“The storm is coming, relentless in its fury. Are we prepared to meet it?”
Testimonies, vol. 8, 315
It is the purpose of the church to combine religion with the state in order to control the consciences of the people. Protestant Christians should look at their roots and ask themselves what the protest of the middle ages was about and whether or not it has been resolved since that time. There has been a change over time in the beliefs of the Protestant world. Today, through ecumenism Protestant churches have incorporated into their beliefs Roman Catholic doctrines that they once protested.
Rome’s Holy Year of Mercy which opened on December 8, 2015 is presented as creating an opportunity for the world to look upon the pope as a holy man as he is portrayed kneeling before the confessional.
The pope said, “I have chosen the date of 8 December because of its rich meaning in the recent history of the Church. In fact, I will open the Holy Door on the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. …
“The Catholic Church, as she holds high the torch of Catholic truth at this Ecumenical Council, wants to show herself a loving mother to all; patient, kind, moved by compassion and goodness toward her separated children.”
Extraordinary Jubilee
The pope has “proclaimed an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy as a special time for the Church, a time when the witness of believers might grow stronger and more effective. www.news.va/en/news/presentation-of-the-extraordinary-julilee-of-mercy
Indulgences, though this time not sold, are being offered to relieve the punishment of sins forgiven, but it should be remembered that it was the selling of indulgences that triggered the Reformation.
What can we expect in 2017?
In 2008 Jesuit Professor Eduard Kimman, then time General Secretary of the Netherlands Bishop’s Conference, proclaimed that there remains hardly any reason to remain a Protestant. He saw Protestantism as an action group that forgot to dissolve itself and a group that had not recognized the significance of a global, visible leadership personality such as that of the pope. Moreover, he stated that he doubted that the Reformation would still exist after 2017 (the year when Protestantism commemorates its 500th year of existence) and Protestantism, he said should return to the mother church.
Lutherans and Catholics Bury the Hatchet for Reformation’s 500th Anniversary
“The Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation released a joint document, From Conflict to Communion, in Geneva that said there is little purpose in dredging up centuries-old conflicts.
“In the document, the two churches recognize that in the age of ecumenism and globalization, the celebration requires a new approach focusing on a reciprocal admission of guilt and on highlighting the progress made by the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue over the past 50 years. …
“The document re-examines the history of the Reformation and the split it created, stressing that Luther ‘had no intention of establishing a new church, but was part of a broad and many-faceted desire for reform’ within the church.
“ ‘The fact that the struggle for this truth in the 16th century led to the loss of unity in Western Christendom belongs to the dark pages of church history,’ the document says. ‘In 2017, we must confess openly that we have been guilty before Christ of damaging the unity of the church.’
“After caricaturing each other’s beliefs for centuries, an honest theological confrontation between the two sides began after the modernizing reforms of the Catholic church’s Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the document says.
“It stresses that, thanks to the ecumenical dialogue of recent decades, Lutherans and Catholics ‘have come to acknowledge that more unites than divides them.’ ” http://ncronline.org/news/lutherans-and-catholics-bury-hatchet-reformations-500th