NOTES:

www.RemnantofGod.org  

 Article discussed in today's sermon is "Letting Catholics off the hook" written by Loren Seibold of Adventist Today on January 04, 2010

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"For over a century, even before the publication of The Great Controversy, we Adventists have regarded the Roman Catholic Church leadership, typified in the first beast of Revelation 13, as our arch-nemesis, our bête noire, the enemy that takes the evil part in the apocalyptic scenario against God's remnant.

1.      More than a hundred years have passed since our prophet approved these prophetic applications. Ellen White expected Jesus to return long before this.1 We're not sure why that hasn't happened.

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 “If those who claimed to have a living experience in the things of God had done their appointed work as the Lord ordained, the whole world would have been warned ere this, and the Lord Jesus would have come in power and great glory. For God has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world. He tells us when that day shall come,--"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Jesus wants every minister to whom he has committed a trust, to be faithful, to remember his injunctions, to contemplate the vastness of the work, and upon how large a number the obligation rests. "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."  {RH, October 6, 1896 par. 7} 

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 "..of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." (Matthew 24:36)

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 "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah 8:20)

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 2.   Principles might be more diagnostic than players. That we oppose those who would legislate matters that should be left to an individual's conscience is a principle I value, and I'm proud of Seventh-day Adventist efforts to protect religious liberty. But if it should happen that someone other than the Roman Catholic Church begins to act like the beast of Revelation 13, we will be more ready to respond if we are watching for a violation of the principle than if waiting for one specific group to offend.

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Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "Outside the Church there is no salvation.”

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 While not quite a Protestant Reformation, today's Catholic Church is not the same Catholic Church referenced in our 19^th-century eschatological studies. Among other things, the Second Ecumenical Council weakened Vatican authority over world Catholics-as evidenced by the 78 percent of American Catholics who oppose their church's ban on contraception.

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“I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth;…”  See entire oath here

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 5.   By focusing on Roman Catholicism, we may miss more dangerous anti-Christian opponents. Far more Christians have been killed, persecuted, or denied their religious liberty by Communism, military Fascism, and Islamist extremism in the past century than by Roman Catholics; we've let these pass with minimal comment (in the case of Naziism, even offering some pusillanimous cooperation) as we continued to warn against the pope. Today religious liberty still has more dangerous enemies than Catholicism–in the United States, perhaps even some of our fellow conservative Protestants.

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 Last day events page 130 = “Rome never changes. …It is Protestantism that will change.”

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 6.   God has given us time to become a world church, and that changes the cast of characters in our eschatology. The "antichrists"-opposers of Christ–to many of today's world Christians are radical imams or cruel dictators. One site of Christian persecution right now is northern Nigeria, where Muslims burn churches and kill Christians. An eschatology that expects only Roman Catholics to initiate religious oppression, only in the United States, and only around the Sabbath question, may fail to speak prophetically should apocalyptic markers appear elsewhere.

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Daniel 8:25, "And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand." 

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“When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with Spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and Republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan, and that the end is near.--Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 451.  {ChS 160.4} 

     The time is not far distant, when, like the early disciples, we shall be forced to seek a refuge in desolate and solitary places. As the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman armies was the signal for flight to the Judean Christians, so the assumption of power on the part of our nation, in the decree enforcing the papal sabbath, will be a warning to us. It will then be time to leave the large cities, preparatory to leaving the smaller ones for retired homes in secluded places among the mountains.” --Testimonies, vol. 5, pp. 464, 465.  {ChS 161.1}