Thursday, May 8, 2025

Catholic Chicago, once citadel of truth

(new article tomorrow)

“Paul didn’t go into the mountains and the country; he went where the people were, the population centers. I’ve said for years, one of the greatest tragedies in fundamental evangelical Christianity in America in the 20th Century is, in the middle of the century, the great host of evangelical Bible-preaching ministries fled the cities to the suburbs because it was easier to live in the suburbs than it was to live in the turmoil developing in the cities. ‘The flowery beds of ease,’ as the song says.

"When fundamentalist Believers fled, they left an absence of truth. For Chicago, since the latter part of the last century, it has been so tightly under the grip of Romanism," explains Richard Jordan.

“Where the people are is where the problems are. Where the problems are, people are going to solve the problems. If truth leaves, what’s the church? The pillar and ground of the truth. The problems will be solved with error, but the problems will get solved because the nature of man is he has to have that order. That’s the way God structured man and his society to function.

“If you go back to the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, Chicago was the citadel of fundamentalism in America. The pastor of Moody Church in the ‘40s, Harry Ironside was called the Archbishop of Fundamentalism.

“Pastor O’Hair of North Shore Church, our ministry, was right there are on the north shore of Chicago and reached out around the world from there, but it had the gospel-preaching center.

“One of the first radio stations in the country preaching the gospel was built in the bell tower of North Shore Church at Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road in 1926. Chicago was a hub for fundamental Bible-preaching Christianity. New York City’s Isaac Haldeman of First Baptist Church. Philadelphia. These they were great centers of fundamental, Bible-believing, Scofield dispensationalism; they were recovering these truths.

“Historically, missionaries would go to a foreign country and they didn’t go to the cities; they’d go to the mountains and then get a following. Take pictures and come back home and show pictures of little babies and people in need and raise money.

“The first 300 years after Paul were the greatest years of evangelism, outreach, expanding the Body of Christ in all of church history. We’re going into a culture right now—our country is falling back into the culture that the world has been in for 2,000 years.

“You’re going to live to see in the next decade a world in America that is just almost exactly like the world Paul lived in, but remember what God did in that world for the Body of Christ because all the distractions were taken away and they just had truth."

From November, 2019:

The Roman Colosseum, owned and operated by the Vatican since the Middle Ages and said to be the most-visited tourist destination in the world, now has a statue of Molech, the Canaanite deity heavily associated with child sacrifice, at its grand entrance! 

"The Colosseum was once a place that saw Christians fed to lions, killed by gladiators, or rolled into pitch and set on fire as torches," reads an article posted to PulpitandPen.org. "The Vatican has ownership and authority over the Colosseum and all of its displays, exhibits, and functions. As Breaking Israel News writes… 'There is no way that such a thing could be done without direct permission from the highest levels of the Vatican. The Colosseum of Rome is owned by the Vatican, and specifically the Diocese of Rome, also called the Holy See. If anyone wants to do anything there, they must get permissions from the office of the Diocese of Rome. This exhibition, called 'Cathargo: the immortal myth' could not be held there at all unless permissions were granted at high levels.' ”

Last month, during closing Mass of its shamanistic Amazon Synod, the Vatican accepted a pagan offering to the “earth goddess” known as Pachamama. 

"The cult of the 'earth goddess' — or demon — is alive and well in the remote reaches of the rainforest, where animal and even human sacrifice is still practiced," writes Catholic blogger Steven Mosher.  "Infanticide is still common among the Yanomami and other Amazonian tribes, and children born handicapped are said to lack a soul and are often sacrificed.

"Much has been written about the disturbing shamanistic ritual that was carried out in the Vatican gardens, but a couple of details have been overlooked, including Pope Francis’s role in the ritual.

"The ritual was presented as a 'tree-planting ceremony' celebrating St. Francis of Assisi’s love of nature, but this was just a smokescreen. During the course of the ritual, Pope Francis received and blessed a Pachamama idol and was given a pagan necklace, an offering of soil to Pachamama, and a Tucum ring.

"The Tucum ring is a black wooden ring made from an Amazonian palm tree. It is often taken to symbolize a commitment to Liberation Theology, a Marxist distortion of the Faith that emphasizes liberation from poverty over liberation from sin.

"But in shamanistic Pachamama rituals, such as the one conducted in the Vatican gardens, it has a deeper and darker meaning. Here a gourd rattle and occult spells are used to direct demonic energy to the Tucum, which comes to represent a spiritual marriage with the 'earth goddess' or demon."

Take a look at this article posted to LifeSiteNews:

CHICAGO, November 8, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago defended the use of the “Pachamama” statues during the Amazon Synod, saying the church has “always adopted pagan elements in its traditions and especially its liturgical rites” while quoting from a Vatican document about “inculturation.”

Writing in the diocesan newspaper Chicago Catholic on Wednesday, Cardinal Cupich asserted that the “artwork” at the Vatican depicting Pachamama — a fertility goddess venerated by indigenous people of South America — was merely “a pregnant woman, a symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life, that represents for indigenous peoples the bond humanity has with our “mother earth,” much as St. Francis of Assisi portrayed in his Canticle of the Creatures.” Cupich was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in November 2016. 

Catholics around the world were outraged last month to see a pagan ceremony take place in the Vatican Gardens before the opening of the Amazon Synod where people bowed down to the ground and worshiped the Pachamama idol as Pope Francis and other top-ranking prelates looked on. The October 4 ritual, captured on video, shows Pope Francis blessing the pagan statue before receiving it as a gift. 

*****

When Paul warns Timothy that "perilous times shall come," the term "perilous" is the idea of dangerous. Talking about his life, Paul writes in II Corinthians 11:26, "In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren."

 “All of those conditions are dangerous conditions that can kill you, can overwhelm you; they're horrendous and can overpower you,” explains Jordan. 

 “In Romans 8, Paul uses the term in an interesting way. Verse 35 says, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’

 “Perilous times can have to do with you just being taken out and slaughtered. They’re dangerous times.

 “When he describes them in II Timothy 3, the nature of the age under grace—it’s not going to be getting better.

 “I remember in the ’80s, right after I’d come up from Alabama to Chicago, preaching a message at North Shore Church and I quoted a verse in Ecclesiastes. Afterward, I had three people come up to me and ask, ‘Where is that verse?’ I thought everybody knew the verse but I came to find out people don’t read the Book of Ecclesiastes.

 “Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, ‘Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.’

 “Isn’t that what Peter said about the dispensation of grace? II Peter 3 says, ‘The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.’

 “Man doesn’t say, ‘Wow, I’m glad I missed the wrath! Thank you for not destroying me!’ He says, ‘Oh, He doesn’t see. I’ll go out and do some more.’

 “Isaiah 26:10 says, [10] Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD.

 “You know what the longsuffering of God demonstrates? The complete depravity of humanity. And the longer the dispensation of grace goes on, the longer you’re going to see a more and more mature depravity overtake mankind.

 "De-evolution, not evolution, is man’s pattern. That’s why that image in Daniel 2 starts at the head and winds up at the feet. Man doesn’t go from the dust to glory; he goes from glory to the dust."

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