Back To The Light?

Back To The Light?

There is a Great Controversy between Christ and Satan that has been going on for over 6,000 years! It is impossible for any human being to “remain neutral” in this struggle! What are the two main organizations currently doing the work for both sides? The Seventh Day Adventist Church and the papacy! All three of the 3 Angels’ Messages clearly point out this fact! And this is why I’m including this article in this section of my website!

Why does the 4th Commandment begin with the word “Remember?” Who is it that has caused almost the whole world to “forget” the Sabbath? That would be the papacy! Who is presenting an accurate picture of the 3 Angels’ Messages? The Seventh Day Adventists!

I hope you will pay very close attention to this discussion between Walter Veith and Martin Smith!

Back To The Light? Woe Unto Them That Call Light For Darkness! – Walter Veith & Martin Smith WUP 221

Hello and welcome to another episode of What’s Up, Prof. Martin! Where are we sitting? We’re on the road. We’re on the road, so our set is not our normal set. We’re here somewhere in the bush.

Yes. In a little cabin here. So please, if the shadows and the lights and everything is not right, don’t comment.

Just enjoy what’s happening. Exactly. We’ve just come from a camp meeting, an overseas trip, and we haven’t been home yet, so it’s been a long road.

I’ve managed to pick up a frog in my throat, so please excuse that too. And so don’t ask me how I am. That’s why I’m not going to.

Let me give a good cough and tell you, don’t ask me how I am. So hopefully that frog of yours will behave itself. Yes, we’ll have to whip it into shape, put it into warm water or something.

Yeah, but one of the reasons we have to probably sit here is everybody is wanting to know what’s going on in the Catholic Church. Yes, we have an interesting topic because Pope Francis has just died, and that leaves a great opportunity for change. So before we talk about that, shall we say a word of prayer? Yes.

Will you do that? I’ll do that. Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can do this even while we are busy traveling. We ask that you enlighten our minds and that you guide us in this discussion and that your name be glorified. In Jesus’ name, Amen. Amen.

Martin, this is a very fascinating time.

Yeah. Even Cardinal Dolan implicated that it was almost like a special moment, like a divine intervention for a time such as this, and that he couldn’t have choreographed it any better. So that is a very strange thing actually to say, isn’t it? Yeah, it is, especially from somebody that died.

Yeah, and somebody with the stature that Pope Francis had. And there are some very interesting points that have been raised in the media, and those points are fascinating to me. This pope, he was a post-Vatican II pope, right? Oh, yeah.

Very much so. A very staunch advocate for Vatican II. Very post-Vatican II.

And there were many, many cardinals and many theologians and many lay people and many ministries that were certainly not happy with the deviations that the church was taking, particularly since Pope Francis was vehemently against the Latin Mass. Yeah. And he even forbade that the Latin Mass should be used at all, unless there were very stringent reasons or permissions given for it.

Well, can you just explain to us, what is the Latin Mass? Well, as the name implies, it was spoken in Latin, and there are certain traditions that are associated with the Latin Mass. For example, the Latin Mass was traditionally spoken by the priest, not facing the audience, but even facing the east. Oh, okay.

Now, that’s very interesting, because the Bible has a lot to say about facing the east, right? Mm-hmm. And in Ezekiel, we have admonitions against the Pharisees and the leaders in the temple that used to worship towards the east, with their backs to the temple. And most churches are built in that direction, in any case, facing the east.

And that was a pagan sun worship culture. So a lot of paganism and Christianity underwent syncretism, and a lot of mingling took place. And it’s fascinating that many of the churches are actually built on pagan sites, and are on those foundations of pagan sites, even the Vatican itself.

And this worshipping towards the east was the ancient tradition, but it was steeped in paganism. It was contrary to what the Scriptures said. So the Latin Mass was spoken in Latin.

Of course, the people didn’t understand Latin. So it added an air of, an ambience of mysticism to the procedure. And supremacy towards the priest, because nobody could understand him.

Correct. Now, of course, there was a lot of argument about how the Mass should be shared, with the congregation. Originally, of course, it was the Mass in two kinds.

In other words, the congregation shared in the wine and in the bread. But then they changed it to one kind. So the congregation didn’t get the wine anymore, but only the host.

And the host itself was not bread that was broken. It was a round wafer, and it was placed in a monstrance, which was sort of a half-moon. And even when they parade the host through the streets, it’s also placed in a monstrance.

Now, that also comes from pagan origins, because the sickle moon represented the womb of Semiramis, and the birth of the sun god within that birthing womb was depicted. So it was an ancient culture that was brought into Christianity and mingled as a syncretistic form of worship. Okay.

So, Martin, originally, of course, it was simple unleavened bread that Jesus used, and he used unfermented wine. Within the Catholic system, later, the unfermented wine was also replaced with fermented wine. Now, that biblically doesn’t make any sense either, because leaven or fermentation was a symbol of sin.

So if the bread had to be unleavened, then the wine had to be unfermented, because it was a symbol of sin, and in Christ there was no sin. The other problem was that the Mass, over time, was considered a reenactment, a precise reenactment, of what happened on the cross. Okay.

And the other problem was that they then introduced the idea that it was the actual sacrifice. Therefore, the bread had to be transubstantiated into the actual body of Christ. So it wasn’t merely a symbol, bread.

It now became the actual body of Christ. So when you partook of it, you partook of the body of Christ. And the Mass was read on a very regular basis, daily.

And of course, over various congregations and districts and time zones, it later turned out that there is not a second in the world when there isn’t some Mass read somewhere. Which means, of course, that the actual sacrifice of Christ is repeated every single second somewhere on this earth. Yeah.

Now, that’s blasphemy. Well, Martin, I think you are right, because the Bible says, by one sacrifice he has forever made perfect. So, Martin, when we look at these things, we have to see what is going to happen to the Roman Catholic Church now.

Because since the 1960s, 1962, Vatican II, there has been this move to accept the different churches no longer as apostate, but as separated brethren. And they were going to come back to the church. And that was the whole aim of the ecumenical movement.

And the ecumenical movement was not set up for Catholics, because they were the mother church. They had their own movement that was to combine the churches. But the ecumenical movement was concentrated in Protestantism to make them come to the position where they would come back into the fold.

Not necessarily accepting the doctrines, because they are irreconcilable. Yeah, you cannot reconcile Protestant doctrine with Catholic doctrine. No, you cannot reconcile them.

And so, over the years, the popes have emphasized that we must lay doctrine aside. And Pope Francis was very strong on setting doctrine aside. Now, if you set doctrine aside, then basically anything goes, right? That’s true.

That’s why he could embrace even paganism. Paganism, Pachamama worship. And there’s a lot in the media about that, of course, because that’s a form of idolatry, right? And it’s one of the gripes that the conservative side of the Catholic Church actually has.

Then, of course, you can embrace other religions that do not see Christ as the way, the truth, and the light. And so, that opened the way to the Abrahamic Accord, because there’s more than one way, according to Pope Francis, to approach God. Now, is that biblical, Martin? No, because the Bible says there’s only one way in which to approach God.

So, can an organization that is Christian, theologically, unite with an organization that denies Christianity? There’s no way. If you go to the Bible, it says that can two walk together unless they agree? Okay, but this goes even further. It goes much further back than this.

So, if we want to see what is happening now within the Roman Catholic Church, then we have an amazing opportunity to see the fulfillment of prophecy. We did mention a little bit of this when Pope Francis was so sick. Now it’s come to fruition.

So now, like you mentioned, there’s a very good opportunity to see this unfold. And then, of course, there are those that held to the view that Pope Francis would definitely be the last pope. Now, in one of our previous What’s Up Profs, we distance ourselves from that, because prophecy, as it is written, historic, continuous, doesn’t emphasize the individual unless it specifically mentions the individual, like the first king of Greece, for example.

That would be Alexander the Great. But it’s the principles that are mentioned in the Bible. So we have to look at this from the very historic root of what is going on and why Catholicism started to become the most powerful Christian movement, let’s say Christian in adverted commas, and sort of overran all the others.

And then the Protestant Reformation gave it a setback, right, and set the record straight. And now the Protestant Reformation seems to be over. So what has achieved that and why? Well, people say Rome has changed.

But Rome might change in its attitude or appear to change in its attitude. But if Rome hasn’t changed in its doctrine, then Rome hasn’t changed. The rest is a facade.

So, Martin, the Bible says that one of the key issues of the last days is deception. Jesus said, be careful that no one deceives you. Now we spoke about deception at the camp meeting just recently.

And basically, what is the purpose of deception? The purpose of deception is to make you believe something that is not true. That’s the purpose of deception. Now, does this necessarily mean that the people practicing the deception are deceivers? No, they can be deceived themselves.

Exactly. So, well, by definition, if they’re practicing deception, they’re deceivers. But they can be unknowing deceivers, because they’ve actually swallowed whatever they believe is true, which happens to be a deception.

Now, the Bible also says that the devil has gone into how much of the world? All. All the world? All the world. The whole world to deceive it.

That means, Martin, that the whole world is lying in deception. Now, that’s a very serious issue. So, how do we know who’s deceiving who? There’s only one truth.

And where do we find that truth? In the Bible. Can you find it in tradition? No. Alright, but the Roman Catholic Church says that tradition is the framework in which it identifies truth.

And the Roman Catholic Church also doesn’t base its morality on the Bible. No. It bases it on natural law.

Yeah. Now, natural law is what society naturally does. It’s like, it’s acceptable.

Yes. What’s normally accepted in a society, that’s natural law. Because by nature, they are doing it.

At the camping day, I also did an example and said, like, natural law, if you are on a cannibalistic island, the natural law is that it’s okay to be a cannibal. Yes, until something else happens and it becomes part of a greater society that doesn’t have that. So, basically, natural law is based on whatever norms are considered acceptable in society.

Do we have a fall in nature? Yes. And the heart is how wicked? Desperately. Desperately wicked.

So, would you like to base your morality on a desperately wicked heart? No, definitely not. And that’s the one that Hollywood continues to tell you to follow. Okay, so what if you lived in a city like Sodom? Yeah.

Would natural law proclaim the activities of that particular city as acceptable? Yes. Okay, and the scriptures base morality on a higher standard, a divine standard. Yes.

Not dictated by man, but dictated by God and written with the finger of God in stone. Now, when we use the terminology, it is written in stone. Then it’s immovable.

Yeah, unchangeable. Unchangeable. It’s like the law of the Medes and Persians, right? So, when we discuss what is happening in the Vatican now, we actually should go way back into history.Yeah, unchangeable. Unchangeable. It’s like the law of the Medes and Persians, right? So, when we discuss what is happening in the Vatican now, we actually should go way back into history.

And then we’ll talk a little bit about Pope Francis and what are the possibilities in the future, right? Yeah. Well, number one, how did Catholicism come about and how did it gain ascendancy? Well, if you go back into history, the early church consisted of the disciples and those that joined themselves to the disciples, right? And this church flourished mainly in the East. So, the seat of Christianity was at Antioch.

And then as it spread, it also spread to other regions and then also to Rome. Now, it’s interesting that the Roman Catholic Church was just a church in Rome and the Roman emperor still ruled from Rome. And the Jews were constantly at war, the zealots, with the Romans.

And the Romans eventually got fed up. And so, they besieged Jerusalem. And in the year 70 AD, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, right? Yeah.

And the interesting thing is, the Jews didn’t then cease their operations because their hope was that the kingdom would be given to them. They misapplied the promises. And what they considered the second coming was what they appropriated to themselves, where they would receive the kingdom.

An earthly one. And they totally negated the first coming, which was to set up the kingdom of accepting Christ and turning away from transgression. So, that was not part of their program.

Even some of the disciples had this mindset. That’s it. That’s why they were disappointed because Jesus was crucified.

Yes, and one of them was even a zealot. In other words, one that was really determined to wipe the Romans out, right? In any case, they didn’t stop their attacks, almost like terrorist attacks against Roman legions or soldiers. And they would constantly harass the Romans.

And just after 150 AD, the emperor that was ruling then was Hadrian. And the emperor Hadrian had it up to here. So, there was a second destruction of Jerusalem, even more severe than the first.

And he totally obliterated the Jewish state and scattered the nation. And he forbade the Jewish religion. Amongst other things, he forbade the keeping of the Sabbath.

Now, this put all of Christianity into a spot. Because they had all been keeping Sabbath until that time. And it is well documented that the Church in the East kept the Sabbath and in Africa they kept the Sabbath.

And even the Celtic Church and the Waldensians and the Albigensians, they all kept the Sabbath, right? So, how were they going to get around this impasse? How were they not going to be associated with the Jews? And the Bishop of Rome came up with the clever idea that he could compromise on this issue and say, but we’re not Jews. And we don’t really have to keep the Sabbath. We can keep the first day of the week and celebrate it as the day of the resurrection.

And then we won’t be associated with the Jews. And that’s basically where it started. So, that’s actually where Sunday keeping really got… So, the Bishop of Rome is the one that introduced Sunday keeping.

And eventually he convinced some of the compatriots in Alexandria to do the same. So, there were these two conclaves that were Sunday keepers and the rest of the Christian world were Sabbath keepers. And over centuries, there were many, many wars and many attempts to totally obliterate Sabbath keeping.

But it always kept popping up. Now, that’s the first thing that happened. And that was a compromise with the pagan world.

Yes, because they had sun worship. Yes. So, now if you had the venerable day of the sun, Dia Solis, then you were also able to draw in paganism because the similarities were there.

And what if you incorporated some of the ideologies of paganism? Now, one of the key features of every single pagan culture in the world is ancestor worship. Right? Exactly. Ancestor worship.

So, eventually in the Roman milieu, they developed the theology that the deceased fathers got a special role on the other side. In order to do that, you have to embrace the doctrine of immortality. Yes.

Okay. The first lie, in any case. Alright.

Now, the doctrine of immortality is also part and parcel of every pagan culture. It forms the basis of pagan culture because human beings eventually became deified on the other side. So, now Rome didn’t go so far as to deify them, but made them mediators.

Go-betweens between God and man. The idea then started to grow that in the pagan culture, there were priests. And the priests brought sacrifices.

Of course, within the Jewish religion, there were also priests. They also brought sacrifices. And the Bible tells us that when Christ was sacrificed once and for all, the priesthood, the sacrificial system ceased to exist.

Because by one sacrifice, he had forever made perfect. So, the New Testament doesn’t refer to priests, but refers to ministers. Now, a minister is someone who ministers, someone who is a shepherd.

So, now you had this idea that the minister worked with the congregation and the priest that was worshipped was the high priest Jesus Christ who had taken the place of the Levitical system. He had taken the priesthood under the order of Melchizedek. Yes.

Can you just explain that portion? That what would have happened if he went into the temple? He would have been killed. When he was on earth? When he was on earth. Because nobody was allowed to enter the temple unless they were Levites, right? They had to be the descendants of Aaron.

And Jesus was a Judean. Yeah. Now, as a Judean, he couldn’t officiate within the temple.

So, his earthly service was in the outer courts. And he became the sacrifice and then he became a high priest of a temple not built by human hands, which is what Hebrew says. And there is only one priest and only one mediator and that is the man Christ Jesus.

But in paganism, the priesthood was very important. They also brought sacrifices. So, the papacy adopted a priesthood.

Now, Martin, that means that there are no ministers, not ministers, but officiating priests that bring a sacrifice. But now, what was the sacrifice? There was no sacrifice of sheep and goats because the Bible says he entered not with the sacrifice of sheep and goats but with his own blood Jesus entered into the holy, right? So, the philosophy and the theology developed that the host of the last supper was the sacrifice. But as a priest, it has to be a real sacrifice.

It has to be an enactment of what went before. And this was where the doctrine of transubstantiation developed. That the bread became the literal body of Christ and the wine the literal blood of Christ.

That’s almost, well, to put it very blunt, it’s like cannibalism. Yes, quite right. And of course, then a problem arises that if you hand out the chalice to somebody and it passes through the congregation like it was in the beginning, then what if somebody spilt it? That would be a disaster, right? Because now you spilt the literal blood of Christ.

And so, it was decided not to give the congregation the wine but only the priest would partake of it. Then you could control the situation. So, this is how this developed over time.

Now, the dead, the ancestors, were already interceding on behalf. Of humanity. And then, of course, they had the doctrine of Mariology.

And the papacy developed this doctrine of Mariology. Now, the Bible tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was born under the law. Right? She was born under the law.

That means she was born under the condemnation of the law. And that means that she required redemption just like everyone else. Now, Rome developed the theology that God is so holy, Jesus is so holy, he couldn’t have come into a vessel that had a fallen nature.

That’s just not conceivable in that kind of thinking. And so, they came up with the idea that Mary, by some miraculous decree, must have been declared immaculate. Now, some of these doctrines, Martin, only become doctrine, well, they were always doctrine, they were always taught, but they were never declared infallible.

Some of these only happened in the last century or two. So, the doctrines have been developing over time, right? So, Mary was declared immaculate by decree of God so that she could give birth to Christ. Now, because of this, he was above humanity.

He didn’t come all the way down to humanity. So, he didn’t become exactly the same flesh as we were. And the Bible says that if you deny that he came in the flesh that we are, then you are antichrist.

This is a bit of a serious accusation, right? And so, this doctrine developed and Mary was now immaculate. But imagine this, Martin. If God could declare Mary immaculate by a decree without sin, then couldn’t he do it for you and for me too? For sure.

Then Christ didn’t have to die. He wouldn’t have had to die because then we would have been declared sinless, right? So, the whole question of the atonement is now highly problematic. So, they developed a theology that Christ actually didn’t die for you.

He came to set the perfect obedient example. His works were perfect. And these perfect works were the offset for the sinfulness of man.

So, God was prepared to accept man on the basis of the obedience of Christ unto death. But he didn’t really shed his blood for you. So, in Catholic doctrine, you still have to pay the price.

Now, we’ve said this many times, but we need to understand it in order to understand the seriousness of the issue. And where it’s most probably also heading. Correct.

So, Martin, what happened is that the Roman Catholic system accepted the pagan doctrine of purgation, purgatory, where your sins that are forgiven are paid for. So, in other words, Martin, if you have been a sinner, then you have to confess your sins. But you can’t confess them to God because he’s way up there.

You need something in between in order to do that. This is where the priest comes in. And where the ancestors come in.

They take the place of Christ. They take the place of Christ. They become intercessors.

And in the case of Mary, it becomes so supreme that they call them co-redeemers, co-redemptrixes. Okay. So, you cannot talk or go to Jesus directly.

You have to go through one of these. In Roman Catholic thinking, the sinner that ventures directly to Christ does so with fear and apprehension. So, he employs the mediation of the mother.

And she presents it to the son. Now, what do they do with everybody that’s burdened and laden can come to Christ? No, you have to go and confess to a priest. So, the decision of the priest to pardon or not to pardon takes precedence.

And according to Catholic theology, God has to subscribe to it. So, the priest now becomes, on earth, a little bit higher in position than Christ himself. So, this doctrine started developing.

Now, there was a bit of a shift in the thinking of purgation. So, you were a sinner and you acknowledged your sin. You went to a priest and you confessed your sins.

And the priest gave you a penance. In other words, something that you had to do to reciprocate. You had to pay for it.

Now, once you start paying for something, Martin, it’s no longer a free gift, right? So, you had to do something in return. And then when you died, you went to purgatory. Your sin was forgiven, but it hadn’t been paid for in full.

So, you had to burn it off in purgatory. And in Catholic theology, that process can take a very, very long time. And the theology grew to such a point where people were terrified of purgatory because they were going to spend maybe a millennium in purgatory on the basis of a short life here on earth.

And how did this work? Well, they paid for their own sin now. Not yet. Oh, this is now in purgatory, so this is paying through pain.

Paying through pain, yes. Now, how do you get an early release out of that pain? That’s where you have to… This is now where it gets interesting. So, they developed a theology of a treasury of merit.

Now, we’ve explained this before. And I want to tell you now, Martin, that the poor Roman Catholic sitting in the pew has no idea how this works. They believe that Jesus paid the price.

They believe they can pray to Mary and she will intercede. But they believe that Christ paid the price. Now, Christ paid the ultimate price by giving up his life, but not for you, just to the point of total obedience unto death.

So now, the question was, how do we give relief to these people? And the theology developed, the theology which is called the treasury of merit. In order to get to heaven, you have to have certain meritorial points. Can I put it that way? This is now trying to simplify the doctrine.

This merit determines how long you will be in purgatory. Now, the doctrine developed that the Pope has access to a treasury of merit. Some of these saints did more than was necessary to merit heaven.

So there was additional merit. And that went into this treasure chest. And of course, Jesus’ meritorious works are unlimited.

They also went into the treasure chest. And the merit of Mary was, according to their doctrine, supreme and went into the treasure chest. So he has basically an unlimited bucket, treasure chest of merit.

And he could apply this merit to someone who lacked merit on the other side, in purgatory. In purgatory. This person is now deceased and in purgatory.

Suffering, excruciating pain. And the Pope has now the power to alleviate that pain by attributing some of this merit to him. That means he can get out of purgatory sooner than normal.

Okay, so purgatory is like a mini hell. It’s a mini hell. It’s an in-between hell.

Of course, if you never confessed your sins to the priest, and you committed what they called mortal sins because they develop categories of sins, then you went straight to hell. Then you didn’t go to that process at all. So this is for confessed sins, right? So the priesthood became absolutely necessary for salvation.

Without priest, you had no access to heaven. And the whole of the society was hooked into this system. Eventually, it became a point to ponder that this merit obviously had value, right? Yeah, of course.

Because it could alleviate a lot of pain. So what about selling the merit? And that is what they started to do. They started to sell the merit.

That was called an indulgence. Now, in the Middle Ages, they were selling the merit for money. And you had Tesla going around and all of these things.

And the world was in total darkness. Now, wasn’t the first point that you must understand, that everybody must understand, is that this system is no longer Bible-based, nor is it Christian. No, a long time.

From everything we’ve spoken now, there’s nothing based on the Bible. There’s nothing. Because you are now dependent upon the system, the priest, in order to have your sins forgiven.

You’re dependent upon the Pope in order to have merit attributed to you. And you are paying the price for everything that you did. Even though your sin has been forgiven, you are still going to pay the price.

So who becomes the sin-bearer? You do. So Christ is completely taken out of the equation. We have a total pagan system.

It’s not Christianity. It invokes the name of Christ and it says that Christ made it possible for you to have eternal life only because his merit was so great and his deeds were so wonderful that God, because of the greatness of his acts, decided to forgive humanity once they had paid for their sins. Do you understand where this is going? It’s 100% the opposite of what it is.

It’s not a Christian doctrine. It’s a pagan doctrine. That’s why it’s not a Christian church.

Correct. And what happened, Martin, is that the world plummeted into darkness. Now, darkness is the absence of light.

Now, Martin, the other sad point is that the people, who were largely illiterate, had no means of verifying this system. They just believed it. And then Rome still buried the scriptures in Latin that nobody spoke.

And so it was a very mystical religion and ceremony and pomp and glory took the place of substance. And people were actually ruled by fear. They were ruled by fear.

Then came the Reformation and it was started because of indulgences. Martin Luther recognized that indulgences didn’t make sense. And he’d been studying the Bible in Latin in his monastery.

And it’s interesting that Jan Hus, 100 years before him, had already recognized that indulgences were not from God, that they were a means of simony, selling, peddling the gospel of Christ. So when the Reformation came and they discovered the word again and Martin Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular tongue and Tyndall did the same for the English language and now the Bible was available and people could read from themselves, then all these papal doctrines based on tradition and paganism and Greek philosophy just dissipated. They were swept away.

And Christ was put back into the center. Salvation was through the blood of the Lamb. Christ paid the price.

The wrath that should have hit man came upon Christ and he took upon himself willingly. So many Catholic theologians would say, well in that case you must hate the Father and love the Son. But it was a joint decision.

They would pay the price and Christ would become sin for us. That’s why Moses had to lift up the serpent. Not because the serpent is your savior but because Christ became sin for us and paid the price.

And without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. And when that curtain tore you had direct access to the throne. There was no more priesthood.

It ended. You now had ministers and they were on the same level as the congregation. Nobody was higher.

It was just a hierarchy but it wasn’t a lordship. You shall not lord it over each other said Jesus. So it’s a totally different system.

And the Protestant Reformation gradually understood but hold on, then there can be no mass. We have to go back to the communion because there can be no transubstantiation because that would be an actual sacrifice requiring a priest and requiring an altar. So Protestantism threw all the altars out of the churches and they had the normal symbolic message of the Lord’s Supper commemorating an act of God that had already been done.

Are you with me? Yes. Okay. That started a war.

Yeah. Christ was back in the middle. There was no such thing as a mass.

There was no such thing as ancestor worship. There was no saint in heaven as mediator. Mary could never be a mediator because there is one mediator between man and God, the man, Christ, Jesus.

So those were vast doctrinal differences that couldn’t be bridged. How were they bridged? Well, Rome raised up other powers, the Jesuits amongst others, and the idea was to create a counter-reformation. So they used the theater and Jesuit theater became the norm in which they brought in paganism and mingled it with other ideas and started to take over the education and eventually they got so far in England as to introduce at Oxford University the Oxford Movement and everything that had been thrown out, the altars and the images, they slowly came back because humanity wants to see something, wants to touch something, wants to be able to confess to someone.

Then they feel better. Whereas with Jesus you have to do it by faith. They don’t want that.

They don’t want that. And the whole doctrine of justification, how are you justified? You are justified by faith alone in the atoning blood of Christ. So the Dark Ages were dissipated.

Christ’s light came into the world and the world blossomed. Then came the Oxford Movement. Then came the Ecumenical Movement and over centuries, biding its time, Rome chipped away, chipped away, chipped away at Protestantism.

Also under a guise. Under a guise. Eventually, I believe, Martin, that they not only fomented but were actually behind the complete liberalization of humanity and the total disregard for any law, divine or human, resulting in chaos that humanity cannot bear.

No, they actually, they’re the instigators of this whole thing. So they themselves swung the pendulum to absolute do what thou wilt is the whole of the law. That was in the French Revolution.

And then they allowed the governments to have this liberal nobody is in control attitude and humanity started to become degraded. And we are now at the point where the pendulum must swing back. So let me read you something out of the spirit of prophecy and then we’ll come to Pope Francis.

Okay, I just want to mention, we mentioned this pendulum probably since the beginning. Yes, correct. And then it’s already swung in the political sphere.

Correct. Now, let me read something to you. Foremost, this comes out of the great controversy, foremost amongst those who were called to lead the church from the darkness of potpourri into the light of a purer faith stood Martin Luther, zealous, ardent and devoted, knowing no fear but the fear of God and acknowledging no foundation for religious faith but the Holy Scriptures.

Luther was the man for his time. Through him, God accomplished a great work for the reformation of the church and the enlightenment of the world. Now let’s continue.

So this pagan system was swept away in large areas of the world by Protestantism. The papacy clung to some areas and even by military means maintained them. But then it used other methods to slowly erode Protestantism.

Here’s another quote, Martin, and it is quite a long one but I’m going to read it. The accession of the Roman church to power marked the beginning of the Dark Ages. As her power increased, the darkness deepened.

Faith was transferred from Christ, the true foundation, to the Pope of Rome. He had access to the treasury of merit. Instead of trusting in the Son of God for forgiveness of sins and for eternal salvation, the people looked to the Pope and to the priests and prelates to whom he delegated authority.

They were taught that the Pope was their earthly mediator and that none could approach God except through him. And further, that he stood in the place of God to them and was therefore to be implicitly obeyed, like a god. A deviation from his requirements was sufficient cause for the severest punishment to be visited upon the bodies and souls of the offenders.

Thus the minds of the people were turned away from God to fallible, erring, and cruel men. Nay, more to the Prince of Darkness himself who exercised his power through them. Sin was disguised in a garb of sanctity.

When the scriptures are suppressed and man comes to regard himself as supreme, we look only for fraud, deception, and debasing iniquity. With the elevation of human laws and traditions was manifest the corruption that ever results from setting aside the law of God. So they had a new system of morality.

God’s law was gone. The Sabbath was replaced with Sunday worship because it was dear solace the venerable day of the sun. The churches faced the east and the priests faced the east when he brought his sacrilegious sacrifice, repeating what Christ had done once and for all.

And they also say that the salvation is in the church. So, in the system. Without the Catholic Church there’s no salvation unless it is transferred from their authority to others.

Now Martin, what is interesting is that deception has an aim. Now what is the deeper aim of deception? The deeper aim was to rob Christ of his heritage. Because if you can take away the plan of salvation and substitute it for something else then you have robbed Christ of his heritage because the road leads nowhere.

Nobody comes to the Father except by man. He was a total new system. Now, who would have ever thought that an age of darkness with such dark doctrines could ever again be accepted by the world? Surely the darkness should have been swept away forever.

Well, does the Roman Catholic Church see those centuries as dark? No, they see them as light. And we will see that in a moment. Here’s another quote from Great Controversy, page 572, paragraph 3. A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to the success of the papacy.

It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success. Now, I want to start there. Under Pope Francis, you had a pope who was the ultra-liberal.

You can call him a woke pope. Yep. And the media and the conservatives were highly upset with some of his activities, particularly basically banning the Latin Mass, except for some orders that were particularly entrenched in that particular activity.

And then his wokeness, his stance on male and female, the LGBT community, abortion, all of these issues, all of them. And he permitted even pro-abortion presidents to take part in the Mass, which is a sacrilegious sacrifice in any case. And Martin, this wokeness was the heyday, the highlight of liberalization.

Yes, it was. It was the pinnacle. They’ve so long strived for this period where this would reign supreme.

Yes. And it became like that. And it came to the point where people saw no point in Christianity because it had become toothless, allowing everything even though it was debauched, right? And so people were leaving the churches in droves.

The churches were empty. And some of them became pubs and some of this became that. But some of them are beautifully maintained.

They’re ready for something. And some of them have gone great renovations in the last few years. Because they burnt down.

Yes, and they will be reignited as it were because the papacy wants to lead people back to what they call light. Yeah. The Dark Ages.

That’s it. If you compare it to the Bible doctrine and light, it’s total darkness. That’s why we mentioned it.

Total darkness. So here you had Benedict who was a conservative. In other words, sorry for interrupting, but another word is traditional.

Yes. Nothing but tradition. Nothing based on the Bible.

And then you had his replacement while he was still alive, Pope Francis. And you had this super liberal agenda. And all the super liberals loved him.

He was their hero. And the conservatives became more and more disenfranchised. They were very unhappy.

Now if you take what’s happening in the United States at the moment, is the swing towards liberal Catholicism or is the swing towards conservative theology? Well, we’ve spoken about just the cabinet and the people of Trump and the people in there. It’s all conservative, traditional Catholics. Highly Catholic.

Highly traditional pre-Vatican II theology. So now we’ve had a post-Vatican II theology. If we can take humanity back to a pre-Vatican II theology, then the papacy will have been fully restored to what it was in the Middle Ages.

Exactly. Wouldn’t the wound be healed then? It would be healed. Now what if church and state then came back and simultaneously embraced the philosophy and the mark of its authority and introduced it to society? Wouldn’t that be amazing? It would.

And people will accept, in the majority, accept this. Correct. Because they’re so fed up with the other portion of wokeness.

Now let’s just have a look at some things. Pope Francis left a will. Yes.

A testament. Yeah. Where he explained that he wanted to have a very simple burial.

But who did he commit himself to? Who did he commit his soul to? To Mary. To Mary. Now Martin, who is the one who will resurrect you? It’s Jesus Christ, right? And he’s the one that you’re supposed to have your faith in.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, right? So here we have an alternative. Now if Mary is a co-redemptrix, as Rome claims, and a co-mediator, then that negates the Bible that says there’s only one mediator between man and God and only one advocate, right? So this is a pagan structure. So in a sense, if it doesn’t stand for Jesus, then it must stand for an adversary.

Somebody who takes the place of… Antichrist. Antichrist. It’s a whole antichrist system.

If you throw in a couple of cents to make it less harsh, then that is something that people would like to understand, right? And then the Bible still forbids repetitive prayer. But what is the rosary other than repetitive prayer? And in the rosary there are ten Hail Marys to one Our Father. So who has precedence? Mary.

Now Pope Francis committed himself to Mary, just as Pope John Paul II did as well. So they committed themselves to Mary. So it is an antichrist system.

And Martin, what is happening in the United States and the cabinet? Didn’t they have a meeting recently where the Catholics partook? That’s at Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago. Tell us what happened there.

There was a big meeting, Catholics for Catholics, and it was all traditional pre-Vatican II Catholics, conservative ones. Everybody that is anybody in that vicinity were there. And had speeches.

Yes. And it’s interesting that over the Easter weekend there was this meeting where Christ was again emphasized and Franklin Graham was over the moon about the transition that had taken place. Exactly.

The previous year it was dedicated to transgenderism or something. Now, what’s more fascinating, it’s not only the cabinet that has moved towards traditional Catholicism, displaying it openly in Ash Wednesday celebrations, et cetera, with the vice president receiving the mark, et cetera. And Protestantism doesn’t say a word.

Nothing. Protestantism doesn’t exist anymore. It actually applauds it.

Yes. It applauds it. So Martin, have they moved back to traditional Catholicism? Yes.

And they long for it. They don’t even have a whimper. So can they be Protestants? Are they protesting the doctrines of Rome? No.

No. They’re looking at the soup kitchens. They’re looking at the revival.

They’re looking at the revival of morality. They’re all very excited but they don’t know what that morality is based on. Natural law.

And where it’s heading. And where it’s heading. And so Martin, you have all of a sudden, whereas in the last few years you had a massive decline, you have a massive resurgence of Catholicism.

It took only a few months. And what did they use? Didn’t they use the celebrities that all turned to Catholicism? And what’s happening with the youth now? Well, where it used to, like you just said, churches were running empty, you’ve got an influx. And they can’t even keep up.

In Catholicism. And where’s it going? Is it going towards Protestantism or is it going to Catholicism? Catholicism. And the interesting part is they want conservative tradition to come back.

Alright, so the youth wants conservative, traditional Catholicism. The man standing in the way of that was Pope Francis. Yeah.

Right? And I don’t know whether anybody watched the movie The Conclave where they discussed the election of the next Pope, as it were. And they said they can’t go back to the ancient things, so they basically took a hermaphrodite bisexual and he became Pope, showing that the modern papacy would be all-inclusive and that wokeness and all of these ideologies would not go. But Martin, there are priests and prelates who are saying we have to go back to the ancient traditions.

Yeah. And they are saying we have to go back to the light. Yes.

They’re calling it light. They’re calling it light, but history calls it the Dark Ages. Martin, this is to me very fascinating because if they manage to do that, if they manage to go back to what they call light, then they are literally saying that the darkness of the Middle Ages was light.

And what does the Bible say about that? Woe to him. Woe to those who call light darkness and darkness light. Martin, this is the ultimate betrayal of Jesus Christ because then the whole system will have been washed away.

By the way, did Pope Francis issue indulgences? Yes. So did he firmly stand for indulgences? Oh, very much so. It’s the Jubilee year.

He opened the door. All of this. So if, Martin, you had indulgences, then Christ is not a mediator that paid the price for your sin because there would be no need for an indulgence.

All it takes is to go onto your knees and thank him for the sacrifice accepted by faith and appropriated to yourself. And as we have said a thousand times, the worst sin, in my opinion, that Protestantism has done in the last decades was to compromise the doctrine of justification, which is the pillar of Protestantism. And that joint declaration, I’m going to quote it again, which says, by grace alone, through Christ’s saving work, we are justified.

That is diabolical because it is by faith alone in Christ’s atoning blood that we are justified. Christ’s saving works goes into the treasury of merit. That’s Catholic doctrine.

And it is by faith alone that you are saved because without faith it is impossible to save you. Yes, you receive grace, but you have to appropriate it by faith in the blood. That’s justification.

So the compromise is totally Catholic. So they all, and just to put it bluntly, everybody that signed that declaration is back under Catholic and they say it’s supreme. And because the world is so chaotic, Protestantism is willing to go along with it just to get some morality back under the semblance of Christianity.

Now, there’s a video out of what one priest said in an interview. Can we play that? Yes, let me play it. So where do you think things sit right now? I mean, you see two camps kind of emerging.

I think I maybe explained both sides of this, social media saying, wow, the woke pope has died. What will the church look like going forward? But we have a return to traditional Catholic values. Or are we moving in a totally new direction? Where do you see things going for the Catholic church worldwide? If we look at the younger generation over this last couple of months, we’ve had lots of data come out from different organizations that shows that younger people are seeking tradition.

They are finding the Catholic faith. And this is across the West, particularly in America and in my home country, Great Britain, where we have the Church of England, which has been the predominant Christian denomination for the last 500 years. And for the first time ever, it looks like Catholics are taking over.

So we’re seeing this across the board, this finding of traditional worship and traditional Christian values. So I’m hoping that the next pontiff happens to be a conservative, traditional, properly sound Catholic, because that will be, it’s just the perfect timing. As the next generation are looking for tradition and sound doctrine, if a pope stands up now that can embrace them and embrace the tradition of the church, it could be a good thing for the world, actually.

If we see a return to Christendom in the West, away from liberalism and progressive secularism and all the things that are tearing us apart and introducing a death culture, we could head back away from the light, sorry, away from the darkness, back towards the light, which would be a wonderful thing to behold. What did you hear there? They want us to go back to the dark ages, but they’re calling it light. So basically what they’re saying is that Protestantism was never able to reign in morality, that they absolutely failed.

It is only Catholicism that can give you the stability that is needed. And we have to go back to the light. And for the first time, Catholicism is outstripping even the Church of England, is outstripping Protestantism everywhere in the world, and it will be enshrined.

I’m just thinking, you know how clever they were. They’ve made, in the past few months since Trump has come in, Catholicism attractive. Yes, and then Dolan says this is providential.

It is the right timing. Right timing for what? For Catholicism to take back the scepter, to step back in history into the dark ages, and to be enshrined. And who will enshrine her? Spiritism and Protestantism will lift her up as the standard, and the standard of God, the Ten Commandments as they stand, written in stone, will be laying in the dust.

And the problem is that Protestants are very pro this whole movement, because like you just mentioned, it seems as if this morality, that’s what they want to follow, but they don’t, they put the doctrines aside. They’re looking at a religion of works, and Christ is negated, and they see no difference between a Roman Catholic mass and a Protestant communion service. It all has blended because they have buried doctrine, biblical doctrine, in order to achieve peace and unity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Martin, this is the last straw. God gave everybody the opportunity to see what Catholicism was about.

It was an anti-Christian system that used the name of Christ to negate him, that placed a system of earthly mediation in the place of the great mediator. It was exposed in the Reformation. It was buried in the Counter-Reformation.

It was made toothless in the Ecumenical Council. And now she’s going back to what she calls light, which the Bible and even history called darkness. I expect that the pendulum will swing to a conservative pope, as that priest iterated.

And I would be very surprised if it doesn’t happen. No. But we will wait and see.

We are not sages. We do not know what is going to happen. But if the Roman Catholic Church is going to retake its position of the moral leader of humanity, then she has to take that power that she had in the Middle Ages, she has to take it back.

And that would be the total healing of the wound. And if she can get the state to support her doctrines… They already do. …then the end will be there.

They already do. I am so glad that these things are happening, because I really want to go home. What about you? Oh, for sure.

Amen. So I don’t want to say I’m glad that Pope Francis is gone, because that would be mean. But I’m saying I’m glad that the opportunity for the last events to take place, when mankind was warned in such a powerful way to set the pagan system aside and accept the true gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ, to reject it a second time.

That’s like the second siege in Jerusalem. It’s over. Wow.

Just on that one, Rome is definitely coming. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we do not know what will happen in the Vatican next, but we do know what the Bible says, that the wound will be healed and that she will take back that position which she lost.

And Lord, when she takes it back and the whole world is deceived, then the answer will be a time of trouble such as never was, culminating in the plagues and the second coming of Jesus to claim His kingdom. Mankind will have had its opportunity. They will have officially rejected it, and the consequences will be dire.

Help us as individuals to make decisions based on biblical principles is my prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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