Church of God News

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (Pvasiliadis)

COGwriter

Pope Francis is going to the Middle East.  Part of his plan there is to work on ecumenical unity with the Eastern Orthodox and various Protestants:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is to visit biblical sites in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories in May, his first trip to the Christian Holy Land as pontiff and only the fourth by a pope since biblical times.

The May 24-26 trip to Amman, Jerusalem and Bethlehem will mark the 50th anniversary of a historic trip to the region by Pope Paul VI. Pope John Paul II visited in 2000 and Benedict XVI went in 2009.

Apart from its significance for Roman Catholic relations with Jews and Muslims, Francis’ trip will hold major importance for relations among Christians because it will include a meeting in Jerusalem with the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians, as well as Anglican and Protestant leaders…

Francis, who defined his trip as a “pilgrimage of prayer”, said he would hold an inter-faith meeting in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre together with Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Bartholomew is the spiritual leader of the some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Francis made the announcement on the exact 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s meeting in Jerusalem with Bartholomew’s predecessor, Athenagoras, the first meeting of the leaders of the Western and Eastern Christianity since they were divided by the Great Schism of 1054.

The meeting between Bartholomew and Francis could also pave the way for an historic encounter between Francis and Kirill, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most influential in world Orthodoxy.

There have been signs of a general warming between the western and eastern branches of Christianity, and Francis fueled hopes of further reconciliation in November when he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first Kremlin leader to publicly profess religious faith since the 1917 revolution.

Representatives of Anglican and Protestant churches, which split from Rome in the 16th century, are also expected to attend the Jerusalem meeting in May.  http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-pope-announces-may-trip-to-middle-east/1823687.html

Pope Francis is an ecumenically-oriented pontiff, and Bartholomew is perhaps the most ecumenically-oriented top Eastern Orthodox patriarch in centuries.  But also notice that there will be discussions with the Anglicans and various Protestants.

The Bible and Roman Catholic writings warn against the type of ecumenical unity that Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis want. The Orthodox actually look forward to a time of a new Babylon:

Monk Leontios (died 543): Rejoice, oh most unhappy one, oh New Babylon!…You, who are the New Babylon rejoice now on behalf of Zion! New Babylon, dance, bounce and leap greatly, make known even those in Haydes what a Grace you have received. Because that peace which was yours to enjoy in times past, and which God has deprived you of in course of battles, receive it once more from the hand of an Angel…oh, the City of Seven Hills the dominion will be yours. (Tzima Otto, H. The Great Monarch and WWIII in Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Scriptural Prophecies. Verenikia Press, Rock Hill (SC), 2000, pp. 82-83).

This is something that the Bible and at least one Catholic priest have warned against:

2…Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! 3 For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.” 4 And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. 5 For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. (Revelation 18:2-5)

Priest H. Kramer (20th century): In the vision of the Seer now appears a second beast rising out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb but speaking like a dragon…In other places he is called the false prophet…This prophet may re-establish the pagan Roman Empire and build the “Great Harlot”, Babylon… The False Prophet…will persuade all infidels, apostates and apostate nations to worship and adore him…Antichrist “sitteth in the temple of God” (I Thes. II. 4). This is not the ancient Temple in Jerusalem…this temple is shown to be a Catholic Church…The False Prophet will proclaim the resurrection of the Roman Empire. (Kramer H., p. 318,320-323)

Despite biblical and other warnings, Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew seem determined to help fulfill prophecies that warn against what they are trying to do.  Catholic prophecies also warn that Protestants, and even evangelical ones, will be accommodated by this:

Anna-Katarina Emmerick (October 1, 1820): The Church is in great danger…The Protestant doctrine and that of the schismatic Greeks are to spread everywhere.  I now see that in this place (Rome) the (Catholic) Church is being so cleverly undermined, that there hardly remain a hundred or so priests who have not been deceived.  They all work for the destruction, even the clergy.  A great destruction is now at hand…

(April 22, 1823): I saw that many pastors allowed themselves to be taken up with ideas that were dangerous to the Church.  They were building a great, strange, and extravagant Church.  Everyone was admitted in it in order to be united and to have equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, sects of every description.  Such was to be the new Church (Dupont, pp. 66, 71).

Priest Paul Kramer (21st century): The errors of Orthodoxy and of Protestantism will be embraced by that false church, it will be an ecumenical church because the Anti-Pope will be recognized by the world—not by the faithful, but by the world—by the secular world and the secular governments. (Kramer P. The Imminent Chastisement for Not Fulfilling Our Lady’s Request. An edited transcript of a speech given at the Ambassadors of Jesus and Mary Seminar in Glendale, California, September 24, 2004.THE FATIMA CRUSADER Issue 80, Summer 2005, pp. 32-45 http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr80/cr80pg32.asp viewed 4/15/08)

Father Laurence Ricci, S.J. (died 1775): … a valiant duke will arise from the ancient German house which was humiliated by the French monarch. This great ruler will restore stolen Church property. Protestantism will cease… This duke will be the most powerful monarch on earth. At a gathering of men noted for piety and wisdom he will, with the aid of the Pope, introduce new rules, and ban the spirit of confusion. Everywhere there will be one fold and one shepherd.” (Connor p.37)

As far as evangelicals supporting the Church of Rome goes, notice something that I wrote and published back in the Summer of 2009:

Various events around the globe suggest that people of many faiths are getting to the point where they are likely to accept some type of ecumenical religion.

Notice that one evangelical Protestant has predicted that there will be a collapse of evangelicals within a decade because of compromise and limited biblical confidence—and that many will join the Catholics and/or Orthodox:

Michael Spencer (2009): We are on the verge—within 10 years—of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West… Millions of Evangelicals will quit…massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence…Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith… Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the “conversion” of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions…

And the above is not even including the fact that those “Catholic and Orthodox communions” will themselves likely come together and change under the guise of the ecumenical movement that will strengthen in Europe—an ecumenical movement that news events show is occurring. (Thiel B. 2012 and the Rise of the Secret Sect.  Nazarene Books, 2009, pp. 176-177).

Despite having a lot of “megachurches,” overall, the evangelical movement continues its decline and movement towards absorption and extinction.  Mainstream Protestant churches are in such massive decline that they are becoming less relevant and will tend towards absorption as well (which happened to a portion of the Anglicans in the Fall of 2009 as Rome compromised to get some of them, see Some Anglicans Starting to Accept Pope’s Offer of Unification and The Vatican, the Anglicans, and the Celibacy Issue).

The Bible shows that an ecumenical unity for the world is coming our of Europe (cf. Revelation 13:3-4,8; Daniel 11:35-38) and it will not be faithful to the early and true apostolic traditions or sacred scripture.  Ecumenical unity will be a disaster for the world (cf. Revelation 13, 17, & 18). Catholics and Protestants will find such unity with the Eastern Orthodox especially disturbing if they understood the plan of the Orthodox in this area.

Rome considers itself to the the leader of all Christendom.  And this is not only in its writings and teachings, it is also emblazoned on various of its buildings.  A couple of days ago, I visited the Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran (in Italian it is called Arcibasilica Papale di San Giovanni in Laterano).  This is the building that allegedly holds the ‘cathedra’ or chair of Peter’s authority for the Church of Rome to rule over its versions of Christendom.

Wikipedia reports the following about it:

It is the oldest and ranks first among the four Papal Basilicas or major basilicas of Rome (having the cathedra of the Bishop of Rome). It claims the title of ecumenical mother church among Roman Catholics.

On the outside of the building in at least two places, I saw the following:

Inscription in the Basilica of St. John Lateran

Translating from the Latin, the inscription above reads:

Sacred Lateran Church Mother and Head of All Churches of the City and the World

Nearly all familiar with the Book of Revelation realize that it contains the following statements:

3 And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. 5 And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6 I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.

9 Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.

18 And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.” (Revelation 17:3-6, 9, 18).

Even Catholic scholars admit that Rome has seven mountains/hills (Tertullian even called it that in the early part of the third century when he wrote “I appeal to the inhabitants of Rome themselves, to the native population of the seven hills“) and that it seems to fit the description in the Book of Revelation (which they normally call the Apocalypse):

…the Apocalypse was an inexhaustible quarry where to dig for invectives that they might hurl then against the Roman hierarchy. The seven hills of Rome, the scarlet robes of the cardinals, and the unfortunate abuses of the papal court made the application easy and tempting (Van den Biesen, Christian. “Apocalypse.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 5 Jan. 20145 Oct. 2008 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01594b.htm>).

The reality is that the drive towards ecumenical unity between the Catholics of Rome, the Greek/Eastern Orthodox, and various Protestants is happening.  The pace seems to be picking up.  And it will not end well for the Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, or various Protestants.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 7th, 2014 at 8:01 am and is filed under COG News, Religious News.

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