Catholiphobe Alarm: KHBA TV of Spokane, WA “He’s Alive Television”
A late night show played on KHBA which is a 7th Day Advent channel, broadcast in UHF locally in Spokane, WA. The program purported to be one of prophecy, and its interesting topic of the antichrist proved to be eye catching.
The man giving a sermon, apparently taped in a Michigan church, was organizing ten “biblical truths” which shed light on what the anti-Christ is, or was. (I apologize, the program did not give his name to my recollection). I had been following the points in my head, thinking he was going to reveal that it was either the Holy Roman Empire or Hitler's Nazi Germany. To my surprise, it was “Roman Church-State”
Seventh Day Adventism is not just another sect of Protestantism, it is in fact, devoutly anti-catholic. This kind of bigotry is not your normal, if not innocent, person saying “why do you worship Mary,” they would ask you “Why do you serve the Whore of Babylon?”
The following were some of the reasons why the Church is in fact the Anti-Christ, and my first-look responses depicting either 1/ why the reason is absurd 2/ why it is absurd to consider the Catholic Church
1: 1024 Reign: The Anti-Christ is supposed to reign for somewhere around 1024 years. He picked a random year, when Emperor Justinian invoked the Throne of Peter and another random year when Napoleon temporarily dethroned a Pope in the 18th century to prove the 1024 prediction. He was careful never to actually mention the word, Catholic, but he failed to realize that our church started when Peter took on the responsibility of the church, …. And has not ended.
2: Diverse Kingdom: He claims that a kingdom will rise and won’t be like other kingdoms. This is so vague, that literally anything could fit into this description.
3: Rule of Three: This kingdom will devour three others. (This is why I thought of the HRE or Hitler). He claims that the Catholic Church is responsible for the slaughter of three nations of people. The folklore of the “crimes” committed by the Church is getting laughable. Even if it were true, again this is so vague that it could fit anywhere… England, Untied States, Mexico, Spain, China, Russia…
4/5/6: Blasphemy: He takes three contexts in the Bible where the word blasphemy is founds and uses them as definitions. The context to these is very poor, but by the end, he equates the Church to be blasphemous because he claims the Church attempts to usurp Jesus on earth. He put up a statement, likely taken very much out of context from Pope Pius equating the churches authority to Gods. The Catholic Church does not exist to usurp Gods glory, in fact it exists as an extension of it, the human part of his universal Church. The Pope does not replace Jesus to Catholics, he acts as a representative, a servant. And finally, the Church does not steal authority from heaven to forgive people, it has a priesthood that utilizes a God given ability to do so, just as this supposed prophet doesn’t steal his prophetic power from heaven.
7: 10 Horns: The kingdom is supposed to rise from 10 horns, or 10 other kingdoms, which is a metaphor for the fall of the Roman Empire. His point is that it has to be European. This is a stretch on both counts, whether that actually means Europe, whether that matters, and whether that is the Papacy.
8: Jew Decision: He says the people of today, apparently Catholics, have the same choice that Jews did before crucifixion. We can either choose Jesus or Rome, and we choose poorly. Come on, it really wouldn’t be a crazy rant without one jew-bash would it?
9: Run by a man: The kingdom will be run by a man. What institution hasn’t been run by a man in the last 2,000 years. Women being the face of institutions is something recent to the last 50 years. Literally, this could be anything and everything. In fact, there is circumstantial evidence that the Church was run by a female Pope for a short time.
10: Use Christianity to harm Christians: He blames the dark ages on the Church because the protection of holy scriptures in that era. First of all, people were not killed by the Church for having a Bible. The main reason why one found Bibles only the Church was because the priest was one of the few who could read in a community, particularly latin, and because bibles were expensive. If they were chained to the church, it was for reasons of theft because the pages were likely works of art and bindings had gold. This sentiment he is spewing is just filth.
Honestly, this man is an example of why Catholic church functions so much better than other systems of organization. It has 2000 years of history and understanding to draw upon in order to create doctrine and church infrastructure. This unfortunate person, if he even obtained a theological degree, got one from a church that is younger than the soda you drink, and because of that, there were no rules, infrastructure or avenues of understanding, besides his own interpretation of the Bible. That has not only gotten him a bigoted and skewed understanding of the holy scriptures.
Ultimately I feel sorry for this man. Something happened in his life that has culminated to this behavior. As for the network KHAB, shame on you. I hold you in a higher contempt for promulgating such hatred while flying the flag of Christianity. I understand that a evangelical or protestant station is not always going to air ideas that flow with Catholic doctrine. This however was not respectful disagreement, but an ill-planned, hate-filled attack on Catholicism, that any lay person could identify.
Lastly a note on what is known as “the end times.” When you focus your faith on the notion of the end of the world, this is the kind of thought that will breed. If you speak of apples all day, spend time reading about apples, spend time with others who do the same, eventually you will want and will eat an apple. The like is true with end times devotion. If you endlessly talk about the end of the word, if you read myriad books on the antichrist, and spend time with others devoted to antichrist study, you will eventually need to find an antichrist, and it won’t likely be valid. I have already heard the following as proposed antichrists: Hitler, Putin or other Russian Leader, Obama, Bush, Netanyahu, the state of Isreal, money, microchips in one’s skin… but my new personal favorite is the throne of St. Peter.
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