inquisitions in the West

If any of you should run into someone who compares Communism to other authoritarian regimes in other parts of history that have been supposedly “just as bad,” here’s the evidence. It is documented that in Russia during the eighty years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, during which time there was sedition, assassination attempts and the actual assassination of a Tsar (when the country was in a state of turmoil due to political, social and economic changes), an average of seventeen persons per year were executed. During the Spanish Inquisition at the height of its terror perhaps ten persons per month were executed. Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution the Cheka, which was the predecessor to the modern KGB, was murdering a thousand a month without trial. Stalin, not to be outdone, killed forty thousand per month not counting the artificial famines. Forty thousand per month executed without trial or hope. -Sean Prophet, Pearl 30:3 ……….......................... They may attempt to divide the body of God upon Earth by religious schism and argumentation, by placing emphasis on the letter of the law. We have seen enough of inquisition in our time! We have seen enough of the wars of Protestant and Catholic! What is the net gain? The only true gain on the path of religion is the Spirit, the Holy Ghost with the individual and then moving nations—Yahweh moving among His people, who is still able to draw out of America those servant-sons of God who will truly manifest an example of the path of freedom and discipleship with Saint Germain, the beloved Joseph.

-Morya, Pearl 27:47 ……........................... in the Last Supper by Veronese commissioned in 1573 by the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, there was aroused the suspicion of the Inquisition’s tribunal of the Holy Office, which summoned Veronese to defend the painting. The tribunal objected to the painting on grounds that it included irreverent elements inappropriate to the holiness of the event, for example, a dog, a jester holding a parrot, and a servant with a bleeding nose. Replying that ‘we painters take the same liberties as poets and madmen take,’ Veronese adroitly and staunchly defended the artist’s right to freedom of imagination. The tribunal, perhaps influenced by the civil authority, elegantly resolved the question by suggesting that the theme be changed to a Feast in the House of Levi....In 1588 Veronese contracted a fever and, after a few days of illness, died on April 9. His brother and sons had him buried in S. Sebastiano, where a bust was placed above his grave.” nn-footnote in Pearl 25:53 ……………............................... 3. Religious persecutions since the time of Jesus. Christian groups persecuted in the early centuries by the Roman Catholic Church included the Gnostics (second century), Arians (fourth century) and Pelagians (fifth century). During the Middle Ages, the Albigenses (Cathars) and Waldenses were the primary targets (eleventh to mid-fourteenth centuries). In 1208 Pope Innocent III inaugurated the Albigensian Crusade, sending Christian soldiers to stamp out the Albigenses in southern France. Fifteen thousand were killed in one battle. In 1245 after the 10-month siege at Montségur more than 200 were burned alive. By the end of the 40-year crusade almost a half million people had been massacred. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX also formally instituted the papal Inquisition, aimed primarily at the Albigenses and Waldenses. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition which targeted Jews, Moors and Muslims who had converted to Christianity but were suspected of having relapsed into their original faiths. -footnote in Pearl 37:43 ……………….............................. On October 5, 1573 in Antwerp, Belgium a woman named Maeyken Wens was arrested and tortured. As Paul D. Simmons wrote in an article for Church and State, “Her tongue was then screwed to her upper palate so she could not witness to her faith while she was hauled in a cart to the place where the sentence was carried out–death by fire. Her crime?...She proclaimed the Gospel as she understood it from her personal reading of the New Testament. She was a victim of the Inquisition. She was found guilty of heresy, impiety and disobedience to Mother Church.” Has not Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre suffered the same fate today, though not so physical?  Does not Rome yet stand intolerant of the human spirit and the right to find out God and to worship Him as one does so choose?  And have we not all given our lives at one time or another to keep the flame of religious liberty burning in Europe in these dark ages? The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in November 1620 had found it necessary to leave England in order to insure their survival as a church, as a community, as one spirit. They had tried Holland, which was said to be tolerant. But because of problems associated with the education of their children as well as economic factors they set out for the New World. In the next centuries they were followed by Quakers, Huguenots and Waldenses, Schwenckfelders, Roman Catholics, and Anabaptists. They were leaving behind a long tradition of religious persecution. In 1545 the French king Francis I had ordered that all Waldenses (followers of the twelfth-century Protestant Peter Waldo) who were found guilty of heresy should be put to death. Waldo had advocated a simple life. He came to the conclusion that the laws of Christ were not being strictly followed. He sold his property, gave away the proceeds, and preached among the poor. Waldenses believed that laymen and women should be allowed to preach. They held that the Bible should be the rule of faith and that God was to be obeyed rather than man; hence they refused to obey the clergy. French soldiers interpreted the king’s order to mean mass extermination. They killed 3,000 Waldenses, burned 22 villages and sent 700 men to the galleys, all to maintain control over the minds and souls of the people.

-Messenger ECP, Pearl 32:26 …………………