How Much Longer, Lord?

It can't just be "coincidence" that we've been seeing signs that suggest the closeness of the very last days for some time now, and the Pope just stepped down and there was also the news of his securing himself a seat in the Upper Room in Jerusalem (that of Judas I must suppose). 

That is, all the events we have been watching accumulate for some time now cannot be the mere machinations of Rome herself to make things LOOK like the end is near, as I've heard opined.  Whatever they can engineer to make the next Pope appear to be the last according to the Malachy prophecy of Peter the Roman couldn't succeed unless the whole world stage were set, as it certainly seems to be, for the appearance of the final Antichrist, and how much of THAT could they have engineered.  (Yeah, some).

Yes I've come to accept that there are human conspiracies going on where I would not have suspected them until I started following Chris Pinto's very convincing presentations in his films and radio shows, but Rome must be as much a puppet moved by supernatural forces as everything else in this world is.  The final Pope is most likely going to be THE Antichrist Puppet whether the next one is the final one or not.  But the timing is SO ripe it can't be long now (...can it?) If it isn't this next one it has to be the one after...  The world is groaning, how much more time could there possibly be?

Whatever human invention comes up with to stage some kind of last days fakery, whatever role human conniving might have played in bringing the world to this point of horror, the breakdown of all morality, the stalking of alien and inhumane ideologies through what once was "Christendom," whatever plots may manifest in murderous expression with a fake Armageddon, a third world war, this CAN'T be just the prelude to another failed attempt to establish the Holy Roman Empire, it has to be The Finale.  The REAL Finale, the REAL Last Days.  It has to be.

It may take a lot longer than we're able to imagine for it to play out (the thought is indescribably wearying), but I don't see how there could be any more wars after the next one, any more Antichrists after the next one, any more Inquisitions/Holocausts after the next one....   If we aren't in the very last of the Last Days I don't think I want to see even the beginnings of the real end to follow (fortunately for me that's not likely anyway, but I also wouldn't wish it on the next generation either).

Some say this is an exciting time for a Christian to live in, and I said it myself a few years back on this very blog, and of course it's true that to watch Biblical prophecy play itself out is a great privilege, but then why am I crying my eyes out all the time these days?  I can't stand much more of it, I want it to be over, or I want to leave before it gets started.  Watching the world fall more deeply under the power of Satan is NOT fun.  Watching the churches fragment and veer off into false doctrine is NOT fun.  Watching "Christendom" go to the demons is NOT fun.  Watching good replace evil and evil replace good in the news almost minute by minute any more is NOT fun.  It's heartbreaking. 

America is under God's judgment and the only remedy is national repentance, or at least the repentance of the churches. Christians should all repent for all the churches, all the bodies that call themselves by the Lord's name, the apostate churches, those that have rejected parts of His word, those that have twisted His word.  Although we may not personally share in their sins we have enough of our own to repent of anyway, and as a corporate body we do share in them.  Daniel confessed the sins of Israel as his own although he personally had no such guilt.  He knew himself to be a member of the corporate body of the people of Israel and guilty along with them and he hoped for corporate repentance and turning back to God so that God's judgment would be lifted from them.

I know there are Christians praying, there are churches praying, and Jonathan Cahn's book has had some impact toward a spirit of repentance.

But this can't be an ecumenical effort, and it worries me when I hear about Cahn's involvement with nonChristians in his zeal to get out his message.  It doesn't matter how solid his gospel message might be if it's compromised by joining with those who appeal to false gods along with the true God. 

It also worries me when ANY Christian ministry or leader, or any Christian for that matter, talks about Catholicism as if it were Christian.  There are plenty of good Catholics out there who have admirable conservative politics but they need their eyes opened to the nature of the organization they belong to and how can we pray with them if they remain attached to it?

Was God pleased when Israel prayed both to Himself and to Molech?  All that does is dig the nation's grave deeper.

There are signs of mercy and hope in all this though.  There are some intelligent and godly voices getting a hearing.  Listen to Dr. Ben Carson's speech at the recent prayer breakfast in Washington for instance, and the interview with him by Sean Hannity which is also at You Tube. There's some hope in the recent revelations of conspiracies that keep coming out, that I get mostly from Chris Pinto, such as Charlotte Iserbyt's whistleblowing on the propagandizing of our children through the schools that I recently posted on, the possibility such exposures might wake up more Americans -- not a LOT of hope since it's so little so late, but hope anyway.  And there's hope in the rumblings of anger at Obama's high-handed moves to take away our guns, and hope in the interview with Garrow I recently posted -- people are paying attention.

But the bottom line is still that the nation has turned away from God and all this is being permitted as God's judgment for that.  The bottom line is still that there needs to be repentance if we are to have any real hope of saving the nation.

A real Reformation, a real revival, a pushing back of the darkness and the deception for some protracted period?  I still try to hope. 

Meanwhile I just cry a lot and pray a lot.

Psa 80:3   Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. 

Psa 80:4   O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? 

Psa 80:5   Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure. 

Psa 80:6   Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies laugh among themselves. 

Psa 80:7   Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. 

Psa 80:18   So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. 

Psa 80:19   Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. 

Psa 85:4   Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. 

Psa 85:5   Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? 

Psa 85:6   Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? 

Psa 85:7   Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation. 

More Quotes from History on the Papacy as Antichrist

This is the subject of Chris Pinto's radio show today to add to the quotes in my post below on this subject, more on Wycliffe and Luther for instance.

Implications of Pope's Resignation + Update

Pope Benedict resignation a first in over 600 years they say. 

As I posted quite some time ago, there is this medieval prophecy by a prophet called Malachy, that the Pope after Benedict is to be the last.  There is no reason whatever that we should take such a prophecy particularly seriously, but the timing is portentous and it's hard not to wonder if maybe he got it right as pagan prophets sometimes may. 

The prophecy identifies the last Pope as Petrus Romanus or Peter the Roman, and although in Catholic thinking he will be a hero of hard times, in Biblical thinking he would have to be the final Antichrist, the one who will put himself in the temple declaring himself to be God ushering in the very last of the last days.

2/13 UPDATE:

I've been without the internet for the last two days because of a local problem with AT&T, so I'm late catching up on this and other stories. 

As usual Chris Pinto is my most informative source on anything having to do with the papacy.  His programs on both the 11th and 12th
are about the Pope's resignation and the connection with the Malachy prophecy.  He refers to a Jesuit who wrote that the whole Malachy prophecy was a Jesuit invention in the first place, designed to influence the election of a particular Pope.  The prophecy is officially denied by the Vatican but nevertheless it appears that the identities of many of the previous Popes have been manipulated to fit in with the prophecy concerning them, and the prophecies are taken pretty seriously by many Catholics.  The big question of the moment is whether the Pope that follows Benedict will take the name Petrus Romanus or not.  Obviously since they choose their identity it's always possible to choose one that accords with the prophecy if that's the intention.

Pinto is quite right to say that God would not honor a false prophet so that he doesn't expect any of it to be true, but he does think it possible that since there has been a great deal of Vatican manipulation of world events such as various wars in the past, that there could be a similar manipulation of events concerning this upcoming Pope having to do with the engineering of another world war and a fake Armageddon that gives us a fake Millennium with a fake Christ on the throme.  It's not something he's presenting with any sense of certainty, just a scenario he thinks possible.

Pinto is very good at tracking such Vatican and Jesuit manipulations of events and rewritings of history so I'm willing to wait and wonder along with him what may be the next plot on the agenda, but I do have to say that it's hard for me to think this way.  I'm used to thinking in terms of satanic supernatural manipulations of events but not in terms of human manipulations.  This whole conspiracy area is new to me, and while I find it convincing as Pinto presents it, it's something I can only watch from the sidelines, I can't really think it through myself.  I can for instance think in terms of a satanic deception having to do with this prophecy as given to "Malachy" by a demonic entity, with the aim of giving a supernatural validation to the papacy, and in the current situation whitewashing the Pope and papal doctrine to distract from the genuine end time events prophesied in the Bible, but I get lost in the intricacies of human invention.

One way or the other, this Pope's resignation is a momentous occurrence and what happens next is to be watched and pondered.

The Pope Looking for a Seat in the Jerusalem Temple Holy of Holies?

The Pope and Jerusalem

• Headline in Israeli National News:  Historic Agreement Drafted Between Israel and the Vatican.  The story is that the Pope has been granted a seat in the room where the last supper is believed to have taken place.
• Pinto gives the historical background that the Crusades were about taking Jerusalem so that Solomon's temple might be rebuilt for the Pope to rule the world from there, which rather strongly reminds of:

2Th 2:3	Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come], except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
2Th 2:4	Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

It was news to me that the Crusades were about setting the Pope up in the temple in Jerusalem, and it's a rather startling idea given the scripture above, and the fact that evangelicals have for years been anticipating the rebuilding of the temple but nobody to my knowledge has anticipated the Pope as the Antichrist who would take his seat there.  It's already a species of the abomination of desolation that he has a seat in the upper room.

Romanism: The Pope Recognized as Antichrist Down the Centuries

Got a Comment on one of my older blog posts here telling me how wrong I am to criticize the wonderful Pope.  Since it was just an accusation with no particular substance to it that could be easily answered I decided not to post it, but if the person wants to write back on this post I may answer it. 

I want to do a series of posts on Catholicism here, or better called ROMANISM because it is not the church members who are being criticized but the Papacy itself, otherwise known as the Vatican or Rome.  This one takes information from a website I found a while back on the historical understanding by Protestants that the Pope is the Antichrist.  In other words this recognition goes way back and isn't just a whim of my own, which would seem hardly necessary to say except that there are so many who don't know anything about the history of these things I've actually been accused of something along those lines.

The Resolution at the bottom of the list of quotes is particularly interesting -- and encouraging.

 Quotes about the Papacy as Antichrist:

Arnulf Bishop of Orleans (Roman Catholic)"deplored the roman popes as "monsters of guilt" and declared in a council called by the King of France in 991ad that the pontiff, clad in purple and gold, was, "Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God" -Phillip Schaff, History of the Christian church, 8 vols., reprint of the 3d (1910)ed. (Grand Rapids Mich.: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co., n.d.)

Eberhard II, archbishop of Salzburg (Roman Catholic)"stated at a synod of bishops held at Regensburg in 1240 (some scholars say 1241) that the people of his day were "accustomed" to calling the pope antichrist." -LeRoy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, 4 vols. (Wash DC: Review and Herald publishing assc, 1950-1954)

John Wycliffe"When the western church was divided for about 40 years between two rival popes, one in Rome and the other in Avigon, France, each pope called the other pope antichrist - and John Wycliffe is reputed to have regarded them as both being right: "two halves of Antichrist, making up the perfect Man of Sin between them." -Ibid

Martin Luther (Lutheran) "We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist...personally I declare that I owe the
Pope no other obedience than that to Antichrist."  (Aug. 18, 1520) Taken from The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 2., pg. 121 by Froom.  (In response to a papal bull [official decree]): "I despise and attack it, as impious, false... It is Christ Himself who is condemned therein... I rejoice in having to bear such ills for the best of causes. Already I feel greater liberty in my heart; for at last I know that the pope is antichrist, and that his throne is that of Satan himself." --D'Aubigné, b.6, ch. 9. 

Cotton Mather (Congregational Theologian) "The oracles of God foretold the rising of an Antichrist in the Christian Church: and in the Pope of Rome, all the characteristics of that Antichrist are so marvelously answered that if any who read the Scriptures do not see it, there is a marvelous blindness upon them."  Taken from The Fall of Babylon by Cotton Mather in Froom's book, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 3, pg. 113.

John Wesley (Methodist) Speaking of the Papacy he said, "He is in an emphatical sense, the Man of Sin, as he increases all manner of sin above measure. And he is, too, properly styled the Son of Perdition, as he has caused the death of numberless multitudes, both of his opposers and followers... He it is...that exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped...claiming the highest power, and highest honour...claiming the prerogatives which belong to God alone."  Taken from Antichrist and His Ten Kingdoms by John Wesley, pg. 110.

Ellen G. White: Seven Day Adventists"This compromise between paganism and Christianity resulted in the development of "the man of sin" foretold in prophecy as opposing and exalting himself above God. That gigantic system of false religion is a masterpiece of Satan's power--a monument of his efforts to seat himself upon the throne to rule the earth according to his will.  {Note:  Seventh Day Adventism is regarded as a cult by most evangelicals}

Thomas Cranmer (Anglican) "Whereof it followeth Rome to be the seat of antichrist, and the pope to be very antichrist himself. I could prove the same by many other scriptures, old writers, and strong reasons." (Referring to prophecies in Revelation and Daniel.)  Taken from Works by Cranmer, Vol. 1, pp. 6-7. 

Roger Williams (First Baptist Pastor in America) He spoke of the Pope as "the pretended Vicar of Christ on earth, who sits as God over the Temple of God, exalting himself not only above all that is called God, but over the souls and consciences of all his vassals, yea over the Spirit of Christ, over the Holy Spirit, yea, and God himself...speaking against the God of heaven, thinking to change times and laws; but he is the son of perdition (II Thess. 2)."  Taken from The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers by Froom, Vol. 3, pg. 52. 

1689 London Baptist Confession

Chapter 26: Of the Church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. ( Colossians 1:18; Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 4:11, 12; 2 Thessalonians 2:2-9 )  

John Knox (Scotch Presbyterian) Knox wrote to abolish "that tyranny which the pope himself has for so many ages exercised over the church" and that the pope should be recognized as "the very antichrist, and son of perdition, of whom Paul speaks."  Taken from The Zurich Letters, pg. 199 by John Knox. 

John Calvin (Presbyterian) "Some persons think us too severe and censorious when we call the Roman pontiff Antichrist. But those who are of this opinion do not consider that they bring the same charge of presumption against Paul himself, after whom we speak and whose language we adopt... I shall briefly show that (Paul's words in II Thess. 2) are not capable of any other interpretation than that which applies them to the Papacy."  Taken from Institutes by John Calvin.

Presbyterian Church (Year 2000) The following Resolution was unanimously passed by the South Atlantic Presbytery of the Bible Presbyterian Church meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, March 25, 2000.

The Resolution is as follows-

THE THREAT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Whereas: The mass media has captivated the world with the activities of Pope John Paul II during his visit to the Holy Land in March 2000; and

Whereas: The Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation have signed, in October, 1999 a joint declaration of accord on the doctrine of justification (only the synods of Wisconsin and Missouri dissented); and

Whereas: In the middle of February, 200, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat met with Pope John Paul II at the vatican to sign an agreement regarding the future of Jerusalem that warned Israel against any unilateral decision affecting Jerusalem; and

Whereas: Bob Jones University has been unjustly slandered for anti-catholic bias by Senators McCain, Torricelli, Hollings and the liberal mass media; and

Whereas: The House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress has just appointed a Roman Catholic priest as its chaplain for the first time, March 23, 2000; and

Whereas: Pope John Paul II has declared the year 2000 a "Great Jubilee Year" for Roman Catholics that establishes the restoration of indulgences, THE VERY ISSUE THAT PROMPTED MARTIN LUTHER TO DRAFT THE 95 THESES IN OCTOBER OF 1517: papal spokesman Timothy Shugrue states, "The indulgence is one of the spiritual privleges extended during Jubilee. It is a way of applying the merits of the good deeds of the saints and the Virgin Mary and CHrist Himself to the rest of us.";

Therefore: The South Atlantic Presbytery of the Bible Presbyterian Church, at its spring meeting in the Bible Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, N.C., March 25, 2000, resolves and warns the Roman Catholic Church, Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth (Rev 17:5) constitutes the greatest threat to fundamental Christianity in the 21st century! The Roman Catholic Church has long since forsaken the Bible alone, Grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone. There should be no confraternity with this apostate church in ministerial associations, community easter sunrise services, Thanksgiving services, mass evangelism or common social endeavors. We admonish devout believers to lovingly and firmly win Roman Catholics to Christ and urge new converts to obey Rev. 18:4, "And I heard a another voice from heaven, saying, come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sin, and that ye recieve not her plagues."

Jim Garrow interview

Here's a fairly lengthy interview with Jim Garrow on his revelation that American military are asked if they would fire on American citizens. 

Among other things he discusses:

• The deAmericanization of America through Obama in general;
• The role of the media who have been educated to support Obama's views;
• That the Chinese despise Obama as a traitor to his country;
• That China wants Americans disarmed because they fear an uprising if they try to claim the resources that have been promised them as payment of the debt we owe them;
• That the Obama administration is very surprised at the reaction of the American people to his gun control plan, and fearful of an uprising as well.

The Story of Persecution of Christians in China

Got this from Jan Markell's ministry this morning, a great video with John MacArthur interviewing a Chinese Christian about the persecution of Christians in China in the 60s. Daniel Wong teaches at John MacArthur's Masters College. . .

Could American Christians withstand if such persecution comes here?