Christ or Anti-Christ?

Pope Paul VI, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Pope John XXIII, extended a world-wide invitation to ‘non-Catholics’ to return, as he put it, to the Father’s house in Rome. Courtesy visits to the Vatican by leading churchmen of different denominations, conferences and conversations between Roman Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, and the present ecumenical outlook all point Rome-wards. It is in the light of facts that we can determine our duty. Without knowing what a return to Rome involves we take but a step in the dark. The following facts, put in question form, should prove helpful.

I. — The Virgin Mary

Do you know?

1. That the doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception” — that Mary herself was born without sin, was only made a dogma of the Church of Rome by Pope Pius IX in the year 1854; that the apostles never taught such a doctrine; and that the early fathers, Chrysostom, Eusebius, Ambrose and Anselm, clearly teach in their writings that Mary, like every other human being, was born in sin, and that such outstanding Roman Catholic theologians as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura and Cardinal Cajetan opposed it, and also Popes Gregory the Great and Innocent III. Mary herself acknowledged her need of salvation for she said: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour” (Luke 1.46, 47).

2. That the dogma of the “Assumption of Mary” — that Mary’s body and soul were taken up to heaven, and that she was crowned Queen of heaven, was proclaimed a dogma by Pope Pius XII in the year 1950.

3. That in the “Glories of Mary” by Cardinal Ligouri, whose writings at the time of his canonisation were declared to be absolutely free from error, Mary is given the place that belongs alone to the Lord Jesus Christ. The following quotations prove this. “And she is truly a mediatress of peace between sinners and God. Sinners receive pardon by Mary alone (pp. 82, 83). Mary is our life . . . Mary in obtaining this grace for sinners restores them to life” (p. 80). He fails and is LOST who has not recourse to Mary (p.94). The Holy Church commands a worship peculiar to Mary (p. 130). Many things are asked from God, and are not granted: they are asked from MARY and are obtained, for “She . . . is even Queen of hell and Sovereign Mistress of the devils” (pp. 127, 141, 143). “The whole Trinity of (i.e. through) MARY, give thee a name . . . above every other name, that at thy name, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.” (p.260).

II. — The Rosary.

Do you know?

1. That the Rosary was unheard of for over 1000 years after the time of Christ, that neither the Apostles, the martyrs nor the fathers of the early Church ever used it. Sinners then prayed to God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not to the Virgin Mary. The Rosary has ten prayers to Mary for each one directed to God.

2. That the Mahommedans had the Rosary long before the Roman Catholic Church. that Peter the Hermit invented it in the year 1090, and that Roman Catholics hold that the Virgin Mary appeared to St Dominic (a Spanish monk) in the year 1215, and promised him that she would let no person go to hell who would pray the Rosary once daily.

III. — The Scapular.

Do you know?

1. That every good Roman Catholic wears next to his body a piece of brown cloth, called the Scapular, on which are pictures of the Virgin Mary. It was during the ‘Dark Ages’ that the Church of Rome adopted this idolatrous charm. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Simon Stock, an English monk, in the year 1287, and told him to wear the Scapular, and that by doing so it would keep him safe from all dangers, and the first Saturday after his death, if he said the prayers attached, she would come and take him out of Purgatory. If the Virgin Mary can take a man who wore the brown Scapular out of Purgatory the first Saturday after he dies, why pay masses for his soul?

2. That in ‘The glories of Mary’, the Rosary and the Scapular lead poor sinners to forget Christ, the only Saviour, and to worship the Virgin Mary. It was Christ who died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and who rose again, and not the Virgin Mary. The worshipping of the Virgin Mary is not to be found in the Bible. The apostles knew nothing of it, nor the early Christian Church. It is giving to the creature the glory that alone belongs to the Creator, and is therefore blasphemy. With the Marian dogmas of 1854 and 1950, and the worship and adoration given to the Virgin Mary, the Church of Rome cannot be called the ‘Church of Christ’, but the ‘Church of Mary’ for Mary is their “mediatress,” their “life” and their “hope”. The Church of Rome is really Marian not Christian.

IV. — Purgatory.

Do you know?

1. That the doctrine of Purgatory was not established until the year 593 when Gregory the Great was Pope, and that it was not proclaimed an article of faith until the year 1438 by the Council of Florence and later confirmed by the Council of Trent in 1548. “But does any intelligent person believe,” asks Loraine Boettner in his monumental work ‘Roman Catholicism’, “That if such a place as purgatory is described in the Bible it would take the church fathers 600 years to discover it, and another 1000 years to confirm it?”

2. That Purgatory is of pagan origin. Every religion except that of the Bible had its purgatory. It is a doctrine most dishonouring to Christ, as it implies that the death of Christ did not secure the remission of the whole penalty of the sins of His people, and that each soul must suffer a part of the punishment which its sins deserve, by penances in this world and by purgatory in the next. How contrary to the Word of God — “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus”! Purgatory has been called “a gigantic fraud” and “a colossal racket” and “the goldmine of the priesthood”. “Take purgatory away from the Roman Catholic Church,” said Dr Hammond, “and you will rob her of nine-tenths of her living” (The Roman Catholic System, p. 27). How awful and blasphemous this trafficking in the souls of men! What a monstrous delusion! How contrary to the words of the Saviour — “Come buy … without money and without price”! (Isaiah 55).

V. — Popish Priests.

Do you know?

1. That there is no warrant whatever in Scripture for the doctrine of a sacrificing priesthood, that the apostles were NEVER appointed to be priests and that they were NEVER called priests, and that the offering of sacrifice had NO place whatever among their prescribed duties. That the only mediatorial priesthood recognised in the New Testament is that of Christ Jesus the Great High Priest, “who by one offering hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” (Heb. X: 14). (Romanism Analysed by J. Macdonald).

2. That Saint Liguori in his ‘Salva’ says, ‘The priest has the power of delivering sinners from hell, of making them worthy of Paradise, and of changing them from the slaves of Satan into the children of God. And God Himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of His priests, either not to pardon or to pardon according as they refuse to give Absolution, provided the penitent is capable of it. The sentence of the priest precedes and God subscribes to it. In obedience to the word of His priest Christ Himself descends on the altar. He comes whenever the priests call Him, and as often as they call Him, and places Himself in their hands, and after having come remains entirely at their disposal.” (Quoted by Dr Hammond in ‘The Roman Catholic System’ p. 130). What fearful blasphemy!

VI. — The Mass.

Do you know?

1. That the Church of Rome declares that after the words of Consecration are pronounced by the priest the bread and the wine are changed or transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, and that Canon 3 of the Council of Trent “curses” all who deny the consecrated bread or wine, though divided into thousands of particles or drops, to be the real Christ — “each particle containing Christ Jesus our Lord whole and entire, body, soul and divinity and whatever constitutes a body viz. bones, muscles, sinews, blood, nerves, etc., etc.“

2. That the early fathers did not believe in the Mass. Augustine about the year 400 A.D. in his commentary says: “Jesus told His disciples, ‘understand in a spiritual sense that which I say unto you. You do not eat My flesh which you see, nor drink My blood that will be shed by those who crucify Me.’ This commemoration, though observed visibly, is to be understood spiritually” (Enarrations in Psalmos 98.9).

3. “That Pope Gelasio 1st (A.D. 492) wrote: ‘. . . The bread and wine retain their nature of bread and wine and the observance of these holy Mysteries is only a figure or symbol of the sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus’ (De Duabus Naturis in Christo)” (‘But the Bible Does Not Say So’ p. 46) by Rev. Roberto Nisbet.

4. That the dogma of Transubstantiation dates from the Lateran Council of 1215.

5. (a) That the Church of England in her Articles calls the Mass a BLASPHEMOUS FABLE and a DANGEROUS DECEIT.

6. (b) That the Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The Popish sacrifice of the mass is MOST ABOMINABLY INJURIOUS to Christ’s one only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.” (Ch. XXIX).

7. (c) That the Heidelberg Catechism states: “And thus the mass, at bottom, is nothing else than a DENIAL of the one sacrifice and passion of Jesus Christ, and an ACCURSED IDOLATRY.” (No. 80).

8. That the Mass is the greatest BLASPHEMY against the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work that Satan ever invented. The sacrifice of Christ being of infinite value and efficacy does not need and cannot be repeated. The Word of God declares that “after He had offered ONE SACRIFICE for sins FOR EVER, He sat down at the right hand of God.” (Heb. X.12), and again “Christ being raised from the dead, DIETH NO MORE” (Rom. VI. 9.).

VII. — The Ten Commandments.

Do you know?

1. That in the Roman Catholic Catechism, the Second Commandment, which forbids the worshipping of God by images, is omitted, and that the Tenth Commandment is divided into two to make up the Ten. The Church of Rome is thus guilty of taking from the Word of God, and of setting the Word of God aside in order to hold to her idolatry. Never in the New Testament nor in the rest of the Bible, are there instances of believers supplicating statues and images.

2. That the Church of Rome has altered the Fourth Commandment from “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” to “Remember the feast days to keep them holy”.

(‘But the Bible Does Not Say So’ pp. 50, 51, by the Rev. R. Nisbet).

VIII. — The Pope.

Do you know?

1. That Peter was never a pope, nor is he the Rock on which Christ builds His Church.

2. That in the text, “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter (Petros) and on this rock (petra) I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. XVI. 18), the word petros means a piece of rock, a moving stone, a round stone: Petra, an immovable foundation. Petros is masculine gender and NEVER applied to Christ; while on the other hand, the word petra — rock, in this verse is feminine gender, and NEVER applied to Peter, but is applied to Almighty God thirty-five times in the Old Testament. If the Church was to have been build on Peter, Christ would have said, “Upon thee I will build My church,” but Jesus says, “Upon this rock (petra) I will build my church,” that is upon the rock of Christ’s eternal deity as set forth in Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (v. 16).

Peter himself in two places in the Bible plainly declares that Christ is the Rock. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “is the stone set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner, neither is there salvation in ANY OTHER: for there is NONE other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts IV: 11, 12). Again, in his First Epistle (Ch. II, 6) he applies to Christ the Scripture, “Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, etc.”

Other Scriptures proving that Christ is the rock and the foundation on which the church is built are: “And that rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. X: 4), and “For other foundation can no man lay that that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. III, 11).

1. That it was in the year 1870 Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of Papal infallibility at the Vatican Council. That according to the church historian Philip Schaff, delegates representing 80 million Roman Catholics were opposed to it, that 88 delegates voted against it, and over 80 abstained from voting.

That on account of this blasphemous dogma the leading German theologian Dollinger withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church and along with others who opposed this dogma formed the “OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH.”

1. That the Pope by calling himself the ‘Vicar of Christ’ shows that he is the ‘anti-christ’, ‘that man of sin’, the ‘son of perdition’ who opposeth all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God (the church), showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. II: 3, 4).

IX. — The Meaning of Anti-Christ.

Do you know?

1. That “The word ‘anti-christos’ is composed ‘kristos’ meaning anointed (Christ), and the prefix anti. ‘Anti’ means ‘against’, also ‘instead of’ or ‘in place of’. When prefixed to the name of an individual it indicates an agent who assumes that individual’s place, and at the same times acts in opposition to him. Thus Rome herself speaks of Antipopes. Anti-Christ, therefore, means one who pretends to be a vicar of Christ, and assumes to act in His name, but who is at the same time His rival and greatest enemy.” (“The Roman Anti-Christ” by the Rev. Fred S. Leahy).

2. That with reference to Paul’s description of the Anti-Christ in 2 Thess. II, 3-8 Dr Charles Hodge says, “This portrait suits the Papacy so exactly that Protestants have rarely doubted that it is the Anti-Christ which the apostle intended to describe.” “So strikingly,” says Richard Baxter, “does the Church of Rome resemble Anti-Christ that any one is justified in mistaking the similarity for sameness.”

X. — Rome and Anti-Christ.

Do you know?

That “alarmed by the fact that the Reformers were pointing to the Pope as the Man of Sin, the Jesuit Ribera at the end of the sixteenth century invented, or at least propagated futuristic views of the Anti-Christ, and pointed to a solitary Infidel Anti-Christ who would appear in the dim future. This is largely the Romanist view today . . . Ribera’s view soon infected the High Church party. J. N. Darby caught the contagion and finally Dr C. I. Scofield swallowed the Jesuit’s pill. Thus Ribera succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, for the attention of thousands of Protestants became deflected from the Papacy, a future Infidel Anti-Christ was looked for, and the historic Protestant view handed down by the Reformers was despised by many. These are the hard facts of history. A Protestantism saturated with Ribera’s Futurism is not the Protestantism of the Reformers, nor is it feared by the Papacy.” (‘The Roman Anti-Christ’, by Rev. F. S. Leahy).

XI. — “Drunk with the Blood of the Saints.”

Do you know?

1. “That Babylon in the Book of Revelation is Rome. Even the great Roman Catholic controversialists have been driven to admit that Rome fits the description in the prophecy in Revelation. Cardinal Bellarmine says: ‘St John in the Apocalypse calls Rome Babylon; for no other city besides Rome reigned in his age over the kings of the earth, and it is well known that Rome was seated upon seven hills. Cardinal Baronius and the French Bishop Bossuet both say that Rome is signified in the Apocalypse by the name of ‘Babylon’.” (‘The Great Harlot of the Seven Hills’, p. 32, by Albert Close).

“The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth (Rev. 17, 9). 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” (Rev. 17: 5, 6).

1. That the Church of Rome shed more blood, caused more unmerited suffering, inflicted through her Inquisition the most cruel and unspeakably diabolical tortures than any other religion or organisation that ever existed among mankind. For centuries Europe was deluged with the blood of martyrs. Her fiendish brutality spared neither age nor sex. The massacres to her account were orgies of sadism, sickening in the extreme. No less than 100,000 of the Albigenses were massacred in France in 1212 in the space of three months; the Waldenses who perished amounted to 1,000,000. What of the awful carnage by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, and of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Inquisition in Spain, the fires of Smithfield in London, the strangling, the burning and drowning of the witnesses of Christ in Scotland!

“Perhaps the most notorious of all massacres was that which was carried out against the Protestants of France, beginning on St Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572 and continuing throughout France for five or six weeks. Some 10,000 Hugeunots, as the French Portestant were called, were brutally butchered in Paris alone, and estimates of the number killed throughout the country run from 40,000 to 60,000. The Standard International Encyclopedia places the number at 50,000.

1. That when news of massacres of Protestants reached the popes they had a Te Deum sung in every church in Rome, and for the massacre of St Bartholomew, Pope Gregory XIII coined a medal with the inscription ‘Massacre of Huguenots’ to commemorate the massacre. This medal may be seen in the British museum.

2. That it has been reckoned that up to the end of last century the whole number of persons massacred since the rise of the Papacy amounts to no less than fifty millions.

3. That to that number must be added the victims of Rome’s oppression in Colombia and Spain, and the estimated 200,000 Serbian men, women and children in Yugo-Slavia of the Greek Orthodox Church who were butchered by the Ustashi-Catholic Actionists led by Pavelich and Archbishop Stepinac who was the supreme military apostolic vicar of the Ustashi. So hideous were the tortures inflicted by the Ustashi even on children that they beggar description. Gouging out the eyes and tearing out the tongues could almost be said to be humane compared with their other sadistic bestialities. A French author, M. Henry Mauriere, himself a Roman Catholic, has told the story in a well-documented book “Assassins in the Name of God”. In all some 250 Orthodox Churches were destroyed or turned over to Roman Catholic parishes and convents. In February 1942 a Te Deum was sung in Stepinac’s church in Zgrab, with special honours paid to Pavelich. In a pastoral letter Stepinac declared that what they were seeing was the ‘Lord’s work’ and called on his priests to support Pavelich.” (‘Roman Catholicism’, p. 436 by L. Boettner), (‘Ravening Wolves’ by Monica Farrell).

XII. — Semper Eadem (Always the Same)

Do you know?

1. That the Church of Rome still claims the right and duty to kill heretics. Dr Marianus de Luce S.J. Professor of Canon Law at the Georgian University at Rome, said in his ‘Institution of Public Ecclesiastical Law’, with a personal commendation from Pope Leo XIII in 1901:

“The catholic Church has the right and duty to kill heretics because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be extirpated . . . If they are imprisoned or exiled they corrupt others. The only recourse is to put them to death. Repentance cannot be allowed to save them, just as repentance is not allowed to save civil criminals; for the highest good of the church is the duty of the faith, and this cannot be preserved unless heretics are put to death.”

1. That today every Roman Catholic bishop at the time of his consecration takes an oath of allegiance to the pope which contains these words: ‘With all my power I will persecute and make war upon all heretics, schismatics and those who rebel against our lord (the pope) and all his successors . . . So help me God and these the holy gospels of God’ (Pontificale Romanum Summorum Pontificum. Belgium. Mechlin, p. 133). (‘Roman Catholicism’ p. 425).

2. That Pope John XXIII was no sooner inaugurated in November 1958 than in his coronation address he said: “Into this fold of Jesus Christ no one can enter if not under the guidance of the Sovereign Pontiff; and men can securely reach salvation ONLY when they are united with him, since the Roman Pontiff is the Vicar of Christ and represents His person on earth.“

How true it is that the Church of Rome is Semper Eadem as a persecuting system, and Semper Eadem in her false and blasphemous claims!

XIII. — The Doom of the Papacy.

Do you know?

1. “That as sure as the Papacy has had its glory so surely shall its doom come. Paul before closing his prophecy pauses, and in solemn and awful words foretells the night of horrors in which its career is to end. ‘That Wicked — whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.'” (2 Thess. II: 8).

” . . . In the predicted doom of the Papacy there are two well-marked stages. There is, first, a gradual consumption; and there is, second, a sudden and terrible destruction.

“The ‘consumption’ a slow and gradual process is to be effected by the ‘spirit of His mouth,’ by which we understand the preaching of the Gospel. This consumption has been going on ever since the Bible was translated, and the Gospel began to be preached at the Reformation. Men have begun to see the errors of Popery; its political props have been weakened, and in some instances struck from under it, and its hold generally on the nations of Christendom has been loosened; and thus the way has been prepared for the final stroke that will consummate its ruin.

“When the hour shall have come then will the second part of the doom of the Papacy overtake it. The Lord shall ‘destroy it with the brightness of His coming.’ . . . This day of wrath will be unspeakably great, and will mark as one of the greatest days of vengeance that have been on the earth since the foundation of the world. Paul despatches it in a single sentence; John expands it into a whole chapter. And in what other chapter of the Bible or of human history is there such another spectacle of judgment — such another picture of blended horrors, of awestruck consternation, of loud and bitter wailings, and cries of woe, as in the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse? ‘The kings of the earth shall bewail her and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning; standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas! Alas! That great city of Babylon, that mighty city, for in one hour is Thy judgment come. And they cast dust on their heads, and cried weeping and wailing, saying, alas! alas! that great city for in one hour is she made desolate.’ (Rev. XVIII: 9-19). But this dark scene has one relieving feature. It is a scene that will not need to be repeated, for it will close earth’s evil days, and begin the hallelujahs of the nations. ‘And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.’ ‘Rejoice over her, thou heavens, and holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her . . . and in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.’ (Rev. XVIII: 20, 21, 24).” (“The Papacy is the Anti-Christ”, p. 128 by Rev. J. A. Wylie).

1. That it is written: “Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Rev. XVIII: 4, 5).

ERGATEES.