As Pope Francis welcomed the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to the Vatican for a remarkable evening of peace prayers, a Muslim imam chanted prayers in the background as the three strolled through the gardens of the Vatican. But what exactly is at stake?

Martin Luther declared, quote: “We here are of the conviction that the Papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist. I owe the Pope no other obedience than that I owe to Antichrist.”

“The Papacy is the very Antichrist, the Pope being the son of perdition of whom Paul speaks.” John Knox

The Westminster Confession, written in 1647 stated; “There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition that exalted himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God.”

“A man who deludes other people by degrees comes to delude himself. The deluder first makes dupes out of others and then becomes a dupe to himself. I should not wonder but what the Pope really believes that he is infallible and that he ought to be saluted as His Holiness. It must have taken him a good time to arrive at that eminence of self-deception. But he's got to it, I daresay by now, and everyone who kisses his toe confirms him in this insane idea. When everybody else believes a flattering falsehood concerning you, you come at last to believe it yourself. Or at least to think it may be so. But the Pharisees being continually called the learned, rabbi, father, the holy scribe, the devout and pious doctor, the sanctified teacher believed the flattering compliments. They used very grand phrases in those days and doctors of divinity were very common, almost as common as they are now and the crowd of doctors and rabbis help to keep each other in countenance by repeating each other's fine names until they believed they meant something. Dear friends," says Spurgeon, "it's very difficult to receive honor and expect it and yet to keep your eyesight for men's eyes gradually grow dull through the smoke of the incense which is burned before them. And when their eyes become dim with self-conceit, their own great selves conceal the cross and make them unable to believe the truth.”

Will we cry peace at any price or will the slumbering church arise and sound the alarm?

“…Are we going to betray the martyrs who died at the hands of the RCC? Are we going to betray the history of true, biblical Christian faith? Are we going to betray those who lived and died to give us the truth? Are we going to betray the Tyndales, the Luthers, the Calvins, John Rogers and all the rest? Are we so senseless, so blind, so ignorant? Are we so faithless and so cowardly that we will not fight?” John MacArthur