A frail Pope, what next?

Pope John Paul II

Having been 39 years a Christian of the born again variety,
(Is there any other?) I trust that I have learnt some wisdom along the way.

In Revelation 16:19 we read -– "And the great city was
divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon
came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the
fierceness of his wrath."

Students of history will know that the original Babylon,
which is situated now in Iraq and controlled by Saddam Hussein, is still there,
but will never rise again, says the prophet Isaiah, and never be lived in.

Isaiah 13:19-20 -– "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,
the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom
and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither
shall the shepherds make their fold there."

In the last days however, we read that there is another
system arising called Mystery Babylon that will be divided into three parts
which have become very clear in the light of the attacks in America in the month
of September 2001.

Economy equals New York, politics equals Washington DC, and
religion equals the city of Rome. In the book of Revelation 17:9, we find
the location of the headquarters of this great world church which will be made
up of all the different religions in the world coming together in the great
ecumenical movement.

Revelation 17:9 -– "And here is the mind which hath
wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth."

Verse 18 -– "And the woman which thou sawest is that great
city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."

Bible students over the centuries have agreed that this must
refer to the city of Rome. Although there are many other cities in the world
with seven hills none of these others fit the bill.

Revelation 17:4-6 -– "And the woman was arrayed in purple
and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having
a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER
OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the
blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw
her, I wondered with great admiration."

For many years people have become angry when the suggestion
has been made that this system based in Rome is a dirty system, until recently
when the dam has burst and the tide of filth is coming out in the media for all
the world to see.

In all fairness it must be pointed out that the people
connected with this religious system in many cases are very very sincere,
in fact more sincere than most other folk in the world today who are seeking
after God. Yet in the midst of their sincerity, there is a doctrine taught by
the church that is called a doctrine of devils.

1 Timothy 4:1 -– "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that
in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits, and doctrines of devils;"

Verse 3 -– "Forbidding to marry..."

In The Weekend Australian newspaper 18-19 May
2002 we read -– "Dirty little secret's out -– What has been the biggest
news event this year in the university hub of Boston? You might nominate the war
on terrorism, in the city from which the hijackers left. Or the
Palestinian-Israeli war. Or the Enron scandal. But you'd be wrong on each
count - because the biggest story, far and away, is the crisis in the Catholic
Church...

The Pope's intervention by summoning all the American
cardinals to Rome proved to be an anti-climax. What is happening is the
deepest crisis in more than 400 years of American Catholicism. There is no
parallel, although the coverage of such monstrous sins perpetrated by the church
against its own children invokes the Clinton sex scandal, Watergate and
ruminations about reformation...

The violation of the sacred is profound. Priests turned
the confessional into an opportunity for pedophilia. The forgiveness of sins
became an occasion for sexual abuse; the sacristy a forum for seduction. John
Geoghan is the focus of legal action by 86 alleged victims across a range of
parishes. Paul Shanley is accused of serial crimes dating back to the 1970s and
finished as co-owner of a gay resort in California before being charged. For
years Geoghan and Shanley, with many reports against them, were protected and
transferred by the hierarchy, dispatched as God's predators to violate more
children. A Baltimore priest, Maurice Blackwell, on leave after an admission of
sexual abuse, was shot and wounded this week...

The fallen priest sanctions pedophilia with prayer and
intimidates the victim with his holy-man status. He picks out the child he wants
from school or altar. In The New York Review of Books, Garry Willis
writes: "This conviction that they (priests) are above the law has much to do
with the compliance of the victims. A priest is a father-figure plus.
The child is available to him, or made available, in surroundings where his
authority is sanctioned by all the accumulated culture of Catholicism. The
child has been taught to confess to the priest intimate matters he would
never reveal to his own father."...

The deeper evil is that when the cardinals had documents in
their hands about the sexual abuses of priests, they acted not to protect the
victims but to protect their own...

Michael Sean Winters identified the central issue in The
New Republic: "The bishops repeatedly begged forgiveness for the
pedophiles' bad deeds. But none of the three cardinals at the heart of the
scandal begged forgiveness of their own sins of negligence." The church cannot
confront the magnitude of its cover-up. It cannot kneel before its people. Its
cardinals cannot confess their sins to their flock. Why?

Perhaps because the church has assets in the temporal world
it must defend -– assets listed on page one of The Wall Street Journal
in stories that deal with legal structures designed to protect a $44 million
real estate holding in Providence, Rhode Island. That's just one diocese...

The church seemed to overlook that its priests broke not just
the laws of God but the laws of man -– and a backlash via the US judicial
system is under way...

The Vatican spokesman says it is "an ongoing struggle to
make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men", while
the liberals demand an end to celibacy and a start to female ordination. Yet a
conservative liberal brawl over the priesthood demeans the crisis..."

Not only are the priests having a hard time but so are the
nuns in fitting in with this doctrine of demons forbidding to marry.

I picked up an old cutting from The Sydney Morning Herald
dated the 8 October 1986 -– "Chastity seen as Holy stumbling block -– A
growing number of Britain's nuns have found they can no longer accept their
vow of chastity, according to a new book to be published on Thursday.

And the inability to cope with that vow is also the largest
single factor in a priest's decision to abandon his vocation.

The book, Desire and Denial, is written by a social
historian, Gordon Thomas, who spent three years tape-recording 167 priests, nuns
and seminarians to explore their sexual attitudes.

He concludes that a growing number of nuns and priests are no
longer willing, or feel they are unable, to show blind obedience to the Pope's
teachings on sexual abstinence...

"The book raises the question; Is celibacy necessary for
holiness?..." "

The answer is "obviously not".

Not only is morality within the church being challenged, a
weakening generally speaking today is allowing people to buy up the lie that
other religions go along with Jesus Christ.

We quote here from a book called -–The Papacy and Islam
-– By Richard M. Bennett and Robert J. Nicholson.

"In spite of catastrophic events of September 11^th,
the Pope has continued faithfully to push the Roman Catholic Church policy of
affirmation and approval of Islam. The Vatican speaks officially of the Roman
Catholic Church having the same God and faith of Abraham as the Muslims..."

Can you believe this when Jesus said himself, "I am the
way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me."

One other thing the Pope needs to take into account is that
Allah had no son and without the son there is no salvation.

Texe Marrs in his Power of Prophecy magazine dated
February 2000 asks the question, "Is the Pope Catholic?"

"In the year 1986 the Pontiff invited and brought to Italy
Hindu gurus, Moslem teachers, Jewish rabbis, snake handlers, witches,
Zoroastrian priests, native American medicine men, African tribal witchdoctors,
and an assortment of "Christian" ecumenicists. Together with the Pope, this
band of religious renegades charted out their masterful plot for destroying true
Christianity and for establishing a global, new order of Luciferian churchdom."

Just before his untimely death in 1978, Pope Paul the sixth
discovered that a shocking conspiracy had arisen and was about to engulf and
consume the traditional Catholic Church. In a speech, the horrified Pope soberly
warned, "The smoke of Satan has entered the very sanctuary of St. Peter's
basilica."

Of this we are very clear, from Bible prophecy, that in the
last days the world political leader, called Anti-Christ, will be assisted by a
second man, called the second beast or the False Prophet. We read of him in the
book of Revelation 13:11 - "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the
earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon."

A careful reading of that passage which continues on from
there gives us more detail about the way these two work together.

It is clear to the world in general that the Pope at this
moment cannot continue on much longer. The Weekend Australian newspaper
dated 18-19 May 2002 tells us the following -– "Speculation is mounting that
Pope John Paul II could be the first in six centuries to resign.

The ailing Pope turns 82 today, and his own guardian of
doctrine and a leading Latin American contender for the papacy predicted that
the pontiff would stand down if he could not carry on.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's chief doctrinal
enforcer as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is likely to
play the role of kingmaker at the next conclave to choose a Pope...

Cardinal Ratzinger said the Pope had become "quieter, he
speaks less"...

The Pope is fully aware of his responsibility and when he
realises that he can no longer go on he will have the courage to say: 'I quit'...

The Pope, who has Parkinson's disease and walks and speaks
with difficulty, will go to Canada and south and central America this year. Next
week he visits Azerbaijan and Bulgaria...

The last pope to step down voluntarily was Celestine V in
1294. Gregory XII abdicated in 1415 to resolve a dispute over rival claims to
the papacy.

Canon law stipulates that it is up to the Pope to decide
whether he can exercise his office. Pope John Paul II has reportedly joked,
however, that he "would not know to whom I should present my resignation".

Cardinal Maradiaga is one of several papal candidates from
Latin America, home to half the world's 1 billion Catholics."

Please notice that this article is in no way written to
demean the religion of any person but to face the facts that that particular
church is in crisis and it is our desire that many of them may find Christ Jesus
the Lord as their only saviour and not add anything to what he has done for us.

My son, Andrew, gave me a good heading to write above the
book of Hebrews and here it is for your consideration: "Jesus Christ cuts
out the middle man", and thus it is now good for us to turn to I Timothy 2:5
-– "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus."

A final question, are you trusting in the one mediator or in
the one mediator plus something else.

The Word of God is clear that "if we confess our sin, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."

May all who read this article not take offence but seek the
one and only way of salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of the living God,
and make Him your own personal saviour, master and Lord.