be turned to fables."

It is a picture which finds its counterpart in the Protestantism of
to-day--a Protestantism full of worldliness, having a form of
godliness, a great religious profession, but denying its only power
(the Holy Ghost), repudiating doctrine