Rotten in Rome

In a fictional cartoon-movie, all dogs go to heaven. In real life, most people do not.

God makes this abundantly clear throughout Scripture. We are all sinners (rebels against God), and the wages of sin is death. And God does not veil Himself from the eyes of the world--thus, we are left without excuse (Rom. 1). We reject Him because we are dumb, deaf, blind, and treacherous, so that God is justified with He judges (Ps. 51; Rom. 3).

But in God's grace, Jesus was set forth as a sacrifice for sinners (Is. 53). He bore their sin in his body, becoming their sin so they would be the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5). And it is only through Christ that we are saved. He declares Himself to be the way, the truth, and the life--no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14). Following the teaching of their risen and ascended Lord, the apostles taught that there is no other name by which we may be saved (Acts 2). Ultimately, every man will bow the knee to Jesus--either in repentance now or in judgment later (Phil. 2).

Apparently, some of the most notorious figures claiming the name of Christ now deny these fundamental truths. Apparently, the man who claims the position of Christ over the church, Francis, has been swept up in the universalistic tide that has swept through Rome over the past half century and rejects fundamental Christian orthodoxy: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-assures-atheists-you-dont-have-to-believe-in-god-to-go-to-heaven-8810062.html

Rome used to argue that one could not be saved by Christ outside of the Roman church. Shaken out of that blatantly anti-biblical notion, they have declared that all dogs go to heaven, as long as they are good dogs. They have caved to the spirit of the age, where a pagan monism (merging of distinct things into one--opposite of dualism) has blurred the lines of truth.

The orthodox from the early Church through the Reformation had an appropriate label for such teaching coming from a supposedly Christian platform--the spirit of antichrist. Let us hope that the Rome repents of such grievous errors and heresy. Let us hope, for Francis' sake, that he doesn't pin his hopes on his own conscience as he encourages others to do. My conscience, and his, apart from Christ is but another piece of luggage destined for eternal torment. And let us hope that he quickly corrects this false teaching or he will rue the day when he must give an account for it.

My friends, God confronts the lie of our self-righteousness and pretension of self-salvation through His Word of truth. Francis, and much of Rome, condones the lie and the pretension. Love detached from truth is no love at all, but a blood-bearing complicity in death. May God in His abundant grace convict those who uphold the name of Christ in name only, and drive them to zealously guard the truth, beauty, and power of the Gospel of God's grace for sinners in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:24).