FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
August 10
THE GOSPEL OF CHRISTIANITY’S CHRIST VS THE ‘GOSPEL’ OF ROME’S ANTICHRIST – (Part 17)
To fellow believers of the Christian mainstream who deny that the Papacy is the Antichrist, prayerfully think this through and sink the shaft of investigation deeper into the rich mines of Bible prophecy. Now this:
“The Romanists themselves SHAME YOU [emphasis mine] in their clear-sighted comprehension of the issues of this question. Cardinal Manning says, ‘THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS EITHER THE MASTERPIECE OF SATAN OR THE KINGDOM OF THE SON OF GOD.’ [emphasis in the original in itals].
Cardinal Newman says, ‘A SACERDOTAL ORDER is historically the ESSENCE of the Church of Rome; IF NOT DIVINELY APPOINTED, IT IS DOCTRINALLY THE ESSENCE OF ANTICHRIST.’
“In both these statements the issue is clear, and it is the same. Rome herself admits, openly admits, that IF SHE IS NOT THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST, SHE IS THAT OF ANTICHRIST. Rome declares SHE IS ONE OR THE OTHER. She herself propounds and it urges this solemn alternative. You shrink from it, don’t you? I accept it.
CONSCIENCE constrains me. HISTORY compels me. THE PAST, the sinful past, passed before me. I see THE GREAT APOSTASY, I see the desolation of Christendom, I see the smoking ruins, I see the reign of monsters, I see these VICE-GODS, that Gregory VII, that Innocent III, that Boniface VIII, that Alexander VI, that Gregory XIII, that Pius IX: I see their long succession, I hear their insufferable blasphemies, I see their abominable lives; I see them worshipped by BLINDED generations, bestowing hollow [not hallowed] benedictions, bartering lying indulgences, creating a PAGANIZED CHRISTIANITY; I see their liveried slaves, their shaven priests, their celibate confessors; I see the infamous confessional, the ruined women, the murdered innocents; I hear the lying absolutions, the dying groans; I hear the cries of the victims; I hear the anathemas, the curses, the thunders of the interdicts; I see the racks, the dungeons, the stakes; I see that inhuman Inquisition, those fires of Smithfield, those butcheries of St. Bartholomew, that Spanish Armada, those I unspeakable dragonnades, that endless trek of wars, that dreadful multitude of massacres.
I SEE IT ALL, AND IN THE NAME OF THE RUIN IT HAS WROUGHT IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD, in the name of the truth it has denied, the temple it has defiled, the God it has blasphemed, the souls it has destroyed; in the name of the millions it has deluded, the millions it has slaughtered, the millions it has damned; with holy confessors, with noble reformers, with innumerable martyrs, with the saints of ages, I DENOUNCE IT AS THE MASTERPIECE OF SATAN, AS THE BODY AND SOUL AND ESSENCE OF ANTICHRIST.’ – ‘Romanism and the Reformation,’ H. Grattan Guinness, pp. 138, 139. London: 1891.’—‘Facts of Faith,’ Christian Edwardson, Revised, pp. 210, 211, Southern Publishing Asso., Nashville 8 TN: 1943.
(To be continued) Bless all, NMF