FINAL WORLD EVENTS IN PROPHECY FORESHADOWED 2021

ALL FINAL WORLD EVENTS LINKS

GENERAL REPORTS

2021 GENERAL REPORTS UPDATES TITLES:

THE 1910 WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE AND ITS AFTERMATH FOR THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH JUDAIZATION OF JERUSALEM, ERETZ ISRAEL IDEOLOGY, AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY RELIGIO-POLITICAL ROME: IMPERIAL AUTOCRACY, INHERENT IMPOSTOR, SUBVERSIVE OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY THE MYSTERIOUS PUTIN'S RUSSIA FACTOR

Home Page
Home Page

That prophecy is a part of God's revelation to man; that it is included in that Scripture which is profitable for instruction (2 Tim. 3:16); that it is designed for us and our children (Deut. 29:29); that so far from being enshrouded in impenetrable mystery, it is that which especially constitutes the word of God as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. (Ps. 119:105; 2 Peter 1:19); that a blessing is pronounced upon those who study it (Rev. 1:1-3); and that, consequently, it is to be understood by the people of God sufficiently to show them their position in the world's history and the special duties required at their hands. (1914 Yearbook, p. 293)

BIBLE PROPHECY

THE SURE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY:

"A Message Whose Time Has Come"

Windows Media

Windows Media 54kbps

Windows Media 11kbps

MAJOR ESCHATOLOGICAL PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE

SPECIAL UPDATING REPORTS

A MENACING CRISIS AND A VERY SIGNIFICANT PROPHETIC SIGN:

DISTRESS OF NATIONS WITH PERPLEXITY - A Sign of the last remnant of time

CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE GEOLOGICAL AND CLIMATOLOGICAL SIGNS WHICH MULTIPLY - “the sea and the waves roaring” Luke 21:25; “Calamities, earthquakes, floods, disasters by land and by sea, will increase. . . ." - (R&H, December 11, 1900):

Natural disasters and extreme weather

Global Disaster Watch

The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System


SPECIAL REPORTS

SUBSIDIARITY: THE PRINCIPLE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION

THE EUROPEAN UNION

A Major Path For Rome Among Many Converging through Jerusalem to Global Domination By Satan in Person - the Ultimate Antichrist

NATURAL LAW

(The Roman Catholic Social Doctrine - Ascendancy of the Roman Catholic dogma in the body politic of the United States.)


The insight of A. T. Jones that needs to be kept in mind as Roman Catholic legislation proliferates throughout America - "The papacy is very impatient of any restraining bonds"  more . . .

Ellen G. White: "When the leading churches of the United States, uniting upon such points of doctrine as are held by them in common, shall influence the state to enforce their decrees and to sustain their institutions, then Protestant America will have formed an image of the Roman hierarchy, and the infliction of civil penalties upon dissenters will inevitably result." (GC 445.1)

"When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with Spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and Republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan, and that the end is near." (5T 451.)

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. Hosea 4:6

We do not go deep enough in our search for truth. Every soul who believes present truth will be brought where he will be required to give a reason of the hope that is in him. The people of God will be called upon to stand before kings, princes, rulers, and great men of the earth, and they must know that they do know what is truth. (Review and Herald, February 18, 1890; TM 119)

Spirit of Prophecy Policy on Family Planning  (For full context cf. Adventists and Birth Control; Adventists and Birth Control (Concluded)

A quotation to be kept in mind and applied to current events:

"What the Jesuit Order is for the left wing of the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei is for its right wing. (Hegelian politics at its finest, for the Roman Catholic Church cannot lose if it has strong ties with both ends of the political spectrum!)" (From Opus Dei in the USA)

GENERAL REPORTS

Certain of the popular positions mentioned approvingly in some hyperlinked reports, essays, and blogs on this web page will of necessity cause reactions of strong disagreement, or at the very least discomfort, on the part of many readers. Regrettably, these positions cannot be separated from the core issues in the reports which prove the fulfillment of major end-times prophecies, and may of themselves be fulfillment of the prophecy of the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

LINK TO 2020

2021 GENERAL REPORTS UPDATES:

THE MYSTERIOUS PUTIN'S RUSSIA FACTOR

INTRODUCTION

An essay titled EVANGELICAL FUNDAMENTALISM AND CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM: A SURPRISING ECUMENISM, written by Antonio Spadaro SJ, and Marcelo Figueroa, a Protestant pastor, described the main right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical Alliance as the "ecumenism of hate." The authors of the essay are described in Two associates of Pope Francis accuse right-wing American Christians of practicing 'apocalyptic' politics, as "close associates" of the Pope, and Figueroa as "a Protestant pastor who worked closely with Francis in Buenos Aires." The link is quite clear. This appears to reveal a conflict between the Francis papacy and the right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical Alliance. The Alliance is enigmatic in more than one respect. There is the established fact that the Alliance is the product of an activist plan of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and there is credible evidence that it had the blessing of Pope John-Paul and probably Pope Benedict as well. Is this no longer the case under Pope Francis, or is there now a clever concealment of the continuing favor of the Papal See?

Here it is important to note that among the Roman Catholic Secret Societies Opus Dei is in the ascendancy at the Vatican under Pope Francis. This contradicts the image portrayed of Pope Francis as opposed to the "ecumenism of hate." The secret society Opus Dei wields tremendous influence in the corridors of power in America's capital city (Opus Dei’s Influence Is Felt in All of Washington’s Corridors of Power.)

PUTIN'S INFLUENCE

The enigma deepens with the involvement of Vladimir Putin's Russia in American politics. He is the darling of the Religious Right, as will be seen later in this document. Donald Trump's Russia connections have been well documented, and yet remain shrouded in mystery. Trump's Russia connections were exposed during the 2016 presidential election campaign. However, Putin's influence in American politics had existed long before. It involved such significant Roman Catholic personalities as the ubiquitous "evil genius" Paul Weyrich. His involvement in the Russia conspiracy raises the question of papal approval. Moreover, there is evidence that Weyrich was associated with known fascists. The personality featured in the following hyperlinked report is revealed to have connections at the highest levels of government in America and Russia, and to have had a close relationship with Weyrich when he was alive. The information about his relationships with leading Republican politicians is startling:

The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow

Dr. Edward Lozansky is a key figure in the Trump-Russia scandal, despite his name being a mystery to you.

Meet Eduard Dmitrievich Lozansky, a US citizen and potentially an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian Federation.

He is prolific Putin propagandist.

A citizen of America.

And he is the key man who introduced the Republican Party’s conservative movement to Russia. . .

Dr. Lozansky’s Unlikely Relationship With Paul Weyrich — A Hungarian Nazi Sympathizer Who Reshaped The GOP

Dr. Lozansky was very involved in advocating for the issues of Russian Jewry, which is how he became friends with men like Sandy Gradinger in Rochester.

Startlingly, Dr. Lozansky’s most important political relationship was with a conservative activist whose connections to Hungarian Nazis have only been equaled by Donald Trump.

Edward Lozansky teamed up frequently with Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, a man whose right-hand man was a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and whose groups were politically active in European far-right politics.

For example, here’s just one article Lozansky and Weyrich co-authored in 2001.

In 2008, Paul Weyrich wrote an op/ed on Newsmax (since removed) where he stated that it was Ed Lozansky who 20-years prior brought up to him the idea of Russia joining NATO.

Wikipedia sums up Paul Weyrich’s Nazi connections thusly:

Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC),[5] an organization that trained and mobilized conservative activists, recruited conservative candidates, and raised funds for conservative causes.

The CSFC, founded by Weyrich, “became active in eastern European politics after the Cold War. Figuring prominently in this effort was Weyrich’s right-hand man, Laszlo Pasztor, a former leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in Hungary, which had collaborated with Hitler’s Reich. After serving two years in prison for his Arrow Cross activities, Pasztor found his way to the United States, where he was instrumental in establishing the ethnic-outreach arm of the Republican national Committee.”

In addition to his Nazi activities, Paul Weyrich coined the term the “Moral Majority” . . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)

Without getting involved in the intricacies of Lozansky's influential activities in the USA, which are not included above, it can reasonably be deduced from two facts that the papacy does approve of the conspiracy. These are (1) Weyrich's involvement, and (2) Lozansky's role as "the key man who introduced the Republican Party’s conservative movement to Russia." The Republican Party has been taken over by the Roman Catholic Church.

The following report provides an even more expansive view of Russian Intelligence involvement in American politics in collusion with well-known Religious Right personalities. It also again brings Paul Weyrich into the picture in a very interesting way:

Evangelicals and the Kremlin: A history of collusion

One of the key chess pieces in the Russian Intelligence Operation that brought us Donald Trump is the Religious Right. In fact, the fascist alliance with the American Right goes back to the period after World War 2 where we allied ourselves with former Nazis to take down the Communists.

Soviet defectors came here in the 1980’s and told bold stories about how Russian intelligence services had infected everything and were playing the long game in several phases. They would target the schools, the government, the media, and our churches over decades until we had been demoralized and chaos would reign.

This also happens to have coincided with the rise of a new form of Conservatism in America. . .

The American religious right viewed the downfall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to proselytize and create an alliance with the Russians. Phillip Yancy, in this story for Christianity Today and later the book he wrote based on this story, it is shown that the KGB welcomed this with open arms. I believe that, at some point, they came to realize that religion was a better way to control people and choose to take advantage of the religious right across the world.

With the financial backing of the notorious right-wing families Coors, Scaife, and Hunt, Paul Weyrich was able to create the Heritage Foundation in 1973. He would follow it up with A.L.E.C, The Moral Majority, the Free Congress Foundation and the Secretive Council for National Policy. Weyrich is also known for his belief that not everybody should be able to vote.

“Another one of Weyrich’s close associates at the Free Congress Foundation, Hungarian-American Laszlo Pasztor, is a convicted Nazi sympathizer who was active in the 1940s in the Hungarian Arrow Cross when it was collaborating with the Nazis. . .

Board member Charles Moser is an editorial advisor to Ukrainian Quarterly which once ran an article praising the Nazi Waffen SS and Ukranian collaboration against the Bolsheviks . . . while Weyrich has ties to neo-fascist and racist groups including the Nazi Northern League and the World Anti-Communist League via British eugenicist Roger Pearson.”

Roger Pearson was on the editorial board for the Heritage Foundation before he went on to work for the Pioneer Fund, a fund dedicated to funding eugenics studies. The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937 and modeled after the Nazi’s breeding program.

Some of the directors of the Pioneer Fund were Tom Ellis — a former president of the Council for National Policy — and two other high-level Republican operatives — Senator Jesse Helms and Carter Wrenn. Both were members of the CNP, as well as being part of the same Eugenics society as far-right financier Nelson Bunker Hunt. Helms was also a member of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, a racist network out of Scotland tied to Joseph Coors. . .

In 1979, Weyrich and his comrades convinced Jerry Falwell to form a new organization to promote theocracy, the Moral Majority. Meanwhile, Ed McAteer (Howard Phillips coworker) formed the Religious Roundtable with dozens of religious leaders including Rafael Cruz. McAteer also served on the board of the International Linguistics Center with Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Seeing this newfound power and broad alliances on the right, Paul Weyrich and his friend at Free Congress Robert Krieble decided to take on the Soviet Union themselves.

To do so, they enlisted the help of Soviet Émigré Edward Lozansky and other young Russians to spread right wing propaganda across Russia and Eastern Europe. Grant Stern and I have covered the origins of Lozansky’s ties to Russia in depth.

Russ Bellant explained this in his book about the New Right in 1991, but also missed the role fascist elements in Russia itself played the rise of fascism throughout the United States.

The evidence out there points to this The Krieble Institute’s goals being one of religious indoctrination rather than one of converting a nation from Communism to Capitalism. Two Months after this letter was sent, the Council for National Policy had its meeting in Moscow. In addition to this letter from 1991, Allen Carlson started the World Congress of Families when two Russian Professors at Moscow State University reached out to him with the idea.

Prior to his death, Paul Weyrich is described [sic] the World Congress’s purposes in the following terms; “to set up an international operation with the ability to combat the forces of darkness wherever they show themselves in whatever part of the world.”

While Weyrich was proselytizing to young Russian families and Allen Carlson was setting up the World Congress, Dr. John Bernbaum was founding the “Russian American Christian University” in Moscow. RACU was founded with money from Deyneka Ministries and Peter Deyneka Jr. Served on the board until his death. The University was supported by millions of dollars from the Prince and Devos family foundations and was just one of the ways the American Right fought a Culture War in a country it had no place being in. . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)

It is noteworthy that the author attempts to provide two source hyperlinks in verification of the information about Paul Weyrich's Nazi connections, which is an indication of the veracity of the facts. The hyperlinks do not work. It seems likely that the data has been suppressed. Weyrich's fascist associations help to understand the current direction of the Republican Party, and the segment of the voting population which supports fascist authoritarianism. This is a voting bloc which has been conditioned by decades of sophisticated propaganda. Were it not for this voting bloc fascism would not pose the menace that it now does to what remains of democratic principles in the government of America.

This report demonstrates that the Russia conspiracy is driven by, or linked to, all of the diabolical network of evil that is hell-bent on destroying, America's democracy with its constitutional separation of church and state.

Two assertions are open to questions. The first is a qualification on The American Religious Right. While it is probably correct that one objective was proselytizing, given the super wealthy personalities involved they must also have been intent on advancing capitalism. The other assertion is found in the phrase "While Weyrich was proselytizing." Proselytizing was never his primary goal in any context. He was a political animal; and his objective was absolute authoritarian power. Moreover, his masters in the Roman Catholic hierarchy are not interested in proselytizing in the proper sense of the term. They simply demand obedience, voluntary or involuntary, to their edicts. Paul Weyrich and his cohorts were happy to oblige with an accomodating program.

DONALD TRUMP'S DEEP INVOLVEMENT WITH PUTIN AND RUSSIA

From the very beginning of his 2016 campaign for the presidency of the United States Donald Trump's relationship with Russia came under suspicion by the FBI. The result was an investigation which lasted for two years:

Special counsel: What is it and what did Robert Mueller investigate?

The special counsel was put in place to oversee the investigation looking into alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election, and if Trump campaign figures were complicit.

Robert Mueller, who headed the FBI for more than a decade, was appointed in May 2017. He concluded his inquiry nearly two years later. . .

Why was he appointed?

The special counsel was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. He made the decision as "acting attorney general" because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had stepped aside from the Russia inquiry.

Mr Rosenstein said that given the "unique circumstances", it was in the public interest for a special counsel independent "from the normal chain of command", to lead the investigation.

By placing authority for the probe into the hands of Mr Mueller, the idea was that it would be able to proceed without any interference, including from the White House.

What was he looking at?

Mr Rosenstein's order allowed Mr Mueller to look into:

The Russian government's efforts to interfere in the election

Any links or co-ordination between Russia and Trump campaign-linked individuals

Any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation

His investigation ventured into work done by former Trump advisers and Russian nationals. Thirty-four people have been charged with wrongdoing.

What did he find?

Mr Mueller's 448-page report said it had not established that the Trump campaign criminally conspired with Russia to influence the election.

However, it did detail 10 instances where Mr Trump had possibly attempted to impede the investigation and stated the report did not exonerate Mr Trump.

Mr Mueller reiterated that in a rare statement following the end of the inquiry and said legal guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting president. He said if his team had had confidence that Mr Trump "clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so".

Note that the report did not find that there was "no collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russians, yet many respected publications, including PBS, have perpetuated the myth that there was such a finding:

The Mueller Investigation, Explained

It dominated headlines for two years, but in March 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election came to an end. The investigation, which President Donald Trump continually called a “witch hunt,” found no evidence that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, but fell short of completely exonerating the president.

This was one of many myths arising out of the Mueller investigation, and this was due to the deliberate corruption of the investigation report by newly appointed Attorney-General Bill Barr, a Roman Catholic theocrat; (N.B. Bill Barr, warrior for theocracy: Why didn't we know this until now?#William Barr, the attorney general of the United States.) Barr was on a nefarious mission.

The following article by two law professors debunks eleven myths about the Mueller Investigation report. The quotation below is confined to the issue of collusion:

These 11 Mueller Report Myths Just Won’t Die. Here’s Why They’re Wrong

By Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance

June 24, 2019 9:57 AM EDT

McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst.

Vance is distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst.

When we joined other legal experts earlier this month to testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding lessons from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, it became apparent from the questioning that a number of misconceptions continue to exist regarding Mueller’s findings. The narrative was shaped by Attorney General William Barr, who issued his description of Mueller’s conclusions three weeks before the public saw the full 448-page report. In a letter to Barr, Mueller complained that Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his team’s work and conclusions, and created “public confusion.” Here is our effort to dispel some of those myths.

Myth: Mueller found “no collusion.”

Response: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.

While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up.

Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”

The confusion about the investigation report's finding about conspiracy arises because many people think that conspiracy and collusion are synonymous. They are not. Conspiracy is a crime requiring specific elements. Collusion is collaborative behavior that nevertheless lacks all of the legal elements required to prove the crime of conspiracy.

As the Trump presidency was preceded by collaboration with Russian agents in his election campaign, so it continued with an unacceptable closeness to Russia and its President Putin. There were also constant breaches of the law that it is unnecessary to include in this paper. In the connection to Russia he was acting in concert with the Religious Right consisting of both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics:

All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts

These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections.

There’s nothing inherently damning about most of the ties illustrated below. But they do reveal the vast and mysteriously complex web behind a story that has vexed Trump’s young presidency from its start—and is certain to shake the White House for months to come.

The seven charts which follow the above introduction fill in the details of the complex web.

INVOLVEMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

What is most significant about the influence of Vladimir Putin's Russia in American politics is the Religious Right's connection with it. The first citation under this section reveals a role being played by the Russian Orthodox Church as well as Putin:

Russia's lasting grip on Christian conservatives [A 2019 article]

Russians are using Christian fundamentalist groups as a conduit to influence lawmakers

Prominent Russian nationals and members of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) continue to build bridges with American right-wing politicians and may be influencing policy.

Despite being sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury and the European Union for crimes in Ukraine, the same Russians under investigation for meeting with National Rifle Association (NRA) members are using Christian fundamentalist groups as a conduit to influence lawmakers.

Russians continue to skirt around sanctions by penetrating American churches and “family values” nonprofit organizations, and by manipulating IRS 501(c) loopholes, which do not require these groups to disclose their donations.

This is similar to the way members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle infiltrated the NRA.

Recently disclosed documents reveal that, over the last decade, at least $50 million has been dumped into fascist European fundamentalist groups. The list of donors includes former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon; Trump legal advisor, who converted from Judaism to become a Christian televangelist, Jay Sekulow; US Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and DeVos’s brother, former Blackwater mercenary founder turned Virginia cattle rancher, Erik Prince.

Another top donor is one of Russia’s richest men, oligarch Konstantin Malofeev — Putin’s most effective Eurasianism lobbyist. Malofeev’s stature catapulted him to the center of America’s growing Christian fundamentalist syndicate, with a healthy boost from Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. In 2011, together with Jack Hanick, a former producer of Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, Malofeev launched an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad.

Hanick and Malofeev successfully modeled their propaganda network after Fox News. Hanick moved to Russia in 2012; four years later he, his wife, and his kids converted to the Russian Orthodox faith. Malofeev is currently the subject of six US criminal investigationsinto Russian ties to the NRA. Not only is Malofeev suspected of laundering money into the NRA’s coffers, he has bankrolled and hosted events for the World Congress of Families (WCF), a right-wing Christian coalition based in Rockford, Illinois. Hanick serves on the WCF planning commission. . .

Over the past few years, the WCF has hosted its conferences in former Soviet countries and was scheduled to host its 2014 event in Russia — but the event was canceled due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea that year. But according to recently hacked and published emails, Russian and American representatives met in Moscow anyway, just a few months after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. . .

A growing political force in Putin’s Russia, the ROC operates as a large corporation tainted with corruption, bribery scandals, money laundering, and tax evasion. Putin has shaped the Orthodox ideology, which parallels that of extreme Christian fundamentalism in the US. . .

    Russia’s long history of courting US politicians dates back to the Reagan era — Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. But so-called family values nonprofit organizations have dramatically proliferated under the Trump administration, fueled by right-wing radio and cable news. Last November, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., who advised Trump to forge stronger ties with Russia, helped produce a film titled The Trump Prophecy that claims the president has been anointed by God. One in four Fox News viewers believe Falwell’s notion, according to a recent poll.

Last month, evangelical leader Franklin Graham traveled to Moscow for a “sit down” with Russian Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who has been sanctioned by the US since 2014for his involvement in Ukraine. Graham told Russian media that Vice President Mike Pence had “signed off” on his Kremlin trip, and that he and Volodin had discussed developing stronger ties with members of US Congress. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Here is evidence that Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC,) and the American Religious Right, Evangelical and Roman Catholic, have been working together to undermine America's democracy. Here is also evidence of support from Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. The following are further samplings from the numerous reports of the strange collaboration between Putin's Russia and American right-wing Evangelicals. The extent of this collaboration is startling:

The unexpected relationship between U.S. evangelicals and Russian Orthodox

Under Trump and Putin, a strange alliance gets stranger.

Well before special counsel Robert Mueller started investigating possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, American evangelicals had formed an odd alliance of their own with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. American evangelicals are led to make common cause with Russian Orthodoxy—and with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—because of a deep and shared suspicion of Western liberal elites.

Evangelical leaders in the United States and Orthodox hierarchs in Russia have accused the Western liberal establishment of being secular, antireligious, and committed to undermining traditional religious and moral values. In recent years, Barack Obama’s comments about “bitter” people “who cling to guns or religion” and Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of the “deplorables” backing Trump have added fuel to the flames. Sexual and gender politics have generated the most heat, but “traditional values” have also included patriotism, respect for the military, and the celebration of historic religious national identities, as in “Christian America” or “Holy Russia.”

In both countries, evangelicals and Orthodox have actively opposed legalized abortion and have called for protection of the “traditional” family. They have turned to leaders who support their causes—American evangelicals to the Republican Party and now Trump; Russian Orthodox hierarchs to Putin.

On this basis, for more than a decade, Russian Orthodox hierarchs—especially Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion—have explored cooperation with American evangelicals and other conservative religious forces both in Russia and internationally. Metropolitan Hilarion, the church’s top diplomat, recently asserted that Russian Orthodox believers and Russian Baptists agree on the need to preserve “traditional Christian values and the institution of the family.” At a gathering of religious leaders in England last year, Patriarch Kirill appealed for a united effort to counter the “oppression” of “power groups” that propose ideas “incompatible with the traditional views of Christian morality. . . .Christians in Europe must strive to defend their values on which the continent was built.” This language echoes that of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who also called for preserving the Christian foundations of Europe.

Metropolitan Hilarion has traveled regularly to the United States to meet not only with Orthodox counterparts but also with conservative evangelical and Catholic leaders. On a 2011 trip, he delivered a speech at the Catholic University of America, perhaps the most conservative of America’s large Catholic universities, and then at Dallas Theological Seminary, one of the country’s most prominent conservative evangelical institutions. While in Dallas, he preached at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, a 4,000-member congregation that has since left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over its liberal social stances.

Metropolitan Hilarion also met privately with politically conservative Texan business leaders and visited former president George W. Bush on his ranch near Waco. In 2014, Metropolitan Hilarion returned to the United States to speak at a conference of Christian leaders organized by Franklin Graham (now head of the Billy Graham organization), after which he attended Billy Graham’s 96th birthday party and met with Tim Keller, the evangelical pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

The alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has been especially significant. In 2015, Metropolitan Hilarion invited Franklin Gra­ham to Moscow, where he had private audiences with Patriarch Kirill and Putin. Graham later thanked the patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church’s “strong voice in the defense of moral values” and lauded Putin for defending biblical values “from the attacks of secularism.” Graham further asserted that many Americans wished that someone like Putin could be their president, and he praised Russia for passing antigay propaganda laws.

The alliance between the ROC and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association before and since Graham's retirement is significant. Billy Graham laid a foundation for both the spiritualism manifested by the Pentecostal movement and the modern ecumenism now rampant the Protestant world. This history puts into perspective the activities of Franklin Graham. Here we see clear evidence of the spirits of Rev. 16:13-14 at work. Franklin Graham appears prominently in reports of the Russian Orthodox Church-Evangelicals alliance. The following article provides detailed evidence, of which a limited portion is quoted:

The Russian connection: When Franklin Graham met Putin

When President Donald Trump stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July and said, "I don't see any reason why it would be" Russia who attempted to influence the 2016 election, the subsequent firestorm of criticism included liberals as well as prominent Republicans. . .

But there was one group that kept uncharacteristically quiet: the president's evangelical advisers. . .

There are good reasons why some Christian right leaders are less than eager to address Trump's attempts to warm relations between the U.S. and Russia. For years, American evangelicals have cultivated ties with Russia, highlighted by a 2015 meeting between Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, and Putin in Russia.

Those ties are now facing scrutiny as, the day that Graham tweeted, news broke that the Department of Justice had charged Mariia Butina, a Russian national, for allegedly lobbying without registering as a foreign agent with the U.S. government. Authorities claim religion was a part of her scheme: Among the channels she was attempting to exploit, according to her indictment, was the National Prayer Breakfast.

Founded in 1953, with help from Billy Graham, the prayer breakfast has since become the mother of all Washington power breakfasts, with thousands of attendees packed into a ballroom at the Washington Hilton and a customary address by the U.S. president. Butina had been allegedly using the breakfast as a back channel for contacts between Russian and American faith leaders and politicians.

But it was hardly the only religious connection said to be targeted by Russian actors. Among Butina's contacts was a Russian politician named Alexander Torshin, and together the pair allegedly attempted to broker a meeting between Trump and Putin before the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The meeting never happened, but its proposed site was a "World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians" in Moscow, organized by Franklin Graham.

Representatives for Franklin Graham said he was unavailable for an interview with Religion News Service, despite multiple requests. . .

Relationships between Russians and American evangelicals extend back more than three decades to Billy Graham's well-publicized visit to Russia in the mid-1980s. The World Congress of Families, a largely evangelical Christian group based in Illinois, was the brainchild of an American historian and a Russian Orthodox mystic, who met in Moscow in 1995, according to Mother Jones.

But the ties have escalated in recent years, due in part to leadership changes within the Russian Orthodox Church, but also because of political shifts that began in Russia in the early 2010s. . .

"It's only since 2012, since Putin's third term as a president, that traditional values have become the center focus point of the Kremlin," she said. "Presenting Russia as the stronghold of traditional family values, (arguing) the West wants to change the definition of the family by giving rights to gay people and so on."

But by the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the Kremlin had become what Politico described as "the leader of the global Christian Right," largely based on an alliance with Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill — who has been accused of being a former agent of the KGB, or the main security agency of the Soviet Union — in an effort to deploy religion to exert spiritual and possibly political influence across Europe. . .

Meanwhile, Putin's ideological influence over parts of the American religious right dates back to at least 2014.

In March of that year, Putin was featured on the cover of Decision Magazine, a publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in an issue that included an opinion article by Franklin Graham that offered cautious praise for the Russian president. The evangelical leader pointed to Putin's decision to sign a law barring the dissemination of "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" to children.

"It's obvious that President Obama and his administration are pushing the gay-lesbian agenda in America today and have sold themselves completely to that which is contrary to God's teaching," Graham wrote. He later added: "In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation's children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda."

Eight months later, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a Russian Orthodox Church official, visited the United States and met with Graham and his father to celebrate the elder evangelist's 96th birthday in Montreat, North Carolina.

Hilarion was no stranger to conservative religionists in the U.S. According to The Christian Century, Hilarion had visited America in 2011 to deliver a speech at the Catholic University of America, one of the most conservative Catholic schools in the country, and Dallas Theological Seminary, a prominent conservative evangelical institution. He also reportedly met with business leaders in Texas as well as former President George W. Bush.

The mention in the last two cited articles of Hilarion's meeting with George W. Bush, and his speech to the Catholic University of America hints at the Roman Catholic connection to Russian influence in the United States. George Bush took advantage of the alliance of the Evangelicals with the Roman Catholics politically; but his primary commitment was to the papacy.

Delving more deeply, there is strong evidence of probable connivance between the Vatican and the Russians. The evidence begins with a critical role played by prominent Roman Catholic activist Pat Buchanan in spearheading the Religious Right alliance of Catholics and Evangelicals. This began in the late 1960s during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

A SEGMENT ON THE ALLIANCE OF CATHOLICS AND APOSTATE PROTESTANTS

(And the continuing Russia factor)

The article hyperlinked below is from the publication Religion News Service, a non-denominational organization. It recognizes the critical role of the abortion issue in the Religious Right religio-political alliance; nevertheless, whether intentional or inadvertent, the "religious freedom" referred to here is the Roman Catholic concept of religious freedom. Perhaps this is a reflection of ecumenism:

How abortion unified Catholics and evangelicals to become a power on the right

Abortion politics thawed relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and indirectly strengthened religious freedom in the United States.

Abortion politics thawed relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and indirectly strengthened religious freedom in the United States. . .

The evangelicals’ ambivalence on abortion, an issue they now consider to be at the sacred heart of their morality, is striking. Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical professor who later became a major anti-abortion activist, at first refused to get involved. After his son, Frank, pushed him to join the anti-abortion movement, Schaeffer exasperatedly blurted out, “They’re Catholics!” . . .

Abortion politics, however, would come to thaw relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and powerfully affect American politics in general. . .

At first, abortion politics only served to cement the divisions between the two groups, with Evangelical protestants taking the more pro-choice position. The year after California’s Therapeutic Abortion law passed, Billy Graham declared that he supported loosening the laws so rape and incest victims could get abortions, and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina took no position.

Other Bible Belt states behaved similarly. “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” said the fundamentalist minister W. A. Criswell, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Some Protestants doubted there was biblical justification for the Catholic view that human life began at conception. . .

The evangelical-Catholic political alliance over abortion began in the late 1960s with Richard Nixon. Nixon aides Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips made the case that abortion was potentially a wedge issue that could separate Catholics from the Democratic Party. Abortion, Buchanan wrote in a private memo, was “a rising issue and gut issue with Catholics.” . . .

The canniest leaders understood that abortion politics could help conservatism, and vice versa. Weyrich explained to his fellow conservatives that abortion should be “made the keystone of their organizing strategy, since this was the issue that could divide the Democratic Party.”

During the Jimmy Carter administration, what came to be known as the religious right began to take shape. A key impetus was the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to remove Bob Jones University’s tax exempt status because it banned interracial dating. In 1979, Weyrich joined together with a Baptist minister named Jerry Falwell to form a new multifaith religious group to advocate conservative cultural issues. They called it the Moral Majority.

The prevalence of Catholics in the leadership of this religious right, little noticed by the press at the time, helped elevate abortion as an issue and bridge the Catholic-Protestant divide. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

This article was published by the non-denominational Religion News Service (RNS,) so its association of Kevin Phillips with the Nixon presidency's use of abortion as a wedge issue to separate Catholics from the Democratic Party may simply be an unintentional error. However, Phillips did publicize a cynical analysis of race relations in the American South which was used by the Nixon White House to turn the South into a bastion of of the Republican Party. He was not the one who had a religious agenda, and he divorced himself from the theocratic agenda of the Republican Party:

Southern strategy

In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. . . As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. It also helped to push the Republican Party much more to the right. . .

Introduction

Although the phrase "Southern Strategy" is often attributed to Nixon's political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it. . . but popularized it. . . In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, Phillips stated his analysis based on studies of ethnic voting:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

While Phillips sought to increase Republican power by polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level.

Undoubtedly Kevin Phillips was a brilliant political strategist, but not religio-political in his inclinations. Indeed, he was not as deeply involved in formulating the political (and religio-political) strategy of Richard Nixon as has been represented:

Kings of America

Kevin Phillips is that rarest of creatures, a reverse neocon, a Republican who has seen the light. As a young politics wonk poring over voting figures in the mid-sixties, he realized that the Democratic Party was growing estranged from many of its traditional constituents, and that the South was ready for a shift. His 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority got him a job in the Nixon White House (he languished in John Mitchell’s Justice Department, and quit in 1970).

In due course Phillips made his position on theocratic governance very clear:

Theocons and Theocrats

The infusion of religion into American politics has become the GOP's Achilles' heel, turning the Republican Party of Lincoln into the party of theocracy.

By Kevin Phillips

April 13, 2006

Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals argue; (2) a joke, given the nation’s rising secular population and moral laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.

The characteristics are not inconsistent. No large nation–no leading world power–could ever resemble theocracies like John Calvin’s Geneva, Puritan Massachusetts or early Mormon Utah. These were all small polities produced by unusual migrations of true believers.

As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush’s Washington: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the nation’s churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.

The Growth of Theocratic Sentiment

The essential US conditions for a theocratic trend fell into place in the late 1980s and ’90s with the growing mass of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity, expressed politically by the religious right; and the rise of the Republican Party as a powerful vehicle for religious policy-making and eventual erosion of the accepted degree of separation between church and state. This transformation was most vivid at the state level, where fifteen to twenty state Republican parties came under the control of the religious right, and party conventions in the South and West endorsed so-called “Christian nation” platforms. As yet nationally uncatalogued–a shortfall that cries out for a serious research project–these platforms set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, ranging from the Bible as the basis for domestic law to an emphasis on religious schools and women’s subordination to men. The 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party is a case in point.

So are the political careers of Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft, two presidential aspirants whose careers were milestones in the theocratization of the Republican Party. Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid brought huge numbers of Pentecostals into the Republican Party. Missouri Senator Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got much of his funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney General by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the religious right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between church and state as “a wall of religious oppression,” and his memoir describes each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner “of the ancient kings of Israel.” . . .

The upshot of this escalating religiosity on the part of the Republican national leadership has been an escalating and parallel religiosity on the part of the Republican rank and file. Those voting Republican for President since 1988 have become increasingly religious in motivation. After 9/11 pro-Bush preachers described Bush as God’s chosen man while hinting that Saddam Hussein, whose Iraq was the biblical “New Babylon” of fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye’s eerie Left Behind series, was the Antichrist or at least the forerunner of the Evil One. In 2004 a further wave of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal turnout helped to cement the Republican transformation, even as moderate mainline Protestants shuddered and turned in a small Democratic trend between 2000 and 2004. . .

The Bible, Theology and American Politics

This is a bit of a chicken-versus-egg situation. Have the issues that matter most to Americans become more theological because religion has become more of a political force–or has the growth of issues with a religious dimension spurred the increasing religious divisions? Probably some of each, but the list is frighteningly long.

First and foremost are the issues involving birth, life, death, sex, health, medicine, marriage and the role of the family–high-octane subject matter since the 1970s. These are areas where perceived immorality most excites stick-to-Scripture advocates and the religious right. Closely related is the commitment by the Bush White House and the religious right to reduce the current separation between church and state. . .

Controversies over life and death–often pivoting on precise definitions of each–can only continue to burgeon. The arguable rights of women (or parents) are being displaced by the rights of embryos or by the prerogative of sperm and egg to join, decisions rooted largely in theology, not science. Perhaps the preoccupation involves maximizing the potential soul count for the hereafter, in the manner of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors who ordered that heretics must die even if they repented, yet pursued repentance to save their souls first. . .

The next throbbing cluster of issues involves church-state relations. The nonradical theocon wing of the GOP demands a more conservative judiciary and an expanded role for religion in education, social services and the constraining of what they consider to be immoral behavior–abortion, homosexuality, pornography and contraception–but avoids spelling out any grand revolutionary mandate. The Christian Reconstructionist movement, by contrast, proclaims ambitions that range from replacing public schools with religious education to imposing biblical law and limiting the franchise to male Christians.

The federal judiciary is the arena in which the battles most critical to incipient theocrats will be fought out judge by judge, court by court. Signs of their anxiety to control the federal judiciary burst into view in an early 2005 meeting at which conservative evangelical leaders were addressed by Tom DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist. The focus of the strategy session was how to strip funding or jurisdiction from federal courts, or even eliminate them. James Dobson of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family named one target: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” Dobson commented. “All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.” A spokesman for Frist said he did not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, but DeLay, who had once said, “We set up the courts. We can unset the courts,” declined to comment. . .

Three prominent Republicans have staked out the boundaries. Former Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri complained in 2005 that “the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in a womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.” Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee suggested that George W. Bush’s “I carry the word of God” posture ought to be a 2004 election issue. And Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut regretted that “the Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.”

Unhappily, that’s the direction in which it’s been trending.

Thus Kevin Phillips has made his aversion to religion in politics quite clear.

By contrast, for decades Pat Buchanan has been a fire and brimstone crusader for just the transformation of the Republican Party and America deplored by Kevin Phillips:

When Pat Buchanan Tried To Make America Great Again

If you're wondering how Donald Trump happened, all you have to do is let Pat Buchanan, the founding father of Republican insurrection, beguile you with a history no one else can tell.

It's impossible to say exactly when the rehabilitation of Patrick Buchanan began, partly because his banishment from polite company was never total. MSNBC rather publicly fired him in 2012—over the protests of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski—after the publication of Suicide of a Superpower, the latest, though by no means the shrillest, in the series of duck-and-cover, they're-coming-for-us screeds he's been writing since 1998. With chapter titles like "The Death of Christian America," "The End of White America," and "The White Party," it sounded the alarm of demographic apocalypse, offering pungent observations such as: "U. S.-born Hispanics are far more likely to smoke, drink, abuse drugs, and become obese than foreign-born Hispanics."

And yet two years later, there he was again on Morning Joe, serenaded with the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song. On camera, Buchanan plugged his new book, The Greatest Comeback, which tells how he helped Nixon get elected president, a three-year siege that raised a repeat loser from the dead. Buchanan is a vivid storyteller, and his account draws amply on his personal archive of briefing papers, letters, and notes. The book also illuminates the Nixon years' atmosphere of cultural embattlement, a political mood that looks more relevant than ever in the Age of Donald Trump.

So do Buchanan's three long-shot attempts, in 1992, 1996, and 2000, to become president himself. He never came close to winning, but each time he nagged at something, rubbed a nerve in just enough voters of a particular kind­—what he called "peasants" and we call the white working class—to send ripples of panic through the Republican party. The echoes of Buchananism in Trump's campaign were a pet theme during the election and its aftermath. But if anything, the debt has been understated. Put most simply, Buchanan begat Trumpism as his former ally William F. Buckley Jr. begat Reaganism. The also-ran of the Republican hard Right is the intellectual godfather of our current revolution. . .

It's true that Trump found his own way, as early as 1987, to the America First platform he ran on almost thirty years later. But it was Buchanan who sounded, or brayed, the message we all now know by heart: anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-Asia, anti-free-trade, anti more or less anything that inches America away from the splendors of the 1950s. . .

He remembers it all today, as he remembers much else in his half-century of national politics, as a quasi-joke. "Somebody said, 'Pat, he called you a Nazi, a Hitlerite.' I said, 'With Trump, you have to realize, these are terms of endearment.' " Sitting in the living room of his big Georgian house in McLean, Virginia, just after the inauguration, Buchanan lets out a soft roar, his eyes disappearing into his still-meaty face. He turned seventy-eight in November, and the thousands of hours on the road, the layers of TV pancake, have wrinkled his pug features, while his hair has faded toward apricot and is thinning in back. But his laughter is alive and happy. And why not? He did in 2000 what sixteen Republicans couldn't do in 2016, despite the best efforts of William Kristol, the halfhearted pushback of the Koch brothers, and the whole machinery of "Conservatism, Inc."

Not only that: The platform from which Buchanan once exuberantly ranted is now GOP doctrine and is fast becoming the law—or the multiplying illegalities—of the land. . .

In fact, Buchanan has been plugging Trump for months in the column he writes on Mondays and Thursdays for his website. Trump has his share of defenders—including a handful of intellectuals—but it's safe to say that only Buchanan would defend the president's directive about transgender access to bathrooms by citing Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical.

"How can such a fanatic be so likable?" Garry Wills, a Buchanan watcher since the 1968 campaign, has wondered. Wills, no pushover, isn't alone. Michael Kinsley has Buchananitis. George Packer has it, too. "Pat Buchanan is a nativist, an isolationist, and an armed-to-the-teeth culture warrior," he wrote in 2008, after interviewing Buchanan in McLean. "He's also a very nice man and a wonderful raconteur." . .

Buchanan's slogan, "America First—and Second, and Third," coined in 1990, signaled that his was a politics of protest. So did another notorious eruption, his fiery oration at the Houston convention in 1992. "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America," he declared. "It is a cultural war." At the time, this sounded like the bitter cry of intolerance. And it was, with its denunciations of "homosexual rights" and "radical feminism." But when Buchanan said that the election was "about who we are" and "what we believe," he was delivering a raw message, a shout from a distant shore, that even now many seem unable to hear. Our delicate moral antennae are attuned to the faintest dog whistle, but they filter out the deeper rumbles through which democracy makes its urgent claims. . .

The real battle, as usual, was over history. Liberals said the cold war had been about the march toward a globalized civil society. But for Buchanan and others like him, it had been a war against godless communism. Their heroes weren't diplomats and Davos attendees. They were brutalists, like McCarthy, MacArthur, and Franco. Wills was right: Buchanan is a fanatic, though he has his own term for it. "We are conservatives of the heart," he says of paleo-conservative America Firsters like himself. "This is one reason the New World Order, the whole idea, is gonna come down. It doesn't engage the heart. Who's gonna put on a bayonet and charge for some Brussels bureaucrat?" . . .

Buchanan had been expanding his case in books with grabby doomsday titles, each a renewed cry to take America back: The Great Betrayal, State of Emergency, The Death of the West, Day of Reckoning. Some verged on learned crackpottery. "Here is a difference between Patrick Buchanan and David Irving," the historian John Lukacs wrote of Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, the revisionist history that Buchanan published in the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. Irving, the notorious Holocaust denier, "employs falsehoods; Buchanan employs half-truths. But, as Thomas Aquinas once put it, 'a half-truth is more dangerous than a lie.' " The review ran in The American Conservative. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The passages quoted above present a portrait of a fascist and a raging culture wars religious fanatic, qualities now recognized in the Religious Right. It is also manifestly a "devils' brew," the evil work of the "spirits of devils" (Rev. 16:14.) Note the lighthearted reference to fascism in connection with exchanges between Donald Trump and Buchanan. The accusation is serious, and substantiated in articles written by respectable authors. A sampling is justified in view of the image of the Religious Right that has emerged and underscores the menace now confronting America:

Pat Buchanan's Fascist Underpinnings

Mar 2, 1992

Charles Krauthammer [Prominent conservative political columnist, now deceased.]

The Washington pundits have worked themselves into a tizzy over whether some of Pat Buchanan's TV colleagues - "Crossfire" co-host Michael Kinsley in particular - have been too soft on Buchanan's anti-Semitism. Washington is a city where turning policy into gossip is an art form. But even by Washington standards this is ridiculous, a sideshow to a sideshow.

The issue is not Kinsley. Nor is it principally Buchanan's anti-Semitism. Now that Buchanan's media-inflated New Hampshire "victory" has made him a national political figure, the anti-Semitism debate is beside the point, or more accurately, obscuring the far larger point. The real problem with Buchanan (as Jacob Weisberg suggested two years ago in The New Republic) is not that his instincts are anti-Semitic but that they are, in various and distinct ways, fascistic.

First, there is Buchanan's nativism. "What happened to make America so vulgar and coarse, so uncivil and angry?" he asks. After serving up the usual suspects ("a morally cancerous welfare state," etc.) he finds "another reason": "Since 1965, a flood tide of immigration has rolled in from the Third World, legal and illegal, as our institutions of assimilation . . . disintegrated." "If present trends hold," he warns, "white Americans will be a minority by 2050."

"Who speaks for the Euro-Americans?" (read: white Americans) asks Buchanan. Guess. "Is it not time to take America back?" Guess for whom and from whom.

Then there is Buchanan's open admiration for authoritarian politics. Press profiles of Buchanan recall colorfully his father's worship of Franco and (Joe) McCarthy. But this is more than mere family lore. Buchanan fils has quite cheerfully expressed his own esteem for Franco and Pinochet (both "soldier-patriots") and for the "Boer Republic," Buchanan's quaint and sympathetic euphemism for white racist South Africa.

As for democracy, Buchanan disdains the principle of "one man, one vote" as "democratist ideology," a locution as contemptuous as it is peculiar. In particular, he scorns the idea of spreading democracy abroad, the cornerstone of Reagan's foreign policy, as "democracy worship" and "liberal idolatry."

Nativism, authoritarianism, ethnic and class resentment. A good start. But Buchanan was long missing an essential feature of the fascist world view: its economics. He had contempt for "democracy worship," but he was still a parishioner at the church of capitalism, free trade and limited government. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

Buchanan Flirting With Fascism

Thu., Feb. 22, 1996

More people should have spoken out when Adolf Hitler was rising to power. And more people should speak out now that Patrick Joseph Buchanan is rising to power.

Buchanan attracts Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, militia nuts, skinheads, anti-Semites, racists, sexists, homophobes, religious zealots and garden-variety bigots just like garbage attracts flies. Why not? Buchanan has devoted his life to releasing just the right scent to attract extremists and fanatics.

Buchanan is intelligent, a gifted speaker and a precise writer. He knows what he is doing.

And so should Americans who foolishly praise Buchanan for his willingness to say exactly what he believes.

As a writer, pundit, commentator and Washington insider, Buchanan carefully pushes his angry rhetoric just to the exact edge of outright racism or bigotry. He always leaves himself a tiny toehold from which he can claim that he is not an outright bigot.

But Americans should consider the evidence before they are beguiled by Buchanan’s lifetime of calculated innuendo.

Recently, Buchanan told a reporter how much he has been influenced by his father. “My father imbued in us that life was a battle,” he said.

It’s likely, however, that William Baldwin Buchanan imbued in his son even more. The elder Buchanan was a devoted backer of the America First Committee, a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, nativist and isolationist movement.

The elder Buchanan also was an admirer of fascist dictator Francisco Franco of Spain and of this nation’s disgraceful redbaiter Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

When he ran for president in 1992, the young Buchanan dubbed his campaign “America First.” As it turned out, former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke also called his presidential campaign “America First.” The messages from Buchanan and Duke were the same. Buchanan said Duke had stolen his ideas.

Like his father, Pat Buchanan has expressed his admiration of fascist dictator Franco. In addition, Buchanan has described Hitler as “an individual of great courage, … extraordinary gifts.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

BUCHANAN OFFERS U.S. FASCISM WITH A HAPPY FACE

October 27, 1999

Patrick Buchanan, in his own words:

“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core … he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.”

– In the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Aug. 25, 1977

“Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory.”

– On “The McLaughlin Group,” Aug. 26, 1990

“I believe Christianity is the true faith.” . . .

Lately, we’ve hollered until we’re hoarse over the handful of crazies who’ve managed to grab the microphone in our midst. In the meantime, Buchanan – a racist who scapegoats Jews for leading America down a path of destruction – has been skulking in the daylight of America’s mainstream.

He may never be elected president. But his insidious rise in stature, despite – or because of – a consistent record of Jew-bashing and Holocaust denial, is certain to make a dent in the political process. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Buchanan exults that his ideas have become prevalent in the religio-political world, and is proud to have been the forerunner of Donald Trump:

‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn’t’

Pat Buchanan won after all. But now he thinks it might be too late for the nation he was trying to save.

May/June 2017

. . . He invaded America’s living rooms and pioneered the rhetorical combat that would power the cable news age. He defied the establishment by challenging a sitting president of his own party. He captured the fear and frustration of the right by proclaiming a great “culture war” was at hand. And his third-party candidacy in 2000 almost certainly handed George W. Bush the presidency, thanks to thousands of Palm Beach, Florida, residents mistakenly voting for him on the “butterfly ballot” when they meant to back Al Gore.

If not for his outsize ambition, Pat Buchanan might be the closest thing the American right has to a real-life Forrest Gump, that patriot from ordinary stock whose life journey positioned him to witness, influence and narrate the pivotal moments that shaped our modern world and changed the course of this country’s history. He has known myriad roles—neighborhood brawler, college expellee, journalist, White House adviser, political commentator, presidential candidate three times over, author, provocateur—and his existence traces the arc of what feels to some Americans like a nation’s ascent and decline. . . Now 78, with thick, black glasses and a thinning face, Buchanan looks back with nostalgia at a life and career that, for all its significance, was at risk of being forgotten—until Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States. . .

“Pat was the pioneer of the vision that Trump ran on and won on,” says Greg Mueller, who served as Buchanan’s communications director on the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and remains a close friend. Michael Kinsley, the liberal former New Republic editor who co-hosted CNN’s “Crossfire” with Buchanan, likewise credits his old sparring partner with laying the intellectual groundwork for Trumpism: “It’s unclear where this Trump thing goes, but Pat deserves some of the credit.” He pauses. “Or some of the blame.”

Buchanan, for his part, feels both validated and vindicated. Long ago resigned to the reality that his policy views made him a pariah in the Republican Party—and stained him irrevocably with the ensuing accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia—he has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.

“I was elated, delighted that Trump picked up on the exact issues on which I challenged Bush,” he tells me. “And then he goes and uses my slogan? It just doesn’t get any better than this.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing reports present a portrait of the man Pat Buchanan as menacing, but masked by affability. The ugly traits exposed are related to the religious intolerance and anti-democratic activism which are inherent in all that Buchanan represents, especially his Catholicity. See how he challenges Pope Francis on Roman Catholic doctrines:

Pat Buchanan: I'm more Catholic than the pope

The right-wing pundit clutches his pearls amid signs that the pope seeks a more inclusive church

Don't count paleoconservative pundit Pat Buchanan as a friend of Pope Francis.

In his latest syndicated column, the longtime social conservative scold lambastes Francis for sowing "confusion among the faithful" with his criticism of the "hostile rigidity" of "so-called traditionalists" in the Roman Catholic Church. The pope's remarks came at the close of a Vatican synod on the family last week. The original draft of the synod's report made waves by stating that the church should be "welcoming" of gay people, who, the document said, have "gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community." But following a conservative uproar, the final document omitted the reference to "welcoming" gays and instead stated that they should be treated with "respect and sensitivity." Francis' sharply worded closing remarks suggested to many observers that he lamented the change.

And that's why Buchanan is up in arms. Responding to the pope's jab at "hostile" traditionalists, Buchanan writes, "That is one way of putting it. Another is that traditionalists believe moral truth does not change, nor can Catholic doctrines be altered."

"Even a pope cannot do that," Buchanan adds, in what reads more like a threat than an interpretation of theology.

So what if Francis throws his weight behind a fundamental shift in doctrine at next year's synod?

"Should such be attempted, the pope would be speaking heresy," Buchanan declares. "And as it is Catholic doctrine that the pope is infallible, that he cannot err when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals, this would imply that Francis was not a valid pope and the chair of Peter is empty." . . .

Should Pat's beloved Catholic Church start to go wobbly, however, he may have an alternative. Last year, Buchanan lavished praise on Russian President Vlaidmir Putin for his country's draconian anti-gay crackdown, lauding Putin for "trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation." (Underscored emphasis added.)

Of course the Bible condemns homosexuality; however, the Pope and Buchanan are not arguing Bible doctrine but Roman Catholic dogma. The last paragraph above allies Buchanan with the Evangelicals who are looking to Russia for leadership of the so-called "Christian" world, and introduces a larger global dimension. This is confirmed by Buchanan himself as well as other reports:

God and Putin: Pat Buchanan's startling insight

"Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world," says author Masha Gessen, who has written a book on Russian President Vladimir Putin. "But the war to be waged is not with rockets," writes conservative columnist Pat Buchanan. "It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia's role, in Putin's words, is to 'prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.'"

Buchanan says he was "startled to read" recently that among the World Council of Families' "'ten best trends' in the world in 2013, number one was 'Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader.'"

"While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view," Buchanan quotes the WCF's Allan Carlson, "Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12."

"Will Vladimir Putin give the keynote?" asks Buchanan.

It is a stunning possibility. The West, says Buchanan, has capitulated to "a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values."

"In the new ideological Cold War," he asks, "whose side is God on now?" . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Now as written by Buchanan himself:

Whose Side Is God on Now?

By Patrick J. Buchanan|August 31st, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Pat Buchanan, Russia

In his Kremlin defense of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond.

Crimea, said Putin, “is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”

Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.

This speech recalls last December’s address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?

Indicting the “Bolsheviks” who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, “May God judge them.”

What is going on here?

With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.

In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.

Western leaders who compare Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Hitler’s Anschluss with Austria, who dismiss him as a “KGB thug,” who call him “the alleged thief, liar and murderer who rules Russia,” as the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins did, believe Putin’s claim to stand on higher moral ground is beyond blasphemous.

But Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on “The Third Rome.”

The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today’s Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was—Moscow.

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.

Putin is plugging into some of the modern world’s most powerful currents.

Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America’s arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.

He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.

In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”

What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?

The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following provides more on Pat Buchanan and his cohorts in American right-wing politics, as well as a critical examination of their misconceptions:

The False Romance of Russia

American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.

December 12, 2019

But in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.

The pioneer of this search was Patrick Buchanan, the godfather of the modern so-called alt-right, whose feelings about foreign authoritarians shifted right about the time he started writing books with titles such as The Death of the West and Suicide of a Superpower. His columns pour scorn on modern America, a place he once described, with disgust, as a “multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual ‘universal nation’ whose avatar is Barack Obama.” Buchanan’s America is in demographic decline, has been swamped by beige and brown people, and has lost its virtue. The West, he has written, has succumbed to “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.”

This litany of horrors isn’t much different from what can be heard most nights on Fox News. Listen to Tucker Carlson. “The American dream is dying,” Carlson declared one recent evening, in a monologue that also referred to “the dark age that we are living through.” Carlson has also spent a lot of time on air reminiscing about how the United States “was a better country than it is now in a lot of ways,” back when it was “more cohesive.” And no wonder: Immigrants have “plundered” America, thanks to “decadent and narcissistic” politicians who refuse to “defend the nation.” You can read worse on the white-supremacist websites of the alt-right—do pick up a copy of Ann Coulter’s Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole—or hear more extreme sentiments in some evangelical churches. Franklin Graham has declared, for example, that America “is in deep trouble and on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.”

What a terrible place all of these people are describing. Who would want to live in a country like that? Or, to put it differently: Who wouldn’t sympathize with the enemies of a country like that? As it turns out, many do. Certainly Buchanan does. Russian cyberwarriors work with daily determination to undermine American utilities and electricity grids. Russian information warriors are trying to deform American political debate. Russian contract killers are murdering people on the streets of Western countries. Russian nuclear weapons are pointed at us and our allies.

Nevertheless, Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is “standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.” Once again, he feels the shimmering lure of that elusive sense of “unity” and purpose that complicated, diverse, quarrelsome America always lacks. Impressed with the Russian president’s use of Orthodox pageantry at public events, Buchanan even believes that “Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.”

He is not alone. The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders, as well as their colleagues on the European far right. Among them, for example, are the movers and shakers behind the World Congress of Families, an American evangelical and anti-gay-rights organization that Buchanan has explicitly praised. One of the WCF’s former leaders, Larry Jacobs, once declared that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.” The WCF even has a Russian branch, which is run by Alexey Komov, a man in turn linked to Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who has hosted far-right meetings all across Europe. At the WCF’s most recent meeting, in Verona, senior Russian priests mingled with leaders of the Italian far right, the Austrian far right, and their comrades from the American heartland. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The linkage between the Religious Right alliance of both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics to Russia is established beyond all reasonable doubt.

GLOBAL DIMENSION OF THE PUTIN AND RUSSIA INFLUENCE

Putin's extraordinary deception now extends beyond the boundaries of America to global proportions:

How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right

While the U.S. passed gay-rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.

By CASEY MICHEL

February 09, 2017

In early April 2014, as the post-Cold War order roiled in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula—the first forced annexation in Europe since the Second World War—Pat Buchanan asked a question. Taking to the column-inches at Townhall, Buchanan wondered aloud: “Whose side is God on now?”

As Moscow swamped Ukraine’s peninsula, holding a ballot-by-bayonet referendum while local Crimean Tatars began disappearing, Buchanan clarified his query. The former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and intellectual flag-bearer of paleoconservatism—that authoritarian strain of thought linking both white nationalists and US President Donald Trump—wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today.” Despite Putin’s rank kleptocracy, and the threat Moscow suddenly posed to stability throughout Europe, Buchanan blushed with praise for Putin’s policies, writing, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”

Three years on, it’s easy to skip past Buchanan’s piece in discussing Russian-American relations, drenched as they are in mutual sanctions and the reality that Moscow attempted to tip the scales in Trump’s favor during the election. But Buchanan’s article crystallized a paradigm shift in religious relations between Moscow and Washington, and in Moscow’s role within the global Christian right. Before 2014 Russia was largely seen as an importer for Christian fundamentalists, most especially from the U.S. But as the Kremlin dissolved diplomatic norms in 2014, Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.

And Moscow’s grip at the tiller of a globally resurgent right has only tightened since. Not only have Russian banks funded groups like France’s National Front, but Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S. Meanwhile, American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Moving very close to the heart of Roman Catholicism, the Holy See, note what is happening in Italy:

Italian Catholics increasingly embrace Vladimir Putin

by Stefano Magni • July 16, 2018

As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki, the world seems concerned about the rise of Vladimir Putin. However, Putinism is on the rise in Italy – in fact, it is now in the political majority. More distressingly, Putinism enjoys growing support among faithful Roman Catholic adherents.

Both governmental parties, the League and the Five Star Movement, are directly or indirectly linked to the Kremlin. The League formally signed an agreement with United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, on November 28, 2016. . . The Five Star Movement has a long voting record on Russian issues reflecting the Kremlin’s views opposing EU sanctions and NATO. And prominent members of the Five Star Movement met with Putin’s party in 2016. Russian “eurasiatist” philosopher Aleksandr Dugin has a very close relationship with several Italian politicians, the League in particular. After the new government was installed, Dugin personally praised Matteo Salvini as the initiator of a “great populist revolution.”

Putin’s closest friend in Italy outside the Italian government is still Silvio Berlusconi, who has had close ties to the Russian leader since the early 2000s. And Berlusconi’s sometime-partner, Giorgia Meloni (the leader of the Brothers of Italy Party), publicly hailed the results of Putin’s disputed re-election in 2018, stating: “The people’s will, in this last Russian election, is apparently undisputable.”

But the political face of Putinism is just the surface. Below it, there are years of cultural penetration of Russian ideas and values.

Catholic public opinion is one of the main drivers of Putinism. It’s difficult to find the origin of this undeniable reality. The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has nothing to say about Russia and Putinism, aside from the pope’s prayers for peace in Ukraine and the recent breakthroughs in the ecumenical dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate (which culminated in the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill). . .

Putin is not a Catholic and he was not even a Christian. He’s now a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, although he became notorious as a former KGB officer during the time when one of the KGB’s top missions was to crush religion in the Soviet Union and in its satellite regimes. Putin never expressed remorse about his past. Despite this, Putin is generally seen by the pro-Russian press as the main promoter of the rebirth of Christian values. . .

In the traditionalist Catholic cultural environment, Putin is exceedingly popular. Traditionalist Catholic priest Curzio Nitoglia defines Putin as the katechon, holding on against the “forces of subversion,” i.e., the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Putin's speech at the Valdai Forum of 2013, in which he stressed Christian values against the secularism and materialism of the West, is one of the most popular speeches of recent times among Italian Catholics. It was published by the online newspaper Imola Oggi with the title, “A Putin Speech to be Carved in Stone.” It then went viral on Catholic blogs. (Underscored emphasis added.)

What is going on here?! Could this possibly mean that Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church are displacing the papacy in her role as prophesied in Rev. 13 and Daniel 11:45? This cannot be! There has to be more to Russia's activities in America and globally than meets the eye.

(To those who are quick to embrace theories that contradict or twist Bible prophecy, Russia is not "the King" of Daniel 11:45, who is directly traceable back to the "king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences" (Daniel 8:23.) In turn the king of Daniel 8:23 is clearly the same power as that identified in 2 Thess. 2:1-12, Rev. 13:1-10, and Rev. 19:19-20.

Barnes' Bible Commentary on Daniel 8:23 quotes Gesenius, "And understanding dark sentences" - Gesenius (Lexicon) explains the word here rendered "dark sentences" to mean artifice, trick, stratagem." Are we witnessing dark sentences here which are yet to be exposed?

It is not beyond the realm of possibility, or even probability, that we are witnessing a shadowy Hegelian dialectic, or a modification of it, in action. Time will tell.


 

Paragraphs following "From "Chapter 6 - Why Did Our Political Will Fade Away?" revised 9/12/21.

RELIGIO-POLITICAL ROME: IMPERIAL AUTOCRACY, INHERENT IMPOSTOR, SUBVERSIVE OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY
Rome hates the American Experiment in Liberal Democracy

American Democracy is near death. The electronic and printed news media blame Donald Trump, "Trumpism," and Dominionist Right-wing Evangelicals. These are seemingly separate threats; but collectively they mask the dark schemes of Rome. Behind all is the puppet master United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as will be conclusively proven by this study paper.

ROME took over the Republican Party and manipulated the Evangelicals into forming the Image to the Beast. They were swarming all over the White House during the Trump presidency. We saw it clearly! The fact that it has disappeared from view in the executive branch of government for the time being does not negate the fact that it was clearly visible, and once formed it does not cease to exist. Moreover, it is now at the heart of electoral politics in America. Millions of Americans vote against their best interests to support Rome's anti-abortion crusade. Trump was not the first choice of ROME for the presidency, but ROME decided she could work with him.

This is verified by Roman Catholic publications surprisingly critical of the hierarchy' alliance with the Republican Party and Trump!

TRUMP'S COZY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AMERICAN CARDINALS AND BISHOPS

Editorial: Dolan delivers the church to Trump and the GOP

The capitulation is complete.

Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump. . .

Unfortunately, the bishops have paid a much higher price than poor public relations in their political strategy the past four decades. Abortion is a serious subject that they've turned into a political volleyball in a game with no winners except the groups on the extremes of the issue who cash in every four years, sustaining careers and an endless debate. . .

It is, finally, reasonable to note that at this moment, particularly, the bishops have little credibility for two reasons. The first is that survey after survey has shown over the years that they have been unable to persuade even Catholics to their point of view in any proportion different from the consensus that exists in the wider public.

The second reason they lack credibility has to do with their own behavior. This absolute rule for women comes from an all-male culture that showed itself quite adept at accommodating a level of violence against already-born children, covering it up and wishing to move beyond the facts and the wrecked lives of thousands of victims and their families.

It is quite a stretch to take the role of moral absolutist on the matter of abortion when you've demonstrated a capacity to engage in a degree of relativism that is truly breathtaking when dealing with horrible abuse of children. Their own behavior over decades of covering up abuse puts the lie to the sanctimonious posturing about the absolute dignity of every person.

This unholy alliance with Trump, coupled with the GOP stacking of the Supreme Court, may get the bishops the abortion ban they so covet, but it will not end the debate. They may even get the federal money they desperately need to extend the fading life of Catholic schools. But all of it will have been purchased at the expense of a whole range of other life and justice issues. . .  (Underscored emphasis added.)

The above headline "Editorial: Dolan delivers the church to Trump and the GOP," suggests ignorance about the takeover of the Republican Party by the Catholic hierarchy which dates back to the late 1970s. However, it was the same National Catholic Reporter which predicted the creation of an American Catholic Party over 40 years ago. Though the publication apparently did not anticipate how this would be achieved, it was accomplished by the Roman Catholic Church's takeover of the Republican Party:

Editorial: Catholics and Trump, a reckoning

Several significant questions emerge, entwined, from the chaos of the moment. One is about Catholicism and its public expression, the other about our civic/political life and, in each instance, how they might be transformed in the post-pandemic era.

In the civil realm, the question is whether truth, or the pursuit of it, and competence will ever be foundational again to the way we conduct our public affairs. Or will we continue to require that truth bowl us over — actually threaten every area of life — before we believe it?

The question for the church in the United States is whether we will come out of this austere moment able to admit the role Catholics and their leaders played in electing and enabling a man who, far from being pro-life, has proven himself a distinct danger to life on several levels.

It is neither coincidence nor surprising that those who engage in fevered distortions of the truth in the political realm would have companions in the religion realm.

The combination is dangerous, and just how potentially destructive — not only of democratic processes and institutions but now of the body politic itself — is becoming all too clear. Are those bishops who reduced Catholic participation in the political process to a single issue, who tacitly approved when their culture-warrior minions delivered that message from countless pulpits, willing to take responsibility now for the sheer incompetence they helped put in place? If it profits not a man to give his soul for the world, how much worse for the church to hand over its integrity for a few conservative justices.

The consequences are enormous and have to do with much more than policy differences or even single-issue politics. As The Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, recounting how Trump bragged about the ratings for his embarrassing afternoon "briefings," so aptly put it recently:

Exploiting this type of tragedy in the cause of personal vanity reveals Trump's spirit to be a vast, trackless wasteland. Trump seems incapable of imagining and reflecting the fears, suffering and grief of his fellow citizens. We have witnessed the total failure of empathy in presidential leadership.

There is a Catholic reckoning at hand. Catholics and their leaders who bought the single-issue strategy find themselves stuck in what once was a fun house now turned house of horrors, incongruously lashed to President Donald Trump, a tawdry community of mutual desperation. This place where the feints and mirrors were once enough in the dim light to convince the band of jesters that they were in control is becoming, in the cold light of truth, a national graveyard. The daily reality is a grim report of the spiraling number of sick and dying. . . 

This awful moment has laid bare the high cost to the U.S. church of 30 years or more of accommodation to a culture of political expediency and an attempt to diminish the community of faith's responsibility to the common good. Single-issue voting relieved too many of us of the responsibility to engage deeper political and historical realities. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Cardinal Dolan defends himself after letter criticizing him for Trump call

More than 1,000 Catholics have signed an open letter in protest of Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s phone call with President Donald Trump and a follow-up interview on Fox News, labeling the president as “not pro-life.”

Your recent phone call with President Trump and appearance on Fox News sends a message that Catholic leaders have aligned themselves with a president who tears apart immigrant families, denies climate change, stokes racial division and supports economic policies that hurt the poor,” they wrote in the letter which was published on Friday with the names of the signatories.

“Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this election,” it continued. . .

The New York cardinal did not weigh in on whether he viewed the president’s bid for reelection support as inappropriate, only citing an Italian expression that “you gotta make gnocchi with the dough you’ve got.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The statement of Cardinal Dolan in defense of support for the re-election of Donald Trump is revealing:"you gotta make gnocchi with the dough you’ve got.” The Cardinal is plainly asserting that "we" are the manipulators of Trump, not the manipulated. Dolan is a "prince" of Rome, which has a history of supporting obnoxiously evil political leaders with whom the hierarchy has made an accommodation. The hierarchy's policy is always that the end of attaining absolute power justifies the means.

Note that the editorials and the report of Dolan's defense all complain that Trump is not pro-life. There is no disagreement on the dogma! The disagreement is about how it is being enforced.

ROME was protecting Trump’s lawlessness. ROME would have been responsible for his re-election, the Republican Party being her tool. ROME will now squeeze as much as she can out of the Democrats who now control the White House and both houses of Congress.

A HISTORY OF BRAINWASHING AND SUBVERSION

In an 1895 General Conference Third Angel's Message sermon Seventh-day Adventist Church leader A. T. Jones laid out the grand design of Rome for America. Note Jones' prescient observation:

The papacy is very impatient of any restraining bonds; in fact, it wants none at all. And the one grand discovery Leo XIII has made, which no pope before him ever made, is that turn which is taken now all the time by Leo and from him by those who are managing affairs in this country--the turn that is taken upon the clause of the Constitution of the United States: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Leo has made the discovery that the papacy can be pushed upon this country in every possible way and by every possible means and that congress is prohibited from ever legislating in any way to stop it. That is a discovery that he made that none before him made and that is how it is that he of late can so fully endorse the United States Constitution. . .

Thus the papacy in plain violation of the Constitution will crowd herself upon the government and then hold up that clause as a barrier against anything that any would do to stop it. And every one that speaks against this working of the papacy, behold! He "is violating the Constitution of the United States" in spirit, because the constitution says that nothing shall ever be done in respect to any religion or the establishment of it. When a citizen of the United States would rise up and protest against the papacy and all this that is against the letter and the spirit of the constitution, behold! He does not appreciate "the liberty of the constitution. We are lovers of liberty; we are defenders of the constitution; we are glad that America has such a symbol of liberty" as that. Indeed they are.

In 1943 Seventh-day Adventist author Christian Edwardson published a heavily documented book titled Facts of Faith. Several chapters of the book are specifically related to the United States and its role in Bible prophecy. Two chapters in particular provide documentation of Roman Catholic publications and actions designed to undermine and ultimately eradicate American democracy.

Chapter 25 titled "Making America Catholic" opens as follows:

    (243) The Roman hierarchy knew that the older Protestants, who had read about the persecutions of the Dark Ages, and who knew some of the inside workings of the papal church, would never become Catholics. Rome's hope lay in capturing the younger generation. If the Papacy could cover up those dark pages of its history, when it waded in the blood of martyrs, and could appear in the beautiful modern dress of a real champion of liberty, as a lover of science, art, and education, it would appeal to the American youth, and the battle would be won.

   The Jesuits, who through years of experience in Europe, have become experts in molding young minds, are now establishing schools everywhere, that are patronized by thousands of Protestant youth. They have also undertaken the delicate task of Romanizing the textbooks of our public schools, and books of reference, in order to cover up their past, and to whitewash the Dark Ages. That Romanists desire to cover up their past record of bloody persecution is acknowledged by that honorable Roman Catholic author, Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris. After giving a frank statement of the many persecutions of which his church is guilty, he says in the words of Mgr. d'Hulst:

   "'Indeed, even among our friends and our brothers we find those who dare not look this problem in the face. They ask permission from the Church to ignore or even to deny all those facts and institutions in the past which have made orthodoxy compulsory.'' - "The Catholic Church; the Renaissance and Protestantism," Alfred Archeveque Cardinal Baudrillart, pp. 183, 184. (Underscored emphasis added.)

This is followed by solid documentation of Rome's perversion of truth under the headings: ROMANIZING TEXTBOOKS; SALE OF INDULGENCES; REVISING BOOKS OF REFERENCE; MUZZLING THE PUBLIC PRESS; CAPTURING THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES; and CENSORSHIP OF BOOKS. a pretty exhaustive program of brainwashing by propaganda, would the reader not agree? This is not academic. These are carefully hidden facts of American history which explain a long-established catholicization of the nation.

In Chapter 26 titled "Americanism Versus Romanism" the opening paragraphs read as follows:

(256) Some say: What of it! Are not Roman Catholics as good as Protestants? Yes, certainly they are. As individuals there is no distinction before the law, and as neighbors they are loved and respected. We, however, are not speaking of individuals, but of a church organization that claims certain rights of jurisdiction in civil affairs, and whose avowed principles are diametrically opposed to liberty of speech, liberty of press, and religious liberty in general, as understood by the founders of this republic and incorporated into its fundamental laws. This we shall now prove (1) from official Catholic documents, (2) from the actual application of their principles to civil governments.

OFFICIAL CATHOLIC DOCUMENTS

   Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter, Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, outlines "the Christian constitution of states," by saying that "the state" should profess the Catholic religion, and that the Roman pontiffs should have "the power of making laws." "And assuredly all ought to hold that it was not without a singular disposition of God's providence that this power of the Church was provided with a civil sovereignty as the surest safeguard of her independence."

   He says of the Middle Ages: "[then] church and state were happily united." - "The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII," pp. 113, 114, 119. Benziger Bros. 1903.

   "Sad it is to call to mind how the harmful and lamentable rage for innovations which rose to a climax in the sixteenth century,...spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license....

   "Amongst these principles the main one lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature...that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose....In a society grounded upon such maxims, all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people....

   (257) "And it is a part of this theory...that every one is to be free to follow whatever religion he prefers, or none at all if he disapprove of all....

   "Now when the state rests on foundations like those just named - and for the time being they are greatly in favor - it readily appears into what and how unrightful a position the Church is driven....They who administer the civil power...defiantly put aside the most sacred decrees of the Church....

   "The sovereignty of the people...is doubtless a doctrine...which lacks all reasonable proof." - Id., pp. 120-123.

   The theory "that the church be separated from the state," Pope Leo further calls a "fatal error," "a great folly, a sheer injustice," and "a shameless liberty." - Id., pp. 124, 125.

   In his next encyclical letter, of June 20, 1888, he calls it "the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and state," "the greatest perversion of liberty," and "that fatal principle of the separation of Church and state." - Id., pp. 148, 159.

   In his letter of January 6, 1895, he says: "It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced....She would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority." - Id., pp. 323, 324.

   Among the many authorities that could be cited, we have chosen that of Pope Leo XIII, because he is not a medieval, but a modern, exponent of papal doctrines, which no Roman Catholic would deny. Any one familiar with the phraseology of the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution cannot help but see in the expressions of Pope Leo a declared opposition to the fundamental principles upon which our government is founded. He urges his followers not to be content with attending to their religious duties, but "Catholics should extend their efforts beyond this restricted sphere, and give their attention to national politics." - Id., p. 131. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing is but a small segment of the chapter's documentation, directly from Roman Catholic sources, constituting a devastating and irrefutable indictment of Rome's hostile actions against America's democracy. As quoted above from Christian Edwardson's Facts of Faith: "We, however, are not speaking of individuals, but of a church organization that claims certain rights of jurisdiction in civil affairs, and whose avowed principles are diametrically opposed to liberty of speech, liberty of press, and religious liberty in general, as understood by the founders of this republic and incorporated into its fundamental laws."

Christian Edwardson documents the Church of Rome's "Catholic Action" in the chapter of Facts of Faith titled THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY. It was a warning about the role of propaganda. The reality of what Roman Catholic propaganda has wrought in the United States of America is sobering:

THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY

Now the "Catholic Action" is focused on America, not in an antagonistic way, but quietly, in wisely planned, systematically organized, and well directed efforts along numerous lines, so as to gain favor among Protestants, and not to be suspected as propaganda. And, remarkable as it may sound, Protestant leaders and people are totally asleep on the Catholic question, even more so than the Huguenots were in France before the St. Bartholomew's Massacre.

Dr. E. Boyd Barrett, for many years a Jesuit, and still a Roman Catholic, as far as the author knows, has the following to say about the plans of his church:

"In theory, Catholic Action is the work and service of lay Catholics in the cause of religion, under the guidance of the bishops. In practice it is the Catholic group fighting their way to control America." - "Rome Stoops to Conquer," p. 15. New York. 1935.

"The effort, the fight, may be drawn out. It may last for five or ten years. Even if it last for twenty - what is twenty years in the life of Rome? The fight must be fought to a finish - opposition must be worn down if it cannot be swept away. Rome's immortal destiny hangs on the outcome. That destiny overshadows the land.

"And in the fight, as she has ever fought when battles were most desperate in the past, Rome will use steel, and gold, and silvery lies. Rome will stoop to conquer." - Id., pp. 266, 267.

In a communication from Vatican City, published in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Nov. 4, 1936, we read:

"Pope Pius feels that the United States is the ideal base for Catholicism's great drive....

"The Catholic Movement, Rome's militant organization numbering millions all over the world, will be marshaled direct from Rome by Monsignor Pizzardo - next to Pacelli the Holy See's shrewdest diplomat and politician - instead of by the local bishops as before. The priest's education is to be thoroughly revised and modernized - with special attention to modern propaganda methods. In addition there will be established in each country a central bureau, responsible only to Rome, to combat red agitation with every political weapon available....The church must fight, and at once.

"Coughlin has shown us the way of getting at the modern man. He has embarrassed us by showing and using the political power of the church so openly....We know how to tackle America today, and that is our most important problem at the moment.

"Pacelli is contacting the American cardinals and leading Catholic personalities,...to explain the Vatican's plan for the new crusade....The Catholic political organizations in the large cities, like Tammany Hall, will give the church a good lever. Those contacts are also being carefully inspected by the pope's minister.

"The Vatican itself resembles a general staff headquarters preparing plans and arms for a big offensive. Since the time of the Counter-Reformation, churchmen say, no such extensive reorganization of personnel and propaganda methods has been undertaken. The whole world-wide net of Catholic organizations and sub-organizations is being contacted directly from Rome and cleared for action. The church is to be adjusted to modern political, social, and cultural conditions." - p. 10, col. 3, 4, used by permission.

This article speaks of Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, then papal secretary of state, coming from the Vatican to effect the above mentioned reorganization. He toured the United States "in a chartered airplane." Christian Science Monitor says: "The visit of a high Roman prelate to the United States on the eve of an election is as unprecedented as it is delicate." - Oct. 2, 1926.

This Catholic plan of conquest was well understood years ago. An illustration in Harper's Weekly of October 1, 1870, pictured the pope pointing to America as "The Promised Land." (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note the specific references in the Roman Catholic publications to propaganda, and "modern propaganda methods" in connection with "preparing plans and arms for a big offensive." Christian Edwardson described how the propaganda worked successfully to gain favor among Protestants. (Facts of Faith was first published in 1943.) The seduction of Protestants was essential to the "Catholic Action" plan laid under Pope Pius XI. This is how the foundation was laid for an alliance of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals thirty-six years later.

Passages quoted earlier from Facts of Faith indisputably establish the fact that Pope Leo XIII had in effect declared war on democracy, and specifically American democracy. Simultaneously, he declared the Church of Rome's determination to eradicate the principle of separation of church and state from America. Christian Edwardson explained why he had chosen to quote from the encyclicals of Leo XIII. That he was correct is demonstrated by the activities of the Church of Rome under Pope Pius XI in the mid-1930s as laid out in the above passages from THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY. Leo XIII had declared war on American democracy and its constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state - Pius XI directed the development of the battle plan for offensive actions in the war and identified the army to be mobilized. Propaganda was to be the artillery of choice. There was to be adjustment "to modern political, social, and cultural conditions." Pius designated the army as "The Catholic Movement, Rome's militant organization numbering millions all over the world . . ." Roman Catholic Jesuit Dr. E. Boyd Barret foresaw the probability of a protracted war fought ruthlessly by the army of Rome. He predicted that "Rome will use steel, and gold, and silvery lies." It is evident that he did not use the word "steel" in the sense of armed conflict; but rather to symbolize Rome's ruthless destruction of the opposition, commonly by secret subversion from within. (This has happened to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.) Dr. Barret's use of the word "steel" did not indicate that Rome contemplated war in the sense of what was inflicted on the Huguenots. That was a thing  of the past, although a predictor of the future after Rome emerges triumphant from her secret propaganda war. In the war in general there has been an abundance of "gold" and "silvery lies;" the last being the "modern propaganda methods."

The Roman Catholics are masters of propaganda supposedly for the "propagation of the faith." In reality it is for much more than that:

The Story of Propaganda

The fact that wars give rise to intensive propaganda campaigns has made many persons suppose that propaganda is something new and modern. The word itself came into common use in this country as late as 1914, when World War I began. The truth is, however, that propaganda is not new and modern. Nobody would make the mistake of assuming that it is new if, from early times, efforts to mobilize attitudes and opinions had actually been called “propaganda.” The battle for men’s minds is as old as human history. . .

The term “propaganda” apparently first came into common use in Europe as a result of the missionary activities of the Catholic church. In 1622 Pope Gregory XV created in Rome the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. This was a commission of cardinals charged with spreading the faith and regulating church affairs in heathen lands. A College of Propaganda was set up under Pope Urban VIII to train priests for the missions.

It is interesting to note that there are an astonishing number of learned articles on the internet which seem to cover up the origin of the term "propaganda" and its use by the Roman Catholic Church to attack democracy and separation of church and state. These articles present a "both sides" use of propaganda in the Protestant Reformation as well as the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This is for practical purposes Counter-Reformation propaganda.

Christian Edwardson warned about the nature and effect of Rome's propaganda war on Protestant America. He also recounted in detail how comprehensively the Roman Catholic Church had corrupted the historical record and promoted disinformation to cover up her cruel past.

There are two statements concerning Pope Pius XI from the Catholic sources quoted above which stand out in their significance.

In the first statement Pope Pius XI perceived that Father Coughlin had "shown us the way of getting at the modern man;" but he had "embarrassed us by showing and using the political power of the church so openly." Of Coughlin it was written that "Father Coughlin's influence on Depression-era America was enormous. Millions of Americans listened to his weekly radio broadcast. At the height of his popularity, one-third of the nation was tuned into his weekly broadcasts. In the early 1930s, Coughlin was, arguably, one of the most influential men in America." Rome's way was to get at the modern man politically under the deep cover of secrecy; and this remains her policy in these times.

The second statement reveals how grave a threat to the papacy American democracy was perceived to be: "Since the time of the Counter-Reformation, churchmen say, no such extensive reorganization of personnel and propaganda methods has been undertaken." The mobilization under Pius XI was greater than at any time since the Counter-Reformation! American democracy and the papacy cannot co-exist indefinitely. Why? Because of America's constitutional guarantee of individual liberty and the separation of church and state, which is the antithesis of Rome's inherent claim to absolute power over every individual human being in the whole world.

GLOBAL IDENTITY OF ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

The Church of Rome is rooted in the pagan Roman Empire. In Chapter 23 of Facts of Faith titled "A Message For Our Time" and a paragraph titled "THE BEAST WITH TEN HORNS," Christian Edwardson states:

John "saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns." Rev. 13:1. The fact that it had "ten horns," the same as the fourth beast of Daniel 7:7, 23, 24, identifies it as a Roman power (see pages 34, 35), The next question to settle will be whether this is Rome in its pagan or its papal state. The ten horns represent the ten European kingdoms into which the Roman Empire was divided between A.D. 351 and 476. On this beast the horns are crowned (Rev. 13:1), showing that the empire had been divided. The beast of Rev. 13:1-10 therefore represents papal Rome.   The dragon with ten horns (Rev. 12:3), which represents pagan Rome, gave to the beast "his power, and his seat, and great authority." Rev. 13:2. The "seat" of the Roman Empire was the city of Rome. How was this given to the Papacy? Francis P. C. Hays (Roman Catholic) says:

   (218) "When the Roman Empire became Christian, and the peace of the Church was guaranteed, the Emperor left Rome to the Pope, to be the seat of the authority of the Vicar of Christ, who should reign there independent of all human authority, to the consummation of ages, to the end of time." - "Papal Rights and Privileges," pp. 13, 14. London: R. Washbourne, 1889.

   Alexander C. Flick, Ph. D., Litt. D., says:

   "The removal of the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople in 330, left the Western Church practically free from imperial power, to develop its own form of organization. the Bishop of Rome, in the seat of the Caesars, was now the greatest man in the West, and was soon forced to become the political as well as the spiritual head." - "The Rise of the Mediaeval Church," p. 168.

   "And meekly stepping to the throne of Caesar, the vicar of Christ took up the scepter to which the emperors and kings of Europe were to bow in reverence through so many ages." - Rev. James P. Conroy, in "American Catholic Quarterly Review," April, 1911. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Further enlightenment is provided by the prophetic description of the ten-horned beast in Daniel 7:7:

After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The historical record reveals that this prophetic depiction of pagan Rome was also fulfilled by cruel conquests and persecutions by Papal Rome. She is described in Daniel 7:8:

I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things. (Underscored emphasis added.)

On page 18 of Facts of Faith Christian Edwardson wrote:

The Little Horn

"I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn." Daniel 7:8. Let us now consider all the characteristics this prophecy gives to the little horn, and we shall be forced by weight of evidence to settle on just one power as the fulfillment of these predictions.

(I) It was to come up "among" the ten European kingdoms into which the Roman Empire was split. (V. 8) (2) It "shall rise" to power "after them." (V. 24) (3) "And he shall be diverse from the first" ten kingdoms; that is, different from ordinary, secular kingdoms. (V. 24) Any one acquainted with history knows that the Papacy is the only power that answers to all these specifications. It rose "among" the kingdoms of Western Rome, "after" they were established in A. D. 476, and it differed from a purely civil power. But the angel gives still another mark of identity to the little horn. (4) Before it "there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots." (V. 8.) That is, in coming up it pushed out before it three of the former horns by the roots. Thus three kingdoms were to be plucked up to give place for the Papacy. This prediction found its exact fulfillment in the destruction of the three Arian kingdoms: the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths, as we now shall see. Rev. E. B. Elliott, M.A., says:

"I might cite three that were eradicated from before the Pope out of the list first given; viz, the Heruli under Odoacer, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths. "Horse Apocalypticae," Vol. 111. p. 168, Note I. London: 1862 . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

There are more historical facts about the identity of the little horn, but the above excerpt is sufficient for present purposes. The reader will note that nowhere is the little horn depicted as separated from the beast. The characteristics of pagan Rome are the characteristics of papal Rome no matter how disguised by the garb of Christianity. Papal Rome's historical cruelties are well documented and are predicted to be revealed again in the near future.

The Roman Pontiffs themselves have unabashedly claimed to be the successors of pagan imperial Rome. In his book The Consecrated Way to Christian Perfection, Chapter 13, titled "The Transgression and Abomination of Desolation," A. T. Jones demonstrated from the annals of history the reality that the papacy is but a continuation of the Roman Empire:

And all this is confirmed by latter Rome herself. For Leo the Great was pope A.D. 440 to A.D. 461, in the very time when the former Rome was in its very last days, when it was falling rapidly to ruin. And Leo the Great declared in a sermon that the former Rome was but the promise of the latter Rome; that the glories of the former were to be reproduced in Catholic Rome; that Romulus and Remus were but the forerunners of Peter and Paul; that the successors of Romulus therefore were the precursors of the successors of Peter; and that, as the former Rome had ruled the world, so the latter Rome, by the see of the holy blessed Peter as head of the world, would dominate the earth. This conception of Leo's was never lost from the Papacy. And when, only fifteen years afterward, the Roman Empire had, as such, perished, and only the Papacy survived the ruin and firmly held place and power in Rome, this conception of Leo's was only the more strongly and with the more certitude held and asserted. . . .

Taking the ground that she is the only true continuation of original Rome, upon that the Papacy took the ground that wherever the New Testament cites or refers to the authority of original Rome, she is now meant, because she is the only true continuation of original Rome. Accordingly, where the New Testament enjoins submission to "the powers that be," or obedience to "governors," it means the Papacy, because the only power and the only governors that then were, were Roman, and the papal power was the true continuation of the Roman.

"Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to the imperial officials; special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Caesar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldst have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above'"—Bryce. And since Christ had recognized the authority of Pilate, who was but the representative of Rome, who should dare to disregard the authority of the Papacy, the true continuation of that authority, to which even the Lord from heaven had submitted.

And it was only the logical culmination of this assumption when Pope Boniface VIII presented himself in the sight of the multitude, clothed in a cuirass, with a helmet on his head and a sword in his hand held aloft, and proclaimed: "There is no other Caesar, nor king, nor emperor than I, the Sovereign Pontiff and Successor of the Apostles;" and, when further he declared, ex cathedra: "We therefore assert, define, and pronounce that it is necessary to salvation to believe that every human being is subject to the Pontiff of Rome."

This is proof enough that the little horn of the seventh chapter of Daniel is Papal Rome and that it is in spirit and purpose intentionally the continuation of original Rome. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Ellen G. White also wrote from the historical record in copious detail about this sinister perversion and subversion of the Christian Church. It is a fascinating account, and only a small portion is quoted here:

Ecclesiastical Empire

CHAPTER XIII - RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

IT is evident that as the papacy had hitherto claimed, and had actually acquired, absolute dominion over all things spiritual, henceforth she would claim, and, if crafty policy and unscrupulous procedure were of any avail, would actually acquire, absolute dominion over all things temporal as well as spiritual. Indeed, as we have seen, this was already claimed, and the history of Europe for more than a thousand of the following years abundantly proves that the claim was finally and fully established.

2. “Rome, jealous of all temporal sovereignty but her own, for centuries yielded up, or rather made, Italy a battlefield to the Transalpine and the stranger, and at the same time so secularized her own spiritual supremacy as to confound altogether the priest and the politician, to degrade absolutely and almost irrevocably the kingdom of Christ into a kingdom of this world.”—Milman. Henceforth kings and emperors were but her tools, and often but her playthings; and kingdoms and empires her conquests, and often only her traffic. The history of how the papacy assumed the supremacy over kings and emperors and how she acquired the prerogative of dispensing kingdoms and empires, is no less interesting and no less important to know than is that of how her ecclesiastical supremacy was established.

3. The contest began even with Justinian, who had done so much to exalt the dignity and clear the way of the papacy. Justinian soon became proud of his theological abilities, and presumed to dictate the faith of the papacy, rather than to submit, as formerly, to her guidance. And from A. D. 542 to the end of his long reign in 565, there was almost constant war, with alternate advantage, between Justinian and the popes. But as emperors live and die, while the papacy only lives, the real victory remained with her. . .

88. In the year 800 Charlemagne made a journey to Rome. He arrived in the city November 23, and remained there through the winter, and till after Easter. On Christmas day, A. D. 800, magnificent services were held. Charlemagne appeared not in the dress of his native country, but in that of a patrician of Rome, which honor he, as both his father and his grandfather, had received from the pope. Thus arrayed, the king with all his court, his nobles, and the people, and the whole clergy of Rome, attended the services. “The pope himself chanted the mass; the full assembly were wrapped in profound devotion. At the close the pope rose, advanced toward Charles with a splendid crown in his hands, placed it upon his brow, and proclaimed him Caesar Augustus.” The dome of the great church “resounded with the acclamations of the people, ‘Long life and victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific emperor of the Romans.’” Then the head and body of Charlemagne were anointed with the “holy oil” by the hands of the pope himself, and the services were brought to a close. In return for all this, Charlemagne swore to maintain the faith, the powers, and the privileges of the Church; and to recognize the spiritual dominion of the pope, throughout the limits of his empire.

89. It would be a sheer ignoring of the native far-seeing craftiness of the papacy, to suppose that this deduction had not occurred to the popes who witnessed Charlemagne’s wonderful career. This would be true even though there were nothing but that amazing career, upon which the papacy might be expected to build. But in addition to this there are in the course of the papacy unquestionable facts which practically demonstrate that it was a deeply laid scheme for the exaltation of the papacy, its secret working traceable far back in her ambitious course.

90. The conferring of the dignity of patrician, as well as that of consul, was a prerogative that pertained to the Roman emperor alone. For the pope then to confer such a dignity was in itself first to assert that the pope occupied the place of emperor, and possessed an authority that included that of emperor. This is exactly what was claimed. We have seen that even while the Roman Empire yet remained, Pope Leo the Great, 440-461, declared that the former Rome was but the promise of the latter Rome; that the glories of the former were to be reproduced in Catholic Rome; that Romulus and Remus were but the precursors of Peter and Paul, and the successors of Romulus therefore the precursors of the successors of Peter; and that as the former Rome had ruled the world, so the latter by the see of the holy blessed Peter as head of the world would dominate the earth. This conception was never lost by the papacy. And when the Roman Empire had in itself perished, and only the papacy survived the ruin and firmly held place and power in Rome, the capital, how much stronger and with the more certitude would that conception be held and asserted.

91. This conception was also intentionally and systematically developed. The Scriptures were industriously studied and ingeniously perverted to maintain it. By a perverse application of the Levitical system of the Old Testament, the authority and eternity of the Roman priesthood was established; and by perverse deductions “from the New Testament, the authority and eternity of Rome herself was established.” First taking the ground that she was the only true continuation of original Rome, upon that the papacy took the ground that wherever the New Testament cited or referred to the authority of original Rome, she was meant, because she was the true, and the only true, continuation of original Rome. Accordingly, where the New Testament enjoins submission to the powers that be, or obedience to governors, it means the papacy; because the only power and the only governors that then were, were Roman. And since even Christ had recognized the authority of Pilate who was but the representative of Rome, who should dare to disregard the authority of the papacy, the true continuation of that authority to which even the Lord from heaven had submitted? “Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined; every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials: special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Caesar, by saying to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above.’”

92. The power that was usurped by the popes upon these perversions of Scripture, was finally confirmed by a specific and absolute forgery. This “most stupendous of all the medieval forgeries” consisted of “the Imperial Edict of Donation,” or “the Donation of Constantine.” “Itself a portentous falsehood, it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of the priesthood which framed it.... It tells how Constantine the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved, on the fourth day after his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual; and how he bestowed therewith upon the pope and his successors the sovereignty over Italy and the countries of the West. But this was not all, although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all of them enjoyed by the emperor and his Senate, all of them showing the same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar, the purple cloak, to carry the scepter, and to be attended by a body of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses, and receive the honors and immunities of the Senate and patricians. The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious society must be in every point conformed to his prototype, the chief of the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman clergy: not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial, than in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation.”—Bryce.

93. The document tells how that “Constantine found Sylvester in one of the monasteries on Mount Soracte, and having mounted him on a mule, he took hold of his bridle rein, and, walking all the way, the emperor conducted Sylvester to Rome, and placed him on the papal throne;” and then, as to the imperial gift, says:— “We attribute to the see of Peter, all the dignity, all the glory, all the authority, of the imperial power. Furthermore we give to Sylvester and to his successors our palace of the Lateran, which is incontestably the finest palace on earth; we give him our crown, our miter, our diadem, and all our imperial vestments; we transfer to him the imperial dignity. We bestow on the holy pontiff in free gift the city of Rome, and all the Western cities of Italy. To cede precedence to him, we divest ourselves of our authority over all these provinces; and we withdraw from Rome, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium: inasmuch as it is not proper that an earthly emperor should preserve the least authority where God hath established the head of His religion.”

94. This forgery was committed in these very times of the intrigues of the popes with Pepin and Charlemagne against the Lombards and the authority of the Eastern Empire as represented in the West in the exarchate of Ravenna. It was first produced as a standard of appeal in 776; and in the dense ignorance in which the papacy had whelmed Europe, it was easy to maintain it. . .

97. Thus the assumption of the papacy in the crowning of Charlemagne emperor, was not merely the assumption of power and prerogative to create an emperor in itself: it was nothing less than the enormous assumption of all the power and prerogative of the whole original Roman Empire, and the re-establishment of it in its own original capital Rome. And though for the immediate occasion, Charlemagne was the convenient means by which this enormous assumption was made to prevail; and though through later occasions, Charlemagne’s successors were the means by which that enormous assumption was maintained; yet these were indeed only the occasional means of the papacy’s attaining to that supreme height of arrogance at which she would hold as entirely of herself all the power and prerogative of that enormous assumption, and, “arrayed with sword and crown and scepter,“ would shout aloud to the assembled multitude, “I AM CAESAR—I AM EMPEROR! (Underscored emphasis added.)

Throughout her dissertation Ellen G. White cited respected historical authorities such as Henry Hart Milman and James Bryce. Now she and A. T. Jones bear witness against the Seventh-day Adventist Church leadership who were seduced by Vatican II, and afterwards encouraged ensnarement of the Church by the delusive trap of ecumenism.

This is all corroborated by the following Roman Catholic source:

St. Peter and St. Paul, the Fathers of Great Rome [2013 essay]

Peter and Paul, the Fathers of great Rome,

Now sitting in the Senate of the skies,

One by the cross, the other by the sword,

Sent to their thrones on high, to Life’s eternal prize.

Elpis, the wife of Boethius, sings the praises of St. Peter and St. Paul in her Latin poem, Decora lux aeternitatis. In another translation of this hymn, these two apostles are referred to as the “twin founders of Rome.” This historical allusion recalls the legend of the founding of the city of Rome by the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. Their city matured into an Empire that was one of the most powerful civilizations in human history. Yet over 800 years from the founding of the city of Rome, another set of brothers, Peter and Paul, not natural brothers, but united by the bonds of the Spirit in Christ, laid a foundation of a new civilization which would outlast and outshine the Roman Empire.

Early Christian writers often contrasted Peter and Paul with Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus. According to the ancient Roman myth, Rome was violently established when Romulus killed his brother as they laid the city’s walls. In comparison, Peter and Paul built up the civilization of love found in the Church with brotherly affection. The Roman Empire, in nascent form at the time of the twin founders, would rule the world through fear and violence under the shroud of the pax romana. Peter and Paul would set the example for the Church to serve the world through faith and charity under the mantle of the pax Christi. The spiritual kingdom of the Church would far surpass the boundaries of time and space to which the Roman Empire had aspired. As noted by Pope St. Leo the Great, the Roman Empire which was the great teacher of error became the disciple of Truth under the guidance of the two great apostles, Peter and Paul.

Through preaching truth in word and practicing charity in deed, Peter and Paul re-founded the city of Rome for Christ. . .

Since the first Rome was founded on fratricide, Rome needed to be re-founded as a Christian city in fraternal love. Elpis continues her hymn in praise of the great apostles Peter and Paul by extolling the great city of Rome.

O happy Rome! Who in thy martyr princes’ blood,

A twofold stream, art washed and doubly sanctified.

All earthly beauty thou alone outshinest far,

Empurpled by their outpoured life-blood’s glorious tide.

The blood of the brothers united in Christ serves as the seed of the Church which will grow in time. We sing their praises together, according to Tertullian, because they “poured forth all their teaching along with their blood.” Their witness in teaching and blood is what truly makes Rome the urbs sacra and urbs aeterna. It was their martyrdom in Rome that at last led to the unending reunion between Peter and Paul in the true Holy and Eternal City, the Heavenly Jerusalem. For eternity, they are united with one another and with their Redeemer who called them both to the great mission of bringing the gospel to the entire world. (Underscored emphasis added; italics in the original.)

There is not the slightest indication in the above essay of disagreement with the Roman Church's vision of her mission and destiny. In fact the declared organizational purpose of Crisis Magazine is precisely that of realizing the vision of "Great Rome." It is therefore appropriate to digress briefly to shed light on the purpose and the intellectual heft of the founders of the publication in which the foregoing essay appeared:

About Us

The word “crisis” comes from the ancient Greek krisis—“decision”.

The West has arrived at a crisis point. We must decide: Do we serve the City of God or the City of Man? Does our first allegiance lie with the Church or with the State? Do we profess the ancient and immutable Faith or the latest fashionable secular dogmas?

Not since the Cold War have we experienced such violent political, cultural, and spiritual unrest. Not since the Civil War has our country been divided so bitterly against itself. Our civilization is under attack from the far-left within and radical Islam without.

Most thought-leaders downplay the gravity of the crisis at hand. The rest promise fresh perspectives and new solutions. Ideologies and ideologues rise and fall with the tides, carrying us further and further out to sea. Night draws in on the West.

Yet the solutions we need are anything but new. In fact, they’re as old as time itself. They’re written on man’s hearts and wired into his brain. They were handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai and taught by Our Lord on the Sea of Galilee.

Every generation has its moment of crisis—the moment when it must decide. And each generation is tasked with articulating these timeless truths of the Faith to guide its decisions.

In 1982, America’s leading Catholic intellectuals founded Crisis for just that purpose.

To this day, Crisis remains America’s most trusted source for authentic Catholic perspectives on Church and State, arts and culture, science and faith. We have one purpose, and one only: to proclaim Christ’s Kingship over all things, at all times, to all nations.

So long as the present crisis endures, we’ll be on the front lines. We can do no other, and we say with St. Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The purpose of proclaiming "Christ’s Kingship over all things, at all times, to all nations" declared by the Crisis Magazine editors must be understood in the context of the paean of praise to Romulus and Remus and the scandalous misappropriation of the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The vision is of the papal "Caesars" reigning over the whole world.

The emphasis on crisis and night drawing in on the West brings to mind the following paragraphs from A. T. Jones' sermon "THE PAPACY," (THIRD ANGEL'S MESSAGE, #3, 1895 General Conference):

I must read a few more statements and make a few more comments. I read from the Catholic Standard of November 3, 1894, as follows:

There is an awakening, a metamorphosis, uneasiness and hope. The tradition is that in ancient Rome there were such strange expectations while the tragedy on Golgotha was being enacted and even now mysterious voices may be heard announcing that Great Pan is dead. What new order will arise? Will humanity be once more its own dupe? and will the old evils appear again under new names to people the world once more with false gods? Who knows?

The idea is suggested there that nobody knows what the answer will be. Now he tells:

What we do know is that a world is in its death agony.

Is it not time that Seventh-day Adventists knew that thing full well too? The papacy knows that the world is in its death agony. Do you know that? If you know it, is it not your place to tell it to the world, as well as it is the place of the papacy to tell it to the world? What has God given us this message for all these years but that we may show that the world is in its death agony and that we may tell the people so, that they may turn to the Author of life and be saved when the agony brings the last result? The papacy knows this, and she is acting in view of it. I will now read the rest of the sentence:

What we do know is that a world is in its death agony, and that we are entering upon the night which must inevitably precede the dawn.

Of course we are. "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said. The morning cometh, and also the night."

Continuing I read:-

In this evolution, the church, in the eyes of the pope, has a mission to fill.

This is in view of the times to come. What is she looking for? A world in its death agony. All nations uneasy, society racked, everything going to pieces as it is.[1] The papacy sees all that is going on and expects it to go on until the finish, and out of the agony and the tearing to pieces that comes with it, she expects to exalt herself once more to the supremacy over the nations, as she did of old. And she is going to do it; we know that. The Scriptures point that out.

Throughout the centuries since the pontificates of Leo the Great and Boniface VIII Rome has never agreed with the gospel of peace taught and preached by the Apostles Peter and Paul, whom  she claims to be the founders of her religion. As Paul described it: "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! (Romans 10:15, last part.) Papal Rome has never sought to advance the gospel of peace, but rather to enforce her claim of right to dominate in the spirit of Romulus and Remus, by persecutions, wars in the Crusades, and wars on the European scene.

THE IMPOSTOR SETS ABOUT ENSNARING THE PROTESTANT WORLD

Rome has not been able to completely hide her persecuting, militaristic past. Nevertheless she has sought to change her image by convoking Vatican II in 1962, which on careful examination is but a continuation of the Counter-Reformation. One of the two objectives was a return to unity of the "Christian Church":

Historical Background of Vatican II

John XXIII provoked general surprise in the world on January 25, 1959. He announced his intention to convoke a council for the Universal Church. Without having very concrete ideas about the content of the council, Bl. John XXIII identified two objectives: an adaptation (aggiornamento) of the Church and of apostolate to a world undergoing great transformation, and a return to unity among Christians, which seems to be what the Pope thought would happen shortly. The council did not speak so much of the Church fighting against adversaries as it did of finding a way of expression in the world in which she lived and seemed to ignore.

Vatican II was an ecumenical council that took place in Vatican City from October 11, 1962, until December 8, 1965. This council represents a major event in the life of the Church of the 20th century, and for this reason it constitutes a fundamental era in universal history. It came to be the conclusion of the Tridentine period and the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Church. This is due to the prophetic action of Bl. John XXIII who perceived the need for a council that would positively mark the new phase of the Church's evangelizing mission and to the undisputed personality of Paul VI who had the courage to have brought it to its conclusion and to have forged the first steps of reform.

Note the phrase "a return to unity among Christians," which seems to be what the Pope thought would happen shortly." What inspired this thought? It was the movement towards unity of the Protestant churches which began with the 1910 World Missionary Conference. Interestingly, the Seventh-day Adventist Church participated. This essay provides the history. Rome was not involved; but she was clearly watching closely as the Protestant movement progressed over the world war years and later. Then the time was ripe to set the snare that would entrap Protestantism. Even the Seventh-day Adventist Church was ensnared. The Church had participated in the 1910 Conference honorably as described in the above Schantz essay; but in the 2010 Centennial as a deeply compromised Church. She has become deeply involved with papal Rome. The Church leaders and laity who follow blindly will rue the day when the spirit of Romulus and Remus is again revealed as prophesied in the Bible; and there can be no turning back of the time clock of history.

The Church  of Rome has never been a true Christian church. Unity with her of necessity involves identification with her war against the fundamentals of the Christian faith. The Apostle Peter declared: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:20-21.) Using the metaphor of warfare the Apostle Paul wrote:

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph. 6-13-17; underscored emphasis added.)

The Apostle Paul also wrote: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16.)

The "sword of the spirit" is "the Word of God," which underscores the evil of papal Rome's war against the Bible. The papal Caesers rejected the words written by the Apostles Peter and Paul with a vengeance. She sought to hide the Bible in its entirety. Over the centuries Rome suppressed the Bible. (Note the documentation extending through the 20th century.)

When, in defiance of Rome's edicts, the Bible was made readily available she set about destroying it by literary criticism, and this has to a large extent been accomplished in the world of apostate Protestantism.

In failing to teach and preach the gospel of peace papal Rome has added to her perfidy by contradicting God's Word, the Bible. When the multitude asked Jesus: "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" (John 6:28,) Jesus replied: "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John 6:29.) The Apostle Paul declared the fundamental principle of salvation: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph. 2:8-9.) The papal Caesars have dared to countermand the Word of God, not only on this point but on other fundamental principles of the Christian faith, again in the Council of Trent:

The Council of Trent

At this point, the Roman Catholic Church could only distance itself from the Reformers, and that’s what it set out to do at the Council of Trent. There were many rulings handed down at Trent, but we want to look at three in particular.

The first one concerns Scripture. At Trent, for the first time in church history, the Apocrypha—a set of Jewish books written in Greek and dating from the intertestamental period—was declared to be part of the biblical canon. Trent also affirmed that the final authority for the church rested not in Scripture alone, as the Reformers heralded, but in Scripture and tradition, as embodied by the teachings of the pope and his bishops. And also, Trent prohibited the printing or owning of an unauthorized version of Scripture. And at that point, the only authorized version of Scripture was the Latin Vulgate. What this ruling meant was that you could not have the Bible in your own language.

The second declaration from Trent that we’ll look at has to do with justification. Just as Trent rejected sola Scriptura, so too it rejected sola fide. Salvation is not by faith alone, Trent declared; we are justified by faith and works. Works contribute to our justification. Trent taught that justification is not a definitive act; it is a process.

And third, Trent rejected the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. The Reformers taught that Christ earned righteousness before God by His passive and active obedience and that Christ’s righteousness is applied to our account. So, when God sees us, He doesn’t see us in our sinfulness; He sees Christ’s righteousness. That’s the doctrine of imputation. Trent put forth the doctrine of infusion. That means that Christ’s righteousness is infused into us and now we, empowered by Christ’s righteousness, do good deeds. And in our doing of those good deeds, we bring our own righteousness before God. The Reformers taught sola Scriptura and sola fide. Trent taught Scripture and tradition, faith and works. And that’s the difference.

Of profound significance is the fact that the first ruling mentioned above was "explained" in Vatican II as follows:

"Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, sacred Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.

Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence."

Hence Vatican II clearly reaffirmed the anti-Protestant purpose of the Council of Trent which launched the Counter-Reformation. In his encyclical letter, Immortale Dei, Pope Leo XIII clearly had the Reformation in mind when he wrote: "Sad it is to call to mind how the harmful and lamentable rage for innovations which rose to a climax in the sixteenth century . . ." He then launched a tirade against the principles of democracy and the separation of church and state.

Through Seventh-day Adventist Evangelist-Pastor and author Christian Edwardson clear warnings were given about the determination of the Church of Rome to destroy American democracy. What he wrote about the Roman Catholic menace was supported by heavy documentation from Catholic publications. The facts are beyond dispute. The Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders were put on notice to be alert in protecting the laity from the papal anti-christ. They were not only asleep as God's watchmen (Ezekiel 33:6-7,) but their course of action was exactly the reverse of warning the people. The way was paved by Vatican Council II. The following paragraphs are excerpted from William Grotheer's manuscript STEPS TO ROME:

OTHER VATICAN II FALLOUT

Vatican Council II was convened by John XXIII on October 11, 1962, and involved four sessions during four successive years. The last three sessions were during the pontificate of Paul VI. It was at this final session that the arrangements were made for the Conversations between representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and representatives of the World Council of Churches. (So Much in Common, p. 98) However, Dr. B. B. Beach was not the only Adventist at this final session. Elder M. E. Loewen, head of the Religious Liberty Department of the General Conference; Dr. R. F. Cottrell, Associate Editor of the Review and Herald; and Elder Arthur S. Maxwell, Editor of the Signs, were also present.

Upon his return late in 1965, Elder Maxwell gave his impressions of Vatican II in a report to the Loma Linda University Church. The speech of Pope Paul VI in opening the fourth and final session impressed Maxwell. He asked those in attendance - "Do you know what the subject was?" - and then answered his question "Love. " After quoting a paragraph from it, he said - "You know, that speech of the pope's could have been given at a General Conference session." (Present Truth, #3, pp. 3, 4)

Maxwell indicated that his second impression was "the apparent awesome, and I mean awesome power of the organization." (Emphasis his) Then the pageantry and elaborate ceremonial, medieval in nature, struck Maxwell's attention. But in it all, he admitted - "there is no change in doctrine." (Ibid., p. 6) Yet in discussing the schema on religious liberty adopted by the Council, Maxwell stated: This is such a tremendous change the Roman Catholic Church has embarked upon. It's so totally different from anything thousands of priests have ever thought of or contemplated, and it is possibly asking too much, that all of a sudden, every priest around the world will suddenly adopt what are really Protestant ideas. But while I've said that, I would also say this, that we shouldn't minimize what the Catholic Church has done. It's a great step forward, there's no question. It's an amazing thing that the church has done to set itself alongside Protestants in declaring that every man has the basic human right to choose his own religion and follow the dictates of his own conscience. Whether the church will stay by that forever, I don't know. No, I'm not predicting the future - I couldn't say - but it does alter the situation in the Catholic Church and should alter our attitude toward that church. (Ibid, p. 11, emphasis mine)

The afterglow of the glitter, pomp and pageantry of Rome seemed to blur Maxwel1's ability to distinguish between the individual and the system. He declared: We must rethink our approach to our Roman Catholic friends. How can we reject an outstretched hand and be Christians? How can you say that they belong to antichrist when they reveal so many beautiful Christian attitudes? Does that shock you very much? I hope it does! I hope it shocks you, because we need to be shocked into a new, more friendly, more loving attitude towards these dear people. (Ibid., p. 13)

Maxwell followed this with some advice to ministers, and telling what he had already done. He said: Now, there's one other thing. These things are going to make us think, they really are - this new situation. I think that a lot of our preachers are going to have to throw away a lot of old sermons. You and me - a lot of old sermons. I scrapped a lot them already. You know what I think is going to happen? We cannot go on preaching about these dear people like we did thirty, forty, fifty years ago. We simply can't do it. The facts are all against us. How can we go and talk about them persecuting, burning the Bible when they're not doing anything of the sort? We've just got to get some new sermons ... Sure have! (Ibid., p. 14)

To merely clothe one's self as "an angel of light" does not alter the nature of that self. This Maxwell failed to perceive having been enamored with the glitter and tinsel of Rome. Well has it been written: Many Protestants suppose that the Catholic religion is unattractive, and that its worship is a dull, meaningless round of ceremony. Here they mistake. While Romanism is based in deception, it is not a course and clumsy imposture. The religious service of the Roman Church is a most impressive ceremonial. Its gorgeous display and solemn rites fascinate the senses of the people, and silence the voice of reason and of conscience. The eye is charmed. Magnificent churches, imposing processions, golden altars, jeweled shrines, choice paintings, and exquisite sculpture appeal to the love of beauty. The ear is also captivated. The music is unsurpassed. The rich notes of the deep-toned organ, blending with the melody -- of many voices as it swells through the lofty domes and pillared aisles of her gand cathedrals, cannot fail to impress the mind with awe and reverence...

None but those who have planted their feet firmly upon the foundation of truth, and whose hearts are renewed by the Spirit of God, are proof against her influence. Great Controversy, pp. 566, 567)

These impressions, conclusions, and advice of Maxwell resulting from his attendance at the final session of Vatican II find reflection in a new study of the book of Daniel written by his son, Dr. C. Mervyn Maxwell, Chairman of the Church History Department at Andrews University. In this book - God Cares, Vol . I - Maxwell's analysis of "the little horn" of Daniel 7 is indicative of the changed attitude toward Rome as suggested by his father. Devoting considerable space to the discussion of this "little horn" of Daniel 7, Dr. Maxwell divides his discussion into two subsections - Four Principles, and Eight Identifying Marks.

In listing the "Four Principles," Maxwell charged God with giving a one-sided picture of Rome in the prophecy - believe it or not! Here are his very words: In Daniel 7 God purposefully presented a one-sided picture of Rome as a terrible beast in order to emphasize His displeasure at persecution. (p. 127)

Then in concluding his "Eight Identifying Marks" of the "little horn," Dr Maxwell wrote: Only one entity really fits all eight of these identifying marks - the Christian church which arose to religiopolitical prominence as the Roman Empire declined and which enjoyed a special influence over the minds of men between the sixth and the eighteenth centuries.

To call this Christian church the "Roman Catholic" Church can be misleading if Protestants assume that the Roman Catholic Church of, say the sixth century was one big denomination among others, as it is today. Actually the Roman Catholic Church was virtually the Christian church in Western Europe for about a thousand years. Because of this early universality, both Protestants and Catholics may regard it as the embodiment of "our" Christian heritage, for better or for worse.

And very often it was for the better. Of course! (Ibid.)

In the revelation that God gave to Jesus, the picture is that the true Christian Church was in the "wilderness" from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries. (Rev. 12:13-14) But in taking the steps to Rome, it is no longer "good Adventism to express ... an aversion to Roman Catholicism." (See p. 10) (Italicized emphasis added.)

Notwithstanding appearances of a friendly Rome, Vatican II was a part of the continuing secretive war against democracy and the separation of church and state, and it was a part of the final offensive in the war against America's constitutional guarantee of individual freedom and religious liberty. It is incomprehensible that in the face of all of the biblical and historical evidence that the Church of Rome is inherently opposed to democracy and separation of church and state, the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have carried their flock into her embrace.

Pope Pius XI unleashed the "Catholic Movement," described as "Rome's militant organization numbering millions all over the world," in the war against America's liberal democracy guaranteeing individual liberty and separation of church and state. He was following the unequivocal declarations of Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century. In one he attributed to the sixteenth century, notably the time of the Reformation, "the tenets of unbridled license," including "the main one" [which] lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature...that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose." His conclusion was that "In a society grounded upon such maxims, all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people." This was a declaration against democracy. In the other he declared in two separate encyclicals against separation of church and state, and in the second of the two encyclicals he stated that "It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced....She would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority," leaving no room for doubt that America's democracy was his main target. Vatican II did not change this reality, and was not intended to do so. It was a part of the Counter-Reformation which has never ended and will not end until the Church of Rome has reached the pinnacle of power.

The contradictions inherent in Roman Catholicism is vividly demonstrated by a conflict within the contemporary institution. There is now raging an internal "culture war" in the Church of Rome. It is spawned on the one hand by the geopolical imperative of ecumenical unity with all "Christian" faiths and other religions, and on the other hand the militancy which is fundamental to the origin and history of Roman Catholicism. These appear to be in conflict and the dominant side in the American branch of Catholicism appears to be against peaceful ecumenism. They appear to pose a challenge to Pope Francis. They are also in an alliance with right-wing Evangelicals which the Pope's supporters have dubbed the "ecumenism of hate." The alliance has been wreaking havoc on the democratic process in America while forming the Image to the Beast, particularly since the first presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Significantly, this is not inconsistent with the Church of Rome's long-term objective to achieve supremacy in America, and this calls into question the genuineness of Pope Francis' open opposition. This paper also presents other evidence that he is not to be trusted.

THE REFORMATION PAVED THE WAY FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERALISM

Rome's perception that democracy and the separation of church and state were inevitable outgrowths of the Reformation was accurate:

How Protestants Made the Modern World

Last fall marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an event with profound consequences for the development of both religion and politics across the globe. Arising in sixteenth-century Europe, migrating into seventeenth-century America, and expanding by degrees across the remainder of the planet, Protestantism has achieved a level of international influence that is difficult to fathom.

In his latest book, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, historian Alec Ryrie takes on a formidable challenge: how to survey the history and assess the significance of a centuries-long and worldwide religious tradition. A professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University in northeast England, Ryrie also serves as an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. He is the author of six previous books, all of which focus on British religious history since the Reformation. This latest effort was released last spring, to correspond with the Reformation’s anniversary.

Eric C. Miller spoke with Ryrie about the Protestant tradition, its victories, its failures, and its ultimate importance. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

R&P: The subtitle of your book states that Protestants “made the modern world.” How?

AR: The Protestant Reformation is a huge event in the history of the modern world. You can find its fingerprints almost everywhere. But I’m not just saying that this is a really big thing that is woven deeply into the story. I’m saying that there are some specific parts of modern life that derive directly from the Protestant Reformation. We couldn’t have these features if it hadn’t happened. In the book, I pick out three in particular.

The first is free inquiry. It’s not quite the idea of freedom of speech, but it is the idea that nobody can compel anyone else to think something. In the end, no intellectual authority can force you to think that you are wrong. There’s nobody who stands authoritatively between you as a human being and God. That’s Martin Luther’s great insight, and that refusal to accept human authority over other people’s minds is something that he established—despite himself. He was not out to create an age of intellectual freedom, but nonetheless, that’s what he produced.

The second is what I would call—and I use this term warily—democracy. Not that Luther or the early Protestant reformers were democrats in any sense. They would have been horrified by the notion. But the idea that the individual believer has a right—even a responsibility—to stand up against a tyrannical or an anti-Christian ruler is implicit in Protestantism from the beginning. It led Protestants who really wanted nothing more than to live in peace into a series of religious wars and revolutions against leaders with whom they could not live on religious terms. They developed new political theories, and carved out a theory of defiance against anti-Christian secular authority, as well as an insistence that they should be able to legitimate and even create appropriate government. You can see how that might have led to theocracies, and there are times—famously in Puritan New England—when Protestantism seemed to be moving in that direction. But in practice it tends to go another way.

Which brings me to the third feature, which is the notion of limited government. It’s the idea that a ruler, no matter how legitimate, has jurisdiction only over outward things, over practicalities, over people’s bodies but not their souls. There are certain spheres where the authority of the government simply does not apply. And it creates a sense that even the godliest government should be strictly limited in the amount of authority that it can exercise over people.
That combination of free inquiry, democracy, and limited government is pretty much what makes up liberal, market democracies. It runs the modern world. And though it seems obvious to us that liberty and equality should go together, it is not at all an obvious combination. It is that distinct heritage of Protestantism in holding those models together that is its most significant contribution to the modern world. . . (Underscored emphasis added.) [Cf. Three surprising ways the Protestant Reformation shaped our world, also by Prof. Ryrie.]

Prof. Ryrie is no inconsequential author, and his opinion is one widely held:

Enrichment Essay: The Reformation Plants Seeds of Modern Democracy & Federalism

The Protestant Reformation had many far-reaching effects. One important impact was on people’s thinking about the problems of government.

More than 250 years after Martin Luther began the Reformation, the American Revolution created the first modern democracy. At that time, many European monarchs still claimed an absolute right to rule. America’s founders adopted a different idea. They believed that government was based on an agreement among free people. That is why the U.S. Constitution begins with the words “We, the people.” In return for the benefits of government, the founders believed, people willingly gave up some of their natural freedom. The government’s right to rule was therefore based on the consent of the governed.

The authors of the Constitution also created modern federalism. In a federal system, smaller units of government (such as states) share power with a central government. The smaller units govern local affairs. The central government serves common needs, such as national defense. Citizens are bound to obey both the local and the central government.

The ideas behind the Constitution grew out of many influences. One of these influences was the Reformation. The beliefs and practices of early Protestants helped plant the seeds of modern democracy and federalism. Let’s look at how.

Individual Liberty and Equality

Individual liberty and equality are basic ideas in modern democracy. One source of these ideas was the Reformation.

The medieval Catholic Church was strongly hierarchical in its organization. At the bottom of the hierarchy were ordinary church members, or laypeople. Above them were priests. Priests had a special role to play in guiding believers and administering the sacraments. Bishops had authority over priests and laypeople alike. At the top of the hierarchy was the pope, who had the greatest authority of all.

The authority of church officials included the power to interpret the Bible and God’s will. The church stressed the duty of Catholics to obey its authority.

Martin Luther rebelled against this hierarchical structure. He prized the liberty of individual conscience and preached “the priesthood of all believers.” In a famous sentence, he declared, “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.” In other words, no Christian had a special, God-given authority over others. At the same time, all Christians had a duty to love and care for one another. In place of priests, Luther called for ministers who served the church with the consent of Christian believers.

The liberty and equality of Christian believers became a basic part of Protestantism. Later these ideas would find their place in people’s thinking about government. . .

Government Based on Agreement of the Governed

The Mayflower Compact illustrates another Protestant idea that influenced democratic thinking. This was the idea that the authority of governments rests on covenants, or solemn agreements.

The idea of covenants is rooted in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God is said to form a covenant with the Hebrew (Jewish) people. Both God and the Hebrews enter this covenant by their own choosing. In turn, covenants unite the different tribes of Hebrews under God’s laws. To some Protestants--including many early Americans--the ancient Hebrew covenants were an early example of federalism.

Many Protestants, especially congregationalists, saw their churches as based on covenants that people entered into freely. From there, it is a short step to the idea that governments, too, are formed by the free choice of people to join together for their common good. And that means that a government’s right to rule is based on the consent of the governed.

In the 1600s and 1700s, some thinkers argued for similar ideas without basing them on religion. But there is no doubt that the Reformation helped plant the seeds of ideas that proved to be truly revolutionary. (Underscored emphasis added.)

(Cf. Top Ten Ways the Reformation Changed the World.)

FROM HOSTILITY TO ACCEPTANCE RANGING FROM FRIENDSHIP TO POLITICAL ALLIANCE

Historically, and justifiably, Protestants of America were hostile to Roman Catholicism, and this inevitably fostered hostility against Catholics. Seventh-day Adventists historically were opposed to the Papacy and all that it represents; but did not hate the Catholic laity per se, counting them to be souls to be won from the darkness of popery into the light of the true Christian faith. In the Protestant world at large feelings ran high against Catholic immigrants. The following article lays out the solid basis for anti-Catholicism; but regrettably fails to take into account Bible prophecy and the centuries of tyranny perpetrated by the Church of Rome in the penultimate paragraph quoted below. Roman Catholicism can never be benign, because it is ever aggressiovely pushing against freedom of conscience and the religious liberty of non-Catholics. Rome demands religious liberty exclusively for herself:

A Protestant Look At American Catholicism

The attitudes of Americans toward church-state relations depend in considerable measure on their attitude toward Roman Catholicism. The chief concern that lies back of the convictions of non-Catholics is the concern for religious liberty, and the chief threat to religious liberty is seen in the tremendous growth of Roman Catholicism as a cultural and political power in the United States.

There are two deep problems connected with Catholicism that must be emphasized at the outset of any discussion. One is the dogmatic intolerance that is itself a part of the Roman Catholic faith. This dogmatic intolerance need not lead to civil intolerance, but there is a tendency for it to do so just as was the case when it characterized the major Protestant bodies. This dogmatic intolerance becomes all the more difficult for non-Catholics when it is associated not only with distinctly religious dogma, but also with elements of natural law that are not accepted as divinely sanctioned moral demands by most non-Catholics. This is true of birth control, of some matters of medical ethics. It is true even of gambling under limited conditions, though this has to do not with a moral demand but with a moral permission! One symptom of the dogmatic intolerance that is most objectionable to non-Catholics is the strict Catholic regulation concerning the religion of the children of mixed marriages.

The other basic problem is the real tension between an authoritarian, centralized hierarchical church and the spirit of an open, pluralistic, democratic society. There is abundant evidence that Catholics in this country do sincerely believe in democracy and practice this belief, but I do not see how they themselves can deny that their polity poses a problem for democracy that is not posed by churches which make their decisions in regard to public policy by processes of open discussion in which both clergy and laymen share. The polity of the Episcopal Church does give bishops meeting separately a veto over many things, but it also gives the laity voting separately in the dioceses a veto over the choice of bishops. I mention this as an example of one of the more hierarchical forms of polity outside the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman polity is itself a matter of faith and therefore religious liberty includes the liberty to preserve that type of polity. And if it is said that the papacy creates a problem of peculiar difficulty because it is from the point of view of the nation a "foreign power," the answer that Protestants should be able to accept is that the Church as Church is supranational and the religious liberty of all Christians includes their right to have relationships, suitable to their polity, with the universal Church.

American Protestants are troubled over far more than these abstract problems created by the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical structure. They resent much that is done by the Catholic Church in America and they fear greatly what may yet be done. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Causes of Anti-Catholicism: Popery and Despotism

By the time Irish-Catholics began arriving in the United States around 1820, Protestantism had cemented itself in the public mind as America’s religion, synonymous with civil liberties and democracy. Samuel F.B. Morse’s assertion, made in his book Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, that “Protestantism, from its very nature, favor[s] liberty,” was not unique in its message.6 Others, like Reverend John Neil McLeod, held similar views, arguing “the institutions of our own republic...are laid on Protestant principles.”7 The views held by these men were two amongst many who viewed America as a Protestant nation since Protestantism allowed for dissent, democratic change, freedom, and lacked any semblance of hierarchy.

However, as the predominately Catholic Irish migrants began to flood American ports, native Protestant Americans became exposed to and subsequently took issue with a religion they perceived as starkly antithetical to Protestantism. Catholicism, in the eyes of many, was a tyrannical European monarchy in which the Pope was king and European Catholics were his subjects. Comparing Catholicism to Protestantism, Morse argues “there is not a Protestant sect...whose creed inculcates such a barefaced idolatry of a human being.” Many writers went so far as to compare Catholics to slaves of the Pope. Morse, for example, writes that Catholics, “instead of having power or rights, are according to this catechism mere passive slaves, born for their masters, taught...to obey without murmuring, or questioning, or examination.” Just in the way that “Protestantism” and “democracy” were synonymous, so too were “popery” and “despotism.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The Southern Baptist evangelicals were no exception to the rule of Protestant animosity towards Roman Catholicism. John F. Kennedy, the second Roman Catholic to seek election to the presidency decided to meet the issue of his religious affiliation head-on:

How John F. Kennedy Overcame Anti-Catholic Bias to Win the Presidency

"I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” JFK declared in 1960. “I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic."

On September 12, 1960, less than two months before Americans would choose the next president of the United States, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy was in Texas giving a speech to a Houston gathering of Southern Baptist clergy.

This wasn’t a normal campaign stop. Kennedy was Catholic and, at the time, only the second Catholic presidential candidate in U.S. history after Al Smith’s unsuccessful run in 1928. And for a Catholic candidate from New England, a conference of Southern Baptist ministers was considered the “lion’s den,” ground zero for anti-Catholic political rhetoric and even outright bigotry.

“[C]ontrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said on live TV in his now famous address. “I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

In the late 1950s, Catholic politicians were viewed with open suspicion by many mainline Protestants and Evangelicals. Shaun Casey, director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University, and author of The Making of a Catholic President, says that Catholic candidates were accused of having “dual loyalties” to both the Vatican and the United States.

“The argument was, when push came to shove, a president who was Roman Catholic would ultimately be more loyal to the Vatican because the fate of his eternal soul was at stake,” says Casey. “If Kennedy was elected president, he’d criminalize birth control, he’d cut off foreign aid that helped countries invest in birth control, and he’d funnel tax money to Catholic parochial schools.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The apprehension expressed in the last paragraph has come to pass and is intensifying; but not by the actions of Kennedy or any Roman Catholic president. The culprit is the Republican Party under the control of the right wing of the American hierarchy of Rome. In fact Roman Catholic President Biden stands in opposition to most of the hierarchy's agenda.

Pat Buchanan managed to overcome most of the vestiges of anti-catholicism among Southern Evangelicals in his campaigns for the American presidency:

Buchanan Tumbles Old Walls of Religion (Article dated March 2, 1996.)

What happened in the Evangel Cathedral here this week was something senior pastor Houston Miles could not have imagined when he opened his first church in this weathered textile town 27 years ago.

On Wednesday, about 800 people filed into this sprawling facility just off a bustling interstate to cheer the words of a Catholic: Patrick J. Buchanan. Asked if he could have anticipated the day when his independent charismatic church would be filled for a Catholic speaker, the compact, white-haired Miles shook his head.

“No, not really,” he said. “If I’d have gone back 30 years, I’d have had a strong feeling here. I came out of the Assembly of God, and they preached against two things: Communists and Catholics.”

Today it is “secular humanists” who stir Miles’ concerns--and, though he is not endorsing any candidate, it is Buchanan who seems to him “a man of deep conviction.”

Miles is hardly alone. As the Republican presidential race moves South, beginning with today’s South Carolina primary, no constituency will be more important than conservative evangelical Protestants, who constitute one-third or more of the vote in most Southern states. And the candidate poised to reap the largest share of their support here is Buchanan--a man from a faith that many Southern Protestant denominations had long viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

That tradition of enmity inspired John F. Kennedy’s famous address to Southern ministers in Houston in 1960, when the Massachusetts Catholic declared that as president he would resign rather than let his decisions be dictated by pressure from his church. Today, the religious tensions that necessitated Kennedy’s speech haven’t disappeared entirely, but they have been submerged by a larger tide that has allied born-again Christians and conservative Roman Catholics in common cause on cultural issues from abortion to education.

“People will say something every now and then,” about Buchanan’s religion, said Mary Kerr, a Baptist homemaker from West Columbia who supports the commentator’s presidential campaign. “But then they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re not voting for pastor.’ ” (Underscored emphasis added.)

With the degree of acceptance achieved by Buchanan it was but a short step to alliance between Evangelicals and Catholics. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was ready to give activist lay Catholics their marching orders; and they were ready to go into action in a major, final offensive. For this purpose the control of a political party was important. A Roman Catholic publication had predicted the creation of an "American Catholic Party." Instead, the Catholic bishops engineered a takeover of the Republican Party. They had an agent in Republican President Richard Nixon's White House to help them. This was well-known culture warrior Pat Buchanan. The Wikipedia article on Buchanan describes him as "an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician and broadcaster." Paleoconservatism is defined as "a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism." By his Southern strategy Nixon opened the door to the takeover of the Republican Party by Roman Catholic hierarchy. Under the heading "Work for the Nixon White House" the Wikipedia article on Buchanan states "During the course of Nixon's presidency, Buchanan became a trusted on press relations, policy positions, and political strategy." Here is what the political strategy accomplished:

Richard Nixon’s Religious Right

Evangelical Protestants began and ended the decade of the 1960s by campaigning for Richard Nixon. Sixty percent of evangelicals voted for Nixon in 1960, 69 percent did so in 1968, and 84 percent did in 1972. They considered him a “man of destiny to lead the nation” and a man who was “in God’s place,” as Billy Graham told Nixon on more than one occasion. But though evangelicals’ faith in Nixon never wavered, their reasons for supporting him changed. In 1960 they viewed Nixon as a champion of Protestantism who would save the country from the dangers posed by a Catholic candidate. By the end of the decade, they began to view him not as a sectarian symbol, but as the champion of an antisecular, ecumenical coalition that was broad enough to include Catholics. Nixon’s success in positioning himself as a transdenominational moral leader who could reach out to evangelicals without losing the Catholic vote laid the groundwork for the rise of a politically influential Religious Right and transformed the Republican Party. Though Nixon was never fully conscious of the degree of his success in creating an interdenominational religious coalition, it became one of his most enduring political legacies. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following publication emphasized the Evangelical beginnings of Nixon's Southern strategy:

God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right

Nixon’s Evangelical Strategy

Richard Nixon brought evangelicals into the Republican Party by focusing his campaigns on cultural issues and by using Billy Graham as a liaison to conservative Protestants. The growth of the heavily evangelical suburban Sunbelt increased evangelicals’ political power and induced the Nixon administration to make a special appeal for their vote. Nixon used White House church services, evangelical events, and interference in the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention to win the support of conservative Protestants. The tactics worked. Evangelicals who opposed cultural liberalism and secularism were heartened by Nixon’s culturally conservative rhetoric and his public friendship with Graham, and they gave him stronger support than they had given to any previous Republican presidential candidate. Although Watergate diminished evangelicals’ regard for Nixon, the Republican evangelical coalition that Nixon had helped to create remained politically influential. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Pat Buchanan was and is a rabid Roman Catholic. Another staffer in the Nixon White House was not a Roman Catholic; but is identified with the Southern strategy:

How the Republican Majority Emerged

Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.

In July 1969, Kevin Phillips, a 28-year-old staffer in the Nixon White House and special assistant to Attorney General John Mitchell, published a book boldly titled The Emerging Republican Majority. For nearly four decades, the Democratic Party’s New Deal coalition had dominated American politics. But in the book, Phillips argued that the old order had come to an end, and that a new conservative era was in the offing.

Nearly 500 pages long and filled with facts, figures, and maps, The Emerging Republican Majority contended that the GOP needed to move beyond its traditional base in the Northeast and reach out to white voters in the South and Southwest—a region Phillips dubbed the “Sun Belt”—and in suburbs across the nation with polarizing appeals on racial and social issues. The book attracted significant attention, appearing in bookstore windows nationwide. Newsweek christened it “the political Bible of the Nixon Era,” while National Review called it the most important political book in the generation.

The Emerging Republican Majority has loomed large in the minds of political operatives and observers ever since, as an essential guide to the Republican “southern strategy” that gave modern conservatism the depth and durability of New Deal liberalism. For his part, Phillips always insisted this was a misreading. “The book was not and is not a ‘strategy,’—Northern, Southern or Western,” he noted in the preface to the 1970 paperback edition. “The book is a projection—and one with a high batting average to date. Read it as such.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Phillips did not conceive the Southern strategy, but simply called attention to it as a predictor of the future of the Republican Party. In an essay published in the Washington Post dated April 2, 2006, he recognized the evolution that had occurred since his involvement with the with theNixon presidencyNixon presidency. He was clearly not happy about it:

How the GOP Became God's Own Party

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews. . .

I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era."

In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt.

Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God. The new cohabitation is an unnatural one.

While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington.

This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil.

Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel.

Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.

Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity.

Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership. . .

These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

It is clear that Phillips abhors the incipient theocracy into which the Republican Party has evolved, and in identifying the importance of the Southern strategy for the future of the Republican Party never envisioned achieving the theocratic governance imposed by the South and the Midwest on America.

In 1996 The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy by Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH. was published. Of Dr. Mumford's international work the following statement is made in the first document hyperlinked in this paragraph:

At the next ICPD conference, convened in Cairo in 1994, it was again Mumford who provided the research illuminating the most pressing issue of the conference. While a small group of representatives of the Vatican threatened to derail the conference with obstructions to consensus on important passages of the Program of Action, Mumford introduced research showing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the principal power behind efforts to block the availability of contraceptive services world-wide.

Using church policy documents and writings of the Vatican elite, Mumford revealed an intense struggle within the church and a decision by those in power to act against the convictions of the vast majority of Catholics, whether in the laity, or part of the structure as theologians and clerics. The Pope has made his opposition to contraception the ultimate test of Papal authority. He has stated very clearly that a change in the Church's position on contraception would destroy the principal [principle] of Papal Infallibility. He has also said that it is the fundamental principal [principle] of the Church, ". . . the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and proclaimed." Few in the public health field have Mumford's background or the professional expertise required to measure the implications of Papal policy and the actions of Vatican activists on the lives and futures of people around the world. He has drawn his share of fire from the Catholic media network for his efforts. Of all the participants at the Cairo conference Elizabeth Liagin, a chief Vatican propagandist, has chosen only two for special condemnation, Bella Abzug and Stephen Mumford. As Madeline Weld, Ph.D., President of Global Population Concerns in Ottawa, has observed in a review of his recent work, " . . . the Vatican even now receives kid glove treatment from the media, its efforts at the suppression of information and the spread of disinformation are rarely exposed. Dr. Mumford has taken off the gloves and exposed the Vatican's ruthless agenda. . . . "(Underscored emphasis added.)

From "Chapter 6 - Why Did Our Political Will Fade Away? . . to the final CONCLUSIONS Chapter 17,  Dr. Mumford has documented in devastating detail the work of the Church of Rome in destroying American democracy in the process of protecting the dogma of papal infallibility from every perceived threat. In dealing with the question of contraception Dr. Mumford does make the error of thinking that this will lead to the collapse of the papal institution. It is true that it brought about dissension within the institution; but collapse could never be envisioned in the light of Bible prophecy. The deadly wound of Rev. 13:3 has been healed as predicted.

In the section of Chapter 17 titled WHY IS THIS A PREDICAMENT? Mumford states, ""In this battle, the Vatican has no qualms about destroying American institutions, including democracy itself. The liberties we hold dear have been rightly recognized as gravely threatening to the Papacy at least since the 1830s. One needs only to read the teachings of the popes themselves to prove this point." This has been completely borne out by history.

It is obvious that this study paper cannot do more than seek to stimulate an interest in reading the entire history. It is surprising and shocking. "Chapter 9 - Implications of the Pastoral Plan is a treasure-trove of critically important information which provides an understanding of why a tangled web of secret conspiratorial organizations have sprung into action since the publication of the USCCB's "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities" in 1975. Dr. Mumford's introduction states:

In Chapter 6, I wrote that the Vatican recognized that if the new threat to papal security-survival posed by the population movement in the U.S. were to be neutralized, American political will would have to be undermined. The purpose of the Pastoral Plan was to accomplish this goal.

Jesuit priest Virgil Blum, founder and first President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, proposed this strategy in a 1971 America magazine article titled, "Public Policy Making: Why the Churches Strike Out."54 "If a group is to be politically effective, issues rather than institutions must be at stake," Blum acknowledged. Abortion was simply the issue chosen to galvanize the movement created to achieve this effectiveness.

Blum's article set the stage for the creation of the Pastoral Plan, offering the bishops a set of well thought out guidelines which capitalized on centuries of experience of Jesuit manipulation of governments. Blum's own words make clear the true motivations of the bishops and their plan. An analysis of Blum's article was published earlier.55 Additional comments from it appear later in this Chapter and in the next. Analysis of the Pastoral Plan makes the intentions of the bishops evident. . .

The first section, "Plan of Action for Constitutional Amendment," describes a mustering of literally millions of people into a political machine completely controlled by the bishops for the purpose of protecting papal security interests -- at the expense of U.S. security interests. This mobilization includes virtually all Catholic institutions and agencies in the United States. From their list in the draft, I will discuss only a few. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The headings of the list: 1. Catholic Press Association, 2. Catholic Physicians Guilds, 3. Catholic Lawyers Associations, 4. Catholic Hospital Association, 5. Lay organizations. The following is quoted from No. 5 Lay organizations:

The lay organizations the reader sees listed by the bishops in their plan collectively have a membership nearly 10 million strong. Members have been asked through their organizations to take whatever steps they can against prochoice individuals and institutions and to promote the advancement of anti-abortionists into positions of power, in their careers, and socially and politically as well. . .

The Pastoral Plan specifically states that the bishops will assist each Catholic organization and agency in marshalling political power, and power to manipulate professional groups, in order to advance the objectives of the Vatican. (Underscored emphasis added.)

A section of Chapter 9 titled "ECUMENICAL ACTIVITY" states the following:

The importance of ecumenism to the bishops' Pastoral Plan is made evident by the position it occupies in the description of the plan, second only to the section on the mobilization of the troops.

In another of his guidelines, Blum concluded that if the Catholic leadership is to succeed, it must make their efforts look non-Catholic.57 Blum also concluded that to accomplish this goal, the bishops must create a strong ecumenical movement.

Before the Vatican's need of ecumenism came along, the small fledgling ecumenical movement of the 1960s was going nowhere. Blum's article was published in 1971. Then, suddenly, ecumenical activity exploded. Most of the Catholic activity in the Christian ecumenical movement has taken place since that time. A leading motivation for the involvement of Catholic leadership in ecumenism has been the Catholic Church's need for wide-scale public participation by Protestant churches in the anti-abortion movement. Blum recognized early on that "ecumenism" would be an essential weapon to counter the criticism certain to come with the blatant involvement of the bishops in making public policy. He saw that constant defense of the Catholic bishops by Protestant leaders, in the name of "ecumenism," was critical. In hindsight, he was obviously correct. Protestant leaders have served as tools of the Catholic bishops to blunt criticism, by branding such criticism as anti-Catholic or anti-freedom of religion and thus un-American. Protestants with good intentions were used like pawns to advance papal security interests at the expense of our country's.(Underscored emphasis added.)

Another section of Chapter 9 titled "THE PLAN CREATED THE `NEW RIGHT" states the following:

The Pastoral Plan specifically directed the creation of "grass-roots" organizations for the purposes of advancing the papal agenda. During the period 1976-1980, nearly all of the organizations that became known as the "New Right Movement" or the "Religious New Right" were organized. Examples are: The Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, the Eagle Forum, American Life Lobby, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Life Amendment Political Action Committee, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, National Right to Life Committee, Religious Roundtable, Right to Life Party, and the Right to Life Political Action Committee. There are many others. Catholics were key players in the creation of all of these organizations and in their leadership. This assessment of the creation of this movement and its control by the bishops is well documented.68-[70]

The creation of these "grassroots" organizations by the bishops had far reaching consequences for the governing of America. Many of these consequences are widely known. Others are not. (Underscored emphasis added.)

As thorough as Dr. Mumford's research for his book was, he still missed among the organizations named above the following two deadly dangerous entities: Council for National Policy (CNP) and the American Legislative Exchange (ALEC.)

The foregoing excerpts from The Life and Death of NSSM 200, constituting an infinitesimal fraction of the treatise, present an account of the mind-boggling Roman Catholic power in America. Why is almost all of this information hidden from the public? Under the heading "Catholic Press Association" the following is stated:

The Catholic Press Association has played a crucial role in the implementation of the Pastoral Plan. The suppression of information about the Pastoral Plan and its implications for American women, about the plan's relationship to our constitutional democratic government, and about the differences between papal security-survival and U.S. security as defined by NSSM 200, has been a great success of Catholic journalists in the secular print and broadcast media and the Catholic Press Association. Largely through one kind of intimidation or another, or simply by blocking publication of this kind of information, Catholic journalists -- including reporters, editors, publishers and producers -- have successfully sought to "protect the faith" as directed by their clerical leadership. Less than 0.01 percent of Americans have ever heard of the Pastoral Plan much less seen an analysis of it implications. The same is true of NSSM 200 which was made available briefly in 1976 before being reclassified and then not declassified until 1989.

The bishops determined the rules of the abortion engagement and defined the terms of the debate. This was in response to another of Blum's guidelines: "Crucial to influencing public opinion is getting the people to define the issue your way. Since language not only defines the situation but also shapes attitudes, a group's cause has an almost insurmountable handicap if it permits opposing forces to define the terms of the discussion. `He who defines the terms of the controversy has the controversy half won,' said a wise politician."

Enforcing these rules set forth by the bishops required the unwavering support of Catholic journalists in both the print and broadcast media. . .

The Catholic journalists organized by the bishops as a part of their Pastoral Plan insure that all tow the line. Without this cadre, the bishops' plan would have failed miserably.

The pope has a keen awareness of the importance of the media to his agenda. In a letter to the world's Catholic journalists appearing in the February 27, 1992 issue of The Wanderer, titled "Mass Media Need Catholic Presence," the pope states: "It is in this connection that on World Communications Day I recall the activities of Catholics, individually and in a myriad of institutions, in this field. In particular I mention the three great Catholic media organizations: the International Catholic Office for Film and Cinema(OCIC), The International Catholic Press Union (UCIP), and the International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (Unda). It is to them in particular and to the vast resources of professional knowledge, skill, and zeal among their extensive international membership that the Church turns hopefully and confidently....The great body of Catholic media professionals, lay men and women for the most part, must be reminded on this special day of the awesome responsibility which rests upon them...to foster the Church's presence in the media and to work for greater coordination among the Catholic agencies involved." (Underscored emphasis added.)

This was an echo in 1996 of the unheeded warnings of Evangelist-Pastor Christian Edwardson in the mid-1940s. The Seventh-day Adventist Church should have been relied on to heed the warnings. Instead the leadership has cast aside the sword of defence against the Roman Catholic hierarchy, to the historical trash heap.

With the vast and complex plan activated by the USCCB as exposed in The Life and Death of NSSM 200 the latest Catholic Action war was unleashed on America with a new combination of the old legions of Rome vastly expanded in power by deluded apostate Protestant militants.

DOMINIONISM: A SATANIC MOVEMENT EMERGING OUT OF APOSTATE PROTESTANTISM

At this point attention must be drawn to a Protestant militant movement that existed before it allied itself with the Roman Catholic hierarchy to enable consolidation of Rome's power. The movement is basically called Dominionism; but it has various versions. Dominionism is said to have started with Christian reconstructionism, which originated with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s and 1970s:

Dominion theology

Dominion theology (also known as dominionism) is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.

Prominent adherents of these ideologies are Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Roman Catholic Integralism, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, New Apostolic Reformation, and perhaps others not identified.[1][2] Most of the contemporary movements labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism. . .

An example of dominionism in reformed theology is Christian reconstructionism, which originated with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s and 1970s.[9] Rushdoony's theology focuses on theonomy (the rule of the Law of God), a belief that all of society should be ordered according to the laws that governed the Israelites in the Old Testament. His system is strongly Calvinistic, emphasizing the sovereignty of God over human freedom and action, and denying the operation of charismatic gifts in the present day (cessationism); both of these aspects are in direct opposition to Kingdom Now Theology. . .

Dominionism and the Christian right

In the late 1980s, sociologist Sara Diamond[32][33] began writing about the intersection of dominion theology with the political activists of the Christian right. Diamond argued that "the primary importance of the [Christian reconstructionist] ideology is its role as a catalyst for what is loosely called 'dominion theology'". According to Diamond, "Largely through the impact of Rushdoony's and North's writings, the concept that Christians are Biblically mandated to 'occupy' all secular institutions has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right"[32]:138 ([italic] emphasis in original) in the United States.

While acknowledging the small number of actual adherents, authors such as Diamond and Frederick Clarkson have argued that postmillennial Christian reconstructionism played a major role in pushing the primarily premillennial Christian right to adopt a more aggressive dominionist stance. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Frederick Clarkson, one of the leading voices seeking for decades to alert the American nation to the deadly danger of Dominionism, has defined it as follows:

Dominionism Rising

A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight

Dominionism Defined

Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.

Analyst Chip Berlet and I have suggested that there is a dominionist spectrum running from soft to hard as a way of making some broad distinctions among dominionists without getting mired in theological minutiae.106 But we also agree that:

Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.

Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing biblical principles.107

Of course, Christian nationalism takes a distinct form in the United States, but dominionism in all of its variants has a vision for all nations. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The turning point in this theological struggle was the 1973 publication of Rushdoony’s 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law, which offered what he believed was a “foundation” for a future biblically based society, and his vision of generations of “dominion men” advancing the “dominion mandate” described in the biblical book of Genesis.32 The Institutes sought to describe what a biblically-based Christian society would look like. It included a legal code based on the Ten Commandments, and the laws of Old Testament Israel. This included a long list of capital offences—mostly religious or sexual crimes.33 But Rushdoony and other leading Reconstructionists did not believe that “Biblical Law” could be imposed in a top down fashion by a national theocracy. They thought the biblical kingdom would emerge from the gradual conversion of people who would embrace what they consider to be the whole word of God, and that this could take hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Rushdoony and many Reconstructionists also believed strongly in a vastly decentralized form of government. Theorist Gary North writes, for example, that, “It isn’t possible to ramrod God’s blessings from the top down, unless you’re God. Only humanists think that man is God.” . . .

An additional strain of dominionist thought has also been deeply influential in the wider evangelical community. The popular 20th century theologian Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) sold some three million books, some of which are still in print. Together with his son Frank, he also made a series of influential films. Schaeffer’s 1981 book, A Christian Manifesto, published at the dawn of the Reagan era, famously served as a catalyst for the evangelical wing of the antiabortion movement, the broader Christian Right, and the creeping theocratization of the Republican Party.41

Schaeffer advocated massive resistance to what he saw as a looming anti-Christian society. His work inspired dominionist political action even though he claimed to support religious pluralism and oppose overt theocracy. One major difference between Schaeffer and the Reconstructionists is that while they agreed about the threat to Christianity, Schaeffer did not believe in the contemporary applicability of Old Testament laws and Rushdoony’s slow motion approach to dominion. Instead, Schaeffer emphasized the need for militant Christian resistance to what he called “tyranny.

Schaeffer argued that “the common people had the right and duty to disobedience and rebellion if state officials ruled contrary to the Bible. To do otherwise would be rebellion against God.”42

According to historian John Fea, “Schaeffer played an important role in shaping the Christian Right’s belief in a Christian America,” drawing an ideological plumb line from the Bible to the Declaration of Independence, via the theologians of the Protestant Reformation.43 Schaeffer said that the situations that justified revolution against tyranny in the past are “exactly what we are facing today.” The whole structure of our society, Schaeffer concluded, “is being attacked and destroyed.”44

To fight that trend, Schaeffer advocated what he called “co-belligerency”: strategic partnerships that set aside theological differences in order to cooperate on a shared political agenda. (Thirty years later, the best expression of co-belligerency may be the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a three-part platform declaring “life, marriage and religious liberty” as conservative believers’ defining concerns. This agenda is now shared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, much of the evangelical Christian Right, and allied politicians in the Republican Party.45) . . . (Underscored emphasis and Manhattan Declaration hyperlink added)

Note the heavy representation of Roman Catholic Cardinals, and others in the hierarchical order, in the National Catholic Reporter's article on the Manhattan Declaration. It can reasonably be concluded that they were the prime movers of the Declaration, which is totally in harmony with the USCCB's Action Plan.

The American Protestant dominionist movement has had its own action plan throughout the decades of its existence. The following article by Katherine Yurica, another prominent voice in warning about the danger posed by Dominionism, has been described as "The No. 1 Article on the web on Christian Dominionism." Every segment of the article is of critical significance. However the following quotation is confined to the section titled "How Dominionism Was Spread." What it reveals is startling:

The Despoiling of America

How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State . . .

How Dominionism Was Spread

The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.

At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity” it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]
Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:

“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”[10]

Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’”[11] Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:

“Rule the world for God.

“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.

“Hide your strength.

“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.

“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”[12]

Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.”[13]

It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,” which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society. . .

Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws. . .

Dominionism started with the Gospels and turned the concept of the invisible and spiritual “Kingdom of God” into a literal political empire that could be taken by force, starting with the United States of America. Discarding the original message of Jesus and forgetting that Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a Gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for his earthly rule by his faithful “regents.”

As Frederick Clarkson and Chip Berlet are agreed, Dominionists "celebrate" Christian nationalism. The ideological components of Christian nationalism do not leave room for moderation, tolerance, peaceful dialogue, or the liberal democracy which alone has guaranteed individual liberty, and above all the freedom of conscience which is the only true religious liberty. These are among the many evidences that the movement is of the devil. Of profound significance is the fact that the Schaeffer agenda "is shared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops." This is wholly consistent with the fact that Roman Catholicism is inherently dominionist:

Opus Dei & Christian Dominion

The American founders clearly recognized the history and danger of any ‘Christian Dominion’ as eloquently stated by James Madison:

Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and virtue of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

Also, there was no sense of certainty, on the American founders’ part, there would be an infallible institution of government born of the American revolutionary experiment. When emerging from the Constitutional Convention, the waiting-shouting crowd demanded an answer of Benjamin Franklin, on the form of a new government to be given them. His answer?

“A republic, if you can keep it.

We couldn’t. The founders were well aware of centuries of Vatican intrigue in relation to manipulating geopolitics, governments and related demands of submission, examples now include condemning the Magna Charta, causing a civil war, to demanding authority over the divorce of Henry the VIII, to the modern church support of Francisco Franco:

Franco’s concordat gave state funding to the Church and legally enforced Church teaching. In return, the Vatican … granted him the full version of “royal patronage” (patronato real). This was the ancient privilege of Spanish kings to name bishops and veto appointments down to the level of the parish priest.

The Catholic Church is dominionist by deed. ‘Christian Dominion’ is perhaps most easily described as the ‘rule of God’s law’ trumps the ‘rule of secular law’, Jesus' commandment to ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ notwithstanding. (Underscored emphasis added; italics in the original.)

Note the statement that "the Catholic Church is dominionist by deed." This signifies the inescapable authoritarian character of the papacy.

INTEGRALISM: ROME'S AGES-OLD VERSION OF DOMINIONISM

There is conclusive proof that Rome in fact has a declared ideology of Dominionism. It is called "Integralism":

Dominion theology

Dominion theology (also known as dominionism) is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.
Prominent adherents of these ideologies are Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Roman Catholic Integralism, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, New Apostolic Reformation, and perhaps others not identified.[1][2] Most of the contemporary movements labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Integralism in Three Sentences

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power. (Underscored emphasis in the original.)

The following hyperlinked documents define Roman Catholic Integralism, and make clear that it is a fundamental principle of the religio-political power of the papacy:

Integralism

In politics, integralism, integrationism or integrism (French: intégrisme) is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society, wherever the preponderance of Catholics within that society makes this possible. Integralists uphold the 1864 definition of Pope Pius IX in Quanta cura that the religious neutrality of the civil power cannot be embraced as an ideal situation and the doctrine of Leo XIII in Immortale Dei on the religious obligations of states.[1] In December 1965, the Second Vatican Council approved and Pope Paul VI promulgated the document Dignitatis humanae–the Council's "Declaration on Religious Freedom"–which states that it "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ" while simultaneously declaring "that the human person has a right to religious freedom," a move that some traditionalists such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, have argued is in contradiction to previous doctrinal pronouncements.[2][3] Integralists therefore do not accept the Second Vatican Council's perceived repudiation of civilly established Catholicism.(Underscored emphasis added.)

The promulgation of Dignitatis humanae by Pope Paul VI was a mockery. It is basically no different from the policy enunciated by Leo XIII in his encyclical letter Immortale Dei. Now there is open discussion in Roman Catholic circles about the implementation of the Institution's "Integralism" in America. This is a recognition that the Catholization of the nation is so advanced that there is no longer any need to be circumspect. This is the climax of a debate within Catholicism which has been continuing since Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of "Americanism." It is an ill omen of a rapidly advancing and intense future of darkness. The following article was obviously written by an advocate of Americanism:

What is Catholic integralism?

One of the oldest ideas in Christianity has come to renewed prominence.

I had an opportunity recently to sit in on a discussion of Catholic integralism among a number of scholars who have been at work promoting the movement. Catholic integralism has come to renewed prominence recently, although it is among the oldest ideas in Christianity. (Importantly, we should note—integralism is not as old as the gospels.)

Catholic integralists believe that, “rendering God true worship is essential to [the] common good, and that political authority therefore has the duty of recognizing and promoting the true religion.” Contemporary integralists include Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. (quoted here), Patrick J. Deneen (Notre Dame), Gladden Pappin (University of Dallas), and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard). The movement has been endorsed in the pages of First Things, Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal, and its online home is a website called The Josias.

But for all that recent exposition and publication, Catholic integralism is little different in substance from the enthusiastic expressions of Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century. Eusebius styled Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, as “invested…with a semblance of heavenly sovereignty…and fram[ing] his earthly government according to the pattern of the divine original, feeling strength in its conformity to the monarchy of God.”

The aim of the Catholic integralist is the integration of religious authority and political power. And, if this seems like a strange idea in the 21st century, we should perhaps pause over that. Popes were crowned with triple tiaras to signify the unity of their heavenly and earthly authority as recently as Paul VI’s coronation in 1963, and Pope Francis remains a head of state today. Still less than a century ago, the popes made claims to the Papal States that challenged the legitimacy of the Italian national government. Like so much in the traditionalist imagination, these things have lingered into our time. It seems almost forgivable. A century is not very long in the lifetime of the church.

Still, there is something else. In 2018, Patrick J. Deneen wrote Why Liberalism Failed to explain…well, why he thinks liberalism failed. I should say that Deneen offers a poor account of what he means by “liberalism” in the book, and probably he doesn’t mean what you think he means. Deneen’s complaints certainly encompass the political positions of people like Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden. Yet, if you are sensing that there are important differences between Warren and Biden, you’re beginning to see some of the problem.

Deneen is untroubled by that. He means liberalism in a larger sense, one that encompasses the whole project of modern philosophy and politics. For Deneen, the critique of liberalism is an argument with “A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later.” In other words, Deneen’s argument with what he calls “liberalism” really is an argument with the separation of church and state, our whole way of life, and everything most readers probably assume is true about the world—such as, that the political presuppositions of American politics are good and true.

There is a different argument underway right now among conservatives. National Review‘s David French and Sohrab Ahmari of the New York Post have been embroiled in an argument on Twitter and, most recently, at The Catholic University of America, about whether conservatives should accept or reject the same presuppositions of American politics that Deneen wrote about.
Ahmari, who is Catholic, believes that Christians need to “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy,” while French, an evangelical, takes a more conventional approach to say that people deserve strong guarantees of personal freedom even if the use of those freedoms sometimes offends Christians: no one needs to be “defeated.” The stakes of this argument are the same as the stakes in Deneen’s book—whether believers still have enough confidence in what Deneen calls “liberalism” to defend it. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The fact is that liberalism is wholly incompatible with Catholic integralism. For this reason Rome has consistently stood in opposition to liberalism, often in the most vehement terms in relation to the political form of liberalism. The author of the essay in which the last two hyperlinked statements appear, seems to separate the religious form of liberalism as the one resulting from the Reformation. However, the liberalism of the modern world, and particularly the American Constitution, also trace back to the Reformation:

Political Consequences of the Protestant Reformation, Part III

Modern liberalism’s origins trace not just to Protestant doctrine but also to pragmatic compromise between religious factions.

The Reformation and the Birth of Modern Liberalism

A third consequence of the Protestant Reformation was its role in the emergence of modern liberalism as a political doctrine. In this respect, it was not doctrine as much as the accidental chain of real-world consequences of the Reformation that led to this result.

Liberalism is a political doctrine that begins with the premise that individuals are born with natural rights, which include the right to life, private property, and individual autonomy with regard to religion, speech, and other aspects of personal choice. Governments in this view are legitimate only to the extent that they protect those rights; there is no collective good or divine right of rulership that overrides these rights.

There was of course a doctrinal connection between Protestantism and liberalism, in the sense that Luther and other Reformation thinkers emphasized faith and the individual believer’s direct and unmediated connection with God. But it is also the case that early Protestant societies, both Lutheran and Calvinist, were anything but liberal in the sense we understand that doctrine today. As noted earlier, Lutheranism spread initially not simply through sermons and individual conversions, but as the result of princely power that simply imposed Protestant worship on often unwilling subjects. Calvin’s Geneva was essentially a theocratic dictatorship in which other confessions were not tolerated, and in which the state intervened in the private lives of its citizens to an extraordinary degree.

Modern liberalism emerged only in the second half of the 17th century as the accidental byproduct of the wars set off by the Reformation. With the rise of the post-Tridentine Church and the Counter-reformation in the second half of the 16th century, the Papacy, the Empire, and individual Catholic monarchs were willing to use force to contain the spread of the Protestant heresy. This led to civil wars across Europe, most notably in France, England, and above all Germany, where the Thirty Years War led to the deaths of perhaps a third of the German population in the first half of the 17th century.

Many of the doctrines underlying modern liberalism were born in England, as a direct consequence of the religious conflicts that culminated in the great English Civil War of the 1640s that pitted a heavily Puritan Parliament against a high-church Anglican Stuart monarchy and led to the beheading of King Charles II in 1649. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan was published in the immediate aftermath of those traumatic events and became a foundational work in subsequent Anglo-American liberal thought. Hobbes argued that rights were not inherited or conventional, but inhered in human beings qua human beings. . .

John Locke accepted Hobbes’ natural right framework, and argued that governments could also violate those rights, leading to a right on the part of citizens to resist governments that did not receive popular consent. Political legitimacy in liberal societies would henceforth be based on “consent of the governed.” Locke directly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the American Founding Fathers, who declared their independence from Britain on the basis of the protection of their rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Liberalism originated in a pragmatic compromise between religious factions that understood that they would be better off settling for religious tolerance than seeking their maximal goals of a religiously grounded polity. But the stability of this system depended also on the emergence of ideas that legitimated a regime preserving individual rights. Individualism was deeply ingrained in English culture from well before the Reformation, but the Reformation’s emphasis on inner faith cemented the view that all human beings were autonomous agents who were subject to God’s grace as individuals. In later years the religious component underlying notions of agency would erode, but the individualism would remain as a foundational principle of modern Western civilization. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Leo XIII categorically condemned individualism, which is the rock on which democracy and liberalism rest. Thus the right of individuals to decide for themselves what to believe or to reject is denied by the Church of Rome.

Pontiffs of Rome and Catholic intellectuals alike have consistently sought to undermine individual liberty and to destroy both democracy and liberalism in all of its forms. This has been as much the task of the Counter-Reformation as that of reversing the religious form of liberalism. The enforcement mechanism of Rome's war on democracy and liberalism is Integralism, and the viewpoint of Ahmari in an earlier passage quoted from a hyperlinked article is the central purpose of the USCCB's Action Plan.

The Action Plan unleashed a formidable army of organizations asked to take steps which can only be described as anti-democratic. Given the events which have followed, it can be concluded that the wishes of the Bishops are heard as commands by the lay organizations. To be cohesive an army must have commanders, and among the early commanders the most important and influential was Paul Weyrich:

Paul Weyrich

Early life and conservative activism . . .

After Second Vatican Council, Weyrich transferred from the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and was ordained as a deacon. . .

[N.B. "Melkite Byzantine Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See as part of the worldwide Catholic Church." (Paul Weyrich)]

Dominionism

According to TheocracyWatch and the Anti-Defamation League, both Weyrich and his Free Congress Foundation were closely associated with dominionism.[28][29] TheocracyWatch listed both as leading examples of "dominionism in action," citing "a manifesto from Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation," The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement[30] which "illuminates the tactics of the dominionist movement".[28] TheocracyWatch which calls it "Paul Weyrich's Training Manual", and others, consider this manifesto a virtual playbook for how the "theocratic right" in American politics can get and keep power.[31] The Anti-Defamation League identified Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation as part of an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations that threaten the separation of church and state.[29] Weyrich continued to reject allegations that he advocated theocracy, saying, "[T]his statement is breathtaking in its bigotry",[32] and dismissed the claim that the Christian right wished to transform America into a theocracy.[33] Katherine Yurica wrote that Weyrich guided Eric Heubeck in writing The Integration of Theory and Practice, the Free Congress Foundation's strategic plan published in 2001 by the FCF,[34] which she says calls for the use of deception, misinformation, and divisiveness to allow conservative evangelical Christian Republicans to gain and keep control of seats of power in the government of the United States.

Dominionism is a controversial term, with many conservatives and religious writers dismissing it as a left-wing term to tar people they disagree with.

Weyrich publicly rejected accusations that he wanted America to become a theocracy:

Some political observers may see the presence of religious conservatives in the Republican Party as a threat. My former friend Kevin Phillips [author of American Theocracy], who in the early days of the New Right was so helpful, now acts as if a theocracy governs the nation. Phillips was the architect of President Richard M. Nixon's Southern strategy, which worked brilliantly until Nixon did himself in. Now that the South does have the upper hand in the Republican Party Phillips is bitter about it. I see no theocracy here. As someone who has helped the religious right transition to the political process, I would have nothing to do with something akin to Iran translated into Americanize.[33] (Underscored emphasis added.)

Weyrich's denial that he wanted America to become a theocracy was a blatant lie. The evidence is abundant that this was precisely his objective, and at the center of his obsession was his absolute loyalty to the papacy. The devout Catholic that he was, his opposition to Vatican II which professed to seek a genuine toleration of Protestantism, and his expression of confidence that the Pope agreed with what he and his associates were doing, expose him as an Integralist. He brilliantly maneuvered the Evangelicals into fronting for the papacy; and this fronting is precisely in line with the prophecy of Rev. 13:11-12.

Weyrich knew that he had the approval of the Pope in the guidance he rendered to Eric Heubeck in writing "The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement; and the Catholic Church is at the heart of the dominionist movement in America. The papacy was the deadliest foe of the American constitution from the day that it was adopted by the founding fathers of the nation to the present!

Weyrich had influential accomplices, among whom was one as dangerous as he, and that accomplice was also a Roman Catholic. There is no evidence that like Weyrich he had left the mother institution; but there are ample indications that like his accomplice he was no friend of Vatican II:

Richard Viguerie was another prominent Catholic activist who collaborated with Weyrich in his wide-ranging religio-political organizational activities and independently advanced them:

'Reaganland' Author Revisits The Roots Of American Conservatism [A PBS "Fresh Air" interview]

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. . .

Perlstein is one of the country's foremost students of the rise of the New Right in American politics. . .

PERLSTEIN: So there was this guy, Richard Viguerie, who was a Catholic. He was the maestro of direct mail. He was the guy who figured out that the bigger the mailing list you had and the more terrifying the letters you sent to this mailing list about how liberals were going to, you know, end Western civilization as we know it, the better you could do for politicians. And one of the things that it was so effective for, it was a very stealthy strategy.

So I described in the 1978 congressional elections all these conservative results that no one saw coming because they didn't realize that this guy, Richard Viguerie, was sending out millions of direct mail pieces that were, you know, basically scaring the bejesus out of these, you know, kind of rural, conservative folk. You had Howard Phillips, who was a converted Jew. You had this guy Paul Weyrich, who I've talked about. And they were not having as much luck as they hoped organizing people around issues like unions being too powerful, issues like the Tennessee Valley Authority being socialism - all this stuff that Barry Goldwater had tried to become president and failed.

But once they picked up things like gay rights, like feminism, they found that they had a lot more success. And Paul Weyrich later said he realized that sex was the Achilles' heel of liberal politics, that the fact that someone like Jimmy Carter could be yoked to people who thought that gays should not be discriminated against on the job, and the fact that Jimmy Carter was a very big supporter of the ERA and, actually, lobbied very strongly for it, became their battering ram. And Richard Viguerie was very, very confident that if he could only win the loyalty of the nation's evangelical preachers, who, after all, had these built-in organizations of churches - they had this built-in communication network in the form of things like church newsletters that liberalism could not live to see another day. And he worked very hard at this, and then he discovered the perfect issue for it when Jimmy Carter's IRS commissioner realized that a lot of Christian schools - not necessarily segregationist schools, but just these schools that had kind of sprung up to protect kids from the influence of the '60s and, you know, made kids wear short hair and believed in God, flag and the country - that they weren't following IRS guidelines against, basically, having two segregated student bodies.

And so he created new guidelines. And this became the spark that lit the prairie fire because it was the money nerve, right? These guys relied on the fact that they were tax deductions under, you know, 501(c)(3) of the IRS code in order to keep their doors open. And once they saw that threat, suddenly it was a stampede to Washington. And that's one of the most dramatic parts of the book, I think. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Viguerie has been deeply involved in shaping the Republican Party into just the kind of autocratic power as is envisioned by the Dominionists:

How Fringe Christian Nationalists Made Abortion a Central Political Issue

The most popular origin story of Christian nationalism today, shared by many critics and supporters alike, explains that the movement was born one day in 1973, when the Supreme Court unilaterally shredded Christian morality and made abortion “on demand” a constitutional right. At that instant, the story goes, the flock of believers arose in protest and threw their support to the party of “Life” now known as the Republican Party. The implication is that the movement, in its current form, finds its principal motivation in the desire to protect fetuses against the women who would refuse to carry them to term.

This story is worse than myth. It is false as history and incorrect as analysis. Christian nationalism drew its inspiration from a set of concerns that long predated the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and had little to do with abortion. The movement settled on abortion as its litmus test sometime after that decision for reasons that had more to do with politics than embryos. It then set about changing the religion of many people in the country in order to serve its new political ambitions. From the beginning, the “abortion issue” has never been just about abortion. It has also been about dividing and uniting to mobilize votes for the sake of amassing political power. . .

In the late 1970s a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement, sometimes by letter or phone, and sometimes in conference rooms or at a hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia. Some of the more vocal members of the group included Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell; conservative activists Ed McAteer and Paul Weyrich; Nixon appointee Howard Phillips; attorney Alan P. Dye; and Robert J. Billings, an educator and organizer who would later serve as Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Christian right.

This was an angry group of men. “We are radicals who want to change the existing power structure. We are not conservatives in the sense that conservative means accepting the status quo,” Paul Weyrich said. “We want change—we are the forces of change.” They were angry at liberals, who threatened to undermine national security with their unforgivable softness on communism; they were angry at the establishment conservatives, the Rockefeller Republicans, for siding with the liberals and taking down their hero, Barry Goldwater; they were angry about the rising tide of feminism, which they saw as a menace to the social order; and about the civil rights movement and the danger it posed to segregation, especially in education. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least at the start of their discussions, was the matter of abortion rights.

Weyrich was “the man perhaps with the broadest vision,” according to his fellow conservative activist Richard Viguerie. “I can think of no one who better symbolizes or is more important to the conservative movement.” In matters of religion, Weyrich was personally conservative: he abandoned the Roman Catholic Church, which he believed had become too liberal, for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. But his politics weren’t necessarily centered on religion. He formed his political creed as a twenty-something in the Barry Goldwater uprising of 1964, and it consisted of visceral anticommunism, economic libertarianism, and a distrust of the civil rights movement. Jimmy Carter’s famous religiosity did nothing to redeem him in Weyrich’s eyes. Indeed, in 1978 and 1979, Weyrich’s immediate priority was to make sure that Carter would be a one-term president.

Weyrich began to identify himself in the late 1970s with a movement whose name Richard Viguerie put on the title of his 1980 manifesto: The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead. Weyrich came to be known as the “evil genius” of the movement—or sometimes “the Lenin of social conservatism”—and Viguerie, who is considered the pioneer of political direct mail, came to be known as its “funding father.”

From the beginning, the New Right sought radical change. They would establish themselves “first as the opposition, then the alternative, finally the government,” according to Conservative Caucus chair Howard Phillips. “We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them and eventually destroy them,” said Weyrich protégé Eric Heubeck, writing for the Free Congress Foundation. “We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment’s rest . . . We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime.”

Weyrich went on to call for a constitutional convention in hopes of producing a form of government more congenial to conservatism. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” he said at a gathering in the fall of 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” 14 Richard Viguerie emphatically endorsed Weyrich’s radicalism, which in turn led both men to adopt a kind of experimental pragmatism in pursuing their ends. “One of the major differences in this group of new conservatives was that we weren’t afraid to try even when there was only a 20 per cent chance of success,” Viguerie wrote. “We knew that if you expected to hit a lot of home runs, you had to expect to strike out a lot.” . . .

As the Lynchburg crowd commenced their conversations, Weyrich had already formulated a general idea for an electoral strategy that would take the New Right from opposition to power. He had studied the successes of the left in the 1960s and 1970s, and now he thought he knew what the left had that the right lacked: the right needed to get religion. The left had successfully appealed to religious feelings and organizations in forming the coalition that advanced civil rights, promoted Great Society programs, and opposed the Vietnam War. Just as reformers around the turn of the century had deployed the Social Gospel on behalf of progressive causes, Martin Luther King Jr. has used his pulpit to mobilize change. If the right could access the religious vote, Weyrich reasoned, power would be in its grasp. Together with Phillips, he devoted “countless hours cultivating electronic ministers like Jerry Falwell, Jim [James] Robison, and Pat Robertson, urging them to get involved in conservative politics,” according to Viguerie.

Weyrich eventually founded or played a critical role in a number of prominent groups on the right. They included the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Free Congress Foundation. Arguably the most consequential of the groups Weyrich played a role in founding was the Council for National Policy, a networking organization for social conservative activists that the New York Times once referred to as a “little-known group of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”

Weyrich did not act alone. Other cofounders and early members of the CNP included Tim LaHaye (then head of Moral Majority), billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell. A leaked 2014 membership directory of the CNP, posted on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, shines a spotlight on this powerful subsection of the reactionary right. The directory includes Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre; Christian right leaders such as Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and James Dobson; and antiabortion advocates Phyllis Schlafly, Penny Nance, and Kristan Hawkins. The group also brought into the fold leaders of right-wing economic policy groups and media conglomerates; masterminds of the right-wing legal movement including Alan Sears, Jay Sekulow, and Leonard Leo; and various members of the DeVos and Prince families, including Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince and her husband, Richard, who served as president twice. “The Council for National Policy went on to assemble an impressive network of media and organizations that worked to advance their cause, with a special focus on mobilizing the fundamentalist vote in key districts,” says Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. (Underscored emphasis added

The foregoing article is a veritable goldmine of information about the "curious combination of religious and political activists" which established a network of organizations to work in concert to achieve their goal of destroying American democracy. Mentioned are Jay Sekulow and Leonard Leo, an evil genius like Paul Weyrich, executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

There was a brief period when Weyrich harbored some doubt that they were succeeding in their crusade; but continuing progress in the war on democracy soon banished his doubts:

Rift On The Right

When Paul Weyrich met with Jerry Falwell in May 1979 to discuss ways to bring fundamentalist Christians into the political process, the two men had high hopes for the proposed venture.

Weyrich, a veteran right-wing strategist and ultraconservative Eastern-Rite Catholic, believed a coalition of conservative Protestants, anti-abortion Catholics and other socially conservative Americans could easily dominate the U.S. political process. If Falwell, a Baptist pastor and increasingly well known television evangelist, would agree to help lead such a movement, Weyrich argued, that would be an enormous step forward.

"Out there is what one might call a moral majority--people who would agree on principles based on the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments], for example--but they have been separated by geographical and denominational differences and that has caused them to vote differently," Weyrich reportedly said. "The key to any kind of political impact is to get these people united in some way, so they can see that they are battling the same thing and need to be unified."

"That's it," Falwell replied. "That's the name of the organization."

According to historian William Martin, that conversation at the Holiday Inn in Lynchburg, Va., was the genesis of the Moral Majority. Falwell's group became the best known of an array of Religious Right organizations that have assailed church-state separation, touted "Christian nation" theology and tried to forge evangelical and fundamentalist Christians into a reliable Republican voting bloc during the past two decades.

But in a shocking turn of events a few weeks ago, Weyrich, the godfather of the Religious Right, announced a dramatic change of heart. In a Feb. 16 letter posted on his Free Congress Foundation's website, Weyrich said, "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority. I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually shares our values."

Embittered by the Senate acquittal of the president and the public's overwhelming support for that action, Weyrich proclaimed, "If there really were a moral majority out there, Bill Clinton would have been driven from office months ago."

Weyrich, who helped found the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups, said conservatives have lost the culture war and should adopt a "strategy of separation" from the rest of society. They should engage in politics, he said, only as a secondary enterprise to keep a "politically correct" government at bay. In a March 7 essay in The Washington Post, he called for a "complete, separate, parallel structure" of institutions, a traditional Western Judeo-Christian network of schools, universities, media, entertainment, and even private courts. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Weyrich's despondency was premature. The "Moral Majority" was always a delusional myth, and its ultimate dissolution was deeply involved with sexual and financial scandals. Nevertheless the schemers who created an enduring coalition of religio-political Roman Catholics and Evangelicals proved that a firmly united minority of deluded religionists could dominate the body politic of America.

The emphasis of this study paper is on events of the past, dating from the times of Pope Leo XIII to to the present current events, all fulfilling the prophecies of Rev. 13:12-18 in particular. Fulfillment of verses 13, and 14 (first part) is unclear; but 14 (last part) and 15 (first part) clearly have been substantially fulfilled, emphasizing the need to follow Jesus' repeated admonitions to "watch."

Readers familiar with the theology of Adventistlaymen's Foundation will be familiar with the date of fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy recorded in Luke 21:24. Of this event William Grotheer wrote in The Sign of the End Of Time:

"What is the Fulfilled Prophecy of Jesus Saying?"

The very least that this fulfilled prophecy of Jesus is saying is that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth. Even though Satan declared that he possessed such power and could delegate it to whomever he chose (Luke 4:6), the book of Daniel draws the curtain aside and reveals that God "ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (Dan. 4:17). When kings and rulers resisted His purposes, Michael, to whom all earthly authority is given (I Cor. 15:27), comes Himself to influence the outcome of human events (Dan. 10:13). That time is now past, and God has stepped aside and Satan is working his will in the nations of earth.

We have not been left in doubt as to what Satan is seeking to accomplish. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the picture is drawn. "The spirits of devils go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14). But some may respond, if ignorant of Adventist Laymen's Foundation exegesis, that is the sixth plague after the close of probation. No, it is the cause for the sixth plague, not the plague itself. Consider the first plague: a "grievous sore" on those who had received the mark of the beast (16:2). Was not the mark of the beast received prior to the close of probation? Just so, the sixth plague. Verse 12 describes the plague - the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and verses 13-14 give the cause in probationary time.

Note the use of this text in The Great Controversy, pp.561-62. Observe the context - "the last remnant of time." . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

That the validity of this insight has been confirmed abundantly by the march of events since 1980 will be obvious to the unbiased mind. Falling within this context are the revelations about Dominionism. Can anyone doubt that the work of Dominionist Christian nationalism is inspired and directed by the spirits of devils?

A DIABOLICAL NETWORK OF EVIL

Rev. 16:13-14 in Action

Of the original conferees Pat Robertson and Richard Viguerie are among those still alive, and both of them are supporters of Donald Trump. The following report on Viguerie's support for Trump in the 2016 election is revealing:

Richard Viguerie and Movement Conservatives Riding the Donald Trump Train

Dubbed the “direct mail wizard of the New Right” for his pioneering techniques in the pre-Internet age, Richard Viguerie helped elect conservative firebrand Jesse Helms to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina for five consecutive terms in the eighties and nineties.

At 83, he has been around long enough to qualify as Old Right, and with conservative cultural values at the core of his politics, he and President Donald Trump don’t appear to have much in common. Yet Viguerie is riding the Trump train for all it’s worth, and loving every minute.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, he praises the “movement conservatives” around Trump: Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, exclaiming, “I know them…We know them.”

“From August on, the campaign was run by movement conservatives,” he says, and that’s never happened before.

“Kellyanne is one of us,” he exclaims. Viguerie attended her wedding more than fifteen years ago, and he recalls how her husband, George, secretly packed her wedding dress on their honeymoon trip to Rome so she could wear it when they had their marriage blessed by the Pope. “She’s very Catholic,” he adds.

They’ll be in the meetings,” Viguerie says of these movement conservatives, along with Trump’s hard-right nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, Scott Pruitt and Tom Price, respectively.

“Trump won’t be in 99 percent of the meetings,” he says confidently. “That’s Trump’s management style. You can’t run something like he did, a worldwide corporation, and be a micromanager. You hire the pilot of the plane, and you pick the surgeon, and you let them go. 99 percent of the meetings he won’t be in, but Pence will be there, and Scott Pruitt.”

“Justice (with nominee Jeff Sessions as Attorney General) and the White House are solid,” says Viguerie. “Who knows what course things can take, but every indication now is they are looking good for us. Personnel is policy, and the personnel while it’s not 100 percent is really, really good—and conservatives like me, we’re just wildly excited.”

Asked how cultural conservatives and evangelicals can support Trump given his checkered history, Viguerie says the media are consumed with Trump’s personal behavior, while “we conservatives are consumed with Supreme Court judges that could rule for thirty years.”

In the third debate, after Hillary Clinton said she would appoint Supreme Court justices that stand up for women’s rights, Viguerie sent out some seven million pieces of direct mail targeting Catholic households in the states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

A third of the people who live there are Catholic; 40 percent of registered voters are Catholic, and on Election Day, almost 50 percent of those who showed up to vote were Catholic, says Viguerie. Mitt Romney lost Catholics 50 to 48; Trump won them 52 to 45, according to the Pew Research Center. Unlike the evangelical vote, which is reliably Republican, but will turn out in greater or lesser numbers, the Catholic vote is a true “swing” vote, he says, and Trump carried it by 7 points.

Viguerie had been building the case against Clinton among Catholics for some time. Her comment at a Global Women’s Summit in New York on March 23, 2015, that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” for women around the globe to have access to abortion as part of their health care, was readymade.

“What that says to me, Richard, you’re going to have to change your religious beliefs,” says Viguerie. “That’s lock and load and go to war.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Richard Viguerie is quoted above as stating that Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway is "one of us," adding that “She’s very Catholic.” In the paragraph of the hyperlinked article immediately preceding these disclosures about Conway, Viguerie is quoted as praising the “movement conservatives” around Trump including Kellyanne Conway exclaiming, “I know them…We know them.”' Conway was the member of the Trump White House staff who coined the phrase "alternative facts" to define the volume of lies emanating from his administration. She would know, as a "very Catholic" person.

This report confirms and expands on the identification in an earlier article hyperlinked in this paper, of the movement conservatives at the heart of the power structure in the Trump White House, as well as others wielding national political influence. Three paragraphs down from naming the “movement conservatives” around Trump, his "hard-right nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, Scott Pruitt and Tom Price" are mentioned. Roman Catholicism is strongly represented among these named "movement conservatives," and all of the living members are committed to the mission of destroying democracy and liberty of conscience by every means possible. Worthy of note is the role of Richard Viguerie in the 2016 presidential election, by mobilizing the Roman Catholic vote for Trump in key midwest swing states.

It is now clearly established that the descriptive terms "Religious Right," "Dominionists," "Christian Nationalists," and "Theocrats" can be used interchangeably to identify what Viguerie described as "Movement Conservatives" who laid their plans in the late 1970s. The founders were "a curious combination of religious and political activists assembled to ponder the strategy of a new political movement." Actually the term "Movement Conservatives" disguises the founders' acknowledged true identity as extreme radicals. A founding principle was secrecy and stealth.

The Movement has had spectacular success in establishing diabolical propaganda as a norm, spread through a network of agencies, conditioning a politically potent minority of the American electorate to believe whatever they are told. This has been perfected under the presidency of Donald Trump, who spewed an incredible volume of lies, and has continued to do so as ex-president.

This website has documented how the "Movement Conservatives" have progressed from the Moral Majority to the Christian Coalition and the Tea Party. A major identifying link has been Richard Viguerie. He remains so indirectly through the power behind the latest phases of the Movement. The CNP is deeply involved in the new phenomenon of "Trumpism" and its deadly assault on American democracy. As reported earlier in this study paper, Viguerie himself played a major role in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency by manipulation of the Roman Catholic vote in key midwest States.

In considering the pervasive power and influence of the diabolical alliance of right-wing Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, it should never be overlooked that "evil genius" Paul Weyrich was the primary founder, or a participant in the founding, of a network of organizations dedicated to destroying the American constitutional democracy, and aimed at abolishing the separation of church and state. Known primary organizations in the network are the Council for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Free Congress Foundation, and there are many affiliates such as the State Policy Network. Although Paul Weyrich is not reported to have been involved in the founding of the Federalist Society, there is a connection through the Council for National Policy:

Judges, Jesus and justifications

The Federalist Society is a group of conservative attorneys, judges and legal scholars that are an arm of the Council for National Policy (CNP). The CNP is described as a “secretive umbrella group of far right leaders” that’s pushing America toward a theocratic government; a society ruled by God’s law.

Members of the Federalist Society and the CNP are generally opposed to immigration, regulation, global warming science, abortion and homosexuality.

Paul Weyrich was a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the CNP. He was closely related to Dominionism and the beliefs of Southern Baptist Pastor Jerry Falwell. Weyrich and Falwell partnered to battle against the Civil Rights Act and desegregation in the South on the grounds of religious freedom. . .

Ever to be kept in mind is that "evil genius" Paul Weyrich was a fiercely loyal Roman Catholic Church who once said: "It may not be with bullets . . .and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it's war nonetheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, and it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war," (ROASTING THE RIGHTEST OF THE RIGHT.) In AMERICAN DEMOCRACY & THE VATICAN: POPULATION GROWTH & NATIONAL SECURITY, By Dr. Stephen Mumford, the following passage appears:

"If we didn't know the Pope agrees with us, we Catholics in the New Right wouId have serious conscience problems. I would never work counter to the Church's official position." - PauI Weyrich, founder Moral Majority - Christian Voice - Religious RoundtabIe.

The radical religious in our country, the so-calIed New Right, religious right, religious conservatives, and the Moral Majority, according to Paul Weyrich, will be guided by policy established in the Vatican.

To ensure that the Moral Majority does not act in ways in which the pope would not approve, the opinion of Weyrich and other Catholics in the organization must bear considerable weight in decision-making by the Moral Majority organization. They must be in positions of leadership.

We have discussed earlier the Vatican's control over faithful laypersons, and Weyrich is apparently in this mold. Weyrich and his Catholic colleagues control the Moral Majority. The Vatican controls Weyrich and his colleagues. Thus the Vatican controls the Moral Majority.

It is a fact that the American Catholic bishops described the Moral Majority in their 1975 Pastoral Plan of Action (appendix two), four years before Jerry Falwell was asked by the Catholics who named the organization to head it. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The facts stated in the above passage have been corroborated by events in America over the last 40-50 years. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has flooded every sphere of the American body politic with individuals and organizations dedicated to ending the "American Experiment" in liberal democracy, and most important, separation of church and state. These individuals and organizations are all of the laity. Rarely do members of the Catholic clergy expose themselves, and the USCCB maintains a discreet distance while the hordes of laymen advance its Action Plan. These, with "all the world" (Rev. 13:3b-4) are being gathered to the battle of that great day of God almighty (Rev. 16:16,) together with deluded "Protestants" so-called. The battle will end in their inevitabe defeat by "the Lamb" (Rev. 17:14.)

Among the victories of the USCCB's Action Plan are three US Presidents dedicated to advancing the Church of Rome's objectives: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. (The current President, Joe Biden, is a representative of Americanism in this nation; but he is almost certainly committed to the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine, and appears to be on good terms with Pope Francis.)

Trump has been the most destructive so far, and he remains a menace; but looking to the future there are others equally dangerous, and probably potentially moreso because of intellects superior to that of Trump:

Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus

Christian nationalists inside our government are working quietly to take America for Jesus. They are the more resilient danger to religious pluralism. . .

It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” . . .

It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.” . . .

The agenda is not always explicit. When Sen. Ted Cruz talks of “restoring” America, he means to recover what he believes is its original identity as a Christian nation. Historian John Fea argues that Cruz’s outlook reflects the Seven Mountains Dominionism of his father — a conviction that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions (religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business). While Cruz is too politically savvy to endorse dominion theology outright, he uses code words like “religious liberty” to sustain Christian privilege and cultural authority. . .

I do not wish to emulate QAnon enthusiasts in projecting a deep-state conspiracy, but there are Christian nationalists embedded throughout our governing institutions — courts, military, legislatures, agencies, police. Many are regular figures at the Capitol and in the halls of power. Distracted by those ready to bring on the apocalypse, we have not adequately exposed this more resilient threat to religious pluralism in the United States. . .

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are potentially more dangerous than Trump.

The passages quoted below from the same article are pertinent to the general menace of the USCCB's Pastoral Plan of 1975, dramatically exposed by Dr. Stephen Mumford earlier in this paper:

Most people have never heard of Project Blitz, for example, but it was responsible for at least 75 bills in 2018 that advance Christian nationalism. They have a playbook developed by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation with “model legislation” designed to privilege “traditional Judeo-Christian religious values and beliefs in the public square.” The term Judeo-Christian here is a perverse appropriation of Judaism, deployed as a cover for Christian exclusivism.

The playbook advises beginning with bills that require schools to teach Bible courses or offer release time, and to display “In God We Trust” banners. (Their parallel project to set the motto in license plates has been linked to corrupt fundraising practices.) Second-tier proposals include Christian Heritage Week and Year of the Bible, to reinforce the idea that America was and always will be a Christian nation. The third tier focuses largely on religious liberty as a tool for exempting religious individuals and organizations from laws they do not like, especially laws that prohibit discrimination or protect women. If officials object, the spin machine can go after them as anti-faith. (Underscored emphasis added.)

There is overwhelming evidence that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is responsible for all of the assaults on democracy and separation of church and state in America over the past 46-50 years. There is worse developing. Reports expose the Council for National Policy (CNP) and other entities spawned by the USCCB's Action Plan, but always stop short of indicting Rome.

The following report is a chronological narrative reporting how the CNP "helped spawn Trumpism, directed his re-election strategy, disrupted the transfer of power" after the 2020 presidential election, and "stoked the assault on the capitol" on January 6, 2021. No quotations from the article can detail the perfidious actions of this sinister organization as fully as the whole narrative. Hopefully however, enough essential facts have been excerpted from the narrative to convey an accurate picture of the dominant role being played by the CNP in the destruction of American democracy. Not mentioned in the article is the role of the USCCB at every stage of advancement of the undemocratic theocratic governance being imposed on the nation: 

How the CNP, a Republican Powerhouse, Helped Spawn Trumpism, Disrupted the Transfer of Power, and Stoked the Assault on the Capitol (By Anne Nelson)

On January 6, 2021, a stunned nation watched as protesters stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of the electoral votes from the November election. The effort failed, but not without shining a harsh light on the fault lines of American democracy.

In the weeks that followed, analysts have struggled to define how much of the incursion was the spontaneous result of a “riot”—or a “peaceful protest” gone wrong—and how much was the result of a planned operation.

One major player in the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol was the Council for National Policy, an influential coalition of Christian conservatives, free-market fundamentalists, and political activists. Over the previous year the CNP and its members and affiliates organized efforts to challenge the validity of the election, conspired to overturn its results, and tried to derail the orderly transfer of power. This is an account of the measures they took, leading up to the deadly January 6 insurrection.

The Council for National Policy was founded in 1981 by a group of televangelists, Western oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory the previous year. From the beginning, its goals represented a convergence of the interests of these three groups: a retreat from advances in civil and political rights for women and minorities, tax cuts for the wealthy, and raw political power. Operating from the shadows, its members, who would number some 400, spent the next four decades courting, buying, and bullying fellow Republicans, gradually achieving what was in effect a leveraged buyout of the GOP. Favorite sons, such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, were groomed, financed, and supported. Apostates, such as John McCain and Jeff Flake, were punished and exiled. The leaders of the CNP tended to favor their conservative Christian co-religionists, but political expedience came first.

In 2016, the CNP put its partners’ money, data, and ground game behind Donald Trump, as the ultimate transactional candidate. Trump promised it retrograde social policies, a favorable tax regime, regulatory retreats, and its choice of federal judges. He delivered in spades. By 2020, the leaders of the CNP were ready to go to extreme lengths to keep him—and themselves—in power.

Over the final year of the Trump presidency, the CNP took center stage. By January 2020, its leading figures had become sought-after guests on talk shows and frequent visitors to the White House. Many of its stated goals had been advanced. By March, the Republican Senate had confirmed more than 185 of Trump’s conservative nominees for the federal bench. All but eight of the judges had ties to the Federalist Society, headed by longtime CNP members Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo. Two of the CNP’s favored Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, had been confirmed. The court was only one justice away from a conservative majority, and the CNP had its eye on the seat held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With a second term in office and normal attrition, Trump could decisively tilt the federal courts, opening the door for a massive overhaul of the American legal framework. . .

Ultimate realization of the CNP’s agenda depended on winning a second term for Trump in November. With another four years, it could enshrine its socially regressive policies on the federal level, further blur the line between church and state, and consolidate huge windfalls for corporations and wealthy individuals. As of January 1, electoral prospects looked sweet. . .

On the tactical front, it seemed as though the Trump team had found a winning formula. Ralph Reed, a member of the CNP’s board of governors. . . . continued to employ his Faith and Freedom Coalition and its partner, United in Purpose, to get out the vote among conservative white Christians in critical swing states, expanding their targeting from evangelicals to Catholics.

The coalition’s data and app development also advanced. The uCampaign apps developed by Thomas Peters had served their purpose in the 2016 and 2018 elections, but they were due for an upgrade. In late 2019, word began to circulate that Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was preparing to release the Trump 2020 app, a component of what he labeled a “juggernaut campaign.” Parscale had quietly taken over Trump’s digital operations and planned to use the new app as part of a broader strategy. Trump 2020 was designed to leverage uCampaign features such as gamification (awarding points and prizes for participating in campaign activities and sharing contacts). It also expanded the use of geolocation devices to recruit and harvest data from attendees of Trump rallies. The crowds, energized by Trump’s live performances, would be invited to download the app and recruit others across their social networks. The rallies were a crucial component of the campaign. The more outrageous Trump’s rhetoric on the podium, the more earned media coverage he received. . .

Then, on January 20, 2020, doctors diagnosed the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States. . .

Trump’s reelection strategy rested on a thriving economy, as well as mass rallies and in-church recruitment. Now public health officials were urging lockdowns that would derail both the economy and the gatherings. Trump’s CNP supporters stepped up to the plate.

The CNP’s meetings had long featured briefings on forthcoming elections by members and allies, followed by a memorandum containing a series of “Action Steps.” The October 2018 meeting’s action steps, for example, called for members to “Volunteer and Contribute to key candidates and organizations (FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, [anti-abortion group] Susan B. Anthony List) that are engaged in turning out voters” for the midterms.

But by February 2020, the CNP, fearing the erosion of Trump’s support, shifted its strategy from boosting the popular vote to deflecting it. Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, told the group, “We’ve been focused on the national vote, and obviously we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote, but it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” Her organization, she told them, had already drafted a model resolution “to make sure there’s no confusion among conservative legislators around national popular vote and the Electoral College.”

Nelson noted that her group was exploring additional ways to invalidate a potential Trump loss in consultation with three election experts, including CNP board of governors member Cleta Mitchell, “who I know you all know, on trying to identify what are those action items that legislators can take in their states, and I think that they’ve identified a few. They can write a letter to the secretary of state, questioning the validity of an election, and saying, ‘What did happen that night?’ So we are drafting a lot of those things. If you have ideas in that area, let us know, and we’ll get them to the state legislators, and they can start to kind of exercise their political muscle in that area.”

So as early as February 2020, the CNP and its advisers were already anticipating various strategies to overturn the results of the election in the event of the loss of either the popular vote or the Electoral College, or both. At the same time, they adopted a three-pronged approach to enhancing Trump’s chances in November. The first involved expanding their use of data to juice Republican votes and suppress Democratic turnout. The second was to mobilize supporters in swing states to ignite Tea Party–like protests against the virus-related public safety lockdowns. The third was to deploy physicians with dubious credentials to dismiss the dangers of Covid-19 through a massive media blitz. All three initiatives were activated in April. It was a rehash of a familiar formula, concocting groups whose names and URLs changed with dizzying speed and calling them “grassroots” organizations. (Critics preferred the term “astroturf.”)

United in Purpose took the lead. In June 2016, UiP had convened the epic Times Square gathering of 1,000 fundamentalist activists to give Trump their blessing. Now, over the spring of 2020, UiP held a series of conference calls to update its strategy. One call—a recording of which was leaked to The Intercept reporter Lee Fang—took place in mid-April. UiP Chairman Ken Eldred told his associates on the call that the Covid-19 virus was a “gift from God” because it was turning Americans back to Christ and building audiences for religious broadcasts—which had been crucial platforms for political campaigns. But “Satan has been busy too,” Eldred warned. “The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.” UiP called its 2020 campaign “Operation Ziklag” (named after a Biblical town that served as a base for the Philistines until it was won by David).

The April call featured various movers and shakers from the CNP. Ralph Reed spoke to the “macro political landscape,” explaining that a key component of the Democrats’ strategy was the Black vote in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democrats had experienced a significant drop-off between 2012 and 2016. “There were 47,000 fewer Black votes cast in just Milwaukee County alone,” Reed told the call participants—in Wisconsin, a state Trump had won by fewer than 24,000 votes.

This was not a coincidence. In September 2020, Britain’s Channel 4 reported that the Trump campaign had used Cambridge Analytica data to profile and target 3.5 million Black voters in 2016, assigning them to a category the campaign called “Deterrence,” with messaging designed to suppress the vote.

Reed told his associates that “his ‘data partners’ had identified 26 million key voters in battleground states, about three-fourths of whom were Facebook users,” The Intercept’s Fang reported. Once again, the 2020 strategy, like the 2016 efforts, would strive to get out the vote for Republicans and suppress the vote of traditional Democrats.

Abortion continued to be a major calling card of the campaign, spearheaded by CNP Gold Circle member Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the Susan B. Anthony List. Dannenfelser, who had recently joined the UiP alliance, told the callers that her organization had conducted surveys on messaging with pro-life working-class voters in battleground Rust Belt states and found that its “born alive” formulation on abortion, promoted by Trump, “has had a tremendous effect in moving persuadable voters in all those areas in Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.” This would strengthen Trump’s chances in the swing states that comprised the “northern path” to victory: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as the “southern path” of North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. (Georgia, assumed to be solidly in the Republican column, would prove a wild card.) . . .

The Washington Post’s April story on the “100 business leaders” initiative made no mention of the CNP, despite the fact that among the leading figures, Moore was on the CNP board of governors, Nelson was a member, and Martin and Brandon were officers. Moore warned the Post that the disaffection of “the right” presented a growing threat to public order, neglecting to mention the ways the CNP was stoking the flames. “There’s a massive movement on the right now, growing exponentially,” he said. “In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets by conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states. People are at the boiling point.”

The “boiling point” materialized over the next two weeks, as Moore forecast, with the assistance of another CNP-linked effort called Convention of States, led by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and CNP Gold Circle member. He told the Post his group would function as a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns. “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about the protests across the country.” The most publicized events occurred at the Michigan statehouse on April 15 and May 1, when armed protesters invaded the state Capitol, but these were far from the only ones. . .

The rest of the August CNP meeting was held under the usual conditions of secrecy, but this time its proceedings were leaked to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr., who published an account on October 14. The CNP leaders were sounding notes of alarm. “This is a spiritual battle. This is good versus evil,” CNP president Walton told the group. “We have to do everything possible to win.” Trump’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis was hurting his chances at the polls, and Democratic voters were newly energized. The old messaging about abortion and unisex bathrooms looked less compelling as the pandemic death toll mounted and millions were thrown out of work.

The CNP went into crisis mode, focusing on the mechanics of the election. Charlie Kirk, head of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA and a relatively new member, took the stage to celebrate the closure of campuses, which could deprive the Democrats of a half-million student votes. “So, please keep the campuses closed,” he said. Executive committee member Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, asked his audience for ideas to foil mail-in voting: “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.” . . .

A new Stop the Steal Facebook group had appeared on November 4 and was banned the following day. The Washington Post quoted the page’s recruitment of “boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote” and solicitation of donations to cover “‘flights and hotels to send people’ to battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.” According to the Post, the “Stop the Steal” group appeared as a co-host on 12 different Facebook protest listings, among them one for a car caravan from California. The group gained 360,000 members before it was removed for violating Facebook’s rules for inflammatory content, as users called for “civil war” and “overthrowing the government.”

According to Allpress, the StoptheSteal.us site provided organizational information for protests on November 6 at counting centers and capitols across six “contested” swing states. CNP member Charlie Kirk was listed as the primary organizational contact for Nevada protests, along with alt-right activist Mike Cernovich. The Center for Media and Democracy reported the state-level involvement of other CNP members and added that FreedomWorks, run by CNP Action board of governors member Adam Brandon, was organizing “Protect the Vote” protests in five states.

On November 6, as Biden pulled ahead, Jenny Beth Martin announced that Tea Party Patriot Action was going to hold “Protect the Vote” rallies in four swing states, “working with FreedomWorks, Turning Points [sic], Heritage”—all run by members of the CNP—“and countless social media influencers to help organize and assemble citizens in various locations around the country to voice our support for transparent and honest ballot counting.” . . .

The election was called for Joe Biden on November 7, based on late-counted ballots in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Attorney Cleta Mitchell made her feelings known on Fox News, stating, “We’re already double-checking and finding dead people having voted,” and tweeted that the Georgia recount was “A FAKE!!!”

The CNP refused to surrender and convened a special meeting November 12 to 14. Mitchell appeared at the meeting on an updated panel, now called “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” And CNP Action answered the question with a new set of “Action Steps.

These directed members to lobby legislators in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada to support litigation challenging the election outcome; to “actively educate your pastor and church” with resources from Charlie Kirk, the Family Research Council, and others; to “reach out” to 10 CNP affiliates engaged in the Georgia runoff election; and (ominously) to “connect with local law enforcement.”

Other measures were being set in motion. A familiar figure resurfaced: Trump’s first national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn, too, had a history with the CNP. In July 2016, Flynn appeared on a CNP panel on “Terrorism and the Condition of the Military.” Academic researcher Allpress found Flynn listed in a Zoominfo database of “email addresses and direct dials for the Council for National Policy employees” with a CNP phone number (first listed on November 26 and still active as of February 11—throughout the period when he was appearing at the Stop the Steal protests, including in the January 6, 2021, WildProtest rally).

Dispelling any possibility of the entry representing another “Mike Flynn,” the listing was linked to his 2016 CNP panel appearance. . .

On December 10, the CNP’s Conservative Action Project published a letter stating, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” It stated that “state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan should exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.” It further called on conservative leaders and groups to implement the strategy discussed at the previous CNP meeting and pressure their state and national representatives to replace the electors. The letter was signed by over a dozen members of the CNP, including the president, the executive director, and executive committee member Jenny Beth Martin. . .

The CNP connection surfaced on a number of fronts, as reflected in a chronology published by The Washington Post. On December 20, the domain “WildProtest” was registered. The Post’s Philip Bump wrote, “It appears to be the brainchild of Ali Alexander” (the onetime CNP member and former Ali Akbar). On January 2, Amy Kremer of Women for America First tweeted, “We are excited to announce the site of our January 6 event will be the Ellipse in President’s Park, just steps from the White House!” Kremer appeared in the CNP’s 2014 roster on the CNP board of governors, listed as chairman of the Tea Party Express. Her daughter Kylie Kremer took out the National Park Service permit for the “March for Trump,” dated January 5, 2021.

CNP affiliates took action on a local level. Two days before the protest, Charlie Kirk tweeted that his organizations were “sending 80-plus buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” (Kirk was indulging in hyperbole. Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet later confirmed to Reuters that Kirk’s organization, Turning Point Action, sent “seven buses carrying 350 students” to the rally, but added that the group “condemns political violence.”) Another tweet from Turning Point Action invited protesters to “ride a bus & receive priority entry” and “stay in a complimentary hotel.” Both tweets were deleted after January 6. In Lynchburg, Virginia, more than 100 protesters boarded buses organized by Liberty Counsel Action, chaired by CNP board of governors member Mat Staver. . .

On Tuesday, January 5, Trump supporters gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington for a Stop the Steal “pre-rally.” Ali Alexander led them in cries of “Victory or Death!” Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history,” and local CBS affiliate reporter Mike Valerio tweeted from the scene, “We’ve heard General Mike Flynn give a salute / shoutout to QAnon soldiers.”

On January 6, thousands of protesters converged on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. President Trump addressed his followers in strident tones, urging them to “walk down to the Capitol,” “show strength,” and “demand that Congress do the right thing.” Then he departed for the White House to watch the day’s events on television.

The crowd moved toward the Capitol and invaded its halls, attacking Capitol police officers and vandalizing the premises. Simone Gold reprised her speech in the Rotunda, condemning the Covid-19 vaccine as “an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine.” Some members of the mob clutched Bibles and carried signs reading “Jesus Saves.” Americans were stunned by shocking images of men in paramilitary gear snaking up the Capitol steps, of the mob assaulting a prostrate police officer, of extremists brandishing zip-tie handcuffs in the Senate chamber. . .

It will be months, if not years, before the details of the events in January will be fully revealed, including the identities of the organizers and underwriters and the role of the CNP. Many additional threads require urgent examination, and this will demand the combined efforts of federal and congressional investigators, journalists, academics, and litigators. One is the mounting evidence of heavy QAnon involvement in the violence in the Capitol. The FBI has noted the wide display of “symbols associated with QAnon conspiracy theories” among the rioters, and QAnon followers are heavily represented among those arrested so far. The marchers on the Capitol also bore a number of Christian Nationalist symbols, including a wooden cross and a flag reading “Make America Godly Again.” Recently, there have been disturbing reports that QAnon has been aggressively targeting Midwestern evangelicals, including mainline Protestants, Southern Baptists, and Pentecostals. Pentecostals are a little-understood but growing force in American politics, particularly among African-American and Hispanic voters, and the CNP has been cultivating their leaders for years.

The CNP’s affiliates were by no means acting alone in attempting to overturn the results of the election, or in their support for the Capitol protest on January 6. The evidence shows various networks at work: civilian and military, independent and intersecting, feckless and murderous.

What is irrefutable is that members of the CNP and their circle exerted their influence and manipulated their followers to support Trump’s lies about the stolen election and his effort to derail the electoral process. Many of these people emerged as key players in the efforts to disrupt America’s 220-year-old tradition of the peaceful transfer of power and stoked the fury of insurrectionists who desecrated American democracy on that fateful January afternoon. (Underscored emphasis and external hyperlink added.)

The author, Anne Nelson) is either unaware of, or overlooked, the dominant role of radical Roman Catholic laymen, determined to overthrow America's democracy, in the formation of the "Moral Majority" and connected activist organizations such as the CNP. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Evangelical dominionist Christian nationalists were waiting in the wings at the time when the USCCB's Pastoral Plan was formulated, and certainly melded with "the angry group of men" if they had not already been a part of them. In connection with Ralph Reed's role in the 2020 election, the author uses the phrase, "expanding their targeting from evangelicals to Catholics." Here again the always dominant role of Roman Catholics in the alliance with right-wing Evangelicals is obscured. The error was not that of the author, but of Ralph Reed and his associates. With egos bloated by a sense of power, they have from the beginning been blind to the fact that they are being manipulated by Roman Catholics. Among the voting public, regular church-going Catholics were always a reliable voting bloc for the Republican Roman Catholic right-wing Evangelical alliance. For Trump, Conservative Catholics Are The New Evangelicals points out that it was the Roman Catholic vote in the key battleground States that won the White House for Donald Trump in 2016. Trump himself did not realize it, and the Evangelicals also clearly did not. While they were unaware of this critical fact, Richard Viguerie of "the angry group of men" boasted of what he had done.

The passages quoted from the Nelson article prove conclusively that the CNP was deeply involved in promoting the candidacy of Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Moreover there is conclusive evidence that they were closely associated with, and probably the primary instigators of, the machinations designed to keep Trump in the White House even if he lost the 2020 election. The CNP must be held accountable for all of the unconstitutional actions that followed Joe Biden's election victory, including the attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

In the passages quoted above there are several references to a sinister movement called QAnon. To the soberminded, this movement's mysterious conspiracy theories are nothing short of extreme delusional lunacy; but they are strangely seductive for an astonishing number of people, including elected officials. Moreover, the movement's conspiracy theories are spreading alarmingly. The evidence is strong that QAnon was deeply embedded in the CNP action plans supporting the lies propagated on behalf of Donald Trump during and after the 2020 election campaign. This dangerous and ideologically driven propaganda movement demands a detailed examination of the enormous threat it poses to democracy and the separation of church and state. Here it must be noted that because of the QAnon involvement in the CNP, it can be linked all the way back to the USCCB's Pastoral Plan.

Anne Nelson's indictment of the CNP has been corroborated abundantly by other reports including the following:

The Shadow Network (Council for National Policy) Is Not Going Away

Anne Nelson details the elusive Council for National Policy's strategy for the election and onward.

Five years ago, at the dawn of the Trump era, few national observers were focused on the role of the Council for National Policy. That was not a coincidence; over the past four decades, this coalition of Christian nationalists and fossil fuel interests has deliberately kept a low public profile, maintaining both its meetings and its membership under a veil of secrecy. Although it is registered with the IRS as a tax-exempt “educational” organization, it has advanced an unapologetically partisan agenda, promoting Republican candidates from the radical right and purging moderates. Key to its success is the expansion of its information ecosystem, composed of fundamentalist broadcasting outlets and myriad digital platforms. Often masquerading as “news” outlets, these organizations have served as vehicles for partisan propaganda and dangerous disinformation, including the ongoing hydroxychloroquine hoax claiming that the drug cures COVID-19.

Even Washington insiders who were familiar with the CNP often discounted its influence. As of 2020 this was no longer possible. CNP affiliates played an outsized role in helping Trump win the 2016 election (as documented in my book Shadow Network), offering his campaign the money, the strategy, and the ground troops his primitive operation lacked—enhanced by state-of-the-art digital campaign tools and the Koch Brothers’ i360 data platform. The CNP went on to reap the benefits: CNP’s then-president Tony Perkins, became a regular visitor to the Oval Office, where he successfully lobbied to restrict the civil rights of LGBTQ populations. Trump granted a day of exclusive coverage at the White House to Salem Media, co-founded by another former president of the CNP. CNP leadership pushed the nominations of right-wing federal judges, and turned out in force for the Rose Garden super-spreader event to celebrate the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. . .

As the campaign season advanced, the CNP leadership realized that Trump’s chances were eroding. They held a series of strategy meetings, which were accessed and recorded for the first time by researcher Brent Allpress. There the CNP strategists laid out a series of options: If Trump lost the popular vote, they would emphasize the Electoral College. If he lost the Electoral College, they would promote spurious claims of election fraud and support challenges to the electors in Republican-controlled statehouses. Videos of the meetings record the presentation of these strategies by various CNP members, including Lisa Nelson, CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), attorney Cleta Mitchell, and Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a member of the Board of Directors of CNP Action, the organization’s lobbying arm.

After the November votes were counted, the organization went into overdrive. On December 10 the CNP leadership released a letter (drafted by Mitchell) calling on legislators in swing states to throw out over 25 million votes based on false claims of electoral fraud. On January 2, 2021, Cleta Mitchell represented Trump on his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pressuring him to alter his state’s count.

Finally, as a last-gasp effort, a number of members helped to organize the January 6 “Stop the Steal” protest on Capitol Hill. CNP members Jenny Beth Martin, Charlie Kirk, and Virginia Thomas all publicized the event in advance. Ali Alexander, a former CNP member, was a lead organizer, and Trump advisor Michael Flynn, who appeared on the CNP’s staff roster, gave an address at the protest saluting his QAnon supporters. . .

The Biden administration came to office with a nearly 7 million lead in the popular vote, but his Electoral College victory was based on a razor-thin margin of less than 45,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona (both current targets of voting suppression legislation), and Wisconsin. As election-watchers look ahead to 2024, they should bear in mind that the Council for National Policy is characterized by three traits: it does not give up; its tactics are infinitely morphable; and it is willing to operate on the very fringes of legality, without regard for public safety or the principles of democracy. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following hyperlinked article provides further corroboration of the CNP's close association with Donald Trump and his attack on the American Electoral system:

Secretive Council for National Policy Closely Tied to Trump

With last night’s confirmation of religious conservative Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Council for National Policy (CNP) has a lot to celebrate.

The secretive Christian right-wing group “has been strategizing to dominate the Supreme Court for decades,” according to Columbia University professor and CNP expert Anne Nelson, and had 15 members in attendance for Barrett’s superspreader Rose Garden nomination ceremony in September, the Associated Press reported.]But CNP’s role in bolstering the Trump administration goes well beyond the Court. The agenda for its August meeting, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) from investigative researcher Brent Allpress, demonstrates the ostensibly nonpartisan group’s strong ties to Trump and the Republican Party. . .

Parts of the meeting were recently exposed in The Washington Post on October 14 by Robert O’Harrow, but the full agenda is being first made public here.

The agenda shows that the meeting began with an exclusive event for Gold Circle members and spouses headlined by Trump’s former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and followed by a panel of three high-powered conservative lawyers, Joseph diGenova, Sidney Powell, and Carrie Severino.

Whitaker, who briefly served as AG after Jeff Sessions’ resignation, was recommended for that position by Leonard Leo, a CNP Board of Governor’s member and Trump’s go-to for federal judicial candidates.

All three lawyers have ties to Leo’s Federalist Society, which Leo now co-chairs, and are connected to the Trump administration. Fox News talking head diGenova is an informal advisor to Trump. Powell, dubbed the “#MAGA Lawyer” by Politico, is currently the attorney for Trump’s former disgraced national security advisor Michael Flynn. And Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), has led efforts to get Trump’s judicial nominees confirmed and attended Barrett’s Rose Garden nomination ceremony. . .

CNP’s meeting agenda shows that the videos discussing voter suppression leaked to The Washington Post were part of another two-part panel on so-called “Election Integrity.” Both were facilitated by Judicial Watch president Thomas Fitton, who told attendees, “We need to stop those [vote-by-mail] ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.”

A who’s who of the right-wing’s voter suppression advocates joined Fitton including: J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF); Cleta Mitchell, PILF’s chairman of the board and partner at Foley and Lardner, LLP; and Hans von Spakovsky, PILF board member and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams told CNP members at the meeting.

Adams and Spakovsky, along with Leo’s Honest Election Project (HEP), True the Vote and Election Integrity Project California (EIPC), have been leading the effort to delegitimize mail-in voting, CMD reported. EIPC’s president and co-founder Linda Paine is a Board of Governor’s member of CNP.

In addition, these groups along with Judicial Watch, True the Vote, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, are fighting to purge voter rolls across the country.

CNP’s August meeting also held panels on “Exposing the Black Live Matter Movement,” a “DNC Watch Party” hosted by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, and remarks from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R), North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.

The CNP and other radical right-wing organizations are working feverishly to restrict the right to vote, which is the bedrock principle of the "government of the people, by the people, for the people," which sustains democracy:

Conservative Expert Privately Warned GOP Donors That a Voting Rights Bill Would Help Democrats

Testifying before Congress, Hans von Spakovsky gave high-minded reasons for opposing the bill. At a private meeting of GOP donors, he was more blunt.

On the first day the new Congress was in session in January, Rep. John Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, introduced the For the People Act, known in the House of Representatives as H.R.1. The sweeping bill seeks to revamp lobbyist registration, campaign financing, and voting rights. The Brennan Center for Justice said it “would create a more responsive and representative government by making it easier for voters to cast a ballot and harder for lawmakers to gerrymander.”

By the end of the month, hearings were held on Capitol Hill. One of the witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee hearings was Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Von Spakovsky used high-minded and principled language to oppose the bill. In his prepared testimony, he wrote that H.R.1 is “clearly unconstitutional,” complaining that its provisions “come at the expense of federalism.”

Just two weeks later, however, as von Spakovsky addressed a private gathering of conservatives, he was considerably more candid about his reason for opposing the bill: It would be bad for Republicans.

That’s the message this scholar delivered when he traveled to Orlando, Florida, to brief a Council for National Policy-sponsored meeting of Republican donors and Christian right leaders on the bill. Sitting in the Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes Ballroom, von Spakovsky explained that expanded voting rights and nonpartisan redistricting could imperil GOP political power. . .

Both the Council for National Policy and the Heritage Foundation, where von Spakovsky is currently employed, were founded by Paul Weyrich, an avowed opponent of access to the ballot.
“How many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome’ — good government?” asked Weyrich at a rally in 1980, a video clip of which is available on YouTube. “They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. ”

“Elections are not won by a majority of people; they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now,” Weyrich continued. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The suppression of the right to vote was a specific target of Paul Weyrich as betrayed by his own words. Suppression of the right to vote has now been combined with open demands for violation of the existing Electoral College law in specific swing states. It is a mark of the sense of power that the enemies of America's liberal democracy and separation of Church and State now have that they are no longer concerned about maintaining secrecy:

Conservative Activist Leaders Call For an End to Democracy

Leaders of the secretive, Christian Right organization the Council for National Policy (CNP) are calling on state legislators in six swing states that President-elect Joe Biden won to throw out the votes of their constituents and appoint the Electoral College electors themselves.

In a Dec. 10 letter posted to the website of the allied Conservative Action Project, CNP members, including CNP President William Walton, CNP Executive Director Bob McEwen, former South Carolina senator and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Leadership Institute President Morton Blackwell, and Tea Party Patriots Chair Jenny Beth Martin, advocated abolishing the nation’s popular democracy and openly lied about the clear results of the election, which members of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called “the most secure in American history.”
“There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election,” falsely states the letter. “Joe Biden is not president-elect.”

The signers of the letter want legislators to throw out the collective 25.5 million presidential votes cast by the residents of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—a total that represents roughly 16% of all votes cast in the presidential race. Biden won 312,000 more votes than Trump in those states, including 154,000 in Michigan, and he beat Trump by more than 7 million votes overall.

The letter links to an uncredited document that details a “constitutional remedy” to throw out millions of votes and lists alleged election irregularities in the five states. According to metadata embedded in the file, the document was created by Cleta Mitchell, a GOP attorney, CNP member, and Bradley Foundation board member known for her voter suppression work. Mitchell chairs the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which attacked vote-by-mail and advocate voter purges in swing states this year. . .

The letter is not subtle, dishonestly claiming that there is “overwhelming” evidence that election officials, pressured by Democrats, “violated the Constitution, state, and federal law in changing mail-in voting rules that resulted in unlawful and invalid certifications of Biden victories.”

Under plenary power outlined in the Constitution, state lawmakers should “appoint clean slates of electors,” state the CNP leaders, and members of Congress should “object to and reject” slates of electors for Biden. . .

The letter comes as 18 state attorneys general, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton, are petitioning the Supreme Court to nullify the elections in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Election law expert Rick Hasen said, “This is a press release masquerading as a lawsuit…What utter garbage. Dangerous garbage, but garbage.” . . .

On Thursday, 126 Republican U.S. House members, a majority of the GOP caucus, came out opposed to democratically decided elections, filing an amicus brief in support of Paxton’s desperate lawsuit. The roster includes the very top of the House GOP leadership. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer (R-AL) all joined, as well as several members who won re-election in the states whose elections they alleged were full of irregularities.(Underscored emphasis added.)

It appears that among all of the organizations created pursuant to the USCCB's Action Plan the CNP is probably the most influential and dangerous.

This study paper has contained report after report which collectively and conclusively prove that the USCCB's Pastoral Plan created a network of interlocking personalities and organizations designed to undermine and finally destroy America's liberal democracy with its constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. The network of interlocking personalities is of critical importance, because it is they who have created and executed the operations of the interlocking organizations. Among these personalities Roman Catholics are dominant, and they are clearly the generals of the millions charged with "marshalling political power, and power to manipulate professional groups, in order to advance the objectives of the Vatican."

In The Life and Death of NSSM 200 Dr. Mumford documents the importance of ecumenical action to the USCCB's Pastoral action plan. He states, "Before the Vatican's need of ecumenism came along, the small fledgling ecumenical movement of the 1960s was going nowhere. Blum's article was published in 1971. Then, suddenly, ecumenical activity exploded." This may have been incorrect in not taking into account Vatican II; nevertheless the USCCB stressed the importance of ecumenical activity and this followed in spades in America. However, in this context this was an ecumenism which embraced much more than interrelationships between Christian faiths. As established by the documentation in this study paper, it is an ecumenism ranging from the Christians who have chosen the power of politics over the power of the gospel, to white supremacists raging with resentment towards the racial minorities of America. It includes Dominionists lusting for the power of theocratic dictatorship to irreligionists whose lust is for wealth and autocratic power. The element of white supremacy is not surprising, given the true reason for the agreement to form the Moral Majority movement. The American South has ever been racist, and here the Church of Rome has had a history most worthy of condemnation. In 2015, just short of six years ago, Pope Francis delivered a speech in front of Independence Hall, and at the lectern used by Abraham Lincoln for his Gettysburg speech. At the very least this was a declaration of confidence that autocratic Rome would be victorious over "government of the people, by the people, for the people." On reflection almost six years later, this was probably a conscious signal by the Pontiff that the subversion of American democracy by the USCCB's Pastoral Action Plan was already irreversible.

HOPE FADES FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

We are now witnessing the consequences of the USCCB's nefarious Action Plan, ofwhich only a small fraction has been covered in this paper. In concluding this study paper, the following is a sampling of the warnings now being sounded in the secular world:

More Than 100 Scholars Issue Warning That American Democracy Is In Danger, Call For Federal Reforms (Forbes, Monday, June 1, 2021.)

A statement signed by more than 100 scholars on Tuesday warns that as a result of Republican-led states proposing or implementing “radical changes” to election laws, the voting procedures in several states are being transformed into “political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.” The statement includes this dire prediction: “our entire democracy is now at risk” . . .

Referring to themselves as “scholars of democracy,” the signatories include leading professors of political science, government, communications and history at many of the nation’s most prominent universities and colleges. As of mid-afternoon today, more than 100 individuals had signed onto the statement, but additional signatures were expected to be added.

Claiming that “statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration,” the statement identified several actions recently put in place by Republican-controlled legislatures that undermine fundamental democratic principles, including:

extending the power to override electoral outcomes based on unproven allegations;

seeking to restrict access to the ballot;

putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators;

curtailing procedures such as early voting and mail voting; and

appealing to qualities like the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, concepts once used in the Jim Crow South to restrict the Black vote. . .

Similar statutory changes are being made in an increasing number of states:

Voting Laws Roundup: July 2021

Eighteen states have already enacted 30 laws this year that will make it harder for Americans to vote.

As many state legislatures conclude their regular sessions, the full impact of efforts to suppress the vote in 2021 is coming into view.

Between January 1 and July 14, 2021, at least 18 states enacted 30 laws that restrict access to the vote. These laws make mail voting and early voting more difficult, impose harsher voter ID requirements, and make faulty voter purges more likely, among other things. More than 400 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions. . .

This wave of restrictions on voting — the most aggressive we have seen in more than a decade of tracking state voting laws — is in large part motivated by false and often racist allegations about voter fraud.

Congress has the power to stem the tide. The For the People Act, passed by the House and now awaiting action in the Senate, would mitigate the effect of many state-level restrictions. And the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would protect voters by preventing new discriminatory laws from being implemented. (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is common knowledge that there is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in the way of passage through the US Senate of the legislation that would "stem the tide." Perhaps this is the reason for widespread pessimism that America's democracy will survive the onslaught:

Wake up, folks: the campaign against democracy continues

In a speech 40 years ago to a group of conservative preachers, Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich said, “Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Weyrich’s idea continues to animate the GOP today. In dismissing a Democratic push for reforms, including vote-by-mail, same-day registration, and early voting to assist state-run elections in the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump opined, “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Starting with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968, through Weyrich’s candid acknowledgement in 1980, to Donald Trump’s numerous rants, the GOP has consistently stood against reasonable voter registration laws and fair and equitable access to the polls — because they know they lose in a battle ideas.

What was that about believing someone when they tell you who they are? Republicans have been telling us who they are for half a century. Weyrich is gone, but his Heritage Foundation and voter suppression efforts endure. The GOP continues to do everything they can to keep Democratic turnout as low as possible.

Republicans have also consistently shown they have no respect for the very concept of governance. Weyrich called good governance “goo-goo.” Ronald Reagan said government is “not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist said his goal was to starve government until it was so small he could “drown it in the bathtub.” . . .

Former George W. Bush speech writer David Frum doesn’t trust his old Republican colleagues. In his 2018 book, The Corruption of the American Republic, Frum writes, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

The call to wake up is clearly directed at Democrats, but generally falls on deaf ears in the general populace. This has been so since the times of Seventh-day Adventist preachers and writers A. T. Jones and Christian Edwardson, followed more recently by secular population control expert Stephen Mumford, then again Seventh-day Adventist preacher and writer William Grotheer (there are probably more, but always an unheeded minority.) The warnings of the deadly peril in which American democracy stands are now being sounded in academia and the news media; but is being muted by Rome's many propaganda outlets in the most blatant fashion.

The following is a warning in the world of journalism:

Guess what? The Trump coup against American democracy never stopped

If you think the coup attempt is over, or that Jan. 6 was a "defeat" for fascism, you're not paying attention

I would like to share a public secret: Donald Trump and the Republican Party's coup attempt was not defeated on Jan. 6. The war against American democracy continues — and is gaining momentum.

All one has to do is take off one's blinders to see it. Unfortunately, too many Americans, including the Democratic Party's leadership, the professional smart people and other members of the country's mainstream media and chattering class, have waited for months to acknowledge what has been happening in plain sight.

Republicans have rejected any independent investigation into the events of Jan. 6. Why? Because they feel implicated, explicitly or otherwise, in supporting and collaborating with Trump's coup attempt and the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

By rejecting any efforts to properly investigate those events, Republicans are also giving permission and encouragement for similar acts of right-wing political violence and terrorism in the future.

Instead of being cowed by President Biden's victory and the events of Jan. 6, the Republican Party and Trump's larger neofascist movement have only been further empowered in their campaign to end America's multiracial democracy.

With attempts to pass voting restrictions in nearly all states, Republicans are trying to impose a new Jim Crow regime on Black and brown people. This strategy involves onerous ID requirements, gerrymandering, threats of intimidation and violence, severe limitations on polling places, absentee voting and early voting, and other selectively enforced laws and rules aimed at making it more difficult for nonwhite people — an indispensable part of the Democratic base — to exercise the right to vote.

Republicans are also trying to make their anti-democracy attacks "legal" by rigging America's electoral system so that only their approved candidates will win. In this near-future scenario, Democrats and others will still be permitted to vote — thus lending a veneer of legitimacy to Republican claims that they have won "free and fair elections" — but the outcome will be already have been determined.

This strategy, which political scientists describe as "managed democracy," is common to autocratic regimes such as Vladimir Putin's Russia, Viktor Orbán's Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey.

In the Atlantic, Adam Serwer explores the Republican attack on democracy in further detail, explaining that Republicans did not block a Jan. 6 commission purely because they fear Trump or want to "move on":

"They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate — the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American — they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home. . ." (Underscored emphasis added.)

Finally, a projection into the future which may not be wide of the mark:

January 6, 2025 could be the date American democracy dies. Mark it on your calendar.

The 2022 and 2024 House elections are not just political battles over the Biden agenda or the Trump tax cuts. US democracy itself will be on the ballot.

You can write it down: Jan. 6, 2025, will be a hinge date in history. On that day, American democracy either will live or die. And if we do not take aggressive steps to ensure that Democrats control the House of Representatives when we get there, the prognosis for our republic is grim.

It is rare to have advance notice of a monumental moment. Before Pearl Harbor, no one suspected that Dec. 7 would “live in infamy.” We could not predict years beforehand that we would celebrate our nation’s birth on the Fourth of July or mark 9/11 as a monument to national tragedy and heroism.

Yet it is now clear that the Sixth of January 2025 will join those historic dates. A joint session of the new 120th Congress will meet that day to count the electoral votes from the 2024 election. The House of Representatives should perform its largely symbolic function and certify the will of the voters, naming the winner of 270 or more electoral votes as the president. That is how it should go. But there is a real chance that it will not.

GOP could install its own president

House Republicans are now firmly in the grip of a deeply anti-democratic right-wing populism. Almost all have now essentially pledged to "support and defend" Donald Trump and Trumpism rather than the Constitution of the United States. They no longer are constrained by once inviolate norms or even by observable facts. If these radicals control the House on 1/6/25, and if a Democrat has won the Electoral College vote, it now seems completely possible that Republicans will instead confirm their own choice as president of the United States. If that happens, the world’s greatest democracy will come to an end.

The mechanism would be the same as the one they tried after the 2020 election: invalidating the Electoral College votes of certain states that went for the Democrat, thereby throwing the election to a vote of the House. This gambit failed because Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the majority Democrats blocked it. We will not have that protection in 2025 if the Speaker is Kevin McCarthy. He voted with the insurrectionists last January.

But wasn’t that just a protest vote? If they have power next time, would House Republicans actually do something so catastrophic?

Well, consider their recent behavior. Almost all have helped spread Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Two-thirds of them took that seditionist "protest" vote just hours after a violent mob stormed the Capitol, maimed police officers, erected a noose, and desecrated our democracy’s most sacred spaces. Only 10 of them voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection. . .

So yes, it’s easy to predict that a House GOP caucus that remains deeply committed to Trump and his seditionist lies would steal the presidential election if they could. That means that the House elections in 2022 and 2024 are not just battles over normal political questions, like the future of the Biden agenda or the Trump tax cuts. Rather, our democracy itself will be on the ballot. But with gerrymandering and voter suppression laws sweeping the GOP-held states, winning these races will be tougher than ever. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Thus in the secular world there is recognition that the future of America's constitutional democracy is bleak. If there is also recognition of where the culpability lies for democracy's imminent demise it is never mentioned. Is it because of a failure to discern that the paramount religio-political power in the world is the perpetrator, or is it because of fear of that power which has been democracy's mortal enemy for well over a century?

CONCLUSION

The final offensive against America's liberal democracy began in 1975 when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published their "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities." It was the launching pad for a gigantic push to finally destroy democracy and the separation of church and state in America.

For Rome's anti-democratic network of organizations in America victory is in sight. This not alarmist "political spin" as Adventist Laymen's Foundation, under the leadership of Pastor William Grotheer, was accused of in 2004. This is realism, pure and simple.

Rome will prevail for a time; but Armageddon will end her power forever. There were early signs that the climax of Rome's war against American democracy was rapidly approaching, when Pastor Grotheer published The Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty It is Pending! in "Watchman, What of the Night?" over sixteen years ago. It is now much more clearly in sight. The "time of test" looms. How far in the distance is it?

 


JUDAIZATION OF JERUSALEM, ERETZ ISRAEL IDEOLOGY, AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY



 

THE 1910 WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE AND ITS AFTERMATH FOR THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH

LUKEWARM RESPONSE TO INVITATION DESCENDS INTO ENTHUSIASTIC COLLABORATION

The following essay on the 1910 World Missionary Conference by Borge Schantz, PhD, adjunct professor at Loma Linda University, begins as an apparent recitation of historical fact, although this sentence early in the historical narrative raises a suspicion: "Perhaps the General Conference was using Edinburgh as a “trial marriage” on possible areas where at least some cooperation with other mission societies could be a reality?" It can reasonably be presumed that such an idea was highly unlikely. Glorious years of Seventh-day Adventist evangelism ensued in the succeeding years, solidly based on the platform of Truth established by the Great Second Advent Movement. This kind of evangelism was increasingly muted after the end of the 1950s, and has now faded into oblivion on the essential doctrines. Thus, it is no surprise that by the conclusion of the Schantz essay it is clear that the author favors increased collaboration with non-Adventists in the propagation of the gospel. This is contemporary Adventism, but it is clear that this was never contemplated in 1910 when Ellen G. White was still alive. The author writes the following passage after naming the Seventh-day Adventist delegates to the Conference:

However, their presence at the Edinburgh conference remained somewhat in the shade. The 33 boxes with the official archives from the 1910 conference stored at the Burkes Library (Columbia University) do not at all indicate that the Adventist delegates were serving on any of the main committees or subcommittees.

It is also worth observing that the Adventist Church itself gave its participation in the 1910 Mission Conference minimum publicity. It was not officially reported to the various churches or commented on by Adventist leaders.4 Neither do we find official reports on Edinburgh in Adventist magazines. E.G. White was likewise silent on the event.

This confirms that collaboration was not in contemplation. The full Schantz essay is as follows (with highlighting and underscoring):

(Underscored emphasis added.)

Tragically, the Schantz essay includes, and emphasizes in the margin, the following passage as seen above:

A growing number of Adventist pastors and members feel it is time to open up for positive relationships with other Christians and churches. The task of bringing Christ to two-thirds of the world's population needs as many voices as possible. Adventists cannot do it alone. And as we have so much in common with most missionary-minded evangelicals, it would be spiritual arrogance to continue.(Underscored emphasis added.)

When did God ever intend that Adventists would "do it alone." How in the world could any Seventh-day Adventist think that preaching the gospel to the world is the work of man and not of the Holy Spirit?

CONSEQUENCES OF SPURNING FAITH IN THE PROMISE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND IGNORING INSPIRED WARNINGS

The concept of a universal "Christian" world is nowhere to be found in the Bible; but to the contrary Jesus Himself repeatedly spoke of the "few." He addressed comfort to the "little flock" (Luke 12:32.) Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36, first part.) The notion of the entire world being won for "Christianity" is purely a Roman Catholic concept. Rome's purpose in the Christian era has ever been to blend imperial power with Christianity. This can never be! Above all, the preaching of the gospel in the early Christian Church was directed, controlled, and empowered by the Holy Spirit:

ANOTHER COMFORTER (Part One)

The book of Acts could well be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. In this book, the Holy Spirit is presented as One in full command of the Church, and its spokesmen, and as One functioning as the Vicegerent of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very introduction sets forth the role of the Spirit as the Vicegerent. After Jesus was taken up into heaven, "He through the Spirit" continued to give "commandments unto the apostles." (Acts 1:2) These apostles and others as "spokesmen" were "full of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 7:55; 11:24; 13:9)

The Book of Acts presents the Spirit as in full command of the Church and its spokesmen. He speaks to Philip - "Go near and join thyself to this chariot." (Acts 8:29) Philip obeys, and another witness is born into the kingdom of God, the Ethiopian eunuch. Then the Spirit transports Philip to another place. (8:39) To Peter, as he meditated on the unusual vision he had received, the Spirit said, "Behold three men seek thee ... I have sent them." (10:19-20) To the leaders of the church in Antioch, the same Holy Spirit said - "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." (13:2) And Paul on his second missionary tour desired to go to certain areas to preach the gospel, but was "forbidden of the Holy Spirit." (16:6-7) Thus, the Spirit is pictured as functioning in His own right, as a Person directing the Church of the Living God.(Underscored emphasis added.)

As Ellen G. White wrote in the Testimony "Shall We Be Found Wanting":

Shall We Be Found Wanting?

One who sees beneath the surface, who reads the hearts of all men, says of those who have had great light: "They are not afflicted and astonished because of their moral and spiritual condition." Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before Mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not." "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie," because "they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved," "but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Isaiah 66:3, 4; 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 10, 12.

The heavenly Teacher inquired: "What stronger delusion can beguile the mind than the pretense that you are building on the right foundation and that God accepts your works, when in reality you are working out many things according to worldly policy and are sinning against Jehovah? Oh, it is a great deception, a fascinating delusion, that takes possession of minds when men who have once known the truth, mistake the form of godliness for the spirit and power thereof; when they suppose that they are rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing, while in reality they are in need of everything." . . .

Who can truthfully say: "Our gold is tried in the fire; our garments are unspotted by the world"? I saw our Instructor pointing to the garments of so-called righteousness. Stripping them off, He laid bare the defilement beneath. Then He said to me: "Can you not see how they have pretentiously covered up their defilement and rottenness of character? 'How is the faithful city become an harlot!' My Father's house is made a house of merchandise, a place whence the divine presence and glory have departed! For this cause there is weakness, and strength is lacking." (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 8, Pp. 249-250.)(Underscored emphasis added.)

Ellen G. White repeatedly warned against compromise of the distinctive doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The following are some of these warnings (with highlighting and underscoring):

Counsels to Writers and Editors, Chapter 6—Integrity of the Message

(Underscored emphasis added.)

The loss of the power and influence of the Holy Spirit was both the end of the beginning of the full manifestation of the Great Apostasy AND the beginning of the hopelessly deluded, fallen state of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This hopelessly deluded, fallen state is revealed in the history of the Church in the century following the 1910 World Missionary Conference.

ENTHUSIASTIC COLLABORATION THE CONSEQUENCE OF REPUDIATION OF THE UNIQUE  GREAT SECOND ADVENT MOVEMENT

In June, 2010. the centennial of the 1910 World Missionary Conference was marked by a 2010 World Missionary Conference which was also included in the Schantz essay. Whereas Schantz honestly disclosed that the records of the 1910 Conference revealed "misgivings and somewhat lukewarm attendance" of the Adventists, the following report (with highlighting and underscoring,) of the 2010 Conference implies a degree of involvement in 1910 that is a fraudulent distortion of the facts (with highlighting and underscoring):

The following description of the 2010 event reeks of collaboration and compromise, which is the antithesis of the gospel commission given to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the counsel of Ellen G. White's testimonies:

The 2010 delegation included Ganoune Diop, General Conference Global Mission Study Centers director; Cheryl Doss, General Conference Institute of World Mission director; and John McVay, Walla Walla University president. Diop functioned on the organizing committee before, during, and after the conference. At the final meeting in the Assembly Hall he was master of ceremonies. (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is obvious that the Seventh-day Adventists, long divorced from the Great Second Advent Movement of Ellen G. White's time, were deeply involved in the 2010 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. The extent of the apostasy from the foundational interpretations of Bible prophecies and the unique doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist faith has grown to staggering proportions. The 1980 General Conference marked the official adoption of doctrinal changes which set the seal on the apostasy, and identified the Church with apostate Protestant and Roman Catholic heresies.

DESCENT TO THE DEPTHS OF APOSTASY BY CLASPING HANDS WITH THE "MAN OF SIN"

Ganoune Diop grasps the hand of Pope Francis during his first encounter with Pope Francis ["the man of sin"] in Rome, Italy on October 12, 2016

Elder Wm. H. Grotheer, founder of Adventist laymen's Foundation and Editor of its publication "Watchman What of the Night?" until his death in 2009, has written expansively and with heavy documentation about the course of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's apostasy. The following titles and quotations are but a sampling:

NEW FUNDAMENTAL STATEMENT OF BELIEFS PREPARES THE WAY FOR JOINING WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

At the Fifteenth and final meeting of the Fifty-third General Conference Session in Dallas, Texas, on April 25, the delegates voted "overwhelmingly" but not unanimously to accept a Statement of Beliefs which contained phrases and clauses which have never appeared in any previously formulated statement of doctrines. Certain phraseology and concepts are copied directly from the Constitution of the World Council of Churches, and prepares the way for the hierarchy to move in that direction when they feel it advantageous to do so.

Article #2 - The Trinity - from the new Statement of Beliefs reads:

There is one God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal persons. (General Conference Bulletin # 9, p. 23)

Article #11 - The Church - reads: 

The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. (Ibid., p. 25)

The Constitution of the World Council of Churches requires that only those churches which express such doctrinal concepts "shall be eligible for membership" in that body. Here are the first two articles from the Constitution.

A. The Constitution

I.   Basis

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

II.   Membership

Those churches shall be eligible for membership in the World Council of Churches which express their agreement with the Basis upon which this Council is founded and satisfy such criteria as the Assembly or the Central Committee may prescribe. (So Much in Common, p. 33)

When Article #2 was presented at the Seventh business meeting, there was discussion over its phraseology. Elder H. J. Harris, president of the Oregon Conference, wished it amended, but both Dr. Richard Hamill and Dr. W. R. Lesher spoke in support of its retention as written. These two men served as "floor leaders" in getting the Statement thru the Session, and were on the editing committee with Hammill as its chairman. In fact, Dr. Lesher, who heads the General Conference Biblical Research Committee commented - "It is much more in harmony with the mystery of God to simply say there is one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." (See GC Bulletin, #5, pp. 11, 14)

Throughout the discussion of the Statement of Beliefs, the stock answer to many of the objections was to use the words of Dr. Hamill - "When we framed this statement we tried to use Biblical phrases as much as we could." (Ibid., p. 11) But where in the authentic text of the Bible can one find the expression as copied from the Constitution of the World Council of Churches in regard to God? One might point to I John 5:7, but this text can be found "in no Greek manuscript earlier than the 15th and 16th centuries." (SDA Bible Commentary Vol. 7,p.675). It is a gloss which crept into the Scriptures to support the doctrine of the Trinity - a term found in neither the Bible nor the Spirit of Prophecy.

The "evolution" of the second statement defining the Church is also very interesting. In the Statement of Beliefs as voted by the 1979 Annual Council to be recommended to the General Conference in session; it read - "That the Church is the company of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour."(p. 9, Adventist Review, Feb. 21, 1980) However, this statement was never presented to the General Conference session. A completely new statement was prepared just prior to the session and presented to the delegates. In this second statement, the article on the Church was re-written to read - "The Church is the community of Christian believers who confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and claim Him as their Saviour and Lord." (GC Bulletin, #6, p. 25) In this the distinct wording of the WCC Constitution is lost. However, in the discussion of this particular article, Dr. Lawrence Geraty of Andrews University commented that the Statement of Beliefs that had appeared in the Adventist Review (Feb. 21, 1980) contained "cohesion and balance." (GC Bulletin #6, p. 23) Elder Neal C. Wilson asked that the committee take a look at re-editing the revised article, and when it did come for the final vote, it contained the wording of the WCC Constitution. We need to keep in mind that the original Statement of Beliefs as voted by the 1979 Annual Council was formulated by a Committee which was "assisted by a group of scholars at the SDA Theological Seminary," (Review, Feb. 21, 1980, p. 8) and one of those scholars is Dr. R. F. Dederen, who serves on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. . .

Another comparison which needs to be considered as to whether the historic position of the Church was changed or not is to compare what was said in both the White and Smith statements with the 1931 Statement and the voted 1980 Statement in regard to the incarnation of Christ. The White and Smith formulations read:

There is one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father, the one by whom He created all things, and by whom they do consist; that He took on Him the nature of the seed of Abraham for the redemption of the fallen race; ... (See "Watchman, What of the Night?" June, 1980, 3, Article 2)

There is no question here as to meaning. The Church believed with "entire unanimity" that Christ when He became man took upon Himself the fallen nature of Adam - coming through the seed of Abraham. Now if the committee appointed by Wilson felt the text in Hebrew 2:16 was open to textual criticism, and desiring to use the phraseology of Scripture, they needed only to use Romans 1:3 - "Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh." But what was voted?

Forever truly God, He became also truly man, Jesus the Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God. (GC Bulletin #9, p. 23)

Though technically correct, the question is left open - Did Jesus take the nature of Adam before the Fall, or the nature of Adam after the Fal1? - Adam was truly man both prior to and following the Fall. Thus the historic position of Adventism is glossed over, and Wilson's explanatory statement that no attempt was considered to alter our historic faith creates a credibility gap as to his own theological posture. However, it must be remembered that Neal C. Wilson placed his "nihil obstat" on the book, Movement of Destiny, which clearly taught that Christ took the nature of Adam prior to the Fall. (See Movement of Destiny, pp. 15-16, 497.)(Underscored emphasis added.)

No quotation from the next article can do justice to Grotheer's clear exposition on the book Questions on Doctrine and its impact on the fundamental doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Please read the entire article. The following is confined to the closing paragraphs of the document: 

THE HERESY OF THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST EVANGELICAL CONFERENCES CONFIRMED BY THE ACTION OF THE 1980 GENERAL CONFERENCE SESSION

We were warned in regard to the Alpha apostasy at the turn of the century that -

The track of truth lies close beside the track of error, and both tracks may seem to be one to minds which are not worked by the Holy Spirit, and which, therefore, are not quick to discern the differ­ence between truth and error. (Special Testimonies, Series B, No. 2, p. 52)

What was true concerning the Alpha Apostasy is equally, if not more so, true con­cerning the Omega Apostasy. While the delegates to the 1980 Session sought to avoid the use of the words - "completed atonement" - in referring to the sacrifice on the Cross, and deleted from the Statement given to them at the beginning of the session, the phrase - "This act of atonement" [WWN (XIII-10), p. 8] - they still accepted phraseology in another section which means the same thing as that which was deleted in a previous section. The cross is noted as "this perfect atonement" with its benefits merely made "available to the believers" through Christ's heavenly ministry.  Yet there are those who believe that a great victory was obtained in Dallas, Texas, simply because some not so subtle heresies were deleted from the recommended Statement issued at the 1979. Thus is confirmed as declared in Questions on Doc­trine, that Christ returned to heaven "not with the hope of obtaining something for us," for "He had already obtained it for us on the cross." Annual Council. But instead of restoring the historic faith which had been committed to our trust, the guardians of the spiritual interests of the people, led by the president of the General Conference himself voted to confirm the sell-out perpetrated in the Seventh-day Adventist Evangelical Conferences of 1955-1956. How deceived can we become!

To top this deception, many are now rejoicing in what was voted in regard to Dr. Desmond Ford, thinking that this has now purified our faith, when in reality we confirmed at Dallas some of the very doctrine which Dr. Ford had merely carried to its ultimate conclusion. For if the atonement of Christ was once for all on the Cross, then is not Dr. Ford correct in maintaining that there is no heavenly significance to 1844? Why condemn him for teaching what was voted as "the voice of God" in Dallas. So long as anyone subscribes to the apostasy of Dallas, they are as much a partaker in heresy as Dr. Ford is. They should join forces with him. This includes the Editor of the Adventist Review who believed in 1968 ­and to my knowledge I have not read a confession of repentance, nor a retraction - that Questions on Doctrine sets forth our fundamental beliefs "more clearly than any other publication that has been issued from our presses in many a year." So he believes with Ford that Christ obtains nothing for us in the Sanctuary, for He obtained it all on the Cross. It is true that one can find from his pen as Editor attacks on Ford's position - this only compounds the deception. It is simply the blind leading the blind. May God help us to awaken to actually what has taken place. The Omega of apostasy has come to full fruition. What was begun in 1955-1956 has now been officially adopted in 1980.(Underscored emphasis added.)

The following issue of "Watchman, What of the Night" is also best read as a whole. The quotations that follow are taken from three sections:

"WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?" AUGUST, 1999
HISTORICAL DATA REVIEWED -3-

The initiative which resulted in the 1980 Statements of Belief was made in 1965. Bernard E. Seton, secretary of the Southern European Division wrote from Berne, Switzerland, to the General Conference administration expressing his conviction that the 1931 Statement "needed revision both from a theological and literary point of view." The response was negative, and temporarily dropped.

In 1965, as a result of contacts made, at Vatican II, an informal meeting consisting of Seventh-day Adventists, and representatives of the World Council of Churches (WCC) was held. Those chosen to attend were selected by the organizers of this informal meeting; for the Adventists by Dr. B. B. Beach, and for the WCC by Dr. Lukas Vischer, of the Faith and Order, Secretariat. In reporting this event in So Much in Common, Beach indicates that subsequent meetings held annually were authorized by the three European Divisions of the Church (p. 98). While the indications suggest that Bernard Seton was one of the Adventists chosen by Beach for the first informal meeting, attempts to verify this fact have been met with silence, neither affirmation nor denial. The question then arises, why would Bernard Seton make the initial request for a revision of the 1931 Statement the same year of the informal meeting?

Whether there was a record kept of what was discussed at the first informal meeting, is not known; but it would be obvious that the purpose and objectives of the WCC would be included in any initial discussion as well as what Adventists believe. The first problem arises from the requirement stated in the WCC Constitution. Eligibility for membership is based on the individual church's expression of "agreement of the basis upon which the Council is founded." This basis reads:

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (ibid., p. 40)

The 1931 Statement of the Adventist Church does not state the doctrine of the Trinity in the terms of the Nicene Creed as is required by the WCC Constitution. Was this a factor in Seton's request? This we do not know, but events which followed do verify that the subject of Adventist membership in the WCC was at the top of the list of' items discussed and that the Adventist conferees did not negate this possibility. Neither did Seton forget his original suggestion made in 1965.

In 1970, he was elected as an associate secretary of the General Conference and as one of his duties served as secretary of the Church Manual Committee. In this capacity, he pressed for revisions in the Church Manual. Due to an action taken at the 1946 General Conference which stated that no change could be made in the Church Manual except as would be authorized by the General Conference in session, there was "Official reluctance to change a jot or tittle." Because of this attitude, Seton refrained from including the 1931 Statement in the initial suggested editorial changes.

After the 1975 General Conference session, Seton believed "the time seemed ripe for attention to the Fundamentals," however he found that the Fundamentals were "surrounded with an aura of untouchability," and that he was the only one on the committee "convinced of the need for revision." He prepared a one-man revision of the 1931 Statement, and presented it to the chairman who in turn appointed a subcommittee to prepare a revision. The outcome was that in 1978 an ad hoc committee was given the responsibility of preparing a statement for presentation to the 1980 GC Session with "minimal revisions in deference to the generally held idea of the sacrosanct nature of the Manual and the sensitivities of the church membership respecting any change that might appear to touch the. doctrinal beliefs of the Church."

When in mid-1979 a preliminary draft was completed Seton suggested that this document be sent to the theologians at Andrews University for their input, rather than wait for their challenges at the 1980 Session. This was done, and the result was that the University prepared its own set of Fundamentals which were presented to the 1979 Annual Council for adoption at the 1980 General Conference.

A word might be of interest in regard to the draft of the ad hoc committee. It was sent under a cover letter by the chairman to the General Conference officers, division presidents and union presidents of North America. The chairman noted "that formal and substantive changes in the 1931 statement had been made." The substantive changes, besides the added sections, was that "the sections on the Trinity had been expanded from two paragraphs to four." This enlargement continued in all subsequent revisions and modifications of the document as well as the final draft as voted at Dallas. And in all the prepared Statements available to us, the Statement as approved by the 1979 Annual Council, the revised Statement given to the delegates upon their arrival it the Dallas Session, and the affirmed Statement voted at the Session all contained the definition of the Trinity as stated in the WCC Constitution in contrast to the 1931 Statement, in other words, the Nicene Creed.

Our knowledge of how the ad hoc committee's Statement read on various concepts is limited to evaluations of this Statement in a secondary source (Spectrum, Vol. 1, # 1, pp. 3, 4), as we do not have a copy of the original in the Library. One point noted in Spectrum would lead us to believe that the Nicene Creed was being closely followed in the section on the Trinity. Speaking of Jesus, it stated that He was born of the Virgin Mary," capital "V" the same as in the Nicene Creed. (Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, p. 59) . . .

Additions and Omissions

The 1872 Statement and the Statement which had been published in the Yearbook till 1914 both defined the papacy as "the man of sin." (#13). The 1980 Statement of Fundamental Belief as well as the 1931 Statement omitted any reference to the papacy. Yet all the Statements set forth the necessity of the proclamation of the messages "symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14." It is impossible to proclaim the Third Angel's Message without reference to the papacy as "the man of sin."

Further, the 1980 Statement added a paragraph not found in any previous statement on "The Church." Not only does the Constitution of the World Council of Churches [state] a "belief" in God according to the Nicene Creed, but also an acknowledgment of the WCC as "a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures." (So Much in Common, p. 40) Dutifully, this concept was written into the 1980 Statement declaring " the church is a community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour." (#11). In #12 a distinction is made between this "universal church" and a remnant whose commission was to proclaim the Three Angel's Messages of Revelation 14. What does the Second Angel's Message mean? Is not Babylon composed of those who make profession of Christ, and yet have rejected the First Angel's Message? Is this position which made Adventism unique no longer valid?

First, we compromise in the 1955-1956 conferences with the Evangelicals our doctrinal positions on the Incarnation and the Atonement, and modify our concept of the "remnant" and redefine, "Babylon" so as to exclude the Evangelicals. (See Questions on Doctrine, pp. 188-189, 201) Then as a result of conversations with representatives of the World Council of Churches we adopt an ancient creed, and enlarge our concept of 'church" so as to permit a working fellowship with "the man of sin." This may be perceived as an unwarranted conclusion, but consider the following data:

In a section of the joint publication, So Much in Common, B. B. Beach has listed the results obtained from the contacts with the WCC. He wrote:

Since 1968 the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has been actively represented at the annual meeting of "Secretaries of the World Confessional Families." This participation is largely the result of the WCC/SDA Conversations and contacts made at the time of the Uppsala Assembly [of the WCC]. (p. 100)

Actually the Secretaries of these various church bodies have been meeting together annually since 1957. Though not directly connected with the WCC, they are recognized as a vital link of the ecumenical chain. In the World Council of Churches Yearbook 1995, the, various communions whose secretaries meet together annually are given. In this listing is not only the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (p. 54), but also the, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity of the Roman Catholic Church (p. 55). The Adventist Church sits in council with "the man of sin"! It was through this organizational means that B. B. Beach was able to place in the hands of Pope Paul VI, the gold medallion, as a symbol of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

We could continue to contrast the Statements of Belief from 1872 to 1980, but sufficient evidence has been given above to establish the fact that the Second Angel's Message is no longer believed in practice even though lip service is given to it. By setting aside its significance, the church is not prepared to give the Third Angel's Message which in its simple essence of truth, pure and unadulterated, will declare that an image has been formed to "the man of sin." God knows this, and this is why He acted in permitting the prophecy of Jesus in Luke, 21:24 to be fulfilled. That is what Luke 21:24 is all about.

Again, there is a "parallel" between ancient literal Israel, and modern spiritual Israel. "The, Jewish people cherished the idea that they were the favorites of heaven, and that they were always to be exalted as the church of God. They were the children of Abraham, they declared, and so firm did the foundation of their prosperity seem to them that they defied earth and heaven to dispossess them of their rights. But by lives of unfaithfulness they were preparing for the condemnation of heaven and for separation from God." (Christ's Object Lessons, p. 294) . . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

The following issue of "Watchman, What of the Night" points to the evidence that we are witnessing the Omega of Apostasy as defined by Ellen G, White:

CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION

Results of Omega Apostacy Now Appearing

The last chapter of Special Testimonies, Series 8, No. 2, entitled, "The Foundation of Our Faith," reveals what would have been, had the Alpha of apostasy been accepted. (pp. 54-55) It is also interesting to observe that the advocates of the apostasy referred to their objectives as a "reformation." The messenger of the Lord asked - "Were this reformation to take place, what would result?" Then follows a list of ten things that would occur:

1) "The principles of truth that God in His wisdom has given to the remnant church, would be discarded."

2) "Our religion would be changed."

3) "The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last fifty years would be accounted as error."

4) "A new organization would be established."

5) "Books of a new order would be written."

6) "A system of intellectual philosophy would be introduced."

7) "The Sabbath, of course, would be lightly regarded, as also the God who created it."

8) "Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of the new movement."

9) "The leaders would teach that virtue is better than vice."

10) "They would place their dependence on human power."

These things did not take place in the time of the Alpha, however, it is written - "The omega will follow, and will be receivedby those who are not willing to heed the warning God has given." (Ibid., p.50) Thus the very things which the enemy sought to introduce in the time of the Alpha at the turn of the Century will be realized in the Omega. The evidence is clear that with the introduction of "books of a new order" following the Seventh-day Adventist - Evangelical Conferences in 1955-1956 (See Facsimile Documents on this Conference), the Omega of Apostasy settled down upon the Church. (For full presentation of this evidence obtain Cassette Tape - "The Alpha & Omega of Apostasy.") Now we are beginning to see the fulfillment of the "bottom line" resulting from the acceptance of this apostasy - "Their foundation would be built on the sand, and storm and tempest would sweep away the structure." (Spec. Test. Series a, No. 2, p. 55)

There is another descriptive prophecy in connection with the time when "Jesus is about to leave the mercy seat of the heavenly sanctuary, to put on garments of vengeance,. . ." (5T:207-208) Faithful ones were sighing and crying over the departure from the historic faith which took place as a result of the compromises made with the Evangelicals, and the fraternizing with leaders in the World Council of Churches. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing provides overwhelming evidence that the omega of apostasy came into full manifestation in 1980.

CLOSE OF PROBATION FOR ALL CORPORATE BODIES OF THE WORLD

The facts of the omega of apostasy are indisputable, and are directly linked to the fulfillment of a great prophecy of Jesus Christ Himself - a prophecy pinpointing the termination of the commission to preach the gospel to all the world and the close of probation for all corporate bodies, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church:

"Jerusalem in Prophecy"

In 1947, the Church took the position that it was absolutely impossible for a Jewish state to ever be re-established in Palestine. One year later, in 1948, the Jewish state became a reality.

In 1948, 1 became pastor of the First church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Sabbath following the establishment of the Jewish state, I prepared a sermon to shore up confidence in the church's position. I told the congregation - "Don't get too disturbed. Do not become overly alarmed. There are still more Jews in New York City than can possibly get settled in the small area of Palestine." I had no other answer. What was I to say? In other words, as a result of then current events, it became obvious that we as a Church were fallible in our prophetic interpretations, and that there needed to be some re-thinking. By 1952, the Church returned to a position as had been set forth by James Edson White, and faced up to the

Page 2

reality of the prophecy Jesus had given in Luke 21:24 - "... and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." First, in considering this prophecy of Jesus, one must recognize what Jesus did not say. He did not tie this prophecy to the time of the restoration of the Jewish State. Therefore, in 1948, when Israel again became a nation, this event in and of itself was not a fulfillment of prophecy. Jesus did not talk about a Jewish state, nor Palestine, but a city - "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." Further, Jesus did not associate this prophecy with the restoration of the temple or its services. A few hours prior to His giving this prophecy to the disciples, He told the Jewish leadership as He left the temple for the last time - "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." (Matt. 23:38) This prophecy was tied solely to the control and government of just one city, and that city was Jerusalem! In 1952, the Church conducted a world-wide Bible Conference. It was held in the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church. Elder Arthur Maxwell, then editor of the Signs of the Times, presented a paper on "The Imminence of Christ's Second Coming," in which he directed the attention of the ministry of the Church to Jesus' prophecy in Luke 21:24. He said:

The recent dramatic restoration of the nation of Israel has focused the attention of mankind once more on Palestine. Many Christians have mistakenly permitted themselves to believe that the return of thousands of unconverted Jews to their native land is in fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not realizing that, since the death of the Son of God on Calvary, there is no salvation, nor any eternal homeland, except for those who believe in Him and accept His sacrifice. However, there is one prophecy concerning Palestine that we should all be watching with special care. Said Jesus, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." (Luke 21:24). (Our Firm Foundation, II, p. 230)

The ministers of the Church from around the world were directed to this neglected prophecy of Jesus by Maxwell. Then he observed that a principle God applied to the Amorites might well apply in this instance, only on a wider scale. He stated:

Centuries ago Israel was not permitted to enter Palestine for a certain time because "the iniquity of the Amorites" was "not yet full" (Gen. 15:16); that is, not until the probationary time allotted to the Amorites had run out. It may well be that the same principle applies today, on a wider scale. If so, then Jerusalem is to remain trodden down by Gentiles till the probationary time of all Gentiles has run out. If this be correct, how much hinges upon the fate of this ancient city and the power that occupies it! (Ibid., pp. 230-231)

Page 3

As noted above, in taking this position, Maxwell reverted back to the position taken by James Edson White in his book - The Coming King. White wrote:

We also read that "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." (Luke 21:24). Jerusalem has never again come into the possession of the Jews and will not until "the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." This will be when the work of the gospel is finished. (1898 ed., p. 98)

Up until 1947, in our evangelistic publications, we taught that there would never be again a Jewish State. Then in 1948, we were shocked into reality because a Jewish State - Israel - did come into existence short of Jerusalem. Maxwell at the 1952 Bible Conference said that "as by an unseen hand" the Jewish forces were "mysteriously ... held back from achieving this most cherished goal" of retaking Jerusalem. Then he asked, "What could be the reason?" and answered his own question - "Only that the times of the Gentiles are not yet fulfilled." That was In 1952.

Now we are faced with certain other realities with which we must be concerned. In 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israeli military forces took Jerusalem, thus restoring to Jewish control the city. However, the Capital of the State of Israel remained in Tel Aviv. Then in 1980, the entire Jewish government - The Supreme Court, the Knesset, the office of both the President and Prime Minister - was moved to Jerusalem. The prohpecy of Jesus had met its complete fulfillment. And yet, here we are still in time. Again, it is obvious that this prophetic interpretation has failed us. How are we to relate to this fulfilled prophecy? Ignore it? We dare not - it was a prophecy Jesus gave!

You ask, why two dates? In 1967, Jerusalem was captured but not until 13 years later in 1980 was the government moved to Jerusalem, thus occupying the city and bringing it once more under full control of the State of Israel. Let us consider this question.

Luke, in both his Gospel and the book of Acts, uses twenty times the word translated, "until" (acri). But three different times, he combined with the preposition a relative, making it an idiomatic expression - achri hou (acri 'ou). One of these times was in Luke 21:24. The other two times are in the book of Acts. It is the last use in Acts which helps us to understand best the meaning of this idiomatic expression.

Take your Bible and turn to Acts 27. Paul, as a prisoner,

Page 4

was on his way to Rome. The ship in the midst of storm was in trouble. All aboard had fasted for fourteen days. Then the record reads - "and while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take food." (ver. 33 KJV) The word, "While" is a translation of the words, achri hou. What does it mean -"while the day was coming on"? This morning as I left the library to go home for breakfast, in the east were the first glimmers of light. In a brief period of time, the sun arose above the horizon and all the shades of night disappeared. The day was coming on. To describe that brief but definite span of time, Luke used the idiomatic Greek expression - achri hou. The "times of the Gentiles" ended in a brief period of time marked by an event in the history of Jerusalem both at its beginning in 1967, and its ending in 1980.

You may now ask another question: "Are we not introducing something new in prophetic interpretation which is without precedent?" No! Let me give you an illustration. In 533 A.D., Justinian issued a decree establishing the Bishop of Rome the supreme ruler in the West. However, it was not until 538 A.D., that Belisarius, Justinian's general, with force of arms put into effect the decree. We begin the prophecy of the 1260 years not with 533, but with 538. "The times of the Gentiles" closes not with 1967, but with 1980, although the event in 1967 alerted us to what was about to take place had we had eyes to see and ears to hear. . .

In the Review & Herald (Nov. 22,1892) Ellen G. White had written:

Page 5

The time of test is just upon us, for the loud cry of the third ahgel has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ, the sin-pardoning Redeemer. This is the beginning of the light of the angel whose glory shall fill the whole earth.

Why was "The time of test ... just upon us"? In August of 1892, a National Sunday Law had been attached as a rider to an appropriation bill and signed into law by President Harrison. It was a period of pronounced Sunday law agitation. In the closing years of the previous decade, Ellen White had noted a National Sunday Law as a sign for God's people. (Keep in mind "time and place.") Now I ask you a further question. Can you show me a single reference in the Writings - and I have asked many; I cannot find it - that after 1901, Ellen White ever referred to a National Sunday Law as a "sign" for God's people? Three weeks later, she did write about the "false Sabbath" being "enforced by an oppressive law" but does not note it as a "National Sunday Law," but as an event to occur "after the truth has been proclaimed as a witness to all nations." (R&H, Dec. 13, 1892) Something went wrong, which caused the warning that "we may have to remain here ... many more years."

However, in the very year that this warning was given - 1901 - Ellen White directed attention to another "sign" by which we would know the end was indeed "upon us." She wrote:

In the twenty-first chapter of Luke, Christ foretold what was to come upon Jerusalem, and with it He connected the scenes which were to take place in the historyof this world just prior to the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Letter 20, 1901; Counsels to Writers, pp. 23-24)

I ask you - In 1901, when Ellen White indicated that "we may have to remain here ... many more years" with what events had she that very year connected the end? A National Sunday Law? No! She connected it with events in Jerusalem and said study Luke 21. Now what is in Luke 21, that one does not find in Mark 13 or Matthew 24? Only one thing - "And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." This event would signal "the scenes which were to take place just prior to the coming of the Son of man" the second time. What then does the fulfillment of Luke 21:24 in 1980 tell us, if anything? It shouts loud and clear that we have reached the end of time. We are at the very end of human history as we know it today. We stand at the very border of the eternal kingdom and we need to recognize that fact. . .

The parallel between the fulfillment of the times of the

Page 12

nations (Gentiles) and our own ch urch history is remarkable and dare not be overlooked. We need to recognize that we cannot divorce ourselves from the fact that the Three Angels' Messages which was committed to the Church in sacred trust involves the nations. The very prelude to these messages reads:

And I saw. another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, ... (Rev. 14:6)

When the times allotted to the nations is fulfilled, the giving of "'the everlasting gospel" to the nations is also affected. The two cannot be divorced. Furthermore, we are told:

In the balances of the sanctuary the Seventh-day Adventist church is to be weighed. She will be judged by the privileges and advantages that she has had. If her spiritual experience does not correspond to the advantages that Christ, at infinite cost, has bestowed on her, if the blessings conferred have not qualified her to do the work entrusted to her, on her will be pronounced the sentence, "Found wanting." By the light bestowed, the opportunities given, will she be judged. (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 8, p. 247)

As Ellen G. White was writing this intent of God following the 1903 General Conference Session, she noted the only condition whereby the judgment of "found wanting" could be averted. It reads:

Unless the church, which is now [1903] being leavened with her own backsliding, shall repent and be converted, she will eat the fruit of her own doing, until she shall abhor herself. (Ibid., p. 250)

This is not a call to individual repentance but to corporate repentance. In the light radiating from the agenda of the sanctuary as revealed in the type with the fulfilling of the time of the Gentiles - nations as corporate bodies - we should now understand the weighing of the Church in the same balance, and the decision that was rendered. Follow closely now the parallel as diagramed. (p. 14-15)

In the lefthand column, we have the significant dates in the history of the State of Israel. Let us review them. In 1948, the State of Israel was re-established. The event itself did not fulfill any prophecy. However, coming events were casting their shadows before. Jerusalem still remained in Jordanian control, trodden down of the Gentiles.

In 1967, in the Six-Day War (June 5-10), Jerusalem was captured, and a government under the control of Israel was set up. It was the beginning of the end. It constituted a warning to the Church of the corporate judgment she faced. In 1980, the entire government of Israel, was

Page 13

transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The prophecy of Jesus had reached complete fulfillment. This was done on July 30 of 1980.

In the righthand column is a review of our own Church historyin parallel with the events which fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus. ln 1949, Bible Readings for the Home Circle was revised. In the study on "The Sinless Life," the paragraphs defining the human nature Christ took upon Himself were altered. ln 1950, Elders Wieland and Short presented a restudy of 1888 to the leadership of the Church and called for a "denominational repentance" - corporate repentance. While these young men did not perceive the connection of the message of 1888 with the General Conference session in 1903 - and still do not understand it - they did answer the call of God in giving to the Church, the only remedy which could avert it being "spewed out" by Christ. (See Rev. 3:16)

In 1952, a Bible Conference in the Sligo Park Church called the ministry's attention to the prophecy of Jesus in Luke 21:24, noting "that we should all be watching [it] with special care." Then came the SDA-Evangelical Conferences of 1955-56, in which we compromised our basic teachings on the incarnation and the atonement. Instead of repentance, we were continuing to betray the sacred trust making it virtually impossible to give the "ever-lasting gospel" message in its purity.

Then came the fateful year - 1967. In the very month that Jerusalem was retaken, a committee appointed by the General Conference rejected Wieland and Short's call for denominational repentance for the third and final time. In July, Dr. Earle Hilgert then of Andrews University took his place as a voted member on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. In October, the Annual Council gave its approval to the Association of Adventist Forums from whose podium at PUC in 1979, Dr. Desmond Ford was to attack the sanctuary doctrine of the Church. Between 1967 and 1980, in 1977, Dr. B. B. Beach would place in the hands of the reigning pope, Paul VI, "a gold-covered symbol of the Seventh-day Adventist Church." (Review & Herald, August 11, 1977, p. 23)

Then came 1980. At the General Conference session in Dallas, Texas, the Church voted a new Statement of Beliefs, and included in them language from the Constitution of the World Council of Churches, and confirmed the compromises on the atonement and incarnation made at the SDA-Evangelical Conferences of 1955-56. Within three months God permitted Jesus' prophecy to reach its complete fulfillment. Corporate judgment was then completed in the Heavenly Sanctuary.

Page 14

(Underscored emphasis added to text.)

All of the sacred Truths of the Bible, and specifically the sacred Truth of the Three Angels' Messages, were committed to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and no other. The Church could draw from historical Protestantism and maintain the advancing Truth with increasing light from the throne of God; but the Great Advent Movement had nothing to learn from Apostate Protestantism. There was bound to be a negative reaction from our offended God. That dreadful reaction came came as the close of probation for all corporate bodies , including the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

NEW IDENTITY OF "ONCE FAITHFUL CITY" WHICH HAS REPUDIATED THE GOSPEL OF ADVENTISM

The following "Watchman, What of the Night?" artictle exposes the new identity of the "Remnant Church" as envisioned by the corporate leadership. It is a portrait of complete intermingling with a crowded world of rebellion, churches and nations alike:

AN EVANGELICAL ADVENTIST

In the North American edition of the Adventist Review for April, 1997, the center spread was devoted to an article by the General Conference President, Robert S. Folkenberg. It was given the title, "Will the Real Evangelical Please Stand Up." Whether Folkenberg chose the title, or whether it was an editorial choice, the article closed with the summation, "That's the essence of true 'evangelical Adventism.' It is the only kind there ought to be." (p.19)

Apart from the "Trade Mark" controversy over the use of the name, Seventh-day Adventist, with its legal ramifications, the article raises the question as to the true designation of an inheritor of the faith growing out of the 1844 Movement. The fact is that there was no such thing as an "Evangelical Adventist" prior to the 1955-56 conferences between Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders and the evangelicals, Barnhouse and Martin, which compromised basic doctrines of the Church. The fact also remains that since those infamous dialogues, there has been continuous doctrinal turmoil in the Church resulting in multiple schisms. Beyond this, is also the fact that many of the schismatics, dissidents, or whatever name describes their action in relationship to the "mother" church, have chosen to refer to themselves as "historic" Adventists.

If the facts noted in the above paragraph are not confusing enough, the title given to Folkenberg's article notes the designation as "Evangelical Adventist," while Folkenberg writes - "evangelical Adventists" - as the designation used by those who see a tension between the gospel and Adventism. (p.17) There is a difference, but the difference is hard to define. There is no Evangelical Church organization as there is a Seventh-day Adventist Church. For example, Barnhouse was a Presbyterian pastor, while Martin was an ordained Baptist minister, yet both were "evangelicals," and in association with "evangelicals" of other church affiliations. Evangelicals profess to be teaching the "true gospel" and set certain concepts as basic, apart from which one is considered a cultist. The bottom line is that the term, "evangelical," involves doctrinal concepts. This brings us back to "square one," to the point where the major doctrinal changes resulting from the SDA-Evangelical Conferences fractured the community of Adventism.

The doctrinal compromises with the "Evangelicals" were published in the book, Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine [QonD]. Two primary teachings were involved: the Incarnation and the Atonement. On these two points, the new position, as stated in the book, read:

Although born in the flesh, He {Jesus} was nevertheless God, and was exempt from the inherited passions and pollutions that corrupt the natural descendants of Adam. (p.383)

Adventists do not hold any theory of a dual atonement. "Christ has redeemed us" ..."once for all." (p.390)

How glorious is the thought that the King, who occupies the throne, is also our representative at the court of heaven! This becomes all the more meaningful when we realize that Jesus our surety entered the "holy places," and appeared in the presence of God for us. But it was not with the hope of obtaining something for us at that time, or at some future time. No! He had already obtained it for us on the cross. And now as our High Priest, He ministers the virtues of His atoning sacrifice to us. (p. 381; [emphasis italicized here was underscored in the original])

A comment is in order before continuing the historical record. In regard to the new position on the Incarnation as stated in QonD, p.383, the word, "exempt," has theological connotations. This term is used in defining the Roman Catholic Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Referring to Mary, this dogma is explained - "She alone was exempt from the original taint [of sin]." (See James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, p. 171, 88th ed.) In other words, Mary was free from "the inherited passions and pollutions that corrupt the natural descendants of Adam." The "new theology" in Adventism presupposes a similar divine intervention in the birth of Jesus as the Roman Catholic Church presupposes for Mary. There is only a "generation gap" in the new Adventist theology.

As for "the theory of a dual atonement," the typical service of the sanctuary taught two atonements; one at the Altar of the Court (Lev. 4:35), and the second on the Day of Atonement (16:30). The "new" evangelical theology simply denies the second or final atonement, and teaches that all was finished on the cross. While Folkenberg gives lip-service to the sanctuary in his call for the true evangelical Adventist to stand up, he limits the final atonement to a mere repeat of the atonement of forgiveness. He calls this "a pure gospel message" and not "new theology teaching."

The alterations in Adventist theological teaching resultant from the compromises with the Evangelicals have never been repudiated. The 1980 Statement of Beliefs voted at Dallas, Texas, incorporated the major compromises as noted above with an added alteration as a "sop" to the Adventist "religious right." This added position had never appeared in any previous Statement of Beliefs.(Underscored emphasis added.)

In all of the historical facts exposed by Elder Grotheer can be seen the consequences of an astonishing policy: seeking the favor of men in place of loyal adherence to the sacred truths committed to the Church by the God of Heaven. It should come as no surprise to anyone that compromise of the Truth inevitably brings tragic consequences.

The Lord God gave us this assurance by His prophet Amos: "Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7.) Were this not so, His people would more easily be deceived by the wiles of Satan. Thus there were warnings by His Messenger Ellen G. White specific to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Testimony published in Selected Messages Book 1, Chapter 25, under the title "The Foundation of Our Faith" is particularly relevant to the ambitions of the Church in allying herself with the world missionary movement:

The Foundation of Our Faith

The enemy of souls has sought to bring in the supposition that a great reformation was to take place among Seventh-day Adventists, and that this reformation would consist in giving up the doctrines which stand as the pillars of our faith, and engaging in a process of reorganization. Were this reformation to take place, what would result?The principles of truth that God in His wisdom has given to the remnant church, would be discarded. Our religion would be changed. The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last fifty years would be accounted as error. A new organization would be established. Books of a new order would be written. A system of intellectual philosophy would be introduced. The founders of this system would go into the cities, and do a wonderful work. The Sabbath of course, would be lightly regarded, as also the God who created it. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of the new movement. The leaders would teach that virtue is better than vice, but God being removed, they would place their dependence on human power, which, without God, is worthless. Their foundation would be built on the sand, and storm and tempest would sweep away the structure. (1SM, 204.2)

Who has authority to begin such a movement? We have our Bibles. We have our experience, attested to by the miraculous working of the Holy Spirit. We have a truth that admits of no compromise. Shall we not repudiate everything that is not in harmony with this truth? (1SM, 205.1)(Underscored emphasis added.)

All of the details of this prophecy have been fulfilled! Men deceive themselves when they think that God will not be offended by the rejection of His Word. The leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church of necessity ignored warnings in the Bible generally, and particularly in the prophetic Writings of Ellen G. White which refer specifically to the Denomination. The rejection of such warnings is the epitome of rebellion. The inevitable result of such rejection was that the divine presence and glory departed from the corporate body of the Church.

A CHURCH DEVOID OF SPIRITUAL POWER SEEKS IN VAIN FOR GROWTH IN THE SPIRIT NOW DEPARTED

Bereft of the power of the of the Holy Spirit Who converted thousands on the one Day of Pentecost, the leaders sought in vain for spiritual power to increase the membership of the Church. Opening the doors of the Church to a mixed multitude was the ultimate choice. No longer was it seen as essential to provide baptismal candidates with a sound doctrinal foundation to stand the tests of faith that always follow. Thus a "numbers game" was devised. One recalls the worst example experienced: in a sermon by a Local Conference officer, he presented a mathematical formula by which church membership could be increased.

A specific date can be assigned to a "numbers game" plan which was conceived to increase the membership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church:

"Watchman, What of the Night?" March, 1991 (From paragraph titled "Geopolitics Within Seventh-day Adventism")

In the final issue of "The Christian CENTURY" for 1990 (December 19-26, pp. 1197-1203), the editors published an article on "Geopolitics Within Seventh-day Adventism." Written by Ronald Larson, a teacher in sociology at Queens College connected with the City University of New York, the main thrust of the analysis was to show the growing tension within Adventism between the home base in North America, and the growing membership in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific islands.

Lawson highlighted his analysis by noting that in 1890, 91% of the membership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church came from North America, but by 1989, only 12%. In a one man, one vote mentality, the home base is out voted. However, the North American Division supplies 97% of all the tithe received by the General Conference. Based on actual support of the Church, the voice of the constituency outside of North America would be but a whisper. But this is not the reality of the situation. The representatives of the two largest divisions, both Latin American, were the largest block on the 1990 General Conference nominating committee. While they could not of themselves topple Wilson, their power did influence the selection of a successor. Instead of the Spirit of God at work, it was power politics in the election process. . .

The present "numbers" game began in earnest at the 1950 General Conference in the election of W. H. Branson to the presidency. He called for the doubling of the Church membership in four years. At the 1952 Bible Conference, Branson declared:

We are engaged in an effort to double our church membership in a four-year period from January 1, 1950, to December 31, 1953. Some have reckoned such a goal to be preposterous. But is it? When the first Pentecost came the church doubled its members in one day. The reception of the righteousness of Christ by the church today will bring a second Pentecost. Revelation 18:1-3 will be fulfilled. Thousands will be converted in a day as the message of salvation through Christ swells to a loud and mighty cry. (Our Firm Foundation, Vol. II. p. 617)

Prior to this, Branson had rationalized that "the message of righteousness by faith given in the 1888 Conference has been repeated here" (meaning the 1952 Bible Conference) with much greater power than at the 1888 session because of the added light cast upon the subject in the Writings. (p. 616)

It is true that a review of the messages given at the 1952 Bible Conference contained the theory of the truth. One discordant note was Heppenstall's presentation. How much and what was edited from his presentation when it appeared in the two volume report of the Bible Conference would be a research paper in itself. It is a verified fact that a questionnaire sent to pastors and church leaders prior to the conference probing their belief in the nearness of Christ's return was deleted from another presentation. It revealed that "the blessed hope" was growing dim in the hearts of the church's ministers.

Two years prior to the Bible Conference Wieland and Short called for a "denominational repentance" as the answer to the Church's need for revival. It went unheeded; the Bible Conference was used as a facade to cover the rejection of the call to such a repentance. The substituted "numbers game" began in earnest. It has not ceased. But into this picture must be programmed several important factors.

Large scale evangelism was carried forward during the 1950s in the cities of America and overseas. Big name evangelists in Adventism mark the period. These men in the long series of meetings they held proclaimed the basic truths. The weak link was the preparation given those who accepted the message prior to their baptism. One of these evangelists with whom I worked actually accepted as a fact that 20% of those baptized would apostatize, but it was the total number baptized which counted. Gradually into this picture came the doctrinal apostasy resulting from the SDA-Evangelical Conferences of 1955-1956. The teaching of the sanctuary truth was muted and now practically abandoned. This same deemphasis marked the training of the ministerial students in the colleges and seminary. Enough decades have now passed so that very few people in the pew know what the truth committed to the Advent Movement really was. They know little or nothing of our church history, or what has taken place since 1950. The younger ministers due to their training cannot now preach "the faith once delivered unto the saints" - they don't know it!

Now we have apostasy accepted as orthodoxy; we have disunity unified under a central command system; and we have dissident voices mouthing every wind of doctrine. Yet the "numbers" game goes on. We try to shake the tree instead of hand-picking the fruit. As a result bruised fruit which soon turns rotten becomes a part of the boxes (churches) of fruit. Issues arise within the Church exactly like the issues the other churches of the world face because we have made converts after the manner of the world leaving in these new adherents to the Church, the same philosophies which they had in the churches from which they came. They are not converted. Instilled in those who aspire to be future ministers of the Church, are the same social agendas which the seminaries of the churches of the world teach their ministerial graduates. Instead of being in the world, but not of the world, we are both in the world and of the world.

If we would have taken the Bible and its message for this time, and would have modelled our social agenda around the counsels of the Writings, the picture today would have been different and the "geopolitics" within Adventism would not be as described in the article in "The Christian CENTURY". (Underscored emphasis added.)

The "numbers game" has induced a delusionary conviction that growth in Church membership after the doctrinal and organizational changes is a mark of approval by God. This study, Adventist Church Growth and Mission Since 1863: An Historical–Statistical Analysis, blithely ignores the apostasy. It defies logic to think that a Church in deep apostasy, doctrinally and organizationally, could by any stretch of the imagination still be the vessel chosen by God to preach the true Gospel to the world.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL APOSTASY IN THE HISTORY OF THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH 

For the Seventh-day Adventist unfamiliar with the Church's history, the organizational apostasy began during the lifetime of Ellen G. White:

WHERE IS THE AUTHORITY OF GOD INVESTED? IN THE GC?

The 1903 Session

The 1903 General Conference session convened in Oakland, California, March 27, with the least number of delegates present from the world field since 1893, and only slightly more than half the number present at the 1901 session in Battle Creek when the call for reorganization resulted in a new Constitution with the office of General Conference president eliminated. Near the close of the session the Committee on Plans and Constitution brought in two reports - a Majority and a Minority Report. The Majority Report called for a new Constitution which would restore the office of President. Elder P. T. Magan, one of three who signed the Minority Report which called for the preservation of the reformatory Constitution of 1901, stated during the floor discussion:

It may be stated there is nothing in this new constitution which is not abundantly safeguarded by the provisions of it; but I want to say to you that any man who has ever read Neander's History of the Christian Church, Mosheim's, or any other of the great church historians, - any man who has ever read those histories can come to no other conclusion but that the principles which are to be brought in through this proposed constitution, and in the way in which they are brought in, are the same principles, and introduced in precisely the same way, as they were hundreds of years ago when the Papacy was made.

Further: This whole house must recognize this, before we are through with this discussion, that the proposed new constitution, whatever improvements may be claimed for it, whatever advantages it may be stated that it contains, that, in principle, as far as the head of the work is concerned, it goes back precisely where we were before the reformatory steps of two years ago. (1903 GC Bulletin, p. 150)

Within eight days from the time of the adjournment of the 1903 Session in Oakland, Ellen G. White penned a prophetic warning to the Church, asking "Shall We Be Found Wanting?' She wrote:

In the balances of the sanctuary the Seventh-day Adventist church is to be weighed. She will be judged by the privileges and advantages that she has had. If her spiritual experience does not correspond to the advantages that Christ, at infinite cost, has bestowed on her, if the blessings conferred have not qualified her to do the work entrusted to her, on her will be pronounced the sentence, "Found wanting." By the light bestowed, the opportunities given, will she be judged. (Testimonies, Vol. 8, p. 247)

This statement is in the future tense. Those who would hold that the church was weighed in the balances in 1903 show their ignorance of the English language and totally disqualify themselves to speak on the subject of organization. There is no doubt expressed as to the fact that the Seventh-day Adventist church "is to be weighed" in the balances of the sanctuary. The "if" part of the prophecy concerns the actions of the church upon which the judgment will be rendered.

A Key Prophecy

This prophecy is the key to the present crisis and dilemma. If the church has not been weighed as yet in the balances of the sanctuary, or having been weighed found not to be wanting, then verily, the Church is the highest visible authority under God on earth for the Holy Spirit speaks through her in the actions which the church in General Sessions vote. However, if the church has been weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, and has been found to be "wanting," the whole picture changes. No longer is the Spirit of God speaking through the church; no longer are her actions clothed in the authority of Heaven.

In this prophecy, "the heavenly Teacher" is quoted as declaring:

"What stronger delusion can beguile the mind than the pretense that you are building on the right foundation, and that God accepts your works, when in reality you are working out many things according to worldly policy, and are sinning against Jehovah? 0, it is a great deception, a fascinating delusion, that takes possession of minds when men who have once known the truth, mistake the form of godliness for the spirit and power thereof; when they suppose that they are rich, and increased with goods, and in need of nothing, while in reality they are in need of everything." (Ibid., Pp. 249-250)

This divine "Instructor" asks a question - "How is the faithful city become an harlot? - and declares that should this condition prevail, the church becomes "a place whence the divine presence and glory have departed!" (Ibid., p. 250)

In the call to corporate repentance at the close of this prophetic testimony, the Messenger of the Lord indicated that "now" - in 1903 - the church was being "leavened with her own backsliding." (Ibid.) Magan had sounded the warning that should the new Constitution be adopted - and-it was - papalism would finally be set up within the Seventh-day Adventist church. This has happened, even though there has been an attempt to cover the fact with a troika executive concept carrying out the actions of an all supreme committee.

In another testimony given years before the 1903 Session, but timed to the period when "Jesus is about to leave the heavenly sanctuary" (V: 207), the same picture emerges. Using the symbol of Israel for the church, Ellen White wrote - "The glory of the Lord had departed from Israel; although many still continued the forms of religion, His power and presence were lacking." (V: 210)

Now we may give lip service to the messages which were sent to the church in 1888 which would have preserved the church from the present crisis; but to fail to recognize these testimonies which give God's intent and reaction under certain conditions is to put one's head in the sand and invite eternal condemnation. The message of warning calling the church to repentance was sounded in 1950. The reaction of the church to this warning is a known fact and cannot be disputed. Now at this late hour, we must determine God's response to the rejection of His call to repentance. Let it be clearly understood that any repentance after God has weighed the church in the balances of the sanctuary and found it to be wanting will only be a repentance comparable to the repentance of Esau and Judas.

The bottom line returns to the all important key question - "Has the church been weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, and was the decision of Heaven - 'Found wanting?'" All other questions pale into insignificance in the face of the gravity of this question. At stake is the destiny of "men, maidens, and little children." (V: 211) How can we blissfully go on saying that there is nothing negative about Laodicea, and that she will triumph, even if "the divine presence and glory have departed?" Should there be an apparent triumph, whose power would be thus manifest in a false "latter rain" experience? Whose messenger would such a messenger be? Is it not time to stop and reconsider where we are in the stream of time, and order our messages in harmony with the decisions of the Heavenly Sanctuary?

The True Voice of God on Earth

When Jesus walked among men on the earth, He was the voice of God on earth. Of Him, God declared - "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." (Matt. 17: 5) When Jesus was about to leave the disciples - those who would constitute His church on earth - He told them He would send "another Comforter," even the Spirit of truth who would abide with them to the end. (John 14:16; 16:13) This Holy Spirit is the voice of God on earth until withdrawn. He has and does speak through men and human organizations. The decision of the first General Conference session in Jerusalem was confirmed in the name of the Holy Spirit. The written decision read - "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us..." (Acts 15:28)

So long as a person and/or an organization remains true to the trust committed to them, the Holy Spirit abides with them, but should a person and/or an organization be found by the balances of the sanctuary to have betrayed that trust, the Spirit of God no longer uses that person and/or organization. It is declared to have been - "Found wanting." This is the issue today, and the only question to be answered at the present time - for all else hinges on the answer! If the answer is not determined beyond shadow of doubt, those on the wrong side of the answer will find themselves ultimately to have been false prophets, and the people who listen to them will be deceived with eternal consequences at stake. The true voice of God must be discerned and followed. This is not an issue over which we can play "tiddly-winks." To say that we believe what Ellen G. White had to say about the message and messengers God sent in 1888, yet refuse to take heed to what she wrote in prophecy following the 1903 General Conference session is to nullify our profession of belief in the gift of prophecy. (Underscored emphasis added.)

SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS FOLLOWS APOSTASY IN PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

The apostasy has advanced on a broad front. The departure from the fundamental doctrines of the Church has been documented in this paper. Some specifics of the apostasy in prophetic interpretation are worthy of note:

APOSTASY IN PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

THE ODYSSEY OF APOSTASY WITHIN THE ADVENTIST COMMUNITY HAS NOT ONLY INCLUDED DEVIATIONS IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, BUT ALSO FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN THE INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY ARE BEING ALTERED - Theological compromise surfaced in the book Questions on Doctrine - as a result of the Seventh-day Adventist-Evangelical Conferences in 1955-1956. In the documents now available, it is established that the Church's conferees compromised the faith given in trust to the Adventist Church in the areas of the atonement and the incarnation. It was stated to Barnhouse and Martin by these men "that they do not believe, as some of their earlier teachers taught, that Jesus' atoning work was not completed on Calvary but instead that He is carrying on a second ministering work since 1844." The idea "was totally repudiated," according to Barnhouse and Martin. These Evangelicals perceived that the Adventists now "believe that since His ascension Christ has been ministering the benefits of the atonement which He completed on Calvary." (Eternity, September, 1956) This assessment of what the Adventist leaders said, has never been denied. As for the teaching on the Incarnation, the book - Questions on Doctrine - specifically stated - "Although born in the flesh, [Jesus] was nevertheless God, and was exempt from the inherited passions and pollutions that corrupt the natural descendants of Adam." (p. 383, [exempt] emphasis supplied)

What is not generally known is that the book also contained a section - 'Questions on Prophecy." In this section, the Adventist conferees were solid on the basic principles of prophetic interpretation which underlie Reformation and Adventist understanding of the books of Daniel and Revelation. They showed clearly that Antiochus Epiphanes could not be "the little horn" of Daniel 8. They forcibly set forth the connection between Chapters 8 & 9 of Daniel. The year for a day concept as applied to the time prophecies was ably defended. One could find little, if any, to question in the defense, as found in the book, of our historic understanding of the principles of prophetic interpretation, or the prophecies discussed in the section.

However, when "the chickens" of the theological apostasy 'came home to roost" in Ford's attack on the sanctuary teaching, he also brought into the open a deviate concept by which the prophecies of God's word were to be interpreted. When given a leave to prepare a defense of his allegations, he produced a large manuscript, which was later published under the title - Daniel 8:14; The Day of Atonement, and the Investigative Judgment.

In this manuscript, Ford defined what he meant by his use of the "apotelesmatic principle." He wrote - "The apotelesmatic principle is a convenient term for referring to the concept that a particular prophecy in outline or as regards a dominant feature may have more than one application in time." (p. 302) Note, and keep in mind the phrase - "more than one application in time." What Ford is saying is simply that a given prophecy, for example, "the little horn" of Daniel 8 could have been fulfilled in Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C., and again this same prophecy could find another application in New Testament times in the Papacy, and again it could apply to a future antichrist to appear near the end of time. He even suggests that "Seventh-day Adventists are no strangers to the apotelesmatic principle though the term is not common in their literature and only rarely has it been used in connection with the prophecies of Daniel." (p. 303) Ford is suggesting that our use of the term - "dual application" - is synonymous with what he calls "the apotelesmatic principle."

We freely admit that some prophecies do have a "dual application" but they are general in nature. For example, Jesus told His disciples on the Mount of Olives that "nation shall arise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven." (Luke 21:10-11) This prophecy of Jesus could have multiple applications; but it is a general prophecy. The same night Jesus also informed the disciples that Jerusalem would be "compassed with armies." By this they would "then know that the desolation thereof was nigh." (21:20) This is a specific prophecy, and finds only one fulfillment in all history. If it were to have a multiple application, how then would the ones for whom the prophecy was given, know when to do what Jesus instructed them to do when the event occurred?

Prior to the time of his leave from Pacific Union College, Ford had written a commentary on the book of Daniel which was published by the now closed Southern Publishing Association. This book - Daniel, with a foreword by F. F. Bruce of the University of Manchester, England - contains a chapter on "Contemporary Systems of Interpretation." Ford defines four systems. One, the Preteristic, views all the prophecies as having been fulfilled prior to, or soon after the beginnings of the Christian era. It was developed by the Jesuit Alcazar as part of the Catholic Counter Reformation. The second, Futuristic, developed also by a Jesuit, Ribera, from the writings of the Church Fathers, sought to project most, if not all prophecy as being fulfilled at some distant date beyond "the noon day of the Papacy." This, too, was a part of the Counter Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church. This view - the Futuristic - has become basic in apostate Protestantism. The other major system is known as Historicism which teaches that history is but the response to the voice of prophecy. This system was used during the great Protestant Reformation, and is the basis for the understanding of prophecy in the Advent Movement.

Ford's comments on three of these major systems of interpretation are most revealing. He wrote: "It must be said that each of the systems is right in what it affirms and wrong in what it denies." (p. 68, emphasis his) After explaining the reason for his emphasis, he concludes - "If the apotelesmatic principle were to be widely understood, some differences between the systems would be automatically resolved." (p. 69) This is simply suggesting that by the adoption of his so-called "principle" there could be worked out a compromise between Jesuitical interpretations of prophecy and the historical understanding applied to the prophecies during the Protestant Reformation. The bottom line is an attempt to adulterate the historic Advent faith which was built upon the prophecies of God's word by which the events of history were seen as the unfolding of the scroll of prophecy. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The Seventh-day Adventist leaders in conference with the Evangelicals opened the door to repudiation of the very foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Desmond Ford walked right through it, and in the process "brought into the open a deviate concept by which the prophecies of God's word were to be interpreted." By this means he was used by the enemy of Truth to deprive God's people of of the light essential to their protection from the deceptions of Satan. A thick cloud of darkness has descended on the Seventh-day Adventist Church, obscuring Truths essential for these end times. The Church is now far fallen away from the Great 'Second Advent Movement.

Those who should have been the spiritual guides of God's remnant people, solidly grounded in the Bible, have become blind and deluded. Compromise with the Evangelicals was followed by the Ford heresy, and repudiation of the prophetic foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination, as demonstrated by the activities of Ganoune Diop and his associates in apostasy:

"Contemporary" Adventism

From "Contemporary" to "Modern"

The changing picture now takes on another hue and "contemporary" Adventism emerges into "modern" Adventism with a de-emphasis. As noted in the "Introduction" to Questions on Doctrine, the book not only answered questions on theology, but also discussed "prophetic interpretation." (See p. 1, par.5) In this latter area, the book maintained the old fundamental Adventist teaching regarding the papacy. It unequivocally declared that papal Rome "trampled and desecrated the provisions of God's sanctuary in heaven, by taking away knowledge of, and dependence upon Christ's 'daily,' or continual, Ministry as High Priest in the heavenly sanctuary. ... And it has imposed the authority of the visible pope in place of Christ, who guides and directs His church by His own designated vicegerent or representative, the Holy Spirit." (pp. 257, 258)

The little horn of Daniel is clearly identified as a prophetic symbol of the Papacy (p. 334), and the "exceeding great" horn of Daniel 8 is set forth as embracing both pagan and papal Rome. (p. 337) An excellent Scriptural defense is made against the identification of the horn of Daniel 8 as Antiochus Epiphanes. Over all, the prophetic interpretations involving sections of the book of Daniel that are discussed in the book - Questions on Doctrine - reflect sound and fundamental Adventist teaching. But today resulting from the confrontation between Adventist dissidents and spokesmen for the Church at the General Conference session in Indianapolis, a new position has been staked out. Summarizing the statements of the Church's news director, Herbert Ford, The Indianapolis Star reported that "though Adventist officials concede the history of the denomination has an anti-Catholic bent, they said the modern church is trying to move away from that stance." (July 14, 1990, Sec. B, p. 1) How has this happened? To answer this question is the main thrust of this issue of the Commentary.

There are two streams in our recent history which are meeting today in one great river, and both streams started from the same source - Vatican II Council of the Roman Catholic Church. One could be called the Maxwell Creek and the other dubbed the Beach Creek.

Elder Arthur S. Maxwell, then editor of the Signs, attended Vatican II as a member of the press corps. His reaction upon his return was taped and transcribed from a report he gave at Loma Linda, called "The Outstretched Hand." (Present Truth, 1968, #3) He was impressed by the Pope's opening speech at the final session - "It was a beautiful speech" - so much so that he suggested it could be given at a General Conference session, indicating "it might be better than some we've had." He asked - "Do you know what his subject was?" - and answered, "Love." He then quoted a paragraph and commented:

You know, the whole thing was a picture of the church loving humanity. Now, we've got to adapt our thinking a bit. There was no condemnation here of Protestants, no suggestion of a persecution of anybody, but love, unfeigned love for everybody - the separated brethren and people who don't belong and all people of all faiths and religions. Very, very wonderful change and a very, very significant change. (p.4)

At the close of the report, Maxwell summarized:

I do feel this very sincerely that we, as a people, must rethink our approach to these dear people. We must rethink our approach to our Roman Catholic friends. How can we reject an outstretched hand and be Christians? How can we say that they belong to antichrist when they reveal so many beautiful Christian attitudes? Does this shock you very much? I hope it does! I just hope that it shocks you, because we need to be shocked into a new, more friendly, more loving attitude towards these dear people. (p. 13)

Then he made a suggestion:

Now, there's one other thing. These things are going to make us think, they really are - this new situation. I think that a lot of our preachers are going to have to throw away a lot of old sermons. You and me - a lot of old sermons. I scrapped a lot of them already. You know what I think is going to happen? We cannot go on preaching about these dear people like we did thirty, forty, fifty years ago. We simply can't do it. The facts are all against us. How can we go and talk about them persecuting, burning the Bible when they're not doing anything of the sort? We've just got to get some new sermons, haven't we? Sure have! (p. 14)

This suggestion, his son has taken seriously. In the book - God Cares, Vol. I, Dr. Mervyn Maxwell, tones down the prophetic implications of the "little horn" of Daniel 7. Prefacing his identification of the "little horn," Maxwell sets forth what he calls four principles." and then summarizes as follows:

With these four principles in mind - (1) that there is more than one antichrist, and we are here trying to identify not "the" antichrist but only the little horn; (2) that in Daniel 7 God purposely presented a one-sided picture of Rome as a terrible beast in order to emphasize His displeasure at persecution; (3) that the New Testament, like the Old, foretold persecution for the church; and (4) that the New Testament also foretold serious apostasy within the church - we are ready to proceed with the eight identifying marks of the little horn. [These are given with verifying verses from Daniel 7. Then his comments continue.]

Only one entity fits all eight of these identifying marks 0 The Christian church which arose to religio-political prominence as the Roman Empire declined and which enjoyed a special influence over the minds of men between the sixth and the eighteenth centuries.

To call this Christian church the "Roman Catholic" Church can be misleading if Protestants assume that the Roman Catholic Church of, say, the sixth century was one big denomination among others, as it is today. Actually the Roman Catholic Church was virtually the Christian church in Western Europe for about a thousand years. Because of this early universality, both Protestants and Catholics may regard it as the embodiment of "our" Christian heritage, for better or for worse. (pp. 126-127; emphasis his)

It should be noted that Maxwell, Emeritus Professor of Church History at Andrews University, is moving through various circles of Adventism with his "accommodation philosophy." In 1988 during the 1888 Centennial Celebration, he was on the West Coast speaking at the John W. Osborn Lectureship Series, which was distinctly a "liberal" conclave. Maxwell was a key organizer of the Andrews University celebration which included Elder R. J. Wieland in the program - the only celebration to do so. Then a the pre-General Conference meeting of the Adventist Theological Society - which proclaims itself as the conservative voice in Adventist theology, Maxwell was among the speakers. So that you might understand the contrast between the West Coast meeting and the ATS meeting in Indianapolis, Dr. William G. Johnsson, Editor of the Adventist Review spoke at the West Coast meeting, but did not even attend the ATS meeting. Keep in mind also that it was Mervyn Maxwell who lauded Wieland and Short's compromised revised edition of 1888 Re-Examined in a Book Review appearing in the 1888 Centennial issue of the Ministry. (Feb. 1988, p. 63)

The second stream is much more devious, and the final flow of that branch has not as yet been fully felt. Its "headwaters" are revealed in So Much in Common. Dr. B. B. Beach, who co-authored the book telling of the contacts between Seventh-day Adventists and the World Council of Churches, begins the recital by stating : "Strange as it may seem, these yearly Consultations are an indirect by-product of Vatican II" (p.98) These Conversations began in an informal manner in 1965 - keep this date in mind - with Beach and the WCC member, presumably, Dr. Lukas Vischer, the other co-author of the book, So Much in Common, each selecting conferees. The Adventist participants were chosen by Beach from the three European Divisions of the Church. The 1965 Conversations started with a broad overview, but focused on the "beliefs and aims of the Seventh-day Adventist Church." (p. 99) The next year, the executive committees of the three Adventist European Divisions authorized and financed the expenses of each of their respective conferees. Each meeting was held part time at the WCC headquarters in Geneva, and the rest of the time at the nearby Seminaire Adventiste at Collonges, just across the border in France.

By 1967 - another key date - progress was sufficiently evident, that in the first Quarter's issue of Ecumenical Review, the official journal of the WCC, an article on Seventh-day Adventists appeared. This article contained 49 footnotes, 28 of which were from Questions on Doctrine. (See So Much in Common, pp. 57-68) Responding to this article, an Associate Editor of the Review & Herald suggested, that while the Adventist Church could not become an official member of the WCC, they would be willing, if invited, to be a part of the Faith and Order Commission. Within weeks, the Central Committee of the WCC appointed a Seventh-day Adventist theologian to the Commission. The first Adventist appointee was Dr. Earle Hilgert of Andrews University who has been followed by Dr. Raoul Dederen, also from Andrews, who is still serving [1990].

Another result of these Conversations with the WCC has been participation in the meetings of the Secretaries of the World confessional Families - churches who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Beach who has represented the Church at these meetings became secretary of the secretaries. It was in this capacity that he presented "a gold-covered symbol of the Seventh-day Adventist Church" into the hands of Pope Paul VI on May 18, 1977. (Review, August 11, 1977, p. 23) The trip to Rome, and the giving of the medallion was authorized by the executive committee of the Northern Europe-West Africa Division.

Two years prior to this, the first major revelation of the Church's changing attitude toward Catholicism came in a Brief submitted by the Church in the EEOC v. PPPA legal suit in Federal Court in California. A Reply Brief dated March 3, 1975, in a footnote, stated:

Although it is true that there was a period in the life of the Seventh-day Adventist Church when the denomination took a distinctly anti-Roman Catholic viewpoint, and the term "hierarchy" was used in a pejorative sense to refer to the papal form of church governance, the attitude on the Church's part was nothing more than a manifestation of widespread anti-popery among conservative protestant denominations in the early part of this century and the latter part of the last, and which has now been consigned to the historical trash heap so far as the Seventh-day Adventist Church is concerned. (Emphasis supplied)

Leaving the Church's "modern" position on Catholicism, we return to the "union" with Rome via the WCC. We need to carefully consider the significance of the appointment of an Adventist theologian to the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC. The same year, - 1967 - that an Adventist was appointed, the Central Committee of the WCC also appointed a Catholic theologian, and instituted a "Joint Working Group" between themselves and the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC, "a fellowship of churches," is striving to realize the goal of visible Church unity. Now note, what arm of the WCC is especially involved:

"To assist the churches towards this goal, the Faith And Order Commission of the World Council provides theological support for the efforts the churches are making towards unity. Indeed the Commission has been charged by the Council members to keep always before them their accepted obligation to work towards manifesting more visibly God's gift of Church unity. So it is that the stated aim of the Commission is 'to proclaim the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ and to call the churches to the goal of the visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and common life in Christ, in order that the world might believe.' (By-Laws)" (BEM, Faith and Order Paper No. 111, pp. vii-viii; emphasis supplied)

At this point a word of caution must be stated. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is not a member of the World Council of Churches, but it is in such close working relationship with the WCC that it is difficult to discern that it is not a member. The WCC publication, Directory of Christian Council, closes with a section, "Ecumenical Relationships." This reads in part:

In addition to the relationships with regional and national councils of churches mentioned above, the WCC is in working relationship with many Christian World Communions, including the ... General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, ... (p. 244)

One has only to read the Indianapolis General Conference session Bulletin to note the warm relationship existing between the Church and the WCC. Joan Campbell, director of the US office of the WCC, in addressing the delegates stated:

I bring you the warmest greetings from the World Council of Churches and from the member churches around the world. You are a beautiful group of people, young and old, many colors, many cultures, and yes, many languages. Your church is one of the few in which the mix of people is truly remarkable. When I was at your worship service yesterday, it seemed as though it was my own time of worship, as well as yours. And it said to me that there are many things that we hold in common - that there is, in fact, one Lord, one God and Father of us all. So as fellow Christians, like those Pentecost people in the earliest days, we look as one another and say that we hold all things in common. (Adventist Review, July 10, 1990, p. 6) (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing heavily documents the fallen state of the "modern" Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has been in a downward spiral since the Seventh-day Adventist-Evangelical Conferences, from which it has not recovered and no longer can recover. The light of prophecy which brought the Great Second Advent Movement into existence has gone out. The Church has joined the apostate Protestant churches in their fallen condition, and is no longer qualified to proclaim the Second Angel's message.

GOD SENT WARNINGS TO THE CHURCH SPECIFICALLY BY HIS APPOINTED MESSENGER

Ellen G. White made predictions wholly inconsistent with the notion that the Church is going through to the Kingdom. Two in particular clearly and unequivocally pointed to Divine judgment against "the Great Apostasy," and the execution of Divine judgment in the first of the Seven Last Plagues.

The Seventh-day Adventist backsliding into alliance with the Church of Rome is clearly visible in all of the history documented earlier in this document. As documented, tcompromise with the Evangelicals opened the floodgates. The Church leaders had disregarded what Ellen G. White predicted about Apostate Protestantism, which should have been a clear warning to keep their distance doctrinally and in prophetic interpretation:

In Testimonies for the Church 5:451-452 (1885) there is the following prophecy:

When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.

As the approach of the Roman armies was a sign to the disciples of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, so may this apostasy be a sign to us that the limit of God's forbearance is reached, that the measure of our nation's iniquity is full, and that the angel of mercy is about to take her flight, never to return. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The threefold union identified by Ellen G. White was: Protestantism, the Church of Rome, and spiritualism. Our attention tends to be focused on the first two. The question is how the third is manifested? This is worthy of close attention, because within it is hidden ensnarement by deadly spiritualism. This is clearly identified in the following:

The Great Controversy, Chapter 36: The Impending Conflict

The religious organizations of the day have refused to listen to unpopular truths plainly brought to view in the Scriptures, and in combating them they have adopted interpretations and taken positions which have sown broadcast the seeds of skepticism. Clinging to the papal error of natural immortality and man's consciousness in death, they have rejected the only defense against the delusions of spiritualism. . .

Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience. (Pp. 587-589) (Underscored emphasis added.)

Alert Seventh-day Adventists can point to manifestations of spiritualism in the modern Church. One is the unwitting acceptance of the immortality of the soul. The term "ensnarement" may not be quite accurate, because the dogma is clearly acknowledged by Rome to be the basis of her relentless campaign against abortion. Roman Catholic propaganda has covinced many Seventh-day Adventists. Their spiritual perceptions have been dulled by the events following the Seventh-day Adventist-Evangelical Conferences. This beginning of compromise by the leaders led the Church into joining the Protestants in reaching "over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power," and a multitude of lay members have followed. The gravity of these developments is captured by the following example from the history of ancient Israel: "The Jews perished as a nation because they were drawn from the truth of the Bible by their rulers, priests, and elders. Had they heeded the lessons of Jesus, and searched the Scriptures for themselves, they would not have perished...." (Messages to Young People, Chapter 82—Search the Scriptures for Yourself, P. 258)

With the aid of proxies such as Ben Carson, Rome has cleverly stirred up intense emotions in support of their "pro-life" movement. Rather than engaging in sound biblical exegesis, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has joined apostate Evangelicals in distorting the Scriptures. Given the Testimonies of Ellen G. White quoted above, the current official position of the Church on abortion is of grave significance, given the deadly consequences of assenting to the dogma of the immortality of the soul. Those consequences are stated above as follows: "Clinging to the papal error of natural immortality and man's consciousness in death, they have rejected the only defense against the delusions of spiritualism." (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is an alarming fact that most Seventh-day Adventist Independent Ministries have only partiallye perceived the circumstances surrounding the doctrinal and prophetic apostasy of the Church. Before it became manifest there were already critical elements of the Denomination's traditional theology that required re-examination by sound exegesis of the Bible. The Church had failed to heed the counsel of Ellen G. White:

WHAT IS IT? - BASIC ADVENTISM

What was to be the nature of Adventism which the Messenger of the Lord envisioned for the Church? This is not a trivia question, but a question fraught with eternal consequences. In 1890, Ellen White addressed this question. She wrote: We must not think, "Well, we have all the truth, we understand the main pillars of our faith, and we may rest on this knowledge." The truth is an advancing truth, and we must walk in the increasing light." (R&H, March 25, 1890.)

This vision of "advancing truth" and "increasing light" was an issue at the time of the 1888 message, and it has become an issue again as a result of the present crisis in Adventism. The resolution of this crisis cannot be found in the hue and cry of staying with Historic Adventism. This is deceptive, just as deceptive as staying in the apostasy that has engulfed the Church. It leaves those who embrace this concept in the same Laodicean blindness that they decry in the leadership of the Church itself. It is simply blind leaders calling others blind. Neither can see, thus they lead the poor deceived "sheep" into the pit of destruction. Tragically, many of the "sheep" would have it so. This is exactly the condition that the messenger of the Lord warned about a few years later in 1894. She wrote then: It is a fact that we have the truth, and we must hold with tenacity to the positions that cannot be shaken; but we must not look with suspicion upon any new light which God may send, and say, "Really, we cannot see that we need any more light than the old truth [historic Adventism] which we have hitherto received, and in which we are settled. While we hold to this position, the testimony of the True Witness applies to our cases its rebuke, "And knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." Those who feel rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing, are in a condition of blindness as to their true condition before God, and they know it not. (R&H, August 7, 1894)

Those, therefore, who are followers and devotees of the "Private Ministries" . . . are merely exchanging one Laodicean condition for another. They have not opened the door to let Jesus, the Truth, "pure and unadulterated" to come in and break the bread of life with them. They are in as much confusion as they were before. But does "advancing truth" and "increasing light" mean that we have to be inundated with all kinds of speculative theories about Bible prophecy, and fanciful interpretations of the Word of God? No, absolutely not! The Messenger of the Lord has given a careful guideline to be followed in pursuing our duty in searching for "advancing truth." She counseled:

The Lord has made His people the repository of sacred truth. Upon every individual who has had the light of present truth devolves the duty of developing that truth on a higher scale than it has hitherto been done. (Ms. 27, 1897.) . . .

Before one can develop "present truth" to "a higher scale than it has hitherto been done," he must know what is "present truth." In other words, he must find the firm foundation of truth - basic Adventism - upon which to build. Interestingly, the same hue and cry we hear today - stay with "historic Adventism" - was the cry in 1888 of those who opposed the messages sent through Elders Jones and Waggoner to the church. It was merely phrased differently. In 1888, it was, "Stand by the old landmarks." However, there was evidence that many "knew not what the old landmarks were." The same is true today. Those crying, "Stay with historic Adventism" do not know what basic Adventism is, so as to be able to tell if what has been built on "the foundation," now called, "historic Adventism" is really pure and unadulterated truth, or if there are things both to learn as well as "many, many" things to unlearn.

What were the "old landmarks" - basic Adventism upon which to build? In the crisis year which followed 1888, the messenger of the Lord wrote:

The passing of the time in 1844 was a period of great events, opening to our astonished eyes [1] the cleansing of the sanctuary transpiring in heaven, and having a decided relation to God's people upon the earth, [2] the first and second angels' messages and the third, unfurling the banner on which was inscribed, "The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." [3] One of the landmarks under this message was the temple of God, seen by His truth-loving people in heaven, and the ark containing the law of God. [4] The light of-the Sabbath of the fourth commandment flashed its strong rays in the pathway of the transgressors of God's law. [5]    The nonimmortality of the wicked is an old landmark. I can call to mind nothing more that can come under the head of old landmarks. (Ms. 13, 1889; numbers supplied) (Underscored emphasis added.)

With a clear understanding of how confused and blind both Church and Independent Ministries leaders have become, it is tragic but not surprising that both have been lured into the papacy's Immortality of the Soul trap - a trap set in the prolife movement.

Andy Roman, founder of Advent Messenger, is one who has been lured into the trap. However, he appears to be clear-eyed in his views on the apostasy of the Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders in their association with Rome. Ganoune Diop's characterization of concerned Adventists who warn about the grave significance of the fraternization. Immediately following are Diop's unbelievably outrageous statements. The whole "commentary" is a brazen, lying screed, and a satanic misuse of the Writings of Ellen G. White. The following quotations are confined to Diop's accusations against opposition which is firmly based on the Bible and the Writings:

The Truth About Inter-Church/Interfaith Relations

Similarly, Ellen White’s declarations regarding the seal of God are sobering and should never lead to a spirit of triumphalism or accusation of others.

Now is the time to prepare. The seal of God will never be placed upon the forehead of an impure man or woman. It will never be placed upon the forehead of the ambitious, world-loving man or woman. It will never be placed upon the forehead of men or women of false tongues or deceitful hearts. All who receive the seal must be without spot before God — candidates for heaven (Testimonies for the Church 5:216).

There is a paradox here. Those who see themselves as victims of future persecutions are in fact led by fear. They adopt the very practices they claim to revile. Those are inquisitions, condemnations, accusations, and discriminations. They become promoters of hate speech, slanderers, accusers of the brethren, and character assassins.

But there is no room for hatred in the heart of a Seventh-day Adventist, someone who, by calling, welcomes the Holy Spirit of Christ to dwell in his or her heart along with God’s fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. . .

Every follower of Christ is faced with a critical question: Does the love of God, which compels us to love our neighbors as ourselves, dwell in our hearts, or is the wrath of the “dragon” stirring passions of hatred and accusations and condemnations against other brothers and sisters in humanity and in Christianity?

Jesus Christ prayed for the unity of His disciples. This unity is unity in God, unity in the truth of God, and unity in the purposes of God. (Underscored emphasis added.)

If Diop really believes that he and his associates are consorting with disciples of Jesus Christ any of whom are "in God," "the truth of God," and "the purposes of God" he is hopelessly deluded. The Apostle Paul predicted such delusion, and Ellen G. White applied the prophecy squarely to the Church increasingly backsliding into great apostasy.

Diop's use of the Testimony "The Seal of God" to support his defense is overwhelming evidence of his conscious and brazen dishonesty. He radiates confidence that his readers are unaware of the following passages in that specific Testimony:

Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, Page 207
Chap. 24 - The Seal of God

"He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand."

And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side; and the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house."

Jesus is about to leave the mercy seat of the heavenly sanctuary to put on garments of vengeance and pour out His wrath in judgments upon those who have not responded to the light God has given them. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." Instead of being softened by the patience and long forbearance that the Lord has exercised toward them, those who fear not God and love not the truth strengthen their hearts in their evil course. But there are limits even to the forbearance of God, and many are exceeding these boundaries. They have overrun the limits of grace, and therefore God must interfere and vindicate His own honor. . .

The command is: "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." These sighing, crying ones had been holding forth the words of life; they had reproved, counseled, and entreated. Some who had been dishonoring God repented and humbled their hearts before Him. But the glory of the Lord had departed from Israel; although many still continued the forms of religion, His power and presence were lacking.

In the time when His wrath shall go forth in judgments, these humble, devoted followers of Christ will be distinguished from the rest of the world by their soul anguish, which is expressed in lamentation and weeping, reproofs and warnings. While others try to throw a cloak over the existing evil, and excuse the great wickedness everywhere prevalent, those who have a zeal for God's honor and a love for souls will not hold their peace to obtain favor of any. Their righteous souls are vexed day by day with the unholy works and conversation of the unrighteous. They are powerless to stop the rushing torrent of iniquity, and hence they are filled with grief and alarm. They mourn before God to see religion despised in the very homes of those who have had great light. They lament and afflict their souls because pride, avarice, selfishness, and deception of almost every kind are in the church. The Spirit of God, which prompts to reproof, is trampled underfoot, while the servants of Satan triumph. God is dishonored, the truth made of none effect.

The class who do not feel grieved over their own spiritual declension, nor mourn over the sins of others, will be left without the seal of God. The Lord commissions His messengers, the men with slaughtering weapons in their hands: "Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house."

Here we see that the church--the Lord's sanctuary--was the first to feel the stroke of the wrath of God. The ancient men, those to whom God had given great light and who had stood as guardians of the spiritual interests of the people, had betrayed their trust. They had taken the position that we need not look for miracles and the marked manifestation of God's power as in former days. Times have changed. These words strengthen their unbelief, and they say: The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil. He is too merciful to visit His people in judgment. Thus "Peace and safety" is the cry from men who will never again lift up their voice like a trumpet to show God's people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins. These dumb dogs that would not bark are the ones who feel the just vengeance of an offended God. Men, maidens, and little children all perish together.

The abominations for which the faithful ones were sighing and crying were all that could be discerned by finite eyes, but by far the worst sins, those which provoked the jealousy of the pure and holy God, were unrevealed. The great Searcher of hearts knoweth every sin committed in secret by the workers of iniquity. These persons come to feel secure in their deceptions and, because of His long-suffering, say that the Lord seeth not, and then act as though He had forsaken the earth. But He will detect their hypocrisy and will open before others those sins which they were so careful to hide.

No superiority of rank, dignity, or worldly wisdom, no position in sacred office, will preserve men from sacrificing principle when left to their own deceitful hearts. Those who have been regarded as worthy and righteous prove to be ring-leaders in apostasy and examples in indifference and in the abuse of God's mercies. Their wicked course He will tolerate no longer, and in His wrath He deals with them without mercy. (Underscored and italics emphasis added; cf. Ezekiel 9 and Luke 21:24 - As Seen in Testimonies for the Church.)

It is incomprehensible that Diop would use the very Testimony which condemns him, and the other leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to insinuate that "those who have a zeal for God's honor and a love for souls" are moved by "the wrath of the “dragon” stirring passions of hatred and accusations and condemnations against other brothers and sisters in humanity and in Christianity." The man must have a seared conscience! He certainly betrays the influence on him of the unclean spirits of Rev. 16:13-14.

Now, to a part of Andy Roman's response, which is supported throughout by damning photographs:

Ganoune Diop Calls His Critics Inquisitors, Promoters of Hate Speech and the Wrath of the Dragon

This is a response to Ganoune Diop’s recent attack against those who do not support the church’s current interfaith outreach programs. Last week the Adventist Review published an article written by Diop in which he lashes out against those who disapprove of what he and others have been doing with regards to interfaith relationships. [1] At every level of the church – local, national and international – there is a coordinated effort in operation where the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Rome are engaging in new, never before seen joint worship services, interfaith bridge-building efforts and interfaith unity.

Instead of addressing these real issues and legitimate concerns that are clearly visible in the modern interfaith movement Ganoune Diop creates many false assumptions, he distracts attention from the main issues and he verbally attacks those who do not agree with him. He calls them inquisitors, promoters of hate speech and the wrath of the dragon. He accuses his detractors of using “violent and angry rhetoric” and of having “antagonism” and “hostility” towards those not of our faith. We will first look at Ganoune Diop’s verbal attacks against those who disagree with him and then we will look at the substance of his article.

The Wrath of the Dragon

Ganoune Diop labels those who are asking legitimate questions and who have real concerns about certain interfaith activities as engaging in “condemnations, accusations, discrimination, slanderers, accusers of the brethren and character assassins.” This language is excessive, but it also reveals that he will go to great lengths in order to defend his relationship with Rome and with the other churches. Standing up in defense of the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy does not make you an inquisitor, a promoter of hate speech or one who is filled with the wrath of the dragon (Satan).

The wrath of the dragon mentioned in Bible prophecy (Revelation 12:17) describes the persecuting power that was manifested during the reign of pagan and papal Rome and will again be revealed against the Remnant people of God. This was fulfilled when the power of the state was used to persecute the faithful throughout church history. And this is the characterization that Ganoune Diop ascribes to certain Seventh-day Adventists who desire to defend the faith from Rome’s ecumenical embrace. Make no mistake; Diop calls those who are protesting his recent engagements with Pope Francis as the working of Satan – the wrath of the dragon. We must ask ourselves: Is it the devil’s work to cry aloud and to warn against crossing the great gulf to grasp the hand of Rome?

Invoking the Inquisition

Then Ganoune Diop invokes the horrors of the Inquisition and hurls this label upon those who oppose his interfaith relationships. Equating the Inquisition with those who disagree with him diminishes the historical significance of the Inquisition when Protestants endured pain, misery, disparity and death. Inquisitors where part of a Roman Catholic office or ministry that was doing the bidding of the Pope to destroy Protestantism. Who is doing the Pope’s bidding today? Is it those who are trying to turn us away from Rome or those who are drawing us closer to her? How are Seventh-day Adventists who want to stop the church from seeking common ground with Rome doing the Pope’s bidding?

“The church that holds to the word of God is irreconcilably separated from Rome. Protestants were once thus apart from this great church of apostasy, but they have approached more nearly to her, and are still in the path of reconciliation to the Church of Rome. Rome never changes. Her principles have not altered in the least. She has not lessened the breach between herself and Protestants; they have done all the advancing. But what does this argue for the Protestantism of this day? It is the rejection of Bible truth which makes men approach to infidelity. It is a backsliding church that lessens the distance between itself and the Papacy” (Signs of the Times, February 19, 1894). . .

There is no question that we need to have a love for souls. But how do we demonstrate a true, godly love for others? Here is what God says about having true love versus those who claim they have love but in fact don’t:

“The world is full of flatterers and dissemblers. Those who are men-pleasers, who cry Peace, peace, might well humble their hearts before God, asking for pardon for their insincerity and lack of moral courage. Such men do not smooth down their message from love for their neighbor, but because they are self-indulgent and ease-loving. True love is a love which seeks first the honor of God and the salvation of souls. Those who have this love will not evade the truth to save themselves from the unpleasant results of plain speaking. When souls are in peril, they will not consider self. They will not excuse or palliate evil” (Review and Herald, October 22, 1901). . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The photographs exhibited within the article demolish Diop's attempt to gloss over the relationship that has been established between the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Church of Rome. This is bolstered by more hyperlinked reports and photographic documentation listed at the end of the article. In stark terms the Seventh-day Adventist Church is now on amicable terms with Roman Catholicism and a range of spiritualistic religions.

Here it is appropriate to examine the details of one of Ellen G. White's visions

The Great Visions of Ellen G. White
“Train of Cars” Metaphor

In one of her most memorable metaphors, Ellen White describes something that she saw in a “parable” vision. The date is not specified, but it was sometime between the vision of 1850 and the writing of this description in 1854:

I saw the rapidity with which this delusion was spreading. A train of cars was shown me, going with the speed of lightning. The angel bade me look carefully. I fixed my eyes upon the train. It seemed that the whole world was on board, that there could not be one left. Said the angel,  ‘They are binding in bundles ready to burn.’ Then he showed me the conductor, who appeared like a stately, fair person, whom all the passengers looked up to and reverenced. I was perplexed and asked my attending angel who it was. He said, ‘It is Satan. He is the conductor in the form of an angel of light. He has taken the world captive. They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie, that they may be damned. This agent, the next highest in order to him, is the engineer, and other of his agents are employed in different offices as he may need them, and they are all going with lightning speed to perdition.’” Ellen plaintively inquired if there were none left, and the angel told her to look in the opposite direction. “And I saw a little company traveling a narrow pathway. All seemed to be firmly united, bound together by the truth, in bundles, or companies. Said the angel, ‘The third angel is binding, or sealing, them in bundles for the heavenly garner.’ This little company looked careworn, as if they had passed through severe trials and conflicts. And it appeared as if the sun had just risen from behind a cloud and shone upon their countenances, causing them to look triumphant, as if their victories were nearly won.” (GVEGW 56-57) (Underscored and italicized emphasis added.)

"They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie, that they may be damned" are the words of the angel and not of Ellen G. White. Furthermore, note the words of the "One who sees beneath the surface," - "The heavenly Teacher." This is a Divine Being speaking! The implication of applying the Apostle Paul's prophecy of Thessalonians 2:11, 10, 12 to those who are "binding in bundles ready to burn" is clear. It reveals the stark fact that the apostate Seventh-day Adventist Church is among the "bundles ready to burn." The prophecy of the Testimony "The Seal of God" is fast approaching fulfillment. No pity need be wasted on "the ancient men" who betrayed their trust; but it is sad that the family units who followed them will perish with them. There are some who balk at the prediction that "Men, maidens, and little children all perish together," sharing the fate of the apostate leaders. "Corporate Accountability vs Individual Responsibility" explains the biblical reason for this tragedy.

The Testimonies quoted above are only a part of the many warnings and predictions of doom given to the Church by His chosen Messenger. The Church leaders are without excuse.

THE ATONING WORK OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE HEAVENLY SANCTUARY AS REVEALED IN THE BIBLE

As it is willing blindness which has overcome Seventh-day Adventists in the abortion controversy, so also it is willing blindness which has shut the many off from the state of mind essential for participation in Jesus' act of Final Atonement - the essential for overcoming sin in the flesh.

The God of heaven has declared to all generations that "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children" (Hosea 4:6.) This is not knowledge of the apostate doctrines concocted by men, but knowledge exegeted from the Bible, and the Bible alone.

The following is such knowledge, and it can be stated with confidence that those of this final generation who reject it do not have the slightest chance of being among those who are able to stand when Jesus Christ appears in His power and glory. The first cited study provides the biblical basis for understanding that the final act of the Atonement is the cleansing of the people, the second deals with the Final Atonement in the context of its repudiation in the SDA-Evangelical Conferences:

God's Objective for the Sanctuary - 2

Another item of interest in Leviticus 23 is the fact that the designation of the tenth day of the seventh month as the Day of Atonement is in the plural form in the Hebrew text - "day of atonements" (vs. 27-28). Is this to be understood as the use of the pluralis majestatis (majestic plural), or the simple plural because of the number of individuals and things cleansed on that day? (Lev. 16:33).

With this feast day as with none of the others, not only was a severe penalty connected with the violation of the restriction placed on the day - "no work" - but also with the failure to enter into an experience described as soul affliction. The warning reads:

Whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people. (Lev. 23:29-30).

How is this to be understood? It cannot be interpreted on a vertical type-antitype basis because it is not involving a priestly ministration; however, the seriousness of the instruction given would indicate a linear type-antitype interpretation with a spiritual meaning. The fact that in describing the services to be performed by the high priest, the emphasis is placed that he alone ministered on that day (Lev. 16:17,) the conclusion can be drawn that no works of man can avail in the final cleansing. In his soul affliction, he can only wait the atonement obtained by the High Priest. Even as the penitent accepted the atonement of forgiveness provided by the common priest, so on the Day of Atonement, the same penitent accepts the cleansing provided by the high priest. In the reality of the antitype, it is the same Priest Who offered Himself on the Cross for us, and Who now as High Priest ever liveth to make intercession for us, Who in His last act of ministration, ministers the final atonement of cleansing. . .

The type indicates movement and activity by the high priest on the Day of Atonement from the most holy place to the court of the sanctuary. The prophecy of Daniel 7 indicates activity from the setting of the judgment till the coming of the Son of man to the Ancient of days to receive His kingdom (vs. 10-14), but it does not define what He was doing. The outline of the Three Angels' Messages also indicates a time between the announcement of the "hour of His judgment is come" and the appearing of "the Son of man" to reap the harvest of earth (Rev. 14, 7, 14-15), and it places the giving of those messages as occurring during this period of time.

As one example of what this activity might be, we can cite Ezekiel 9 and the "man, clothed with linen" (vs. 2, 3, 11). While this prophecy does not conform to a sanctuary type-antitype relationship, it does emphasize the same dress worn by the high priest on that day, and focuses on the same place of the sanctuary where the typical service of the Day of Atonement ended, prior to the introduction of the scapegoat. (Lev. 16:20). The six men with slaughtering weapons, and the "man clothed with linen" who had a "writer's inkhorn by his side" came to the "brazen altar." The glory of God moved from the cherubim (most holy place) "to the threshold of the house" (v. 3). He instructed "the man clothed in linen" to place a mark on the foreheads of those who "sigh and cry for all the abominations" that are done in Jerusalem (v. 4).

It is recognized that this is placing an eschatological interpretation on the apostasy which occurred in the time of Ezekiel, and suggesting that this chapter which is a part of a larger vision (Chapters 8 - 11), expands the perception of the High Priestly ministry of Christ on the antitypical Day of Atonement. While the Writings follow this hermeneutic approach to Ezekiel 9 (5T:207-216), a non-Adventist commentary, such as, The Bible Commentary on the Old Testament, suggests the same. In the introduction to Ezekiel the editor stated:

There is one feature in the writings of Ezekiel, which deserves particular notice. This is (to use a modern term) their Eschatological character, i.e.. their reference not merely to an end, but to the very end of all. (p. 305)

While the editor notes that many parts of Ezekiel "have special reference to the circumstances of the prophet and his countrymen" so that "the local and the temporary seem to dominate;" however, there is by closer observation, more to be found. He observes:

Israel represents the visible Church, brought into special relation with God Himself. The prophetical writings have therefore their applications to the Christian Church when neglectful of the obligations which such relation imposes. (p. 306).

Then the editor concludes:

These predictions of Ezekiel are therefore not to be interpreted simply as illustrative of, but directly predictive of the Church, . . . until the end of time. . . . Their peculiar appropriateness to such a Book as that of Ezekiel is best seen when we perceive that he is addressing, not simply the historical Israel of his own day, but the whole body who have been, like Israel of old, called forth to be God's people, and who will be called to strict account for the neglect of their consequent privileges. (ibid.).

We are not seeking to interpret nor apply the judgments predicted in Ezekiel 9, but rather to reinforce the application of the sanctuary imagery as found in this chapter to the end time Day of Atonement. It is also of interest to note the observation made in this commentary to verse 2:

[Clothed with linen] The priestly garment (Ex. xxviii. 6, 8; Lev. xvi. 4). This One Man (Cp. Dan. 10:5; Rev. 1:13) was the Angel of the Covenant, the great High Priest, superior to those by whom He was surrounded, receiving direct communication from the Lord.

This understanding of the relationship between Ezekiel 9 with the typical services of the Day of Atonement enlarges the perception of the ministry of Christ as High Priest during the antitypical Day of Atonement. This prophetic "Identifier" - a "man clothed in linen" - does not end in Ezekiel. Another prophet also saw in vision this "Man" (Dan. 10:5; 12:6-7), which opens up another area for study and understanding. . .

In the details describing the Day of Atonement, in Leviticus 16, it is emphasized "there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation" (v. 17). The high priest, alone, accomplished the typical cleansing. This should speak loud and clear to all who, by their own works of righteousness, seek to cleanse themselves. This fact as well as the last act of the final atonement is symbolized in a vision given to Zechariah. Writing of this vision, the Messenger of the Lord commented:

Zechariah's vision of Joshua and the Angel applies with peculiar force to the experience of God's people in the closing up of the great day of atonement. (5T:472; emphasis supplied).

Joshua, the high priest in the times of Zechariah (Haggai 1:1), was pictured as "standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him" (1:1). Here is the same "great controversy" motif as is evidenced in the sanctuary "example and shadow" typical services on the Day of Atonement - the Lord's goat and Azazel. Joshua, the chief priest of a nation that was to have been "a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation" (Ex. 19:6),"was clothed with filthy garments" (3:3). If he were to remove his garments, the "shame of his nakedness" would appear with nothing available for covering.

It was the Lord who commanded those who stood before Him - "Take away the filthy garments from Him" (v. 4). To Joshua, he declared:

"Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment.” (ibid.)

He who can cleanse us from all iniquity is the One only who can provide a change of raiment. Those "standing by" will so do if we do not cling to those filthy garments. This gives us some indication as to what the "soul affliction" (Lev. 23:29) commanded in the "example and shadow" for the Day of Atonement means. "The battle which we have to fight - the greatest battle that was ever fought by man - is the surrender of self to the will of God, the yielding of the heart to the sovereignty of love" (Mount of Blessings, p. 203, 1946 ed.). Not only did those "standing by" give Joshua a change of raiment, but also set "a fair mitre upon his head" with the promise that he would be given "places to walk among (those) that stand by" (vs. 5-7).

In the verses which close this vision there are concepts which need to be amplified by prayerful study. Note them carefully:

1) Those who receive the change of raiment will become "men of wonder" or "men wondered at" (v. 8; margin). Into this picture is interjected Him, whom "the Lord of hosts" calls "my servant the BRANCH." This BRANCH would "grow up out of His place." He would "build the temple of the Lord: and He shall bear the glory, and He shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a priest upon His throne" (Zech. 6:12-13).

2) The Lord of hosts declares that He would "remove the iniquity of the land in one day" (3:9). Connected with this is the prophetic symbolism of "seven eyes" which in the book of Revelation is associated with "the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth" (5:6). (Underscored emphasis added.)

This is all light that has been hidden from the people by "the Great Apostasy," at the most critical time in the history of the Remnant Church:

FINAL ATONEMENT

This is present truth! It is based in the sanctuary truth committed to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. If one still believes that the atonement was not completed on the cross as the leading independent ministries profess to believe, and that Christ is now ministering as High Priest in the most holy place of the Heavenly Sanctuary, then in these final days of human history, what should be the center of our focus? Should it not be to understand the meaning of the type where the High Priest came to the Court with the mingled blood of the bullock and the Lord's goat to expiate "the uncleanness of the children of Israel"? (Lev. 16:19) Does not the type dictate that the attitude of God's professed people should be that of "soul affliction" at this present time, and if not, they will be "cut off" as if they themselves were apostates? (Lev. 23:29). Have we forgotten the counsel which states - "the class who do not feel grieved over their own spiritual declension, nor mourn over the sins of others, will be left without the seal of God." (5T:211) The continual recitation of apostasy by which to keep a steady flow of tithes and offerings into the coffers to support an "ego" trip is not "mourning" over the sins of others; it is merely using the cry of apostasy to cover their "own spiritual declension."

Can we actually believe, no matter how it may titillate our ears, that a recitation of "New Age" roots, or a tirade on the Celebration type of service, or a review of the hypnotic methods being introduced to control people - and any number of sins of the "brethren" will bring a people to the place where there will be "soul affliction"? This failure to perceive the final atonement as the present truth for this time, and substituting for it a continuous recitation of the apostasy in the Church has produced a pharisaical Laodiceanism unmatched by the Church itself in its Laodicean state. The ones who are looking at the continuous flow of videos and attending "camp meetings" where the apostasy in the Church is the main menu are developing a smug complacency thanking God that they are not like their former brethren who are now attending a celebration type of service and being manipulated by mind controlling techniques. These concerned souls are for the most part unmindful that the same psychological techniques that are being decried, are the same techniques being used on them by the very "voices" who are decrying their use. Consider the "electronic" letters being sent out, their exaggerations, manipulation of facts, and the fanciful projects proposed. Those practicing these deceptive techniques, for the most part, do not even know the first thing about the final atonement, and the meaning of "soul affliction.". For one sure thing, "soul affliction" is not bragging about how many "deep pockets" one gets his hand into, nor the using of the "Celebration" theme to influence God's concerned people to send in tithes so that one can cause his and his wife's payroll checks to reach the $50,000 per annum figure.

There is a place for the revelation of facts concerning the apostasy in the Church which has led to a Church in apostasy. But such a revelation must be dealt with from an historic perspective, instead of using the end results in a "leaf plucking" exhibit for an "ego" trip. Well did Paul write - "When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God." (Heb. 5:12)

Another factor concerning the final atonement must be considered. Dr. Desmond Ford introduced a theology which completely sets aside the basic sanctuary truths which were committed to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Because of the compromises with the Evangelicals in 1955-56, the Church has succumbed to the inroads of Ford's theology. Why was this devastating heresy permitted to plague God's people? This question has been given little consideration. The Messenger of the Lord warned the Church that "God will arouse His people; if other means fail, heresies will come in among them, which will sift them, separating the chaff from the wheat." (5T:707) What brought about a condition that God permitted such a drastic introduction of heresy as is represented in Ford's teachings? This we are also told:

Whenever the people of God are growing in grace, they will be constantly obtaining a clearer understanding of His word ... But as real spiritual life declines, it has ever been the tendency to cease to advance in the knowledge of the truth. Men rest satisfied with the light already received from God's word, and discourage any further investigation of the Scriptures. They become conservative, and seek to avoid discussion (ibid., pp. 706-707)

If there ever was a time to discuss the final atonement, it is now, but it will take some deep searching of the Bible with prayer. Biblical answers will need to be provided to offset Ford's theology. . . God's concerned people have fallen upon hard times with blind guides seeking to lead them. (Underscored emphasis added; italics substituted for underscoring in the original.)

CLEAR EXPOSITIONS OF THE BIBLE'S PROMISE OF PERFECTION AS THE RESULT OF THE FINAL ATONEMENT

This paper ends with hyperlinks to two "teaching sermons" which, with prayer for spiritual discernment by the Holy Spirit and careful reading of the Bible texts, should both expose and clear up the present confusion in Seventh-day Adventism on the subject of the Atonement:

The following are two "teaching" sermons containing essential biblical knowledge on the relationship between the imperative of perfection in the lives of the final generation of Christians AND the last act of the Final Atonement by Jesus Christ:

The High Calling of God

Attainment or Atonement



 

Bookmarks

ni·hil ob·stat

(In the Roman Catholic Church) a certification by an official censor that a book is not objectionable on doctrinal or moral grounds.