The umbrella of deception continues to grow. In March of 1994 the next big step was taken to further solidify the One World Religion and union between the son of Pharaoh (The Catholic Church) and the bride of Christ, (The Church) This critical next step was made recognizable by a document that Christian and Catholic leaders signed at that time. I am enclosing it in this article. Some of you will recognize it others will not. In either case, it is perhaps one of the most important statements made in the last hundred years, further entrenching the unsuspecting sheep in the deception that the haunt of jackals can be a good place for sheep to dwell.
Evangelicals and Catholics together: the gift of Salvation!
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
We give thanks to God that in recent years many Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them, have been able to express a common faith in Christ and so to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We confess together one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; we confess Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son of God; we affirm the binding authority of Holy Scripture, God's inspired Word; and we acknowledge the Apostles' and Nicene creeds as faithful witnesses to that Word.
The effectiveness of our witness for Christ depends upon the work of the Holy Spirit, who calls and empowers us to confess together the meaning of the salvation promised and accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through prayer and study of Holy Scripture, and aided by the Church's reflection on the sacred text from earliest times, we have found that, notwithstanding some persistent and serious differences, we can together bear witness to the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. To this saving gift we now testify, speaking not for, but from and to, our several communities. (The Gospel of Catholicism is not the Gospel of the Church) [Emphasis author’s]
God created us to manifest his glory and to give us eternal life in fellowship with himself, but our disobedience intervened and brought us under condemnation. As members of the fallen human race, we come into the world estranged from God and in a state of rebellion. This original sin is compounded by our personal acts of sinfulness. The catastrophic consequences of sin are such that we are powerless to restore the ruptured bonds of union with God. Only in the light of what God has done to restore our fellowship with him do we see the full enormity of our loss. The gravity of our plight and the greatness of God's love are brought home to us by the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
God the Creator is also God the Redeemer, offering salvation to the world. "God desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:4). The restoration of communion with God is absolutely dependent upon Jesus Christ, true God and true man, for he is "the one mediator between God and men" (1 Timothy 2:5), and "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts4:12). Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). He is the holy and righteous one who was put to death for our sins, "the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (I Peter 3:18). (I wonder that the Catholic Church advocates now more than ever that Mary is co-redeemer of the earth.) [Emphasis Author’s]
The New Testament speaks of salvation in various ways. Salvation is ultimate or eschatological rescue from sin and its consequences, the final state of safety and glory to which we are brought in both body and soul. "Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we: be saved by him from the wrath of God." "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed" (Romans 5:9; 13: 11). Salvation is also a present reality. We are told that "he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy" (Titus 3:5). The present reality of salvation is an anticipation and foretaste of salvation in its promised fullness.
Always it is clear that the work of redemption has been accomplished by Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). Scripture describes the consequences of Christ's redemptive work in several ways, among which are: justification, reconciliation, restoration of friendship with God, and rebirth from above by which we are adopted as children of God and made heirs of the Kingdom. "When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Galatians 4:4-5).
Justification is central to the Scriptural account of salvation, and its meaning has been much debated between Protestants and Catholics. We agree that justification is not earned by any good works or merits of our own; it is entirely God's gift, conferred through the Father's sheer graciousness, out of the love that he bears us in his Son, who suffered on our behalf and rose from the dead for our justification. Jesus was "put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25). In justification, God, on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone, declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies but his forgiven friends, and by virtue of his declaration it is so. (The Catholic Church continues to perpetuate the demand of works to secure salvation. This has not in any way changed.) [Emphasis Author’s]
The New Testament makes it clear that the gift of justification is received through faith. "By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). By faith, which is also the gift of God, we repent of our sins and freely adhere to the gospel, the good news of God's saving work for us in Christ. By our response of faith to Christ, we enter into the blessings promised by the gospel. Faith is not merely intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, involving the mind, the will, and the affections, issuing in a changed life. We understand that what we here affirm is in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone (solafide).
In justification we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, through whom the love of God is poured forth into our hearts (Romans 5:5). The grace of Christ and the gift of the Spirit received through faith (Galatians 3:14) are experienced and expressed in diverse ways by different Christians and in different Christian traditions, but God's gift is never dependent upon our human experience or our ways of expressing that experience.
While faith is inherently personal, it is not a purely private possession but involves participation in the body of Christ. By baptism we are visibly incorporated into the community of faith and committed to a life of discipleship. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4).
By their faith and baptism, Christians are bound to live according to the law of love in obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord. Scripture calls this the life of holiness, or sanctification. "Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God" (2 Corinthians 7: 1). Sanctification is not fully accomplished at the beginning of our life in Christ, but is progressively furthered as we struggle, with God's grace and help, against adversity and temptation. In this struggle we are assured that Christ's grace will be sufficient for us, enabling us to persevere to the end. When we fail, we can still turn to God in humble repentance and confidently ask for, and receive, his forgiveness. (To the Catholic this means the final struggle is complete through the sufferings of purgatory.) [Emphasis Author’s]
We may therefore have assured hope for the eternal life promised to us in Christ. As we have shared in his sufferings, we will share in his final glory. "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (I John 3:2). While we dare not presume upon the grace of God, the promise of God in Christ is utterly reliable, and faith in that promise overcomes anxiety about our eternal future. We are bound by faith itself to have firm hope, to encourage one another in that hope, and in such hope we rejoice. For believers "through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation to be revealed in the last time" (I Peter 1:5).
Thus it is that as justified sinners we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. All this is the gift of God. Faith issues in a confident hope for a new heaven and a new earth in which God's creating and redeeming purposes are gloriously fulfilled. "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:9-1 1).
As believers we are sent into the world and commissioned to be bearers of the good news, to serve one another in love, to do good to all, and to evangelize everyone everywhere. It is our responsibility and firm resolve to bring to the whole world the tidings of God's love and of the salvation accomplished in our crucified, risen, and returning Lord. Many are in grave peril of being eternally lost because they do not know the way to salvation.
In obedience to the Great Commission of our Lord, we commit ourselves to evangelizing everyone. We must share the fullness of God's saving truth with all, including members of our several communities. Evangelicals must speak the gospel to Catholics and Catholics to Evangelicals, always speaking the truth in love, so that "working hard to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace ... the. body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God" (Ephesians 4:3, 12-13). (According to this we are to open the door wide to the Catholic Gospel among Protestants.) [Emphasis Author’s]
Moreover, we defend religious freedom for all. Such freedom is grounded in the dignity of the human person created in the image of God and must be protected also in civil law.
We must not allow our witness as Christians to be compromised by half-hearted discipleship or needlessly divisive disputes. While we rejoice in the unity we have discovered and are confident of the fundamental truths about the gift of salvation we have affirmed, we recognize that there are necessarily interrelated questions that require further and urgent exploration. Among such questions are these: the meaning of baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, and sacramental grace; the historic uses of the language of justification as it relates to imputed and transformative righteousness; the normative status of justification in relation to all Christian doctrine; the assertion that while justification is by faith alone, the faith that receives salvation is never alone; diverse understandings of merit, reward, purgatory, and indulgences; Marian devotion and the assistance of the saints in the life of salvation; and the possibility of salvation for those who have not been evangelized.
On these and other questions, we recognize that there are also some differences within both the Evangelical and Catholic communities. We are committed to examining these questions further in our continuing conversations. All who truly believe in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters in the Lord and must not allow their differences, however important, to undermine this great truth, or to deflect them from bearing witness together to God's gift of salvation in Christ. "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought" (I Corinthians 1:10).
As Evangelicals who thank God for the heritage of the Reformation and affirm with conviction its classic confessions, as Catholics who are conscientiously faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and as disciples together of the Lord Jesus Christ who recognize our debt to our Christian forebears and our obligations to our contemporaries and those who will come after us, we affirm our unity in the gospel that we have here professed. (These last three paragraphs are mutually exclusive and therefore can bear no relationship to one another. They are the deceiving words of compromise.) [Emphasis Authors]
In our continuing discussions, we seek no unity other than unity in the truth. Only unity in the truth can be pleasing to the Lord and Savior whom we together serve, for he is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).
Signers:
EVANGELICALS
Dr. Pat Robertson
Dr. Gerald L. Bray (Beeson Divinity School)
Dr. Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ)
Dr. Harold O. J. Brown (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Mr. Charles Colson (Prison Fellowship)
Bishop William C. Frey (Episcopal Church)
Dr. Timothy George (Beeson Divinity School)
Dr. Os Guinness (The Trinity Forum)
Dr. Kent R. Hill (Eastern Nazarene College)
The Rev. Max Lucado (Oak Hills Church of Christ, San Antonio, Texas)
Dr. T. M. Moore (Chesapeake Theological Seminary)
Dr. Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary)
Dr. Mark A. Noll (Wheaton College)
Mr. Brian F. O'Connell (Interdev)
Dr. Thomas Oden (Drew University)
Dr. James I. Packer (Regent College, British Columbia)
Dr. Timothy R. Phillips (Wheaton College)
Dr. John Rodgers (Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry)
Dr. John Woodbridge (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Dr. Richard Land Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
Dr. Larry Lewis with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention
Dr. John White with Geneva College and the National Association of Evangelicals
Mr. Keith Fournier, author of Evangelical Catholics with Regent University s American Center for Law and Justice.
Those who recognize true doctrine understand that this document undermines in every way the value of the Reformation the Lord so lovingly sent through Martin Luther for the purpose of liberating the true Church. By this document should we embrace it, we are herein removed of our right to evangelize Catholics in the true Gospel for the purpose of saving their souls through Christ's blood alone. Further, if we espouse this writing we agree that we, that is Catholic and Christian are both part of the Church of Jesus Christ and therefore all entering into the kingdom of heaven upon our passing whether by works or by grace, by Mary or by Christ. We have through this document all become one -- all distinctions vanish and are forgotten or at least in the process of being forgotten. We are to forget that Catholicism is a false religion. We are to forget that it is the Catholic Church under the leadership of her Pope that has martyred millions of Christians who refused to recant the truth given them through the Reformation and refused to rejoin her seedbed of sin. We are to forget that this harlot Church is responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of Jews from as early as AD 300. And we are to forget that it was this system that dethroned the Lord's own family from their godly leadership in the true Church and threw them out of its sight because they were demanding holiness and truth through the reestablishment of the true Church. We are to disregard the fact that the Pope calls himself the Vicar of God and Mary the Mother of God. With Mary and the Pope in their place, I wonder what do we need with Christ? We are to forget -- disregard, all this and much more if we imbibe the document signed by our leaders in the Church. Once again we will through this agreement take an even greater hold on compromise and lose what little truth the Church holds this day.
To be continued next week...
In Him,
Nita Johnson
