Bab 3 A Passover Plot?

The prophecies concerning the second major theme of the Bible, the coming of the Messiah, are even more numerous and detailed than those pertaining to Israel. These prophecies have also been dealt with at some length in my previous books, so we will only summarize a few of them briefly here. Even the most anti-Christian critics who deny categorically that Jesus of Nazareth is the Savior of the world admit that many specific messianic prophecies were fulfilled in His life and crucifixion. In the attempt to explain away the significance of that fact some bizarre theories have been invented.

Typical of such attempts was a book and movie (neither very successful) some years back entitled The Passover Plot. Its thesis was that Jesus, knowing some of the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, conspired with Judas to fulfill them in order to make it appear that He was the promised Messiah.

Irreconcilable Contradiction?

Obviously it would have been ludicrous for Jesus to get Himself crucified in order to convince a small band of uneducated, inept followers that He was the Christ. In fact, neither His disciples nor any other Jew, including even John the Baptist, could believe (though the prophecies were clear, as Christ explained often) that the Messiah was to be crucified. His death rather seemed proof that he was not the Messiah, so fulfilling the prophecies concerning His crucifixion to the letter, as He did, would not have been the way to gather a following. In fact, Christ's death in fulfillment of Scripture was in order to pay the penalty for our sins.

The prophecies concerning His death (Psalm 22:16; Isaiah 53:5,8-10,12; Zechariah 12:10; etc.) were avoided by the Jews as impenetrable mysteries because they seemed totally at odds with other prophecies declaring plainly that the Messiah would ascend David's throne and rule over a magnificent kingdom.

Bab 2 Reason to Believe

Biblical prophecy is the key to understanding both the past and the future. While to skeptics that may seem a preposterous claim, it is easily proved. Because most prophecy recorded in Scripture has already been fulfilled, it is therefore a simple matter to determine whether or not the prophecies in the Bible are reliable.

Two major themes of prophecy run consistently throughout all of Scripture: 1) Israel; and 2) the Messiah who comes to Israel and through Israel to the world as the Savior of all mankind. Around these two central themes almost all other prophecies revolve and find their meaning, whether it be the rapture of the church, Antichrist, his coming world government and religion, the battle of Armageddon, Christ's second coming, or any other prophesied occurrence. The Bible is absolutely unique in presenting these prophecies, which it records in specific detail, beginning more than 3000 years ago.

About 30 percent of the Bible is devoted to prophecy. That fact validates the importance of what has become a neglected subject. In marked contrast, prophecy is completely absent from the Koran, the Hindu Vedas, the Baghavad Gita, the Ramayana, the sayings of Buddha or Confucius, the Book of Mormon, or any other writings of the world's religions. This fact alone provides an undeniable stamp of divine approval upon the Judeo-Christian faith, which all other faiths lack. Biblical prophecy's unblemished record of fulfillment is sufficient to authenticate the Bible, in distinction to all other writings, as the one and only inerrant Word of God.

Prophecy-The Great Proof

There are many important reasons for Bible prophecy. First of all, prophecy fulfilled provides irrefutable proof for the existence of the very God who inspired the prophets. By foretelling major events of world history centuries and even thousands of years before they happen, the God of the Bible proves that He is the only true God, the Creator of the universe and mankind, the Lord of history-and that the Bible is His infallible Word given to communicate His purposes and way of salvation to all who will believe.

Bab 1 A Woman Rides the Beast!

The most astounding prophecies in the Bible are found in its last book, known as "The Revelation" or "The Apocalypse" and recorded by the apostle John about A.D. 95. He claimed to have received from the resurrected Christ Himself this series of visions of God's final judgment upon mankind which would close human history. This, the Bible's last and most awesome panoramic view into the future, embodies revelations of climactic events-some already fulfilled, most still future, but all both incredible and terrifying.

Of all the glimpses of "things which must shortly come to pass" (Revelation 1:1) which John reveals, none is as intriguing and staggering as the vision recorded by John in chapter 17. There we see a fearsome, scarlet-colored beast with seven heads and ten horns. This is not the first time it has appeared to biblical prophets. From the description, it is obviously the same terrifying creature whose description has already been recorded three times. John himself had seen it twice. Daniel saw it as well, 600 years earlier. But in this last glimpse, suddenly something has changed.

In its previous appearances in Scripture the beast has always been the total focus of attention, and invariably presented alone. Now, however, it appears with a rider on its back. That anyone would dare, much less be able, to mount such an incredible beast seems beyond imagination.

A Woman Rides the Beast!

By Dave Hunt Published 1994, 549 pages

Overturning the Reformation

1. A Woman Rides the Beast!

2. Reason to Believe

3. A Passover Plot?

4. An Unfolding Revelation

5. Mystery, Babylon

6. A City on Seven Hills

7. Fraud and Fabricated History

8. Unbroken Line of Apostolic Succession?

9. Infallible Heretics?

10. Infallibility and Tyranny

11. Upon This Rock?

12. Unholy Mother

13. Seducer of Souls

14. An Incredible Metamorphosis

15. Unholy Alliances

16. Dominion over Kings

17. Blood of the Martyrs

18. Background to the Holocaust

19. The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Jews

20. The Slaughter of the Serbs

21. The Vatican Ratlines

22. Sola Scriptura?

23. A Question of Salvation

24. "Sacrifice" of the Mass

25. The Reformation Betrayed

26. Apostasy and Ecumenism

27. What about Mary?

28. The Coming New World Order

Appendix A: Purgatory

Appendix B: Indulgences

Appendix C: Dominion over Kings: Further Documentation

Appendix D: Papal Infallibility and Apostolic Succession

Appendix E: Papal Heretics, the Bible, and Galileo

Appendix F: What About Tradition?

Notes

To the nearly 1 billion Roman Catholics misinformed by their hierarchy;

to the 400 million Protestants equally ignorant of the facts; and to the genuine martyrs

on both sides, this book is dedicated.

Overturning the Reformation

The most significant event in nearly 500 years of church history was revealed as a fait accompli on March 29, 1994. On that day leading American evangelicals and Catholics signed a joint declaration titled "Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the 3rd Millennium." The document, in effect, overturned the Reformation and will unquestionably have far-reaching repercussions throughout the Christian world for years to come.

This startling development was the culmination of careful planning and negotiations over the previous two years. Each step was continuously monitored and approved by the Vatican. The New York Times release making the announcement, which was carried in newspapers across the country on March 30, said in part:

They toiled together in the movements against abortion and pornography, and now leading Catholics and evangelicals are asking their flocks for a remarkable leap of faith: to finally accept each other as Christians. In what's being called a historic declaration, evangelicals including Pat Robertson and Charles Colson [one of the chief originators] joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders today in upholding the ties of faith that bind the nation's largest and most politically active religious groups. They urged Catholics and evangelicals ... to stop aggressive proselytization of each other's flocks.

John White, president of Geneva College and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the statement represents a "triumphalistic moment" in American religious life after centuries of distrust....

Other evangelical endorsers include the heads of the Home Mission Board and Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention [who acted in an independent capacity], the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.... Mark Noll of Wheaton University ... [Os Guinness, Jesse Miranda (Assemblies of God), Richard Mouw (President, Fuller Theological Seminary), J.I. Packer and Herbert Schlossberg].

Robert Simonds, Southern California chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals, "applauded the declaration" and said he hoped it would bring "increased cooperation between evangelicals and Catholics...." Other evangelical leaders have since signed the declaration, while still others have denounced it as a betrayal of the Reformation.

APPENDIX A Purgatory

As the quotations opposite indicate, Catholicism teaches that while Christ's death made it possible for sins to be forgiven, the pardoned sinner must himself suffer some undefined pain or torment of unknown intensity and duration in order to be purged and thereby made fit for heaven. While Catholicism says it is theoretically possible to be cleansed through the sufferings of this life and one's death, no one, not even the pope himself, can know whether that has occurred. Consequently, almost all Catholics expect to spend some unknown length of time in purgatory. Failure to accept the doctrine of purgatory brings automatic excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

Both Trent and Vatican II speak of those who, even though Christ suffered for their sins, "must still make expiation [for their sins] in the fire of purgatory." Here is Vatican II's further explanation of this doctrine:

The doctrine of purgatory clearly demonstrates that even when the guilt of sin has been taken away, punishment for it or the consequences of it may remain to be expiated or cleansed....

[I]n purgatory the souls of those who died in the charity of God and truly repentant but who had not made satisfaction with adequate penance for their sins and omissions are cleansed after death with punishments designed to purge away their debt.

What is adequate penance? No one knows. The Church has never defined it. Where does the Bible say that punishment purges from sin? It doesn't.

APPENDIX B Indulgences

Can Bible-believing Christians really accept such an obviously false gospel and join with those who preach it in evangelizing the world? Can evangelicals, in good conscience, direct inquiring souls to a Church which preaches purgatory and indulgences, and agree that its members are Christians and not to be evangelized? A Church which claims to control the gate to heaven and opens it to those who put themselves in her hands?

In fact, she glories in her claim to be "the minister of redemption" (Canon 992 says the same). Rome unashamedly admits that the salvation she offers must be received in partial installments and that its efficacy is derived not only from "Christ's merits" but from the surplus "good works of all the saints" beyond what they needed to "attain their own salvation."

How astonishing that evangelical leaders could credit Roman Catholicism with being Christian and propose to evangelize the world as her partner in the gospel!