ANGLICAN APOSTASY

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites without permission from the author. Any articles which are redistributed by e-mail must be left intact and nothing must be removed or changed, including these informational headers. This is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our primary purpose is to provide information to assist preachers in the protection of the churches in this apostate hour. If you desire to receive this type of material on a regular basis, e-mail us, tell us who you are and where you are located, and request to be placed on the list. Also include your postal address and the name of the church of which you are a member. Some of these articles are from the "Digging in the Walls" section of O Timothy magazine. David W. Cloud, Editor. O Timothy is a monthly magazine in its 14th year of publication. Subscription is $20/yr. The Way of Life web site is http://www.wayoflife.org/.]

April 23, 1997 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The Church of England is incredibly and wretchedly apostate. When I was passing through London in 1982, I picked up a copy of a newspaper containing an interview by John Mortiner of the Sunday Times with former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie. It was Easter, and the interviewer asked Runcie if he understood why Christ had to suffer. The Archbishop replied, "As to that I am an agnostic." He did not know for certain why Christ died on the cross! The interviewer asked, "Is God a judge?" Runcie replied, "No." The interviewer then said, "So you don't see God as celestial Lord Chief Justice?" Runcie said, "Not at all. I had an old landlady when we were at Oxford. And when we got into any sort of trouble, she'd say: 'There's one above who seeth all'. I can't think of God like that." Mortiner then asked Runcie if God accepts people of other religions, and Runcie had this reply: "I can't believe in a God who only saves people who live in certain latitudes. I used to lecture to Hellenic cruises about [Islamic] mosques, and I found great spiritual values in them."

Runcie's unbelief is typical of the Church of England today. Large numbers of Anglican priests and bishops are modernists who deny the Word of God, and there is a massive homosexual movement within the Church of England. When the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebrated its 20th anniversary recently at the Anglican Southwark Cathedral, more than 2,000 assembled to show their support. One can find every sort of strange unscriptural thing in Anglican churches today. In one newspaper I read while in London in late March this year a well-known secular reporter described his visit to an Anglican church on Easter Sunday. He said he went to see if it was still as boring as he remembered it being when he was young. The service featured songs by the Spice Girls, a popular female British rock group. The audience were asked trivia questions about this group and their music. The speaker then said the first Spice Girls were Mary and Martha who brought spices to Christ's empty tomb! This wicked nonsense is typical of Anglicanism today. In 1996, the Anglican doctrinal commission reported that Hell is not a place of eternal fiery torment. The present Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, glories in the Church of England's diversity. Last year he stated: "Anglicanism at its very best can hold differences of thought together. Catholicism, evangelicalism, charismaticism, and liberalism all contribute" (Calvary Contender, July 1, 1996). Even the pope of Rome is welcomed with open arms by the modern Anglican denomination. John Paul II was welcomed as a religious hero by the Church of England on his historic trip in 1982. The first Archbishop of Canterbury to visit a pope was Geoffrey Fisher, who paid an unofficial visit to John XXIII in December 1960. Every successor to Fisher has trotted to Rome to fellowship with the pope. Michael Ramsey officially audienced with Paul VI in March 1966. Robert Runcie met with John Paul II in October 1989 and became the second Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a papal mass. George Carey journeyed to Rome to meet with John Paul II in June 1992 and again in December 1996.