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The Holy Alliance?
March 1992
Ronald Reagan entered the office
of President in January 1981 on a crusade against the Communist
Empire—or as he characterized it—"that evil empire."
Pope John Paul II had an implacable hatred of Communism. These two
crusaders met for the first time on June 7, 1982, in the Vatican
Library.
The February 24, 1992, issue of
TIME under the article, "The Holy Alliance," details the
incredible story of their meeting and agreement to undertake a
clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the Communist
empire. The following are some quotations:
"One of his earliest goals as President,
Reagan says, was to recognize the Vatican as a state 'and make
them an ally'" [emphasis added].
"Both the Pope and the President were
convinced that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if
the Vatican and the U.S. committed their resources to
destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed
Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial law
in 1981."
"A free non-communist Poland, they were
convinced, would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire;
and if Poland became democratic, other East European states
would follow."
"The objective was akin to creating a
Christian Democratic majority in Poland with the church and the
overwhelmingly Catholic membership of Solidarity as the dominant
political force in a post-communist Poland."
"Both sides agreed that the Soviets must
become the focus of an international campaign of [Economic]
isolation and the withholding of Western and Japanese technology
from Moscow."
"The key Administration players were all
devout Roman Catholics—CIA Chief William Casey, Allen, Haig,
[Vernon] Walters, William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to
the Vatican. They regarded the US-Vatican relationship as a holy
alliance: the Moral force of the Pope and the teaching of their
church combined with their fierce anti-communism"
Archbishop Pio Lashi said: "It was a
very complex situation But I told Vernon, 'Listen to the Holy
Father [Pope]. We have 2,000 years' experience at this.'"
"Step by reluctant step, the Soviets and
the Communist government of Poland bowed to the moral, economic
and political pressure imposed by the Pope and the
President."
We can appreciate the idealism of Reagan and
the Pope to rid the world of that "evil empire." Aside
from the issue of how involved a Christian should be in the
governments of this world, we want to probe the prophetic
implications of this incredible drama. Therefore, we will be
discussing prophetic organizations—and not making value
judgments of individuals.
Quotations 1 and 7 (above) from
the TIME article are revealing. In Quotation 1 Reagan refers to
the Vatican as a "STATE." The Roman Catholic Church
claims to be a civil government in addition to being a Christian
Church. Why? It claims to be God's Kingdom on earth. As such, it
claims the right to civil power and consequently actually
functions as a world power—exchanging ambassadors with other
nations, etc. What's wrong with claiming to be both the spiritual
and civil Kingdom of God?
Who is the Virgin?
The faithful church is spoken of
as a chaste "virgin" engaged to the Lord, eagerly
awaiting the return of her heavenly bridegroom (2 Cor. 11:2; Matt.
25:1-13). After the Lord's return, the marriage takes place and
only then does the bride (faithful church) and the bridegroom
(Jesus Christ) set up the Kingdom of God on earth (Rev. 19:7;
21:1-5; 22:17). Conversely, Revelation 17:1-5 symbolically
describes a woman who is called "the mother of harlots"
because she "committed fornication" with "the kings
of the earth." This fornication is symbolic of a scripturally
unlawful union with the governments of the world. This woman is
not symbolic of individual Christians, but of a religious
organization that did not wait for the bridegroom's return and the
marriage. Rather, she broke her vows of engagement to Christ by
uniting with the kings (governments) of the world to set up the
counterfeit Kingdom of God before the Bridegroom's return. This is
spiritual harlotry in God's sight. And if there is a "mother
of harlots," there are also daughters.
Who is the Harlot?
Quotation 7 refers to the
Vatican's experience of 2,000 years influencing and manipulating
governments. Two thousand years is a bit presumptuous. It was not
until 533 AD that the Bishop of Rome was recognized by the Emperor
Justinian as the head or Pope of the Church of the Roman Empire.
After 539 AD the Pope of Rome exercised temporal power over Rome
and its environs. In 744 AD Emperor Charlemagne made the Pope
ruler of much of Italy. In 800 AD Papacy was officially recognized
as the Kingdom of God when Charlemagne had Pope Leo III crown him
Emperor of the Western Empire and/or Holy Roman Empire. For
centuries this Papal counterfeit Kingdom of God held the masses in
chains of superstition and crowned and uncrowned kings and
emperors.
Luther and other reformers
identified the Papacy as the "little horn of Daniel 7 & 8
and the antichrist beast of Revelation 13."[1]
The civil power of Papacy was relatively unchallenged until
Napoleon downgraded the Papacy in 1799. Later in the 1870's with
the unification of Italy, Victor Emmanuel liberated the Papal
States leaving the Pope Vatican City. Then the Marxist philosophy
of Communism eclipsed Papacy's influence after 1917.
In the Reagan-Pope John Paul
battle against communism, Papacy might look like "Mr.
Clean" compared to Communism. But look at another scenario
recorded in Paul I. Murphy's book, La Popessa. In Munich in 1919
Adolf Hitler's nationalism was born. Archbishop Pacelli, later to
become Pope Pius XII, already lived in fear of atheistic communism
because of its professed aim to annihilate Catholicism. He
presented Hitler with a large amount of Church money to "help
his small, struggling band of anti-communists. 'Go quell the
devil's works,' Pacelli told Hitler."[2]
In 1933 Pope Pius XI signed a
concordat with Hitler. "It ordered the Holy See's clergy to
swear fealty to Hitler and the Third Reich. It further ordered
that prayers be said publicly for the Fuhrer and Germany by
Catholic bishops and priests. The Church, in effect, pledged never
to oppose Hitler's dictatorship." A similar pact, the Lateran
Treaty, was signed with Mussolini. The Papacy considered the Nazis
and Fascists as their best defense against communism.[3]
In German Catholics and Hitler's
Wars, by Gordan Zahn, the author, a Catholic sociologist and
professor of sociology at Loyola University, explains that almost
all German Catholics completely supported Hitler's wars of raw
aggression and ruthless conquest because of formal direction given
by Catholic Church leaders and the Catholic press.
[4]
In late 1942 the Vatican learned
of the Holocaust but chose to remain silent so as not to offend
Hitler.[5] Again we can sympathize with the good
intentions of individuals. But Rev. 17:1-5 shows a church system
that continued to unite with the governments of Europe and calls
it harlotry.
There is a current demand that
the Vatican open its files on its post-war activities to probe
whether the "escaping Nazis 'had many protectors in the
Vatican,' where prelates hope they would be useful allies in the
coming fight against communism."[6]
A Secret Agenda
With the collapse of Communism,
seemingly the crusade of Reagan and Pope Paul was accomplished.
But the Vatican had a secret agenda unknown to Reagan. The fall of
"that evil empire" was only the beginning of this
agenda.
Pope John Paul II revealed the
Vatican's complete agenda in a statement on April 21, 1990,
"A united Europe is no longer a dream. It is not utopian
memory from the middle ages [emphasis added]. The events that we
are witnessing show that this goal can be reached."[7]
The Pope wants to revive the
Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages when no one dared question
the Papacy's claim to be the Kingdom of God on earth. That
glorious hour of Papal Rome was written in blood. Historians call
it the Dark Ages.
A controversial book, The Keys
of this Blood—Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for
Control of the New World Order was written by Dr. Malachi Martin,
a Vatican insider, friend and advisor to Pope John Paul. Martin, a
priest who writes from a Catholic perspective, credits the Pope
for coining the phrase, "New World Order"— before
President Bush.
Whose New World Order?
"John Paul had taken on not
merely a national regime but an international system of
government. He had opened the first effective challenge to the
political order of the Soviet satellite system and of the Soviet
Union itself. Just as he said he would in his earliest speeches
after his papal election, he had indeed called for the beginnings
of 'a New Order' in Central Europe and in the international,
political and economic order enlaced with it."
Martin predicted first the fall
of Gorbachev then President Bush, after which Pope John Paul would
bring in a united Europe.
"John Paul's goal is a
geopolitical structure for the society of nations designed and
maintained according to the ethical plans and doctrinal outlines
of Christianity as taught and propagated by the Roman pontiff as
the vicar of Christ. There can be no compromise with the dialectal
materialism of that 'East' or with the capitalist materialism of
that 'West.'
We are living in prophetic
times. Europe will be ruled by a short duration church-state
system just before the returned Christ fully destroys man's
perverted "New World Order (a revised old Holy Roman
Empire)" and replaces it with God's truly New World Order,
the Kingdom of God on earth.
ENDNOTES
Lutheran World, September,
1960, pp. 128-129.
Paul I. Murphy, La Popessa,
Warner Books (N.Y. 1980), p. 52
Murphy, p.198.
German Catholics and Hitler's
Wars by Gordon Zahn, Sheed and Ward—New York, 1962, p.56.
Murphy, pp. 193-202.
Star Ledger, February 21,
1992.
New York Times, April 23,
1990.
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