Evangelicals and the Ecumenical Movement
This is chapter 12 and the last chapter of The Effect of the Jesuit Eschatologies on America Today – by Dr. Ronald Cooke
The modern Ecumenical Movement at the start involved very very few true evangelicals. On the Protestant side, most of those involved in the early stages of the ecumenical drive to unite “Protestantism” (really non-catholicism) with Rome, were apostate humanists who paid very little attention to the Bible as the inspired Word of God. All that changed with the advent of New Evangelicalism.
After Harold Ockenga set New Evangelicalism in motion, many self-professed evangelicals became involved in the ecumenical movement. They began working with Roman Catholics and with the Jesuits. As time went on this love affair with Rome developed into ECT I and ECT II where evangelicals joined with Roman Catholics for the first time in church history.
Reformed Reconstructionism was born in 1973 when Rousas Rushdoony wrote his major opus The Institutes of Biblical Law. Reformed Reconstructionism was really Jesuit Reconstructionism, for none of the Reformers ever followed such drivel. But more and more evangelicals began to be sucked into the cause of the Jesuits. The Jesuits had been working, long before Rushdoony was born, to bring about their reconstruction of American Society through the setting up of their CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ORDER. Soon many Christian leaders in America were following the Jesuit line and promoting it with all the energy and commitment they could muster: men like Dr. James Kennedy, Chuck Colson, Os Guinness, Barey Corey, and many many others. In fact, one could say that the building of a Jesuit Social Order became an obsession with these men and with other evangelicals.
Chuck Colson, a Baptist Minister, who recently passed away, certainly became a prominent figure in America as he wrote large tomes promoting the fiction that Roman Catholics were Christians and urging Protestants to quit fighting with Roman Catholics, and join with them in a co- belligerency to defeat secular humanism, and set up the Jesuit Social Order in America. The bottom line of all this theological twaddle was that NO CHRISTIAN SHOULD BE FIGHTING ANY THEOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST THE PAPAL MAN OF SIN; he was to see the papacy as his ally and co-belligerent in another entirely different warfare: the cultural warfare against secular humanism. So the Jesuit eschatology certainly has consequences: there is now NO PAPAL MAN OF SIN to contend against; only some other secular evil.
The Jesuit teaching that the Man of Sin is only someone who appears at the very end of the age, removes the Papal Man of Sin from the theological battlefield completely. This is what the Jesuits have managed to accomplish: the end of a theological warfare with evangelicals. As Chuck Colson graphically put it: evangelicals need to QUIT FIGHTING Roman Catholics. This was one of Colson’s main points in his efforts to maintain his warfare against secular humanism. Let us quit fighting each other and start joining together to fight the real enemy. Whereas all the Reformers, and most of all the leading Puritans, and the millions of true Protestants who followed such leadership for centuries, saw their MAIN BATTLE against the Papal Man of Sin and his evil empire. Their eschatology called for total spiritual warfare against the Papal Man of Sin, not some other imaginary target. There are surely many battles to be fought: but the main battle of the church is to contend earnestly for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.
The converted Roman Catholic priest Lehmann wrote fifty years ago that the real title of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, written more than a hundred years ago was ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER. The whole charismatic idea of RENEWAL, and the whole idea of the RECONSTRUCTION of Society is papal and Jesuit. Yet multiplied millions of charismatics, reformed, and evangelicals are now all busily engaged in trying to set up a Jesuit Social Order in America today. Is that not another great triumph of the Jesuits?
The Roman Catholic church teaches that the whole earth is to be submissive to the Pope of Rome. America, for centuries, repudiated the Pope as the Papal Man of Sin, and refused to be submissive to the Vicar of Satan for they certainly did not believe he was the Vicar of Christ. The majority of Americans for centuries followed the men and teachings of the Protestant Reformation, and repudiated all the errors and blasphemies of Rome as the deceptions of Satan and his main man on earth, the Papal Man of Sin. Read the works of the early Puritan Separatists who started this nation for corroboration.
Malachi Martin, who has many criticisms of the Roman Catholic church, and of the papacy in his works, nevertheless, as a true Roman Catholic, believed that the Pope of Rome is the “ULTIMATE ARBITER OF WHAT IS MORALLY GOOD AND MORALLY BAD IN HUMAN ACTIONS.” In other words, although he criticized some of the actions of some of the modern popes, he still believed that the Pope of Rome was the mouthpiece of Almighty God on earth. Surely a strange position to adopt in light of all the pedophilia scandals that have haunted the whole system of Rome for years and contributed mightily to the resignation of the former pope.
The Pope of Rome could not be the final arbiter of what is morally good, and what is morally bad, when he sought to shield all the pedophiles in the Roman priesthood. Such an immoral system could never be the foundation of either the RENEWAL or RECONSTRUCTION of any society.
However, even apart from all the immorality, the whole idea of an idolatrous and blasphemous cult bringing about the renewal or reconstruction of society is merely a pathetic fiction. Surely it is a mark of the spiritual declension in America today, whenever evangelicals, Baptists, and Reformed men think that an idolatrous, spiritually, and morally bankrupt religion, could ever change any nation for the better.
Such an evil religion is always the curse of any nation in which it gains the ascendancy; it is never a blessing to any nation. Even more to the point, it blinds the millions trapped in it to the truth of the glorious gospel thus sending them to everlasting damnation, something infinitely worse than merely hurting some nation.
Chuck Colson recently passed away. His legacy has been promoted and praised by several leading scholars and educators. Barry Corey is one of those who has been praising Colson and his work now for several years. Barry Corey is the president of Biola University. He wants to continue Chuck Colson’s cultural struggle and his deep involvement with Roman Catholics to do so.
Barry Corey was Dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary before coming to Biola. He recently recalled a conversation he had with Colson at that time to the effect that Colson then wanted to start a lectureship on the need for a Christian World view to be presented to a much wider constituency.
Chuck Colson’s world view was not a biblically Protestant one; it was the old classical Roman Catholic view. Surely it is very significant that when Corey was Dean at Gordon-Conwell it was famous for turning out Roman Catholic graduates. Colson was a member of the Board of Trustees at that time of Gordon-Conwell. So the Jesuit line was being pushed and pushed hard at Gordon-Conwell,
Indeed, Gordon-Conwell produced so many Roman Catholic graduates that Sursum Corda, the Roman Catholic magazine, gave an entire issue to recount and celebrate the stories of all those Roman Catholic converts being graduated from Gordon-Conwell. Barry Corey was one of the leaders at this school of theological confusion. He has since moved on to become President of Biola University. He seems to want to turn Biola into another Gordon-Conwell,
Secularism is the bete-noir of all the Roman Catholic politically conservative writers and scholars. Apparently, Colson followed them very closely. Now Corey wants to continue the fight of Roman Catholic conservatism against secular humanism. The only problem to the Bible-believer is there is as much theological error in the Roman Catholic religion, maybe more potent error than there is in secular humanism. Both systems are evil; not just one of them. But the only war going on in the United States today is the Roman Catholic cultural struggle against secularism. There is no war being carried on in the United States today against the false religious system of Roman Catholicism which controls the Supreme Court, the legislature, and which dominates education today. Christian academia in the United States today has, for the most part, become Roman Catholic Academia.
Is the church to be engaged in fighting secularism in the culture, to the exclusion of fighting false religion in the church? For this is obviously where the battle in America rages today. So much so, that Colson called for a co- belligerency with Roman Catholicism to fight secularism. A candid and fatal admission that to fight Roman Catholicism is completely unnecessary.
Corey, in singing the praise of Colson, wrote that,
The rising tide of secularism is only one of the problems American culture faces today. The rising tide of false religion is even more evil than the rising tide of secularism. For secularism rises in a culture dominated by false religion.* When a nation is to perish in its sins, “it is in the church the leprosy begins.” The tide of compromise with false religion has reached enormous proportions with Wheaton College, Calvin College, Westminister Seminary, Fuller Seminary, Gordon-Conwell, Biola, and many others as examples of that compromise. The rising tide of theological ignorance on the part of those who are supposed to be teaching the truths of biblical Christianity is surely becoming a tsunami in what are still called Christian academic institutions. How else explain the fawning adulation heaped upon C. S. Lewis and Chuck Colson, men who promoted the cause of Roman Catholicism constantly and continually. Thus aiding mightily the Jesuit conspiracy out to destroy biblical Christianity.
* Look at modern Europe which is now almost totally secular.
Let us look at how Biola intends “to grab the mantle (of Chuck Colson), joining the next generation of Christians around the globe to stand up for biblical truth even where it is increasingly unfashionable.” 2 The Center for Christian Thought is to have two great scholars present in February 2013 (even as we write). They are Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Who are these “Christian” scholars? Here is how they are described in Biola’s magazine.
Alvin Plantinga, who has been called “arguably the greatest philosopher of the last century” in Christianity Today, is currently the William H. Jellema, Chair of Philosophy at Calvin College, and was until his retirement in 2010, the John A. O’Brien, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.”3 This is then the “scholar” that is going to stand up for biblical truth, according to Barry Corey, a man who taught for years at a Roman Catholic University!
Biola magazine calls,
Nicholas Wolterstorff is called by Biola one of the world’s premier Christian philosophers. What does this “outstanding Christian philosopher” promote? He promotes Jesuit Liberation Theology. He writes,
Here we see the ecclesiology of the Jesuits unashamedly pushed and promoted. He does NOT address the fact that Romanism has been in these “ecclesial communities” for centuries and has helped to produce the poverty that characterizes them. He also does not go into detail to show what liberation theology has produced.
Not all scholars are impressed with Nicholas Wolterstorff. Dr. John Robbins said that,
He made this comment in connection with what Wolterstorff wrote about capitalism and communism.
Wolterstorff also said,
Does this “scholar” live on the same planet as the rest of us? Does North Korea, one of the most communistic countries on the face of this earth, give a high priority to the alleviation of poverty?
The magazine describes the Center’s aims as the desire “to encourage cutting-edge Christian scholarship by bringing in world-renowned scholars to Biola’s campus.” 8 In discussing the aim of the center, the magazine recounts what took place when those planning it were talking together about what they hoped to accomplish.
“No way! You got Plantinga to come?” he said. “Folks, Alvin Plantinga is on the shortlist of the top two or three most brilliant Christian philosophers… He and (Biola professor) Bill Craig, and maybe Swinburne… and Wolterstorff. Some of the brightest people around.”
Ten Eishof chuckled. As it just so happened, he said, Nicholas Wolterstorff would be joining Plantinga at the new Biola center in the spring. And Richard Swinburne was slated to come the following year.
“You’re getting an all-star team!” Pastore shouted.
“That’s the idea,” Ten Eishof said. 9
Surely the ignorance of biblical truth is widespread today. With the worship of man comes biblical ignorance. The wisdom of this age is completely destroyed by the Wisdom of God. The Wisdom of God has nothing whatsoever at all to do with the cutting edge of Jesuit scholarship; it has all to do with the cross of Christ. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The glorious gospel, of which Rome knows nothing, is the wisdom of God. The wisdom of this age now rules much of what is called Christian scholarship in America today.
One of the main changes in American Christianity, in my lifetime, has been the loss of the Puritan-Protestant theology that was the foundation of this great nation for more than three hundred years. Several forces were at work to bring this change about, none more powerful than the Jesuits. The Jesuits worked hard to replace biblical Protestant Christianity with “classical” Christianity.
As time went on, there were other voices that arose to promote and defend “Classical Christianity.” The writings of C.S. Lewis championed “Classical Christianity.” Lewis loved the Mass, taught that egregious lie of Purgatory, which is surely the foundation of medieval religion, and never said a word about justification by faith alone in the finished work of Christ. What Lewis believed and taught was medieval mythology, not Protestant Christianity.
Dr. John Robbins, examines one of the main promoters of “classical tradition” in “Reformed” circles: Andrew Sandlin. He stated, among other things, that Sandlin had attacked him for showing the errors of the neo-legalists, whom Sandlin defends. Dr. Robbins also points out the distinction that Sandlin makes between what the Protestant Reformers taught-the Reformed Faith-and what Sandlin calls “historic orthodox Christianity.”
Sandlin quotes Thomas Oden, the Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics, at Drew University, a United Methodist liberal school.
This is the man that Sandlin cites as his authority on “Classical Christianity.” Sandlin continues his defense of Classical Tradition,
Here Sandlin is defending all those who hold to what he calls classical Christianity. That is Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox adherents, are not heretics even though they are not biblical Christians. So the same old push of Colson to have Roman Catholicism recognized as a sister Christian communion is being promoted by Sandlin. What Sandlin is defending here is medieval mythology, not Christianity.
Dr. Robbins refutes the errors of Sandlin. He stated,
The return of a “divisive Protestant rebellion” to classical Romanism, has been the goal of the Jesuits since their inception. Now it is obvious that many in Reformed and evangelical and charismatic circles, have taken up the sword of the Jesuits in order to fight alongside them, to destroy what is left of historic Protestant Christianity in America today.
The Charismatics meeting at New Orleans a few years ago said that at the previous conference in Notre Dame, we knocked down the giant of Protestantism, now let us cut off his head that the divisions among the churches may never appear again. They, of course, we assume, were speaking figuratively, about cutting off the giant’s head. What they meant was that they wanted to bring about the complete destruction of Protestantism.
In America today we have those people who are classed as evangelicals; we have others classed as Reformed; still others from both of these camps classed as Charismatics, and all these people are promoting the ecumenical non- Protestant church; the confusion thus generated has been overwhelming.
Historically, all Protestant denominations, at their inception repudiated and refuted, and preached and taught against the great System of Mystery Babylon religion, with all the spiritual weapons at their disposal. And in many, many, cases sealed their witness in the flames of martyrdom. The dissenters before the Reformation, the Reformers, the Puritans, the Huguenots, the dissenters after the Reformation, ALL believed that they were in a life and death struggle with the Papal Man of Sin. They were struggling against him, and all his henchmen who were dealing out wars, massacres, sieges, mayhem, and every type of persecution known to man against them. Now the heirs of that glorious Protestant heritage, have all made their peace with the Man of Sin, having dropped Reformed Protestant eschatology. This is the consequence of following a Jesuit eschatology.
The Charismatics now want to cut THE HEAD OFF the giant of Protestantism; meaning they want to destroy him completely. However, they do NOT want to cut the head of the Papal Man of Sin; they do not want to destroy him completely. They obviously want him to flourish, so that those who once separated from him, and repudiated him, will NEVER AGAIN trouble or divide the great apostate ecumenical religion of humanity governed by him.
What does this mean?
Well, it means that they must love all the errors and blasphemies of the Papal Man of Sin. They must love the blasphemy of the Mass which is the chief act of worship in the Romish communion. They must love working for their salvation. They must love penance rather than repentance. They must love Mary more than Christ. They must love Purgatory, that chief of all blasphemies against the total forgiveness that Christ has accomplished for all those who believe in Him. They must love making saints and prayers for the dead, candles, and a hundred and one other evils of the Papal Man of Sin.
At the same time they want to destroy SOLA SCRIPTURA, the glorious Protestant teaching that Scriptura ALONE is the ONLY AUTHORITY for faith and practice in the church. Thus ruling out all popish edicts, ecumenical councils, Oral Tradition, and all forgeries of papal history. They must also want to destroy SOLA FIDE, that the sinner is justified by faith ALONE. They must love all the anathemas that the Papal Man of Sin has called down on such a wonderful doctrine. They must want to destroy SOLUS CHRISTUS, that salvation is not found in the church but in Christ ALONE. They must want to destroy SOLA GRATIA, THAT GLORIOUS Bible doctrine that the sinner is saved by GRACE ALONE, without any works of merit done by the sinner. Then they must all want to destroy SOLA DEI GLORIA, that all the glory belongs to God ALONE for everything. He that glories let him glory in the Lord. God has chosen the weak and the foolish and the despised, and the things that are not, that NO FLESH should glory in His presence.
Talk about unmitigated confusion. Those who claim they get revelations from God are led to repudiate the glorious truths the historic Protestants gleaned from the Scriptures ALONE; and in their place they want all the errors and blasphemies, that have been added over and above the Scriptures by the Papal Man of Sin down through the centuries. May the Lord enlighten the eyes of the modern church to the truth as it is in Jesus and as it is found in the Holy Scriptures ALONE! Romanism is built upon a foundation of total irrationalism. It may be called “classical” Christianity by the irrational neo-orthodox manologians of today but it has nothing to do with Christianity. What is called “classical” Christianity today is medieval mythology. The Apostles Creed may have been repeated by some in the middle ages, and some scholars may have known something about the ecumenical creeds, but the people were swamped in superstition. As Bishop J. C. Ryle said, their religion,
It was an absolute carnival of irrationality and superstition, John Bale, in his commentary on the book of Revelation, said,
The medieval mythology based upon tradition and not the Bible, promoted and defended the magic of the Mass, that a magic trick is performed every time the priest says his hocus-pocus over the bread and wine. It defended the myth of Purgatory. It promoted and extolled relics and bones. It developed a whole religion around Mary. It promoted and defended pilgrimages and shrines. It promoted the gross lie of indulgences. It promoted the lie that defied the Man of Sin as our Lord God the Pope. It denied salvation by grace ALONE, and justification by faith ALONE. And denied that the church was to be governed by the Bible ALONE. So whatever was promoted and followed in the religion of Rome, it had nothing whatsoever to do with either classical Christianity or Reformed Christianity. It simply was NOT Christian in any way, shape, or form.
It is this classical form of irrational traditional mythology that the Jesuits are promoting in America today, as a Christian Social Order. And many “Christians” are lined up with them, helping their cause with all the power and support they can muster.
Martin says of the Jesuits,
Not even Inigo could have seen the quasi- miracle of his Society’s organization, its meteoric and brilliant success, and its universal influence on the world of man when he founded it. For the next 425 years, the tens of thousands who joined Inigo’s company established a record that in its own category stands unmatched in past or present history…
Once his men harnessed their energies within his organization to the worldwide work of the Roman Church, they produced a unique phenomenon of human history. “Never,” wrote the eighteenth-century German theorist Novalis, “never” before in the course of the world’s history had such a Society appeared. The old Roman Senate itself did not lay schemes for world domination with greater certainty of success. Never had the carrying out of a greater idea been considered with greater understanding. For all time, this Society will be an example to every Society which feels an organic longing for infinite extension and eternal duration.”
They were giants, but with one purpose: the defense and propagation of papal authority and papal teaching. 15
This great antichristian conspiratorial Order of the Jesuits, animated by the great Spirit of Error, is changing the American church even as we write. And the spiritual warfare that the Protestants and Puritans of America used to wage against it, is all but over. The theological battlefield is enshrouded in silence in the “Christian” churches of America; the noise of battle is heard only in American culture. The eschatologies of the Jesuits have seen to that. So while many “Christians” sleep a stealthy and deceptive enemy still wages his war against them.
We close with those immortal words of Grattan Guinness,
What can the true believer do in the face of apostasy, false religion, and the compromise with such evils? He can do no better than to follow the advice of the Apostle Paul,
(End of The Effect of the Jesuit Eschatologies on America Today – by Dr. Ronald Cooke. )
If you read the entire booklet, congratulations! You should now know more than most born-again Christians about who the real enemy is. I used to think it was the Jews, and then later the Illuminati / Freemasons / Bilderbergers / CFR / International Bankers / Rothschilds / Rockefellers / ___________ (fill in the blank with your favorite bad guy), at the top of the pile of evils in this world, but now based on my knowledge of the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church’s reaction to the Reformation which is called the Counter-Reformation, I believe ALL these people and organizations are controlled by the Jesuits and the Vatican. Dr. Ronald Cooke’s booklet added more details to that knowledge.