I am a former Roman Catholic, and now I am a believer in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. I was once a follower of the visions of Mary at Fatima, Guadalupe and Lourdes, among others, but I no longer believe those visions were from God. My passion is to warn Christ's sheep of the danger of Roman Catholicism, and to equip them to defend the faith and refute Rome's many errors.
The Early Church understood praise, not the Lord’s Supper, to be the sacrifice of the New Covenant (Hebrews 13:15).
We continue this week with our analysis of Malachi 1:11 as understood by the Early Church. This series is a response to The Sacrifice Challenge, a challenge issued by Roman Catholic apologists who believe that the only possible fulfillment of Malachi 1:11 is Roman Catholicism’s sacrifice of the Mass. The Early Church, however, saw the sacrifice and incense of Malachi 1:11 to be “simple prayer from a pure conscience,” not a sacrifice of bread and wine. Continue reading Their Praise was their Sacrifice (part 6)→
The Early Church understood praise, not the Lord’s Supper, to be the sacrifice of the New Covenant (Hebrews 13:15).
We continue this week with our analysis of Malachi 1:11 as understood by the Early Church. This series is a response to The Sacrifice Challenge, a challenge issued by Roman Catholic apologists who believe that the only possible fulfillment of Malachi 1:11 is Roman Catholicism’s sacrifice of the Mass. The Early Church, however, saw the sacrifice and incense of Malachi 1:11 to be “simple prayer from a pure conscience,” not a sacrifice of bread and wine. Continue reading Their Praise was their Sacrifice (part 5)→
The Early Church understood praise, not the Lord’s Supper, to be the sacrifice of the New Covenant (Hebrews 13:15).
We continue this week with our analysis of Malachi 1:11 as understood by the Early Church. This series is a response to The Sacrifice Challenge, a challenge issued by Roman Catholic apologists who believe that the only possible fulfillment of Malachi 1:11 is Roman Catholicism’s sacrifice of the Mass. The Early Church, however, saw the sacrifice and incense of Malachi 1:11 to be “simple prayer from a pure conscience,” not a sacrifice of bread and wine. Continue reading Their Praise was their Sacrifice (part 4)→
The Early Church understood praise, not the Lord’s Supper, to be the sacrifice of the New Covenant (Hebrews 13:15).
We continue this week with our analysis of Malachi 1:11 as understood by the Early Church. This series is a response to The Sacrifice Challenge, a challenge issued by Roman Catholic apologists who believe that the only possible fulfillment of Malachi 1:11 is Roman Catholicism’s sacrifice of the Mass. The Douay Catechism, as well as many Roman Catholic apologists, holds that “All the … Fathers, … of the primitive ages, teach that the mass is the self same sacrifice of bread and wine that had been instituted by our Saviour,” and is the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy that “in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering.” As we have demonstrated in the last two weeks, Rome’s claims are wholly inconsistent with the data. Rather, the Early Church saw the sacrifice and incense of Malachi 1:11 to be “simple prayer from a pure conscience.” Continue reading Their Praise was Their Sacrifice (part 3)→
The Early Church understood praise, not the Lord’s Supper, to be the sacrifice of the New Covenant (Hebrews 13:15).
In our introduction to this series last week, we accepted The Sacrifice Challenge, which is a gauntlet, as it were, that has been thrown down by Roman Catholics who believe that the “incense” and “pure offering” of Malachi 1:11 can only refer to the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass. “All the … Fathers … of the primitive ages, teach,” says the Douay Catechism, “that the mass is the self same sacrifice of bread and wine” to which Malachi referred. According to the Douay Catechism, the Sacrifice of the Mass (in which the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ and then offered as a sacrifice to God for our sins) is the “pure offering” prophesied by Malachi. Continue reading Their Praise was their Sacrifice (part 2)→
“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” — Hebrews 13:15
As we explained several months ago in our entry, In Vain Do They Worship Me, Roman Catholics worship the elements of the Lord’s Supper, and because the bread of the Lord’s supper remains bread throughout, we do not hesitate to call our Roman Catholic acquaintances—and yes, even this writer’s own Roman Catholic family members—”bread worshipers.” This term is considered offensive to Roman Catholics but we do not shy away from it. As the Scripture says,
“he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto, …he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, ‘Deliver me; for thou art my god.’ … a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?'” (Isaiah 44:15-20)
The “bread god” in the priest’s right hand is a lie, and we will no more demur from calling the idol what it is than we will demur from preaching the Gospel, which is equally offensive to them. Much more offensive to us is their insistence that we join them in worshiping the work of their hands. The world cannot be fully converted, they say, until all men bend the knee to their bread idol. Continue reading Their Praise was their Sacrifice (part 1)→
Mary’s conception was understood by the Early Church to be no different than ours, until “a significant turning point” occurred toward the end of the 4th century.
Readers who have been following this blog are familiar with our position that Roman Catholicism as a religion originated in the latter part of the 4th century A.D. The religion of Rome is not of apostolic origin. As we explained in The Rise of Roman Catholicism, distinctively Roman Catholic dogma can be traced to the late 300s A.D., no earlier. In that article, we touched briefly on the late development of the immaculacy of Mary in the imagination of Rome. This week, we explore the magnitude of Rome’s historical revisionism in its attempt to prove the apostolicity of the dogma of her “Immaculate Conception.” Continue reading “A significant turning point…”→
The unenviable task of Rome is to try to convince the world of the antiquity of her novelties.
One of the most consistent Roman Catholic complaints against Protestants is that we just don’t “get” the incarnation. If we only understood the incarnation of Jesus Christ, they say, we would understand the inherent incarnationalism of the religion He founded. Just as Jesus intersected our world in fleshy realism, the grace and presence of God continue to intersect our world “incarnationally” in the forms of oil, water, bread, relics, icons, statues, images, priests, liturgy, the Mass sacrifice, Eucharistic adoration and a visible, apostolic head of the church in Rome.
Mark Shea is one of the foremost, or at least one of the most passionate, Roman Catholic apologists on the matter of Roman “incarnationalism.” “In the Incarnation,” Shea wrote recently, “Catholics believe, God was committing Himself to revealing His power and grace in and through human things. And the unfamiliar ways Catholics express this belief tend to make Evangelicals very nervous.” Continue reading Novel Antiquity→
America was colonized by French Huguenots 45 years prior to the settlement at Jamestown.
We were pleased to hear this week of the release of a trailer from Aperio Productions for their new film, The Massacre at Matanzas, a documentary about the 1565 massacre of the French Huguenots at Ft. Caroline (modern day Jacksonville, Florida). The film recounts the history of Captain Jean Ribault‘s voyage to the New World in 1562, the establishment of a colony by French Huguenots in 1564, and the massacre of the settlers at the hands of the Admiral Pedro Menéndez in 1565. Continue reading French Colonial Florida (1564-1565 A.D.)→
“…it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing.” (Canon XX, Council of Nicæa, 325 A.D.)
Catholic Answers is a ministry that exists “to explain & defend the faith,” and seeks to “help good Catholics become better Catholics, bring former Catholics ‘home,’ and lead non-Catholics into the fullness of the faith.” The ministry began in 1979 when its founder, Karl Keating, grew annoyed at a local Protestant church’s efforts to evangelize the Catholics in his parish. The Protestant church had put flyers on the windshields of the parishioners’ parked cars during Mass, and the flyers were allegedly “riddled with misinformation.” Continue reading “It’s Complicated”→
“The badly converted Huguenots are attached to their religion to the most horrible excesses of stubbornness; but as soon as the rigor of punishments appears, all their strength leaves them. … these are cowardly against force…” — François Fénelon, March 8, 1686
Last week we discussed the Evangelical and Reformed penchant for invoking Roman, Jesuitical, counter-reformational mystics as a way of instructing the flock, and we registered our objections to such under the title of Peddling Fénelon. Protestant infatuation with François Fénelon is just one example of this tendency, and it is quite common for Fénelon to be cited by Protestants as a giant of the faith, a great Christian philosopher and an even greater evangelist—the very model of restraint and deference. By way of example, we notice that this Presbyterian church includes a citation from Fénelon on the footer of its downloads page, and this Presbyterian church features a quote from Fénelon on its “my favorite quotes” page. Continue reading L’Intolérance de Fénelon→
Fénelon’s mission to the Huguenots is now being funded by their grandchildren.
There is a burgeoning movement within Protestant and Evangelical circles that emphasizes the ancient and mystical above the Word of God and seeks, by any means necessary, to cast off the “youthful naïveté” of the Protestant Reformation and bring the church to a superstitious, anti-intellectual “maturity.” Just to give examples from the last ten years or so, a 2008 article in Christianity Today wondered how the church might move beyond the cumbersome restrictions of a boring, propositional gospel. “Easy!,” comes the answer—”Just embrace the mysticism of the early Church!”: Continue reading Peddling Fénelon→
“PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:28)
This week we conclude this week our analysis of the Bowls of Revelation 16. Per our analysis thus far, the first five Bowls of Revelation are
The First Bowl: The Stigmata (1224 A.D. – present) The Second Bowl: The Plague of Scurvy (1453 – late 1700s A.D.) The Third Bowl: The Dogma of Papal Infallibility (1870 A.D.) The Fourth Bowl: Scorching by the Sun at Fátima (1917 A.D.) The Fifth Bowl: The first (and only) formally ex cathedra papal statement in Roman Catholic history (1950 A.D.).
The First Bowl was poured out “upon the earth” (Revelation 16:2), the Second “upon the sea” (Revelation 16:3), the Third “upon the rivers and fountains of waters” (Revelation 16:4) and the Fourth “upon the sun” (Revelation 16:8). The Fifth Bowl is poured out directly “upon the seat of the beast” (Revelation 16:10).
“When the Church makes something infallible, I wish they would just do it plainly and clearly.” — Robert Sungenis, August 5, 2008
This week we continue our series on the Bowls of Judgment in Revelation 16. The first four Bowls thus far are:
The First Bowl: The Stigmata (1224 A.D. – present) The Second Bowl: The Plague of Scurvy (1453 – late 1700s A.D.) The Third Bowl: The Dogma of Papal Infallibility (1870 A.D.) The Fourth Bowl: Scorching by the Sun at Fátima (1917 A.D.)
The First Bowl was poured out “upon the earth” (Revelation 16:2), the Second “upon the sea” (Revelation 16:3), the Third “upon the rivers and fountains of waters” (Revelation 16:4) and the Fourth “upon the sun” (Revelation 16:8).
This Fifth Bowl is poured out directly “upon the seat of the beast” and the people “gnawed their tongues for pain” because of it (Revelation 16:10). We therefore note with no small interest that at the Third Bowl, when the Dogma of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed, the Pope was said to be infallible “when he speaks [with his tongue] ex cathedra [from his seat]” (Vatican Council I, Pastor Æternus, chapter IV). The Pope’s seat, from which he claims to speak infallibly, is the target of this Fifth Bowl, and his kingdom is thereby plunged into darkness. Continue reading If the Light that is in Thee be Darkness (the Bowls, part 5)→
“The sun came down upon us. We felt the heat. We thought it was the end of the world!” — Mrs. Erminia Caixeiro, eyewitness.
This is our fourth week in the series on the Bowls of Revelation. The First Bowl of judgment is a weeping sore that afflicts the men who worship the Image of the Beast. We understand this to be the Stigmata, a weeping, bleeding sore that is highly correlated to eucharistic adoration. Francis of Assisi was the first recipient in 1224 A.D., and many eucharistic worshipers suffer from it to this day. Roman Catholics have historically considered the Stigmata to be a sign of God’s blessing, but it is in fact a curse from Him.
The Second Bowl is a plague in which all those affected by it die at sea. We understand this to refer to the plague of scurvy, which killed millions of men on the long-haul sea journeys around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope in search of Indian spices between 1453 and 1800 A.D.. The Spanish and the Portuguese considered the discovery of the eastern and western sea routes to India to be a great blessing from God, but those long haul voyages became a curse to them and their crews.
At the pouring of the Third Bowl, all the “rivers and fountains” are turned to blood. Because we understand “rivers and fountains” both here and in the Third Trumpet to refer to the Word of God, we understand that the “rivers and fountains” became bitter with Wormwood in the Third Trumpet when Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate, but they turned to blood in the Third Bowl when the dogma of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed by Vatican Council I in 1870. By proclaiming the dogma, the Council had essentially subjugated the Word of God to the word of the Pope. Roman Catholics consider Papal Infallibility to be a great blessing from God through which the successors of Peter are alleged to guard infallibly the purity of the faith. In reality, by pouring out the dogma of papal infallibility on Roman Catholics, God “hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy” (Revelation 16:6).
The first three Bowls of Judgment are, thus far:
The First Bowl: The Stigmata (1224 A.D. – present) The Second Bowl: The Plague of Scurvy (1453 – late 1700s A.D.) The Third Bowl: The Dogma of Papal Infallibility (1870 A.D.)
As we have progressed through the Seals, the Trumpets and Bowls of Revelation, we notice that there are aids to interpretation provided within the text, aids that assist in the identification of each Seal, Trumpet and Bowl. It is our conviction that each Seal, Trumpet and Bowl is sufficiently described in Revelation that it is possible to identify each particular one particularly. Whereas there have been interpretations in the past that identify the Trumpets generally as a series of calamities, we believe each calamity can be identified. The same is true of each Seal and each Bowl, and even the fractions matter (i.e., 1/3 of the trees (Revelation 8:7), 1/4 of the earth (Revelation 6:8), etc…). Continue reading They Hewed Out Broken Cisterns (The Bowls, part 3)→
Vasco da Gama’s ship rounding the Cape of Good Hope en route to India in search of spices in 1497.
Last week we began our series on the Bowls of Revelation 16, the first of which was the Stigmata, the “noisome and grievous sore” that fell “upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image” (Revelation 16:2). As we explained last week, the Papacy is the Beast, the Apparition of Mary is the False Prophet, and the Eucharist is the Image of the Beast of Revelation 13. The Stigmata, which is alleged to be an imitation of the five wounds of Christ, is known to manifest in those most fervently devoted to the worship of the Eucharist, and in some, their sores start bleeding at the mere mention of it. Padre Pio, one of the most famous practitioners of Eucharistic Adoration and now known as a patron saint of Eucharistic adorers, is the second most famous Stigmatist in history. Francis of Assisi is the first. In the 12th century, Francis of Assisi was one of the most vocal proponents of Eucharistic Adoration, a practice that had only begun the previous century, and as one of its early advocates he also became the first man in history to receive the “noisome and grievous sore” of the wrath of God for worshiping the Image of the Beast. In 1224 A.D., he received the Stigmata, a “noisome and grievous sore” that continues to afflict Eucharistic adorers to this day.
Before we proceed into a discussion on the Seven Bowls of Revelation, we will need to spend a few moments with Francis of Assisi. Aside from Mother Teresa, there is hardly a more sympathetic figure in Roman Catholicism. Modern Protestants and evangelicals often hail him as “one of ours” and for this reason prayers and quotes—rightly or wrongly attributed to him—find their way into Protestant sermons, into church bulletins and onto church marquises. Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Familywrote favorably of “our man” Francis, and Mark Galli of Christianity Today compiled a biography of him, entitled Francis of Assisi and His World. In the book he explains that Francis was
“a complex and contentious man who combined an irradiated mysticism with a very practical Christian commitment and, above all, sought to glorify God as Creator.”
The Early Church did not teach Baptismal Regeneration.
This week we conclude our series on Baptismal Regeneration in the Early Church. The purpose of this series has been to evaluate Called to Communion‘s attempts to find Baptismal Regeneration in the Early Church Fathers, and we have limited our discussion to a critique of their analysis. We encourage our readers to read the full text of Called to Communion‘s arguments at the link above. Each week in this series we have provided hyperlinks to the Church Fathers where we cite them, so that our readers may read them in their context. We have thus far covered Ignatius of Antioch, Barnabas of Alexandria, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Gregory Thaumaturgus and Pamphilus of Caesarea. Continue reading That He Might Purify the Water, part 6→
The Early Church did not teach Baptismal Regeneration.
We are now in our fifth week of analyzing Called to Communion‘s efforts to find Baptismal Regeneration in the Early Church Fathers. Thus far, we have covered Ignatius of Antioch, Barnabas of Alexandria, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen. We have found in many cases that the Church Father saw the Word, the Holy Spirit, Christ, His Passion or the preaching ministry of the Church as the “laver” of washing, illumination, regeneration, repentance and knowledge, but Called to Communion simply interpreted “the laver” to be the Roman baptismal font, and concluded that the Church Father supported Baptismal Regeneration. We have also seen in several cases that a Church Father was writing or speaking metaphorically about baptism, or in some cases he was talking about something entirely different from baptism, and Called to Communion simply separated the father from his context and placed him in the Baptismal Regeneration column. Continue reading That He Might Purify the Water, part 5→
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