Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, a Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther posted a list of challenges to the authority of his church’s leaders. The Protestant Reformation quickly blossomed from there. People soon had access to Bible truths in their own language.
The Reformation wasn’t without cost to the Roman Church. Less than two hundred years after Luther’s courageous act, in February 1798, French forces under the command of General Louis-Alexandre Berthier marched into Rome, entered Vatican City, and deposed Pope Pius VI. That capture was seen by many observers of prophecy as a “mortal wound” to the Catholic faith, but one from which it recovered over the ensuing 165 years.
Following the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, the Catholic Church made strenuous efforts to gain friends among Protestant churches. Outreaches by every pontiff since Pope Paul VI have increased with each passing year. Days after he became leader of the world’s Roman Catholics, Pope Francis invited Protestant leaders to meet him at the Vatican—and from the Church of England to The Salvation Army, those leaders came (p. 12, 13).
Now, a major U.S.-based Catholic publisher has released a volume claiming a reunification of Catholics and Protestants “will” be done. According to an announcement, Peter Kreeft, a leading Catholic thinker, claims the two sides “need to stop ‘directing arrows not against each other but against our own hearts and minds and wills.’ ”
What that appears to mean is that Kreeft wants people in both camps to drop their prejudices about the other. And, astonishingly, a leading Protestant academic appears to agree.
Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, said, in the same statement, that author Kreeft has “given us a passionate plea for Christian unity, one that builds upon the great common core of Christian belief confessed by faithful Protestants and Catholics alike.”
Of course, “faithful Protestants” who know their Bible reject many unbiblical doctrines of the Catholic church, so just how “great” this “common core of Christian belief” actually is may be subject to question.
The Bible’s last book Revelation reveals details about a religious deception that will unite an apostate “church” and the civil state in what will be an unholy alliance against those who hold fast to what the Bible teaches. Beginning on November 3, 2017, Pastor Doug Batchelor will address how the Protestant Reformation must continue during his live series called Foundations of Faith, which is designed to bring people back to the Bible as our primary source for faith, just as Luther did five hundred years ago.