then he will spoil his house.’ (Mark 3:22‐27; Luke 11:22.) This effective binding of Satan is accordingly shown to be the first work of the New Dispensation.” (A. 68.) “The Adversary’s every deceptive and misleading influence will be restrained—so that evil shall no longer appear to men to be good, nor good appear undesirable, evil. Truth shall no longer appear to men untrue, nor falsehoods be caused to appear true.” (D. 519.) “The words of inspiration give us to understand that Satan’s struggles to retain control of mankind will be especially desperate at its close.”—S. 78. A thousand years.—The Millennial Day, the Day of the Lord’s rest, following the six thousand years of evil which ended in 1874. “One Day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” (2 Pet. 3:8; Psa. 90:4.) “It was the claim of the Papacy that the thousand years of Christ’s Reign, the Millennium, promised in Scripture to follow Christ’s Second Advent, began in the year 800 A. D., under Pope Leo III., who claimed to be the representative of Christ, His vice‐gerent, to begin Christ’s Reign in His stead. In that year the ‘Papal states’ were ceded to the Church by Emperor Charlemagne. Their ‘Millennium’ ended, it was claimed, in the year 1799, when Napoleon confiscated the territories granted to the Church and took the Pope, Pius VI., a captive to France, where he died. The succeeding freedom from Papal persecution, and the widespread circulation of the Bible in the languages of the people, was declared by the Papal leaders to be the ‘little season’ (Rev. 20:3) to follow the thousand‐year Reign of Christ on earth; and they are hoping that soon they will regain their former power and prestige and once more reign supreme, and that their rule will be permanent. This Papal Millennium is known in history as the ‘Dark Ages.’ During those dark centuries millions were tortured, exiled and murdered for refusing to bow to the mandates of the apostate Church, under the leadership of Popes, Bishops and priests. Agents and spies were employed to apprehend and bring to punishment any who were found to express sentiments contrary to the Papal hierarchy, or who failed to bow in abject submission to their authority. Thus were the nations of Europe paganized, and steeped in error and superstition and in reverence for men who falsely claimed to be the special and authorized representatives of God on earth. They presumed to have authority to alter the Laws of God when it seemed advisable to them to do so, and thought to change the time for the Reign of Christ as we have shown.” (Dan. 7:25; Z. ’16‐181; B. 354.) “ ‘Those who lived next to the Apostles, and the whole Church for 300 years, understood them [the “Thousand Years”] in the plain literal sense.’ According to Jewish theology, as collected from the Talmud, Messiah is to gather in from the Dispersion all the scattered descendants of the Tribes, to discomfit their foreign oppressors, and from Jerusalem