"Whore of Babylon" watch

There have been some interesting reports in The Trumpet over recent years on the Traditional Anglican Communion and efforts on the Catholic Church on promoting unity.

Often there are many accurate details in these reports. However, one has to consider that the overall viewpoint of the "prophetic" founder of the belief system behind The Trumpet, Herbert Armstrong, believed the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon.

This is a telling paragraph in a recent story:

For now, the Catholic Church is willing to compromise to draw in Anglicans. But that won’t always be so. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in May 2007, “Indeed, biblical prophecy indicates that full unity will not be achieved purely voluntarily. At a certain point, the mother church will abandon its efforts to woo her daughters back by flatteries and instead revert to the age-old method of preserving ‘Christian’ unity by exerting physical force.”

There is always a danger in assuming one-on-one correspondence between current events and Biblical prophecies. Also, the paper has a kind of nutty view of the power of the Catholic Church in Europe. The Church has little influence on European states, which have grown increasing secularist to the point of even having anti-Christian policies. Also Armstrong was an Arian who did not accept the Doctrine of the Trinity.

Pope Benedict XVI is, as I see it, building an Ark for the remnant of the Christian faithful.
There will never be a return to the use of physical force by the Catholic Church, because that only happens when state power exerts it.

No the force that is going to be exerted will be against the Catholic Church by the secular powers that will have adopted a religion that is anything but Catholic. Alas, the Trumpet folk are missing the real antichrists in their midst while focusing on dear Benedict.

No serious evangelical still holds that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, only those on the fringes.