How the Church Got To Where It Is Today pt.6 of 7

Fred Whitman is a missionary supported by our local church. He is the Founder and president of a fundamental radio station in Italy. He also planted and pastors a Baptist church there as well. The following is a booklet that he wrote and gave away to those who wanted it. I am presenting it here essentially untouched and unedited. It may take several installments. My hope is that others will find his thoughts insightful and be blessed. Pray for Brother Fred and his family as they ministers to those in Italy.

In His fellowship,
Brother John

How the Church Got To Where It Is Today
By Fred Whitman

Let's take a quick jump to 1948, when the Ecumenical Movement began. First, the liberal denominations wanted to unite. They invited the Catholic Church as an observer. Now there's a saying that goes, "Don't ever let a camel get his nose inside a tent or he'll tear the whole thing down." In 1948, the Catholic Church came in as an observer. Today the Roman Catholic Church is leading the Ecumenical Movement for everybody to come back to Rome. Now remember that the Counter - Reformation began and they were killing Protestants because they wanted to force them to come back into the Catholic Church. They wouldn't do it, so they killed them. Now, with the Ecumenical Movement, they are bringing many of these Protestants back into the Catholic Church, into fellowship with the Pope, under the leadership of the Pope, and they're basically accomplishing the same thing they had hoped to do back then by physical force, but they weren't able to.

At the second Vatican Council in 1961, all the Protestants were called heretics, or separated brethren. From that point, Pope John XXIII really started pushing, inviting all these Christians to come back into the fold. In 1986, Pope John Paul II called the first interfaith prayer meeting for peace at Assisi - Italy, just 20 minutes from our house. He invited liberal Baptists and liberal Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, among other groups. All the religious groups of the world were there to pray together for peace. And it is interesting that when it was happening, I saw a news report on the television. They gave a different church to every religious group to meet in, and then they all came together to the Pope at the end to celebrate mass together in the church that they had given to the Buddhists, the Church of St. Peter. They went in and cleaned off the altar. Now what does that mean? Well, there's a little box called the Tabernacle (I call it the God Box). That's where the Blessed Host, the body of Jesus is stored. They put the host in the little Tabernacle, which means, "dwelling place of God." In the Church of St. Peter, they moved that God Box off, they took the Crucifix off, they cleaned everything off, and on that altar in this Catholic Church they put a statue of Buddha. That happened in 1986.

Well, then in 1994, the Church came out with a new catechism. For all these centuries, everything the Catholic Church printed bore the name: The Apostolic Roman Church. When this catechism came out, what does it say? It says The Catechism of the "Catholic Church." Why Catholic? The word Catholic means universal. They don't want the stigma of being an Apostolic Roman Church. They want people to all come back and all be together with a new catechism. Actually, this book is about 800 pages. I've read through it a couple of times. We have actually taught a number of courses in our Sunday school class on its contents, which clearly identify this church as a cult.

In 2002, the Pope called again all the religions of the world together. It will make goose bumps on your arm if you think about it. The book of Revelation talks about all of the religions uniting in a great super church, which is not, by the way, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, because His believers will be persecuted by the Church.

If you've never read this book, A Woman Rides the Beast, by A. Hunt, you must. You may not find it in a Christian bookstore, but they can order it. It is the most excellent book about the history of the Roman Church. It helps you understand how it all fits into prophecy right now.

(To be continued, just one more to go.)