This is the continuation The Key to Pope Francis’s Identity – Part I. Master of the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Inquisition Update. My name’s Tom Friess, and I’ll be your host for the next hour.

Yesterday morning, I began a series of articles written by Richard Bennett of BereanBeacon.org. This article is entitled, Key to Pope Francis’ Identity, Master of the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises.

Now, we’ve described yesterday what essentially constitutes the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola. It’s mysticism. It’s visualizations. It’s subjective… Well, you’ve heard me make the expression before, they worship a figment of their own imaginations. That’s what the spiritual exercises do. They allow a man and empower a man to worship a god of his own making, in his own mind.

And the Scripture tells us plainly that a man’s mind is desperately wicked. Who can know it? And it’s vanity. It’s designed to replace the Scripture, the objective truth, with subjective mysticism, feelings, visualizations, dreams, and visions.

And it’s been quite successful. As a matter of fact, some of my listeners who will be familiar with the Alpha Course, have experienced the study of the Ignatian spirituality right in their own Protestant churches! The spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola are hidden behind the Alpha Course! That’s very popular in the Protestant churches and Evangelical churches.

So, this is the method that the Jesuits are using to replace the Bible with a man-made god, a higher consciousness, they call it. And it’s nothing but ancient mysticism, wrapped in a cloak of Christianity. And the current Antichrist sitting on the throne of Rome, Pope Francis I, is expert at the spiritual exercises. He is, first and foremost, a Jesuit. And he’s using these spiritual exercises and Ignatian spirituality to divert Roman Catholics, who are sick and fed up with the corruptions within the Roman Catholic Church, and have become critical of the Roman Catholic Church, to divert their attentions away from the scandals, the innumerable scandals of the priesthood, and focus them on, well, dreams and visions, a higher spirituality.

Okay, continuing, just retreating a paragraph or two from where we left off yesterday, we’re rehearsing the history of Loyola submitting to Pope Paul III. This is the very beginning of the Jesuit order in 1534.

Before I begin, I’ll let you know that the Jesuit order came at a most opportune time for the papacy. Half of Europe had rebelled against the papacy, under guise of the Protestant Reformation. The wide-scale recognition that the papacy, and only the papacy could be that man of sin, that son of perdition, the Antichrist of the Bible, and they were rebelling against the Pope’s authority. And so, consequently, the governments of the lands were rebelling against the authority of the Pope.

The Pope needed a miracle. And it strolled into the Vatican one day in the form of Ignatius Loyola. Now, we’re going to rely upon James A. Wiley, a Protestant writer, to describe a little bit about this Jesuit order. Wiley describes how Loyola submitted himself and his men to the service of Pope Paul in Rome.

“The war in which Loyola and his nine companions enrolled themselves, when on the 15th of August of 1534 they made their vow in the Church of Montmartre, was to wage a war against the Saracens of the East. However, the war which had just broken out between the Republic and the Port had closed the gates of Asia. So, right off the bat, this divinely inspired order, so they believed, met its first obstacle. They were going off to fight the Saracens in the name of the Pope, and the gates were closed. They couldn’t go in. So, they set their eyes toward the West, and to be the Pope’s militia in the West.

They took this as an intimation that the field of their operations was to be in the Western world. Returning on their path, they now directed their steps toward Rome. In every town through which they passed on their way to the Eternal City, they left behind them an immense reputation for sanctity by their labors in the hospitals and their earnest addresses to the populace in the streets.

As they drew nigh to Rome, and the hearts of some of his companions were beginning to despond, Loyola was cheered by a vision in which Christ appeared to him and said to him, ‘In Rome, I will be gracious unto thee.'”

So, here we have the Genesis, rather, just another instance in the life of Ignatius Loyola where he had seen dreams and visions.

Now, for those of you who want to know more about the Jesuit Order, and I highly encourage you to do this, do your own research into the very beginnings of the life of Ignatius Loyola, and you will find that he was a military officer in the Spanish War, and he was wounded in battle, always trying to distinguish himself as a warrior, and he was wounded in battle. He took a cannonball to one of his legs, a pretty lucky shot by the opponents, and they seriously wounded Ignatius Loyola, and he was bedridden, and several attempts were made to re-break his leg in order to reset it so that it would grow straight, and he knew he had no more future in politics, no more future in the army if his leg was crooked. So, they broke his leg numerous times, at least two that I’m aware of, without anesthetics, and the man took the pain, and it was during these instances of exquisite pain that Ignatius Loyola had visions and dreams of the Virgin Mary, and so he was a man given to visions and dreams.

This is the mysticism of Ignatius Loyola. He didn’t get his knowledge of God from the Scriptures. He got it from, supposedly, direct revelation from images that he saw in his own mind, and these form the basis of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, that you don’t get to know God from reading the Scriptures, you get to know God by dreams and visions, visualizations, and imagining yourself at the feet of Jesus, and communing with Jesus. That’s how you get to know Jesus of the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesus of Ignatius Loyola is gotten by dreams and visions.

So, now we’ll continue. The hopes this vision inspired were not to be disappointed. Entering the gates of the capital of Christendom, Rome, that is the Vatican, and throwing themselves at the feet of Pope Paul III, they met a most gracious reception. The Pope hailed their offer of assistance as most opportune. Mighty dangers at that hour threatened the papacy, and this is a reference to the Protestant Reformation and the rebellion of Europe against the authority of the papacy, and with half of Europe in revolt, and the old monkish orders become incapable…and why were the monkish orders already established in the Roman Catholic Church incapable of stopping the Protestant Reformation? Because they were widely known as corrupt. This is typical of the monkish orders of the Roman Catholic Church. They’re fat, lazy, they live off society, and they’re nothing but troublemakers, and when they get power and authority, they abuse it. It isn’t long before a monkish order of the Roman Catholic Church is steeped in corruption.

That was the case of all the monkish orders at the time of the Protestant Reformation. It’s what led, partly, to the Protestant Reformation. People could look at the Vatican and just see nothing but corruption. There was no bright light in the Roman Catholic Church, and that’s why it became so easy to see the Pope as the Antichrist, and the Roman Catholic Church as the synagogue of Satan, and the Jesuits, a new order, newly established, had built a reputation for itself of being very generous, very astute, and a great sanctity, as we’ve read even earlier in this article.

And so, the Jesuits proposed early on that they would whip all the monkish orders of the Roman Catholic Church into shape because they were partly to blame. Their corruption was partly to blame for the Protestant Reformation. So, the Jesuits were the great saviors of the papacy and of the Roman Catholic Church at this time. When it looked, for all intents and purposes, that Roman Catholicism would come to an end.

Mighty dangers at that hour threatened the papacy, and with half of Europe in revolt, and the old monkish orders become incapable, this new and unexpected aid, that is, the Jesuits, was sent by heaven. (So thought the Pope.) The rules and constitutions of the new order were drafted, and ultimately approved by Pope Paul III.

Two peculiarities in the constitution of the proposed order specially recommended it in the eyes of Pope Paul III. The first was its vow of unconditional obedience. Yes, the Jesuits promised unconditional obedience to the Pope. Now, this is something the Pope never enjoyed with all the other monkish orders. They had a tendency to become a little bit rebellious, especially when they became powerful. That was not to be the case with the Jesuits. The Jesuits vowed, from the very beginning, unconditional obedience to the papacy.

The society swore to obey the Pope as an army obeys its general. It was compounded by the fact that Ignatius Loyola was a military general. He had a military background, and he knew how important it was to follow the orders of the superior general. And the survival of the Roman Catholic Church would not be accomplished without that kind of military strictness. So the society swore to obey the Pope as an army obeys its general. It was not canonical, but military obedience, which its members offered him. They would go to whatsoever place at whatsoever time, and on whatsoever errand he should be pleased to order them. They were, in short, to be not so much monks as soldiers.

Now, at this point, I want my listeners to recognize what status has been given to the Jesuits. They are the Jesuits, or rather, they are the papal militia. Think of them as the special forces of the papacy. We’ve heard of SEAL Team 6 and the special forces of the United States military that go into foreign lands in disguise before the war ever starts and defeats the enemy before the firing begins. That is the role of the special forces of the papacy called the Jesuit Order. It’s an order of military monks. Every Jesuit is an officer in the Pope’s militia, in the Pope’s secret forces, special forces, and they have a military objective, and that is to conquer the whole world for the papacy and make the papacy the king of kings and the lord of lords in the world. The status that he enjoyed in the world prior to the Protestant Reformation. That is the Jesuits’ sworn oath to accomplish.

Now, this comes at the expense of the Protestant Reformation. It was the Protestant Reformation that overthrew the tyranny that the Pope enjoyed before the Protestant Reformation. It was the Protestant Reformation that was created by the Bible. After all, it was the Bible from which they learned that the papacy was and always will be the Antichrist.

So the Jesuits are bent on destroying the Protestant Reformation, and the best way to do that is to destroy the importance of the Bible, and that’s what the Ignatian spirituality is all about. To get people to worship a God that is a figment of their own imagination rather than the objective truth of the Bible, they are submitted and given over to subjective visions and dreams and imaginings. The source of the spirituality of the Ignatian spirituality is man-made. It’s like making and worshiping, bowing down and worshiping, something that you make with your own hands. It’s spiritual idolatry. It’s a very tactful way of destroying the Bible. It places mysticism, the imaginations of a man’s mind as being the source of truth, and diminishes the Bible, the objective truth of the Bible.

Now, let’s continue. Pope Francis has been thoroughly indoctrinated into Loyola’s spiritual exercises and his militant attitude. This is who Pope Francis really is. He is first and foremost a Jesuit. He is first and foremost a warrior against the Bible and a warrior against the Protestant Reformation, and he’s going to seek to replace the Bible with feelings, with emotion, with imagination, with dreams and visualizations, mysticism, a phony gospel.

So now as Pope, he comes onto the world stage so versed in the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, so able to spread knowledge and practice of this counterfeit way of conversion, a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this brings us to the fact that the spirit of Ignatian training is not only mystical but also ethical. How do you make something so corrupt ethical? This is the magic of the Jesuits. Spiritual exercises demonstrated ethically. This is how you cloak the diabolical spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola and pass it off as legitimate.

There are several ways that Pope Francis manifests his Ignatian training. For example, in his preaching. Rather than preaching the objective gospel or exegeting the scripture to convict his hearers of sin and of righteousness and of judgment to come, he tells his audience, quote, “close your eyes and imagine yourself doing,” unquote. This is to appeal solely to the subjectivity of the emotion rather than to present a proposition to the mind.

The objective truth of God’s written word is scripture. Nevertheless, James Martin says that statements of Francis such as, “close your eyes and talk to Jesus in prayer is very Ignatian.” Martin is very correct in his estimation. The emphasis in the spiritual exercises is ever on one’s imagination.

This is the source of the spirituality of the Ignatian way, that you worship a figment of your imagination. You imagine this Jesus Christ that takes on any form that your corrupted mind will permit. In other words, you can fashion Jesus any way you want. That’s the Ignatian way, and that is what Jesuit priest Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis I, is intimately trained in. He worships a God that is a figment of his own imagination. The emphasis in the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola is ever on one’s imagination.

Imagine you can see the particular and gory details of hell. Imagine you can smell the sulfur. On and on it goes, stoking the heated imagination without mercy, but without truth. This is the way Ignatius learned from his reading of the lives of the saints and the mystics. But it’s not the way of Scripture.

Now here is a reference to what Ignatius Loyola preoccupied himself with suffering in his sickbed, recovering from this cannonball wound. He dedicated his life laying there in bed to reading the mystical lives of the saints and the mystics of the Roman Catholic Church. This is where he got his mystical order. This is what corrupted Ignatius Loyola. It’s all around mysticism. It would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Scriptures. Right? Create your own God in your mind.

Now I want to ask my listeners, do any of you participate in the Alpha course? Does any of this sound familiar to you? It should. (If you participate in the Alpha Course.)

The Alpha course is an evangelistic course that seeks to introduce the basics of the Christian faith through a series of talks and discussions. It is described by its organizers as “an opportunity to explore the meaning of life”. Alpha courses are run in churches, homes, workplaces, prisons, universities and a wide variety of other locations. The course began in Britain and is run around the world by various Christian denominations. – (Source: Wikipedia)

It’s straight out of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola! This is the way Ignatius learned from his reading of the lives of the saints and the mystics, but it is not the way of Scripture. Rather, Scripture states, “the imagination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth.”

So how can anyone arrive at God through vain imaginations? The Bible plainly warns us not to participate in these other forms of truth that run counter and otherwise diminish the written Word of God. Right? This was the great question at the time of the Protestant Reformation. What should be our rule of faith? The Scriptures or man’s tradition? The Protestant Reformers clearly decided unanimously the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone.

This is the war that the Protestant Reformers fought against the papacy. Enough of your mysticism! Enough of your vain imaginations! Enough of your idolatries! Enough of your making a man into a god! The Scriptures forbid all of it.

And we want no more part of the Roman Catholic Church and all of its mystics and all of its phony imaginations and ulterior forms of worship, and its false conversions, and its false rituals, and we’ll hold fast to Christ and to the written Word of God. That was the Protestant Reformation. This is what overturned the papal power in Europe. This is what set humanity on the straight and narrow.

And Rome wants her power back. At a time when Roman Catholicism has known all the world for a corruption. And that’s why there is now a Jesuit on the papal throne.

The Scripture plainly tells us, “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Unquote. And that’s only one of the passages dealing with the imagination of a man. You’ll never arrive at the truth through your own vain imaginations.

Continued in The Key to Pope Francis’s Identity – Part III. Master of the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises

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