There are some battles that can be won only by not getting into them. A battle with meth or cocaine comes to mind. And there are some bombs that cannot be defused without detonating them. The only way to avoid detonation is to let them sit untouched. Booby-traps come to mind. And there are some evils that cannot be examined without being exposed to them, and thereby contaminated by them. Today’s Roman Catholic Church comes to mind.
Thus it is that I am not going to detail, or even name, the emerging evils of the Catholic Church, some old, some new. But they are there, in the news, for the brave and interested reader to see. Evil. (Nor is the Catholic Church alone in this.)
How has such a wretched state of affairs come about?
As background, in the early centuries A.D. the persecution of the Christian Church was horrendous. For example, the Roman historian Tacitus (circa 56 – 120 A.D.) says of the persecution:
Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skin of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.
Here is a famous painting of Emperor Nero’s use of Christians for lighting-up night-time festivities.
Nero’s Torches by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1876. Oil on canvas. National Museum, Krakow, Poland.
If you look carefully at the right side of the painting you will see a row of Christians on poles, wrapped in combustibles, about to be ignited.
The persecution went on, on and off, until A.D. 313 when Emperor Constantine (and Licinius in the East) made Christianity legal throughout the Roman Empire.
Between 313 and today the Christian Church went bad, and recovered, more than once. Why? As John Eldridge in his book Waking the Dead has put it, after three centuries of trying to kill-off Christianity, Satan figured out “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
The Satanic scandal of the Roman Catholic Church today is proof of this. This scandal is being accompanied by public exposure of the New World Order (e.g. George Soros), of the Deep State (e.g. CIA), of the criminal activities of various NGO’s (e.g. the Clinton Foundation), of the corruption of the news media (e.g. CNN), of the corruption of the “entertainment” media (e.g. Hollywood), of the corruption of even the best of governments (ours), and of a general state of affairs with evil being called good, and good being called evil (e.g. homosexuality) throughout what was once Christendom – and you know it is.
Western Europe today is reaping the harvest of having turned from God.
In addition to Islam, France now has a new self-proclaimed god – Jupiter – in the person of French president Emmanuel Macron. Macron has promised a “Jupiterian” presidency, and stated that his thought processes are “too complex” for the ordinary person to understand. (They were forewarned: “Emmanuel” means “God is with us”. He is taking his name too seriously.)
So the question is: Why is all this coming to light now, visible to the whole world? One possible answer: God is giving us one last chance to see a sample of humans as we are without God, and as we will become without the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit, and cry out for deliverance. Of course there is little expectation that we will do this, but a few strays may be saved. At best there may be a revival in a world that is spiritually and morally bankrupt.
And lest you think I am ignoring our good works, to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah (64:6) speaking of ancient Israel’s condition: before God your righteous works are as used tampons. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but nonetheless true. Except through Jesus, we come up zip.
The corruption of the Christian Church was not unforeseen. The first letter of Peter in the bible addresses the issue already.
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God:
He then goes on:
and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1 Peter 4:17-18 KJV)
Peter’s questions are obviously rhetorical. And the answer to both these questions is: Hell.
O that I but had the key
To make my fellow mortals see
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