Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – The Waldenses – Baptist Peculiarity SIX (continued) – Part 15 in the Series

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 1 hr March 3, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – The Waldenses – Baptist Peculiarity SIX (continued) – Part 15 in the Series

The Waldenses regarded all the Catholic worship as the grossest idolatry; they did not, therefore, commune with Antichrist. They boldly affirmed that the Church of Rome is the “whore of Babylon;” and any communion with her they regarded as spiritual fornication —an unspeakable abomination. For repudiating the Romish communion, with all her abominable superstitions, the Waldenses suffered untold persecutions through all the dark ages of popish rule.

Yes: these ancient Waldensean Baptists, as a denomination, raised the only standard of opposition and protest against the corruptions and blasphemy of the papal dragon during the dark midnight of the world for more than a thousand years before Luther, King Henry, Calvin, and others, raised the standard of rebellion in the Church of Rome, in which mighty religious earthquake a tenth part of the harlot city fell. But, alas! these mighty reformers of the sixteenth century, instead of coming out of Babylon, as they were commanded, attempted to reform that old, polluted, miserable, bloody, debased, cruel, drunken ecclesiastical bawd, in order to prepare a bride for the Lamb of God! And their reforming efforts were so tremendous as to shake “Mystery Babylon” to her dark foundations. This brought on her pangs; and amidst her mighty throes, which shook the nations, she brought forth those ecclesiastical organizations called, in the Bible, “Harlots and abominations of the EARTH.”

These daughters of the old “Mother and Mistress of Churches” still retain the peculiar characteristic features of the “Mother Church;” for they have all sought, and entered, when they have had the opportunity, into an adulterous marriage with civil powers. And they, like their mother, have

“committed fornication with the kings of the earth.” They as organizations, have derived their ordinances, their laws, more or less, and their church existence, from Rome. But now they come, dressed up in the garments of reformation, and wish to commune with the bride, the Lamb’s wife! The bride of the Lamb has no more business to affiliate and commune with these mystic daughters of Rome than the faithful wife has to become the associate of the abandoned women of earth.

Peculiarity SIX continues March 4, 2020

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: “Baptist Succession” by D.B. Ray, 1871 Edition, pg. 367-68