Mary, Mary quite contrary

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth.

Sound Doctrine and Standing Against Error

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. It's Mike Avendroth, glad to be your host today for these 24 and a half quick minutes. That doesn't count the intro song and the outro song. So 24 and a half minutes we are today dealing with the issues that we deal with on every Friday, at least the theme for a while on Friday, false Fridays, as we examine things that are contrary to scripture.

If you are an elder or you're a pastor, you must teach sound doctrine, healthy, hygienic, sound doctrine about God, sin, man, Christ, and times. You have to teach that. But also, people don't like this today, you have to stand up against error.

If you're gonna stand for the truth, that means by default, by definition, you have to stand against something. Stand for means to stand against, especially in the truth wars that exist today. And so we have to contradict those, we have to expose those who contradict.

Titus chapter one is clear, teach sound doctrine, refute those who contradict. And so today on false Friday, we're going to do Roman Catholicism part five. Now the whole Pope deal has come up since I started this series and since I've taped this series.

And so I don't think I'll get into that today. I want to deal with some topics that are from the Bible, not from the Bible, that the Roman Catholics believe or they don't believe. And the topic today is Mary.

The topic today is Mary. So if you'd like a show title today, the title is going to be Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. And so the Mary that the Roman Catholic Church teaches about is not the Mary found in the Bible.

Oh, maybe it's a different Mary, maybe it's a Mary I've never met, but it's contrary to what the Bible teaches. And so what does the Bible say about Mary? And what does the Roman Catholic Church say about Mary?

If you're a Roman Catholic today, here's my goal. My goal is that you'll say, how could all this stuff come up over time for the church to teach about Mary when it's not in the Bible? It's not in history until a later date.

It's not in history until a later date because the Roman Catholic Church needed to support a doctrine. And so you shouldn't be mad at me today. You should be mad at your own church. How many things will it take for you to say, I must leave the Catholic Church?

Oh, I don't believe in the church's view of conception. I don't believe in the church's view of this, that, and the other. How many will it take? So today we're going to talk about Mary. And I'm going to use the outline that Robert Morey had, why Christians and Catholics do not agree, because he just lays it out.

This is the Bible verse. This is what the Roman Catholic Church teaches in their 1994 Catholic Catechism, et cetera. And so you can't have both of these true, what the Bible teaches and what the Catholics teach because they teach the opposite.

So we can't just be some kind of postmodernist absorbing everything. We don't want to do that. So let me tell you first about Mary from the Catholic position, that she is a co-mediatrix, or at worst, a mediatrix.

This is from Catholic Catechism, 1994, their source of doctrine as well. I'm not making this up. This is not some kind of kooky Dave Hunt quote from the third kind of, you know, source. No. Page 252, number 69.

Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the church under the titles Advocate, capital A, Helper, capital H, Benefactress, capital B, and Mediatrix, capital M. I mean, we could close the case right there.

She is called a Mediatrix in the Catholic confession. If you look at 966, same confession. Finally, the Immaculate Virgin preserved free from all stain of original sin when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things.

Page 252. Really? Well, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches there is one Advocate. It is Christ that died, not Mary. Yea, rather, that is risen, not Mary. That is, even at the right hand of God, not Mary.

Who also maketh intercession for us, not Mary. That's Romans 8 .34. Nowhere in Scripture is Mary called an Advocate, but the Roman Catholic Church calls her that. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Mary the Righteous.

Is that what the Bible says? First John 2 .1 says we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. Jesus is the Advocate, not Mary. Mediator? I don't think Mary is a Mediator, for there is one God and one Mediator.

If there's one, that means there's only one, and so there can't be two. Between God and man, the man, Christ, Jesus. Jesus is the Mediator. We don't need some kind of female Mediator called a Mediatrix.

1 Timothy 2 .5 is crystal clear. And for this cause, Jesus is the Mediator of a new testament or covenant, Hebrews 9 .15. Mary is an Advocate in Scripture. She's not a Mediator, and she's not a Helper.

Behold, God is my Helper, Psalm 54, verse four. I will pray that the Father and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, John 14 .16, and that is regarding the Spirit of God, not Mary.

Queen of Heaven? I think you might want to read Jeremiah 7 and Jeremiah 44 before you start saying, we want Mary to be called the Queen of Heaven. That is a pagan title. So the Roman Catholic Church gives pagan titles to Mary or titles that are used exclusively for God, especially in this context.

Jesus is the King. Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is the Advocate. Jesus is the Mediator. Jesus sent His Helper, the Holy Spirit, and He is the Lord. Matter of fact, when you think about what goes on in the Roman Catholic Church, Jesus even dealt with Mary in a certain way that would make you say to yourself, she's not God, she's not even sinless.

Then His mother and His brothers come to Him, and came to Him and could not approach Him because of the crowd. And it was told Him by some who said, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you.

But He answered and said to them, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the Word of God and do it. Maury said the veneration of Mary is not only foreign to the Bible, but condemned altogether by the Lord Himself, noting that He repeatedly denied any special distinction and uniqueness in regard to His mother's status.

That's from Luke chapter, the quote I gave before Maury was Luke 8, 19 and following. How about Luke 11? While He was speaking, a woman entered. She was from the crowd, called out to Him and said, blessed is the womb that carried you and the breast at which you nursed.

Jesus said, rather, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it. Well, you say, yeah, but she was immaculately conceived and she was assumed bodily. Really? Well, here's what the Catholic Church teaches.

Catholic Catechism, I give you the page number 124, number 493. By the grace of God, Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. Now that is a different religion. That is scary. That is spooky.

I guess she could just make it on her own and Jesus didn't have to die for her sins. Mary is the most excellent fruit of redemption, number 508, Catholic Catechism. From the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all her sin throughout her life.

And see, therefore, since she has been, you know, never had to have cleansing from sin and she could just zoom straight up. So Catholic Catechism 966 says, finally, the Immaculate Virgin was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory.

So if she is conceived immaculately, if she has no personal sin, then straight up she goes, kind of her own personal Mary rapture. What does the Bible teach? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

You know what I know about Mary? She was not righteous. No, not one. Mary died. The soul that sins dies. Why did Mary call Jesus, him my savior, Luke 1, 47? Who needs salvation if you don't sin? Born without sin, incorrect.

Free from impurities because she did not die, incorrect. People, as Psalm 51 say, are born in iniquity. That's what happens. And so you notice in an attempt to fortify the Roman Catholic position of Mary's sinlessness, they appeal to Luke 1, 28 and 1, 42 in the Douay-Rheims and it distorts the text.

Here's the Catholic Bible, a Catholic Bible, and the angel being come in said under her, hail, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Hail, full of grace. Do you know what the Greek word for that is? Favored one, favored one. She's not full of grace because if she would be full of grace, she would be no longer a sinner. She would be sinless.

Do you know the word for blessed is used of both Mary and Jesus there in the Catholic translation, implying Mary's sinlessness because she's equal to Christ, the sinless one. So you have to just start the Bible to get your position.

How about zooming up to heaven, the bodily assumption? Is it right to refer to Revelation 12 for that to happen? I don't think I'd want Mary associated with those in Revelation 12. New Catholic Encyclopedia, volume seven, page 378 to 381, states that the Immaculate Conception doesn't have any basis in the Bible.

I applaud them for that statement. The Immaculate Conception is not taught explicitly in scripture. The earliest church fathers regarded Mary as holy but not as absolutely sinless. It is impossible to give a precise date when the belief was held as a matter of faith.

But by the eighth or ninth century, it seems to have been generally admitted. Actually in 1854, Pope Pius IX defined that. Go on to say in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, which holds that the most blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin in the first instant of her conception.

Well, there were some church historians like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen that said she sinned, that she doubted Christ. And I applaud those men for that. How about Catholic scholar Ludwig Ott? Ludwig Ott, this is very interesting in his book called Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma published in 1960.

It's interesting what he has to say. A list of just some of the many who oppose the Immaculate Conception include Augustine, Chrysostom, Eusebius, Ambrose, Anselm, Aquinas, Bonadventure, Cardinal Cajetan, and Pope Gregory the Great and Pope Innocent III.

Now that's from the Catholic doctrine. Ott says on page 209, the idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in transitus narratives of the fifth, sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing.

Yai, yai, yai, yai, yai. Maury says yet Ott conveniently forgets to mention to his readers that these narratives were deemed heretical by the church of the day and anathematized by Galatius, the very Bishop of Rome, the Catholic Bishop.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary and the Brothers of Jesus

Okay, well, I don't know what else to say. Some people think that she was a perpetual virgin and I only have two words for this portion of the show. This is nocompromisedradio .com. My name's Mike Abendroth and this is Friday.

We call it False Friday, examining the truth claims of other people. Today, part five on Roman Catholicism. What does the Bible say about Mary? What does Rome say about Mary? Ignorance is not bliss. You might as well know the difference.

There's a Mary in the Bible who said, I'm a sinner and I need Jesus as Savior. There's a Mary in the Bible that had Jesus die for her sins and then brought her to heaven based on his merit, his work. By the way, that gives him more glory.

That allows Mary to boast in Jesus. She is bowing down now. Well, I guess she doesn't have her body yet, but she's in her spirit, worshiping Christ Jesus now saying, you did it all. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.

Sin has made a crimson stain and Jesus has washed it white as snow. My two words for the perpetual virginity of Mary are these two words. Ready? You write it down, make sure you get a pencil. Two words when people think about this doctrine that I have in response to the perpetual virginity of Mary.

These are my two words, two and only two words. Well, I guess I'll add some more words later, but these are the slogans. So two words, ready? Perpetual virginity of Mary. These are the two words. Poor Joseph.

Did you get that? Poor Joseph. If Mary was a perpetual virgin, Mary would be sinful because she would not be obeying the scripture and not being conjugally, intimately, involved with Joseph after Jesus's death.

That's a sin to do. Matthew 1 .25, the text says, Joseph knew her not until Mary had born a son and he called his name Jesus. That word until, even in the gospels, means that there's a point in time where something comes to an end and then something changes.

And so Mary was a virgin when they were betrothed, a virgin when they were married, a virgin when the Spirit of God conceived Jesus in her womb, a virgin when she bore Jesus, and then sometime later, maybe six weeks, eight weeks, depending on the cleansing and the ritual, I think it's eight weeks for, maybe no, it's shorter for a boy, and then when she had healed, obviously, after giving birth, then she was regularly and intimately involved sexually with Joseph.

And if she wasn't, it would be a sin according to 1 Corinthians 7. I think of Matthew 17, tell the vision to no one until, same Greek word in Matthew 1, the Son of Man is raised. Same word in Luke 24, and behold, I'm sending forth upon you that which is promised by my Father.

You therefore abide in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. There's a difference, there's a situation that changes, it does not remain the same. Luke 2 .6, Mary gave birth to her firstborn son.

Inference, there are other sons. Matter of fact, some Bible verses tell us the names of the brothers of Jesus. Matthew 13, is not this his mother, the woman called Mary, and his brothers Adalphoi, James and Joseph, and Simon and Jude, and his sisters Adalphi too?

Are they not all here with us? How about John 2, after this, he and his mother, his brothers, and his disciples went down to Capernaum and stayed there only a few days. John 7, so his brothers said to him, et cetera, for his brothers did not believe in him.

First Corinthians 9, do we have no right to take on a believing wife as do the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? First Corinthians 9, Galatians 1, but I did not see any other apostles, only James, the brother of the Lord.

And so what does the Roman Catholic Church do with all those verses? Well, here's what they do. They try to change the word brother into relative. They try to change the word brother into cousin. New Catholic Encyclopedia does though, admit that the Greek word Adalphoi, and Adalphi, brothers or sisters, have the meaning of full blood brother and sister in the Greek speaking world of the evangelist time, and would naturally be taken by his Greek reader in this sense, Volume 9, page 337.

Did you know that the Jewish historian Josephus even talked about Jesus's brother on Antiquities, Volume 20, page 200 to 201? He converted the council of judges and brought before it the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ, whose name was James.

That is very, very fascinating. That is fascinating that we have this woman named Mary who has been some kind of perpetual virgin, and that she is assumed up to heaven. Friends, if she was a perpetual virgin, she couldn't have had other children, and she wouldn't have had any relations at all to Joseph.

And so one of the reasons why Joseph married Mary is because he had a desire that God had given him to have sex in marriage, pure, holy, righteous sex in marriage. That's why men, for that reason and other reasons, have testosterone and have a sex drive.

And so then, can you imagine, even Joseph saying, you know, I'd love to have you forever, and we have a family together, et cetera, and then Mary saying, you know, I have to stay a perpetual virgin. Why does that have to happen?

Could it be that we look back into some of the pagan cults and the Queen of Mary and the Virgin and all the people that have to serve her? One of the things that people often say when they think of Mary is, you know, Jesus would never say no to his mother, and Jesus is the masculine, holy, Revelation chapter one, laser beam eyes and judgment, and so we need a softer side of God.

We need a softer side of God, and her name is Mary. Why is it that the Pope, the last Pope, Pope John, John Paul, why was he buried with the TT for Latin, always yours, always yours for Mary, put on his casket?

This is a religion that is ripe with the worship of Mary, and they have taken Mary of the Bible and turned her into something that's not true. So here's my question for my Catholic listeners. I was gonna say Catholic friends, but you'd probably say, if you're listening, you're not my friend, and again, I have relatives who are Catholics.

I had a dear grandmother who was Catholic, but sitting down, why is it that you can listen to all these things, even from the Catholic doctrine, and then look at the Bible? You should say to yourself, these two cannot mix, but because the Catholic Church, through Satan's work, has so blinded your eyes and so made you not see, you can't do it.

It's a perfect man-made religion because if you somehow walk away from the Catholic Church, it affects you socially, it affects you personally, it affects those in your mind who have died without the Jesus of the Bible, who have died underneath the Catholic Jesus, who just requires baptism and a few other sacraments and some other works, and you're good to go.

No, that's why it's so insidious. That's why I do so many shows on it, because people just wanna say, well, you know, we wanna be loving. Friends, I love you enough to tell you the truth. I hope you're super mad at me.

I hope you write an email to WV &E and say, quit with the Catholic bashing. Friends, I'm not bashing anybody. I haven't bashed anybody all day. If you show me where the cross-references are wrong and where I'm wrong, I would love to talk with you.

But if you just wanna fall behind the cowardly and lazy, oh, he's bashing, that's not going to get you anywhere. That's not going to get you anywhere when it comes to heaven or it's not going to get you anywhere in a debate class or in an argument.

That is passe, it is old, and frankly, I wish I had a dollar every time someone said, that's Catholic bashing, and then I could say to them, you've wrongly defined the term Catholic bashing. In nowhere does my statement of faith at the church say anything negative about Catholics, but Catholics have that in their doctrine.

Trent has lots of things about Protestants bashing us, and so I will gladly stand up for the Lord Jesus Christ and pure, sovereign grace, free, sovereign love, and say that if anyone comes along and gives another gospel, let them be anathema.

You must run from the Roman Catholic Church. Why would you stay in such a system that is transferring known criminal perverts and molesters to other places? Can people like that be forgiven? Obviously, but they're not to be transferred and put in other places of leadership to prey on other people.

There's a big problem, and I don't want any ill wished on any person, but I want that system, the Roman Catholic system, to fall, to tumble headlong, and it might as well start at the top, at the top of the list.

There's no holy father, there's no vicar. We have one father, we have one father, and I do pray that the Pope would become a Christian. I pray that those who are listening today who are Roman Catholics would realize this is all a deception, this is cut and paste, this is smoking mirrors.

There is no way you can line up the Bible and the Roman Catholic tradition. Why would you bank your entire soul on the traditions of men who are frail and fallible? I wouldn't do that. I trust in Jesus Christ alone, who says it is finished.

I don't have time to talk about purgatory today, but if you believe in purgatory, you believe Jesus is a liar, because Jesus said after the transaction was done on Calvary, it is finished. Payment is in full.

So what did Jesus mean by that, if there's purgatory? He didn't mean that at all, so you need the Roman Catholic switcheroo artist to tell you something differently. No, that's not true at all. In fact, the switcheroo artists aren't true.

Jesus was true when he said it is finished. Why don't you trust in that Jesus? Why don't you get so mad at me you open your Bible? I dare you to pick up your Bible and start reading the Gospels. Let's start with Mark and begin to read the Gospels and ask yourself the question, is this person wonderful and worthy of worship as the only God, the I am incarnate?

And if he is, you're not going to see any kind of vain traditions that you need. Jesus actually, in Mark chapter seven, will spank those who want to add something to his perfect, great work. And so as long as I'm alive, I'm going to tell people who are caught up in any false system, run, flee, repent.

There is free grace, sovereign grace. There is a man who died upon the cross for sinners like you to believe in the risen Savior freely, fully, with full forgiveness and confidence of assurance.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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