A common theme among Freemasons, occultists, and others who belong to the expanding confederacy of evil which raises its hydra-like head against the supernatural faith of Roman Catholicism, is that a
, a humanity with a new heightened consciousness. Belief in the Son of God is seen as incompatible with this "new consciousness." Christianity must be rejected for a new humanitarian religion. See
Cardinal John Henry Newman was a prophet. He saw the foundations being laid
for apostasy in his own time. He was able to see the signs of sickness within
the Body of Christ as surely as a physician today is able to detect a cancer in
the human body. In a sermon dealing with the times of Antichrist delivered more
than a century ago, his Eminence asked, "
And is there no reason to fear that
some such Apostasy is gradually preparing, gathering, hastening on in this very
day? For is there not at this very time a special effort made almost all
over the world, that is, every here and there, more or less, in sight or out of
sight, in this or that place, but most visibly or formidably in its most
civilized and powerful parts, an effort to do without religion? Is there not an
opinion avowed and growing, that a nation has nothing to do with religion;
that it is merely a matter for each man's own conscience,-which is all one with
saying that we may let the truth fail from the earth without trying to continue
it?
Is there not a vigorous and united movement in all countries to cast
down the Church of Christ from power and place? Is there not a feverish and
ever busy endeavour to get rid of the necessity of religion in public
transactions? for example, an attempt to get rid of oaths, under a pretence that
they are too sacred for affairs of common life, instead of providing that they
be taken more reverently and more suitably? an attempt to educate without
religion,-that is, by putting all forms of religion together, which comes to the
same thing? an attempt to enforce temperance, and the virtues which flow from
it, without religion, by means of societies which are built on mere principles
of utility? an attempt to make expedience, and not truth the end and the rule of
measures of state and the enactments of law an attempt to make numbers, and not
truth, the ground of maintaining, or not maintaining this or that creed, as if
we had any reason whatever in Scripture for thinking that the many will be in
the right, and the few in the wrong? An attempt to deprive the Bible of its one
meaning to the exclusion of others, to make people think that it may have a
hundred meanings all equally good, or in other words, that it has no meaning at
all, is a dead letter, and may be put aside? an attempt to supersede religion
altogether, as far as it is external or objective, as far as it is displayed in
ordinances, or can be expressed by written words,-to confine it to our inward
feelings, and thus, considering how transient, how variable, how evanescent our
feelings are, an attempt in fact, to destroy religion?
Surely, there
is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of
the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of
Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it.
Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is
still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its
tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and saviour of death. Far be it
from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is
circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in
which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskillful in his
craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the
Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he
promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a
remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals
from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail
against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to
imitate him; or he promises you illumination,-he offers you knowledge, science,
philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every
institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to
you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you
how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with
you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them,
and then you are his."
Man is being conditioned to worship himself. The
crisis of faith is a crisis of the supernatural. Once this crisis of faith has
reached its zenith, once men have deified themselves, the one whom St. Paul
calls "the man of iniquity" will reveal himself to the world. For he can only
reveal himself within the context of apostasy, loss of faith - open rebellion
against God. Until then he is restrained.
Dostoyevsly makes this point in
The Brothers Karamazov:
"Once humanity to a man renounces God (and I
believe that period, analogous with the geological periods, will come to pass)
the old outlook on life will collapse by itself without cannibalism and, above
all, the old morality too, and a new era will dawn.
Men will unite to get
everything life can give, but only for joy and happiness in this world alone.
Man will be exalted with a spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the
man-god will make his appearance. Extending his conquest over nature
infinitely every hour by his will and science, man will every hour by that very
fact feel so lofty a joy that it will make up for his old hopes of the joys of
heaven..."
So concerned was Pope Pius XII, that he said:
"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima.
This
persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine
warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology
and her soul....
"I hear all around me innovators who wish to
dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject
her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past.
"
A
day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will
doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God
"In our churches, Christians will search in
vain for the red lamp where God awaits them, like Mary Magdalene weeping before
the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?' (Pope Pius XII,
quoted in the book Pius XII Devant L'Histoire, pp. 52-53, by Msgr. Georges
Roche).
How will this be accomplished? Pope St. Pius X, the Pope of the
Eucharist, warned back in 1907, in his Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici
Gregis, that the enemies of the Church, knowing that external persecution of Her
actually brings about Her greater growth ("The blood of the martyrs is the seed
of Christianity" - Tertullian), would focus in the future on destroying Her
through infiltration.
That future has arrived. A masonic false prophet seeks to alter the Faith in her
liturgy, theology and soul.
The Man of Sin readies his appearance onto the world stage.
