Roman Catholicism was the avowed enemy of Christianity for nearly 300 years after the resurrection of Christ Jesus. It did not declare itself "Christian" until Emperor Theodosius I in the Fourth Century CE, and it bears no resemblance to original Apostolic Christianity.
The Roman Catholic institution was founded not by Christ Jesus or His Apostles, but by the merger of the Roman Imperial government with a politically convenient form of religion in the 4th century. By the time of Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica (CE 380), the Roman Catholic church had incorporated centuries of pagan Roman religious traditions, customs, priestcraft, and mythology into its practice — all under a thin Christian veneer.
Among the many Roman Catholic doctrines and practices with no basis in the Apostolic Scriptures: transubstantiation, papal infallibility, prayers to Mary and the saints, purgatory, indulgences, the requirement of celibacy for priests, infant baptism for salvation, the veneration of images and relics, and the substitution of Easter for Passover. None of these appear in the New Testament. All of them have their roots in pre-Christian Roman pagan religious practice.
As Christ Jesus warned in Mark 7:6-9: "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites... in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men... thus making the word of God of none effect through your tradition."
"I was raised and trained in the Roman Catholic Church. I have practiced my faith piously and devoutly all my life. I was devoted to Mary and wore a scapular for 35 years. Now, a widower at the age of 61, after having read through the entire Bible, I find myself for the first time feeling mysteriously different, even distant, about my religion."
My most pious relatives and the most devout among my Catholic friends are biting and sarcastic in their contempt and rebuke ever since they discovered that I have presumed to read and try to understand the Holy Scriptures without the help of a priest or officially approved Roman Catholic literature.
They will often shout and complain about Protestant misinterpretations of Christian beliefs established long ago by the early Church Fathers, about the abandonment of Roman Catholic traditions, or about the numerous Protestant Bibles with flawed translations. They seem proudly self-justified in having avoided the attempt to read the Bible for themselves. They tell me I'm a fool, while assuring me that they "KNOW" what they believe.
I find myself entangled in a holy war in relation to the matter of my daily routine of studying in the Scofield Bible Reference while listening to a Protestant minister on the radio who consistently reads through the entire Bible with commentary, explanation, words of study, and personal reflections drawn from a life of ministry.
A small group of my Catholic relatives and friends have begun trying to distract me during these Bible study broadcasts. I've responded by avoiding them, making myself unavailable, and finding out when other radio stations in my area broadcast the same Bible study. Now I tune in to shortwave radio twice a day.
Their attitudes and actions are driving me away from the Mother Church because when I attend Mass, I suffer their relentless verbal attacks in public. It's even more shameful when they drag our Monsignor into the fray, because he supports the opinions of my detractors. This makes attending weddings, funerals, and other religious services a difficult and uncomfortable experience.
The buzzing increased to a howl when it was discovered that I modestly supported the radio ministry organization and had purchased a limited number of copies of their commentaries containing the material broadcast on the radio. Now, a close relative often brings nuns to my house to pray for me, three other relatives have donated to have a Mass said for my recovery, and several groups of friends claim to pray the rosary for me, so that I may regain my senses and return to being a good Catholic again.
They are most upset by the fact that I am beginning to understand that the Roman Catholic faith is a sham, a false religion built around colorful but powerless rituals and spectacular but worthless ceremonies rooted in pre-Christian religions. Having read through the entire Bible, I now see clearly that the pre-Christian religious practices described in the Old Testament, which God commanded the Hebrews to avoid, are for the most part the current religious practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
I was truly alarmed to discover that the Protestant Bible contains a prohibition in the Second Commandment against religiously associated idols of any kind, and against images of any living thing when the idols and images are for religious purposes. This is because, since no human has seen God, no human can produce a replica or likeness of God that would be remotely accurate. This could render every religiously associated idol and image worthless, a pathetic counterfeit of the Real God, or an ungodly substitute for the True God. And this worthless and prohibited status applies to all religiously associated idols and images without exception.
None of the officially approved Roman Catholic Bibles I have examined contain the prohibition of the Second Commandment against idols and images used in religious worship or involved in pious devotional practices. I have the impression that Roman Catholicism has altered some scriptures to suit its religious practices rather than aligning its religious practices with the Holy Word of God.
I shudder to think that I spent nearly 60 years ignorantly involved in idolatry, identified and condemned by God in the Bible, simply because that was how I was raised, that was the faith I was taught. It frightens me to realize that I might never have discovered the truth and could face the disappointment of going to my grave unsaved, while falsely believing I was a saved Christian.
My detractors are making my life a living hell. I'm considering moving away from my family, my lifelong friends, and my hometown just to have some peace and regain a more normal, less contentious lifestyle.
Is there really, as I feel the Bible clearly indicates, something terribly wrong with the Roman Catholic religion?
Are my current feelings about the Roman Catholic faith justified?
Names and situations of those detained, due to the lawsuit.
The answers are: Yes, and Yes!
Both the Bible and secular history make it abundantly clear that you are completely justified in feeling that there is something terribly wrong with the Roman Catholic religion.
Despite the (suspiciously) omitted Second Commandment against ALL idols and images (found in Exodus 20:4-6; from Protestants in their Bibles), most Roman Catholic Bibles include many other Old Testament references to God's proscription against ALL religiously associated idols and images.
Clearly and simply demonstrating that, God is against the religious use of idols, especially when idols are used in pious devotions; when they are used for worship; and when they are used for purposes of veneration, service, or honor of some characters other than God.
Why haven't Roman Catholics noticed what God says?
NO IDOL! NO IMAGE!
This means: ALL THE TIMES!
No "RELIGIOUS" use of statues or likenesses of anything!
NONE, ABSOLUTELY NONE!
What could be simpler or easier to understand?
Read the 2nd Commandment - Omitted in most officially approved Roman Catholic versions:
† The Book of Exodus, Chapter 20 †
4 -
"You shall not make for yourself an idol or any image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water that is under the earth."
5 -
You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, nor honor them: for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers and mothers upon their children to the third and fourth generation of those who show their hatred for me by committing these sins;
6 -
And showing mercy to the thousands of them who love me, to those who keep my commandments.
† The Extended Literal Version †
You will notice that God says "Those whom He thinks love Him or those who keep His commandments." And you are completely correct in your understanding that this prohibition against ALL religiously associated idols and images is without exception, forever.
"Imitation" Christians BELIEVE in God, but do not OBEY God.
Within both Judaism and "Authentic" Christianity, there is absolutely no circumstance where God finds idols or images acceptable. NONE, ABSOLUTELY!
The exact words of the entire biblical narrative differ greatly from popular Roman Catholic "religious" myths. The words of the Bible also differ greatly from many other non-biblical "religious" practices, traditions, customs, beliefs, and fanciful tales or pagan folklore that have been built around the Roman Catholic "Religion" in opposition to the original, God-given stories of the Bible.
Regarding "IDOLS": God declares that ALL idols are blind, dead, deaf, lifeless, forbidden, silent, religiously worthless, spiritually powerless, and sinful. God calls the religious use of idols "Spiritual Adultery"! See: Leviticus 19:4, Jeremiah 3, and the entire books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Regarding "IMAGES": (Likenesses, Statues and Symbols) Prohibited, whether carved, struck, engraved, molded or cast - See: Lev. 26:1 - Deut. 5:8 - Deut. 16:22 - Jer. 10:14 - and the entire book of Isaiah.
In addition to the testimony of God that you have discovered in the Bible, both modern archaeology and ancient history are weighed down with overwhelmingly massive amounts of information about the fact that the religious system (today) called Roman Catholicism pre-existed Christianity by ages and eras before the time of Jesus Christ.
The core beliefs and practices of Roman Catholicism existed for three thousand years, dating back to the formation of the oldest non-Roman Catholic, apostolic, Christian church in the first century AD in Rome. Two thousand years ago, Roman Catholicism already possessed all of today's idols, images, rites, ceremonies, religious orders, and an intact ecclesiastical calendar, three hundred years before Roman Catholicism declared itself a Christian religion in the fourth century AD.
And secular history also demonstrates that what is (today) called Roman Catholicism, as the state religion of Rome, was the declared enemy of Christianity and individual Christians for nearly 300 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In those days it was not only the Jews who were persecuted by Rome, as Christianity was perceived as merely a Hebrew sect or cult.
And, ultimately, both the Bible and secular history show that, before the fourth century of this common era, what is (today) called Roman Catholicism had no part in the formation of Apostolic Christian doctrine and no part in the establishment of any Christian church group. While Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was tolerated as a "legal" religion (Edict of Milan, 313 AD), Roman Catholicism did not declare itself "Christian" until the Eastern Emperor Theodosius I decreed Christianity as the new, official religion of the Roman state (Edict De Fide Catholica, 380 AD).
Immediately after the decree of Emperor Theodosius, those Christians—persecuting the Romanists of the past, ancient age—the religion of the Roman state briefly and quickly absorbed (usurped) Apostolic Christianity, taking it captive.
And Romanism proceeded to DATE-BACK its ascent from the Fourth Century, AD, to its newly-authorized "apparent Christianity" status to make it appear as if Roman Catholicism had evolved from the original Christian Apostolic Church in an unbreakable line of succession from St. Peter, through all the Popes-of-Rome, to this day.
At the time of the shift from pure paganism to some form of "apparent Christianity," the Romanists of the 4th century AD possessed a well-established, highly organized system of temples, monasteries, and abbeys throughout the Empire. And Romanism enjoyed a deeply embedded and politically connected priesthood with the innate ability of religious deceivers to initially masquerade as a genuine Christian clergy.
The groups of now-converted pagans and gentiles had no way of knowing about this new state-ordered religion that was made up of charlatans, hard problems, and frauds, since, as a result of 300 years of persecution, almost no genuine Christians remained (alive) to testify against the old Romanist in his new, state-sponsored, apparent Christianity, the religious replacement.
Those former persecutors of Christians, those ancient Romanists of the old official, pagan, state religion, those old idolatrous Roman Catholic priests, abbots and bishops were not authentically Christian in the eyes of God.
As charlatans and pretenders, the Romanists never possessed the "Spirit of Truth" of God.
Since, at the time of their religious transition, an authentic indwelling by the Holy Spirit would have been necessary to give (individually) to each of those Romanists genuinely sanctified by the precepts of God and by extension, it would have been necessary to alter their idolatrous form of "pretend-belief" into something much more authentically Christian - much more like the purest form of Apostolic Christianity that had completely rejected idolatry.
The ancient, pre-Christian, Roman religious system had both the MOTIVE (Purpose) and the ADVANTAGE (Temporal Power) to perpetuate its pagan system of idolatry, which both modern archaeology and secular history demonstrate had its source and origin in the ancient Chaldean mysticism of Babylon, three thousand years before the time of Christ Jesus.
THE REASON:
The new purpose of the ancient Roman religious system was to retain power within its well-established sphere of religious influence in order to maintain authority over its lucrative and profitable business called "Religion".
To assume, after the Fourth Century, AD, the appearance of the legitimate successors of the original, the entire Hebrew, Apostolic, Christian Church.
And, more importantly, it was to submerge together the old idolatrous Roman religious system with what little they understood of true (authentic) Christianity. The resulting religious amalgam, today's modern Roman Catholicism, possessing a small amount of Christian truth, is so full of error because the ancient idolatrous Roman religious system was never rejected but merely adapted.
Back in the 4th Century AD, Romanism falsely designated itself as authentic Christianity, although idolatrous Romanism bears no resemblance to the original form of "truth" of Apostolic Christianity that AVOID idolatry and paganism.
Roman Catholicism has always eagerly admitted that it has "baptized" paganism from Gentiles in order to "Christianize" it, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy of today freely admits that Roman Catholicism had long ago brought paganism into its ecclesiastical robes.
Roman Catholics have ignored the Church's structure, as found in the Book of Acts:
The Apostles were sent by Christ Jesus to take the Church out into the pagan world.
Roman Catholics have reversed that process and have been busy bringing paganism from the world into the Church.
Roman Catholicism, for a long time, adapted pagan holy days, religious beliefs, and spiritual practices into Christianity. These holy days, religious beliefs, and spiritual practices had no connection to the original, Apostolic, Christian faith.
Roman Catholics, in the fourth century AD, implemented this adaptation to comfortably and serenely accommodate the massive influence of pagans in the newly "Christianized" Roman state religion. And those pagans felt right at home in the new state religion that supported and embraced the old, idolatrous religious system so completely, even to this day.
The ancient idolaters, Romanists, and pretenders, like the new Christians, were also distant, dedicated, and entrusted to idolatrous spirituality in order to fully conform themselves to Christ Jesus. For such conformity would have required the complete rejection of idolatry and the complete rejection of all paganism, which God calls spiritual sin.
But remember this…
God has made no truce with spiritual sin!
Everything that idolatrous paganism adopted many thousands of years ago by Roman Catholicism is the same paganism and idolatry adapted to Apostolic Christianity by Roman Catholicism in the 4th century AD, and it is the type of idolatry that Gentile Christian converts were once instructed to surrender, forsake, abandon, repent of, and cease practicing.
God calls idolatry a sin! Spiritual adultery!
And Roman Catholic idolatry feeds and sustains the spiritual inclination of pagan, irreligious humanity, which readily conforms itself to the natural world. This natural spiritual inclination, which the Apostle Paul declares every newly converted Christian must "put off" (renounce, repent of) so that the Holy Spirit of God may transform them into a true, believing Christian through the spiritual renewal of a formerly idolatrous and pagan mind. (See: Romans 12:1-3)
The Roman Catholic religious system has never had this mandatory experience of spiritual renewal and repentance.
He has never become a saint or sanctified in the eyes of God.
THE ADVANTAGE:
Through the temporal power of Rome, by the Fourth Century AD, the Roman religious system had spent the previous 500 years as the established state religion.
And, by the Fourth Century AD, the Roman religious system had spent the last 300 years zealously attempting to seal the same Christianity that (then) wished to incorporate and try to imitate.
Secular history records that, until 382 AD, every Roman Emperor also held the title "Pontifex Maximus" (Supreme Pontiff or Pope), the head of both the government and religion of Rome. From the 100 years prior to the First Triumvirate, until Emperor Gratian's rejection of the religious title, it was a nearly 500-year period of emperor worship as the state religion.
During that 500-year period, newly minted coins from Rome bore the name of the current Emperor and likeness on the obverse, with the title "Divi Felius" (The Divine - The Emperor/God), while holding the actual matter of temporal power.
And those same coins have the title "Pontifex Maximus" (Supreme Pontiff - Pope) on the reverse, displaying the profile of the Emperor wearing a mitre (the Pope's tall hat that resembles the head of a fish with its mouth open) as the actual object of religious power used by all the Pope Emperors, and now used by all subsequent (non-Emperor) Pope Bishops-of-Rome.
Roman coins from that period can be seen in museums, in encyclopedias, and can be displayed "For Sale" on the World Wide Web (www), and in the catalogs of coin collections that deal with ancient historical coins.
Beginning in 382 AD, it was the first time a Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome ascended to the title of Pope. Slightly more than 300 years after the time of Jesus Christ, it was also the first time a non-Emperor was ever a Roman Catholic Pope.
After the relocation of the empire's capital to Constantinople, after the rift that left two separate empires, and after the fall of Rome to the Vandals in the Fifth Century AD, a succession of Bishops-of-Rome, Popes (NOT-Emperors) also began to handle the immense temporal powers of the previous Emperor.
At this time, after the fall of Rome, the "Dark Ages" began in Europe.
It was during the Dark Ages that the Bible became a closed book to the masses. The Dark Ages are when literacy began a marked decline in Western Europe, for that was when Roman Catholicism locked the Bible away.
Even today, Roman Catholics are not encouraged to read the Bible; most do not.
In today's modern era, Roman Catholics are strongly discouraged from independently attempting to read and understand the Bible, while Evangelical Protestant Christians are strongly rebuked if they do not engage daily in Bible study.
Finally, something curious happened on the road to the Reformation. Nearly a thousand years after Roman Catholicism helped usher in the "Dark Ages," a Roman Catholic priest and seminary professor in Germany began to read the New Testament in the original, unaltered Greek. The revelations he discovered led him to understand that Roman Catholicism (as taught from the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible and as practiced by Roman Catholics at that time) was a Christian imposter, a religious fraud, and a false claimant to authentic, biblical Christianity.
Nearly five hundred years ago, in an era when printing began to be mechanized; at a time when printed material began to become affordable to the masses of people; at a time when literacy in Europe began to increase rapidly; and at a time when accurate Bible translations first began to be widely available in numerous common languages (instead of only in Latin and Greek), the iron grip that Roman Catholicism held over access to the Word of God began to slip and fade.
But because Roman Catholicism has neither repented of nor abandoned its idolatrous origins, it has never operated with God's spiritual blessing. And without God's blessing, Roman Catholicism has been forced to claim that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ; to claim to be the successor of the Apostle Peter; and to claim to offer a genuinely sanctified religion that, in fact, is nothing more than a bombastic and ostentatious one.
Roman Catholicism, however, does NOT imitate authentic Christianity because idolatry has nothing in common with the original, all-Hebrew, apostolic form of Christianity found in the Bible.
THAT idolatry is why devoutly Roman Catholicism and devout believers openly display a lack of spiritual fulfillment.
Demonstrated by the many millions of Roman Catholics who are always pursuing apparitions of blessed virgins; and often venerate relics and vague images of Jesus or Mary appearing on a tortilla, or on a large water storage tank, or on the windowpane; and are always managing to invoke and magically make appear idols and statues that weep or bleed.
All that religious nonsense is based on superstition and is rooted in the underlying idolatry of Roman Catholicism.
That is why Roman Catholicism, as an idolatrous religious system, leaves much to be desired spiritually for its devotees.
Because, even if it is not consciously understood or recognized, the faithful devotees and pious followers of Roman Catholicism clearly demonstrate that they can feel in their souls a spiritual deficiency that Romanism is unable to fill.
Despite the striking religiosity of Roman Catholicism, its devotees deeply and subconsciously feel that a superstition-based, idolatrous religion cannot offer a genuinely authentic and secure path to salvation.
Primarily because Roman Catholicism remains (today) in the same idolatrous religion it was before the time of Constantine, a religion that is a mixture of mythology and reverence, is in direct opposition to God's admonition to all potential Old and New Testament believers to cease, desist, and flee from idolatry.
The Bible is very clear and easy to understand about that enduring and often declared admonition from God against ALL idolatry!
Jesus Christ's declaration that He "will set them free" refers to human souls being freed from the spiritual burdens of idolatry. For in the absence of Christianity, humanity will always be trapped in idolatrous religiosity; and since idolatry has no power to forgive sins or provide eternal salvation, those souls trapped in idolatrous religiosity have no relief from the guilt they feel because of their sins and no solution to what is a mystery to them: the attainment of truly secure salvation.
While Christ Jesus, through Biblical Christianity, provides real and effective relief from the feeling of guilt for our sins and, by the Grace of God, provides eternal assurance of salvation, Roman Catholicism provides NO such relief or assurance because it CANNOT guarantee those provisions.
And Roman Catholicism does not guarantee those provisions because, while authentically, biblically, God-ordained Christianity provides genuine spiritual security through the assurance of salvation for its believers, Roman Catholicism can only induce superstition and insecurity in its feigned believers.
Roman Catholicism is a guilt-based religion with an approach that leaves many of its devotees constantly burdened with guilt. It's as if the feeling of guilt for sin and the fear of eternal damnation are the driving forces behind the entire Roman Catholic religious system, fittingly demonstrating that idolatry is undoubtedly heavily burdened with tremendous spiritual weight.
Roman Catholics are tormented by doubt about their eternal salvation whenever they consider that their religion teaches about Purgatory (Limbo). And, sadly, they fail to understand that they will be victimized and betrayed on Judgment Day because Roman Catholicism does not provide reliable assurance of eternal salvation, despite Rome's false and presumptuous claims of possessing the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
As a result of Rome's pretentious claims, while they falsely imagine they are only in Purgatory (Limbo), countless Roman Catholics will permanently end up in Hell. And, the more they imagine their stay in Hell is only temporary, the more they will eventually come to the needy, hopeless, and lonely realization that there is NO WAY OUT of Hell!
THIS is when they will fully understand that they have been victimized, betrayed, and abandoned.
THIS is why practicing Roman Catholicism is so spiritually risky and eternally dangerous. And…
That is why devout and faithful Roman Catholic devotees demonstrate a lack of spiritual fulfillment.
That tangible spiritual emptiness is because they foolishly ask about apparitions, desperately seek to venerate vague relics or images, and marvel at idols and statues that weep or bleed.
Roman Catholicism doesn't fulfill them spiritually, as evidenced by their insatiable demand for more and more religious experiences.
Quite simply, Roman Catholicism doesn't satisfy spiritually!
Because Roman Catholicism teaches that intermediaries are essential to approaching God spiritually (a priest, a blessed virgin, and selected favorites from an army of saints - as intercessors), Rome cannot satisfy the natural, human, transcendental impulse (yearning) for direct, personal, and authentic spiritual contact with God.
By keeping its pious devotees and faithful followers away from the Bible, Roman Catholicism protects itself from the scandal of having many of its believers question the underlying idolatry of the Roman form of religion that is revealed and expounded in Holy Scripture.
BUT, in the end, Roman Catholicism causes religious victims (fools), blocking, extinguishing and hindering the fulfillment of that longing for direct, personal, authentic and spiritual contact with God.
And once any Roman Catholic reads the entire Word, Witness, Testimony, and Counsel of God for himself, he, just as the priest in Germany did nearly 500 years ago, will come to the realization that he must flee from the idolatry of Roman Catholicism…
In the best interest
of eternal destiny
† of their souls. †