THE REFORMATION

The Reformers, one and all, applied the prophecies of the “Man of sin” and the “Antichrist” to the Papacy. John Knox, for instance, wrote, “The Pope is the head of the Church of Antichrist. As for your Roman Church, as it is now corrupted, I no more doubt but that it is the synagogue of Satan, and the head thereof called the Pope, the man of sin.”

Cranmer at his trial, gave what he knew was his dying testimony, “As for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy, and the antichrist with all his false doctrines.” It was this conviction based on prophecy that made the Reformation. Bible prophecy added great strength to this God-led movement. Bible prophecy may not be the sole foundation but it provided a solid foundation. The Papacy was condemned by both precept and prophecy.

Martin Luther never felt free to break with the Church of Rome until he discovered Justification by faith and had nailed his thesis on the church door. He still believed the Pope was the vicar of Christ and the church of Rome was Christ’s church. He merely aimed at reforming the Catholic Church. It was the discovery from Bible prophecy that finally gave him strength to make the full and final break. He discovered that the Pope was the Antichrist, the “Man of Sin.” He then burned the Pope’s Bull. To him his former church was but a counterfeit system. Now separation from Rome was not separation from Christ, but separation from Antichrist. This discovery produced the Reformation. It gave it it’s foundation and strength. The Reformation, we do well to remember, was born of a dual discovery:- The discovery of the true Christ and the discovery of the Antichrist. Prophecy had foretold the Reformation and prophecy had given the foundation. Is it any wonder that the Papacy, felt that at any cost, it must turn the evidence. The stigma must be removed.

The Jesuits were established as the silent arm to counter the Reformation. They had no allegience to any except their own order. And the order was entwined with protecting the papacy, although they could even assassinate the pope if he did not conform to the correct papacy. Cut off from earthly ties and human interests, dead to the claims of natural affection, reason and conscience wholly silenced, they knew no rule, no tie, but that of their order, and no duty but to extend its power. It became a deadly order. To combat these forces of the self-sacrificing Protestants who were willing to die for Christ, Jesuitism inspired its followers with a fanaticism that enabled them to endure cold, hunger, toil, and poverty, the rack, the dungeon, and the stake. While vowed to perpetual poverty and humility, it was their studied aim to secure wealth and power, to be devoted to the overthrow of Protestantism and the establishment of the papal supremacy.

THE END TIMES DOCTRINES

Secular historians record the tactics of Counter-Reformation Rome. The Encyclopedia Britannica states, “Under the stress of the Protestant attack there arose new methods on the papal side.” In those pages, Ribera (a Jesuit scholar) is identified as the founder of the futurist school of interpretation [Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 23, p. 213. 11th edition]. Rev. E. B. Elliot gives a synopsis of the prophetic positions published by Jesuit scholars as follows:

So at length, as the [16th] century was advancing to a close, two Jesuits published their respective, but quite counter opinions on the Apocalyptic subject: the first, Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), a Jesuit Priest of Salamanca published an Apocalyptic Commentary [Apocalypsin], about 1585 A.D. on the grand points of Babylon and Antichrist, what we now call the futurist scheme. The second man, Louis de Alcazar, also a Spanish Jesuit, but of Seville, published Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi, published in Antwerp in 1614 on main points what we now designate as the praeterist scheme.

These two eschatologies were invented solely for the purpose of protecting the papacy. Ribera and Alcazar both spun their primary apparatus from the 70th week of Daniel by putting the antichrist either in the remote past or the remote future, taking him out of the present where the reformationists could attack the papal system.

Ribera said that God had first given us 69 weeks and that at the baptism of Jesus in 27 A.D. the 69 weeks concluded. He said that God extended the 70th week into the future to take place at the end of the age. The antichrist is to be a single individual (not the papal system) who would not rule until the very end of time. Today there are three versions of this futurist eschatology held mainly by Pentecostals, but also many others – (1) the pre, (2) the mid, and (3) the post tribulation rapture doctrines. Then there are numerous versions of each one of those three basic schools of thought.

Alcazar said that the prophecies of the Apocalypse (Revelation) were fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the temple was destroyed and the Jews were slaughtered or deported. By this teaching, Matthew 24 and all (but the first chapter) of Revelation, and the 70th week of Daniel were fulfilled in 70 A.D. Alcazar insists that the enemies of the church (the Sanhedrin) were destroyed; that Jesus returned to reside in the person of the reigning pope (the Vicar of Christ); and that the millennium (the amillennium) started at that time and continues today. This is still the basic stance of Catholicism. Once again, no reformer, no Protestant accepted a word of either Ribera’s or Alcazar’s teachings. [Robert Caringola, Seventy Weeks, pp. 19,31-38]

THE END TIMES CAME TO GLOBAL ACCEPTANCE AFTER 1826

Dr. S. R. Maintland (1752-1866), the librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, discovered Ribera’s book in his library and translated and published it in 1826 just for the sake of interest. Until this time there was not a single Protestant in the world who believed the futuristic teachings (now held by Pentecostals and many others). Dr. Maintland also wrote a prophetic pamphlet showing his contempt for the Reformation, and he did not believe that the papacy was the predicted antichristian Apostasy or Beast of Daniel and the Apocalypse (Revelation).

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) magnified Maintland’s errors. Darby read the pamphlets that Maitland produced and was persuaded. This man was the founder of the Plymouth Brethren. He thought this was a great revelation with such a simplified view of Bible prophecy, there was no need to understand the historic application. It was all in the future! Darby wrote several volumes on this new understanding of prophecy. He influenced many people, including Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) who incorporated Darby’s views in the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. Scofield was awarded an honorary Ph.D., he didn’t earn it.

THE RAPTURE – FIRST PUBLISHED IN SPAIN ABOUT THE SAME TIME

The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, a book by Emmanuel Lacunza (1731-1801), a Jesuit priest from Chili, contains what some say is the first known reference to the modern concept of a rapture. Although “rapture” appears in the Scriptures meaning to be caught up (the Greek “harpazo” and the Latin “rapere”) The modern concept of catching up the whole church at once was first put forward by Lacunza. The closest scripture to support this view is 1 Thessalonians 4:17 “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” However, the details of exactly how this would happen first came from Lacunza. His book was published in Spain and then translated into English and published in London in 1827. The book was attributed to a fictitious author named Rabbi Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra. In an extensive introduction the translator, Rev. Edward Irving (1792-1834) contended that the book was the work of a converted Jew!

Knowing fully well that he was giving a false position on the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead, Irving presented Lacunza’s work as a new revelation from God. Irving became one of the most eloquent preachers of his time. In 1828 his open-air meetings in Scotland drew crowds of ten thousand people. In March 1830, he held a series of prophecy meetings in which he introduced Lacunza’s ideas. [Michael J. Berry, Foundation for Restoration, p. 63-4]

In 1830 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, a 15-year-old named Margaret MacDonald claimed she had received a new revelation in a vision, then set about to share this vision of a pre-tribulation rapture with anyone who would listen. One who did was Robert Norton (1807-1883), who recorded Margaret’s prophecies and published them in a book, The Restoration of Apostles and Prophets in the Catholic Apostolic Church (London, 1861). It is uncertain whether or not Margaret ever heard or read Irving’s translation of Lacunza. Anyhow, Norton wrote that Miss MacDonald was the first to advance the idea of pre-tribulation rapture. [Note: Margaret MacDonald's vision is recorded in The Incredible Cover Up.]

The rapturist doctrine of today is quite different from the fragments of rapture of Lacunza, MacDonald and Norton. They proclaimed a partial rapture in which only a select portion of the body of believers would be chosen. The identity of this elite, select portion quickly became a focal point of confusion and disagreement. Lacunza claimed that only those believers who partake of the sacrament of the Eucharist would be raptured; Miss MacDonald said the rapture would take away only those who were filled with the Spirit; and Norton claimed that only Christians who were sealed by the Holy Ghost with the laying on of hands would be raptured.

DARBY

In the years that followed, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), a brilliant and well-educated man from Glasgow, Scotland, developed the teaching into its current form. It was Darby who introduced this new teaching into the main current of prophetic interpretation. Darby, who was ordained a deacon by the Church of England in 1825, was acquainted with Edward Irving who translated Lacunza’s work, and had visited Miss MacDonald in the days when she was having her visions. The potential of their radical new prophecy of a rapture intrigued Darby, who was already unhappy with the lethargic conditions prevailing in many churches of his time. The pre-tribulation rapture theory became the rallying point of Darby’s break from the Church of England and the focus of his ascent to a position of leadership in the Plymouth Brethren movement.

Strangely enough, what at first was understood to be a new and special revelation was soon to be dogmatically promoted as though it had always been the eternal truth of the scriptures. Those who opposed Darby, such as Charles H. Spurgeon and George Mueller, were excommunicated.

Darby’s biographers refer to him as “the father of modern dispensationalism.” Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1842-1921) became one of Darby’s most enthusiastic promoters. The Scofield Reference Bible (1909) has influenced countless thousands of believers. It is interesting to note that the majority of Scofield’s contemporaries – men such as Charles R. Eerdman, W.G. Moorhead, A.J. Gordon and Nathaniel West – rejected the views of this new “British” doctrine.

THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL

In 1962, the justices of the United States Supreme Court ruled that official prayer had no place in public education.

The court did not rule that children are forbidden to pray on their own; the justices merely said that government officials had no business composing a prayer for children to recite.

In the following year, 1963, the Supreme Court handed down another important ruling dealing with prayer in public schools. The court declared school-sponsored Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer UNCONSTITUTIONAL (Americans’ constitutional right to follow their own consciences when it comes to religion in the First Amendment). However, the Supreme court also ruled that as long as the approach is objective, balanced and non-devotional, the Bible may be studied as literature. Schools may also offer courses in comparative religion.

Public education for the masses, as conceived by Horace Mann (the father of American public school education) and others in the mid 19th century, was intended to be “non-sectarian.” Schools often reflected the majority religious view a kind of nondenominational Protestantism. Classes began with devotional readings from the King James Version of the Bible and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Catholic families were among the first to challenge these school-sponsored religious practices. In some parts of the country, tension over religion in public schools erupted into actual violence. In Philadelphia, for example, full-scale riots and bloodshed resulted in 1844 over which version of the Bible should be used in classroom devotions. The media portrayed several Catholic churches and a convent burned; although there could have been many other people that died. In Cincinnati, a “Bible War” divided the city in 1868 after the school board discontinued mandatory Bible instruction.

Tensions like this led to the first round of legal challenges to school-sponsored religious activity in the late 1800s. Several states ruled against the practices. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted this view as well.

In 1995, as a reminder of the Supreme Court rulings of 1962 and 1963, a joint statement of current law regarding religion in public schools was published by a variety of religious and civil liberties organizations. This statement served as the basis for U.S. Department of Education guidelines. These guidelines, which were sent to every public school in the nation, stressed that children have the right to pray or to discuss their religious views with their peers so long as they are not disruptive. The word “disruptive” however could easily be construed to mean “not gaining converts”. Indeed, the guidelines went on to state that public schools are prohibited from sponsoring worship or pressuring children to pray, meditate, read religious texts or take part in other religious activities. This even appears to be a contradiction. Why? because “sponsoring” can easily mean that the school PREMISES cannot be used in any way for prayer, meditation, reading religious texts or taking part in other religious activities. Why not?

There had to be a ruling to clarify this: In 1990, the high court ruled specifically that high school children may form clubs that meet during “non-instructional” time to pray, read religious texts or discuss religious topics if other student groups are allowed to meet – but no younger than high school.

In 1954, in a build up to these Supreme Court rulings affecting schools, Lindon B. Johnson (who later became US President from 1963 to 1969) introduced a bill in Congress that offered tax exempt status to Churches in exchange for their neutrality in politics. In a nutshell Christians sold their liberty and freedom for money, which has grown to 500 BILLIONS of dollars in assets. It was just a short nine years later when Johnson came to his presidential term that atheists stopped prayer in schools, and challenged other religious safeguards. For instance, just nine years after that, in 1973, abortion was legalized with no outcry from the 300,000 pulpits in America.

WHAT, THEN, ARE SCHOOLS TO TEACH?

While recognizing matter, Evolution and modern thought says that we have no soul. Or at best, that there is no immortality of the soul. Schools, therefore, are to teach:

DEISM – which leads to Agnosticism (Skeptical Atheism) if the heart is hardened. Agnosticism in the form of Skeptical Atheism was first introduced by John Locke (1632 – 1704) who maintained that people are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived by sense perception. Curiously, Locke’s writings led to ‘liberty of the conscience’ (although he did not believe in one) separating the spiritual and the temporal in society. It stopped social work done for the sake of piety, replacing it with social work done for the sake of man’s perceived ‘morality’ – a removal of absolute values and homage to God in society, and replacing it with nothing – this is what is called ‘liberty’. It developed into the separation of Church and State, and secularisation of government schools and places of work, preventing salvation. In short, it is the removal of God from society, called ‘Religious Tolerance’. To understand exactly what is behind ‘liberty of conscience’, then know the difference between Morality vs. Piety, which makes reference to these ‘inalienable’ rights of the secular state of America.

David Hume (1711 – 1776) built on Locke’s ideas, denying the a priori function of the reason to directly intuit laws and principles. In this, modern Atheism was born. Hume based all knowledge purely on facts of sense or sensation (Empiricism). Hume was a close friend of Adam Smith (c. 1750), the founder of modern free market economics.

Kant (1724 – 1804) did recognise the pure reason. However, Kant limited the reason to say that principles and laws are known by deduction as opposed to direct intuition, and so he concluded they cannot be known universally. In this Kant laid the foundation for modern-day Agnosticism. He developed the notion that man created religion from a desire to intend “right” – thus according to Kant, it matters not what religion is chosen, or whether any religion is chosen at all, as it all comes from man’s “ethics” or desire to intend “right”. “Right” according to Kant, is not deemed “right” by everybody, but the concept of “right” is purely a prejudice of education. Kant ignored the plain fact that “right” is actually based on the VALUE to everyone of the good sought. That is, he overlooked the plain fact that seeking the real happiness of everybody, including our creator God, is the absolute good and the only good. Agnosticism then became mainstream based on these concepts of Kant, through T. H. Huxley in 1860 and later espoused by Albert Einstein – and practically every ignorant modern thought of the West says that morals are prejudices of education. However, this can easily be disproved.

PANTHEISM says we are not free to act, but fixed in a predetermined course by nature, and are therefore not responsible agents. No-one has the option to change one’s fate, except in ‘rare instances’. So say the most prominent scholars in Buddhism who are Pantheistic (and also highly acclaimed in the West). This is heathenism. According to this philosophy, whatever God makes, we are forced to do. God cannot condemn us, because we cannot help what we do. However, Pantheism ignores our MORAL side or the MORAL attributes of God as our rightful lawgiver and judge. We are not pre-programmed robots. Every man is free to obey or not to obey God, because this is the only way happiness can exist – us knowing that we have chosen to bring happiness is a pleasure – but only if we had the freedom, and it was absolutely our own choice and act. God cannot prevent sin because man is absolutely free. And to complement this freedom, so that it is not abused, God punishes sin which any man commits. Man’s freedom is a total responsiblity, and a total blame if abused.

BUT ATHEISTS HAVE A FAITH – otherwise, why do they practice pantheism? PAGANISM is definitely pantheistic. Why do Atheists celebrate their birthday, if they have no faith? This is a pagan custom. Or why do they teach evolution? Evolution is a pantheistic belief – a religion just as much as any other, and so secular government schools are teaching children a religion after all. Or, why do Atheists visit the psychiatrist? The techniques used by Western psychiatrists are, with few exceptions, on exactly the same scientific plane as the techniques used by witchdoctors. (E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Games: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972, page 8.)