Crucified Hearts

The darkest ages for humanity came when the Roman Catholic Church sought to rule the conscience through enforcing its traditions with the threat of excommunication, suffering, torture, and death.

In political union with kings, she wielded the power to tax, to raise armies, to wage so-called holy wars against anyone who dared question her authority, including the kings themselves.

Thus we see how Satan carried on his work of persecuting Christ, using the same principles of misinterpreting and deny the Scriptures, of using false witnesses, and the authority of the state to condemn the Son of God to death on a cross

According to Revelation, chapters 13 through 18, when the deadly wound of the Roman church is healed, that is when she again has the power of the state to enforce her doctrine, history will repeat itself.

“One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.”
— Revelation 13:3

“It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed.”
— Revelation 13:12

Yet as it was in the past, God will bring her luxurious apostasy to an end, holding her responsible for shedding the blood of saints and putting an end, an eternal end, to her whoredom with the nations.

“And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints,
and of all who have been slain on earth.”
— Revelation 18:24

For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
and you have given them blood to drink.
It is what they deserve!”
— Revelation 16:6

The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
— Revelation 11:18

Until that day we will live by this principle:

“But God will have a people upon the earth to maintain the Bible and the Bible only, as the standard of all doctrines and the basis of all reforms. The opinions of learned men, the deductions of science, the creeds or decisions of ecclesiastical councils, as numerous and discordant as are the churches which they represent, the voice of the majority—not one nor all of these should be regarded as evidence for or against any point of religious faith. Before accepting doctrine or precept, we should demand a plain Thus saith the Lord in its support.”

E.G. White — The Great Controversy, p. 595.

In matters of truth and conscience you are responsible to God as an individual alone. He will teach his truth to you personally if your will is to do his. His word is truth and as you compare Scripture with Scripture you will hear him guiding you in every aspect of your life with him, and in relationship with others. No traditions, however sanctified by age, can supersede your conscience in standing before God alone and his truth. His word is truth.

As Scripture says:

If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
— John 7:17

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
— John 16:13-15

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”⁠—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.  The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
— 1 Corinthians 2:8-16