Question (composite of many): Jack Van Impe’s new video about the Roman Catholic Church and the ...

Question (composite of many): Jack Van Impe’s new video about the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope left me confused. What do you make of it?

Response: The advertising preceding the video promised “the most stunning news in 2,000 years of Christianity…information I have uncovered and am about to reveal.” In fact, Jack Van Impe uncovered nothing. He simply quoted what Malachi Martin wrote more than three years ago. This “rehashed Martin” was touted as “the most authoritative, reliable and stunning information ever released during the history and reign of 264 popes.” Hardly. Papal history contains volumes of authentic information which is far more sensational.

It seems incredible that anyone could be so ill informed. In the video they present the Roman Catholic Church as the true church which is just now slipping into apostasy. The Van Impes call this “the greatest defection within Christendom covering the last twenty centuries…the most shocking revelation in 2,000 years of church history!” The truth is that Roman Catholicism has been apostate for at least 15 centuries. Its priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes have long perverted God’s Word, practiced the grossest evil, bought their offices, sold salvation for money, and at least one pope toasted Satan at St. Peter’s altar in Rome.

What is promoted as a thoroughly documented video “involving hundreds of hours of research” is little more than quotes from Malachi Martin’s The Keys of This Blood, published in 1990. The villains in the plot are liberal priests, bishops, and cardinals who, allegedly of late, are dragging the true church of Rome into apostasy. The reluctant hero is Pope John Paul II, staunch defender of God’s truth and greatly distressed by the apostasy but unable to prevent it. To support this incredible scenario, the video is necessarily a montage of hyperbole, contradiction, misinformation, and missing facts.

For example, that the Dalai Lama was hosted by Cardinal Cooke at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York is offered as evidence of the apostasy that so grieves Pope John Paul II. Yet, unmentioned by the Van Impes, the Pope himself hosted scores of pagan religious leaders (including snake worshippers and witchdoctors) in Assisi, Italy, where he allowed his good friend, the Dalai Lama, and his monks to replace the cross on the altar of a Catholic church with a statue of Buddha and perform before it their pagan ceremonies. That the Temple of Understanding, which is devoted to formation of a one-world religion, has held meetings in St. Patrick’s is offered as another “shocking” piece of evidence of the “apostasy.” No mention, however, that Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, whom the video praises, were among the founders of the Temple of Understanding.

That John Paul II has enemies within his Church is supposedly the most shocking news in 20 centuries. Yet his predecessor was murdered in the Vatican (see In God’s Name by David A. Yallop), popes have been deposed by mobs and monarchs, they have fought, excommunicated and poisoned one another, commanded marauding armies, slaughtered innocents by the thousands, hosted drunken, sexual orgies for their cardinals and  concubines, etc. All the above and more is documented by Catholic historians.

The prophecies and warnings of “Mary” when she allegedly appeared at Fatima, Medjugorje, and elsewhere are quoted by the Van Impes to support their scenario. Yet the anti-Christian statements of these apparitions (All religions are the same…many souls perish because they have no one to make sacrifice for them,” etc.) clearly identity them as demonic.

It is our prayer that the Van Impes, who have long been recognized for their commitment to the truth of God’s Word, will see the error of promoting Roman Catholicism and its false gospel.