The Deceivers

CATHOLICISM

Page 2 of 5

And so with this as our backdrop let us now consider the following from that Christianity Today article which I mentioned earlier, an article clearly written in a spirit of praise for the late Pope John Paul II.

When Karol Wojtyla stepped out on the Vatican balcony on October 16, 1978, as the new Pope John Paul II, waving to the crowds in St. Peter's Square on the first day of his auspicious papacy, the person preaching for him in his home pulpit back in Krakow, Poland, was none other than Billy Graham. Behind that fact is a surprising story of the late pope's personal involvement with American evangelicals. With his passing, it is time to tell that story.

In the mid-1970s, American mission organizations like the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association began taking the gospel behind the Iron Curtain to Eastern Europe. After Graham's first "communist" crusade in Hungary in 1977, he was invited to the predominately Catholic country of Poland by the tiny Protestant community there, which amounted to less than 1 percent of the population. Just as in his 1957 New York City crusade, Graham wanted to work with as many Catholics as possible (David Scott, "The Pope We Never Knew," May 2005, p.34, emphasis added).

You know I'm just not a good enough writer to make all this stuff up! It is truly amazing to watch this chain of events unfold. Can you believe what we just read from Christianity-Lite &endash; oops I mean - Christianity Today, a magazine founded by Billy Graham along with a couple of other Evangelical Protestants.

And in this May issue we read: "Graham wanted to work with as many Catholics as possible." Why thank you Billy Graham! I wonder how John Hus and Luther and Latimer and Ridley would view that pathetically nauseating stand regarding the Church of Rome by a professed Protestant Evangelical. And one who is revered as a Christian statesman at that! How far we are sinking.

Now just watch how these events will unfold for us. Later on in that very same article itself we are told that just about the time Pope John Paul II sealed his own doom by accepting the papacy, the late Bill Bright founder of Campus Crusade For Christ, met with the late Father Franciszek Blachnicki. A man who just "happened" to be a close friend of the Pope. It would appear interesting that neither of these men reside on this planet any longer. "Except for a "few fine points," Bright concluded, "there was basically no difference between what he believed and what I believed" (ibid., p.36). Really? Yes, we've heard all that before.

Here is some further proof of Satan's subtlety and lies. It seems that, "Little more than a decade later, in 1994, Bright was one of the signers of Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) - a statement of shared convictions by 40 Protestant and Catholic leaders" (ibid). Indeed Bright was one of the signers of ECT, along with Southern Baptist statesman Chuck Colson, who was one of the men who helped to draft that dubious document!

You may remember that ECT first came out it was the subject for discussion in a series on The John Ankerberg Show which featured Dr. D. James Kennedy, Dr. R.C. Sproul and Dr. John MacArthur. What you might not know was that Dr. J.I. Packer and Colson met with these men later in Kennedy's office and defended their being involved with ECT in the first place. Now in this Christianity Today article years later we find out how all this came about. "Bright attributed his support [of ECT] to his personal confidence in the spiritual authenticity of Catholic reformers like Wojtyla and Blachnicki, a trust that was established through their history of working together" (ibid., emphasis added). Are you able to discern the conniving work of the father of lies - the Devil - here?

And tragically the truth gets even more twisted. "Wojtyla's papacy benefited from his exposure to American evangelicalism. Through his global travels to reinvigorate the Catholic Church, he became…'the most visible pope in history,' yet he did so in worldwide open-air crusades whose staging is more typical of Billy Graham than the Vatican" (ibid, p.37, emphasis added). The truth is these Evangelicals were being used by Pope John Paul II in his attempt to make the Church of Rome look before the world like it really is this organization of tolerance, and that it is actually interested in working on real reforms with Protestants.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then look at who else ends up being mentioned in the article.

The late pope had seen how mass mobilization centered on a conservative piety could accelerate church renewal. Later he approached the challenges of his papacy with the same mix of traditional spirituality and popular mobilization.

In this respect, John Paul II was not all that different from Bill Hybels or Rick Warren. He tried to harness the forms of popular culture to conservative piety in order to reinvigorate the church. Ironically, while much of American Catholicism has resisted Wojtyla's conservatism, many lapsed American Catholics have fueled the growth of evangelical megachurches such as Willow Creek and Saddleback (ibid.).

You do have to admit, it is rather curious how all these names, keep showing up all intertwined isn't it? You need to know that the Church Growth Movement and the ecumenical movement are simply two sides of the same coin of apostasy. And should you still have doubts that the Lord is trying to alert us to something untoward here - now we uncover the wolf in sheep's clothing. The reader is asked to look closely at this last part of our examination of this Christianity Today article. For you must understand that Pope John Paul II: who as a bishop oversaw American evangelicals working in his diocese in Poland is the same pope who called evangelicals in South America "rapacious wolves" for their evangelism of Catholics.

In Poland, foreign evangelicalism posed no threat to the cultural monopoly held by the Polish Catholic church, so evangelicals' assistance was gladly accepted in the fight against communism, but in South America, evangelicals were the competition.

The pope who in his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint invited input from non-Catholic Christians on the primacy of the office of Peter, is the same man whose Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1999 declared the primacy of Peter "immutable" (ibid., emphasis added).

Anyone who has read Vatican I could have told you that would happen. "Chapter 2." of "Session 4" - July 18, 1870 - of the official record begins with these words - "On the permanence of the primacy of blessed Peter in the Roman pontiffs" (http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.HTM#6). Pope John Paul II's empty words are simply regurgitating Roman Catholic dogma as articulated some 129 years prior! Such are the words of The Deceivers, and Jesus told us, "By their fruit you will recognize them" (Matthew 7:16).

It would certainly appear that John Paul II was acting as a hypocrite in 1999 and never had any intention of altering the papacy &endash; for Rome will never surrender this permanent man-made office - which is the very zenith of human pride. I tell you in the Lord, when the Roman Catholic Church installed Pope Benedict XVI she sealed her fate for all eternity, and those who have eyes to see have seen it for themselves.

Now; let's take a moment to consider the following from the Second Vatican Council held by the Church of Rome in the mid 1960's. This would be some 30 years before Pope John Paul II would have "invited input from non-Catholic Christians on the primacy of the office of Peter." Please look very carefully at the following quote from Lumen Gentium - "Solemnly Promulgated By Holiness Pope Paul VI On November 21, 1964" - just as the office granted individually to Peter, the first among the apostles is permanent and is to be transmitted to his successors, so also the apostles' office of nurturing the Church is permanent, and is to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops. (14*) Therefore, the Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, (15*) as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ. (149)(16*) (Lumen Gentium,

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html, copy on file, emphasis added).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------