WHAT'S

HAPPENING?

BY

SANDRA ROBINSON

PART III

ROME

CONTENTS

Chapter 9 A City on Seven Hills

Chapter 10 The Slaughter of the Serbs

Chapter 11 Sola Scriptura v. Interpretation by Roman Church

Chapter 12 Salvation

Chapter 13 “Sacrifice” of the Mass

Chapter 14 What About Mary?

Chapter 15 The Coming World Order

Chapter 16 Purgatory

Chapter 17 Indulgences

PART XXXI

CHAPTER 193

A CITY ON SEVEN HILLS

A woman rides the beast, and that woman is a city built on seven hills that reigns over the kings of the earth! This is an unambiguous statement in plain words. She is a city built on seven hills. Only one city has for more than 2000 years been known as the city on seven hills. That city is Rome.

Even Catholic apologist Karl Keating admits that Rome has long been known as Babylon. He claims that Peter's statement “The church here in Baby-lon … sends you her greeting” (from 1 Peter 5:13) proves that Peter was writing from Rome.

As for “Mystery”, that name imprinted on the woman's forehead is the perfect designation for Vatican City. Mystery is at the very heart of Roman Catholicism, from the words “Mysterium fide” pronounced at the alleged trans-formation of the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ to the enigmatic apparitions of Mary around the world. Every sacrament, from baptism to extreme unction, manifests the mysterious power which the faithful must believe the priests wield, but for which there is no visible evidence.

The first thing we are told about the woman is that she is a “whore” (Revelation 17:1), that earthly kings “have committed fornication” with her (verse 2), and that “all the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication” (verse 3). Why would a city be called a whore and be accused of having committed fornication with kings?

Fornication and adultery are used in the Bible in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Of Jerusalem God said, “How is the faithful city become a harlot!” (Isaiah 1:21). Israel, whom God had set apart from all other peoples to be holy for His purposes, had entered into unholy, adulterous alliances with the idol-worshipping nations about her. She had “committed adultery with stones and with stocks [idols]” (Jeremiah 3:9); “and with their idols have they committed adultery” (Ezekiel 23:37).

There is no way that a city could engage in literal, fleshly fornication. Thus, we can only conclude that John, like the prophets in the Old Testament, is using the term in its spiritual sense. The city, therefore, must claim a spiritual relationship with God. Otherwise such an allegation would be meaningless.

Against only one other city in history could a charge of fornication be leveled. That city is Rome, and more specifically Vatican City. She claims to have been the worldwide headquarters of Christianity since its beginning and maintains that claim to this day. Her pope enthroned in Rome cclaims to be the exclusive representative of God, the vicar of Christ. Rome is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, and in that too she is unique.

Numerous churches, of course, are headquartered in cities, but only one city is the headquarters of a church. The Mormon Church, for example, is headquartered in Salt Lake City. But there is much more to Salt Lake City than the Mormon Church. Not so with Vatican City. It is the heatbeat of the Roman Catholic Church and nothing else. She is a spiritual entity that could very well be accused of spiritual fornication if she did not remain true to Christ.

In Bed with the Rulers

Not only does Rome's pope call himself the vicar of Christ, but the Church he heads claims to be the one true Church. Christ's bride, whose hope is to join her Bridegroom in heaven, is to have no earthly ambitions. Yet the Vatican is obsessed with earthly enterprise, as history proves; and in furtherance of these goals it has been, exactly as John foresaw in his vision, engaged in adulterous relationships with the kings of the earth. That fact is acknowledged even by Catholic historians.

The Catholic Church, however, is very much of this world. Her popes have built an unrivaled worldwide empire of property, wealth and influence. Nor is empire-building an abandoned feature of the past. We have already seen that Vatican II clearly states that the Roman Catholic Church today still ceaselessly seeks to bring under its control all mankind and all their goods.

Popes have long claimed dominion over the world and its peoples. Pope Gregory XI's papal bull of 1372 (In Coena Domini) claimed papal dominion over the entire Christian world, secular and religious, and excommunicated all who failed to obey the popes and to pay them taxes.

In the name of Christ, who had no place on earth that He called his own, Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), claiming to own the world, drew a north-south line down the global map of that day, giving everything on the east to Portugal and on the west to Spain, to settle the dispute over the land Columbus had dis-covered between King John II of Portugal and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel of Spain, who both thought the pope had given the same lands to each. Africa went to Portugal and the Americas to Spain, on the condition that they brought the inhabitants to profess the Catholic Faith. Thus these continents had Roman Catholicism forced upon them by the sword and remain Catholic to this day. North America (with the exception of Quebec and Louisiana) was spared the dominance of Roman Catholicism because it was settled largely by Protestants.

The Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas have not forgotten the choice of conversion which often meant slavery or death, enforced by the sword.

To amass their earthly empire they have repeatedly engaged in spiritual fornication with emperors, kings and princes. Claiming to be the bride of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church has been in bed with godless rulers down through history, and these adulterous relationships continue to this day.

Rome Equals Vatican

For more than a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church exercised both religious and civil control over the entire city of Rome and its surroundings. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) abolished the Roman Senate and placed the administration of Rome directly under his command. The Roman Senate that had governed the city under the Caesars had been known as the Curia Romana (Roman Curia), the name of “the whole ensemble of administ-rative and judicial offices through which the Pope directs the operations of the Catholic Church.”

The popes' authority even extended to large territories outside Rome ac-quired in the eighth century by fraudulent means, a false document manufactured for the popes known as The Donation of Constantine. So these Papal States were literally stolen by the popes from their rightful owners, and controlled and taxed by them until 1848.

The point is that, exactly as John foresaw in his vision, a spiritual entity that claimed a special relationship with Christ and with God became identified with a city that was built on seven hills. That “woman” committed spiritual for-nication with earthly rulers and eventually reigned over them. The Roman Catholic Church has been continuously identified with that city.

Wealth from Ill-Gotten Gain

The incredible wealth of this woman caught John's attention next. She was dressed “in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication” (Revelation 17:4). The colours purple and scarlet once again identify the woman with both pagan and Christian Rome. These were the colours of the Roman caesars with which the soldiers mockingly robed Christ as “King” (Matthew 27:28 and John 19:2,5), which the Vatican took to it-self. The woman's colours are literally still the colours of the Catholic clergy!

The Cappa Magna – a cloak with a long train and a hooded shoulder cape... [it] was purple wool for bishops; for cardinals, it was scarlet water-ed silk (for Advent, Lent, Good Friday, and the conclave, purple wool); and rose watered silk for Gaudete and Laetare Sundays; and for the pope, it was red velvet for Christmas Matins, red serge at other times.

Cassock (also Soutane) – The close-fitting, ankle-length robe worn by the Catholic clergy as their official garb …. The colour for bishops and other prelates is purple, for cardinals scarlet...

The “golden cup [chalice] in her hand” again identifies the woman with the Roman Catholic Church. “It is the most important of the sacred vessels...[It] may be of gold or silver...” The Roman Catholic Church possesses many thousands of solid gold chalices kept in its churches around the world.”

Rome has practised evil to gather her wealth, for the “golden cup” is filled with “abominations and filthiness”. Much of the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church was acquired through the confiscation of the property of the pitiful victims of the Inquisitions. Even the dead were exhumed to face trial and property was taken from their heirs by the Church.

Most of Rome's wealth has been acquired through the sale of salvation. Untold billions of dollars have been paid to her by those who thought they were purchasing heaven on the installment plan for themselves or loved ones. The practice continues to this day – blatantly where Catholicism is in control, less obviously elsewhere.

Also there are the further abominations of corrupt banking practices, laundering of drug money, trading in counterfeit securities, and dealings with the Mafia (fully documented in police and court records).

The Mother of Harlots and Abominations

The deeper one investigates the history of the Roman Catholic Church and its current practices, the more amazing is the accuracy of the vision John received centuries before it would all be lamentable reality. John's attention is drawn to the inscription boldly emblazoned on the woman's forehead: “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Revelation 17:5). Sadly enough, the Roman Catholic Church fits the description “mother of harlots and abominations” as precisely as she fits the others. Much of the cause can be traced to the unbib-lical demand that her priests be celibates.

Although Paul the apostle was a celibate and recommended that life to others who wanted to devote themselves fully to serving Christ, he did not make it a condition for church leadership, as the Catholic Church has done, imposing an unnatural burden upon all clergy that very few could bear. On the contrary, he wrote that a bishop should be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2) and set the same requirement for elders (Titus 1:5,6).

Peter, whom the Catholics wrongly claim was the first pope, was married, as were some of the other apostles, and was accepted as an ongoing norm. Paul himself argued that he had the right to marry like the rest: “Have we not power [Greek exousia, the right of privilege or authority] to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles and as the brethren [half-brothers, sons of Mary and Joseph] of the Lord, and as Cephas [Peter]?” (1 Corinthians 9:5).

The Roman Catholic Church, however, has insisted upon celibacy even though many popes and millions of cardinals, bishops, archbishops, monks and priests throughout history have repeatedly violated such vows. Not only has celibacy made sinners of the clergy who engage in fornication, but it makes harlots of those with whom they secretly co-habit. Rome is indeed “the mother of harlots”! Pius II declared that Rome was “the only city run by bastards [sons of popes and cardinals]. Their numerous outrageous crimes reveal the depths of papal depravity. To call any of these men “His Holiness, Vicar of Christ” makes a mockery of holiness and of Christ. These abominations that John fore-saw not only occurred in the past but continue to this very day.

Drunk with the Martyrs' Blood

John next notices that the woman is drunk – and not with an alcoholic beverage. She is drunk with “the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus...” (Revelation 17:6). The picture is a horrible one. It is not merely her hands that are red with this blood, but she is drunk with it! The slaughter of innocents who, for conscience' sake, would not yield to her totalit-arian demands has so refreshed and exhilarated her that she reels in ecstasy.

One thinks immediately of the Inquisitions (Roman, Medieval, and Spanish) which for centuries held Europe in their terrible grip. An official estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake.

To wring out confessions from these poor creatures, the Roman Catholic Church devised ingenious tortures so excrutiating and barbarous that one is sickened by their recital.

The remnants of some of the chambers of horror remain in Europe and may be visited today. They stand as memorials to the zealous outworking of Roman Catholic dogmas which remain in place today, and to a Church which claims to be infallible and to this day justifies such barbarism. They are also memorials to the astonishing accuracy of John's vision in Revelation 17.

More Blood Than the Pagans

Pagan Rome made sport of throwing to the lions, burning and otherwise killing thousands of Christians, and not a few Jews. Yet “Christian” Rome

slaughtered many times that number of both Christians and Jews. Beside those victims of the Inquisition, there were Huguenots, Albigenses, Waldenses, and other Christians who were massacred, tortured, and burned at the stake by the hundreds of thousands simply because they refused to align themselves with the Roman Catholic Church and its corruption and heretical dogmas and practices. Out of conscience they tried to follow the teachings of Christ and the apostles independent of Rome, and for that crime they were maligned, hunted, imprisoned, tortured and slain.

“Christian” Rome slaughtered Jews by the thousands – far more than pagan Rome ever did. The land of Israel was seen as belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, not to the Jews. The Roman Catholic Church inspired the first crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims, and later was responsible for the Nazi Holocaust, because of the pope's complete silence throughout the war.

Reigning over the Kings of the Earth

Finally, the angel reveals to John that the woman is “that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18). There is only one city where the popes crowned and deposed kings and emperors, exacting obedience by threatening them with excommunication.

Although Pope Francis lacks the power to enforce such brutal claims today, his Church still retains the dogmas which authorize him to do so. And the practical effects of his power are no less than those of his predecessors, though exercised quietly behind the scenes. The Vatican is the only city which exchanges ambassadors with nations, and she does so with every major country on earth. Ambassadors come to the Vatican from every major country, not out of mere courtesy, but because the pope is the most powerful ruler on earth today. Only Vatican City sends ambassadors to other countries. Unlike any other city on earth, the Vatican is acknowledged as a sovereign state in its own right, separate and distinct from the nation of Italy surrounding it. There is no other city in history of which this has been true, and such is still the case today. Only of the Vatican could it be said that a city reigns over the kings of the earth. Vatican City is absolutely unique.

That the popes reigned over kings is an undisputed fact of history, and in so doing, horrible abominations were committed, as John foresaw, is also indisputable. Pope Nicholas I (858-67) declared: “We [popes] alone have the power to bind and to loose, to absolve Nero and to condemn him; and Christians cannot, under penalty of excommunication, execute other judment than ours, which alone is infallible.” In commanding one king to destroy another, Nicholas wrote:

“We order you, in the name of religion, to invade his states, burn his cities, and massacre his people...”^{Cormenin, History of the Popes, p.243, as cited in R.W. Thompson, op. Cit. p.368.}

CHAPTER 194

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE SERBS

So it was that Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s seemed to offer the best hope of uniting Catholic Europe as a bulwark against the rising red tide of world Communism and the growing threat of democracies. The Vatican realised it was in a war to the death against Marxism-Leninism. It seemed essential to join in partnership with the emerging forces of Fascism in Western Europe. The 1929 concordat with Mussolini and the 1933 concordat with Hitler were part of this policy. Both Mussolini and Hitler were Catholics and their leadership would strengthen European Catholicism.

President Wilson, however, had been determined to grant independence to the Southern Slavs. Thus was born the independent states of Czecho-slovakia and Yugoslavia. Suddenly the Catholic Croatians found themselves a minority in a new country controlled by the Eastern Orthodox Church. To change this unhappy situation, the Vatican launched a campaign to destroy Orthodoxy in Yugoslavia and to counter the growing threat of Communism in that land.

In pursuit of these twin goals, the Vatican made contact in the 1920's with a group of “White” Russian intelligentsia who had fled the Bolshevik take-over and were determined to return to defeat “the Reds”. As this coterie of conspirators grew it became known as Intermarium, a buffer zone of more than a dozen states, that would seal off the Communists to the East from a new united Catholic Europe. As it grew, so did its support from the Vatican, even though by the 1930s it was clearly a Fascist group involved in international terrorism. Among its most vicious and sadistic leaders was Ante Pavelic, who was destined to be of great service both to Hitler and the Vatican as the head of a Nazi puppet regime in Yugoslavia known as the Ustasha.

World Communism has been an evil beyond imagination, responsible for the slaughter of untold millions and the unlawful imprisonment and torture of multitudes more. Unfortunately, many of those who made it their lifework to oppose Communism were its equal in savagery. After World War II the World Anti-Communist League was infiltrated by “terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American [former Ustasha] death squads.”

Ante Pavelic and the Catholic Croatian Underground

The lawful leaders of Croatia, though Catholics, were suspicious of the political ambitions of the Vatican and justifiably unwilling to aid its efforts.

Thus it was necessary to form an illegal army of pro-Vatican terrorists. This group of Ustashi was led by Intermarium leader Ante Pavelic in partnership with Croatian Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac. These two arch-criminals were responsible for numerous assassinations including Yugoslavian King Alexander and French Foreign Minister Barthou (1934), as well as Croat Peasant Party leader Radich (1928). (The latter had warned against and opposed the machin-ations of the Vatican and thus had to be removed.)

Pavelic was sentenced to death by the French but managed to escape. He had already been sentenced to death in absentia by the Yugoslavian government five years earlier. Mussolini, out of loyalty to the Vatican, gave Pavelic asylum in Italy and refused both French and Yugoslavian demands for his extradition.

All over Europe, under Pavelic's leadership, the Ustashi were responsible for murders, bombings in public places, blackmail, threats, and other acts of terror aimed at disruption of order in Yugoslavia and the formation of an independent Catholic Croatian state. Vatican diplomacy did its part to further the same goal. Backed with funds from both Mussolini and the Vatican, the Ustasha grew in numbers and power; thus, when Hitler moved into Yugoslavia, it was ready to operate a Nazi puppet regime headed by Pavelic.

Ante Pavelic and his Ustashi had a propaganda machine which turned out Nationalistic Croatian historical revisionism and racial hatred calculated to appeal to the lowest level of prejudice and superstition. Croatia's population in the late 1920s was comprised of about 3 million Roman Catholics, nearly 2 million Serbians of Eastern Orthodox faith, a million Muslims, and about 50,000 Jews. The Ustashi held out an appealing solution for those who wanted the Croatians in control of their country: All non-Catholics and non-Croatians would be removed either by deportation or liquidation.

In order to achieve that goal, Croatia had to gain its independence from Yugoslavia. To that end Pavelic had already in 1929 established training camps for his Ustashi guerrillas in Hungary and Italy, from which the Ustashi sallied forth to commit their acts of terror against the Yugoslavian government.

When the German army entered the Croatian capital of Zagred and summoned Pavelic from Italy, the Nazis, fulfilling the Vatican's desire, declared Croatia an independent nation and set Ante Pavelic as the head of their puppet regime. He immediately launched his extermination programme, the slaughter of Serbs and the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps, mainly Auschwitz.

The Catholic Connection

Most of Croatia's Catholic clergy were fanatically behind Pavelic and his unbelievably evil regime. Medals were even given by Pavelic to nuns and priests, thus betraying the fact that many of them played active roles alongside

the Ustashi military.

One Franciscan monk, Miroslav Filipovic, headed the Jasenovac concentration camp for two years, during which time he directed the extermination of 100,000 victims, mostly Serbian Orthodox. Archbishop Stepinac headed the committee which was responsible for forcible “conversions” to Roman Catholicism under threat of death and was also the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, which effected the slaughter of those who failed to convert. Stepinac was known as the “Father Confessor” to the Ustashi and contually bestowed the blessing of Holy Mother Church upon its members and actions.

Among the most infamous Church officials involved, in addition to Arch-bishop Stepinac, were Father Vilim Cecelja (later a key figure in the Vatican's escape route for Nazi war criminals), and bishops Gregory Rozman of Lubljana and Ivan Saric of Sarajevo. Cecelja served as Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustashi militia, in which he held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Known in Bosnia and Herzegovina as “the hangman of the Serbs”, Saric declared that Al-mighty God was behind the Ustashi movement and that His blessing was speci-fically upon their determination to free the world of the Jews.

As a reward by the Vatican for his work, Stepinac was later made a cardi-nal. Though his crimes were well-known, Pavelic was received at the Vatican and blessed by Pope Pius XII.

The Inhuman Slaughter of the Serbs

Unlike the Germans, who were interested only in the quickest and most efficient means of mass extermination, the Catholic Ustashi, with priests and bishops participating and giving their blessing, took great pleasure from “tor-turing before killing. Most of their victims were not shot but were strangled, drowned, burned, or stabbed to death. Serbs were herded into Orthodox churches by Ustashi [as the crusaders had done with Jews in an earlier age], who then barred the doors and torched the timbers. One captured photograph shows Ustashi smiling for the camera before a table displaying the body of a Serbian businessman whom they had castrated, disemboweled, carved with knives, and burned beyond recognition.”

Estimates of the number of victims exceed a million, which is probably realistic. Yugoslavia in its war-crimes trials estimated that from 700,000 to 900,000 victims were “tortured and put to death...[in] the two dozen concentration camps” within Croatia, and tens of thousands never reached the camps. Many were Jews, but most were Serbians of Orthodox faith who were given the choice of conversion to Roman Catholicism or death.

Both in Yugoslavia and the Ukraine, Roman Catholic clergy, wth the full knowledge of the Vatican, participated in and gave their blessing to some of

the bloodiest and most barbaric massacres of the war, aimed at giving Roman Catholicism control of these regions. The massacres began in earnest at the end of June 1941 and continued throughout the summer, growing in scope and intensity until in August the terror reached its height. The whole of Bosnia ran with blood. Bands of Ustase roamed the countryside with knives, bludgeons and machine guns, slaughtering Serbian men, women and little children, desecrating Serbian churches, murdering Serbian priests, laying waste Serbian villages, torturing, raping, burning, drowning. Killing became a cult, an obses-sion. Even the Nazis were eventually sickened by the atrocities of the Ustashi and intervened on occasion to rescue their victims, disbanding one Ustashi regiment in 1942 to prevent further atrocities. Some Italian troops hid Jews and Serbs from Ustashi bands.

Postwar Escapes and Misinformation

After the war, Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac was arrested by the Yugoslav government and sentenced to 17 years in prison for war crimes. The Vatican propaganda machine portrayed Stepinac as a brave victim of Communist per-secution – a portrayal which has continued in the secular media. Pope Pius XII elevated Stepinac to cardinal after the war. In Croatian communities around the world, “Cardinal Stepinac Associations” were formed to lobby for the release of this “suffering martyr”. Such pressures succeeded in obtaining Stepinac's release from prison after only a few years.

Andrija Artukovic, the admitted Ustashi Minister of Interior and later Minister of Justice under Ante Pavelic, was in charge of the Croatian government's genocide policies, supervised its extermination camps, and in 1986 was described as “probably the most important war criminal still alive and unpunished today.” Nevertheless, having been mistakenly released by British Intelligence in Austria in 1945, he entered the United States illegally under the name Alois Anich and lived unmolested in Southern California under his own name until his arrest for a deportation hearing in 1984. Artukovic was defended by fellow Catholics, such as Croatian priest Fr. Cutukric, quoted in a Chicago newspaper:

And what are they trying to do to one of our real leaders, Andrija Artukovic – Croatian and Catholic – who is being defended by the real champions of freedom, justice, and truth against the godless Jews, Ortho-dox, communists, protestants everywhere? They call our leader, Andrija Artukovic, a “murderer”. No, we Ustashi must keep our dignity.

Finally returned to Yugoslavia in 1985, Artukovic was tried and found guilty of numerous war crimes, including “ordering the killing of the entire population of the town of Vrgin Most and its surrounding villages...” Sentenced to death by firing squad, he died January 16, 1988, at the age of 88 before the sentence could be carried out. To the end, his defenders portrayed Artukovic as the innocent victim of Communist propaganda and persecution.

Names such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sarajevo have become known to the world. The Serbs are properly castigated for their aggression and atrocities; yet news reports never mention the 1941-43 massacres of Serbian civilians by the Catholic Ustashi, for which the Serbs are seeking revenge. A Reader's Digest article by a journalist authority on Yugoslavia mentions the Ustashi without a word about their slaughter of Serbs. It refers to “Christian Croats and Serbs”, and ignores the fact that the Croats are Catholics and the Serbs Orthodox and that a deep hatred exists between them.

Just prior to this new war, inside Croatia the Serbs had begun to fear another purge. “Ethnic Serbs, accounting for 12 percent of Croatia's 4.75 million people, accuse[d] the nationalist administration of resurrecting the spirit and policies of the Ustasha regime”. The newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija was put under strict censorship in January 1993 for claiming that “in the new state of Croatia, it is forbidden not to be Croatian [Catholic].” The sins on both sides be admitted and repented of for there to be peace.

In the last days of World War II, as Soviet troops closed in, Pavelic made his escape. Disguised as a Catholic priest, Hitler's puppet ruler eluded both the Soviet and Allied intelligence search teams and made his way to Rome, where he was hidden by the Vatican. There he met frequently with Pius XII's Assistant Secretary of State, Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI. As early as September 1941, a Yugoslavian named Branko Bokun had turned over to Montini a huge file of evidence including gruesome photos and eyewitness accounts which documented the Ustashi atrocities. The Vatican saw no reason to change its policy, but continued to back their man in Croatia and his Ustashi regime and deeds.

After Vatican officials had learned all that Pavelic could tell them about Soviet Communism, Catholicism's archenemy, he was sent down its Ratlines to Argentina. There this sadish and mass murderer surfaced once again, this time as security adviser to Juan Peron, the Catholic dictator who welcomed fugitive Catholic war criminals for Mother Church.

The Vatican Ratlines

With the collapse of German resistance at the end of World War II, the greatest fear of the peoples living in Eastern Europe was that the advancing Soviet troops would not liberate, but enslave them. Whole countries would become part of the spoils of war with which Roosevelt would reward Stalin. Freedom would be lost and citizens once used to traveling freely from country to country would become virtual prisoners of Communist regimes behind closed borders.

Escape from Communist rule, if it was to occur, had to be effected immediately. With this realization, multitudes of refugees began streaming west ahead of the advancing Red Army. Mingling among those fleeing, and

hoping to hide their identities in the confusion, were tens of thousands of war criminals from the Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Ironically, many of them would receive faster and better aid than the legitimate refugees, some of whom they had imprisoned and tortured.

As the war neared its end, the pope was far from neutral. He pleaded with the Allied Forces to go easy on both Mussolini and Hitler. Their countries had to remain strong as a buffer against Soviet Communism. The Allies, of course, turned a deaf ear to the pope's surprising intercession for mass murderers.

Having failed to do anything on a significant scale to rescue the Jews, the pope would exert great effort to save their murderers, because the Fascists who had fought Communism must be rescued from prosecution as war criminals in order to carry on the battle from other Catholic countries. Though unable to rescue Hitler and Mussolini, the pope let it be known in the refugee camps “that the Vatican would shelter Fascist fugitives.”

The Great Escape West

It is almost uncanny how quickly that word reached the “right people” while remaining unknown to the rest. A steady stream of Nazi war criminals began to flow through an underground escape route that was quickly set up by the Vatican. The network would be known as the Ratlines.

“Under the direction of Pope Pius XII, Vatican officials such as Monsignor Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI) supervised one of the greatest obstructions of justice in modern history...facilitat[ing] the escape of tens of thousands of Nazi [war criminals] to the West, where they were supposed to be trained as “freedom fighters”...[as well as] Central European Fascist [war criminals] from Russia, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine.”

Thousands of the Ustashi retreated with the Nazi troops in face of the Russian advance, and attempted to surrender to British forces at the Austrian border, but were refused. It was therefore necessary to get past the British lines secretly, and to do so they were aided by fellow Ustasha, Father Wilim Cecelja. In anticipation of the Nazi defeat, Cecelja had gone to Vienna in May 1944 “to prepare the Austrian end of the escape network” and to found “the Austrian branch of the Croatian Red Cross, which provided ideal cover for his illegal work.”

As for Ante Pavelic, Western intelligence records indicate:

Ante Pavelic clipped his recognizable bushy eyebrows, donned a beard, and, with an Argentine passport, slipped into Austria under the name “Ramirez”. He hid in the Convent of St. Gilgin until picked up by British occupation forces. [By arrangement with the Vatican] he was released and surfaced two years later in Italy dressed as a priest and secreted in another convent...[until] he sailed to Buenos Aires in 1948.

The Early Ratlines Operations

One of the early key figures directing the escape of Nazi war criminals (and especially Catholic clergy) was Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of a seminary for German priests in Rome and a close associate of both Monsignor Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI) and Alcide de Gasperi (later Italian Premier). Con-fidant also of Eugenio Pacelli both before and after he became Pius XII, Hudal was as fanatical in his support of Hitler and Nazi policies as he was in his hatred of anything Communist. An unrepentant anti-Semite to his death, Hudal worked closely in Rome with the Holy Office (successor to the Inquisition), watchdog over Catholic doctrine.

Among the war criminals that Hudal helped escape were major figures such as Franz Stangl, commandant of the infamous extermination camp at Treblinka; he had presided over the efficient murder of about 900,000 inmates, mostly Jews.

The most infamous mass mrderer of them all, Adolf Eichmann, atheistic head of the SS Department for Jewish Affairs and in charge directly under Hitler of the entire Holocaust, was among the tens of thousands who were carefully smuggled by Catholic officials with Vatican blessing down the Ratlines.

American and British Involvement

The frustrated American and British agents who were attempting to capture elusive war criminals were not aware that the Ratlines were being tipped off by certain elements within their own agencies. Thus the Vatican's infamous Ratlines were operated in unholy alliances with Western intelligence agencies. CIA chiefs such as Allen Dulles and William Casey as well as United States presidents were implicated, and laid the foundation for later scandals such as Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.

The Death of Ante Pavelic

Pavelic was welcomed to Argentina by its dictator, Juan Peron, himself a Catholic, as required by law. Pavelic was assured that Peron had already approved the continuation of the Ustashi movement from Argentina as its new base. That arrangement had been negotiated by a Vatican representative, Daniel Crljen, another priest who had also played a key role in the slaughter of the Serbs.

Waiting for Pavelic in Buenos Aires was a host of his former ministers, police, and military officers, most of them wanted war criminals. Virtually the entire leadership of the Ustashi had escaped intact and had safely preceded Pavelic down the Ratlines in their flight from justice. His old friend Stejpan Hefer had also joined the Ustashi Fuehrer there to give the movement a fresh start in new locations around the world.

The exiled Ustashi members managed to portray themselves as victims of Communist terrorism who had fled from persecution brought about because they were Croatian patriots who opposed Tito's Communist regime.

But there is no honour among murderers, and it was not long until rival Croatians attempted to assassinate Pavelic, and he went into hiding in Spain. He lived quietly and reclusively in Madrid until his death from natural causes in December 1959. On that day, Pope John XXIII pronounced his personal bene-diction upon that incredibly evil and sadistic mass murderer! Archbishop Saric died a year later, in 1960, also in Spain.

On May 5, 1994, PrimeTime Live with Sam Donaldson presented a tele-vision documentary titled “The Last Refuge”. Shot in Rome and Argentina, the programme offered some of the same information presented above. The entrance into Argentina of Nazi war criminals coming down the Vatican Ratlines was documented from the recently released archives in Buenos Aires: for example, the recorded entry of Jose Mengele (known as “the Angel of Death” of Auschwitz). It was shown that the Argentine government, which was both pro-Catholic and pro-Nazi, knew Mengele's true identity and whereabouts and pro-tected him in spite of demands for his extradition. He died of natural causes in Brazil in 1979.

The most fascinating part of the film was Sam Donaldson's street encoun-ters with elderly surviving Nazi war criminals interviewed for the first time ever on camera. Initial denials were followed with grudging admissions of identity after Donaldson showed copies of SS membership documents and photos of the individuals in SS uniform. Acknowledgement in atrocities was also elicited but with the excuse that “I was only following orders.” One ex-Nazi acknowled-ged that he had had an office in the Vatican.

CHAPTER 195

SOLA SCRIPTURA V.

INTERPRETATION BY ROMAN CHURCH

Sola Scriptura

Vatican II requires “loyal submission of the will and intellect” to the Roman Pontiff “even when he does not speak ex cathedra...” No Catholic can presume to obey God and His Word directly, but must give that absolute obedience to the Church, which acts for God and thus stands between the individual and God.

The corruption of power reaches its greatest height in Catholicism's bold claim that its members cannot understand the Bible for themselves but must accept unquestioningly the Church's interpretation: “The task of giving an auth-entic interpretation of the Word of God...has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.” With that edict, God's Word, the one repository of truth and liberty which is capable of destroying despotism, is kept under Church control and shrouded in mystery. This leaves devout Catholics at the mercy of their clergy, a clergy which, as we have seen, is all too readily corrupted.

The Catholic Church has no comprehension of Bible prophecies concerning the return of the Jews to Israel, and of the Messiah returning to reign from the throne of His father David. In 1862 they published this: “As the Jews were formerly God's people, so are the Roman Catholics under the New Covenant.” It was only natural that such teaching would nurture and sustain anti-Semitism.

Blind Acceptance

To escape that destructive enslavement, the Reformers urged submission to God's pure Word as the ultimate authority rather than to the Church or the pope. The basic issue that sparked the Reformation (and which remains the basic issue today) was whether to continue in blind submission to Rome's dogmas, even though they contradicted the Bible, or to submit to God's Word alone as the final authority.

What the Bible Says

The Bible was given by God to all mankind, not to an elite group to explain it to others. It is to be a lamp on the path (Psalm 119:105) of all who heed it. Moses proclaimed that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3) – and not a whisper about that word being interpreted by an elite hierarchy. Psalm 1 speaks of the blessed man who meditates upon God's Word (variously called the law, statutes, judgments, commandments, etc.) day and night. “Man” surely includes woman, but cannot possibly be interpreted to mean only a special class of highly educated experts.

We get the impression from reading Paul's epistles that those to whom they were written were expected to understand them. The epistles are not addressed to a bishop or select group of leaders, but to all of the Christians at Corinth, Ephesus, etc. Each Christian is given an understanding by the indwel-ling Holy Spirit of the words which the same Spirit inspired “holy men of God” to write (2 Peter 1:21).

Even a “young man” is expected to “heed” God's Word (Psalm 119:9). Again, not a hint is given that it must be explained to him by a rabbi. Christ, quoting Moses, affirmed that man is to feed upon the Bible for his very life (Deuteronomy 8:3); Matthew 4:4). Job considered God's Word “more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). Never a word about consulting a hierarchy for its meaning.

Christ declared, “if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth [no hint of another source of truth]” (John 8:31,32). He did not make that statement to the 12 apostles, but to common people who had just “believed on him” (verse 30). He said nothing of His truth having to be interpreted by the rabbis, and of course the Roman Catholic hierarchy didn't even exist then. God's Word was available to and was to be understood, believed, and obeyed by even the newest converts. That was what Christ expected of His followers then and it is what He expects of us today as well.

If the Holy Spirit can convince the world “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8) then surely He can teach all those in whom He dwells. John says that the Christians to whom he writes don't have to look to some special class of men for teaching, but have an “anointing [of the Holy Spirit which] teacheth you of all things” (1 John 2:27).

If all Christians are “led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14), then surely all must be able to understand the Scriptures which the Spirit of God has inspired. Christians “have received...the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 1:12). There is no hint that a group of clergy must interpret the Scriptures for everyone else. And why should they? All Christians “have the mind of Christ” (verse 16). Rome dare not acknowledge this truth, for then those under her would be set free.

Sola Scriptura remains the central issue at the heart of the Reformation. One must choose between submitting to the authority of the Bible or to that of the Roman Catholic Church. One cannot do both because of the clear conflict between the two.

CHAPTER 196

SALVATION

The gospel declares “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). Evangelicals believe the gospel not merely as a fact of history, but as offering them forgiveness for their sin, and eternal life as a free gift of God's grace. Paul said this is the gospel “by which also ye are saved” (1 Corinthians 15:2). On that basis, the evangelical knows he is saved.

One “gets saved” the moment one believes the gospel. To the earnest cry, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), Paul responded, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (verse 31). It's that simple. The moment faith is placed in Christ, one is saved, never to be lost again. One has “passed from death unto life” and is no longer under God's judgment (John 5:24). Heaven is now one's home, and death means to be “absent from the body and … present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). The Bible says:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16); I am the door [said Jesus]; by me if any man enter in he shall be saved (John 10:9); My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish (John 10:27,28); Unto us which are saved (1 Corinthians 1:18); It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe (1 Corinthians 1:21); by which also ye are saved (1 Corinthians 15:2); By grace are ye saved (Ephesians 2:8); Who hath saved us (Titus 3:5); the nations of them which are saved (Revelation 21:24); etc.

The evangelical believes that, having accepted Christ's offer of pardon and eternal life, he is a Christian, born of the Holy Spirit into God's family. He is certain that as a child of God he will “never perish” (John 10:28), not “come into condemnation” (John 5:24). His salvation is secure because, by God's wonderful grace, Christ's death paid the penalty for his sin. So says God's Word:

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself [the assurance of the Holy Spirit in his heart]; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God (1 John 5:10-13).

The Evangelical Goal: Salvation of Sinners

While growing up in an evangelical home and church, one may believe the gospel intellectually from childhood, yet realize hat he is not yet saved. Merely mentally assenting to all that the Bible says does not save; one must personally receive Christ as Saviour. In that act of faith one is saved: “For by grace are ye saved, through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). Everything is now different. One has become a “new creature” in Christ; “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The person is now “saved”, a member of the universal church – not through joining a Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, or other church, but through the Spirit of God having placed him in the body of Christ: “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be [were being] saved” (Acts 2:47). “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 12:13). This is the “good news” of the gospel.

Christ told His disciples to “go into all the world and preach the gospel” (Mark 16:15) so that His mission of saving sinners would be accomplished. The primary goal of evangelicals is to preach the gospel to the lost so they might be saved. Peter said we “must be saved” (Acts 4:12 through Jesus, since there is no other way of salvation. Paul's passion for his fellow Jews was “that they might be saved” (Romans 10:1). Such is the desire of the evangelical for all mankind.

Catholics Aren't “Saved” But Are “Lost”

The Reformers were Catholic priests who realized that they were not saved, but were lost, because Catholicism was not the biblical gospel that saves, but a false one. People were not being brought into a personal relationship with Christ as Saviour, but into bondage to the Church, hoping it would eventually get them to heaven if they followed its rules. In Catholicism, salvation is not an accomplished fact resulting from faith in Christ, but an ongoing process of works and ritual in obedience to the Church.

Having believed the biblical gospel, the Reformers knew they were saved, rejoiced in that fact, and preached the good news of “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) to their fellow Catholics, hoping to reform the Church from within. For that they were excommunicated and persecuted, multitudes of them to the point of death.

The Council of Trent was convened to confront the issues raised by the Reformation. It rejected everything for which the Reformers stood, from the authority of the Word of God to salvation by grace through faith and the priest-hood of all believers. And it cursed with more than 100 anathemas anyone who accepted the doctrines which evangelicals hold. Not one of these curses has been removed even to this day.

These are the simple facts of history. Nothing has changed in the beliefs of either evangelicals or Catholics. Oddly, evangelicals who try to point out the errors in Catholicism because they love Catholics, and want them to be saved, are accused of “Catholic bashing”. What of the more than 1200 anathemas damning Protestants? Is that not the real “bashing”?

It is popularly imagined that Vatican II changed a great deal. In fact, only a few cosmetic changes were made, such as allowing the Mass to be in the language of the people rather than in Latin. Nothing of the core doctrines of Rome has been changed at all. Vatican II continually quoted from the Council of Trent and other councils and simply reaffirmed the established Catholic dogmas of the past. ^{Austin Flannery, O.P., gen. ed., Vatican Council II;: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev, ed. (Costello Publishing, 1988), vol. 1, p. 378.}

“Salvation” in Catholicism

Yes, the Catholic Church preaches salvation, but in direct opposition to Scripture and to what evangelicals believe. Salvation is through obeying the Church, not on the basis of the finished work of Christ upon the cross. No Catholic could say that he is saved and knows for certain that upon death he will go to heaven. To say that would bring automatic excommunication and the curse of Rome:

If anyone says that in order to obtain the remission of sins it is necessary … to believe with certainty and without any hesitation … that his sins are forgiven him, let him be anathema (Council of Trent, Six, XVI, 13).

If anyone says that he will for certain … have that great gift of per-severence even to the end [i.e. knows he is saved as the Bible promises] … let him be anathema (Council of Trent, Six, XVI, 16). ^{H.J. Schroeder, O.P., trans., The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Tan Books, 1978), p. 44.}

The Roman Catholic Church is adamant in insisting that the work neces-sary for our salvation was not all finished by Christ upon the cross, and that the sinner cannot be saved by simple faith in Him. It insists that salvation is an on-going process of works, ritual, and suffering decreed by the Church that con-tinues throughout life and more than likely requires one to suffer in purgatory as well:

If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of Justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.^{Ibid., p. 378.}

Roman Catholic salvation is not what the Bible teaches. Christ said, “Come unto me” (Matthew 11:28); Rome says, “Come unto Mother Church”. Catholics can't reach Christ directly, but must come through the Church, which offers for salvation, in addition to Christ's finished work, the merits of the saints plus credit for one's own penance and good works, the suffering of others on one's behalf, submission to the popes, obedience to the Church's decrees, etc. Vatican II states very clearly that the Catholic Church “is necessary for salvation”.^{Flannery, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 364-65.} This dogma is stated in numerous papal decrees like that of Pope Boniface VIII:

There is one holy Catholic and apostolic church, outside of which there is no salvation … it is altogether necessary for salvation for every creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.^{From his papal bull, Unam Sanctam, A.D. 1302.}

The Church is the key to salvation for the Catholic, and through her the faithful are kept on a treadmill of Church-directed self-effort. Instead of looking to Christ alone, and having a personal relationship with Him, the Roman Catholic looks to the Church, and must be in a proper relationship with it when he or she dies in order to be saved.

CHAPTER 197

“SACRIFICE” OF THE MASS

We have come to the very heart of Roman Catholicism, that unique ele-ment which separates it from all other religions and especially from evangelical Christianity: the sacrifice of the Mass. In it “the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated. [It is] the source and the summit of the whole of the Church's worship and of the Christian life.” Declared present on the altar through the miracle of transubstantiation (which only the Catholic priest can perform) is the “true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, who is really and substantially present under the appearance of bread and wine in order to offer himself in the sacrifice of the Mass and to be received as spiritual food in Holy Communion.” ^{John A. Hardon, S.J., Pocket Catholic Dictionary (Doubleday, 1966), p. 132.}

Christ said from the cross just as He died, “It is finished” (John 19:30). But to the Catholic it isn't finished. Christ's sacrifice continues to this day, being endlessly repeated on Catholic altars: “Each time Mass is offered, the Sacrifice of Christ is repeated. A new sacrifice is not offered, but by divine power, one and the same sacrifice is repeated … In the Mass Christ continues to offer Himself to the Father as He did on the Cross”^{The New Saint Joseph Catechism, No.2 (Catholic Book Publishing Co., New York, 1969, p. 171. See also the new universal Catechism of the Catholic Church (The Wanderer Press, 1994), pp, 284-304.} but in an “unbloody manner under the appearance of bread and wine.” ^{Ibid., p.168, see also Vatican II and the new universal Catechism.}

Calvary was a very bloody scene. How there could be an unbloody repet-ition thereof is not explained. Furthermore, the Bible distinctly says that “without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins]” (Hebrews 9:22). Yet the “unbloody” Mass is deemed to bring remission of sins – a remission which is not needed, for Christ already obtained it on the cross. The Bible says:

And he took the cup … saying … this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed [on the cross] for many for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:27,28).

To him [Christ] give all the prophets witness, that … whosoever believeth in him shall receive [as a gift of God's grace] remission of sins (Acts 10:43).

Many Sacrifices or Only One?

The Mass is called a propitiatory sacrifice in which “Christ offers himself [perpetually] for the salvation of the entire world … [and] the work of our redemption is accomplished.” ^{Flannery, op. Cit., pp. 114, 1.} In contrast, the Bible repeatedly emphasizes that the full penalty for sin was paid upon the cross and on that basis the resurrected Christ “entered in once into the holy place [heaven], having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). There He is seated at the Father's right hand, our Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14), representing those He has redeemed, where “he ever liveth [dies no more] to make intercession for them”:

Who needeth not daily, as those [Old Testament] high priests, to offer up sacrifice … for this he did once, when he offered up himself [on the cross] (Hebrews 7:27).

The contrast between Catholicism and what the Bible teaches could not be greater than with regard to the alleged “sacrifice” of the Mass. That difference is exposed with stark clarity in the distinction which the Bible emphasizes between the one sacrifice Christ made of Himself and the continual Old Testament sacrifices which had to be repeated daily. The repetition of those offerings is given as proof that they could not pay the penalty for sin; and the fact that Christ was offered only once is given as proof that His sacrifice was sufficient and never needed to be repeated. That the Mass must be repeated proves its ineffectiveness. If once is not enough, then neither would be a billion repetitions; nor can Rome say how many masses it takes to get anyone out of purgatory.

The Vital Role of Transubstantiation

Due to the alleged miracle of transubstantiation, the host (or wafer) which is eaten at Mass is worshipped as Christ Himself. The same devotion is directed to additonal blessed wafers reserved in a tabernacle (a small, boxlike receptacle covered with a veil and with a light perpetually burning nearby). The devout come and pray to the wafers therein as though to Christ, believing they are in His holy presence.

Pagan Pageantry to Honour Christ?

Enclosed in a monstrance, a large wafer is also carried in processions. It is astonishing with what extravagant pageantry the host is paraded through the streets on special festivals.

If this wafer is the literal precrucifixion body of Jesus Christ being offered on Catholic altars around the world, then the pageantry is not overdone – or is it? How did that one body become millions of bodies each in the form of a tiny wafer, each one literally and physically Jesus Christ “whole and entire”? How did the bloodied “old rugged cross [with] its shame and reproach” transmute into gold and become encrusted with diamonds? And how can bishops in their ornately embroidered robes of finest silk represent the One who hung naked on the cross and whose lifeless, battered body wrapped in grave-clothes was laid in a tomb? Has the “perpetuation” of Christ's death become an incongruous farce?

What does such pagan pageantry with its gold and jewels have to do with Calvary? How blasphemous is this parading before the world of the Church's boasted power to hold the precrucifixion body of Christ in its hands and offer Him again upon its altars!

Jesus called mankind to believe on Him. He told Nicodemus that those who believed on Him would “not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), and that believing on Him would bring about a new birth. He didn't mean a physical birth, however, but a spiritual birth, a fact which even Catholics acknowledge.

Christ said, “This is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life” (John 6:40). Clearly this believing on Christ (which He likens to eating Him) is a once-for-all act. He doesn't say it must be done 20 times, a thousand times, once a day, or once a week. The moment a person believes on Christ, he or she receives for-giveness of sins and everlasting life as a free gift of God's grace. Clearly, a person who has received eternal life by once believing/eating need never repeat that act. Otherwise everylasting life is misnamed, for something that is everlasting must last forever and need not be renewed or reinforced.

CHAPTER 198

WHAT ABOUT MARY?

We have identified the woman astride the beast as Vatican City and the false World Church which will eventually be headquartered there. But why a woman on the beast and not a man? Why is this false World Church seen as a woman? The most prominent figure by far in Roman Catholicism is a woman. She overshadows all else, including even God Himself. More prayers are offered to the Catholic Mary and more attention and honour is given to her than to Christ and God combined. There are thousands of shrines to Mary around the world (and hundreds of shrines to other “saints”), but scarcely more than a handful of minor shrines to Christ himself.

Some Catholic leaders even boast that in this day of burgeoning “goddess consciousness” and “women's liberation” the Catholic Church is right in tune with the times: A woman holds the position of highest honour and power. In Catholicism it is a woman through whom all graces, gifts, blessings, and power flow – a woman, who, as we shall see, has the amazing potential to unite the entire world, including even the Muslims, in one religion. This “per-petual Virgin”, however, is a fiction that bears no relationship to the real Mary of the Bible, a woman who was not only Christ's mother but also Joseph's loving wife.

Mary “Ever Virgin”?

The Bible teaches that Mary was a virgin until the time that Jesus was born. Subsequently she had a number of other children by Joseph, her husband. This fact is clearly expressed by the statement that Jesus was her “firstborn son” and that Joseph “knew her not until” Christ was born (Matthew 1:25). There are repeated references to Jesus' brothers and sisters, some of whom are even mentioned by name. The people who knew Jesus where He grew up in Nazareth “were astonished and said, Whence hath this man this wis-dom and these mighty works?” They went on to argue:

Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren James and Joses and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? (Matthew 13:55,56; cf. Mark 6:3).

Catholic apologists such as Karl Keating insist that these brothers and sisters were really Christ's cousins and that Matthew and Mark had to use the word for brother/sister because neither Hebrew nor Aramaic had a word for “cousin”. There is no basis for such an unbiblical supposition. Furthermore, Matthew and Mark were written in Greek. Keating insists that although there was a word for cousins (anepsios) in the Greek, it was common for Jews writing in Greek to continue the Hebrew practice of referring to all relatives as brothers/sisters (adelphos). He cites examples from the Septuagint, but none from the New Testament, because there are none. In fact, anepsios is used in Colossians 4:10 to refer to the cousin of Barnabus. Moreover, the brethren of Jesus are usually mentioned as being in the company of Mary, indicating that they were her children in her care or, if grown, travelling with her as part of the immediate family.

The Catholic argument goes on to insist that for Christ to be born of a womb that would later conceive and give birth to other children would some-how contaminate him. That argument, again, is not only without biblical basis but takes away from Christ's very humility in becoming a man. Peter de Rosa, as a Catholic, gives some interesting insights into why Rome can't allow Mary to have sexual intercourse even after giving birth to Christ:

[W]e noted that priests, especially popes, have developed a cult of the Virgin Mary. For celibates, the ideal woman is an asexual being who gave birth to a child. Mary had a baby without sexual intercourse, that is per-fection.^{Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (Crown Publishers, 1988), p. 427.}

If Mary had taken a vow of virginity, however, and that was what she meant by her response to Gabriel, then (as Martin Luther pointed out) by allowing Joseph to marry her, she would have committed treachery and poured contempt upon the holy covenant of marriage. Even the Catholic Church does-n't allow a wife to take a vow of continence at her own pleasure, and the Bible is against it, declaring that the marriage bed is God's will for married couples (Genesis 1:28; 2:21-24; I Corinthians 7:3-5) and that it is honourable in all (Hebrews 13:4).

Clearly Mary's words to Gabriel “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” (Luke 1:34) refer only to her condition at that time. This was not a dec-laration that she had taken a vow of celibacy. If she had, she would not have been engaged to Joseph (verse 27). And if her perpetual virginity isn't true, neither are the other fantasies about Mary which Catholicism has invented (her immaculate conception, bodily assumption to heaven, etc.).

Mary, “Mother of God”

In the most authoritative book written on Catholicism's “Virgin Mary” by Cardinal and Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, entitled The Glories of Mary, it compiles what the great “saints” of the Roman Catholic Church have to say about Mary down through the centuries. The chapter headings are staggering, crediting Mary with attributes, abilities, titles, and functions that belong to Christ alone: “Mary, Our Life, Our Sweetness”; “Mary, Our Hope”; “Mary, Our Help”; “Mary, Our Advocate”; “Mary, Our Guardian”; “Mary, Our Salvation”. Here are some of Liquori's quotes of what the saints have said concerning Mary's role in salvation:

Sinners receive pardon by … Mary alone. He falls and is lost who has not recourse to Mary. Mary is called … the gate of Heaven because no one can enter that blessed kingdom without passing through her. The way of salvation is open to none otherwise than through Mary … the salvation of all depends on their being favoured and protected by Mary. He who is protected by Mary will be saved; he who is not will be lost … our salvation depends on thee … God will not save us without the inter-cession of Mary … who would receive any grace were it not for thee, O Mother of God …?^{De Liguori, op.cit., pp 82-83, 94, 160, 169-70.}

“Mother of God”? Yes, Jesus is God and Mary is His mother, but she is not the mother of Him as God, which He was and is from all eternity before Mary was even born. She is the mother of the physical body which the Son of God took when He became man, but she is not the Mother of God! The Scripture explains Mary's role:

Wherefore when he [Jesus] cometh into the world, he saith... a body hast thou prepared me (Hebrews 10:5).

The incredibly unbiblical position to which Mary has been exalted by the Roman Catholic tradition continues to be evidenced in the prayers offered to her. This false Mary is the very heart and life of Roman Catholicism. Yet Catholic apologists, sensitive of criticism in this regard, deny that Catholics pray to Mary. Peter Kreeft, for example, deceitfully writes, “Catholics [don't pray to saints, they] only ask saints to pray for them – just as we ask the living to pray for us.”^{Bookstore Journal, “Official Publication of the Christian Booksellers Association,” February 1992, p.30.}

On the contrary, the most numerous and popular prayers in Catholicism are to the saints and especially to Mary, not to God or to Christ. Moreover, these prayers ask Mary to do for Catholics and for the entire world what she would literally have to be God (and, for some things, Christ) to be able to accomplish. At the close of Sunday Mass in Denver in August 1993, John Paul II consigned all youth and the entire world to Mary's protection and guidance:

Mary of the New Advent, we implore your protection on the prepa-rations that will now begin for the next meeting [World Youth Day]. Mary, full of grace, we entrust the next World Youth Day to you. Mary, assumed into heaven, we entrust the young people of the world … the whole world to you!

Catholics only ask Mary to pray for them? If one asks prayer of a friend one doesn't say, “I implore your protection and entrust the whole world to you”! Yet such requests that only God could fulfil are typical of Catholic petititions of Mary, who is exalted to omnipotence and credited with caring for all who trust in her.

“Mary, Queen of Heaven”

Time magazine comments that “according to modern Popes” Mary is “the Queen of the Universe, Queen of Heaven, Seat of Wisdom...”^{Time, December 30, 1991, p.62.} In the pope's September 1993 speech in Lithuania, he spoke of Mary as “Mother of the Church, Queen of the Apostles [and] dwelling place of the Trinity”! He told “priests and aspirants to the priestly life, men and women Religious” to “look to Mary … who is venerated here ...in the shrines of Ausros Vartai and Siluva, to which I will go on pilgrimage! … To Mary I entrust all of you …!”^{The Pope Speaks, March/April, vol. 39., no. 2, 1994, p. 105.} Such blasphemy is repeated in the most recited Catholic prayer, the Rosary. It concludes with this final petition:

Hail, holy Queen [of heaven], Mother of Mercy! our life, our sweet-ness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping, in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus; O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Mary is our life and our hope? According to Scripture, Christ is our life (Colossians 3:4)! In Catholicism, Christ and His sacrifice for our sins upon the cross are not enough. To be saved, one must have Mary's favour, for she decides who will be in heaven, as the many quotes above demonstrate.

Do Mary's “eyes of mercy” actually see everyone in the world? Is she really the “Mother of Mercy”? Didn't God's mercy exist long before Mary was even born? We read of the “God of mercy” (Psalm 59:17)a and are encouraged to “trust in the mercy of God” (Psalm 52:8; Luke 1:78; etc.) but never a word is said in the entire Bible about Mary's mercy toward mankind.

Those who know God's mercy have no need of Mary's mercy. In fact, she would have to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent (qualities of God alone) in order to extend mercy to all mankind. Paul and John both refer to “grace, mercy, and peace” coming from God to believers (I Timothy 1:2; 2 Tim-othy 1:2; Titus 1:4; 2 John 1:3), but nowhere is there a hint that mercy is bes-towed by Mary on Christians. Yet the Rosary makes it seem that we depend upon her mercy rather than upon God's. Is it really her doing that brings believers into the presence of Christ? According to the Rosary, one would think so.

Mary is the “Queen of Heaven”? We are told in Scripture that Christ is the king, but never that there is a queen of heaven, much less that she is Mary. If there were a queen who shares Christ's throne it would be His bride, the church composed of the redeemed, yet the church is never referred to as the queen of heaven. The only “queen of heaven” mentioned in Scripture is an idol which was worshipped by the pagans and to which the Jewish women gave offerings, bringing the wrath of God upon them (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:15).

Far from being embarrassed by such pagan connections, Rome flaunts them. Many Catholics boast that Mary has taken the place of “Maia, the nymph of Greek mythology, who was the mother of Hermes by Zeus, the sky god.” The month of May was named after Maia, who was known as “the queen of May … [and] the Jesuit effort to turn the Queen of May into the Virgin Mary was successful...”^{The Catholic Sun, May 26, 1993.}

The Multiple Marys

There are many Marys in Catholicism, “Our Lady” of this and “Our Lady” of that. Wherever “Mary” appears in various forms, that particular “Mary” dev-elops a following. Most Catholics have their favourite “Mary”. Some prefer “Our Lady of Medjugorje”, others “Our Lady of Guadalupe” or “Our Lady of Lourdes”. Pope John Paul II has two favourite “Marys”: the “black Virgin” of Jasna Gora, the patron saint and protectress of Poland, and “Our Lady of Fatima”. The latter allegedly appeared to him during his convalescence from the attempted murder (which took place on the anniversary of her supposed first appearance in Fatima, Portugal, on May 13, 1917). She had saved his life, she said, for a purpose and would give the world a sign that would cause it to bow to his supreme spiritual authority.

The Cult and Worship of Mary

As early as 1854 Pius IX had sent up a papal infallibility trial balloon. It was well-received by the Church because it involved the ever popular “Virgin Mary”. On his own initiative – by his own authority and standing alone without any Council or the magisterium supporting him – Pius IX pronounced as a dogma that all Catholics must accept the Immaculate Conception of Mary: that she was “in the first instant of her conception … preserved free from all stain of original sin ...” It was, in effect, a declaration of his own infallibility – that he did not need the support of the bishops or a Council but could define such binding dogmas on his own.

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII made an allegedly infallible ex cathedra declaration in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus that “the immaculate Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary was at the end of her life assumed into heaven body and soul”. In the Constitution the pope claimed that the dogma of the assumption had been unanimously believed in the Church from the very beginning and that it was fully supported by Scripture. In fact, the dogma was unknown to the early church and is unsupported by Scrip-ture. Such papal declarations simply responded to the popular sentiment of Catholics, and contributed to the growing cult of Mary. The cult of Mary

developed gradually as the apostasy gathered momentum.

The Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent Mary

Soul Magazine, Official publication of The Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima in the U.S. And Canada (22 million strong) declares: “Mary is so perfect-ly united with the Holy Spirit that He acts only through [her] His spouse … all our life, every thought, word, and deed is in Her hands … at every moment, She Herself must instruct, guide, and transform each one of us into Herself, so that not we but She lives in us, as Jesus lives in Her, and the Father in the Son.” Every thought, word, and deed of all mankind is in Mary's hands? She instructs, guides, and transforms each one of us into Herself? Then Mary is God!

Never does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit only acts through Mary! The Holy Spirit has been in action from eternity past, an eternity before Mary even was born. All our life is in God's hands, not Mary's. We are instructed and guided by God, not by Mary. And we are being transformed into the image of Christ, not the image of Mary. Nor does the Bible ever hint that Mary lives in the believers, while it assures us that Christ lives in us by His Spirit (John 14:20; Colossians 1:27; Galatians 4:10) and the Christian in Christ (Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:10; etc. To suggest that such promises are fulfilled in Mary is blasphemy of the vilest sort, which the real Mary would rebuke! The Bible never says a word about anyone either being in Mary or Mary in anyone. For that to be true of Mary, as it is of God and Christ, she would have to be omnipresent like God. Amaazingly, whatever the Bible promises God will do for us through Christ requires, in Catholicism, the intercession and intervention of Mary as an additional intermediary. What an abomination!

Maryology and Maryolotry

For Mary's heart to be immaculate she must have been sinless. Yet the Bible unequivocally declares, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Mary herself rejoiced in God as her Saviour (Luke 1:47), and only sinners need a Saviour. Christ clearly said, “There is none good but one, that is God” (Matthew 19:17; Mark 10:18). No exception is made for Mary.

If the accusation were made that Mary is their chief deity, almost every Catholic would deny it vehemently.^{This has been stated explicitly by some of the “saints” of the Church and it is implicit throughout the entire teaching of calling upon Mary from whom help us obtained more quickly than by calling upon God or Christ directly. See Liguroi, op. Cit., eg. pp.40, 130, 137, 156, 157, 174.} In practice, what began as Maryology gradually became Maryolatry as the thousands of prayers to Mary testify.

The fact that Christ died for our sins and offers eternal life as a free gift of His grace means nothing without Mary. Though the Bible never even hints at such a thing, and though Paul never preached it or told it to anyone, yet for the Catholic, Mary has become the essential conduit through which salvation and all grace flows. Jesus and God the Father play an important role too, but it is Mary who brings everything together and dispenses all God's gifts to those who through devotion to her become “her children”.

This blasphemous dogma is taught without any biblical basis whatsoever. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that anyone becomes a “child of Mary”. According to the biblical gospel we become “the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26). Yet in Catholicism one becomes a “child of Mary” with the promise that “no true child of Mary will ever perish”.^{Devotions in Honour of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, back cover} Again she has usurped the place of Christ.

Yes, Catholicism acknowledges that Christ is the one Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), but Mary is the mediatrix between mankind and Christ, “the short road to Jesus”.^{Catholic Twin Circle, August 26, 1990, p.20} Thus prayers to God, though in Christ's name and through Him, require Mary's intervention.^{The Fatima Crusader, Winter 1992, p.16}

The Bible is very clear that we come to the Father through Jesus Christ (John 15:16; 16:234). Never is there the slightest suggestion that we must come to Christ through Mary, much less that Mary herself is to be petitioned and answers prayer on her own initiative and in her own power. Yet Mary's function as an intermediary to Christ and her powerful intervention on behalf of and protection of those who call upon her is both taught in Catholicism and testified to by Catholics.

Mary Crushes the Serpent's Head

Genesis 3:15 provides the first promise of the Messiah. God is speaking to the serpent (Satan): “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [the seed of the woman, i.e., the virgin-born Messiah] shalt bruise thy [the serpent's] head, and thou [Satan] shall bruise his [the Messiah's] heel. Yet Catholic translations of Genesis 3:15 for years have said that “she [the woman] shall bruise thy head.”

This abominable usurpation by the fictitious Catholic Mary of Christ's place as victor over sin and Satan persists as one of Catholicism's major per- versions of truth. It is a woman whom John saw astride the beast. Does that fact include intimations of the strategic role that Rome's fraudulent Mary will play in the preparation of the world for Antichrist? We must consider that pos-sibility carefully.

CHAPTER 199

THE COMING NEW WORLD ORDER

Time magazine reports there have been so many sightings of the “Virgin Mary” around the world that “the late 20^th century has become the age of the Marian pilgrimage” to the many shrines established to commemorate these appearances. There are 937 Marian shrines in France alone.^{Time, December 30, 1991, p.62} From 1961 to 1965 there were about 2000 visitations to northwest Spain's village of Garabandal accompanied by occultic phenomena and apocalyptic messages to the world. In 1983 hundreds of Palestinian Arabs “saw the Virgin Mary” near Bethlehem, Israel. She has appeared in every corner of the world.

These apparitions have brought millions of people to faith in Catholicism's Mary. The shrine at Lourdes, France, attracts about 5.5 million pilgrims annually; Poland's Black Madonna draws 5 million; Fatima, Portugal, “draws a steady 4.5 million pilgrims a year from an ever widening array of countries.”

To beseech Mary for help and protection implies that she is at least equal to God in power and is preferred over God and Christ. This is not the Mary of the Bible, but the woman who rides the beast. Faith in Catholicism's Mary, sup-ported by her thousands of apparitions, prepares the way as perhaps nothing else could for a world religion, a New World Order, and the reign of the Anti-christ.

A Unique Role for the Amazing Maryolatry

Worldwide, today's women are asserting themselves as never before in history. Contrary to popular opinion, “women instigate most domestic violence [and] hit men more frequently and more severely [than men hit them]” and violence is far more frequent in lesbian relationships than between husband and wife.^{USA Today, June 23, 1994, p.15A} Women are taking over what were once men's jobs, and there is a growing acceptance of women at the highest levels of leadership in business, government, and religion. Only God could have given John, 1900 years ago, a vision that so fits our day – a woman in control.

From current trends, it seems inevitable that a woman must ride the beast. And of all the women in history, none rivals Roman Catholicism's omni-potent, omniscient, and omnipresent “Mary”. Could it be that in preparation for her unique role in the New World Order astride the beast she is now appearing to millions around the world in a dazzling display of power? The script is ingen-ious! John Paul II has said:

Mary … should inspire all who cooperate in the Church's apostolic mission for the rebirth of humanity … The Church journeys through time … along the path already trodden by the Virgin Mary.^{Pope John II, RedemptorisMissio, 86, 92}

The ecumenical power of this Mary is found in the fact that she provides a new deity to whom the followers of all religions can look – a female deity in step with the spirit of our age. Even Protestants find her appealing. At a women's conference in November 1993, “more than 2,000 participants recited a liturgy to … a female deity … [and] in a ritual that resembled holy communion, the women partook of milk and honey to honour the goddess.” A far-out New Age gathering? No, “most of the participants represented mainline Protestant denominations ...”^{Charisma, May 1994, p.76.}

A woman Lutheran pastor “boasted that Jesus Christ's name was never mentioned” while another church leader urged attendees to overthrow the pat-riarchal image of [a] Father God.” Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung “urged Christians to adopt a 'new Trinity' composed of Buddhist, Hindu and Fili-pino goddesses.”^{Charisma, May 1994, p.76.}

Catholicism is a jump ahead. Its “Mary”, a goddess suitable for all religions, is already adored by a quarter of earth's population. Moreover, her ability to command the loyalty of multitudes has been demonstrated on a national level for centuries.^{Soul Magazine, March-April 1993, p. 19.}

Mary and Islam

It is easy to imagine Buddhists, Hindus, New Agers, and liberals – as well as both Catholics and Protestants – uniting in a world religion, but the billion Muslims pose a special problem. Mary, however, seems to be the unique one through whom even they could be united into a universal faith. A British Catholic magazine reports that “a Marian revival is spreading throughout Africa, with alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary finding a following among Muslims …”^{The Tablet, February 29, 1992} African Muslims themselves are seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary and “are not required to become Christians” to follow her.^{The Christian World Report, May, 1992} Our Sunday Visitor pointed out the honour given to Mary in Islam's Koran and the intriguing connection between her and Muhammad's favourite daughter, Fatima.^{Our Sunday Visitor, May 29, 1994, p.5}

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote an interesting book in which he predicted that islam would be converted to Christianity “through a summoning of the Moslems to a veneration of the Mother of God.” He reasoned thus:

The Koran … has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception and also in her Virgin Birth … Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: “Thou shalt be the most blessed of all the

women in Paradise, after Mary.”^{Fulton J. Sheen, “Mary and the Moslems”, The World's First Love (Garden City Books, 1952); see also Malachi Martin, The Keys of this Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Capitalist West (Simon and Schuster, 1990), p.285.}

Sheen goes on to say how remarkable it was that “our Lady” had the foresight to appear in the Portuguese village of Fatima (named after Muhammed's daughter during the Muslim occupation) and thus become known as Our Lady of Fatima”. It is a fact that when a statue of “Our Lady of Fatima” is carried through Muslim areas of Africa, India, and elsewhere, Muslims turn out by the hundreds of thousands to worship her. In two days an estimated 500,000 came to give their respects to this idol in Bombay, India.^{The Fatima Crusader, Winter 1992, front cover and p. 3.}

Mary and John Paul II

No one is more convinced of the validity of the Fatima visitations than John Paul II. Nor is anyone more devoted to Mary. He has unusual personal reasons for this special devotion. The assault upon his life occurred on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the Virgin's alleged first appearance on May 13, 1917, at Fatima, Portugal. In a vision during his convalescence she told him she had spared his life for a special mission he must fulfil in bringing peace.^{Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood:: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Capitalist West (Simon and Schuster, 1990), pp. 626-27; see also interview with Malachi Martin, Washington Times, September 28, 1990, p. B6.}

Returning to the Vatican after his recovery, John Paul II prayed at the tombs of his immediate predecessors and declared, “There could have been another tomb, but the blessed Virgin … has willed otherwise.”^{La Croix, August 17, 1981, as cited in Abbe Daniel Le Roux, Peter, Lovest Thou Me? (Australia: Instauratio Press, 1989), p. 18.} He added grate-fully and reverently, “For everything that happened to me on that day, I felt that extraordinary Motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullets.”^{Cited on back of card with photo of Pope bowing to a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. “This prayer card was poublished to commemorate the visit of Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1982, and especially for use during the worldwide All-Night Vigil sponsored by the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima [Washington, NJ 07882] on May 12-13, 1982.”} Why would you need God when you have Mary's protection?

The thankful pope made a solemn pilgrimage to Fatima on May 13, 1982, where he “prayed before the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Thousands heard him speak and consecrate the world to Mary as she had requested.” On at least three other occasions, “on October 16,1983; on March 25, 1984; and on December 8, 1985 … he consecrated the world to our Lady”^{The Fatima Crusader, November/December 1986, p. 9.} with “special mention” of the Russian people. Now that the Berlin Wall has come down and Soviet Communism has unraveled throughout Eastern Europe, credit is being given to Our Lady of Fatima for fulfilling her promise that if the popes and bishops would consecrate the world and Russia to her Immaculate Heart, “My Immaculate Heart will triumph, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace.”^{Our Lady of Fatima's Peace Plan from Heaven (Tan Books and Publishers, 1983), inside back cover.}

Such a statement is in the fullest opposition to the clear teaching of the Bible, which offers “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans5:1) as a free gift of God's grace – a peace that was bought “through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). Individual peace comes by faith to all who believe the gospel. World peace will only be established when Christ returns to reign from Jerusalem as the prophets foretold.

A Seducing Spirit

There have been apparitions of the Virgin Mary with “the Child Jesus” which are counterfeits. She utters promises and ways of salvation for the viewer and also members of his/her family in Purgatory. Not only is the Lord Jesus now grown up, but he is ascended into Heaven and in his glorious form, and certainly not assisting in this demonic activity, which is uttering lies and mixing it with Scripture to make it sound more believable. The real Mary was a devout Jewess, the mother of Jesus by a miracle conception, and the wife of Joseph, by whom she had other children after Jesus: James, Joseph, Simon and Judas, and at least three sisters (Matthew 13:55-56). She became a believer and then one of Jesus' disciples, and eventually died and was buried. When the Lord comes back in the air for his people, she will be resurrected along with all the other true Christians and join him in the air, and then he will take care of the Antichrist and False Prophet and then, a thousand years later, Satan will get his just deserts. These apparitions are all lying spirits foretold in the Bible (Matthew 24:4; I Timothy 4:1).

The apparitions are given credit for pointing people to Jesus, yet there is little sign of real devotion to Christ among pilgrims to Marian shrines. It is Mary who has the honour. The Rosary is prayed over and over, the talk is all about Mary rather than Christ or God, the devotion is to her, and pilgrims see themselves as her servants doing her bidding. Mary, not Christ, is the one who will bring peace. It is her peace plan for the world, reparation must be made to her for the sins committed against her, and she must hold back the hand of her son from judgment. Mary, not Christ, is glorified.

The Jesus promoted in the apparitions is a counterfeit who is always sub-ordinate to Mary. The false gospel of salvation through Mary is even endorsed by a demon posing as the Child Jesus who accompanies Mary [Jesus is no longer a child!].

Clearly we are seeing what Paul warned would occur in the last days: “Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils” (I Timothy 4:1). What these apparitions teach are definitely doctrines of devils that deny the sufficiency of Christ's death for our sins, that deny His position as Lord of all and exalt a false Mary above Him. She becomes the way to Jesus and the door to heaven (standard Catholic doctrine, but not biblical).

Ancient Rome's Religion Revived

Clearly, along with a worldwide revival under Antichrist of the Roman Empire, there will be a revival of its religion which, as we have seen, was paganism surviving under a thin veneer of Christian terminology. It eventually became known as Roman Catholicism. Statues of the fertility goddess were renamed Mary. Images had been made of the Roman emperors, and all who refused to bow to the images and worship the emperors as gods were killed.

As the successors to the Roman emperors, the popes also killed those who refused allegiance to them and their religion. This is irrefutable history, which the Bible says will repeat itself under Antichrist:

[They will] make an image to the beast [Antichrist] … and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed (Revelation 13:14,15).

A pope will not be the Antichrist, but will be his right-hand man, the false prophet of Revelation 13:11-17; 19:20; 20:10. At current papal appearances, however, one observes adoration like that which the world will give Antichrist when it worships him as God.

Here We Go Again!

Pagan Romans who worshipped the emperor were not narrow-minded. They had many gods and tolerated a wide range of beliefs. Christians were not persecuted because they believed in Jesus Christ but because they believed in Him alone and would embrace no other gods, but only the God of the Bible. Catholicism is similarly tolerant of every religion and allows its members to practise everything from Yoga to voodoo so long as they remain in the Church. Both popular opinion and legislation are solidifying similar attitudes.

“Hate laws” are coming on the books in Canada, USA and elsewhere which will make it a crime to suggest anyone is wrong in his religious or moral beliefs or practices. Oddly enough, Roman Catholicism, while claiming to be the one true church, at the same time embraces all religions, as we have seen. On this count as well, the Vatican qualifies uniquely as the woman astride the beast in Revelation 17. We have seen John Paul's embrace of all religions and his claim that all gods are the same, while at the same time denouncing fundamentalist Christians. His friend and admirer, televangelist Robert Schuller, presents similar ideas from an alleged evangelical perspective: The way to “tell the good religion from the bad” is whether it is “positive”. Schuller urged “religious leaders … whatever their theology … to articulate their faith in positive terms … in a massive, united effort by leaders of all religions [to proclaim] the positive power … of world-community-building religious values.”^{Orange County Register, April 25, 1993, editorial, L01}

“World-community-building religious values” acceptable to all religions? Antichrist couldn't improve upon that New Age doubletalk! Yet Schuller is com-mended by evangelical leaders and has the largest audience each Sunday morning of any televangelist. Schuller's embrace of Roman Catholicism and his advocacy of Protestants “coming home” to Rome has been well-documented.^{E.g. Tidings, October 20, 1989; Los Angeles Herald Exanuber, September 19,1987, Religion page}

The coming world religion will be subtly, not blatantly, anti-Christian. It will, like Hitler's National Socialism, pose as positive Christianity and will be irresistibly appealing to the whole world. Like so much that we are already seeing even within evangelical circles, it will be a perversion of Christianity in the name of Christ. The same acceptance of all religions is preached by the apparitions of Mary and by the most appealing Catholic evangelist, Mother Teresa, whom no one dares to criticise because of her outstanding charitable deeds of self-sacrifice.

The worldwide fame of Mother Teresa of Calcutta has given Catholicsim acceptability with Protestants, who rightly admire her life of sacrificial charity. Rome calls her “one of the world's greatest evangelists”.^{New Evangelization 2000, first issue, July-August, 1987, p.15,} Yet her “evangelism” leads no one to Christ but encourages trust in whatever god they believe in.^{Desmond Doig, Morher Theresa: Her People and Her Work, (Harper and Row, 1976), p.156}

The Vatican and the New World Order

The new world religion will be similarly tolerant of all beliefs which are willing to unite in the charitable rescue of mankind. Uncompromising Chrisitians will be put to death for standing in the way of unity and peace. David Koresh was a false Messiah, but the massacre at Waco shows how easily the Antichrist could justify the destruction of any who deviate from the world religion. President Clinton said:

I hope very much that others who will be tempted to join cults and become involved with people like [David] Koresh will be deterred by the horrible scenes they have seen [of the immolation of the Branch Davidians at their Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Texas].... There is, unfortunately, a rise in this sort of fanaticism all over the world. And we may have to confront it again.^{Bill Clinton, President of the U.S., April20, 1993, at press conference, The New American, September 6, 1993, p.24}

It is almost frightening that the President of the United States commends the massacre at Waco as the “justice” deserved by religious fanatics. In contrast, governments cultivate partnerships with Roman Catholicism. This was so not only in past centuries, but today as well. John Paul II's relationship with Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev, Arafat, et al is well-known. His willingness to ignore injustice to keep such relationships was demonstrated early in his ponti-ficate. He visited Argentina's “three-man ruling junta [but] refuse[d] to grant an audience to the relatives of about 20,000 people who were abducted by the military and 'disappeared'.”^{National Catholic Reporter, June 19, 1992, p.4}

One reason for Antichrist's close partnership, at first, with the Vatican is seen in the importance which every nation on the earth puts upon good relations with “the most extensive international organization in the world outside of the United Nations.^{Our Sunday Visitor, January 24, 1993, p.2} U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Raymond Flynn has said, “The Vatican relationship to the United States is extraordinarily important … it is in the national interest of the United States of America to have strong diplomatic relations with the Vatican.” ^{Inside the Vatican, October 1993, p,41}

President Clinton considered his meeting with the pope in Denver to be of the utmost importance. He met several times with Ambassador Flynn in preparation for that meeting, and Flynn flew out with him in the presidential plane for continuing consultation. Less than a year later Clinton journeyed to Rome to meet with the pope in the Vatican. The whole world recognizes the importance of this relationship (and so will Antichrist):

From Rome to Washington, geopolitical analysts are talking about a “new alliance” between the world's chief military power, the U.S., and the world's chief spiritual leader, the pope. ^{Inside the Vatican, October 1993, p,37}

Soon the alliance will be between the world ruler and the Vatican. Indeed, the woman will ride the beast, so vital will be her role. Antichrist will know there can be no political peace without religious peace. Until all religions are willing to embrace one another as partners in working toward common goals there can be no global peace – and the pope, for the the previous reasons, will be essential to establish full ecumenism. When finally the religious and political leaders unite to accomplish the same goals, the kingdom of Antichrist will have arrived. Such was the situation (in imperfect union) under Vatican leadership for more than a thousand years in the past. And so it will be again, but this time with the terrifying full control that only today's computers and spy satellites can effect.

A Solemn Warning from Heaven

How could religious leaders and their followers tolerate such totalitarian-ism? The goal toward which they are working is a world church – and not one which is united so much by faith as one which is visibly united in the eyes of the entire world. They have adopted the statement:

There is no turning back … from the single ecumenical movement that unites concern for the unity of the church and concern for … the struggles of the world.^{Cited in Foundation magazine, July-August 1993, p. 7.}

That significant declaration recognizes that the world church must operate in partnership with the world government. WCC Central Committee Moderator Aram Keshishian declared in his address in August, 1993, that the WCC “must relate its doctrinal work more closely to social ethics …. Faith and Order cannot ignore the socio-political and economic dimension in its quest for church unity … Any dichotomy between Christian Faith and political involvement, between unity of the church and struggles for justice, is an ecumenical heresy.”^Ibid.

That goal will be realized. The marriage of convenience, however, between Antichrist and the false World Church won't last indefinitely. When the honeymoon is over, Antichrist will turn on and destroy the “whore” (Revelation 17:16), effecting God's will in the process (verse 17). One of the most damning indictments God makes against the woman on the beast is that she will have trafficked not only in costly “merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones” but also in “slaves and souls of men” (Revelation 18: 12,13), documented already.

In the meantime, there is a “voice from heaven” saying in awesome tones:

Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works; in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her, for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death and mourning and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her (Revelation 18:4-8).

May all those who love Christ and His gospel come together in compassion and true union to rescue as many as possible from this dire judgment.

CHAPTER 200

PURGATORY

Catholicism teaches that while Christ's death made it possible for sins to be forgiven, the pardoned sinner must himself suffer some undefined pain or torment of unknown intensity and duration in order to be purged and thereby fit for heaven. While Catholicism says it is theoretically possible to be cleansed through the sufferings in this life and one's death, no one, not even the pope himself, can know whether that has occurred. Conseqently, almost all Catholics expect to spend some unknown length of time in purgatory. Failure to accept the doctrine of purgatory brings automatic excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Bible makes no mention of purgatory. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death [i.e., eternal separation from God]” not a limited time in purgatory. We would be lost forever apart from Christ's sacrifice for our sins.

The Bible declares unequivocally that there is only one way for the soul to be cleansed: through the blood of Christ poured out upon the cross in payment for sin, and by a new birth of God's Spirit in the soul through faith in Christ and His finished redemptive work.

The Origins, Development, and Purpose of This Doctrine

The idea of purgatory, a fictitious place of final purgation, was invented by Pope Gregory the Great in 593. There was such reluctance to accept the idea (since it went contrary to Scripture) that purgatory did not become an official Catholic dogma for nearly 850 years – at the Council of Florence in 1439. No doctrine has so increased the Church's power over its members or added so much to its income. To this day, the threat of purgatory hangs over Catholics, who therefore give repeated offerings to the Church for its help in getting them out of that place of torment.

Rome promises that if its decrees are followed one will eventually be released from purgatory and enter heaven. Yet the Church has never been able to define how long any person must spend in purgatory nor how much that time is shortened by any means it offers.

The Council of Trent, Vatican II, and the resulting Code of Canon Law con-tain many complex rules for applying the merits of the living, and especially Masses, to the dead in purgation of their sins and to reduce time in purgatory.

A major developer of this horribly false but ingeniously profitable doctrine was an Augustinian monk named Augostino Trionfo. In the fourteenth century, the popes ruled as absolute monarchs over both heaven and earth. By their power to bind and loose they not only established and deposed kings and emperors, but it was believed they could open and shut the gates of heaven to mankind at will. Trionfo's genius extended this authority, at the behest of Pope John XXII, to a third realm, Purgatory.

The Bible clearly states that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). It is too late for prayer after death; all that follows is judgment.

The doctrine of purgatory errs in a number of other ways. It forgets that we have offended God's infinite justice. James says that even the smallest sin makes a sinner “guilty of [breaking] all” of the commandments (James 2:10. Why? Because any sin is rebellion against God, which separates the sinner from God for eternity. We are finite beings and could never pay the infinite penalty demanded by God's justice. Consequently there is no escape from hell, but the sinner must suffer there eternally. To “expiate” one's sins by suffering is therefore impossible.

Of course, in theory God could pay the infinite penalty demanded by His justice against sin, but that wouldn't be just because He isn't one of us. So God became man through the virgin birth. Being a sinless man and infinite God in one Person, Christ was able to satisfy the claims of His own justice so that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The only expiation of sin comes as a free gift of God's grace; any attempt to earn or merit it constitutes a rejection of God's offer of mercy to unworthy sinners. Moreover, the thought that there is any suffering at all left for a Christian to endure in payment of his sins after Christ suffered the full penalty and cried “It is finished” (John 19:30) is a blasphemous denial of the redemption that Christ effected and the salvation that He offers.

Roman Catholicism does not accept God's offer by His grace, but insists upon adding human works to what Christ has done. Although Catholicism does affirm that salvation is ultimately by grace through faith, it also states that good works (though by God's grace operating in the individual) are essential for salvation., ^{Austin Flannery, O.P., gen. ed., vol. 1, “Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences,”, Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed. (Costello Publishing, 1988), II 5, III 6, pp. 65, 68.}

him sp

CHAPTER 201

INDULGENCES

Origin of Indulgences

The very concept of indulgences comes from paganism: the idea that the infliction of pain, the recitation of formulas, or the pilgrimages to shrines and sacrifices to the gods are meritorious and influence the gods in one's favour. The idea that saying so many Hail Marys or kissing a crucifix and repeating a formula could reduce purgatorial suffering which Christ's suffering on the cross could not reduce is bad enough, but the teaching that an indulgence may be applied to the dead carries the blasphemous absurdity a quantum leap further. The idea that “time off for good behaviour” could be credited to someone in purgatory who has not done the necessary “work prescribed” betrays the fraud of Romanism. Anything is possible for a financial offering.

This blatantly unbiblical and illogical doctrine came out of the Middle Ages and is still in force today, and became the papacy's greatest money-making scheme. Theoretically, it should take only one Mass to release every soul from purgatory; Mary, whose power is infinite, could do it in a moment; and the popes, whose power is also unlimited, could empty purgatory with the stroke of a pen by simply devising an indulgence to do so. Why not, then? Do they have no love for souls? The answer is obvious.

To empty purgatory would stop the inflow of offerings for more Masses and endless graces and favours. Instead, the requirements for getting out of purgatory were made ever more complex, necessitating ever greater services from the Church. The doctrine of indulgences was at last declared an official Church dogma by Pope Clement VI in 1343. Clement reasoned that “one drop of Christ's blood would have sufficed for the redemption of the whole human race.” The remainder of that blood shed on the cross, its virtue “increased by the merits of the Blessed Virgin and the supererogatory works of the saints” (above and beyond the good works needed for their own salvation), constitutes the “treasury” referred to above. By papal bull in 1476, Pope Sixtus IV “exten-ded this privilege to souls in purgatory [reducing their time of suffering there], provided that their living relatives purchased indulgences for them.”^{Earle E. Cairnes, Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church (Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), p. 282.}

Out of this “treasury of the church” salvation/redemption is dispensed a bit at a time by the Catholic clergy through the seven sacraments. There is no way to know how much credit is granted for each deed, ritual, or indulgence, or how long this process must continue. Never is sufficient grace given to assure one of heaven. Always more Rosaries must be said, more Masses performed, more offerings given in order to obtain more grace from the Church.

In Catholicism, one never passes “from death to life” as Christ promised (John 5:24) but is always in the process of earning salvation with the Church's help and with the expectancy of finishing the “purging” process in purgatory. In fact, excommunication is the penalty for a Catholic to say he is saved and knows that he has eternal life through faith in Christ's finished work. The very heart of the gospel that evangelicals affirm is denied in Catholicism in its official catechisms, canons, decrees, and dogmas, and those who dare to affirm the biblical gospel are anathematized.

It was the sale of indulgences more than anything else that roused Luther's ire to such an extent that he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle chapel and sparked the Reformation.

It is no good to plead that the abominations of the past are no longer practised by Rome. Of course they are, and quite openly, especially in Roman Catholic countries, though less so in the United States. Yet even there, salvation (in baby steps towards heaven, of course) may be purchased by offerings to the Church. A friend whose father died recently in the United States said that more than 2000 dollars was expended for Mass cards at his father's funeral, which would allow for a number of Masses to be said on his behalf to help get him out of purgatory.

Rome has given her people a gospel of despair. Multitudes of Catholics live in dread of committing a mortal sin, of failing to reveal all in confession, of falling short of the rules and regulations their Church has set for salvation. As a consequence, they are completely at the mercy of the Church, looking to it for salvation rather than resting in God's rich grace and in Christ's finished work at Calvary.

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