|
The Mystery of Iniquity
William Diehl
Protestant Christians have always been falsely labeled "Catholic bashers". This of course is ridiculous. Not one of the discourses found in www.PresentTruthMag.com has ever attacked the person or character or salvation of any Roman Catholic or even the Pope himself. The Restoration Movement deals only in doctrine and the teachings of the Bible. There is not one ounce of "character assassination" in anything written in Present Truth Magazine.
This kind of talk is only a "smoke screen" that is being laid down to avoid the full light of the gospel. If you look at the posts of those who object to pointing out the deceitful actions of the Jesuits and the erroneous doctrines of the Papacy in the past and their Antichrist activities in the present, you will see that it is they who are attacking our mental stability as "paranoia" and as "phobia". These kind of personal attacks are the only reply that can be made by those who will not accept the truth of what the word of God teaches. Satan always resorts to personal attack and then when this fails he uses force to silence the voice of the watchmen on the wall of Zion. The same thing happened to all the Reformers of the past and it will be thus until the end. But God Himself will cast down every thought system that exalts itself against the Gospel of justification by unmerited grace alone through faith in the sinless life and atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ alone.
It is Rome who says that before God can accept a sinner, the sinner must begin to do good works of love by the indwelling Holy Spirit before he can be accepted and adopted into the family of God and have his name written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Thus sanctification and infused love must precede justification according to Rome.
We invite anyone to produce one statement by Present Truth Magazine that denies that sanctification is the fruit of being justified freely by God's grace through faith in the sinless life and atoning death of Christ on the cross. We have consistently written that sanctification always follows having been justified. Our sanctification however ALWAYS falls short of sinlessness in the sense of perfectly revealing all the love and holiness and goodness and unselfishness that was revealed in the sinless holy life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because sanctification is the work of a lifetime and is never finished in this life we can NEVER trust in sanctification as the basis of our assurance of eternal life. Justification alone is our title to heaven and we as Christians can only rest in the finished work of Christ on the cross for our assurance of acceptance with God and eternal life.
The great error of Romanism is that the believer is taught that only sinless, perfect Saints can go directly into heaven!! That is, without perfect absolute sinless sanctification no man or woman can believe that he or she is accepted by God and has eternal life. Thus the believer is continually seeking to become sinless in order to be saved. The true believer however has the assurance that because Jesus is sinless and has died for his sins, even though he still has not reached perfect sanctification, he still can rest in certainty that he is a child of God, saved from the wrath of God and free from all condemnation through faith in Christ's imputed perfection.
The entire system of Romanism is based on getting people "holy enough" to be saved in the judgment. Those who do not achieve sinless perfection will NOT go to directly into heaven according to this false system!! They must go to Purgatory to purge away the remaining sins that they were unable to become completely free of in this life. The power of Rome rests in the belief that she holds the keys to dispensing this sanctifying grace to all who come to her. Without the intercession of her system of confession, penance, sacraments, vigils, good works of charity, monastic celibacy and asceticism, masses for the departed dead, acknowledgement of the authority of the Pope as holding the keys to heaven, and the intercession of the departed Saints and the Virgin Mother of God who have reached perfection in their earthly life and are now in heaven, NO ONE can enter heaven because it is only through these means that the sinner can obtain enough Sanctifying inward grace to be saved on the last Day. The entire Roman system is based on getting enough inward holiness (sanctification) to be saved on the last Day.
Again, we teach that God wants his people to fill their lives with sanctified good works of charity!!! God does not save us because of these good works!!! These works are NEVER pure enough to allow us to enter heaven. The saved Christian is accepted ONLY because of the sinless life of Jesus reckoned to the believer's account. This is what is meant by the biblical teaching of justification by grace alone through faith in the sinless life and atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Only Jesus is able to bring to the Law of God a perfection that meets the broadest and deepest demands of the righteousness of the Law. The repentant believer has NOW in the PRESENT TENSE attainted to this level of righteousness by faith in Christ.
Because Romanism denies this teaching, she is the "Mystery of Iniquity". The Papacy is the "Man of Sin", and the "Falling Away", and the "False Prophet", and the "Image to the Beast", and the "Woman Who Sits Upon the Scarlet Beast", and "Babylon the Great", and many, many more biblical terms which represent the Serpent and his earthly Kingdom of Darkness.
Come out of her my people and partake not of her plagues which are poured out without mercy!! If these things had been revealed unto Sodom and Gomorrah they long ago would have repented in sack cloth and ashes. But because you will not come to the defense of the gospel, your house will be left unto you desolate and there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. You say that if you had been living in the time of the prophets of old you would not have opposed the message of God, but now in the end of the world a greater light has come and you resist it just like the stiff-necked and unbelieving generations of the past who did not recognize the day of salvation and labeled it a delusion and fanaticism and paranoia. But the Lord has opened His truth unto the babes and the poor publicans of the world, while He has blinded the eyes of those who were content to sit at their ease and disparage the call of the Spirit to repentance and faith to go up to take the city by faith.
|
