SRR # 45 | Roman Catholics and Their Queen Part 5

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SRR #68 | Antiochus IV and the Abomination of Desolation Part 1 (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 6)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. These are wolves.
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Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves in the church.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not fashion. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right.
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Welcome back everybody. My name is Tim and this is Simple Riff from on the radio. I'm glad that you are able to join us.
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If you are, we are here with the other Tim, Tim Coffman, who is going to lead us in our final episode on the
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Roman Catholics and Mother Mary. We've done four episodes on this and we're hopefully going to put together a blog article where we can just attach each episode to that just so that people can have all of the episodes together.
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Just a reminder, we are part of the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network. There's a number of other podcasts out there.
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Let me just play a little video, not a video clip, but a little audio clip from Tim Hurt highlighting the other podcast and then just give a word from our sponsors.
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This podcast is a member of the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network. All right, welcome everybody to another podcast episode with Simple Riff from on the radio.
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What is going on guys? Shaina's Lights coming at you. Well, welcome to Slick Answers. Good evening and welcome to Conversations from the
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Port. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Bible Thumping Wingnut podcast. The Bible Thumping Wingnut Network.
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That's TractPlanet .com coupon code BTWN. Alright, so those are our sponsors.
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Go ahead and check out the TrackedPlanet. I think they've got some pretty good stuff.
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But let me give Tim McCoffman an opportunity to say hello and then we'll get going.
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Hello everyone. Thanks for coming back for the fifth episode in the series on Mary. It's good to be here and looking forward to wrapping up the series.
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Awesome. Well, Tim, let me go ahead and do this. I want to share an email that we got regarding our series on Mary and I just wanted to read this to you.
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But we got an email from a gentleman by the name of Alonso Vaccherano.
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Vaccherano. I believe that's his last name. And brother, if I mispronounce your name, I do apologize because I completely understand what it's like to have somebody mispronounce your name.
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People mispronounce my name all the time and get it wrong. You can just ask
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Andrew Rappaport about that. But anyways, he writes,
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Grace and peace, brother. Hope you all are having a great morning. Just wanted to say how much the last four episodes on Catholicism have blessed me.
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I would like to share that my brother -in -law by the grace of God has become a follower of Christ and is no longer a
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Catholic. This week he revealed to my mother -in -law that he no longer was
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Catholic and that he is now a follower of Christ. The conversation lasted about three hours.
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My mother -in -law, I have to say, was very upset, sad, frustrated, but in the end took it well.
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The Lord has opened doors in which I've been blessed to share the gospel to her and even touch briefly on the subject of Mary.
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She at times surprises me with the things she says in terms of what we may agree on.
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Anyhow, my wife's family, they are six and well my wife and now my brother -in -law by God's grace are saved.
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I pray that my three sister -in -laws, my mother -in -law, and my father -in -law will also come to Christ by His grace.
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Anyhow, I am so happy and full of joy. Believe me that I've been taking notes on Brother Tim's that would be you, messages and definitely have shared to my family.
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I praise God for you brother. Thank you and have a great week. In Soli Deo Gloria Alonso.
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Alonso, I just want to say thank you very much for your encouragement. This is exactly why we're doing this and talking about your mother -in -law, how she was sad, frustrated, and upset.
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My encouragement to you brother would just be this. Be faithful in your response and trust
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God with their response. I learned this a number of years ago because I had a difficult conversation with a friend and prior to that conversation
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I was stressing out about how my friend would respond. A faithful brother came up to me and he said, you know, just be kind, be loving, be gentle but stand on the truth and trust
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God with their response. There's a lot of times when we say things and people are going to get upset and I remember a number of years ago going through a controversy with Tim Keller a number of years ago.
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It seemed as if every time I would say something people would get upset. Then there was pushback and they would say, well, you know the way that you're saying it or the way that you're coming across and there's even been pushback more recently with my own family people saying that I think that I'm better than them or that well you have it right and they get upset and basically what it boils down to is you're not really upset with me, you're upset with the message and the problem isn't it's not that you have an issue with the way that I'm saying this, it's you have an issue with what
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I'm saying and so just be mindful of how you approach these things but be faithful and you know trust
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God with your family. That's all we can do. That's what I'm doing with my own family. I'm trusting
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God with my own family and I know that God is good. So Tim, what do you think about Alonzo and then after that I have a brief email that I got from a family member that I want to pitch to you
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I want to see what your thoughts are on the email that I got from my own family but do you have any thoughts on this email from Alonzo?
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Yes, I appreciate Alonzo's email very much and I want to encourage him with just this story from my life is that I had been raised as a
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Roman Catholic since birth and I spent the summer between my 8th and 9th grade year at a monastery in Massachusetts and it was at that monastery that I really was instructed in deep devotion to Mary in the
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Marian apparitions and the Marian doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and I was absolutely steeped in it and I held on to it for a very very long time but on my way home from that monastery the man next to me on the plane opened up the
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Bible to me and shared a scripture verse about Jesus being the only mediator between God and man and I shrugged it off and turned away and I made it clear through body language that I wasn't interested in talking with him but then
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I went to high school and there were Christians in the high school that asked me why we needed the saints to intercede for us and when
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I got to college there were people asking me why do you need a priest and when I got out of college
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I went to work in Alabama and their co -workers and friends that I hung out with were asking why do you need a
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Pope? Why do you pray the Rosary? And I was always ready with a defense but it was because of all the questions though that I investigated and studied it and finally concluded that the
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Roman Catholic Church and particularly the doctrines that we're talking about in this series are all false and I'm thankful that every person along the way that was challenging me because without them
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I never would have even thought to question anything and so I'm glad that Alonso has had some success with his family and it's also important to know that one man sows and another man reaps and you may not be there when it's time to reap but it's important that everybody sow and I'm glad that he's doing that and I'm glad that he's been able to reap as well there's a certain joy in that and I'll just tell you that between my 8th and 9th grade year and when
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I received Christ was more than a decade and that's a lot of people that's a lot of people sowing seeds very patiently and some of them
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I'll never meet until we get to Heaven because I don't even know who they are but I remember they shared with me and it's important that Alonso's doing that and I'm glad that he is and I'm glad that we're able to help
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Yeah and I think it's remarkable that you actually remember having a conversation with the man on the plane who shared a
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Bible verse with you because that's really saying a lot I've shared the
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Gospel with so many people and from my own perspective it looks as if it's had very little effect and I can become frustrated with that and I've become sort of disillusioned at times with the prospect of going out and sharing the
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Gospel with people and I can't tell you how many times I've tried to share the
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Gospel with people that, you know, going out and doing street evangelism and trying to invite people to church trying to I'm not really for decisional evangelism and trying to get them to ask
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Jesus into their heart I wouldn't necessarily agree with that but I've seen very little effect and so it's encouraging to me to hear you say you know that this guy shared a
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Bible verse with you on a plane and even that you didn't receive it and then to recount that years later and to look at the fruit of your life that you did come to Christ and that you are
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I mean now you're a huge blessing to the church by God's grace so that's very encouraging for me to hear but anyways
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Tim this sort of ties in with the email that I got from my family member and you doing this series with me has been a tremendous help and I want to read it to you because I'd love for to get your input on this and I'll just briefly give my input but I got an email from a family member and it says
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Tim good morning, please explain your rationale why Roman Catholics are not
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Christians if they are not as you state then what have they become please limit your response and keep it simple
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I am anxiously awaiting your thoughts now I've already responded to this to this family member
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I told them that I'd respond that same day and unfortunately I wasn't able to get around to it but my response was basically this, it was two -fold is that going into the book of Galatians Paul's writing to the churches of Galatia and he's confronting this issue that's come up where Judaizers that would be
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Jewish Jews who are professing to be Christians have come in and they've added circumcision to the gospel and so Paul immediately in the first chapter he identifies this as a false gospel and the first thing that he does is he anathematizes those who bring a false gospel and so we would say that Rome brings a false gospel and therefore falls under the curse given by Paul in chapter 1 and so in reading in verses 6 -10
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Paul says I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel not that there is another one but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ he goes on to say but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we have preached to you let him be accursed as we have said before so now
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I say again if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received let him be accursed for am
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I now seeking approval of man or of God or am I trying to please man if I were still trying to please man
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I would not be a servant of Christ and so he says but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached let him be accursed and he says in verse 9 as I have said it before so now
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I say it again if anyone if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to this let him be accursed so we would look at that and we would say well the
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Roman Catholic Church is most certainly preaching a gospel that is contrary to the one that was delivered in the scriptures to the saints and so right off the bat we would say that the
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Roman Catholic Church falls under this curse because they are bringing a false gospel but then
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Paul goes on and in chapter 5 he says basically that a person cannot be saved by believing these false gospels and he says look
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I Paul say to you and let me back up this is Galatians 5 2 through 4 he says look
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I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision that is if you accept this gospel which these
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Judaizers are bringing in he says Christ will be of no advantage to you I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law you are severed from Christ you who would be justified by the law you have fallen away from grace now
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Paul is basically saying if you accept this gospel which in chapter 1 he identifies as it's no gospel at all if you accept this gospel that a person is saved by faith plus works or faith plus obedience to the law that you are severed from Christ and we know from verses like Acts 4 12 it says and there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved we know that there is no salvation outside of Christ he says you are severed from Christ and you have fallen away from grace well we know from Ephesians 2 verse 8 through 9 for by grace you have been saved through faith this is not of your own doing it is the gift of God not the result of works that no one may boast and so if you have fallen away from grace and it is only by grace that you've been saved then he's basically saying you cannot be saved by believing these false gospels and we're going to get into this a little bit more but when we look at religions like Mormonism it's sometimes easy for Christians to identify
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Mormonism as a 19th century novelty and we can look at them and say well they're not really
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Christian but we have a little bit more of a difficult time doing that with the
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Roman Catholic Church sometimes but what we are showing is that Roman Catholicism is a 4th century novelty and that it has no true apostolic tradition that it's not grounded in Scripture and so for those reasons both
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Tim and I would look at Roman Catholicism and say ultimately this is not Christian and Tim is going to point out that if you reject certain teachings of Roman Catholicism then you are not
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Roman Catholic and so likewise we are saying that if you reject if you believe what
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Rome teaches that actually makes you a Roman Catholic then you're not a
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Christian because you're not believing in the gospel, you're not believing these other essentials for the faith.
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So Tim I'm sure that you can add something to this. Do you have any thoughts on this?
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Yes I wanted to add and it had to do with your statement about the novelty of Roman Catholicism the question was if Roman Catholicism isn't
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Christian, what is it? Well, when Paul was getting ready to go to Rome he called the
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Ephesian elders to Miletus and he exhorted them and he reminded them by way of forewarning that he said also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years
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I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears. He's saying I know that when
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I leave there are men among your own selves are going to arise up speaking perverse things and he goes on about how important it is for these men to be shepherds over the flock and watch out for the false ones that are coming and Peter also wrote to his followers and said this is 2
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Peter 2 verse 1 but there were false prophets also among the people even as there shall be false teachers among you who privily shall bring in damnable heresies.
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So here Peter is talking about there shall be false teachers among you who are bringing in damnable heresies.
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Paul warns of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them.
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What we find when we study Roman Catholicism in detail is that whether it's baptismal regeneration sacrifice of the mass veneration of the cross veneration of images smoke and incense in worship, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the sinlessness of Mary the assumption of Mary, the primacy of Rome the primacy of Peter all of these teachings originate in the latter part of the 4th century and before that the church did not believe that Peter was the ruler of the whole church.
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They did not believe that Rome was the chief metropolis of the church.
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They did not believe in baptismal regeneration. They did not believe in the sacrifice of the mass, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the sinlessness of Mary and on and on and on.
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So we could do a series on baptismal regeneration we can do a series on Petrine primacy and you do find in the early church there are people talking about every bishop in every city sits on the chair of Peter and to the degree they recognize
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Petrine primacy is that every single bishop in the world owns it and has it but it was not about Peter in Rome being the ruler of the church until the latter part of the 4th century and so you have one thing after another.
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These doctrines that are are quintessentially Roman Catholic doctrines they all originate in the latter part of the 4th century and when they did originate they were imposed with an iron fist and that's what
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Roman Catholicism is. It's a late 4th century novelty that imposed these teachings that were perverse teachings damnable heresies being brought in and Roman Catholics will say but all these people that brought them in were from within the church.
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Like exactly that's what Peter and Paul warned us about exactly this thing was going to happen and how do you tell if something is perverse?
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How do you tell if something is an error? You have to compare it with the scriptures and what you find is that in the scriptures you don't have evidence of the sacrifice of the mass.
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You don't have evidence of Mary's perpetual virginity you don't have evidence of the saints interceding for us or us offering sacrifices to God through the saints.
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You don't have Mary interceding for us. You don't have Mary being immaculate. You don't have Mary being assumed body and soul into heaven.
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These are all late 4th century novelties so what is Roman Catholicism?
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It's a religion that dates to the latter part of the 4th century, 300 years removed from the apostles and we all know what that is.
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By any other standard that would be a cult and you say if Roman Catholics aren't
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Christians, what are they? Okay, they're members of a cult. They're members of a cult that started 300 years after the apostles and they need to return to the original religion that was established by Christ and his apostles and it wasn't
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Roman Catholicism it's the apostolic biblical religion called Christianity and Roman Catholicism is not part of it.
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Yeah, and we're going to continue to show this stuff because our hope is that we know that people out there are benefiting from this.
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We're certainly grateful for people like Alonso. I'm very grateful that my family member is willing to engage me and talk to me about this.
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I'm open to being challenged and with some of these things.
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With that being said we're going to wrap up this series on Mary. Yes, that's absolutely right.
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We have covered Mary as Queen Mother. We have covered Mary as Mother of God, Ark of the
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New Covenant, the Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity of Mary. Now we're going to talk about the
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Assumption and then wrap up the series. What I want to make sure we do at the beginning is to define what the
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Assumption is. The Assumption of Mary is the teaching that when
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Mary was finished with her earthly ministry she was taken up body and soul into Heaven and therefore does not await the resurrection of the dead.
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She already has her glorified body in Heaven. The Assumption of Mary is not about Mary being in Heaven.
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It's about Mary having her resurrected body already ahead of everybody else and basically being in Heaven with her body mediating between us and Christ.
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It's the teaching that she has her body already and that's very important. It's not just about Mary went to Heaven.
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I want to read the official proclamation. This is from Pius XII on November 1st, 1950 in his proclamation called
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Magnificentissimus Deus and this is from paragraphs 44 to 45 from that allegedly infallible proclamation.
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He said By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the
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Immaculate Mother of God, the Ever -Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
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Hence, if anyone which God forbid should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith.
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So there are several things I want to point out here. One, notice that when
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Pius XII proclaimed the doctrine, he appealed to Mary's virginity,
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Mary's immaculacy, Mary's role as Mother of God. And secondly,
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I want people to notice that he says here, if anyone willfully denies this doctrine, he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith.
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He's an apostate. And it's important to point this out because so often we run into Roman Catholics and we explain what their church actually teaches and they'll say, well
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I believe I'm Roman Catholic, I just don't believe all that Mary stuff. Or I'm Roman Catholic, I don't believe in all that papal infallibility stuff.
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Or if you try to explain that Roman Catholics actually worship the elements of the Lord's Supper, the bread and the wine, they'll deny it and they'll say, well
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I'm Roman Catholic, I just don't believe all that Eucharistic adoration stuff. Well, that's a knee -jerk response that we get a lot when we're interacting with Roman Catholics.
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But it's important to point out that if you don't believe all that Mary stuff,
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I'm putting Mary stuff in air quotes here, if you don't believe all that Mary stuff, then you have fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith.
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In fact, you're pledging your allegiance to a church that isn't interested in having you as a member. They're basically saying that if you don't believe all the
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Mary stuff, you're not even one of us. So you can't have one foot in and one foot out with Roman Catholicism.
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Either you believe all the Mary stuff and you're Roman Catholic, or you reject all the Mary stuff and you're not actually
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Roman Catholic. We would strongly encourage people to come to terms with the fact that all this
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Mary stuff is a late -breaking novelty from the latter part of the 4th century. It's not apostolic and therefore it's not
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Christian. I believe earlier you said something to the effect that you're putting your hope in an institution that damns you to hell.
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Yeah, that's exactly right. You're saying, I want to be Catholic so I can go to heaven, and the
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Catholic Church says, you've fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith. In fact, you're subject to the wrath of God under the judgment of the law because you've rejected all that Mary stuff.
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It's just important for Roman Catholics to keep that in mind. You can't have one foot in and one foot out of Roman Catholicism.
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And also to people, evangelicals, who say, I know some Bible -believing
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Roman Catholics who aren't into all that Mary stuff, then either they're not
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Christian or they're not Catholic. If they're Catholic, then they believe all the Mary stuff.
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If they're Christian, then they're not Catholic. You can't be both.
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You can't be Catholic and Christian. As much as Roman Catholics want to claim it, it's just when we say Christian, we're talking about people who have trusted in Christ, justified by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, and what they believe they get from the scriptures, and Roman Catholicism condemns those things.
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That's a pretty big misconception, and I actually got a lot of pushback from people that I know just regarding that, because I'll make the claim,
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Roman Catholics aren't Christian. And people will say, well, I know a Roman Catholic who's a Christian. Well, my response is, well, okay, so it's important to remember that Martin Luther was excommunicated from the
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Church for believing the very thing that made him a Christian, and I've pointed this out before, and so if you're a
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Christian, then you're not a Roman Catholic. If you're a Catholic, then you're not a Christian, because in order to be a
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Christian, you have to believe things like the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Well, that doctrine was anathematized by the
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Church of Rome at the Council of Trent, and Luther was excommunicated from the Church, and when we say that Luther was excommunicated from the
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Church, we mean that Luther was kicked out of the Church of Rome. And not only was he just...
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it's not... the Church wasn't just simply saying, Luther, you're no longer part of our club. It was,
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Luther, you are damned to hell as a heretic. And so... Right, right. Go for it, yeah.
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When Luther was condemned, it wasn't a gracious statement of ecumenicity.
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It was a rejection of Luther and saying, you're going to hell because you rejected these things that we're teaching. Right, and so my simple reply to people who say, well,
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I know somebody who's a Roman Catholic and they're saved, my reply is this. If they truly are saved and they're believing that they're saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ apart from works of the law, then the
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Church of Rome declares them unsaved. And so they are by definition not
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Roman Catholic. And so my encouragement would be that they need to stop going to a
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Roman Catholic Church, that they need to not partake in the Roman Catholic Mass, that they need to come out of her and join a true biblical
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Bible -believing Christian community. So, I hope that didn't derail things too much,
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Brother Tim. I just wanted to add that and we can continue with where we're going. That doesn't take away from it at all.
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It accentuates it. The fact is that this teaching on the Assumption is required by Roman Catholics and what we'll do next is show that it is actually constructed on the late 4th century novelties of Mary being the
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Ark of the Covenant, Mary being immaculately conceived, and Mary being a virgin in part two, that is during the birth of Christ.
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What I want to do now is read how when
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Pius XII proclaimed the Assumption Doctrine, he claimed that this is something that originates with the
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Apostles and if you remember on the week that we covered the Immaculate Conception, Pius IX claimed that this teaching was firmly held by the whole
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Church in the East and the West all the way back to the Apostles and yet when Roman Catholic scholars went to study this, they found that the earliest they could find incontrovertible evidence of Mary being conceived immaculately and being sinless is from the latter part of the 4th century and what we find when we covered the
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Ark of the New Covenant, we saw that there's no real evidence for this.
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Even well past the 4th century, people are still saying that the Ark of the Old Covenant was a type, a foreshadowing of Christ or a foreshadowing of the
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Church, but you don't end up with it being a foreshadowing or a type of Mary until in some cases they have evidence from questionable documents from the latter part of the 4th century and most of the evidence is even later than that.
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But what you find is that here, Pius XII is going to make the claim that this dates all the way back to the
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Apostles, but I think that we all just need to accept the fact, and even Roman Catholics acknowledge this, that it doesn't come from the
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Apostles, it comes from much later than that, and we'll see when we get to the Catholic Encyclopedia's summary on the
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Assumption Dogma, it's just all over the map, but what it's really saying is that we don't have any real evidence that this is apostolic, but we're required to believe that it is.
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So let me read from Pius XII, this is paragraphs 12 -13 from the Proclamation on the
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Assumption. He says, Thus, from the universal agreement of the Church's ordinary teaching authority, we have a certain and firm proof, demonstrating that the
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Blessed Virgin Mary's bodily assumption to Heaven is a truth that has been revealed by God, and consequently something that must be firmly and faithfully believed by all children of the
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Church. For as the Vatican Council asserts, all those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith, which are contained in the written word of God or in tradition, or which are proposed by the
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Church, either in solemn judgment or in its ordinary and universal teaching office, as divinely revealed truths which must be believed.
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Various testimonies, indications, and signs of this common belief of the Church are evident from remote times down through the course of the centuries, and this same belief becomes more clearly manifest from day to day.
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So he's basically making the play for the Apostolic Era, saying, trust us on this, this goes all the way back to the
34:13
Apostles. And I want to read what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about this, though, because the
34:22
Catholic Encyclopedia, when explaining the Assumption of Mary and the belief in her
34:30
Assumption into Heaven bodily, they can't find anything reliable before the latter part of the 4th century and the early 5th century.
34:38
And this is the entry from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia. It says, Regarding the day, year, and manner of Our Lady's death, nothing certain is known.
34:48
The earliest known literary reference to the Assumption is found in the Greek work De Obitu Saint Domine, from the turn of the 6th century, so we're talking early 500s.
34:57
Catholic faith, however, has always derived our knowledge of the mystery from Apostolic Tradition. Now that's just parenthetically,
35:04
I'm going to say, that's the lie. We've derived this from Apostolic Tradition, but we don't have any evidence for the 5th century.
35:15
So it continues. It says, Epiphanius, who died in 403
35:20
AD, acknowledged that he knew nothing definite about it. The dates assigned to the
35:26
Assumption vary between 3 and 15 years after Christ's Ascension. Two cities claim to be the place of her departure,
35:33
Jerusalem and Ephesus. Common consent favors Jerusalem, but the first six centuries did not know of the tomb of Mary at Jerusalem.
35:42
The belief in the corporeal Assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise
35:48
De Obitu Saint Domine, bearing the name of Saint John, which belongs, however, to the 4th or 5th century, probably the late 5th.
35:55
It is also found in the book De Transitur Virginis for the late 5th century, falsely ascribed to Saint Melito of Sardis and in a spurious letter attributed to Saint Denis the
36:06
Areopagite. If we consult genuine writings of the East, it is mentioned in the sermons of Saint Andrew of Crete, that is from 650 to 750
36:13
AD. We're talking 8th century. Saint John of Damascus, 675 to 749, also 8th century.
36:19
Saint Modestus of Jerusalem, who died in 630, which would be the 7th century, and others. In the
36:25
West, Saint Gregory of Tours mentions at first, between 538 and 594 AD, the sermons of Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine for this feast, however, are spurious.
36:36
So, what you notice is that we're talking early 5th century and then 6th and 7th and 8th centuries.
36:42
We're getting stories about the Assumption, but even when they tried to get it as early as the late 4th century, that is with Jerome and Saint Augustine, the documents turned out to be spurious.
36:52
They're unreliable and questionable. So, what I want to show with that is that just think about what
37:00
Pius XII was saying. He basically said, hey, this goes all the way back to the Apostles.
37:06
And even the Catholic Encyclopedia says, well, we've always derived knowledge of this mystery from apostolic tradition, but we just don't have any evidence of it.
37:14
We can't find any evidence until we get to the 5th, 6th, and 7th century. Now, what's also important about a discussion on the
37:22
Assumption of Mary is that how deeply intertwined it is with three other Marian doctrines.
37:28
One is that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant. The other is that Mary is the Immaculate Conception, conceived without sin.
37:35
And the other is that Mary was conceived, sorry, that Mary gave birth to Christ without compromising her physical virginity.
37:42
Now, keep in mind, when Pius XII was defining the doctrine of the
37:47
Assumption, he referred to the Ever -Virgin Mary, and Mary Mother of God, and the
37:54
Immaculate Conception. And he actually states that these two privileges, the
37:59
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, are most closely bound to one another. But remember, the
38:06
Immaculate Conception finds no support in the early Church until 377 A .D. And that's the earliest confirmed reference to the
38:14
Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic Church. And Juniper Carroll says that's a significant turning point in 377
38:21
A .D. because until then there wasn't any firm evidence for it. Now, what also is notable in Pius XII's proclamation is how much he appeals to Mary as the
38:32
Ark of the Covenant. And remember, we talked about the fact that Mary as the
38:38
Ark of the New Covenant doesn't arise as a doctrine until the latter part of the 4th century. Before that, people thought that the
38:46
Church was the Ark, the individual Christian is the Ark, or Jesus was the
38:52
Ark. And it's not until the latter part of the 4th century that Mary is considered the Ark.
38:58
And then, you'll also find when Pius XII is proclaiming the doctrine, he appeals to Mary's perpetual virginity and part and parcel in Mary's perpetual virginity is her virginity in part, that is during the birth of Christ.
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And as we talked last week, Roman Catholics teach that when Jesus was born,
39:20
Roman Catholics believed that he did not actually open Mary's womb, there was no childbirth pain, and there was no tearing of the flesh, there was no compromise of Mary's physical virginity.
39:32
So Roman Catholics would say that she was a virgin before Christ was born, during Christ's birth, and after Christ was born.
39:39
And yet, as we showed last week, the early Church thought that Christ's birth was entirely normal, that there was pain in childbirth, and that pain is from the womb being opened that way, and the physical virginity of the mother being compromised, in this case with Mary.
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And we even had explicit statements from the early Church writers who would say things like, normally it's in marriage that a woman's womb is opened, and then the child comes out, but in Mary's case, her womb wasn't opened until Jesus was born.
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So these are all statements that had to do with Mary travailing in childbirth pain, which is indicative of a loss of physical virginity.
40:25
And it's not until the latter part of the 4th century that they started talking about, well, Jesus maybe just passed through Mary's womb the same way that he passed through the doors of the upper room after the resurrection.
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And as we talked about last week, there were apocryphal documents dating to the 2nd century that said things like that, but when
40:48
Jerome was making his argument for Mary not having other children besides Jesus, he was making fun of that document, ridiculing it, saying that it was ridiculous, and within 10 years he actually was adopting what was being stated in that document.
41:02
So what I want to do is I want to just read a couple verses that Roman Catholics use and in fact what
41:08
Pius XII used when he was appealing to Mary as the
41:13
Ark of the Covenant in order to support the Assumption Doctrine. Okay, well, before you do that, can
41:20
I capitalize on something that you were saying right now? Yes, yes. So I just want to point this out because what you're saying is that for the
41:30
Roman Catholic position is that we don't have any evidence of this prior to the 4th century.
41:36
And that's very important and that's very significant, but what I also want to point out to people and I really, really want to drive this point home,
41:44
I really want people to get this is that not only do we have a lack of evidence for the Roman Catholic position prior to the 4th century, but we also have evidence to the contrary.
41:55
And that's important because you'd have to basically have your head in the mud to ignore that because what
42:04
Brother Tim is talking about here, these things must be embraced by the
42:12
Roman Catholic Church in order... these teachings by the Roman Catholic Church must be embraced by the
42:19
Roman Catholic in order for the Roman Catholic to be saved. And what we're finding is that the early church fathers believed to the contrary of these views.
42:29
And so it's... the Roman Catholic would have to somehow account for the fact that the early church rejected these ideas, that the early church did not hold to these ideas and somehow were saved.
42:45
There's a 300 year gap in which you'd have to account for how was anybody saved prior to the 4th century when nobody believed these things.
42:55
Yeah, and it's an important one to drive home. What's especially interesting is that when the evidence we have regarding these doctrines is countervailing evidence.
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We have evidence from before the latter part of the 4th century indicating that the church believed that Mary was sinful.
43:12
We have evidence prior to the latter part of the 4th century indicating that Christ's birth was entirely normal.
43:18
We have evidence from prior to the latter part of the 4th century that the
43:23
Ark prefigured Christ not Mary. And so you have all these people teaching these things that are different and nobody correcting them until the latter part of the 4th century.
43:35
And you have to wonder how is it possible that the church whose job it was to teach the truth accidentally left out all these doctrines that are absolutely required in Roman Catholicism now.
43:51
And, you know, when you read the Catholic Encyclopedia about Mary's sinfulness, they just say, well, those were just stray private opinions.
44:00
And Mariologists will say, well, these guys apparently were mysteriously unaware of the duty that they held to hold
44:09
Mary's holiness in high esteem. But they're always talking around the elephant that's in the room, and the elephant in the room is this.
44:17
Your religion started in the latter part of the 4th century. That's the elephant in the room, and we have to address it in order to show that what you are required to believe for your salvation now was absolutely foreign to the early church, and it didn't come up until the latter part of the 4th century.
44:36
So to look at the foundation upon which the Assumption is built, we just have to look at the
44:41
Immaculate Conception. And remember in paragraph 4 of this document, Pius XII said, these two privileges, that is the
44:47
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, are closely bound to one another, but there's no evidence for Mary's Immaculate Conception prior to the latter part of the 4th century.
44:57
In paragraph 26, he ties the Assumption doctrine to the Ark. He says, there are theologians and preachers who, following the footsteps of the
45:07
Holy Fathers, have looked upon the Ark of the Covenant, built of incorruptible wood and placed in the
45:12
Lord's Temple as a type of the most pure body of the Virgin Mary, preserved and exempt from all the corruption of the tomb and raised up to such glory in heaven.
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Remember, there's no support for Mary being the Ark of the Covenant until the latter part of the 4th century. The best they can do is some works that are attributed to Ambrose and Athanasius from that time.
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And the verses they use are from 2
45:39
Chronicles 6 41. It says, Therefore arise, O Lord, into thy resting place, thou and the
45:44
Ark of thy strength. In Psalm 132 8, it says the same thing. And so they say, well, if Jesus is the
45:51
Lord and he rises to his resting place, and then the Ark of his strength follows him, then after Jesus' Ascension, if Mary's the
46:00
Ark, then Mary would be assumed as well into heaven. And as we talked about this in the episode on the
46:09
Ark, about how at the end of Revelation 11, there's a picture of there's an image of the
46:15
Ark in heaven, and the next verse is from Romans 12, 1, referring to a woman appeared in the heavens.
46:24
And so Roman Catholics put those together and say, then the Ark must be a reference to Mary, because they mentioned the
46:31
Ark and then they mentioned this woman. But what's interesting is we talked about this when we did the episode on the
46:38
Ark, the only reference we could find to an understanding of that verse and who the Ark signified was it was a reference to Christ, not to Mary.
46:49
You know, Christ being that Ark that's displayed in heaven at the end of Revelation chapter 11.
46:55
But that's not to say that that's what we believe, it's just to say that you just don't find these interpretations that are absolutely central to Roman Catholicism until the latter part of the 4th century.
47:06
And then the final one, as we mentioned, this is from chapter 21 of Pius XII's proclamation.
47:16
He's citing John of Damascus from the 8th century, and he says, it was fitting that she who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death.
47:28
But remember, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Chrysostom, and even Jerome himself believed that Mary suffered childbirth pains and that Jesus' birth was entirely normal.
47:37
It wasn't until 393 AD that Jerome switched positions on that and started teaching that Mary had not suffered childbirth pains and had actually mysteriously come through Mary's womb in the same way that he came through the doors of the upper room after the
47:55
Ascension. And as we mentioned last week in John chapter 2 that describes the wedding at Cana, scriptures are very clear that the beginning of the signs that Jesus performed began at that wedding at Cana, and therefore there weren't any signs before that.
48:12
There was, for him to come through the womb of Mary miraculously, leaving it untouched the same way he walked through a door, a closed door after the
48:24
Ascension were to be the beginning of his miracles and signs 27 years earlier than the scriptures would allow.
48:31
My point is, and just to summarize here on the Assumption Dogma, it rests firmly on the foundation of Mary's Immaculate Conception, her perpetual virginity, especially the virginity in part two, that is during the birth of Christ, and her identification as the
48:47
Ark of the New Covenant, all of which have no patristic support prior to the latter part of the 4th century, and therefore the
48:53
Assumption can't have originated any earlier than that, and that's why we're seeing in the historical data that we really have to get to the 5th century and the 6th century and the 7th and 8th centuries to find definite statements about Mary and the
49:08
Assumption. Before that, there's just no evidence for it. So, the short story on the
49:14
Assumption is that just like all these other teachings on Mary, it is 300 years removed from the
49:22
Apostles, and yet in all that, Roman Catholics will still insist that it's an apostolic teaching, and you just have to be able to do better than that.
49:32
It's just inconceivable that the Church had gone 300 years and knowing or believing that these things about Mary were true and just accidentally forgot to teach them.
49:45
Well, and that would mean that the gates of hell prevailed against the
49:50
Church for 300 years. If these things were essential to salvation and a person couldn't be saved without believing them, then you know, that's a pretty big deal.
50:06
It's pretty significant. I just want to ask, do you hear reasons as to why the
50:12
Church didn't preserve these things in writing from Roman Catholic apologists?
50:17
I mean, it's pretty significant. I'm sure that somebody's going to try to come up with a response.
50:25
Oh, yes, yes. They'll say that the Church before the latter part of the 4th century was under persecution, and it wasn't until after the persecution ended that they were free to write these things down.
50:39
But that's a distraction, and it's a red herring, and it's absolutely irrelevant to the conversation, especially because of how much people did write down in those 300 years.
50:53
We have thousands and thousands of volumes of information from these guys writing about all sorts of things, and they were free to talk about the
51:04
Ark signified Christ, Mary suffered childbirth pains,
51:10
Mary was a sinner. These are the kinds of things that would get people burned alive at the stake during the
51:17
Reformation, and yet, for some reason, they're saying the early Church was afraid to teach these things, or they'd suffer persecution from the
51:26
Romans. The fact is that there's a reason you can't find any of this data in the first 300 years of the
51:32
Church. It's because it didn't believe it. Nobody believed these things in the first 300 years of the Church. Even if you go to Origen, who thought that maybe the apocryphal teachings about the
51:45
Proto -Evangelium of James, or the Gospel of Peter, which appear to indicate that the children of Joseph, or the brethren of Christ in the
51:55
Scriptures are actually children of Joseph from a marriage prior to his marriage to Mary, even
52:01
Origen believed that Mary's delivery of Christ was perfectly normal, and she had childbirth pains.
52:08
The problem is you don't get to an absolute, complete package on perpetual virginity of Mary that is pre -partum, in -partum, and post -partum.
52:20
I'm sorry, pre -partum, in -partum, and post -partum, until the latter part of the 4th century. Before that, it was taken for granted that Christ's birth was normal, because He'd truly become one of us.
52:30
And it's the idea that, you know,
52:37
I'll just give you an example of how deeply ingrained it is in the minds of Roman Catholics that these teachings on Mary are apostolic, even though there's no evidence for it.
52:47
If you were to cite all the different passages of Scripture, Luke 1 with the Annunciation, Luke 2 with the
52:53
Visitation to Elizabeth, the various passages where Mary and Jesus' brethren interrupt
53:00
His preaching, or the wedding at Cana, you find the early church took those verses and concluded that Mary was sinful.
53:12
Okay? And Protestants will look at those verses and go, yeah, Romans 3 .23, everybody is, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
53:21
And we find that argument being made in the early church, that's how we know that Mary was a sinner, is that all men have fallen short of the glory of God, all men have sinned, and in fact,
53:30
Jesus died on the cross for her sins. And I remember a
53:36
Protestant on my blog was making an argument about Mary being a sinner, and a
53:42
Catholic responded saying, yes, I know how you Mary -hating Protestants interpret those verses, but what's interesting is you go to the early church and find out that's how they interpreted those verses of Scripture, too.
53:53
So, basically, he thought he was condemning Protestants, but he was condemning the whole early church.
53:59
Right. Well, and going back to you saying that sometimes they'll say that the early church feared persecution,
54:08
I was reading a book about church history and the author pointed out that at the
54:14
Council of Nicaea, a lot of the people that came sort of looked like veterans from war, because a lot of the people that came to the
54:27
Council of Nicaea, the Christians had been persecuted.
54:33
They were maimed, some of them were their health was declining because they had been persecuted greatly for their faith, and so the early church,
54:45
I mean, that's just something that you that's really, like you said, a red herring and really just sort of a cop -out to say that the early church writers, that the early church fathers were too afraid to write some of these things down, because these were men who were persecuted unto death in many cases, and so that's really not giving enough credit to what these men faced and their willingness to face the persecution.
55:18
And then also, just to point out that Paul wrote part of the New Testament while in prison and under persecution.
55:28
So, if these things were essential to the faith, if these things were necessary for salvation,
55:34
God would have preserved these things, and He didn't. He didn't preserve them in the first 300 years of church history, and not only that, we see in many cases that these early church fathers believed the exact opposite, and therefore, you'd have a hard time saying that anybody prior to the 4th century was a
55:59
Christian or was saved, if you want to buy into Rome's argument. So I really think that the whole thing just falls flat on its face.
56:08
Tim, let's go ahead and continue. Well, you know, our next step here is just to wrap up on Mary, and just to revisit our last four weeks before this, when we talked about Mary as Queen Mother, we talked about the word
56:24
Gebera as it appears in the Old Testament, and Roman Catholics see that as a type of Mary, especially in that the
56:34
Gebera is alleged to be the mother of the reigning king. But if you remember in our conversation, they were looking for the
56:44
Gebera as a type of Mary in the Davidic line that is in the southern kingdom. And so, two of the references in the
56:51
Old Testament to the Gebera refer to the mother of a king in the Davidic line.
56:57
One time, it refers to the grandmother of a king in the Davidic line. One, it refers to the mother of a king in the northern kingdom, and another time, it refers to the wife of an
57:11
Egyptian king. And so, these are not the problem is that there's no real consistent story on the
57:18
Gebera, and when we talked about, they said, well, every time a
57:24
Davidic king is introduced, his mother is listed, except that's not true. There are two
57:29
Davidic kings that are listed, but their mother is not listed with them. And what we find, typically, is that the cases where you have a dominant woman serving in the court of a king, it's usually when that king was not the immediate successor to the previous king, and the mother had to intervene in some way.
57:50
And that would explain why, in some cases, and particularly in the case of Bathsheba, she actually has a pretty prominent role in Solomon's kingdom, but remember,
57:59
Solomon wasn't the next in line to the throne. But the important thing is that when you look at it from that perspective, you realize that none of those situations really apply to Jesus.
58:09
Jesus was the legitimate king next in line to the throne, and he didn't need a queen mother to help him administer his kingdom.
58:17
And what we find when we get later, talk about Mary being sinless, the powerful women who portrayed themselves, who are portrayed as, say, the powerful woman in the court of a king in the
58:32
Old Testament are so presumptuous and authoritative, and yet, any time that Mary appears to be that way, like at the wedding of Cana, the early church interpreted that as sin, rather than as Mary being the queen mother.
58:49
So, again, this whole thing with queen mother doesn't arise, Mary being the queen mother does not arise until late in church history.
58:57
We talked about mother of God, or the word Theotokos being translated as mother of God, but the first confirmed reference to Mary as Theotokos was from Alexander of Alexandria in his deposition of Arius.
59:09
This is about 324 A .D. And what's important to notice about this reference to Theotokos referring to Mary, he calls her that when he is citing
59:19
Hebrews 10 .5 about that, a body thou hast prepared for me, which is very consistent with how the early church would refer to Jesus' divine generation was from his father, his body was from his mother, but they would say that if Jesus had two nativities, that is his eternal generation as the son of the father is his first nativity and his birth by Mary is his second nativity, they would say that in his first nativity he had no mother and in his second nativity he had no father, but it's important to recognize that they would say things like, insofar as he is
59:57
God, he had no mother. So the early church would have been shocked to hear the term mother of God applied to Mary and when
01:00:08
Alexander of Alexandria uses the term Theotokos, he uses it in reference to Jesus taking on a body,
01:00:14
Hebrews 10 .5, a body thou hast prepared for me, but in the same paragraph of that deposition, he reserves the term
01:00:21
Theogonias, which is divine generation, he reserves that to the father. So when
01:00:27
Theotokos is used before the council of Nicaea, and it was, it was used to counter distinguish between Jesus' divine generation, which is from his father alone, and the fact that Mary carried
01:00:40
God in her womb for nine months. Nobody denies that, but it's interesting that Alexander of Alexandria in his use of Theotokos separates the term from Theogonias, which shows that the late 4th century translation into Latin as degenitrix, or the mother of God, is completely a novelty, and it is not the way that Theotokos was used before Nicaea.
01:01:05
It's a late 4th century novelty to refer to Mary as mother of God. That is not how the early church referred to her, and when they did talk about God, Jesus' eternal generation, they said that he was motherless in his generation.
01:01:19
And that's not the kind of thing you'd say if you really believe that Mary was the mother of God. We talked about the
01:01:25
Ark of the New Covenant, and the early church did not see Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. The dominant theme was that they believed that Jesus was the
01:01:34
Ark of the New Covenant. The Roman Catholic attempts to trace the belief that Mary is the
01:01:39
Ark of the New Covenant is based on spurious documents, doubtful documents, or documents that are so hopelessly compromised that they can't possibly take in as credible.
01:01:48
We talked about the Immaculate Conception. We talked about how the early church saw her as sinful, doubting, and occasionally obstructionist, occasionally vainglorious, and obtuse, thinking more highly of herself than she ought.
01:02:01
In fact, Tertullian, when Mary interrupted Jesus, he said that Mary in that moment was a figure for the synagogue of the
01:02:10
Jews who were on the outside, whereas the people listening to Jesus preaching were on the inside. These are not the kind of things you say about somebody who is sinless.
01:02:19
Remember, John Chrysostom, when he was talking about that same occasion, said that Mary was being presumptuous and vainglorious, and that when
01:02:32
Jesus rebuked her at the wedding at Cana, he had to cure her of her vainglory because he cared much more about her soul, the salvation of her soul.
01:02:43
Basil talked about how when Jesus died, only then did the benefits of the cross get applied to Mary.
01:02:52
In Roman Catholicism, the teaching is that Mary was preserved from stain of sin at her conception.
01:03:00
Here we have Basil saying the benefits of the cross were not actually applied to Mary until after the cross.
01:03:07
Last week we talked about the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is absolutely wrapped up in the idea of her virginity in part.
01:03:14
That is the doctrine that Mary's physical virginity was not compromised when Christ was born, and yet you find in the early church that Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, John Chrysostom, and even
01:03:28
Jerome himself believed that Jesus' birth was perfectly normal, complete with the blood and the tearing and the pain and the childbirth pains.
01:03:36
All the way up until 383 A .D. is when Jerome was still holding the normal parturition of Christ, but in 393
01:03:44
A .D. he changed his position and adopted the apocryphal view that he had ridiculed only ten years earlier and agreed that Jesus had actually gone through Mary's womb miraculously in childbirth and therefore did not compromise her physical virginity when he was born.
01:04:04
Finally, today we covered the assumption which rests entirely on the Ark, the Immaculate Conception, and perpetual virginity.
01:04:09
All of these are late -breaking 4th century novelties, and therefore we can conclude that one, the assumption can't be any earlier than those other teachings because it rests so heavily upon them, and those other teachings are dated to the late 4th century.
01:04:25
In the conclusion, we'll say this particularly about the Marian doctrines, but Roman Catholicism overall, it's constructed a religion that is the figment of the imagination of a system that came on the scene in the late 4th century and has absolutely nothing to do with Mary of the
01:04:40
Bible except in name only. They basically built a monstrosity that they call
01:04:46
Mary and expect everybody to honor her and the Mary they've constructed is not to be found anywhere in the scriptures and certainly not anywhere in the first three centuries of the
01:04:58
Church either. That's our wrap -up on Mary. I'll tell you,
01:05:04
Tim, there's even more to be said. The question that could be raised is, do
01:05:09
Catholics worship Mary? And of course they deny it, but I've written about how they actually do worship
01:05:16
Mary and don't realize it, but we could talk about that later. It's a topic for another day.
01:05:24
I don't want to focus so much on how Roman Catholics treat Mary today as I want to focus on the fact that the things they do believe about her originated in the latter part of the 4th century and they are not apostolic.
01:05:36
They're novelties and they're the fulfillment of what Paul and Peter had warned us about. A man arising from among ourselves speaking perverse things and introducing damnable heresies.
01:05:48
And that's pretty much as fine a point as you can put on it. This is all novelty from the late 4th century and it's not apostolic.
01:05:57
Well, as I've said in every episode, Roman Catholics need to repent of the novelty and Protestants don't need to take the
01:06:04
Mary and stuff lying down. There's a pretty solid argument against the teachings that Roman Catholicism is purveying about Mary.
01:06:12
That's excellent. Tim, let me go back. I got another question from a family member, another family member regarding the apparitions of Mother Mary and I want to read to you my response and then just get your comments on it.
01:06:31
Hopefully I got it right. I actually quoted you to my family member, but some of the apparitions of Mother Mary have portrayed themselves as the woman of Revelation 12 and as you pointed out that the church has tried to identify that the woman of Revelation 12 is a depiction of Mother Mary.
01:06:56
And so this was the question that came up and this was my reply to my family member.
01:07:02
I said, the Roman Catholics find themselves in an impossible position. Either Revelation 12, verse 1 through 6 is referring to Mary and that means that the
01:07:11
Roman Catholic Church is wrong, or it is not referring to Mary and that means that the
01:07:16
Roman Catholic Church is still wrong. Personally, I do not believe that the passage is referring to Mary, but at the very least, we can agree that either it is or it isn't.
01:07:28
Those are only two options. If it is referring to Mary, then the Roman Catholic position that Mary was without sin is wrong.
01:07:37
Romans 12, verse 2 says that, says with regards to the woman, quote, she was pregnant and crying out in birth pains and in agony of giving birth.
01:07:50
End quote. We know from Genesis 3, 16 that pain in child bearing was a direct consequence of sin.
01:08:01
My friend Timothy Kaufman writes, quote, any woman not under the curse would experience pain free child bearing, but the woman of Revelation 12, verse 1 and 2 is clearly experiencing a consequence of sin.
01:08:15
End quote. This would mean that Mother Mary was not without sin if this passage was referring to her and that the
01:08:24
Catholic position is not only wrong, but idolatrous.
01:08:30
Of course, we already know that their view of Mother Mary being without sin is wrong because of what the
01:08:36
Bible tells us. Romans 3, 10 says, quote, as it is written, none is righteous, no not one.
01:08:43
End quote. And Romans 3, 23 says, quote, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
01:08:50
End quote. It is pretty clear when we read the Bible that Mary was not sinless.
01:08:55
This also means that the apparition of Mary that said at Lourdes in France of Lourdes, France in 1858, which said
01:09:07
I am the Immaculate Conception and I can't read how the apparition actually said it.
01:09:16
I think it was in France. I can't read that.
01:09:24
It's in a different language. But the apparition declared I am the
01:09:29
Immaculate Conception. We can safely conclude then that this was a lying spirit.
01:09:35
However, if this passage is not referring to Mother Mary, then the
01:09:41
Catholic Church is still wrong. This would mean that the apparition of Mary in 1830, which portrayed itself and identified itself as the woman of Revelation 12, which the
01:09:52
Catholic Church has fully embraced, was a lying spirit as well. So we should recognize that these apparitions of Mother Mary are not from God, that they are demonic in nature, and they should not be trusted and that they should be rejected.
01:10:10
Then I point out that I say my friend Timothy Kaufman has written on this stuff extensively and you should check it out.
01:10:21
For our listeners, I want to point everybody back to Tim Kaufman's blog article, not article, but his blog, thewhitehorseblog .com
01:10:31
and just point out that you've written on this stuff extensively.
01:10:37
I may have gotten something wrong in that. Tim, would you care to comment if I got it right?
01:10:47
The only thing I would correct in that is sometimes you said Romans 12 instead of Revelation 12.
01:10:54
Did I? That's the only thing. Here's the thing.
01:11:01
Roman Catholics will argue that the childbirth pains of Revelation 12 are not physical tearing of the womb that would result in Mary's virginity being compromised.
01:11:12
They're actually a depiction of the great sorrow she was feeling because she knew it was going to be happening to her son, and yet the
01:11:19
Pope himself says that Mary completely escaped sorrow in giving birth to him.
01:11:25
You can't just write that off and say, well, it must be just prefiguring a kind of sorrow, or it must be just prophesying a kind of sorrow, or referring to a kind of sorrow when the
01:11:35
Pope himself says that no, there was no sorrow in childbirth for Mary. The point is that they will have an answer for it.
01:11:44
It's not a very good one, and it's internally inconsistent because the Popes and the apparitions of Mary speaking at odds with each other, and yet, and we can cover this on another podcast, and yet the apparitions of the
01:11:56
Popes work together very closely when it comes to establishing the Marian doctrines and the doctrine of papal infallibility.
01:12:02
We'll cover that in another episode, but you're right, and I think it's a good conversation to start with Roman Catholics, saying, why is the woman of Revelation 12 having childbirth pains if Mary's supposed to be sinless?
01:12:14
Alright, so I just want to ask you one really quick question regarding a statement that we made earlier because I'm anticipating some pushback on this, and that's with regards to the fact that we were saying that if you don't believe these doctrines of Mary, that you are not saved under the
01:12:35
Roman Catholic system, that they would basically say that you've made shipwreck of your faith, and that you can't be saved.
01:12:42
And I'm anticipating some pushback in this area because it would appear that the new
01:12:50
Pope, Pope Francis, is making allowances for salvation.
01:12:56
He said something about the fact that even atheists can be saved if they live good lives.
01:13:03
I believe that that's what he said. And so a lot of people would say, well, you know, this really isn't.
01:13:13
You can still be saved and reject these things, and that's not really what Roman Catholics believe.
01:13:19
So, how would we respond to that? Okay, so here's something.
01:13:25
This is important. For us to have a conversation with Roman Catholics, we all have to agree that words actually have meaning, and that we're intelligent and logical.
01:13:37
Okay? We can't have an intelligent conversation if the total of our conversation is, you know, pancakes and bananas rhyme with purple peanuts.
01:13:50
If that's the extent of our conversation, where words have no meaning, we may as well just talk that way.
01:13:55
But if words have meaning, then we have to take seriously the infallible proclamations of the popes.
01:14:01
And when Francis makes statements about, well, it's not that big a deal.
01:14:07
Atheists will be in heaven. You know, the diehard Roman Catholics will say, well, he wasn't speaking infallibly, and so that's not really binding.
01:14:16
But what is binding is when they speak infallibly. Okay? And so this is what the popes have said when they're speaking infallibly about the
01:14:26
Marian doctrines. When Pius IX proclaimed that Mary was conceived without sin, he said,
01:14:32
If anyone shall dare to think otherwise than has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment, and by his own actions he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he thinks in his heart.
01:14:49
That's a pretty solid condemnation of anybody that disagrees with the Immaculate Conception. This is what
01:14:54
Pius XII said about the assumption. If anyone, which
01:15:00
God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith.
01:15:09
It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition, or by rash attempt to oppose and counter it.
01:15:16
If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed
01:15:22
Apostles Peter and Paul. I'm sorry, those aren't ecumenical statements welcoming
01:15:28
Luther and Calvin back into the arms of the Church. Those are statements that if anyone dares to deny this, he's going to fall under the wrath of the blessed
01:15:40
Apostles Peter and Paul. The wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.
01:15:47
I don't know how someone who is incurring the wrath of Almighty God does so in heaven with his
01:15:57
Catholic brothers and sisters. Okay? This is a statement from Pius XII.
01:16:02
Words have meaning. If you deny the assumption, you will incur the wrath of Almighty God and welcome to heaven.
01:16:09
Have a nice day. That just doesn't make sense to say that, and that's why I'm saying if it all comes down to words have no meaning at all, then yeah, you can be under the wrath of Almighty God and still get into heaven.
01:16:22
But if words actually have meaning, these infallible proclamations on Mary are a condemnation of anyone who would even dare to think something differently, much less to speak it out loud.
01:16:35
And the official proclamation of the Roman Catholic Church is you're required to believe in the Immaculate Conception. You're required to believe in papal infallibility.
01:16:43
You're required to believe in the Assumption of Mary. The reason I tie all of them together is because they're so wrapped up in what the apparitions of Mary have done to influence the teachings of the
01:16:53
Roman Catholic Church. And the teachings of the
01:16:58
Roman Catholic Church from an infallible and allegedly infallible pope is the wrath of Almighty God.
01:17:04
You'll be cursed with the wrath of God if you deny this. Well, those certainly are explicit statements.
01:17:11
I don't think that anybody can get around that. Well, I just think that's the perfect place to end it.
01:17:17
And I just want to say thank you again to Timothy Kaufman for coming on. We have learned so much from him and I don't think that anybody can actually get through these episodes without coming to recognize how just how thorough
01:17:35
Tim is. And for that reason, I mean, we want to plug his blog again.
01:17:40
Go to whitehorseblog .com. Check him out. And Brother Tim, thank you for coming on today.
01:17:48
We're going to go ahead and close out with this. If you'd like to email us, you can contact us at semper .reframanda
01:17:55
.radio at gmail .com. With that, God bless you and have a great week.