I call this presentation, The Response of the Papacy to the Reformation.
It is part one of two addresses that I will give.
The response was what is called the Counter-Reformation.
It was a very strong movement against all the biblical principles that had come out
at the time of the Reformation.
And it was led principally by Ignatius of Loyola.
He founded the Jesuits in 1530 and was recognized by the Pope, Paul III,
ten years later.
The Jesuits have been uncompromising and militant.
And they have led a movement to restore Roman Catholicism to the position that it
had before the Reformation.
And Ignatius' main effort was to lock both rulers and the ordinary people back into
the Roman system and into full obedience to the Roman Catholic Church.
His primary tactic was through education.
And he had men trained in many different skills and professions.
And the principal aim was to bring the children of Bible believers to a Catholic
education whereby they would accept Catholic interpretation of how things
should be seen.
Many people were won to the Catholic Church as their children went to Catholic
schools and later to Catholic universities.
The intention was always to indoctrinate the population in things Catholic.
It was to interpret things in light of how the Catholic Church saw them.
So they were subtle enough often not to explicitly teach Catholic dogmas but to
give Catholicism in such a way as to turn and twist the minds of men and women.
And this they did right across Europe.
It is really sad when you study histories like Wiley's history and you see how it
was successful in the different nations.
It breaks your heart when I read about Poland, for example, and how far the
Reformation faith had spread and then to see the Jesuit schools grow up and then to
see princes and kings and brought back to the Church through the Roman Catholic
education or so-called education system.
Ignatius also used a book that he had written called The Spiritual Exercises.
This was to teach men and women self-discipline and mastery over self and
mysticism, union with God by experience.
And when you know that people are superstitious by nature, many people like
the trills of mysticism and it has been a successful tool since then.
The Jesuits continue to educate.
I went to a Jesuit college myself.
I was thoroughly educated in things Catholic at a Jesuit college, Belvedere
College, a famous college in Dublin, Ireland, where James Joyce had been
trained at one stage as well.
But it is a tactic that still continues and they still continue their mysticism.
Tony Jones, one of the main youth leaders of the emerging church movement that is
sweeping this nation and many nations of the world, in one of his books,
Lauds, Ignatius' book, The Spiritual Exercises, and he wants people to get into
the mystical ways as taught by Ignatius.
So it was Ignatius and the Jesuit order that was the principal means for the
counter-reformation.
But the church was also going to try and reorganize itself.
And the reorganization was done in different ways and it was principally
under one Pope.
He is usually known in history under the Latin or the Italian Latin name Pio Nono,
Pius IX.
He was famously one of the longest reigning Popes in history.
His rule as Pope was from 1846 to 1878.
He ruled during a time of nationalism that was sweeping Europe and Italy.
Italy actually became a republic in 1849, much against the wishes and the desires
and the efforts of the Pope.
He had neither territory nor civil power.
The reason why is that the Catholic Church had lost their power when in 1798,
Napoleon's army removed the Pope, Pius VI, from his throne.
It was then that it seemed that a mortal wound had hit the Catholic Church.
They no longer had the Vatican States.
They no longer had civil power.
That was 1798.
But now, in the time in the 19th century, we have Pio Nono.
We have Pius IX coming to power and his intent, even though he doesn't have civil
power, to reorganize and centralize the Catholic Church system.
And he does so principally by calling a general council of the Catholic Church,
Vatican Council I, in 1870.
And the purpose was explicitly to bring in a dogma that Catholics would have to
accept on the pain of mortal sin.
If they didn't accept it, that was papal infallibility.
This was done even though it was an absurd dogma, it was nonetheless, it was passed
as official dogma of the Catholic Church in 1870.
We had famous historians like Dollinger and Hassler write against this.
How the Pope Became Infallible was a book by a German Hassler and it was to show
that this was not only not scriptural, it was not even in tradition and there
were heretical popes in the course of Catholic history.
So how could you claim that the Pope was infallible?
Nonetheless, it went through and it became one of the major dogmas to centralize
because the Catholics now have a man sitting in the temple of God calling
himself infallible.
It's an attribute of God.
So it's a dogma that has become a central theme of Catholicism.
A major part of the Catholics reorganizing was also by the one who followed Pius IX,
Pius X.
He reorganized the Catholic Church by its canon law.
The code of canon law was for the first time drawn up in 1917.
This was generally for every single nation.
Before this, different nations had different laws for different nations.
Now, the Catholic Church centralized itself and became the power in the hands
of one man, the Pope and his courier, those agents that he has around him.
So this was a major step towards the Catholic Church reorganizing itself
internally.
A huge historical event occurred in 1929.
It was the dictator Mussolini with a deal with the Pope at the time, Pope Pius XI,
signed the Lateran Treaty.
It gave territory, Vatican Hill and other parts of Rome, as territory to the
Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church again became a civil state.
It now was a civil power.
The famous description in the book of Revelation, you are the woman rides the
beast.
The spiritual power rides the civil power.
The two things are knitted together.
What the reformers and many others had seen throughout the centuries was again
fulfilled.
The Vatican again was back as a civil power.
This together with the fact that we have Catholics in most nations who fear for
their salvation, look to Mother Church and they are willing to work together with the
civil powers.
Just like in the United States of America, it's not only the Supreme Court that has
so many justices that are Catholic, but it is in Congress and in the Senate.
We have Catholics who are willing to work together with the Vatican as a civil
power.
We will see more of this as we progress.
But the Catholic Church made this deal and there will be many more concordas as we
will see as we go on.
Then there came a deal in England.
This was part of the Catholic Church trying to bring down the nation of
England.
It had been a Protestant nation where the crown was Protestant and like Ireland and
it had held fairly strong to Biblical faith at the time of the Reformation.
The civil powers had outlawed the Jesuits.
They had to remove their colleges and universities.
They were no longer allowed civilly.
But then there came a turnabout civilly.
The Catholic Act of Emancipation in 1829 allowed the Jesuits back into the UK.
And this was quickly acted upon.
One of the evil fruits of that was the Oxford Movement and its main leader John
Henry Newman.
John Henry Newman, an Anglican, had as his main purpose to make
Anglicanism like onto Roman Catholicism.
He produced many tracts.
The Tractarian Movement came from the Oxford Movement and they were twisting
Scripture to try and show Ritualism instead of the Gospel.
And trying to show that the historical interpretation of the Antichrist that had
been through all the Reformers and that the historical interpretation that had
been held right through the Reformation was not correct.
Looking to a future Antichrist to come and twisting Scripture and dislodging it from
history.
This was Newman and the Oxford Movement.
It was one of the evil fruits of the Catholic Emancipation Act.
The Catholic Church was now gaining because of this because the
Anglo-Catholics, as they were called, became more and more like onto
Catholicism.
And this is what Newman himself was desiring.
He actually became a Roman Catholic and was made a Cardinal.
He is on his way now.
They are trying to make him into a Blessed and then into a Saint at the moment.
It has been announced recently.
So it is a whole downward trend where Anglo-Catholicism has become so much like
Roman Catholicism.
Another huge turnaround was the advance of the Jesuit ideas that had come about in
their schools.
The Jesuits had built on Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine's teaching of a
future coming of the Antichrist.
And a famous Jesuit in Chile, Manuel Lacunza, wrote about the coming of the
Messiah in Majesty and Glory.
I have a copy of it at home.
It is over 600 pages long.
But this book was written not under his own name, Manuel Lacunza, but he wrote
under the name Ben Yosefat Ezra, born again Jew.
He pretended that he was a born again Jew.
And this book was to have sinister effects.
It looks to be one of the major things that influenced the Brethren.
The Brethren movement was founded principally by John Nelson Darby,
a former Catholic.
And they had prophetic meetings south of Dublin in a castle called Powerscourt
Castle.
And they were trying to see just who the Antichrist was and the man of sin of 2
Thessalonians 2.
And they were using, it seems, the book by Manuel Lacunza.
Because there are such similarities between Manuel Lacunza's book and what is
the futurism of the Brethren.
And so the efforts of the Jesuits now began to have fruit as the Brethren began
to give out many tracts and publish books and produce their theses about a future
Antichrist to come.
And this was one of the main ways that Catholicism increased because people were
no longer looking at her as the woman rides the beast, as the man of sin,
the son of perdition of 2 Thessalonians 2.
They no longer looked at her color scarlet and purple.
They no longer looked upon her as the one who drank the blood of the saints for 605
years of the Inquisition.
They were looking to a future Antichrist to come and so Rome was in the clear.
And the Brethren were really one of the main ways in which Catholicism was able to
grow.
Another huge thing took place here in the United States and it was the founding of
Dallas Theological Seminary by Louis Barry Schaeffer and the introduction of a system
of theology called Dispensationalism.
Because Dispensationalism when it comes to understanding the Antichrist again is
futuristic.
It puts it way in the future where you cannot verify it.
It's unlocked from history the way all the Reformers had seen the Antichrist.
There's no accountability whatsoever for Rome's drinking the blood of the saints.
And Louis Barry Schaeffer and Dallas has had influence right across the United
States of America.
Europe is not affected as much by Futurism as the United States but this has had a
huge effect.
Another major factor in Rome's growing and increasing because eyes were offered was
the Scofield Bible.
This became part and parcel of most of the fundamentalist churches.
They had their Scofield Bible and their Scofield notes.
It was first published in 1909 and then 1917 and it has become a source book for
many fundamentalist churches.
The notes in the Scofield Bible were taking like they were the Bible text
itself.
If the Scofield Bible said that there was an Antichrist to come and gave you charts
and diagrams and everything how things were to happen.
That's what you believed.
It was like that was God's word.
And so these movements inside what was Evangelicalism had a major factor,
were major factors in letting the Roman Catholic Church increase.
And particularly here in the United States but across Europe as well.
The Catholic Church was also increasing as it brought in a lot of drama and a lot of
adoration for Mary and a lot of worship towards her.
Before papal infallibility had been portrayed as a dogma in 1870, in 1854
there was a famous dogma portrayed by the Catholic Church, the Immaculate
Conception.
It claimed that Mary was full of grace from the moment of her conception.
The Immaculate Conception is not dealing with the virgin birth.
Some bi-believers say, well we all believe in the Immaculate Conception, thinking
that this is talking about the virgin birth.
This is not talking about birth, it's talking about conception.
It's Mary's conception in the womb of her mother.
And to say that she was without stain of sin from the first moment.
Reading from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 491.
This is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses as Pius IX portrayed
in 1854.
The Most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception,
by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, and by virtue of the mercy
of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of
original sin.
And then paragraph 493.
By the grace of God, Mary remained free from every personal sin her whole life
long.
And so we have somebody who was without original sin.
And this became one of the main bases for many other dogmas that have come since
then.
It is the principal dogma that the Catholic Church falls back on.
Of course, there's nothing in Scripture.
Scripture says all of sin falls short of the glory of God.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church has this as one of its main dogmas.
It has been reinforced by a dogma that was actually based on it in 1950.
I remember at Jesuit school, 1950 was called the Marian year, the whole year.
I remember the date that this was produced.
It was drama in the highest.
Mary is proclaimed to be assumed into heaven.
Christ was ascended.
Mary was assumed.
Christ is King of Kings.
Mary is Queen of Heaven.
And so they paralleled Jesus' life, his ascension, with Mary's assumption.
And now he is King and she is Queen.
So this became a main dogma in the Catholic Church.
And it has been ever since one of the main dogmas of the Catholic Church turns back
to.
I read the official words from the Caddys of the Catholic Church, paragraph 966.
Finally, the Immaculate Virgin preserved free from all stain of original sin,
when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up, body and soul,
into heavenly glory, exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she
might be more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of Lords, the conqueror of sin
and death.
The assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's
resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.
And then it finishes with a prayer to Mary herself.
And so she is exalted in this way in the Catholic Church.
It is not only important to understand these dogmas, but to understand how they
are lived in Roman Catholicism.
How do Catholics live these?
How do they see them?
They see them principally through the drama of the apparitions, Mary appearing
in nations right across the world.
Because she appears as the Queen of Heaven.
She appears as the Immaculate Conception, like she did at Lourdes and Fatima.
She appears as the one who tells you that you have to suffer for your sins.
I memorized when I was doing my sacrifices in the seminary, I memorized what Mary was
supposed to have said at Fatima, that many souls go to hell because there
is nobody to pray or do penance for them.
I was a devout Catholic and because of that I took cold showers in the dead of
winter and I flagellated myself, I beat myself with a little whip to feel
pain, to pray that souls could get out of purgatory and that people would be good
enough to die in the internal state of righteousness, what we call sanctifying
grace.
So this is how these dogmas are lived out.
And these apparitions are big DVDs, videos and presentations in Catholic
churches about what is happening.
We have here in the States many apparition sites.
Some of the most famous are Denver, Colorado, Conyers, Atlanta, just outside
Atlanta in Conyers, Georgia and Phoenix, Arizona are some of the more famous sites
where Mary appears and continues to teach people to suffer for their sins so that
they may reach God.
The Catholic Church continues also in its adulation of Mary.
It has reached a point in the New Catechism whereby they proclaim her as the
All-Holy One.
Now this is really horrendous and it's quite unbelievable that any church calling
itself Christian could say this, but this is the exact words.
Paragraph 2677 By asking Mary to pray for us we acknowledge ourselves to be poor
sinners and we address ourselves to the Mother of Mercy, the All-Holy One.
She's not only said to be the All-Holy One in paragraph 2030, she's declared to be
the model and source of holiness.
From the church he, the Catholic, learns the example of holiness and
recognizes model and source in the All-Holy Virgin Mary.
So Mary is the source of a person's justification, sanctification and finally
glorification.
That is the source of how God shares holiness.
In Scripture, of course, it's God so loved the world.
There's no human creature as source of holiness.
But this is why in Catholicism Mary is prayed to more than anybody else.
Why we have the rosary, why the rosary finishes with the Hail Holy Queen,
Mother of Mercy, Hail Our Life, Our Sweetness and Our Hope.
The prayer that never does she refuse prayer, God may refuse prayer.
We had a prayer, the memoriary, that she never refuses to answer prayer.
And so Mary is exalted and the apparitions become part and parcel of everyday life as
Catholicism is lived out.
The Catholic Church had some territory going back to 1929.
But before that they were still dealing with Mussolini in Italy.
From 1922 actually to 1943 they were in agreement with and actually made a
concordat with Adolf Hitler in Germany.
And his reign from 1933 to 1945 with Francisco, with Franco in Spain.
Where Spain became so Roman Catholic with the influence of the Catholic Church and
the dictator there.
With Antonio Salazar in Portugal, finally wiping out Biblical faith in
Portugal.
And in a similar way in Austria with Edelbert Dolfus and Kurt von Schichnik
from 1932 to 1934.
With Juan Peron in Argentina from 1946 to 1955.
And possibly the most infamous and brutal of all was with Anton Pavelic in Croatia
from 1941 to 1945.
This shows you how the Catholic Church deals civilly and with dictators.
And it has been a huge success from the Catholic point of view.
The money that still comes from the agreement made with Hitler to the Catholic
Church directly from the state continues.
The concordat that was made with Adolf Hitler continues.
When I was building a church in Trinidad we got money from Germany.
It was part of the agreement made under Hitler of the percentage that goes
directly to the Catholic Church from the government.
But Hitler was recognized by the Pope and it was Pius XI and he was the first head
of state Pius XI to recognize the Nazi regime in 1933.
Hitler himself of course was Roman Catholic until the day of his suicide.
It is really horrific to see these dictators and how they have to establish
further across Europe the work of the Jesuits but now by civil authority.
The worst of all was Anton Pavelic, head of the new national state of Croatia
carved out of Yugoslavia during the Second World War.
He had relationship with, in his effort to wipe out the bi-believers in Croatia or to
wipe out the orthodox however genuine they were as bi-believers, the Catholic sodom
as evil.
That was Archbishop Alois Stepanik and the policy was convert or die.
200,000 actually converted under fear of death.
700,000 choose to die.
They were tortured, burnt, buried alive, shot, often digging their own graves.
There are pictures of some of this on the internet and it is quite horrific.
The Ustashe, worse than even the IRA in my own Ireland were one of the main
instruments that the Catholic Church used.
But it was unlike the Inquisition where the Catholic Church used civil authorities
and the burning of the stake and the tortures.
Here it was the friars, the priests and the monks with dagger and hatchet.
That they came against the orthodox in particular but there were also others who
they tortured and then sometimes even buried alive.
The horrific years under Anton Pavelic are still one of the most graphic and brutal
part of the Second World War.
Now what many people don't realize is that the 605 years of people Inquisition has
stopped.
But that the Catholic Church continues with her policy to civilly bring in
Catholic laws into nations and to bring them under the heel of Roman Catholicism.
The woman continues to ride the beast and the Vatican as a civil power continues to
have huge effect on nations of the world.
Bible believers for the most part are totally ignorant of this.
They do not even know the word Concordat.
Put it into Google search engine and you will see some of the Concordats that have
been established and the definition of Concordat.
Concordat is an international contract binding a nation with the Vatican nation
called the Holy See, the official name for it.
It defines the right of the Catholic Church to define doctrine, education in
many instances from a Catholic point of view as it touches Catholicism.
Education as it touches economics and the Catholics are quite socialistic in their
trends and very vocal about property belonging to everybody and denying private
property.
They negotiate the appointment of bishops and laws about marriage so that they take
control over the marriage bed and how marriages are to be performed and what
makes a marriage valid or invalid.
This becomes part of civil law.
Prior to 1989 the Holy See as the Vatican is called as a civil power had these legal
agreements principally with Latin American and European nations.
But from 1950 to 1999 there were 128 Concordats between Rome and other civil
states.
And then in the course of nine years we had 43 Concordats with nations.
Even nations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have entered into civil
agreements with Rome.
At the moment the Vatican has 174 nations where she has at least the recognition as
a civil power with ambassadors sent back and forth.
That's the beginning before a Concordat is established.
It is quite sad that it was President Reagan here in the United States on
January the 10th 1984 who reestablished the legal relationship between the Vatican
as a civil power and the U.S.
government.
Before it had been broken off in 1865 because the Vatican during the Civil War
had supported the Confederacy.
And the U.S.
Congress decided that no longer will we have Vatican ambassadors coming.
But Reagan in 1984, it was quite sad at that time one congressman spoke against
it.
If it went further, if there was to be a Concordat whereby in more detail some
civil laws are already accepted which the Catholics will tell you about under canon
law.
If a Concordat was to be established, I'm sure that nobody, not one congressman
would bat an eyelid.
It would not be on Fox News or on any of the newscasts.
It would just pass unnoticed for the most part.
It is really sad that people do not see how the Catholic Church is increasing in
leaps and in bounds because of her agreements.
And because of the way in which she instigates these things and maintains
them.
The Vatican desiring to maintain official diplomatic intercourse with all nations
woos Iran with Iran's threats on Israel while she maintains diplomatic
relationships with Israel.
She has uninterrupted intercourse civilly with Cuba which she boasts.
She has great difficulties with China, Korea and Vietnam.
And Islamic nations are now signing on.
There was a huge turnaround on October 11, 2007 when 138 Grand Muftis from each
different branch of Islam, the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Sufis when they
pronounced a call for peace between Islam and Christianity.
This was a radical change.
Islam was now reaching out to Christians.
It is really sad to see Yale University here in the States and the professors from
the Divinity sign on to this and apologize for the brutality done to Islam
officially.
And to see all the so-called evangelicals who have endorsed Yale's letter.
It is quite horrific.
If you want to read details of that and the 67 to date so-called Christians who
have endorsed this agreement between the Vatican and the Vatican is now part of
this.
The Vatican, Islam and reaching out to other Christians.
If you want to see that, it is acommonword .com is the webpage.
And you will see the amount of so-called Christians.
It is not just the Rick Warrens of the world, but there are many others that you
would not expect who are agreeing that we should work together with Islam.
The Vatican made a formal agreement with Islam on March 5, 2008 where they agreed
to a New World Muslim Catholic Forum.
That is what they call it.
And the Catholics are now working together with Islam.
I have done on search engines, I have looked up different cities like
Chicago, New York and some of the main cities in the United States and seen how
this is being lived out now on a local level.
Whereby we have Muftis meeting together with priests and bishops and they are
studying how to, on local level, bring further dialogue between the
Catholic Church and Islam.
When we are talking of Islam, we are talking about 1 billion people.
Quite similar to Catholicism, 1 billion plus.
This is 2 billion people worldwide.
And even if the union is just beginning to cement together, it is a frightening
union.
It is frightening too when the Catholic Church, like it does with other nations,
cements it with civil agreements.
When it becomes part of civil law, what your economic thought is,
how marriages are to be performed, what property rights people are to have,
how things are to be instigated civilly.
It is quite sad.
When you look at the nations of the world, it breaks your heart to see nations where
the civil agreements have been instigated for years.
I lived in Trinidad for 21 years.
I could look out from one of my parish houses and see Venezuela.
Venezuela, thoroughly Catholic.
1% Evangelical.
Because Venezuela has for years and years had civil relationships with the Vatican.
Whereby education from a Christian point of view is forbidden.
Whereby Christian radio stations and other things cannot be established.
It is the same in Spain and in Portugal.
Where you see civil law is now Catholic laws come into civil law.
It was quite frightening for me when I was in Slovakia in the year 2000.
I was with many Bible-believing pastors in small churches.
Most of them had left Lutheranism, or they had left Roman Catholicism,
or the Orthodox Church.
And these pastors were sold out to the Lord.
But in that year 2000, as I spoke to some of these pastors, as we met together in a
particular resort, that they told me that on that year the Vatican had a concordat
with Slovakia.
They said, now will be the time, from this time onwards, it will not be
that the Catholics are protesting at our churches, but that it is the police will
be coming to shut us down.
People have no understanding of these things.
It nearly broke my heart to hear from pastors in Slovakia.
As they understood, they had been following concordats in other nations.
They had been following how the Catholic Church increases by civil power.
I have a DVD, a video online called the Vatican Controls Through Civil Power.
It needs to be updated.
It was made some years ago.
But it does show you in more detail how the Catholic Church has increased in leaps
and in bounds because of her civil agreements.
The Catholic Church is indeed what it says in Revelation.
The woman which thou sawest is that great city which ruleth over the kings of the
earth.
The city that rules over the kings of the earth, whose colors are scarlet and
purple.
I remember as a priest at Vatican II, I went out to the square.
I saw the square flood with the cardinals coming out and the bishops.
I was watching.
This was not Hollywood.
This was real before my eyes.
And I was frightened because it was scarlet and purple.
And I at least knew my Bible well enough to know that this was the colors portrayed
in Revelation 17.
At that stage, because I had been indoctrinated in Catholic history,
I did not know how she had drank the blood of the saints.
How she had been responsible for torture of over 50 million people right through
the 605 years.
How many of those bi-believers were actually burnt at the stake.
Her blood, the blood on her hands for all those many years.
If you haven't seen our DVD on the Inquisition, it is quite professional and
it is quite graphic.
We show you the pictures of torture, the actual pictures as they are today.
We give some dramatization from Bob Jones University of how some of these tortures
were instigated and the actual burning at the stake.
But it is history.
Rome has drunk the blood of the saints.
She still sits in the temple of God calling herself God.
Who is it that calls himself the Holy Father?
The words that Christ Jesus used in John 17.
It is the Pope of Rome calls himself the Holy Father, the Holy One.
When you address him, you are supposed to call him His Holiness.
He calls himself the Holy Father.
He portrays that he is infallible, an attribute of God.
It is quite horrendous that the movement such as the Schofield Bible, Darwin's
evolution of course comes in a spiritual sense with mysticism has helped with the
spiritual evolution, has helped further the whole emerging church movement.
But the whole movement in the futurism of the Schofield Bible, Dallas Theological
College, that these things have and the brethren have really shaped American Bible
believing churches.
So that people do not see Rome as the Bible believer's thought of old.
History has been forgotten and Roman Catholicism is free just to be another
denomination.
This is how we see things because Rome has increased.
She has through Ignatius from early on right up through the centuries.
She has increased and she has in the 20th century and in the 21st century continued
to increase.
Bible believers have to get back to the Bible and see what the scriptures actually
say.
The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the
earth.
We will in the second part of this presentation next week deal with the
papacy and the European Union.
This has been a big part of the history of how the Catholic Church is having
influence on the Catholic nations of Europe through the European Union.
We will deal with the false ecumenism of Vatican Council II, more successful even
than Vatican Council I from 1962 to 1965.
We will deal with the critique called, the document called Evangelicals and
Catholics Together I and II endorsed by such as J.I.
Packer.
It has had a horrendous effect in pulling down denominations and changing the face
of what had been Bible believing churches in the United States.
We will deal with that next week.
We will deal with the 1999, the 31st of October Lutheran Catholic Accord whereby
the Catholic Church officially in a decree after 30 years of trying to work together
with the Lutherans finally brought the Lutherans to heel.
These are other parts of the advance of Roman Catholicism.
Finally, next week we will give an analysis of how we really face and deal
with this movement of the advance of Catholicism from the time of the
Reformation.
Thank you for this time to be able to address you on this.
I ask not only that you study these things, but that we have a history section
on our webpage where you can study about details of some, not only of the early
churches, but the Inquisition and things like this.
But that you pray about it because this is a serious matter.
People's eyes have to be open.
We have to see the Vatican as a civil power, not just as a spiritual power.
And we have to be able to deal with Catholicism as it is, which so few people
understand.
And that we will, as Bible believers, give a correct response.
And that in our personal life and prayer and in our churches, we will see that the
Word of God stands.
And the prophetic Word of God stands.
And the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.
May the Lord be praised.
Father, we pray that as we have dealt with this very difficult response of
Catholicism to the Reformation and seeing the advance of Catholicism, we pray that
you would give us the wisdom how to deal with this as did the Bible believers,
the Vaudois before the Reformation, the Albigensians, the Paulinists,
all those at the time of the Reformation.
That you would give us wisdom from on high.
And that you would give us a love for the Gospel and a love for prophetic truths in
the Scriptures so that we are equipped to deal with the woman who rides the beast.
Father, empower us, we pray, and give us a love and a compassion for those who are
trapped in this system, that we may reach out in the truth and in the love of Christ
Jesus himself with the power of the Gospel.
And we praise you, worship you, and thank you.
In Jesus' glorious name.
Amen.