Grace and peace.
Henceforth, I will not be posting to this blog, as it has been moved to The Gospel Light And Truth Crusade website. If you follow or are subscribed to The Still Man, Please subscribe to or follow us at The Gospel Light And Truth Crusade. Thanks, and God bless you.
The Still Man
Grace and peace.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you an article discussing the fact that President Donald Trump, before taking residence, had the White House exorcised by a Roman Catholic priest. After the exorcism, the President asked the priest if he could keep a desk-sized replica of “Our Lady of Fatima,” an apparition of the idol called the Virgin Mary.
We also discussed Our Lady of America, a movement which I believe to be part of the Roman Catholic Takeover of America.
I proposed that because the United States is the most powerful country in the world, and belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, then the President of the United States would be the de facto Holy Roman Emperor. The new Charlamagne.
Well, imagine my surprise when this morning I saw a news item that depicted President Trump at a summit standing in front of a “fake” presidential seal featuring a double-headed eagle. The article suggested the seal was intended to satirize President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, which has the double-headed eagle on its coat of arms. It is also featured on the flags of Serbia, Albania, and Montenegro.
What the article failed to mention was that the double-headed eagle was originally the emblem of the Roman Empire/Holy Roman Empire.
Turning Point USA, the organization that hosted the summit, attributed the seal to “a last minute A/V” mistake.” Folks, that was no mistake: it was both an announcement and a pronouncement. Amazon even has T-shirts for sale depicting the “fake presidential seal.
You may be interested to know that the Holy Roman Empire is one of the symbolic meanings of the Beast of Revelation 13:
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns then crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” (Revelation 13:1).
The Bible says that the Beast “was and is not, and yet is” (Revelation 17:8), which is a reference to the fact that the Holy Roman Empire, which was supposed to have fallen, is risen again.
It is no accident that this story came out in the immediate aftermath of the El Paso, Texas shootings. People are clamoring for the President to do something about the “gun problem” in America. And he will. The Roman Catholic Takeover of America cannot happen as long as American citizens are armed; and Rome has too much invested to let that little detail spoil their plans.
You have been warned.
P.S.: If you haven’t already, now would be a good time to watch the video below. The excrement is about to hit the fan.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
“Tree Blowing in the Wind” from www.PaintingValley.com.
Grace unto you, and peace.
For the past few days, the mornings had been pleasantly cool, and there was always a gentle breeze moving through the trees. But this morning when I stepped out onto the porch, I immediately noticed that though the sky was overcast and there was no glaring sun, the air was still, heavy, and humid. But what really got my attention was the fact that there was absolutely no breeze.
I instantly recalled Revelation 7:1, which recounts what will happen on the earth at the opening of the sixth seal:
“After these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.â€
Do you have any idea how miserable the earth would be if there were not even the slightest breeze to offer relief from the heat (and the humidity)? Even after I remarked to my son the fact that there was no breeze, a slight breeze blew, and there was an immediate and noticeable difference. Imagine if there were not even that?
Well, my Bible tells me that this very thing is coming to a neighborhood near you.Â
We usually only give God credit for the major things that He gives us (i.e. life, food, a job, a place to live, clothes, etc.), but we often fail to recognize the importance of a simple breeze and to glorify God for providing that for us.
Â
Those of us who claim to love the Lord Jesus Christ ought to think about this, because we are supposed to know Him better than the average person. If we are not thanking Him for the simple things like a cool breeze, how well do we really know Him? And if we don’t really know Him, how grateful can we be?
So, the next time you feel a breeze, no matter how slight, think on the Lord Jesus, because He did that for you.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
I’ve made some interesting discoveries in the past week.Â
The first discovery happened last weekend, while watching the disaster movie 2012 for the second time. When I first watched the movie some years ago, I had only been saved about five years; so the only thing I noticed that was of any spiritual importance was that a global inundation of such apocalyptic proportions is pure fantasy from a biblical perspective, as God promised that He would never again destroy the world with a flood. Watching it the second time, however, after being saved for fourteen years, I noticed quite a bit more. One of those things occurred in the scene where President Wilson, (Danny Glover), is in the chapel of the White House praying, when the Chief Science advisor comes to the White House to tell the President that he needs to board Air Force One immediately, as a huge tsunami is en route.
You may have noticed that in the corner of this chapel was an image of the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary. I was not aware that the White House even had a chapel; but, if it does, then this is yet another proof that the formerly great republic called the United States of America is in its death throes.
You must understand that the separation of church and state is vital to the freedoms we enjoy; and, therefore, cannot and must not be destroyed, if we are to remain a free nation. Most of us did not learn in school that when the founding fathers declared independence from England, they were primarily declaring independence from the British monarchy, which, along with other monarchies and the Roman Catholic Church, hated (and still hate) the idea that people can rule themselves. Their hatred of popular government was in fact the basis for the Secret Treaty of Verona.
The Treaty of Verona, for those of you who do not know, was a secret treaty wherein the “high contracting parties,†Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Pius VII, entered into an agreement to prevent popular government from taking root anywhere in the world and to destroy it wherever it had already been established. It should come to no surprise to you that since its inception, their principle object of hatred was the United States of America.Â
NOTE: Read more about the Secret Treaty of Vienna in the book, The Suppressed Truth About the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, available here.
The American system of government is based on the principle that “all men are created equal,” and popular government is the hallmark of this principle. In his famous Gettysburg address, President Abraham Lincoln said, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.â€Â The idea of popular government, however, is in direct contrast to the beliefs of the high contracting parties, who believe that the common man does not possess sufficient wisdom, intelligence and illumination to govern himself, and should therefore be governed by those who have the “divine right” to rule, by virtue of royal blood and because they were ordained by the Pope, who they believed to be the Vicar of Christ.
The Roman Catholic Church is violently opposed to both popular government and the separation of church and state, because the Pope believes himself to be sovereign over both. The marriage of church and state is embodied in the most visible symbol of the Papacy, the so-called keys of Simon Peter. Here’s what the Vatican has to say about this emblem:
“Since the XIV Century the two crossed keys have been the official insignia of the Holy See. The gold one, on the right, alludes to the power in the heavens, the silver one, on the left, indicates the spiritual authority of the papacy on earth. The mechanisms are turned up towards the heaven and the grips turned down, in other words into the hands of the Vicar of Christ. The cord with the bows that unite the grips alludes to the bond between the two powers.â€
Note that the keys represent spiritual and temporal authority; that is, the Church and the State, and are symbolically united by the red cord. By this, the Roman Catholic Church signifies that it does not believe in a separation of church and state. To them, the Church is the State.
I searched the internet for any reference to a chapel in the White House, and I could only find one, from a Google newsgroup. The individual said that he had also heard that there was indeed a chapel in the White House.
As the workplace of the President of the United States, and the symbol for our democracy, the White House should be kept devoid of any religious association, as this would show religious bias. A chapel in the White House would be bad, but a statue of the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary would be even worse: not just because it shows bias towards Roman Catholicism, but because the Virgin Mary is an idol. Our Lady of America is supposedly a movement to place that apparition of the Virgin Mary in the National Cathedral. I have always suspected that its real purpose was to place the Virgin Mary in the White House, and this revelation confirms my fears. Could this have been the true significance of the movie 2012? Did anyone even notice?
The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. is called the National Cathedral, already making Roman Catholicism the de facto religion of the United States; but a statue of the Virgin Mary in the White House would make it official.Â
While searching for information about the chapel in the White House, I made the second discovery, when I came upon an article that discussed the fact that prior to taking office, President Trump, at the insistence of his wife Melania, a Roman Catholic, had the White House exorcised by a Roman Catholic priest. I was not aware of this.
The article, taken from the Catholic online newspaper, The Remnant, featured a photo of President Trump holding an image of “Our Lady of Fatima.†The article stated that after the exorcism, President Trump asked the Catholic priest who performed the ritual if he could keep the statue of Fatima, which just happens to be desk-sized. Where do you think he keeps it?
You may read the original article here:
When the author can go so far as to say that President Trump acts more Catholic than most Catholic leaders, you know we are in trouble. Many so-called Protestants believe President Trump is a Christian, but not one of them, to my knowledge, has publicly asked him what kind of a Christian. Then again, it wouldn’t matter, as many baptized Catholics change their official religion.Â
Now consider this: if the United States is the most powerful nation on earth, and if the United States is also a Catholic country, then that would make the President of the United States the Holy Roman Emperor. Officially, the Holy Roman Empire is dead, but the Bible is clear that like The Terminator, it would be back. If the Holy Roman Empire will be back, then the Holy Roman Emperor will be back. And that would be the President of the United States.
If President Trump is not a baptized and confirmed Catholic, then I don’t believe he could ever be the Holy Roman Emperor. But if his successor is Catholic, he could be.
Years ago I downloaded a snippet from an article from the Catholic online magazine, Commonweal (https://www.commonwealmagazine.org) entitled, “The Roman Catholic Takeover of America is Almost Complete.” Here is part of it:
Upon the passing of Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii (a war hero from WWII, leaving Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey the sole remaining WWII veteran in Congress), Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont becomes the President pro tempore of the Senate and, I believe, the first Catholic to hold the position. Indeed, if Senator John Kerry is nominated and confirmed to be Secretary of State, the four offices in line of succession to the presidency will all be held by Catholics: Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker John Boehner, Senator Leahy, and Secretary Kerry. [boldface mine.]
The original article is here.
CORRECTION: What I downloaded from Commonweal was a commentary on the article from Mirror of Justice. It is here.
A faithful Roman Catholic, Joseph Biden had a priest bless his private swearing in 2013.
In the article, The Roman Catholic Takeover of America, Â I explain that Roman Catholic Takeover of a nation happens in three phases:
Phase I – A crusade of prayer, claiming a country for the Virgin Mary.
Phase II – Dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.
Phase III – A Holy Warfare to claim that country.
Phase II was accomplished in the United States in 1959, with the reading of a prayer at the dedication of the newly completed Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C. We are now in Phase III, which consists of four steps:
When these steps have been accomplished, the Catholic Church will begin its Great Crusade to “Make America [Completely] Catholic.” In the book, Ravening Wolves, author Monica Farrell writes that in the newly-created Independent State of Croatia, Rome’s plan was to convert one-third of the Serb population, murder one-third (either by execution or a slow death in the concentration camps), and allow one-third to live. I don’t believe this will be true in the U.S.Â
While not all Roman Catholics may know what is going on, most do; and they are behind it 100%. Those who are not will not say so.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Last month, my son began what was supposed to be an art apprenticeship with a government-funded summer program for inner-city youth. I learned about the program via a flier I found in my mailbox one day last Spring. I get a lot of bogus things in my mailbox, so, when I saw the flier, I immediately suspected that something was afoot. But, my son and I have been back in St. Louis for two years now; and, as he has yet to make any friends, I thought it would be an opportunity for him to at least be in the company of other kids his age. Of course, being the son of a Protestant preacher in Roman Catholic St. Louis, I know that my son will very likely never make any friends—real or otherwise. But, sometimes it is important to keep a semblance of normalcy; so I went through the motions and let him sign up for the apprenticeship. Two months later, in June, he started.
When he came home after his first day, I asked him how it went, and he said that it went well, but that he wished he had spoken more (he is somewhat shy). It was obvious to me, however, that something had happened that he didn’t want to talk about. It didn’t seem to be serious, so I decided to leave it for tomorrow. When he came home the next day, I again asked my son how it went; and again, he said that it went fine; only this time adding that he had made an effort to speak to the other kids there, rather than waiting to be spoken to, and had even given someone his phone number. Now, this may not be a big deal for most kids; but, for me it was huge. As a six-year old, my son was adventurous and gregarious—a natural leader. But, after living in Munich for almost three years without me and being constantly bullied at school and neglected at home, he had become shy and introverted. So since arriving in St. Louis, I had been encouraging him to take advantage of every social interaction from buying groceries to borrowing a book from the library to practice conversing with people, no matter how briefly. He had been making some progress; but with few opportunities, it was slow and hard to gauge.
When this apprenticeship materialized, therefore, though I had serious misgivings, I saw it as an opportunity for my son to hone his burgeoning social skills. I told him he should not expect much from the program, however, as experience had taught me that there would be little if anything, useful that he would gain there. He should therefore seek to make his time there as personally profitable as possible.
When we talked about what had happened that second day, my son tried to look as optimistic as he could, but found it impossible, as the things they did at that apprenticeship were, in his words, ridiculous. One example of a useless exercise he gave was when the teacher/facilitator passed around a piece of paper upon which, he said, each student drew a body part of a person, beginning with the head, until they had a full man. This sounded odd even to me; but, trying to be fair, I told him that perhaps he was not giving the program a fair chance, that it was possible there was a method to the madness.
It was then that he told me what had been bothering him that first day. On that day, he said, there was a particular exercise where, in order that the students could get better acquainted, each student had to introduce himself to the class and share three personal details about himself. But there was a caveat: one of the things had to be a lie. Now, if I were any other parent, in any other city, and on any other planet, I probably would not have had any problem with this exercise. But, as a Protestant evangelist in Roman Catholic St. Louis, I had a huge problem with this exercise. And I’ll tell you why.
Most of us know something about the Ten Commandments; and though we may not know them all, or even where they can be found in the Holy Bible, we know that the Ten Commandments are ten things God commanded us either to do or not to do. Lying is one of the things God told us not to do.
For the record, the Ten Commandments can be found in Chapter 20 of the Second Book of Moses, called Exodus. They are:
- “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
- “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image (statue), or any likeness of any thing (i.e. doll) that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…”
- “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”
- “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
- “Honor thy father and thy mother…”
- “Thou shalt not kill.”
- “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
- “Thou shalt not steal.”
- “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
- “Thou shalt not covet…”
–Exodus 20:3-17.
In case you did not know, to bear false witness is to lie. Some teach that some lies are not as bad as others (the so-called little white lie), but the Bible says “all disobedience is sin.†There is no such thing as a little white lie. A lie is a lie; so, when this facilitator told the students that they should tell three things about themselves, and that one of those things had to be a lie, she was essentially telling the students to lie. And, because lying is a sin, then she was essentially telling the students that it was okay to sin. Though sinning is a crime against the law of God, and not the law of man, you may have noticed that our laws are largely based on the Ten Commandments. Lying in a court of law, for example, is called perjury, which under federal law, is a felony.
The Lord Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because the Law says that a person should honor his mother and father, yet they taught that if a person should tell his parents to consider themselves lucky if he did anything for them, it was okay. By this tradition, Jesus told them, the Pharisees made the law of God “of none effect” (Mark 7:9-13).
When I broke this down for my son, his mouth formed an “o,” and his eyes widened as the light bulb came on. Then his countenance fell, and he seemed to be thinking, “They played me for a fool,†which they did. To make him feel better, I told him that this was nothing new. Children (especially black children) have been programmed for decades by teachers, clerics, coaches, scout leaders, and even parents to not only be violent, but also to be promiscuous, disrespectful, addicts, agnostic, superstitious, and witchy (what parent over fifty didn’t read Hansel & Gretel in school?). Some very evil people have access to our children, and they all have an agenda: the moral deflowering and paganizing of all children–especially black children.
I was going to take my son out of the apprenticeship, but under the circumstances, I wanted the decision to be his. Happily, he did not want to go back, because, he was “not ready” (his words) for such slickery. He made the right decision.
Now, if you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, consider that just about everyone in America and a lot of the world knows that St. Louis, Missouri is one of the most crime-infested cities in America. They know about Ferguson, Missouri, a city that is part of Greater St. Louis, and of the riots that rocked that city as a result of the Michael Brown killing. And they know that an awful lot, if not most, of the crime in St. Louis—including the murder of blacks—is committed by blacks. What they don’t know, however, is why. The answer is simple: blacks in St. Louis have been programmed to commit crime. How? They have been taught from very early that it’s okay to sin. And sin is a crime.
“How do they accomplish this?†you may ask.
In much the same way my son was about to be programmed, I would answer.
“Why?” you may ask.Â
Click here, I answer.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).
Wake up, St. Louis!
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
James Retby was a Scottish Protestant who in 1422 was burned at the stake at Glasgow “for denying that the Pope was the Vicar of Christ.”
“And when He had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held” (Revelation 6:9)
James Retby was a Scottish Protestant who in 1422 was burned at the stake at Glasgow “for denying that the Pope was Christ’s Vicar.” A disciple of John Wycliffe, Retby promulgated his master’s opinions in Scotland, where they spread in the diocese of Glasgow, and “laid the foundation of an extensive and permanent spread of Lollardism [Protestantism] throughout the western parts of that kingdom.â€Â
“Precious in the sight of God is the death of His saints” (Psalm 115:16).
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Sources:
The Protestant, Vol. I, by William McGavin, p. 107
The Rise and Progress of Religious Life in England, by Samuel Rowles Pattison, p. 81.
Animal attacks on humans have seen a marked increase in recent years. On Memorial Day, for example, a 4-year-old boy was attacked by a mountain lion at a wildlife preserve in California. The boy was hiking with a group of six adults and five children in the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve, in an area known as Carson’s Crossing, when the cougar struck. His father threw rocks at the animal, and it fled, leaving the boy with non-life-threatening wounds to his head.
According to Dave Bitner, director of Wildlife Research Institute, mountain lion attacks on humans are very rare, owing to the fact that these animals normally only come out at night, and usually avoid humans. This mountain lion, however, was not afraid of humans, evidenced by the fact that while California Fish and Wildlife officials were investigating the incident, the beast returned and approached them. “The animal did not appear to be scared of the wardens, which is an indication that the animal is habituated,” an official said.
Across the Pacific, on May 29, Thomas Smiley, a retired optometrist from California, was killed by a shark while swimming off the coast of Maui. An expert swimmer and diver, Smiley was unaware that authorities were monitoring the area because of earlier shark activity. For years, experts have always said that shark attacks are rare; but, with several attacks in the last few years–two of them fatal–I think it is safe to say that is no longer the case.
Incidents of pets attacking their owners are also on the rise. Last Tuesday, a Texas woman died of injuries sustained when her two pit bulls attacked her at an animal hospital. As I reflected on this, I thought of Charla Nash, who, in 2008, was horribly disfigured in a vicious attack by her neighbor’s pet chimpanzee. I also remembered Olga Moslealyova, a young Russian woman, who, in 2001, was eaten alive by a bear and her cubs.
Experts are uncertain why animals, once afraid of human beings, are attacking in ever-increasing numbers. Some believe it is mostly due to humans encroaching on animal habitats; while others, like Dave Bitner, believe it is due to animals becoming habituated to humans. While these may help to explain the increase in wild animal attacks, they do little to explain why even domesticated animals and family pets are attacking their masters in increasing numbers. And, while there is evidence that abuse has been a factor in some instances, it is not always the case.
Whenever something cannot be attributed to natural causes, you can bet that the cause is supernatural. In such cases, I look to the Holy Bible, the infallible source of supernatural wisdom, for the answer.
You may be surprised to learn that the Bible tells us precisely why animal attacks are on the rise. Turn with me, if you will, to Chapter Nine of the Book of Genesis, which discusses the Great Flood. It has been almost a year since the first drop of rain fell, and the world was inundated with water, drowning all life. Only Noah, his family, and the animals that were aboard the Ark were spared. The waters have receded off the face of the earth, and the ark has come to rest on the mountains of Ararat. For the first time in nearly a year, Noah and his family step out of the ark onto dry land. God blesses Noah and his family, telling them to replenish the earth. We pick up there:
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you will be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered†(Genesis 9:1,2).
Did you see that? God put the fear of man into every living creature on the earth. He did this to protect Noah and his family so they wouldn’t fall prey to the animals that came off the ark. This is because, prior to sin coming into the world, all animals were tame and docile, and only ate herbs. But the sin of Adam cursed the world so badly that even the animals had become corrupted, including the animals that were with Noah on the Ark. God therefore put the fear of Noah (and subsequently all humans) into every animal, from the smallest insect to the largest mammal, so that they would not fall prey to the wild animals, which greatly outnumbered Noah and his family, and procreate at a much faster rate. Even fish and marine life were afraid of man. If God had not done this, Noah would have been doomed, and mankind with him.
What happened? Why are animals no longer afraid of us? Why are humans being attacked by virtually every kind of animal, from fish to birds? Even docile animals like cows, giraffes, and elephants are attacking humans without provocation. Has God taken the fear of man and the dread of man out of animals? The answer is “Yes.â€
Open your Bible and turn with me to Chapter Six of the Revelation of Jesus Christ; which, as you may know, deals with the Seven Seal Judgments. Here is the synopsis: In his vision, the Apostle John sees God the Father sitting on His throne with a book, or scroll, in His right hand, sealed with seven seals. Each seal is associated with a judgment upon sinful mankind. An angel asks who is worthy to loose the seals from the book, and only the Lord Jesus Christ is found worthy. As each of the first four seals is loosed, one of four beasts gathered around the throne of God says, “Come and see,†and John sees a horse of a certain color and its rider. These are commonly known as the Four Horsemen. We pick up as Jesus opens the fourth seal:
“And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth†(Revelation 6:7,8).
Did you get that? At the opening of the fourth seal, it is pronounced that a fourth of the earth’s population would be killed with sword; hunger; and death, which are war; famine; and pestilence, respectively. The last judgment, is interesting, because the “beasts of the earth” are animals. That, my friends, means that the increase in animal attacks we see today is prophetic. It is the finger of God!
This thoroughly explains what experts cannot. While some of these attacks can certainly be attributed to the foolishness of the individuals involved, and while human encroachment on animals’ habitats may also play a role, by far, the best explanation for the increase in animal attacks is that it is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The hand of God is upon us. Scientists, therefore, can wrack their brains all they want, but it will be to no avail. Animal attacks are part of God’s judgment on the world; and you better believe that when God declares a thing, He will bring it to pass.
In spite of the increase in the frequency of these attacks, “experts” will continue to say they are rare. The attack on Thomas Smiley, for example, was the sixth this year; yet shark expert Michael Domeier said that the odds of someone being attacked by a shark are “1 in 12 million.” Granted, math is not my strong suit; but I can add pretty well: and that don’t add up.
If the Bible is true (and it is), then soon–and very soon–animal attacks will get so bad that it will be ridiculous to say they are rare. Remember, the Bible says that a quarter of the earth’s population must be killed by war, famine, disease, and animal attacks. There are almost eight billion of us on planet earth right now (7.71 billion according to World Population Review). If a quarter of that number (roughly two billion) are to be killed by war, famine, disease, and animal attacks, then (if distributed evenly) the number of the human family that will have been killed in animal attacks will be in the neighborhood of half a billion. That’s incredible!
Now don’t look for most of these attacks to be covered on the evening news, because they who run the media don’t want anyone getting scared and turning to the Lord Jesus. Social media will probably be the way most of these incidents will come to light. If not, it will still be enough for any thinking person to know that something is desperately wrong.
What must we do? We must repent! We must repent of our sins and the sins of our nation. We must repent of our idolatry. We must repent of our fornication. We must repent of our witchcraft. And we certainly must repent of our abuse and murder of the innocent. We must repent of our many sins, and seek a return to the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. We must seek out the Lord Jesus Christ, if haply we should feel for Him, though He be not far from any one of us.
If we don’t, then there just may be a lion’s paw out there with your name on it.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Tuesday night, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and other parts of Missouri originally effective until 10:00 p.m. A tornado watch means that conditions are right for a tornado, while a tornado warning means that a tornado has actually been spotted on the ground and is heading in the direction of the areas affected by the warning.
This was the first time my son had experienced a tornado warning, so he was quite nervous when the weather took a turn for the worse and the sirens went off. He’s not the most dextrous cat I know, but I can tell you that if he could churn butter the way he cranked that emergency radio, Prairie Farms would have to start selling potato chips. To allay his fears, I calmly reminded him that contrary to the popular opinion that tornados are merely “Mother Nature” letting her hair down, tornados and floods are God’s punishment for sin. When there is a tornado warning, I told him, rather than merely hoping that the tornado misses us, we should be on our knees confessing our sins; for it is because of our sins that God brings tornados upon us. And while we are busy confessing, it doesn’t hurt to ask God to let the tornado miss our homes, neighborhoods and towns.
I’m happy to report that the tornado not only missed our town, but it also missed St. Louis. Other areas of Missouri, however, were not so fortunate; as three people perished in Golden on Tuesday, and Jefferson City took quite a beating last night. May the Lord Jesus console the families of those who lost their lives, and help the survivors in Golden and Jeff City to rebuild their homes and lives.
I know the view that God causes tornados is not a popular one, seeing that many of those who profess a belief in God believe He is all love and no justice. I do believe, however, that God is the Author of tornadoes, and therefore want to publicly thank the Good Lord Jesus for sparing our home, our town, and our lives. God knows I don’t deserve His mercy, but I’m grateful that He saw fit to spare us, nevertheless.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Â
Most of us are familiar with 2 Corinthians 5:17:
Â
“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.â€
Â
We usually only look at this verse with regard to the New Birth: that is, the fact that when we get saved, we become a new person. Though this is very true (my handwriting and signature actually changed), it is important to understand that the Bible not only says that we become a new creation, but that all things are become new. “All things†means everything. If the Bible is true, then the moment we believed on the Lord Jesus and accepted His sacrifice on our behalf, not only were we changed, but so was literally everything else in our lives. If you think about it, that is absolutely incredible.Â
Â
There are a lot of things, if you will, that make up who we are and what we call life. We are much more than human beings. We are shaped and defined by our beliefs, our habits, our tastes, our opinions, our likes and dislikes, our hobbies, and our professions. There are places we like to go and others we don’t like to go, as well as things we like to do and others we don’t like to do. There is music we like, music we don’t care much for, and music we absolutely hate. We are fond of some people, indifferent towards others, and hate the rest. But there is one thing that we all have in our lives that has nothing—and yet everything—to do with us: people. People are things too, you know: living things, true, but things just the same.  If the Bible is true (and it is), then when we got saved, not only were we changed, but so were the people in our lives.Â
Â
I believe that the more profound the change in us is, the more profound the change in the people around us will appear. I say appear, because often it is not the people in our lives that have changed, but our perception of those people. You may see now, for instance, that someone you always thought was really cool is really not so cool after all, or you may now see that someone you thought was a friend was really an enemy. Conversely, you may realize that someone you thought was antisocial was merely discreet; or someone you thought was aloof was really just shy. It was a matter of perception. Then there are cases where neither the people in our lives nor our perception of them have changed, but our relationship with those people definitely has. And when those people are family, the change can be dramatic. Permit me to illustrate by way of example.
Â
Last November, my son and I were at the gym when I received a call from my niece, which was strange because she almost never calls me.  I have never been very close to my family, and had not seen very much of them since I left home for the military at age 21. In fact, out of the last thirty-eight years, the combined total of our time spent together would not even total a month. It would not be an exaggeration, therefore, to say that we are practically strangers. When my niece called me, therefore, my first thought was that someone must have died.
Â
As it turned out, no one had died. My niece had called because she was visiting the eldest son of my deceased brother, who passed away from cancer at age thirty-six. I had not seen this nephew since he was around sixteen years old, and as he was now thirty six; when he asked if I would stop by his house, I told him I would be right over. I arrived at his apartment within the hour and, upon entering, was surprised to see my niece’s mother (my sister) and my nephew’s younger brother, whom I hadn’t seen in five years. To say that I was shocked would be an understatement, as family reunions (that include me, that is) are a rarity in my family.Â
Â
The next thing I noticed was that the single window in the living room, where everyone was gathered, was wide open, though it was the middle of November. My nephew said he had the window open because it was too warm in his apartment, but I still found it strange that the window was all the way open, rather than halfway or cracked, especially since it was about forty degrees outside. Having been in this situation more times than I can recall, I knew that the window was open because whatever conversations we would be having that night had been planned well in advance, and it was very important that my words be heard by the unseen as well as the seen. I therefore sat back and waited. What followed was some of the most bizarre behavior I had ever seen or heard—even from my family.
Â
You must understand that my family is about as typical as a black inner city St. Louis family can get. The use of and commerce in controlled substances and alcohol were always very typical; and, growing up, scholastic achievement was not only uncommon, but actually discouraged. Intelligent and enlightened conversation is not the hallmark of such families, as you can imagine, and mine was no exception. When my family gathered around the dinner table, it was never to discuss current events, talk politics, or even have healthy debates. If it wasn’t about food, then it was to play cards and ingest mind-altering substances. In all my years on planet earth, I’ve never once heard my family talk about anything other than maybe their jobs, their neighbors, or who had been recently incarcerated or murdered. In short, my family are not contemplative people; so under normal circumstances, you would not expect them to be interested in subjects that don’t affect them directly, as this is not reflected in the historical record.Â
Â
Tonight, however, the circumstances were anything but normal; as I had been invited. Tonight these people seemed interested in subjects as varied as PTSD and school desegregation. By far, however, the main topic, was racism—something I had never in my life heard anyone in my family talk about. My niece began by complaining about the racism at her job, which I found this odd, because prior to this, she always talked about how great her boss was, and how much she loved her job. In fact, the last time I spoke to her, which was approximately a year and a half prior, she was elated because she had just received a substantial raise. Next, my nephew chimed in about a video that had gone viral of a white woman who tried to prevent a young black man from entering her apartment building, where he was also a tenant. After talking about this for about half an hour, he spent the next hour ranting about the racism he supposedly deals with on his job. Then, out of nowhere, he starts going on about the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Never mind he hadn’t even been born when Amin was in the news!Â
Â
For almost three hours this went on, all of them chattering like chipmunks, sometimes in turn, sometimes simultaneously, with no natural progression or logical segue between topics. Their speech and behavior were so bizarre that my then sixteen-year-old son became visibly uncomfortable. I wanted to spare him and leave when I first noticed his discomfort, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to stay until I was certain what was taking place. It was clear that these people had no genuine interest in seeing me or in discussing any of those topics, as these are purely sensual people who are not at all interested in the issues of the day. That they were suddenly and inexplicably elevated to such new heights of intellectual thought and with such enthusiasm was therefore so incongruous to their character that it bordered on lunacy. I realized that their sole purpose for inviting me was the hope that in a “relaxed,†“familiar,†and “totally spontaneous†environment, I would speak freely and possibly say something that could be used against me by parties inimical to my ministry.Â
Â
Realizing that my son was getting more uncomfortable by the minute, and not wanting him to become any more cognizant than necessary of the extent to which our family had been destroyed by the forces of darkness, I bid them all farewell, and took leave of that bizarre scenario. Two weeks later, to my chagrin, I received a phone call from my nephew ostensibly to tell me that he had just gotten a job working for a gypsy. He even repeated the word gypsy several times, as though he wanted me to respond to it. After this, I resolved to just let sleeping dogs lie. Like my mother always said, “Some people have to be fed with a long-handled spoon.â€
Â
The worst thing about this entire episode is that it is true. Things like this happen to me all the time, and I have had many such experiences with my Roman Catholic wife and her family, and even my own children. For some strange reason, However, I never expected to go through something like this with my blood family. I just never thought them capable of such deception. Apparently, I underestimated the power of sin.
Â
This incident reminded me of an episode in the life of Jesus Christ. While at the house of Simon Peter, the Lord Jesus was informed that His mother and brethren were outside desiring to see Him. Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and my brethren?†and, stretching out His arms to His disciples, He said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother†(Matthew 12:46-12:50).
Â
We must remember that though we may have family according to the flesh, our spiritual family are our brothers and sisters of the household of faith. If we lose sight of this, then it will be difficult for us to understand the actions and motivations of those around us, especially our family.
Â
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
Â
The Still Man
Â
Grace and peace, Saints.
For the most part, Protestants have forgotten that the Lord Jesus commanded us to break bread in remembrance of Him. Many of us believe this only applies to the Lord’s Supper, but we should also break bread whenever we have a meal, if possible. This video explains the biblical basis for this. I pray it blesses you.
Grace and peace, Saints.
As usual, it has been a long time since I’ve written anything; but I’m still taking care of my son, and I’m still witnessing for the Lord Jesus. I’m trying to get the new website at www.GospelLightAndTruthCrusade.org together, and lately I’ve been concentrating on doing videos for the YouTube channel, The Gospel Light And Truth Crusade. I have seriously neglected this blog, as I’ve done a few videos and forgot to even write blog posts with the embedded videos. I’ve just completed posted another video today and I’ll post it shortly.
Please pray for me, as persecution against me is increasing steadily. God bless you all, and be encouraged, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Most of us in the household of faith know little of our Protestant heritage. We may know something of Martin Luther and the Reformation, and we may have heard of the martyrdom of William Tyndale for his valiant efforts in making the Word of God available to the common folk in the English language. But we are mostly ignorant of those faithful believers who, centuries before the Reformation, defied the Catholic Church in obeying the Great Commission and preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Waldenses, a group of Bible-believing Christians who lived in the valley of the Piedmont, in France, are one such example. Today, little is known of the Waldenses, and nothing remains of their culture and literature, as the Catholic Church mounted a terrible crusade against these peaceful people for the express purpose of not only destroying them, but erasing them from memory. I have learned something of the Waldenses and of their remarkable founder, Peter Waldo; and I would like to share it with you in order to:Â
I quote now from The Protestant.
“Early in the twelfth century, a great number of persons in Lyons, and other parts in the south of France, had their eyes opened to perceive the idolatry and absurdity of the Romish worship. The Vulgate Latin Bible was the only edition of the Scriptures at that time in Europe; and very few of the people were capable of reading it. We may well suppose, then, that the knowledge of divine things was very scanty; but nobody can tell how small the degree of knowledge is, by which a sinner may be saved, if it be but the knowledge of Christ. Multitudes, who were called the poor men of Lyons, had obtained that knowledge, and were enabled to maintain that truth, at the expense of being hated and persecuted by their neighbors.
“Providence raised up one among them, who was highly honored as an instrument of extensively propagating those truths which were, three hundred years after, embraced by Luther and his colleagues, at the time of the Reformation. This was Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons, from whom it is supposed the Waldenses took their name. Having had a better education than most of his neighbors, he was able to teach the people the text of the New Testament, in their mother tongue. Here he saw clearly the way of salvation by Jesus Christ, and found peace and comfort to himself. He was desirous of communicating to others the knowledge of that truth which he found to be his own salvation. He abandoned his mercantile pursuits, distributed his wealth to the poor, as occasion required; and, while the latter flocked to him, to partake of his alms, he labored to engage their attention to the things which belonged to their everlasting peace. He either translated, or procured to be translated, the four Gospels into French; and had the honor of being the first who gave the Word of God in any modern language of Europe. —See this subject, more in detail, in Jones’ History of the Waldenses, 2d Ed. Chap. V. §. 1.
“Waldo laboured incessantly in propagating the truth, and in demonstrating the great difference there was between the Christianity of the Bible, and that of the Curch of Rome. ‘Other Archbishop of Lyons heard of these proceedings, and became indignant. Their tendency was obvious; the honor of the Church involved in them; and in perfect consistency with the usual mode of silencing objectors among the Catholic party, he forbade the new Reformer to teach any more, on pain of excommunication, and of being proceeded against as an heretic.’—Waldo replied, ‘that though a layman, he could not be silent in a matter which concerned the salvation of his fellow creatures.’ ‘Information of these things was then conveyed to Pope Alexander III. who no sooner heard of such heretical proceedings, than he anathematized the Reformer and his adherents, commanding the Archbishop to proceed against them with the utmost rigor.’ He was now compelled to leave Lyons, and afterwards, ‘persecuted from place to place he retired into Picardy, where also success attended his labors. Driven from thence, he proceeded to Germany, carrying along with him the glad tidings of salvation; and, according to the testimony of Thuanus, a very authentic French historian, he at length settled in Bohemia, where he finished his course, in the year 1179, after a ministry of nearly twenty years.’ —Hist. Wald. vol. ii. P. 12.
“Attend now to the intolerant spirit of the Popish religion, and the cruelties exercised upon the followers of Peter Waldo;—The doctrines which he had taught, which were evidently those of the Gospel, spread extensively in Alsace, along the Rhine, and in many other places. ‘Persecutions ensued—thirty-five citizens of Mentz were burned in one fire, at the city of Bingen, and eighteen in Mentz itself. The bishops of both Mentz and Strasburgh [sic] breathed nothing but vengeance and slaughter against them; and, in the latter city, where Waldo himself is said to have narrowly escaped apprehension, eighty persons were committed to the flames. In the treatment and in the behavior of the Waldenses, were renewed the scenes of martyrdom of the second century. Multitudes died praising God, and in the confident hope of a blessed resurrection .’ Ibid. p. 13.
 “That these cruelties were inflicted, not on the mere authority of individual bishops, but on the authority and at the instigation of the Pope of Rome, as head of the Church, appears by a decree of Pope Lucius III. against heretics, A.D. 1181, which commences thus: ‘To abolish the malignity of diverse heresies, which are lately sprung up in most parts of the world, it is but fitting that the power committed to the Church should be awakened, that, by the incurring assistance of the imperial strength, both the insolence and mal-pertness of the heretics, in their False designs, may be crushed, and the truth of Catholic simplicity shining forth in the Holy Church, May demonstrate her pure and free from execrableness of their false doctrines. Wherefore we, being supported by the presence and power of our most dear son, Fredrick, the most illustrious Emperor of the Romans, always successor of the empire, with the common advice and. Ourselves of our brethren, and other patriarchs, archbishops, and many princes, who, from several parts of the world, are met together, do set themselves against these heretics, who have got different names from the several false doctrines which they profess, by the sanction of the present decree, and by our apostolical authority, according to the tenor of these presents, we condemn all manner of heresy, by whatsoever it may be denominated.Â
“More particularly, we declare all Catharists, Patorines, and those who call themselves the poor of Lyons; the Passagines, Josephites, Arnoldists, to be under a perpetual anathema. And because some, under a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, as the Apostle saith, assume to themselves the authority of preaching; whereas the same Apostle saith, “How shall they preach, except they be sent?â€â€”we therefore conclude, under the same sentence of a perpetual anathema, all those who either being forbid, or not sent, do notwithstanding presume to preach publicly or privately, without any authority received from the Apostolic See, or from the bishops of their respective dioceses, &c. &c.Â
“Thus, by authority of the Holy Father, the emperor of the Romans, and many princes from different parts of the world, any man who shall tell his neighbor about salvation by Jesus Christ, however privately, is subjected to a perpetual curse: and the decree proceeds:—“As for any layman, who shall be found guilty, either publicly or privately, of any of the aforesaid crimes, (that is, preaching, or speaking improperly of the sacraments,) unless by abjuring his heresy, and making satisfaction, he immediately return to the orthodox faith, we decree him to be left to the sentence of the secular judge, to receive consign punishment, according to the quality of the offence.†—Hist. Wald. Vol. ii. P. 15,16.Â
“This of giving over to the secular judge, was well understood to infer certain death, often accompanied by the most cruel tortures that the ingenuity of man could invent.â€Â
—The Protestant: A Series of Essays of the Principle Points of Controversy Between The Church of Rome and the Reformed, by William McGavin, Vol. 1, Tenth Edition, 1887, Blackie and Sons, London, p. 97-100.
In our article regarding the Ulster Massacre of 1641, we reported that Ulster is a town in England; when, in fact, it is a province in northeastern Ireland. The Encyclopedia Britannica states, “The name Ulster has been generally used since 1920 as another name for Northern Ireland.â€
We beg your forgiveness for this error.
TSM
On October 21, 1641, Roman Catholics in the town of Ulster, England massacred 30,000 unarmed Protestants.
(Source: The Illustrated Dictionary of World History, William L. Langer, 1975, Vol. 1, p. 398.)
I grew up in a poor single-parent family. In fact, were it not for my grandparents, my siblings probably would have been a lot worse off. I remember, when I was about ten, waiting up some nights until about ten o’clock for my mother to come home from work to feed us. Dinner would consist of a hamburger, a bowl of chili, and some French fries, which I, my little brother, and my sister would divide among us. I would discover many years later that my mother was giving us her lunch, provided her by the restaurant where she worked.Â
I’ve always done everything I could to ensure that my children would never know what that was like; but I also realize that in so doing, they have missed out on a very important lesson: the importance of gratitude. It’s hard to be grateful for something you have always had. If you’ve slept in a warm bed all your life, it’s hard to appreciate a warm bed. If you’ve always had a warm coat in the winter, it’s hard to appreciate a warm coat. And if you’ve never missed a meal, it could be difficult to appreciate eating every day.Â
I was reminded of this the other day while making some hot cocoa. I used to drink cocoa occasionally as a child, and I gathered that it must have been expensive, as was milk, because it was something we rarely had. As an adult, too, I rarely drank it: not for economic reasons, but because my children, like their mother, preferred tea. That all changed in 2012, when I tried some cocoa one of my daughter’s classmates gave her a tin of cocoa as a Christmas present. I tried it, and it was great. After I finished the whole tin, I purchased a box of cocoa imported, it said, from Africa. It was very very good. Since then, I average a couple cups of cocoa a week.
My son would never even try cocoa until last year. (He was fed breastmilk until he was around two years old; and later never liked the taste of cow’s milk and wouldn’t drink it.) While passing through Baltimore en route to St. Louis, however, we stopped at Bob Evans for breakfast, and my daughter convinced him to try it. He loved it; and, since then, he now seems to prefer cocoa to tea. So, when I fix myself some cocoa, I’ll usually ask my son if he wants some too; and he usually does. But this day, he declined; because, he said, he wanted to start drinking cocoa less in order to “make it special.†Realizing that my son didn’t have a perfect understanding of the concept of special, which goes hand-in-hand with gratitude, I decided to use cocoa as a teaching point, telling him essentially the following:
A thing doesn’t become special because you do it less: a thing becomes special because you make it special. A wedding anniversary isn’t special because it happens once a year, a wedding anniversary is special because your wedding was special to you, and would still be special if you celebrated it every day. If you appreciate your husband or wife, and are thankful for him or her, then every day you spent with you husband or wife would be special, because it would be one more day you get to spend with him or her.
That Jesus Christ died and shed His blood on the cross for the sins of mankind is not special because He only did it once. It’s special because He did it for us, and He didn’t have to. If we love Him for what He did, then His sacrifice is special to us; if we don’t love Him for what He did, then His sacrifice means nothing to us.
Cocoa is special to me, whether I drink it once a day or once a year, because I choose to make it special. Every time I drink cocoa, I do so knowing that there was a time when someone like me couldn’t drink it. The cocoa bean, used to make chocolate, is grown primarily in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, and was originally planted and cultivated by Indians, but later exclusively by African slaves. Those slaves never had the pleasure of enjoying the delicious products that resulted from their labors, including hot cocoa. When solid chocolate for making cocoa as a beverage first appeared in London in 1657, it was sold at ten to fifteen shillings a pound (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1966), which only the wealthy could afford. In America, only in the twentieth century did cocoa became cheap enough for middle class Americans to afford; and today, even someone of little means can buy a cup of cocoa for less than two dollars.Â
Vanilla, extracted from the vanilla plant, is a flavoring agent that grows in many of the same regions as cocoa. In fact, vanilla is used in the manufacture of chocolate. It used to be very expensive, but now can be found in virtually every kitchen. Like cocoa, vanilla was planted, cultivated, and harvested by African slaves, and, like cocoa, vanilla was never meant to be enjoyed by those slaves, but was manufactured, marketed and sold by Europeans for Europeans. Sugar, a staple in virtually every household worldwide, has a similar history, as does cinnamon: today one of the most common spices in the world, but at one time coveted by the rich.
I flavor my cocoa with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and a little coffee (oh yeah!), all of which for hundreds of years were planted, cultivated, and harvested almost exclusively by African slaves, but never intended for them to enjoy. The fact that I can and do enjoy these things, is to me proof positive that there is a God, and that He loves and cares about me so much that He won’t deny me any good thing. And don’t get me started about clothes, shoes, a hair comb, and other things we take for granted.
The Bible says that we should be grateful for all things:
“Giving thanks always for all things unto God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ†(Ephesians 5:20).
Gratitude is not a natural human trait. It is not natural for us to be thankful for the little things. If it were, then God would not have to command us to be thankful. Gratitude must be taught, and gratitude must be learned. They say that experience is the best teacher, but God doesn’t want us to learn every lesson by personal experience. Sometimes it is better (and less painful) to look to history, and to learn from it. When I drink a cup of cocoa, therefore, I think on my forefathers, and I thank God, knowing that if Satan had his way, I would not be drinking cocoa, and I wouldn’t know enough to be grateful that I am.
“For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).
And cocoa is a good thing.:-)
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
P.S. I also remember that it was my daughter’s cocoa that started the whole thing. Thanks Tete! (Sorry I drank the whole thing.)
Grace and peace, Saints!
The other day, someone asked me why I haven’t written much of anything for over a year. Well, it’s not because I don’t have anything to say, because I have plenty to say. The honest truth is that while I can function, some days it is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. I miss my little girl terribly.Â
You may recall that last year I left Germany where I had lived almost twenty years, and moved back to the USA. I didn’t want to leave my family, but under the circumstances, it was necessary. My first night back home, I knew I was going to have serious problems being separated from my three-year-old when, around 3 a.m. I awoke thinking about my little girl so much that I experienced what could only be described as a panic attack. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and the house seemed so small it was suffocating me. I was worried to death about my little girl, as I realized that for the first time since she was born, I couldn’t just walk into her room and pick her up, or call her to me. For the next two hours, I paced around, unable to sleep.
Feeling helpless, I got on my knees to pray, asking the Lord Jesus to forgive me if coming back to the States and leaving my little girl with her mother and sisters was a mistake. I told Him that I knew that it was not me who had always kept my children safe, but He. As a man, I’m not even in control of my own life, let alone my children’s lives. In order for me to have any peace at all, therefore, I was going to have to give my children completely to the Lord Jesus, and trust Him to care for my little girl and keep her safe. And I had to forgive myself for leaving her behind at such a young age, when it was my intention never to leave her. I’m just a man, and there is only so much I can do. I had been playing Superman for almost two decades; now it was time to take off the cape and concede that I was Clark Kent full time. I have no super powers.
I had to recognize that some things are not meant to be, especially in this spiritual warfare, as not everyone wants to do God’s will. I also had to remember that the Bible says, “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). If I love God, therefore, which I do; and if I am called by God, which I am, then everything that happens to me also happens for me–and for my good, even something as painful as being separated from my little one.
And I’m not the only one who has to deal with separation. My son has also had to deal with it, as he came with me. Being the only boy in the family, he has had to learn to live without his mother and sisters, the only female influences in his life. I praise God that he has learned to cope with the situation very well under the circumstances, and is getting stronger every day. He knows things can never go back to the way they were before, but being also of the household of faith, he believes and knows that everything that is happening is part of God’s plan for our lives. Sometimes, I remind my son how Joseph, the son of Jacob, was separated from his family for many years because of a spiritual warfare that was raging in his home; and I remind him that Joseph understood that all the evil that had befallen him was ultimately part of God’s plan not only for his life, but for his family’s also.
But when I just want to lighten his spirits and encourage him, I sing “Put One Foot In Front of the Other,” from the animated cartoon, Santa Clause Is Coming To Town. When nothing else will do, that always does the trick–for me as well as for him.
The Lord Jesus promised that when He comes, he will wipe all tears from our eyes. The pain and loneliness of separation will be but a distant memory when we see His face and receive the reward for our steadfastness and faith in Christ Jesus. Until then, we must be patient and encouraged, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other!
God bless and keep you, and please pray for me and my family.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
Your servant,
TSM
Grace and peace.
Today, using quotes from imminent Freemasons, we shall illustrate that Freemasonry is a Roman Catholic institution.
“Symbolic Masonry [Freemasonry], under whatever form it may be propounded, is a Catholic institution, democratic in its form and government, and universal in its operation.” [Brackets mine, boldface mine, CAPS in the original.]
–A Dictionary of Freemasonry, p. 484.
Â
 “The inward development which the second degree symbolizes is typified by the lowering of the triangular flap of the apron upon the rectangular portion below. This is equivalent to the rite of Confirmation in the Christian [Roman Catholic] Churches.” [Brackets mine, boldface mine.]
 –The Meaning of Masonry, p.40.
 “Masonry is a sacramental system, possessing, like all [Roman Catholic] sacraments, an outward and visible side consisting of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectual and spiritual side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial, the doctrine and symbols, and which is available only to the Mason who has learned to use his spiritual imagination and who can appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil of outward symbol.” [Brackets mine, boldface mine.]Â
–The Meaning of Masonry, p. 21.
“Iranaeus, Tertullian, Clemens, Origen, and Gregory, of Nyssa, also furnish abundant proofs that the primitive [Roman Catholic] church was a secret society. Indeed, so well known was this peculiar organization that nearly all ancient writers, Christian or Pagan, have noticed this fact.
“Indeed the Christian [Roman Catholic] right [sic] of baptism itself has an evident relation, as Cyril of Jerusalem represents, to the initiatory rites of Isis, Eleusis, Samothrace and Phrygia.” [Brackets mine, boldface mine.]
–A Dictionary of Freemasonry, p. 121 “DISCIPLINA ARCANA.”
“Masonry is not the Coliseum in ruins. It is rather a Roman palace of the middle ages…” [Boldface mine.]
–Morals and Dogma, p. 23.
Question: Should a Protestant (Bible-believing Christian) belong to a Roman Catholic institution?
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
Sources:
A Dictionary of Freemasonry, by Robert Macoy, 1989, Bell Publishing Company, New York.
The Meaning of Masonry, by W.L. Wilmshurst, 1980, Bell Publishing Company, New York.
Morals and Dogma, by Albert C. Pike.
It’s no secret that many who name the name of Christ are Freemasons. In fact, many deacons, elders, and even pastors are members of the Masonic Fraternity. It is so bad that some masonic lodges even have their own churches.Â
Masonic Church of Christ
Can there be any question as to why many of our communities are so devastated? Â
I remember visiting a church about ten years ago where Freemasons were members of the church’s leadership, and were even sporting their Masonic rings in church. It happened on this wise: My children and I were visiting a particular church in St. Louis for the first time, as we didn’t have a church home. While listening to the pastor’s sermon, my daughter drew my attention to the hand of a man seated in the pew in front of us, whose arm was draped over the back of the pew. I looked, and noticed that the man was wearing a Masonic ring. I always carried at least one tract on Freemasonry on me at all times so, leaning over to the man, I discreetly asked if I could give him something. When he answered that it would be OK, I handed him a Chick gospel tract on the subject of Freemasonry. He looked briefly at the cover, and, after reading the tract for about then minutes, he handed it to the man seated next to him, who looked at it briefly and placed it in his breast pocket. After the service, the second man, visibly upset, walked up to me and told me that I “had better be careful,” adding that the man to whom I had given the tract was his brother, which I took to mean his brother in Masonry. Almost yelling, the man told me there was nothing wrong with Freemasonry, and that Masons do a lot of good in the church and in the community, adding that he was a deacon, and telling me that the Masons had helped many people in the church. He even went so far as to call a young man seated in the pew across the aisle to tell me about all the help his Lodge had given him when he was in dire straits.
I told the man that I had no problem with Freemasons as people, and that I was very aware of what the Masons do in the community, such as the Shriner’s Hospital for Children. The problem I had is that Freemasonry is a pagan religion, and therefore has no place in the Church. A Christian, I told him, should not be a Freemason, and a Freemason has no business being a member of a Christian church, let alone holding any church position, as the spirit of Freemasonry is not the Lord Jesus Christ, but Satan himself.
Well, you can probably imagine how that went over. The man was so angry, he almost forgot he was in church. “You better watch yourself!” He exclaimed. “You know I’m right,” I told him. “That’s why you’re angry. If I were wrong, you would just blow me off. The fact that you can’t speaks volumes.”
Walking off, he repeated that I had better be careful, and out the door he went. When he was gone, the man, to whom I had given the tract, came over and apologized for the man’s behavior, assuring me that he would read the tract better when he got home. We said goodbye, and he left.
Afterwards, I went straight to the pastor and advised him that he had church officials who were not only Freemasons, but also were not ashamed to wear their Masonic rings in the sanctuary. I was mildly surprised to discover that the pastor knew this full well. After reassuring me that he himself was not a Mason, and that he knew that Freemasonry was not consistent with the Bible, the pastor went on to extol the piety and steadfastness of the Masons in his church, explaining that they had helped many in his congregation with their personal problems. Â He made no effort to explain why he allowed Freemasons in his church to hold leadership positions, and even wear their Masonic rings in the sanctuary during service.
That was when I learned for myself that the Christian Church is in trouble. Because pastors are not obeying God’s commandment to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them†(Ephesians 5:11), paganism in the form of Freemasonry and Witchcraft have taken over our churches, and their ministers even preach from our pulpits.Â
I live by the old adage that if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. I didn’t bring Freemasonry into the Church, and I cannot stop Freemasons from wielding influence over it; but I can do my part to make the Protestant (biblical) position clear on the subject of Freemasonry and to possibly help someone who has been deceived into believing that a Christian can be a Freemason and still please God, because that is a lie from the pit of Hell.
Freemasons are souls for whom Christ died, and they deserve to know the truth of their religion. The first truth is that Freemasonry is indeed a Mystery Religion, making it, by definition, idolatry and witchcraft. And idolatry and witchcraft are irreconcilable with the Bible. Christians, therefore, have no business in Freemasonry, and active Freemasons have no business being members of the Church, let alone holding positions of leadership. Period.
To the end that we may know the truth (as the Truth shall make us free), beginning today, I will share with you what Freemasons themselves say about their religion–and it is a religion–that you may decide for yourself if Christians should be Freemasons.Â
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
Grace and peace, Saints.
They say that “history is written by the winners,” and we know that though history books may say one thing, often the truth is far different. The marginalized segments of any society are almost never fairly represented in the historical record, as they are rarely–if ever–called on to give their version of events. This is true with many peoples and ethnic groups, but, arguably, no race or ethnic group has been more misrepresented in the historical record than the Negro. Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, is a good example. Most sources say Hannibal Barca was white, but ancient coins depict Hannibal as a black man. It is also an historical fact that after the Roman general, Scipio defeated Hannibal, he was given the surname Africanus, which would seem to support the contention that Hannibal was Black.Â
Then there is the curious case of Sir Francis Drake. Drake was an English admiral, adventurer, and navigator, who is considered “the greatest and most famous of Elizabethan seamen.” Drake is credited with some of the greatest victories in British naval history. Most portraits of Drake, such as the one below, portray him as a white man.Â
This, however, is a photo of Sir Francis Drake from the Illustrated Dictionary of World History, Vol. 1, p. 394:
The Encyclopedia Brittanica describes Drake as being “of medium stature, blonde, rather heavy than slender, merry, careful,” but this photo clearly contradicts that description. Intrigued, I googled “Sir Francis Drake Black” and “Sir Francis Drake Negro” and was surprised that Drake’s ethnicity has been called into question by others, though not many. I also found this interesting photo of a famous jewel said to have been given to Drake by Queen Elizabeth I, which he was said to have worn hanging from his belt.
The jewel clearly features a black man and what appears to be a white woman. I was not at all surprised to learn that though the jewel is well known in England, few seem to question whether the black man may be Drake himself. One article, in fact, said that the man could not be Drake because he is clean-shaven! Another article, written by an English freelance historian, said that the black man on the Blake Jewel, “has been interpreted as a symbol of Drake’s alliance with the Cimaroons,” African slaves who had run away from their Spanish captors. The article did not, however, question whether the black man could possibly be Drake.
There are two possible reasons why few question if Drake were black. The first reason is obvious. For the British, Drake is a national hero, and stories of his deeds of daring have excited the imagination of Britons for centuries. So famous and influential was Drake that it is said that he “founded the British naval tradition.” For many, it would be a hard pill to swallow if it turned out that Drake was, in fact, black.
The second reason is not so obvious today, but would have been in Drake’s day. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Sir Francis Drake “inherited an ardent Protestantism” from is father, who was a preacher. Drake served his entire career under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, who was succeeded by King James I, also a Protestant. King James, as you may know, was responsible for the the Authorized Verion of the Bible. Protestantism allows a person to excel regardless of race, color, creed, or station, and Drake is a prime example. Even for a white man, his accomplishments and meteoric rise to the upper echelons of British society were extraordinary, given that Drake was not from the upper class, but was, in fact, of very humble stock. Drake had been very successful in defending Protestant England against their mortal foe, Roman Catholic Spain; so it is not hard to imagine that during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, history would have been very kind to Drake.
But, England eventually fell at the feet of the Pope, where it remains until this day. Considering the damage he inflicted on Spain’s “Invinsible Armada,” Drake no doubt incurred the undying enmity of the Vatican. If he were black, therefore, it is highly likely that fact would be all but forgotten by historians, a great many of whom just happen to be Roman Catholic.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
Sources:Â
Encyclopedia Brittanica, vol. vii, 1966, p. 626.
The Illustrated Dictionary of World History, by Harry Abrams, 1975, vol. i, p. 394.
Once again, today, August 15, marks the celebration of the Roman Catholic feast day known as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Assumption. A Practical Catholic Dictionary says this about the Assumption:
“The taking into Heaven of the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary soon after her death. The word assumption comes from the Latin word assumere (to take up) and the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was free from original sin and so was not subject to death in the same way that creatures are, was taken into Heaven and united to her son. The Feast of the Assumption is August 15 and is a holiday of obligation in the United States. Belief in Our Lady’s Assumption goes back to early Christian days. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption as a dogma of the Church. See dogma. A new Proper for the Mass for the day shows Mary in her bodily glory. The Introit begins, ‘A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars†Apocalypse XII 1.’ (p. 29).Â
A holiday of obligation is one of the six feast days a Catholic must be present at Mass. In the United States those six days are: Christmas (December 25), the Circumcision (January 1); Ascension Thursday (forty days after Easter); the Assumption (August 15); All Saints Day (November 1); and the Immaculate Conception (December 8).
There are many problems with the doctrine of the Assumption, the most obvious being the fact that nowhere in the Bible is it taught that Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, was taken into heaven. It is assumed that Enoch, the great grandson of Adam, was taken into heaven, because the Bible says that he “walked with God: and he was not, for God took him†(Genesis 4:24), and we know that the prophet Elijah was taken into heaven on a chariot of fire. Nowhere, however, does the Bible say that Mary the mother of Jesus was taken into heaven.
A Practical Catholic Dictionary says that the belief in the Assumption “goes back to early Christian days,” yet it was not made a Catholic Church dogma until 1950. If it were true, however, that the early Christians recognized and believed in the doctrine of the Assumption, then  this would be recorded in the Bible. That it is not means that the Assumption does not go back to early Christian days, but to early Roman Catholic Church days.Â
Moreover, the Catholic Church says that the Assumption was made a dogma in 1950, but the feast of the Assumption was only introduced as a liturgical feast in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Sergius I, who reigned from 687-701 (Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 16, p. 385.) This then, is the earliest known record of the doctrine of the Assumption: some six centuries later than the establishment of the Christian Church (33 AD), and three centuries after the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church (330 AD).
This should all come as no surprise to Bible-believing Christians, as very little of what is taught in the Roman Catholic Church can be found in the Bible, including the Immaculate Conception: the Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was free from original sin. This dogma is contrary to the Bible, which teaches that all are born with the sin of Adam and Eve:
“Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned†(Romans 5:12).Â
“For if through the offence of one [Adam] many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many†(Romans 5:15).
If the Virgin Mary were sinless, then the Bible would be a lie, because, according to the Bible, it is because of sin that we all die. This includes Mary, the mother of Jesus. If the Virgin Mary were really the biblical Mary, therefore, then she died, because she was born into sin like the rest of us. If the Virgin Mary did not die, then the Virgin Mary could not have been the biblical Mary, the mother of Jesus. And I have been saying that for years.
Jesus never sinned a day in His life, and it is for this reason that He rose on the third day. Death couldn’t hold Him, because He did nothing to deserve death. Mary, the mother of Jesus, however, was subject to death because she was born under the curse of Adam like all humans.
The Catholic Church worships the Virgin Mary as a deity, which is obvious when it says that the Virgin Mary “was not subject to death in the same way that creatures are.â€A creature, according to the Random House Collegiate Dictionary,is “anything created, whether animate or inanimate.†If the Virgin Mary were not created, then the implication is that the Virgin Mary must be the Creator, as there is no other option.
The doctrine of the Assumption calls Jesus Christ a liar; as the Lord Jesus, said:
“And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven†(John 3:13).
To those who say that when Jesus said “no man†He meant no male, I say to you that when Jesus said “no man†He was using the inclusive masculine, the same inclusive masculine He used in John 14:6 when He said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.†Jesus therefore meant “no man or woman.†And to those who would say that Jesus was talking about the past and not the future, I would call your attention to the fact that when Jesus made this declaration He had not yet been crucified, let alone risen. The Lord Jesus was therefore in effect saying, “No one has ever ascended into heaven, nor will ever ascend into heaven, but me, the only One who has ever come down from heaven.â€
The doctrine of the Assumption deifies the Virgin Mary by further ascribing to this idol qualities and characteristics that belong exclusively to the Lord Jesus. This is further proven by the fact that according to A Practical Catholic Dictionary, the Virgin Mary was taken into heaven and “united to her son.†It doesn’t say “united with,” mind you; it says “united to.” To unite in this fashion means “to join, combine, or incorporate so as to form a single unit or whole†(Random House Collegiate Dictionary). With this statement, the Roman Catholic Church is actually declaring that the Virgin Mary is part of the Godhead.
But, the Bible says:
“There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three [not four] are One†(1 John 5:7).
There is no mention of the Virgin Mary.
The Bible then adds this final Word:
“If we receive the witness of men [the Roman Catholic Church], the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which He hath testified of his Son†(1 John 5:9).
Amen.
–TSM
Grace and peace.
On behalf of the Gospel Light And Truth Crusade and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation for all the men, women and families who fought and died to defend the Constitution for the United States of America against all enemies FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.
I also want to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to President Abraham Lincoln, hero of the Republic, defender of Liberty, opposer of Tyranny and Treason and the soldiers and their families who fought against the Great Rebellion; for, without their many sacrifices, I would not be writing this, and many of you would not be reading this.
God bless all who love the Lord Jesus Christ and the United States of America in sincerity!
TSM
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh!
TSM
Grace and peace, Saints!
Yesterday I realized it has been over two years since I suffered a potentially fatal stroke, in January 2016. This was actually the second stroke I suffered, the first being just two months prior in November 2015. The fact that I survived two strokes is a miracle in and of itself; but, given the second stroke was a hemorrhagic stroke, that I am writing about it today is a miracle of epic proportions: for me, that is.
For those of you who may not know, a hemorrhagic stroke is one in which arteries or blood vessels in the brain bleed or rupture. Hemorrhagic strokes are especially deadly because the loss of blood supply and accumulation of blood on and surrounding the brain leads to the death of brain tissue and brain tissue damage. The stroke I suffered was pretty bad, and the bleeding on my brain was quite severe: so severe, in fact, that the chief surgeon of the stroke unit at the hospital where I was treated was amazed my appearance and the functionality I retained, for my brain scan told a different story.
The survival rate for a hemorrhagic stroke is 27% (about 1 in 4), and of those who die, most do so within days or weeks of the event. Some, however, have died as late as six months to a year later, making it difficult to know when a person is really out of danger. And, because many people who suffer a hemorrhagic stroke often suffer a second, I watched the calendar pretty closely for about eighteen months. But, realizing this was both counterproductive and a hindrance to enjoying whatever time I had left, I decided to shift my focus to taking care of myself and doing all I could to prevent another stroke. So, I made some lifestyle adjustments, which included regular exercise, eating sensibly, and managing stress; and I managed to lower my blood pressure, lose excess weight, and improve my overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Now, more than two years later, I am healthier than I have been in over twenty five years.
At this point, it is important for me to mention that not only does hemorrhagic stroke have a high mortality rate, but less than 10% of survivors make a full recovery. I’m not yet 100%, but I wasn’t 100% before the stroke either. My counselor at the rehabilitation center told me I should look at my recovery in terms of years rather than months, and this is what I do. And because I’m doing everything I was doing before the stroke and more, I’m claiming my healing and giving the Lord Jesus all the glory.
My health-aversary is important to me because, two years ago, the future was very uncertain. When I was in the hospital recovering from the first stroke, I remember wondering if I would ever again go for walks with my then two-year-old daughter, or ride my bike, as I had suffered partial loss of sight in one eye. I remember sitting in the hospital emergency waiting room and not being able to see any of the people seated on one side of the room, and what I could see was hazy. I recall thinking that the magazine I was reading to distract myself could quite possibly be the last thing I would ever read. I even got angry with myself because I had never experimented with the speech-to-text software on my laptop. When I was in the hospital being treated for the second stroke, I wondered if I would ever again go for runs with my children, or play basketball with my young son. As the Lord Jesus would have it, I took several walks with my daughter in 2016 and 2017, and, two years later, I have both run and biked with my children and now work out several times a week with my son. In fact, I am healthier now and in better shape than I have been in the previous twenty-five years.
By showing me that under the circumstances, I am doing very well, the Lord Jesus is reminding me just how blessed I am to even be alive–let alone thriving–and that I have come incredibly far in the last couple of years, which is very important, because the last twelve months have been very difficult for me and my children. In May of last year, my son and I relocated to America, leaving my wife and daughters in Munich, Germany. If you have been following this blog for any appreciable length of time, then you know that my witness for Jesus has come at a price, and my family has suffered much. Leaving half my family in Germany was not a decision I wanted to make, but it was necessary, under the circumstances, especially if I were to make a complete recovery. Leaving my teenagers was bad enough, but leaving my four-year-old behind at a time when she really needed her father was really hard. Her personality was just starting to form, and she and I were really enjoying spending time together. I miss going to the playground with her and playing in the sandbox, and, afterwards, running around in the subway station with her and catching the elevator up and down. We used to have so much fun going shopping together, as this was when I would teach her about the world and probe her mind as she talked endlessly about any and every thing that crossed her mind. I miss her coming into my office when I would be writing or doing research, and asking me to play gospel music for her on my laptop, after which she would pull her little table up next to my desk and ask for a pencil and paper so she could draw.
While I don’t regret my decision to leave (my recovery depended on it, to say nothing of my ministry and Christian testimony), hearing my little girl tell me on the phone, “You forgot about me,” made me very sad. So I had really been down, since leaving Munich, and this is the principle reason I have done very little writing over the last year. It was not until the other day–and again just a couple of hours ago–when the Lord Jesus reminded me just how fortunate I am, that I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, and remember that the Bible tells us to be thankful for all things. I understand and know that despite all that has happened, the Lord has been very good to me and my children. All things considered, we are alive and in relatively good health, and this is of no small importance.
Besides the disposition of our eternal soul, there is nothing more important than our health. Satan is a master of diversion, and he is pretty good at diverting our attention from how blessed we really are to how bad things appear to be. He knows it can be hard to praise God and be grateful for what we have when we’re going through a difficult time, so he gives us as difficult a time as he can. But God is good all the time, and He has promised never to put more on us than we can handle. No matter how bad things get, they will always get better, if only for a time, as highs and lows and peaks and valleys are all a part of the job description.
As I told my son today, as long as we can put one foot in front of the other, we can talk about ourselves using the future tense, and all things are possible. But, once we give up the ghost, people can only talk about us in the past tense, and nothing at all is possible. So, take care of yourself!
“And we know that all things work for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Waco Massacre. YouTube took down the documentary entitled Waco: The Rules of Engagement, but you can watch it on my Facebook page. Lest we forget.
TSM
“Nothing was so expensive as a gun. For the gun, they sacrificed everything, usually life.”
Grace and peace to all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity, and greetings to all pretenders.
February the 2nd marks the celebration of the Roman Catholic feast day known as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called the Purification of Our Lady, Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or, as it is known in Germany, Candlemas. First instituted by Pope Sergius I, this holiday is based on the Roman Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary, after the birth of the Lord Jesus, went to the Jewish temple at Jerusalem to be purified and to present the child Jesus to the Lord God. Page 179 of A Practical Catholic Dictionary explains it thus:
“This feast is in memory of Our Lady’s purification in the Temple after the birth of Jesus. According to the Jewish law, a mother, after the birth of a child, went to the Temple to present the child and to be purified after childbirth. The Presentation in the Temple is commemorated in the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. The Feast of the Purification is also called Candlemas Day.â€
Purification was done in obedience to the law of Moses:
“If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.
“And in the eighth day the flesh of his [the child’s] foreskin shall be circumcised.
“And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled” (Leviticus 12:2-4).
According to the Bible, purification is merely the natural process of a woman’s blood flow drying up after childbirth; and if the child were male, then he would also be circumcised during this time. The Law of Moses also mandated that during this time, the woman was not allowed to participate in public worship or touch sacred objects. It would not have been necessary, therefore, for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to go to the temple to be purified, as her purification would have been accomplished at home. That it was, in fact, is the Bible’s testimony that when Mary, the mother of Jesus, went to Jerusalem, her purification had already been accomplished:
“When the days of her [Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought Him [Jesus] to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord” (Luke 2:22).
Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not go to the temple to be purified, therefore, because her purification had already been accomplished when she went to Jerusalem. She did, however, go to the temple to make a sin offering, as the law of Moses commanded:
“And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove for a sin offering, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest:
“Who shall offer it before the Lord, and make atonement for her: and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood. This is the law of her that hath born a male or a female†(Leviticus 12:6,7).
And Mary did obey the law:
“When the days of her [Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought Him [Jesus] to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons (Luke 2:22,24).”
The law did not stipulate that a mother bring her child to the temple to present Him to God, and the Bible does not give us Mary’s motive for doing so (though the reason is pretty obvious). What is clear, however, is that Mary did not go to the temple to be purified.
If Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not go to the temple to be purified, you may ask, then why does the Roman Catholic Church teach that the Virgin Mary, after the birth of the Lord Jesus, went to the temple to be purified? I believe it is to bolster the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the belief that the Virgin Mary was not born with original sin.Â
A Practical Catholic Dictionary defines the Immaculate Conception as:
“The privilege by which the Blessed Virgin was free from original sin from the very moment of her conception. Her soul was filled with sanctifying grace at its creation. The word immaculate means free from any stain, that is, perfectly pure. The Blessed Virgin Mary was perfectly pure from her first moment of being†(p. 118).
I believe the purpose of the Purification of the Virgin Mary is to reconcile the Immaculate Conception with the Bible’s testimony that Mary went to the temple to atone for her sins, as the doctrine of the Purification changes Mary’s primary motive for going to the temple from sin atonement to purification. This is because, if the Roman Catholic church were to acknowledge that Mary went to the temple to atone for her sins (something she would not have done if she were sinless), then they would have to admit that the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is unbiblical. As the principle doctrines concerning the Virgin Mary hang on the Immaculate Conception, especially the doctrine that the Virgin Mary is the Co-Redeemer and Mediatrix with the Lord Jesus, this is something they would never do.
If the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Purication of the Blessed Virgin are true, then the Bible is a lie. Conversely, if the Bible is true, then the Immaculate Conception and the Purification of the Virgin Mary are lies. There can be no middle ground.
Then again, if the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary were not the biblical Mary, then the Purification of the Virgin Mary could be true, as the Virgin Mary would not be Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, but another Mary. The Bible calls this other Mary the “Virgin Daughter of Babylon†and the “Lady of Kingdoms†(Isaiah 47:1,5). If the Virgin Mary is another Mary, then the Roman Catholic Jesus must be “another Jesus†(2 Corinthians 11:3,4).
“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.â€
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Woman doing a penance at swayambhunath.
Grace and peace to the saints, and greetings to the lost.
Today we continue our discussion on the Roman Catholic celebration known as Lent. As we discussed in Part One of this essay, A Practical Catholic Dictionary says that during the 40-day Lenten celebration, Roman Catholics pray, fast, go to confession, and do penance in order to:
1. prepare themselves for the Easter celebration,
2. identify with the Lord Jesus who fasted and prayed for forty days when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness,
3. make “partial satisfaction” for their sins.
No, that last item was not a misprint. According to A Practical Catholic Dictionary during Lent, Roman Catholics make partial satisfaction for their sins. Now, the Holy Bible says the Lord Jesus died and shed His blood on the cross to redeem the world from sin, and that this redemption propitiated (which means to satisfy or appease) God:
“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God;
“Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (Romans 3:23-25).
“And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
The verb propitiate derives from the Latin propitiare which means “to appease.” By calling the Lord Jesus the propitiation for our sins, the Bible is declaring that Jesus’ death and the shedding of His blood appeased God’s anger and satisfied His sense of justice. You may note that Romans 3:25 says that redemption is in Christ Jesus, because God Himself ordained Jesus for this task. God doesn’t do anything by half. He would not send His only begotten Son into the world to suffer a horrible death only to “partially” redeem us from sin. Jesus’ sacrifice, therefore, was complete and satisfactory.
If Roman Catholics, however, believe that Jesus’ sacrifice was only partially satisfactory and will therefore not accept His sacrifice as full payment for their sins, then they must look to something or someone else to satisfy God’s wrath. Foreseeing this need, the Roman Catholic church has provided several something elses, and one of these is called penance. The Roman Catholic church defines penance as:
“prayers or good works required of the penitent (Catholic) by the priest who has heard his confession. This penance satisfies in part for the sins confessed” (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 170).
Through penance, the Roman Catholic seeks to appease God by personally participating in the redemptive work. Through good works, he hopes to save himself. Penance is so important to Roman Catholicism that it is one of the seven sacraments, or “channels of grace” by which Catholics attempt to earn their way into Heaven. A Practical Catholic Dictionary says this about the Sacrament of Penance:
“The sacrament by which sins committed after Baptism are forgiven through the absolution of the priest. To receive the Sacrament of Penance worthily a person must, first, examine his conscience; second, be sorry for his sins; third, have the firm purpose of not sinning again; fourth, confess his sins to the priest;Â and fifth, perform the penance the priest gives him “Â (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 170).
Many of you already knew that Roman Catholics confess their sins to a priest, who they believe is able to absolve them of their sins. What you now know is that the act of confession is tied to and incomplete without the performance of the penance (good work) imposed upon the Roman Catholic by his priest. Through penance, the Roman Catholic believes he is partially satisfying his sins.
Penance can take many forms, from reciting the Rosary (Roman Catholic prayer) x amount of times, to crawling around the church floor on one’s knees. Some Catholics even perform something known as corporal mortification, which can take the form of whipping oneself, or even placing sharp objects in one’s shoes to inflict pain. The object is to suffer in some way.
But why do Roman Catholics need to make partial satisfaction for their sins, when the Roman Catholic church claims to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and shed His blood to redeem them from their sins?  The answer may surprise you. In reality, the Roman Catholic church does not believe Jesus’ sacrifice fully redeemed them from sin. The concept of partial satisfaction already demonstrates this, and we can see this further by looking at the Roman Catholic definition of redemption:
“The word redemption really means buying back. Jesus Christ, by His sufferings and death on the Cross, bought back for men the right to be children of God and heirs of Heaven. Because Jesus Christ was God, He was able to give infinite satisfaction for the sins of men.” (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 182)
The Dictionary begins by defining redemption as buying back, but instead of declaring that by His death and the shedding of His blood, the Lord Jesus redeemed us from sin, the Catholic church uses the unbiblical term “infinite satisfaction,” effectively implying that Jesus’ sacrifice did not redeem us from sin. Moreover, stating that Jesus’ sacrifice was able to give infinite satisfaction, rather than stating that His sacrifice infinitely satisfied, implies that Jesus’ sacrifice was infinitely partially satisfactory. That Jesus’ sacrifice is viewed by the Catholic church as infinitely partially satisfactory, means that the Roman Catholic must spend the rest of his life on earth doing good works in order to make partial satisfaction for his sins.
This agrees with the testimony of former Roman Catholic, Monica Farrell, who writes:Â
“I knew the Lord Jesus died on Calvary, and had He not died nobody could get to heaven. What I did not know was that because He died anybody could go to heaven. We were told that the death of Christ opened the gate to heaven, but that you had to work your own way in, and that was just what I couldn’t do. So, to [sic] all intents and purposes, the gate of heaven might just as well have been closed.” (From Rome to Christ, p. 24.)
By “working your own way in,” Ms. Farrell was referring to penance. Note that she knew in her heart that there was no way she could possibly work her way into heaven. She could never be “good enough.”
But works salvation does not only pose a problem for the Roman Catholic in this life. The Bible teaches that there is another life after this one, as the soul lives eternally. Because the Roman Catholic church believes that Jesus’ sacrifice was not just partially satisfactory, but infinitely partially satisfactory, and for this reason has rejected the sacrifice of Jesus as full payment for their sins, how will Catholics fully satisfy their sins in the life to come? What can the Roman Catholic do after death? The answer is Purgatory:
“Purgatory – Place and state of punishment in which the soul suffers for a time in order to be cleansed before going to Heaven. In Purgatory venial sins and mortal sins, which have been confessed but for which full satisfaction has not been made, must be removed by purification before the soul is ready for Heaven. The word purgatory comes from the Latin word purgare, meaning to cleanse” (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 179).
This is where the Roman Catholic is thoroughly deceived. His church teaches him that Jesus’ sacrifice is infinitely partially satisfactory. Infintely means “without end”; in other words, forever. Â Through penance he seeks to make up the rest. When he dies, he believes he goes to Purgatory to purge his remaining sins to ready his soul for Heaven. The only way he can go to Heaven is that full satisfaction for his sins be made. But, in Purgatory, the Roman Catholic can no longer do penance, take communion, or in any other way make partial satisfaction for his sins. If, then, the Roman Catholic must remain in Purgatory until his sins are fully satisfied, but there is no other way for him to partially satisfy his sins, then the Roman Catholic will never leave Puragatory! Think about it: if Jesus’ sacrifice was only partially satisfactory, penance is only partially satisfactory, and there are no more partially satisfactory works that can be performed in Purgatory, then the Roman Catholic’s sins can never be “fully satisfied!” He will never leave Purgatory!
Now consider this: recall that Purgatory is based on the Latin word purgare. Did you know that this word also means “to burn?” Yes, the Roman Catholic church teaches that in Purgatory, a Catholics remaining sins will be purged or burned off. If the Roman Catholic can never make full satisfaction for his sins, this means that he will burn in Purgatory forever! Can you think of another place where a person will burn forever? I can:
And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast [the Roman Catholic pope] and his image [the Virgin Mary], and whosoever receiveth the Mark of his name” [the cross keys of Simon Peter]. (Revelation 14:11).
Can you now see the deception?! Roman Catholics will believe they are in Purgatory and that their stay will be only “for a time,” only to find out that they are really in Hell, and that their torment will be forever. Wake up Catholics!Â
The Bible says that that our works–good are otherwise–are as “filthy rags” to Him. There is no good work we could do that would wash away our sins in God’s eyes. The Bible says we can not be justified by works, because works salvation was under the law, which was done away with the death of Jesus.Â
“Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of [good] works? Nay: but by the law of faith.Â
“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds [good works] of the law.”–Romans 3:27,28
This agrees with Ephesians 2:8,9 which says:
“For by grace [of the Lord Jesus Christ, not the Virgin Mary] are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
“Not of [good] works, lest any man should boast.”
If you are a Roman Catholic who truly loves the living Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart, and you want to do his will, then the Lord Jesus is calling you out of the romish church:
“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).
“America is great because she is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” –Alexis de Tocqueville.
Grace and peace, Saints.
In five days, Americans will celebrate All Hallows Eve, commonly known as Halloween. Americans celebrate Halloween by dressing up in costumes, attending parties, and canvassing the neighborhood collecting candy. Halloween is probably the most popular of all American holidays, which is notable because, of the four most popular American holidays: Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, Halloween is the only one that is not associated with God. This could be considered the greatest evidence of the depravity of Americans, and proves without a doubt that America is an evil nation.Â
It should first be noted that of the four principle American holidays, only Halloween has no ostensible religious connection. Ostensible, I say, because though all four holidays are descended from pagan European festivals, all but Halloween are widely believed to be Christian in origin. Christmas, celebrated by many as the anniversary of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, is actually the celebration of the end of the winter solstice. Easter, believed by many to be a celebration of the day the Lord Jesus Christ was resurrected, is actually a reenactment of the pagan European spring fertility festival in honor of Eostre, the goddess of the dawn. And Thanksgiving, widely believed to have originated with the Pilgrims as a feast thanking God for bringing them through that brutal first winter, actually began in Europe as a pagan harvest festival. Only Halloween or Hallowed E’en (Hallowed Evening) makes no pretense to being a Christian holiday.
In that respect, one could say that Halloween is the more honest of the four holidays. But, though Halloween may not mock God by pretending to honor Him on the one hand, while paying homage to a pagan deity on the other, Halloween is still the most evil of all holidays, because the principle theme of Halloween is evil. A quick check of the Halloween costumes at your local Wal-Mart would quickly bear this out. Sure, one will find costumes of princes and princesses, super heroes, and cartoon characters; but they will be far outnumbered by monsters, vampires, witches, skeletons, ghosts, and zombies.Â
Now, it would be bad enough if only adults would be guilty of wearing these evil costumes; but the sad reality is the vast majority of the vampires, witches, skeletons, ghosts, ghouls, and zombies walking the streets on Halloween night will in fact be children, most of whom don’t know any better. And their parents will be responsible for purchasing their costumes and allowing them to dress this way! It is said that a nation’s treatment of and attitude towards its children is the best gauge of the moral condition of that nation. That America’s parents allow their children to go out at night dressed up as monsters and other evil creatures and go house to house accepting candy from mostly strangers is proof that, it’s pretense to being a caring and nurturing nation notwithstanding, America actually hates its children.
Think about it: if a total stranger walked up to your son or daughter and offered him or her some candy, or if a total stranger invited your child to come to his or her house to get some candy, you would freak out! Yet, you have no problem sending your child to a neighbor’s house to get some candy that you didn’t purchase. Does that make any sense?
And Americans don’t just celebrate evil by dressing up in wicked costumes; they also celebrate death. Starting as early as September, Americans begin transforming their homes into virtual crime scenes: littering their lawns with dismembered corpses, buckets of blood, knives, and crime scene tape as they enact famous murders such as the Manson slayings, or scenes from their favorite horror movies like “Freddy’s Nightmares,†“Carrie,†and “Scream!†Others turn their own homes—the place where their family is supposed to feel warm and secure—into haunted houses, funeral parlors, and cemeteries. And well-meaning parents all over America will place a grinning, snaggle-toothed pumpkin on their front porch, as ignorant of the origin of this tradition as they are of the true origin of Halloween.Â
You may find it interesting to know that Halloween is said to be the most important holiday on the Witchcraft calendar. Witches call it Samhain, and it is a most sacred holiday for them. For this reason, it was called Hallowed (Sacred) Evening or, in the Old English, Hallowed E’en, which was later shortened to Halloween. What I find most chilling about Halloween is that, on this night, witches are said to perform a blood sacrifice. That means that on Halloween, witches everywhere will kill a human being in order to consume his or her blood to gain power. According to John Todd, a witch who supposedly converted to Christianity, the blood sacrifice ritual is known in Witchcraft as the “Warrior on the Block†rite, and is performed by all high-level witches. You may also find it interesting to learn that the highly-regarded Masonic scholar, Manly P. Hall, himself a 33rd degree Freemason, wrote on page 47 of The Lost Keys of Freemasonry:
“When the Mason learns that the Warrior on the Block is the proper application of the dynamo of living power, he has learned the mystery of his craft. The seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands.â€
In light of what you have just learned, it doesn’t take a genius to know that the “dynamo of living power†is human blood. Witches, therefore, when performing a blood sacrifice on Halloween, are doing so in to gain power from Satan. (This is interesting, because witches claim that Satan doesn’t exist.) So, while you are busy playing evil on Halloween, witches will be busy doing evil; and while you are busy spilling fake blood, witches will be busy spilling real blood.
Do you have any idea where the tradition of dressing up in frightening costumes comes from? It comes from the medieval belief that on Halloween night, the spirits of the dead and evil spirits roamed the streets in search of the living. On this night, people locked themselves in their houses and did not venture forth unless it was absolutely necessary. Those who of necessity had to go outdoors would dress up like a dead person or an evil spirit so that the dead and evil spirits would believe the person was one of them. The custom of placing a pumpkin on one’s front porch also came from medieval Europe. On Halloween night, the dreaded witchcraft order known as the Druids are said to have gone in procession from house to house demanding that families give them their virgin daughters to use in their blood sacrifice ritual. It is said that if a family gave their daughter up to the Druids, they were given a pumpkin to leave on their porch as a sign they had cooperated. If a family refused to relinquish their daughter, however, the master of the house was either driven mad or killed by demonic spirits. The term “Trick or Treat†derives from the custom of the Druids querying a family whether or not they had a virgin to give. If they wanted to give up their daughter, then the family responded with “treat,†and relinquished their daughter. If the family had no virgin daughter to offer, then they had to perform some trick to appease the Druids. If the trick was deemed unsatisfactory, the master of the house would meet with the same fate as the master of the family who refused to give up their daughter.
Do you now see how evil Halloween really is?
That many Christians celebrate Halloween along with the world is just one more piece of evidence that the Great Apostasy is in full swing. Now, the Bible says that the whole world lieth in wickedness, so it is no strange thing that the unsaved would celebrate death and violence. But, those of us who name the name of Christ should in no wise take part in the Halloween festivities. The Bible says Christians should do everything in the name of Jesus. Is it proper for us to celebrate evil and death in the name of Jesus, who is Life?Â
And think of this: when we celebrate death, we actually celebrate Satan, who has the power of death. The Bible teaches that the Lord Jesus, through His death, destroyed Satan:
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He [Jesus] also Himself took part of the same, that through death, He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15).Â
Why, then, would Christians honor Satan, the Destroyer, by celebrating death, fear and bondage, when the Lord Jesus gave His life to free us from death, fear and bondage?Â
This brings me to another point I wanted to make. In that Blacks are the descendants of slaves, a people who were all their lives subject to bondage, why on earth would Blacks celebrate evil by celebrating Halloween, a holiday that celebrates bondage? If you have a problem understanding why Blacks should not celebrate Halloween, consider slavery, America’s greatest evil. It was the fear of death that kept the African slaves in bondage. If the slaves had chosen death over slavery, there would have been no slave institution in America. True, every tree in the South would have had a slave hanging from it, but slavery as an institution would have collapsed overnight. Fear, then, kept slavery alive. Fear truly is bondage. Now, no one in their right mind would celebrate slavery. Why, then, do Blacks celebrate fear, which is slavery, by celebrating Halloween?
For blacks to celebrate Halloween is really a slap in the face of all those brave souls who labored and died to free the slaves from bondage. and, for the descendants of those slaves to celebrate bondage is actually a slap in the face of those African slaves. Yet, Halloween is as popular in the black community as in the rest of America. How can this be?Â
Sadly, many Christians don’t believe Halloween is an evil holiday, and merely suggest that Christians find another way to celebrate it. Those who make this claim are either completely ignorant of its satanic origin (which is not surprising given the state of the Church), or are totally aware of what Halloween is and are trying to influence the body of Christ to merely accept it and to not denounce this demonic holiday for what it really is–evil. Either way, that more Christians do not speak out against Halloween and even celebrate it along with the world is the greatest proof that America’s moral condition is a lot worse than most of us would like to admit.
America’s love affair with Halloween is proof that America is no longer good. That is why America is no longer great.
TSM
Last week, I wrote you concerning the Ten Commandments, saying that God didn’t give us just Ten Commandments, but eleven. My original intent in writing the article was to provoke you to take into consideration all the commandments of God, and not just the Ten. This is because so much attention is paid to the Ten Commandments, that we forget the other Commandments, especially those found in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Many of those Commandments concern God’s prohibition against witchcraft and other evils that He truly hates–activities that have become so imbedded in the fabric of our society that most of us don’t even know that they are actually sins.
Cigarettes, for example, are actually a type of recreational drug, and recreational drugs are a form of witchcraft the Bible calls sorcery. Sorcery is forbidden in Deuteronomy 18. You have probably never heard this, but it is absolutely true. If all of God’s Commandments were considered important, especially by the Church, cigarette addiction would be treated the same as drug and alcohol addiction, which are sins.
While writing the article, my focus shifted to the fact that so much attention is paid to idolatry in the form of worshipping statues, that we forget that God’s very first commandment was to worship no other gods before Him–including people and things. Consequently, we, as a society, have set up many gods before the Lord Jesus. To rectify this, we should begin by focusing more on the first, and most important commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). In so doing, not only would we be able to discern any false religion or doctrine on the landscape, but we would also be able to discern the false gods we set up in our own lives.
We should then take a look at the rest of the law; for we would quickly see that not only society as a whole, but even many of us in the Church are breaking many of God’s laws, and we are paying the price for it.
True, God gave us the Ten Commandments; but He didn’t stop there.
TSM
Grace and peace, Saints.
For years, I had wanted to teach my children the Ten Commandments. I know that we are under grace and not under the law, but I thought that if my children could understand how difficult it is to keep the law, then perhaps they would have a greater appreciation for grace and for the blood of the Lord Jesus.
I always thought that the best way for them to learn would be “by the numbers,†learning each commandment by the order it appears in Exodus Chapter 20 (i.e. Commandment 1: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Commandment 2: “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven images, etc.), and had tried several times to make this happen. But every time we would start, I found myself unable to do it consistently, and would go weeks, months, and years without ding it. Eventually, we just left off doing it altogether.
This troubled me slightly because, though I do forget things from time to time, rarely do I forget to do something to the extent it never gets done—especially in matters of faith. At some point, I will get it done. Not so with the Ten Commandments; we never got around to learning them, and I could not understand why.
By the grace of God, However, today I learned what hindered me for almost a decade from learning the Ten Commandments and teaching them to my children: it was the Lord Jesus Himself. And the reason is simple: there are no Ten Commandments!
Turn with me, if you will, to Exodus Chapter 20, and let us discuss what we know as the Ten Commandments. Commandments. Only instead of considering each imperative as a separate commandment, as is commonly done, let us consider each contextual whole; for, in so doing you will see that there are not really ten commandments, but eleven.
First, it is generally accepted by Protestant theologians that verse 5 deals with idolatry:
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…â€
But if we consider the passage contextually, then we will see that verses three, four and five all deal collectively with idolatry.
Verse two defines idolatry as worshipping any god other than the Lord God:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
While verses four and five expand the definition of idolatry to 1. making statues and images, and 2. worshipping statues and images.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…â€
Verses 3-5, therefore contain three commandments rather than two:
1. Thou shalt not worship any gods besides God.
2. Thou shalt not make statues or anything else in the likeness of birds, humans, animals, or marine creatures.
3. Thou shalt not worship statues or anything else in the likeness of birds, humans, or marine creatures.
It continues:
4. “Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord in vain (v. 7).
5. “Remember the Sabbath day (v. 8).
6. “Honor thy father and thy mother.†(v. 12).
7. “Thou shalt not kill (v. 13).
8. “Thou shalt not commit adultery†(V. 14).
9. “Thou shalt not steal†(v. 15).
10. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor†(v. 16).
11. “Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s†(v. 17).
As you can clearly see, there are actually eleven commandments. And it was right there before your eyes all along. It’s true: the best place to hide something is right out in the open.
It is important to note that Protestant theologians have often pointed out that Roman Catholic Bibles omit Exodus 20:4 (Thou shalt make no graven images) and split Exodus 20:11 (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house), replacing verse 4 with the first part of verse 11 (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife), thus keeping the number of commandments at ten. But, as we have already seen, Exodus 20:2-11 actually contains eleven commandments, not just ten.
Right now, you’re probably asking yourself where the notion that there are only Ten Commandments came from? Well, I submit that Rome, the age-old enemy of The Word of God, is responsible; for statues; likenesses of things in heaven, things in earth, and things in the water under the earth; and false gods are in great abundance in the Roman Catholic Church, adorning the walls—inside and out—as well as the roof and grounds of every Roman Catholic edifice in the world, including the Vatican.
One oft-used tactic of Satan is to create a false argument that diverts our attention from what we should be looking at onto something that is really of little or no consequence. Concerning the “Ten Commandments,” By highlighting the prohibition against worshipping statues (Exodus 20:4-5) and making Mary worship the principle point of contention, Rome attempts to divert our attention from an even more egregious matter: the worship of false gods (Exodus 20:2). In the romish church, that false god is known as the Eucharist, the consecrated piece of bread Roman Catholics believe contains the body, blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Â This makes the Eucharist “another Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:3).
Besides this, the priest is another Jesus in the Roman Catholic Church. The priest, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, holds many of the powers attributed to the Lord Jesus Christ, including the power to forgive sins. That makes the priest too, “another Jesus.” Priests even hold the title of alter Christus–literally “another Jesus” in Latin.
One can see therefore, why the Roman Catholic Church would want to minimize the importance of the First Commandment by diverting our attention to Mary worship. From priests, to the Eucharist, to the Pope himself, the Virgin Mary is far from the only idol in the romish church. We would know this, if we, as Protestants, would do something Rome doesn’t want us to do: believe the Bible as it is written; and the Bible makes no mention at all of the Ten Commandments.
Since God will not allow the Roman Catholic Church to destroy the Word of God, it has settled for changing the way you and I understand the Word of God. Are you going to let them get away with that?
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
t
Today, Roman Catholics celebrate a holiday known as “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” or simply, The Assumption. A Practical Catholic Dictionary describes the Assumption as:
“The taking into Heaven of the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary soon after her death. The word assumption comes from the Latin word assumere (to take up) and the body of the blessed Virgin Mary, who was free from original sin and so was not subject to death in the same way that creatures are, was taken into heaven and united to her soul. The Feast of the Assumption is August 15 and is a holyday of obligation in the United States.Â
“Belief in Our Lady’s Assumption goes back to early Christian days. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption as a dogma of the Church. See dogma. A new Proper for the Mass for the day shows Mary in her bodily glory. The Introit begins, ‘A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’ Apocalpse XII 1.'” (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 29).
You may note that the Roman Catholic Church teaches the Virgin Mary was “free from original sin” and therefore not subject to death the way normal human beings are. This is the strongest evidence that the Virgin Mary and Mary, the mother of Jesus, are not the same person, as the Bible teaches that after Mary gave birth to the Lord Jesus, she went to Jerusalem to make a sin offering:
“And when the days of her [Mary’s] purification were accomplished, they brought Him [Jesus] to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord…And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:22,24).
“Law of the Lord” is referring to Deuteronomy Chapter 12, where God commands that after a woman gives birth, after the days of her purifying, she should go to the priest with a lamb to be offered upon the altar as an atonement:
“And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest:
And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for her…” (Deuteronomy 12:6,8).
If Mary, the mother of Jesus, were sinless, then there would have been no need for her to make a sin offering for an atonement, as she would not have needed to atone for any sins. Clearly, then, Mary, the mother of our Lord, was born into sin like the rest of us: it was the Lord Jesus who was without sin. The Roman Catholic Virgin Mary, therefore, being without sin, could not be the mother of Jesus Christ, but another Mary.
It is interesting that the Roman Catholic church claims that belief in the Assumption “goes back to early Christian days,” because the Bible, the oldest surviving record of the beliefs and practices of the early Christian Church, does not mention the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, let alone the Assumption.
That is not the only puzzlement with the doctrine of the Assumption. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself declared that “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven” (John 3:13).
When the Lord Jesus said, “No man,” He was using the inclusive masculine: that is, “No man or woman. This is the same “no man” the Lord Jesus uses in John 14:6 when He said, “No man [or woman] cometh unto the Father but by me.” Jesus had not yet been crucified, resurrected, or ascended, when He said this, so it is clear that He was speaking about eternity past and eternity future. In other words, Jesus was saying that no one had or ever would descend from heaven or ascended into heaven, but Himself.
If the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is true, therefore, then the Lord Jesus Christ is a liar. The Word of God says, “Let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
Grace and peace, Saints.
For years, I wondered why statues and pictures portraying the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary often depict the goddess standing with her left leg slightly bent in a peculiar fashion. If it were just one instance, perhaps I would not have paid much attention to it. But, because I have seen many such instances, and because the Roman Catholic religion is modern day Mystery Babylon, I knew there was some occult meaning to it, though I knew not what.
Even Roman Catholics have attempted to explain this obvious curiosity. One website discussing the image of Guadalupe says “Our Lady of Guadalupe is shown in a position of dancing prayer, with her knee bent in movement.” But this doesn’t explain the numerous other instances that can be found.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe”
I pondered this over and over again for years, until one day I considered Boticelli’s famous painting, The Birth of Venus, which depicts the goddess standing in a seashell:
Venus, the goddess of the sea
Notice that the goddess stands with her knee bent and covering her private parts with her hair. The pagans have never been accused of being modest, as anyone who has been to Rome or to an art museum will tell you. So, that Boticelli depicted the goddess being both modest and immodest at the same time is really quite strange when you think about it. But one day I noticed that Venus’ hand is actually too low to be covering female genitalia. Knowing that nothing in the occult is pure happenstance, I meditated on this for months.
Then it hit me: Venus is really Semiramis, who goes by many different names, and for this reason was known as Myrianimus “The goddess of ten thousand names.” But, though Nimrod was not known by as many names as his famous wife, he, too, had not a few; and one of these names was Saturn, “The Hidden God.” Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons says this regarding Saturn:
“We have now only to inquire what was the name by which Nimrod was known as the god of the Chaldean Mysteries. That name . . . was Saturn. Saturn and Mystery are both Chaldean words, and they are correlative terms. As Mystery signifies the Hidden system, so Saturn signifies the Hidden god” (p. 17).
It is important to understand that when Nimrod was killed, Semiramis became the principle object of worship and was ultimately exalted above her husband/son. But the practitioners of the Mystery Religion continued to worship Nimrod and Semiramis simultaneously by creating an androgynous god, a goddess with male genitalia. In this manner, Semiramis would be worshipped ostensibly as the goddess, while Nimrod–Saturn, the Hidden God–would be worshipped occultly in the form of the male phallus, hidden beneath the goddess’ clothing, or, in the case of Venus, her hair.
In the Greek Mysteries, this androgynous god was known as Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, taken from the Greek hermaphroditos meaning a “person partaking of the attributes of both sexes.” As a proper name, Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who according to Ovid, was loved by the nymph Salmacis so ardently that she prayed for complete union with him and as a result they were united bodily, combining male and female characteristics.
Hermaphroditus is usually depicted with the face, breasts, and body characteristics of a woman, and the genitalia of a man. Note the position of the left leg in both of the following statues of Hermaphroditus. WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES FOLLOW!!!
Statuetta di ermafrodito con Eros. Ermafrodito con in braccio Zeus, fronte, inv. S 370
Could it be merely a coincidence that in both of these status of Hermaphroditus the deity is standing with its leg bent in the same fashion as the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary?! Of these two statues, the most telling is the second, as it depicts Hermaphroditus holding the baby Eros, just like the Virgin Mary is often depicted holding the “Baby Jesus!!!”
Now, you may right this off as merely a coincidence, but, as I have said many times before, if there are too many coincidences, then it is no coincidence.
If you are a Roman Catholic, I challenge you to give a better explanation for why images of the Virgin Mary, such as that of Guadalupe, depict the goddess standing in such a curious position (and you gotta do better than “prayer dancing”). If you cannot, then I suggest you carefully ponder today’s revelations and ask yourself why you worship or, if you will, revere the Virgin Mary, when, in reality, it is Semiramis, the wife of the great rebel Nimrod, that you are worshipping. The Bible calls Semiramis the Virgin Queen of Babylon, the Lady of Kingdoms, and the Abomination of Desolation. If you really love the Lord Jesus Christ, then leave off worshipping this statue, for it is idolatry, and God hates idolatry!
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Many of you are familiar with my testimony of persecution, which includes gang stalking and other forms of harassment. As I relate in God is in Control and other posts, sleep deprivation has been a major part of this harassment. This diabolical form of harassment has come in many different forms, and it is almost always perpetrated by my neighbors.
Now, imagine my reaction when I saw the above headline about a month or so ago on a newspaper vending machine near my apartment in Munich:
The headline reads: “New Nightmare Study: Five Million Bavarians Have Insomnia.” The article goes on to share these alarming statistics:
The article goes on to say that insomnia is a major cause of many ailments such as depression and heart complications. It just so happens that depression is a major problem in Munich, evidenced by the fact that the number of psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists has increased dramatically over the last decade.
Now, if you are a Christian who is being persecuted like me, then you should be encouraged by this bit of news, because it proves you are doing something right. It also proves that God really does look out for His people. In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul encourages this persecuted church by telling them that their suffering is proof that they are doing well in the sight of God:
“We ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure:
“Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer:
Paul then goes on to assure the Thessalonians that God will exact vengeance of those who persecute them with the exact same persecution:
“Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you.” (2 Thessalonians 1:4-6)
Recompense means “to pay in kind”: in other words, to do to someone exactly what they have done to you, whether it be good or bad. So, God will do to our enemies exactly what they do to us, exactly how they do it to us, and exactly as often as they do it to us. This is important, because God has commanded us not to recompense evil for evil. We are never to do to our enemies what they do to us, because God says that that is His job. He will avenge us. God wants us to keep our hands clean and our consciences spotless that we will be “harmless, blameless, the sons of God, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.”
You may be interested to know that the population of Bavaria, according to the 2011 census, is around 12.4 million. Since 1.6 million of those 12.4 million Bavarians live in Munich, then almost half of Bavaria suffers from insomnia and almost all of Munich suffers from insomnia. And note that this problem has been noted since 2005. Is it merely a coincidence that I got saved and starting evangelizing in Munich in 2005?
Now, you may be inclined to believe that this huge problem of insomnia in Munich and Bavaria and the sleep deprivation campaign waged against me are merely coincidental. But I’m here to tell you that God is not a God of coincidence. God is a God of purpose. And we know that “all things work together for good to those that love God; to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19).
Be encouraged and look up; for your redemption draweth nigh.
TSM
As one reader noted a few weeks ago (thank you, Ms. G), I haven’t posted anything since April. That is because, for about a month or so, I have been in transition.
After living in Germany for over twenty years, I have relocated to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. I learned an awful lot about myself and the world during my stay in Munich, and I can say without any reservation that, if it were not for my time there, I would not be the person I am today. After all, it was in Munich that I found the Lord Jesus Christ!
Of course, as with any life change, this move was not without its challenges; and I had to make some great sacrifices. But I am assured that the Lord Jesus is with me and that I have His blessing. I can tell you that during this move, He has already done some great and marvelous things–things that even amazed my children! I would also like to publicly thank my sister, Denise, for helping make this move possible.
Please pray for me, Saints. St. Louis is known as the “Rome of the West.” Roman Catholics outnumber Protestants in this city probably 99 to 1, with Muslims bringing up the rear. With a ministry like mine, my children and I will have to endure much. I therefore covet your prayers for me and my family. In particular, please pray that my children will make a good transition and that I will be patient with them and receptive to their needs. Also pray that the love of Jesus will abound in my heart and that my ministry to the Roman Catholic people will bear fruit.
May the will of God be done.
Your servant,
Tony
Grace and peace, Saints
This is part of my testimony and will give you an idea of the circumstances that characterize my ministry, and why I do what I do. Please listen with an open mind.
The Still Man
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mary Surrat’s boarding house as it appeared in 1890.
541 H Street was the boarding house of Mary Surrat, one of the chief conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was also the place where John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Lincoln; and John Surrat, Ms. Surrat’s son, frequently met with the other conspirators in the assassination plot. Mary Surrat was later tried, convicted, and hung for her role in Lincoln’s assassination. Nearly all of the conspirators, including Mary Surrat, were fervent Roman Catholics. (Rome’s Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 53.)
Grace and peace, Saints.
Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the assassination of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. I had planned to write an article and do a podcast commemorating this event, as I have done the past couple of years, but, regretfully, events conspired to prevent me from doing so. For your edification, education, and encouragement, however, I pray that you will listen to the podcast I did commemorating this occasion of our great martyred President back in 2015. God bless you.
The Still Man
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Pope Francis aboard the papal plane during his Oct. 31-Nov. 1 trip to Sweden. Credit: Edward Pentin/National Catholic Register.
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication” (Revelation 17:4).
Grace and peace, Saints.
Many of you may be aware that last October, Pope Francis went on an ecumenical journey to Sweden. During an in-flight press conference held aboard the papal jet, the pontiff fielded a variety of questions covering subjects from ecumenism to secularization. Responding to a question from a Swedish journalist regarding the possibility of women being allowed in the Catholic priesthood, Pope Francis made a cryptic, yet very revealing statement wherein he once again admitted that the Roman Catholic religion is, in fact, Mystery Babylon, the worship of Nimrod and Semiramis.
Click here for the full text of the press conference.
Following is the complete dialogue:
Journalist: “Good morning. The Sweden that hosted this important ecumenical encounter has a woman as head of it’s own Church. What do you think: is it realistic to think of women priests also in the Catholic Church in the coming decades? And if not, why are Catholic priests afraid of competition?â€
Pope Francis: “Reading the history a bit in the area where we were, I saw that there was a queen who was widowed three times. And I said: but, this woman is strong, and they told me: Swedish women are very strong, very good. And because of this some Swedish man looks for a woman from another nationality…I don’t know if it’s true, but…on the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the final word is clear, it was said by St. John Paul II and this remains. On competition, I don’t know…â€
Journalist: “Never ever?â€
Pope Francis: “If we read well the declaration made by St. John Paul II, it goes along this line, yes…But women can do so many things better than men, even in the dogmatic field. To clarify (to perhaps give some clarity, not to say only a reference to a document):
INTERJECTION. Now pay close attention, as the Pope reveals the true nature of Roman Catholicism: that rather than Christianity, Catholicism is really Mystery Babylon, the worship of Nimrod and Semiramis. The greatest emphasis, however, is on Semiramis.
Pope Francis: “In Catholic ecclesiology there are two dimensions to think about: the Petrine dimension (which is from the Apostle Peter and the Apostolic College, which is the pastoral activity of the bishops), as well as the Marian dimension (which is the feminine dimension of the Church); and this I have said more than [once]. I ask myself: who is most important in theology and in the mystic of the Church: the apostles or Mary on the day of Pentecost? It’s Mary! The Church is a woman! It’s “la Chiesa” (in Italian), not “il Chiesa.” It’s “la Chiesa”; and the Church is the spouse of Christ. It’s a spousal mystery.
“And in light of this mystery you will understand the reason for these two dimensions: the Petrine dimension, which is the bishops, and the Marian dimension, which is the maternity of the Church, but in the most profound sense. A Church doesn’t exist without this feminine dimension, because she herself is feminine.†[Boldface and brackets mine.]
If you have ears to hear, then you know that Pope Francis has made some extremely revealing admissions here.
First, it is important to first understand that if the Roman Catholic Church were truly the Bride of Christ, then there would be no mystery, as the bride and groom would already be identified. That there remains a “spousal mystery†is the first clue that the Roman Catholic Church is not the Bride of Christ and Jesus Christ is not the groom of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Pope’s emphasis on the Petrine and Marian dimensions being peculiar to Roman Catholicism is also very important. In biblical Christianity, there are no Petrine or Marian hemispheres, as “Christ is all and in all†(Colossians 3:11). If there were two dimensions to biblical Christianity, then they would have to be the Mosaic Dimension, which is salvation by works, and the Christian Dimension, which is salvation through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ:
“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christâ€Â (John 1:17)).
Regarding the Church, there is no spousal mystery. Jesus is the groom and the Church is his bride. There are two great mysteries in the Bible:
The mystery of godliness, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has already been revealed through Scripture and is therefore no longer a mystery:
“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Timothy 3:16).
The mystery to which Pope Francis alludes, therefore, can only be the Mystery of Iniquity, which just happens to be a spousal mystery. The Bible calls this mystery Mystery Babylon:
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
“And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus…” (Revelation 17:5).
When Pope Francis calls Catholicism a “spousal mystery,” he is admitting that Roman Catholicism is Mystery Babylon, which is the worship of Nimrod and Semiramis. The Petrine and Marian dimensions of Catholic theology are therefore emblematic of the deified couple: St. Peter is a symbol for Nimrod, and the Virgin Mary is a symbol for Semiramis.
It is important to understand that Pope Francis’ use of the words mystery and mystic is a signal that he is speaking in occult or symbolic language. Mystery Babylon uses symbols to conceal the fact that its principle objects of worship are Nimrod and Semiramis. There are two types of symbols: esoteric and exoteric. An esoteric symbol is closer to the truth, while an exoteric symbol is farther from the truth. The Pope has already provided us with the two esoteric symbols for Nimrod and Semiramis in the Petrine and Marian dimensions of Catholic ecclesiology. Any cryptic references the Pope makes to people or things are merely symbolic references to the deified couple.
When the Pope therefore says “in light of this mystery you will understand….the two dimensions,†what he is really saying is “Once you understand that Roman Catholicism is Mystery Babylon, then you will know that everything in Roman Catholicism—from the dead Jesus, to the cross, to the Virgin Mary, to the seven sacraments—is symbolic of Nimrod and Semiramis, and you will have the key to deciphering all my cryptic references, including and especially my reference to the Roman Catholic Church as a ‘spousal mystery.’â€
Pope Francis said that he has mentioned the feminine aspect of the Roman Catholic Church in the past, and one such incident may be a homily he gave in 2013, wherein Pope Francis described the Catholic Church as “a widow in search of her spouse,†an obvious reference to the Egyptian legend of Isis and Osiris, who are none other than Nimrod and Semiramis.
Pope Francis’ remarks also proves that the Virgin Mary is not the biblical Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Roman Catholic Church claims its popes are the spiritual descendants of the Apostles. Yet, the Pope claims that the Virgin Mary is the most important person in Catholic theology. The problem with this statement is that according to the Bible, Jesus’ mother Mary was present with the Apostles and the other disciples of the Lord Jesus, in the days from our Lord’s crucifixion up to Pentecost, but she played no major role. Peter was the one who was prominent:
“These [the Apostles] all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren. And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples…†(Acts 1:14).
In fact, the Bible records that on the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter preached a sermon that resulted in three thousand people being converted:
“And when the day of Pentecost was come…Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem…hearken unto my words…†(Acts 2:14).
Peter then went on to preach Jesus to the crowd, ending with:
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ†(Acts 2:36).
What was the result of Peter’s preaching?
“Then they gladly received his word and were baptized: and that same day were added unto them about three thousand souls†(Acts 2:41).
Jesus’ mother Mary is not even mentioned in connection with Pentecost, yet Pope Francis claims that Mary was the most important person on that day!
Why is all this important? You may ask. I’ll tell you. The Roman Catholic Church bills itself as the “mother of all churches,†and claims that it’s popes are the spiritual descendants of the Apostles and that the Apostle Peter was the first pope. This, they believe, gives the Catholic Church the divine right to rule all other churches, including the true Christian Church, and makes the Pope the spiritual head of all churches, including the Christian Church. But, by Pope Francis’ own words, Mary is the most important person in Catholic theology, even more important than the Apostle Peter. If I were a sincere Roman Catholic, I would find this problematic, because, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Virgin Mary is a statue.
Why does the Catholic Church exalt the Virgin Mary above the Apostle Peter, if they consider Peter the first pope? Because, by Pope Francis’ own words, the Catholic Church could not exist without the Virgin Mary. Pope Francis tells us:
“[T]he Marian dimension…is the maternity of the Church, but in the most profound sense. A Church doesn’t exist without this feminine dimension, because she herself is feminine.â€
Here, the Pope is again using symbolic language; so, if you interpret “Marian dimension†as the Virgin Mary and “most profound†as esoteric, then you will understand that Pope Francis is telling us that the Catholic Church could not exist without the Virgin Mary because, in it’s most profound (esoteric) sense, the Virgin Mary is Semiramis.
The Pope is saying that the Marian (Semiramis) dimension is more important than the Petrine (Nimrod) dimension, because the Church is Semiramis and Semiramis is the Church. This is why the Roman Catholic Church calls itself “Mother Church.†The Catholic Church is Semiramis, who was worshipped as Cebele, the Goddess Mother and wife of Nimrod. The preeminence of Semiramis over Nimrod is depicted in the Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, where we read that “Osiris or Horus, is the doctrine, while Isis is the Church.â€
Only when one considers Roman Catholicism from the perspective of the ancient mysteries and understands that the Roman Catholic St. Peter and the Virgin Mary are really esoteric symbols for Nimrod and Semiramis, can one understand why the Catholic Church claims their popes are descended from St. Peter and the Apostles, when the popes are not and have never been anything like the Apostle Peter and the Apostles. The Roman Catholic popes are really reincarnations of Nimrod, while the Virgin Mary is really Semiramis.
Pope Francis once again proves that Roman Catholicism is not Christianity, but “Mystery Babylon The Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth†(Revelation 17:5).
“He who hath an ear, let him hear.”
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
In our last article, we discussed the fact that the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Movement is gaining momentum with every passing day. In the article, we showed you an advertisement for a concert here in Munich featuring a symbol composed of a cross, a six-pointed star, and a crescent moon. The symbol, as well as the music, was dedicated to “The One God.”
In the article, we explained that contrary to popular belief, the cross is not the symbol for Bible-based Christianity, but for Roman Catholicism, as the cross was used by Constantine The Great, founder of the Roman Catholic Church, as a symbol for the pagan sun god, which Constantine worshipped as Sol Invictus. The six-pointed star, the so-called Star of David, is widely regarded as the symbol for Judaism, but the Bible states that those Jews who fell into apostasy used a star to represent Nimrod, whom they worshipped as Moloch and Rempham; and Semiramis, whom they worshipped as Chiun (See Amos 5:26 and Acts 7:43). The crescent moon has come to be known as the primary symbol for Islam, but the crescent moon (as well as the full moon) is also a symbol for many goddesses, including the Egyptian Isis, the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth, the Roman goddess Diana, The goddess Diana of the Ephesians (Turkey), and the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary.
We further explained that Mystery Babylon, as the worship of Nimrod and Semiramis is known in the Bible (Revelation 17:5), uses symbols to represent the deified couple, and that among these symbols are the cross, star, and moon. The Bible calls Mystery Bible the “mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” Roman Catholicism uses all three symbols: the cross, the moon, and the six-pointed star, and bills itself the “mother of all churches.”
By these associations we hoped to illustrate that Roman Catholicism is in fact, Mystery Babylon, and the symbol formed by the amalgamation of the symbols for Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism is proof positive that the three religions are united in their worship of the One God, which is none other than The Image of the Beast (Revelation 13): the goddess Semiramis, which the Bible calls The Abomination of Desolation.
Today I will provide proof that this is not conjecture. A Practical Catholic Dictionary gives this definition of “The Heathen”:
“Those who are not Christians, Jews, or Mohammedans [Muslims]. Under Christians are included both Catholics and non-Catholics. Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans worship the One God and so cannot be called heathen” (p. 109). [Brackets and boldface mine]
Here is the original:
Definition of “Heathen” from A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 109.
Can you believe that? The Roman Catholic Church considers Muslims and Jews Christians! Because Roman Catholics don’t consider Bible-believing Christians to be Christians, but calls us Protestants and heretics, then what Rome is really saying is that Muslims and Jews are also Roman Catholics! I’m not surprised by this, as I have been saying this for years, and even wrote about it in articles such as House of the Virgin Mary, Ephesus and The Roman Catholic Church, Zionism, Stars, and Seashells. But this time, it’s not me saying it: Rome is saying it herself.
The problem, of course, is that neither Muslims nor Jews worship the Lord Jesus Christ, who Roman Catholics claim to worship. If Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism worship the One God–whom Catholics claim is Jesus–yet Muslims and Jews do not worship the Lord Jesus–who Catholics claim to worship–then, for Catholics, Muslims, and Jews to have One God in common, it could only mean that the One God of Roman Catholicism is not the Lord Jesus Christ. Who then, is the One God? Answer: the only “god” that Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism have in common: Semiramis, known in Catholicism as the Virgin Mary, in Islam as Mother Mary, and in Judaism as Miriam. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Roman Catholics and Muslims share a joint shrine at Ephesus, Turkey; and that the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s second holiest shrine, stands where the Jewish temple once stood.
The One God of Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism is The Woman, Semiramis, who was worshipped in Mesopotamia as Ishtar “The Woman,” in Rome as Domina or Despoina “The Lady” (The Two Babylons, p. 103), and mentioned in the Bible as the “Virgin Queen of Babylon” (Isaiah 47:1), the “Lady of Kingdoms” (Isaiah 47:5), and the “Queen of Heaven” (Jeremiah 44:17-19). Could it be merely a coincidence that the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary is known in every country in the world as Our Lady and the Queen of Heaven? Â If there are too many coincidences, there are no coincidences.
If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you should be very encouraged to know that as terrible as all this sounds, it is actually a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, as the Bible tells us that “all the world shall worship him [the Pope]” (Revelation 13:8). Before the Lord Jesus opened my eyes, I used to wonder how Muslims, known for their fanatical devotion to Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, or the Jews, who pride themselves as being the chosen of God and the children of Abraham, would ever rally around the Pope. I don’t wonder anymore. The Virgin Mary, the “One God,” is the key.
The One World Church is not coming; it’s already here.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
The move towards a one world church seems to be picking up steam, as can be clearly seen in advertisements I’ve been seeing around Munich.
This is an advertisement for a concert featuring music from “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” The Christianity referred to in this advertisement is not Bible-based Christianity, as true Christians would never fellowship in a religious capacity with Muslims and Jews, as both Islam and Judaism reject Jesus as the Savior of the world. Islam both rejects the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, claiming that “Allah had no son,” and denies His deity by reducing Him to a minor prophet. Judaism also rejects the Lord Jesus by refusing to acknowledge the New Testament, and denies His deity by rejecting Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. For Christians to fellowship in a religious capacity with Jews and Muslims, therefore, is to be “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 14:6). The cross, then, must represent Roman Catholicism, a pagan religion that also rejects Jesus, though it pays Him lip service. Catholicism claims to be Christian, but, in reality, it worships “another Jesus” (a dead Jesus still nailed to a cross), and has “another spirit and another gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). Since Pope John Paul II, Roman Catholicism has attempted to unite with Islam and Judaism through the Ecumenical Movement.
In order for Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam to worship “The One God,” then all three religions would have to have this one god in common. But, how is this possible, when all three religions worship different gods? My premise is that Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam do all worship the same god, but that god is not the God of the Bible, whose name is Jesus Christ. The One God which Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam all have in common is the goddess, Semiramis. This can be proved by examining the symbols in the advertisement.
Let us begin with the symbol of the cross with the tree wrapped around it. Suspended from a branch of the tree is an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is an obvious reference to the sin of Adam and Eve. The Bible tells us that Eve, the first woman, was deceived by Satan into eating the fruit which God had forbidden her and her husband to eat. The Roman Catholic Church has long taught that the forbidden fruit was an apple, though the Bible doesn’t specify what the fruit was. The apple is therefore an exoteric symbol for Eve, The Woman. The fact that the tree is wrapped around the cross and not the other symbols is a sign that the apple and the cross are meant to be symbolically interpreted together. And this we shall do.
Now, the cross is thought by many to be the symbol for Christianity, but the Holy Bible never mentions the early Christian Church symbolizing their faith with a cross. In point of fact, the cross is historically a symbol for the Sun God, Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14). The Roman Emperor Constantine The Great worshipped Tammuz as Sol Invictus (The Unconquerable Sun), which he symbolized with an equal-armed cross. The Romans used crucifixion both as a means of execution and as a way to sacrifice victims to Tammuz. Emperor Constantine founded the Roman Catholic Church in 330 A.D., when he issued the Edict of Milan, a decree of tolerance towards Christians. Constantine then announced that he had become a Christian and declared Christianity as the state religion. But Constantine’s version of Christianity was actually an unholy mixture of the pagan worship of Tammuz with a smidgen of Christianity thrown in for good measure. Because the cross is a symbol for Tammuz or Nimrod, then the apple, rather than a symbol for Eve, is really a symbol for Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod. Semiramis was also known as the The Lady (Isaiah 47:5).
The crescent moon symbol has come to be associated with Islam, but you may find it interesting that the moon is also a symbol for the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Scandinavian goddess Frigga, the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth, the Greek goddess Diana, and the Roman Catholic idol known as the Virgin Mary.
The six-pointed star is usually associated with modern Judaism, but it is also found in the Holy Bible as the symbol of a pagan god and goddess:
“But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves” (Amos 5:26).
“Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god, Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them” (Acts 7:43).
The six-pointed star is also used in Roman Catholicism as a symbol for the Virgin Mary, which is known in Catholicism as the Star of the Sea.
Note lastly that the cross and the six-pointed star are interlaced and surmounted by a half moon, effectively forming a new symbol. Since the purpose of this union is to glorify “The One God,” then this symbol, rather than representing three separate religions, actually symbolizes one single religion, which incorporates Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam. The problem, however, is that Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam do not worship the same god; or do they?
Islam has the moon and the star, but the cross is not found. Modern Judaism has the star, but the moon and the cross are not (normally) found. Only Roman Catholicism uses the moon, the star, and the cross. I submit therefore, that the religion symbolized by the amalgamation of the moon, the cross, and the star is Roman Catholicism, which worships a goddess known as the Virgin Mary, and calls itself the “mother of all churches.” The worship of the goddess is known as Mystery Babylon, which the Bible calls the “mother of harlots and abominations of the earth” (Revelation 17:5).
The “One God” then, that this concert seeks to glorify is actually the One Goddess, Semiramis, known in Catholicism as the Virgin Mary, in Islam as Mother Mary, and in Judaism as Mother Mary and Miriam (in Kabbalistic Judaism, God the Mother). The Bible, however, calls this idol the Abomination of Desolation.
There are two symbols I almost forgot to include, which also happen to be symbols for the Virgin Mary. The first is the dove at the upper left. The Roman Catholic Church claims the dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit, but the dove is also a symbol of Semiramis, who was also known as Columbia or The Dove. Notice also the flowers on the right side of the symbol. I’m no florist, but they appear to be roses and possibly carnations. The Catholic Church uses both as symbols for the Virgin Mary.
Let us take a look at yet another advertisement.
The caption above “We Are The World” says “An Inclusive Gospel Choir,” and below the globe is stated, “A Community project of people with and without handicaps and asylum-seekers.” While a Gospel choir that includes the handicapped is a good idea, as the Gospel is for them too, you must understand that this event is taking place in Munich, a very Roman Catholic city in the very very Roman Catholic state of Bavaria, Germany. This choir, therefore, is most likely composed primarily of Roman Catholics (further proof of this is the fact that the event is taking place in a Catholic church). For those of you who didn’t know, the Jesus of Catholicism is not the Jesus of the Bible, most evident by the fact that the Jesus of Catholicism is still hanging on a cross. Catholicism, therefore, has “another Jesus, another spirit and another gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:3,4).
Note also that besides the handicapped, this choir includes asylum seekers. Having lived in Munich for almost twenty years, I can tell you that, arguably, the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers here are Muslims. In that true gospel music glorifies Jesus Christ, and Muslims do not glorify the Lord Jesus, then the music that this choir sings cannot be the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but, again, “another gospel.” If this choir does not glorify Jesus Christ, then, what is its purpose? Answer: to promote an “inclusive”: that is, ecumenical, gospel: the gospel of the One World Church.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.Â
Today is Day Seven of the Forty-Day Roman Catholic celebration of Lent, and, as promised, we continue with our essay “What Is Lent?â€
According to A Practical Catholic Dictionary, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, ushers in the Lenten celebration “in the spirit of penance.†Penance, according to the Dictionary, is “good works†required by the priest to whom the faithful Roman Catholic confesses his sins. The purpose of Lent, therefore, is for the Roman Catholic to do good works as part of his Catholic contract to redeem himself from sin.
If you believe it a stretch to say that the Roman Catholic is trying to redeem himself from sin through good works, consider that the Bible says that “the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin†(1 John 1:7), and “we have redemption through His [Jesus’] blood, even the forgiveness of sins†(Colossians 1:14). The Bible also tells us that after Jesus made “one sacrifice forever†he sat down on the right hand of God the Father (Hebrews 10:12). The Bible’s mention of Jesus sitting down is symbolic of the fact that there was no more work to be done. Jesus’ death and the shedding of His blood fully atoned for our sins.  “It is finished,†Jesus said.
You may find it interesting that the word Atonement cannot be found in A Practical Catholic Dictionary. There is a simple reason for this: Roman Catholicism does not recognize the Atonement. If you think this is again a stretch, consider that the Roman Catholic Jesus is still hanging on the cross. Understand that by leaving Jesus on the cross, Catholicism says that Jesus’ sacrifice is not yet complete. He is still making sacrifice for sin. “It is not finished,†Catholicism says. Catholicism does not believe that Jesus hung on the cross; Catholicism believes Jesus is still hanging on the cross. If you think this is yet another stretch, consider this Catholic prayer to the Virgin Mary, attributed to Pope Pius XII: Click here for source of prayer.
O kind and good Mother,Â
whose own soul was pierced by the sword of sorrow,Â
look upon us while,Â
in our sickness,Â
we arraign ourselves beside youÂ
on the Calvary where your Jesus hangs.
Dowered with the high grace of suffering,Â
and hopeful of fulfilling in our own fleshÂ
what is wanting in our sharing of Christ’s passion,Â
on behalf of his Mystical Body, the Church,Â
we consecrate to you ourselves and our pain.Â
We pray that you will lay themÂ
on that Altar of the Cross to which Jesus is affixed.Â
May they be little victims of propitiation for our salvation,Â
for the salvation of all peoples.
O Mother of Sorrows,Â
accept this consecration.Â
Strengthen our hopeful hearts,Â
that as partakers of Christ’s sufferingsÂ
we may also share in his comfort now and for evermore.
Amen.
Note that the prayer says, “Calvary, where your Jesus HANGS†instead of “HUNGâ€; and “the Cross to which Jesus IS affixed,†instead of “WAS affixed.†Roman Catholicism believes Jesus is still hanging on a lonely cross at Calvary.
But, why do they do this? You may ask. It’s simple: if Jesus’ sacrifice is not complete, and he is still hanging on the cross, then the Roman Catholic has to complete the act of atonement through his own effort. “Where?†you may ask, did you get that?†Well, consider that A Practical Catholic Dictionary says that Jesus, “by His suffering and death, made infinite satisfaction for the sins of men.†It doesn’t say that the blood of Jesus atoned for sins. To make atonement is to satisfy completely. To use the word atonement would be to say that the work of redemption is over. But, by merely saying that Jesus’ sacrifice made “infinite (never-ending, eternal) satisfaction,” and leaving Jesus on the cross, the Roman Catholic Church implies that the work of redemption has not been completed. And, by requiring Roman Catholics to make partial satisfaction for sins through penance, the Roman Catholic Church says that Jesus’ death on the cross and the shedding of his blood wasn’t good enough. The Roman Catholic must do something himself to complete the work of redemption.
It is important at this point to mention that the Roman Catholic Council of Trent curses anyone who believes that justification comes through faith in the blood of Jesus alone and that one needn’t expend any effort on his own.
Proof that the Roman Catholic believes he must redeem himself can be found in the above prayer. Note that the prayer asks that the body of the Roman Catholic, along with his suffering, be accepted as “little victims of propitiation for our salvation.†Propitiation literally means satisfaction for sins. Colossians 1:14 and Romans 3:25 say that Jesus Christ was our propitiation, meaning His death and the shedding of His blood satisfied both our sin debt and God’s wrath. His death paid the penalty for sins, according to Romans 5:23, which says, “The wages of sin is deathâ€; and the shedding of His blood washed away our sins according to Hebrews 9:22, which says “without shedding of blood there is no remission.â€
This is the reason Roman Catholicism teaches that Jesus’ suffering, made “infinite†satisfaction for sins, rather than that His death and the shedding of His blood made atonement for the sins of mankind. It enables the romish church to teach that, through suffering, which may include flagellating himself with a whip, putting sharp instruments in his shoes to inflict pain, or kneeling in prayer upon some instrument designed to inflict pain, the Roman Catholic seeks to become a “little victim of propitiation†(sacrifice) to the end that he might save himself.
The final proof (at least for today) that suffering through penance is one way the Roman Catholic hopes to make atonement for his sins can again be found in Pope Pius XII’s poem. The second stanza says,
Dowered with the high grace of suffering,Â
and hopeful of fulfilling in our own fleshÂ
what is wanting in our sharing of Christ’s passion,Â
on behalf of his Mystical Body, the Church,Â
we consecrate to you ourselves and our pain.
Notice that the poem calls suffering “the high grace.†This is a reference to the Sacrament of Penance, one of the seven “channels of grace†by which the Roman Catholic hopes to earn the right to go to heaven. Note also that through suffering the Roman Catholic is “hopeful of fulfilling in [his] own flesh what is wanting [lacking] in [his] sharing of Christ’s passion.†If you consider that Catholicism teaches that it was through Jesus’ suffering that he made “infinite satisfaction†for sins, then “fulfilling in [his] own flesh” means that the Roman Catholic, through penance, hopes to fulfill, through his personal suffering, the unfinished work of atonement. This prayer is talking about penance.
If the Roman Catholic must partially satisfy his sins through penance, then the work of Jesus on the cross was a failure. This is, by the way, exactly what Pope Francis said:
 “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakes of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
“Our Lady of Guadalupe”
Grace and peace, Saints.
Bible-believing Protestant Christians are aware that the Roman Catholic Church exalts the Virgin Mary into the place of  the Lord Jesus Christ and even above Him. One way they do this is by calling the Virgin Mary the Mediatrix (contrary to 1 Timothy 2:5), and by calling the Virgin Mary co-Redeemer with the Lord Jesus (contrary to Colossians 1:14, Romans 3:25, Revelation 5:9). They also do this by giving the Virgin Mary titles which belong only to Jesus Christ, such as Guadalupe, which means The Virgin Who Crushed The Serpent (an obvious reference to Genesis 3:15).
Allow me to give you yet another example. A couple of weeks ago, I went on an errand to a local hospital where I have been treated several times. On the ground floor is a chapel that I have passed many times in the past, without ever noticing anything out of the ordinary.
This day, however, I noticed something I had never noticed before:
On the other side of the door was the German translation:
Here we see yet another title bestowed upon the Virgin Mary: that of Salvation of the Sick. This is further proof that the Virgin Mary is not the biblical Mary, the mother of Jesus, but another Mary; for nowhere in my Bible is Mary, the mother of Jesus, credited with having healed even one sick person, let alone being said to have the power to heal all the sick. As with the image of “Our Lady of Guadalupe,” the message of the title “Salvation of the Sick” is that the Virgin Mary can not only “make you whole,” but that the Virgin Mary can also save you.
My Bible says that only the name of Jesus heals, not the name of Mary (Acts 3:1-16). My Bible also tells me that there is salvation in none other but Jesus Christ:
“Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
If only Jesus Christ heals and saves, why does the Roman Catholic Church call the Virgin Mary Salvation of the sick? Your guess is as good as mine.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace.
Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Roman Catholic celebration of Lent. A Practical Catholic Dictionary defines Lent as:
“The period of forty days from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday during which by prayer and fasting the Church makes itself ready for the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord. Lent is the second part of the Cycle of Easter and follows Septuagesima. The time of Lent is six and a half weeks, but the Sundays are not counted so that the period is considered forty days.
“After Our Lord had been baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan, He fasted forty days and nights in the desert. Here He was tempted three times by the devil and resisted him. In Lent the faithful follow the example of Our Lord in fighting against the devil through prayer and fasting. (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 134.)
This is a rather confusing definition in that it is first said that during Lent, Roman Catholics make themselves ready for the Easter holiday by praying and fasting, then we are told that the faithful Roman Catholic prays and fasts in order to follow the example of the Lord Jesus when He resisted Satan in the wilderness. It must be emphasized that the celebration of Lent is not found in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible do we find the first-century Christians preparing themselves for Easter by celebrating Lent.
To get a deeper meaning of Lent, I looked up Ash Wednesday, mentioned in the definition of Lent, which can be found on page 29 of A Practical Catholic Dictionary. This is what it says:
“The Wednesday on which Lent begins. On this day ashes are blessed and placed on the foreheads of the priests and the people. The ashes are made by burning the palms blessed on Palm Sunday almost a year before. The priest says in Latin, while he places the ashes on the foreheads of the people: ‘Remember, man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.’ Ash Wednesday, which reminds man of his short stay in this world, ushers in Lent in the spirit of penance” (A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 29).
If Ash Wednesday “ushers in Lent in the spirit of penance,†then in order to find out what the spirit of Lent is, it is necessary to find out what penance is. A Practical Catholic Dictionary defines penance as:
“Prayers or good works required of the penitent by the priest who has heard his confession. This penance satisfies in part for the sins confessed. See satisfaction for sin†(p. 170).
This definition is problematic for several reasons, which we will not get into now, but, God willing, we will talk about it in depth in Part Two of this essay. For now, let us go to A Practical Catholic Dictionary’s definition of “satisfaction for sins,†which is incredibly revealing of the true nature of Lent. Satisfaction for sin can be found on page 196, and is defined as:
“Making up to God for sins committed against Him. The penitent satisfies in part for his sins when he says his Penance after Confession. Jesus Christ Himself, by His suffering and death, made infinite satisfaction for the sins of men. This is called vicarious satisfaction.â€
Again we read that penance “satisfies in part for sins. If Ash Wednesday “ushers in Lent in the spirit of penitence†and penance “satisfies in part” for sins, then the implication is the purpose of Lent is not to prepare for the Easter celebration, to identify with the Lord Jesus, or to resist sin and temptation. If we can believe A Practical Catholic Dictionary (and we certainly should believe it), then the true purpose of Lent is to perform some sort of penance, through “good works” and prayer in order to make partial satisfaction for sins.Â
The observance of Lent says that Jesus Christ failed to redeem mankind from sin. This is blasphemy.Â
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Today marks the 24th anniversary of Day One of the United States federal government’s raid on the Mount Carmel Center and church owned by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. On February 28, 1993, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms stormed the Branch Davidian ranch attempting to serve a warrant to David Koresh on suspicion of stockpiling illegal weapons. A gunfight ensued, which resulted in the deaths of four four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians.
On the ATF’s failure to serve the warrant to Koresh, the FBI took the lead, initiating a 51-day siege which ended on April 19, 1993 after the FBI and ATF, aided by British and U.S. Military Intelligence, INTERPOL, DELTA Force, and other agencies and entities used tanks, machine guns, CS gas, and other military tactics against the Davidians, attempting to drive them out of Mount Carmel. A huge fire erupted which consumed Mount Carmel, and, the next day, the center was completely destroyed. 76 men, women, and children perished that day, dead from flame, CS gas, and automatic weapons fire. Some of the bodies were severely mutilated and their injuries were consistent with having been run over by an armored vehicle.
The ATF and FBI maintain to this day that they never fired a shot.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Page 135 of A Practical Catholic Dictionary defines a litany as “A prayer of devotion consisting of short invocations followed by responses.” It goes on to say, “In the invocations, Our Lord, Our Lady, or the saints are called upon for help.”
Directly beneath “Litany” the dictionary gives the following definition for “Litany of the Blessed Virgin”:
“Prayer of devotion to Our Lady, See Litany. In this litany Our Lady is given some very lovely titles, such as: Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Cause of Our Joy, Mystical Rose, Tower of David, Tower of Ivory, House of God, Morning Star, Queen of angels…”
Each of these titles is similar to a title of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is problematic; but, the title Morning Star is especially troubling, because the Bible says that Jesus is the Morning Star:
“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star” (Revelation 22:16).
Now, some may argue that “morning star” is different than “bright and morning star,” but this is just semantics. Jesus Christ is the Morning Star, not the Virgin Mary. But why should we be surprised that the Roman Catholic Church would steal honor from the Lord Jesus and bestow it upon their Virgin Mary, when they call the same idol Co-Redeemer with the Lord Jesus and the Mediatrix?
The fact that none of the titles attributed to the Virgin Mary are found in the Bible is further proof that the Virgin Mary is not the biblical Mary, the mother of Jesus, but another Mary. This should not surprise you, because the Bible says that there is “another Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:3). If there is another Jesus, then there has to be another Mary. And there certainly is.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
P.S. You may find it interesting to learn that Satan also calls himself the Morning Star.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Roman Catholics are very adamant that Jesus Christ instituted the Roman Catholic Church when He told the Apostle Peter “Upon this rock I will build my church†(Matthew 16:18). Never mind that Jesus Christ was referring to Himself, as He is the Rock. Simon Peter wasn’t the rock Jesus was talking about, as Simon means “sand,†and Peter means “a small stone.” So, while Peter was integral to the early church, the Lord Jesus would never build a church on him, as sand and pebbles could never be a sure foundation for any building, let alone the Church of God. It is also important to note that moments after making this statement, Jesus called Peter Satan. This fact, however, has never stopped the romish church from declaring that Jesus instituted the Catholic Church and made Peter the first Pope.
But, the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t stop There. Rome even goes so far as to call the Lord Jesus a Catholic priest. On page 113 of A Practical Catholic Dictionary, under “Holy Thursday,†the dictionary says this:
“Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist both as a sacrament and a sacrifice. As a sacrament He gave His apostles His own body and blood in Holy Communion. As a sacrifice He said the first Mass. He was preparing His Apostles for the priesthood when He said, “Do this in remembrance of me.â€
One has to really marvel at this, because, in that only Catholic priests say Mass, with this statement, the Catholic Church is actually implying that Jesus was the first Catholic priest! Now, it is one thing to claim that Jesus instituted the Catholic Church. It is another thing to claim that the Pope of Rome is the substitute for Jesus Christ and call him Holy Father, a name reserved for God the Father (John 17:11). But, implying that Jesus was a Catholic priest is going way too far. If you think about it though, this is not a stretch for a church that considers its head, the Pope of Rome, Jesus on earth, and gives its priests powers which belong only to God. If the Catholic Church can call its priests Alter Christus (another Jesus), then why wouldn’t it call Jesus a Catholic priest?
Protestants, do you still think that Roman Catholicism is Christianity? Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
P.S.: Think about this: In that Jesus Christ is our High Priest, and the Pope is the highest priest in the romish church, then, isn’t the Catholic Church really calling Jesus the first Pope? Food for thought.Â
Be encouraged, and look up; for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Yesterday, a Roman Catholic posted an interesting response to our article entitled “An Unexpected Meeting With Ganesh.” I believe his comment echoes the sentiments of many Catholics, including many you may know–so I decided to share our dialogue with you for the edification of Christians and the benefit of Catholics. Below is his comment followed by my response.
[Begin Comment]
“I think you are mistaken about Catholics. First – a word about crucifixes. A crucifix is NOT cursed NOR is it a sign of a curse. During Jesus’ incarnation, the punishment of death by crucifixion was CONSIDERED to be accursed. Notice the use of the past tense. Jesus has redeemed us ALL from any and all curse of the Law. Nothing which was formerly held to be a curse can stand. Furthermore, the very fact that Jesus expiated all human sins and curses – has even further removed any possible curse from ancient use of the torture of crucifixion. You must also consider the fact that a crucifix is considered holy by us Catholics – it is a sign of Jesus suffering for all humanity. It’s powerful a way of honoring Jesus’ sacrifice which saved us all and a way to compassionate with him. The Crucifixion was the means by which he saved the world and a crucifix is a powerful tool against he enemy since it is a clear sign of Jesus’ victory. We all talk about the victory of the cross, where Jesus conquered the world and defeated the Enemy. Well crucifixes represent that victory and well as the process of redemption.”
I don’t know where you get the idea that Catholics worship Mary. It is clear that they do not. I find it unhealthy that Protestants are constantly labeling and judging other Christians and their beliefs and activities. The Catholics formed the first church and from our first pope to the present, Catholicism has had uninterrupted leadership and maintained apostolic tradition for 2,000 years. We do not worship the Virgin Mary – we VENERATE her and recognize her great spiritual importance. She plays a role in our lives and in our faiths. It should not be too hard to understand this, but I have never met a Protestant who COULD understand the veneration that Catholic express towards Mary. No matter how often you explain to Protestants that Latria=Worship and Hyperdulia & Dulla, are differing forms of VENERATION which we offer to the saints and to Mary the mother of Jesus. – Protestants always choose to collapse everything into one concept – worship.
You sound like you can’t handle being married to a non-white woman, that you are undermining your wife as a mother in front of her daughters. You are robbing your daughters of a very precious treasure- that of respect and intimacy with their own mother. You are destroying their sense of wellness about being mixed children.
This is why Catholics should never marry Protestants – they steal great treasure from us and cover our lives with disapprobation, censure, self-denial and rejection. No Protestant can ever be a good husband or wife to a true Catholic.
[End Comment]
[Begin Response]
Thanks for your comment, VaniNY. Indeed, Jesus has redeemed all those who are trusting in His blood from the “curse of the Law”; but Roman Catholics are still living under the Law, because you are not trusting in the blood of Jesus for redemption from sin. That means that the blood of Jesus is not applied to your sins. According to the Bible, a Christian is someone who is trusting in the blood of Jesus Christ alone for redemption from sin (Romans 3:25, Ephesians 2:8-9); the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, however, places anyone who believes that faith in the blood of Jesus alone is sufficient for salvation under a perpetual anathema; that is, a curse:
“If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will [good works], let him be anathema.” Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Canon 9. (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p. 43.)
This is contrary to the Bible, which says: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).
Moreover, the Bible says that our works will not get us into heaven:
“For by grace are ye saved; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of god: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The Council of Trent also decreed that anyone who believes he is justified by faith in the blood of Jesus alone is a heretic (which means he is worthy of death):
“It must not be said that sins are forgiven to anyone who boasts of his confidence and certainty of the remission of his sins, resting on that alone, though among heretics [Protestants] and schismatics this vain and ungodly confidence may be…
“Moreover, it must not be maintained, that they who are truly justified must needs, without any doubt whatever, convince themselves that they are justified…and that absolution and justification are effected by this faith alone.” Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Chapter 9 “Against The Vain Confidence of Heretics”, (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p. 35.)
The Bible, however says that we ought to have confidence in our justification:
“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in Him…” (1 John 5:13-14).
This is the difference between a Protestant (Bible-Believing Christian) and a Catholic. Protestants follow the Bible as the sole rule and guide of our faith. Catholics, however, have several sources, including tradition. The Council of Trent decreed: “If anyone…knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be anathema.” (Fourth Session)
Jesus, however, said that through tradition men make the Word of God “of none effect.”
This is why Catholics don’t see the crucifix as a cursed thing, when the Bible says that Jesus hanging on the cross is a cursed thing. This is how Catholics can justify idolatry, by calling the worship of a statue “veneration.” This is how Catholics can call the Virgin Mary Co-Redeemer with Jesus Christ, when she didn’t shed a drop of blood for mankind. Dulia, hyerdulia and Latria are merely ways for Catholicism to justify Mary worship and Eucharist “adoration.”
This brings up an interesting point–more interesting than Mary “veneration.” By your own words, latria is worship. Why then do Catholics argue that they do not worship the Eucharist (the consecrated wafer used during the Mass) but adore it, when the Council of Trent says the Eucharist should be given the worship of latria?:
“There is, therefore, no room for doubt that all the faithful of Christ may, in accordance with a custom always received in the Catholic Church, give to this most holy sacrament [the Euchrist] in veneration the worship of latria, which is due to the true God. For we believe that in it the same God is present of whom the eternal Father, when introducing Him into the world says: And let all the angels of God adore Him…” (Council of Trent, Thirteenth Session Chapter Five, p. 76.)
With this statement, the Catholic Church is actually calling both veneration and adoration forms of worship; and they should, for that is exactly what they are. Note also that Eucharist worship is not done in obedience to the Bible, but “in accordance with a custom always received in the Catholic Church.” A custom, as you know, is a tradition. So, while Catholics may argue that they don’t worship the Virgin Mary, but “venerate” it, and don’t worship the Eucharist, but “adore” it, your own church says otherwise.
To the contrary, I can very well handle being married to a non-white woman, given that I am a non-white man. For the record, I am a Black American, while my wife is a Black African. Our children are, therefore, of mixed nationality, but not of mixed race.
Lastly, you spoke a great truth when you said that “Catholics should never marry Protestants,” but you are incorrect when you say that Protestants “steal great treasure from you and cover your lives with disapprobation, censure, self-denial and rejection.” It is your own Catholic church that steals many great treasures from you, chief of which is the Truth of Jesus Christ and the Free Gift of Eternal Salvation that could be yours. It also steals the holy treasure of marriage from your priests and nuns (1 Timothy 3:1-3) resulting in their great frustration and the hurt of many innocent girls and boys. Your comment that “No Protestant can ever be a good husband or wife to a true Catholic” should also be re-worded to say that no good Catholic can ever be a good husband or wife to a true Protestant, because your own Council of Constance (1414-1418) decreed:
“A Catholic wife is not obliged to any duty to her heretical (Protestant) husband, because by the husband’s heresy she is freed from her duty. In like manner, a Catholic husband is freed from all duty to his wife, is she be a heretic.”
You see, it is your own Catholic Church that is the enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ and all godly institutions, including marriage. Open your Bible and read it, if you dare, “and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
[End Response]
Saints, please pray for the dear Roman Catholics. Dear Roman Catholics, please “Come out of her and be ye separate.”
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, Saints.
Have you ever heard of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools? I hadn’t, until recently. Â I invite you to please watch the following video in its entirety. If you have a heart, it will break.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace, saints.
Today we begin a series which asks the question, “What Do Roman Catholics Really Believe?” I was moved to do this series by something I saw while reading through A Practical Catholic Dictionary, a book written for “Catholic and non-Catholic readers who want a dictionary of Catholic words that is neither too technical nor too specialized for ordinary needs.”
I bought the book in order to better understand the Catholic faith, which claims to be Christian, but has many beliefs, traditions and terminology that are neither found in the Bible, nor held or used in the Protestant (Christian) Church.
On page 96, the dictionary gives the following definition for fortunetelling:
“Attempting to tell what is going to happen in the future by the reading of the lines on the palms of the hands, looking into a crystal ball, or any such superstitious means. Fortunetelling is forbidden by the first commandment of God, because it gives to a creature (the fortuneteller) the power which belongs to God alone.” [p. 96; parentheses in original, boldface mine.]
As I read this, I was struck by the fact that this simple, but, true statement confirms that the very foundations on which the Roman Catholic Church rests ought to be forbidden also, because they “give to creatures [created things] the power which belongs to God alone.” The foundations of the Roman Catholic Church are its priests, its popes, and the Virgin Mary; and all of these have been given powers and attributes which belong only to God.
The Roman Catholic priest, for example, has the authority to hear confessions (when a Catholic confesses his sins) and is believed to have the power to grant “absolution” or forgiveness of sins. Additionally, the Roman Catholic Pope is known as the Vicar or Substitute of Christ and holds the title of Holy Father, a title of God the Father. And, the Virgin Mary, a statue which Catholics believe is the mother of Jesus Christ, holds the title of Mediatrix and is believed to be Co-Redeemer with the Lord Jesus.
I was instantly led to share this information with you, because I occasionally receive comments from Roman Catholics and professed Christians alike who feel I should devote more energy to finding ways to unite Roman Catholics and Protestants rather than revealing the true nature and intent of the Roman Catholic Church, an activity which they find divisive.Â
But the Lord Jesus, through the Apostle Paul, said that we should not be “unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14). Jesus also said that we should “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11). We should, therefore, not seek to fellowship with those who do not share our faith; for, to do so, is to be unequally yoked (unbalanced) and unfruitful. Jesus said that any tree that didn’t bear fruit would be cast into the fire. We should also remember that the Lord Jesus gave us the Great Commission, commanding us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to the unsaved.Â
Each of us needs to determine for himself if Roman Catholicism is true Christianity, because if it is not, then to fellowship with Roman Catholics is to be unequally yoked. We should therefore examine what Roman Catholics believe and practice because, if what they believe and practice conforms to what the Bible says Christians ought to believe and practice, then, we should by all means embrace Catholics as brethren. But, if what Roman Catholics believe and practice does not conform to what the Bible says Christians ought to believe and practice, then, rather than seek fellowship with them, we ought to obey the Lord Jesus and evangelize them and pray for their salvation.
To help us determine what Catholics believe, therefore, we will examine A Practical Catholic Dictionary and see if it lines up with the Bible.  Many Roman Catholics say that the only difference between them and Protestants is that the Roman Catholic Church has “a different worship tradition.” If their worship traditions are contrary to the Bible, however, then it means that their worship traditions are not only different, but unbiblical. And unbiblical is not Christian.
A Practical Catholic Dictionary has the nihil obstat and imprimatur (in effect, the seal of approval) of the Roman Catholic Church, which certifies that the book has been examined and determined to contain “nothing opposed to [Roman Catholic] faith and morals.” We can be assured, therefore, that what it says the Roman Catholic Church believes is what the Roman Catholic Church says it believes.Â
It should be added that because a great deal of Roman Catholic doctrine comes from tradition, much of which is oral, it would be impossible for us as non-Catholics to learn everything a Roman Catholic knows and believes. Â But, that is not our aim. To make an informed decision, it should be enough for us to examine that which is readily available. Â If necessary, I may also use other sources which may or may not be approved by the Catholic Church.
We pray this series will be of benefit to both Christians and non-Christians.
Your servant,
The Still Man
Grace and peace, saints.
A couple of weeks ago, my children and I were walking to the animal shelter, when I noticed that my son was wearing a rain jacket with a sweatshirt underneath instead of his winter coat. It was extremely cold this day, and I was perturbed with him, because we had discussed this before.
“I don’t like to wear my coat because it’s too warm,” he said, “I’d rather wear my rainjacket.â€
“Which would you rather be on a cold day,†I said, “Too warm or too cold?â€
He got the message, but I could tell he was a little upset. My son is almost fifteen; and as he is becoming more independent and mature, he is asserting himself more. One way he tries to assert himself is by dressing the way he likes, even if it doesn’t always make sense. I get that, but I also know that not everyone who wears a rain jacket on a cold winter day does so to assert his independence. Some do so because they have no other choice. I was such a person. Growing up, I didn’t always have a coat for the winter: in fact, most winters, all I had was a light jacket. All my life, all I ever wanted was a nice, warm coat.
God heard me, and I have not passed a winter without a coat in more than forty years. God has also blessed me to be able to provide a decent life for my children, and they have never known a winter without coats, a summer without shorts, or a house without heating or cooling. These are truly blessings, but sometimes we fail to recognize those blessings.
I am finding that one of the hardest lessons to teach a child is gratitude. It’s difficult for a person to appreciate something he’s never gone without. This is especially true of children. If a child has never been hungry, it’s difficult for him to appreciate being full. If he’s never been cold, it’s hard for him to appreciate being warm. And if he’s never been homeless, how should he appreciate having a roof over his head?
I’ve been talking to my children a lot lately about gratitude because gratitude is crucial to a Christian’s prayer life. When God blesses us, we ought to thank Him. In fact, we ought to be thanking Him every day we wake up. We ought to thank Him every morning we didn’t wake up dead. We ought to thank Him every morning we didn’t go to the hospital in the middle of the night. And, if it’s as cold where you live as it is where I live, you ought to be thanking the Lord Jesus every night you go to sleep in a warm bed and wake up to a warm home, because, I assure you, not everybody is.
Philippians 4:6 says that we should take our petitions to God in prayer but that we should do so with thanksgiving. That means that we ought not to just be asking God to do things for us, but we also should be thanking Him for what He has already done—especially feeding us, clothing us, putting a roof over our head, and protecting us. But, unfortunately, this is not the case.
By the way, if there were ever an ungrateful generation, it is the present generation; and if there were ever an ungrateful people, it is Black people—my people. Somebody is not going to like this, but it’s the plain truth. Black Americans are the descendants of slaves, a people who could not even own property, as they were themselves property. Now, tell me who, in their right mind, ever thought the day would come when Blacks would not only be free, but would own homes, found corporations, make important contributions to science, become doctors, lawyers, CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, and be professional athletes making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Who would hath fathomed that a Black man would one day become President of the United States?
With all God has allowed Blacks to do, achieve, and, most importantly, have, you would think that we would be the most grateful, appreciative, and God-fearing people on the planet. Yet, Blacks are generally some of the most ungrateful, unappreciative, and God-hating people in the universe. We spend so much time talking about how far we still have to go, that we don’t appreciate how far we’ve come. We are always complaining and are rarely thankful. I know someone, for example, whom God has tremendously blessed. Yet, he is the unhappiest person I know. He has a job, a home, a car, a family, and is in relatively good health. Yet, all he does is complain about all the missed opportunities he’s had in life. He has lost all perspective. He’s forgotten his history to the extent that he no longer knows who he is and where he came from. He doesn’t realize that were it not for the hand of God on his life, he would not be getting paid for the work he does, let alone actually enjoying the fruits of his labor.
This guy never thanks God for anything. The other day, for example, he was extolling the virtues of the new coat he just bought, telling me how warm it is and how much he liked the large hood it has. As he was pointing out all it’s cool features, I said, “Well, as cold as it is this winter, praise God for blessing you with such a nice coat!†He reacted as though I hadn’t even mentioned God, and told me that as much as he liked the coat, he wished it were longer. Tragically, this man, rarely, if ever, gives God any praise for blessing him so much. He is ungrateful; and the worst part is that he claims to be be Christian.
If a Christian is going to be anything, he should first be grateful. Gratitude is important because, without gratitude, not only is it impossible for us to see and appreciate what God is doing for us, but it is impossible for us to recognize what He isn’t doing for everyone else. If we can’t see that God isn’t blessing everyone the same, then not only can’t we see and appreciate our own blessings, but we can’t appreciate the plight of those who are less fortunate than we are. And if we can’t appreciate their plight, then how can we pray for them? And if we can’t pray for them, then what kind of Christians are we after all?
This is how Satan is trying to influence my children. He makes sure that there is no one they can compare themselves with so that they can put their life in perspective. There are homeless people in Munich, for example, but I have never seen any homeless children. I have also never seen any children in my children’s school who look like they could use help. While this can be seen as a blessing, it can actually work like a curse, because since everyone seems to be doing so well, my children are unable to see how well they are actually doing. For example, there are kiosks in my children’s schools that sell food, and the other children are always buying snacks from those kiosks. I could tell my children sometimes felt odd because they took a sack lunch, while it seemed to them that many of the other children always had money to buy lunch. Sometimes children would even offer to buy them lunch.
For a time, this was having an effect on my children, because it was obvious that they felt poor compared to the other children. One of my daughters would often “forget†to take her lunch and ask my wife for money to buy lunch at school. Another daughter would always hound me to pay the materialgeld (money the schools ask for to defray the cost of paper, books, and other things) quicker, because all the other children would pay the money as soon as the teacher asked for it, whereas I would put it off for a couple of months or pay in installments. I perceived that my children were ashamed of being poor, because I experienced similar feelings as a child as well.
I had to explain to my children that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of, and that while they didn’t have money to buy lunch or snacks, they ate breakfast every morning and had at least a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and something to drink for lunch. And, while they may not have been able to hand in the materialgeld the day their teachers asked for it, they were able to hand it to them ultimately. With time they came to understand that the true blessing was just to be able to eat every day.
It is important that my children be grateful, because we live in Munich, one of the most idolatrous cities in the world. Satan knows that my children well understand that idolatry is an abomination to God, and because they know this, then it is highly unlikely that he could ever convince them to worship an idol, confess their sins to a priest, or consider the Pope of Rome to be Jesus Christ on earth. What he can do, however, is get them to be ungrateful. If everyone seems to be doing better than they are, and if every little boy and girl has five bucks in their pocket and an expensive cell phone (that’s another article), then it can be difficult for my children to see and appreciate how God is truly blessing them.
Ingratitude is a trick of the enemy, and will kill a Christian’s victory and steal his joy quicker than most anything else. If Satan can’t get you to praise him, he will settle for you not praising God. And if you are not praising God, it is because you are ungrateful.
In the parable of the talents, Jesus told of a man who went to a far country, leaving each one of his servants a sum of  money: some little, some a little more, and some more than that. When he returned, the man found that those to whom he had given some had invested their money and received interest thereon, which they presented to their employer. The worker to whom he had given little, however, had merely buried his money, and had received no interest to show to his master. He had not been a good steward. Through this parable, Jesus taught that if one does well with just a few things, God will bless him with many things; but if a man do poorly with a few things, God will take away the little that he has. It’s impossible to be a good steward if you are not grateful for that which God has entrusted to your care, but are always wishing you had more or better.
Ingratitude almost always leads to covetousness; because if you are dissatisfied with what God has blessed you, you will begin to covet something “better.†And covetousness almost always leads to envy. And envy inevitably leads to hate. The covetous person usually ends up hating both himself and anyone he feels is doing better than he is. And it all starts with ingratitude. See how this can get terminal in a hurry?
The key to avoiding all this drama, then, is gratitude. We need to learn to appreciate what God has done for us—and not just the big things, but also the little things (like the cup of hot chocolate I’m enjoying as I write this). So, be grateful!
“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1Thessalonians 5:18.)
Be encouraged, and look up; for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace to those who love Jesus sincerely, and greetings to the enemies of the cross of Christ.
When I was a boy, living in a two-family flat on the west side of St. Louis, Missouri, my family used to pray at the dinner table before meals.
On most days, my mother, together with my siblings and I, ate upstairs, where we lived; but, on weekends and holidays, we would eat downstairs with my grandparents. When we ate upstairs, my siblings and I would say, “Jesus wept,†before we ate. We had no idea why we did this, or what it meant, but we always recited this phrase before we ate. We knew we were praying, but we had no idea why we were praying or why we said, “Jesus wept.â€
When we ate downstairs with my grandparents, we still prayed before we ate, but something else was added to the ritual. First, my grandfather would “say grace,†at which time he would utter some words which I gathered were from the Bible. Then, my grandmother would follow with something I cannot fully recall except that it ended with the words, “I can’t understand it.†Next went my mother (I don’t remember at all what she would say), and, lastly, us children. As when we ate upstairs, my brothers and sisters would still say “Jesus wept,†but I would say another prayer that for years I remembered as “Bless the Lord for these I guess which you are about to receive from our bounty, Christ the Lord, Amen.†Many years later, I would learn that the words to the prayer are actually, “Bless us, O Lord, for these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ the Lord, Amen.â€
My grandmother rarely missed a Sunday in church, and she used to read her Bible almost every night. She also had a very large Bible sitting on the coffee table in her living room.  Because my mother was a very profane woman who seemed to hate anything (and anyone) religious, there was never any doubt in my mind that it was my grandmother who taught us those prayers. I therefore always believed my grandmother was a devout Christian. And, because we always prayed at mealtime, went to church occasionally, and sometimes read that Bible in the living room, I felt that with the possible exception of my mother, we were an average Christian family.
When I got saved, in September 2005, however, I realized that we really weren’t Christians. This actually came as no surprise to me, as, by this time, I had seen and met people who professed to be Christian, and I noticed that I behaved nothing like those people. But, even though I knew my mother and her children (especially me) were not Christians, I never doubted that my grandmother was anything but a devout Christian woman. Years later, however, I would not be so sure.
One day, years into my Christian walk, I was wondering why it was that no one had ever told me what the Lord Jesus had done for me on the cross at Calvary. “Surely my grandmother must have told me something,†I thought, “But I was probably too heathen to listen to her.†I told myself this for years, but the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that my grandmother had never given me the gospel. In fact, I don’t remember her ever mentioning the name of Jesus. In my opinion, a Christian who doesn’t share the Gospel with anyone—especially his own family—is not really a Christian, because the Lord Jesus commanded us to go out into the world and share the Gospel with every living soul. Because she never did this, I began to wonder if my grandmother really were saved.
It was hard for me to accept this as a possibility at first. My grandmother was everything to me. My grandmother was the only person who really cared about me; and treated me as though I were her very own son, while my own mother treated me like I wasn’t even a member of her family.
When I sung my first solo in the high school spring festival, it was my grandmother, not my mother, who came to see me (a fact made even more significant when I later learned that she was very ill at the time). When I went into the military, the first phone call I made from basic training was to my grandmother, not my mother. And it was my grandmother who kept my first paycheck from the first job I ever had. My grandmother was the one ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark and gloomy existence.
Before I got saved, I took great pleasure in the fact that the little exposure I had to “Christianity†was due to my grandmother. I enjoyed reading that big Bible that sat on her living room coffee table, and I enjoyed going to church with her on Sunday and sometimes to a restaurant afterwards. When I would go out on Friday and Saturday nights as a teenager, it gave me great comfort to go downstairs and visit with my grandmother before leaving the house and see her sitting in her recliner with her reading glasses resting on her nose, a Bible in her lap, and Larry King on the television. My grandmother provided the only stability I knew.
It was difficult therefore, considering all she did for me and meant to me, to think that my grandmother may not have had the Blessed Assurance I always thought she had; and that perhaps now, rather than enjoying the eternal rest promised to those who have made the Lord Jesus their Savior, she may be in everlasting torment with “no rest, day or night†(Revelation 14:11).
It is not only because my grandmother never shared the Gospel with me, or mentioned the name of Jesus that I feel she may not have been saved. There were other indicators, some of which would only be obvious to Christians.
For one, most of the things my grandmother did with respect to religion seemed to be based more on tradition than on the Bible. It was never explained to us, for example, why we prayed before meals, and we never learned why we said “Jesus wept.†Though we had some idea who Jesus was, we had no idea why He wept, or, indeed, what it meant to weep. It was not until I got saved and started to read the Bible for myself that I learned that “Jesus wept†is from the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John, and is actually the shortest verse in the Bible.
When I got saved, I learned that with respect to prayers before meals, the Bible only teaches that Christians should thank God in prayer for our food, as the Bible teaches that the food we eat is “sanctified by the Word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:1-5). The Bible also says that we should give thanks for everything (including our  food) in the name of the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 5:20).
The primary purpose of praying before meals is to thank God for providing us food for our nourishment. So, to pray at mealtime without giving thanks to God is unbiblical (and ungrateful) and to do any more than this may be nice, but it is not necessary. No one ever thanked God at our dinner table, and we never prayed in the name of Jesus: curious behavior for a Christian family.
Another thing that always puzzled me about my grandmother was that she never told us anything about her religion. She never explained, for example, what Communion was, and why at church during the communion ceremony the congregation would place a small, thin wafer of bread on their tongues and drank a tiny glass of wine. She also never explained why I could never “take†communion with her and the rest of the church. I assumed that I was too young to drink the wine, but I didn’t understand why I couldn’t at least eat the little piece of bread. Whenever I would reach for the elements when they were handed to me, my grandmother would shoot me this look that seemed to say, “I’ll break your neck if you touch them.†But she would never explain why it was forbidden for me to take part. Because I was excluded from this ceremony without any explanation at all, I never felt a part of my grandmother’s church and actually came to resent it and. Christianity. My grandmother also never explained why her church always celebrated Communion on the first Sunday of the month.
It was not until I got saved that I learned the Lord Jesus commanded believers to eat the Lord’s supper in remembrance of His sacrifice, and that the first century Christians ate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday in honor of the day Jesus rose from the dead. Because the Lord’s Supper memorializes Jesus’ death, and Sunday is the day Jesus rose, then, when we eat the Lord’s Supper on Sunday, we honor both Jesus’ death and resurrection.
It is also worth noting that my grandmother never told us anything about Roman Catholicism. This is extremely important, because the Roman Catholic Church has been the sworn enemy of the Christian Church since the Protestant Reformation, the sixteenth-century movement which saw the true followers of Jesus Christ break from the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563) condemned Martin Luther, the movement’s founder, and all Bible-believing Christians, whom they call heretics, to death. The decrees of the Council of Trent have never been repealed and are still in effect today.
Because we lived in St. Louis, Missouri, which has one of the largest Roman Catholic populations in the United States, and is home to the largest basilica west of the Mississippi (St. Louis is so Catholic that it is even known as the “Rome of the Westâ€), it is almost incredible that my grandmother never taught us about the Reformation and the historic enmity between Romanism and Protestantism. If my grandmother were really a Christian, then why did she never tell us these things?
The key to that question lies in the fact that the prayer my grandmother taught me that began “Bless us, O Lordâ€Â can be found on page 42 of A Practical Catholic Dictionary. It is a Roman Catholic prayer. I believe the reason my grandmother taught us a Roman Catholic prayer, had religious practices that were based more on tradition than on the Bible, attended a church that “took†Communion rather than ate the Lord’s Supper, and never mentioned the name of Jesus was because she was not really a Christian. She was what I call a Crypto-Catholic. And the reason we as children never knew the things Christians should know or did the things Christians should do is because we were not really Christians, but were what I call Christolics.
A Crypto-Catholic is a Roman Catholic who hides his Catholic identity from those non-Catholics with whom he lives, works, and associates in order that wherever he is, he may always work in the interests of the Catholic Church unsuspected by his family, friends, and associates. Roman Catholic doctrine permits and even encourages Catholics to be Crypto-Catholics. Former Roman Catholic priest, Charles Chiniquy wrote, “The theologians of Rome have assured us that we may, and even that we must, conceal our faith” (Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, p. 77).
A Christolic is a person who has been raised or greatly influenced by a Crypto-Catholic, masquerading as a Christian, to the extent that his theology is essentially Roman Catholic, even though he has never been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, or received formal instruction in Roman Catholic doctrine. Examples would be the children of a Crypto-Catholic parent or grandparent, or the congregation of a Crypto-Catholic pastor, masquerading as a Protestant.
Before I continue, it must be understood that there is no godly reason for a person to conceal his religion from anyone, especially when his life is not in danger. And, because the Roman Catholic Church has always been the implacable enemy of the Protestant Church, then the obvious reason for the Crypto-Catholic to conceal his religion is that he may better work in the interests of the Catholic Church undetected.
History bears record that the influence of a Crypto-Catholic is always ultimately malevolent. We will discuss this in Part Two of this essay.
Now, it could be argued that my grandmother was a Christolic, but there have been some very significant things that have occurred in my life with respect to my grandmother that simply cannot be explained other than from the perspective of her being a Crypto-Catholic. One of those things concerned my late father.
From as early as I can remember, I never called my father Daddy, Dad, Pop, or anything like that, but by his given name. This was a terrible thing when you think about it, made worse by the fact that no one seemed to care or to even notice.
There was no conceivable reason why this should have happened. My father was not a bum or a deadbeat dad. He owned a successful business, and he was well respected in the community. He was also not an absentee dad. My parents lived together until they divorced when I was around five years old, and thereafter my father was always in the picture. I knew where he lived, and would visit him whenever I wanted.
If you consider the influence most grandparents have on their families—for good or for ill—then you will understand that it is impossible that such a thing could have happened without my grandmother’s involvement on some level. Young women tend to do foolish things, but grandmothers have the power to correct much of that. And because my grandmother wielded tremendous influence on our family (we lived with her and called her Mama, while calling my mother “Motherâ€), if she had been so inclined, she could have nipped this shameful practice in the bud. Besides, as a “Christian†woman, she certainly must have known that the Bible teaches a child should honor his mother and father, and that a child dishonors his father when he calls him by his given name. There’s no two ways about it: she was either directly responsible for this travesty, or she acquiesced to it.
This practice of calling my father by his given name may even have been rooted in religious bias. I don’t believe my father ever discussed religion with me before he got saved; so I’m not sure what religious denomination his family was, though I’m relatively sure they were Protestant. They may even have been Pentecostal, because my father’s mother, my Grandmother Ernestine, would sometimes hold church service or choir rehearsal at her house. The way those people sang was nothing like I was used to hearing at my grandmother’s Baptist church; for, whereas the services at Grandmother Ernestine’s house were lively and joyous, those at my grandmother’s church were dull, lifeless, and monotone. Later, during my teenage years, I would visit a Pentecostal church called Lively Stone with my cousin and hear the same kind of joyous praise and worship I had witnessed at Grandmother Ernestine’s house. The only good memories I have regarding religion from my childhood are those visits to Grandmother Ernestine’s.
If my father’s family were Pentecostal, then it is possible that my grandmother may have had some difficulty with them for this reason; for she could be very hard on those who didn’t share her religious beliefs. I can remember, for example, having quarreled with her once as a young man because she remarked that if a person did not belong to the Church of Christ, they were going to hell, because the Church of Christ was “God’s church.â€
There was another incident involving my grandmother that has always been difficult for me to understand, and that for me can only be satisfactorily explained from the perspective of her being a Crypto-Catholic. One day when I was probably about twelve or thirteen years old, I was lying on the living room floor watching television, when my grandmother walks in and throws a book on the floor in front of me. The title of the book was “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex, But Was Afraid To Ask.â€
I was afraid to even open the book, as sex had always been a taboo subject in my house, even though sexual sin runs in my family. Not one time, to my recollection, did anyone ever discuss sex with us children. No one ever told me about the birds and the bees, no one ever told me where babies come from, and no one ever asked me if I knew anything about sex. No one ever told me whether I should or should not have been having sex, no one ever explained the conditions under which I should or should not be having sex, and no one ever asked me if I was having sex. Most importantly, no one ever explained to me God’s mind on sex, or whether He even had an opinion on the subject. Consequently, the little I did know about sex was what I had learned from watching T.V. and had gotten off the school playground. This, combined with the deafening silence on the subject at home, left me pretty much believing sex was dirty, sinful, and something that God didn’t really want people doing, but that they did anyway.
Now, instead of giving me that book, my grandmother could have called my father or my grandfather and charged one of them with this delicate task. But that never happened. My grandmother gave me the book, and I read the book. So, I first learned about sex from a book written by an unsaved grown up for unsaved grown ups. This was not a good thing, because, to my recollection, the author did not approach the subject from a biblical perspective, placing sex within the context of marriage. The Bible calls sex outside of marriage fornication, which is a sin God really hates. Without this very important perspective, a book on sex is tantamount to a primer on fornication; and, because my grandmother gave me that book without first telling me God’s mind on sex, she was basically condoning fornication and encouraging the moral destruction of her grandson, which did, in fact, happen.
You must understand that I am not trying to tarnish the memory of my grandmother or imply that she was evil. I’m just saying that sometimes her actions were inconsistent with the person she purported to be, and these inconsistencies ultimately had a detrimental spiritual effect on her grandchildren—especially me.
In my experience, when a person behaves in a manner inconsistent with the person they present themselves to be, either they are not really the person they present themselves to be, or they are being influenced by someone or something to behave in a manner inconsistent with the person they really are. When those inconsistencies are of a spiritual nature, then a satanic influence is at work. I think both things may have been true in my grandmother’s case. I think my grandmother may not have been the person I always thought she was, and I think there was a satanic influence in her life that was the cause of her inconsistent behavior. As far as I’m concerned, that satanic influence was Roman Catholicism.
Stay tuned for Part Two of this essay.
Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Grace and peace.
This morning, my three-year-old daughter woke me up around 3:00 a.m. asking for milk. So, after getting her some milk, changing her diaper, and making sure she was all comfy, I laid back down and tried to go back to sleep. But, for the life of me, I couldn’t. All kinds of thoughts started entering my mind: ideas for an article, things I have to get done, and, of course, problems.
It was the problems that really kept me from going back to sleep; and, the more I tried not to think about them, the more I thought about them. By this time, it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t go back to sleep that bothered me, but the fact that with all my thinking, I couldn’t solve one single problem. I hate to waste time; and there’s nothing that wastes time more than worrying about problems you can’t solve. I was in the mud. Then it hit me: Philippians 4:6:
“Be careful for nothing, but in every thing through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.â€
Let’s take a closer look at this verse:
1. Be careful for nothing. (Don’t worry about anything…)
2. But…(instead…)
3. Through prayer and supplication (Pray…)
4. With thanksgiving (Thanking God for everything, including your
problems…)
5. Let your request be made known unto God. (Tell God about it.)
6. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. (God will give you peace in the midst of these problems, and you will not be able to understand how that happened.
This is important because, as humans, we are going to worry. We worry about things because we feel out of control. God understands this. He is telling us that rather than worry about those things that are out of our control, we are to instead take those things to Him, because they are well within His control.
The Lord Jesus said without Him we can do nothing. So, it is fruitless for us to worry, because worrying won’t change our situation for better or worse. But the Bible also says we can do all things through Christ (Philippians 4:13). When we have problems, therefore, we need to take those problems to the Lord Jesus, because though we are powerless, He has all power. Though we are weak, He is strong.
Jesus said that we should come to him in prayer with our problems, thanking Him for whatever we are going through, because if it is happening to us, then He allowed it to happen to us; and, if He allowed it to happen to us, then it is ultimately for our good; and we should thank Him for that.
Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good for those of us who love God and are the called according to His purpose. Did you hear that? Everything—but everything—that you and I are going through serves God’s purpose for our life, even though we can’t always see it. I don’t know about you, but that is good news to me. The Lord Jesus said that if we do this thing, then he will give us His peace: peace of heart and peace of mind—total peace.
So, this Christmas, when you start to worry about things you can’t control, take a minute and remember Philippians 4:6, and God will give you peace.
Be encouraged and look up; for your redemption draweth nigh.
The Still Man
Bad Behavior has blocked 401 access attempts in the last 7 days.
