The Pope's Apology
 

[Treatise]

Part III

Retributive Justice of Blood-Guilt
After the First Advent

Let us turn to scriptures that show the blood-guilt after the First Advent. Innocent blood had been atoned for from Abel to Zechariah at the First Advent. But the blood-guilt of the Christian Gospel Age has not yet been atoned for. This is what the great trouble of Armageddon is all about–retributive justice.

The trouble is due primarily upon Christendom because they have had the Word of God. They have represented themselves as being God’s spokesmen. Yet they are the ones who are most responsible for shedding of innocent blood.

Revelation 6:9– Under the Fifth seal–which would be the stage of the church which would correspond to Wycliff’s period–we read: "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood and them that dwell on the earth?’ And white robes were given unto every one of them and it was said unto them, ‘Rest yet for a season, until their fellow-servants and their brethren that should be killed as they were.’"

We would suggest that this verse has not realized its fulness as yet. There will still be a shedding of blood on the innocent ones, the martyrs of the Lord in the future, as unlikely as it might seem today. We can certainly see that there is a record-keeping–the souls under the altar. It is the ashes–the memory of these saints–innocent ones whose lives were taken from them because they testified to the truth of the Word of God.

Those were the ones Papacy branded as heretics. Papacy is the organization responsible for their death. The Lord said, "Wait. I will avenge your blood, but wait." Because the blood-guilt had not come to the full, even as we had read similarly with the Amorites– whose judgment waited until their guilt had come to the full. The scriptures tell us that there is still to be a shedding of innocent blood that would also have to be accounted for in this terrible retributive judgment that would be issued upon the nominal church systems.

Revelation 17:5,6– "Upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of harlots, an abomination of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered with great astonishment." John marveled at the wickedness, the ferociousness of what we have learned to be the Papal system–the blood of the Lord’s people.

Revelation 18: 24– "And in her (Babylon) was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and of all that were slain upon the earth." When we look out and see the Papacy accounted as having 1-1/2 million churches around the world, all their land-holdings, their influence–certainly, the Lord has not exacted His retributive judgment against that system to the fullest yet.

Revelation 18:5– Regarding mystical Babylon, we read, "For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquity. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works. And the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double."

Revelation 18:8– "Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, mourning, famine. She shall utterly be burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God’s justice." Clearly we see this judgment exists, but clearly we see it has not yet been fulfilled. "But render unto her double for what she has done." The Lord remembers. Even though it may seem like a long time since Wycliff and Luther’s day, the judgment still stands.

Here we are told that the judgment comes for her works. This is the crux of the problem. The pope can apologize, but any way he words it–when you read all the documentation–he never says the Church sinned. He says the Church is grieving for the sins of her sons and daughters. Catch this distinction.

The Pope is not apologizing for Papacy, whose doctrines are responsible for the Inquisition. It is very easy to reason: If you believe in a hell-fire for those who don’t accept the pope as the supreme head of the Church, or if you don’t believe in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, it is a small step to say that God is going to eternally torment these people in hell– so we must keep them from spreading their errors.

This is what the Inquisition was all about. Which came first? The bad act or the bad doctrine? The bad doctrine came first. The doctrine of devils–I Tim. 4:1–the doctrine of demons, the doctrine of eternal hell-fire and the other concepts that allow them to make God a god of torture, to justify their acts of torturing heretics now. We have to stop the heretics now– they’re going to go to hell in the future.