By Betsy Mayer
“The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” said Pope Francis I in his famous 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” He continued ominously: “We can see signs that things are now reaching a breaking point…. If we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has disappointed God’s expectations.”
A papal encyclical is a pastoral letter to the pope’s worldwide flock. But in this letter, Pope Francis addressed his urgent message to “every person living on this planet.”
The summary of Francis’s urgent message is this: as members of the human family, we must all acknowledge the harm we are doing to the earth through pollution, the shameful destruction of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, and the immense peril of climate change. We must also realize that when we hurt the earth, we also hurt the poor—those least able to adjust their living and working conditions.
“Everything is connected…. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.”
Many of Pope Francis’s concerns are justified, and some of his solutions are admirable. They appeal to both secular and religious people. Global leaders praise his encyclical as a moral masterpiece of climate advocacy. But one of his primary solutions includes the observance of Sunday as a universal day of rest, and this should sound an alarm to students of Bible prophecy. (See “What Is the Mark?” in this issue.)
“Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world.… The law of weekly rest forbade work on the seventh day, ‘so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed’ (Ex. 23:12). Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others.”
Here, Francis implies moral authority for the observance of Sunday by equating it with the unchangeable seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment. He wrongly designates the Bible Sabbath as the “Jewish Sabbath,” which was founded at Creation before the existence of the Jews. (See “Honest Questions about the Bible Sabbath” in this issue.)
Sunday rest, he continues, “protects human action from becoming empty activism; it also prevents that unfettered greed and sense of isolation which make us seek personal gain to the detriment of all else.”
But then his message takes a startling turn: “And so the day of rest, centered on the Eucharist, sheds its light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor.”
Do not dismiss his argument here. His promotion of Sunday rest centers on the Eucharist—the heart of Roman Catholic worship. By implication this includes elevating papal authority as the only true medium of salvation. Here’s why.
During the weekly Eucharist, an ordained priest claims to recreate Christ’s very body and blood from the wafer and the wine. This is foundational to Catholic faith, and taking part is believed to be essential for salvation.
The Eucharist is totally dependent on a hierarchy of priests under the authority of one man—the pope—making his church the mediator of salvation for the whole world. The Roman Church can also “excommunicate” you, thereby cutting you off from God’s grace.
The Protestant Reformation rightly rejected the Papacy’s unbiblical view of spiritual authority and its usurped role as the dispenser of salvation. This set in motion political events that led to the Papacy’s “deadly wound” when its power and authority were removed nearly three centuries later when Pius VI was captured and exiled by Napoleon’s armies in 1798, thereby ending the Holy Roman Empire. Bible prophecy predicts that this wound will be healed. (See “The Beast Behind the Mark” in this issue.) Despite its historic setback, the Papacy has never lost its ambitions to restore all that the Roman Church has lost and to go even farther—to position her as the dispenser of God’s heavenly grace to all nations.
In essence, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” is Pope Francis’s assertion that the healing of Planet Earth can only take place as we accept the authority of the Roman Church to dispense spiritual, economic, environmental, and social remedies. An examination of its 184 pages shows that it promotes the theory of papal social justice as the solution to our environmental and social crises. It ignores the Bible’s teaching about redeeming the earth from the Fall, which includes God’s plan to cleanse the earth from sin and from those who cling to it before recreating our planet. The encyclical never calls for repentance from personal sin, only from environmental and social sins, and places man’s works as central to the climate solution.
Our best charitable acts and climate activism can never fix the sin problem and all its results on earth. While Christians should be involved in works of charity as Jesus has instructed us, we do so while looking for His soon coming to deliver us from this world of sin. Serving others helps us deal with the selfishness inherent in every heart and to prepare for God’s heavenly kingdom where no selfishness dwells. Others may also be drawn to Jesus through our unselfish acts of love. Leading others to a saving relationship with Jesus is more important than recycling, using fewer fossil fuels, or adopting sustainable practices, as important as these may be in our stewardship of creation.
Recently, Pope Francis, who presents himself as the head of all Christians, along with the heads of the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches, issued “A Joint Message for The Protection of Creation” ahead of the COP26 climate summit in November 2021. The statement appealed to people of good faith everywhere to “listen to the cry of the earth.”
“This is the first time that the three of us feel compelled to address together the urgency of environmental sustainability, its impact on persistent poverty, and the importance of global cooperation. Together, on behalf of our communities, we appeal to the heart and mind of every Christian, every believer and every person of good will. We pray for our leaders who will gather in Glasgow to decide the future of our planet and its people….
“This path requires an ever-closer collaboration among all churches in their commitment to care for creation. Together, as communities, churches, cities and nations, we must change route and discover new ways of working together to break down the traditional barriers between peoples, to stop competing for resources and start collaborating.”
Opposing an environmental Sunday worship law will seem selfish and uncaring.
The combined memberships of these three churches make up 1 in 5 people on the planet. Their collaboration brings us closer to the day when the deadly wound is completely healed and “all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?” Rev. 13:3, 4.
The mark of the beast—Sunday worship enforced by law—will be implemented as a solution to a global emergency. Opposing it will seem selfish and uncaring. Only those who allow nothing to eclipse their view of Jesus as their true Mediator and Lord and who accept only the Bible’s truth about the restoration of this earth as well as the authority of God’s unchanging law will be able to withstand these masterful deceptions. May God help us be in that number.
Image credit: Shutter stock.com
Betsy Mayer is the managing editor of Last Generation magazine.