Catholic Bible Prooftexts Overlooked by Evangelicals

Berserk,

Hello Berserk, A big problem you are going to encounter here, is many of us have been saved by God out of the false teaching RC. church. We know what they teach, and we know what the bible actually says.

All believers in the new testament are believer priests in Christ.
rev.1:
5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Not only that every true Christian is a saint.
1 cor1;
1 Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,

2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their's and our's:

All sin is against God primarily, but you can also confess to the person you have sinned against.

You are most likely a sincere person, and I would pray many RC. people have a simple God-given faith in Jesus, despite the false teaching of that church.
You were not saved by your baptism.
There is no such thing as Godparents.
Your confirmation was another man-made fleshly ritual...did you wear your white bucks?
Rosary beads, scapulas, holy water, all nonsense.
Praying to Mary is idolatry.
The perpetual virginity of Mary, a fairytale.
Mary confessed Jesus was her savior.
Praying to saints is a fairytale and idolatrous.
Popes have fathered illegitimate children....perverted sex with nuns and priests,

other than that, everything is just fine.

 

Ya know, if you're going to convince me, you're going to show the context of the passage. What you did here was ignore the context and create an interpretation from a sentence.
Let's just ignore the context and you tell me what the Bible is saying in this verse.

“I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”

Now, if I ignore the context, I could make up anything and perhaps teach that if we bow down and worship God, he will give us all we ask for. Of course, that would be an horrific teaching from the verse I quoted...from Matthew 4:9.

Now look at James 5:13-18 you can see that the context is about prayer, not about going to a confession booth at a church building and confessing to a catholic priest.

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

 

2 Corinthians 2

10To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ


John 20

23If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”


Self explanatory.

 

Is the Papacy the Antichrist?
The first written history suggests Arnulf, the archbishop of Reims in the 10th century identified the Papacy as the Antichrist. Later Joachim of Fiore in the 12th century preached the Papacy was the Antichrist. And the archbishop Eberhard II in 1240 also related the papacy to the Antichrist. This led to the martyrdom of many Albigenses, Anabaptists, and others who in part embraced his views. Synopsis of the End Times; A look at the popular beliefs of today by Mike Morrill.

Here’s an idea I find interesting. Augustine (354 - 430 AD) mentioned about who the coming Antichrist might be. Where Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:4;

“[Man of sin] Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in [Greek = as] the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) (KJV 1900)

Instead of the man of sin sitting in the temple of God, he would sit as the temple of God. Which of course is what the Papacy claims for itself. The Papacy claims to be the one true church. The Church = God’s temple in the NT.

Says Augustine; “Antichrist means not the prince himself alone, but his whole body, that is, the mass of men who adhere to him, along with him their prince; and they also think that we should render the Greek more exactly were we to read, not “in the temple of God,” but “for” or “as the temple of God,” as if he himself were the temple of God, the Church.1405” NPNF1-02. St. Augustine’s City of God and Christian Doctrine - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

All of the Reformers believed the Papacy is the Antichrist of Scripture. Following is a list of Reformation-era creeds and others who provide evidence of this.

“The Antichrist and the Reformation”
During the time of the Reformation and following, Christians in every English-Baptist, Lutheran or Protestant and Reformed Church, believed the Papacy was the Antichrist. This fact remains embedded in the books and creeds of Christendom to this day. Several examples follow;


From The Westminster Confession which also with some adjustments became the 1st and 2nd London Baptist Confessions.

Chapter XXV

Of the Church
VI. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof. but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.

And from the preface to the Canons of Dort;

For this Church being by God’s mighty hand set free from the tyranny of the Romish Antichrist, & from the fearful idolatry of Popery.....

Martin Luther declared, “We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist.” (Aug. 18, 1520). According to The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, by LeRoy Froom. Vol. 2., pg. 121.

I shall briefly show that (Paul’s words in II Thess. 2) are not capable of any other interpretation than that which applies them to the Papacy.” According to Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin.

John Knox concluded that the Papacy was “the very antichrist, and son of perdition, of whom Paul speaks.” The Zurich Letters, by John Knox, pg. 199.

“Whereof it followeth Rome to be the seat of antichrist, and the pope to be very antichrist himself. I could prove the same by many other scriptures, old writers, and strong reasons.” (Referring to prophecies in Revelation and Daniel.)

Works by Cranmer, Vol. 1, pp. 6-7.

“the pretended Vicar of Christ on earth, who sits as God over the Temple of God, exalting himself not only above all that is called God, but over the souls and consciences of all his vassals, yea over the Spirit of Christ, over the Holy Spirit, yea, and God himself...speaking against the God of heaven, thinking to change times and laws; but he is the son of perdition (II Thess. 2).

Roger Williams (1603-1683) (First Baptist Pastor in America):” The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, by Froom, Vol. 3, pg. 52.

Cotton Mather (1663-1728) (Congregational Theologian): “The oracles of God foretold the rising of an Antichrist in the Christian Church: and in the Pope of Rome, all the characteristics of that Antichrist are so marvelously answered that if any who read the Scriptures do not see it, there is a marvelous blindness upon them.” According to The Fall of Babylon by Cotton Mather in Froom’s book, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 3, pg. 113.

John Wesley (1703-1791) (Methodist): Speaking of the Papacy, John Wesley wrote, “He is in an emphatical sense, the Man of Sin, as he increases all manner of sin above measure. And he is, too, properly styled the Son of Perdition, as he has caused the death of numberless multitudes, both of his opposers and followers... He it is...that exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped...claiming the highest power, and highest honour...claiming the prerogatives which belong to God alone.” Antichrist and His Ten Kingdoms, by John Wesley, pg. 110.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses: “Wycliffe, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer; in the seventeenth century, Bunyan, the translators of the King James Bible and the men who published the Westminster and Baptist confessions of Faith; Sir Isaac Newton, Wesley, Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards; and more recently Spurgeon, Bishop J.C. Ryle and Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones; these men among countless others, all saw the office of the Papacy as the antichrist.” According to All Roads Lead to Rome, by Michael de Semlyen. Dorchestor House Publications, p. 205. 1991.

 

The ONLY sins we confess to any besides God are those done against others personally, as we seek their forgiveness!

 

Was Martin Luther better off with God as he confessed sin after sin in the monastery so much that the priest kept telling him to stop coming back, or was Luther in a better state when he was freed from guilt via justification by faith alone?

 

If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”

Don't complain about that statement. Say what it means.