The gospel is in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not in the beattitudes.
And it is not in Mary , not in the Church of Rome, not in the papacy, not in the Canons of Trent, not in the mass, not in hail Mary nor in prayers to Mary, not in the priests, not in baptismal regeneration, not in prayers to the canonized saints, not in.................!
I like the Apostle Paul's definition of the Gospel as expressed in:
Romans 1:16, 17. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
The basis of that
power of God unto salvation is presented in the passage referenced earlier:
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
1. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2. By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4. And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
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The prophet Daniel, in the sixth century before the birth of Jesus Christ, foretold the establishment of the Roman Empire [the fourth beast of Daniel], the coming of the Kingdom of God during the time of that Empire, the Empire’s persecution of the Saints of God, and eventually God’s judgment on Rome [Daniel 7ff]. History confirms Daniel’s prophecy. The Roman Empire was judged. All that remains of the secular Roman Empire is Italy, a nation which has had no subsequent influence on the world scene other than that it is the home of the Papacy. Unfortunately, as Schaff in his
History of the Christian Church tells us [Volume 2, page 73]:
With Constantine, therefore, the last of the heathen, the first of the Christian, emperors, a new period begins. The church ascends the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the once despised, now honored and triumphant cross, and gives new vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome.
Schaff further writes [Volume 3, page 12]:
Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully developed by his successors, it animated the whole middle age, and is yet working under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian empire, the Roman church-state the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however, Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of heaven with the earthly interests of the state.
Although Schaff refers to Constantine as the first Christian Caesar it is not certain from a study of his life that he was a ‘true believer’. Constantine refused baptism until shortly before his death so that he might “secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins” [Schaff, Volume 3, page 11ff].
Jesus Christ, standing before Pilate, who represented the power of pagan Rome, declared, My kingdom is not of this world [John 18:36]. Yet with the fall of pagan Rome, as Schaff writes, the church ascends the throne of the Caesars. Thus a significant part of Christianity entered into an unholy alliance with the world contrary to the teaching of the Head of the Church. This alliance would in time lead to the establishment of Roman Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire, with its ‘dark ages’.
I wrote in an earlier post:
The Bishop of Rome is as close to being the Vicar of Jesus Christ as Judas Iscariot. Judas and his Jewish cohorts betrayed Jesus Christ to pagan Rome and the so-called Bishop of Rome has betrayed Jesus Christ because he has corrupted and blasphemed the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I stand by that statement!
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Like Fred Sanford, I couldn't find the glasses I needed to see which glasses I should use. 