Catholic, Catholic, Catholic. Everything’s turning Catholic; a sure sign we’re headed full-bore into the Rapture climate the Apostle Paul warns about.

As any Bible-believing Christian should know (and did know 100-150 years ago), Catholicism represents the present-day manifestation of Baal worship—the future official world-imposed religion of the Antichrist.

In yesterday’s Sunday Washington Post was a long article about how the White House and many in Bush's inner circle will welcome as kin Pope Benedict when he makes his “rock star” debut on U.S. soil this week.

“If Bill Clinton can be called America's first black president, some say, then George W. Bush could well be the nation's first Catholic president,” read the article. “This isn't as strange a notion as it sounds. Yes, there was John F. Kennedy. But where Kennedy sought to divorce his religion from his office, Bush has welcomed Roman Catholic doctrine and teachings into the White House and based many important domestic policy decisions on them.

“. . . Bush attends an Episcopal church in Washington and belongs to a Methodist church in Texas, and his political base is solidly evangelical. Yet this Protestant president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics -- and thus Catholic social teaching -- have for the past eight years been shaping Bush's speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history.

“. . . Bush has also placed Catholics in prominent roles in the federal government and relied on Catholic tradition to make a public case for everything from his faith-based initiative to antiabortion legislation. He has wedded Catholic intellectualism with evangelical political savvy to forge a powerful electoral coalition.”

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Understanding Baal worship, which originates with Nimrod of Babylon in Genesis 10 and 11, is one of the very biggest keys to “interpreting” the whole Bible. It has everything to do, for instance, with Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry.

Israel, throughout the Old Testament, continuously broke her marriage contract with Jehovah and committed spiritual adultery as it went “a whoring after other gods.”

They were repeatedly drawn into the same abominations the Gentile world had already wholesale given itself over to: shrines, altars, icons, priests in long colored robes referred to as “father,” incense and drink offerings, including ones to the female counterpart of chief male deity Baal who comes under the general heading of “Queen of Heaven” in the Bible.

As my preacher, Richard Jordan, frequently points out, “Drive the streets of Chicago and its suburbs are you’ll see plenty of (Catholic) churches with the name ‘Queen of Heaven’.”

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In an old sermon I have on Baal worship, Jordan observes, “People brag, ‘Our church is the oldest church.’ Yeah, you’re way back here before Christ!”

The seeds of Baal worship as it permeated and thoroughly corrupted the nation Israel can be found in Judges 2: 11-13: “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:
[12] And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.
[13] And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.”

Of course, Ashtaroth is the female deity; she’s the ‘Queen of Heaven’ who mediates for Baal, the male deity.

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In I Kings 19:18, after Elijah confronts the Baalite priest and challenges Israel to throw off Baal and worship Jehovah, God informs His prophet, “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.”

Jordan says, “I read that and I say, ‘That’s pretty obvious what’s going on!’ Every knee that hasn’t bowed and every mouth that hasn’t kissed him. There’s some of you who’ve ‘been-there-done-that’, huh? Some of you others just watched it.

“Can you understand why people don’t like the Bible?! We’re just reading verses and they think we’re preaching about them. That’s why the Bible is considered to be hate literature. You get on Oprah and you start quoting verses like that—just about what the Bible records—and you know what they’re going to call you? ‘You’re a phobic! It’s hate literature!’

“Now, your ancestors a hundred and fifty years ago knew this stuff and it made a difference when they went into the polling place. It made a difference when they went and did things. They understood God’s command, ‘Touch not the unclean thing; be ye separate.’ ”

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