Pope Francis, in his catechesis at the General Audience on Wednesday August 18, 2021, made the following controversial and blasphemous words in relation to God’s Law and Christ’s Grace. The statements are recorded in the final two paragraphs of an article published by Vatican News. The Pope expressed the following:
‘It is good for us to ask ourselves if we still live in the period in which we need the Law, or if, instead, we are fully aware of having received the grace of becoming children of God so as to live in love.’ It is a good question, he said, and added a second: ‘Do I despise the Commandments?’ He also gave an answer: ‘No. I observe them, but not as absolutes, because I know that it is Jesus Christ who justifies me.’ [1]
Rome is truly spewing relativistic heresy by confusing God’s law and love. The Pope has concluded that God’s law is not “absolute.” This is setting the Christian world adrift into a sea of doubt that will only lead to more lawlessness and sin. It is obvious that many of the major denominations are no longer reading the Bible anymore. Why should they if they believe that God’s word is no longer absolute and should not be trusted?
Does God love unrepentant sinners? The Bible tells us, yes, that God does love the entire world (John 3:16); but, God’s love is not like our love. God’s love is holy, it is perfect, it is just, and righteous. Speaking of God, Moses said, “His work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” Deuteronomy 32:4.
This means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and is Himself the final, absolute standard of righteousness. God’s love, character, truth, and messages are all absolute! His truth is not subject to anyone else’s feelings or perceptions. His message is not just one of many views that we can choose to follow or not. God is not a man that He will lie, cheat, be influenced or bribed. God will never speak to us out of context or give us bad information that is outdated.
And His Law is not relative, meaning that it is true only as it relates to my understanding. When Jesus came to this world notice the condition it was in. It was similar to what is happening today:
“He saw his people deceived, self-satisfied, and asleep in their sins. He longed to rouse them to a holier life. The message that God had given him to bear was designed to startle them from their lethargy, and cause them to tremble because of their great wickedness.” (Desire of Ages, pp. 103, 104).
Notice the method and strategy that God uses in His great love to reach unrepentant sinners:
“Before the seed of the gospel could find lodgment, the heart must be broken up. Before they would seek healing from Jesus, they must be awakened to their danger from the wounds of sin.” (Ibid., p. 104).
God does not use a subjective gospel or a relativistic gospel or a social gospel or the rainbow gospel or a watered-down gospel to reach unrepentant sinners. These are labels that man uses in order to please the carnal heart, to coddle the sinner into a false security, or to reject the warning messages of God. God’s true gospel message is clear, trustworthy, necessary, straight to the point and completely absolute.
“God does not send messengers to flatter the sinner. He delivers no message of peace to lull the unsanctified into fatal security. He lays heavy burdens upon the conscience of the wrongdoer, and pierces the soul with arrows of conviction. The ministering angels present to him the fearful judgments of God to deepen the sense of need, and prompt the cry, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Then the hand that has humbled in the dust, lifts up the penitent. The voice that has rebuked sin, and put to shame pride and ambition, inquires with tenderest sympathy, ‘What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?’ ” (Desire of Ages, p. 104).
This is the method that God uses as the means to call sinners to repentance. This was how Christ dealt with humanity when He walked the earth. And remember, God’s absolute truth and His means to reach the world are despised by the devil. Look who’s behind those who reject the warning messages of God:
“Their unbelief bred malice. Satan controlled them, and in wrath they cried out against the Savior…These people had prided themselves on keeping the law; but now that their prejudices were offended, they were ready to commit murder” (Desire of Ages, pp. 239, 240).
What caused the Jews of Nazareth to show so much hatred toward a loving Saviour that they were willing to sacrifice that law of God and commit murder? It was their own personal unbelief and rebellion. It was Satan who was controlling them and giving them his spirit of malice toward the truth of God. This is what we are dealing with today and it is the same spirit of Satan that hates God’s law that manifests itself in the hearts of men and women today:
“Truth was unpopular in Christ’s day. It is unpopular in our day. It has been unpopular ever since Satan first gave man a disrelish for it by presenting fables that lead to self-exaltation” (Desire of Ages. p. 242).
What causes men today to war against the truth? It is the same unrepentant, carnal, prideful spirit of unbelief—and an unwillingness to receive correction or instruction. It is the spirit of Satan that is offended by the truth. God is not offended by truth. It is the devil’s spirit that opposes itself against Christ and His truth and causes men to want to commit murder and bury the messenger. Jesus told the Jewish leaders of His day:
“But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth…Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” John 8:42,44,45.
The existence of absolute truth is controversial. The preaching of absolute truth is even more controversial, because it does not sit well with a lot of people who like their God subservient to their own distortions of truth. In this modern age of multiculturalism nobody wants to be bothered with the fine print in the Bible. The world just wants a God who loves everyone and tolerates everything. This is the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, the very thing that Gods hates:
“So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate.” Revelation 2:15.
What was the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, the thing God hates?
“The doctrine is now largely taught that the gospel of Christ has made the law of God of no effect; that by ‘believing’ we are released from the necessity of being doers of the Word. But this is the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes.” (Signs of the Times,
Jan. 2, 1912).
Every day I am more convinced that Francis is the Pope of the Nicolaitanes, a huge religious movement that rejects God’s moral standard as absolute. They have established their own morality: climate justice, wealth redistribution, Mother Earth spirituality, Green Sunday laws, ecocide and several other catholic social teachings. This is what happens when we reject God’s law as being absolute; anything goes.
In fact, if God’s law wasn’t absolute, there would not have been a flood in Noah’s day. Sodom and Gomorrah would not have been turned to ashes. Jerusalem would not have gone into captivity to Babylon. There would not have been a crisis of faith in Daniel 3 or Daniel 6. Jesus would not have been turned over by the Jews to the Romans to be crucified. But because God’s word speaks in absolute terms when it says, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), Jesus had to step up and choose to give his life so that we can live. There was no other way but through atonement. On the cross Jesus suffered and died so that we could have eternal life.
If God’s law was not absolute, there would have been no early Christian martyrs; there would be nothing to be persecuted for. There would have been no Protestant Reformation. How can you have a reformation without an absolute standard to bring about favorable changes according to God’s will? Without absolute commandments there can be no obedience, no purity among the people, no sanctification and no Remnant Church in the last days. Tragically, it also means that there will be no mark of the beast, no test between Saturday versus Sunday. And don’t worry about Revelation 12, 13, 14, 17, 18. None of that matters whenever God’s will is not absolute.
Pope Francis has created a false dilemma, and his ideas are entering all the churches, including many Adventists circles. The Three Angels’ Messages is God’s absolute, final warning message given to the final generation—to counter the popular teachings that God’s law is unnecessary or not absolute. Tragically, the world doesn’t want to hear these messages. Why is that? Because when you understand the heart of the Three Angels’ Messages, you tremble to see the great wickedness and rebellion our world is in.
It exposes the beast and the image and shows that the whole world is deceived by the dragon (Revelation 12:9), and is worshiping the beast and the dragon (Revelation 13:3, 4), and not God. God also identifies His people and calls them the Remnant which keep the commandments (Revelation 12:17), and God also calls them His saints which keep the commandments of God (Revelation 14:12), and they are seen in heaven for keeping God’s commandments (Revelation 22:14).
Revelation 14 is not a message that originated in man. These are God’s words, and God put them there to be applied. Therefore, it is not intolerant or malicious to try to understand, apply or preach these apocalyptic narratives, lest we come to the conclusion that the word of God or that our loving God must be classified as such. The bigotry, hatred and confusion lie in the fact that fallen and sinful human beings are trying to separate God from His own truth, and they want you to accept their broken and failed policies.
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I find it sad when I am talking about a Bible truth and the person responds with something that goes kind of like this: Well, that’s your truth, or that’s how you interpret it but that isn’t my truth or I understand it differently. This said while claiming to believe in the Bible and wanting the promises offered but not the conditions of the receiving of the promises.
If the Bible does not contain absolute truth then why bother reading it: it becomes any other novel. Paul said that if Christ did not rise from the dead then we have nothing to hope in… that is absolute truth.
Relativism is the first lie… what is truth to you isn’t truth to me…Death was God’s truth, the snake had his ‘truth’ which was you won’t die, and Adam had his truth…God will not follow through with the punishment so I will risk it and partake.
Rationalizing and justifying our carnal desires is much easier to accomplish in an environment where everyone has their own truth.
Greetings Andy,
Excellent article. The watering down of God’s absolute truth is only acceptable to one who does not read the Bible properly. The stories therein are for our learning and admonition. If an individual wants to contemporize the truth so not to understand it contextually then they place themselves where the Holy Spirit cannot work for them, and they misinterpret the meaning of the scriptures. Unfortunately, this is happening all over now as the false ministers, 2 Corinthians 11:15, have not been teaching a faulty hermeneutic of Biblical interpretation for many years and the majority of Christians today are set adrift without an anchor. Blessings!
I meant to say “have been teaching a faulty hermeneutic.”
Thanks brother Andy for this beautiful study. We have made the turn. We can now see the glittering golden city of God. Our home for eternity. Satan is leading his church and any that choose to follow, to disregard God’s law, which he hates. He has always hated Jesus, the Commandments, and Jesus’ church. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” Jn. 14:15
Jesus never changes. We must choose today to FOJ:. Focus On Jesus. He will carry His people through till the end.
“Hath God said”? The question that comes to every soul? If we listen to and believe in lies, we will end up in the fiery lake in the final Judgement. This includes the mass deception of taking the liquid Lucifer vaccine so the globalists can fulfill their goal of death and destruction. The vaccine is weeding out the sheep and the goats.
Man of sin would say something like this, seeing he is figure head for a religion which is a revolving door for continuing Sins, an Almagamation of ancient paganism, most noticeably Sunworship, home of every unclean doctrine
Including Satan’s main lie from the garden of Eden,
No victory over sins inside the Papal system.
It great for the comments we talk and talk now, but when the time comes to stand can we stand for our almighty God ?. How remember the bring of Iraq war and isis too those 20 or more Chirstains to there death,how watch that it was sent to me and I still have it in me hard drive. So I’m asking and begging you all to pray, read the Scriptures and do some fasting for for strength always ask for the baptism of the holy spirit to you in hard times. May God’s Blessings be with us all Chirstains.
When he said that they are not absolutes, he might have been saying that our obedience is not absolute, therefore, the grace of Jesus protects us, not our obedience. This, of course, is what Paul said. You remember Paul? He wrote before the “Desire”.
It’s always a statement of “he might have said” with the Catholic Church. In the statement of Peter being the rock the Hebrew word used had a “s” at the end a feminine pronoun seperating the distinction. But the Catholic Church said nope “it might have said rock so it is founded on Peter”. I can’t with the might haves. Gods word doesn’t contradict and we can compare scriptures through out the Bible that show the truth. Gods word is the absolute truth.