Pope Francis elected.
The mystery of iniquity continues.
By Richard Bennett.
As Pope Francis moves onto the world stage, many people are wondering how he
will be generally accepted.
The pleasant aura of John Paul II still lingers for many, while the shortcomings
of Benedict XVI still collar the current scene.
More importantly, given the pope's exalted position in the world, many will be asking
how Pope Francis will change the papacy.
The fact remains, however, that since the early 19th century, the office of the
papacy has been set on a course of action that no individual pope will reverse.
How can this be so?
Setting the stage for the mystery of iniquity.
In 330 AD, Emperor Constantine moved the seat of the Imperial Roman Empire from
Rome to Constantinople.
By that time, he had decreed Christianity the religion of the empire in hopes that,
by means of its acceptance, a new unifying strength could be infused into his
crumbling empire.
The new state religion was organised much like the Roman Empire's military.
It was divided into four major districts, having a head over each.
Without persecution, the simple faith of the early church had declined so that,
by the 5th century, the church at Rome was no longer a fellowship of strong believers
under Christ Jesus.
Rather, it had become part of an institution dominated by a hierarchy in
which the Bishop of Rome eventually commanded the most power.
The mystery of iniquity becomes manifest.
Scripture speaks of the mystery of iniquity in 2 Thessalonians 2.7.
This particular lawlessness arose gradually within the church as the
Imperial Roman Empire gave way to what became the Holy Roman Empire.
The mystery of iniquity had been visible in the form of the man of sin for well
over 8 centuries, from Vitalian's rule until the 16th century.
The reformers and the general population of the Holy Roman Empire did not recognise
it, however, until the recovery of the Gospel and the Bible.
The outcome of apostasy is the deceivableness of unrighteousness.
Such apostasy is marked by hypocrisy and deceit, while appearing righteous and
holy, and is aimed at deceiving even the very elect, were that possible.
For centuries, the reigning Pope has assumed to himself the titles of Holy
Father and Vicar of Christ.
Note.
From the Latin, Vicarius Christi, meaning acting or taking the place of
Christ, a substitute.
It is the title of the Pope, implying his supreme and universal primacy,
both of honour and jurisdiction, over the Church of Christ.
Which title, honour and jurisdiction, belong to Christ only?
End of note.
For centuries, the reigning Pope has assumed to himself the titles of Holy
Father and Vicar of Christ, which fulfils, in the unqualified sense, the definition
of Antichrist given by the Apostle John.
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?
He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.
1 John 2.22 The pontiff, in taking these designations to himself, denies the
supremacy and honour due both to the Father and to the Son alone.
A further qualification of the man of sin is that he sits in the temple of God,
showing himself to be God.
Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem
in 70 AD, it is clear from Scripture that it is true Christians who are the temple
of God.
See 2 Corinthians 6.16 and Hebrews 3.6.
They are scattered throughout the world.
While the Pope calls true Christians schismatics because they are not in his
church, he nevertheless purports to be the head of the Church of Jesus Christ on
earth and parades himself about under the titles of Holy Father and Vicar of Christ.
Emperor Justinian I, more than anyone else, was the one to establish the
supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the 6th century.
He did it in a formal and legal manner, bringing even things religious under the
control of civil law.
Leroy Edwin Froome summarised...
...as the head of all the holy churches, thus laying the legal foundation for papal
ecclesiastical supremacy.
Leroy Edwin Froome, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, The Historical Development of
Prophetic Interpretation, Washington DC, Review and Herald Publishing Association,
1950, Volume 1, pages 507-508.
Justinian's decree did not create the office of the papacy, but rather set a
legal foundation for the acquisition of civil ruling power by the bishops of Rome.
Soon, the bishops of Rome desired to reign like kings.
The very thing that the Lord had warned against was now transpiring.
And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them,
but ye shall not be so.
Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verses 25 and 26.
Vitalian, the bishop of Rome from 657-672 AD, was the first to actually be addressed
with the title Pope when he was called in Latin, Papa Vitalianus, i.e.
Pope Vitalian.
It took time for the Pope of Rome to spread the exercise of his state-given
title over the bishops of Europe and the British Isles.
For example, even in Northern Italy in 800 AD, Claude, the bishop of Turin,
did not recognise the bishop of Rome's authority.
It was only after Bishop Claude's death, as the Gospel and the Bible were removed,
that this area fell to the Roman bishop's authority.
Similarly, in our own day, it is only by the watering down of the Gospel and the
removal of preaching the whole counsel of God from the Bible, that the Roman
Catholic ecumenical movement has been able to infiltrate hitherto sound churches.
From there, it is not a big step into the new emergent church movement.
And the emergent church is simply a route back to the folds of the Roman Catholic
Church.
The papacy grows strong via civil power.
From the 4th century through the 8th century, much of the growth of papal power
was acquired in trade-offs with kings throughout what had been the old imperial
Roman Empire.
To be sure, in those centuries, there was evangelism with the true Gospel
throughout the area.
However, the pagan religion of those still heathen was not so different from the
religion of the Pope, which was more easily accepted than the Gospel.
Then too, in the 8th century, when the Pope needed defending against the Saracens
and the Lombards, the French kings provided it and presented the Pope with
ruling title to the cities they had won.
As a reward, in 800 AD, Pope Leo III famously crowned Charlemagne, Emperor and
Augustus.
Thus began the Holy Roman Empire, ever in turmoil over issues of the legal
limits of jurisdiction of each sovereign, the Pope on one hand and the Emperor on
the other.
These issues could not be solved except throughout the actual course of history.
Note, see Philip Scharf's History of the Christian Church, Hendrickson's
Publishers, 1885, Volume 4, pages 250-253.
End of note.
In 1203, as head of the state religion, Pope Innocent III began to demand
subjection to his church's unbiblical doctrines through his courts of
inquisition and had them enforced by the civil state.
This papal killing machine worked tirelessly for 600 years, standing at
least on par with the largest bloodbaths that Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and other
20th century dictators managed to inflict on humanity.
Thus the form of the mystery of iniquity, the state-ordained Roman Catholic Church,
with its office of the papacy, grew in strength and civil power
throughout the Dark and Middle Ages.
It had amassed to itself wealth, property and influence through the
inquisition and other cruel, unethical, totally unbiblical means, including murder
and hotel theft.
The Reformation brings the rise of the modern era.
In 1547, the Church of Rome went fully apostate at the Council of Trent when it
formally declared If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than
confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake,
or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be
anathema, that is, cursed.
Council of Trent, Session 6 on Justification, Canon 12 From the 6th
century until the Reformation of the 16th century, the mystery of iniquity had
acquired great political power and earthly wealth.
Nevertheless, the murderous inquisition of the papacy was unable to stop the spread
of the Reformation throughout Northern Europe, England, Scotland and the
Scandinavian countries.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, thousands of Bible believers were
unmercifully persecuted.
Providentially, many were able to flee to the new land of America, a country born
out of the Reformation.
In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War between the Catholic
Church and the Lutheran and Calvinistic princes.
Note, Leroy Edwin Froome in The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers says, In it,
the Peace of Westphalia, Catholic, Calvinistic and Lutheran princes agreed to
tolerate each other within carefully defined limits.
Suppressed evangelical truth had at last emerged from papal dominance.
Volume 2, page 599.
End of note.
The Reformation, first of all, had restored the absolute authority of
God's written word, the Bible.
Note, Christ Jesus also said that scripture could not be broken.
See the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 35.
The Bible testifies to its own essential truth.
For example,
The written word of God is the word of truth.
Psalm 119, verse 43 and 2 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 7.
God says of his written word,
The written word of God is infallible and inerrant in all areas, earthly as well as
spiritual.
John, chapter 3, verse 12.
End of note.
Then, with the widespread recovery of the Gospel of Grace and the Bible being made
available in the ordinary languages of the people, the forms of civil government were
bound to change because the religion of many people had changed.
Thus, it was agreed that each nation was to be sovereign.
There was to be no Holy Roman Empire to which sovereign nations bowed.
With that idea manifested in force by treaty, the modern era began.
Clearly, such a monumental change as the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire might
have signaled the end of the Roman Catholic Church.
However, the mystery of iniquity, the heart and soul of the papacy,
was not so easily finished.
The mystery of iniquity's transition into a modern nation state.
In 1798, after the removal of Pope Pius VI from his throne by a Staff General of
Napoleon's army, Note.
General Louis-Alexandre Berthier, a Chief of Staff under Napoleon,
entered Rome unopposed on February 10, 1798, and proclaimed a Roman Republic.
He demanded of the Pope a renunciation of his temporal power.
The Pope refused, and he was taken captive to France, where he died not long after an
arduous trip.
End of note.
In 1798, after the removal of Pope Pius VI from his throne by a Staff General of
Napoleon's army, it appeared that the papacy as an institution of the collapsed
Holy Roman Empire might also be at an end.
That was not the case.
Rather, throughout the 19th century, the papacy was reorganizing.
True, it had lost its power in the civil arena, having now no official civil status
over the modern nation states.
However, it still had its visible institutional structure, infrastructure,
and Jesuits.
It had its religious rituals, its false gospel and traditions, its clergy and
laity.
All these remained in place, oiled and functioning.
Externally, the papacy lost no time in attacking England, which had produced so
many strong and staunch Puritans in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the 19th century, England was still in the forefront of sending forth many
evangelical missionaries to far corners of the earth.
Thus, in 1844, the papacy launched the Oxford Movement through John Henry Newman
to bring the Church of England back under its thumb.
The strategy was to gradually remove by stealth the teaching of the gospel and the
great doctrines of faith from the Bible.
These were to be replaced with rituals and personal testimonials.
If the papacy could accomplish this, England could again be a Catholic country.
Internally, to strengthen the hold on ordinary Catholics, the papacy in 1854
declared Mary to have been immaculately conceived.
Note, most of the other traditional dogmas on Mary were founded on the teaching of
the immaculate conception.
Superlative worship of Mary is now standard practice.
For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2677, officially states,
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.
With their elevated Mary, the papacy had manufactured an alternate but visible
figurehead to which the Catholic faithful could be united in prayer.
The attention of the faithful was thus deflected away from the invisible Lord
Jesus Christ and his written word.
Without these, their attention naturally focused on the visible image in front of
them as the centre of their prayers.
Further, Pope Pius IX was highly instrumental in bringing about the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility.
Note, attributing papal tradition to the leading of the Holy Spirit and
presumptuously assuming such preposterous claims as papal infallibility is,
in the strict sense of the term, a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
End of note.
With remarkable ingenuity against not only the scriptural absurdity of the concept,
but also in spite of the historical fact of popes declared heretical by the same
Roman Catholic Church, this was made doctrine at Vatican Council I in 1870.
Note, Pope Honorius, 625-638 A.D., was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, 680-681 A.D.
He was also condemned as a heretic by Pope Leo II, as well as by every other pope
until the 11th century.
Thus, there were infallible popes condemning another infallible pope as a
heretic.
End of note.
This doctrine, consolidated in the hands of the reigning pope, dictatorial powers
heretofore unknown within the Catholic Church.
Succeeding popes re-established the papacy internally by reorganising Roman Catholic
law into the 1917 Code of Canon Law.
The Vatican achieved civil status in the modern era.
The apparent mortal wound of 1798 was healed in 1929 when, under Mussolini,
the Vatican was again recognised as a sovereign civil power known as the Holy
See, where Vatican City is seated geographically within the city of Rome
that encompasses all seven hills.
The concordat with Mussolini was only the beginning of many civil concordats,
one of the most infamous being that between Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler.
Note.
John Cornwell, in his book Hitler's Pope, The Secret History of Pius XII,
page 7, writes...
...lies unopposed by the most powerful Catholic community in the world.
End of note.
Thus, the papacy had consolidated its power from within by the 1917 Code of
Canon Law, and from without by legal concordats with various nations.
Consequently, the Vatican has a growing civil power with which to be reckoned,
for it has its own faithful living within most sovereign nations around the world,
while its civil agreements with the same nations allow the Catholic Church to teach
the faith to its people.
This is a double cord of power.
The individual Catholic, fearing for his salvation, and laden with his first
allegiance being to Holy Mother Church, becomes a pliable pawn in the hand of the
papacy.
The mystery of iniquity makes a strategic change.
Vatican Council 2, from 1962 to 1965, formally declared the papacy's strategic
change of tactics regarding the reunification of Protestants under
Catholicism, along with incorporating other faiths under its rule.
Therefore, the Council moved from a position of separation from other
religions to one of an all-encompassing ecumenism, not only with the religions of
the world, but also with Bible believers in particular.
Separated brethren was a new term for these Bible believers who previously were
called heretics.
Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, previously called pagan religions,
were now accepted as religions that contain, quote, what is true and holy,
unquote.
The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, No.
56, Nostra Aetate, 1965, Vatican Council 2.
This new approach was established by the Roman Catholic Church to win the world to
herself, primarily by means of dialogue.
The Council formulated its rules and goals of dialogue, which are carefully spelled
out in her Postconciliar Document No.
42 on ecumenism.
It states that, quote, dialogue is not an end in itself.
It is not just an academic discussion.
Rather, ecumenical dialogue serves to transform modes of thought and behavior
and the daily life of those non-Catholic communities.
In this way, it aims at preparing the way for their unity of faith in the bosom of a
church one and visible, unquote.
Unlike the body of Christ, whose unity is in Jesus Christ, the unity for which the
Roman Church strives is an outward, visible unity, and one that will be
enforceable through civil law, as her Compendium of the Social Doctrine
of the Church spells out by means of many deceptive words.
The Pope's official position in the same document is that, quote, ecumenical
encounter is not merely an individual work, but also a task of the Roman Church,
which takes precedence over all individual opinions, unquote.
The papacy expects this process of dialogue to take time.
The Roman Catholic Church's aim of bringing all Christian churches under her
authority is her clearly stated goal.
She says, quote, little by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesial
communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered in a common celebration
of the Eucharist, that is the Mass, into that unity of the one and holy
church.
This unity, we believe, dwells in the Catholic Church as something we can never
lose, unquote.
This he did by revising the 1917 Code, making it even more conservative than it
had been, and he was careful to appoint new bishops in line with his centralised
way of thinking.
Like another Hildebrand, John Paul II was determined to build, both by church and
civil law, the structure by which the papacy can again wield might and authority
among the nations at the appropriate time.
This same Pope, John Paul II, was adamant in his efforts to update the laws of the
Roman Catholic Church.
Since the days of Hildebrand, Popes have seen the necessity of making iron-like,
inflexible church laws before attempting to control their subjects and those not
Catholic by compulsion if necessary.
In 1983, John Paul II's revision of the 1917 Code of Canon Law added to the Roman
Catholic laws.
For example, quote, The Church has an innate and proper right to coerce
offending members of the Christian faithful by means of penal sanctions.
Code of Canon Law, Latin English Edition, Canon Law Society of America, 1983,
Canon 1311.
Examination of these laws shows them to be even more absolute and totalitarian than
those of the past.
If one rejects submission of his intellect and will to the Pope, or rejects some
doctrines of the papacy, by church law he can be severely punished.
For example, Canon 1312, paragraph 2, states, quote, The law can establish other
expiatory penalties which deprive a believer of some spiritual or temporal
good and are consistent with the supernatural end of the Church.
Unquote.
Canon 1336 reads, quote, In addition to other penalties which the law may have
established, the following are expiatory penalties which can affect an offender
either perpetually, for a prescribed time, or for an indeterminate time.
One, a prohibition or an order concerning residence in a certain place or territory.
Unquote.
The mystery of iniquity, power player in the postmodern era.
The Roman Catholic Church is not content to rule only over her own faithful.
Rather, now with the dawn of the postmodern era, globalism is the
manifesting idea of the day.
A day for which the papacy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries has been
preparing.
Note, globalism is the policy of placing the interests of the entire world above
those of individual sovereign nations.
End of note.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which began to be collected by
the end of the 19th century under Pope Leo, is a catalogue of Catholic law.
It lays out the papal ideas and strategies for restructuring the current civil
political world and extends the application of its laws and dictates to
all individuals worldwide.
For instance, it states that all human individuals worldwide are part of the
common good.
Everybody has a share in the common good and everybody has something to contribute
to the common good.
The rallying cry of the compendium is for fairness, equality, social justice,
economic justice, etc.
Which, defined by them, means that everyone must participate in sharing what
he has with whomever the state says he must, regardless of whether or not one
agrees with his view.
For a while, those who maintain such backward and recalcitrant attitudes will
be tolerated.
Then, individuals will be coerced into taking part.
See the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, sections 167,
173, 177-179, and 191.
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI called for a new governmental structure to rule
over the General Assembly of the United Nations, the UN.
This new governmental body, conferring among themselves, is to hand down laws and
dictates which the nation-states of the UN would then enforce.
In other words, a new sovereign world empire in which the nation-states are
simply to enforce the laws and dictates of a higher, unelected body.
All goods, resources and property of any kind would be subject to management by the
UN and the nations.
In a word, the papacy wants a totally centralised world government, one in which
the Roman Catholic Church will be the moral and juridical authority.
To that end, the Roman Catholic Church has been increasingly bold in infusing
international and international public forums her agenda for restructuring the
civil-secular world.
Regardless of the type of persona Pope Francis displays, he will not change this
central objective of the papacy.
The compendium is constantly being updated as information is gathered, collated and
taught to individual lay Catholics.
Most Catholics have not recognised the agenda that is behind the change in what
they are being taught.
Yet, it is the specific duty of all lay Catholics to change the thinking within
their societies and to align it with a papal understanding of church and civil
government.
See the compendium sections 80 and 83 and the Catechism of the Catholic Church of
1994, paragraph 168, 169 and 181.
In the 50 years since Vatican Council II, dutiful lay Catholics in every walk of
life have been quite successful at rolling Catholic social doctrine like a new Trojan
horse into all sorts of religious, political and social groups.
The Evangelical Church, for the most part, has felt honoured to receive such a prize.
For at least 70 years, Catholic social doctrine has been mainstreamed into the
political arena.
Witness the buzzwords of today, coined not by Muslims, Hindus or
Buddhists, but by the Roman Catholic Church.
Phrases such as redistribution of wealth, social justice, economic justice,
dignity of the human person, the common good, fairness and the right to life,
food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, education and employment.
Catholic social doctrine is pushed worldwide by individual Catholics and
Catholic groups as the latest addendum to the things that the papacy says are
included in evangelisation.
The papacy says this is the particular duty of the Catholic laity.
Thus, the mystery of iniquity, made manifest in the institution of the
Roman Catholic Church and its office of the papacy, has, for the last century,
been moving effectively into the civil governmental sphere, everywhere pressing
its own unbiblical ideas into the public forum.
These ideas are to be formulated into ruinous and unjust laws to the enslavement
of those living under them.
Utopianism, socialism, communism and totalitarianism are all children of the
papacy's doctrine and practice.
These ungodly ideas are found in the compendium as integral parts of Roman
Catholic social doctrine.
Under the civil title of Holy See, the Catholic Church has ambassadors in
many nations.
Declining to come under the dominion of the United Nations, she preferred to take
an official place as observer rather than member.
The Holy See has observer status in many other international bodies as well.
Moreover, the Roman Church has a viable infrastructure in most countries of the
world.
Therefore, she is in an excellent position to take advantage of the burgeoning idea
of globalism in any sector of life that the statists, utopians and totalitarians
intend to harness to their own ends.
She, with her fifth column in every nation, is able to pervert the gospel,
sideline the truths taught in the scripture as irrelevant or false,
and deceptively divert Bible believers away from the love of the truth.
What, then, is to stop her from once again making wholesale merchandise of men's
souls in deals with modern leaders of the nations to the glory of her own power?
Conclusion The mystery of iniquity arose under the imperial Roman Empire and
survived the Empire's demise.
In 537 AD, Justinian gave the legal bays for it to acquire civil power,
which it did throughout the course of the next ten centuries.
Its temporal power was arrested by the recovery of the Bible and the gospel
during the Reformation of the 16th century.
It was held at bay by the Puritans of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Nevertheless, it survived the demise of the Holy Roman Empire to become a
sovereign nation in the 20th century, and is now set to be a major power player
in the postmodern era.
Currently, Pope Francis is the visible head of the Roman Church, but the mystery
of iniquity is still the power behind the throne.
The mystery of iniquity is nothing less than the satanic counterfeit of the
mystery of godliness.
The scripture states, Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
1 Timothy 3.16 The mystery of godliness is the great revelation of God, which had its
full manifestation in the person of the Christ of God.
Thus, scripture proclaims, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken
unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made
the worlds, who, being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his
person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 and 2.
As we behold the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Father, we also behold
the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
For, as mediator, he has the nature and perfections of God in himself.
The Lord Jesus Christ alone can satisfy our hearts.
There is absolutely no church system that satisfies.
It is only our personal relationship with our Lord that truly satisfies.
Thus, his word expresses it.
Whom have I in heaven but thee?
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
Psalm 73 verse 25.
How trivial and vain are the promises of the papal system compared to the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is revealed to us as chiefest among ten thousand.
Song of Songs chapter 5 verse 10.
Were it not for the recovery of the absolute authority of the Bible alone and
the gospel of grace and salvation during the reformation of the 16th century,
the mystery of iniquity might still be undetected.
Contrary to this, and in spite of the mystery of iniquity being so rampantly
displayed in the world today, the Holy Spirit still convicts individual men of
their sin before holy God and sends them repentance unto life in Christ Jesus.
For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9.
The true believer is thus accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his
grace.
Ephesians chapter 1 verses 6 and 7.
The frightening words of the Lord in Matthew 7 verse 21 ought to ring in the
ears of those who have spent their whole lives believing in a religious system.
Believing in Christ's authority, believing in his divinity, professing
faith in his perfection and in the infinite merit of his atonement,
shall have any part with God in his glory, but only he who does the will of his
Father.
The Lord put the command to believe in a nutshell when he said, This is the work of
God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
John chapter 6 verse 29.
Likewise, the apostle Paul in Silas declared, Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
Acts 16 verse 31.
The godliness of Jesus Christ stands.
So also does his call on your life.
Before you, the question stands.
Have you tasted the mystery of godliness?
To personally know Christ Jesus is to know the everlasting arms of the all-holy God.
Does your very heart and soul cry out to him, Abba, Father?
Romans 8 verse 15 says, For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father.
The water of life is offered to you in the abundance of grace, which far surpasses
the evils of sin.
Thus the Lord's call in scripture says, The Spirit and the Bride say, Come,
and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is athirst come,
and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
Revelation chapter 22 verse 17.
Once a convicted sinner believes on Christ Jesus alone, by grace alone, through faith
alone, as his only surety and refuge before the all-holy God, he finds himself
not only freed from his sins, but made to, quote, reign in life.
For if by one man's offence death reigned by one, much more they who receive
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one,
Jesus Christ.
Romans chapter 5 verse 17.
Those who receive the abundant grace given by Christ are not only redeemed from the
dominion of death, they live and reign with Christ as they are sanctified daily
through his word by the Holy Spirit and by constant fellowship with him.
With him they shall reign forever and glorify him for all eternity.
Believe on him alone, and you will be secure in him.
To the praise of the glory of his grace, his free gift to us and the beloved.
Ephesians 1.6.
Then you will behold the mystery of godliness.
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new.
2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17.
End of article This article was recorded by Rodrigo Vasquez on behalf of the author
Richard Bennett.
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