An indication of the importance the Vatican attaches to the papal visit to Britain is the amount of time and energy that is being devoted to its preparation. Visits to other countries can apparently be arranged a few months in advance, but the British visit requires no less than two years planning. Well does Rome realise that our nation, even in its backslidden condition, is still the most Protestant in the world and that a triumphant Papal visit, enjoying popular support, would be a most notable and significant achievement. Public opinion must be moulded gently and carefully — an operation which requires time and meticulous planning. The mass-media, firmly in the grasp of Romanist sympathisers, is clearly being used to this end and that the desired effect is being achieved is, alas, only too evident. Even in the Island of Lewis some who regard themselves as very orthodox Protestants have outrightly refused to append their signature to a Petition addressed to the Queen respectfully asking that no official recognition be given to the Pope if he visits our land. Those controlling the British mass-media made quite certain that the public were well-informed in regard to the Queen’s visit to the Vatican and that she was received in audience by the Pope clad in penitential black. To add to our sense of indignation, our Prime Minister provided the same spectacle a few weeks later. The Foreign Office informed us that the wearing of black dresses was laid down by protocol and that it had no other significance. Strange protocol, we say, that required our Queen and Prime Minister to wear black while the Queen of Belgium and, more recently, the Queen of Spain appear in the Papal presence clad in white and sparkling in jewels! We draw the obvious conclusion that “heretics” are required to wear black while the “faithful” are to wear white. Rome’s intentions are clear — universal acknowledgement of the Papal claim to be “Father of princes and kings and Ruler of the Universe” — in short, all that is implied in the wearing of the three-tiered tiara already referred to. While his white-robed Queen stood by, King Juan Carlos of ‘most Catholic Spain’ was, in full military uniform, photographed kneeling down, very significantly, at the Pope’s feet! That is the place that every head of state in the world ought to take if Rome’s arrogant and blasphemous claim were to be regarded as valid and scriptural.
It is vain for Romanists to deny that the Pope in 1981 claims universal supremacy and at the same time demand the recognition of their church as being semper eadem. If it was true in 1825 it must be true now. John Paul II’s predecessor Leo XII in that year had a medal struck at Rome and the evidence it furnishes simply cannot be explained away. It is plainly a case of “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee“. On the one side appears Leo with the initials of his Babylonian title appended; on the other there is a woman representing the Church, seated on a globe with the legend around her, “SEDET SVPER VNIVERSVM“, (“The whole world is her seat“). She is stretching forth her right hand with a cup as if in the act of delivering it to someone. ‘Here’, some unknown writer has commented, ‘is a picture to the life of the Apocalyptic woman, whom John saw “sitting on many waters . . . with a golden cup in her hand;” and “the waters . . . are peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues”. “This witness is true”, even though it came from the mint of Papal Rome. By her own hand in the plenitude of her pride, she had revealed the plenitude of her apostasy, as that power “by whose sorceries all nations were deceived, and in whom was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain on the earth”. (The reader is referred to Revelation XVII and XVIII).
“The gigantic system of moral corruption and idolatry described”, says Hislop, ‘in this passage under the emblem of a woman with a “GOLDEN CUP IN HER HAND”, “making all nations DRUNK with the wine of her fornication” is divinely called “MYSTERY, Babylon the Great. That Paul’s “MYSTERY of iniquity”, as described in 2 Thess. II. 7, has its counterpart in the Church of Rome, no man of candid mind, who has carefully examined the subject, can easily doubt. Such was the impression made by that account on the mind of the great Sir Matthew Hale, no mean judge of evidence, that he used to say, that if the apostolic description were inserted in the public “Hue and Cry” any constable in the realm would be warranted in seizing, wherever he found him, the Bishop of Rome as the head of that “MYSTERY of iniquity”. Now, as the system here described is equally characterised by the name of “MYSTERY”, it may be presumed that both passages refer to the same system. But the language applied to the New Testament Babylon, as the reader cannot fail to see, naturally leads us back to the Babylon of the ancient world. As the Apocalyptic woman has in her hand A CUP, wherewith she intoxicates the nations, so was it with the Babylon of old. Of that Babylon, while in all its glory, the Lord thus spake, in denouncing its doom by the prophet Jeremiah: “Babylon hath been a GOLDEN CUP in the Lord’s hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad”. (Jer. LI. 7). Why this exact similarity of language in regard to the two systems? The natural inference surely is, that the one stands to the other in relation of type and antitype. Now, as the Babylon of the Apocalypse is characterised by the name of “MYSTERY” so the grand distinguishing feature of the ancient Babylonian system was the Chaldean “MYSTERIES”, that formed so essential a part of that system . . . The Chaldean Mysteries can be traced up to the days of Semiramis, who lived only a few centuries after the flood, and who is known to have impressed upon them the image of her own depraved and polluted mind. That beautiful but abandoned queen of Babylon was not only herself a paragon of unbridled lust and licentiousness, but in the mysteries which she had a chief hand in forming, she was worshipped as Rhea, the great “MOTHER” of the gods, with such atrocious rites as identified her with Venus, the MOTHER of all impurity, and raised the very city where she had reigned to a bad eminence among the nations, as the grand seat at once of idolatry and consecrated prostitution. Thus was this Chaldean queen a fit and remarkable prototype of the “WOMAN” in the Apocalypse, with the golden cup in her hand, and the name on her forehead, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the MOTHER of harlots and abominations of the earth”. The Apocalyptic emblem of the harlot woman with the cup in her hand was even embodied in the symbols of idolatry derived from ancient Babylon, as they were exhibited in Greece; for thus was the Greek Venus originally represented, and it is singular that in our own day, and so far as appears for the first time, the Roman Church has actually taken this very symbol as her own chosen emblem!
This being the true character of Romanism how sad and shameful that our Queen and Prime Minister should pay their respects to the system’s head and continue to deferentially give countenance to it. In post-Reformation times our nation inflicted more damage on this Satanic system than any other. That was the honoured place to which the Most High was pleased to exalt us. “How is the gold become dim!” Little wonder that Rome now rejoices when together with our head of state so-called Protestant Church leaders in Scotland, alas, as well as in England, welcome a visit from the very person whose authority and pretensions Knox, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and other faithful servants of Christ now in Heaven expressly repudiated.
High on Rome’s priority list is undoubtedly the reclamation of England, “Mary’s dowry”, to the Papal fold and with England we may include the other parts of the United Kingdom. England, lacking as it does the great bulwark of Presbyterianism, is especially vulnerable. No secret is made of the fact that the Roman Catholic “faithful” are exhorted to pray for the return of “Mary’s dowry” and John Paul II had the bold effrontery to refer to England under that name in a letter addressed to a council of bishops meeting in Liverpool last year. The defection of Henry VIII, or at least his refusal to accept Papal ruling in connection with his divorce, began to weaken the national link with Rome that was eventually broken during the brief reign of the godly young King Edward VI. Romanist persecution and rage during his papist sister’s reign was to lead to the kindling of the fires of Smithfield and the martyrdom of about 300 saints before the Lord mercifully intervened to remove to the endless world that wicked woman whose actions were to earn for her in all time coming the inglorious epithet of “Bloody Mary”. Rome, however, rejoiced at her accession. A medal to commemorate the event was minted, as might be expected, at Rome. It may be viewed in the British Museum.
The information given in regard to the medal is as follows: “Struck by Julius III, A.V. (“year of victory”), to commemorate the accession of Queen Mary of England. The Pope is represented on the reverse in full robes. Cardinal Pole, Papal Legate to England, on his right, with the Emperor Charles V between them. On the left is King Philip of Spain and Queen Catherine, wife of Henry VIII. Queen Mary kneels in the foreground. The inscription is: “England, thou shalt rise again“.
We may be sure that what Rome now desires is the repetition of history with Queen Elizabeth II in Queen Mary’s posture and found, like King Juan Carlos, acknowledging Papal supremacy. Love to our Queen and nation ought to move us to pray with importunity that Babylon would soon fall and we have every encouragement for doing so “for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her“.
“Rome shall perish — write that word
In the blood that she has spilt.” (Cowper)