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| Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II |
"Do not be yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"--2 Corinthians 6:14
In the early 1990s, the United States and the western world were in the midst of a downward moral spiral. Crime was increasing; families were falling apart, drug and alcohol addictions were on the rise, Islam was spreading rapidly and millions of people were abandoning the Christian church.
In order to combat all this, several evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders met and decided that Christian churches needed to stop bickering among themselves and present a new, unified face to the world.
And so, in 1994, the greatest betrayal of Martin Luther's 16th century Protestant Reformation took place when prominent evangelicals signed a document with high-ranking Roman Catholic leaders called Evangelicals and Catholics Together. That document called for evangelicals and Roman Catholics to put aside their differences for the purpose of promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
Here's a sampling of that infamous document: As Christ is one, so the Christian mission is one. That one mission can be and
should be advanced in diverse ways. Legitimate diversity, however, should not be
confused with existing divisions between Christians that obscure the one Christ
and hinder the one mission. There is a necessary connection between the visible
unity of Christians and the mission of the one Christ. We together pray for the
fulfillment of the prayer of Our Lord: “May they all be one; as you, Father, are
in me, and I in you, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe that
you sent me.” (John 17) We together, Evangelicals and Catholics, confess our
sins against the unity that Christ intends for all his disciples.
The 25-page document was signed by notable evangelicals such as Max Lucado, J. I. Packer, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson and Dr. Bill Bright. One of its provisions called for evangelicals to accept the Roman Catholic gospel as a legitimate path to heaven in order to better evangelize the world for Christ.
What ECT did was nullify the genuine biblical gospel of Jesus Christ that declares that eternal life is a free gift from God that cannot be earned, (Ephesians 2:8-9) in favor of an ambiguous universal gospel that promotes high moral conduct over faith.
The infamous document set off a firestorm among evangelicals who rightly claimed that it sold out Christ by legitimizing the gospel of the world's oldest and largest religious cult.
Several evangelicals who signed the infamous document backtracked and claimed that they merely signed the agreement with Rome to wage war against moral depravity.
But that was a fallacious argument. The church's greatest responsibility is to preach Christ crucified for the sins of the world and His resurrection from the dead.
While the church is indeed called to fight against moral depravity, that's not her highest calling. A church that merely wages war against evil without presenting the biblical path to salvation and eternal life through the cross is a dead, corrupt church. Evil exists because people have rejected God and spurned His laws. And people can only be delivered from the power of evil when they are truly born again by faith in Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
No one can be born again unto eternal life through the Roman Catholic gospel. In fact, the Catholic Church pronounces a curse on anyone who believes in salvation (justification) by faith. If anyone says that by faith alone the sinner is justified, so as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification. . . let him be anathema (Trent, sess. 6, canon 9). If anyone says that the righteousness received is not preserved and also not increased before God by good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of its increase, let him be anathema (Trent, sess. 6, canon 24).
The false unity of an ecumenical gospel not only fails to deliver people from the bondage of evil, it sends them to hell.
Or, as the old saying goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Several evangelicals who signed the infamous document backtracked and claimed that they merely signed the agreement with Rome to wage war against moral depravity.
But that was a fallacious argument. The church's greatest responsibility is to preach Christ crucified for the sins of the world and His resurrection from the dead.
While the church is indeed called to fight against moral depravity, that's not her highest calling. A church that merely wages war against evil without presenting the biblical path to salvation and eternal life through the cross is a dead, corrupt church. Evil exists because people have rejected God and spurned His laws. And people can only be delivered from the power of evil when they are truly born again by faith in Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
No one can be born again unto eternal life through the Roman Catholic gospel. In fact, the Catholic Church pronounces a curse on anyone who believes in salvation (justification) by faith. If anyone says that by faith alone the sinner is justified, so as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification. . . let him be anathema (Trent, sess. 6, canon 9). If anyone says that the righteousness received is not preserved and also not increased before God by good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of its increase, let him be anathema (Trent, sess. 6, canon 24).
The false unity of an ecumenical gospel not only fails to deliver people from the bondage of evil, it sends them to hell.
Or, as the old saying goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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