Strange Fire Revisited: True and False Doctrine, True and False Spiritual Experience

Partly as an antidote to the discouragement and depressing effect of the End Times scenario that is looming over us, I've been immersing myself in good teaching, lately a lot of John MacArthur on You Tube videos, which got me back into the issues addressed by his Strange Fire Conference of a couple years ago.  I caught up with some of his answers to his critics among other things. 

MacArthur remains concerned that the moderates in the charismatic movement, as well as those outside who also believe that the gifts of the Spirit continue today, don't denounce the false teachers among them, because their silence gives tacit approval to what he considers to be the most serious threat to the Church in our time, and misleads individuals who get a false idea of salvation from the movement.

The Strange Fire Conference should have demolished the Charismatic Movement

As I've been reviewing some of the talks and follow-ups from the conference I conclude that the conference achieved its goal of showing that the Charismatic Movement is not Christian, even though there are Christians who are involved in it. The conference made their case, biblically, theologically and historically, that the "gifts of the Spirit" are not the gifts of the Spirit as described in the New Testament, they are something else, something false, misleading Christians into serious error.

I personally benefitted greatly from the Strange Fire Conference because although I'd come out of the charismatic movement years ago -- thanks to God's merciful answers to my prayers for truth about phenomena I'd encountered there -- I still had lingering doubts about the overall authenticity of the movement.  As MacArthur mentions in at least one of the videos I recently watched, one Reformed teacher said his eyes were opened by one particular revelation from MacArthur’s book based on the conference that completely exposed the errors of the movement and ended any doubts he had about it: the simple fact that all the practitioners of the movement recognize that the supernatural phenomena they are practicing are not the same as the gifts of the Spirit that were possessed by the New Testament Church.  The charismatics call the phenomena they experience "the gifts of the Spirit" nevertheless, while acknowledging this difference.  It seems to me that once this is acknowledged the whole charismatic movement is exposed as a deception and the hard thing to explain then is why some people aren't yet convinced.  The "prophecies" they promote, the "healings," the tongues-speaking, none of that is the same thing as the New Testament Church had experienced.

That revelation was one of seven Biblical arguments for the cessation of the spiritual gifts given in the talk by Pastor Tom Pennington, and was also crucial for setting me free from my lingering doubts, but that entire talk is what finished it off for me for good.  Those seven arguments he gave should be the end of the claim that scripture doesn't say that the gifts ended. What Pennington showed is that while it doesn't say that in so many words, there should be no doubt that the Bible makes clear that the gifts have ceased. He shows definitively, it seems to me, that the purpose of miraculous gifts throughout the Bible was always to authenticate the possessor of the gifts as God's chosen messenger. He then focuses on the gift of Apostleship to show that of all the gifts given to the New Testament church, that one has unquestionably ceased. He then shows that the New Testament Church was founded on the New Testament apostles and prophets, and once a foundation is laid it's laid and what follows in subsequent church history is building the temple on it. Then he makes the point mentioned above and elaborates it, that none of the phenomena practiced today in the charismatic movement that are claimed to be the continuation of the New Testament spiritual gifts bears any resemblance to the originals. Then he shows from scripture that the gifts had already declined during the time of the New Testament church, and then gives the testimony of church history that they had ceased. He argues then for the sufficiency of scripture, and goes on to point out that the rules given for the expression of the speaking gifts in the New Testament church are completely ignored by today's practitioners.

It seems to me that Pennington's talk alone should leave no charismatic claim still standing. All the talks contributed to that assessment, but another I found particularly illuminating was R.C. Sproul's talk on Undervaluing Pentecost, in which he demonstrated from the Book of Acts that the four major impartations of the gift of the Holy Spirit by the apostles were for the purpose of including separate groups of believers in the foundation of the Church, that is, the Jerusalem believers, the Samaritans, the "God-fearers" and the Gentiles. I'd never heard that before and it answers the major claim by the charismatics that those events argue for the continuation of the gifts today as if they represent the norm. If they were instead unique to the founding of the Church, as Sproul demonstrated, they argue against their continuation.

Those who continue to criticize MacArthur and the conference either can't have listened to it or understood it.  Judging by some of the criticisms I ran across, many just didn't hear it, because they are criticizing points that were clearly answered in the conference.

However,

There is some confusion between the charismatic phenomena and other forms of “mysticism” that could keep the Strange Fire Conference from completely demolishing the movement as it should

As MacArthur says in an interview by Phil Johnson [27:05], as well as in a talk he gave to his seminary students, What has happened since Strange Fire, he doesn't understand what “compulsions” make an otherwise strong Reformed preacher and thinker step outside that frame of reference in order to endorse the charismatic movement. 

Two continuationists that were mentioned were John Piper and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and both of them have said that the scripture doesn't show the cessation of the gifts, which I say above Tom Pennington seems to me to have answered definitively forever. Lloyd-Jones also made it clear in some of his writing that he thought the cessationists are saying all miracles have ceased rather than just the specific gifting of individuals as described in the New Testament. Pennington answers that objection too, and I’m sure MacArthur does in his book as well.

Both Lloyd-Jones and Piper certainly have a strong influence on continuationists today. I'm not as familiar with Wayne Grudem, but apparently he is another Reformed teacher who has defended the gifts. There remains a question why he and Piper haven't changed their view of the movement based on the conference, and especially on Pennington's talk, if they in fact heard it.

Lloyd-Jones died in 1981 but those influenced by him should be able to correct his views from the information given at the conference. Other influential evangelical teachers who accepted the charismatic movement were A.W. Tozer and Leonard Ravenhill, both very inspiring preachers it would be hard for serious Christians to criticize. This is a great value of the Strange Fire Conference, that it gives us solid grounds for rejecting their views of the charismatics apart from their valid theology.

According to MacArthur in the talk to seminary students, Lloyd-Jones often spoke of seeking a special "anointing" or power of God on his preaching, saying he'd experienced it three times in his career. MacArthur answered very effectively based on 1 John 2 that the anointing is there when the truth is preached, which is of course true and needs to be affirmed as he did.

But he fails to recognize that sometimes there is such a thing as preaching with a felt power that affects the hearers in an unusual way. MacArthur's argument would be stronger if he allowed that there very well may be valid supernatural spiritual experiences, although they have nothing whatever to do with the Charismatic Movement and are wrongly appropriated to it. He quite rightly says in that talk to the seminary students that he thinks Lloyd-Jones’ mysticism about the anointing “lends itself to being open to the charismatic gifts.”

But since he has never experienced this sort of thing himself he denigrates that mysticism and risks being unable to persuade those who take it seriously. My point is that one of the reasons for Reformed teachers to hold on to the idea of a special anointing, which then wrongly becomes the basis for supporting the whole charismatic movement, is that they themselves have had such “mystical” experiences and assume they are the same kind of spiritual experiences the Charismatic movement is based on. Lloyd-Jones didn't experience the big revival in Wales in 1905 (though his wife did), but he was very interested in revivals and studied them. Genuine revivals are characterized by supernatural experiences that leave an indelible impression on those affected by them, including the experience of a special power to affect people by the preaching of the leaders.

Tozer received what he understood to be the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” as a new believer, and often mentions the “Christian mystics” in his books as examples of a deep level of worship and a high view of God. The fact that such examples of "mysticism" are so often criticized along with the Charismatic Movement can be misleading, and confuse the false teachings the Strange Fire conference did such a good job of exposing with legitimate experiences given by the Holy Spirit. Today we also have a fast-growing new form of mysticism in the churches, this one the “Contemplative Prayer” movement within the apostate Emerging Church movement that teaches a form of Transcendental Meditation (I wrote about this recently on my Things of the Spirit blog).

The differences between the bogus mysticisms and the mysticism Tozer extols really need a whole separate conference because the only thing they have in common is experience of the supernatural. Or at least that is my opinion; perhaps a good Biblical study could show me that I’m wrong about this. Some of the mystics Tozer admires can be shown to have had some false ideas too, but the one thing they have that the Charismatics and the Emerging Church don't have is a genuine sense of worship that truly exalts God, whereas the phony mysticisms are all caught up on the level of the experiences themselves, which do not glorify God at all even though they claim they do.

Leonard Ravenhill's passion was praying for revival. Revival of the supernatural sort he had in mind did not come in his lifetime as a result of his prayers and books exhorting Christians to pray for revival. In fact the only "revivals" we've had over the last few decades are the bogus charismatic and Word-Faith spectacles in which people exhibit bizarre behavior under the influence of the flesh or some alien spirit. The Strange Fire Conference did provide the categories of discernment necessary to differentiate a true revival from the charismatic movement and from the false revivals associated with the movement over the last few decades, but without a clear idea of what true revival would look like the point can get lost.

MacArthur says, however, on the two videos linked above, that we are right now in the midst of the greatest revival that has ever been, far greater than the Reformation, and that is the recovery of Reformed theology, of which his church and seminary are a part. He gave some very interesting history of the movement which he experienced from its beginnings. That’s a very important perspective, brand new to me, and it lifted my spirits quite a bit to hear him say that because I’ve become so resigned to how God is judging the west and isn’t going to give us a revival. I do think it’s fair to call this resurgence of Reformed doctrine a revival, but nevertheless it’s not a revival in the sense that Edwin Orr wrote about revivals, which are characterized by supernatural phenomena. That is clearly what Lloyd-Jones had in mind, and Leonard Ravenhill, although they made the error of accepting the phenomena of the Charismatic Movement as the same thing, which it is not, and not differentiating these things is an error perpetuated by the Strange Fire Conference, which needs to be corrected if the conference is to be the success it should be.

When I’ve hoped for a revival, something I wrote about fairly frequently early on in my blogging, the wish would be almost immediately squelched by the knowledge of the false revivals we’d been having, such as the “Toronto Blessing,” and the fact that there is so much doctrinal error in the churches we would need a Reformation before a genuine revival could be possible. So MacArthur’s saying the Reformed movement is in fact a great revival cheers me immensely, because I read that to mean we are actually having the doctrinal Reformation we need to have before any experiential revival could be safe. A genuine revival of that kind has the supernatural effects of deeply convicting Christians of sin en masse, and of spreading wide in the community even without human intervention to draw people to the revival where they can hear the gospel. If the church isn’t founded on true doctrine the result could only be a chaos of misguided experiences, misleading any new converts as they are even now being misled in the megachurches. It’s no doubt a great blessing from God that all the praying for revival that has been done over the last few decades has not gone further than it did in the bogus charismatic events, and may even have been answered by the Reformed movement. But we aren’t yet where we should be in order to rest easy in the idea of a big move of God either.

Tozer warned (a few decades ago already) that a revival in the current condition of the church would be a disaster, not a blessing, and his words proved prophetic. It would only confirm the churches in their horrific man-centeredness and false ideas of worship, which is what happened with the Toronto and Lakeland and Brownsville “revivals” and now Redding if that is considered to be a revival. Despite the hopeful growth of Reformed doctrine, the doctrinal dangers continue now even worse than ever in the “seeker-sensitive” megachurches which are packed with people hearing messages of comfort to their fleshly and worldly self-interests instead of the gospel message of dying to self.

The Strange Fire Conference did a remarkable job of answering all that, but someone like John Piper might resist even the best biblical evidence against the charismatic phenomena based on having experienced spiritual phenomena that raised his Christian life above the ordinary. I don’t know the causes in Piper’s case but he clearly highly values a certain kind of “mystical” experience that leads him to endorse the Charismatics. Strange Fire did not answer this sort of objection because it's not at all in the same category as the Charismatic Movement though often confused with it, and would need a whole different set of arguments to answer it.

Different Kinds of Supernatural Experiences

When MacArthur said he doesn't understand why some Reformed teachers would persist in seeking a special anointing or other special feeling, he reveals a gap in his own thinking that may undermine the arguments of the Strange Fire Conference in some people's minds. Even if it's clear that the conference is not arguing for the cessation of all supernatural work by the Holy Spirit, there is still the fact that some people HAVE experienced something supernatural that isn’t the spiritual gifts but which he doesn’t consider valid, which he lumps with the charismatic phenomena as the same sort of “mysticism” and dismisses as false in the same way. But you can't just dismiss all that as an illusion. Somehow you have to answer it if it can and should be answered, and it has to be answered on completely different grounds than the charismatic phenomena, because they are not the same thing.

This is certainly true of the kinds of experiences Lloyd-Jones would have remembered from the Welsh revival, but even with the bogus charismatic experiences you can't just dismiss them as produced by imagination or “impressions” or "the flesh" because they are not voluntary experiences. To characterize the sought-for “anointing” as “some kind of buzz” as MacArthur did, is to completely discredit his own opinion of these things.

There needs to be a differentiation between the false and the God-sent experiences such as Lloyd-Jones would have in mind.

The Charismatic Experiences are not Voluntary

Even the Charismatic experiences need to be understood as something different from ordinary modes of experience and knowing. While emotions can be heightened by repetitive music it would be a mistake to think all that is going on in those charismatic “worship services” is emotion (and you could ask in any case WHAT emotion it is that is being invoked since it’s clearly not worship). Repetitious music or drumbeats or bodily movements can bring about altered states of consciousness, but also are part of shamanistic rituals that invite demon possession in tribal settings. While some of it may be faked, there is a real power that is imparted with the laying on of hands you can see in those videos where people fall over, sometimes apparently unconscious. That sort of thing can’t be chalked up to anything the senses or emotions could bring about.

Clearly there is a supernatural or spiritual power that is exhibited in some charismatic gatherings and "revivals" --  you can find video after video of people suddenly losing control of their bodies and thrashing around wildly, jerking spasmodically, being thrown to the floor, or their heads whipping about alarmingly even while they are speaking, and there should be no doubt whatever that this is a real power outside their control.  The "prophecies" and the "tongues" also come involuntarily, which adds to the overall impression that the whole array of such phenomena including what they wrongly call the “gifts of the Spirit” are of God.  The logic is pretty simple:  Well, all this is outside our control and what other source for such phenomena is there but God, since we're Christians aren't we?

The Charismatic phenomena I just described has been shown to be the same as the “Kundalini” experiences had by Hindu practitioners. Ex-“prophet” Andrew Strom has posted videos to You Tube demonstrating this which I’ve linked in the margin of my blog. You can also find videos of the “Toronto Blessing” and Todd Bentley’s Lakeland “Revival” which demonstrate the same phenomena. There is nothing Christian about any of this and the fact that it is the same sort of thing as practiced in Hinduism ought to open people’s eyes to this fact.

You can’t just impute these things to normal experiences of “the flesh” because the people experiencing them obviously can’t control most of it. It’s either demonic or it belongs to what Watchman Nee identified as “soul power” in his book The Latent Powers of the Soul, in which he ascribes them to original powers possessed by Adam and Eve that were for the most part lost or at least distorted at the Fall. These would include psychic abilities of the sort that become the source of the “prophecies” claimed by Charismatics. Nee says he himself had the experience of knowing things in other people’s minds that he couldn’t have known through normal experience, and at first thought it was a gift from God until he came to understand that God is not pleased with that sort of thing, so he made an effort to do away with it as you would with sin. The involuntary tongues-speaking experienced by charismatics can come from this latent “soul power” as well, certainly not from God. Nee also mentions that fits of laughter affected congregations in China in his time just as they have in the “laughing revivals” in Toronto and other Charismatic and “Word-Faith” gatherings, and they sought these experiences because they believed they were from God, and Nee advised them against it. The thing is all these phenomena are involuntary, produced automatically without the person’s conscious involvement, and that is what convinces them that they must be of God.

All this can be stimulated by demonic forces or twisted to their own ends too, since it is all part of the fallen nature.

There may also be Genuine God-sent "Mystical" Experiences

Next post continues from the last heading. =============================================== (Note: I discovered after posting this that Martyn Lloyd-Jones did not exoerience the Welsh revival personally, don't know how I had that idea. Turns out from a biography I found on him that his wife had been there, so he may have received a lot of his interest in revivals from her accounts. That same biography said he did study revivals. I tried to change my comments but it wasn't easy so those sections are pretty awkward.

The futility of trying to save the west if God is judging us.

I still try to get across how political correctness is a false morality that is going to destroy the west, very probably the world for that matter by the looks of how things are going, but it seems minds are shut so tight against it the effort is futile.  Perhaps there are some who can hear it still, I hope so, but it's only too clear that an awful lot of people just can't hear it at all.  Try to get across that Islam is a dangerous ideology and you even get accused of being as bad as the Islamists, equating your effort to warn with blowing people up. 

This just has to be the Great Delusion of the last of the last days.  A couple of decades ago you'd encounter some of this craziness but now it seems to have captured most of the world. 

We don't hear much through the mainstream media about the threats to Europe from Islamic refugees. You have to go to, say, Infowars, to find out about, say, the epidemic of rapes in Sweden:



Continuing to warn about Islam probably is a lost cause. But warning about God's judgment through these things is still necessary because that's the reason for it all. It may be just as futile but if it led anyone to repent and turn to the true God that the west has rejected, that would be a great blessing. Saving Europe, or the US, is probably out of the question, but saving some human beings may still be possible. The world is soon most likely going to come under the rule of the Antichrist anyway.

This is at least World War III but worse...

Thank you, Mark Levin, for telling the horrific truth:   This is World War III

“These people inside Washington – they don’t get it,” Levin said. “This is World War III. Could you imagine during World War II or World War I having these discussions? World War I, under a hideous president, Woodrow Wilson, World War II under an almost equally hideous president, FDR – did they worry about any of this stuff? Was this the national debate? The national debate was how to secure the nation and destroy the enemy and how to destroy the enemy as quickly as possible – victory, victory, victory. Do these guys even talk about victory? This entire debate is absurd.”

Syrian refugees and illegal aliens, both, spell death to America. Yes it IS war on America and nobody is trying to stop it. Except a few conservative voices who are scorned, called racist and so on. Those of us who know what's coming are helpless to do anything about it. Is the opposition brainwashed or something more sinister? I'd prefer to believe brainwashed at least in the majority of cases, but that doesn't make the threat any less dire. Their minds are destroyed by political correctness that hallucinates lambs where there are wolves and invites the wolves in to dine.

Franklin Graham is saying the same thing: Islam Has Declared War on the World. Well, they declared it a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, but fimally now they are getting their chance, and that's because of Political Correctness which is the suicide note of the west.

Supposedly, according to the politically correct revisionist history we hear everywhere now, America was founded on a kind of generosity of spirit that would in fact destroy the nation. They quote Christ against us as if He would invite Islam to the table of Christians. They quote the poem by Emma Lazarus about giving us your tired, poor huddled masses, as if all huddled masses are equal. We're supposedly treating people as guilty instead of innocent until proven so. As if this was about individuals and not about a murderous ideology. We're "haters" and "racists."

So far about eight radicals have been discovered among the refugees. But the refugees themselves are also a threat, this is what the twisted leftist mind won't recognize. They may right now be sincere seekers of asylum, not planning to attack us at the moment, but most of them are Muslims and Muslims will eventually attack us, because that's what their version of God tells them to do.  Convert or pay huge fines or die.   Even if right now there are no ISIS members among them, Islam is contrary to the whole spirit of America.  I ask again, do they "not get it" or are they motivated to do away with America? I've always thought that may be Obama's real aim.

Try to tell the PC-brainwashed that they are putting the nation in danger with their twisted version of compassion, and you get back the accusation that we're just racists who don't like brown-skinned people. This seems to me like worse than "not getting it" but perhaps the brainwashing has really been that successful.

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Trump and Carson get it. Islam is not just another religion to be protected by American rights. Islam is an ideology that wants the death of all other ideologies. Why do we have to listen to the likes of Hillary Clinton who either doesn't get it or wants to see America go down, or any of the rest of them who can't grasp that Islam is the current Hitler who aims to take over the entire world.
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As I usually do, I come back to the fact, something that Christians ought to recognize as fact even if nobody else does, that America, and the west in general, is under God's judgment and that is the reason we are being subjected to these dangers. The only solution, and it may be too late, is for a resurgence of the Protestant Christianity that built the west.  May God have mercy and hear this prayer.

Yes, Protestant. I'm sure there are patriotic Catholics too, but they are too misguided by their leaders to be trustworthy. There are American Catholic bishops who are determined to bring in these refugees no matter what other Americans think. There is a Catholic sanctuary in New Orleans that has already brought in Syrian refugees. For decades they have been providing sanctuary for the illegal aliens of the Catholic Hispanic nations. These are traitors and should be recognized as such. Patriotic Catholics should be denouncing them.

How many Christians are left in America? Mercifully God doesn't need large numbers. But we need to be praying constantly for a long time that He will protect the nation. We should also be sending missionaries to the refugees but first please Lord bring this nation back to You.

But this one is so bad, so many deluded people, so many who put evil for good and good for evil. so many enemies of Christ, this is more than just World War III, this must truly be the very last days, in which hearts will fail for seeing what is coming on the earth.

Luke 21:26-28 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Come soon, Lord.

Mysticism Posts on other blog

Just a note to point readers to my other blog, Things of the Spirit where I've done a few posts on the subject of Mysticism, true and false.

If another comes in his own name, him you will receive

John 5:43 I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.

The "another" is understood by some to be the antichrist, the False Christ or any false Christ for that matter. This statement by Jesus came to mind during the Pope's time here in America over the last few days, as so many, even many who should have known better, welcomed him even adoringly. He arrived three hours before the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur and left on the day of the last moon of the Blood Moon Tetrad that began last year, the first day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Some were anticipating or at least hoping this dramatic event in the heavenlies portended the coming of the Lord Jesus.   Of course it still could mean that, the Feast of Tabernacles has only begun and has a week to go. But the False Christ has dominated the media up to this point, hard not to associate him with the portents.

A perfect example of being condemned to repeat history when we forget it. Up until the beginning of the last century there was general knowledge that the Pope was no friend to America, or any Protestant nation, that the Vatican and especially the Jesuits had been working tirelessly since the Reformation to destroy Protestantism. It was even general knowledge that it was the Jesuits who engineered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Try telling people that now and they think you are a way-out fringey conspiracy theorist. But that used to be common knowledge.

A couple of posts back I said I wished I could drop fliers on the Pope's adoring crowds to inform them of the truth about the Vatican and its anti-Americanism. I had lost track of one of my email accounts where I belatedly found out yesterday that something even better had been done in anticipation of the Pope's visit, from Paul Serup :

In anticipation of the pope of Rome coming and speaking to the U. S. Congress ..., three works have been hand delivered to every member of Congress, including the Senate .... The books are: a reprint of General Thomas M. Harris’ book, Rome’s Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, a Chick Tract comic entitled The Big Betrayal, (Charles Chiniquy’s story including Lincoln’s assassination), and [Paul Serup's] book, Who Killed Abraham Lincoln? (which Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site has favourably reviewed).

That means that any American can email, phone, mail any of their Representatives / Senators and ask them what they think of the pope coming to address Congress in light of the Vatican / Roman Catholic Church's hostility towards the United States and its democratic institutions, as shown in the books that they definitely have received at their congressional offices in Washington! They do have to give an answer to their constituents, do they not? This includes the Vatican’s recognition of the Confederacy, (the New York Times’ last word on the subject is an 1876 article entitled “How The Pope Recognized The Southern Confederacy – His Letter to Jeff Davis”), and in this sesquicentennial year of the Lincoln assassination, the evidence of Roman Catholic responsibility for Lincoln’s murder. There may be some very interesting answers coming back, which could be discussed on such a site as this.

As well, there is planned to be at least three full page ads taken out on consecutive Wednesdays in the Washington Times, the second largest newspaper in the nation’s capital, about the visit by this pope and disclosing that all elected federal representatives have received these books. The first ad has come out Wednesday. I will try to post a copy on my website, www.salmovapress.com, a copy could be posted on other sites too. I attach a copy to this email also. All this is being done and paid for mainly by Christians in the United States. The plan is to also send copies of these books to the President, Vice President and the members of the Supreme Court, which I believe has also been done!

I hope Americans will take the time to contact their members of Congress and ask why the leader of this organization / nation that has had such an anti-American history, is speaking to Congress, without ever addressing its anti-American history.

Hooray. Pray that these documents will be read and open some eyes to the truth.

America Sold Out to the Vatican Wolf

Had this news bit parked for a few days.  Maybe I'll get it up and running today.  The Pope is coming, the Pope is coming.  Wish SOMEBODY in high places knew what an offense this is to a free nation to allow this wolf, this antichrist, to speak in our Congress.  Oh but the Great Delusion is upon us.  We're just part of the Holy Roman Empire now aren't we?  He's got his men telling Obama what to do, and forming policy all over the nation.  Whatever happened to Separation of Church and State?  But we Protestants have been asleep to it all for at least a century. 

GOP Candidates to attend Pope's speech to Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — To some Republican presidential candidates, it's better to be with the popular pope than against him.

Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have deep policy differences with Pope Francis, but the senators will break off campaign travel to attend his address to Congress later this month, a centerpiece of his eagerly anticipated visit to the United States.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a devout Catholic, will attend Mass with Francis in Washington. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Catholic candidate, plans to attend one of the pope's East Coast events.

"Regardless of what the pope says or emphasizes, the simple fact of being associated with his visit is still significant for a candidate," said David Campbell, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies religion and politics. "The images are very powerful."

Yeah, well, Romanism has always been big on images ya know.  But of course we get a Catholic professor at Catholic Notre Dame ("Our Lady") quoted on this?  He's probably right of course, even a Protestant candidate isn't going to disassociate from the wannabe Holy Roman Emperor during an election season.  Should I say it again:  Church and State, Church and State, whatever happened to Separation of Church and State?

Francis has become one of the world's most popular figures since his 2013 election to the papacy, drawing praise for his humility and efforts to refocus the church on the poor and needy. He also has become involved in numerous hot-button political issues, often staking out positions that put him at odds with Republicans.

The guy is Left as Left can be.

(And by the way, there have been lots of Jesuits involved in socialist and Marxist events. Stealthily of course. Even Marx and Stalin had Jesuit teachers. More on this when I can get to it.)

The pope supports the Iran nuclear deal, which many GOP candidates pledge to tear up if they are elected president. As Republicans debate the place of immigrants in the U.S., the pope has urged countries to welcome those seeking refuge and has decried the "inhuman" conditions facing people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, NOTE HERE HOW THE MEDIA HAVE BEEN AIDING AND ABETTING OUR PROBLEM WITH THE MEXICAN BORDER:  THAT SHOULDN'T BE "IMMIGRANTS,"  THAT SHOULD BE "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS."  AND NOTE THE WEASEL LANGUAGE THAT REFERS TO "THE PLACE OF" ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.   THERE IS NO PLACE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.   In a sane world that would be a no-brainer, but the world is being run by Jesuits these days who know how to manipulate things to get their way.  And what PATSIES we all are!

WHAT A HYPOCRITE.  He himself took a Syrian refugee family into the Vatican, awwwww, SUCH a nice guy.  These are Muslims who want to kill Europeans and Americans, but we can be sure Papa is safe while he sets such a compassionate example for all us sheep on inviting wolves in to dine with us. 

The RCC is the main mover behind our problem with illegal aliens from Mexico, and "compassion" is the emotional battering ram they use to accomplish their will, slandering those who object with terms designed to destroy our reputations, such as uncompassionate, racists, bigots and haters, all the PC "arguments" that have "Jesuit" written all over them.   All attempts to do anything meaningful about the border problem seem to be paralyzed, --well, who wants to be subjected to that sort of character assassination? --- and dare one suggest the whole situation goes back to all the CATHOLICS in the government, hey?  Why?  Because these are predominantly Catholics coming over the border.  Duh.  HEY CATHOLICS, think about it, do you really want to put this anti-American Pope above your American commitments?  I don't know, but I think many probably don't.  SO SPEAK UP ALREADY.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE? 

Francis was also instrumental in secret talks to restore diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a rapprochement the GOP views as a premature reward for the island's repressive government.

In a heated primary where any break from party orthodoxy is a political risk, Republican candidates have stepped gingerly around their differences with Francis.

What business does this foreign anti-American antichrist  have in "secret talks" about our political situation, hey?   SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?  

Cuban Catholics are not happy with this manipulation by the Pope either:  I AM A CATHOLIC WITHOUT A POPE  --LOUDER, GUYS, LOUDER!

When Francis issued an encyclical this year calling for aggressive international action to combat climate change, most Republicans made clear they had no problem with pope taking a position on the matter. But they suggested his stance would have little influence on their own views.

"He is a moral authority and as a moral authority is reminding us of our obligation to be good caretakers of the planet," Rubio, a practicing Catholic, said at the time. "I'm a political leader and my job as a policymaker is to act in the common good."

Moral authority, ha! He's already trying to undo what's left of anything in the RCC that has anything to do with Christian truth, he's the head of an institution that tries to protect their own doctrine-created child molesters from legal action.   This is the "man of sin" scripture identifies.  This is no moral authority, and again what right does he have to say anything at all about political issues?  Yes, at least everybody is keeping their independence, and I get why it seems necessary to step gingerly around all this, but call it like it is, in the end it's COWARDICE.  Nonaction, nonprotest, just lets the wolf have his way. Meek as doves is a good thing, but crafty as serpents seems to be lacking here.

It goes on but this is no doubt more than enough.

Protestantism Derailed, America Betrayed: Why the Pope Should Feel Right at Home Here

The Pope is about to open his antichrist mouth in America, about to display his antichrist power in America, against our best interests, in favor of the new world order, in favor of policies that undermine true Christianity, that favor disintegration and chaos.  I've been finding it hard to keep my thoughts organized lately, succumbing to sleepiness, fogginess, difficulty concentrating, losing my train of thought.  Spiritual oppression?  I've wondered.  I've been trying to read up on the history of the Roman Catholic Church, wanting to muster evidence that might convince others that this is our enemy, nothing else, just this, just Romanism, the Vatican, the Pope, their Jesuit army.  All our battles, all evils, spring from this antichrist source.  Too much you say?  Far-fetched?  I would once have thought so too.  I mean, if you're going to go with conspiracies, there's Freemasonry, and the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, even the Skull and Bones Society, and all the other secretive organizations that always get named.  Is it possible they're all just arms of the RCC?

Where is the American Protestant voice?  Where's our Ian Paisley who would stand up in Congress and denounce the Pope as Antichrist?  Paisley objected that the European Parliament, of which he was a member, had invited the Pope to speak without putting it to a vote.  Did Congress get a vote on this upcoming visit by this Pope?  Was there even a ripple of objection to the invitation?  Those among the Republican candidates who are at least nominally Protestant aren't doing any protesting.  They are going to go hear the Pope, going to be polite, disagree of course but politely.  Trump has been sounding off about illegal immigration and so far drawn some Catholic reaction, from the archbishop of my last post, then from Catholic Joe Biden who called it "xenophobia."  Think about such terms that are used against people who care about the rule of law:  we're xenophobics, we're homophobics if the law is God's ordinance defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  The method of attack is truly Jesuitical, ad hominems designed to poison the well and discredit the opposition with character smears, promote emotional reactions and destroy reasoned argument.  See how far you get presenting your well-thought-out case against gay marriage or illegal immigration, when the opposition's whole argument is that you are a "hater" and a "bigot."   Saying anything against the Roman Church also gets those epithets thrown at you:  Catholic hater.  According to JA Wylie's History of Protestantism, slander, or calumny, is historically one of the tools of the Jesuits against Protestants.  It seems to have worked its way into Political Correctness and the left in general. 

The media too have been practicing their usual subliminal partisanship, portraying the Republican candidates in muted tones of ridicule. 

Who is running this country really?  Are you aware of the evidence that it is the Roman Catholic Church?  Are you aware of how many Catholics there are in American government and have been for decades, shaping policy?   The vast majority of Catholics probably have no clue that they are tools of the Vatican against a free America.  There are lots of conservative Catholics who object to some of the policies of this Pope for instance.  But Vatican II told all good Catholics to exert themselves for the promotion of the Church and how can that be a bad thing? 

I started trying to get some of this across with the post "Waking Up Among Wolves."  And I didn't know as much then as I know now about just how vast this wolf pack is.  There is no escape.  And those who should be protesting don't see the wolves for the sheep's clothing.

If I had the resources, wish wish wish, I'd print out as much evidenced information as I could muster to try to convince Protestants and Catholics both of these realities and air-drop them as fliers on the crowds that will be assembling for the Pope's visit.  Not sure where to drop them for the Protestants, maybe have to fly from church to church.  But I can't even muster an evidenced blog post on the subject, just this rambling that even sounds somewhat demented to me.

Some people who are into end times prophecies ask Where is America in the Biblical scenario about the Revived Roman Empire that is to rise up in the last days?   Blink.  Guess what, America has been an arm of the Revived Roman Empire since its founding.   But back up a bit:  where is the Revived Roman Empire at all?  Isn't it just getting some pieces together in the EU, still quite a ways from full development? 

Blink.  

Oh how we have lost our Protestant legacy, lost the voices who could have been keeping us awake and alert to the stealthy workings of evil in this world all along.  The Reformers knew it:  the Revived Roman Empire is the RCC itself and the Antichrist is the PAPACY.  They made the arguments from scripture, they proved it.  But a crafty Jesuit taught us to forget about the proofs that the Pope is Antichrist by interpreting the relevant scriptures as all in the future, and the Protestants have bought it.  (The Jesuits also invented Preterism by the way, for the same reason, to get the Pope off the hook). Even those who have done a lot to expose the errors of Rome have missed the big picture.  They subscribe to futurism while describing the doctrinal errors as if doctrine is our only problem with the RCC, as if it isn't a threat to the entire world with its ambition to put the Pope in the seat of power over the world.  Yeah yeah yeah, ridiculous, right? If anything the RCC has been losing power. Yeah yeah yeah. Well, if I can I'll try to bring out the reasons that's a delusion. So anyway, we've had our eyes forward and haven't been noticing that it's been around for centuries, gradually working out its antichrist mission.

It received a near-deadly wound from the Reformation.  Even John Dowling who wrote a very informative tome on the History of Romanism in 1845 thought the Roman Church could never recover.  But doesn't scripture tell us it recovers?  And if Dowling were living today he might see the recovery gathering steam behind the scenes. 

Romanism, the Roman Church:  I've been using the term for some time because it's necessary to counter its pretensions to being Christian.  It has some Christian stuff tacked on, even enough for some Catholics to have a genuinely Christian outlook, but it's staggering how the institution as a whole has taken over the trappings and thought of the Roman Empire. There's so much more to the term than just that the RCC grew from the Bishop of Rome in the early centuries.  Dowling's History of Romanism chronicles how the RCC early on took over one after another pagan practice into its rituals, such as lighted candles during the day, holy water, incense, and how the statues of roman gods got renamed for Christian saints and installed in their churches.   Awareness of their use of statues doesn't make you aware of their origin from the Roman gods and that derivation was rather startling to me, for one.  Such concepts as The Immaculate Conception as Romanism came to apply it to Mary the mother of Jesus, originated with a Roman goddess.

Why is that obelisk in the piazza of St. Peter's basilica in Rome the Roman Emperor Caligula's obelisk?   What does a Roman Caesar have to do with Christianity?   Then go on to ask why our Capitol building looks like St. Peter's basilica and why Washington's monument looks like the obelisk of Caligula? 

There's plenty more to say to show the essential Roman character of the Roman church, but might as well go on at this point to America.  Besides the architecture just mentioned, why is there a statue of the Roman goddess Persephone at the top of the Capitol dome, renamed "Freedom?"  And why does she look east toward Rome?    And why is there a painting in the interior of that same dome called The Apotheosis of Washington depicting him among the gods and goddesses of Rome?  And why are the portraits of two Popes in that building?  And by the way, the very concept of a "Capitol" originated as the temple of the Roman god Jupiter.   What does any of this have to do with America?

Francis should feel right at home addressing Congress.

Does anybody care?

More later, God willing.