It’s absolutely ridiculous how obvious it’s all becoming! On Thursday night, Pope Benedict invited leaders of five different faiths to a free dinner at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington to discuss building a “solid basis for the peace and security of the human family” through meaningful interreligious dialogue.

As Christianity Today’s website reported on the event, “Representatives of the Jewish faith, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains presented ceremonial gifts -- a menorah, a Qur'an, a bell, an incense burner, and a metallic cube symbolizing Jain principles -- and received commemorative gold Vatican coins emblazoned with Benedict's profile (Editor’s Note: Scroll down to bottom for more on this) in return. The pope had to go home without a Sikh gift since representatives of that faith had declined the offer to meet the pope when the Secret Service barred them from wearing their traditional and sacred kirpans or swords anywhere near the pontiff.

”Several hand-selected representatives of the different faiths approached Benedict for a series of grip-and-grin photos. The Muslim leaders in that group later said they urged the pope to open more lines of communication between Catholics and Muslims. After the public portion of the ceremony, the pope delivered a Passover message to the Jewish members of the group in a separate room.”

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As I’ve written many times before, Roman Catholicism represents the present-day manifestation of Baal worship, or Satan’s counterfeit religion running from Genesis 10 through Revelations that comes to its ultimate fruition with the reign of the Antichrist during the tribulation. Baal is a name meaning god and the idea is he’s the counterfeit God.

Jordan explains, “Baal worship is a religious system that piggybacks all through human history in which the kings of the earth commit fornication because of its seductive nature.”

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Baal worship first got its foothold in the nation Israel with a man named Micah, who set up a “house of gods” on Mount Ephraim.

As Judges 17:5 reports, “And the man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.”

Jordan explains, “Notice that expression ‘a house of gods’. Have you ever heard of a church building called the ‘House of God’? So, what’s he got. He’s got a church building, but it’s a house of a lot of gods. This guy’s developing a religion! He’s got an ephod, which is an apron the priests wore on which they then put their ceremonial garments. He’s got a teraphim (vestment) and one of his sons who he’s made into a priest.”

Under God’s system, only men from the tribe of Levi were to be priests, so when Micah came upon a sojourning young Levite fresh out of seminary school (in essence) who was looking for a place to set up his ministry, Micah offered, “Dwell with me, and be unto me a father and a priest, and I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals.”

Jordan explains, “The Levite comes along and Micah thinks, ‘Boy, you know, I could make my religion more like God’s religion if I had a Levite to be my priest!’ So he brings him in and gives him the religious title of ‘father.’

“Why did he call him father? Because he’s his priest. Now, there are a lot of different denominations who do that today. Where do they get that from? A lot of the priests called father have to take a vow of celibacy to get ordained into the priesthood, so they’re not fathers in the physical sense; that’s a religious title.”

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In Matthew 23, when Jesus Christ is speaking to the multitudes and to His disciples, He plainly commands, “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”

Jordan says, “Now why would He have to tell someone in Israel not to do that? Because they were doing it! This stuff back here in Judges 7, where it was once just one guy doing it, has now completely corrupted the nation Israel and become the standard of the religious system!

“You see why in John 8:44 Jesus tells the religious leaders of Israel, ‘You might have Abraham as your physical father but your spiritual father is the devil’? Why? Because they had been totally and completely corrupted and captivated by this unclean religious system.

“So when Christ comes, the nation in the grips of this apostate religious system. I Peter 1:18 tells them, ‘Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.’ Think what he’s saying!

“He’s not talking about being redeemed from hell and sin, and from tobacco, dope or fornication, or lying, or thieving. He’s talking about being redeemed from an apostate religious system—from the vain, empty, worthless conversation received by tradition.

“It’s little wonder that Christ, in Mark 7 and Matthew 15, says that ‘when you lay aside the commandment of God and hold the tradition of men, you make the word of God of no effect.’ He’s saying, ‘You reject God’s Word to keep your traditions.’

“When Christ came to call out that believing remnant, He was calling them out of that religious system; those unclean spirits that possessed Israel in the Gospels. We’ve studied in the book of Luke about those unclean spirits. We saw that maniac in Gadare there.

“The things that Gadarene was doing in those tombs, cutting himself and all of that, that’s exactly what the Old Testament scriptures described as the worship produced by these unclean spirits!

“They produce this unclean conversation, unclean behavior; this unclean practice and confession of a false religious system. And that ‘little flock’ of Believers is being redeemed and separated out of that. Believing Israel is being called out of that apostate nation.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )

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Regarding the gift of Benedict’s face on a gold coin is this revealing passage from R. Dawson Barlow’s 2005 book The Apostasy of the Christian Church:

“The ‘Supreme God,’ which Constantine publicly acknowledged he called on in times of trouble was Apollo, The Sun God (Editor’s Note: This is simply another name for Baal). . . . On Roman coins, up till AD 324, Constantine was still proclaimed as ‘Constantine of the Unconquered Sun’ (i.e., Apollo-the ‘Sun God’).

“Many coins, issued under Constantine’s orders depicted Constantine on one side and Apollo, the sun god, on the other side. Some coins even depicted a (then) recognized likeness of Apollo on one side and the name of Christ under it. Constantine’s affection to Apollo was revealed when he endowed the church with land and money to build the original St. Peter’s Basilica. He chose a site which had a particular association with Apollo. It was: ‘NERCO’s Circus in the Vatican, AN AREA FORMERLY SACRED TO APOLLO.’

“Years later, Constantine commissioned a statue of himself to be built. The historical account of that statue illustrates the attitude of Constantine concerning Apollo and Christ. It appears that he tried to blend Apollo, the sun god, and Christ, the Son of God into one person. . .

“It is noteworthy to call attention to how Constantine’s obsession with Apollo, the Sun God, affected (infected?) religious art, which, for many centuries, depicted ‘saints’ with halos around their heads. The genesis of that practice originated with Constantine. The halos were not Christian in origin, but pagan! The halos were not symbols of ‘inner goodness’ shining out (as is commonly supposed) but, like Constantine, was a depiction of the ‘Apollo like’ rays of the sun behind the individuals.