Lux Lucet

Just to dispense with one item upfront, I have not seen the movie Unplanned, nor, despite the many encouragements from various conservatives to support the film, do I intend to.

To be clear, my lack of support for Unplanned is not because I’m pro-abortion. Far from it. I’m pro-life

I actually had considered going to see the film yesterday, but elected not to. So what stopped me? A little research on the internet.

Not knowing much about Unplanned other than snippets I’d see in the press, I decided to search the web for information on the central character in the movie, Abby Johnson. In just a few seconds, I’d found all I needed to know, a headline in the National Catholic Register that read “From Abortion Worker to Catholic Apostle.” As the subheadline went on to elaborate, “A former Planned Parenthood director, Abby Johnson, tells how an ultrasound of an unborn baby’s fight for life eventually let (sic) her to the Catholic Church and a new apostolate.”

A bit more searching led me to this interview on EWTN’s Facebook page – EWTN is a Roman Catholic organization that owns and operates the National Catholic Register – in which directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzleman speak openly of their Catholic faith. At one point, they even note that the “blessed mother” has promised to end abortion.

In short, it’s fair to call Unplanned a Catholic movie.

For Protestants, this represents an insuperable problem.

Why This Is a Problem

Very likely, some reading this post will think it uncharitable of me to point out the Catholic influence behind Unplanned. “After all, conservative Christian Evangelicals and Roman Catholics both believe that abortion is wrong. Why are you creating division on an issue we can all agree on?”

That’s a good question deserving a good answer.

And the answer is, the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone.

The Bible teaches, and Christians believe, that our sins are forgiven and we are accepted in the sight of God, not by any works we do, but by the righteousness of Christ imputed, ascribed, reckoned, credited to us, and received by faith – faith is defined as belief, a mental act that involves understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ and agreeing that it is true – alone.

Justification by Belief Alone is not some secondary issue over which good men can disagree, it is the sine qua non, the very essence of the Christian faith. It is the idea on which the church stands or falls.

It was the centerpiece of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. It is the centerpiece of the faith for all Christians today.

Rome, on the other hand, has for centuries fought against Justification by Belief Alone and damned all those who hold to it. One of the clearest examples of Rome’s hatred of Justification by Belief Alone is found in Canon 24 of the Council of Trent,

If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of its increase, let him be anathema.

In other words, if you believe that you are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone, Rome says your anathema. What’s that mean, you ask. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary gives the definition of “anathema” as “Excommunication with curses. Hence, a curse or denunciation by ecclesiastical authority, accompanying excommunication.”

Put a bit more bluntly, the Council of Trent is telling Christians, in so many words, to go to hell.

And please do not fall into the trap of supposing that, since the Council of Trent took place in the 16th century, that Rome somehow no longer takes its pronouncements seriously. Semper eadem (always the same) is the Babylonian Harlot’s motto.

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Pope and all his prelates despise you.

In light of this, why should Christians support a movie designed to promote Romanism, whose very representatives hate Jesus Christ and all his followers?

The Pro-Life Movement, Rome’s Gateway Drug

In his brilliant and hard-hitting 2004 book More than These, Pastor Ralph Ovadal, himself a pro-life activist dating back to the 1970’s, details how Rome has used the pro-life movement as an ecumenical tool to draw unsuspecting Evangelicals to herself. Writes Ovadal,

As a person who has been in the fight against the murder of unborn children since the 1970s, I have been involved in virtually every aspect of that battle…Yet I also grieve when I see the spiritual deception, confusion, and compromise – even spiritual fornication – which has been ushered in through the pro-life movement. Of course, in saying such a thing, we have already come to a place of controversy. It is my firm conviction that the pro-life movement has been a convenient, effective tool in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership in their drive to desensitize the average Christian to Rome’s heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy. I believe that the pro-life movement has been greatly used by the Vatican to convince many Christians that the Roman Catholic Church is a Christian church, albeit one with some unique “distinctives.” Further, I hold that Christians working in tandem with Catholics in pro-life ministry have done much to convince lost sinners that the Roman church is Christian. In addition, I believe that same ungodly partnership has effected numerous conversions of pro-life Protestants to the Roman Catholic religion. Lastly, as a result of working shoulder to shoulder with Catholics, ostensibly under the banner of Jesus Christ, to save babies, many Christians have even taken to teaching Roman Catholic doctrine (Ovadal, More Than These, 9-10).

Pro-life Roman Catholics certainly seem to have cast their spell over Abby Johnson. In her interview in the National Catholic Register, Johnson says that she grew up on a “praise-and-worship music” Baptist church, then became an Episcopalian during her time at Planned Parenthood.

Johnson goes to note that when she became pro-life, she was asked not to come back by the minister and the vestry of her Episcopal church. This put her and her husband in a quandary, where should they go to church?

Having already stated in the interview that she had fallen in love with the liturgy of the Episcopalian church, they tried a local congregation in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  Johnson is quoted in the article saying that she and her husband did not like that church.  No reason is give for why the couple did not like Lutheran church.

They then, with some trepidation, decided to try a local Catholic church. Her husband was skeptical of this idea and the Johnson says “he had the typical misconceptions about Catholics.” What these “misconceptions” were, we are not told.

But what Johnson says next is the money quote. According to Johnson, “All of our new pro-life friends were Catholic, but he [her husband] insisted that we weren’t going to get sucked in. When we attended the Catholic church, he leaned over during Mass and said, ‘This is just like the Episcopalian Church.”

There you have it. Abby Johnson and her husband were led to Rome by pro-life Roman Catholic friends with an assist from Rome’s smells and bells. This is the very thing that Pastor Ovadal warned about in the paragraph quoted above.

One last comment on Ovadal’s book, it is quite simply the best pro-life book I’ve ever read and I encourage everyone to read it. You may do so for free here.

Antichrist’s Useful Idiots

Often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, the phrase “useful idiot” describes as person “perceived as a propagandist for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of” (Wikipedia).

This certainly seems to be a fitting definition for many Protestants, who, due to their lack of understanding of the satanic nature of the Roman Church-State and the Papacy, with the best of intentions wind up serving the cause, not of the Lord Jesus Christ, but of Antichrist.

One example of this is phenomenon is Mike Lindell, the Minneapolis businessman famous for developing “My Pillow.” According to the Washington Times, Lindell is a born-again Christian and invested $1 million of his own money to finance the making of Unplanned, a movie directed by two Catholic directors who openly cite their Catholic beliefs and featuring Abby Johnson as the protagonist, a woman who came to her senses about abortion but in the process rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here we have a clear example of a man who claims to be a follow of Jesus Christ underwriting a movie that promotes the agenda of Antichrist, an agenda that he probably is completely unaware of because he almost certainly has never been taught about it in his church.

When, oh when, are American Christians ever going to learn?

When are we Christians going to stop serving as the dupes of Antichrist?

When are Protestant ministers going to start teaching their congregations the truth about Rome?

Closing Thoughts

It’s not hard to understand why many Christians, desperate to find something in popular culture that affirms their beliefs, have found Unplanned so attractive.

It’s remarkable how much more hostile American culture has become to the Christian faith in just the past few years. The so-called culture wars were trending against Christians for a long time. And then, in June 2015, the ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage seemed to turbo-charge the opposition. So quick has been the change that the Democrats newest darling for the 2020 presidential nomination is an openly homosexual, same-sex married man named Pete Buttigeig. Just a few short years ago, such a development would have been unthinkable. But now, not only is it being talked about, but there actually is a real possibility of it taking place.

So why are Christians losing, and losing badly, the culture war? I would like to suggest one reason is that we have, as did the church of Ephesus, left our first love. That is to say, we have failed to believe and to teach the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone. Rather than being faithful to God and trusting in him, too often Christians have fallen prey to the siren song of seeking their (perceived) rightful place at the table of public discourse, and in so doing, have not only muted and muddled their message, but actually have engaged in ecumenical activities with the very enemies of Christ.

This is the very sin that Israel was prone to in the Old Testament. Time after time, God’s people, rather than turning to God for their defense, instead sought to make ecumenical alliances with unbelievers, and in doing so repeatedly were chastised by God.

The best statement I’ve heard concerning Protestants and their foolish dalliance with ecumenism came from John Robbins. In his lecture The Religious Wars of the 21st Century, Robbins, responding to a question from the audience, gave a brilliant answer which can be heard here starting at the 29:40 mark.

Robbins asks the question, “Am I going to work together with people who deny the Gospel to accomplish a political end?” Robbins goes on to add that the religious right, not the secular right, but the religious right, “has made the wrong choice for decades.”

As Robbins notes, “If you are going to take political action that compromises the Gospel, then you’re sealing your own doom.” The sad case of Unplanned, a movie which serves as a recruiting tool for the Roman Church-State, is the inevitable end product of the failure of Protestants to put first things first, by which I mean the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone, in the pursuit of the political goal of ending abortion.

Should Christians support Unplanned? Absolutely not.

May the Lord open our eyes to our sin of ecumenical compromise and bring his church to repentance.