Papal Rome and the European Union by Richard Bennett and Michael Desomnian.
Papal Rome is widely respected and admired by the world.
She is seen as well-organised, successful and influential, as well as
dignified and authoritative.
The aura of uncritical acclaim around the person of successive popes is unique to
the Church of Rome.
No other global institution has it.
Her pronouncements on moral issues carry great weight.
So well regarded is the papacy today that the acceptance of her extends even to
evangelicals, most of whom have ceased to question her doctrine.
Why then should we take a position contrary to this avalanche of present-day
approval?
We do so because we are commanded by the Lord God to proclaim His truth and His
warnings, for all is not at all as it seems.
We believe that the late great British preacher Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones was correct
when he proclaimed that the Roman Catholic Church is a counterfeit and a sham.
It represents prostitution of the worst and most diabolical kind.
It binds the souls of its people absolutely, just as communism and Nazism
did, and is itself a totalitarian system." Papal pronouncements on Europe.
On August 31st 2003, Pope John Paul II entrusted the future of the New Europe to
the Virgin Mary.
In the words of the Catholic news agency Zenit, he placed Europe in Mary's hands so
that it would become a symphony of nations committed to building together the
civilization of love and peace.
Last Sunday, the Holy Father urged that the final draft of the European
constitution should recognize explicitly the Christian roots of the continent as
they constitute a guarantee of a future.
The official teaching of Rome makes clear that this statement concerning the
Christian roots of the continent is a facade.
When the Pope or his church use the term Christian, they mean Roman Catholic.
A recent official decree of Rome condemns, quote, the tendency to read and to
interpret sacred scripture outside the tradition and magisterium of the church.
Rome officially proclaims that the Christian church of Christ is the Catholic
church.
In her decree she states, therefore there exists a single church of Christ which
subsists in the Catholic church, governed by the successor of Peter and by
the bishops in communion with him.
Just as the Nazis declared non-Aryans to be non-humans, so now the church of Rome
declares other churches to be non-churches.
Her official words are, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the
valid episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic
mystery are not churches in the proper sense.
In the same document, Dominus Iesus of September 5th 2000, footnote 51,
refers to a decree which states, we declare, say, define and proclaim to
every human creature that they by necessity for salvation are entirely
subject to the Roman pontiff.
The mind of Rome is thus expressed in her official decrees.
Once the Protestant nations are committed to the emerging European super-state and
its constitution, the Vatican's plan to once again Christianise the European Union
will be implemented.
As described by the London Sunday Telegraph, the Pope is calmly preparing to
assume the mantle which he solemnly believes to be his divine right,
that of the new Holy Roman Emperor reigning from the Urals to the Atlantic.
The Vatican has a unique contribution to the EU, the European Union.
The EU already has most of the attributes needed for nationhood.
It has a passport, a flag, a single currency and an anthem.
It is also drawing up its constitution.
The further characteristics of nationhood such as a president, international
ambassadors and a foreign secretary.
The Vatican carefully gives soul to all of this by claiming that this is,
quote, a unique contribution to the building up of a Europe open to the world.
The Pope in his Ecclesia in Europe states, one and universal, yet present in the
multiplicity of the particular churches, the Catholic Church can offer a unique
contribution to the building up of a Europe open to the world.
The Catholic Church, in fact, provides a model of essential unity in the diversity
of cultural expressions, a consciousness of membership in a universal community
which is rooted in, but not confined to, local communities, and a sense of what
unites beyond all that divides.
The particular churches in Europe, as quoted there, are not simple agencies
or private organisations.
Rather, they carried out their work with a special institutional dimension that
merits legal recognition in full respect for just systems of civil legislation.
Particular churches in Europe is simply a pretense.
The Vatican views itself as the particular church and officially states, the Catholic
faithful are required to profess that there is an historical continuity rooted
in the apostolic succession between the church founded by Christ and the Catholic
Church.
From the decrees published, it is clear that apart from the Church of Rome
establishing herself as the, quote, unique contribution to the building up of
a Europe open to the world, she claims for herself legal recognition in accord with
her own civil legislation.
This has been the basis of the Vatican's political manipulation over the centuries.
While Rome carefully prepares her own legal place, she will tolerate no rivals.
Quote, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid episcopate
are not churches in the proper sense.
Most certainly they are not to be included as part of the unique contribution to the
building up of a Europe open to the world.
As author Adrian Hilton warned recently in an article in the Spectator, the issue of
European religious union is one that has been concealed even deeper than the plans
for political union.
But the ratchet towards a Catholic Europe is just as real.
The Pope's recent demand that God be featured in the emerging European
constitution has been echoed by many leading Catholic politicians and bishops.
While on the surface such a reference may offend only Europe's atheistic and
humanist contingent, it must be observed that when the Vatican refers to God,
she sees herself as God's infallible vice-regent upon earth, the leading organ
of divine expression.
Indeed, according to its publication Dominus Iesus, as the only mediator in the
salvation of God's elect, insisting that all other churches, including the Church
of England, are not churches in the proper sense.
The real meaning of the Pope's message to Europe.
The Ecclesia in Europa pronouncement is one of the cleverest produced by the late
Pope John Paul II.
It's a masterpiece that purportedly proclaims the Christian message,
while in fact it teaches the rites and rituals of the papacy.
For example, the concept of the gospel of hope is mentioned 40 times in the
dissertation.
The message, however, is not one of hope.
Rather, it is an adept counterfeit.
For example, paragraph 74 begins by stating, A prominent place needs to be
given to the celebration of the sacraments as actions of Christ and as of the Church,
ordered to the worship of God, to the sanctification of people,
and to the building up of the ecclesial community.
The Pope thus presents his physical, symbolic sacraments as the efficacious
cause of salvation.
In place of the direct obedience to Christ Jesus demanded in the gospel of faith,
the sacraments are purported to be actions of Christ.
This is where the Vatican's pretension of hope lies.
Such sacraments are declared necessary for salvation in the official teaching of
Rome.
Quote, the Church affirms that for believers, the sacraments of the new
covenant are necessary for salvation.
Sacramental grace is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each
sacrament.
By setting aside the direct work of God in Christ Jesus, the sacraments of Rome are
seeking to steal from Christ his priesthood, and to rob him of his power as
mediator.
The Roman Church also seeks to rob God, the Holy Spirit, of his peculiar work as
the sanctifier, by attributing his power of giving grace to its own rituals.
Moreover, it seeks to rob God the father of his prerogatives of justifying and
forgiving sinners.
This is the reality behind the concept of the Gospel of Hope that permeates the
Pope's, the former Pope's, message to Europe.
Throughout the centuries, Rome has substituted her sacraments for the Gospel
in a consistently degrading insult to the grace of God.
Shameful to God and damning to men is the Pope's memorandum to Europe.
We are at a seminal moment in history, as the Holy Roman Empire re-emerges as a
European super-state.
Throughout her history, the papacy has remained self-governing and invincible to
every restraining force other than that of the power of God in the Gospel.
Bible believers need to be aware of the times in which we live.
We need to study the history of the EU in order to see the outworking of the guile
of Rome.
A short history of the European Union.
After the destruction, ruin and enormous human cost of the that it would never
happen again.
In 1946, Sir Winston Churchill suggested in a famous speech at Zurich in
Switzerland that, quote, we must build a kind of United States of Europe.
This was not a commitment for Britain to participate in the European project,
as Euro-enthusiasts have often insisted.
Churchill envisaged a Western Europe, a free, independent, sovereign nations,
not an undemocratic federal super-state.
Together, the nations would reach for a destiny of unprecedented cooperation and
harmony.
In 1950, the Schuman Plan proposed the supranational pooling of the German and
French coal and steel industries in order to lay the basis of European economic
unity.
The partial merger of the economies of the two traditional enemies would ensure
continuing peace between them.
French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed
the agreement, the Treaty of Paris, as co-founders of the Franco-German Coal
and Steel Confederation.
Like their colleagues, Jean Monnet and Paul-Henri Spaak, they were both devout
Roman Catholics who shared the vision of successive post-war popes for a
re-Catholicised and united Europe.
Adenauer and Schuman, along with Alcide de Gasperi, all three founding fathers,
are in the process of being made into saints by the Vatican as a reward for
founding the new Europe, quote, on Roman Catholic principles.
The European Economic Community, the EEC, this was established in 1957 by
the Treaty of Rome and brought in Italy, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg to join
with France and Germany in removing trade barriers between member states and
unifying their economic policies.
It made clear to those with sufficient stamina to read the Treaty's lengthy and
turgid document that the aim of the project was always to achieve political
unity in economic disguise, an ever closer union.
In 1962, the Common Agricultural Policy was introduced with a single European
market and price fixing, which has consistently favoured French farmers.
The Northwest Technocrat journal commented on the developing design of the European
project at that time, I quote, fascism in Europe is about to be reborn in
respectable business attire and the Treaty of Rome will be finally implemented to its
fullest extent.
The dream of a Holy Roman Empire returning to power to dominate and direct the
so-called forces of Christian mankind of the Western world is not dead,
but still stalks through the antechambers of every national capital of continental
Western Europe in the determination of the leaders in the common market to restore
the Holy Roman Empire with all that that means.
Nearly 30 years later, the London-based Sunday Telegraph was to express the same
concern in a major article headed Now a Holy European Empire?
It stated, the Vatican notoriously thinks in centuries.
In Pope John Paul II, we have the most political pope of modern times.
It is in the movement towards federalism of the common market, with the coming
membership of Eastern European countries, as well as in the turmoil of the Soviet
Union, that the pope may see the greatest possibility for an increase in Catholic
political power since the fall of Napoleon or since the Counter-Reformation.
The common market itself started under the inspiration of Catholic politicians,
such as Adenauer of Germany, Paul-Henri Sparck, John Monet and Robert Schuman.
The EC social charter and the socialism of Jacques Delors, former president of the
European Commission, are imbued with Catholic social doctrine.
If European federalism triumphs, the EC will indeed be an empire.
It will lack an emperor, but it will have the pope.
It is difficult not to think that Votia, the former Pope John Paul II, realises
this.
In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that Britain would apply to join
the European community, or the common market.
The British people voted to do so in a referendum in the belief that they were
joining a closer trading relationship, a kind of club, rather than being bound
into an evolving super-state.
Unfortunately, no more people had read the Treaty of Rome in the 1930s.
Politicians and opinion formers, who should have known better, accepted
assurances that no loss of sovereignty was involved in acceding to the EEC.
In 1973, Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, who definitely did know
better, committed Britain into membership of the EEC.
Ireland and Denmark joined the same year.
In 1979, the European Parliament was established in Strasbourg with its first
direct elections.
The word economic was carefully dropped from the name of the project that was now
to be described as the European Community, just EEC.
Greece joined the EEC in 1981, which was the year of the Single European
Act, enacting the gradual transfer of executive, legislative and judicial powers
from member states to EEC instrumentalities.
Spain and Portugal signed up to the EEC in 1986, making a total of 12 member states.
In 1990, East Germany joined as part of a united Germany.
In February 1992, the Maastricht Treaty or Treaty of European Union was signed at
Maastricht in Holland by the foreign and finance ministers of the member states.
Its objective was to bind the 12 nations into cooperation or, quote, ever closer
union on a range of issues other than economic and trading.
To this end, the EEC was renamed the European Union.
The Maastricht Treaty established economic and monetary union, which would lead
ultimately to all member states sharing a single currency.
The religious dimension, although not apparent, was the key to what was being
formed.
Among European leaders who were most influential in furthering the Maastricht
agenda were Jacques Delors and Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, both
Jesuit-educated, as well as devout Catholics.
German Chancellor Kohl and Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of Spain were alongside
them.
These four leaders were all products of the Roman Catholic social movement,
which believes that there is no nobler task than the unifying of our continent,
and views the idea of a united Europe as essentially a Catholic concept.
The Amsterdam Treaty followed and was signed in 1997 as a further notch of the
ratchet of ever closer union, meaning, in fact, ever-diminishing sovereignty,
following the principle of acquis communautaire, which asserts, quote,
that what has been acquired cannot be taken away.
The Amsterdam Treaty gave more powers to the unelected commission, and particularly
to its unelected president, as the initiator, administrator, mediator,
negotiator, and guardian of the treaties.
The Treaty of Nice, signed by Prime Minister Tony Blair in December 2000,
was the last in a series of treaties which have progressively drained the UK of its
sovereignty.
At Nice there was finally, and irrevocably, established the EU as a
sovereign federal state.
A new European criminal code, Corpus Juris, is planned to replace the classic
long-standing British criminal code.
Vital elements such as trial by jury and habeas corpus are missing from this new
code.
EU supreme power.
Even before the Treaty of Nice came into force, the EU Constitutional Convention,
presided over by former French president Valéry d'Estaing, produced its first draft
of a constitution for Europe in October 2002.
On the 13th of June 2003, a final version of the draft treaty establishing a
constitution for Europe was produced.
Quoting from the London Daily Telegraph of that time, "...to the strains of
Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the Convention on the Future of Europe proclaimed agreement
yesterday on a written constitution for a vast European Union of 450 million
citizens bringing together East and West.
Valéry d'Estaing, the chair of the 105 strong body, held up a text, quote,
"...we have sown a seed and I am sure that seed will grow and bring fruit.
Europe's voice will be heard and respected on the international stage.
Instead of a half-formed Europe, we have a Europe with a legal identity,
with a single currency, common justice, a Europe which is about to have its own
defence." There was no vote.
Mr Gistard, famed for his autocratic style during 16 months of stormy debates,
simply discerned consensus among the MPs, MEPs and national envoys.
Few were willing to spoil the party by crying foul.
End of the quote from the Daily Telegraph.
The constitution gives the EU full legal personality and determines that EU law
will have primacy over the law of member states.
It prohibits Westminster from legislating in most areas of national life,
agriculture, justice, energy, social policy, economic cohesion, transport,
the environment and aspects of public health, unless Brussels chooses to waive
its power.
If the new constitution is accepted, the EU will no longer be a treaty
organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain
purposes, on the understanding that they can take them back again.
Rather, the EU will itself have become the fount of power, with the ability to sign
international treaties in its own right.
It will have its own president, foreign minister and foreign policy,
its own parliament, supreme court, flag, anthem and currency.
It will have become a sovereign state, in fact a federal super state.
The member states whose constitutions will be subject to this higher constitution
will cease to be sovereign.
The new order will be irreversible.
Mr Giscard makes clear that the national veto is to be abolished in 50 new areas,
including immigration and asylum.
The same spirit of domination.
Under the new constitution's rules, no nation is to be allowed to secede from
the EU, except by a two-thirds majority vote of member states in agreement with
the secession.
The EU will acquire competence in all areas of foreign policy, including the
progressive framing of a common defence policy, though major decisions must be
unanimous.
The European court, which acquires vast powers, will ensure that member states,
quote, actively and unreservedly support the EU's common foreign and security
policy.
Article 8 of the draft constitution, which also imposes an obligation of loyal
cooperation vis-à-vis the union of member states, reinforces the supremacy of EU law
over the laws of member states.
An EU attorney general will be able to prosecute cross-border crime, a catch-all
term that will allow Brussels the supreme jurisdiction throughout.
The constitution lacks any serious democratic dimension and is clearly
designed to strengthen the EU power structure for the benefit of the European
elite.
The EU will be able to enforce its doubtless the intention is to force it
through with the minimum of real democratic scrutiny.
This spirit of absolute autocracy that is to govern the EU is frighteningly akin to
the spirit that rules in the Vatican.
Quote, the first C is judged by no one.
Rome's stamp upon the pages of history has forever been no accountability.
Its laws also state, quote, it is solely the right of the Roman pontiff himself to
judge in cases mentioned in canon 1401-1, those who hold the highest civil office in
a state.
The same spirit of despotism in both systems loudly proclaims supreme caution.
The abandoning of a thousand years of history.
The treaty that establishes the new constitution due to be agreed by the
intergovernmental conference in 2004, which was agreed in 2004, is far more
extensive than any previous treaty.
Derek Heathcote Emery, the conservative party representative at the constitutional
convention, rightly described it as, quote, bigger than the treaties of
Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice rolled together.
The implications of such huge changes, the abandoning of a thousand years of
history, have not been really understood by the majority of the British people.
Little by little, treaty by treaty, first the EC, then the EC, then the EU,
people have become used to Europe and bored with it.
And with so many scare stories about Brussels, so-called dangers threatening
their independence and sovereignty, so many Eurosceptics crying wolf,
it has all been going on as long as they can remember.
And after all, Britain does have the fourth largest economy in the world,
and in the main, Britons have prospered.
The problem is that the wolf is now at the door.
Many of those who cherish Britain's independence and who don't want to give
away that for which two world wars were fought to retain, realise this.
If the move to establish the constitution for Europe is ratified by the UK
Parliament, it would be the first time that the United Kingdom has adopted or
acceded to a wholly written constitution.
How can the UK adopt such a constitution, having never had one before?
The answer would seem to be straightforward.
The people must give their consent.
However, if the Labour government had had its way, there would be no referendum.
Tony Blair, who is said to have set his sights on the top job as President of the
United States of Europe, originally made clear and adamantly made clear that there
should take place towards the end of 2006.
The Prime Minister did agree to hold a referendum on the single currency before
he came to office in 1997.
And he's now set fair on allowing the referendum to take place, if he is
re-elected and his new Labour administration re-elected as the
government.
The EU's power symbols.
The EU Parliament's main base is Strasbourg in France.
The city symbolises the dream of Franco-German integration that was at the
heart of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne.
In December 2000, the European Union opened its new Parliament building there.
The building is patterned after Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel's famous painting of
the Tower of Babel.
Bruegel's painting portrays the tower unfinished, as does the new EU building,
which was deliberately made to appear as unfinished, thereby displaying a close
resemblance to the Bruegel painting.
Outside the Parliament building is a statue of the goddess Europa riding a bull
or a beast.
Inside, the dome displays a colossal painting of a woman riding the beast.
The woman riding the beast symbol also appears on some of the two euro coins that
have been minted, and of course is identifiable from scripture in Revelation
17.
The same imagery has appeared on EU postage stamps, including the British one
issued in 1984 to commemorate the second elections for the European Parliament.
The EU's conscious use of such symbolism creates the impression that it wishes to
bring to mind Europe's desire to rule using all the power it has at its
disposal.
And as has been said in scripture, the woman riding the beast is to be
recognised in Revelation chapter 17.
The identification with the Church of Rome has long been apparent to Bible believers.
This interpretation of Bible prophecy did much to empower the Reformation.
Only papal Rome is a city which is sited on seven hills, a religious system whose
prelates, quote, are arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, a civil state,
quote, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication.
Historically, with hands that are crimson with the blood of Bible believers,
quote, from scripture, that has been drunken with the blood of the saints and
with the martyrs of Jesus.
Papal Rome is the only worldwide religious system that calls itself and its virgin
goddess Mother.
History also unveils what is now happening.
A brief preview of European history helps with the identification of the papacy with
scripture.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the papacy continually
sought to establish the same dominance as had the Caesars before them.
In fact, successive popes used the same name, Pontifex Maximus.
They did so by weaving together both temporal and spiritual jurisdictions and
blasphemy assumed to themselves the office of the Vicar of Christ.
In that spurious role, in the course of a few centuries, they were able to subjugate
the kings of Europe who became their vice-regents.
Thus, century by century, the Mother Church succeeded in extending her power,
usurping that of civil governments.
Under the guise of religion, she planted her own hierarchical system of government
with its exhaustive financial requirements in each of Europe's kingdoms.
The blending of things civil and sacred was the Vatican's hard-to-resist method of
operation in those dark days.
Unhappily, this is still so today, that scripture foretells the apostate
church, and will be so again once power and control have been consolidated in the
new United States of Europe.
Semper Iadem, Rome never changes.
The duplicity of the papacy's perpetual mixing of political and spiritual power
could surely not be better portrayed than in God's Word in Revelation 17.
The Apostle John beheld the ten-horned beast representing the Roman Empire,
carrying a woman dressed in purple and scarlet, decked with gold, precious stones
and pearls.
She is a harlot, and the mother of harlots and abominations, the paramour of kings,
the pitiless persecutor intoxicated with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The angel told John, the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman
sitteth.
To explain this singular fact and to avoid but guesswork, he adds, quote,
the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the
earth.
The city is indisputably Rome.
The name upon the harlot's brow is mystery.
The city cannot be pagan Rome, about which there was no mystery.
In contrast, papal Rome was mysterious and continues to be elusive.
Babylon in the book of Revelation is a city and a harlot.
Jerusalem in the same book is a city and a bride.
Babylon is the deceptive lover of earthly kings.
Jerusalem, the chaste bride of the king of kings.
The contrast is between church and church, the faithful church and the apostate
church.
The EU flag, another EU spiritual symbol.
The flag of the European Union, blue with a design of 12 stars in a
circle, derives from the 12 stars that in Catholic tradition are the halo around the
head of the Virgin Mary.
The stars stem from the belief that 12 is the symbol of perfection and of what is
unchangeable.
The political purposes behind all of these symbols are much debated.
The biblical significance, however, is revealing.
According to the European Union publication Europe's Star Choice,
quote, the flag has its roots in Romanism, takes its symbolism from Romanism and
represents the Roman Catholic ideal.
The design with its halo of stars was inspired by many pictures of the Virgin
Mary, the most prominent of which is on the Council of Europe stained glass window
in Strasbourg Cathedral.
The EU's single market social chapter and subsidiarity are concepts of Roman
Catholic social teaching, originating with Pope Pius XI in the 1930s and adopted by
Hitler's Vatican-backed Third Reich.
Nazi finance minister Walter Funk, styled as the architect of Hitler's New
Europe, issued a compendium of papers in 1942 which contained detailed plans for a
Europe bearing close resemblance to the Europe now emerging.
Funk's papers described the European economic community, the common European
currency, harmonisation of European rates of exchange, a common labour policy and a
European regional principle.
All these terms, now in use again, were used by Funk at that time in the
1930s.
The European regional principle has now become known as, there's the exception,
because it's now become known as the Europe of regions policy.
And in England is to be replaced by seven regions, which with Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland will total ten regions in all.
Together they are to replace the United Kingdom.
The Third Reich, to be followed by the Fourth.
The Third Reich, like the EU, was an attempt to revive the Roman Empire.
The higher strategy of the Vatican and the acquiescence of the Catholic Central Party
had brought Hitler to power.
Instrumental in this strategy were Reich Chancellor Franz von Pappen and Papal
Nuncio Monsignor Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII.
Von Pappen goes down in history as the man who obtained Hitler his two-thirds
majority in the Reichstag, signed the law which made him head of state, and he was
who was also responsible for the enormously important concordat with the
Church of Rome in 1933.
He declared, quote, the Third Reich is the first power in the world to put into
practice the lofty principles of the papacy.
Incredibly, given his responsibility for Nazi atrocities, von Pappen was acquitted
at Nuremberg and later became Papal Chamberlain to Pope John XXIII.
Pacelli, as Pope Pius XII, became notorious for his silence with regard to
the Holocaust and to the other appalling crimes committed by the fascists in
Europe.
The Vatican's attempts to canonise him have proved highly controversial and
perhaps embarrassing for the Vatican.
The Nazi leadership was mainly Roman Catholic.
Hitler and Himmler were greatly influenced by the Jesuits, as was Mussolini,
whose father confessor was a Jesuit.
Hitler said of Himmler, quote, in Himmler I see our Ignatius de Loyola.
Joseph Goebbels was also Jesuit-educated, as was Walter Schellenberg, who led the
SD, or Sicherheitsdienst, the security service of the SS, and before being
sentenced to death at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, Schellenberg stated
that, quote, the SS organisation has been constituted by Himmler according to the
principles of the Jesuit order.
Their regulations and the spiritual exercises prescribed by Ignatius de Loyola
were the model Himmler tried to copy exactly.
The lesson and warning of history is that undemocratic regimes whose leaders owe
allegiance to the Pope or practice the, quote, lofty principles of the papacy,
pose a threat to individual liberty and carry out religious persecution.
For example, the Inquisition was alive and well in the Balkans in the 1940s.
Convert or die was the choice on offer to 900,000 Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and other
peoples in the new state of Croatia, run by Nazi puppet Anton Pavelic and Roman
Catholic primate Archbishop Alois Stepinac.
200,000 of the Serbs were, quote, converted.
The other 700,000 who preferred to die were tortured, shot, burned, or buried
alive.
This appalling persecution carried out mainly by Ustashe priests and friars for
the triumph of Christ in Croatia, as they called it, included many of the
worst atrocities of the war.
Certainly the mutilations were horrific, the savagery terrible.
Few people today know what took place in Croatia during the Second World War.
News of it has been simply suppressed.
Nor do they understand what happened in the Balkans in the 1990s.
The re-establishing of Croatia as an independent state during the
disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s is instructive.
The European Union, led by Germany, ignored the protest of Britain and other
nations in pressing for this to happen.
The Vatican was the first to recognise the reborn Croatia.
Writing in September 1991, in the Sunday Telegraph, historian Andrew Roberts
expressed surprise that, quote, almost the entire Western media have
chosen to champion the Croats.
How are the Serbs expected to react to the decision to adopt the Ustashe's checkered
symbol as the Croatian national flag?
In Krajina, it takes longer than the attention span of today's CNN broadcaster
to forget the way Franciscan friars participated in the slaughter of Serbs in
Croatian Bosnia.
Orthodox Serbs were promised protection if they converted to Catholicism and were
then killed after they entered the churches as the priests looked on.
None of this is surprising if we know the history of Roman Catholicism.
From the birth of potpourri in 600 to the present time, it has been estimated by
careful and credible historians that as many as 50 millions of the human family
had been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by Popish persecutors, an average
of more than 40,000 religious murders for every year of the existence of potpourri.
The scripture speaks prophetically of her lust for power and blood.
History has recorded many of the gruesome details.
The papacy has been predominant throughout the whole history of Europe.
It has left its mark and record on most of the major nations.
In times past, it has proven itself to be totally dominant in its control of kings
and princes.
The whole history of the Western world over 14 centuries has been plagued by the
intrigues and machinations of the Church of Rome in unceasing pursuit of her global
designs.
In the words of the historian J.A.
Wiley, as regards the influence of potpourri on government, it were easy to
demonstrate that the papacy delayed the advent of representative and
constitutional government for 13 centuries.
Superstition is the mother of despotism.
Christianity is the parent of liberty.
There is no truth which the past history of the world more abundantly establishes
than this.
It was through Christianity that the democratic element first came into the
world.
The papal government is the very antipodes of constitutional government.
It centres all power in one man.
It does so on the ground of divine right and is therefore essentially and eternally
antagonistic to the constitutional element.
Its long dominancy in Europe formed the grand barrier to the progress of the
popular element in society and to the erection of constitutional government in
the world.
Our hope and prayer for Europe.
Once again we have come to a defining moment in our history.
Once more the Vatican is engaged in placing its hallmark and its rituals on
the face of Europe to further its familiar agenda.
It does so in a number of different ways, directed from the highest levels of
command in the Vatican.
Firstly, it operates directly through its civil ambassadors in each European nation.
According to the Catholic almanac, quote, papal representatives receive from
the Roman pontiff the charge of representing him in a fixed way in the
various nations or regions of the world.
Secondly, the Roman church also deals directly and legally with individual
nations through its many legal concordats.
Less directly, it operates through its representation and influence in most of
the governmental agencies of Europe.
This involvement, especially in the area of finance and business, is documented in
her almanac under the heading of governmental organizations.
These include the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization of
American States, the International Organization for the Unification of
Private Law, the International Council on Grain, among many others.
Rome has her observers and delegates in all of these many listed organizations.
Finally, she operates through her own people in Europe whose allegiance is to
first and foremost to the Roman Catholic Church.
Many of her people have access to positions in the ruling structure of their
nation.
As Roman Catholics, they are enjoined by the Vatican to use both influence and
position to bring that nation into line with papal policy on any particular issue.
We need to pray that Europe will not be taken back to the state that it was in,
spiritually and politically, during the Middle Ages.
Roman Catholicism, though outwardly and politically strong, is inwardly and
spiritually feeble.
By her laws and ceremonies, her bishops, priests and laity are obliged to accept
the system that recognizes the Pope as the universal, sovereign father, while denying
the true father and the son.
From its traditions, history and crises, it is evident that it is an institution
lacking the gospel of grace in Christ, one that walks in darkness and in the
shadow of death.
In contrast, the true Christian faith may outwardly look small and weak,
but inwardly and in essence, it is the strongest power on earth.
That same power liberated most of Europe at the time of the Reformation.
It is the power that is in the Lord Jesus Christ and inseparable from him.
In the words of the Apostle Peter, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto
a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The reason for our confidence is our relationship to the risen Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is Lord, the universal King and Sovereign, the High Priest and Saviour.
Christ Jesus our Lord is a prophet, anointed with the Holy Spirit and
furnished with all gifts necessary for the instruction, guidance and salvation of his
people through his written word, the Holy Scriptures.
He and his gospel of grace are our hope for the future of Europe.
Our inheritance is reserved in heaven.
On earth, however, we are, quote, kept by the power of God through faith.
We remember that the greatest power of God has often been experienced in times of the
greatest declension, such as the time of the 18th century revival and that of the
Reformation itself.
Quote, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.
They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
God in his sovereignty and in his divine timing can bring a people to the Bible,
to his truth of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
When he pleases, he is able with one word of his grace to renew Europe by an act of
his power and make his enemies his footstool.
We pray that he will give us the faith of the reformers and of all those in the
history of Europe who have given their lives for biblical truth.
For the European Union, we pray the words of the prophet of the Lord.
Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned.
Renew our days as of old.
God can send forth his spirit when he pleases.
He did so at the time of the Reformation.
He prays that he will do so again now.
We remember the words of John Owen at another turning point of history.
He spoke of his own nation, England, at a time of social disintegration,
yet looking for revival.
We now need that same faith and confidence for Britain and for the future of all the
EU.
To quote John Owen, when God will do this, I know not.
But I believe God can do this.
He's able to do it.
Able to renew all his churches by sending out supplies of the spirit whose fullness
is with him to recover them in the due and appointed time.
And more, I believe truly that when God has accomplished some ends upon us and has
stained the glory of all flesh, he will renew the power and glory of
religion among us again, even in this nation.
Watch and pray.
Sound an alarm in Zion.
The Church of Rome is one of the major players in the, quote, creeping
totalitarianism of the new world order.
Her designs on the EU are a major part of the unfolding global strategy.
We need to watch and pray as this fourth Reich emerges out of its embryo.
A watchman of old was expected to guard against robbers and disturbers of the
peace.
We are all commanded to be watchmen, to watch and pray.
There's been a dreadful apathy that has afflicted the household of God,
an indifference to the clear threat to our ancient liberties and Protestant identity
from both the EU and the Church of Rome.
As watchmen of the Lord today, we are to guard against false teachers and
false religion.
We are to watch and discern the actions and words of the one who would seek to
supplant the gospel with apostasy and with tyranny.
Our task under God is to sound an alarm.
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand.
Now, even more than in the days of old, the commands of the Lord are to be obeyed.
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.
Therefore, hear the word of my mouth and give them warning from me.
As we make our stand, so also we pray, expecting to see the power of God at work
in Europe.
They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with
wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.
We owe the liberty that we yet enjoy to Jesus Christ our Lord.
By his faithfulness and perfect sacrifice, he has satisfied the demands of the broken
law of the all-holy God, the true Holy Father.
It is he, the Son of God, who has made us free.
If the Son of God shall set you free, you will be free indeed.
There is a genuine unity of all true believers throughout the world.
There is but one faith.
All true believers are converted by the same Holy Spirit and receive the same work
of grace which places them in the Beloved.
In Christ Jesus we are spiritually one and called to stand fast in this liberty and
stand firm in his truth.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be
ye not entangled again with the yoke of bondage, sayeth the Lord.
Amen.