Pope Courts Lutherans

On Wednesday, Pope Leo xiv met Lutheran bishops from Norway during a pilgrimage to Rome. He urged them to seek communion and to work with Catholics for peace and justice. He invited them to visit sites of the early Christian martyrs and said Catholics and Lutherans share baptism and a mission in the world.

The pope is trying to close a historic rift: In January 1521, Pope Leo x excommunicated Martin Luther.

• In January 2021, Cardinal Kurt Koch said the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation were studying the historical, theological and canonical questions around Luther’s excommunication. They plan a joint statement for the Augsburg Confession’s 500th anniversary in 2030.

Catholics and Lutherans signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999. Major differences remain over the papacy, the sacraments and ordained ministry. If these gaps close, the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran churches could move toward fuller communion soon.

Isaiah 47 describes a church it calls “the lady of kingdoms.” This church exerts power over many nations yet has protesting daughter churches. She vows to bring her daughters back into the fold, saying, “I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children” (verse 8).

Herbert W. Armstrong, who founded the Plain Truth magazine (predecessor to the Trumpet), taught from the early 1930s that scriptures such as Isaiah 47 describe a coming union between Catholics and Protestants. For example, the October 1961 Plain Truth says:

The pope will step in as the supreme unifying authority—the only one that can finally unite the differing nations of Europe. The iron jurisdiction over both schools and religion will be turned over to the Roman Catholic Church. Europe will go Roman Catholic! Protestantism will be absorbed into the “mother” church—and totally abolished.

To build and influence this church-state superpower, the Catholic Church will make strategic compromises—standing firm in one area, yielding in another. Isaiah 47 and Revelation 17 reveal that the old Holy Roman Empire, influenced by the Vatican, will be resurrected one last time.

To understand what the Bible says about the religious system that will dominate the Western world in the last days of man’s rule, read Mr. Armstrong’s Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?