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58 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Those who tried to obey the true gospel were labeled “heretics” and bitterly persecuted by the
Church. Some who rejected the teachings of the Roman Church had molten lead poured into their
ears and mouths. Eyes were gouged out and others were cruelly beaten with whips. Many were
forced to jump from cliffs onto long spikes fixed below where, quivering from pain, they slowly
died. Others were choked to death with mangled pieces of their own flesh, with urine, or excrement.

The ride of the BLACK horse, which prompted the Inquisition, caused wars which involved
entire cities. In 1209 the city of Beziers was taken by men who had been promised by the pope that
by engaging in the crusade against “heretics” they would, at death, bypass purgatory and immedi-
ately enter heaven. Sixty thousand people in this city perished by the sword while blood flowed in
the streets. The PALE horse was gathering more victims. At Lavaur, in 1211, the governor was
hanged on a gibbet and his wife thrown into a well and crushed with stones. Four hundred people
in this town were burned alive. The crusaders attended high mass in the morning, then proceeded to
take other towns in the vicinity. In this siege alone it is estimated that 100,000 Albigenses fell in one
day. Their bodies were heaped together and burned. Satan has often been able to use “the beasts of
the earth” (which represent human governments) with devastating effect in opposition to the true
gospel. All this has fed the insatiable appetite of the PALE horse and his companion, the GRAVE.

Through these ages of darkness and apostasy, there were a people called the Waldenses who
denied the supremacy of Rome, who rejected image worship as idolatry, and who apparently kept
the true Sabbath. Under the fiercest persecutions of the Roman Church they maintained their faith --
they stood unflinchingly for YEHOVAH’S word and His honor. In return they suffered “famine,
persecution, war, -- all three, sometimes in succession and sometimes together” (Wylie: History of
the Waldenses, p.2). “Literally,” says Wylie, “did the Waldenses suffer all the things of which the
apostle speaks, as endured by the martyrs of old, with other torments not then invented, or which the
rage of even a Nero shrank from inflicting. ‘They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were
tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being desti-
tute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in
mountains, and in dens, and caves of the earth’”

Continues Wylie: “The soldiers [of the Vatican] were not content with the quick dispatch of
the sword; they invented new and hitherto unheard-of modes of torture and death. No man at this
day dare write in plain words all the disgusting and horrible deeds of these men; their wickedness
can never be all known, because it never can be all told” (p. 141). “The corn in many places re-
mained uncut, the grapes rotted on the bough, and the fruit dropped from the trees. Strangers who
had come to find health in the pure mountain air obtained from the soil nothing but a grave” (p.
129).

While “beasts of the earth” can certainly imply human governments -- it can also be taken
quite literally! Laments Wylie: “Little children were torn from the arms of their mothers, clasped by
their tiny feet, and their heads dashed against the rocks; or were held between two soldiers and their
quivering limbs torn up by main force. Their mangled bodies were then thrown on the highways or
fields, to be devoured by beasts”(p.141). Under the Roman Empire Christians were tied to stakes in
the arena and devoured by lions to the amusement of the Roman masses. Others were given a short
sword to face the animals -- the result was the same.

The Berean Voice September-October 2002