Question: [In April 2005] Jack Van Impe [stated on his TV program] that over 100,000 Protestants ...

Question: On Sunday, April 17, 2005, I watched Jack Van Impe’s program on TV and sent him a letter [of protest] because of some of his statements. I am enclosing a copy of that letter and of [his] reply….He states that over 100,000 Protestants were put to death by other Protestants because they were immersed [baptized], or because they proclaimed the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth. Have you ever read from history such a claim?

Answer: No, but Jack is not known for his accuracy. He may be thinking of what became known as the “Peasants’ War”—a violent uprising by the peasants against the landowners, nobles, and clergy, seeking redress for a multitude of  wrongs. Luther addressed the lords on behalf of the peasants and urged the latter to avoid violence. The peasants, however, continued to commit so many outrages against the nobles and princes that Luther issued a further violent pamphlet, “Against the Robbing, Murdering Hordes of Peasants,” advising that they ought to be massacred like mad dogs. About 100,000 peasants were slain.

This was not, however, Protestants killing Protestants for practicing baptism by immersion or for proclaiming the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth as Van Impe says.

And what is the point Jack is trying to make?  For years, although an ex-Catholic who ought to know better, he has been promoting Roman Catholicism as the true gospel and the Pope as an evangelical Christian. Yet the Pope looked to Mary, not to Christ, for salvation and wore the brown scapular all of his life, relying upon the promise made by an apparition of “Mary” that is written upon it (known as the “Sabbatine privilege”) to take from purgatory to heaven the Saturday after their consignment in that place of torment all who die wearing it.

If Van Impe is referring to Anabaptists killed by Lutherans and Calvinists, they amounted to a fraction of his 100,000.  Nor would that persecution ever justify or cover up the slaughter of millions of true Christians by the Roman Catholic Church.

In his letter to you, Van Impe commends the Catholic Church again. He needs to be honest with himself, with the Lord, and with his audience, and acknowledge that Catholicism is a false promise of heaven that is sending hundreds of millions to hell—and that his approval thereof has only deceived additional multitudes and increased the numbers heading for the Lake of Fire. One day he will stand before the Lord and give an account for this duplicity.