Lux Lucet

Environmental Pretection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy listens to reporters’ questions during a meeting with the media in the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See residence in Rome, Friday, Jan. 30, 2015. The Obama administration is seeking to hitch its climate change message onto that of the ever-popular Pope Francis, whose upcoming environmental encyclical has drawn more speculation than any papal document in recent memory. The head of the Environmental Pretection Agency met Friday with senior Vatican officials who helped draft the document, which is expected to be released in June or July. (Alessandra Tarantino, AP/AP)

For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is not enough oppress Americans with the mere authority of the US federal government.  No, it had to go and up the ante by teaming up with the papal Antichrist.

According to an article from the Associated Press,

Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy met with Vatican officials working to draft Pope Francis’ climate change encyclical on Friday, applauding The Holy See for engaging Catholics on the issue.

The article continues,

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters that her aim in visiting was to show the Vatican how aligned President Barack Obama and Francis are on climate change.

The UN globalists have been pushing the bogus man-made climate change meme for twenty years.  Of course, during that time, they’ve changed their story.  First, it was global warming.  When that was exposed as a sham, they simply repackaged their hooey as climate change.  Now that the ultimate globalist has joined their crusade against cheap, plentiful energy, economic prosperity and freedom, politicians are quick to seek the blessing of Antichrist to provide cover for them to do what they wanted to do in the first place.

This and other trips to the Vatican by high US government officials raises the question, whatever happened to the separation of church and state?  Apparently, it depends on what church one is talking about.  God help the municipality caught with a copy of the ten Commandments on public property.  As one of the plagues of Egypt, the ACLU will be quick to descend upon them with its team of high-powered lawyers all for the purpose of ensuring that never again will the good citizens of said community have their consciences pricked by exposure to the law of God.   On the other hand, making a pilgrimage to the Vatican to kiss the pope’s ring raises nary an eyebrow.

Of course, pilgrimages to the Vatican are not the only way the Obama administration cooperates with the Roman Catholic Church-State.  According to an article in the Hill, when in Rome,

McCarthy met with [Vatican] officials to discuss working with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and nongovernmental organizations to put a spotlight on the need for action on climate change, according to a readout of the meeting from EPA.

Not that it is any surprise given the Roman Catholic Church-State’s long-running hatred of, and war against, capitalism, but the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been pressing the EPA to get on board with legislation to limit carbon emissions.  For example, in his 2014 letter to Gina McCarthy, the Most Reverend Thomas G. Wenski of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development wrote,

As bishops and people of faith, we do not speak as experts on carbon pollution or on the technical remedies to address climate change.  We are pastors in a faith tradition that teaches, as Pope Francis recently stated, “Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.

The best evidence indicates that power plants are the largest stationary source or carbon emissions in the United States, and a major contributor to climate change.  Power plants have often been located near low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.  Air pollution from these plants contributes to respiratory problems, especially in the young and the elderly.

Strip out the flowery language and crocodile tears of the devil masquerading as an angle of light, and what you have is a crass objection by the USCCB to that fact that Americans have access to cheap, plentiful energy.  They don’t like that one bit and aim to bring it to an end.  Later in the same letter, Wenski even acknowledges that the USCCB’s proposals will have a negative economic impact on the country when he writes under the heading of Social and Economic Justice,

Workers should be protected from negative effects on the workforce resulting from the new [carbon emission] standards and should receive assistance to mitigate impacts on their livelihoods and families.  Any additional costs that such standards may generate must be distributed fairly, without undue burden on the poor.

This is the sort of rubbish we have come to expect from Rome.  It is bad enough that the USCCB cynically uses a the myth of man-made climate change to further its socialist agenda.  But when by its own admission its proposed solution to a nonexistent problem threatens to create real economic hardship for the poor, the very people it claims to want to help, the USCCB seeks to offload the cost on others.  In other words, it wants the ordinary American taxpayer to pick up the tab.  That is what the words, “Any additional costs that such standards may generate must be distributed fairly,” mean.  God forbid that the USCCB pay the cost of its own proposals.  Just think, the USCCB get to posture as the champion of the poor while at the same time socializing the costs of doing so.  Nice work if you can get it.

Kennedy and Catholicism

It may be that not every government official in Washington is falling all over himself to curry favor with the pope, but it certainly seems that way.  Such, however, was not always the case.  In 1960, Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy had to publically distance himself from the politics of the Rome.  In his address to protestant ministers in Houston, Kennedy said,

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act.

Fast forward a mere 55 years and we have Catholic prelates telling every president, regardless of his religion, how he should act.  And the US officials are more than happy to listen to him.  In almost laughable deference to the pope, McCarthy added,

It’s certainly not my place to dictate to the pope what he should be doing in an encyclical.

To which the proper rejoinder is, it is not the pope’s place to dictate to the American people what they should be doing with their environmental laws.  He has no authority in matters of US government.  Yet officials like McCarthy keep acting as though he does.  Apparently, she along with many others, really does believe in the Romanist doctrine of the two swords.

Lack of Discernment

During my brief experience as a seminary student, I had the enlightening experience of sitting under the teaching of a real, live wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.  Week after week I would sit in his Old Testament class and listen to him attack, attack, attack Reformed teaching all the while claiming to uphold the Bible and the Westminster standards. The man simply oozed heresy from his every pore.  But the most disturbing part of the experience wasn’t his false teaching.  Certainly, that was bad enough.  But what was even worse was that few people connected with the school seemed to recognize the problem.  They lacked the necessary discernment to spot a false teacher, even when he was doing his work right in front of their noses.

In like manner, protestants lack the discernment to recognize the work of Antichrist, even while he carries out his work in broad daylight.  Some fail to see Antichrist, because they are blinded by Dispensational Pre-millennialism that posits a future Antichrist.  Others fail to see Antichrist at work due to their Postmillennialism, supposing the work of Antichrist to be something that took place long ago.  Both groups are the unwitting dupes of Rome, for the eschatologies they espouse – futurism and preterism – both had their origins in Rome during the Counter Reformation, their express purpose being to deflect the charge of the reformers that the papacy was the Antichrist.  So strong was the conviction of Protestants in this area that it was even given confessional status by the Westminster Divines, who wrote,

There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ:  nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense be the head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God (Westminster Confession of Faith, XXV.6).

Bowing to the prevailing thought of the time, most Presbyterian denominations removed this language from their version of the Confession a hundred years ago.  The result has been an increasing confusion about the identity and work of Antichrist among Presbyterians and other Evangelicals. I once sat in a church service in which a veteran missionary proclaimed his ignorance on the identity of Antichrist to all the congregation.  “I have no idea who Antichrist is,” he exclaimed.  Time was when every protestant knew the answer.  The propagandists of Rome have succeeded beyond their wildest hopes.

Eschatology Matters

It is tempting to think that eschatology doesn’t matter all that much, to suppose it is a minor thing over which good men can differ with no serious consequences to the church’s witness.  But eschatology does matter.  For one, it is part of the whole counsel of God, which Christians are obligated to believe.  We should not be satisfied with a confused, erroneous, and unsystematic eschatology.  The Reformation produced a systematic eschatology called Historicism.  The statement above from the Westminster Confession represents one of its principle tenants, the office of the papacy is the Antichrist.

Second, in a battle, you had better know who your enemy is.  Western Civilization, the civilization produced by the Reformation, is being inexorably drawn into the orbit of Antichrist, in part because the very people who should be most alert to his predations don’t even recognize him when they see him.  They are fooled by satan masquerading as an angel of light, because they have been blinded by bad eschatologies.  Eschatologies that have them looking for Antichrist everywhere except the place he actually is.  Does anyone think the Obama administration could cozy up to Rome so openly if protestant ministers, understood, believed and accurately preached the eschatology of the Reformation from their pulpits?

Conclusion     

The Roman Catholic Church-State, the UN and the Obama administration are three entities that, while they have their differences, are united in their contempt for private property, capitalism and liberty.  In light of this, it should come as no surprise that they have joined forces to push for an international climate change accord that is really nothing more than a stalking horse for socialism and world government.  They preach love for the poor, but by their fruits they show themselves to be anything but their friends.  For it is capitalism, not socialism that has freed mankind from poverty, disease and ignorance.  It is capitalism, not socialism, that has provided for justice.  It is capitalism not socialism that gives hope to the disadvantaged.

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Pope Francis, March 27, 2014 at the Vatican.

It is disturbing, though not surprising, that, while many Evangelicals are quick to recognize the socialism of Barak Obama or the globalism of the UN, few are able to discern the bigger threat posed by the papal Antichrist.  One can find many excellent articles and videos on the web calling out the this or that government official or agency for suppressing freedom or fostering one world government, but scarcely anything is written about the satanic influence of Rome.  It as though nearly everyone has an enormous blind spot when it comes to the true nature of the papacy.  And Evangelicals, who of all people should be most attuned to the threat of the Roman Catholic Church-State, seem to go out of their way to miss the point.

In truth, there is no greater threat in all the world to freedom, justice, and prosperity than the papacy.  In his 1999 book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins stated,

The Roman Catholic Church State in the twentieth century, however, is an institution recovering from a mortal wound.  If an when it regains its full power and authority, it will impose a regime more sinister than any the planet has yet seen (195).

In the book of Revelation, we find a reference to the kind of regime Rome has in mind in Chapter 13 where we read,

He [the beast from the earth] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free an slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name (Rev. 13:16, 17).

This set of circumstances appears not to have occurred yet.  As such, it is possible that the Apostle John is here delineating the sort of world-wide economic repression that would occur as a result of a global government ultimately headed by Rome.   Could it be that climate change is being used by Rome as a means for brining this about?  Rome is the one organizations with the history, the motive and  the means to set itself up as head of a world government.  The Scriptures testify that this will happen.  How is it that so many Christians do not understand?

And if we as Evangelicals remain silent about this, will not the Lord require it of our hands?  In Ezekiel we find the answer to this question,

[I]f a watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity: but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand (Ezk. 33:6).

Let not the Lord’s people be intimidated into silence about the papacy.  The threat is real.  It is high time for men of God to say so.