You are reading Absolute Maximum Ratings section. If you go over these values your transistor will break.
'Base-Emitter' is actually emitter-base voltage, and means reverse voltage over base-emitter 'diode'. I do not think you are going to hit that very easily. You are right about forward current and resistor taking most of the voltage.
Collector to Emitter voltage means break down voltage. BC547 cannot handle more even when not conducting. Consider this as limitation of your power supply voltage.
Collector current means you cannot have more than 100mA flow thru collector or it will break. Design your circuit so that this won't hapen. (with collector resistor or some other way)
One thing to watch out is 'Collector Power Dissipation':
Lets say we have supply voltage 20V. And collector resistor 200 ohm, no leds etc. When transistor is not conducting, it has collector-emitter voltage of 20V we are safe, it is under 45V. When we saturate transistor collector emitter voltage is near zero, maybe 0.3V. Current is just below 100mA, so we are just safe. Power that remain on transistor is 0.3V*100mA=30mW. So we are safe from that too. But what hapens when we drive transistor in half conducting stage? with base current (50mA/Hfe). Now collector current is 50mA and collector-emitter voltage 10V that gives us power 10V*50mA=500mW. So we are in limit there.