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Papacy
This is about the Pope himself, and about the papacy in general.
We want to tell you at the beginning what is at stake because what we are going to say will surely offend those who are devout Catholics; it will surely offend those who believe that Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.
Some will read it as unkind and unloving, but nothing is more loving than the truth. To let somebody perish in a false system isn’t loving at all. To rescue people out of a damning and false religion is the only loving thing to do. And there’s a lot at stake here.
Not too many years ago, some evangelical Protestants got together – Chuck Colson and some others – Bill Bright and some others – and they met with some Roman Catholics, and they came up with a document called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”
And in that document, they celebrated a common faith and a common mission. And they said, “We need to embrace each other and carry out this gospel mission together.”
This was shocking, to put it mildly, to many – to all of those people who affirm clearly a biblical gospel. And there was immediately a counter to that and all kinds of things brought to bear upon the signers of ECT.
Are Roman Catholics the mission field, or do we embrace them as fellow believers in Jesus Christ? The mood of evangelicalism today is to embrace them. That’s what all the spokesman – self-appointed spokesman for evangelicalism - keeps saying in the media - some of them evangelists; most of them evangelists by their own definition – that these people are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Indeed, the Pope is our brother in Christ. Indeed, the Pope is the greatest spiritual and moral leader in the hundred years in the world. Is the Pope in heaven? Of course the Pope is in heaven; he was good, and he suffered, etcetera.
Reclassifying the Pope, reclassifying Roman Catholics as believers isn’t that simple. It has massive implications. It has implications that literally overturn centuries of missionary effort. It has massive implications that overturn centuries if not millennia of martyrdom.
In the long war on the truth, the most formidable, relentless, and deceptive enemy has been Roman Catholicism. It is an apostate, corrupt, heretical, false Christianity; it is a front for the kingdom of Satan.
The true church of the Lord Jesus Christ has always understood this, and even through the Dark Ages, from 400 to 1500, prior to the Reformation, genuine Christian believers set themselves apart from that system and were brutally punished and executed for their rejection of that system.
Those believers throughout those centuries, along with genuine and discerning believers today, understand this is a false system; it has a false priesthood; it has a false source of revelation, tradition in the magisterium. It has illegitimate power granted to it by this magisterium, this papal Curia.
It engages in idolatry by the worship of saints and the veneration of angels. It conducts an horrific exaltation of Mary above Christ and even God. It conducts a twisted sacrament of the mass by which Jesus is sacrificed again and again. It offers false forgiveness through the confessional. It calls for the uselessness of infant baptism and other sacraments.
Motivated by money, it has invented purgatory. And by the way, purgatory is what makes the whole system work. Take out purgatory and it’s a hard sell to be a Catholic. People hang in there because of the deception of purgatory. Purgatory’s the safety net; when you die, you don’t go to hell; you go there and get things sorted out and finally get to heaven if you’ve been a good Catholic.
Take away that safety net, that’s a hard sell, because in the Catholic system you can never know you’re saved;
you can never know you’re going to heaven; you just keep trying and trying.
As the priest said on the television program the other night, “We are all engaged in a long journey toward perfection.”
Well, if you’re engaged in a long journey toward perfection, it’s pretty discouraging. People in that system – guilt ridden, fear ridden, no knowledge of whether or not they’re going to get into the kingdom. The threat of a mortal sin which throws you back out again. And the only thing that makes it work is purgatory. If there’s no purgatory, if there’s no safety net to catch me and give me some opportunity to get into heaven, it’s a second chance. It’s another chance after death. I can’t buy into this.
So, they had to invent purgatory; it’s just too much without it. The harm of indulgences, selling forgiveness for money; the false gospel of works, you participate in your salvation by your good works; the abomination of idols and relics; prayers for the dead; the perversion of forced celibacy; and so it goes.
But at the top of the pile of all of this is the amazing, amazing papacy. And the Pope is the one at the top of the Roman Catholic Church who has, in a word, usurped the headship of Christ over His church. The Reformers have always understood this. With unashamed boldness, they understood this, and they declared this, and they faced death for it.
Martin Luther, 1483 to 1546. “Luther proved by the revelations of Daniel and John, by the epistles of Paul, Peter, and Jude,” says the historian d’Aubigné, “that the reign of Antichrist, predicted and described in the Bible, was none other than the papacy. And all the people said, Amen! A holy terror seized their souls. It was Antichrist whom they beheld seated on the pontifical throne.
This new idea, which derived greater strength from the prophetic descriptions launched forth by Luther into the midst of his contemporaries, inflicted the most terrible blow on Rome.”
Based on his study of Scripture, Martin Luther finally declared – quote – “We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist. I owe the Pope no other obedience then that I owe to Antichrist.” Luther said, “I am persuaded that if at this time Saint Peter in person should preach all the articles of Holy Scripture and only deny the Pope’s authority, power, and primacy, and say that the Pope is not the head of all Christendom, they would cause him to be hanged.
Yet if Christ Himself were again on Earth and should preach without all doubt, the Pope would crucify Him again.”
John Calvin, 1509 to 1564. “Some persons think us to severe and censorious when we call the Roman Pontiff Antichrist, but those who are of this opinion do not consider that they bring the same charge of presumption against Paul himself, after whom we speak and whose language we adopt. I shall briefly show that Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians 2 are not capable of any other interpretation than that which applies them to the papacy.”
They saw in the Antichrist the papacy, the Pope. Why? Because they had some special insight that in fact the final Antichrist was actually to be a pope? No. Because the Pope personified everything that the Scripture described the Antichrist to be.
John Knox, 1505-1572, the great Scottish Presbyterian sought to counteract the tyranny which the Pope himself had, for so many ages, exercised over the church. He himself said the papacy is the very Antichrist, the Pope being the son of perdition of whom Paul speaks.
Thomas Cranmer, one of the great martyrs in England - died in 1556, said, “Whereof it follows Rome to be the seat of Antichrist and the Pope to be the very Antichrist himself. I could prove the same by many scriptures.”
The Westminster Confession was written in 1647. The Westminster Confession, the confession of the Reformers says, “There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition that exalted himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God.”
It isn’t that he is the final Antichrist, but he is in his time and in this age the very embodiment of antichrist.
“And there are,” says John, “many antichrists in the world” – before the final one.
Cotton Mather again, an American Puritan, died in 1728. “The oracles of God foretold the rising of an antichrist in the Christian church, and in the Pope of Rome, all the characteristics of that antichrist are so marvelously answered, that if any who read the Scriptures do not see it, there is a marvelous blindness on them.”
And Spurgeon, “It is the bounden duty of every Christian to pray against this antichrist. And as to what antichrist is, no sane man ought to raise a question; if it be not the popery in the Church of Rome, there’s nothing in the world that can be called by that name.”
John said, “There are many antichrists.” Here is the supreme embodiment of it to these great leaders, these great reformed leaders through the ages.
Spurgeon went on to say, “Popery is contrary to Christ’s gospel and is the Antichrist. And we ought to pray against it. It should be the daily prayer of every believer that Antichrist might be hurled like a millstone into the flood, and for Christ because it wounds Christ, because it robs Christ of its glory, because it puts sacramental efficacy in the place of His atonement and lifts a piece of bread into the place of the Savior and a few drops of water into the place of the Holy Spirit, and puts a mere fallible man like ourselves up as the vicar of Christ on Earth. If we pray against it, because it is against Him, we shall love the persons though we hate their errors. E shall love their souls though we loath and detest their dogmas. And so the breath of our prayers will be sweetened because we turn our faces toward Christ when we pray.”
It was 1553 to 1558, a terrible five years in England. The reign of Bloody Mary all began seven years after Luther’s death.
And Mary came into England and restored the Pope’s authority in England. Immediately, all Bibles were removed from the churches. All Bible printing ceased and was forbidden, became a capital crime. Eight hundred English ministers fled to Geneva. Three hundred Protestants were burned at the stake. The first martyr to Mary was John Rogers, a London minister who translated the wonderful Tyndale-Matthew’s Bible. Ridley and Latimer, the two famous martyrs burned at the stake at Oxford.
And William Tyndale - blessed William Tyndale – chased for years and finally martyred for the crime of translating the Bible into English.
All this under the leadership of and for the satisfaction of the Roman system and the Pope. Luther, in the Smalcald articles wrote this – quote – “All things which the Pope - from a power so false, mischievous, blasphemous, and arrogant - has done and undertaken have been and still are purely diabolical affairs and transactions for the ruin of the entire holy Christian church and for the destruction of the first and chief article concerning the redemption made through Jesus Christ.”
Luther didn’t mince words. He said further, “The Pope is the very Antichrist who has exalted himself above and opposed himself against Christ, because he will not permit Christians to be saved.” Further, Luther said, “It is nothing else than the Devil himself because above and against God he urges and disseminates his papal
falsehoods concerning masses, purgatory, the monastic life, one’s own works, fictitious divine worship, which is the very papacy, and condemns, murders, and tortures all Christians who do not exalt and honor these abominations of the Pope above all things. Therefore, just as little as we can worship the Devil himself as Lord and God we can endure his apostle the Pope. For to lie and to kill and destroy body and soul eternally, that is wherein his papal government really consists.”
Back to Spurgeon, “Of all the dreams that have ever deluded men and probably of all blasphemies that ever were uttered, there has never been one which is more absurd and which is more fruitful in all manner of mischief than the idea that the Bishop of Rome can be the head of the church of Jesus Christ. No. These popes die. And how could the church live if its head were dead? The true head ever lives, and the church ever lives in Him.”
And Spurgeon said, “A man” – this is very interesting – “A man who deludes other people by degrees comes to delude himself. The deluder first makes dupes out of others and then becomes a dupe to himself. I should not wonder but what the Pope really believes that he is infallible and that he ought to be saluted as ‘His Holiness.’ It must have taken him a good time to arrive at that eminence of selfdeception. But he’s got to it, I dare say, by now, and everyone who kisses his toe confirms him in this insane idea. When everybody else believes a flattering falsehood concerning you, you come at last to believe it yourself. Or at least to think it may be so.
The Pharisees, being continually called the ‘Learned Rabbi,’ ‘Father,’ the ‘Holy Scribe,’ the ‘Devout and Pious Doctor,’ the ‘Sanctified Teacher,’ believed the flattering compliments. They used very grand phrases in those days, and doctors of divinity were very common – almost as common as they are now. And the crowd of doctors and rabbis helped to keep each other in countenance by repeating one another’s fine names till they
believed they meant something.
“Dear friends,” says Spurgeon, “it’s very difficult to receive honor and expect it and yet to keep your eyesight, for men’s eyes gradually grow dull through the smoke of the incense which is burned before them. And when their eyes become dim with self-conceit, their own great selves conceal the cross and make them unable to believe the truth.”
Spurgeon said, “Christ did not redeem His church with His blood so the Pope could come in and steal the glory. He never came from heaven to Earth. He never poured out his very heart that he might purchase his people, that a pour sinner, a mere man, should be set upon high to be admired by all the nations and to call himself God’s representative on Earth. Christ has always been the head of His church.”
Spurgeon knew of His church. Spurgeon knew what the reformers knew, what any true student of Scripture knows, that the Pope stood at the top of an illegitimate system, and particularly and specifically at the top of an illegitimate priesthood.
And Spurgeon wrote this, “When a fellow comes forward in all sorts of curious garments and says he’s a priest, the poorest child of God may say, ‘Stand away and don’t interfere with my office; I am a priest. I know not what you may be; you surely must be a priest of Baal, for the only mention of the word “vestments” in Scripture is in connection with the temple of Baal. The priesthood belongs to all the saints. They sometimes call you laity, but the Holy Ghost says of all the saint, “You are God’s klēros – you are God’s clergy.”‘” Every child of God is a clergyman or a clergywoman. There are no priestly distinctions known in Scripture. “Away with them,” says Spurgeon. “Away with them forever. The prayer book says, ‘Then shall the priest say...’ What a pity that word was ever left there. The very word ‘priest’ has such a smell of the sulfur of Rome about it, that so long as it remains, the Church of England will give forth an ill savor. Call yourself a priest, sir. I wonder men are not ashamed to take the title. When I collect what priests have done in all ages, what priests connected with the Church of Rome have done, I repeat what I have often said. I would sooner a man pointed at me in the street and called me a devil than call me a priest, for bad as the Devil has been, he has hardly been able to match the crimes and cruelties and villainies that have been transacted under the cover of a special priesthood; from that may we be delivered.
“But the priesthood of God’s saints, the priesthood of holiness which offers prayer and praise to God,
this we have because thou hast made us priests.” That is what the saints are.
The Roman Empire then is, in the view of these men of God through the ages, a frontline for Satan. And for Spurgeon, Rome was a deadly enemy, first of all, as well as a mission field. Spurgeon said, “We must have no truce and make no treaty with Rome.” He said this, “War. War to the knife with her. Peace there cannot be. She cannot have peace with us; we cannot have peace with her. She hates the true church, and we can only say that the hatred is reciprocated. We would not lay a hand upon her priests; we would not touch a hair of their heads. Let them be free, but their doctrine we would destroy from the face of the Earth as the doctrine of devils. So, let it perish, O God, and let that evil thing become as the fat of lambs. Into smoke let it consume; yea, into smoke let it consume.”
You can just hear him preaching that in the tabernacle in London.