I stumbled upon this amazing teaching by John Macarthur and I thought I would share it with all on this forum, if this has been posted before forgive me but its been a great help to me in my in depth study of this pagan religion. It's quite lengthy but definitly worth the read. It will be several posts beacuse the teaching was in several parts.

Explaining the Heresy of the Catholicism

I want you tonight, if you will, to understand my heart. I...I have to confess to you that the biggest grief, of course, in my life and you will understand this because it is yours as well and it is the Lord’s, is that we find no pleasure in the death of the wicked. We find no delight in people who are condemned to hell. We long that people be saved. That is the great heart cry of every true Christian, salvation for all they know. As we learned from the story this morning of the rich man in hell, even in hell he had an evangelistic passion wanting somebody to go and warn his brothers. If that is the impulse of those who are the damned, what kind of impulse do the redeemed have for the salvation of sinners that they may escape eternal hell? There are many religions in the world who promise heaven and do not deliver it; many religions in the world that are satanic deceptions. All of them, in fact, but the true faith and the true gospel fall into that category.

Roman Catholicism belongs in the category of false religions, clearly. Not because of what I say about them, but because what they say about the Bible and what they say about the gospel and what they say about religion. All one needs to do to understand a false religion is to see what they believe and understand what they advocate and they can be then measured against the Word of God so that we can clearly understand that.

Today there is a very, very aggressive and concerted effort among evangelical people, so many of whom don’t know the true gospel..not just Roman Catholics but also Protestants, to embrace Roman Catholicism as if it is a true religion. This...this run to embrace Catholics and declassify them as non-believers, declassify them as a mission field is being led by very prominent leaders in evangelical positions, both in churches and para-churches. This has gone on for a number of years. It was not too many years ago that a document appeared, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, known as ECT which struck an alliance between evangelicalism and the Roman Catholic system. It was signed by many, many well-known evangelical leaders. It launched no small controversy. As a result of it, I would up in a seven-hour meeting, locked up in a room with these evangelical leaders while we endeavored to confront the signers of that document with the horrible realities of Catholicism and their complete misrepresentation of the gospel and to call these people to take their names off to deny this document with all their passion and all their heart. None of which they were willing to do. And so that embrace of Catholicism has gone on and the great reality is that many, many people who would call themselves Christians and some who are Christians are confused about the character of Roman Catholicism. We need to end that confusion because we need to make sure that we understand that they do not believe in the true gospel.

At the heart of Roman Catholicism is this event called the Mass...the Mass. Before we look at it, I want you to open your Bible, however, to the book of Hebrews, to the seventh chapter of Hebrews, and I just want to settle one thing in your mind, to begin with. And I tell you this, this may seem a little bit rambling as I go through this material. Usually I’m pretty organized in my thinking but as I was trying to finally put this together Saturday while I was flying, there was just an interminably bumpy flight and I think it was jogging my brain, along with everything else. So I’m going to hope that there’s some cohesion, even if I have difficulty reading my own handwriting, because of the movement, I hope that you can follow me as I go through this. But I want to establish one thing to begin with and that is the nature of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So in Hebrews chapter 7 I would like you to look at verse 26, and I just want to read verse 26 through 28.

“For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. Because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the Law appoints men as high priests who are weak but the word of the oath which came after the Law appoints a Son made perfect forever.”

The operative word is “once,” one sacrifice. There is no need for daily offering of sacrifices. If you will look at the ninth chapter of Hebrews you will see this same truth repeated in verse 11. “When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained...past tense...eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Again the operative word is “once.”

“He entered the holy place...verse 12...once...past tense...having obtained eternal redemption.” Go over to verse 24 of Hebrews 9, “For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, that is some earthly temple, some earthly sanctuary, some earthly altar, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us, nor was it that He would offer Himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world, but now...here’s that word again...once at the consummation of the ages...that is, the culminating point of the ages, the very event of His own death and resurrection...once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await Him.” Again the operative word appears in verse 28, “once.” He does not need to offer Himself often, verse 25 says. He does not need to suffer repeatedly, as verse 26 would indicate from the foundation of the world because again “once” at the culmination of the ages He put away, past tense, sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Chapter 10 of Hebrews, verse 10, “By this will...that is the will of God...which Jesus came to do as it says in the prior verse 9, by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Sanctified meaning separated from sin in a saving sense, as well as an ongoing sense. “And it was accomplished through the offering of Jesus Christ, the offering of His body, once. Every priest in contrast...verse 11...stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, but He having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time sat down at the right hand of God.”

The finality of this is so clear. He came, He made one sacrifice which perfected forever them that are sanctified. He came, He made one offering for all, never to be repeated, in contrast to priests repeating over and over and over sacrifices which can never take away sin. There’s only one sacrifice made one time by one person that can take away sin. It is that sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the Old Testament sacrifices did was portray and develop almost a passionate longing for the final sacrifice which would truly take away sin. The Old Testament had a priesthood, an altar, and sacrifices which were only shadows anticipatory of the final sacrifice that would come with Christ. He came, He offered that sacrifice and God punctuated that one sacrifice by destroying the temple using the Romans to do it in 70 A.D., by destroying the altars, thus smashing the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and all the records of all the genealogies of all those in the priestly line, thus ending permanently the priesthood. There are no more sacrifices. There are no more altars. And there are no more priests as a special order to offer sacrifices. It all came to an end at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Any sacrifices being made today are unbiblical and unable to accomplish anything. Any priests today are false claimants to a special priesthood, a special order of priests since now we are all priests. We are a royal priesthood, all believers. We need no mediator, we all have immediate access to God. We need to make no sacrifices because there is no temple, there are no altars, there are no sacrifices and we are not in need of any priests.

In spite of that, the Roman Catholic system has devised a priesthood, has built in every church on the face of the earth an altar and around that altar continues to offer sacrifice, tens of thousands of timed every day, as if they had reinvented the Levitical priesthood. And they will be doing this until the end of time, until the end of the world, it says there in their literature. They have reestablished what God Himself destroyed. And it is a variation of the Levitical priesthood, it is an illegitimate variation of that priesthood. I say variation because it is mingled with cultic pagan mystery and idolatry. The Mass is a sacrifice which can be made only on an altar of some kind and only by a priest.

How important is the Mass to Catholicism? Well, to show you its importance, I quote the Catholic Catechism. Quote: “The Mass is the source of and summit of the Christian life.” That it is say it is the origin of the Christian life and it is the high point. It was Cardinal Ratzinger now calling himself Pope Benedict, who said, and I quote him, “The Mass is the sum and substance of our faith.” This is not peripheral, this is not on the edge, this is not one among many, this is the heart and soul of the system, even though there are seven sacraments by their definition, this is the main sacrament. But at the very outset, the Mass is a deception because, as I said, there are no more sacrifices, there are no more altars. There is no more temple in which God dwells, no more tabernacle and there is no more priesthood. It is therefore a false sacrifice on a false altar in a false temple by a false priest.

At heart, it is a denial of the singular sacrifice of Christ on the cross because the Mass is an offering of Christ repeatedly by an illegitimate priesthood on an illegitimate altar for a useless and ungodly purpose. As in so many points, as I’ve been saying, Roman Catholicism is a mix. It is mostly paganism with a little Christianity sprinkled into it and with a lot of Christian terminology in order to deceive and delude souls. It is a demonic religion that does not bring salvation...cannot.

John O’Brien, a Catholic priest, has helped Roman Catholics to understand the importance of the Mass. He has written a book called The Faith of Millions, The Credentials of the Catholic Religion. It is a classic work. This is what he writes, John O’Brien, a very popular work. “When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration...this is the Mass...he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man. It is a power exercised by the priest greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of seraphim and cherubim. Indeed, it is a power greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal victim.” You wonder why you always see a crucifix and not an empty cross?

“The priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man, not once but a thousand times.” Stop there for a moment. You see the comparison? Mary only brought Him into the world once, the priest brings Him down thousands of times. He has greater power than the Virgin Mary. It’s an amazing thing for a Roman Catholic to say since any study of Mary would indicate to us that they think that she has the very power of God. We wouldn’t expect a system like this to be consistent, would we? “The priest...he goes on...speaks...speaks, and low, Christ the eternal and omnipotent God bows His head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.” And the last paragraph from O’Brien, “Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest who is thus privileged to act as the ambassador and the vice-regent of Christ on earth. He continues the essential ministry of Christ. He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ. He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ. He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration and atonement which Christ offered on Calvary. No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of applying to the priest is that of alter priestos for the priest is and should be another Christ.”

Last week I was on the Larry King program, some of you saw it. That came out of the mouth of one of the priests on that program. “How wonderful it is...he said...to be another Christ.” The Bible warns about another Christ, false Christs, and they will proliferate in the end days. That’s what’s going on in a Mass. This priest given for that greater power than the Blessed Virgin brings Christ down out of heaven, all he has to do is speak and Christ the eternal and omnipotent God bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.

Now all of this goes back for it’s real ratification and clarification to the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. The Council of Trent affirms so many things because they were reacting to the Reformation. But you go back to the Council of Trent and you’ll get a really good idea of how they fell about the Mass. This is dogma, folks. When the Council of Trent said something, the Church says it. When the Church says it, it’s infallible, therefore it can’t change. The Council of Trent met in its thirteenth session. The sessions went on for a long, long time. Met in this thirteenth session in October of 1551. They promulgated at that particular session a decree concerning, quote: “The Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist...the Mass.” At the end of the decree was a list of canons or laws and these laws provide anathemas or damnation, strongest thing that they can do, strongest word that they can use is to damn or anathematize. And the canons anathematized those who reject the Council’s teaching.

Now what happens if you look at these canons is, they provide short succinct definitions of their doctrine. And I want to read to you some of them that relate to the Mass, the issue of what they call the Eucharist.

Canon number one, inside the decree concerning the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, canon number one, if anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently the whole Christ but says that He is in it only as a sign or figure or force, let him be anathema. Damnation is pronounced on anybody who says that Christ is not actually there, body, blood, soul, divinity, in the wine and the wafer.

Canon number two, if anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ...that is they’re both there...and denies that wonder and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which changed the Catholic Church most apply calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.

In other words, if you say the body and blood as well as the soul and divinity of Christ are not there in the wine and the bread, you’re anathematized. If you say He’s only there along with the bread and the wine, you’re also damned. What you have to say is He’s there and the bread and the wine are not there although they appear to be there. Mystical hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo for sure.

Canon number eight, if anyone says that Christ received in the Eucharist is received spiritually only and not also sacramentally and really, let him be anathema. That is if you say that in taking the bread in, taking the host, as they call it, which the bread is the only thing given to the communicant, if you say that Christ is only there spiritually and not sacramentally and really, you’re damned.

Eleven years later in 1562 twenty-second session was held of the Council of Trent and this time the decree promulgated was entitled, “Doctrine Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass.” And it’s important for you to know this, so let me just read what the second session of this decree says. “And inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass is contained and immolated in an un-bloody manner, the same Christ who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy Council teaches that this is truly propitiatory and has this effect, that if we contrite and penitent with sincere heart and upright faith with fear and reverence draw nigh to God, we obtain mercy and fine grace in seasonable aid.” In other words, the Mass is really Christ, it is really a sacrifice on a real altar by a real priest, just like priests in the Old Testament offered an animal on the altar as a sacrifice, the only difference is it is an unbloody one, that Christ is nonetheless immolated, or offered or sacrificed. And as a result of this, propitiation is achieved, actual satisfaction for sin is achieved.

Trent went on to say, “The victim is one and the same,” that is Christ is the victim as He was on the cross, “in this Mass, the same...that is Christ...now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered Himself on the cross.” So you’ve got tens of thousands, millions upon millions of sacrifices of Christ being made by priests and it is the same Christ, the real Christ, the actual Christ and not just a spiritual Christ but the real Christ, body, blood, spirit and divinity. And it is propitious...propitiatory.

He went on to say, Trent did, “It is well understood that it is an unbloody sacrifice, but it is no less a sacrifice. It is rightly offered for the sins, the punishments, the satisfactions and the other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those departed in Christ but not yet fully purified.” Where are they? Purgatory. So this is propitiation for the living and for the dead.

Now at the end of that decree which came eleven years later, there are more canons, more curses pronounced on those who would deny this. Here’s canon number one, “If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God or that to be offered is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema.” If you say we’re eating Christ, literally eating His body and blood and spirit and divinity but it’s not a sacrifice, you’re damned.

Canon number two, “If anyone says that by those words, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me,’ Christ did not institute the Apostles’ priests or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer His own body and blood, let him be anathema.” If you just say, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” is anything less than the institution of the Roman Catholic priesthood, you are damned.

Canon number three, “If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...that is it is not efficacious, that it is not a real sacrifice which God accepts so that He can forgive sin...if you say it’s anything less than that, or that it profits him only who receives and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead...that is, only the person who is there receiving it and not other living people and other dead people who aren’t there...for sins, punishment, satisfactions and other necessities, let him be anathema.” If you say that it doesn’t count for the living and the dead who aren’t there, you’re cursed.

Canon number four, “If anyone says that by the sacrifice of the Mass a blasphemy is cast upon the most holy sacrifice of Christ consummated on the cross, let him be anathema.” So we’re all damned. If you say that this sacrifice blasphemes the most holy sacrifice of Christ, then you’re blaspheming and you’re damned.

Canon number five, “If anyone says that it is a deception to celebrate masses in honor of the saints and in order to obtain their intercession with God, let him be anathema.” Masses are offered as some kind of offering to dead saints to get dead saints to intercede for us, the living, and dead.

And then just to make sure you can’t escape, “If anyone says that the canon of the Mass contains errors, let him be anathema.” I mean, they’ve damned you in every possible way. There is no way out. Now do you understand why Roman Catholic people are bound to this system? It is so full of damnation, there is no way out.

How can we summarize this? Just a few things. One, Jesus Christ...this is Roman Catholic theology of the Mass, it’s from the Council of Trent, summary...one, Jesus Christ is truly really and substantially present in the sacrament following the words of consecration. It doesn’t show up till after the words of consecration. Two, Transubstantiation, that simply means to transform the substance. It started out as wine and bread, the substance, but the transforming of that substance into the actual body and blood of Christ is what transubstantiation means. Transubstantiation, secondly, involves the change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance into the body of Christ, the change of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of the blood of Christ. It is a real and actual change although it appears still to be bread and wine.

Three, since Christ is really present in the Eucharist, the elements themselves are worthy of worship. They’re worthy of worship.

Do you know that when a Catholic goes to Mass and passes the little box that the wafer and the wine is in, he worships? I was listening the other night to the Catholic channel when I was in Louisville and there was a priest on, I listened for at least an hour cause he was lecturing on the Mass and I was checking my facts. Amazing how God brings things into my life when I’m working on this stuff. I mean, I was on the Larry King Show last week with six priests and I was checking all my facts. And then I go there and this guy is saying this, “We can always tell...this priest...we can always tell the devotion of a true Christian by whether or not he or she bows and genuflects in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.” That’s exactly what they taught.

Fourth, the sacrifice of the Mass is properly called propitiatory in that it brings about a real pardon for sin. Five, in the institution of the Mass at the Lord’s Supper, they think Christ instituted the Mass, He offered His own body and blood to the Father in the signs of the bread and the wine and in so doing He ordained the Apostles as the first priests.

Number six, the sacrifice of the Mass is properly offered for sins, punishments, satisfaction and other necessities, not just for living people but dead ones.

And finally, anybody who denies any of this is damned.

Now you might say, “Well, that’s a long time ago. You’re talking about sixteen centuries, that’s still the teaching of the Church?” Absolutely still the teaching of the Church. Pick up any Catholic Catechism, any Catholic writer, any modern writer on Catholicism, Karl Keating or anybody else, you’re going to find the same thing. Trent’s teaching remains the official dogmatic position of the Roman Catholic Church. Interesting, in the catechism of the Catholic Church there are nine paragraphs dedicated to the subject of justification. There are 84 dedicated to the Mass and fourteen summary paragraphs. In the current catechism of the Catholic Church, Trent is mentioned by name, the Council of Trent quoted as authoritative, its doctrines plainly presented as the Church’s teaching. Here’s one paragraph from the catechism.

“The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. The victim is one and the same. The same now offers through the ministry of priests who then offered Himself on the cross only the manner of offering is different. In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered Himself once on the altar of the cross is offered in an unbloody manner repeatedly.” I added the word “repeatedly” for clarification.

Roman Catholic theology says the Mass is not a divine...is not a...what did I say...a dramatic reenactment. It’s not theater. Roman Catholic theology says it’s not a commemoration. It’s not a memorial. It’s not a remembrance. It is a real sacrifice that continues the eternal sacrifice of Christ, the eternal victim. It is not a separated sacrifice, but it is the same sacrifice as the cross continually being offered again and again and again and again and again. It’s really an amalgamation of pagan sacrifices which has found their way into Christianity very, very early. True Catholic devotion is measured by whether or not you genuflect and make the sign of the cross when you see the blessed sacrament. Roman Catholic catechism quotes Vatican II. Vatican II says, “As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which Christ has been sacrificed is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out. It is a redeeming sacrifice, as is the cross.”

What utter chaos and confusion is that? So where do you look for your salvation? To what sacrifice? The one you had today? Yesterday? The one you’ll have down the road? No wonder in Roman Catholicism there’s no such thing as assurance of salvation, how would you ever know? And let me just compound that a little bit. I was talking to R.C. Sproul this week back in Louisville and we were talking about Catholicism, it’s the background he came out of. And he said, “What’s really astounding about Catholicism is this, if the priest doesn’t have a pure intention when he offers the Mass, it’s invalid.” Whoa. “The only way that the thing becomes valid is if the intention of the priest is pure.” Trying to find a pure priest is no easy deal. And what if he’s immoral. What if he’s a pedophile? What if he’s a homosexual? Is that...does that invalidate everything the guy does? And just exactly what does pure intention mean?

Listen to Ludwig Ott, my favorite Roman Catholic theologian because I can find everything I need in that one book. Here’s Ott. “The sacrifice of the Mass effects the remission of the temporal punishments for sin which still remain after the forgiveness of the guilt of sins and of the eternal punishment, not merely remitted by the conferring of the grace of Penance, but also immediately because the atonement of Jesus Christ is offered as a substitute for our works of atonement and for the suffering of the poor souls. The measurement of the punishments of sins remitted is proportional.” Okay, you’re going to get your sins remitted but it’s proportional in the case of the living to the degree of perfection in their disposition. In the case of the suffering souls, the satisfactory operation of the sacrifice of the Mass is applied by way of intercession, as they are in the state of grace and thus oppose no obstacle. Theologians generally teach that at least part of their punishment for sins is infallibly remitted.

So now you’ve got not only the intention of the priest, but you’ve got the nature of the person’s attitude. On the same page he says, “As a propitiatory and impritiory(?), sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass possesses a finite external value since the operations of propitiation and impetration refer to human beings who as creatures can receive a finite act only. This explains the practice of the Church in offering the holy sacrifice of the Mass frequently for the same intention.”

What’s all that about? It’s all saying this, we can’t be too sure about the intention of the priest, we can’t be too sure about the intention of the person for whom the Mass is being offered. And since we can’t really be sure about that, we have human limitations upon the Mass. Since the priest might not have a pure intention, and the person might not have a pure intention and it might not be really doing very much good, and so they throw in this little possibility at the bottom that there has to be somewhere a finite benefit. In fact, part of their punishment must infallibly be remitted. You’ve got to throw that in. Why? Because you have to pay for the Mass. That’s right, you pay. That’s how the coffers of the Catholic Church are filled, you pay for a Mass. There are inexpensive Masses and there are really expensive ones offered by a Bishop or a Cardinal. There is the votive Mass which is like the routine stuff of life. There is a requiem which is a Mass for the dead, that costs you more. There’s a nuptial Mass for a wedding, that will cost you more. And then there’s a super Mass offered by a hierarchical figure in the Church which will cost you a lot more. The Catholic Church admits that you could have Mass upon Mass upon Mass upon Mass and you can pay plenty of money. And if the intention of the priest, intention of the priest isn’t right and the intention of the person receiving the Mass isn’t right, it’s not going to have much effect. But they hurry to quickly add, quote, “Part of their punishment is infallibly remitted.” Why? Because that’s really a bummer to try to get people to pay money for something that might have no value. So you stick in a little finite value at the bottom and that makes them come back again and again and again and again to pile up those little finite values.

Roman Catholic theology teaches that a person can attend a thousand Masses and still leave this life not fully purified and go into Purgatory and have another thousand Masses read in their behalf and still not be fully purified because their attitude isn’t pure and the attitude of the priest isn’t pure either. What a horrible trap, absolutely horrible trap. Mystical mumbo-jumbo right out of the pit to take captive the souls of people.

Now, to have a Mass you have to have a priest. You can’t have a Mass without a priest. That’s why the shortage of priests is a big problem...a big problem. Oh, I want to take you to a Mass for a moment here. This is kind of how it would float. This is Betner(?) who wrote a classic book called Roman Catholicism, you’ll be interested in this. Stay with me. “The bread in the form of thin round wafers, hundreds of which may be consecrated simultaneously is contained in a golden dish. The wine is in a golden cup. The supposed body and blood of Christ are then raised before the altar by the hands of the priests and offered up to God for the sins both of the living and the dead.” By the way, the people are never more than spectators. They don’t sing. They don’t talk. They don’t pray. They don’t do anything. And the liturgy is so rigid that it’s carried out mechanically and the priests have to be trained to do it. And you’ve got to be...you’ve got to have a good memory to be a priest. There’s a lot of details. And the observants, after he’s lifted it up, the priest partakes of a large wafer, then he drinks the wine in behalf of the whole congregation. They never drink the wine. Traditionally they do not. Maybe some exceptions to that. The lay members go to the front of the church. Some of you have seen this, some of you have done this. And they kneel before a railing and they close their eyes and they drop their jaw into an open-mouth position, into which the priest places a small wafer. And the reason it never leaves the hands of the priest and goes to the hands of the parishioner is simply because this is the complete body and blood of Christ and they don’t want to drop it, they don’t want the people to touch it. Only the priest drinks the wine because the people might spill it and it would land on the floor and it would have a horrible situation.

It used to be in Roman Catholic tradition, you had to abstain from solid food since midnight if you were having a morning Mass, that’s why they always had early Mass. You know where early Mass came from? It came from that traditional law that you couldn’t eat anything between midnight and Mass and people didn’t want to wait till nine o’clock, ten-o’clock, eleven o’clock so they always had a six o’clock, five o’clock Mass because people were hungry. They weren’t hungry to eat the wafer, they were just hungry to have the wafer eaten and then to go eat. And the reason you weren’t allowed to eat before midnight was they didn’t want to mingle Christ with anything else. Now that’s been changed. I know...I understand the silliness of it. Now it’s down to an hour, I think. Strange, however, isn’t it that the Lord instituted the Last Supper immediately after they had eaten a huge meal that lasted for hours? Christ had no objection with the bread and the wine being mixed with whatever else they ate.

Then the pageant really gets going. It takes a lot of training and you’ll understand why, okay? This is what happens. The priest then makes the sign of the cross sixteen times in his pageant. I’m not going through it step-by-step, I’m going to sum it up. He has to make the sign of the cross sixteen times. He has to turn toward the congregation six times, lift his eyes to heaven eleven times, kiss the altar eight times, fold his hands four times, strike his breasts ten times, bow his head 21 times, genuflect eight times, bow his shoulder seven times, bless the altar with the sign of the cross 30 times, lay his hands flat on the altar 29 times, pray secretly eleven times, pray aloud 13 times, take the bread and wine and turn it into the body and blood of Christ, cover and uncover the chalice ten times, go to and fro 20 times and in addition perform numerous other acts. What in the world is he doing? All this extended pageant is designed, writes Betner, to reenact the experience of Christ from the Last Supper in the Upper Room through the agony in the Garden, through the betrayal, through the trial, through the crucifixion, through His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. That’s why all that motions going on, some kind of dramatization. His bowings and genuflections are imitations of Christ in His agony and suffering and if the priest forgets one element of the drama, he commits a sin, technically invalidates the Mass. So you’ve got to be trained to do this. And you’ve got to have a good memory. Who could count all those? What you do is you go through it, it’s like a routine until you get it down.

Historically the Mass has been said or sung in Latin which nobody understood. They didn’t need to understand. Priesthood, by the way, replaced preaching, and an altar replaced a pulpit. That’s how it is with sacramental religion. And Betner says, “Surely there was much truth in Voltaire’s remark concerning the Mass as practiced in the cathedrals of France in his day when he called it the Grand Opera of the Poor.”

After the adoration of the consecrated host, the uplifted hands of the priest pretend to offer to God the very body and blood of Christ who has come down for the sacrifice for the living and the dead. And then the priest pretends to eat Him alive in the presence of the people, also to give Him to the people under the appearance of bread though it’s not really bread to be eaten by them. When the Roman priest consecrates the wafer, it is then called the Host and they worship it as God. And that’s why they genuflect, and that’s why they bow and you know as well as I do that that piece of bread is nothing but a piece of bread. And if the soul and divinity of Christ are not present, then to worship it is sheer idolatry, no different than a pagan who worships a rock or a stick or a statue or a fetish. And remember, the efficiency of all of this when it’s all said and done depends upon the priest’s intention. If he doesn’t have the right intension, it doesn’t work. Council of Trent, “If anyone shall say that intention at least of doing what the Church does is not required in ministers while performing and administering the Sacraments, let him be anathema.”

Pope Pius IV said, “If there is a defect in any of these, namely the due matter, the form with intention or the sacerdotal order of the celebrant, it nullifies the sacrament.” If you do it wrong, or with a wrong attitude, it’s null and void. Cardinal Bellerman(?) who is considered one of the foremost authorities says, quote: “No one can be certain with the certainty of faith that he has received a true sacrament since no sacrament is conformed without the intention of the ministers and no one can see the intention of another.” Just tragic stuff.

But according to the mediator day, the priests do this with the salvation of the world in view. Quote: “It is the sacrifice of the altar where the merits won by the Redeemer on the cross are distributed to the faithful.”

When you try to nail down the Roman Catholics on what exactly is going on, they...they’re all over the map. And most of the poor folks who just go to the Catholic Church have no clue except they think this is Christ and they worship Him. In fact, this is so serious, skipping over to something, listen to Mother Teresa and I’ll stop here.

This is a quote from Mother Teresa, “It is beautiful to see that humility of Christ in His permanent state of humility in the tabernacle,” the little box where they put the wafer and the wine. “Where Christ has reduced Himself to such a small particle of bread that a priest can hold Christ in two fingers.” Vatican II said, “The blessed Sacrament should be given the worship which is due to God, the true God. It is not to be adored any less.”

What are they worshiping? Bread? Churches promote the worship of the Blessed Sacrament. There are annual feasts in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. Special orders of men and women dedicated to continuous adoration of the Host. There is a group of nuns called, “The Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.” There is the congregation of the Blessed Sacrament who are, quote, “Devoted to carry out before the Blessed Sacrament a perpetual mission of prayer and supplication.” Their whole lives devoted to worshiping a piece of bread in a box.

Now let me close with this. I think I can find it. Oh yes. We’ll close by taking you to an eighteenth century eyewitness account of a festival, Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, the Blessed Sacrament. And I won’t drag you through all of it, it’s too painful. But it would go a little bit like this.

“Huge wooden figures fifteen feet dressed colorfully in their respective habits of office and dignity are assembled. All the clergy of the parish Churches and Friars of convents form a procession, all the silver bodies of saints on pedestals and bases in the Churches and convents are collected together.” So they’ve got all these statues and all these things. “The inhabitants are to clean the streets which the Sacrament is to go through and cover the ground with greens and flowers and put the best hangings in the front of balconies and windows. There’s going to be a parade of the bread. The Archbishop makes a prayer before the great altar. The music begins. The Archbishop takes out of the tabernacle the bread, the Host upon the rich solid gold chalice and places it on the great Custodia, on the altar’s table. The Archbishop in his Pontifical habit officiates his grace, gives the blessing to the people with the Sacrament in his hands. Then the Archbishop with the help of the Dean, the arch-deacon and the chanter, place the Custodia on a gilt pedestal which is adorned with flowers and the jewels of several ladies of quality and which is carried on the shoulders of twelve priests dressed in the same ornaments they say Mass in. This being done, the procession begins to go out of the Church in the following order.”

Now they’ve got twelve guys carrying this...this Custodia, this golden box and on top of it sits this little box with the Host in it. First of all comes the bagpipe, some kind of instrument played like a bagpipe and the great and small giants, the colorful figures dancing all along the streets followed by a big silver cross out of the cathedral. Next come 30...30 corporations of tradesmen, the smallest is thirty people. Then the boys and the girls of the Blue Hospital with their master, mistress and chaplain. Then all the religious orders led by the Franciscans cause they’re the youngest and all about 70 orders dressed in the ornaments they use at the altar. Twenty convents of Friars. About two thousand present on this solemn occasion. Sixteen convents of nuns, about 1500, twelve hundred parish priests, 47 hundred ecclesiastical personages and the rest add up to about fifteen thousand families. Massive parade.

They come out...this is in Spain in a town called Zeragoza(?) but it’s typical of all of these. They come marching out, twelve priests carrying the canopy under which the Sacrament goes, the Archbishop in his pontifical habit goes at the sub-deacon’s right hand, the viceroy at the Archbishop’s right hand, the deacon and the subdeacon, one at the right and the other at the left, all under the canopy. Six priests with incense and incensories on both sides of the Custodia go incensing the Sacrament without intermission, without stopping. One kneels down before the great host and incenses it three times. The other puts incense in his incensory and thus they do from the coming out of the Church until the return back. They’ve got three going at all times, this guy’s doing his three while the other is loading his three, and then they switch. The great chancellor, the presidents, the counsels follow after with all nobility, men and women with lighted candles. This procession lasts four hours from the time it goes out till it comes into the Church again. All the bells of the convents, all the parishes ring all this time. The riches of the procession are incredible. With this magnificence they carry the Sacrament through the principle streets of the city and all the people that are in the balconies and lattice windows throw roses and other flowers upon the canopy of the Sacrament as it goes by. This is the festival of Corpus Christi. This is the worship of bread.

By the way, there’s a revival in America today of the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. In Catholic Churches around America, parish families sign up for an hour or more each week to keep company with the Host and they go down to the Catholic Church and they sit there for an hour worshiping the Host around the clock every day.

Pope John Paul II approved enthusiastically of perpetual adoration...that’s what it means, perpetual around the clock worship of the Host. Some nuns do it all the time. Some congregations do it all the time. And in all Catholic Churches there are people assigned to keep it going around the clock, or in many Catholic Churches.

You could never confuse this with Christianity...never....never.

I have a lot more to say. Fascinating about where it came from and why it came. And I’m going to tell you next week some stories that will shock you about massacres of those who refused to worship the bread. Let’s pray.

We...we struggle with this, Lord, because it’s so dishonoring to You. We want to make a whip and clean it out. It is a den of thieves. It is a den of thieves, stripping people of their money and their souls in Your name. How it must horrify heaven, but our horror also is mingled with grief for the millions upon millions of people who are captive to this system and don’t even know what they teach, but worship a dead woman, Mary, and worship a box with bread in it and never the true and living God who trust in a priest who may have a wretched heart and not in the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy harmless undefiled one and only true great High Priest by whom access to You is given. Help us, Lord, to understand these things and to rejoice that we know the truth and have been delivered, many of us, from this satanic system. Help us to be eager to share the true gospel with those we know. We pray in the Lord’s name. Amen.

Explaining the Heresy of the Catholicism

Speaking of sound theology, we are on Sunday nights doing a doctrinal study and we have covered a lot of things over the last many, many months and found ourselves pressed into a very important look at Roman Catholic theology. It rises out of all of our study of theology because this culture in which we live is so dominated by Romanism. We have demonstrated by raising of hands several times in this recent series that the majority of people who have come to Christ in this church and that would be the majority of people in this church have come out of a Roman Catholic background. And it is important for us to understand what it is that Roman Catholic theology teaches and what it is that Catholics believe and advocate. It is important for a number of reasons, the first and foremost reason that presents itself to me in this day is that evangelicalism is in a big hurry to redefine Catholic people as brothers and sisters in Christ. There is an eagerness to accept them because they talk about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the cross and the resurrection, and even the Scripture. It is wishful thinking, however, to assume that people in the Roman Catholic Church are genuine Christians. In order to be genuine Christians they would have to believe something other than Roman Catholic theology.

The purpose of this series is by no means to belittle them, or to ridicule them, or to make them any kind of object of humor, no matter how bizarre the theological things that they advocate seem to us. But to maintain the age-old realization that they are still a mission field, that they need to be reached with the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, it’s my conviction that they are the most fertile soil for evangelism perhaps in the world because while they know all the terms, and some of the historical facts concerning the Lord Jesus, they know that they do not know God and they do not have the assurance of eternal life. Through the years we have seen such a tremendous response to the gospel among people coming out of Catholic Churches. And we want to make sure that we don’t allow ourselves to be lured into this very seductive kind of emphasis that’s coming along now that we’re all Christians together.

I also want to say, too, that what I’m telling you is essential Catholic doctrine and that is not to say that everybody in the Catholic Church, all people who are quote/unquote “Roman Catholics” believe this or even know this. Ignorance has always been a premium in Roman Catholicism. That’s why for so many centuries everything was done in Latin, it didn’t really matter whether the people understood it or not, it was all a kind of mystical and mechanical effort where ritual brought you through some ritualistic ceremonial mechanisms into communion with God through communing mystically with the church. And in recent years they have moved away from Latin in to the vernacular languages of the world, but still there is widespread ignorance among Roman Catholics, even as to the priesthood being unsure in many cases of what is important doctrine. And so we do understand that many people involved in Roman Catholicism have no idea what the Church’s dogma is, they’re just there going through the routine. However, to understand the truth is very important if we’re going to expose the system for what it is and ignorance doesn’t change that at all. And again, the purpose that we have in mind in dealing with this material is to demonstrate an evangelistic compassion toward people in Roman Catholicism...so close and yet so terribly far. In fact, as we remember from the writer of Hebrews, the hottest hell belongs to those who having known the cross and the truth of the cross have thereby trampled it under feet in unbelief. Theirs is the more severe eternal judgment. So they are not just a mission field, the are a great mission field, a needy mission field to which we have to go with great compassion and clarity of sound doctrine.

Now we are talking currently about the Mass, a pagan corruption, the Mass. It is a corruption of the Lord’s table. I haven’t taken the time to explain the biblical significance of the Lord’s table because I’ve done that for all the years I’ve been here. We have covered the ground on the meaning of the Lord’s table through the years every way possible, and I’m going to assume that you understand that. But I do want you to understand the error. I think you already know the truth. There, as I said, has been plenty of information that we’ve given from this pulpit in that regard.

I want to approach this tonight by looking at something that’s very historical. This week I had the opportunity to read a book that was given to me by Rick Holland called Bloody Mary’s Martyrs. It is a book that was produced in New York City in the year 2001. I have always been frankly extremely fascinated by the sixteenth century, particularly the sixteenth century in the UK, Scotland, Ireland and England, because of my own ancestry going back there both on my father’s side, both parents of his. And I have always loved that particular century because of the tremendous influence and impact of the Reformation as it reached into England and Scotland and particularly the amazing ministry of John Knox. And so it is interesting to me to understand a little bit of the history of Bloody Mary, as she is known, Queen Mary Tudor. This book is a history of Mary and the martyrs that were slaughtered under her reign from the very inception of her reign she began the slaughter. The writer of the book says this, “In England, in the reign of Queen Mary Tudor, for 45 terrible months between February 4, 1555 and November 10,1558, two hundred and eighty-three Protestants were martyred, 227 men and 56 women. There are other records that indicate also there were four children. They were all burned alive, for certain, 283 were burned alive and that is how Queen Mary Tudor became known as Bloody Mary.

Let me read the record of the execution of just a few of the best known names. You can find a great amount of this history in Foxe’s classic Book of Martyrs. There’s also a wonderful other source if you can find it, it’s a book written by J.C. Ryle called Light From Old Paths which also has a history of the Marion martyrs, as they are called. One was a wonderful preacher of the gospel named John Rogers. And John Rogers was burned in Smithsfield on Monday, the fourth of February, he was the first martyr that launched her 45 month campaign. He had assisted, here is his crime, he had assisted Tyndale and Coverdale in bringing out a most important version of the English Bible, a version commonly known as Matthew’s Bible, taking Tyndale’s New Testament and combining it with his own work in the Old Testament and putting it under the title of Matthew’s Bible as a synonym to try to hide a little bit. It didn’t bear his name but he was condemned as Rogers, alias Matthews. He was the first one who was burned at the stake. He was led forth to Smithsfield on foot within sight of the Church of the Sepulcher where he had preached. He was led through the streets of the parish where he had done the work of a pastor. And along the way stood his wife and ten children, one a newborn baby in the arms of his wife. As he passed his children, he was unable to do anything but to look at them and smile and say a brief word of greeting because of the diabolical cruelty of Bishop Bonner who had flatly refused him any opportunity to see his wife or his children when in prison. He only glanced at then and then walked on calmly to the stake, reciting Psalm 51. He walked, says Bishop Ryle, steadily, unflinchingly into a fiery grave and upon his arrival, the enthusiasm of the crowd knew no bounds, they rent the air with thunders of applause. Even Nol Elai(??) The French ambassador wrote home a description of the scene and said that Rogers went to his death as though he were walking to his wedding. Ridley says in the book, Bloody Mary’s Martyrs, “On his last night in his prison cell at New Gate, he slept so soundly that his jailor had to wake him in the morning and tell him it was time for him to dress and prepare to leave for the place of execution. He was happy, because he knew that however much he might suffer in the fire, he would go directly to heaven.”

Death came quickly. He held his hands in the fire and went through the motions of washing them as if the fire had been cold water. Then he withdrew them from the flames, held them aloft in the air and recited a prayer until he died soon afterwards.

Then there was John Hooper, another preacher of the gospel. When he arrived at the spot of his execution, he was allowed to pray though strictly forbidden to speak to the people. A box was placed before John Hooper containing a full pardon if he would only recant. His answer was, “Away with it, away with it.” He was then fastened to the stake by an iron around his waist and fought his last fight with the king of terrors. Three times the faggots had to be lighted because they would not burn properly. Three quarters of an hour the noble sufferer endured the mortal agony as Foxe says, “Neither moving backward, forward, nor to any side but only praying, ‘Lord, Jesus, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And beating his breast with one hand till it was burned to a stump.” Seven thousand were there to watch and a blind boy said, “You, sir, have enabled me to see the light of the gospel.”

Then there was Robert Ferarre(?) burned at Kamarthon(?) on Friday, the thirtieth of March, the same year. He stood in the flames holding out his hands till they were burned to stumps until a bystander in mercy struck him on the head and put an end to his suffering. And so that Welch preacher passed away.

And then the two famous compatriots in the gospel, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer. Ridley arrived on the ground first and seeing Latimer come afterwards ran to him and embraced him saying, “Be of good heart, brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flames or else He will strengthen us to abide it.” Ridley’s last words before the fire was lighted were these, “Heavenly Father, I give Thee most hardy thanks that Thou hast called me to a profession of Thee, even unto death. I beseech Thee, Lord God, have mercy on this realm of England and deliver the same from all her enemies.” Latimer’s last words were like the blast of a trumpet which rings even to this day, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day by God’s grace light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out.” And when the flames began to rise, Ridley cried out with a loud voice, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Lord, receive my spirit.” Latimer cried vehemently on the other side of the stake, “Father of heaven, receive my soul.” Latimer died soon, an old man of eighty years of age. It took very little to set his spirit free from its earthly torment. Ridley suffered long and painfully from the bad management of the fire by those who attended the execution. At length, however, the flames reached the vital part of him and he fell at Latimer’s feet and they were at rest. Ryle says they were lovely and beautiful in their lives and in death they were not divided.

John Philpot was burned in Smithsfield December 18, 1555. The night before his execution he went to his bedroom and thanked God that he was counted worthy to suffer for the truth. And when he came to Smithsfield he kneeled down and said, “I will pay my vows.” He then kissed the stake and said, “Shall I disdain to suffer at this stake, seeing my Redeemer did not refuse to suffer a most vile death on the cross for me?” After that he meekly repeated the 106, 107 and 108 Psalm and being chained to the stake died very quietly.

And there was Thomas Cranmer who vacillated back and forth, back and forth and seemed to be very unfaithful. But in the end found his courage and came to his death. As he was being burned he said, “I will burn my hand that writes first for it is my hand that in the past has written things contrary to the truth. It shall burn first.” And it did.

There is another amazing story of a girl named Peratine(?) Couchen(?). The Channel Islands were in the realm of Queen Mary and this is in the summer of 1556, a case arose there. There was a woman named Catherine(?) Couchen(?) and she lived in the Channel Islands with the two daughters, Paratine and Gillamine. Through a series of circumstances, a woman reported Catherine and her two daughters as heretics and the three women were convicted of heresy and sentenced to be burned. Paratine did not tell the judges at her trial that she was pregnant. When the fire was lit, the heat of the fire caused Paratine to give birth to her baby son who fell onto the faggots while the flames burned around him. One of the spectators rushed forward to save the baby and pulled him out of the fire and laid him on the grass. A man at arms picked him up and he was handed from one official to another till he was given to the sheriff in charge of the execution. The sheriff ordered his man to throw the baby back into the fire and he was burned with his mother, his grandmother and his aunt.

Well there are eight of the 283 and there are many more stories like that. And the question is...why? Why? And the answer is a single answer, amazingly enough. All of them, all 283 of them were burned and even more during the prior reign of Henry VIII, they were all burned because of one matter, they refused to admit and believe in the doctrine at the center of the Mass, the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. J.C. Ryle writes, “All without one exception were called to special account about the real presence and in every case their refusal to admit the doctrine formed one principle cause of their condemnation. They all died under Bloody Mary because they would not acknowledge that the wine and the bread at the Lord’s table was the real presence of the body, the blood and the nature and the divinity of Jesus Christ. In fact, Foxes’ book of martyrs records the very words of the martyrs when they died. Listen to what John Rogers said. “I was asked whether I believed in the sacrament to be the very body and blood of our Savior, Christ, that was born of the Virgin Mary and hanged on the cross really and substantially. I answered, ‘I think it could be false. I cannot understand really and substantially to signify otherwise then corporeally, but corporeally Christ is only in heaven and so Christ cannot be corporeally in your sacrament.’ And therefore he was condemned and burned.” Here are the words of sentence against Bishop Ridley, “The said Nicholas Ridley affirms, maintains and stubbornly defends certain opinions, assertions and heresies contrary to the Word of God and the received faith of the Church as in denying the true and natural body and blood of Christ to be in the sacrament of the altar and secondarily, in affirming the substance of bread and wine to remain after the words of consecration.” And so he was condemned and burned.

Now remember what I told you last time. The idea of the Mass is that when the priest consecrates the wine and the bread, they immediately and miraculously become the real blood and the real body of Jesus Christ and are no longer wine and no longer bread. Although they maintain the appearance of them, that is not the reality of them. What Ridley said was that before and after the consecration, it was still wine and it was still bread. And he was condemned and burned. His friend, Latimer, here’s what was said against him, “That thou hast openly affirmed, defended and maintained that the true and natural body of Christ after the consecration of the priest is not really present in the sacrament of the altar and that in the sacrament of the altar remains still the substance of bread and wine.” Same thing. And the good old man, Latimer, said, “After a corporeal being which the Romish Church furnisheth, Christ’s body and blood is not in the sacraments under the forms of bread and wine. In denying it, he was condemned and burned.

Here is the address made by Bishop Bonner to Philpot, “You have offended and trespassed against the Sacrament of the Altar, denying the real presence of Christ’s body and blood to be there, affirming also material bread and material wine to be in the Sacrament and not the substance of the body and blood of Christ. And because of that opinion, he was burned.” Here’s what Cranmer said with almost his last breath, this is in St. Mary’s Church in Oxford, “As for the Sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester, to which my book teaches so true a doctrine that it shall stand at the last day before the judgment of God when the Papist’s doctrine contrary there to shall be ashamed to show her face.” You want to know what he said in his book? “They...the Papists say, that Christ is corporeally under or in the form of bread and wine. We say that Christ is not there, neither corporeally nor spiritually, but in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine He is spiritually and corporeally he is in heaven and so he was burned.” Three hundred years later the Roman Catholic Church was still doing this, the last martyr to the Catholic system in Spain was in the year 1826, a school teacher named Kaitano(?) Repoll(?), he was burned at the stake in 1826 for not taking his students to Mass, for not making them kneel before the Host and for saying, “Praise be to God,” instead of “Hail Holy Mary.”

It really is a horrible thing to think that an ordinance given by our Lord for the blessing of His beloved saints would be so corrupted and so defiled that it would become a devilish, satanic reason to slaughter the most faithful Christians and preachers of the gospel. But it did in the corrupting hands of the Roman system.

As I said, from the fourth of February 1555 to the tenth of November 1558, 45 months Protestants were put to the ultimate test about their conviction concerning the Lord’s Table. That was the issue. Mary was a staunch Catholic. When she came to the throne, England had begun to be transformed by the Protestant Reformation. Luther had nailed his thesis to the door at Wittenberg about 38 years earlier, 1517, and 38 years the Reformation had spread to England. Just a footnote, I happened to have because they’ve been given to me by friends, some Bibles that were printed and used in that very period of time. In fact I have a copy of Matthew’s Bible, I almost brought it to show you tonight but it’s huge. It’s a sacred treasure to me because I understand the price that John Rogers paid and the price that William Tyndale paid. Tyndale was executed and so was John Rogers.

Well the Reformation infuriated Queen Mary who was Catholic and she set out to erase the gospel of grace from her kingdom, and the standard she used was the Mass and Transubstantiation. For anybody who didn’t affirm it, death came swiftly. And as I pointed out last time, the Catholic position is that in the cup and the bread after the priest consecrates it, he is doing something that has supernatural power that transforms it into the real presence of Jesus Christ. This was repulsive to the Reformers, to the true Christians. And what they said was that this Mass every time they did it was another sacrifice, a re-sacrifice of Christ who would be endlessly sacrificed over and over and over and over till the end of the world, they said. English Protestants would not participate in a Mass because that would be a denial of the sufficiency of the one offering of Jesus Christ. And so Mary made a law, if you deny the real presence of Christ in the bread and the cup, you’re guilty of heresy and you will be burned. The true Christian faith and the true Christian understanding of the Lord’s Table isn’t anywhere close to the Roman perversion.

Just to review it. The Roman Catholic Church says the Mass is a real and true sacrifice for sins. Every Mass ever done by a priest is a real and true sacrifice. So there is not just one sacrifice at the cross, there are millions. The Roman Catholic view says the sacrifice is propitiatory, that is it provides a real satisfaction to propitiate or satisfy the justice of God. It therefore genuinely effects the remission of sins and the punishment that could come and should come to the sinner. However, it is only propitiatory if in fact, says Rome, the intention of the priest is pure and if the intention of the priest is not pure, then it does not have its validity. Although, they conceded, otherwise it would be pretty hard to get people to pay for a Mass if they thought it might not matter since the priest might not have true intentions, it does have some minimal propitiatory benefit even though the full efficacy depends upon the valid intention of the priest. The Roman Catholic Catechism, a more current one, quotes Vatican II, quote: “As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which Christ has been sacrificed is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out.” It is a sacrifice, it is an actual sacrifice though unbloody of the real Christ made on a real altar by a real priest, it is a sacrifice that the priest offers to God the Father, so you have a human priest offering to God the Father, God’s own Son as a sacrifice that is propitiatory, redemptive and brings about the remission of sin to the degree that the intention of the priest is valid. It is a false sacrifice of a false Christ on a false altar by a false priest.

They say that Christ is a non-bloody sacrifice, but He is still...use the word immolated. Immolation is a word we don’t hear a lot, but immolation...because we don’t live in a sacerdotal sacrificial kind of culture, but immolation is the sacrificial killing of a victim. They say in the Mass Christ is actually immolated. He is sacrificially killed. Christ becomes in their language the Most Holy Victim, actually present in flesh and spirit and divinity in the bread and the wine though it appears still to be bread and wine. By the way, that’s kind of an aorist atillion(?) influence that what we see is not the true reality. It is, in fact, mystical mumbo-jumbo. In fact, you remember what I told you in past studies, in the Mass the priest says in Latin, “This is My body,” but in Latin it is, “Hocus Corpus meum...hocus Corpus meum.” People didn’t know Latin and that’s where the little expression, “Hocus Pocus” came from. It’s just so much meaningless hocus pocus.

Roman Catholic theology says the Mass is being offered for the redemption of the world...the redemption of the world. And as I said last time, the key to the whole thing is this transubstantiation...transforming the substance from bread and wine to the actual Christ. The holy Mass is the sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus Christ really present on the altar under the appearance of bread and wine and offered to God for the living and the dead for the sins of the living and the sins of the dead that needed to get themselves out of Purgatory where they’re being purged from their sins. Elaguare(???) again who wrote The Glories of Mary says this, “We are struck with wonder when we find that in obedience to the words of his priest, Hocus Corpus Meum, this is My body, God Himself descends on the altar.” Listen to what he says, “God comes whenever the priest calls him and as often as they call Him and places Himself in their hands even they...even though they should be His enemies.” Some kind of power the priests have to call down God from heaven and it says, Elaguare, “After having come, God remains entirely at their disposal and they move Him as they please from one place to another. They may, if they wish, shut Him up in the tabernacle,” that is in the little box where they keep the Host, “Or expose Him on the altar, or carry Him outside the Church. They may if they choose eat His flesh and give Him for the food of others besides the power of the priest surpasses that of the Blessed Virgin because she cannot absolve a Catholic from even the smallest sin.” That, by the way, is in a volume called, “The Dignity and Duties of the Priest.” This is their priestly power, to pull God down and infuse Him into the Mass and then move Him wherever they want. The priest then is supposed to be endowed with power by the Bishop at his ordination. The ordination of a priest is a very important event because he is given the power at his ordination to change the bread and the wine into the literal living body and blood of Christ. He literally is given the power to call God out of heaven and bring Him into those elements. In fact, they say the body of Christ is present down to the last eyelash and toenail. And when asked how is it possible for THE body of Christ which is one body to be everywhere in the world where Mass is being said at the same time, and the anser is, “It’s a miracle.”

After the adoration of the consecrated Host, the uplifted hands of the priest pretend to offer God the very body and blood of Christ as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. And then in observance of the Eucharist, the priest eats Christ alive in the presence of the people. And then gives Him to the people under the appearance of bread.

It is a horrific and pagan event that goes on constantly. The congregation of the Blessed Sacrament is an organization devoted to carry out before the Blessed Sacrament a perpetual mission of prayer and supplication. There are people in that organization and a number of other organizations who spend all of their time praying to the box that contains the Host. Roman Catholics all over the world do this. We closed out last time by saying in Roman Catholic Churches they have people sign up to come at all hours of the day to pray to the box.

Now what is the source of this strange and bizarre system. And I’m not going to say anymore because we said enough last time. Where does this come from? Obviously from Satan, counterfeit, pagan religion. There is no special priesthood in Christianity, we’re all kings and priests. We don’t need human mediators, we have one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus. There are no more altars. The one sacrifice was made, there are no more altars, there are no more sacrifices. Jesus doesn’t die again and again and again and again.

But why do they do this? Where does this come from? Paganism has to have...paganism has to have a..some symbols of religiosity. It has to give the illusion of mystery. It has to give the illusion of deity and divinity. It has to give the illusion of transcendence. It has to give the illusion of magic. This is just one concoction to pull it off.

Now I’m going to get a little academic for a few minutes, just grin and bear it for a while and maybe it will help you. Some of you will appreciate this...maybe not all. How can I say this in a few words? Not a skill that I have developed through the years...by the way. Who said “amen” about that? I can’t argue with it...now think with me, okay? The New Testament conveys the idea of a composite society, that’s new, that’s revolutionary...just file that...a composite society. That is to say the New Testament presents a society in the world that is composed of two factions, okay? Society is made up of believers and non-believers, all right? Christians and non-Christians, those who believe the gospel and those who do not, those who proclaim with others deny, those who believe what others reject, this is a composite society. We understand that. We understand that in America, we live in a composite society, it goes way back to our Constitution which understands the separation of church and state, that we are living...that’s just another way to say we live in a composite society. New Testament society then has church and state and they are completely different, completely separate, completely distinct loyalties. And we who live in this composite society as Christians must render loyalty to both the state and the church. We know that. The state demands our loyalty. It demands loyalty from every citizen to its laws. The church demands loyalty as the Word of God is brought to bear upon those who are part of it. So we live in a two-loyalty world. Not everybody does, but we as Christians do. We are told in the Bible to be model citizens, that the powers that be are ordained of God and we’re to submit to them. We’re even to pray for those that are over us, the rulers and governors and submit to them. And the state has been given by God a sword, that is authority even to the point of death to constrain and coerce us. This is the societal law of penalty. So the state has a sword and the state demands our loyalty for the well-being of those who live in that state.

The church also has a sword to constrain and to coerce. The church also has a sword to persuade, it is Scripture, it is the Law of God. If we do not obey the law of the state, we are physically alienated. If we do not obey the Law of God, we are spiritually alienated. This is what the New Testament teaches. We’re going to have to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. We understand that. We also understand that the state is not the church, the church is not the state, they are completely distinct and Jesus made it absolutely clear when He said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”

Now let me tell you something. That concept which is so obvious to us is brand new in the New Testament...brand new. Nobody before the New Testament ever heard of such a thing, no one. All previous societies in the world were one loyalty, religion and the state were one. Religion and the state were one, all previous societies, including Israel, were sacral, sacred societies. That is they were unified and bound together by common religious loyalty. Government was inseparable from religion. Government wielded power in behalf of religion. No society in history, according to historians who have studied this, no society in history ever was composite. Pre-Christian society had no option. If you wonder about it, look at a Muslim country. What options do people living there have? There’s no difference between Islamic religion and Islamic state. If you’re not a Muslim, you may be killed. There are no composite societies. Hinduism, same thing, take any historical religion, there’s no such thing as a composite society until you come to the New Testament and it lays it out. There were Christians throughout the history of the church who understood this. They understood that the state should not exercise power over them, but we saw tonight that the Queen of England, along with all the other monarchs, along with all the other state leaders of that time thought that they as the rulers of the state had the right to execute the people who didn’t cooperate with their religious conviction. There was no difference. In fact they pretty much saw the king as exercising divine rite. And I told you, if you go to the Scottish Parliament to this day you’ll see a chair at the top of the Scottish Presbyterian Parliament that’s for the King of the Queen or his representative to sit symbolizing headship in the church. Even Israel was not a composite society. Everybody in Israel was to conform to Israel’s moral, social, ethical, ceremonial laws. It wasn’t until the New Testament that this was really made clear because the Jews lived in a theocratic kingdom, but the church exists as a part of a secular society. There’s no such thing as a Christian society. There’s no such thing as a Christian nation. There are only Christian people living in a nation and depending upon the number of them, they have a lessor or greater influence. There are only more or less Christians in a society, there’s no such thing as a Christian nation or a Christian society.

But along comes the early church and what happens? They get persecuted by the Jews because they’re not consistent with Jewish religion because Jewish religion and the Jewish state were one. They get persecuted by the Romans because they won’t worship whom? The emperor, Caesar. Classic sacral culture, non-composite. Even when you went to the butcher shop to buy your meat, you bought meat at the butcher shop that had been offered to...what?...to idols. Christians could eat that stuff because an idol was nothing anyway. Sacral societies punished dissenters. Rome killed Christians. Right now, we just heard it on the news, the Afghan government going to try a Christian and execute him for being a Christian because they don’t understand a composite society. The New Testament taught that, but sad to say, even coming out of the Reformation the Reformers never really applied it. That composite society began to disappear in history very fast. Second century, third century after Christ, the composite understanding is beginning to erode. In the year 250 Origen, early church father, suggests that the entire Roman Empire should unite in devotion to the true God and the Lord will slay all non-believers...that was Origen. This is a call to redefine the church of Jesus Christ to make it the all-embracing society and if they did that, God would slay all of the non-conformists. It was not long after that, 325, seventy-five years later, Constantine took power in the Roman Empire and did just that. What Constantine did was say there are too many gods, too many religions. If we’re going to have a unified empire, we’re going to have to have one religion and he picked Christianity. Everybody was to be a Christian. Non-Christians were punished. They were identified as heretics, revolutionaries, reactionaries, non-conformists and they were to be punished. Everybody was going to be a Christian. How you going to do that? Well you have to have a rite, you have to have a ritual, you have to have a ceremony that makes them all automatically Christians and so came infant baptism. Infant baptism did the trick. Go through a ceremonial washing after birth and this is an official entrance into the church, this is an official entrance into the Covenant people. Now the government has control over everybody. The government is the church. Religion and the state are inseparable. And so the New Testament model is gone by the time you get to the fourth century. And as I said, there were always true believers through all this history who knew this was not right. And what was born with Constantine was Christendom rather than Christianity. A Christian-kingdom is contracted to Christendom.

There were protestors, believe me, as I said called the Donatists. They protested. They said the church is for those who are true believers. You can’t make everybody a part of the church by baptizing babies. They were suppressed. Through history whenever this came up among Anabaptists and others, they were called Neodonatists because they were bringing up this old argument. But there have always been true people of God who challenged the sacral society.

Since everybody came in through a rite, everybody was sustained by a rite and a ceremony and a ritual. And so came all those adaptations of pagan rituals that swept in to the Roman Empire and created the mish-mash of quasi Christianity and paganism that is Roman Catholicism.

What about the Reformation? Sixteenth century? Sad to say, the Reformers while they did a great job on some of the doctrines that developed what was essentially a New-Constantinianism. They opted for a sacral society and Germany became a sacral society. All the babies were baptized. Switzerland became a sacral society and all the babies were baptized. The Netherlands and England and everybody bought in to the sacral society. No better demonstration than in England where there was no separation of the church and state and so the church, quote/unquote, was not regenerate people but a mish-mash of all kinds of people, some saved, some corrupt and most of the leadership severely corrupt.

So how do you sustain these people in this false form of religion? You do it with mystery. You do it with mechanisms. You do it with rites and ceremonies. It’s really immaterial whether anything communicates to them in a language the can understand. You can look at the fifteenth and sixteenth, seventeenth century in England and you would be appalled at the ignorance of the priesthood. I mean, they were so ignorant...I’ve read..for example, they couldn’t name four Apostles. They didn’t know where the books of the Bible were. It was...they didn’t learn that. That was immaterial. They just needed to learn, as I pointed out last time, how many times you turn around when you do the Mass and to make sure you pound the table eleven times, facing in one direction, and so forth and so on. All through the Middle Ages there were Christians who cried out for the true church and very often they were slaughtered...they were slaughtered. Now not all of them were legitimate believers, but there were among them true believers, as there were true believers in the sacral societies, but they always knew what it was to be a true believer and could easily see who was not. Typically they were killed, just as these that I read you about were martyred. Read Foxes Book of Martyrs. By the way, in our library over here, we have an original edition of the first printing of the three volumes of Foxes Book of Martyrs which was given to me...it’s huge. It’s historic, marvelous. They were killed because they would not comply with Christendom because they couldn’t comply with Christendom because their Christianity prevented them from it. Mediaeval society became totalitarian, there weren’t any options. Christian sacralism, Protestant sacralism developed alongside Roman Catholic sacralism and you had Catholic states like Italy and France and Protestant states like Germany and Switzerland. Church and state were one religious society. Somewhere in the middle of all of this were true believers.

The first break, this is some interesting history, the first break from sacral society was America. America, according to some scholars, never was a Christian nation, never was...no nation ever is in the true sense. America is the first nation in the history of the world that is a composite nation. This is the great experiment here. This is the great experiment. What happened was, the people who came here to found America came out of the sacral society because they were true Christians, persecuted by Christendom...the Pilgrims, Puritans, they came here and they founded a country that they took back to a New Testament model that would be a composite in which they would render to Caesar what was Caesar’s and render to God what was God’s. So in a sacral culture, salvation becomes a matter of sacrament, it becomes a matter of ritual, it becomes a matter of manipulation. Baptism and other mechanical means borrowed from cultic rites and ceremonies are imported. It got so bad, really, even the Reformers killed non-conformists. Even the Reformers killed non-quote/unquote Christians. Anabaptists, some of them were drowned by Reformers for denying infant baptism. When Cromwell went from England over to kill the Irish, the chaplain for his armies to kill the Catholics was none other than the great Puritan Divine John Owen. They didn’t have a sacral...they didn’t have a hybrid society. They didn’t have a composite mind set. Verdun(?), who writes so lucidly on all of these themes says this, “The church of the Middle Ages was not a company of believing folk joined in voluntary association. It was a mass of human beings brought together and held together by the symbols of coercion,” end quote. Religion was not personal, it was not a matter of faith, it was not a matter of righteousness, not a matter of holiness, not a matter of truth, it was a matter of ritual.

So, priests replaced preachers, an altar replaces the pulpit, doctrine is replaced by ritual ceremony. The Roman Catholic Church is still a sacral society. All its components are pagan and cultic. As I said, it wasn’t even till Vatican II that priests could speak in the vernacular. Before that it had to be in Latin because Christ...listen to me...was never imparted by the preaching of the Word, He is imparted by the ritual of the Mass. It’s not about truth to the mind, not about faith comes by hearing the truth about Christ, Romans 10, the central event in a true church...what is the central event in a true church? What is it? What is the central piece of furniture in a true church? You’re looking at it. What is the central event in a true church? It’s the preaching of the Word of God. What is the central event in a false sacral cultic society? It is an altar and a priesthood and a sacrifice. It is the stuff borrowed from cultic ritual. What is the central purpose of the central event in the church? To preach the Word of God clearly to the mind so people can know it, understand it, believe it. What is the central function in a sacral society? It is a priestly transaction in which God somehow is infused into a cracker and eaten. It is not clarity, it is mystery. It is hocus-pocus consistent with the other mingling of demonic activities and useless ceremonies and all kinds of false religions. The priest conveys Christ in an act, not by the preaching of the gospel. The Lord’s table becomes an altar where people can eat the actual flesh and drink the actual blood of a sacrificial victim that is being offered by a false priest to God as if Jesus needed to be sacrificed all over again. And as I said last week, all you have to do to receive Christ is drop your lower jaw.

By the way, there are at least seven Sacraments in the Catholic Church, mechanical means of imparting mysterious divinity to people. The preacher replaced by the sacrificer. The Bible and its clarity replaced by the mumbo-jumbo. They believe that the Sacrament of the Mass has the innate power to convey Christ and grace and forgiveness and redemption and provide propitiation to satisfy God. And in that system, the manipulator is essential. In that system the priest is everything and that is why the shortage of priests today is so critical.

None of this has anything to do with the Christian gospel. None of this has anything to do with the Christian life. None of this has anything to do with the Christian church. None of this has anything to do with the true God...nothing whatsoever. The differences are not cosmetic. The differences are not superficial. They are essential to the salvation of the eternal soul and the truth of the gospel. There is no salvation or sanctification in the blessed Sacrament. There is no salvation in any Sacrament of any kind in any ritual, any routine, or any ceremony. The bread and the wine is not Christ in any sense. It is not a mystical experience in which people take in God. All of this is a lie, a fraud, a damning fabrication to be exposed for what it is...just as in the book of Hebrews the writer exposes the uselessness of the long departed Old Testament sacrificial system which never needs to be resurrected because the cross has accomplished everything–everything. It is demonic. It is idolatrous as the Host is worshiped. The Mass cancels the cross. It is the worship of an idol made with hands. Somebody made the wine and somebody made the bread.

A couple of passages come to mind in the midst of this and just a couple to bring to your attention here. Romans chapter 6 verse 9...well verse 8, “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” Now listen to this. “Knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to...what?...to what?...to die again...never.” Never to die again. “Death no longer is master of Him for the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. The life that He lives He lives to God.” He died once, He will never, ever, ever die again. He was a sacrifice once, it is an abomination to turn Him in to a perpetual sacrifice. In 1 Peter 3 verse 18, “For Christ also died for sins once for all; the just for the unjust so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” He died once for all. Hebrews 7:27...26, “It was fitting for us to have such a High Priest holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens who does not need daily like those high priests who offer up sacrifices first for his own sin and then for the sins of the people because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.” The Mass cancels the cross, the Mass is idolatry.

Listen to J.C. Ryle. “Whatever men please to think or say, the Romish doctrine of the real presence if pursued to its legitimate consequences obscures every leading doctrine of the gospel and damages and interferes with the whole system of Christ’s truth. Grant for a moment that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice and not a Sacrament, grant that every time the words of consecration are used the natural body and blood of Christ are present on the communion table under the forms of bread and wine, grant that everyone who eats that consecrated bread and drinks that consecrated wine does really eat and drink the natural body and blood of Christ, grant for a moment these things and then see what momentous consequences result from these premises. You spoil the blessed doctrine of Christ’s finished work when He died on the cross. A sacrifice that needs to be repeated is not a perfect or complete thing. You spoil the priestly office of Christ. If there are priests that can offer an acceptable sacrifice to God besides Him, the great High Priest is robbed of His glory. You spoil the scriptural doctrine of the Christian ministry. You exalt sinful men into the position of mediators between God and man. You give to the sacramental elements of bread and wine an honor and veneration they were never meant to receive. You produce an idolatry to be abhorred by faithful Christians. Last but not least, you overthrow the true doctrine of Christ’s human nature. If the body born of the Virgin Mary can be in...can be in more places than one at the same time, it is not a body like our own and Jesus was not the last Adam in the truth of our nature.” Not a minor thing. That is the perverse and idolatrous reality, the implications that come.

What about somebody who says, “Well I think I’m a Christian but I...I like going to the Catholic Church. I feel at home there. And should I leave?” Listen to 1 Corinthians 10:21, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” Take your choice.

At the end of each delivery in the Mass, the communicant who receives the Host is required to say one thing to the priest, “Amen...Amen,” affirming the truth of having received Christ. That is impossible for a true Christian. And if you are still lingering with that system, you must come out and we must with love and sensitivity call people to the true gospel.

Father, we thank You for the time tonight. So much to think about, such heart-searching things and, O Lord, how we want to be discerning and compassionate, loving, gracious in seeking to bring the true gospel to those beleaguered souls who are caught up in this meaningless and condemning mystery. Give us opportunity to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel of grace. We pray in His name. Amen.

Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: An Overview

Tonight, as was made clear this morning, we are going to be looking at the subject of the idolatry of worshiping Mary. And I want to say a few things before I say a few things by way of an introduction. The first thing to say is my objective and my goal is to make known to you the truth for the sake of the truth, for the sake of the God of the truth who is to be honored. A second and corollary purpose is to let you know that the worship of Mary is, in fact, an idolatry that is displeasing to God. And I say that because it’s critically important that we understand what it is that God desires and what it is He blesses and what it is that He rejects and punishes.

Now I want to break this up into several components. It’s important, to begin with, to understand what the Roman Catholic Church and the people in the Roman Catholic system have and do believe about Mary. So we’re going to begin with a look at what has been written and said and established about her. Then we’re going to move from that into specific dogma, when the Church has absolutely laid down an absolute dogma regarding Mary, we’ll take a look at that. Thirdly, we’ll compare that with Scripture. And then finally, we’ll conclude with a comparison of this to other texts of Scripture that relate to forms of idolatry, false gods and blasphemy of worshiping any other than the true and living God.

We’re not surprised that some people worship people. Romans chapter 1 says that when people suppress the truth of God and reject that which can be known of God that is in them, in the place of God they create their own idols in the form of man as well as beasts and other animals. It is a little bit unusual, however, in our society to worship dead people. There is a group of Jews in New York City called the Lubavitches(???) and they worship a dead rabbi.

Perhaps even more strange is the growing worship of the former emperor of Ethiopia. He was crowned emperor on November 2 in 1930. He died in 1975. For 45 years he was the emperor of Ethiopia. You would know him and history knows him as Haile Selassie I, or the first, but among his followers, Haile Selassie One. That is not his actual name, that’s a name he took. And what it means is “the power of the Trinity.” He took that name for himself. He also took other names for himself, “King of Kings, Lord of Lords,” and borrowing from Revelation 5:5, “The Conquering Lion of Judah,” a Messianic title. His pre-coronation name, the name that he was given at birth, an Ethiopian name, Ras Taffari Maconin(?). He was raised in the Ethiopian orthodox religion. He was particularly interested in the Bible and most of all in the Old Testament. Some of you will remember him, if you’re old enough, you will remember Haile Selassie. He showed up at all kinds of world events for the 45 years of his reign, including, I believe, the funeral of John F. Kennedy. He was a remarkable man, five-foot- three, or five-foot-four with lifts. And always, no matter what the occasion, bedecked with a panoply of medals, dozens of them all over his coat. He actually claimed to be the 225th in an unbroken line of Ethiopian kings descending from a union between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He actually went so far as to say, “Psalm 87 verses 4 thorough 6 prophesied his coronation.” That all seems very bizarre to us but you might want to know that there are well in excess of one million people who today as I speak to you worship him as God. They call him “Ja(?),” short for Yahweh. They call him the king of creation, the call him the living god and they call him god incarnate. Some identify him with the title, “The black messiah of the world.” He is believed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

The religion that subscribes to these bizarre ideas about the man is drawn from his original name. His original name, I told you, Ras Taffari. His worshipers are called Rastifarians. Strangely this started not in Ethiopia but in Jamaica. And it started in 1930, the year of his coronation, when among the very poor and disenfranchised Jamaicans, they took seriously his claim to be king of kings and lord of lords, his claim to be the conquering lion of Judah and they began to worship him as God. The characteristics of the religion began to develop and they are fairly well fixed today. They believe only in the King James Version of the Bible, or the Am Harak(??) version which is in Ethiopian language. If you’re in that religion, you have a personal relationship to Ras Taffari. That’s why you are a Rastifarian, just as if you have a personal relationship to Christ you are a Christian. They say he didn’t really die, his death was a scam and he’s coming back to Africa on the day of judgment. They believe that only half the Bible has really been written. There’s another half to the Bible that was stolen from black people in Africa by white people and is to be found hidden in the Ark of the Covenant if the Ark of the Covenant can be found and in that half of the Bible is a repository of African wisdom. They believe in physical immortality for devout believers, that is you don’t die physically. They believe that Haile Selassie Ras Taffari is God the Father and God the Son and his followers are the Holy Spirit. He is the head and they are the body. They believe that in a reincarnation prior to that of Jesus he came into the world as Melchizedek.

Now if you were to go to a Rastifarian service, it would involve smoking marijuana while singing, dancing, feasting, reading the Bible and listening to their most popular prophet Bob Marley. Bob Marley took the Rastifarian concept and developed it into a form of music called reggae. You associate reggae music with Rastifarians and also dread locks which is the idea of going back to nature by never taking care of your hair, a kind of play on the Nazarite vow.

All this seems ridiculous, bizarre, ignorant, corrupt, perverse, foolish to worship a dead Ethiopian who is now in hell. It is really no more foolish than worshiping a dead woman who is now in heaven. Equally ridiculous, equally bizarre, equally blasphemous and idolatrous, equally foolish is the worship of Mary. It is the same thing and far more deadly, far more deadly because of the massive influence of the Roman Catholic system and its deceptiveness. And there are millions all over the world who worship Mary. Millions of images of her in every imaginable form are scattered throughout the world. They’re obviously not able to even be counted...millions of them in every form and every location, churches, cathedrals, shrines, houses, streets, cars, wallets, everywhere are images, pictures, representations of Mary. Millions upon millions of people every day pray to her. They pray to her to save them. They pray to her to protect them. They pray to her to help them, to comfort them, to rescue them, to bring them to heaven and she has never heard one of those prayers ever. By any honest definition, this is idolatry, this is a severe violation of the first commandment, to have no other gods but the true and living God, is no different than pagan idolatry which God totally condemns as an abomination. So let’s just get that clear at the beginning.

Roman Catholics worship Mary as if she were God. Cathedrals elevate her above God and above Christ. We were talking this evening about a cathedral in Pisa where we have visited which depicts Mary at the pinnacle as they almost all do all through Europe, she’s at the top, Jesus and God are below her, and in that particular cathedral in Pisa, you have Jesus and God offering their crowns to Mary. People kiss her image. They kiss her statue. They kiss her picture. They crawl on their knees in penitential pain as some kind of preparation to come before statues of her. They pray to her regularly using the rosary. The rosary is a series of ten prayers, there are five of the tens making 50 prayers, and there are five prayers in between. The 50 are to Mary, the five are to God. There are five “Our Fathers,” there are 50 “Hail Marys.” For every time you pray once to God the Father, you pray ten times to Mary...for five to God, fifty to Mary.

This is no different than worshiping Baal or Molech or Caesar or Buddha or Krishna or Haile Selassie. And the whole cult of Mary worship would be an unspeakable horror to Mary if she ever knew, she never will.

Now the Catholics try to wiggle around a little bit out of this by saying there are different kinds of worship. There is doulia(?), that is the worship of saints and angels. There is latria, that is the worship of God. And there is hyper-doulia which is the worship of Mary alone. This is not just doulia which is a sort of low-level worship of saints and angels, this is hyper or upper level doulia, not quite latria. This is a silly, artificial kind of distinction that even Roman Catholic people can’t sort out. They worship saints. They venerate or worship angels. Far above saints and angels they worship Mary. And they attempt to worship God. But if you’re worshiping those who are not God, God does not accept your worship. It is an artificial distinction, doulia and latria from Greek words are synonyms, they do not distinguish worship at all. Mary is believed to hold the sovereign authority of God.

Now I don’t want to assign to the Catholic Church anything that they don’t say, so I am about, at this point, to let you hear Rome speak. This is going to be a little bit beleaguering but it’s very important for you to understand that this is not coming from me, these are their claims for Mary.

In the celebration of the Marion year, Pope Pius XII accurately reflected the Church’s view of the Virgin Mary when the Pope stood up to give this following Pontifical prayer, and I quote: “Enraptured by the splendor of your heavenly beauty and impelled by the anxieties of the world, we cast ourselves into your arms, O immaculate mother of Jesus and our mother, Mary we adore and praise the peerless richness of the sublime gifts with which God has filled you above every other mere creature from the moment of conception until the day on which your assumption into heaven He crowned you Queen of the Universe. O crystal fountain of faith, bathe our hearts with your heavenly perfume. O conqueress of evil and death, inspire in us a deep horror of sin which makes the soul detestable to God and the slave of hell. O well-beloved of God, hear the ardent cries which rise up from every heart in this year dedicated to you. Then tenderly, O Mary, cover our aching womb, convert the wicked, dry the tears of the afflicted and the oppressed. Comfort the poor and humble. Quench hatred. Sweeten harshness. Safeguard the flower of purity. Protect the holy Church. In your name resounding harmoniously in heaven, may they recognize that all are brothers and that the nations are members of one family. Receive, O sweet mother, our humble supplications and above all, obtain for us on that day, happy with you that we may repeat before your throne that hymn which is sung today around your altars, you are beautiful, O Mary, you are glory, O Mary, you are the joy, you are the honor of our people,” end quote.

Now if that is not worship, I don’t know what worship is. There is no other definition for that. None whatsoever. Rob Zins(??) writes, “The snowball of Mary in superiority will roll down the slope of Catholic fantasy until she becomes in their minds immaculately conceived, sinless, assumed into heaven and finally redemptress and co-redeemer with Jesus Christ,” end quote. And that is exactly right. In fact, Roman Catholics refer to her as “Theoticas(?),” God bearer. They say she gave birth to God and thus is to be elevated and adored. She gave birth to God...that is a terrible misconception. She gave birth to Jesus in His humanity, she did not give birth to God, God was never born.

Someone may think I’m overstating or exaggerating the blasphemy toward God that comes in Mary worship, so I have to do this very distasteful exercise to let you hear from the sources themselves.

1745...St. Alphonsus Delaguarie(?) wrote a massive book called The Glories of Mary. It is 750 pages, all of which I read. That was a very painful exercise, believe me. It has been published many, many times since 1745. It is fully authorized by the Roman Catholic Church. Its latest edition that I have is a smaller abridged version of it, published by the Catholic Book Publishing Company of New York and officially stamped by the Vicar General, the Archdiocese of New York. The original was fully sanctioned as well. One of the sanctioners of this are the Redemptorist Fathers and they sanctioned an edition of it in 1931 through the Cardinal in New York City. The purpose of Delaguarie, his work, is to make the impression of wonder and awe at the realization of Mary’s power. She is viewed as powerful. The book then and all its subsequent publishings and in all of its subsequent formats calls on all of us to be loyal and faithful to Mary for everything we need spiritually, including our salvation. I went back to the original edition which has been published again and again and again, the one I have is a 1931 reprint which was, as I said, sanctioned by the Redemptorist Fathers and the Cardinal in New York City. Here are some of the prayers. Listen to this.

“O Mary, sweet refuge of poor sinners, assist me with thy mercy. Banish me from the infernal enemies and come thou to take my soul and present it to the eternal judge. My queen, do not abandon me, I give you my heart and soul.” What Delaguarie did was collect all the great tributes to Mary going all the way back to the fifth century and amasses them in this huge tome, collective tribute from all the ages to Mary. That one came from page 670. Here’s another one. “O immaculate and holy, pure Virgin Mary, mother of God, queen of the world, thou art the joy of the saints, thou art the peacemaker between sinners and God, thou art the advocate of the abandoned, the secure haven of those who are on the sea of this world, thou art the consolation of this world, the ransom of slaves, the comforter of the afflicted, the salvation of the universe.”

Here’s another one. “We have confidence but in thee, O most faithful virgin. O great mediatrix of peace between men and God, the love of all men and of God to whom be honor and benediction with the Father and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Here’s another one. “O sovereign lady, saint of all saints, our strength and our refuge, God as it were of this world, glory of heaven, accept those who love thee.”

Another one, “O sovereign princess, turn, O Mary, thy loving eyes on me. Look at me and draw me to thee.”

Another one, “Mary, blessed virgin, immaculate queen, I dedicate my family forever to thy service. I appoint thee ruler of my whole house. Bless us, defend us, provide for us, counsel us, comfort us, assist us in our infirmities, especially in the sorrows of death. Grant that we may go to heaven.”

All of these are prayers that belong only to...whom?...to God. God says, “My glory will I not give to another.” If Jesus were here today, He might go into a Catholic Church and make a whip and throw the money-changers out.

There are weekly prayers to Mary. Here’s a Sunday prayer. “Behold, O mother of God, at thy feet a miserable sinner, a slave of hell who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. I do not deserve that thou shouldest even look at me, but I know that thou having seen thy son die for the salvation of sinners hast the greatest desire to help them. I hear all call thee the refuge of sinners, the hope of those who are in despair and the help of the abandoned. Thou art then my refuge, my hope and my help. Thou hast to save me by thy intercession. Help me for the love of Jesus Christ, extend thy hand to a miserable creature who has fallen and recommends himself to thee. I know that thy pleasure is to help a sinner to thy utmost. Help me therefore now that thou canst do so. By my sins I have lost divine grace and with it I have lost my soul. I now place myself in thy hands. Tell me what I must do to recover the favor of my Lord and I will immediately do it. He sends me to thee that thou mayest help me. And He wills that I should have recourse to thy mercy, that not only the merits of thy Son but also that thy intercession may help me to save my soul. To thee then I have recourse. Do thou who prayed for so many others pray also to Jesus for me. Ask Him to pardon me and He will forgive me. Tell Him that thou desirest my salvation and He will save me. Show how thou canst enrich those who trust in thee. Amen. Thus I hope, thus may it be.”

Praying to Mary on a Sunday prayer for your salvation and Jesus will do what Mary wants Him to do. On Wednesday you pray this prayer: “My most beloved lady, I thank thee for having delivered me from hell as many times as I have deserved it by my sins. Miserable creature that I was, I was once condemned to that prison and perhaps already after the first sin, the sentence would have been put into execution if thou in thy compassion hast not helped me. Thou without even being asked by me and only in thy goodness didst restrain divine justice. And then conquering my obduracy, thou didst draw me to have confidence in thee. O into how many other sins should I have afterward fallen in the dangers in which I have been hadst not thou, my loving mother, preserved me by the graces which thou didst obtain for me? Ah, my queen, continue to guard me from hell for what will thy mercy and the favors which thou hast shown me avail if I am lost? If I did not always love thee, now at least after God I love thee above all things, never allow me to turn my back on thee and on God who by thy means has granted me so many graces. My mother, most amiable lady, never allow me to have the misfortune to hate thee and curse thee for all eternity in hell.”

It goes on. “Wilt thou endure to see a servant of thine who loves thee lost? O Mary, what sayest thou? I shall be lost if I abandon thee. But who can ever more have the heart to leave thee? How can I ever forget the love thou hast born me? My lady, since thou hast done so much to save me, complete the work, continue the aid, continue to help me. But what do I say if at a time when I live forgetful of thee? Thou didst favor me so much, how much more may I not hope for now that I love thee and recommend myself to thee. No, he can never be lost who recommends himself to thee, he alone is lost who has not recourse to thee. Ah, my mother, leave me not in my own hands, for I shall then be lost. Grant that I may also have recourse to thee, save me, my hope, save me from hell, but in the first place, save me from sin which alone can condemn me.”

You wonder why Catholics are attached to Mary? If you don’t love Mary, you don’t have any hope of being saved. She’s the one who holds off divine justice. She’s the one who talks God into accepting sinners. Page 9 of that book it says, “It is God’s own goodness which comes to us through Mary’s intercession.” We shall learn in this study that no grace of any kind is distributed to anyone any time that doesn’t pass through Mary. That’s why you want to adore Mary because if Mary feels your love, you’re going to get what you have and if she doesn’t, you’re just not going to get it because it all comes through Mary or it doesn’t come at all.

It’s understandable why they worship Mary. They don’t have any hope without her. Here are some quotes. “As queen she possesses by right the whole kingdom of her Son.” That is to say she possesses everything that is within the kingdom of her Son to dispense by right. Another one, “There are just as many creatures serving Mary as there are serving God.” Another one, “All things in heaven and earth are under God’s dominion so that they are at the same time under Mary’s dominion. She has dominion and power over all creation.” Another one, “Jesus is King of justice, Mary is queen of mercy.” Now you’re starting to get to the core of this thing.

Jesus operates on justice, Mary operates on mercy. You don’t want justice, you want mercy. It’s hard to get justice...it’s hard to get mercy out of Jesus, it’s easier to get it out of Mary because she’s compassionate and Jesus can’t resist His mother when she pleads for mercy on behalf of someone who’s asked her for it. Love Mary and she’ll get the mercy you need from Jesus because Jesus can’t resist His mother. Which is a blasphemy against the nature of God as a Savior and the heart of Christ as a compassionate Savior.

Another quote from Delaguarie’s treatise. “Every prayer of Mary’s is like an established law for our Lord. She establishes the law by which God acts. Further, “Every prayer of Mary’s is like an established law for our Lord, obliging Him to be merciful to everyone for whom she intercedes.” Why are Catholic people so caught up with Mary? Because God has to do what Mary asks Him to do, that’s His obligation. She sets the law for God.

Another one, “Mary throws open the door of God’s mercies to anyone she pleases when she pleases as she pleases.” Who determines who gets mercy? Mary. Who determines who God saves? Mary. Who determines who God helps? Mary. So you want to be in with Mary.

Further quotes. “There are no sinners who will be lost no matter how great their crimes when Mary intercedes for them.”

Another one, “She has great compassion for sinners who come to her determined to do better.” There’s a little window on the works’ system.

Here’s another quote, “Nothing resists her power for God the Father looks upon her glory as if it were His own.” Pretty frightening, isn’t it? Equal glory with God? Equal power with God? Sovereignty over who is saved? Sovereignty over God for she sets the law by which God operates?

Another quote from page 22 of Delaguarie’s book. “Nothing resists her power for God the Father looks upon her glory as if it were His own AND...finishing that quote...God the Son taking delight in glorifying her grants her every perfection as if He were paying a debt.” God has to do what she says and Jesus has to do what she says as if He were paying a debt.

The following page, page 23, and these quotes come from the history of Catholic devotion to Mary, I’m not giving you every date, I’m just quoting them from the authorized book. Page 23, “The Son is under great obligation to her. Jesus to pay what He owes to Mary listens to her requests and grants them.” So you’ve got God and Jesus doing what Mary tells them to do.

Page 25 and 26, “Mary is the mother of our souls. Mary is our spiritual mother.”

She is sovereign. She sets the heavenly law. She operates with glory equal to God. God and Jesus do what she tells them to do. She is the source of spiritual life. She gives life to our souls. She gives birth to our souls. And here’s the sum of it on page 40, “If I love Mary, I will obtain from God whatever I want.” If I love Mary, I will obtain from God whatever I want. I expect if you begin to attack Mary, this is pretty traumatic stuff for people who are caught in Roman Catholic deception because all their life they’ve been trained that whatever they want is going to come through Mary. You disconnect them from Mary, they have to reinvent their whole understanding of religion as they should.

Another quote from page 43, “Those who want to be children of this great mother must first give up sin.” Oh, so that’s what it takes, just give up sin? First give up sin and then they can expect to be accepted as her children. So Mary justifies the righteous while Jesus justifies the ungodly.

Further from page 45 and 46, “As long as sinners remain obstinate, Mary can’t love them. But if they repent and plead with her to lift them out of their state of sin, this good mother will reach out her strong hand to them, break loose their chains and lead them to salvation.” Wow! That’s just amazing. “She lifts people out of sin when they repent to her. She breaks the chains of sin and leads sinners to salvation.” It also says on page 46, “She reconciles sinners to God.”

You see...are you beginning to put the picture together? She has all the properties of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Page 51, “All you who hunger for the Kingdom of God honor the Blessed Virgin Mary and you will find life and eternal salvation.” The way to be saved is to honor Mary. Page 53, “Mary is the ark which saves from eternal destruction anyone who takes shelter in it. Under the shelter of Mary sinners are saved.” Page 55, “She will welcome u and secure our salvation.” Same page, “If Mary ignores or condemns anyone, that person is inevitably lost.”

What a grip. If Mary isn’t for you, you’re going to hell. If she is, you’re going to heaven. Whoever...page 153, “Whoever bears the mark of devotion to Mary, God recognizes as His own.”

A few more blasphemous notions. Page 30 and 31 has these statements. “To honor the Queen of Heaven, the Queen of Angels, is to gain eternal life. This most gracious lady will honor in the next world those who honor her in this world. Let us therefore always with our hearts and tongues honor this divine mother in order that we may be conducted by her into the Kingdom of the blessed. Salvation of sinners should come from the remembrance of her praises whose womb was made the way through which the Savior came to save sinners. All graces are dispensed by Mary. All who are saved are saved only by the means of this divine mother. The salvation of all depends upon Mary and her intercession. Blessed are they who bind themselves with love and confidence to these two anchors of salvation, Jesus and Mary. They will not be lost. Farewell until we meet in paradise at the feet of this most sweet mother and this most loving Son, there to praise them and to love them face-to-face for all eternity.”

Is that what heaven is? The worship of Mary? Catholic catechism, 1994, paragraph 2,677 says, Catholic catechism, “By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the mother of mercy, thee all holy one.” I can’t figure out how God is any different...the all holy one, the sovereign one, the source of salvation, the source of all graces, the comforter, the sympathizer. And that is why on page 402 it says this, “The divine mother can be called the Savior of the world.” Same page, page 402, “When God was about to redeem the human race, He deposited the whole price in Mary’s hands.” Same page...next page, 403, “The Son can deny nothing to such a mother.”

In Delaguarie’s book and some other sources, there are hymns to Mary. You will notice there are none in our hymnal. And unless you’ve been raised in a Catholic Church, you’ve never seen such a thing. But there are a number of hymns that have been written to Mary and are sung to Mary. They’re really distasteful. I...I picked out just one verse, “Queen art thou whom all things worship, earth and hell and heaven above, but thy heart oer flows with goodness just and sinners feel thy love.” All creation worships her, earth, hell, heaven and her heart oer flows with goodness to everybody.

Now it should be noted historically that the official worship of Mary was established in 431 A.D.....431 A.D. Prayers to Mary came around 600 A.D. A few hundred years past before this cult developed. It really is a form, an old, old pagan form of the goddess worship, Baal and Ashteroth, Isis and Osiris in Egypt. You can trace the Babylonian mystery religions, you can trace the mother/child cult all the way back to pagan goddess worship. You even find references to that in the DaVinci Code. That’s a huge issue for the Feminists who think that modern day Christianity has reinvented religions true understanding and replaced the goddess who is the true ruler of the universe with a male figure. But this goddess worship has been around for a long, long time. Even the idea of the Queen of Heaven has been around for a long, long time.

I want you to turn to Jeremiah 44 for a minute. In Jeremiah 44, actually go back, that’s 37 chapters too far...or so. If you go back...on Jeremiah, remember now, Jeremiah is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Lord’s house which came to pass in the Babylonian captivity. The Jewish people are going to be punished by God severely. The Babylonians are going to come, destroy Jerusalem, destroy the temple, slaughter, massacre people and then take some captive back to Babylon where they will be for the duration of the Babylonian captivity. What are the sins that have brought about the judgment of God? Go to verse 17, “Do you not see what they’re doing in the cities of Judah in the streets of Jerusalem?” What are they doing? “Children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire and the women need dough to make cakes for...whom?...for whom?...for the Queen of Heaven...for the Queen of Heaven.” By the way, heaven has no queen. You know that? It has a king, it has no queen. This is paganism, blatant, outright paganism. It is the paganism, the false form of worship for which the people of Israel were judged. They were offering their cakes baked to the Queen of Heaven, as part of the libations and other things given to gods, false gods.

Verse 20, “My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place on man, on beast, on the trees of the field, on the fruit of the ground, it will burn and not be quenched.” This is serious. God is going to bring about horrific judgment on those who worship the Queen of Heaven. It comes again in the forty-fourth chapter, you can jump ahead. In the forty-fourth chapter it appears again, verse 17, Jeremiah 44, there’s an obstinacy, a real obstinacy among the Jews. Even when Jeremiah confronted them, said you have violated the Law of God, you have blasphemed God with your worship of false gods, in particular this worship of the goddess, the Queen of Heaven. This is blasphemy. The people didn’t care. They didn’t listen. They hated Jeremiah. You remember eventually they threw him in a pit to silence him. Some of them went down into Egypt knowing that the punishment was going to come, they ran to Egypt to think they could get away from it, they could go down to Egypt and they could ply their idolatry down there and escape judgment. And God reminds them in verse 13, “I’ll punish those who live in Egypt as I have punished those who live in Jerusalem.” You’re not going to get away from Me. I don’t care where you go. And that’s exactly what happened. There were Jews who went to Egypt to be saved and Egypt had a great invasion and terrible destruction as well. And again, what was the issue here? Verse 15, “The men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, women were sort of leading this parade as women have always been drawn to this goddess worship,” verse 17, “Their defiance is expressed but rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths.” We don’t care what you say, Jeremiah, we will not listen, we will not change, we will burn sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, pour out libations to her just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings, our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.” Wow! Was this pretty pervasive?

The whole country is caught up in the worship of this goddess, this Queen of Heaven. There is nothing anywhere in the pages of the New Testament that attributes to Mary any of these ridiculous attributes of sovereignty, supernatural power, nothing. This is just a woman like any other woman. But there’s plenty in pagan history to point to the worship of a queen in heaven. And paganism on a number of fronts has infiltrated Roman Catholicism, it is steeped in paganism. The queen of heaven is right out of paganism. And it was pervasive. Our forefathers, it’s been going on for a long time, generations, our kings, our princes, everywhere in all the cities, the common people in the streets. For then we had plenty of food. When we were worshiping the queen of heaven, everything was good. She was giving us everything we asked for. It was all going well. There was no misfortune, the end of verse 17. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we’ve lacked everything and met our end by the sword and by famine. Now look what’s happened. Now we’re being conquered because we stopped worshiping the queen of heaven. This is the bottom line, folks, the lie of paganism, the lie is as long as you keep worshiping the queen of heaven, you’re going to get all the good stuff. If you ever stop, then there’s no channel for the blessing of God. Verse 19, “So said the women, we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out libations to her. Was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out libations to her? Of course not, they were all in agreement. It was the rulers and the men and the women and everybody. And everything was going fine and all of a sudden now look at us, we’re under siege and we’re in the midst of judgment and we stopped doing that and now look what’s gone wrong.”

Jeremiah verse 24 said to all the people, including the women, “Hear the Word of the Lord, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt. Those of you who think you can escape down there to Egypt and worship the queen of heaven, the Lord of host, the God of Israel says as follows, As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths, fulfilled it with your hands saying, we will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her. Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows. Have at it, folks, go worship the queen of heaven. Nevertheless, hear the Word of the Lord.” If you’re down there in Egypt where this was going on and they were sustaining it down there, they...there had been a cessation of it in Judah under the threat of judgment, the judgment had come and they said...well we stopped and this is why the judgment come...has come. The truth was, the judgment had come because they had done it for so long but some escaped to Egypt and said, “We’re going to keep doing what we’re going to do.” And he says to them, “All Judah who are living in the land of Egypt, I have sworn by My great name, says the Lord, never shall My name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt saying as the Lord God lives.” I’m finished with you, you will never have My name in your mouth again. “I am watching over them for harm and not for good and all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone.” There will just be a remnant left.

Pretty serious stuff to worship the queen of heaven. The false Mary of Roman Catholicism is a lie and a deception. It is pagan goddess worship, imported into Christianity. It steals glory from God the Father. It steals glory from God the Son. Steals glory from God the Holy Spirit. And you cannot worship the true God and sit at the table of demons. You can’t, it’s an abomination. The queen of heaven is nothing but an occult concept. The Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, leads people into demon worship cause demons impersonate false gods. The Roman Virgin Mary is included, by the way, on some web sites. The Roman Virgin Mary is included on some web sites of goddesses. If you want to look at them, there’s a website called, “The Spiral Goddess Grove.” Another one called “The White Moon and Goddess 2000,” and Mary is one of the goddess figures. She is considered to be the divine feminine. In reality, this is Satan transforming himself into an angel of light, getting people to worship a dead woman...dead in terms of any connection to this world. She hears no prayers. She has no supernatural divine power. She does not operate on her own. She answers no prayers. She sends no grace. She does nothing. Really, you’d have to believe that the two greatest hoaxes that have ever been perpetrated on the world in any connection with Christianity are that the Pope is the representative of Jesus Christ in the world and that Mary is the source of all spiritual graces. Two horrific lies right out of the pit. Pagan/goddess worship dressed up in Roman Catholic fantasy, just as idolatrous as the ancient worship of the Semitic goddess Astarte known as Ishtar, originally among the Babylonians. The veneration shown to Mary in Roman Catholicism is no less offensive than the worship of Ishtar and Astarte. The worship of Semiramis, the worship of Isis. It is no less offensive to God than the worship that King Manasseh gave to the Tyrian goddess Asherah. Remember he had a carved image set up in the house of the Lord, remember 2 Kings you can read it, 2 Kings chapter 21. He set up a goddess in the house of the Lord, 2 Kings 21:12 says, “For this abomination God sent calamity on Jerusalem and Judah.” The Roman Catholic Church has set up an idol in every Church, every cathedral, every Catholic home and the image is everywhere. It is virtually indistinguishable from Roman Catholicism.

The Church enthrones Mary in heaven. From the viewpoint of the people she is above Christ because Christ and God have to do what she asks. I ask you, can the Roman Catholic Church escape the judgment of God? I don’t think so. And who’s behind all this? Not God, God doesn’t give His glory to any other. But Satan steals the glory of God whenever he can.

Now that is the general background that you need to know. Next Sunday night, cause our time is gone, I am going to talk about specific Roman Catholic dogma about Mary. I can give you a quick rundown. The Immaculate Conception, sinlessness, perpetual virginity, assumption or ascension into heaven, we’ll even talk more about Queen of Heaven, apparitions, so-called appearances of Mary which is part of the dogma of Mary, and most disturbing, that she is mediatrix or mediatress, that is she mediates all divine graces to us because she is co-redeemer with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we will go through all of those right out of the Catholic theology books. And then, one final exercise, will be to compare that with Scripture and to send out a very, very impassioned strong loving warning for people to run with all their might from this damning idolatry...which is a horrible dishonor to Mary, more importantly, to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Father, this is so difficult for us to talk through these things and yet so necessary because it must be addressed...it must be addressed. When we look at what the Bible actually says about Mary, it’s so beautiful, so simple, she knew her place. In the one statement that we have that came from her lips, her praise, she celebrated that You, God, are her Savior. How wonderful that she knew she was a sinner who like every other sinner needed a Savior. Help us, Lord, to hold fast to the truth and to run with all our might from lies and deceptions. Rescue people, Lord, from this horrible, horrible deception that they might come to the true and pure grace that comes only through You, our triune God...Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These things we ask for the glory that is Your’s and Your’s alone. Amen.

Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 1

As you are well aware, tonight we are going to do the second in a series of the idolatry of Mary worship. Just to begin with, I want to call two portions of Scripture to your attention as a kind of a biblical beginning for what it is that I am going to say. And the first portion of Scripture is one with which we concluded last time from Jeremiah’s prophecy. In the prophecy of Jeremiah and chapter 7, we read about the children of Judah as those who gathered wood, verse 18, Jeremiah 7, kindled fire and the women kneed dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven. In the forty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah, this same kind of pagan idolatry is addressed again. Jeremiah 44 verse 17, “God indicts Judah further for burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out libations to her.” This is not new, our forefathers did it, our kings, our princes did it in the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem. There was widespread worship of this goddess called the Queen of Heaven. It was addressed by the prophet. People were asked to cease doing it. They refused to do that. When trouble came, finally they acquiesced, diminished their attention to the Queen of Heaven. And when the judgment of God fell, they blamed it not on the way they had dealt with God, but on the fact that they had stopped sacrificing to the queen of heaven. They were consumed with the worship of the goddess, and it comes up again in verse 25 of Jeremiah 44, again referring to burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven.

God condemns apostate Judah for worshiping this goddess of paganism called the Queen of Heaven that has had a number of different names throughout history. The latest name for this goddess, sad to say, is a name borrowed from the earthly mother of our Lord, none other than Mary who has now been morphed by apostate Christianity into the latest edition of the Queen of Heaven. Is it important to address this issue? It is. First Timothy chapter 1 lays out for anyone in ministry what is an important mandate. First Timothy 1:3, Paul says, “I urge you that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.”

You have to address the people who teach strange doctrine and myths. And verse 5, “And the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart.” It’s important to say at the outset that this is not because we are mad or hateful or resentful, but it is love from a pure heart. If you do not address error, if you do not address strange doctrine, damning heresy, this is not love, this is indifference. Love from a pure heart and a clear conscience and a sincere faith demands such a confrontation. And so we come to address this same age-old goddess heresy of paganism in its newest form with the modern goddess having stolen the name of Mary, a terrible dishonor to her. But there is nothing sacred to Satan anyway. And to address it is not a lack of love, but is the sincerest, purest kind of love rising out of a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Now in part 1 I surveyed a brief representation of Mary worship from Roman Catholic dogma and Roman Catholic testimony. Starting from the fifth century into the eighteenth century, we looked at a book called The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus Delaguarie(?) originally written in 1745. It is a history of devotion to Mary reaching back to the fifth century, reprinted many, many times. The particular edition that I had is a reprint copy of a 1931 edition, translated out of Italian, it was originally written in Italian. Always with the official imprimatur of the Catholic Church. I have another edition of it, 1981, with the official stamp of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

The inescapable conclusion from all of that 750 pages of material collected through all the centuries and the additional things that have come since the eighteenth century, many of which I referred to, is that the Roman Church has deified Mary. This is their own affirmation, called for worship to be given to her, affirmed that she possesses attributes that belong only to the Triune God. And such worship and attribution is blasphemous and satanic and assaults God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. So we dealt with the Roman Catholic attitude toward Mary, as noted from the history of devotion to her.

I want to dig a little deeper now and I want to look not at expressions and prayers directed at Mary, but I want to look at actual Roman Catholic doctrine. What do they actually affirm to be true, that is from God inspired revelation regarding Mary. Everything I am going to say to you is foreign to Scripture. So if you expect me to give you passages in which they find these things, there are none. In most cases, even in their own literature, they will acknowledge that there are no Scripture passages to support any of these dogmas. However, that is not a problem. Conveniently in all forms of false Christianity you have other revelation, whether it’s the Book of Mormon, or Science and the Key to the Scriptures, or whatever it is, heresy is going to come from other sources of revelation. So in Roman Catholic theology you have another source of revelation, that is the Magisterium, that is the Church tradition, that which the Church, the Pope who represents Christ says is inspired by God. That is in reality not only the equal of Scripture but superior to Scripture, since the Church is the only valid interpreter, authoritative interpreter of Scripture, it sits in judgment on the Scripture. So it’s not a problem for them that there’s no Bible support for any of these views. They find their support in their own tradition which they consider to be equal to, if not superior to Scripture.

Let me give you a list of these dogmas about Mary. The first one is called the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception...the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Most people misunderstand this, they think it means that Mary gave birth to Jesus as a virgin. It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is about the birth of Mary. It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It was 1854 and Pope Pius IX issued the famous Bull Effabillis(????), ineffable, ineffabilis. Ineffable means sacred, it means divine, it means transcendent. This bull, this document that came out of the Pope is even called ineffabilis deus, God’s ineffable declaration. It says this, quote: “Mary was preserved by Immaculate Conception when conceived in her mother’s body and was miraculously free from pollution of sin inherited from Adam. She was in soul and body holy, sinless, stainless, undefiled, pure innocence,” end quote. That is a segment of this ineffabilis deus from 1854. If I would give you even more, it says this, “Accordingly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the Pope for the honor of the holy and undivided Trinity for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and by our own...that is our own blessed Apostles...we declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the first instance of her conception by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of Original Sin. This is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful,” end quote.

The same Pope, Pius IX, stated how serious an issue it is to reject this dogma. And I quote, “Hence, if anyone shall dare which God forbid to think otherwise than has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment, that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith, that he has separated from the unity of the Church and that furthermore by his own action he incurs the penalties established by Law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the error he thinks in his heart,” end quote.

You are damned and you will be excommunicated if you question this doctrine. Now this is part of the system that by sheer fear and intimidation and heavy handedness binds people to do what they say you must do or be damned. The Church further says, “God exempted Mary from sin to make her the repairer of the lost world. We are all saved by Mary from the shipwreck of sin. By Mary the whole human race was rescued from death. She crushed the head of the serpent. She to do this had to be guiltless, free from Original Sin and personal sin.”

Delaguarie in his book on page 297 writes, “Even her body was preserved from corruption after death.” Quote: “The flesh of Mary and that of Christ are one, the glory of the Son with that of His mother.”

So, the first of the Catholic dogmas to which one must adhere or be anathematized is that Mary was immaculately conceived, that is she was without the stain of original sin. The second and obvious corollary is the Doctrine of her Permanent Sinlessness....her Permanent Sinlessness. The Roman Catholic Catechism from 1994, page 490, number 2030 says this, quote: “The Church finds its example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary.” Delaguarie says, quote: “There never was and never will be an offering on the part of a pure creature greater or more perfect than that which Mary made to God when at the age of three she presented herself in the temple to offer God not aromatic spices, nor calves, nor gold, but her entire self in His honor. At three she came to the temple, fell down, kissed the ground, adored God’s majesty, thanked Him for His favor, and without reserving anything, all her powers and all her senses and her whole mind and body, she vowed virginity saying, ‘My Lord and my God.’”

Page 348 of Delaguarie says, “She is called the holy child and she progressed in perfection.” Born sinless, the all-holy virgin progressed in sinless perfection. One wonders why she says in Luke 1:47, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”

That leads to a third dogma and this is one, I think, is well-known by most people who have any association with the Roman Catholic Church because it’s been around a long time, it’s the Doctrine of Perpetual Virginity. This gets very bizarre. Not only did she not have Original Sin, immaculately conceived without the Original Sin of Adam, not only was she sinless, but she was a perpetual virgin. This was held in 553, sixth century, and it was actually made dogma in the seventh century at the Laterin(?) Council, 649, under Pope Martin I. This dogma of perpetual virginity states that she was a virgin before Jesus’ birth...that is accurate, by the way, Matthew 1:25. She is clearly indicated to be a virgin. She was a virgin, said this council in 649, and says this doctrine, listen...she was a virgin during Jesus birth. What does that mean? Quote, “Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion without any opening of her womb and injury to her body and without pain.” Now without getting very descriptive about that kind of thing, simply say this, they cannot allow a sinless Mary to have any wound or any injury to her physical body whatsoever. So the dogma says Jesus came out some miraculous way without ever coming through the birth canal because that would have created some injury to her perfect body. This is not some obscure doctrine, this I have read in numerous places.

She was a virgin, it’s true, before His birth. They want to make her a virgin even during the birth, and that’s a kind of a strange approach to virginity. But the absolute untouched, unscarred, unwounded body of this goddess to them is important. And then and most importantly, that after Jesus’ birth, she remained a virgin for life. This is what her perpetual virginity is all about. Shreck(?) in The Basics of the Faith, a Catholic Catechism, says, “Out of respect for the fact that God Himself had dwelt and grown in her womb, she remained a virgin all her life....all her life.” This, of course, is utterly contrary to what the Scripture says. Matthew 1:18, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child.” What does that tell you? Before they came together means at some point they came together. How hard is that? Things are so utterly obvious and 1 Corinthian 7 says that if she withheld her body from her husband, she sinned. First Corinthians 7:3 to 5 says, “It’s a sin to withhold yourself from your husband. Your body is not your own, it is your husband’s even as your husband’s body is not his, it is your’s.” Matthew 13:55, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and His sisters are they not all with us?” Everybody knew Mary had sons, daughters. John 7 talks about Jesus’ brothers not believing in Him, later they did after the resurrection.

What does the Roman Catholic Church say about this? They say they were all cousins. Even though none of those passages uses the word anepsios which is the word for cousin, but whenever it refers to the brothers it uses adelphos which means brothers. So you have these strange doctrines, Immaculate Conception which means conceived without sin; perpetual sinlessness which leads to the obvious perpetual virginity. At the end of her life we come to what they call the fourth of their important doctrines concerning Mary, the doctrine of the Assumption. You may have heard of that, the Assumption, or the Ascension. This doctrine didn’t find a place in the actual canon of Catholic theology until 1950. It was November the first, 1950, Pope Pious XII made it official that Mary ascended into heaven. Quote, “The bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven is a dogma of the divine and Catholic faith.” Born without sin, lived without sin, lived as a virgin and left this world by ascending into heaven.

Now this idea about Mary, though it really wasn’t formally dogmatized until the twentieth century goes way, way back and you start to read about this in the fifth century as paganism and pagan goddess worship at the very earliest gets mingled. Remember the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, the Holy Roman Empire was really not holy, it was Roman, for sure, but the emperor in the 325 decided that the best thing to do to unify the great empire was to make everybody automatically a Christian. And since the emperor was rife with paganism, they just married a kind of Christianity with paganism and all of this came very early. So it’s in the rule of somebody who calls himself Galacius(?) I, a self-appointed leader of the church in the fifth century, this comes up at that time. There’s a discussion about Mary being assumed into heaven. So already this goddess cult has imposed itself on poor Mary. And it was at first considered heretical. There was no evidence for it historically, there’s no evidence for it biblically, obviously. So the earliest appearance of this idea is in a very apocryphal work, an unreliable work like the gospel of Judas and hundreds of others. It was called Transidus Getti Marii (???) and it was in the fifth century it was denounced as a heresy. So when it first showed up in the fifth century, the 400's, it is denounced as a heresy. But things began to develop over the years in regard to Mary. Praying to Mary arrives in 600...400 or 500 years later the rosary comes into play in 1090. But it’s not until 1950 that this original idea which was considered to be a heresy that Mary was assumed into heaven in an ascension, it isn’t until 1950 until it finally becomes dogma.

One of the modern day apologists for Roman Catholicism is a man named Carl Keating (??). Carl Keating is very aggressive in defending Catholicism, writing about it, particularly he goes after evangelical Protestants who are ignorant and unwitting and are easily victimized. Carl Keating says this in his book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism. That will tell you where he’s directing his efforts at advocacy for the Catholic Church. Carl Keating writes, quote: “It was the Catholic Church that was commanded by Christ to teach all nations infallibly. The mere fact that the Church teaches the Doctrine of the Assumption as something definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” Carl Keating, probably one of the two or three leading apologists in our day for Roman Catholicism, if the church commanded by Christ to teach all nations infallibly says it’s true, then the fact that the Church says it’s true is a guarantee that it’s true. Catholic theology says that Mary went to heaven intact to reign and to take possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.

There are hymns to Mary at her death. Here’s one. “Uplift the voice and sing, the daughter and the spouse, the mother of the King to whom creation bows. Praise to Mary, endless praise, raise your joyful voices, raise. Praise to God who reigns above, who has made her for His love. When Mary lingered yet in exile from her Son, like fairest lily set mid thorns of earth alone.” And then the chorus, “Praise to Mary, endless praise,” etc. “To be with God on high, her heart was all on fire. He sought...She sought and asked to die with humble sweet desire. At length her heavenly spouse who loved her with such love, invites her to repose with him in heaven above. Praise to Mary, endless praise, raise your joyful voices, raise.” Delaguarie(?)writes, page 144, “At her ascension, purgatory was emptied out.” Whoever at that moment was in purgatory was released.

So you have those four very, very strange and unbiblical ideas about Mary. To deny any of them, to deny any official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church is to be anathematized, condemned and damned. And from the Church’s viewpoint, excommunicated. Those four have considerations for her earthly life. She came in sinless. She lived sinlessly. She lived as a virgin and upon death was immediately ascended or assumed into heaven.

Now that puts her into heaven and we turn the page and talk about how the Catholic Church views her role in heaven. The first four, how they view her on earth. The remainder, how they view her in heaven. And I want to be careful about this and I want to be somewhat detailed because it’s so important that you understand this and that we make sure the sources are indicated. Let’s make this number five in our list, the first four relating to life here, the next relating to life in heaven from the Catholic view.

The first thing you want to know about Mary in heaven is she is immediately identified as the mother of God and the Queen of Heaven. Ludwig Ott, page 211, his theology, “Mary’s right to reign as Queen of Heaven is a consequence of her divine motherhood.” She is ever and always the mother of God, the mother of God, the mother of God...a very, very misleading statement, a very unbiblical statement. She, in fact, dominates the whole church calendar. There are, and I counted them with my finger over the Catholic calendar, there are about 50 annual feasts and festivals devoted to Mary, 42 of them on set days, and five of them are variable. Starting in January and running through December, there are 47 to be exact, feasts and festivals devoted to the mother of God and the Queen of Heaven. It was John Paul II who dedicated himself and his pontificate to Mary. He is the Pope who was just replaced. His personal motto, Totus(?) Tuos(?) Sum Maria, “I am all yours, Mary.” On October 8th, the year 2000, before the image of Fatima virgin, an early appearance...supposed appearance of Mary, the Pope stood before the image of Fatima and consecrated the world and the new millennium to his personal and heaven’s own queen whom he called “Mary most holy.” Pious XII, the same one we mentioned earlier, put forth this statement, Ad coelli(?) reginam(?), quote: “The Blessed Virgin Mary is to be called queen not only on account of her divine motherhood, but also because by the will of God she had a great part in the work of our salvation. In this work of redemption, the Blessed Virgin Mary was closely associated with her Christ, just as Christ because He redeemed us is by a special title our King and Lord, so too His blessed Mary are queen and our mistress because of the unique way in which she cooperated in our redemption. She provided her very substance for His body, she offered Him willingly for us and she took a unique part in our salvation by desiring it, praying for it and so obtaining it,” end quote. So she deserves to be called the mother of God and the queen of heaven.

It was Newsweek magazine, it was August 1997, Newsweek said, “Mary has changed the Trinity into a holy quartet. Mary is viewed as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, the mother of the Son and the daughter of the Father. And even an outsider looking in can see that she is treated as a fourth member of the Godhead.”

Where did this idea of “mother of God” come from, so misleading, as if God had a mother who gave birth to Him? This was first used by Alexander Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century. Goddess worship, the very outset, the Holy Roman Empire comes into existence in the fourth century, early in the century. This mother of God comes in rapidly by the year 431 and the Council of Ephesus and 451, The Council of Chalcedon, this is established. She is to be called the mother of God, this contributes to centuries and centuries and centuries of accumulated deification of Mary. She becomes equal to God. And though the Church tries its best to wiggle out of this, it tries its best to deny this, the truth of the matter is, she really is superior to God and superior to Christ as becomes very evident in what they say and in how they portray her in cathedrals all over the world. She rules in heaven as queen, sovereign, saving, sanctifying, sympathizing, all this power is given to her that belongs only to God. Again it’s Carl Keating who’s trying to sell the Catholic faith to fundamentalists who says, quote, “God’s grace is not conferred on anyone without Mary’s cooperation.”

Number six in my list as to how the Catholic Church views her is not so much a dogma but it is an experience of Mary that is so widely accepted and acknowledged. It’s as good as a dogma. Let’s just call it apparitions. Mary keeps appearing. Have you noticed? She keeps appearing. She descends from heaven to earth to make herself known to people. She comes quite frequently. She always comes with secret messages. She comes with secret messages for very isolated people.

She came to Benoit(?) near Liege in Belgium. In 1933 she appeared eight times to an eleven-year-old peasant girl. She came again to Barrange(??) in Belgium in 19...it’s really about the same period of time, started in ‘32 and ended in ‘33. She appeared 33 times to five little children in the garden of a convent. She came to Fatima which, by the way, I should have said earlier, is in Portugal. She appeared there six times in 1917 to three children in a field. Fatima is north of Lisbon. She came to Guadalupe, Mexico, appeared four times back in 1531 to an Indian by the name of Juan Diego on a hill outside Mexico City. She came to Lasalette(?), France appearing as a sorrowing and weeping figure again to two peasant children. She came to Lourdes, you probably heard about Lourdes in France, identifying herself as the Immaculately Conceived Mary, affirming the Catholic doctrine. She appears 18 times between February 11 and July 16, 1858, all 18 times to a 14-year-old named Bernadette Subiero(??). She appears at a grotto near Lourdes, which again is in southern France. She appears three times in 1830 to Catherine Lavorae(??) in the chapel of the mother house of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Reudebak(?) near Paris. And those are just a few that come out of the Catholic Almanac.

She comes a lot. She comes quite regularly. In fact, the apparitions are presently becoming numerous. The latest Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, previously known as Cardinal Ratzinger(?) said this, noted this, “In 1984 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Roman Catholic Church’s congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” that was where he came from, he came from being the doctrinal gate keeper of Roman Catholicism, “declared, quote: ‘One of the signs of our times is that the announcements of Mary in apparitions are multiplying all over the world,’” end quote. He made this observation as a comment on the many reports of the appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary to individuals located in a wide variety of countries, cultures and political systems. In fact, the last century and a half has seen numerous appearance of the Blessed Virgin, they say, and they have received official approval by the Roman Catholic Church. You may have remember some...some of the Catholic mystics of the past, Elizabeth Von Chaneau(?), Mary appeared to her, she lived in the twelfth century. Mary appeared to her repeatedly. She appeared to another woman, Anna Katarina Emmerick(??), this is in the basically the end of the eighteenth century, the early nineteenth century. She kept appearing and appearing and appearing and there’s a lot written about these two mystical women and all the appearances of Mary. And one wonders why the Lord Jesus never bothers to get equal time. He’s definitely losing the popularity contest because He never shows up, which reinforces the whole Mary deal because Jesus seems to be indifferent to everybody while Mary is so sympathetic, she always shows up in obscure places and talks to peasant people. She’s certainly a lot more lovable than Jesus.

Through these apparitions, according to one writer, Mary has called Catholics to repentance, to perform acts of penance, to pray the rosary for the conversion of sinners, and to pray for peace in the world. She has asked Catholics to give themselves to greater devotion to her under the titles of her immaculate heart and her immaculate conception. And that sinlessness is the immaculate heart idea...immaculate conception and immaculate heart. When you think of Catholicism you think of the immaculate heart, don’t you? That’s something they....they portray constantly. You see a picture of Mary, a picture of Mary with a great big huge heart there.

Religious practices have also developed as a result of these appearances, such as the wearing of the miraculous medal and scapular medal, both of which bear images of Mary. In one appearance, supposedly to Pope John XXII, that was fourteenth century, Mary is said to have instructed Catholics to wear the scapular which is two squares of cloth often bearing images, connected by string and hung around the neck. Mary promised Pope John that Catholics who died wearing the scapular in honor of her would be delivered from purgatory on the first Saturday after their death. So if you want to get out of purgatory the first Saturday after you die, you spend your whole life cause you don’t know when you’re going to die with that stuff around your neck. Each year five-point-five million Roman Catholic pilgrims visit Lourdes, almost that many go to Fatima and to the cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe near Mexico City. In central Europe, the primary focus of Mary’s appearances and the pilgrims’ attention is the Shrine of Our Lady of Sestakowa(???), a wooden icon of a black Madonna dating from the fourteenth century. The best known, however, is Majorie(?) in Bosnia, Herzegovina. There Mary supposedly appeared to six peasants. She appeared to them around 1981 almost every day. Over ten million Catholics have gone to Majorie to drink in some of whatever happens when Mary’s been someplace.

A book in 1993 had about a thousand appearances of Mary that were documented thirty times in the eighteenth century, 200 times in the nineteenth century and 450 times in the twentieth century. So they are escalating at a rapid rate. Cardinal Meisner claims that Mary brought Christ to Europe from Fatima and one would ask where was he before that if she brought him? She visited a farm in Georgia, an office building in Clearwater, Florida and a subway wall recently in Mexico City. She comes so often and she comes to the down and out and she comes to the little children, she comes to the peasant people and this validates the fact that she is this loving sympathetic merciful tender-hearted compassionate person. Let me read you from apparitions.org commenting on the Majorie phenomenon, quote, “Since the apparitions began in 1981 at Majorie, millions of people of all faiths from all over the world have visited Majorie and have left spiritually strengthened and renewed,” I’m not sure what the dynamic is there. “Countless unbelievers and physically or mentally afflicted have been converted and healed. Our Lady continues to give messages to six young people from the village of Marjoie. Ivan, Yakov, Maria, Marianna, Vica and Ivanka(????), these six young people referred to as visionaries have had apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary since June 24, 1981. In addition to these messages, our Lady is to give each of the six visionaries a total of ten secrets, or happenings that will occur on earth in the near future. Only one of the secrets so far has been revealed by the visionaries....there are nine more to go. Our Lady has promised to leave a supernatural, indestructible and visible sign on the mountain where she first appeared. When each of the six visionaries has received all ten secrets, our Lady will stop appearing to them on a daily basis. Currently Maria, Vica and Ivan have received nine secrets and our Lady still appears to them every day wherever they are at 5:40 P.M. during daylight savings time, and 6:40 P.M. the rest of the year, Majorie time. Marianna, Yakov and Ivanka have received all ten secrets and our Lady appears to them once per year and will do so for the rest of their lives.” So they’re all moving toward having all the ten and each of them has ten for a total of sixty and when they’re all in, the virgin is going to write something on the mountain that’s going to effect the whole world.

The only person if there is someone really appearing to them is right out of hell. This is demonic, for sure....for sure. But what assurances and what cleverness the demons offer for the deceived and the damned with their hellish counterfeits.

Well there’s more. Here’s a seventh and very important doctrine regarding Mary. This has swirled around in Catholicism for a long, long time. This is Mary as Mediatrix...Mary as Mediatrix, or Mediatress, if you will, either one is correct. Mary is that channel of all divine grace through which God touches people. Listen to the Catholic Church official statement, Ludwig Ott, quote: “No grace is conferred on man without her actual intercessory cooperation,” Ott page 212, page 211. “Mary’s sublime dignity as Queen of Heaven makes her supremely powerful in her maternal intercession for her children on earth. She intercedes to God and Christ to get the grace for whatever we need and it never comes except by her intercession.” Delaguarie says, page 159, “We may be afraid to go to God because it is His infinite majesty we have offended, Mary has nothing in her to terrify us,” end quote. And that’s the bottom line. Mary is harmless, compassionate, tender. Don’t go to God, He’s tough. Don’t go to Jesus, He’s harsh and He never shows up so He’s indifferent. Go to Mary. That’s the system.

And so, Satan has diverted all these people who say they worship God and Christ into an inordinate worship of Mary. Roman Catholic Catechism page 252, number 969, “Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the title of Advocate, Helper, Benefactrix and Mediatrix. She is the chief and sovereign refuge of Catholics in their trials.”

Here is a statement called supreme apostalotos, a Catholic church, quote, “The Catholic Church has always and with justice put all her hope and trust in the Mother of God. She who is associated with Him in the work of man’s salvation has favor and power with Her Son greater than any other human or angelic creature has ever obtained or ever can obtain.” The point is, you go to Mary because Jesus can’t resist Mary. And Mary, because she’s so merciful, can’t resist you. Mary, claims the Church, can persuade God to grant what He otherwise wouldn’t grant.

Another Roman Catholic document, “All men...quote...moreover are full of the hope and confidence that prayers which might be received with less favor from the lips of unworthy men will be accepted by God when they are recommended to Him by the most holy Mother and will be favorably heard.” You’re really banging on steel if you go to God yourself. Go to Mary and He listens to Mary.

Fausto Apententi(???) Dea, another Roman Catholic document says, quote: “St. Dominic knew well that while on the one hand Mary is all powerful with her divine Son,” just remember that, she is all powerful with her divine Son, “who grants all graces to mankind through her. On the other hand, she is by nature so good and so merciful that inclined to aid spontaneously those who suffer she is absolutely incapable of refusing her help to those who invoke her. The Church is in the habit of greeting the virgin as the Mother of Grace and the Mother of Mercy and so she has always shown herself, especially when we have recourse to her by means of the holy rosary.”

You see, Roman Catholicism is pagan goddess worship, completely distracted. God is reinvented as judgmental, harsh. Christ is reinvented as indifferent. Everybody worships Mary.

Listen to what Superiori Anno(??), another document says about God. “We have a confident hope that God will at length let Himself be moved and have pity upon the state of His Church and give ear to the prayers coming to Him through Mary.” Pope Pius XII taught, “While Peter...quote...has the keys of heaven, Mary has the key to God’s heart. When she turns the key, the Church guarantees the lock will open.”

Another Catholic document says, “We could not find a more powerful protectrix or one more irresistible before God, she is for us the best of mothers, our safest confidante and, in fact, the very motive of our hope. She obtains all she asks for and her prayer is always heard.”

Another quote, “Mary is all powerful with her divine Son for she is the mighty mother of God.” Tonto Studio(??) another document, “For while the prayers of those in heaven have certainly some claim on the watchful eye of God, Mary’s prayers place their assurance on the right of a mother, for that reason when she approaches the throne of her divine Son, she begs as advocate, she prays as handmaid, but she commands as mother.” She commands Jesus.

Who is this person? Who is this? This is a false god. Mary is even given the power to save us. When praying the “Hail Mary,” Catholics say this, “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Asking Mary to extend salvation. The catechism of the Catholic Church says this, quote, “By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners. We address ourselves to the Mother of Mercy, the all-holy one. We give ourselves over to her now in the today of our lives and our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender the hour of our death wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her Son’s death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her Son, Jesus, in paradise.”

Is this some kind of a movement among ignorant people? Is this some kind of commoners movement? I don’t think so. There was a day in the life of John Paul II, a frightening day for him. He was shot in the stomach by Mimmet Ali Odgga(???), psychopathic terrorist and a convicted murder, 23-year-old Turk. He had a nine millimeter Browning automatic pistol and he was in St. Peter’s Square and he fired at the Pope and hit him. A friend caught the falling Pope and heard him pray, “Mary, my mother, Mary, my mother.” The biographer says that plea was still on his lips fifteen minutes later when he passed out at Gamelli Hospital, dropping blood pressure threatening his life. He was immediately ministered Last Rites. St. Peter’s Square was crowded with people. Some went to the throne of the Pope and placed a picture on the throne and the picture was a picture of Mary. And on the back of the picture it was written, “May our Lady protect the holy father from evil.” Immediately the rosary was broadcast over Vatican loud speakers. By eight o’clock the Pope was stable, confident quote, “That God had heard Mary’s plea for his life.” And the crowd began to disperse.

This is not some uneducated commoner’s view, this comes right from the top. Going back a little bit in John Paul’s history, after the death of his mother when he was eight-years-old, his real name Karl Woydewa(??), he developed at that very early age an intense devotion to Mary because that was part of the whole system. When he became Pope in 1978 he formally rededicated himself and his whole Pontificate to Mary. In his travels as a Pope he constantly visited the Marion shrines and they’re all over the world. He made devotion to Mary the primary focus of his prayers, the primary emphasis of his own personal devotions.

He had a crest that John Paul had as his coat of arms. On the central part of that crest was a huge M for Mary. And when he died, his coffin was decorated with this large letter M signifying what he had said so many years before, “I am totally yours, Mary.”

In notes included in his will, he quoted the words of a former Polish cardinal which had inspired him, quote: “Victory when it comes will be through Mary.” Anyone who follows at all the preaching of John Paul could see his intense devotion to Mary. On Wednesday the seventh of May, 1997, John Paul said, quote: “The history of Christian piety teaches that Mary is the way that leads to Christ.” He wrote a book called John Paul II Book on Mary. The ad copy inside the book says, “It’s a book for people who seek a deeper relationship with Jesus and His mother.” The Table of Contents in the book lists all the titles that John Paul credited to Mary: “ate of Heaven, Mediatrix of all graces,” which is what we’re talking about, “mirror of perfection, mother of the Church, mother of mercy, pillar of faith, seat of wisdom.”

Here’s a sample of things from the book. “Mary shares our human condition but in complete openness to the grace of God. Not having known sin, she is able to have compassion on every kind of weakness. She understands sinful man and loves him with a mother’s love. Precisely for this reason she is on the side of truth and shares the Church’s burden in recalling always and to everyone the demands of morality.” Another time he said, “For every Christian, for every human being, Mary is the one who first believed and precisely with her spouse and mother, she wishes to act upon all those who entrust themselves to her as her children. And it is well known that the more her children persevere and progress in this attitude, the nearer Mary leads them to the unsearchable riches of Christ.” If you ever want to get to Christ, you’ve got to go to Mary.

And I ask again...who is this? This is a satanic fabrication. This is worshiping demons. He says further, “As Christians raise their eyes with faith to Mary in the course of their earthly pilgrimage, they strive to increase in holiness, Mary the exalted daughter of Zion helps all her children wherever they may be and whatever their condition to find in Christ the path to the Father’s house.” He said, “Nobody else can bring us as Mary can into the divine and human dimension of the mystery of the gospel.” He said, “We can turn to the Blessed Virgin trustfully employing her aid in the awareness of the singular role entrusted to her by God, the role...listen to this...of cooperator in the redemption which she exercised throughout her life and in a special way at the foot of the cross.”

Now that...that’s a pretty bold statement. She is not only the mediatrix of all grace, the channel through which all grace comes, the one to whom we go for everything, but she is even involved in our redemption. Leo XIII said, “According to the church, Mary is God’s unique channel of blessing. God grants all graces to mankind through her.” And Benedict XV affirmed that. She is the seat of all divine graces. Quote, “An almost infinite treasure to whom the Church exhorts the faithful to flee in time of need.”

Now I could go on and on with all of this, but I think you get the picture. The Church says nothing comes to us except through Mary’s mediation for such is God’s will. The Church says Mary is the most powerful mediatrix and advocate of the whole world with her divine Son. “Hail,” one of the prayers of the rosary says, “Hail, holy queen, mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

This is what Delaguarie said, reaching way back, “Mary was made mediatrix of our salvation, not a mediatrix of justice, of course, but of grace.” He says, “She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven...that’s what John Paul II called her...the most true mediator between God and human beings.” Delaguarie says, “God decreed all graces through her hands.” He said, “Mary is the source of every good and the absolute master of all graces.” And again, Ott, the Roman Catholic theologian, “No grace accrues to men without the intercession of Mary.” Beri totus splendor(???), from John Paul II says, “She is the mother who obtains for us divine mercy.”

There are two more that I need to talk about. But you’ve endured a lot. I think what I’m going to do, this is probably wise, is finish this next Sunday night because there are only two more but there are a lot more pages in my notes. And I would be unfaithful to the duty that is mine if I didn’t also at the end of all of this go to the Word of God and take a real biblical look at this. So, I understand next Lord’s day is Easter Sunday, but next Sunday night we had planned a Q&A, but this is much more important and we’ll wrap this up next time.

In case you’re wondering what the remaining two are, I shouldn’t tell you, I should make you come, but because I want to be kind, we’ve already suggested one, that she is co-redemptrix, co-redeemer with Jesus, and the final one, equally shocking, that she is the source of eternal merit. She not only participated in our redemption, but she was so much more holy than she needed to be that she had more holiness than she needed which is now available to sinners for a price. And that gets us into the whole idea of selling indulgences, selling the excess righteousness of Mary and that’s what infuriated Martin Luther and launched the Reformation. Having looked at those two, we will then look at the Word of God and what it has to say about worshiping a false god.

Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 2

I want to begin tonight by having you open your Bible to the first chapter of the book of Galatians, Paul's letter to the region of Galatia. Just a focal point, a starting point, Galatians chapter 1, Paul begins in that first verse, "Paul, an Apostle not sent from men, nor through the agency of man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead, and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia." And then this, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out from this evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory forever more. Amen. I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him...that is God...who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Even though we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. Or am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ."

Rendering service to God and rendering service to Christ demands that we forsake all efforts to please men to gain the favor of men and that we speak the truth. Any other gospel is a false gospel. Any preacher of any other gospel is a false teacher. Any other system that advocates a false gospel is a false system, and all of it is accursed by God. It has to be a false gospel if it calls for worshiping a false god. This chapter opens reiterating the due, glory forevermore given to Jesus Christ and God the Father. Anyone else stepping in to usurp that glory which belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is accursed. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, they have created a false goddess who has blasphemously been given the name of "the Mother of Jesus, Mary," but who has absolutely nothing to do with her. The Roman Catholic Church leads the world in pagan goddess worship, blasphemous idolatry pretending to be Christianity.

In Catholicism it is the false goddess named Mary through whom all graces, all blessings, all divine works pass to people. No one can be saved, no one can be blessed unless Mary intercedes. She is presented as all-knowing, all-wise, all-merciful, everywhere present and all-powerful, attributes which belong only to God.

For two weeks now, we have considered what the Catholic Church says about Mary, this goddess that they worship. We have looked in particular at the historical record of the worship of Mary accumulated by St. Alphonsus Delaguarie who wrote The Glories of Mary in the year 1745 which has been since translated into English and printed again and again and again with the full affirmation and imprimatur of the official Roman Catholic Church. In this book there is the sum of all the glories of Mary which has been vouchsafe to the Roman Catholic Church and the Church itself calls upon all its constituents to give Mary that honor she is due. She is identified as Mary, our Queen; Mary, our mother; Mary, our life; Mary, our sweetness; Mary, our hope; Mary, our help; Mary, our mediatress; Mary, our advocate; Mary, our guardian; and Mary, our salvation. It is said that Mary delivers us from hell, Mary delivers us from purgatory, and Mary leads us to heaven.

And it should be said that Delaguarie, who collected all the Marion dogma and devotion, was himself one of the most celebrated and revered authorities in the Roman Catholic Church. Delaguarie was himself a cardinal in life, and a saint in death. I told you that Mary worship is not to be treated as some low-level popular movement only among the poor. Mary worship is never rebuked by the Church hierarchy. It is rather taught by them. It is encouraged by them. Bishops, cardinals and Popes themselves have been among the most devoted to Mary, none more so than John Paul II who recently died. It was to John...Pope John XXII that Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared and gave the Sabbatine(??) privilege in 1322. Mary was confirmed by Popes Alexander V, Clement II, Pious V, Gregory XIII, and Paul the V and many more. She has been and is relied upon by tens of millions of Catholics. It is said that Mary promises to assist us at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for salvation. "I promise...she says...this assistance to all those who on the first Saturday of five consecutive months shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the rosary and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary with the intention of making reparation to me and who die wearing my brown scapular." Salvation is through Mary and that salvation comes by her assistance at the hour of death when one has on a series of five consecutive Saturdays gone through the rosary and dies wearing a brown scapular, brown cloth.

Despite denials by Roman Catholic apologists, Mary is worshiped. In fact, Mary is the main god in Roman Catholicism which is nothing more than the worship of a non-existent goddess who usurps the glory and the worship that is due only to God and Christ and the Spirit, the true worship of the true God. Catholicism is then as Mary is a false god a false religion, as demonic a deception as any non-Christian religion or any unbiblical cult. And such assessments are the result of what the Catholic Church says about Mary. This is not our words, this is really their words.

Recently in the city of Los Angeles, the Roman Catholic Church erected a massive new cathedral called The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Some of you have known about it, perhaps seen it. The entrance to this expensive massive cathedral are some great bronze doors. On those doors are multiple images of the Virgin, symbolically she is the way in to God. In a series of depictions on that door there is the Virgin of Pomata(?), Pomata is a village in the Andes where supposedly Mary appeared. There is the ex voto to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Ex voto is a Latin phrase meaning "out of a vow." There is there a picture of a devotee making a vow, a shrine in gratitude and homage to Mary. In fact, is shows a mother and a child kneeling before the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. And then there is an actual image of the Virgin of Guadalupe as the virgin stands framed by the rays of the sun in the typical Guadalupe replication of the supposed vision. Above and below the image are bouquets of thornless roses which is a beloved part of the supposed appearing of Mary to the Indian, Juan Diego...whom, by the way, no history records ever existed. There is also on that same door, the apocalyptic virgin in extremely flamboyant image. The virgin is shown with the mighty wings of Revelation chapter 12 crushing Satan's head between her foot and a huge lily seen at the bottom. And the lily, we are told, is the symbol of her own sinlessness and that is the source of her own invincibility.

There is another image on the doors of the cathedral that depicts the divine shepherdess. The virgin supposedly once appeared to a pious Spanish monk dressed as a shepherdess. There is another image on the doors of the Virgin of the Cave, supposedly an old Spanish legend that the virgin appeared somewhere...the appearance of the virgin was replicated in an image, the image was buried accidently in a cave, miraculously recovered and since recovery has had the power to do miracles, particularly popular in the Spanish Carribean. You look again at the door and you will see another image and it is the image of the Virgin of Mont Serat(?) Catalonia, home to the authentically black virgin, the most authentic of all supposed black madonnas of Europe, in this case both the mother and the child she holds is black. You look again and there is the Virgin of the Candlestick with other virgins of Belain(?), Spanish for Bethlehem, another appearance of the Virgin supposedly in Peru. You look again and there's another image of Mary on the door as she is the Virgin of Mercy and she is spreading her cloak protectively over the souls that are suffering in Purgatory. And these suffering souls are reaching up as if to clamor for her intercession to get them out. You look again and there is the Virgin of the Rosary of Chichingquera(???) which is a town in Columbia. And in this picture, the virgin is flanked by St. Anthony and St. Andrew and she is traditionally adorned by the rosary. You look again and you will find a depiction of Pieta, Mary strong, beautiful, holding the emaciated and weak Christ.

This door is typical, it is representative of what you find in Catholicism all over the globe. It is the worship of Mary. No other conclusion is possible or even conceivable.

Now as we look at this, I want to review what we've said in the last two weeks, and then get us into tonight's discussion. Number one, part one, we considered the history of Roman Catholic devotion to Mary. From the Church's own statements through all the centuries of its existence we looked at the attributes of Mary, we looked at elements that belong only to God that belong to her. We considered prayers to Mary, hymns to Mary, all manner of expressions of devotion and worship to the one who is called "The Queen of Heaven," which is the name of a pagan goddess in the book of Jeremiah which the children of Israel were forbidden to worship under the penalty of divine judgment, which when they did worship the judgment fell. And so in our first look, we looked at devotion to Mary through the history of the Catholic Church.

In the second we considered not so much the devotion but doctrine, dogma regarding Mary...none of which, by the way, is found of Scripture, none of which is found in Scripture. And the Church of Rome acknowledges that to be so but that does not matter because there is another source of revelation. The other source of revelation is the Church itself, the true interpreter of Scripture and the ongoing source of revelation. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra that is as if the Word of God has been uttered from heaven itself. When the councils make a determination, that is the Word of God. When the Church determines something to be true, it is true because the Church says it is true, end of argument. The Church is the continuing channel of divine revelation and the only infallible interpreter of Scripture.

Just this last week when I was on Larry King program, some of you may have seen it, with a whole handful of priests, I was the only Protestant in the building, believe me, or on the program and I tried to engage them off the camera in a discussion about Scripture and I was really again amazed at the absolute ignorance of what the Bible says. They don't even know the content of the Bible, let alone what it means. And the repeated statements, particularly by one of the young men who was on that program called "God or the Girl," that follows the path of some young men considering the priesthood but having trouble with celibacy, who kept saying to me, "But the Church has said...but the Church has said...but the Church has said." Ignorant of Scripture, basing everything on what the Church has said because the Church is infallible...infallible. Any religion...any religion that has a source of divine revelation other than the Bible or a source of revelation equal to the Bible, or a source of revelation which is the only true interpreter of the Bible is a false religion. God has spoken He has spoken only in His Word. He has not spoken outside of His Word. To say that God has spoken when He has not spoken is to add to Scripture and to add to Scripture is to bring upon yourself, according to Revelation 22:18 and 19, the plagues that are written in the Bible.

Still, the Roman Catholic Church affirms this corollary and in fact superior source of revelation that comes to the Church in an ongoing sense. The French Roman Catholic George Tavard(?) wrote, "Tradition was the overflow of the Word outside sacred Scripture. It was neither separate from nor identical with Holy Writ. Its contents are the other scriptures through which the Word made Himself known. Tradition and Scripture." So they don't need the Bible for anything and all the doctrines regarding Mary come from their tradition.

Thomas Aquinas, the favorite theologian of all scholastic Roman Catholics who lived from 1225 to 1274, and the most renown theologian of Roman Catholic history, states in the first question of his summa theologica that sacred Scripture consists of "The Biblical texts and the theology of the fathers and the doctors of the Church." The Council of Trent in 1546 produced the official view. The discussion began on February 8, 1546, didn't finish until April 8, same year, several months. The bishops debated long and hard and the first draft of the decree did not appear until a special meeting on March 23. Finally the summary said this, "The purity of the gospel of God promised by the prophets was promulgated by Christ. It was preached by the Apostles as the rule of all saving truth and of all moral discipline. This truth is contained partly ion written books, partly in unwritten traditions. These traditions are ascribed to Christ Himself or to the Apostles to whom the Holy Ghost dictated them. They have reached down to us transmitted as though by hand. The council, Council of Trent, therefore acknowledges the books of the Old and New Testament and these traditions as dictated orally by Christ Himself or the Holy Ghost and kept in the Catholic Church in continuous succession." Then this statement. "Equal adhesion of faith is due to both. The Council receives them as sacred and canonical. It will use both to constitute dogmas and restore the morals in the Church," end quote.

So you don't need the Bible because you have the Church's own pronouncements as the very Word of Christ. And all the components of Maryolotry, all the elements of devotion and dogma related to Mary come from tradition and they admit it.

Now let me remind you of the doctrines we looked at last time. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that is Mary was born without original sin. She is holy, sinless, stainless, undefiled and pure. That became dogma under Pious IX in 1854. Corollary to that, Mary's permanent sinlessness, a consequence of that absence of original sin she was her whole life sinless, called the All-holy one, worthy of worship and worthy of praise.

The third doctrine, the doctrine of Perpetual virginity was established in 649. It said that she not only was a virgin before Jesus was born, she even remained a virgin during the birth so that the child never passed through the canal at all but came out miraculously and all her life she was never touched by her husband. She was a virgin perpetually. Those who are told...those who are called her children were not her children at all, they were nieces and nephews.

The fourth doctrine came in the year 1950 under Pious XII, it is called the Doctrine of Assumption, that is that Mary was assumed into heaven when she died, she ascended into heaven. And at the moment she ascended into heaven, she emptied Purgatory. Delaguarie gives a bizarre account of her death, even in his period, a couple of hundred years before this was made dogma, and in that bizarre account of her death, you have this kind of strange death of a sort of para-normal kind of person. Delaguarie says that on her deathbed, all the holy Apostles were weeping around the bed, throwing themselves on their knees around her and kissing her holy feet. And Jesus appeared in the room carrying His cross and she says to Him, "My son, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." That's a brief summary of several pages of the most wacky, wild, screwball description of the death, supposedly, of Mary who was then assumed into heaven intact.

The fifth doctrine we looked at is Mary as mother of God, Queen of Heaven, the sovereign reigning monarch who is, practically speaking, superior to God and superior to Christ since, as we pointed out, they always do whatever she asks them to do and they don't do what she doesn't ask. That's how Catholics are held to Mary. If you want to get saved, you have to go to Mary. If you want blessings, you've got to go to Mary, you've got to love Mary. If you love Mary hard enough and long enough and faithfully enough, you'll get what you want.

The sixth area of doctrine regarding Mary are apparitions. She descends to earth frequently to visit people, lowly people, outcast people, peasant-type people, even children and the suffering people. This goes on all the time. There was a very interesting special this weekend on the History channel, some of you may have seen it, on Mary and apparitions. And it went on for several hours, telling the story of her supposed appearance in...her appearance in Setun(?) in Egypt in 1968 where one million people saw her on the top of a Coptic dome. Her appearance in 1917 in Fatima, Portugal, her appearance in 1981 in Majagoria(?), the details go on and on, fascinating details, some that I would just rehearse to you. On occasions when Mary comes and you have a collective group of people who see the apparition, they are all silent at the same time, they all speak at the same time, and all they say the same thing when they speak. They are in a trance at the time, in a semi-state of consciousness, all of this is indicative of demonic activity. And the last message that Mary gives in all of these appearances is a message of horror and hell, a horrific fearful message that seems, to me, to be just the kind of thing that demons would want to say to people is going to happen to them if they don't worship Mary. When the truth is, it's what's going to happen to them if they do.

The seventh in these doctrines is the Doctrine of Mary as Mediatrix, to say that she is the source and channel of all graces to us, even salvation grace. No grace is conferred on anyone without her actual intercessory cooperation. She is called the Mother of Grace, the Mother of Mercy. People tap into that grace, into that mercy through loving and worshiping her and by the prayers of the rosary which came in about 1090.

Here's a good summary that comes from Pious IX who actually ruled the Vatican from 1846 to 1878, Pious IX, hear his ineffibilis deus, this is a summary about Mary. "Let all the children of the Catholic Church who are so very dear to us, hear these words of ours. With a still more ardent zeal for piety, religion and love, let them continue to venerate, invoke and pray to the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, conceived without original sin, let them fly with utter confidence to this most sweet Mother of Mercy and Grace and all dangers, difficulties and needs, doubts and fears. Under her guidance, under her patronage, under her kindness and protection, nothing is to be feared. Nothing is hopeless because while bearing toward us a true motherly affection and having in her care the work of our salvation, she is solicitous about the whole human race and since she has been appointed by God to be the Queen of Heaven and earth and is exalted above all the choirs of angels and saints, and even stands at the right hand of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, she presents our petitions in a most efficacious manner. What she asks she obtains, her pleas can never be unheard." That from Pope Pious IX is Catholic dogma.

Now that brings us to the final two doctrinal deceptions regarding Mary. Number eight, that she is co-redemptrix, that she is co-redemptrix. And I will say at the beginning, this has not yet been formalized into a final official dogma. The delay in doing so is due to ecumenical concerns. This would be a final blow to Protestant reconciliation for some and even to Eastern Orthodox reconciliation. So they are reluctant to make this official dogma, but it is unofficial reality, nonetheless. For example, in the 1990's a petition came to John Paul II with which he agreed, calling for the Church to officially dogmatize what the Church believes, quote: "Mary is co-redemptrix with Jesus Christ." Four-point-four million signatures from Catholics around the world, many nations, were on that petition. In the St. Peter Catechism, one of the most familiar of all Catholic Catechisms, we read this, "Did God will to make our redemption and all its consequences depend on the free consent of the Blessed Virgin Mary?" Answer, "God willed that our redemption and all its consequences should depend on the free consent of the Blessed Virgin Mary." Pope Leo XIII said, "Every grace to man has three degrees. One, by God it is communicated to Christ. Two, by Christ it is passed to the Virgin. Three, from the Virgin it descends to us." That includes, of course, the grace of salvation.

"No amount of verbal gymnastics can evade the fact that Mary saves in the Roman system. All gifts, all virtues, all graces, says Catholic theology, are dispensed by the hands of Mary to whomsoever when and as she pleases. O Lady, since thou art the dispenser of all graces and since the grace of salvation can only come through thy hands, our salvation depends on thee." Mary plays the key role in salvation. St. Bernard said, quote: "All men past, present and to come, should look upon Mary as the means and negotiator of salvation."

Let me give you a sample of what the chief Catholic saints have said about Mary's role as co-redeemer, so-savior. St. Bonaventure says, "The gates of heaven will open to all who confide in the protection of Mary." St. Efrem(?) calls devotion to the divine mother, quote: "The unlocking of the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem." Blossius(?) also says, quote: "To thee, O lady, are committed the keys and the treasures of the Kingdom of Heaven, therefore we ought constantly to pray to her." In the words of St. Ambrose, "Open to us, O Mary, the gates of paradise since thou hast its keys." The Church even says, quote: "Thou art its gate, the gate to paradise, hence the gates into the cathedral are the gates of Mary." St. Vulgentious(?) says, and I quote, "For by Mary, God descended from heaven into the world that by her man might ascend from earth to heaven." St.Ethanacious(?)said, "And thou, O lady, was filled with grace that thou mightest be the way of our salvation and the means of ascent to the heavenly kingdom." St. Bonaventure again, "Blessed are they who know the O mother of God, for the knowledge of thee is the high road to everlasting life and the publication of thy virtues is the way of eternal salvation." Now could Catholic people understand anything other than that they're saved by honoring and praying to Mary? Richard of St. Lawrence said, "Mary is the mistress of heaven, for there she commands as she wills and admits into heaven whom she wills." Abbot Garrick said, "He who serves Mary and for whom she intercedes is as certain of heaven as if he was already there. And those who do not serve Mary will not be saved." St. Bonaventure again, exclaims, "Give ear, O ye nations, and all you who desire heaven. Serve, honor Mary and certainly you will find eternal life."

The whole Roman Catholic system is filled with people who believe if they worship Mary they're going to heaven. That is a false god, and a false and damning gospel. Even St. Anselm, "It suffices, O lady, that thou willest it and therefore our salvation is certain." The Church and the saints greet her thus. "You, O Mary, together with Jesus Christ redeemed us. O Mary, our salvation is in your hands." She is the co-redemptrix because with Jesus she ransomed mankind from the power of Satan. "Jesus, says Catholic theology, redeemed us with the blood of His body, Mary redeemed us with the agonies of her heart, suffering in her heart what was lacking in the passion of Christ." Really? Something was lacking in the passion of Christ?

A popular tract is titled, "Heaven opened by the practice of the three Hail Mary's." That's the title of it, "Heaven opened by the practice of the three Hail Mary's." Here's what it promises, and I quote, "One of the greatest means of salvation, one of the surest signs of predestination is unquestionably the devotion to the most Blessed Virgin. A devout servant of Mary shall never perish." She it was...says the mistichi coporus, another Catholic document, "She it was who offered Christ on Golgotha to the eternal Father." She offered Christ on the cross to the eternal Father? My Bible says, "God offered His Son." John Paul II said this, "Mary participates in the redemption achieved by her Son and all graces are granted only through her intercession with her Son."

In a bizarre kind of thing, the II Vatican Council says this, "Not only did Mary offer her Son to God, but she remained at the cross to suffer with Him," as we heard, "to sort of fill up what was lacking in His passion," I guess. Here's a quote from II Vatican Council, "Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross where she stood in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of His suffering, associated herself with His sacrifice in her mother's heart and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim which was born of her." In some strange way they have Mary somehow suffering in an efficacious manner for the very sins which had placed her Son there. According to the Church, Mary's sufferings were so intense that they brought her to the very threshold of death herself." She...says the Church...and I quote, "Participated with Jesus Christ in the very painful act of redemption." So the suffering of Mary at the cross was redeeming sinners. Mary suffered, says inter sodalicia(??), another document, "Mary suffered and as it were nearly died with her suffering Son, for the salvation of mankind she renounced her mother's rights and as far as it depended on her, offered her Son to placate divine justice so we may well say that she with Christ redeemed mankind." She had to give her will and her consent and offer her Son to God for God to place Him on the cross as a sacrifice. Mary had a part with Christ in the redemption of the human race. She is therefore called by the Church the co-operatrix in man's redemption. She is even called, "Our co-redemptor." It is said at the cross that Mary triumphed over the ancient serpent. Another document says, "It is no exaggeration to say that it is due chiefly to her leadership and help that the wisdom and teachings of the gospel spread so rapidly to all the nations of the world, in spite of the most obstinate difficulties and most cruel persecutions and brought everywhere in their train a new reign of justice and peace." And now Mary is the Holy Spirit. She's the one spreading the gospel. She's the one converting sinners. Delaguarie said, "She cooperated in our redemption and became the mother of our souls." Delaguarie writes, "A person deprived of Mary's help falls first into sin and then into hell." He says, "God will not save us without Mary's intercession." He writes, "In Mary we find life and eternal salvation. She is the happy gate of heaven." Delaguarie writes, "Since a man and a woman cooperated in our ruin, Adam and Eve, it was proper that another man and another woman should cooperate in our redemption, and these two were Jesus and Mary." "There is no doubt that Christ alone was more than sufficient to redeem us...he writes...yet it was much more becoming that the two sexes should work together to repair the evil which the two had worked together to bring about. So we call her the co-helper of redemption." In fact, on page 402 in Delaguarie's book he says, "The divine mother can be called the savior of the world."

It's painful to read this, by the way, to me, as I'm sure it is to you. So I'm going to skip some of it. Finally, just one last comment from Delaguarie, equally bizarre and blasphemous, page 26, "Mary merited to conceive the Son of God in her virginal womb." She earned the right to have God in her womb. "Our blessed lady gave the consent which the eternal Word was waiting for before He would become her Son. At the same time, she not only agreed and gave consent, but she asked with all her heart and obtained the salvation of all the elect." Mary is the savior.

A final doctrine, now let's just call it The Treasury of Merit. One of the most strange things in Catholicism but one that really makes the system work is the idea of the treasury of merit. Probably the most important doctrine to Roman Catholicism is Purgatory because that's a safety net. And if all goes bad here, you can land there and you can get out. That's...Catholicism is a tough thing, it's a hard sell because it's legalism, right? You've got people trying to live virtuous lives, even the priests can't do it, thousands upon thousands of them in our modern time and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands through history have been immoral because false religion can't restrain the flesh, right? So if the priests are as wretched as they are, and some of you heard one of the priests say the other night when Larry King said to him, "Have you been celibate all your life?" And he answered, "I've been celibate as far as I'm able." Well I know the answer to that. If you have been celibate as far as you are able, you haven't been celibate because you're not able. So nobody can live up to the standard. So everybody is going to fall short, so therefore nobody can know they're safe and so you'd say, "Well, I'm going to walk, I mean, this is too much, I can't handle this." But there's a safety net there. If you just don't do the really bad stuff, you're going to end up in a waiting place and eventually you'll get out of there. But the question is, how do you get out? How do you...how do you get good enough to get to heaven? How do you become righteous enough to get to heaven?

Since most people aren't going to earn heaven in this life, they're going to end up in this place called "Purgatory," which is from the idea of purge where you get purged, where whatever still remains of your wretchedness gets burned off by some kind of punishment for a period of time, hundreds or thousands of years. This is the place where the sinners almost all of them go. They fall short of the merit. They are there, they are purged and how does that happen? It happens one way, by having somebody else's merit applied to you and by being purged by pain. Pain gains merit. So if you have enough pain for enough millennia, your pain earns you merit. But to speed the process and get you out sooner, somebody else's merit can be applied to you and there happens to be in the Catholic world a treasury of merit. God has at His disposal excess merit. Some of it is His, and asked the priest the other night before we went on the television program, I said, "Now I don't understand about this treasury of merit. Whose merit goes in there? Does Mary's merit go in there?" Oh yes, because, you see, Mary had more merit than she needed. Whoa! She had more righteousness than necessary.

You tell me what kind of a system that is. Instead of saying, like the Bible says, that no man's righteousness can earn him a relationship to God, Mary had more than she needed and so Mary's excess merit and the excess merit of other beatified saints and some of the very righteousness of Christ all gets deposited in this treasury of merit. And you can get it. You can get it. In fact, you can get it before you die. In fact, you can buy it. That's what indulgences are. You pay a fee, you get your forgiveness purchased, punishment canceled, merit applied, Purgatory shortened and you avoid temporal punishment.

It was the year 2000, we were traveling around Italy doing a conference over there. It just happened to be a Jubilee year when certain doors to certain cathedrals were infused with indulgences. If you walk through that door, you received an indulgence. That is, you had certain sins of the past forgiven. I'm telling you, those were crowded places, all you had to do was go through the door. And there were certain doors, not all doors but certain doors spotted all over the place in certain cathedrals where you could go and get an indulgence. And here's what happened. When you got that indulgence, you had the merit that was in the treasury of merit, the excess merit of Mary applied to you, credited to you. If you're already in Purgatory, people who pray to Mary for you, people who light a candle to Mary or to the saints can accumulate merit that can be applied to you. That's why when you go into a Catholic Church you see all the candles everywhere, certain people praying for certain people. As long as the candle burns, the prayer goes on. And as long as the prayer goes on, the merit in the prayer is accumulating on the benefit of the person in Purgatory and the merit is being drawn out of the treasury of merit which merit essentially belongs to Christ, belongs to the saints who have excess merit and to Mary. The most effective means, by the way, of helping the dead in Purgatory is to have a priest say a Mass. So you pray, you pay the priest a fee and he says a Mass for the dead and merit is transferred to that person's account, Purgatory is shortened. You go to the church, you light the candle, you pay the priest to say the Mass, all of these things are intended to shorten up Purgatory. So you can borrow from the treasury of merit by paying for an indulgence, that's what launched the Reformation, remember, Tetzel coming along selling indulgences outraged Luther. Luther confronted the issue of indulgences and that launched the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation.

So Mary has more...far more merit than she needs and she is the source of this merit that can be purchased. " Indulgentiarum doctrina, post Vatican II, November 1, 1967, the Treasury of the Church...it says...is the infinite value which can never be exhausted which Christ's merits have before God. They were offered so that the whole of mankind could be set free from sin and attain communion with the Father. In Christ the Redeemer Himself, the satisfactions and merits of His redemption exist and find their efficacy. This Treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they are immense, unfathomable and pristine in their value before God." So you have there the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of Mary, and it goes on to say, "In the Treasury also are the prayers and good works of all the saints, all those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ and by His grace made their lives holy, carried out the mission their Father entrusted to them. In this way they attained their own salvation and at the same time cooperated in saving their brothers in the unity of the mystical body." Is this a salvation by works system or what? You attain your salvation and not only yours, but if you have excess merit you can attain the salvation of somebody else. That's not old stuff, that's II Vatican Council in '67. This system is called The Sauros(??) Meritorium(?), the Treasury of Merit. Mary's merit is unfathomable, part of the Treasury of the Church. She has earned the right to deposit it there. She has earned the right to dispense all the treasures to those who honor her. Careful how you treat Mary. Mary saves you. Mary's merit is applied to you. Mary gets you out of Purgatory. Mary gets you into heaven. Pious X said, "She is the supreme minister of the distributions of grace." There's another quote, I'm not sure where this quote came from, "Through her, merits....through her merits the torments of souls in Purgatory are not only softened but shortened." Illustration in a Papal Bull attributed to Pope John XXII who died in 1334, "We learned that our Lady Mary wished to make it known to all that on the Saturday after their death, she would deliver from Purgatory all who wore the Carmelites scapular. The same promises were afterwards confirmed by several other Pontiffs, notably Paul V who in a Bull of the year 1613, that's what they call a Papal Declaration, set down the conditions which must be fulfilled for the gaining of the singular mercy. That is the Saturday after you die you can get out of Purgatory if you wear a Carmelite scapular. According to what was written in the solemn office of our Lady of Mount Carmel, we may piously believe that the Blessed Virgin comforts the members of the Scapular Confraternity in Purgatory with maternal love and that she soon delivers them...the next Saturday...by her intercession and takes them to heaven. Besides the scapular of Mount Carmel, those of the seven dolars(?), the blessed Trinity and the Immaculate Conception, those are orders in the Church, have been enriched with indulgences. The Pope Paul V said, 'For my own part I have been careful to receive them all. Give me all of Mary's stuff...he said...to get me out of Purgatory.'"

Well all these are lies, obviously, all are lies...patently(?) lies. And my time is gone. What that means is, painful as it is, one more, but you're going to like this one because next week we're going to look at what the Bible says about Mary. Amen? Now you better be there, I heard that amen. All right, let's pray.