[A letter from a concerned brother in Christ]
To Whom It May Concern:
Hello, you don’t know me, my name is Anthony Donaghey and I live in Australia. I am writing to you, hopefully, in the spirit of a passage found in the Book of Isaiah when God says, “Come, and let us reason together”. I am hoping to encourage all of you to please re-examine your decision to sign the document called the Manhattan Declaration. I am sure you read God’s Word regularly and I am certainly not a preacher like many of you are, I do not have a great ministry or anything like that, so I am not hoping to appeal to you on the basis of any great achievements on my part in this world in which we live. I am simply a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose salvation in by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. And I find myself in that awkward position of needing to warn and perhaps rebuke men and women who hold a much higher position than myself in this world, but warn and rebuke I surely must do in this situation, with all the love that is commanded in God’s Word.
I believe with all my heart, and scripture bears me out on this, that you are being slowly deceived by that master deceiver, Satan, in the same manner that Jehoshaphat was deceived by Ahab and Ahab’s lying prophets. I believe that if you prayerfully read and study 1st Kings Chapter 22 & 2nd Chronicles chapters 17 – 22, you will see this “the enemy of my enemy must surely be my friend” ploy used to spiritually shackle a good king to an evil one. Abortion and Euthanasia etc are our common enemies, so let’s put aside our theological differences and become one in this battle; surely this is the decent thing to do. This, I believe, is what is being replayed by the ecumenical / interfaith movement that you are being unwittingly dragged into.
In order to deceive you Satan has got you forgetting God’s ultimate purpose of sending His only begotten Son, which was that He was to die and take on the wrath of God the Father in order that the sins of ‘whomsoever’ would believe would be completely atoned for, instead, he has got you looking at a world that is dying and taking your eyes from off the gospel concerning the faith that was once and for all delivered unto the saints. God’s purpose is about salvation and He warns us all again and again not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, including those who believe in another gospel, in fact the apostle Paul goes so far as to warn that those who bring another gospel are to be accursed.
Please take it from me as a brother in Christ Jesus; I know what I am talking about here. I used to be an Irish Roman Catholic until God saved me from out of it. The Catholic Jesus is as different to the Biblical Jesus as the Mormon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Islamic Jesus is. He is not the Jesus described in God’s Word. He is a Jesus who cannot save, the Catholic must atone for his/her own sins in purgatory, the Catholic must pray to Mary at the hour of his/her death in order for salvation to take place, ultimately, for the Catholic it is their version of Jesus and the 1752 rules and regulations hammered out in Vatican II that leads to their false form of salvation, not faith alone in Christ alone through grace alone, in fact to believe in this is actually a ‘sin of presumption’ within this false faith. This is a completely different gospel, and it is a gospel that keeps ordinary Catholics in bondage on their way to Hell thinking that they are on their way to Heaven by way of Purgatory.
I beseech you all who have signed this deceitful document, to please take heed onto yourselves, read the scriptures that warn of deceptions and false gospels, examine the Catholic gospel with a keen eye and I am sure that you will discover that despite the fact that they and we may use identical terminologies when it come to speaking about belief and salvation etc, the definitions are completely different. This, I believe, is part of the great falling away that is to herald in the ‘Man of Lawlessness’, and it breaks my heart to see so many who started off so well being robbed of their crowns so easily.
It is wrong to sign such documents, but I understand how one is drawn into such emotional issues, although I do not read in scripture anything that tells us as believers to save this planet or change the minds and desires of the dwellers of this planet, in a temporal sense, my heart, however, lies with you when it comes to the wickedness that is engulfing this planet with the mass murder of unborn children made in the image of God or the millions of people left starving and jobless and helpless right across this globe. As Christians we should try to ease such suffering and right such wrongs wherever possible, obeying the command to ‘love our neighbour as we love ourselves’. But we must also preach the only gospel that saves, this is the great commission handed down to us by our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We must put eternity over temporal. And we must not, under no circumstances, align ourselves with false religions filled with idolatrous, God hating leaders who think they can out think God Almighty as well as not letting 900 million Catholic people go to Hell thinking they are going to Heaven by giving them the idea that their leaders and our leaders are somehow joined together by the commonalities of their respective gospels. This would be an evil too great and twisted to find the words to accurately describe by any mere man, including the author of this letter.
Once again, I ask you all to please reconsider your decision and remove your signatures from this document, read the passages I have suggested, pray, and hopefully the result will be godly sorrow, confession and repentance leading to salvation.
I hope and pray that you return once more to the wisdom found only the Holy written Word of God, and pray also that God’s Holy Spirit will move you away from Ahab’s lying prophets and that you will instead heed the word’s of that one lone prophet, Micaiah.
Thank you for taking the time to read and meditate upon this letter and I know it is not easy to take a rebuke from anyone, let alone someone you do not personally know who is of no earthly reputation whatsoever, and I hope that you will forgive me that if in order to make an omelette I had first to crack a few eggs.
Waiting at the Cross of Christ,
your concerned brother,
Anthony Donaghey.
Related:
The Manhattan Declaration
Our Regretful Inability to Become a Signatory
Posted here on the Be Alert! archive page
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