Pinto on Rome in America

Still hoping to get up a series on the history of Roman Catholicism. Meanwhile, here's a link to Chris Pinto's radio show for the 3rd, Elton John, the Pope, and Fox's Book of Martyrs, in which most pertinently he reads from the Preface to an 1833 edited edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which is essentially a warning to America because the RCC wolf is now loose in our midst. (Let me add again: it's the papacy that is the subject of such warnings, not ordinary Catholics who don't usually know much about the papacy or RCC history.) 

The Colonies had laws that severely restricted Roman Catholicism from any political or other influence in America, but with the First Amendment they got freedoms which gave them free rein, and which they immediately took advantage of.   Would that all those who call themselves Protestants made themselves aware of this history we've been deprived of.  It should help to wake us up. 

A movie that destroys the meaning of the Biblical Noah

UPDATE April 3: There are things about the movie I'd like to see, as shown in the trailers, mostly the special effects. It looks like they may have done a good job with the design of the ark for instance, and the rain and things like that. But those things are incidental and overall I really do have to conclude that it's such an anti-Biblical anti-God project that I shouldn't support it by paying to see it. Even when I heard Olasky and Cal Thomas favoring it I felt their discernment is faulty, but there are others in favor as well so it seems right to give them a hearing -- if I had the motivation which right now I don't, I'm preoccupied elsewhere. For now I go with the critics.

Here's a page from Eric Barger's ministry. Here's one of the main ones that Barger and others have recommended on the subject: Pastor Joe Schimmel

UPDATE April 2: Maybe I should try to see this film. There are strong Christian opinions both for and against it. Cal Thomas and Marvin Olasky have positive things to say about it for instance.  Maybe I'll be able to say more later.   

========Earlier post:

I can't really blog on the movie "Noah" because I haven't seen it and don't expect to, but from everything I've heard it's a horrible travesty that Christians shouldn't support by paying to see it, and I should at least pass on that information. 

Apparently its main message is that God wiped out humanity because we were abusing the environment, making it basically the Green Agenda projected onto the Biblical story.  Animals are good, human beings are bad.  "Noah" thinks God really wanted to save only the animals, and wants ALL people dead including himself and his family.  So after they are in the ark it sounds like he becomes a version of the father in The Shining, terrorizing the family as he thinks he's supposed to kill them, or at least the grandchild his daughter-in-law is soon to deliver.  He can't go through with it in the end, but the impression that gives is that God is evil and "Noah" at least has a spark of humanity left in him. 

So there isn't even a pretense of telling the actual Biblical story, in which Noah is a foreshadowing of Christ, chosen by God because of his faith, to save a few out of a desperately sinful humanity.

What's really distressing is to think some Christian ministries have recommended this mangling of the Biblical message.  According to some reviewers it doesn't even have the mitigating factors of being well done with a good script and exciting story, as characterized Braveheart and Gladiator,  movies the advertisements falsely compare it with.

It's no surprise that the Pope gave it his blessing of course, since he's not interested in Biblical truth.

Chris Pinto did a lengthy radio show review of it HERE

Are There Any American Ian Paisleys in Congress Willing to Shout Down the Pope?

UPDATE: A friend emailed me the question, "What about the separation of church and state?" Good question. Since that principle got the revisionist treatment in the last few decades, we can no longer have prayer in the schools, we can no longer have Christian Christmas displays in public places, we can no longer have the Ten Commandments in the Courthouse, but let me guess: Nobody is going to protest the presence of the abomination of the Pope in the Congress.

==============================================Earlier post:

The answer to my title is "Not that I know of."

Here's the context: Catholic members of the US Congress, Republican John Boehner and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, have invited Pope Francis to speak to a Joint Session of the Congress. I heard about this as I often do from Chris Pinto, who spent a few minutes on it toward the end of yesterday's radio show on The Crimean Vote for Russia. He mentions the invitation to the Pope starting at 29:00. Since this new Pope is a radical even by comparison with earlier Popes, Pinto wonders why the supposedly conservative Boehner should be so willing to have him speak. Being Catholic apparently trumps other allegiances.

This would be a first, a hideously shameful first. No Pope has ever been invited to speak to Congress before.

Here are a couple of articles on the invitation to the Pope:

Huffington Post

ABC News Blog

What immediately came to my mind was the incident in 1988 when Irish Protestant Pastor Ian Paisley, a member of the European Parliament, angry at the invitation of the Pope to speak to the Parliament without the consent of members such as himself, shouted out that the Pope is the Antichrist just as the pontiff began to speak.

Here's an article on the event from the New York Times .

Paisley was one of a kind then and I suspect he has no representatives in America today.  I'd like to be proved wrong about this.

What good would it do?  You may ask.  Just as Dr. Paisley was summarily escorted out of the European Parliament, anyone today attempting such a statement would meet with a similar response.  We've got a Congress full of Catholics, and the few Protestants haven't the perspective to know that the Pope is the Antichrist.  Forget the unbelievers of the nation.  Too many have been brainwashed to think the Pope represents Christianity and that to object to him is to be "unloving," just as to object to gay marriage is now considered to be "unloving." And besides, they LIKE his radical antiChristian anticapitalist stance. 

So, again, what good would it do?  Maybe nothing pf any note in this fallen world, but God will reward those who stand up for the truth against the Antichrist, and it might even wake up some blinded "Protestants" and bring some backbone into the churches. 

Might. 

A weary word on Christian infighting

There seems to be an escalation of arguments between some Christian ministries these days that takes up an awful lot of time.  I've not been following most of it lately but first became aware of it because of the attacks on Jonathan Cahn over his book The Harbinger which I defended here for many months.  The last thing I posted on that subject was an interview of Cahn by Chris Rosebrough, someone I'd never heard of to that point.  I thought he did a very fair job of interviewing Cahn and bringing out the unfairness of the criticisms against him.  The ministries that attacked Cahn are very respectable ministries you don't really want to criticize in turn, but the attacks were so unfair you have to point out the unfairness.  And I personally believe you have to name the ministries or otherwise all you do is create confusion.

Then I more or less backed away from the controversies.  But it was Chris Rosebrough who hosted the debate between James White and Chris Pinto on his radio show on Wednesday, and looking up more on the debate at You Tube I found a program he did a couple months ago in which he was taking Pinto to task for slandering a friend of his, asking that Pinto apologize.

I don't want to get into all THIS either, but I listened to the first part of that radio show and felt that now Chris Rosebrough is the one being unfair.   He goes on at great length explaining how Chris Pinto had committed this sin of slander and I started getting impatient to hear the evidence.  Then when he played the audio in question it seemed to me he was completely misjudging Pinto's point.  I wish I had access to Pinto's whole show now but I don't, so this is based just on that part I heard.  Pinto described Rosebrough's friend as someone who had gone to Harvard Divinity School and then described Harvard Divinity School as where a certain professor who promoted Christian homosexuality had taught.  Rosebrough took that as insinuating that his friend was gay or supported gay Christianity but all Pinto was saying was that Harvard Divinity School is really not the kind of institution where a professing Christian should seek his education;  it's not the sort of institution where you could expect to get solid Biblical teaching.  I heard nothing more than that.  According to Rosebrough Pinto edited that part of the program afterward, but I didn't hear anything in it along the lines Rosebrough was suggesting anyway.  I couldn't listen past the first few minutes because Rosebrough was going on and on with this misjudgment and I got tired of it, so I hope I didn't miss something I needed to hear.

And now there is the debate between Pinto and White which has required me to be more aware than usual of how heated the Bible controversies can get.  And in this case Pinto is being accused quite offhandedly of being a conspiracy thinker.  As if he was jumping to conclusions from a lack of evidence, which is what that usually means, but in fact the conclusion of conspiracy is clearly based on the facts he's been researching.

I wish I could say Pinto had won the debate.  He did a very nice job of presenting his thinking and his research, but I have to conclude, as I titled my blog post on it at the Bible blog, that Truth lost the debate.  Truth just doesn't win debates these days.  That's just the way it is.  People who win debates are glib and scholarly, they demand certainty and don't have much patience with the kind of probing and inconclusiveness Pinto's research requires.   I concluded that the important issues involving the Bible versions come down to spiritual discernment and I agree with that more and more as I think about it.  That's a virtue that isn't usually evident in scholarly debate.  It isn't evident, period, in the defenders of the Westcott and Hort Greek texts or anything having to do with textual criticism or the modern Bibles.

The First Thanksgiving WAS What We've Been Traditionally Taught it Was, Contrary to the Revisionist History Concocted by Leftists

UPDATE: 

Just heard a Special Program on Pilgrim Radio, my local Christian radio, Remembering Pilgrims, created by Moody Radio.  It did a very nice job of dramatizing some of the events and interviewing experts to give basically the same information I've covered below. 

Wish it was available online somewhere so I could link to it but it doesn't seem to be.

====================================================

Didn't get a Thanksgiving message together this year but maybe I can get a brief belated one up at least.  Chris Pinto did a message on the first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims, demonstrating that they DID have a feast that included turkey and they DID share it with the peaceable friendly Indians who were their neighbors, contrary to some propaganda we've heard in recent years that says the Pilgrims didn't get along with the Indians and so on. 

Here's the link to his radio show page, where you can find his Thanksgiving show for November 27th over the next few days, until it rolls into his website where you have to subscribe to listen.

He begins by reading some psalms of Thanksgiving, for the first nine minutes or so, and then starts to get into the story of the first Pilgrims, how they had many tragedies and many died the first winter but how they had a good harvest the next year and that was the reason for the Thanksgiving celebration, which they planned to last three days.

Edward Winslow was the assistant governor to Bradford and wrote a report on the Thanksgiving celebration.  Pinto quotes from Winslow's account, which he wrote in a letter in December of the year of the celebration, which is published at the website Mayflower History dot com.  Winslow reports that they had a good harvest of wheat and Indian corn although some of their other crops hadn't done so well.  After they got in the harvest four men went out and brought back enough fowl to feed the company for a week.  They were joined by neighboring Indians including Chief Massasoit and ninety of his men, whom the Pilgrims entertained and feasted for the three days, after which the Indians went out and killed five deer, which they presented to the governor.

So there it is from an eyewitness at the time who participated in the feast, who ought to know.  So that those historians who emphasize the conflicts with the Indians that did occur but at different places and at other times are simply wrong to discount the story of the first Thanksgiving and the basis for our continuing to celebrate it. 

Twenty years later Governor Bradford wrote his History of Plymouth Plantation in which he also described the great plenty they enjoyed that second year although he doesn't describe the Thanksgiving feast itself.  He describes the abundance they enjoyed including fish and fowl along with a peck (two gallons) of meal per person per week, and mentions that they also had many wild turkeys.   Winslow doesn't mention the turkeys so we can thank Bradford for that piece of our historical lore that justifies our continuing way of celebrating the holiday. 

Pinto goes on to mention another historical document written by a visitor to the plantation, a William Hilton, who arrived on a ship called The Fortune soon after that first Thanksgiving.  He wrote home to England about... turkeys! AND reports that the neighboring Indians were "peaceable and friendly," which contradicts a lot of that revisionist history about the murderous white man who couldn't possibly have celebrated a friendly feast with the Indians.   Hilton also describes the abundance of natural foods in the land, from nuts and berries to fish and fowl and game, and also describes the people as genuinely godly Christians.

So is the traditional story of Thanksgiving vindicated.

Pinto then goes into a discussion of a website called The Kasama Project which promotes Communism and seeks a Communist takeover of America, and includes a page titled Native Blood:  The Myth of Thanksgiving, all about how the first white settlers wouldn't have invited Indians to a feast but only murdered them and stole their land from them, and about "the ruthless ways of capitalism"* ("unlike the Communists," Pinto goes on, who murdered over a hundred million people in the twentieth century alone). 

He mentions the Salem Witch Trials in relation to the idea that the white settlers were nothing but murderers (while of course the Communists are the peace lovers who murder the unborn along with anybody who objects to Communism when they are in power).  He says he got this information in the mail about how the Salem leaders had a day of fasting and contrition for that blot in their history.

Another website Pinto mentions is Pilgrim Hall dot org.

I might as well also include a link to my post on Thanksgiving from 2010 which also deals with the propaganda that seeks to denigrate this part of American history

=============================================
*We need to be praying against Communism too.  Another subject I might do a post on if I can get to it is the Pope's recent denunciation of capitalism, which I heard Rush Limbaugh talked about on his show yesterday. 

Some Warnings Against the Bogus Bibles, Against the Bogus "health care plan," and Against the Bogus "Palestinian cause" plus Update on Jesuits

11/20 UPDATE:

Chris Pinto's radio show today is about Jesuit influence, particularly in Scotland. He quotes from J A Wylie's book on the history of Protestantism (It's listed at my Catholicism blog).   In passing he mentions a book about Vatican influence in Nazi Germany.  The book is available but so is this video Interview with John Cornwell about his book, Hitler's Pope.

=============================

THE GREAT BIBLE HOAX:

After writing yesterday's post for the Bible Hoax blog I went back and listened again to Chris Pinto's radio show The Burning of the Bibles, which I'd linked in the previous post at that blog, because I remembered that it gives support to some of the claims I was making about Westcott and Hort's Bible revision of 1881.  It does, and it's an excellent outline of the whole Bible debacle that was hatched in the 19th century and has been creating chaos ever since, causing the English Bible to be brought into doubt.  Yes we're talking conspiracy.  The revision of 1881 was more of an attempt to destroy the King James Bible by people under the influence of the Vatican than it was any kind of legitimate revision.  This is what Chris Pinto has been repeatedly documenting for some time, and this particular radio show does a very nice job of outlining the whole story.

I started that blog based on the writings of John Burgon, a contemporary of Westcott and Hort's who saw their revision as an indefensible undermining of the Bible, which he called "poisoning the river of life," and wrote a series of critiques of the revision that became the monumental book The Revision Revised.   Although Burgon's name has been used by a King-James-Only organization, The Dean Burgon Society,  Burgon did not give King-James-Only arguments.  His effort was entirely to show the scholarly deficiencies of the 1881 revision, both in their substitution of corrupted Greek manuscripts for those underlying the King James, and in their mangling of the English translation itself by thousands of unnecessary changes, both against the instructions that had been given to the revising committee. 

What Chris Pinto does is show that there were very likely ulterior motives to their mutilation of the King James Bible, specifically in the use of the corrupted Greek manuscripts, and that these motives were most likely fostered under the influence of the Vatican.  The Vatican of course had, and still has, strong motives to bring down the Reformation, which had deposed it from its former power in Europe, of which the King James Bible was the crown jewel.

This particular radio show was inspired by an incident in which Catholic priests in America burned the King James Bible in the year 1834, as reported by the Protestant writer John Dowling, but Pinto doesn't get to that incident until late in the show because he gets sidetracked by the fact that the criticisms of the King James used by Catholic apologists as reported by Dowling are the same as those unwittingly given by supposedly Protestant Bible textual critics today.

The title of Dowling's book is The Burning of the Bibles:  Defense of the Protestant Version of the Scriptures Against the Attacks of Popish Apologists for the Champlain Bible Burners,  and Pinto says that the arguments Dowling describes as those of the Catholic apologists for the burning of the Bibles

...are arguments that are nearly identical to your textual critics in modern times, who don't realize that many of their arguments come from the Roman Catholic Church ...  even though these guys are professing Protestant evangelical, sometimes neo-Reformed...  the arguments they make about the Bible and its history...come from Roman Catholic apologists, and Jesuits and rationalists...who have made these arguments for hundreds of years.  And of course I believe that because Higher Criticism gained the upper hand in the 19th century, largely as a result of events surrounding the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus, and because of the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus, this is what led to the full-blown exploitation of unbelieving Higher Criticism in our colleges and universities...  and as a direct result of the Higher Critical arguments gaining the upper hand, what immediately happened after was the beginning of modern-day ecumenism...

This gets him into a discussion of how the revising committee of 1881 introduced the corrupted Greek manuscripts, but especially how their arguments came to dominate today's Bible scholarship. He says we have to understand that

...Westcott, Hort, Scrivener, all of these guys, were Anglo-Catholics... That's why they invited Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was the leader of the Oxford Movement, to come and sit on the committee with them.... Cardinal Newman, his entire purpose was to reclaim England for Rome.

The plot goes on thickening from there, through the work of Phillip Schaff who did the American version of the English revision, how Schaff kissed the feet of the Pope and how he was a keynote speaker at the ecumenical Parliament of World Religions of 1893 which included Buddhists and the satanic Theosophists Blavatsky and Annie Besant among the bogus "Christians" and so on and so forth. This is all within the first six minutes of the radio show, and it goes on from there until he finally gets back to Dowling's book in the middle of the second half of the show.   Listen and weep.  That's what happens to me when I hear this stuff.

What can I say.  I pray and hope that Chris Pinto's work might change the minds of some of those Protestant Christian spokesmen today who are committed to the modern Bible versions.  I pray for James White and Daniel Wallace and John MacArthur who are very influential Reformed Christian leaders who are unwittingly supporting these Vatican-inspired Bibles that are contributing to the destruction of Protestant Christendom.  Why?  Because they have put their trust in Bible scholars, some of whom were unbelievers, such as Bruce Metzger, and Jesuits.  If there is a lesson here from the Bible itself, it must be the many warnings to us to avoid the "wisdom of this world."  It's just another of the devil's strongholds we are to bring down through the spiritual weapons we have been given in the Word itself.

=============================
So I wanted to point back to that radio show today, hoping hoping hoping my voice joined with Chris Pinto's and others who are saying the same things might help turn the tide against the Antichrist Vatican's plots -- if it might by God's providence reach some open ears.

But Protestant Christendom is so far gone these days, so completely under God's judgment, so mutilated and dying, I wonder how much hope is there that the Lord might have mercy on us at this late hour.

There are so many fronts on which we need that mercy these days, the Bible versions are just one of them. 

=============================

THE PLANNED OBAMACARE TRAIN WRECK

I just heard a radio show Jan Markell hosted on Saturday, on two separate topics, Obamacare and Israel that constitute two such fronts, that was something like being punched twice in the stomach:  one, the second, was on The Planned Train Wreck of Obamacare, which suggests that this was never a legitimate health care plan, which many of us knew anyway, but a designed attack on American capitalism.

There's a whole lot that needs to be said about how capitalism is a specifically PROTESTANT system, that brought about the unprecedented prosperity of Protestant America, and how socialism is the economic system of the Vatican, whose work can be seen in the miserable poverty of Catholic nations.  This wasn't part of Jan Markell's show, but it's necessary background.  All this stuff was new to me over the last year, and I've hardly even touched on it in my blogs.  All I'm going to do here is say this much and hope others who are still in the dark about these things, as I was, will do the research.  I've listed many sources on such things at my Catholicism blog.  Check out the book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, which is available at The Trinity Foundation for some eye-opening revelations about Catholic economics.

THE EVANGELICAL POLITICAL ABANDONMENT OF ISRAEL

The second punch in the stomach from Jan Markell's weekend radio show was on the fact that the growth of Reformed theology in American churches has contributed to the political abandonment of Israel in evangelical circles, in favor of supporting the "Palestinian" cause against Israel.  This is apparently due to the Reformed theology that says the Church has replaced Israel in God's plan, which I've discussed here before as in my opinion a misunderstanding of what scripture teaches.  I believe the Church is the fulfillment of God's plan that He began with believing Israel, not a replacement but a fulfillment, a continuation.  It isn't the result of God's rejection of Israel but the completion of His plan through the coming of the promised Messiah, which goes back to Eden.  Apparently some Reformed or Covenant theology sees it as a substitution instead of a fulfillment.  In either case it is true that earthly Israel is no longer God's people as only BELIEVING Israel is God's people and that's the Church. 

HOWEVER, we're also talking about spiritual Israel versus earthly Israel (or "Jacob") as I've looked at it -- and I could be wrong about this way of looking at it but it makes sense of some things for me.   Looking at it this way, there is no "replacement" of Israel at all.  Earthly Israel today is the playing out of Old Testament teaching as misunderstood by unbelieving Jews, but it makes no sense to me to take the Reformed view that God has utterly abandoned them, let alone to treat them as some kind of specially evil earthly nation.  God hasn't abandoned a single earthly nation on this planet, why would He abandon the Jews who represent His firstborn chosen people?  If only for the honor of His name among the peoples God is not going to abandon even apostate earthly Israel. 

We know from scripture that a time will come when a huge number of Jews will recognize their true Messiah, and we also know that Jesus is going to return to the Mount of Olives.  God hasn't abandoned that piece of real estate or the Jewish people even in their apostate condition.  And how can it be denied that they are THERE, on that land that God originally gave Abraham?  That couldn't happen without God's willing it.  Yes, that land was a type of a heavenly Promised Land that Abraham himself looked to, as so much of the Old Testament gives us types that point to Christ and our redemption through Him, but in earthly terms it still represents that promise God gave to him. 

AND historically speaking God has clearly supported the nation of Israel miraculously against many of the attacks by her Arab neighbors since she became a nation in 1948.  There is no doubt in my mind that Israel, for all her unbelief, is still under God's protection and still figures in God's plan for the finale of Planet Earth.  AT THE SAME TIME there is also no doubt in my mind that earthly Israel is under God's judgment for their apostasy and rejection of their Messiah, which can certainly be seen in their being surrounded by implacable enemies.  Only God could juggle these two facts but that's what He's doing.

Theologically it makes no sense to treat Israel as if it doesn't exist or isn't in fact back on that particular piece of land given to them, but it's also political and historical blindness to take up the "Palestinian" cause against Israel.  Surely the Palestinians are a miserable people we need to pray for, but they are the pawns of their Israel-hating leaders who invented the whole idea of a "Palestinian people" in the first place to be a thorn in the side of Israel. 

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.  The area known as Palestine was almost barren of population when the Jews began to settle it.  It had no official name, it had no government, it had no "people."  Mark Twain wrote a description of the land as a wilderness on his visit there in the late 19th century.  The accusation that the Jews stole the land from a "Palestinian people" is just bogus.  They bought whatever land was owned by the few who owned it, but the over five million people who today take the name of "Palestinians" are the descendants of citizens of all the surrounding Arab nations who originally came to the area to work for the Jews as their nation was being built up.  When the first Arab attack on Israel was planned, the Arabs living in Israel were warned to flee the country to protect themselves.  They became the "Palestinian" refugees whose refugee status was then blamed on Israel although it came about through the Arab warning of the imminent attack.

Over the decades attempts to bring peace to the region between Israel and the "Palestinians" have included many generous concessions by Israel to form a Palestinian State, that were nevertheless rejected by the "Palestinians," over and over and over, and yet the reason for this continues to go unrecognized by most of the world:  the refusal to accept any compromise whatever with the nation the Arabs want not to exist at all, and which their maps show as not existing at all.  There is NO peace plan that will ever work for this reason.   America has been right all these decades to support Israel, but the ridiculous "peace plans" we've tried to foist on the region show a basic blindness to the true political situation.

The "Palestinian" cause has been invented entirely as a ruse to give Israel a bad reputation in the eyes of the world and ultimately to eliminate the nation from the planet altogether as many Arab leaders have so often made clear is their desire.   There is a book which details this plot through historical facts and quotes that is available at Amazon,  Philistine: The Great Deception, by Ramon Bennett, which I got from the ministry of The Berean Call back before 9/11. 

Whatever your theology, the historical facts ought to tell you that supporting the "Palestinian cause" which is founded on devious Arab plots against Israel, is not the side to be on.

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We need a new Protestant Reformation.    

Again I Point to the Work of Chris Pinto in calling down the Roman Church as the Antichrist Plotter of Plots.

A friend listened to Chris Pinto's radio show on The Final Antichrist that I linked at my Catholicism blog yesterday and was fascinated and edified by it, which encourages me to continue to give Chris Pinto's work top billing at my blogs.  My friend was lamenting about how stupid we all are about history, which we may find out by listening to Chris Pinto for one. 

So I thought I'd edit my answer to him for the sake of anybody reading this.   I do my blogs in the hope of being useful to the Church, after all, which is up to God of course and I don't get much notice out here in Cyberboonieville but that's no reason to stop.  So here's some stuff as I laid it out for my friend, that I've learned through Chris Pinto's work, through his documentary films and his radio shows and articles.

One reason we're all so stupid about history is that Jesuits have rewritten many of our history books to obscure and downplay the role of the Vatican in all their evil doings, from the Inquisition to attempts to assassinate the leaders of nations, even the whole English government at one time (The Gunpowder Plot), to their work to take the American continent for the Pope (recognized by the first Protestant settlers, as described in Bradford and Winthrop's writings), to their role in the assassination of Lincoln (sources are Charles Chiniquy and Paul Serup), to their influence on the Bible manuscript and translation committees, including their forgeries of "ancient manuscripts" designed to discredit the King James Bible, which used to be common knowledge, and much more, all of which I learned through Chris Pinto's ministry.

He is not a scholar, but a guy who used to want to be an actor and now makes documentary films, but he's got the instincts of a historian and collects all kinds of old books with all this information in them that has been suppressed over the last century or so.  I've linked to many of them in the right margin of my Catholicism blog.  I don't know of anybody else who is doing anything comparable that could be of so much benefit to the Church and I pray for him, that the knowledge he has been trying to get out would be picked up by the Church at large so we won't have to remain stupid about who our enemies are.

Right now if you research any of these topics you'll find you are directed to a lot of Catholic revisionism and disinformation.  If you love the idea of the Pope ruling the world through a reestablished Holy Roman Empire along with a new Inquisition, which we believe would in fact be fulfillment of prophecy, then choose the Catholic sources.  But if you love the idea of truth and freedom you might consider finding out what Chris Pinto has to say and put off the fulfillment of prophecy for another season.

Both Pinto and my friend are ex-Catholics by the way, and it is always necessary to say that in attacking the RCC nobody is attacking Catholics as such, who don't know anything about this history but need to learn it so they can escape the clutches of the Vatican, which is what the Reformers and their followers did.  The Vatican is still working strenuously but stealthily behind the scenes to bring down the Protestant Reformation, and making quite a bit of headway, too, judging from the signs of the times. 

I hope many will be inspired to learn what Chris Pinto has been bringing to our attention and do their own deep study of all of it.

************WE NEED A NEW PROTESTANT REFORMATION************

Rethinking the Mark of the Beast

I always thought the Mark of the Beast, which is described in Revelation 13 as a mark put on hand or forehead of those who follow the Antichrist, would irrevocably damn any person who received it.  So when the Left Behind series said a person could repent of it I thought that was heresy.  Then I heard in the summer of 2012 of a Christian teacher who said the same thing and wrote a blog post suggesting he must be a heretic too.  

Now it looks like I should apologize for that as repentance from the Mark is taught by two Christian teachers I think highly of:

First, John MacArthur whose position is that no sin is unforgiveable if it is repented of.

Then, Chris Pinto who goes back to the Reformers, showing that they identified the Mark as connected with the Roman Catholic rite of Confirmation, which was said to implant an indelible mark on the confirmed person.  If that is the identity of the Mark, then obviously one can repent of it or nobody could ever be saved out of the RCC.  Pinto discussed the Mark in some recent radio shows:

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_MARK.GOSPEL.REVELATION_10.17.13.mp3  Mark's Ending and the Mark of the Beast, October 17

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_MARK.OF.THE.BEAST.TWO_10.21.13.mp3
The Mark of the Beast, Part 2, October 19

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_HISTORY.MARK.OF.BEAST_10.21.13.mp3
History of the Mark of the Beast, October 25

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_REPENT.MARK.BEAST_10.22.13.mp3
Repentance From the Mark of the Beast, October 25

Bogus Bibles: A Complete Tangent to the Strange Fire issues but it was getting to me

It kept bothering me as I listened to the Strange Fire Conference so I'd like to register my objections:

BIBLE VERSIONS
I have a separate blog on the Bible manuscript controversies, The Great Bible Hoax of 1881,  and am probably hypersensitive to quotations from any of the modern Bibles, having come to regard them as based on the bogus Greek manuscripts that were introduced into all our new Bibles with the Revision of 1881.  At the Conference every time a lengthy quotation was read from -- presumably --  the New American Standard, I cringed.  The English is just plain awful in that translation, which is a different problem from the fact that it's also one of the modern versions that is based on the Critical Text, which includes the corrupt Westcott and Hort Greek text.  The NAS is considered to be a good "literal" translation, but in fact it is a klutzy rendering that is deaf to English, attempting to render the Greek in ways that are simply alien to the English language.   For one thing, it keeps on saying "keeps on doing" this that or the other, which is NOT the way ongoing action is normally conveyed in English.  John Burgon pointed out this strange mistreatment of English  -- yes it's a legacy from the 1881 Revision -- in his book, The Revision Revised, a massive critique of the 1881 Revision put out by the Westcott-and-Hort-dominated committee.

THE STRANGE FIRE CONFERENCE IS BASED ON ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, IT IS BASED ON SOLA SCRIPTURA, AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE THIS ALWAYS AFFIRM THAT OUR BIBLE IS INERRANT.  BUT ALL THESE VARIOUS BIBLE VERSIONS, AND ESPECIALLY THE CORRUPTED GREEK TEXTS CONSIDERED TO BE THE "OLDEST AND BEST" ALTHOUGH THEY ARE FULL OF CORRECTIONS AND ERRORS, TESTIFY TO ERROR, NOT INERRANCY.  THE "SCHOLARLY" ASSESSMENT DOES LEAD SOME CANDID THINKERS TO THE FALSE BUT NOT UNREASONABLE CONCLUSION THAT THE BIBLE IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY.   THE CHURCH NEVERTHELESS CONTINUES TO AFFIRM BIBLE INERRANCY, WHICH WE SHOULD DO IN ANY CASE, BUT BECAUSE OF THESE FALSE MANUSCRIPTS THE DEVIL HAS BEEN BUSY USING ALL THOSE BOGUS BIBLES QUITE PLAUSIBLY TO TEACH SOMETHING ELSE. 

AEON
Burgon also pointed out the equally bizarre mistranslation of the Greek word "aeon" as "age" as opposed to the King James rendering, "world."   "Age" is now in most of the new Bibles and is staunchly defended as the "correct" meaning of the Greek term, at the Conference by Justin Peters if I recall correctly, although Westcott and Hort's insistence on it merely demonstrated their ignorance of nuances of translation from Greek to English (OR possibly a more sinister motive?  They DESPISED the Textus Receptus and the King James).  Of course it also bothers me that it wouldn't just be obvious that the King James translators were the highest caliber scholars who knew Greek far better than W and H did, but maybe you have to read Dean Burgon to have a sense of the difference. 

YAHWEH
And I also cringe at the name "Yahweh" as the Name of God in the place of "Jehovah."  As for the scholarly excuses for the change - the reasons are NOT as clear as is often claimed -- even at best they are not worth the confusion and disruption of the historical usage in the minds of millions of English speaking Bible readers, not to mention the disruption of the literary and cultural heritage of centuries.  Not only does it sound to me like the name of a tribal god, a lesser god, but it shows only too tellingly the lengths to which some "scholars" are willing to go to undermine the King James Bible in one way or another.  There was NOTHING wrong with "Jehovah" just as there was nothing wrong with MANY of the English words in that Bible that the Westcott and Hort Committee chose to change, some 36 thousand UNNECESSARY changes in the English alone, that went on to spawn more and more change-for-change's sake in subsequent translations (although much of that is due to the fact that a certain number of differences from other versions is necessary for a translation to qualify for copyright). 

It's something of a puzzle why people do not simply HEAR the problem when all these different translations are compared, not to mention why we don't hear the confusion that is created by simply HAVING so many translations used by so many Christians, the cacophony, the confusion of tongues, even the simple inability to locate a verse because you've remembered its wording from a different translation.  The effect is to GARBLE THE BIBLE.  But I didn't hear it either once upon a time, I've had to learn all this stuff over the years. 

Chris Pinto is now the best source of information about what all this is REALLY about, at least the Greek manuscripts (he doesn't object to the English translations as I do).  Hint:  Vatican, Jesuits;  the Roman Catholic behemoth's plots to destroy the English Bible and ultimately whatever is left of the Protestant Reformation.  Westcott and Hort were at least Anglo Catholics, and so were/are many of the scholars who have been promoters of their Greek text.  I know, conspiracy conspiracy.  Well, you need to hear Chris Pinto and I've done some work myself toward demonstrating all this at my blogs including the Catholicism blog, nowhere near as much as needs to be done.  Pinto is the best source of all this information.

Of course this doesn't apply only to the Strange Fire Conference, it is just as true of most of today's Christian teachers, of Reformed teachers and Charismatics as well.  I do a lot of cringing these days as I listen to sermons by today's preachers.  It's just that I know MacArthur is a strong NAS guy and it started to get to me so I had to mention it.  I'd call it a "pet peeve" but obviously I take it a lot more seriously than that.

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Later:  Listening to the Charismatic radio show host, Dr. Michael Brown, I encountered another common affront to the Church brought to us courtesy of the Westcott and Hort 1881 debacle, the belief that the last twelve verses of Mark are not authentic.  The vast majority of supposed Bible-inerrancy believers now accept this devil-wrought slap in the face of the Church.  Well, that's what we get for accepting the work of scholars who are unbelievers, who let their disbelief in the supernatural dictate their dating of the Bible among other things.  Not to mention scholars who are Jesuits.  How gullible today's Church is!  Is it too late to wake up?    

The Plot to bring down Civilization

Here's how I'm getting it from Chris Pinto in a brief outline.  All the trends and influences we Christians and Conservatives decry in modern society can ultimately be traced back through a line of thinkers to certain predictable sources.  Certainly it's all an expression of human fallen nature, the putting of evil for good and good for evil, but apparently it's more than that, not just a random expression of this trend in human nature, but there are actually plots involved, conspiracies, or ultimately one basic plot or conspiracy that has branched out to some extent but is still of the same basic mentality with the same aim.  And although there are many false leads along the track the main source always turns out to be...  Rome.  Specifically, the Jesuits.

He did a radio show recently that stretched me quite a bit with his revelations of facts I'd known nothing about, on (of all things) the story of Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein and the French Revolution.  Is this common knowledge out there or am I typical in not knowing anything about a connection between this well known horror story and an event in history, The French Revolution?   And not only that particular event, but the philosophical underpinnings of that event that are still shaping the radical movements of our own time?  In a word, Communism and its softer version, Socialism, and all its separate projects for remaking society by its rules.

Sometimes I'm rather overwhelmed with all the information Chris Pinto offers that is brand new to me.  This particular program covers too much to keep in mind.   He sketched out the life of Mary Shelley who wrote "Frankenstein,"  her having been born into a radical family, her father a well known Anarchist, William Godwin, who was in fact denounced by many Brits for his views.   Later, after the death of her husband she began to have second thoughts about some of the radicalism of her friends, specifically decrying the barbarisms of the French Revolution and the philosophies that supported it. 

The monster invented by Dr. Frankenstein in her story is in fact the "new man" the radicals wanted to create, overthrowing all the old traditions in favor of their own conception.  El sueno de la razon produce monstruo --  that's from Ortega y Gasset I think, but that just came to mind because it seems to echo Shelley's point:  the dream of Reason produces monsters.  This dream has produced more monsters than merely the French Revolution, it has also produced the horrors of Communism and other murderous innovations that are destroying the world.

In her book she has Dr. Frankenstein being educated at a Jesuit-run university, the same university where Adam Weishaupt formed the Illuminati.  Did you know the Illuminati were originally called the Perfectabilists?  That is, they wanted to invent a Perfect world and a Perfect man, the "new man" that Shelley's book shows to be a monster.  Weishaupt's close friend believed Weishaupt was a secret Jesuit.  That would of course fit with Pinto's belief that Jesuits can usually be found behind all the radical plots to destroy civilization.

Well, there's a lot to that radio show that I'm not doing justice, so I can only recommend listening to it.

Chris Pinto's show on The Harbinger back in January was right on

I discovered The Harbinger originally through Chris Pinto's program on January 5th of this year, and just decided I needed to hear it again after all the attacks on the book since then.

As usual I find that Pinto's perspective is spiritually more trustworthy than most, biblical and true.  What is wrong with the critics who miss it and miss it and miss it?  Pinto hadn't read the book at that time but just from some ads and reviews he correctly assesses Cahn's message.

CORRECTLY. 

The critics have missed it completely but Pinto GETS IT.  I'm glad I heard it again. 

He criticizes the "conspiracy crew" who think that by exposing the New World Order adherents they can change things.   No, he says, but Cahn has exposed what is needed:  repentance for our sins.  Nothing else is going to change America.  He also gets into the influence of ecumenism and Billy Graham as a wolf in sheep's clothing bringing the nation under judgment.

I had only one objection.  He reads the line about how God's hand "is stretched out still" to be stretched out in invitation to us to come to Him, though in context it is simply a way of emphasizing what has already been shown, that since there is no repentance His hand is still stretched out IN JUDGMENT.  The message about God's invitation to us is nevertheless probably true enough, it's just not what that particular line means.

Glenn Beck's Ecumenical Travesty and the true Christian founding of early America

I wish Chris Pinto would write a book or somebody would write one using his material. We need his correctives to American history to sort out what was Christian in our history and what was not, and the historical perspectives he's dug up that show the REAL dimensions of the Antichrist Church of Rome. Pinto not a historian, as he's made clear, but a documentarian who accumulates his historical facts in the service of his films. We are starved for historical truth, thanks to such deceitful "histories" as David Barton has fed us over the last few decades, so historian or not Pinto's work is much needed.

Today's radio show, Restoring Love or Blind Delusion? is about Glenn Beck's latest attempt to blur the lines between Christianity and Mormonism and all other religions, his "Restoring Love" rally. Early colonial Governor John Winthrop was apparently made an excuse for Beck's ecumenical travesty, as the love he wrote of in his Model of Christian Charity is misused by Beck to foster acceptance of all religious beliefs as equal, whereas of course as a true Christian Winthrop would never have treated anything but the Biblical gospel as the true Christian faith, certainly not the false religion of Mormonism -- or Catholicism, or Islam etc. etc. etc. Pinto shows the antichrist nature of Beck's selective quoting of Winthrop.

Since I've been defending The Harbinger recently, I noticed that the Winthrop article has implications for this purpose. The book is often criticized for claiming that America is in covenant with God, or for supposedly equating the American covenant with God's covenant with ancient Israel.* Well, here is John Winthrop's affirmation that he did indeed believe "we are entered into covenant with" God and he does base it on God's covenant with Israel and the Mosaic law. Here is the last part of Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity which refers to this covenant:

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. "Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil," in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Tomorrow's show, more revelations of the true nature of America's founders, who were far from the spirit of the Christian colonial leaders of 150 years earlier: Jefferson was a racist and intentionally excluded blacks from the phrase "all men are created equal."

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*The Harbinger doesn't say that America is "in covenant" with God though there is definitely a special relationship with God implied. But since the critics keep accusing Cahn of making some kind of equation between America and ancient Israel's covenant with God, it seems to me, based on the Winthrop statement in preparation to found a colony in America, that if Cahn had actually made such an equation he wouldn't have been wrong, so the critics' complaints don't hold either way.

Chris Pinto on John Hagee, Extreme Dispensationalism versus Replacement Theology

I just have to keep thanking the Lord for Chris Pinto. I've been struggling through my own understanding of Replacement Theology recently, against arguments from both sides that hit me as wrong in many respects even if right in some respects.

I've been bouncing around in Chris Pinto's long list of radio shows -- sure wish he had a search feature -- hearing whatever happens to grab my attention by its title, and just came across his shows on John Hagee, who is an extreme dispensationalist, quite the opposite of Hank Hanegraaf whose Replacement Theology was the subject of my previous post. They both make the same error, however, not making a distinction between Israel of the flesh and Israel of God.

And here I find Pinto saying clearly and simply what I've been struggling to get into focus and say myself. This has happened recently with other subjects as well: I discover that he's said the same thing I've been saying, but more clearly. And he's corrected me in some areas and strengthened me as well in areas where I've been vacillating and spiritually flabby.

THANK YOU, LORD.

Unbelieving Israel is the enemy of the Church. The idea that Christians should treat them as worthy of our special care because they are Jews is a denial of our Lord and a twisting of the teachings of His apostles, but this is what John Hagee teaches, and to a less extreme extent some other teachers I've heard. Religious Jews are identical to the Pharisees of Jesus' day, and Paul's day. Apparently Hagee misapplies Romans 15:27 to call on the Church to supply the needs of these enemies of Christ, although its true reference is to the BELIEVING Jews of Jerusalem in Paul's day. Our call is to support the people of God, not the enemies of God (although we are of course to show kindness and mercy to all just as God does).

Nevertheless national Israel does fulfill prophecy and on a political level should be defended. This is a completely different level from that of the identity of God's people. God said He would make Jerusalem a "cup of trembling" to the whole world and that is certainly happening as Israel is surrounded by implacable enemies and the war to end all wars appears to be just on the horizon. But "not all Israel is Israel." Out of that war and out of the other sufferings coming on the earth as the end times unfold many Jews will come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

A related subject Pinto touched on in another show I recently heard was the accusation of Martin Luther as an anti-Semite because of his writing, the Lies of the Jews. I haven't written on this in this set of blogs but I have argued it in the past on various message boards. Maybe I'm a coward and avoid it now because of all the hatred that came against me for my arguments before. Luther was no anti-Semite, and was for a long period very generous toward the Jews -- until he found out what they teach against Jesus Christ, especially in the Talmud, the curses they bring against Him, the accusations of His birth to an adulterous woman or a prostitute and other calumnies -- which RIGHTLY offended Luther, although we might take issue with his recommendations for their punishment. It is certainly the reason GOD has punished them and is going to punish them more in the "time of Jacob's trouble." While we aren't to treat them as equal to the Israel of God which is the Church, we also aren't to mistreat them. For us to leave them in their blindness is far from a blessing, we must pray that God will open their eyes to the truth that they may repent and come to Christ and be spared what is coming both in this world and the next. Through Paul we do learn from scripture that God will save many in the end, and the Reformers also taught that.

This post is mostly just to say this much: Thank You, Lord, for Chris Pinto. Please make his work more generally known to the Body of Christ, and protect him and his family and helpers from all the enemies of the truth that are multiplying like rats these days. Amen.

Religious Liberty is an attack on Christian Liberty

Here we've been, Bible-believing Christians, for years thanking God for this liberty under the American Constitution and never suspecting that it is not really the protection we've taken it to be.

Oh it has seemed to be for a very long time, but that's only because the nation WAS predominantly Christian for that time. Now that our numbers are diminishing and this farcical notion of "liberty" has multiplied the enemies of Christ, and God's truth is being aggressively attacked in America, its true colors can perhaps be better recognized.

I for one have pondered the puzzle that this "liberty" has been allowing the enemies of God more freedom than true religious liberty should, but I interpreted this as due to today's politically correct misreading of its intent by our contemporary advocates of a malleable Constitution.

Then a year or so ago I saw a quote from one of the founding fathers, George Washington I'm pretty sure, specifically naming the religion of Islam as given freedom under this American provision. I didn't know quite what to do with this disturbing information, conditioned as I have been for so long to thinking the original intent of the First Amendment was to protect Christianity.

Protecting Islam, however, is the same thing as authorizing the wolf to eat the lamb, effectively destroying any real political liberty for Christians.  Not yet, of course, but just wait until the tide shifts and Christianity is marginalized enough in this country for the other religions to gain power.  They will not be as tolerant of their competitors as this once-Christian nation has been toward them.

I wondered if Washington was simply naive as so many these days are, treating all religions as equal. Whatever his conscious intent, however, it was clear that he was selling us out with a statement like that, turning Christians and the nation itself over to the wolves, and putting our current crop of Constitutional revisionists more in tune with the nation's founders than Christians.

It did begin to occur to me that our founders possibly intentionally sold us out, but I'm no historian and I just wouldn't be able to read enough in the original writings of that era to find out one way or the other.

All this has been coming more into focus for me finally thanks to Chris Pinto's films and radio shows. Pinto IS a historian who does read thoroughly in the original documents in order to get the full picture, and American Christians should all be learning from his work and thanking God for him.

Yes, they sold us out. Intentionally. They were not Christians, they were in fact haters of Christianity.

I knew Adams was a Unitarian and that Jefferson denied the supernatural truth of the gospel, and I think I had even heard that Washington refused to take Communion in his Anglican church, and I'd even been startled to read of one preacher from that era who specifically said that the founders had dealt treacherously with the Church of Christ. But in spite of all that I could never draw the reasonable conclusion but let it all sink down under a fog of confusion. These men were not only not Christians but unfriendly to Christianity, but it has been hard to see this clearly because there has been so much propaganda against such a conclusion.

David Barton is the main source of this kind of propaganda, as Pinto has been revealing, David Barton who has had such a strong impact on American Christians to the point of deserving credit -- or as I see it now, blame -- for a great deal of the political focus of the Christian Right. When we should have been affirming the gospel against the devices of the world and the devil we've been trying to reinstate a worldly institution that in its essence works against the gospel.

The main thing I've been learning from Pinto which I never would have been able to learn on my own, or from any other Christian teacher out there that I know of, is that the Roman Church through the Jesuit order was behind the concept of religious liberty, that its whole point was to overthrow Protestant strictures against Catholic influence in their communities, and ultimately to put the Catholic Church in a position to impose the rule of the Pope on the whole society.

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Pinto gets into all this in many of his radio programs, but try this one on Freemasonry in the Church #3 of May 5, 2011
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Liberating Catholicism is liberating the slyest and cruelest wolf of them all to eat the lamb of true Christianity. After tenderizing it on the rack and in the iron maiden of course. Interesting that the last Antichrist, Hitler, brought back some of the torture devices of the Inquisition, showing the spirit of Catholicism behind Nazism even in that form.

On the way to bringing all under the Pope they also -- inadvertently? -- liberated the similarly power-hungry religion of Islam with its own agenda to bring the world under Sharia Law.

And don't forget that Mormonism also has ambitions to bring the nation under their rule.

Not to mention that orthodox Judaism also has a rather paranoid desire to undermine Christianity, thanks largely to the common confusion of Catholicism with Christianity and very probably some Jesuitical encouragement there too.

Lotsa wolves out there after the lamb of truth.

Odd perhaps that what just came to mind was the immortal sputtering of that cartoon cat whose identity escapes me: "What a revoltin' development." Totally wrong tone there.

Oh I don't know. Reality often seems like some sort of tragic farce.

Oh, Sylvester the cat, right? Or was that Daffy Duck? No, I'm sure he lithped and spluttered, must have been Sylvester.

Please please come soon, Lord Jesus.

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Wow, Pinto says the Holocaust was directly modeled on the Inquisition, and designed by the Jesuits. He gets into this in his radio show for May 11, 2011.

Sorting out the history of true Christianity from that of the apostate Antichrist Roman church

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of church history and of the antichrist nature of the Catholic Church, but what I've been learning recently shows me that not only my own education in this area but what the Protestant churches in general know is sadly deficient. And I've heard some very good teaching on church history so this is saying something.

I'm talking about what I've been learning recently through Chris Pinto and Brannon Howse at their websites, and now this morning from Mike Gendron (pro-gospel.org), an ex-Catholic who seeks to educate Catholics to the truth, who was Howse's guest on today's radio show.

Much of the confusion comes from the fact that there are two different streams of church history, the Catholic and the Protestant, and it is possible to read a Catholic history without being aware that you are absorbing false propaganda. I'm sure that's happened to me many times. Getting the true history straight is not easy for the average reader.

A caller from the UK on Howse's program this morning referred to a book about the history of Christianity in England by Charles Bullock, titled The Story of England's Church written in the 19th century, which is online at Google Books. Wish I could copy out some of it. It's the sort of information that all Protestant churches should have been making a major effort to teach their people all along, so that no Protestant could ever be deluded that Roman Catholicism is a Christian church which so often happens.

Broader knowledge of this kind of information would have protected many individuals and even denominations from their own leanings in the direction of that apostasy that unfortunately seems to be growing these days, and it would have made a much stronger base for helping Catholics escape. It's certainly true that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, but of course we cannot remember it unless we are taught it if it is a past before our time.

What I've been learning from these ministries is that the Roman Church was recognized very early on as the seat of the Antichrist, at least back to the first Waldensians, who fled to the mountains upon recognizing the Pope as the Abomination of Desolation sitting in the temple making himself out to be God, as scripture warns us is to occur. I'd otherwise had the notion that it was the Reformers who first identified the papacy as the Antichrist system. I also hadn't digested the fact before that the Pope by receiving the sort of worship he receives does make himself out to be God, if the title "Vicar of Christ" weren't enough of a clue [and the Roman numerals in that title as written in Latin -- VICARIVUS FILII DEI -- add up to 666, by the way (The phrase means "In the place of, or substitute for, the Son of God")]. I've also learned that the Great Apostasy or falling away was attributed to the doctrines of the Roman Church all the way back to the early church as well, and that the apostasy was a thing that grew over the centuries so that it is hard to identify the exact point at which it was fullblown. Perhaps by the time of the first official Pope at least, which was in the late 6th century. I've also learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Emperor Constantine was not a true Christian convert since he continued to affirm the pagan religions that a true Christian would have abandoned completely, and that it's even possible he may have confused Christ with the pagan god Sol Invictus.

From this fuller view of history it's easier to see how some would not necessarily be expecting a final individual to be the Antichrist, as he's been in the world all these centuries. It certainly makes clear that Nero was NOT the Antichrist as some argue -- was THAT familiar idea a Roman concoction perhaps?

There's plenty of reading on this subject on the internet. Just following out the entries on this Google page should keep you busy for a while. I see that Michele Bachmann's church rightly says that the Pope is the Antichrist but of course the entry on that has the usual politically correct spin, which in this case is the Roman Catholic slant. I particularly appreciate Ian Paisley on this subject. He's a fire-and-brimstone Irish preacher whose style of preaching can be rather offputting, but I became a fan when he was shown in one of Chris Pinto's films confronting the Pope as the Antichrist when he was speaking in British Parliament [correction:  that's the European Parliament, and Dr. Paisley is more than just a preacher, he's also a high-ranking government leader in Ireland with a chair in the European Parliament]. THAT's the spirit of Protestantism we need more of.

One recent comment by Chris Pinto on a radio show caught my attention as he took to task Marshall Foster who said something to the effect that after Constantine legalized Christianity the Roman Empire furthered the spread of the gospel. Chris Pinto objected that all the Roman Empire did was spread the apostate Christianity of the Roman Church. I need this sorted out better. I hadn't heard of Marshall Foster before, but I have heard teaching along the lines that the Roman Empire was one of God's means for spreading the gospel. This goes along with other teaching I've heard that God chose to send the Lord Jesus into the world when Koine Greek was the universal language so that the gospel writings could be easily disseminated, AND when the Roman Empire with its wide reach made travel easy. God of course disposes all things, and the gospel did spread throughout Europe, but did the legalization of it through Constantine aid that or not? The idea is that after the persecutions of Christians by the Roman Emperors were lifted it was easier for the evangelists to do their work, along with the idea that the fact that Roman institutions were established all over Europe, even just the Roman roads, facilitated the spread of the gospel as well. This may be something along the lines of what Marshall Foster had in mind, but of course I don't know. And even if so, Chris Pinto may be right that the legalization of Christianity didn't aid anything but the spread of apostasy and Marshall Foster simply has the usual Catholicized version of history that we are all so easily made prey to. Or perhaps there's some truth in both views.

That reminded me of a book I read a few years ago about the effect of Christianity in changing the world for the better, Alvin J. Schmidt's Under the Influence. As I recall, the book presents the effect of the spread of Christianity (and I believe he attributes this effect partly to Constantine's legalization of the religion) as specifically fostering humane treatment of the sick and suffering, including rescuing newborn infants left to die and the aged who were also put out on the street to die, by first taking such victims in and caring for them but then by establishing hospitals and orphanages. He also credits Christianity with liberalizing society's attitude toward women through the model of Christ, also with paving the way for true empirical science because of Christianity's view of God as a God of law and order, unlike the gods of the pagans.

But now after seeing Chris Pinto's films I recognize that Schmidt misrepresented Francis Bacon as a Christian, who was an occultist. He also wrote a reference book about secret societies in America, which clearly presents them as benign positive influences, quite the opposite of what Chris Pinto's films reveal.

The plot thickens.

O Christians, shake off the influence of the higher critics of the Bible, it's all the devil's smoke and mirrors

I've come to believe that Chris Pinto's films should be seen by all Christians -- they've been feeding my own concerns in my blogs for a couple weeks now, from American politics to the Bible disaster of 1881 to End Times developments in general, and especially have illuminated the horrifically evil involvement of the Roman Catholic Church in these things.

CHRISTIANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THESE THINGS.

Some of his radio shows should be heard too (I don't know what a "podcast" is, as opposed to a broadcast, but apparently that's what they are). His recent radio shows (March 26 and 27 at least) cover important information about the "higher criticism" of the Bible and how it can undermine the faith of Christians.

A GREAT MANY CHRISTIANS INCLUDING PASTORS ARE DECEIVED ABOUT BIBLE SCHOLARSHIP AND THE NEW TRANSLATIONS.

I was very happy to hear Pinto quote the first Psalm as an admonition to those who accept the counsel of unbelieving critical scholars such as Bruce Metzger:

Blessed [is] the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

Walking in the counsel of the ungodly is exactly what Christians are doing who accept the judgments of a Bruce Metzger. Sure, the ungodly may be great scholars in some ways, but on this subject which involves all kinds of subjective judgment calls about the history of Bible manuscripts, definitely not to be trusted.

This issue is very much like the evolution-creation issue, in which the evidence is also soft, largely a matter of mental gymnastics asserted as if it were fact, and when an unbeliever promotes such evidence it should NOT be accepted by believers.

Chris Pinto discusses Bart Ehrman on the recent radio programs, who claims to have been turned away from his original Christian belief in the inerrancy of scripture by this sort of evidence, evidence which gives an early date for a corrupt manuscript which, if accepted as valid, casts doubt on the traditional view of scripture as God's word. Ehrman was trained by Bruce Metzger. He's quite convinced, but such evidence is easily counterfeited.

Pastors and teachers who accept the judgments of a Bruce Metzger may think they are just being intellectually honest but this kind of work undermines the faith of many in the churches and can't help but do so. If they are convinced that all God's word is not all God's word, the faith of honest Christians WILL be shaken, and that undermines the power of witness in the churches.

This is the devil's work for sure.

God's warning harbingers to America in light of revelations about the Antichrist nature of the American founders

There is no doubt in my mind that the correspondences between Isaiah 9:10 and events associated with 9/11/01 in America are something only God could have brought about. The fallen bricks, the hewn stone to replace them, the fallen sycamore, the conifer to replace it -- no human agent could have intentionally engineered all that in some strange attempt to make 9/11 echo Isaiah 9:10. The correspondences don't even need to be as exact as they are to show that America's attitude toward God is the same as Israel's was in response to a warning judgment from God, and that unless we repent we will meet further judgment from God, more serious judgment. Some of us also didn't even need this revelation at all to know that much. But it appears that God Himself wanted to impress this on America by giving us all these omens in the context of Isaiah 9:10.

It's also important, I think, that David Wilkerson of Times Square Church preached on this same passage from Isaiah on the first Sunday after 9/11.
There are two more parts to David Wilkerson's message. Part 2 is where he quotes Isaiah 9:10.

God was speaking to America this same message in many different ways. Nobody was listening then, is anybody listening now?

But Is/Was America a Christian nation?
After I became aware of the Harbinger message I've happened to learn quite a bit about the founding of America that has somewhat altered my view of this revelation, mostly through the film Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers by Chris Pinto. To my mind this film and others Pinto has done about the founding of America are as important as Cahn's revelation. He shows beyond a doubt that the most prominent of our founding fathers were so far from being Christians that it is right to call them "antichrists," because they denied that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh, and even ridiculed the idea. Those founders who had this view included Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

They were clearly Deists with Enlightenment views, who believed in Providence to the extent that they thought it important to pray for God's blessings on the nation but did not believe in salvation through Jesus Christ, God Himself incarnate in human flesh, who was born of a virgin, did many miracles and died to pay for our sins. They denied all the supernatural elements of the Biblical revelation, and deified human reason above God's revelation.

Christians today have been misled by some who have sought to convince us that these men were Christians or at least intended to preserve Christian influence in the nation. We are easily misled by the fact that they believed in prayer and Providence, and at least in the case of Washington lived a highly moral life. Perhaps Adams did also, who said the nation they formed could only work for a moral people. We may rightly doubt Jefferson's personal morality and certainly Franklin's, and apparently also Paine's from what Pinto's film reveals, but we don't hear about that side of things when we are being given Adam's statement, and that and other such words taken out of context have wrongly convinced many Christians in the last few decades of a Christian influence in the making of the nation that really was not the case at all.

Not to say that America wasn't ORIGINALLY Christian, because it was. The original settlers were strongly Christian and their Christian influence continued even to the time of the founding. But by that time there was also the strong countereffect of the Enlightenment near-deification of Reason that specifically attacked Christianity, and the founding generation were particularly infected with this trend. They were also strongly influenced by Masonry which held to similar beliefs about Reason, with a strong dose of satanic occultism thrown in especially at the higher levels. Washington and Franklin were Masons, and I think also Paine.

Masons and Deists of that generation refer to "God" and to "Nature's God," promote a basic morality, and we often mistake that for a Christian mindset, especially because there are some who actively promote this equivalence. They would pray before opening Congress and they would even end a session by assembling together at a nearby church for prayer. It doesn't occur to most Christians that they would have done such things if they weren't Christian. But Pinto shows that Deism, which is really Antichrist religion, explains it all. When you become aware that all of them rejected Christ, yes, all five of them, it can be a bit like being punched in the stomach -- it was for me -- but it is something we need to know.

There were certainly strong Christian influences in the colonies from the beginning but unfortunately they were compromised and obscured by the documents that underlie the founding of America as a nation. Pinto shows that God was intentionally and specifically left out of the Constitution after much discussion in Congress.

Chris Pinto has done a thorough and believable job on this subject. I'd heard some of it from other sources before but not presented in such a credible way, making what seemed like extreme assertions without sufficient evidence to back them up. That can't be said of Pinto's presentations. Two other films about America's character can also be found at You Tube (although I'm sure Pinto would prefer you bought them from his site): The Eye of the Phoenix which should remove all those rationalizations you may have accepted about the symbolism of the Great Seal of America and other symbolism on our dollar bill as if they refer to the thirteen colonies and so on; and Riddles in Stone, which shows the masonic and pagan mentality that built Washington D.C.

I do think all that is as important as Jonathan Cahn's message. And it has altered my view of his message somewhat, at least it has raised questions. That is, he refers to the dedication of America by George Washington as if it were a Christian dedication, in a Christian chapel for one thing, and he refers to a quotation from Washington about the need for the nation to stay in obedience to God's laws in order to continue to be blessed. Now, I did sort of know that Washington wasn't a Christian, but he did pray and he did emphasize the need to be true to God's will, and it does seem fair to regard that time of prayer in the chapel at Ground Zero as a dedication or consecration of the nation to God.

And certainly all the harbingers that connect the attack on the WTC with Isaiah 9:10support the idea that God Himself is giving us a very personal warning as if He regards us as His own nation, dedicated to Him.

But knowing the mentality of Washington and the founders raises questions, and I can't answer them. Was the nation blessed for so long because we did acknowledge God even in the insufficient way of the Masons or Deists? But how could that be so if their views were really Antichrist, as they were? Shouldn't that have deprived the nation of blessings from its very beginning, since they weren't praying or acknowledging God truthfully? Did the nation succeed in being obedient enough to God's laws to keep us in His blessings for a while? Or should we consider that God's blessings were due to the Pilgrims and the original settlers, and the maintenance of a Christian worldview in the population of large, and such events as the Great Awakening which brought a resurgence of true Christianity to the nation just before the Revolutionary War? How to put all this together?

It's just a question. Things always turn out to be a lot more complicated than you first think they are. We need to know about the infidel founders of America, especially now as the last of the last days are surely about to burst over us.

But Jonathan Cahn's revelations are just as important and they should lead us to prayer for the nation. If Christians prayed as we should on the basis of his revelation, protracted prayer with fasting, huge numbers of us, surely God would turn things around. At least there would have to be a great influx into the church even if we can't save the nation.

I'm going to put up Jonathan Cahn's first talk on this subject from 2005 again. I udnerstand he did another at another Messianic convention very recently that includes much more information -- he's been tracking God's judgment on the American economy through Biblical references that are no less uncanny than the Isaiah 9:10 revelation -- but that talk is apparently only available on DVD from his ministry. And all that is in his book anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXei0Zb3dxM

The pagan origins of Christmas again -- Chris Pinto nails it!

FINALLY, a SENSIBLE study of the history of Christmas!

Chris Pinto to my mind does THE best study of Christmas, correcting many wrong notions about how it came about, and giving the most sensible reasonable guidelines for how a Christian believer should respond to the holiday:

This is the page where you can download Parts I and II of his radio discussion of Christmas, The Origins of Christmas on Dec. 20 and 21.

One thing he argues is that the Roman Catholic Church as such did not exist until 606 AD, contrary to the kneejerk screamings of some who claim it started with Constantine. It did NOT. Most of the early Church belongs to the TRUE CHURCH -- including the Council of Nicaea which was convened by the leaders of all the true churches of the day and was NOT led by Constantine, whose role was mostly observer. The Roman Church started with the claim in 606 AD that the Bishop of Rome was to be the head* of the entire Church, not just Rome but head over all the other Bishops of all the other churches as well. The Roman Church LATER CLAIMED TO THEMSELVES all the pre-Roman-Catholic history of the Church. Why should we believe THEM?

So the Roman Church can't be particularly blamed for inaugurating the holiday of Christmas. In fact Pinto said something else that suggests the Roman Church didn't even acknowledge the holiday until the 1800s.

{Later: Also go on and listen to the first half of Pinto's broadcast of December 22, Christmas trees and Catholics Come Home to find out that "mass" as in Christ-mas does NOT necessarily refer to the institution of the Catholic Mass -- the word has older/original connotations that are perfectly acceptable to a Christian, it only later came to refer to the Catholic ritual, just as much else from the early Church was later co-opted into the Roman context. (also go on and listen to the second half of that broadcast for his answer to a very misleading Catholic ad). Pinto is a much more trustworthy investigator of history than many who seek to educate the Church. If you are going to try to make your case from history you have to recognize that history goes through changes, the truth isn't necessarily the first thing that hits you in the face.}

Also Pinto makes the point that the pagans themselves rewrite Christian history for us and Christians who don't read enough in true Christian history believe this stuff written by enemies of the true Church. They would claim the holiday themselves even if the Church did it.

One point he presents that I was not familiar with is that there was a theologian of the early church who argued that December 25 really was the birthdate of Christ, completely independent of its connection with any pagan holiday around that time of year. His argument doesn't really hold up but apparently it was meant seriously and taken seriously. So although there was a definite sense in which Christ's birthday was an excuse to replace a popular pagan holiday with Christian content, it turns out that wasn't the ONLY reason for the date chosen. History is always more complicated than the conspiracy thinkers try to make it out to be.

Another point he makes which really ought to make the case all by itself is to compare the substitution of Christ's birthday for a pagan holiday with the practice of many churches today in substituting a harvest-oriented celebration for the pagan Halloween, with bobbing for apples and that sort of thing. Some do a Reformation Day Party, since that date is also the date on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, which began the Reformation. If you want to distract Christians from the good time the pagans are having with Halloween then give them something Christian or at least innocent to party about instead. Distract them from the pagan debaucheries of Saturnalia the same way, what's wrong with that?

At the end of Part I Pinto quotes Romans 14:4+ as his understanding of how we should regard the celebration of Christmas:

Rom 14:4-8 Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day [alike]. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth [it] unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard [it]. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.

How we celebrate a holiday is all about our own personal relation to the Lord, there is really very little in the holiday of itself that is the problem.

In Part II Chris Pinto gets into the history of the Christmas tree. This is because many object to the tree as pagan, and many quote Jeremiah 10:2-4 as supposedly directly describing the Christmas tree as a pagan practice to be shunned. I didn't comment on this myself but it is clearly NOT talking about the Christmas tree as we use it today. We do not bow down to it and worship it for starters, which is the main teaching of scripture about idolatry, specifically the heathen practices of carving their idols out of wood and decorating them with gold and silver which is what this passage is also about.

It does not refer to the Christmas tree.

Jer 10:1-5 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people [are] vain: for [one] cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They [are] upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also [is it] in them to do good.

But they speak not, they must be borne, they can't walk. Be not afraid of them. Cannot do evil nor good. THIS IS A REFERENCE TO IDOLS, to objects of worship CARVED OUT OF THE TREES, not to Christmas trees and this is the point Chris Pinto makes. (I'm only touching on his main points here, you have to listen to the radio talk to appreciate the many examples he gives to support his points).

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CHRISTMAS TREES AS SUCH, they are NOT the idolatry God was condemning in Jeremiah. For us they are nothing more than a pretty object that defines the season. Some Christian traditions have developed a whole Christian symbology referring to the tree, some treat it as a symbol of the Tree of Life which Christ opens to believers. But at bottom, for a Christian the ONLY thing we need to be aware of is the condition of our own heart in any celebration, and, I should add, a respectful awareness of the conscience of our brethren.

Surely we can simply ignore the pagan silliness of Santa Claus in our celebrations and avoid the overindulgence of the season and that sort of thing without getting all indignant about what the unbelievers do.

In the second half of his Part II Pinto gets into the big flap about the culture's pulling away from the focus on Christmas in saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" and the offense taken by some Christians. Of course this is all about the "Culture Wars" and the rise of the politics of "multiculturalism" over the last few decades, but it should also be noted that the greeting "Happy Holidays" goes back before all that without the political onus that is now attached to it. At the very least it included the New Year with Christmas.

Now it has become a sign of the fact that the culture no longer regards itself as Christian, has begun to appropriate the American First Amendment to validate all religions, even in some sense every religion BUT Christianity, and that's what the churches are objecting to. We are no longer "Christendom" we are headed as a culture back to the paganism Christianity had slowly displaced over the centuries.

Pinto says it's silly to try to make the pagan culture acknowledge Christmas since they don't believe in Christ anyway. It's a good point but I think he's missing the bigger context of the culture wars and why this upsets Christians these days. [Later: I should acknowledge here, however, that Chris Pinto also did the most convincing study I've ever run across demonstrating the NON-Christian foundations of America, which I'm sure I covered somewhere in this blog or another of my blogs. It's at You Tube I'm sure. So in his mind there really hasn't been a Christian culture to lose.]

It IS a good point though. I think he's right overall, we should just give up our insistence on a Christian culture which hasn't existed for decades anyway. It's good for the church that we separate ourselves from the culture, why should we expect anything of unbelievers? We are told we are not of this world and we should embrace this opportunity for a clearer separation.

At the end of Part II he makes some very good points about how just about everything has a pagan meaning anyway, including the rainbow, including just about every number, defined by pagans or satanists or whatnot, things whose TRUE origin is God. He makes the point that it's superstition to get exercised over the satanic meanings that were imposed on the things that were made by God. This world IS ruled by Satan, this IS a fallen world until the Lord recreates it at the very end, but as for TRUE origins, it BELONGS TO God -- the rainbow belongs to God, numbers belong to God, the days of the calendar belong to God, etc. etc. etc. -- while Satan's rule is going to come to an end thanks to the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

THESE TWO RADIO DISCUSSIONS ARE WELL WORTH LISTENING TO. CHRIS PINTO HAS NAILED IT.{The one following them is also recommended}

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*"Head of the Church": I just feel like adding the personal information here that when I was first learning about Christianity -- in the mid-80s -- I was strongly drawn to some Catholic writers, especially the "mystics" like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and Brother Lawrence and Madame Guyon. (Just for the record I still love them, especially the latter two, though I've learned to separate out their specifically Catholic errors from their genuine love of Christ). I was sure I was going to become a Catholic but I made no move toward any church for quite some time, content for the time being just to read and read and read and learn everything I could about the history of the Church and Christendom.

After I'd encountered some Protestant writers I was not so sure I was going to become a Catholic but I had yet to learn about the Reformation. (I did not like Martin Luther. He struck me as a rude heathen by contrast with the genuine followers of Christ melted in adoration of Him that I'd found the "mystics" to be, so it took me a while to get around to Reformation writings).

At one point in that period I ran across a description of the Pope as "Head of the Church" and it really bothered me. The next time I opened the Bible the Lord guided me to one of the passages where it says flatly, "Christ is the Head of the Church" (Ephesians 5:23 and Colossians 1:18).

That abruptly ended my leanings toward Catholicism. After that I began to learn about the Antichrist nature of the Roman Church.