August 11, 2009

Below is a partial transcript of a very important interview with Mike Gendron, a former Roman Catholic, now an evangelist to Catholics. Mike’s insights into how the Roman Catholic Church fits into the coming events in Last Days’ prophecies are truly worth listening to. Go to the link above to hear the entire interview.

Jan - Mike Gendron, welcome back to Understanding the Times

Mike- Well, thank you Jan. It’s good to be back on your radio program. Part of understanding the times is recognizing the great apostasy in which we are in today.

...Having been on your program before, I know one of the greatest catalysts for false unity is biblical ignorance among professing Christians. There’s a lack of discernment and that produces fertile ground for deception. If people don’t know the truth and a false teacher enters into their church then they cannot discern whether or not they’re speaking the truth or heresy.

Jan - You talk about ecumenical stew and here’s the recipe folks...chop the gospel thoroughly and add water to dilute its effect....mix in some tolerance to suppress unpopular taste of doctrine...add enough self-esteem to neutralize the bitterness of sin...heat the mixture until it becomes lukewarm and it is in need of nothing else.

...Pope Benedict XVI issued a 30,000-word encyclical calling for -- and this is shocking -- a global economy led by one who is “universally recognized,” and he called for a powerful world government with teeth in it. Well, who’s going to be universally recognized in this world? Only two people: Jesus Christ and Antichrist. This tells me there could be some Vatican involvement in this one-world system. Your take on this?

Mike-- Well Jan, we just see prophecy unfolding because for thousands of years now -- really I think it came to a head primarily in the Reformation -- all the Reformers viewed the papacy as the antichrist. I personally believe that the papacy represents a false prophet that will point the world to the antichrist. But here you have Pope Benedict XVI saying there is an urgent need of a true world political authority whose task would be to manage the global economy and to revive economies hit by the crisis. I mean he’s preparing the world for a unifying figure that we know as the Antichrist that will lead us out of this economic mess that will unite all the governments of the world. And his responsibility, of course, is to unite the whole world in worship of this man.

So do we know that the papacy is the false prophet? If we’re in the season of the Lord’s return, we don’t know of anyone who has more control of the world’s population than the pope of the Roman Catholic religion. Do we know that he’s a false prophet? Absolutely. All we have to do is look at the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and then look at the gospel that Pope Benedict preaches and that is clear evidence that he is a false prophet.

Jan -- Hold it now, because it certainly might not be him. It may be somebody who succeeds him.

Mike-- Oh, that’s true. I’m not suggesting for a moment -- this pope is very old. But again, I’m talking about the office of the papacy itself as being the office of the false prophet because not only does the office preach a false gospel, but the office also declares itself to be infallible such that they cannot ever err in matters of faith or morals. And so here you’ve got a world of six billion people, most of which recognize him as a most influential leader who is infallible and he has his tentacles in every country of the world with his followers. And as you know, Jan, many evangelicals and Protestants also call this man “holy father” and give him great adoration and respect.

Jan -- I want to get into the Catholic Church and the Last Days...Many people do not and/or have no opinion and really don’t care about the lateness of the hour. To you and I, it’s a passion...  The strategy is to unite the world under the power of the pope who is making this effort.

Mike-- ...Another strategy is just to confuse Protestants with Catholic mystics and contemplative spirituality...and that’s what the Emerging Church is doing right now. That’s a vehicle to bring many Protestants back home to Rome.

Jan -- Yes, they are beguiling Protestants who are buying into the mysticism and we need to talk about it. Mainline and Evangelical Protestants are reading all the Catholic mystics: Henri Nouwen, Brennan Manning, Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton -- Protestants are joyfully jumping into the Lectio Divina, walking the labyrinth, contemplative prayer, stations of the cross and more. Now all of this entering the Protestant church is also a push, it was on the cover of Time Magazine two years ago, “Mary for Protestants”, and so the missionary affect from the world of Catholicism is quite effective.

Mike- Well it is very effective because so many Evangelicals have been seduced with this new faith that Rome is presenting. Prior to Vatican II, Rome had a history of destroying Christians. In fact, some of your most accurate historians would say that the Roman Catholic religion is responsible for the death of 50 million Christians from about the 7th Century, all the way through the 16th Century. Back during the time of the Reformation, it was death to read pages of Scripture... so the Roman Catholic religion was really carrying out the prophecy that we see in John 16:2...

When the true church is taken away, then what’s left is the apostate Christianity, made up of all liberal Protestant denominations, and all the cults and all the isms. They’re going to come together with all the non-Christian religions of the world to form this one-world religion that will give its allegiance to Antichrist and worship him as the true Christ.

Jan -- The false prophet, who is he? Revelation 13 says he causes all to worship the beast or the antichrist. He’s a religious leader who resembles a lamb, but he speaks as a dragon...he deceives by using miraculous signs and wonders; he kills all who refuse to worship the image...first of all, you feel that the false prophet will be a pope, not probably the current one but probably a successor.

Mike-- Right, and really the description given in Revelation 13 fits the office of the papacy like a hand in glove. Well, he resembles a lamb -- in other words, he’s going to look like a Christian, and you won’t know that he’s not until he speaks and he speaks like a dragon when he speaks his false gospel and false doctrines. He has the power to make the earth and its inhabitants worship antichrist. There’s no other religious leader on this earth that has the infallible power that whatever he says must be taken as true because he cannot err in matters of faith.

He also deceives the earth’s population by performing miraculous signs. And we do know that one of the great lying signs and wonders that’s going on in our world today is the apparitions of Mary. So here you have the papacy that’s validating these lying signs and wonders as being the true Mary from heaven that is calling the world to come together in unity to worship, not Christ, but to worship her sacred heart. And it’s interesting to note that Islam esteems Mary as the most revered woman who has ever lived. She’s the only woman mentioned in the Koran; she’s mentioned over thirty times. And they esteem her because of her perfect submission to God. 

And so we find it fascinating that the apparitions of Mary are drawing Muslims to the apparition sites. And they’re now looking for messages from Mary. So I really believe, knowing what we see, as far as prophecy being fulfilled today, that it could be some of these apparitions that tear down the walls that separate Islam from Roman Catholicism...

The false prophet kills all those who refuse to worship the image and we really don’t know what the image is...knowing how the eucharist is a non-negotiable form of worship. So is it possible then, knowing what we know about the eucharist, that the false prophet will kill all those who refuse to worship it as the image of the beast? And we know that the eucharist is not the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Catholic religion proclaims it to be... The Catholics worship this eucharist as the true Jesus, so they’re already worshipping an antichrist, a false christ, in the form of the eucharist, so it’s not too surprising then that the false prophet will kill those who refuse to worship the eucharist as the true Christ and that will be the image of the political leader who comes to rule and reign as the antichrist.

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