We continue with extracts from Benjamin Wills Newton’s book, Prospects of the Ten Kingdoms, the chapter 6 — THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORY OF PROFESSING CHRISTIANITY, AS GIVEN IN THE PARABLES OF MATTHEW XIII.
I would commend a close reading of these extracts for they deal with the very issue of ‘decay within Christendom’ that we see all around.
Here is Part 7, which covers pages 174-179.
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It is plain from every sign around us, that we are living at a period of crisis, not only in the world’s but in the Church’s history. What then is to be done by those who fear God? Shall we forsake those blessed principles of Truth which Protestantism, under God’s own power, restored: or shall we rather cleave to them with ten-fold tenacity? Only, we must separate the precious from the vile. “If,” as was said to Jeremiah, who himself lived at a period when all things were out of course, “if thou wilt take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth.” If Protestantism at the Reformation failed to judge the primeval corruptions of Christianity — if, thinking only of the Woman and her evil, it forgot the sin of the Church in forsaking her lowliness, and becoming like the fair-spreading Tree — if it neglected to search into the prophetic word, and consequently remained in ignorance of all that Israel is to be, and of all that the nations are, then have we to avoid these quicksands. We have to carry our thoughts back over the long train of corruptions, until we reach the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour. We have to remember that the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship, but not we-that neither the condition of Israel under the Law, nor of Israel in millennial rest, is to be the condition of Christianity now; and that the nations, symbolised by evil monsters, are in God’s sight, contrasted in. every possible sense with her who is the Bride of Christ, and who once occupied in the earth a position worthy of being represented by “candlesticks of gold.” Attention to those things would not only materially affect our practical position, but would lead us also to a right ” division” of the Scriptures, without which they can neither be interpreted nor applied aright. (more…)
This is a headline on today’s BBC news site: “Covid: Greece to fine over-60s who refuse Covid-19 vaccine”. 
“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies,” Revelation 18:1-3.