Religion – Going My Own Way & Not God’s

WOLFL-2024-17

Transcript

Okay, here we go, our oral quiz. What is chapter 16 about in Revelation? What did we just talk about for fifty minutes? The battle of what? Oh, now you’re getting it. So, on your test, you’re going to have Revelation 16, and on the right, you’re going to have Second Coming of Christ, Antichrist, Heaven, Millennium, and Armageddon. Which one do you think it is? Armageddon. So, five of you are going to get it right. And even our DR contingent got it. Let’s try the rest of it. What is Revelation 16 about? Say it real loud. It’s Armageddon. The answer is Armageddon. What is Revelation 16 about? Very good. What is chapter 17 about? Religion.

In fact, this, you talk about an unusual, let me read to you chapter 17. And now you see why unsaved people are afraid of the Bible. Imagine this is your first time, and you go like this. You’re in the hotel, and you get a Gideon Bible, and you open it like this, and say, I’m going to try out Christianity. And you start reading this. And it says, “And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked to me, saying, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot…” You go, har, harlot? “Who sits on many waters. With whom the kings of the Earth commit fornication. And the inhabitants of the world were drunk with the wine of her fornication.” And verse 3, “I saw the woman sitting on a scarlet beast and she was arrayed,” verse 4, “in purple, and she had a golden cup full of abomination and filthiness of her fornication, and on her forehead a name was written, mystery of Babylon, the great mother of the harlots.” And then it gets worse. If they are still reading their Gideon Bible, look at verse 8, or 6. “And I saw a woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”

Wouldn’t you put your Gideon Bible away and say, what on Earth, what is Christianity about? I’m reading the Bible and it’s about a woman in fancy clothes with this horrible name on her forehead that’s drunk and a harlot. That’s how God looks at religion.

By the way, in the ancient world, harlotry, prostitution, was something slaves did. And all of them had on their forehead, just like this woman, they had their name, and they were labeled so that you knew who you were paying for. And so, to the original readers of this, the first century people, they all had seen women with the name on their forehead, prowling the streets, and they knew right what they were. And do you understand this book so resonated with these people that got it. They understood that God considers religion to be as unacceptable to normal people that are His people as prostitution was to the common person back in the first century.

Okay, religion. What is religion? Isaiah 53 tells us that all of us were born like sheep. All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned everyone to our own way. Religion is going my own way, not God’s way. And it starts right back in the Garden of Eden with Cain and Abel. And we’re going to look at that. That Cain became the first convert to Satan, and Abel became the first martyr for God. And that’s the beginning of Satan’s war against God.

Where we are right now, we’re still in the Tribulation of God’s wrath. But we’re looking at Satan’s two deadliest agents.

Now, remember, we left off in chapter 16. Armageddon is the plain of Jezreel in Israel. It’s, Mount Carmel’s here and the Hill of Megiddo is there, and the Jezreel Valley is going down toward Beit She’an, if you know Bible geography. And it’s shaped like a diamond, and it’s this triangle. And that is called Har Megiddo. The Hill of Megiddo is over here. And the plain in front of it, the plain of Jezreel, is where Armageddon, where all the soldiers are staging. So, we’re on Earth. Chapter 17, we’re back up, getting the Heavenly look over the edge, and God has John look over the edge and He shows him in chapter 17, Satan, the god of this world, has deployed two lethal viruses. That he’s been infecting all of humanity with since the dawn of human race.

Chapter 17 is religion. Satan has promoted people trying to achieve God’s favor by their own personal human achievements. That’s what religion is. Talk to anybody. Wait until your next time witnessing. If you talk to about three or four people, one of them will say to you I hope that my good outweighs my bad. That is like 80% of the people I talk to. The other 20% don’t think they’ve done anything bad, and they don’t need to outweigh it. They’re blasted by sin and desensitized. But the rest of them, they still have a conscience. Conscience? Did you know what your conscience is? It’s God’s ally He’s built into every human being. It’s God’s ally that’s inside of every human saying, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. I’m not sure I would do that. It doesn’t, I don’t, that doesn’t look right. That conscience. It’s a part of the, what, the image of God that God has put into everybody is their conscience. You know what most people do? Paul put it this way. In Romans chapter 1 he said, every human being is born with two candles in their hands. Did you know Paul said that, in Romans chapter 1? The first candle is Creation. And if you hold up that candle, you’ll see there’s a Creator out there, and you’ll say, wow, I want to know You, Creator. The other candle is conscience, that I just talked about. And that conscience is saying, you are doing things that aren’t right, you’re going to get in trouble. And you know what people do? They believe in evolution and say, [pfft], no Creator. They blow that candle out. And then they live to the hilt, like our power walker friend, and try and blow [pfft] that candle out, the conscience one. And then they go through life desensitized. Do you know if you sin too much? Do you know what happens?

Let’s see. I’ll take thirty seconds to tell you. I had a dear friend in school that invited me to go to his house. And he was in Texas, so I drove to Texas. His family raised cows. His mother took me on a jeep to, in their ranch, to their Black Angus cows. And his mother, a Texan, wore a big hat. Women used to wear these beautiful hats, with all kinds of stuff. And it was held on her head by hat pins. Hat pins are about as long as my finger. They have a pearl thing on them, and you stick them in, to your hat and your hair somehow. It holds your hat on. And she jumped off her jeep in her Texan outfit. And said, you’re going to be a minister, aren’t you? I said, yeah. She said, my son told me you’re going to be a minister. She said, I’m going to give you an illustration you’ll never forget. I never have. She pulled her hat pin this long, out of her hat, walked up to a fourteen hundred pound black, gigantic, its shoulder was, I was looking at its shoulder, standing there, and it was as heavy as a car. She pulls out her hat pin, walks up to the triple bar brand in the side of that cow. She said, watch. And she jammed that hat pin right into the side of that cow. In the brand. And it was going, chewing its cud. It didn’t stop. Why? It didn’t feel it. Where they brand, as a little calf, they put that red-hot-out-of-the-fire brand, pull it from the fire, and [pfft] burn it right into that cow.

It has killed all of the nerves, and they don’t come back. It’s just, it’s a dead zone. And she looked at me and pulled her hat pin out of that monster cow. She said, that’s what sin will do to you. Wow! She should have been a youth pastor. She should have brought all the kids down there to the ranch. Because that’s what sin does. It desensitizes you until you don’t feel it. And you can just chew your cud through life and push off the conviction.

Religion has to come into that, because how do you get to God then if you’ve got all this baggage? And Satan’s lie, his first virus is, just make your own way. And this is what we’re seeing on the college campuses all across America. Next hour we’re going to look at materialism. Which is really a temptation for everybody. Religion is, and so is materialism. Materialism is living and believing that my purpose in life is about how much I can enjoy it, how much I can own, how much power and glory, rather than actively serving God. And we’ll come to that in just a minute.

So, let’s talk about Satan’s plan. Chapter 17 has three parts. So, to sort out all this stuff that we’re looking at, this drunken woman. I read the first 6 verses. That’s exposing Satan’s plan.

And here it is. Lost humanity wants to have a God that fits them. They don’t want that God out there that’s too hard. They want one kind of a custom-made God. So, every culture invents its own form of Cain. What did Cain do? Cain knew what God wanted. Abel knew what God wanted. Cain knew what God wanted. And he saw Abel doing what God wanted, killing an innocent animal, offering it as a sacrifice. And Cain said, I don’t like that. I don’t want to kill one of my animals. I don’t want to get blood on me. I don’t like that. I’m going to bring a pumpkin. Or a cucumber. Or an apple. I don’t know what he brought. He brought something he grew. Emphasis, he grew. So, he gave his best. I bet he gave a beautiful apple. Can you imagine how big apples would have been back in the Garden of Eden? Or his biggest peach. I don’t know what he gave. But he gave something. So, God is exposing these false religions based on some form of works or human achievement in the form of a prostitute, a woman drunk. And chapter 17 is God destroying it.

If you go back to Genesis, now I know Mark Strout teaches Genesis, Genesis is Satan giving his battle plan. Right off. And what he says in chapter 3 is, I want you, Eve, to abandon God’s way. I want you to doubt God’s Word. In his first question to Eve, in the form of a serpent, that was standing up and talking and was beautiful. Serpents were, before the Fall, beautiful. And when you see what Satan looked like before he became, when he was Lucifer, he, Isaiah, remember? In your chart? Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 tells the story of Satan before his fall when he’s Lucifer. He’s so beautiful that Eve is captivated and talks to him, and he says, did God really say? question to her. That was to make her doubt God’s Word. Then he said, and this one gets people all the time, did God really say you shouldn’t have sex before you’re married? What about half sex? How about partial sex? How about one sex? How about, whatever. See, Satan is saying, is God really good if He’s trying to keep you from what you really want? Yes, He is. The worst thing God can do is let us have what we really want. So, Satan’s tempting Eve with God’s Word, doubt it, doubt God’s goodness, that He doesn’t know what He’s doing with all of His rules. Doubt, and what were God’s rules? One treat, stay away from. Isn’t that what kids do? When my mom would say, you can have anything you want in the house, I made that for your father, that pie. Don’t touch it. What did I want to do? Touch the pie, of course. We always want to do what we’re told not to. Doubt God’s authority. You shall not surely die.

See, this is what Roman Catholicism has made into the horrible religion of Romanism. The Catholics say that’s not true. Sin will not kill you. They’ve divided sins into two types, venial and mortal. Venial is everybody’s sins. Mortal sins are really big ones. Like murdering, choking someone to death on the spot or stabbing them. That’s a mortal sin. But all the venial ones won’t kill you. That’s Satan’s lie. Doubt God’s authority.

You know what God says? The worst sin is any sin you commit, and you only need to commit one sin and you’re going to pay for that forever. Doubt God’s Word, doubt His goodness, doubt His authority, doubt God’s plan. What God said is, obey Me. Satan says, no, God knows if you go to that tree, you, your eyes will be opened. And that’s Eastern religions. That is, this opening, you’re going to see things more, and use the drugs and come out, and experience stuff you don’t know. But what’s Satan’s next? Once he gets you to abandon God’s way, His Word, His goodness, His authority, and His plan. Then make your own way, and that’s what chapter 4 verse 3, Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground, his way.

That is why Satan’s first convert was Cain. The Word of God says in 1 John 3:12, don’t be like Cain. Now look at God’s description of Cain, who was of the wicked one. Who murdered his brother. And why did Cain murder Abel? Because his works, Cain’s works were evil, and his brothers’ righteous.

Satan’s church began officially at the Tower of Babel. You’ve covered this with Mark too. All the people say, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the Heavens. Up there where God is. He’s away from us. We’re going to go to Him. We’re going to find our own way to Heaven. It’s amazing. And let us make a name for ourselves, unless we be scattered abroad.

So, basically, Revelation 17 is warning us about this final religion. Now you’ve covered Galatians already. Look what Paul’s warning is. If we or an angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel, what is the Gospel? Christ died for our sins, according to the Scripture, all three parts, that’s very important. Christ died. Why did He die? As a substitute for our sins. How did He die? He wasn’t strangled or electrocuted, He didn’t get lethal injection. He died, according to Scriptures, as that substitute as the sacrificial system pointed to. So, make sure you have the Gospel. Then He was buried and then He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. If you hear a Gospel other than that, or you preach it, let him be accursed. Verse 9, as we said before we say again if anyone preaches any other Gospel to you then what you’ve received let him be accursed. Yet, we’re living in a time where it’s like anybody can make up anything about God they want.

Now, this is interesting. This is a book. This is on Amazon. You can get it for, I don’t know, $11. This is an amazing historic summary of what I told you about. Archaeologists have found there’s a universality of all religions in the world, whether it’s the Mayan or the Aztec or the Polynesian, or the Indus Valley people, or the central steppes of Asia, or over there in Mesoamerica. It doesn’t matter, or all the European, the Norse gods and everything. There’s something they all have in common. And he spent his life, this guy, Alexander Hislop is his name. And what he talks about is, how today, the Roman Catholic Church is trying to unite all the religions of the world. And he wrote a book about it, and it’s very interesting.

Where we pick up with the book is in the Old Testament. Look at Jeremiah 44. I just picked a little bit out for you to see this Queen of Heaven, Semiramis and her son Tammuz, which you all have heard of. If you’ve ever been around Catholicism, you’ve heard of Lent, right? Lent the 40 days before Easter. That whole thing, and Easter ends it, and all that. Lent and Romanism comes from the Old Testament. We will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth. See, they invented it themselves. To burn incense to the Queen of Heaven. What is one of Mary’s names? That our current Pope, from Argentina, what does he call her? The Queen of Heaven. It’s very interesting. He didn’t think of that. That was brought to Rome before Romanism started by Julius Caesar, who went to the temple of Semiramis and imported all the stuff that you see in Roman Catholicism. Julius Caesar brought from Pergamum the seed of Satan, but you can read all that if you want to read it. If you like history, it’s in that book. Continues verse 18, since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven, and the women said that. Then verse 25, we’re going to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven. We’re going to pour out drink offerings to her. And we’re going to keep our vows to her.

Now, here’s a quick overview of history. This is chapter 17. At the Tower of Babel, the religion Satan started had two parts. It had on the left, Ishtar. On the left, Semiramis at the top. That was the mother. And she had a son named Tammuz. Boy, it’s an interesting story. Semiramis’ son Tammuz was a mighty hunter, and he was out hunting wild boars with his bow and arrow. And he shot a boar, but it didn’t kill it. And so, the boar turned around and gored him. And the other boars came, and they tore him up and dismembered him. And he was laying on the ground, and Tammuz’s mother, Semiramis, found him, put him in a basket, put the basket on the shore of the river, and prayed for 40 days, and after 40 days, he rose out of the basket. Mythology? But you catch a mother with her son, her little son, mourns for 40 days and at the end of 40 days he rises from the dead. That went into all religions. Semiramis is called Ishtar in Aramean Syrian, that culture. Her son is still called Tammuz. But now, oh, you’ve all heard this in Phoenicia around Israel, the mother is called Astarte or Ashtaroth. Now you’ve heard that name. That’s all the way through the Old Testament. Her son is called Ba al, or we just say Baal. But in Hebrew it’s Ba al. They have short letters in Egypt, the same story, the 40 days, the resurrection thing. Isis’ mom. Osiris is the sun. The Greeks pick him up and it’s Aphrodite. You’ve all heard of Aphrodite the goddess of love. Or Venus, that’s what the Romans call her. Eros, erotic. You’ve heard, that’s the little male god. The son of Aphrodite. Or Cupid. Oh, now we’re in Valentine’s Day. Have you ever seen Cupid? He’s a little fat, naked boy with a bow and arrow that’s associated somehow with chocolate, in February. But that’s who he is. He is the son of Semiramis. So, mystery religion is what historically started at the tower of Babel when they were building their tower to God. And they had these stories and Semiramis happens to be Nimrod, the guy you read about Genesis 10’s wife. So, it’s amazing.

So, Satan’s religion, the great harlot that sits on many waters, verses, the true bride of Christ. How did Paul describe us? 2 Corinthians 11:2. I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste version to Christ. All of us are engaged. Have you ever thought of that? Do you know anybody that’s engaged? Do you keep your eye on them? They act different when they’re engaged. The men act nervous, and they sweat, and I’ve done hundreds of funerals… I’ve done hundreds of funerals, but I’ve done hundreds of weddings too. You know how many pass out? The guys lock their knees and they’re, and they’re just, they don’t breathe, and they see her coming and they, I’ve had to catch them. And you slowly allow them, you don’t stop the ceremony, because everybody, you only have the hour, so you just get them down and they sit, and they lean against you, and about three minutes later they’re all embarrassed, or they throw up. Oh, I’ve had everything happen at weddings, but let’s go back to the engaged. You meet a couple that’s engaged, if they’re really in love, it’s unbelievable. It’s like magnetism. They watch each other, if they’re apart, they’re on the phone, or they’re on whatever, and they can’t wait to see them. Paul says, hey, you see anybody that’s betrothed to someone else, you see that behavior, that’s what you’re supposed to be to Christ. You’re not supposed to be dating anybody else. How would you like to have someone that’s engaged here at Word of Life, and the one they’re engaged to, is up at Schroon Lake. And that fella down here that has the girlfriend up there at Schroon Lake is asking every one of you girls out here. And you look at him and say, aren’t you engaged to, you know, in Schroon Lake? Oh yeah, but I’m not in Schroon Lake. I’m here. What would you do? I wouldn’t go out with him, number one, and I’d tell Susie and Schroon Lake about his behavior because he should not be, he’s betrothed, he’s promised. That’s how Paul says Satan wants to get us out of our betrothal with Christ. He wants to distract us and be intoxicated with Satan’s plan. By the way, he doesn’t usually get us with the religion part, but he does get the materialism. And those we’re going to see next hour. Most Christians don’t succumb to the false religion. They succumb to the materialism side. And they go Satan’s way instead of God’s because they like pleasure and power and possessions.

Okay, who is the woman in verse 1? She’s the great harlot. The harlot, theologians say this, the yellow is what you could read in a theological book. The harlot is the apostate church of human religion. And then I add, I personally believe the Tribulation’s apostate church will be a form of the Roman Catholic Church merged together with all other world religions.

Now look, here’s a bumper sticker. I took a picture of a bumper sticker. This is what I see in Revelation 17. You’ve seen it, the Coexist one. Islam, Buddhism, Scientology, that’s Tom Cruise and that group. Judaism, Paganism, that’s the, the whole, going back to the Pagan things. Wiccan stuff, and then there’s Christianity, that’s the Coexist. Remember, Satan’s Genesis 3 goal is to get us to abandon God’s way and then make our own way to God. That’s what and look at what we have. We have Charles Taz Russell that started the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We have Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that started, the whole Mormon thing. Then we have Mary Baker Glover Patterson Frye Eddy, who starts, the Christian Science thing. And then we have Ellen G. White with Seven Day Adventist. We have all these other religions and a lot more.

But look what the Roman Catholic Church has done. Bonnie and I were teaching last year. I teach Paul’s epistles to European Bible Institutes. And I have a best time. And when I’m in Italy, I take them on field trips. And I have a great time. So, I took them to Assisi. That’s a beautiful town in Italy, north of Rome. It’s on the left you can hardly, that’s me taking a picture with my iPhone of the, that peace bell, there’s a little plaque, and I took a phone, you can’t read it, but basically, what it has is, the four world religions are represented the, on the left, the little round thing, the top one there, is the Dalai Lama symbol for Buddhists. Then the cross below that is Christianity. The crescent moon is Islam. And the Star of David is the Star of David. So, those four religions were invited by the Pope. The Dalai Lama of the Grand Mufti of Cairo, the Pope was there, and they brought Rabbi, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger of, I don’t know, from Jerusalem. It’s on the plaque. Those four came together. And they said, we’ve found commonality, that there is a part that we all agree with. Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, and Christianity.

And so, they started the Peace Park. Now the Pope has actively, since the 50’s, been building this Peace Park. And what he got is, every time a world leader of a world religion would come up and meet with him in Assisi, they left one of these monuments. Here, I’ll walk down, I actually took my cell phone and took a picture. He got the Shinto people then he got the next one that next one. You see the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim? He got the Jews to come. Then that wing thing are the Greeks and the Greek mythology. And there’s Catholicism. There’s this, oh, that one there, the thing is the Egyptian. That’s the people that are Zoroastrian. There’s the Pope. Oh, there’s the yin and yang thing that, that has to do with Eastern religions. Oh, that big nose, that’s from Easter Island and all the Polynesian religions. And if you keep, I ran out of film on my, I took so many pictures of this. This is not hidden. This is the goal of Roman Catholicism. To bring all peoples into one worship.

Do you know what they all have in common? Islam has no problem with Mary. They have a problem with saying Jesus Christ is the Son of God and rose from the dead. But they have no problem with Mary. No religion seems to have any problem with Mary. What’s the common strand of all of Satan’s religion? It’s a mother/son religion. What’s the first thing you see when you walk into the Vatican? It’s right there. You walk through the big doors of the Vatican, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. Right there. The first visit. Everybody’s around it taking pictures. It’s called the Pietà. It’s a gigantic Mary that’s thirty feet high, and she’s cradling Jesus in her arms. The mother, son. Semiramis, Tammuz. Mary, baby Jesus. It’s in every religion of the world. Whether it’s in Mexico, the heights of the Andes, old Babylonian stuff they’re digging up. All religions in the world have the little piece of this mother/son.

So, do you see if Ezekiel 38 and 39 happens anytime soon, and Islam is no longer to be reckoned with, or Russia like they were, the Antichrist says hey, let’s have time out. Why don’t we do this? We’re going to leave the number two most holy site for Islam alone We’re going to leave number three alone, and we’re going to slide in some Christian things, or maybe other religion, maybe put in a Buddhist thing or something. And we’re going to let the Jews put up their long-awaited temple. Do you see how it would work? And do you see how Roman Catholicism would fit in there?

Here’s Newsweek magazine, which is not particularly Christian. Mosque, synagogue, and church all being built together in Abu Dhabi. This has already started. You ever heard of the Abraham Accords? that were started years back trying to bring peace to the Middle East. This is part of it, to unite the monotheistic religions. And so, we’ll put a Jewish thing, we’ll put a Christian thing, we’ll put an Islamic thing, and we’ll leave it alone.

So, that is the first part of Revelation 17, exposing Satan’s plan.The second part, look what it says in verse 7. After John is aghast seeing this prostitute that’s drunk with blood, the angel said to me, why do you marvel? Verse 7, I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her. Ah, religion has always been carried by Satan. Satan enslaves the world, either with religion… How did we get the pyramids built? That was religion. How do we get all the incredible, their LiDAR, LiDAR that they use with drones to map jungles, they’re finding, right now, across Central America, there weren’t thousands of people building pyramids. There were millions of people building pyramids. The most recent LiDAR explanation that they found, there is superhighways that are leading between all these developments, where millions of people lived. How did they build those superhighways and pyramids? It was religion. And what we see is religion has harnessed some of the greatest building projects ever seen in the world.

Yes, ma’am. Did you all hear that? Roman, what she said, what I would say she said is, Roman Catholicism is 98% Orthodox Christianity. 98%. You can’t even say that for some Christian churches. Roman Catholicism knows Bible doctrine like you wouldn’t believe. If you study systematic theology, and, that is a very good question, by the way. If you study systematic theology, a true study of systematic theology is not what you believe but finding what you believe surrounded by what everybody else teaches in Christendom. Personally, when I teach theology, I use, the person I use, I guess I say it on YouTube so I can say it out loud here, I use Wayne Grudem. Now, he is hyper-reformed. He’s a six-point Calvinist, okay? Not five, six. What I mean by that is he’s really Calvinistic. But what he does in his Systematic Theology I love. He puts down what he believes, then he sets next to it what the Roman Catholics believe. And they’re historic. We have Roman Catholic theologians going all the way back sixteen, seventeen hundred years. Then he puts down what the Calvinists believe, he calls it the reformed or covenant view. Then he puts down what the Lutherans believe because they shifted a little bit from Catholicism. Then he puts down what the Wesleyans believe, that’s what you would call Arminianism and that would be what, Charles and John Wesley believe. Then he puts down what the Baptists believe. Almost like a subset. Then next to them he puts what he calls, the Renewal. That’s the charismatics. All forms of charismatics. In one systematic theology. And then he concludes it with a verse and a devotional prayer and a hymn. On every systematic theological doctrine. I’ve never seen anybody do that before.

Why I say that is, Roman Catholicism is so orthodox. What they’ve done is they’ve added this works thing, and in just a minute I’m going to show you what they added, the sacraments. You all heard of the sacraments? How many of them are there? Seven sacraments. And what they start with is Satan’s lie. And see, it’s interesting, the 2% that’s wrong is the start of Romanism. By the way, when I’m on an airplane, you know what I say to the person sitting next to me? I’m reading my Bible, and they go, what do you do? And I say, I’m I teach ancient literature. And they go, What’s that? I said, I teach the primary documents of the Christian faith. Now they’re really interested. They go, what is that? And I say, I teach the Bible. Oh! You know what they say next? I have a question. But then they’ll back up and they’ll say, I’m a Roman Catholic, and I smile at them. I do this all the time. I say, I’m Catholic. I’m just not a Roman Catholic. Now you’ve got them hook, line, and sinker. You teach the Bible. You’re Catholic, but not Roman Catholic? They have a million questions for me. I am Catholic. I believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus started His church, built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. I’m not Roman Catholic.

As you’ll see, if I ever stop diverging, that Romanism entered Christianity in the 4th century. That’s when what Julius Caesar brought in the Roman temples was merged when Constantine legalized Christianity. The Roman church owned all the temples. The Christians were winning. There were more Christians than there were pagans. So, Constantine said, if you can’t beat them, what’s the saying? Join them. And he did. He said, we’ll pay all of you Christians that are leaders to lead your churches, and we’ll keep all the pagan temples. And why don’t you guys just work this out? And all of a sudden, the churches that read Scripture and prayed and were just like in normal churches today, maybe more like a brethren church, that it’s real Bible centered and not a lot of activities, that’s what the early church was like; merged with candles, beads, robes, headdresses, pontifex maximuses, that’s what they called the Pope, Pontifex Maximus. That’s his name. If you’ve ever read, if you know anything about Roman Catholicism, he is the Pontifex Maximus. He’s the chief bridge builder to God. And he is the vicar of the church, and he is the, all these things. Where are all those titles from? They come from Roman temples. That Julius Caesar, when he was starting the empire, he imported every ancient, pagan religion, and brought them to Rome, and put temples up. They were all there. And Constantine said, you guys can have all that. And the popes originally were pastors in Rome. And they were good ones. Very orthodox. But Gregory the Great took upon himself to be the first Pontifus Maximus and said he would be the monarchical episcopate. Mono means one, arché means to rule, episcopate is ruler. He was the pope, and that’s Gregory, and he instituted all the stuff. Roman Catholicism is two parts. Christianity from the Bible, that’s the Catholic, the holy Catholic faith that used to be called. Plus, Romanism, which is all this, what the beast that’s coming.

So, you ask, don’t they know this? If they’re born again, they do. And there are some born again ones that are Roman Catholics and Roman Catholic priests I’ve even met. Roman Catholic priests. I used to deliver Bibles in Poland to the largest Mary shrine in the world. It’s in outside of Kraków, where the John Paul II lived. Do you know what that born again Roman Catholic priest did? He risked going to prison and being beaten by the Polish authorities to receive from us ten to twenty thousand Gospel of John’s, with a track in it, in every language of the world. Because people came, even in communist times, to the shrine of Mary and would crawl up there and bow down and do all that. And he was the priest that guarded it. And he stood next to each one of them that came all day long, crawling up to Mary and bowing down, and he’d keep following them, and he had in his robe a Gospel of John. In fact, he had several. He’d stand there and he says, do you feel like you’ve gotten closer to the Lord, and they’d be crying and everything, and they’d say, yeah, he says have you ever read the Bible? And they’d go, no. And he’d hand them a Gospel of John and say, this is how I came to know Jesus personally. That’s all he did. Ten thousand a year. He knew the Lord, and he was in the system, and he was using it. Do I recommend that? No. What he should have done is said it’s all wrong, but that’s how I am, and he is different.

What I’m saying is, some Roman Catholics know it’s wrong. Most of them don’t. Why? Because they’re deceived. What does it say in Ephesians? The God of this world has blinded their minds, and they really think that they’re earning their way to Heaven through all the seven sacraments, and they are so earnest. Have you ever seen a lifelong Italian, Roman Catholic woman? She is so devout, and so focused, and so sweet, and goes to Mass twice a day, she is trying her hardest, what? To do enough good to get to Heaven. That’s Satan’s biggest lie. That’s why Satan is called an angel of light. He works in the realm of religion.

There are devote Taoist, and Buddhist, and Shintoist, and Muslims, and Mormons. Devout, and they’re knocking on every door that Jehovah’s Witness is hoping to get to Heaven, and the others are in the liberal Christian churches, and they’re starting every soup kitchen hoping to get to Heaven, and others are doing whatever. In Paul’s day, they were giving their bodies to be burned. Thought, thought they could help somehow. That’s religion. That’s Satan’s thing.

But, to answer your question, how did it get into Roman Catholicism, Constantine brought it. Do you all know Constantine? Constantine’s from Upper Northern England, York. He lived there. His father was the general, the Roman general, of one of the most winning armies in the Roman Empire, in the 4th century, the 300’s. He was up in Northern England fighting, and the Pope died. The Pope, the Roman emperor died. And so, the council in Rome called to Northern England and asked Constantine’s dad to become the next emperor. He was such a good general. He started making his way with his wife, Helena, to Rome to become the Roman Emperor, and he dies. The council was aghast, what do we do? And everybody wanted to be the emperor. And they all started fighting, so Constantine’s dad died, so Constantine the son tells everybody, the army loved him, because father/son, he was part of the same army. He said, I’ll go in my dad’s place. And he brought his army down from England. Across Europe, to Rome, and he met the other rivals. This is history, it’s fascinating. At the Milvian Bridge, it’s called. And Maxentius was on one side, Constantine was on the other. The night before, they were going to meet and fight it out, the legions. Constantine was in his tent, sleeping away on his cot, and he had a dream. And he saw a light in Heaven, and a voice said to him, his dreams were in Latin, in hoc signo vinces, four words in Latin, in this sign conquer. And he looked in his dream, and he saw a shield, a Roman shield, with a red line painted on it, and a red line painted that way, a cross. He woke up in the middle of the night, said, everybody, get your shields out! He put a red cross on every shield. They marched up the Milvian Bridge. The Roman legions coming against him. They fell off the bridge and they drowned in the river. And he won the battle. He became the emperor. And he got so excited. He felt that was a connection to Christianity. His mother, Helena, the widow, came with him. And she said, it is Christianity. She was a Christian, a Byzantine Christian. And he said, I will give, what he called in Latin, Religio licita. The legalization of religion. In other words, Christianity became legal.

And I’m used to having, at all the other Bible Institutes I have a screen right here I can point to and it’s, or it’s over there, I’ll point here. Here’s Judaism, there’s Jesus, here is the one holy Catholic Apostolic church that Jesus started, that immediately started branching off into Arminianism and Coptic and Eastern Orthodox and Greek and Russian. Then there were the radical reformers, the Hutterites, the Mennonites, the Brethren. Through the Lutheran come the Pietists, the Moravians, the Covenant, the Free, the Baptist General Conference. Then we have the Reformation. And look, the Roman Catholic Church splits. Roman Catholicism in England becomes the Anglican Church. The Anglican Church of England is just the Roman Catholic Church in England, okay? Same thing. And then they become the Methodists, the Episcopalians. So, the Anglicans in America are Episcopalians. The Methodists are Anglicans through the Wesley’s. From them come the Assemblies of God, the Holiness Church. Through the Reformation we got the Quakers, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Universalists, the Unitarians, the Presbyterians and the Christian Reformed. It’s all from the same thing. The same book, the Bible, and they all have varying degrees.

In fact, you could put all of church history over the Bible. They’re just five stages of church history. The early church. Now notice, the square is the Bible, right there. So, it’s Biblical. The early church was mostly Biblical, but they had some problems. And Paul was always addressing them, John was addressing them, Peter was addressing them. But their first biggest problem was called, Baptismal Regeneration. And people were Jewish, and they knew about circumcision, and circumcision was a sign of the covenant, so they thought, Baptism is like circumcision. Just like in the Old Testament, God wanted you to be circumcised to make you in the covenant. We want to baptize people to get them in. And so, people started thinking, if I’m baptized, I’m going to Heaven. I’m in. That was a very bad error of the early church.

Then we go through all that persecution. Then we got to the Roman Catholic time. Now we’re in the 4th century. Now look, it’s changed a little bit. We’ve got a lot of Romanism is in the Bible, but we’ve got this whole overlay of works, and beads, and candles, and outfits, and popes, and bishops, and monks, and all this stuff. But the worst part is the works religion.

By the way, you notice in my Bible here, it’s God’s Word, the Bible. And you’ll find all the Armenian Wesleyan verses are in there. And you’ll find all the Augustinian Calvinistic verses are in there. And the Bible is much like a deck of cards. That you can deal it into piles. And that’s what theologians do. They deal off, and if they’re primarily, reformed, they really deal them on that pile. And these they put over there and they don’t deal with those. They just put them on a pile. And if they’re Wesleyan or Arminian, they really deal those on the pile, and they put all those hard to understand, Calvinistic ones over here. And that’s what the controversy has been. So, we go from the Roman Catholic Church, they get worse and worse away from the Lord. We get to the Reformation Church of, all the great reformers, Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and all those people. Now look what we have. We have, you notice above the box, Roman Catholicism is works.

What’s the problem of Reformation theology? It’s called drift. Now watch, I’ll do, when I taught systematic theology, I used to love to do this. This is the Bible. These are conclusions from the Bible. So, we’ve got all these verses, and we make conclusions. Those are called doctrines. Bible conclusions. This is theological drift. I have all of these doctrines. I go over here, and I find this doctrine, and this doctrine, and I make a conclusion. What have I just done? You can’t see it, but here’s the Bible. Every doctrine is tied to the Bible. But when you’re a doctrine in the Bible, and you tie to something, see, all these doctrines become doctrines that are no longer tied to the Bible. Let’s go back to Wayne Grudem. I always point this out. I say, whenever he gets into some parts of theology, you can go six to eight pages and not find a single verse. Why? Because everything he’s saying in Reformed Theology is logically true. It’s a conclusion of a conclusion. But it’s not tied to the Bible. So, what I say is, it’s logical, but it’s not Biblical. And that’s where you get to the five points of Calvinism. But I’m not teaching theology.

Then we got to the Evangelical Church. And what did they add that was a problem? Tradition! They started saying, hey, if you walk down the aisle, you’re a Christian. If you pray this prayer after me, you’re a Christian. Just like the Reformation Church made all these conclusions from conclusions, and just like the Roman Church added beads and candles and penance and oil and all the stuff they had, the Evangelical Church, of course, added their traditions. And then we’ve got the Renewal Charismatic people. And they’ve got all this, people, spirit slaying me, and God told me. And now you don’t know what’s the Bible and what God told you. And did what God tell you, is it equal with the Bible? And you have all these signs and wonders. That’s just Satan’s method, the Catholic part.

Let’s finish chapter 17, because we only have two minutes. And the ten horns and the beast and those that hated the harlot made her desolate, made her naked. What this is saying is, Satan has always used religion. And now he’s going to get rid of religion and he’s going to become the religion. So, it’s going to be unvarnished occultic worship.

What is the Gospel religion and merit in Romanism? You’re born a sinner, baptism washes away all your sin, you start at zero. You do venial sins. If you confess, do penance, do merits and good works, those go away. But if you do a mortal sin, you’re back down to where you were at birth. You’re a sinner, and you’re really in trouble. At death, only saints go to Heaven. Now there’s the doctrine that’s true in Roman Catholicism. That is true. But who is a saint? There are only a hundred or two hundred. I don’t know how many they have. But after they die, the church declares they’re a saint. They are a saint because they were good enough to go straight to Heaven. And most of them have so much extra good left over, the church can use it. That’s what the Roman Catholic Church does. It’s called the Treasury of Merit. And they hold all of Mary’s goodness, and Paul’s, and everybody’s. And what you do is, at death, the saints, the few of them go to Heaven, the rest of them go to purgatory. Where’d they get purgatory? It’s not in the Bible. It’s in 2 Maccabees.

And basically, to show you how relevant this is, on May 17th, the current pope declared, this is him. He’s called it the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. He will give plenary indulgence to everybody that will come to church between May 17th and July 16th. And it will wipe away all of your venial sins. All of them. That’s Satan’s religion.