A Wake-Up Call?

The recent news concerning Pope Benedict’s resignation compels me to once again set aside my series on “Following Jesus.” I have written on the subject of a new Pope before, and since there are startling prophecies connected with this event, I am reposting some of that information now.

What does this prophecy say, and who said it?

A 12^th Century Archbishop, Saint Malachy, purportedly received a vision wherein he was given the description of 112 future Popes, then detailed it in a work entitled The Mysterious Prophecy of the Popes. The current Pope Benedict XVI is number 111^th, thus the very next Pope will be the 112^th.  Of this final Pope, Malachy says: “In extreme persecution, the seat of the Holy Roman Church will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed the sheep through many tribulations; when they are over, the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed, and the terrible or fearsome Judge (Jesus) will judge his people.”

So, according to Saint Malachy, the next and final Pope will oversee the Catholic Church through much “persecution” and “tribulation” just prior to the return of the “fearsome Judge” or Jesus, and during which time Rome will be destroyed.

Over the years several Jesuits have worked hard to debunk Saint Malachy’s prophecy as a forgery, then along came respected Belgium professor and Jesuit, Rene Thibaut (1883-1952) who studied the prophecies to determine if they matched the previous Popes, and not only asserted they did and that Saint Malachy’s prophecies were valid, but then through elaborate computations, put the date of 2012 as the time this final Pope would enter the world stage. Obviously his calculations were a few months off.

But is it possible? Can the 112^th Pope really usher in the end times? Worse yet, can he be the False Prophet of Revelation, or at least his tool, that Thibaut and others believe him to be?

According to Father Malachi Martin, the answer is “yes”. A Jesuit and eminent Catholic theologian, Martin was a personal friend of Pope Paul VI, and a member of the Vatican Advisory Council, as well as the personal secretary to the celebrated Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea. He was also the Vatican researcher on the Dead Sea Scrolls and spoke seventeen languages. In other words, he was a man of importance who commanded respect at the highest levels. His startling claim is this: an Illuminate-Masonic group (Freemasons) had infiltrated the upper ranks of the Catholic Church and conspired to bring about a one world government. In his book, Windswept House, Martin talked about “prominent clerics who worship Satan” and that “networks . . . had been established between certain clerical homosexual groups and Satanist covens,” hence the world-wide cover-up of pedophile clerics by the church establishment. Martin also talked about a secret ceremony, the “enthronement of Satan,” which took place in the Vatican in 1963 in order to ensure two outcomes: 1) Satan’s control over the Vatican and Rome and 2) a demonically controlled end-time Pope. Martin died under “suspicious” circumstances in 1999 while working on another book connecting the Catholic Church with the New World Order.

If considering a Pope of Rome as being affiliated in any way with the end-time Antichrist is still unthinkable, let me assure you that Malachi Martin wasn’t the only one who believed it possible. The list is long, and includes such notables as Luther, Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. To learn more, read Petrus Romanus, The Final Pope is Here, by Thomas Horn and Cris Putnam. It’s guaranteed to frizzle your hair.

But are these prophecies and warnings just foolishness? Or are these men right, and their writings dire warnings, a wake-up call, alerting us of things soon to come?

Only time will tell.

Until next week,

Sylvia