Usually, I would not comment on this, but it gave me pause this time.
Thursday, I was working at a library all afternoon and into the evening. When I finally left, a bit before closing time, I came out to my car and found a couple of pamphlets tucked under my windshield wiper. On pulling them out, I discovered they were pieces from the Tony Alamo Ministries. I had not encountered any of these things in years, so I was curious as to whether there was anything new to them?
Apparently not.
The “outside” pamphlet (the one that showed its title as they were folded together) is titled “The Pope’s Secrets.” The opening sentence of this missive reads:
The Vatican is posing as Snow White, but the Bible says that she is a prostitute, “the great whore,” a cult. (Rev. 19:2)
“Oh, really?” I thought.
Now, I don’t really need to spend time on Mr. Alamo. He’s been convicted of various crimes and is presently in prison. But that he still has followers who continue to pass out this literature is something that calls for comment. How do they justify continuing to support the man?
One of the first things I learned in my class on Formal Logic, back when I was an undergraduate, was that if the premise of the argument was false, there was no way the following argument can reach a true conclusion. Once falseness (whether intentionally included or present by error) enters the calculations, you cannot get rid of it.
So, right from the start, with his first swing at the ball, Mr. Alamo (the credited author of this pamphlet) goes astray.
Fact: at the time of the writing of Revelation, the Vatican had not even been established. How then could the imagery of the scripture be applied to it?
Most scholars agree that the visionary code of Revelation meant the “great whore” to apply to the Roman Empire, not the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Alamo’s opening assertion that “the Bible says” it means the RC church is just that: his assertion.
He continues in the pamphlet, making other assertions, and he includes footnotes to support the various quotations he includes. Unfortunately, when you check the footnote for the source of a quotation ascribed to President Abraham Lincoln, you find not anything from Lincoln’s writings, but a citation for a work titled 50 Years in the “Church” of Rome, by a Charles Chiniquy, from 1886 (available in PDF, we are assured).
The whole of the pamphlet asserts that the Vatican controls everything in the world, that it is the source of every possible evil and intentionally so.
Now, I realize that crackpots can get fixated on ideas that they feed and grow into monstrously huge obsessions. And obviously this is the case with Mr. Alamo. But when the final paragraph states “You can either believe the pope or me,” I have to conclude that delusion has won out. Because, no, it is not an either/or proposition.
When someone puts themselves forward as the only proper arbiter of truth from the scriptures, something has gone wrong. When they assert that the King James Version of the Bible is the only translation to be consulted, something has gone wrong.
Where is the real Gospel in all this ranting (8 pages of it!)? At one point, he states there are five steps to salvation: a prayer of confession and acceptance of Jesus, denying self and taking up the cross, “resurrection from the satanic life of Adam,” ascension into a position of authority (to reign for God on earth), and to reign (for God) on earth (to bring the Kingdom of Heaven). The skewed thing here is the claim that all these are needed for salvation!
Did I miss something? I’m pretty sure that St. Paul said that a heart-felt declaration of “Jesus is Lord” was sufficient. Anything else would flow from that.
To me, it has always seemed that a follower of Christ ought to focus on the immediate, what is present before each of us. If the Lord wants to extend our reach, He will do so. We need not worry about vast conspiracies. We need not labor to create a spreading network (a means) when we ought to focus on testifying to the difference Christ has made in our own lives (the desired end).
Mr. Alamo spends barely a third of one page in eight about salvation. And even then it is clouded with implications of “necessary deeds” and orders to seek instruction from his organization.
Of course, it is easy to fall into the trap of ranting about massive error in the world around us. Consider how much space I have just given to what I see to be Tony Alamo’s errors. But when I end this discourse, I will set the matter aside, and return to doing my daily work as best I can as an act of worship to my Creator. I am endlessly thankful for the difference Christ makes in my life, for the power of His nature causes me to try and be more like Him in my dealings with other people.
This is the Good News, the Gospel: that in accepting the love of Christ, my own being is changed, drawing me closer to His model of life and caring. Not some pie-in-the-sky wonderful life-after-death (though I do believe in the world to come), but rather bettering the here-and-now, by holding on to love and grace. For with Christ, that is possible.
