Arch-apostate of Canterbury Justin Welby endorses Mary worship in Belfast visit and encourages prayers with Pope

The most senior figure in the Anglican Communion (which includes both the Church of England and Church of Ireland) has paid a somewhat secretive visit to Northern Ireland, where he has strengthened his credentials as an arch-apostate by cosying up with Romanists in Clonard monastery, the papal hub of Irish republican west Belfast.

Archbishop (Arch-apostate!) of Canterbury Justin Welby dropped into Northern Ireland in the second half of the week just gone in a completely unheralded excursion, bringing 60 other members of the top brass in the Anglican Communion with him.

He had a look around the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) headquarters before making his ecumenical visit to Clonard, on Belfast’s Falls Road.

While there, he apparently prayed with the rector of Clonard, ‘Father’ Noel Kehoe, for “peace and reconciliation”. As the Roman Catholic Church believes in offering prayers to Mary and Saints, we cannot be sure to whom these prayers were addressed.

They, of course, ought to be addressed to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 2:5 says: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.

The arch-apostate Archbishop compounded the matter when he accepted an icon (statue) of what the Roman Catholic Church calls ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Help’, another of the many grand and blasphemous titles afforded by Rome to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Arch-apostate Welby must not be familiar with the Second Commandment but here is what God has to say regarding the making of idols and worshipping them. It can be found in Exodus 20:4-5: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”.

So, pretty straightforward, one would have thought. However, Arch-apostate Welby was evidently more than happy to receive a symbol of idolatry.

This should be no surprise to anyone who pays even a passing interest in ecclesiastical affairs, with Arch-apostate Welby having met on several previous occasions with the Pope, and is by all accounts on good terms with “that man of sin, and son of perdition”.

So much so, in fact, that on numerous occasions this week, Arch-apostate Welby has implored his followers on social media to join with the Pope in prayer.

In one such Twitter post from Thursday past, he says: “Let’s get behind the Pope’s appeal tomorrow and come together as the united body of Christ to pray for our brothers and sisters in South Sudan and DR Congo.”

He followed it up on Friday with: “Please join the Pope’s call today for prayer and fasting for peace”.

Certainly nobody can deny that peace is desirable, nor that the issues facing those in South Sudan and DR Congo should be the subject of prayer. However, joining forces with the Pope and giving credence to the corrupt organisation over which he presides is definitely not the way to go about achieving anything positive.

A great example for us to follow is that in Ezra chapter 4, where people in the surrounding area to Jerusalem offer to help the Israelites who have returned from captivity in Babylon with restoring the temple.

Whilst they claimed to be of the same religion as the Israelites, the returning Jews’ leaders, Zerubbabel and Jeshua, see through their pretence and tell them to stay well away from the work they were trying to do.

Ezra 4:1-5 says: “Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel; Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do ; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar-haddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.”

Joining forces with those who don’t have the advancement of God’s Kingdom at heart will not lead to success.

The true spirit of those claiming to share the religion of God’s people was soon discovered. When they realised they wouldn’t be able to hinder their work from within, they set about attacking them from without.

The Arch-apostate of Canterbury should not encourage praying alongside the Pope.

Mr Welby represents the head of the Church of Ireland, which has most of its adherents here in Ulster. We would encourage those who attend the Church of Ireland to contact those in authority in their area to make their views clear on this dreadful sell-out of Biblical Christianity.

Ephesians 5:11: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”