THE CONSPIRACY OF MISDIRECTION

Satan has a plan for this world. His plan is doomed to failure, but that does not mean it is to be taken lightly or that it cannot affect men and nations and do untold harm before it is finally frustrated.

Dr. Stuart McBirnie retraced the steps of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys. In those cities where the great Apostle had established churches in the first century, the cause of Christianity has disappeared. McBirnie recounted how not only was he not able to find a church of any kind, but in some instances he could not even find one Christian. So although the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church of the Living Christ, some local churches do fold up and disappear under the onslaught of the devil and this world.

Satan has been at work since the fall of man. So his Satanic conspiracy to dominate this world is of age long duration. Satan’s primary area of operation we saw in our first study as the area of religion. Only God’s believing remnant can understand this aspect of the conspiracy, and even many of them are at sea at this point. Every unsaved person thinks that religion is a good thing when in fact only vital biblical Christianity is a good thing: every other religion is a satanic counterfeit. Satan is working to deceive the nations. He works through individuals. It should be obvious to every thinking person that there are people working day and night to overthrow vital biblical Christianity and many of these individuals are religious, even posing as “Christians.” In other words the battle we face is primarily a spiritual one. It will not be defeated by merely legal efforts or even protests unless the protests are centered on a proper interpretation of the Word of God.

Romanism has made unbelievable advances in the United States in the last one hundred years. As one leading Roman Catholic spokesman said, “We are less than one hundred years from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, referring to the slogan of American politicians at the close of the nineteenth century. (See our first booklet for further documentation.)

Gary Allen in his examination of conspiracy fails to come to grips with known historical conspiracies. For one reason or another he obviously ignores the documented religious conspiracies of history. Roman Catholic conspiracies are part of the historical record. Papal plots have been discovered, and the conspirators arrested and brought to trial at various junctures of history. Father Chiniquy portrays Romanists as the main plotters in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. So the Vatican has been working night and day to shift the burden of conspiracy from its shoulders to some other group of conspirators. Since the McCarthy era, extremist groups have painted almost every leader in the United States as Communist, pro-communist, or an insider. NO ONE HAS EVER LOOKED AT THE PAPAL INTRIGUE, which is still going on today as it has for over 1,000 years. While men hunt for shadowy conspirators among America’s leaders, who evidence no continuity whatsoever, Romanism, with a continuity in conspiracy unparalleled in the history of man, continues to flourish and to call the shots in the area of religion and politics.

It should be obvious to every Bible-believer that one of the main tasks of the Satanic conspiracy is to direct those who are seeking to discover the conspiracy and alert Christians to it to some other apparent culprit. This we term the conspiracy of misdirection. Misdirection is written large in the field of conspiracy.

We see this conspiracy of misdirection focused in four main areas.

1. Toward the Masons
The Masons have become a favorite whipping boy for conspiratorialists writing on the great global conspiracy. While we do not approve of the Masons, we do not believe the Roman Catholic propaganda put out against the Masons. Yallop postulates a secret Masonic Conspiracy against the Vatican in his work, “IN GOD’S NAME.” Michele Sindona is also linked to the Masons by Yallop, Martin, and other writers. Sindona came out of Sicily, the reputed home of the Mafia but is regarded as a Mason by Martin. He is certainly a man of mystery. But to try to link him to the Masonic Lodge and hint at some hidden conspiracy by the Masons to destroy the Roman Catholic Church through financial embezzlement is more fiction than fact. It is true that Sindona was linked to the loss of almost one billion dollars, which the Vatican financial empire sustained, and that he at one time was a close friend of Pope Paul. According to Newsweek he was the brains behind

an intricate group of holding companies (and) he controlled a chain of hotels, a giant multinational real-estate operation, several industrial firms in Europe and America, half a dozen banks. Rumor had it that he was the Pope’s chief financial adviser, or alternatively, the Mafia’s number one banker.¹

When Pope Paul realized the amount of money involved in the Sindona scandal, he said that Sindona was in the “hands of unknown powers,” hinting at some dark super-conspiracy against the Papacy. For it is a belief of many Roman Catholics and even some “Protestant” writers, that the great conspiracy is not directed by Rome but is directed at Rome. At least Malachi Martin seems to indicate as much in his work. He tells that:

Montini (who later became Pope Paul) had known that over in the Quirinal…and within the Vatican behind Pacelli’s back, there were men and women who dealt every day in millions of church dollars —the “Patrimony of St. Peter”— buying war and selling peace down the river, cynically scandalously…. Montini could almost see a Satanic rictus behind the whole affair.²

Martin also points out that late in the Sindona scandal, “It is now reported to Paul that Michele Sindona is a member of the Masonic order.”3 Before the whole affair with Sindona was over, Paul was to feel that Sindona was a shadowy figure behind some great conspiracy against the Papacy.

Roman Catholic writers, of course, do not believe in a Roman Catholic conspiracy. So they are constantly proffering Masonry or some other Bilderberger or Tri-lateralist conspiracy as the real one. Some conservative Protestants, who do not know their Bibles, have taken up the cry of the Roman Catholic conspiratorialists. But to try to link Michele Sindona to some conspiracy against the papacy is a difficult task. For the few things that we do know about his early education show that he was educated by the Jesuits. Also his bank failures, while definitely affecting the Vatican, also affected him. The Vatican not only lost millions, but Michele Sindona lost so much that he was wiped out. So if Sindona was in the hands of “unknown powers,” they must have been unknown to him too, for they certainly deserted him when he needed a friend. The powers, which seem to be connected with Sindona, were the Mafia. For the main government witness against him, Giorgio Ambroscoli, who had been appointed to liquidate the Sindona controlled banks in Italy, was killed in Milan. No one was ever charged with the crime.

Sindona had to flee to America where after another bank failure he was arrested and brought to trial and sentenced to five years on “65 counts of conspiracy, fraud and perjury.”4 The truth that must be grasped in this whole Sindona scenario is that Sindona, who drew a lot of attention to the Vatican, is now out of commission and thoroughly discredited. But the Vatican is still there, directing would-be conspiracy hunters away from the Vatican conspiracy to Insider, Bilderberger or other shadowy conspiracies. The enduring nature of the Vatican power base makes it a prime suspect in the field of conspiracy.

Michele Sindona was at one time one of the most powerful men in Italy. He was also closely identified with Vatican finances. It seems to us that there is much more substance to the assertion that Sindona was probably “done in” by the Vatican instead of vice-versa. Sindona was about to be investigated by the Italian government. The man sent to investigate his bank, who unearthed many things, some of them probably not complimentary to the Vatican, was murdered for his trouble. Yallop believes that he was murdered by the Mafia. However it appears obvious that Sindona had now become a very possible international embarrassment to the Vatican, and he himself maintained that he fled to the United states to escape being murdered.

After arriving here, even the bank that he owned in the United States went under. Again the only power on earth able to bring banks down in any one of fifty countries is the Vatican. It not only wields great financial clout but has hundreds of dedicated devotees in powerful positions in banks and financial institutions, which it does not even control, to help fulfil its plans. Sindona went down, down, down without a friend to help. His financial fortune for the most part disappeared almost over night. Yallop believes that Sindona is a suspect behind the murder of Pope John Paul I. It seems that Sindona for all his mystery really had little or no clout at all in the end. He just went to jail. As Hammer points out in his book, “THE VATICAN CONNECTION,” the Roman Catholic New York policeman, who linked the Vatican to the Mafia and to a billion dollar counterfeit scam, when nothing was ever done to bring the culprits to justice, said he had finally realized that if you are powerful enough, you are beyond the reach of the law. Sindona was not that powerful!

Hammer says of Coffey, the New York Irish American Roman Catholic policeman, who had tracked the links of the Mafia right into the heart of the Vatican in a billion dollar counterfeit scheme so vast that few would believe it:

There had been months of plodding along twisted and tangled pathways that seemed to be leading nowhere, and moments of startling breakthrough and discovery…Often during those years as the scope of the hunt and its consequence became clear, he had been convinced that this was what he had been born to do, that this would be the capstone of his career. And now it was over, ended not with the glittering victories he had foreseen but on a sour and cynical note. HE COULD NO LONGER DENY WHAT HE HAD NOT WANTED TO BELIEVE: THERE ARE PEOPLE SO POWERFUL AND SO HIGHLY PLACED THAT THEY ARE IMPERVIOUS TO THE LAW, AND THAT SOCIETY’S RULES AND CODES DO NOT APPLY TO THEM.⁵ (emphasis ours)

The main lesson that Hammer’s book teaches is that it is easier to bring down the President of the United States than a crook in the Vatican.

When the investigation ended, Aronwald, who was testifying before a Senate sub-committee in Washington said:

Because of serious allegations that had been made with respect to someone in the Vatican although the name of the individual was never given, the Department of Justice made contacts with the Vatican and obtained their cooperation… As a result of our visit and a result of the cooperation of the Vatican, we were able to conclude that there was no substance to the allegation that anyone within the Vatican was cuipably involved in this scheme.⁶

In other words, there was a complete whitewash of the whole investigation. So while the real criminals go free, lesser men are prosecuted and sent to jail. Michele Sindona was one of the ones who went to jail. So although a financial wizard, in some ways he proved to be quite vulnerable in the end while the Vatican men roll on without batting an eye, cleared of all culpability.

The charges against Sindona were also the same as those made against Nogara, the financial wizard who put the Vatican on the map financially. Nogara was the brains behind the reorganization of the whole financial structure of the Vatican in 1929. He succeeded in moving the Vatican fortunes from millions to billions before he retired in 1958. However, he was investigated on the charges that he was a Mason and belonged to a secret masonic society and was secretly conspiring against the Vatican. The same old story trotted out against Sindona and also written large in modern books dealing with Conspiracy. (See Yallop, Allen, and Bowen for corroboration.)

Not only was Nogara not a Masonic man, nor a conspirator against the “church,” he was one of the most loyal hard working sons of the “church” that Italy ever produced. Not only was he not out to ruin the Vatican, he helped it on to such financial success that it now has become one of the richest organizations on earth. When the investigation was completed by the Vatican loyalists, the taciturn Nogara was completely exonerated of all charges against him, and the record showed that he was completely trustworthy, a loyal son of the Vatican in every respect. Yet these rumors and charges persist in every generation and are still being made today.

We believe that the reason we hear of “secret Masonic conspiracies” is to keep the idea of a mock conspiracy before the people to keep them from seeing the real thing. These writers lack one thing in their writings on conspiracy, and that is an in-depth exegesis of Revelation 17-18. They focus attention on the Masons to draw away attention from the Vatican and to create sympathy for the Pope and Papacy, who are then considered victims of the conspiracy rather than the brains behind it.

2. The second theory that we see written large in contemporary works is the Insider theory. That is, that a certain group of financiers are at work to control the world. Gary Allen, of course, postulates this idea as do others like William Bowen. Allen states:

In the Bolshevik Revolution we have some of the world’s richest and most powerful men financing a movement which claims its very existence is based upon the concept of stripping of their wealth men like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Schiffs, Warburgs, Morgans, and Harrimans, and Milners. But obviously these men have no fear of international communism. It is only to assume that if they financed it and do not fear it, it must be because they control it…. Remember that for 150 years it has been standard operating procedure of the Rothschilds and their allies to control both sides of every conflict.⁷

It certainly is easy to direct attention toward the Rothschilds because of their great wealth and also because they are Jews. What Allen fails to see is that every accusation that can be made against the Rothschilds and their allies can also be made against the Vatican with much more weight. The Rothschilds’ wealth, although immense, is not in the same league with the Vatican’s. The tentacles of the Rothschilds do not reach into every government on earth with anything approaching the same degree as the Vatican’s. The longevity of the alleged conspiracy of the Rothschilds, according to Allen himself, goes back a mere 150 years— again nothing in comparison to the Papacy whose global ambitions and intrigue go back more than a thousand years.

Again the idea of operating on both sides of every major conflict with which Allen charges the Rothschilds can be seen in the history of Vatican power politics with far greater documentation to support it. It can even be seen right now in Central America at this very moment. The Vatican is on both sides in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the intrigue of the Jesuits on both sides of the conflicts is causing such an uproar that the Pope traveled there to try to defuse the embarrassing situation.

3. The third idea of the conspiracy that faces America is “Secular humanism.” William Bowen in his book, “GLOBALISM-AMERICA’S DEMISE,” spends much time and effort trying to pin America’s troubles on the secular humanists. This has become a popular theme with other conservative writers as well. We would be the last to downplay the effect that secular humanism has had on America, but we do not think that secular humanism is the global conspiracy that confronts the world.

In fact we believe that the flurry over secular humanism at the present time is another case of misdirection. The real conspiracy is much more closely knit and has much clearer goals. The drift of America from her Protestant moorings allows the religious men to take over. We get tired of listening to those who speak of America’s Judeo-Christian ethic. America was founded upon historic Bible Protestantism. Anyone who has studied early American history knows that her people were made up of the persecuted Protestants of Europe who fled here for a refuge and built the greatest country the world has ever seen. It was built solidly on English-Puritanism, Scottish Presbyterianism, Scots-lrish-Presbyterianism, German Pietism and Dutch Calvinism. As for Jews and Roman Catholics, they were almost unheard of in the early days of America. And they certainly had little or no influence outside Rhode Island and Maryland. Why do we never hear of this in any of the writings which conservatives write today? You would think that American liberties came from the Jews and Roman Catholics. America is going down because the Protestant Puritan ethic upon which she was founded is being replaced not by a secular humanism but by an effete false religion which will not mention the past but will praise the Roman anti-christ. This is the crux of America’s trouble. God judges idolatry whether our half-baked modern Protestant Christian writers realize it or not. America is going down not from secular humanism nor a false pietism but from a love affair with idolatry and false religion.

It is indeed very strange that we hear nothing about the Inquisition today. In reading the “STEALING OF AMERICA,” we note that the secular humanists are the ones we have to fear. When illustrations are drawn of persecutions in the past, mention is made of the early Christians, who were thrown to the lions in the Roman arena and of Christians, who were tortured under Communism in Eastern Europe.

Various philosophers are named in recent books as the cause of the downfall of western civilization. In all this plethora of writing about the demise of America because of certain sinister forces, no mention is ever made of the Inquisition which lasted 500 years. Is that not passing strange?

We hear of the Hordes of the French Revolution but not tne Massacre of St. Bartholmew’s Day, carried out not by atheists, secular humanists or a totalitarian state, but by those claiming to be religious and belonging to the only true “church.” Secular humanism is made out to be the unstoppable force while Romanism flourishes in America as never before. While misguided Protestants stare at “Secular Humanism,” Romanism controls the White House, the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Congress, and most of the leading posts in the present Reagan Administration. Manhattan observes:

The existence of such an organically oriented Catholic body would have been a matter of concern itself, but the fact that it enjoyed the patronage of the most eminent individuals of the U.S. political intelligence and military establishment, made their presence one of profound disquiet. The list, although minimal, was impressive: from General Alexander Haig, Secretary of State, (since deposed) to Mr. Casey, head of the Central Intelligence Agency; from D. Regan of the U.S. Treasury to Mr. Allen of the National Security; from Mrs. Kirkpatrick, UNO, to W. Clark, who replaced Allen in 1982, to W.S. Wilson, the U.S. envoy at the Vatican and a convert to Catholicism, and many others in less glamorous but nonetheless very influential posts up and down the administration.⁸

As of this writing President Reagan has appointed an ambassador to the Vatican, and he has pledged that if reelected he would fight for the family in the spirit of Pope John Paul II. So Vatican influence is written large in American politics today. (As for fighting for the family, the papacy has been the greatest enemy of the family in most Roman Catholic countries in the world, grinding the family under its tyrannical heel all over Central America, South America, Southern Europe, Eire, and wherever it has been entrenched for centuries.)

The blackout which has been thrown over the Inquisition and the massacres and persecutions of Romanism apparently is no accident. Conservative writers apparently believe that the United States has nothing to fear from the Vatican, and therefore, they seem to have tacitly agreed not to mention known historical horrors connected with Rome’s global ambitions.

The use of the word “Christian” today by many of these writers, who would alert us to the evils that confront us, is obviously an omnibus term. It obviously includes in its meaning, as used today, the unchristian religion of Romanism.

So in saving America from the secular humanist conspiracy, we are being herded along with Romanism to do the job. Such writing leaves a lot to be desired as far as the Biblical Christian is concerned. One has only to look at a nation where Romanism holds absolute sway to see that the Vatican can match anything any secular state has ever produced in the way of suppression and more.

Biblical Christians, keep to your Bibles! Do not be misled even by sincere men, who have not done their homework in church history nor apparently in Bible Doctrine.

4. The fourth idea put forward to misdirect us concerning the Global Conspiracy is the Usurper Theory. This theory links the Vatican to the conspiracy but maintains that the Pope is kidnapped or killed and his place taken by another man who is a Communist or atheist.

The idea is written large in contemporary works although it is not new. The Novel, “THE JANUS POPE,” is a story about the real pope being kidnapped and a Communist put in his place. Although this book has some of the characters saying nasty things about the Vatican, the idea that the Pope is God’s representative or God’s deputy is put forward a number of times. So the author apparently views the pope as Christ’s vicar upon earth.

Malachi Martin in his book, “THE FINAL CONCLAVE,” also alludes to this idea of usurpation. The national news media also gave large coverage to the Bulgarian Connection in their attempts to assassinate the Pope. So that the impression is given to the unthinking that the real conspiracy, even though it does involve the papacy, involves it only as the target of the intrigue and not as the originator of it.

Dean Alford in his “PROLEGOMENA TO THE REVELATION” points out that even Roman Catholic expositors see the papacy in Revelation 17 and 18.

From Joachim’s time…men’s mind even WITHIN THE ROMISH CHURCH, became accustomed to the idea that the apocalyptic Babylon was in some sense or other not only Pagan but PAPAL ROME; and that Antichrist was to sit, whether as an usurper or not, on the throne of the papacy. 9 (emphasis ours)

Joachim was Abbot of Flores in the 12th Century. He denounced even back then the corruption of the Roman clergy, the issue of indulgences, the deification of the Roman Church and the Crusades. He saw in the Revelation the description of the Papacy as Mystery Babylon the Great and the Mother of Harlot religion.

So with such a crushing weight to dispose of, it is not surprising that the idea of a usurper upon the seat of the papacy is written large in contemporary thought. Something had to be done to offset Protestant suspicions of a secret cabal in the heart of the Vatican. So a massive propaganda effort to educate Protestants in the niceties of the papacy and the evil machinations of some other shadowy conspirators out to destroy this nice institution had to be launched. The sad thing is that apparently millions of Protestants have bought this idea without even a second thought. Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit, may still imagine that there are many Protestants who believe in this secret cabal in the heart of the Vatican, but in actuality their number is very, very small. By far the majority of modern Protestants have swallowed the Vatican line.

REFERENCES

1. Newsweek, Aug. 20,1979, p. 67
2. Martin, THE FINAL CONCLAVE, p. 29
3. Ibid., p. 64
4.Time, April 7,1980, p. 59
5. Hammer, Richard, THE VATICAN CONNECTION, Charter Books, N.Y. 1982, p. 309
6. ibid., p. 308
7. Allen, Gary, NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY, Concord Press, Rossmoor, California 1971, pp 73-75
8. Manhattan, Avro, THE VATICAN-WASHINGTON, MOSCOW ALLIANCE, Chick Pub., 1982, p. 65
9. Alford, Henry, THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, Vol. VI, Guardian Press, Grand Rapids, Mich. 1976., Reprint, p. 246