From One Degree of Darkness to Another
The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Jonathan Goodall, has renounced the Church of England and is seeking full communion within the fold of the Church of Rome. He is the latest in a number of married Anglican clergy who have apostatised, going over from the ritualism and spiritual darkness of High Church Anglicanism to the even greater, antichristian darkness of the Papacy. With characteristic elasticity of principle, Rome seems able somehow to absorb married clergy who join its ranks from outside while it maintains a strict and unscriptural prohibition on marriage for its own homeborn priests.
In 2010, a number of bishops, including a previous bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, took the same step as Goodall is now taking, in protest against the ordination of female bishops. Sadly, for these deluded men, they have set a dreadful example for others to follow and, predictably, the Archbishop of Canterbury has only played into Rome’s hands by expressing his prayerful good wishes for Bishop Goodall and his wife in their “future ministry and for the direction in which they are being called in their continuing journey of dedicated service to Christ”.
Such words belie the magnitude of the spiritual unfaithfulness to Christ which is involved when a professing member or office bearer in a Protestant Church – notwithstanding how unfaithful it may have become in its profession and practice – goes over to the Papacy, the great and enduring enemy of Christ and of precious souls. Romanism will perish in the Lord’s appointed time (2 Th 2:8), and the unscriptural doctrine, government and practice, which distinguish many aspects of Anglicanism, will also cease when the Lord revives and purifies His Church. Instead of going Romeward, how much better it would be for poor sinners to flee from both these camps and seek instead to follow the pure teaching of the Word of God alone. AWM