BUDHA POPE ANTICHRIST
2006-06-04 15:00:23 UTC
Preparation for Antichrist
Dave Hunt
We noted in the last newsletter that since the Antichrist is a counterfeit
"Christ" there must be a large "Christian" church on earth to recognize,
support and worship him. Of course, this is where the apostasy which is now
gathering momentum leads: to the formation of just such a church, which will
be the apostate bride of the Antichrist, as the true church is the Bride of
Christ. The religion of ancient Catholic Rome-paganism under a thin veneer
of "Christianity"-must become the world religion in partnership with
Antichrist's world government through the prophesied political revival of
the Roman Empire. The partnership between emperor (Antichrist) and the pope
must be revived as well.
The Antichrist will be worshiped by the entire world. To make this possible,
apostate "Christianity" must enter into union with all of the world's
religions-while at the same time there must be a recognition of the
importance of "spirituality" by the secularists. As one syndicated columnist
put it in an article titled, "What Part Will Religion Play in Emerging
Global Struggles?":
In Chicago, which was once considered the heart of Midwestern America, there
are now more Muslims than Methodists, more Buddhists than Presbyterians,
more Hindus than Congregationalists....In the future, the majority of
Christians will be living in the Third World....It's not particularly chic
to mix talk about religion and politics, but there is a connection.
An ecumenical union of all religions is seen to be essential, for there can
be no political peace without religious peace as well.
The ecumenical movement that will unite the entire world under the
Antichrist has now gathered irresistible momentum. Following up the mention
of some of the leading ecumenical groups in the May newsletter, the
magnitude and prestige of this movement can be seen in one dominant
organization: The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on
Human Survival. Its stated purpose is to "combine legislative common sense
with eternal spiritual values."
The Global Forum began in October 1985. While the United Nations was
celebrating its 40th anniversary, ten "spiritual leaders," two each from the
world's five major religions, and eight elected officials from parliaments
on five continents, met together at psychology's New Age center in
Tarrytown, New York to explore ideas for ecological salvation and world
peace. Out of this meeting grew a working partnership between the world's
religious and political leaders-something which had been unthinkable since
ancient Rome.
The politicians belonged to the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on
Population and Development. The religious leaders had been invited by the
Temple of Understanding, long headquartered at the "Very Reverend" James
Parks Morton's infamous Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
As early as 1975 the Temple (Morton is president), known as "the spiritual
UN," had sponsored a week-long "Spiritual Summit Conference" which
culminated in "addresses at the United Nations by representatives of five
major faiths," with Mother Teresa as the keynote speaker (May 1990 TBC).
The interrelationship of vast networks of ecumenical groups may be seen in
the fact that Temple of Understanding director Daniel L. Anderson also heads
the North American Interfaith Network, while Morton is a co-chairman of
Global Forum. NAIN sponsors, among other things, the annual North American
Assisi, one of many similar conferences now held around the world as
follow-ups to Pope John Paul II's October 1986 gathering of representatives
of 12 world religions in Assisi, Italy for a day of world prayer for peace.
Assisi was a deliberately ecumenical and New Age addition to Catholicism's
day of prayer for world peace traditionally called by the popes on the
"Feast of the Holy Mother of God."
That first exploratory meeting in Tarrytown in 1985 was followed by the
April 1988 Global Survival Conference in Oxford, England, which brought
together about 200 spiritual and legislative leaders from 52 countries. "For
five days parliamentarians and cabinet members met with cardinals, swamis,
bishops, rabbis, imams, monks....Among them: the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa,
the Archbishop of Canterbury...Cardinal Koenig of Vienna...Carl Sagan,
Vice-Chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Evguenij Velikhov, Gaia
scientist James Lovelock ...Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova." The conference
was covered by media teams from 35 countries.
Conferees issued a joint "Final Statement of the Conference," which
declared: "We have met at Oxford bringing together our individual experience
from the parliaments and religious traditions of the world ...brought
together by a common concern for global survival, and have entered into a
new dialogue on our common future....We have derived from our meeting a
vivid awareness of the essential oneness of humanity...the realization that
each human person has both a spiritual and a political dimension. We
acknowledge the inadequacy of attitudes and institutions within all our
traditions [including Christianity] to deal with our present global
crisis....We have explored the nature of the relationship between political
and religious life, and...have agreed that we [political and religious
leaders] both need and desire to work together...and shall promote at
regional, national and local levels all possible collaboration between
spiritual leaders and parliamentarians....Each one of us has been changed by
our Oxford experience...and [we] have undertaken commitments that are
irrevocable."
Global Forum next sponsored a four-day symposium at the Aspen Institute in
June 1989. It brought together 21 of the world's leading journalists to
dialogue with experts, political and religious leaders on global survival
issues. Harvard University and Global Forum are hosting a further ongoing
series of seminars. As a recent history of this remarkable movement
declared, "The momentum is growing: The Global Forum dialogue of spiritual
and parliamentary leaders now is being replicated worldwide at local,
national and regional levels."
The latest major gathering was the January 15-19, 1990 Moscow Forum
co-hosted by what the program called a "unique alliance": "the Supreme
Soviet, the country's first freely elected parliament; all faith communities
of the USSR, coordinated by the Russian Orthodox Church; the USSR Academy of
Sciences; and the International Foundation for the Survival and Development
of Humanity." Moscow saw more than 1,000 participants from 83 countries call
for a "new planetary perspective" involving a "new spiritual and ethical
basis for human activities on earth." In his address to the Forum, Mikhail
Gorbachev called it "a major step in the ecological consciousness of
humanity." He drew cheers from delegates when he pledged "to ban nuclear
tests completely, for all times, and at any moment, if the U.S. does the
same...[and] to open our territory for inspection...."
Laying the foundation for the coming world religion, ecological concerns are
being expressed increasingly in pantheistic/New Age terms as though the
universe were a living and even conscious entity (the Gaia hypothesis) with
whom we must make peace and live in harmony. Calling spirituality "common to
all humanity," New Age physicist Fritjof Capra defined it at the Moscow
Global Forum as "the experience of being connected to the cosmos as a
whole...a sense of belonging that gives meaning to life." Capra recently
founded The Elmwood Institute, dedicated to "the convergence of politics,
ecology and spirituality."
In his keynote speech at Moscow, U.S. Senator Al Gore declared: "I do not
see how the environmental problem can be solved without reference to
spiritual values found in every faith." He is not referring to biblical
Christianity, but to an ecumenical world "spirituality" based upon what he
called a "new faith in the future of life on earth...[providing] higher
values in the conduct of human affairs." The final "Moscow Declaration"
called for "a global council of spiritual leaders" and the "creation of an
inter-faith prayer...." It declared, "We must find a new spiritual and
ethical basis for human activities on Earth: Humankind must enter into a new
communion with nature...."
In his address to the Moscow Forum, Gorbachev had called for "a new
contemporary attitude to Nature...returning to Man a sense of being a part
of Nature." Global Forum's newsletter, Shared Vision, declared that "we need
to remember our natural origins and re-learn how to love and respect nature.
The love of our eternal parents, Earth Mother and Sky Father, is all
embracing...."
Using similar pantheistic/New Age language, John Paul II has promoted a
kindred concept in numerous speeches. In his 1990 World Peace Day message on
the Feast of the Holy Mother of God, the Pope said, "A harmonious universe
is a cosmos endowed with its own integrity, its own internal, dynamic
balance." Addressing a prayer gathering of "Christians, Muslims, Jews,
Buddhists and others, he told participants that their efforts were
unleashing profound spiritual energies in the world and bringing about a
"new climate" of peace. The Pope pledged that "the Catholic Church intends
to 'share in and promote' such ecumenical and interreligious cooperation."
Testifying how far the Catholic Church has already gone in promoting
"ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation," the entire May/June 1990
edition of The Catholic World is devoted to Buddhism. Articles include "The
Buddha Revered as a Christian Saint" and a flattering biography of "His
Holiness the Dalai Lama." The Tibetan Buddhist leader has frequent contact
with Catholic leaders. He met twice with Pope Paul VI and five or more times
with John Paul II, whom he calls "an old friend." "Both of us have the same
aim," says the Dalai Lama, who was also, of course, present at Assisi.
The Pope's September 1989 speech to Catholic and Buddhist monks, who had
been visiting one another's monasteries in order to further
Catholic/Buddhist "dialogue," was revealing. He told the Buddhists: "You
were welcomed by Benedictine monks whose motto is precisely PAX-peace. You
have encouraged one another to promote this peace of which our world is in
such dire need. All human persons...must commit themselves to the cause of
peace....You, as monks, make use of...prayer and the search for interior
peace....Your dialogue at the monastic level is truly a religious
experience, a meeting in the depths of the heart...."
Writing in The Tibetan Review (and quoted in Catholic World), a Buddhist
monk evaluated the goals of this "dialogue":
The unity of religion promoted by the Holy Father Pope John Paul II and
approved by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not a goal to be achieved
immediately, but a day may come when the love and compassion which both
Buddha and Christ preached so eloquently will unite the world in a common
effort to save humanity from senseless destruction, by leading it toward the
light in which we all believe.
A month before his death, Catholic monk Thomas Merton had told an ecumenical
conference in Calcutta, "My dear brothers, we are already one. But we
imagine that we are not. And what we have to discover is our original
unity." Merton had earlier written that "Buddhism and Christianity are alike
in making use of ordinary everyday human existence as material for a radical
transformation of consciousness." He was convinced that the transformation
of consciousness which Zen Buddhism calls "the Great Death" was identical to
what Christians call "dying and rising with Christ"that both led to the same
"death of self" and to a "new life" not found in some future paradise, but
in "living here and now."
Of course, the obvious difference is Christ himself and His historical
death, burial and resurrection on this planet for our sins, to reconcile us
to God. It is this essential uniqueness which ecumenism eventually denies.
Paul didn't try to die to self through mystical techniques popular not only
among Catholics/Buddhists/Hindus/New Agers but increasingly so among
evangelical Christians. His death to self came about by faith in the
finished work of Christ: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me...." (Gal 2:20).
In a Time interview (5/28/90) concerning his two audiences with the Pope,
Billy Graham said, "I have spent considerable time with the people around
[John Paul II]. I could sense they recognize that they have an affinity with
Evangelicals. They have suddenly realized that these are the people who are
closest to them theologically." In fact, the Pope, at the same time he tells
Graham, "We are brothers," has been warning Catholics against nonecumenical
evangelicals. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson is recruiting "conservative Catholics
and evangelical Christians" as the "invisible army" of a new Christian
Coalition that he hopes will turn America back to God and eventually land
him in the White House.
Earlier this year at its annual convention the Michigan Episcopal Diocese
refused to vote upon the resolution that "Jesus is the Christ, 'the only
name given under heaven by which we may be saved.'" The resolution was
called "flawed because it presumes to define the ways in which God is able
to work," and "divisive and demeaning to people whose faith in God is as
strong as ours though it is differently defined." A substitute resolution
was voted upon and passed to the effect that Episcopalians would recommit
themselves to proclaim a "Good News" that offended no one.
The apostate church is growing in all denominations. "Positive Christianity"
is the enemy of souls. Do not seek to please anyone except our Lord himself.
And do not be afraid of the cost, for "The fear of man bringeth a snare: but
whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe" (Prv 29:25).
Dave Hunt
We noted in the last newsletter that since the Antichrist is a counterfeit
"Christ" there must be a large "Christian" church on earth to recognize,
support and worship him. Of course, this is where the apostasy which is now
gathering momentum leads: to the formation of just such a church, which will
be the apostate bride of the Antichrist, as the true church is the Bride of
Christ. The religion of ancient Catholic Rome-paganism under a thin veneer
of "Christianity"-must become the world religion in partnership with
Antichrist's world government through the prophesied political revival of
the Roman Empire. The partnership between emperor (Antichrist) and the pope
must be revived as well.
The Antichrist will be worshiped by the entire world. To make this possible,
apostate "Christianity" must enter into union with all of the world's
religions-while at the same time there must be a recognition of the
importance of "spirituality" by the secularists. As one syndicated columnist
put it in an article titled, "What Part Will Religion Play in Emerging
Global Struggles?":
In Chicago, which was once considered the heart of Midwestern America, there
are now more Muslims than Methodists, more Buddhists than Presbyterians,
more Hindus than Congregationalists....In the future, the majority of
Christians will be living in the Third World....It's not particularly chic
to mix talk about religion and politics, but there is a connection.
An ecumenical union of all religions is seen to be essential, for there can
be no political peace without religious peace as well.
The ecumenical movement that will unite the entire world under the
Antichrist has now gathered irresistible momentum. Following up the mention
of some of the leading ecumenical groups in the May newsletter, the
magnitude and prestige of this movement can be seen in one dominant
organization: The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on
Human Survival. Its stated purpose is to "combine legislative common sense
with eternal spiritual values."
The Global Forum began in October 1985. While the United Nations was
celebrating its 40th anniversary, ten "spiritual leaders," two each from the
world's five major religions, and eight elected officials from parliaments
on five continents, met together at psychology's New Age center in
Tarrytown, New York to explore ideas for ecological salvation and world
peace. Out of this meeting grew a working partnership between the world's
religious and political leaders-something which had been unthinkable since
ancient Rome.
The politicians belonged to the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on
Population and Development. The religious leaders had been invited by the
Temple of Understanding, long headquartered at the "Very Reverend" James
Parks Morton's infamous Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
As early as 1975 the Temple (Morton is president), known as "the spiritual
UN," had sponsored a week-long "Spiritual Summit Conference" which
culminated in "addresses at the United Nations by representatives of five
major faiths," with Mother Teresa as the keynote speaker (May 1990 TBC).
The interrelationship of vast networks of ecumenical groups may be seen in
the fact that Temple of Understanding director Daniel L. Anderson also heads
the North American Interfaith Network, while Morton is a co-chairman of
Global Forum. NAIN sponsors, among other things, the annual North American
Assisi, one of many similar conferences now held around the world as
follow-ups to Pope John Paul II's October 1986 gathering of representatives
of 12 world religions in Assisi, Italy for a day of world prayer for peace.
Assisi was a deliberately ecumenical and New Age addition to Catholicism's
day of prayer for world peace traditionally called by the popes on the
"Feast of the Holy Mother of God."
That first exploratory meeting in Tarrytown in 1985 was followed by the
April 1988 Global Survival Conference in Oxford, England, which brought
together about 200 spiritual and legislative leaders from 52 countries. "For
five days parliamentarians and cabinet members met with cardinals, swamis,
bishops, rabbis, imams, monks....Among them: the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa,
the Archbishop of Canterbury...Cardinal Koenig of Vienna...Carl Sagan,
Vice-Chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Evguenij Velikhov, Gaia
scientist James Lovelock ...Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova." The conference
was covered by media teams from 35 countries.
Conferees issued a joint "Final Statement of the Conference," which
declared: "We have met at Oxford bringing together our individual experience
from the parliaments and religious traditions of the world ...brought
together by a common concern for global survival, and have entered into a
new dialogue on our common future....We have derived from our meeting a
vivid awareness of the essential oneness of humanity...the realization that
each human person has both a spiritual and a political dimension. We
acknowledge the inadequacy of attitudes and institutions within all our
traditions [including Christianity] to deal with our present global
crisis....We have explored the nature of the relationship between political
and religious life, and...have agreed that we [political and religious
leaders] both need and desire to work together...and shall promote at
regional, national and local levels all possible collaboration between
spiritual leaders and parliamentarians....Each one of us has been changed by
our Oxford experience...and [we] have undertaken commitments that are
irrevocable."
Global Forum next sponsored a four-day symposium at the Aspen Institute in
June 1989. It brought together 21 of the world's leading journalists to
dialogue with experts, political and religious leaders on global survival
issues. Harvard University and Global Forum are hosting a further ongoing
series of seminars. As a recent history of this remarkable movement
declared, "The momentum is growing: The Global Forum dialogue of spiritual
and parliamentary leaders now is being replicated worldwide at local,
national and regional levels."
The latest major gathering was the January 15-19, 1990 Moscow Forum
co-hosted by what the program called a "unique alliance": "the Supreme
Soviet, the country's first freely elected parliament; all faith communities
of the USSR, coordinated by the Russian Orthodox Church; the USSR Academy of
Sciences; and the International Foundation for the Survival and Development
of Humanity." Moscow saw more than 1,000 participants from 83 countries call
for a "new planetary perspective" involving a "new spiritual and ethical
basis for human activities on earth." In his address to the Forum, Mikhail
Gorbachev called it "a major step in the ecological consciousness of
humanity." He drew cheers from delegates when he pledged "to ban nuclear
tests completely, for all times, and at any moment, if the U.S. does the
same...[and] to open our territory for inspection...."
Laying the foundation for the coming world religion, ecological concerns are
being expressed increasingly in pantheistic/New Age terms as though the
universe were a living and even conscious entity (the Gaia hypothesis) with
whom we must make peace and live in harmony. Calling spirituality "common to
all humanity," New Age physicist Fritjof Capra defined it at the Moscow
Global Forum as "the experience of being connected to the cosmos as a
whole...a sense of belonging that gives meaning to life." Capra recently
founded The Elmwood Institute, dedicated to "the convergence of politics,
ecology and spirituality."
In his keynote speech at Moscow, U.S. Senator Al Gore declared: "I do not
see how the environmental problem can be solved without reference to
spiritual values found in every faith." He is not referring to biblical
Christianity, but to an ecumenical world "spirituality" based upon what he
called a "new faith in the future of life on earth...[providing] higher
values in the conduct of human affairs." The final "Moscow Declaration"
called for "a global council of spiritual leaders" and the "creation of an
inter-faith prayer...." It declared, "We must find a new spiritual and
ethical basis for human activities on Earth: Humankind must enter into a new
communion with nature...."
In his address to the Moscow Forum, Gorbachev had called for "a new
contemporary attitude to Nature...returning to Man a sense of being a part
of Nature." Global Forum's newsletter, Shared Vision, declared that "we need
to remember our natural origins and re-learn how to love and respect nature.
The love of our eternal parents, Earth Mother and Sky Father, is all
embracing...."
Using similar pantheistic/New Age language, John Paul II has promoted a
kindred concept in numerous speeches. In his 1990 World Peace Day message on
the Feast of the Holy Mother of God, the Pope said, "A harmonious universe
is a cosmos endowed with its own integrity, its own internal, dynamic
balance." Addressing a prayer gathering of "Christians, Muslims, Jews,
Buddhists and others, he told participants that their efforts were
unleashing profound spiritual energies in the world and bringing about a
"new climate" of peace. The Pope pledged that "the Catholic Church intends
to 'share in and promote' such ecumenical and interreligious cooperation."
Testifying how far the Catholic Church has already gone in promoting
"ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation," the entire May/June 1990
edition of The Catholic World is devoted to Buddhism. Articles include "The
Buddha Revered as a Christian Saint" and a flattering biography of "His
Holiness the Dalai Lama." The Tibetan Buddhist leader has frequent contact
with Catholic leaders. He met twice with Pope Paul VI and five or more times
with John Paul II, whom he calls "an old friend." "Both of us have the same
aim," says the Dalai Lama, who was also, of course, present at Assisi.
The Pope's September 1989 speech to Catholic and Buddhist monks, who had
been visiting one another's monasteries in order to further
Catholic/Buddhist "dialogue," was revealing. He told the Buddhists: "You
were welcomed by Benedictine monks whose motto is precisely PAX-peace. You
have encouraged one another to promote this peace of which our world is in
such dire need. All human persons...must commit themselves to the cause of
peace....You, as monks, make use of...prayer and the search for interior
peace....Your dialogue at the monastic level is truly a religious
experience, a meeting in the depths of the heart...."
Writing in The Tibetan Review (and quoted in Catholic World), a Buddhist
monk evaluated the goals of this "dialogue":
The unity of religion promoted by the Holy Father Pope John Paul II and
approved by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not a goal to be achieved
immediately, but a day may come when the love and compassion which both
Buddha and Christ preached so eloquently will unite the world in a common
effort to save humanity from senseless destruction, by leading it toward the
light in which we all believe.
A month before his death, Catholic monk Thomas Merton had told an ecumenical
conference in Calcutta, "My dear brothers, we are already one. But we
imagine that we are not. And what we have to discover is our original
unity." Merton had earlier written that "Buddhism and Christianity are alike
in making use of ordinary everyday human existence as material for a radical
transformation of consciousness." He was convinced that the transformation
of consciousness which Zen Buddhism calls "the Great Death" was identical to
what Christians call "dying and rising with Christ"that both led to the same
"death of self" and to a "new life" not found in some future paradise, but
in "living here and now."
Of course, the obvious difference is Christ himself and His historical
death, burial and resurrection on this planet for our sins, to reconcile us
to God. It is this essential uniqueness which ecumenism eventually denies.
Paul didn't try to die to self through mystical techniques popular not only
among Catholics/Buddhists/Hindus/New Agers but increasingly so among
evangelical Christians. His death to self came about by faith in the
finished work of Christ: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me...." (Gal 2:20).
In a Time interview (5/28/90) concerning his two audiences with the Pope,
Billy Graham said, "I have spent considerable time with the people around
[John Paul II]. I could sense they recognize that they have an affinity with
Evangelicals. They have suddenly realized that these are the people who are
closest to them theologically." In fact, the Pope, at the same time he tells
Graham, "We are brothers," has been warning Catholics against nonecumenical
evangelicals. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson is recruiting "conservative Catholics
and evangelical Christians" as the "invisible army" of a new Christian
Coalition that he hopes will turn America back to God and eventually land
him in the White House.
Earlier this year at its annual convention the Michigan Episcopal Diocese
refused to vote upon the resolution that "Jesus is the Christ, 'the only
name given under heaven by which we may be saved.'" The resolution was
called "flawed because it presumes to define the ways in which God is able
to work," and "divisive and demeaning to people whose faith in God is as
strong as ours though it is differently defined." A substitute resolution
was voted upon and passed to the effect that Episcopalians would recommit
themselves to proclaim a "Good News" that offended no one.
The apostate church is growing in all denominations. "Positive Christianity"
is the enemy of souls. Do not seek to please anyone except our Lord himself.
And do not be afraid of the cost, for "The fear of man bringeth a snare: but
whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe" (Prv 29:25).