FINAL WARNING: Setting the Stage for Destruction
63,000,000 members in thousands of churches. They have extensive
real estate holdings (they own one-third of Rome), own major
companies and utilities and have controlling interests in others,
possess priceless works of art, religious artifacts, and massive
deposits in Italian and foreign banks (including America and
Switzerland). It is rumored, that the Vatican owns 40-50% of the shares
quoted on the Italian Stock Exchanges, which is worth about $5 billion.
Vatican City has their own flag, their own bank, their own license
plates (numbered from 1-142), their own radio station (Radio Vatican,
which reaches every country on earth with broadcasts in thirty
languages), their own newspaper (l ́Osservatore Romano), their own
post office (issuing their own stamps), their own telephone system, the
Institute for Religious Works (established in 1942, which provides
about $10 million a year towards their budget), a pharmacy, a bar, a
gas station, a train depot, and a printing plant. There are no taxes; and
they issue their own passports and citizenship papers. The neutral
country is protected by 100 Swiss guards, and 150 Italian police.
Despite the efforts of the Catholic Church to destroy the Holy Bible,
the Scriptures survived, and in 1603, King James of England gathered
54 English scholars to assemble manuscripts to prepare a Bible. They
used the Antioch manuscripts, and the Jewish Massoretic text,
completing their work in 1611. The result was the King James Version
of the Bible that was used by the Episcopalians in England, and the
Scottish Presbyterians. Today, it is the most widely accepted version
of the Scriptures in the world.
In England, two groups opposed the Church of England, because of
the centralized control of the Anglican Church and their elaborate
rituals: the Puritans, who wanted to try and purify it from within; and
the Separatists, who felt that the Church was so corrupt, that it was
beyond the possibility of reform. To escape the persecution of King
James, William Bradford led many to Holland, in 1608; and in 1619,
they joined a larger group in England and sailed to America on the
Mayflower, where the Separatists became known as Pilgrims. They had
intended to land at Virginia, but was blown off course, hundreds of
miles north, where the 103 settlers floated into the peninsula of Cape
Cod in Massachusetts, in November of 1620.