Exposing the Papacy as the Antichrist 3

This is a detour from the main focus of my posts on this subject but it doesn't go far off the track.

I received a link to a video in my email and found it to be a surprisingly effective claim to reveal a completely different interpretation of Mystery Babylon and the Antichrist than I've been working on: Babylon the Great and The Turkish Antichrist. It's definitely worth some thought. It traces the connections between Islam and the pagan religions back to Semiramis, and claims that Mecca, not Rome, is the "city on seven hills" of Revelation 17. John was taken into the desert, or wilderness, to see the image of the great harlot who sits on the beast, and that location does make Mecca a better candidate than Rome.

It is merely asserted in passing that Mecca sits on seven hills, so I don't know what degree of authenticity can be claimed for this, but certainly Rome was known as the City on Seven Hills already back when John wrote the Book of Revelation, and has always maintained that title.

There are other claims made that give credence to this new interpretive scheme, but I think also enough failures to fit the prophecies to show that it isn't really a rival to Rome.

It's mainly the idea of the Antichrist in this system that ultimately doesn't work, though. This is a single figure who will appear at the very end of time, along the lines of so many Futurist views we're familiar with today, who will have the title of Caliph, which is said to mean "Substitute" just as "Vicar of Christ" means Substitute for Christ and therefore Antichrist. The connection is strained in the film, however, as Jesus is regarded by Islam as just one of many prophets, so the final Caliph is a substitute for him along with all the other prophets and therefore can't be Antichrist who specifically usurps the place of Christ. No informed Christian is going to fall for such an inexact Substitute, but the papacy has fooled Christians down the centuries already with their claim to be the Vicar of Christ.

The papacy also has all the trappings of the old religions that go back to Semiramis, as Alexander Hislop showed in his Two Babylons, so both religions show that connection, but the papacy does a much better job of filling the description of the Harlot's scarlet and purple garb.

Also they have to turn the "wine of her fornication" into the oil which has made Saudi Arabia wealthy, as it is that oil that keeps the world more or less at their mercy, and that made possible all the wealth in today's Middle East that fits the description in Revelation 17. But of course this is all very recent. None of this wealth existed when John wrote the Book of Revelation, or down through the centuries either, but the papacy has accumulated wealth from early on.

The woman's being drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus fits both systems though, as Islam has murdered Christians, including a million and a half Armenian Christians by the Turks during the Ottoman Empire, and of course Islam has been continuing the slaughter particularly in Africa in recent times. Now with the rise of ISIS it is becoming everyday news. I just saw a headline, too, that says ISIS destroyed the monument to the Armenian genocide in Syria.

So none of this is going to rival the papacy for the title of Antichrist, but I'd say it does fill in the case for Islam as the other leg of the Roman Empire as shown on Nebuchadnezzar's statue as described in the Book of Daniel.

Exposing the Papacy as the Antichrist 2

Besides the monumental History of Protestantism, J. A. Wylie also wrote a short treatise, published in 1888, titled The Papacy Is the Antichrist: a Demonstration, in which he argues that the papacy is the perfect counterfeit of Christ.  In fact this treatise is quite a tour de force as Wylie attempts to show that the papacy fulfills all the scriptural references to the Antichrist, including all the references in the Book of Daniel, which I find rather boggling.  He could be right, but it would take quite a bit of study to find out for sure. 

But even without those references he gives solid reasons why only the papacy can be the actual Antichrist, starting with its claim to the title "Vicar of Christ" which all by itself is like announcing the Pope to be "Antichrist" as the words are synonymous.  This is a point I've made as well, as "vicar" means "substitute" or "in the place of," and there is also a Latin version of the concept, VICARIVUS FILII DEI which means "in the place of the Son of God" and whose letters which are also Roman numerals (VICIVILIIDI) add up to 666.

He must be a good counterfeit who can deceive many, a false Christ. Therefore he can't be an open enemy of Christ but must be a pretender to be Christ or a Christian leader. So Wylie points out that he can't be an Atheist or a Communist or a Pantheist.

He also can't be a Muslim. All these actively oppose Christ. Islam reveres him as a prophet and is antichrist in the sense that they deny His Deity, but this is an open denial. There are "Christian" cults that do the same. None of these are THE Antichrist although they are antichrists.

He also can't be an evil political leader, even if his evil surpasses that of all the most violent political leaders ever known, because he lacks the essential character of putting himself forward as a false Christ. (I would point out, however, that a characteristic of some political contenders has been that they make themselves gods and demand worship. That was true of the Caesars and Nero in particular took it to Antichrist proportions in his persecutions of the Christians, and Hitler also made himself as close to an object of worship as he could get. The Third Reich was after all one of the attempts to revive the Roman Empire, which followed the Holy Roman Empire and Kaiser Wilhelm's Second Reich, all in some form of collaboration with the papacy, and those who have followed these things are expecting the European Union eventually to develop into another version of the Holy Roman Empire.)

In this connection Wylie says

Antichrist’s rage is concentrated on one particular object and cause;

By which he must mean ridding the world of the true God and Christ and His followers, but I'd point out here that although the Inquisition murdered tens of millions of true Christians it also murdered Jews and Muslims and witches and atheists.

He continues:

nor with any propriety can such a one be said to sit in the “temple of God,” the seat on which the mock-Christ specially delights to show himself.

It took a while for me to be convinced that this defines the Popes already down through the centuries, as putting themselves in the seat at the head of the Church, which was the view of the Reformers. This contrasts sharply, of course, with today's futurist interpretation of a rebuilt literal temple in earthly Jerusalem, in which the Antichrist is expected literally to seat himself during the last seven years before the Lord Jesus returns. Something of the sort did happen in the time of the Maccabees when Antiochus Epiphanes put up what was probably an image of Zeus in the Jewish Temple and demanded that the Jews worship it, in fulfillment of the prophecy of the "abomination of desolation" in the Book of Daniel, which is generally understood to have a future fulfillment as well.  Antiochus was certainly an Antichrist figure, but by Wylie's argument not THE Antichrist since he was far from a successful counterfeit but an open enemy of the true God.

The next section of Wylie's argument where he contrasts the Mystery of Inquity with the Mystery of Godliness loses me to some extent, but then he does make a good comparison between the many Christ figures who came as types of the true Christ over the centuries before His arrival, as sketched out in the Old Testament, with types of the Antichrist, particularly the Caesars who were both kings and pagan priests and became the foundation of the papacy. He speaks of a "colossal" image of the Antichrist but, surprisingly (to me anyway), doesn't specifically name the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream which identifies the pagan empires that lead up to the final Roman empire. Nebuchadnezzer did, however, erect a gold statue of himself and demanded it be worshiped, which makes him personally a type of the Antichrist.

In Chapter 7 Wylie spells out how the papacy arose, and I find his historical points to be very convincing myself:

The first event which contributed, and contributed essentially to the development of the Papacy was the removal of the Emperor from Rome. Had Caesar continued to reside in his old capital, he would, as the phrase is, have "sat" upon the Pope, and this aspiring ecclesiastic could not have shot up into the powerful potentate which prophecy had foretold. But Constantine (A.D. 334) removed to the new Rome on the Bosphorus, leaving the old capital of the world to the Bishop of Rome, who was henceforth the first and most influential personage in that city. It was then, probably, that the idea of founding an ecclesiastical monarchy suggested itself to him. He had fallen heir, by what must have seemed a lucky accident, to the old capital of the world; he was, moreover, possessor of the chair of Peter, or believed himself to be so, and out of these two -the old town of the Caesars and the old chair of the apostle, it might even be possible -so, doubtless, he reasoned, to fabricate an empire that would one day rival and even overtop that of the emperors. These, it might have been thought beforehand, were but slender materials to bear the weight of so great an enterprise; yet with their help, and aided, doubtless, by deeper that mere human counsel, he projected a sovereignty which has not had its like on earth, which survived the fall of the Roman Empire, which lived through all the convulsions and overturnings of the Middle Ages, and which has come down to our day, and has the art, when men believe it to be about to expire, of rallying its powers, and coming back upon the world.

About this time, moreover, the equality which had reigned among the pastors of the church in the primitive age was broken. The bishops claimed superiority above the presbyters. Nor was there equality even among the bishops themselves. They took precedence, not according to their learning, or their talents, or their piety, but according to the rank of the city in which their see was placed. Finally, a new and loftier order arose overtopping the episcopate. Christendom was partitioned into five great patriarchates -Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. These were the five great cities of the empire, and their bishops were constituted the five great princes of the church.

Now came the momentous question, for a while so keenly agitated, Which of the five shall be the first? Constantinople claimed this honour for her patriarch, on the ground that it was the residence of the Emperor. Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem each put in its claim, but to no effect. Constantinople found, however, a powerful rival in the old city on the banks of the Tiber. Rome had been the head of the world, the throne of the Caesars; around it was still the halo of a thousand victories, and that gave it a mysterious influence over the imaginations of men, who began to see in its bishop the first ecclesiastic of the Christian world. The popular suffrage had pronounced in favour of the Roman bishop before his rank had received imperial ratification. He was installed as the first of the five patriarchs in A.D. 606. The Emperor Phocas, displeased with the bishop of Constantinople, who had condemned the murder of Maurice, by which Phocas opened his way to the imperial dignity, made Boniface III. universal bishop. The imperial edict, however, gave to the Roman bishop only the precedence among the five patriarchs; it gave him no power or jurisdiction over them.

He goes on to sketch out how the papacy acquired power bit by bit over the ensuing centuries beginning with the forged Donation of Constantine and Decretals of Isidore. These are now acknowledged to be forgeries, but

The fabrications of Isidore were made the substructions of canon law, and that stupendous fabric of legislation is still maintained to be of divine authority, despite that it is now acknowledged to be founded on a forgery.

And he goes on describing the means by which Rome brought primitive Europe under subjugation to papal power, for instance by teaching not a word of the gospel of Christ but only the power of Rome itself, and creating various superstitions to keep them in line.

In earlier years there had been genuine Christian evangelical churches planted in northern Europe by Irish and Scottish missionaries, but these were forced under Romanism, as were the original Irish evangelical churches that had been founded by St. Patrick.

Then the Crusades added to the papal power. And on it goes. I do find all this very convincing myself. This is certainly a portrait of the Great Apostasy and the Antichrist system built on it. It fits all the scriptural qualifications for the Mother of Harlots.

He continues with further evidences but I'll have to come back to consider them later. But to this point I'd say he's made the case, and it is really astonishing that today's churches are blind to the Antichrist nature of the papacy.

Exposing the Papacy as the Antichrist

I've had in mind for quite a while getting together a post on the Antichrist system of the papacy with documentation so that it might convince some to try to do something about it. Even people who believe the papacy is the Antichrist don't think of doing anything to combat it, it's just a passive recognition, along with the sense that there will yet be a final Antichrist, which is the main thing people think of. That there is any danger to anybody at any stage is a completely foreign thought.

But as Chris Pinto has been making clear, there is quite a history of Protestants warning against this Antichrist system, trying to make Christians aware of it, exposing it, calling it out, as we're counseled in scripture to do with the "works of darkness." Charles Spurgeon didn't believe the papacy was the Antichrist at first but finally did and wrote many articles exposing them in his publication The Sword and the Trowel.

Up until the first part of the twentieth century there were many such warnings, and a main target of the warnings was the Jesuits, who are the attack dogs of the papacy and truly dangerous, being known in former times as ruthless assassins who aimed to take down heads of state, particularly Protestant heads of state, but also any others who crossed them, including Popes. Early American President John Adams said there wasn't any group more deserving of Hell.

But who knows any of this any more? Newsweek magazine even came out recently with an edition that speaks approvingly of the Jesuits having a sort of comeback. Since this current Pope is a Jesuit and is quite popular, his order gets to bask in his glow.

I hope I'll be able to get my documented post together soon, I've been reading J A Wylie's History of Protestantism for starters, but at least I wanted to say this much now. We all need to know these things. Catholics also need to know about it since they really don't have a clue about any of it either.

Meanwhile Chris Pinto has lots of information at his sites, Noise of Thunder Radio and Adullam Films.

People Still Fall for the Heaven Stories

It's beginning to seem that a major proof that we are in the last of the last days is the phenomenal success of the many books about people's experiences of "heaven," and in some cases also Hell.

I was reminded of the popularity of these stories as I was walking out of the grocery store a few days ago with a couple of people behind me talking about the book Heaven Is For Real, what it costs at that store and where to go to get a better deal on it. Their interest is probably due to the recent movie based on that book. With that much popularity I thought I should write a brief update on the subject since I've got a few posts of my own on it here that I hope steer people to the truth about such things.

When I wrote my posts on that subject it never occurred to me that they would become the topic that attracts far and away the most comments I get at my blogs. I still get comments on those posts.

Many of the comments are of course negative, especially when it comes to the experiences of small children. How can I suggest that small children could be so deceived? The idea seems to be that children are too innocent for the devil to exploit them. But of course the devil has no qualms about whom he exploits, whatever works to deceive us is all that matters to him, and apparently we are a gullible lot, even Christians sad to say. Some of the books were of course written by Christians, and I do mean genuine believers, who even claim the experiences do not contradict the Bible.

By now it should be clear that they do contradict the Bible. I've tried to collect that evidence here, but there are many other sources out there, including the sermon by a pastor I linked here, but also in particular John MacArthur's ministry Grace to You, for instance HERE and HERE.  [Just for the record, I don't see that there's any reason to suspect that these stories are the product of imagination or hallucination, I think there's reason to believe that they are genuine experiences that can only be demonic deceptions.]

I don't want to review the arguments in this post, there's enough in the posts I've written already, and there are many comments to those posts people can read as well. This is just a reminder for anyone who still has questions.

I updated the previous post on the two legs of the Antichrist empire

I think my update makes my point a lot clearer so I'm doing a separate post to call attention to it.

Waking Up Among Wolves: The Antichrist Pt 2: Islam

UPDATE 8/31 Since I think I got this post rather garbled but don't know how to correct it without starting over, I'm going to add a short explanation, hoping that will say more clearly what I wanted the post to say.

I've been focused on the papacy as the Antichrist, with the Protestant Reformers as the main source for that viewpoint, Luther in particular. I don't usually bring in the prophecy of the Revived Roman Empire, which is based on the statue of Daniel 2, but the two are clearly connected. The Roman Church inherited the visible trappings of the Roman empire's pagan religion, the robes and headgear for instance, and the title Pontifex Maximus for the head of that religion, mixing it all together with some of the teachings of Christianity and calling it Christian.

The point of this post was to consider that there are two legs to the section of Nebuchadnezzar's statue that pertains to the Roman Empire, and since the two arms had significance in the empire of the Medes and Persians that followed Babylon, it makes sense that there would also be significance in the two legs of the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church or the empire of Byzantium would be the likely other leg for starters, but Islam in the form of the Turkish invasions conquered Constantinople, the head of that empire, in 1453.

That makes Islam the other leg of the Roman Empire of the statue of Daniel 2, another politicized religion like Roman Catholicism, now already calling itself the Islamic State. A few decades ago Islam might not have been easily seen in this role but today it's a very reasonable interpretation as that religion has been growing and spreading just as it did in Luther's time under the Turks, killing Christians in Africa and the Middle East, beheading western journalists with their horrific bloody satanic zeal. Just as the Reformers in that day understood its spread to be God's judgment against the apostasy of the Christian church, those of us who see God's judgment on the West today can see it as God's instrument as well.

The West, meaning principally Europe and the U.S., are doing very little to resist the spread of Islam, and are of course absolutely blind to the wolfish character of the false Church of Romanism. Muslim-fomented uprisings in France are not being checked, and nobody is watching our borders where not only hordes of Catholics are being allowed to enter, who can be expected before long to acquire voting status, but Muslims very likely as well with their zeal to blow us all up if we won't bow to the Islamic State.

Of course all this is prophecy and it has to come about eventually that these two powers will dominate the world, but I'd like to think we could still muster a Christian opposition, which would have to start with a Christian Reformation or Revfival, that would push it all back for another century or two.

[This isn't too far-fetched when you consider that the Reformation rose up during the Turkish invasion and effectively quelled both that and the Roman Church as well for the next few centuries. As Isaiah 59:19 says, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise up a standard against him.]

I hope this makes the communication below a little clearer.

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ORIGINAL POST:

In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream about a great statue, which only the prophet Daniel by God's grace is able to interpret for him.  It is a statue of a man with a head of gold, his chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay.  In the dream a stone is cut out "without hands" and smashes the feet, and the statue breaks up and is destroyed. 

Daniel gives the interpretation that the statue represents a series of kingdoms yet to come, beginning with the head of gold representing Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, followed by lesser kingdoms and ending with the kingdom represented by the iron legs which will break in pieces and subdue all things.  The feet of iron and clay will be partly strong and partly weak.  The stone that smashes the feet and breaks the whole statue is the final kingdom set up by the God of heaven and it shall stand forever.

The labeled image above is a typical representation of this statue as presented in many churches and Bible studies, except that the chest and arms of silver are usually represented as Medo-Persia, showing the rule of the two kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians in the two arms.  Next, Greece conquers through Alexander the Great, ushering in the Hellenistic period during which the conquered nations all learned to speak common Greek, which is the language of the New Testament;  and the legs of iron are of course the Roman Empire, during which time Jesus Christ came into the world.   The feet and toes as Western Europe divided into ten nations within a revived Roman Empire is considered to be prophetic of the world situation during the last of the last days.

This basic view of the prophetic meaning of the statue is the Futurist view, from the very popular Dispensationalist camp.  A revived Roman Empire is regarded as the culmination of the series of earthly kingdoms, prophesied to dominate the world in the last days yet to come. 

I held this view as I think the vast majority of Christians still do, until I recently encountered the historical interpretation of the last days, in which this revived Roman Empire has been recurrent throughout history, through the political aspect of the Roman Church.  First in the form of the Holy Roman Empire, followed by attempts to revive it in the Second Reich and then the failed Third Reich, all at least covertly headed by the papacy of the Roman Church.  Many consider the European Union to be the next attempt to revive it in power, and that may well turn out to be the case, although the Futurist system doesn't put the papacy at the head of this revived empire or see the papacy as the Antichrist. Even where these attempted revivals of the Roman Empire are recognized as pertaining to the last days, they are generally not connected with the Roman Church.

But neither does today's Reformed eschatology connect it with the Roman Church.  Before I had the benefit of Reformed teaching, most of what I learned came from the Dispensationalist camp which views the Antichrist exclusively as a figure yet to come, who is to be revealed in the last seven years before the Second Coming of Christ.   This is apparently due to the Dispensationalist or Futurist understanding of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel outlined in Daniel 9:24 - 27, meaning "weeks of years" or 70 x 7 or 490 years, 69 "weeks" of which are understood to have been fulfilled at the first coming of Christ, counting the time right down to His riding into Jerusalem on the donkey.  That leaves one week or seven years to be fulfilled in the future, during which the final Antichrist is to reign for at least part of that period.  This has led to all kinds of speculation about the possible identity of this figure among those who believe we are in the last of the last days, and various contemporary political personalities have taken their turn in the role.  Hal Lindsey's blockbuster book of 1970, The Late Great Planet Earth, popularized this view of the last days, and the more recent book series, Left Behind, which envisions what would happen if the Church were raptured out of the world, has kept it in the public eye. This line of thinking has had the effect of keeping our focus exclusively on a future Antichrist who is rarely if ever considered in relation to the Roman Church.

What the Reformers had to say about the papacy as Antichrist has been utterly lost in this theological system, and it may be due at least partly to its influence that the Roman Church is now widely accepted among nominal Protestants as just another Christian denomination, its very opposition to the gospel itself now lost or at least blurred in the minds of a majority of Christians.

However, today's Reformed theoloogians don't do a much better job with the last days or the Antichrist.  I don't completely reject the Dispensationalist system -- the counting of the weeks of years is convincing to me for instance, so I can accept the view that there is yet a seven-year period in the future that will complete the work of redemption as envisioned by Daniel.  I can consider this a possibility AND that the papacy is the Antichrist, a final expression yet to come. The Reformed position on the seventy weeks, on the other hand, makes the numbers as good as irrelevant, mere symbols and far from convincing ones.  And along with the Futurists I too anticipate the revealing of the final Antichrist, although I look first to the papacy for this, keeping open the possibility that the Antichrist himself could be a Hitler type figure supported by the papacy, while the Dispensationalists pretty much disregard the papacy as a candidate for the Antichrist.   If today's Reformed also followed the Reformers in their historical eschatology, which views the papacy as the Antichrist throughout history, I'd place myself more fully inside their camp.  It's really the historical eschatology that has captivated me most recently, the eschatology of the Reformers themselves.  (I think today's Reformed also fail to appreciate the role of Israel in the last days, though the Reformers themselves didn't make this mistake, as I noted on another of my blogs a while back.)

All that is to explain how Christians have been lulled to sleep by false theories about the Antichrist and the nature of our pagan opponents as represented in Nebuchadnezzar's statue. This is how it comes about that when you begin to contemplate the role of the papacy through history in its tireless efforts to undermine the true gospel, a viewpoint we could have learned from the Reformers themselves if they'd been taken seriously as they should have been, that's when you may experience what I mean by waking up among wolves. The veil of the irrelevant ditherings about the identity of the Antichrist to come in the near future falls away and we see that he has been there all along, waiting for his chance.

But even recognizing the papacy as the Antichrist isn't the whole story.

Why Does The Roman Empire Have Two Legs?

If the Dispensationalist / Futurist interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's statue offers an explanation for there being two legs to the Roman Empire they don't make much of it.  Since they limit that symbol to the original Roman Empire which collapsed in the fifth century the most natural interpretation would be the division into the Eastern and Western branches, Byzantium or Eastern Orthodoxy in the East, and Rome in the West. 

But here is where the Reformers' Historical Eschatology, seeing the Roman Antichrist ongoing in history, brings out a connection that both Dispensationalism and Reformed theology miss, though the Reformers themselves wrote about this, principally Luther.

According to Luther on Islam and the Papacy by Dr. F. N. Lee:

After Luther learned to trust in Christ alone for his salvation in 1517f, he increasingly saw both Islam and the Papacy as the two huge apostasies which the Holy Scriptures predicted would long obscure True Christianity -- until both would ultimately be quashed and vanquished.

In the Biblical Book of Daniel, Luther saw both Islam and the Papacy predicted.

In 1453, Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium or the Eastern Empire, was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, conquered, in other words, by Islam.   F.N. Lee continues:

Luther on Islam and the Papacy as the two legs of the image in Daniel chapter two 

Christ, the Stone in Daniel chapter two, at His Resurrection shattered the Pagan Roman Empire -- in principle. Ephesians 1:20f & 4:8-10, and Colossians 2:12-15. Then, from A.D. 600 onward, that shattered Roman Empire divided into two legs -- as predicted in Daniel’s explanation of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. The left leg became the Western Roman Empire, under the Papacy in Rome. The right leg, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital Constantinople, later succumbed to Islam -- under the Turk Mohammed II.and his awesome armies in 1453.

Islam!  Well, haven't we been wondering and speculating where Islam fits into the end times?  The Reformers, who lived in the days of the Turkish conquests, had it figured out long ago, but instead of benefiting from their insight, in my opinion we've been traipsing down rabbit trails.

As Lee presents Luther's thinking on this subject, the Pope is THE Antichrist because he has set himself up inside the Church and taken the place of Christ Himself, but the "Turk" or Muslim is also a spirit of Antichrist in his outright denial of the Deity of Christ.   It is also interesting that both arose in the seventh century, the papacy being officially established first in 606, and Islam originally given to Mohammed in the year 610.

Luther gives God's judgment on the Church as the explanation for the rise of the two apostasies.

Today these two legs of the antichrist empire are huge, a billion Catholics and well over a billion Muslims. 

Interestingly, Luther judges the papacy as the worse of the two, since the "Turk" is up front about his opposition to Christ, while the Pope pretends to be His friend.  F. N. Lee again:

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther continues: “The Pope, with his followers, commits a greater sin than the Turk and all the Heathen.... The Turk.forces no one to deny Christ and to adhere to his [own Islamic] faith....   Though he rages most intensely by murdering Christians in the body -- he, after all, does nothing by this but fill heaven with saints....

“The Pope does not want to be either enemy or Turk... He [the Pope] fills hell with nothing but‘Christians’.... This is committing real spiritual murder, and is every bit as bad as the teaching and blasphemy of Mohammed and the Turks. But whenever men do not allow him [the Pope] to practice this infernal diabolical seduction -- he adopts the way of the Turk, and commits bodily murder too....

For reference: Chris Pinto's recent radio show on the same subject, Luther, Calvin and Islam . He quotes Luther from E.M.Plass, What Luther Says.
And here's my other Waking Up Among Wolves blog post.

The True History of Palestine and Israel

UPDATE August 10
So what else is new?  Now we have a report of  "Palestinians" protesting to the UN about Israel's determined defense of itself against the rocket attacks by Hamas.   The usual accusation of unnecessary deaths is brought against Israel.    Given their history of faking injuries and deaths to make Israel look bad, and their history of using their own people as human shields, my guess would be that these people are either deceived, believing the Hamas-produced propaganda, or part of the conspiracy themselves.

But for some reason the news media just love these victim complaints against Israel, love treating Israel as the aggressor when as usual they are in fact on the defensive, responding to the provocation of "Palestinian" attacks on Israel itself, aiming to take out as much of the ability of Hamas to launch such attacks as they can.  And, something that just does not get reported in the mainstream media, when they are about to destroy a target in Gaza, the Israelis make sure the people who are in harm's way are warned so they can escape. If they don't escape, that is Hamas' doing, not Israel's.

The world just won't face the fact that Islam's objective is and always has been to destroy any people or nation that opposes Islam.  Killing Jews and Christians is what their religion tells them to do [listen to Jacob Prasch below].  But we get only the media spin that makes such actions into ethnic struggles or blames the anti-Islamic side of the conflict.

We're in a time when the world just loves lies of all kinds.  

http://news.yahoo.com/pro-palestinian-activists-march-un-headquarters-231139359.html

Original Post:
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Israel again was put in a position of having to respond with force to the provocations of Hamas in sending rockets into Israel from Gaza, by the murder of Israeli teenagers by Hamas. Israel reports that the operation is now over because they located and destroyed the tunnels that had facilitated the attacks on Israel. As usual, Israel has been treated as the Bad Guy in the media, and our leftist-propagandized citizenry has fallen for it as usual. Evil evil Israel, look at these dead Palestinians.*

Nobody hears how before a raid into Gaza the Israelis sent warnings to the people there of their targets, advising them to leave and save themselves from the attack. They even made phone calls into the very buildings they planned to attack, telling the people there in their own language that the place was targeted and to leave to protect themselves. Hamas wouldn't let the people leave. They WANT victims to show the world how evil Israel is. They want to keep up the propaganda so they can continue to prosecute their often-stated goal of driving Israel into the sea, simply obliterating it from the maps of the Middle East altogether. Which their own maps already reflect. There is no Israel on their maps in case you haven't noticed.

Received a link to a video of Jacob Prasch speaking on the subject of the history of the Palestinian people, which answers the usual leftist revisionist blaming of Israel for their plight. I'd never heard of Jacob Prasch but found out he is a Jewish believer in Christ, and what he's saying is an expanded version of what I have known and believed about the Middle East situation for years already, so I'm happy to post the video. Googling him comes up with all kinds of objections to him I'm not going to track down. Nobody escapes controversy in the Christian community these days and I don't need to know what I think about those other issues right now. What he's saying on the video is the truth about the Israel-Palestinian situation that few know about any more and that is why I'm happy to post it here.



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*Does anybody remember as I do the video of Palestinian "victims" from some such operation by Israel many years ago now, that shows in an almost humorous way how the Palestinians try to set up Israel as the Bad Guy? This was a shot taken at some distance of a couple of Palestinians carrying a man on a stretcher under a sheet, when they stumble and the stretcher tips, and the man who had been lying on it lands on his feet and then all three start running. Sometimes they fake it, sometimes they let their own people be killed just to get the world to hate Israel.