BLIND ANGLICAN LEADERS

BLIND ANGLICAN LEADERS

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Copyright 1998. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites without permission from the author. The articles cannot be sold or placed by themselves or with other material in any electronic format for sale, but may be distributed for free by e-mail or by print. They must be left intact and nothing removed or changed, including these informational headers. This is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our goal is not devotional. OUR PRIMARY PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. If you desire to receive this type of material on a regular basis, e-mail us, tell us who you are and where you are located, and request to be placed on the list. Also include your postal address and the name of the church of which you are a member. Please note that we take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and you will be expected to participate. Some of these articles are from the "Digging in the Walls" section of O Timothy magazine. David W. Cloud, Editor. O Timothy is a monthly magazine in its 14th year of publication. Subscription is $20/yr. The Way of Life web site is http://www.wayoflife.org. The End Times Apostasy Online Database is located at this web site.]

January 18, 1998 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - In his New Year's message to Britain, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey paid tribute to the late Princess Diana and called upon Britons to continue her work in building a more caring society.

Carey said he believed a new mood is emerging of a "wistful longing for a better world," a world in which simple human kindness is not sacrificed in the drive for success and competition. He said the death of Diana encouraged this longing. Note his words:

"The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, gave these thoughts and feelings a vivid and dramatic expression. For here was someone who, though intensely human and fallible like all of us, expressed kindness. She was, in the deepest sense of the word, a caring person. And perhaps that amazing outpouring of grief last September arose partly because we recognized in Diana some of those hopes for a more caring society. ... The tremendous outpourings of widespread grief following the deaths of Princess Diana on August 31, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta a few days later, reveal that it was now time to reclaim those values" ("We Must Continue Work of Diana," Christian News, Jan. 12, 1998, p. 2).

Carey is extremely confused. Princess Diana is not an example who should be held up for people to follow in any biblical, Christian sense. She gave no testimony that she was a born again Christian. She made no attempt to obey the Word of God or to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ with her life. She was unfaithful to her marriage vows and cheated on her husband (who also cheated on her). She dressed immodestly and caused men around the world to lust after her indecently clad body which was displayed shamelessly before the public. Carey characterized her as "in the deepest sense of the word, a caring person." It was a strange sort of caring, though. She cared so little about her young children that instead of staying at home with them and being the morally pure mother they needed, she ran around the world pursuing immoral relations with notorious playboys. She did not care enough about her mother-in-law, the queen of England, to avoid running her down before the world in interviews with the press. This is not caring in a Christian sense. Her "caring" was in the redefined humanist sense of seeking to be in touch with one's self and feelings at all cost, even if it destroys one's family, and feeling strongly about politically correct projects, such as AIDS research or a ban against land mines.

Instead of preaching the Gospel that man is lost and must be born again through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, the Archbishop of Canterbury preaches a feel-good message that means nothing and accomplishes nothing of eternal value. Instead of warning his hearers of Christ's imminent return and of the judgment which will fall upon this unbelieving world, he encourages them to attempt to build a more caring society. When Carey mentions Jesus Christ and the Gospel, he does so in the context of his redefinition of the same. Most of his hearers are unsaved religionists, at best, yet he does not address the wretchedness of their spiritual condition and does not warn them of judgment to come and does not present to them the true hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He leaves his hearers lost in their sins and hell-bound, yet feeling a little better about themselves and a little more hopeful for the future, though in vain. This demonstrates the wretchedness of modernism.

Carey's unbelief is no surprise. His predecessor, Robert Runcie, was an outspoken modernist who denied the Gospel. On a trip from Asia to the States in 1982, I was passing through London and picked up a copy of a newspaper containing an interview by John Mortiner of The Sunday Times Weekly Review (April 11, 1982) with former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie. It was Easter, and the interviewer asked Runcie if he understood why Christ had to suffer. The Archbishop replied, "As to that I am an agnostic." He did not know for certain why Christ died on the cross! The interviewer asked, "Is God a judge?" Runcie replied, "No." The interviewer then said, "So you don't see God as celestial Lord Chief Justice?" Runcie said, "Not at all. I had an old landlady when we were at Oxford. And when we got into any sort of trouble, she'd say: 'There's one above who seeth all'. I can't think of God like that." Mortiner then asked Runcie if God accepts people of other religions, and Runcie had this reply: "I can't believe in a God who only saves people who live in certain latitudes. I used to lecture to Hellenic cruises about [Islamic] mosques, and I found great spiritual values in them." (In O Timothy magazine, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1985, I published an article entitled "Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism's Chief Heretic." It is available in the O Timothy Computer Library, which is described at the Way of Life Literature web site.)

Runcie's unbelief is typical of the Church of England today. Large numbers of Anglican priests and bishops are modernists who deny the Word of God, and there is a massive homosexual movement within the Church of England. When the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebrated its 20th anniversary recently at the Anglican Southwark Cathedral, more than 2,000 assembled to show their support. One can find every sort of strange unscriptural thing in Anglican churches today. In one newspaper I read while in London in late March of 1997, a well-known secular reporter described his visit to an Anglican church on Easter Sunday. He said he went to see if it was still as boring as he remembered it being when he was young. The service featured songs by the Spice Girls, a popular female British rock group. The audience was asked trivia questions about this group and their music. The speaker then said the first "spice girls" were Mary and Martha who brought spices to Christ's empty tomb! This wicked nonsense is typical of Anglicanism today. In 1996, the Anglican doctrinal commission reported that Hell is not a place of eternal fiery torment. The present Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, glories in the Church of England's diversity. In 1996 he stated: "Anglicanism at its very best can hold differences of thought together. Catholicism, evangelicalism, charismaticism, and liberalism all contribute."

Even the pope of Rome is welcomed with open arms by the modern Anglican denomination. John Paul II was welcomed as a religious hero by the Church of England on his historic trip in 1982. The first Archbishop of Canterbury to visit a pope was Geoffrey Fisher, who paid an unofficial visit to Pope John XXIII in December 1960. Every successor to Fisher has trotted to Rome to fellowship with the pope. Michael Ramsey officially audienced with Paul VI in March 1966. Robert Runcie met with John Paul II in October 1989 and became the second Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a papal mass. George Carey journeyed to Rome to meet with John Paul II in June 1992 and again in December 1996.

Think of these facts the next time you hear someone say we need to remove denominational walls and have unity among all who "love Jesus." What Jesus? What gospel? What spirit?

"Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him" (2 Corinthians 11:1-4).