"Man of the Year"

The prestigious "Man of the Year" award for 1994 was bestowed upon Pope John Paul II by TIME magazine.

No other world figure has commanded the admiration he has enjoyed as the globe-trotting (over 1/2 million miles) Pope. His kindly smile and fatherly wave have made the "Pope Mobile" a legend. Although they might disagree with his theology, both Catholics and Protestants have joined in the accolades of praise for this man. Indeed, Catholics all over the United States have hailed his October visit as the most important event in their lives. Billy Graham has extolled Pope John Paul, "as the conscience of the whole Christian world."

Of course, he has his detractors. Many are former priests and nuns who have experienced the tragic consequences of enforced celibacy. What is the root of this problem and what can be done? The solution, as expressed by ex-nun Patricia Nolan Savas, is simple: "Any organization that can, with the stroke of its’ sacerdotal pen, remove the pain of eternal punishment from a Friday hotdog and pluck St. Christophers from millions of dashboards can surely admit that it has erred in other matters."

The implications are obvious. .. By the stroke of a pen, John Paul could end the Catholic Church’s centuries’ long dogma of "forbidding to marry" which no less than the Apostle Paul identified as one of the "doctrines of devils" (1Ti 4:1, 3). No wonder the majority of Catholics in the United States disagree with this dogma of celibacy imposed on priests, brothers and nuns.

Not Just a Church

John Paul was extolled for his moral leadership in 1994 by TIME, but the article admitted that the UN population conference in Cairo could be considered the Pope’s "low point" of the year. (Yet this did not discourage the UN from including him as a featured peace and human rights speaker last month during his visit.) Yet at this conference of 186 nations which included the Papacy, the policies of President Clinton and the Pope hit head on and the Pope won.

Why was the Vatican the only Christian Church at the Cairo conference? The Vatican is more than a church. The Vatican State is a civil government that exchanges ambassadors with the nations of the world. The Vatican claims to be both the spiritual and civil Kingdom of God on earth.

To set up a Kingdom of God before Christ returns to set up his own Kingdom, the Scriptures identify as the work of the "antichrist." The Greek word translated antichrist means instead of Christ (STRONG’S 473+5547), not against Christ. This fact motivated Luther and other reformers to identify the Papacy as the "little horn" of Daniel 7 and 8 and the antichrist "beast" of Revelation 13. This historic Protestant view holds that antichrist is a system, not an individual, which thrives during the Christian Age.

The concept that the antichrist or "man of sin" would be an individual who would appear in the future, at the end of the Christian Age, was first presented by the Catholic Jesuit Priest Ribera in 1580 to counter the Reformation view that the Papacy was the antichrist. A future individual antichrist, however, did not become popular among "born again Christians" until after World War II.

Pope John Paul appears to be a sincere and compassionate individual, but the government which he heads, the Papacy, has an unfortunate track record. And that unfortunate record is not just from the remote past. The following is a documentation of Papacy’s unsavory influence in world affairs during much of the 20th century:

The Papacy from 1919 to 1990

1919: Hitler’s Nazi-ism was born. Archbishop Pacelli (who became Pope Pius XII) gave Hitler Church Money to "help his small, struggling band of anti-Communists ‘go quell the devil’s work,’ Pacelli told Hitler." Under Vatican pressure, part of Ukraine was taken from Communist Soviet Russia and given to Catholic Poland.

1922: Much to the Vatican’s delight, Mussolini set up a Fascist dictatorship in Italy.

1925: Any Vatican representative was forbidden to enter the Soviet Union. From this time the real Vatican campaign against the Soviet Union "began to flood ‘the whole world.’" Later the Vatican established Fascist parties in most European nations in its attempt to "establish Totalitarianism wherever possible."

1926: Under Vatican pressure, Pilsudski set up a Catholic Fascist dictatorship in Poland. For over 15 years Catholic priests accompanied Polish soldiers in expeditions to punish the "rebel Ukrainians." Orthodox churches were burned and many were executed.

1929: Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini, which guaranteed the full and independent sovereignty of the Vatican State in Vatican City. Also Fascist Italy paid the Vatican a vast sum of money to compensate for the loss of the Papal States in 1870.

1933: The Pope had Franz von Papen persuade President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to be Chancellor of Germany. Fritz Thyssen, a rich Catholic steel magnate who financed Hitler, wrote an article in the Swiss Arbeiterzeitung entitled, "Pius XII, As Nuncio, Brought Hitler to Power." "I learned much from the Order of the Jesuits (said Hitler). .. until now there has never been anything more grandiose on the earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. I transferred much of this organization into my own party."

1936: The Vatican and Mussolini backed General Franco’s bloody civil war against the Spanish Republic and vigorously supported his Fascist regime.

1939-1941: The Vatican pressured Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium and France to cave in to Germany.

1939: The Vatican and Hitler, with the fall of Czechoslovakia, set up a Catholic Fascist State in Slovakia headed by a Catholic prelateu Monsignor Tiso. His regime was brutal toward Jews and non-Roman Catholics. After the war he was executed for war crimes.

1941: The Axis Powers and the Vatican set up the Catholic Fascist Party, Ustashi, in Croatia under the dictatorship of AntePavelic. Archbishop Stepinac was the Supreme Military Vicar of the Ustashi Army. Jews were murdered, Serbian Orthodox churches were destroyed and Serbs were given the choice to convert to Roman Catholicism or be killed.

1943: When it was known that Germany would lose the war, the Vatican and Britain tried to plot the fall of Hitler, then have Germany join forces with Great Britain and the U.S. in a war against Russia.

1945-1989: The Axis Powers and the Vatican lost World War II and Communism swept over 1/3 of the world.

1982-1989: Pope John Paul and former President Reagan successfully plotted the downfall of the Communist Empire (TIME, February 24, 1992). During this clandestine campaign Archbishop Pio Lashi said to the diplomat, Vernon Walters, "It is a very complex situation ... listen to the Holy Father (Pope). We have 2,000 years experience at this." It was further observed, "Step by reluctant step, the Soviets and the Communist government of Poland bowed to the pressure imposed by the Pope and the President."

1989: The Communist Empire fell. Papacy finally triumphed over her bitter enemy.

1990: The Pope’s ultimate agenda is revealed in the following statement he made on April 21, 1990: "A united Europe is no longer a dream. It is not a utopian memory from the Middle Ages (emphasis added). The events that we are witnessing show that this goal can be reached." The Pope wants to revive the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle (Dark) Ages.

Are the Heavens Rolling Together "as a Scroll"? (Isa 34:4)

1992: A group of 40 prominent evangelical and Catholic scholars and leaders has agreed that Christians must stop aggressive proselytizing of one another’s flocks and work together more closely to "contend against all that opposes Christ and His cause." "We dare not by needless and loveless conflict between ourselves give aid and comfort to the enemies of the cause of Christ," the statement, signed March 29 in New York, says. "Not since the 16th century have Protestants and Catholics ‘joined in a declaration so clear in respect to their common faith and common responsibility.’""... Although the document addresses the relationship between evangelicals and Catholics, it acknowledges that belief in "the one Christ and one mission includes many other Christians," most notably Eastern Orthodox and Protestants outside the evangelical camp. What brought the two communities together to this point, some signers said, are the experiences of worshipping together in the charismatic movement and working together for political causes, such as the pro-life movement. Evangelical Protestants "have much more in common with Bible-believing Catholics" than with liberal Protestants, Charles Colson said.

1993: In November Moody said, "Today, for good or bad, the lines that separate evangelicals and Roman Catholics are fading. More and more people from both sides are working together. .."

Charles Colson writes, "It’s high time that all of us who are Christians come together regardless of the difference of our confessions and our tradition ..." Ministries of Billy Graham, Luis Palau, World Vision, and charismatic groups such as YWAH involve Catholics.

1994: Christianity Today (December 12) observed that the consensus among younger evangelicals is to "collaborate with Roman Catholics."

The ecclesiastical "heavens," in fact, are rolling together. What shall be the result? "The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and their host shall fall down."

"Man of the Year"? The Pope himself is not the "Man of Sin," but he heads the system that is the Man of Sin, the Antichrist. Whether you are a Protestant or Catholic, can you afford not to investigate scripturally the long-held Reformation concept that Papacy is the antichrist? Send for our free booklet, "CHURCH UNION AND THE ANTICHRIST" for more information about how these prophecies are being fulfilled today, and what the future holds.

Footnotes _______________________________

1. U.S.A. TODAY, December 8, 1993 2. LUTHERAN WORLD, September, 1960, pp. 128-129.

3. Joseph Tanner, DANIEL AND REVELATION (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1898), pp. 16, 17.

4. Paul J. Murphy, LA POPESSA (New York: Warner Books, 1980), p. 52.

5. Avro Manhattan, THE VATICAN IN WORLD POLITICS (New York: Horizon Press, Inc., 1949), p. 272.

6. Ibid., pp. 272, 280.

7. Ibid., pp. 273-275 (Many references given for documentation) 8. Murphy, LA POPESSA, and Manhattan, THE VATICAN IN WORLD POLITICS, pp. 22-24.

9. Manhattan, THE VATICAN IN WORLD POLITICS, pp. 168, 169.

10. Leo Lehmann, BEHIND THE DICTATORS (1942), Fritz Thyssen, I PAID HITLER (1941).

11. Hermann Rauschning, HITLER SAID TO ME (1939), pp. 266-267.

12. Manhattan, THE VATICAN IN WORLD POLITICS, pp. 95-99.

13. Ibid., pp. 247-265, 340-341.

14. Ibid., pp. 262-236.

15. Avro Manhattan, THE TERROR OVER YUGOSLAVIA, THE THREAT TO YUGOSLAVIA (London: Watters, 1953).

16. John Loftus & Mark Aarons, THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE JEWS (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1994), p. 87.

17. NEW YORK TIMES, April 23, 1990.

18. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RELIGION REPORT, April 4, 1994.

Courtesy of The Oakland County Bible Students