Lux Lucet

Demonstrator holds up sign in front of Pope Francis during his visit to Ireland, August 2018.  Will Oliver (EFE)

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”

    – Revelation 18:4

“US Catholic Church reports big rise in sex-abuse allegations,” ran the AP headline on Friday. In a way, this latest announcement by the U.S. Roman Catholic church seemed to underscore the point I began to make in last week’s post about the horrifying scale of the Antichrist Roman Church-State’s pedophilia problem. Then again, with announcement after announcement of new and horrific enormities committed by Roman Catholic priests seeming to hit the news wires every week, a jaded individual may be tempted to say, “well, it’s business as usual.”

According to the AP story,

During the period from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 allegations of abuse, according to the
annual report
of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. That was up from 693 allegations in the previous year. The report attributed much of the increase to a victim compensation program implemented in five dioceses in New York state.

According to the report, Catholic dioceses and religious orders spent $301.6 million during the reporting period on payments to victims, legal fees and child-protection efforts. That was up 14% from the previous year and double the amount spent in the 2014 fiscal year.

As horrific as these numbers are, they apparently do not include the findings of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury concerning the sexual abuse of children in six dioceses – according to the Washington Post, “The lengthy [Grand Jury] report identified about 1,000 children who were victims but concluded there were probably thousands more. ‘Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.’ ” – since the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report was not released until August, after the June 30, 2018 reporting period end.

The report says nothing about the activities of Theodore Edgar McCarrick, the disgraced former Cardinal, because the allegations against him were not with respect to the abuse of children, but of adult seminarians.

Likewise, the report includes nothing about the sexual abuse scandal in Illinois that made headlines in December 2018. According to the New York Times,

The Catholic Church in Illinois withheld the name of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors, the state’s attorney general said Wednesday in a scathing report that accused the church of failing victims by neglecting to investigate their allegations.

The preliminary report by Attorney General Lisa Madigan concludes that the Catholic dioceses in Illinois are incapable of investigating themselves and “will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.”

The report said that 690 priests were accused of abuse, and only 185 names were made public by the dioceses as having been found credibly accused of abuse.

“The number of allegations above what was already public is shocking,” said Ms. Madigan in an interview.

Finally, the report does not include the victims of Catholic priest abuse in Michigan, which is the story that prompted me to address this issue in the first place. That story indicates that five priests in the state were indicted for sexual abuse of minors and quoted Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel saying that the five cases were “the tip of the iceberg.” The story notes that investigators in the state were in the process of tracking down hundreds of tip about abuse by Catholic priests.

The story in the Detroit Free Press is very explicit, so I recommend caution when reading it. Just to give you a flavor of what went on, one priest is charged with abusing a 10-year-old boy, providing him with alcohol and cigarettes, and also threatening to kill him if he told anyone.

Michigan Deputy Solicitor General Ann Sherman expressed dismay at the attitudes of some of the hierarchy, noting that one priest attempted to put the blame for the abuse on the victims. Said Sherman, “This attitude is horrific. Sexual abuse is never the fault of the victim and it certainly can never be that sexual abuse of a child is a child’s fault.”

One struggles to come up with sufficient words of outrage when it comes to the attitudes and the actions of the Roman Catholic clergy in the instances listed above. And then to think that these represent but a tiny fraction of what has gone on in just one country – the mind reels.

I could go on much longer, but lest we lose sight of the passage at hand, let us now turn to consider how the child abuse horror can be related to Revelation 18:4.

One Command, Two Purposes – First: Be Not Partakers of Her Sins

As was noted last week, Revelation 18:4 has one command to which two purposes are appended. The command being “Come out of her, my people,” the two purposes being “that ye be not partakers of her sins,” and “that ye receive not of her plagues.” Last week, we dealt with the command. This week, let us examine the two purposes.

In the first place, the voice from heaven – although Revelation does not specifically identify the speaker, John Gill notes that the voice says “my people” which suggests it is the voice, “of God, or Christ himself” – tells his people to come out of the Harlot City, that is, the Roman Church-State, “that ye be not partakers of her sins.” This clause – “that ye be not partakers of her plagues” – is referred to by Greek grammarians as a purpose clause. As the term “purpose clause” suggests, this construction gives a reason for that which precedes it, in this case, the command to come out of the Harlot City of papal Rome. Let us ask then, How is it that one partakes in Rome’s sins by remaining in her.

In the first place, one can partake in the sins of Rome simply by associating with its ministers. In 2 John, the same apostle who wrote Revelation warns the elect lady against so much as greeting false teachers or inviting them into her house. John does not warn about the sin of believing them, but simply of associating with them in any capacity. John continues by telling the elect lady, “For he that biddeth him [the false teacher] God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.”

Worth noting is that the Greek word translated “is partaker” in 2 John 11 (koinonei) is essentially the same word as is rendered in Revelation 18:4 as “be not partakers” (synkoinonesete). The basic verb in both cases is koinoneo, which can be translated “have fellowship.” When people associate themselves with the clergy or the hierarchy of Roman Church-State, either by being part of the Roman Church-State itself, or even by speaking well of its representatives as if they were fellow believers, they have fellowship with, they share in, the enormous sins of the Roman Church-State. This includes the many, enormous sins of pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests and the ensuing cover ups by the Church’s bishops, cardinals and popes.

The apostle Paul also warns us against cozy relationships with Roman Catholic clergy. Paul commanded the Ephesians, “And have no fellowship (the Greek work Paul uses is the same one John does in Revelation 18:4) with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Certainly, those who remain in the Roman Church-State are guilty by association of the sins of the Roman Catholic clergy. It cannot be otherwise.

But while Roman Catholics accrue guilt by bidding “God speed” to unbelieving and, in some cases, predatory priests, guilt by association also attaches to Protestants, both to those who actively praise Roman Catholic laymen and clergy as “brothers in Christ” as well as to those who, knowing the evil doctrine and practices of Rome, fail to warn the faithful of Satanic nature of the Roman Church-State.

Many of the most famous Protestant ministers of the 20th and 21st century have associated themselves with Rome. Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, Bill Hybles and Rick Warren are just a few of the names who “have bidden God speed” to representatives of the Antichrist Roman Church-State and have, therefore, become guilty of the enormous sins of that synagogue of Satan.

Other ministers who perhaps see the problem with Rome and refuse to openly associate with or to praise the morally corrupt men who stalk its halls of power, nevertheless sin by failing to speak out against Rome. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you heard a minister preach against the Mother of Harlots Roman Catholic Church-State or clearly identify the office of the papacy as Antichrist. If you’re anything like most conservative Evangelicals, the answer most likely is “never.”

The failure of Protestant ministers to believe the Bible’s warnings about the identity of Antichrist and the Woman Who Rides the Beast is really an act of treason against the Lord Jesus Christ. During Pope Francis’ visit to the US in September 2015, Christianity Today ran an article titled “From Antichrist to Brother in Christ: How Protestant Pastors View the Pope.” The piece reviews the results of a survey done by LifeWay Research of 1,000 Protestant pastors, and notes that more than half of them say Pope Francis is their brother in Christ. But there’s more. According to the same survey,

• 90% of the Protestant pastors say Roman Catholics can be born again (do these men even have a clue what the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone is?).
  
• 50% of the pastors value the Pope’s opinion on theological matters.
  
• The higher the educational attainment of the pastor, the greater the likelihood that he has a favorable view of the Pope (given my own experience in seminary, this is not surprising; a significant number of professors, even in supposedly Bible-believing seminaries are dupes of the Roman Church-State; these men not only are corrupt themselves but also are corruptors of their students, who then go on to corrupt their congregations both by their active support, and passive acceptance, of the Roman Church-State as a Christian concern and its representatives as Christians).
  

The failure of supposedly believing Protestant ministers to speak out against the manifest evils of Rome has left generations of the faithful bereft of crucial knowledge about Antichrist and has opened up God’s people to being hoodwinked by the false doctrines of Satan’s masterpiece, the Roman Church-State.

It is not enough merely not to “bid God speed” to predatory priests. As Paul tells us, one must also “reprove [their] unfruitful works of darkness.” To the extent that putatively Bible-believing ministers refuse to “go there” and reprove Rome for its pedophile priests, its conniving cardinals, its Antichrist popes, and its false Gospel with a false Christ who saves no one, to that extent they partake in the manifold, monstrous sins of Rome.

In the second place, one can become guilty of the sins of Rome by believing her doctrines and by participating in her idolatrous worship. The contemporary idea that it doesn’t really matter what one believes so long as he is sincere carries no weight with God. He has told us in his word what he requires of us, both to believe and to do. And for us to depart from his Word in these matters is a great sin.

It may come as a surprise to some that believing false doctrine is sinful. But if it is true, as James tells us, that God, “Of his own will begat us with the word of truth,” does it not follow that believing the lies of Satan, the father of lies, is a sin? And there is no greater liar on the face of this earth than the Roman Catholic Magisterium, by which the Romanists mean the teaching office of the Church, consisting of the popes and bishops of Rome. Rome lies about the source of Christian authority, she lies about the sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Scriptures themselves and the Gospel. As Isaiah said of Judah in his day, so we can say of Rome in ours, there is no soundness in it.

If false doctrine leads to false practice, and it does, then it should come as no surprise that Rome’s corrupt doctrine leads to corrupt worship. Roman Catholics sin by participating in the mass, praying to Mary and the saints, confessing their sins to, and seeking absolution from, a priest and not God, making useless pilgrimages to holy shrines, and worshipping dead men’s’ bones.

But as bad as these things are, there is yet another way in which Roman Catholics sin by remaining in the Antichrist Roman Church-State: They knowingly expose their children to sexual predators. Now do I really mean to suggest that Roman Catholic parents who expose their children to pedophile priests have sinned by doing so? In short, yes, I do.

Now one may argue that not every priest is a pedophile, and that this, plus Rome’s tendency to cover up the enormous crimes of her priests by moving them from parish to parish, removes all culpability from the parents. But the scale of the pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church is so great and the dangers posed by her priests to children is by now so obvious, that no parent can reasonably claim to be ignorant of the threat these men pose to his children. The Scriptures command parents to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, not knowingly expose them to potential sexual predators. When Roman Catholic parents do so, they sin against God by endangering the lives of their own children.

Closing Thoughts

Once again, I have failed to cover everything I wanted concerning the application of Revelation 18:4 to the ongoing pedophilia scandals of the Roman Church-State. Not that this represents any great disaster. Lord willing, next week I shall take up the second purpose clause in Revelation 18:4 “that ye receive not of her plagues.”

That said, I would like to make a few closing remarks about today’s post. In sports, when a competitor makes a heroic comeback, people will say of him that he snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. On the contrary, nobody respects a so-called choke artist. That is to say, someone who, when given every opportunity to win, somehow manages to embrace defeat instead.

It seems to me that 21st century Protestants have managed to become some of the biggest choke artists in the history of Christianity. Jesus Christ is openly judging the Antichrist Roman Church-State, and what do we do? Do we seize the day and expose Rome’s unfruitful works of darkness? No we do not. Instead, we either make excuses for Rome – recall how last week I mentioned the ridiculous article in National Review by David French who likened Christianity to a fleet and lamented that one of its mightiest battleships, the Roman Church-State, was taking torpedoes right and left – or simply say nothing at all. Neither of these options is acceptable in the eyes of God.

We Christians are not called to make excuses for evil, neither is it for us to remain silent in the face of it. Rather, as the apostle Paul enjoined the Ephesians, we are to called to, in the first place, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” and to, in the second place, “rather reprove them.” It is the duty of all Christians to speak out against the evil doctrines and practices of the Roman Church-State, but this is especially true of elders in the church, the very men who are charged with teaching God’s people. When ministers of the Gospel fail to cry out against Rome, they become blood guilty for their failure to declare the whole counsel of God.