Church of God News

Here is some of what Pope Francis said today in Rio de Janeiro:

Dear young friends…The Church is counting on you! The Pope is counting on you! May Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother, always accompany you with her tenderness http://wydcentral.org/final-mass-with-pope-francis-on-copacabana/

UPDATE 1:40 pm PDT: Afterwards, Pope Francis made other statements:

Following the closing Mass of World Youth Day, Pope Francis held Mary up as the model for the life of Christians…

“May Mary teach us by her life what it means to be a missionary disciple,” the Pope prayed.

He remarked that each time the Angelus is prayed, “we recall the event that changed the history of mankind for ever.”

Immediately after receiving the grace of becoming God’s mother, Mary went in haste to help her kinswoman Elizabeth, Pope Francis noted, rather than basking in her own radiance.

“There, my dear friends, we have our model.”  http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/news/pope-mary-the-model-of-evangelization-2967001

(The ‘Angelus’ originated with the 11th-century monastic custom of reciting three Hail Marys during the evening bell.)

This pontiff is popular.  He promotes ecumenical dialogue and often speaks of helping the poor.  To many, he looks “like a lamb” (cf. Revelation 13:11). And his emotional appeal is affecting people.

Regarding the intellectualism comment made earlier by Francis, notice the following from the Bible:

4 But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Daniel 12:4)

There will also be increased knowledge of the truth at the time of the end (cf. Matthew 24:14).  Yet, Catholic ‘prophets’ have seemingly feared this:

Anne Catherine Emmerich January 27, 1822 Then my guide exhorted me anew to pray and, as far as I could, to incite others to pray for sinners and especially for erring priests. ‘Very evil times are coming,’ he said. ‘The non-Catholics will mislead many. They will use every possible means to entice them from the Church, and great disturbances will follow.’ (Schmöger, p. 348)

Nursing Nun of Bellay (died 1820): “All these things shall come to pass once the wicked have succeeded in circulating large numbers of bad books.” (Dupont, p.51)

Trappistine Nun of Notre Dame des Gardes. “Chastisement will come when a very large number of bad books have been spread” (Dupont, p 114).

Elizabeth Canori-Mora (died 1825): “All men shall rise one against the other, and they shall kill one another without pity. During this sanguinary conflict the avenging arm of God will strike the wicked, and in His mighty power He will punish their pride and presumption. God will employ the powers of {Hades} for the extermination of these impious and heretical persons who desire to overthrow the Church and destroy it to its very foundation…God will allow the demons to strike with death those impious men because they gave themselves up to the infernal powers and had formed with them a compact against the Catholic Church. (Connor, pp.22-23)

Abbe Voclin. “People will speak only of money. Horrible books will be freely available. Intellectuals will argue fiercely among themselves. Then war will break out that will see the rise of the Great Monarch” (Dupont, p. 114).

We in the CCOG will likely make more books and articles that will be perceived to fulfill the above–and even some existing materials that I have written may be considered to be in that category by them already (note: the “Great Monarch” that certain Catholics hope for seems to be the final King of the North that the Bible warns against, so the timing of materials that certain Catholics fear is supposed to be near the time of the end).  Furthermore, a book that I have been working on for years (which I expect to release a draft of in 2014) will better shed the light of truth on the foundations of the Church of Rome and may be perceived as an attempt to destroy the falseness of the Roman church’s very foundations.

Pope Francis taking jabs against intellectualism may be partially motivated by the fact that he does not want to have his church have to deal with facts that will be uncovered about it.  However, he should know that Jesus taught:

22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed (Mark 4:22)

And in my view, Catholic prophets and other leaders have feared this revealing.

Furthermore, it should be of value to understand that Pope Francis’ predecessor specifically warned against the millennial gospel of the kingdom of God message.  Notice:

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism. (Catechism of the Catholic Church. Imprimatur Potest +Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Doubleday, NY 1995, p. 194).

It is important to realize that the millennial teaching appears to be the only doctrine associated with Antichrist that is condemned in the current official Catechism of the Catholic Church (which is the first new one in hundreds of years).  Since the millennial message is a key part of Christ’s Gospel of the Kingdom, and “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations” (Matthew 24:14), it is clear, to me at least, that leaders of the Church of Rome have been, and still are, taking steps to downgrade/demonize the message that Jesus wants His Church to be proclaiming.

A reader sent me a link to an article in WND related to Pope Francis:

The 900-year-old prophecy of St. Malachy that predicts Pope Francis, the 112th pontiff in a specific line, will be the last pope applies labels to each Catholic leader, many of which strikingly coordinate with each man’s official coat of arms.

In the WND Films documentary “The Last Pope?” …experts on the ancient prophecy explain how many of these mottoes not only match up with the papal symbols but the men’s origins and life experiences as well.

Malachy was a Catholic saint who lived in Ireland in the 12th century. His “Prophecy of the Popes,” as it has become to be known, forecast that there would be 112 popes from that time until Jesus made His triumphant return to the planet. The sudden and unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was the spark igniting the new wildfire of speculation due to one simple reason: his successor, Pope Francis, is the end of the line.

So is Pope Francis indeed the “last pope”? The prophecy’s moniker for his papacy is “Petrus Romanus,” or “Peter the Roman.”

In the documentary, Tom Horn, co-author of “Petrus Romanus,” says he believes the motto fits just fine.

Explains Horn in the film: “We had given interviews [prior to the election of Pope Francis] saying it would be a mistake to try to nail down the last pope having the Christian name Peter, that in fact the only thing that it would take to fulfill the prophecy would be a cardinal of Italian descent. And low and behold Jorge Bergoglio, Italian descent, parents full-blooded Italians, or in the old language ‘Romans.’

“But he names himself after Francis of Assisi. Now this is a Catholic friar who lived in the late 1100s and the early 1200s, but his name of birth Giovanni Di Pietro Di Bernardone, Peter. He was an Italian, or Roman in the old language, a man whose name can be literally translated as Peter the Roman.'”  http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/uncanny-popes-coats-of-arms-back-up-prophecy/#mgoRcmtJOAXhAwMT.99

Although the article did not actually mention Pope Francis’ coat of arms, let me state that according to Wikipedia it was changed from the original one to include an eight-point star in order to better represent ‘Mary’:

The coat of arms of Pope Francis was revealed on 18 March 2013. Francis decided to keep both the arms and motto he used since his episcopal consecration in 1991, however altered to reflect his position as Roman Pontiff…Below the Jesuit emblem is an eight-pointed star, which is a long-standing symbol of the Virgin Mary, and a spikenard (or nard flower) representing Saint Joseph…as pope he changed the tincture of the star and the spikenard from argent (silver) to or (gold). The first version of the papal coat of arms published by the Vatican adopted the five-pointed star from Bergoglio’s previous one, but it was later changed to eight points; the representation of the spikenard was also slightly altered.  Coat of Arms of Pope Francis.  Wikipedia, viewed 07/28/13)

Pope Francis frequently speaks of Mary, has dedicated his pontificate to his version of Mary, and told people in Brazil to turn to ‘Mary’ (see Massive crowds meet Pope Francis at Marion shrine in Brazil and he speaks of ‘Mary’).

Turning people towards Mary, appealing to ecumenical dialogue, appearing as a popular ‘lamb’ to many, frequently taking economic positions (cf. Revelation 13:16-17), and perhaps getting demonic support to function as he does at his age with a missing lung (cf. Revelation 16:13-14), could be signs of the final Antichrist.

While it is still too early to tell for sure if Pope Francis is this individual, many of the items I have discussed in various posts point to that as a possibility (and are consistent with the many of the details I wrote about in my book The Last Pope: Do Biblical and Catholic Prophecies Point to Pope Francis?). And if he is not, he certainly is setting the stage for the one who will be.