Signs of the Times

The Passing of the Pope

The following are thoughts I shared at a service at the Bridge Christian Fellowship following the death of Pope Francis on 21^st April. To see the message click on the picture below.

The Pope is the head of the largest church on earth, the RC Church, home to 1 ½ billion Catholics. The huge gathering, including world leaders, in St Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’ funeral testifies to the power of this church and its world wide reach. The papacy is more than just a religious organisation, it is a political presence on the world scene with its own state in the Vatican in Rome, a seat at the United Nations, embassies around the world and a power to whom world leaders come and pay homage and even seek counsel. 

The funeral service contained religious music, readings from Bible, (Acts 10.34-43, Philippians 4), the presence of cardinals and bishops arrayed in purple and scarlet, and leaders of the world. It had references to the resurrection of dead as well as the ‘sacred mysteries’ and prayers to Mary and the saints to intercede for his soul. There were tributes to Francis for his good works, care for the poor, for refugees, for the environment, his pastoral heart and love for people. He was described as the ‘People’s Pope’. Cardinal Re, giving the homily said,

All very impressive, even seductive in a way. The question remains,

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For Bible believing Christians and true Protestants, there is a huge gulf between Roman Catholic Church and New Testament Christianity.  Roman Catholicism did not originate with the early Church nor was Peter the first Pope. There are disputes over who was the first person to call himself Pope but Roman Catholicism in its present form did not really begin until the fifth century AD. Its teachings on the Mass, transubstantiation, the celibacy of clergy, purgatory, prayers to Mary and the saints, even the institution of the Papacy itself, are all contrary to the teaching of scripture. Without going into all these here, I want to highlight two major issues relating to Pope Francis’ teaching that conflict with Biblical teaching and belief (and with traditional Roman Catholic teaching.

1. Should God’s laws be re-interpreted in the light of modern social practice, particularly in the area of sexuality? 
2. Is there one way or many ways to God?

Francis was definitely a reformer, who was open to the relativistic morality of our age. He said ‘No’ to judgementalism and flung the church’s doors open to everyone ‘without censure’. He said even good atheists would go to heaven. In response to a question about whether gay men could serve as priests, he replied ‘Who am I to judge?’ The left leaning ‘Independent’ newspaper wrote: ‘The pope’s gone woke – and we should celebrate.’ They even called him ‘queer friendly’ after he okayed priestly blessings for same-sex unions in certain circumstances, and acceptance of LGBT communities. 

He won the favour of liberal left elites in the west, who for the most part are ‘post-God’ and created a conflict within the RC church between traditionalists and liberals. His critics accused him of becoming ‘open to moral confusion’ and following the ‘post-truth delirium of the new elites’ (Brendan O’Neill writing in Spiked). O’Neill, born a Catholic now an atheist, wrote perceptively ‘Approaching life ‘without censure’ can leave one dangerously exposed to voguish delusions. Absent conviction, even the earthly representative of God can end up a representative of earthly follies.’

On this subject an article by Chick publications claims Francis stacked the deck for the next pope to follow his way. ‘As Francis’ health declined, he ramped up his efforts to secure his legacy of liberal leadership. After appointing 88 cardinals during his 12-year tenure, he added another 20 as his health deteriorated toward the end of 2024. Many of those 20 are outspoken advocates for the LGBTQ+ movement, liberation theology, and dialogue that continues Francis’ push that “all roads lead to Rome.” Of the 135 men who will vote for the next pontiff, a whopping 80% were appointed by Francis. In keeping with Francis’s liberal leanings, the majority of his appointees are theologically progressive, socially liberal, and culturally in step with the godless 21st-century West. It’s safe to say that the next pope won’t just continue Francis’s agenda—he’ll probably push it even further.’  We wait to see whether Cardinal Robert Provost, now Pope Leo XIV, will follow this pattern.

On the question of ‘Who am I to judge?’, Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount ‘Judge not that you be not judged’ are often taken by liberals to say we must not pass judgement on others.  In the context of Matthew 7 we see that Jesus is saying don’t condemn people for things that you do yourself; ‘For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.’  He says, take the plank out of your own eye before you take the speck out of your brother’s eye. 

The Bible does not say we are not to speak against sinful practices and warn people not to follow in them. Romans 1 specifically condemns homosexual practice and other behaviours that are contrary to the will of God and concludes with a word

³² who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1.32

In other words, church leaders are under an obligation from God to warn against such behaviours. If they approve them, they are under God’s judgement as much as the person who practices them. Failure to do this is a major reason for the decline in Christianity today, especially in the Church of England.

The other issue is the multi faith agenda as opposed to biblical evangelism. In 2016 Pope Francis released a video in which he very clearly expresses his belief that all of the major religions are different paths to the same God. He says that people from various global faiths may be ‘seeking God or meeting God in different ways’ and that it is important to keep in mind that ‘we are all children of God’. While speaking in Singapore in September of 2024, he said,

This is a clear denial of Jesus’ word,

‘I am the Way, the truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father but by Me.’  John 14.6

The Pope was wrong when he said we are all ‘children of God’. In Ephesians 2.1-3 Paul writes:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, ² in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, ³ among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2.1-3

We become children of God through receiving Jesus as Saviour and Lord as we repent of sin and believe the Gospel, being born again of the Holy Spirit:

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: ¹³ who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1.10-13

While he spoke of all ‘people of faith’ being ‘children of God’, he has also spoken against those who believe in a literal interpretation of scripture (fundamentalists) and those who wish to preach the Gospel to those of other faiths. He called ‘Proselytism’ (a negative word for evangelism) ‘solemn nonsense’ and said that we need to ‘get to know each other and listen to each other’. In other words we need to engage in dialogue but not preach the Gospel to people of other faiths.

In 2019 he signed a Document on Human Fraternity along with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, (the highest authority in Sunni Islam, a kind of Muslim Pope if you like), a commitment to work with Muslims as equals in the area of faith. This states that

It actually goes a bit further than that. The idea that all religions are different paths to the same God coincides with the globalisation agenda that looks for the coming together of religions as an important building block of the process. In 2015 he said the Catholic Church should be, ‘working with the leadership of other religions’ to lead ‘a bold and humanitarian action by the world’s religions acting in unison.’ This should back the UN’s sustainable development goals, ‘into sustainable economic development pathways for the 21st century.’ He was a major speaker at the UN’s ‘2030 Agenda’ in September 2015 in which he proposed a kind of benign world government to sort out the ills of the planet. 

Revelation 13 speaks of a non benign world government at the end of days under the power of the devil, backed by the Babylon religious system of Revelation 17. This Babylon religion will end up persecuting those who are true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ (and has done through the ages – ‘drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus’).  Scripture tells us to ‘Come out of her (Babylon), my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.’  Revelation 18.4.

Our call is to follow the Lord Jesus who said, 

¹⁸ And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Matthew 28.18-20

Wars and Rumours of Wars

This article by Allister Heath in the Daily Telegraph is a warning to the world.  I could not put it better myself, so I am quoting it in full.

On the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the world is edging ever closer to another apocalyptic conflagration, with India-Pakistan the latest terrifying escalation. Pax Americana has been shattered, never to return, and with it the delusions of Western modernity.  In eerie parallels to the 1930s, rogue actors are initiating a series of interlinked conflicts around the world that, thanks to a web of alliances, risk joining up into one hideous global war.

We don’t yet know whether the massacre of Indian tourists in Kashmir by terrorists will prove to be the casus belli, or whether it might be precipitated by another outrage by Vladimir Putin, or whether the tipping point will be triggered by Iran’s genocidal mullahs developing a nuclear bomb and using it. We may have to wait for China to invade Taiwan, or perhaps for an entirely different despot to make his move. What is almost certain is that conflict, perhaps even one future historians will describe as World War III, is coming, and there appears to be nobody, no mechanism, no alliance, to stop it.

Multipolar chaos has filled the vacuum left by America’s retreat: there is no longer a global policeman. The legacy post-WWII global institutions, and the liberal, technocratic project they were meant to underpin, have been exposed as utterly useless, only viable under Pax Americana. International bodies have become ineffective, corrupt or captured, with international law (policed by the dreadful ICC), agencies (such as UNRWA) and treaties (such as the Paris Accords) routinely weaponised against the West by Marxists, Orientalists and clever third world statesmen. The EU is destroying its economies and societies. The Global South is laughing at the decadent West, including at Donald Trump’s naivety, and China’s President Xi is meeting his new vassal Vladimir Putin.

America is no longer rich, strong or capable enough to keep the peace, and it wouldn’t want to even if it could. Its efforts to do so after 9/11 ended in catastrophe, as did its meddling in Libya and elsewhere. Its confidence and attention span are shot. Years of over-consumption, profligacy and under-production have made it too dependent on inflows of funds that come with geopolitical strings attached. Its over-indebtedness and unfunded liabilities are its Achilles’ Heel. Trump voters no longer want to serve as cannon fodder in forever foreign wars. His project is very much a defensive retreat, the winding down of the Great American empire, combined with a MAGA version of the Monroe doctrine, which asserts Washington’s sole influence over the Americas (including Panama, Canada and Greenland).

He also wants to prevent a Chinese takeover of the Pacific. He isn’t really interested in much else, hence why he has been so keen to believe the lies Putin, Iranians and Houthis have been telling him. With the Europeans having spent the past 30 years squandering the peace dividend, we have ended up with a fractious Western pseudo-alliance excessively focused on counter-insurgency, that has fallen behind in the tech wars and that is physically unable to produce enough missiles or weapons. The collapse in war-fighting capacity has been staggering. Combined with the pathologies of multiculturalism, especially in Britain and Europe, and the rise of pacifism and a woke, anti-patriotic, Western self-hatred, we are even less fighting fit than we were prior to rearmament in the 1930s.

China hasn’t embraced democracy and individual liberty; instead, it weaponised its wealth to become the second most powerful military power in the world and its technology to become a vicious surveillance state. The richer it grows, the more dangerous it becomes.  Woke imbeciles pretend only the West is expansionist or racist, but of course that isn’t true. Today, Russia wants Ukraine, China wants Taiwan, and Iran, funder of Hamas and Hezbollah, wants to control the Middle East, destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse all minorities. The fusion of imperialism with ethnic hatred is as toxic today as it was in the 1930s.

The balance of power is further complicated by the rise of asymmetric warfare: drones in particular can inflict immense damage on supposedly stronger countries, level the playing field and further destabilise the world. It is just a matter of time before a drone causes an event of a magnitude similar to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.

We can see similar warning signs today, starting with Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 under Barack Obama, a seminal moment in the world’s descent into disorder. The period since 2021 has been the bloodiest since the Cold War. The Tigray War in Ethiopia, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ assault on Israel, have reversed the downward trend in deaths from war.

It is a miracle that until Ukraine, two or even three generations of Europeans, North Americans and Australians had avoided missile attacks, invasion, nuclear or biological hell or even, with a few exceptions, mass conscription. What are we thinking? Are we ready to betray not just our veterans, but also our children? Those who made the ultimate sacrifice deserve better than to have us dismantle their legacy.

I posted a comment under the article on the Telegraph site:  

Nine people liked what I wrote and nine people didn’t. One (who didn’t) wrote   

I replied,

Saving the world or destroying it?

Scientists are proposing to modify Boeing 777 aircraft to spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere in an attempt to cool the Earth in the name of “climate change”—despite fully acknowledging the serious risk of acid rain and other environmental disasters.

A new study published in Earth’s Future openly admits that this method, called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), would sharply increase dangerous side effects like acid rain because it requires “three times more” aerosol to achieve the same cooling effect compared to previous high-altitude schemes. Rather than developing new, specially-designed aircraft to reach the ideal 65,000 feet altitude, researchers from University College London and Yale now propose dumping sulphur at just 42,000 feet—within the existing capabilities of modified 777s​. 

The ironic catch? At lower altitudes, sulphur particles would rain out of the sky much faster—meaning a massive increase in the amount of pollutant dumped into the atmosphere.  Instead of solving anything, their plan could flood the atmosphere with even more toxic material, accelerating the very environmental destruction they claim to be fighting.

The study projects injecting 12 million metric tons of sulphur dioxide per year​—comparable to the volume released by the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which famously cooled the planet temporarily but also triggered severe acid rain​.  The new proposal to retrofit Boeing 777s to spray sulphur mirrors the large-scale atmospheric modification that is already being carried out daily through commercial aviation’s sulphur emissions. See​ https://jonfleetwood.substack.com/p/video-jet-fuel-or-sprayer-planes This article warns that ‘geoengineering is being normalized as an “emergency solution”—without serious consideration of the unintended, irreversible damage it could unleash on ecosystems, agriculture, and human health.  Acid rain, after all, devastates forests, poisons waterways, and corrodes infrastructure.​’

Yet despite these known dangers, the plan is moving forward—with government agencies like Britain’s Aria already preparing field experiments​. Once this kind of geoengineering begins, it can’t be easily stopped. The sudden cessation of sulphur injection could trigger abrupt, catastrophic warming—known in scientific literature as the “termination shock.” This isn’t a solution. It’s engineering dependence on a dangerous, destructive atmospheric intervention. If the public doesn’t push back, the same establishment that wrecked the environment with reckless industrialization will now finish the job under the guise of “saving” it.

If this goes wrong, the results would bear an uncanny resemblance to the environmental disasters prophesied for the Great Tribulation time in Revelation 8.7-12 and Revelation 16 – vegetation struck, creatures dying in the sea, waters undrinkable, the sky darkened blotting out the sun, followed by great and unbearable heat.

Revelation 8 – The Four Trumpets

⁶ So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. Revelation 8:6

First Trumpet: Vegetation Struck

⁷ The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Revelation 8:7

Second Trumpet: The Seas Struck

⁸ Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. ⁹ And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Revelation 8:8-9

Third Trumpet: The Waters Struck

¹⁰ Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. ¹¹ The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter. Revelation 8:10-11

Fourth Trumpet: The Heavens Struck

¹² Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.

¹³ And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!” Revelation 8:12-13

Revelation 16 – The Seven Bowls

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.” Revelation 16:1

First Bowl: Loathsome Sores

² So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. Revelation 16:2

Second Bowl: The Sea Turns to Blood

³ Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died. Revelation 16:3

Third Bowl: The Waters Turn to Blood

⁴ Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. ⁵ And I heard the angel of the waters saying:

“You are righteous, O Lord,
The One who is and who was and who is to be,
Because You have judged these things.
⁶ For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
And You have given them blood to drink.
For it is their just due.”

⁷ And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.” Revelation 16:4-7

Fourth Bowl: Men Are Scorched

⁸ Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. ⁹ And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. Revelation 16:8-9

Fifth Bowl: Darkness and Pain

¹⁰ Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. ¹¹ They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds. Revelation 16:10-11

Sixth Bowl: Euphrates Dried Up

¹² Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. ¹³ And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. ¹⁴ For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

¹⁵ “Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”

¹⁶ And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon. Revelation 16:12-16

Seventh Bowl: The Earth Utterly Shaken

¹⁷ Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” ¹⁸ And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. ¹⁹ Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. ²⁰ Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. ²¹ And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great. Revelation 16:17-21