 
The ABCs of Christianity

Published by Bill Etem at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Bill Etem

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The ABCs of Christianity

As I stated on my Smashwords bio page, you don't want to commit sacrilege with the cross and the crucifix. My books push the doctrine that while Christianity is true, the cross and the crucifix are evil symbols, and, since it is sacrilege to declare evil things to be sacred, therefore, it is sacrilege to say either the cross or the crucifix is sacred. The Book of Revelation is very clear in saying, in so many words at least, that the Antichrist and his followers will have an evil mark on their foreheads or right hands. You burn in hell forever if you have this evil mark on your forehead or right hand. So, if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand then you can't possibly be shipped off to eternal hellfire for the sin of having the mark of the beast on your forehead or right hand. Now some people might claim that God has spoken to them, and these people might say, that God says, that the cross is the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9, and they might say, that God says, everyone must have the mark of a cross on their foreheads, during the great tribulation, in order to escape the torments described in Revelation 9. We'll have to review Christianity and sort everything out.

Chapters 1 and 2 of my Constitutional History of the Western World run you through a brief history of the evils under the sign of the cross. That book gives evidence saying every church under the cross leads people to perdition because they all make a mockery of 1 Corinthians 11. 27-9.

A Christian is supposed to be able to guide people to heaven. A Christian is supposed to be the temple of God, 1 Cor 3. 16. A Christian is supposed to have the Divine Law inscribed on his heart, Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34. So, if a kid asks you, assuming you are a Christian, how he can attain heaven and escape hell, and if you're telling a kid the cross is sacred, but if it turns out the cross is evil, then you're leading the kid to hell by leading him into sacrilege. And if you lead a kid to hell then you will certainly go to hell.

On the other hand, suppose the cross is sacred to God. Suppose, furthermore, that someone, like the Pope or any number of Protestant clergymen, announce they have spoken to God, and suppose God actually says that you must put the mark of a cross on your forehead, to escape the torments described in Revelation 9. Then that's what you have to do to escape the torments.

But, on the other hand, suppose God didn't say any such thing, suppose the devil masquerading as God gave false info to some clergymen. Suppose the truth is the cross is evil, suppose one will burn in hell forever and ever if one puts the mark of a cross on his forehead...

Anyway, if a kid asks you how he / she can escape perdition and attain heaven, then you'll have to address the issue of the cross. Do you tell the kid to embrace the cross? Do you tell the kid to get rid of the cross?

If God says the cross is evil, but if you tell the kid that the cross is sacred, then you are leading the kid into sacrilege, you're leading yourself and the kid to perdition. Of course, if God says the cross is sacred, but if you say the cross is evil, then you're committing sacrilege, and therefore putting yourself on the road to perdition.

You have to look to the future, to the Great Tribulation, to the time when the Antichrist is on the earth, to the time when the 3 angels from heaven mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11 are here on earth, and you have to ask yourself: is putting the mark of a cross on your forehead a good idea or a bad idea? We know that if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand, for example, no mark of a cross, then you will never be shipped off to eternal hell for the sin of having an evil mark on your forehead or right hand.

Presently we have thousands of churches which aspire to be God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, to recall Matthew 16. 13-19. There are thousands of churches to choose from, so choose carefully, because the True Church leads people to heaven but false churches lead people astray, lead people away from heaven and to eternal perdition.

Is every church in the World Council of Churches God's True Church? Is any church in the World Council of Churches God's True Church?

Consider the Roman Catholic Church, which isn't a member of the World Council of Churches. Rome says Catholics and Muslims worship the same God. 2 Thess 1. 8, which much resembles John 15. 6, says you must know God and must obey the Gospel to escape hellfire.

Rome doesn't know that the Islamic god is a false god.

Here's the proof that the Roman Catholics say the Christian God and Allah, the false god of the Muslims, are the same God.

'Vatican Council and Papal Statements on Islam

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 16, November 21, 1964

"But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place among whom are the Muslims: these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 3, October 28, 1965

"The Catholic Church...has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth (Cf. St. Gregory VII, Letter III, 21 to Anazir [Al-Nasir], King of Mauretania PL, 148.451A.), who has spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself...

Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam 107, August 6, 1964

"Then [we refer] to the adorers of God according to the conception of monotheism, the Muslim religion especially, deserving of our admiration for all that is true and good in their worship of God....

Paul VI, address to the Islamic communities of Uganda, August 1, 1969

"In our prayers, we always remember the peoples of Africa. The common belief in the Almighty professed by millions calls down upon this continent the graces of his Providence and love, most of all, peace and unity among all its sons. We feel sure that as representatives of Islam, you join in our prayers to the Almighty, that he may grant all African believers the desire for pardon and reconciliation so often commended in the Gospels and in the Qur'an...

John Paul II, address to a symposium on "Holiness in Christianity and in Islam," Rome, May 9, 1985

"All true holiness comes from God, who is called 'The Holy One' in the sacred books of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Your holy Qur'an calls God 'Al-Quddus,' as in the verse: 'He is God, besides whom there is no other, the Sovereign, the Holy, the (source of) Peace' (Qur'an 59, 23).

2 Thess 2 says the man of sin / aka the Antichrist will show up prior to the Second Coming of Christ. Revelation 14. 6-11 says 3 angels from heaven will show up. My theory is that when these events happen then everything will be greatly simplified, and the thousands of churches which we have now will be reduced to 2 big churches: the false church pushed by the Antichrist, and God's True Church pushed by the 3 angels from heaven.

We're looking for God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, to recall Matthew 16. 13-19. The True Church leads people to heaven, whereas false churches lead people away from heaven and to perdition. What we want to do is get people out of the false churches that they are in and we want to get them into God's True Church. We want to get them off the road to perdition and get them on the road to heaven, you see. And how do you determine if a church is the True Church or if it is a worthless false church which drags people down to eternal perdition? Excellent question! To answer that question we have to review some of the basics of Christianity and rational thinking.

What exactly is a Christian? A Christian is someone who says Jesus is God, or more specifically, someone who says God is a Trinity of Father Son, and Holy Spirit. There are two broad types of Christians. There are true Christians (saints, i.e., people who will go to heaven) and there are false Christians (non-saints, i.e., people who will go to perdition). Every Christian is a sinner, no one is perfect. Just how imperfect can you be and still go to heaven? A good question but we need to review the basics before we can answer it. The New Testament scriptures which tell us Jesus is God include, Matthew 1. 23, John 1. 1-14, Romans 9.5, Colossians 2. 8-10 and 1 Timothy 3. 16. Psalm 2 from the Old Testament implies the Son is God and Isaiah 9. 6 says it explicitly.

Christianity teaches that a beautiful heaven exists, in fact Christianity teaches that heaven is so beautiful human beings can't even imagine how beautiful it is. See 1 Corinthians 2. 9 and Isaiah 64. 4. But there are also hellfire scriptures, such as Malachi 4. 1, John 15. 6, 2 Thess 1. 8, Matthew 25. 31-46, Revelation 20. 12-15 etc. About 2 Thess 1. 8 – hellfire for those who do not know God and who do not obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's review how it is that you do not know God if you say, as the Roman Catholic Church says, that the Christian God and the Islamic god are the same God. The attributes of Allah, the false god of the Muslims, are explained in the Koran. The Koran tells us who Allah is, what he supports and what he doesn't support. In Islam you are an unbeliever if you reject Allah. Islam and Allah teach the following surahs from the Koran:

Surah 4. 14: Those who disobey Allah and His Apostle will abide in fire.

Surah 5. 33: Crucify or murder or cut of the hands of those who war against Allah and His Apostle

Surah 5. 36-9: Fire for unbelievers. Chop off the hands of thieves.

Surah 5. 51: Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends.

Surah 5.86 Disbelievers are the companions of fire.

Surah 7. 40-1: Those who reject the Koran will suffer in a bed of hell-fire.

Surah 9. 68: The hypocrites and the unbelievers will burn in hell.

Surah 17. 8: There is a hell for unbelievers.

Surah 22. 19-21: Boiling water, garments of fire and whips of iron will torment the unbelievers.

Surah 24, 2: Whip the fornicatress and the fornicator, give them each a hundred stripes.

Surah 32. 20: Fire for transgressors. Chastisement of fire for those who doubt the Islamic fire.

Surah 33. 64-6: Allah has cursed the unbelievers and has prepared flaming fire for them.

Surah 37. 55-74: The bottom of hell and serpents await unbelievers who were warned.

Surah 40. 70-2: Boiling water and fire for those who reject the Book and the Apostle.

Surah 41. 26-28: Those who reject the Koran will burn.

Surah 45. 20: These are clear proofs and a guide and a mercy for the people who are sure.

Surah 56. 92-5: Scoffers are given an ordeal of boiling water and will burn in hell.

Surah 76. 4: Chains and fetters and cruel fire await unbelievers.

Surah 88. 2-5: Unbelievers are thrust into burning fire and forced to drink boiling water.

Merely because both the Bible and the Koran have hellfire scriptures doesn't mean the God of the Bible and the god of the Koran are the same God. Lots of religions teach the existence of hell. This doesn't mean these religions worship the same god. Christians say the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Many say this is preposterous. It's not preposterous, it's true, but it takes some explaining to explain why it is true.

If the Koran is trustworthy, if it is a work of non-fiction, then it is hateful to reject Jihad. It is hateful to simply let the unbelievers and their children and grandchildren burn in Islamic hellfire because you refuse to wage Jihad, because you want to be a Moderate Muslim, because you want to be popular with Christians, Jews and all non-Muslims. One might find the tactics of Hamas and Hezbollah imperfect but, at least they're trying. At least they are trying to rescue people from the terrible fire which awaits all those who do not become true Muslims. If Islam is God's True Religion, then the smart thing to do is practice the True Version of Islam, and it is simply insane to say that the True Version of Islam rejects the plain words in the Koran.

The most controversial elements of Islam might be epitomized as follows, 1) Islam is very clear in stating that the souls of those who reject Islam will be tormented in hellfire in the afterlife, 2) Islamic Law is very harsh. People found guilty of fairly minor crimes have their hands and limbs cut off, 3) Islamic Law calls for the execution of Muslims who renounce Allah and Islam, and 4) Jihad - war must be waged against those who refuse to be subject to Islamic Law. And as we've seen there is some discussion as to whether True Islam wants gays executed. Well, since Islam calls for the execution of those who renounce Islam, calls for fornicators to be whipped, calls for adulteresses to be executed etc., then where do you think this is leading one when one asks the question: does Islam demand that homosexuals be executed?

So, if Islam is true, then all the nations on earth would be wise to adopt Sharia law. Why would you want to burn in hell by refusing to be a good Muslim? People who refuse to convert to Islam must be reduced to 2nd class status, must be made subservient to Muslims, must be made to pay a tax. THE KORAN IS VERY CLEAR: YOU WILL BURN IN HELL IF YOU REFUSE TO LIVE THE WAY A GOOD MUSLIM IS SUPPOSED TO LIVE.

On the other hand, if Islam is a big lie, a big fraud of a religion, if Islam is just a worthless superstition invented by some guy named Muhammad in the 7th century...

Do you get how Islam is either the True Religion or else it is a false religion? Do you get how Islam will either lead you to heaven or else it will lead you to perdition? So, if Islam leads people to heaven, then you don't want to be a `moderate Muslim.' You want to profess and practice the religion taught by Muhammad, and this includes teaching the hellfire scriptures and Jihad. Obviously, fanatics might corrupt Islam by being too cruel and bloodthirsty, but, essentially, Jihad makes perfect sense, Islamic armies conquering the world and bringing everyone under Sharia law makes perfect sense if it serves to lead people to heaven and serves to save them from hellfire. But then, on the other hand, if Islam is not the True Religion, if Islam leads people away from heaven and drags their souls down to perdition, then Islam is an evil superstition. What else would you call a religion which leads people away from heaven and instead leads them straight to eternal perdition?

Of course, the same sort of logic can be used about any religion. Suppose a religion leads you away from heaven and drags you down to eternal perdition. Then that religion is evil. It is not noble. Politicians might call some religion a noble religion for political reasons, but if a religion leads you away from heaven and leads you straight to hell then that religion is evil not noble. Gibbon, writing about ancient Rome, had a famous quote about religions: the people saw them all as equally true, the philosophers found then all equally false, and statemen found them all equally useful.

Malachi 4. 1 has the LORD saying the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the proud and wicked people will be set on fire....

So, you don't want to make a slip up with your Judeo-Christian theology. Suppose you say Jesus is a false god, when in fact Jesus is the True God...Or suppose you say...

I realize lots of readers will say Malachi 4. 1 is voodoo. I'm just trying to explain Christianity! We have simple stuff and we have complicated stuff. You don't want to descend into wicked blasphemy by saying Jesus is a bogus deity and a fraudulent god if in fact Jesus is God. And you don't want to say Jesus is God if the True God says it is a wicked blasphemy to say Jesus is God. I say Jesus is God, and I say Malachi 4. 1 is true, but I'm trying to explain all of your options here. Assuming Malachi 4. 1 is true, then if you say Jesus is a bogus deity, a false god, when in fact Jesus is the True God, then you are guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege, and so the fire mentioned in Malachi 4. 1 is coming for you. Now if Jesus was in fact a false god and a bogus deity, then, one who insists Jesus is the True God is guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege, and so the fire mentioned in Malachi 4. 1 is coming for him, coming for me, in fact, as I'm someone who insists Jesus is God, the Divine Son, the 3rd Person in a Divine Trinity.

If the New Testament scriptures which tell us Jesus is God are falsehoods, if they are lies which lead us into blasphemy and sacrilege, lies which lead those of us who are Christians to perdition, then Christianity is an evil superstition. On the other hand, if you can trust John 1. 1-14, Matthew 1. 23, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 etc., then you can trust what God / Jesus says in the hellfire scriptures, and you can trust what God / Jesus says in Matthew 16. 13-19, where God / Jesus says He has founded His Church on a rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Every Christian church claims to lead people to heaven. No Christian church brags that it leads people away from heaven and drags their souls down to eternal perdition! But you have to be wise. You have to use some common sense. We have a scripture which says the Devil walks about like a roaring lion looking to devour people, so you have to watch out. You have to watch out for heretics. These are people who push false doctrines which corrupt the True Faith and which lead people to eternal perdition. An obvious question that springs to mind is: How likely is it that every church that you encounter is the Church which Christ founded on a rock – God's True Church – to recall Matthew 16. 13-19? Christ tell us, in so many words, in John 6. 53-55, that you must take communion in order to attain heaven and to escape perdition. And then at the Last Supper, Matthew 26. 28, Jesus informs His disciples: `This cup is My blood of the New Covenant...' These words refer to the famous prophesy of Jeremiah 31. 31-34, where we are informed that God will write His new law on the hearts of His people, a New Law to amend the Old Law, the Mosaic Law. It's true that much of the Old Testament indicates that the Mosaic Law is an eternal law. Christians interpret this to mean that it will be eternally remembered but not all of it will be eternally enforced. The 10 Commandments are still enforced under Christianity. Christians are not permitted to have other gods above the True God. Christians are not free to murder, steal, covet, violate the Sabbath etc. But all blood sacrifice of animals for the atonement of sin is gone under the New Law. Under the Mosaic Law the daughter of a priest who became a harlot was to be burned alive. The Jews were commanded to execute enchantresses, Sabbath violators, blasphemers, homosexuals, children who cursed their parents etc. Ezekiel 20. 25 tells us that God gave the children of Israel bad laws because He was angry about their incessant rebelliousness. All these practices are banished under Christianity. So far Christianity seems fairly easy to explain. When Christ told the people who wanted to stone the adulteress `let he who is without sin cast the first stone' he was casting the Mosaic Law aside and instituting the New Law. And by what authority did Jesus do this? Psalm 2 implies the Son is God. Isaiah 9. 6 says it explicitly. The New Testament scriptures which say Jesus is God include: John 1. 1-14, Matthew 1. 23, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16. Anyway, so far you wouldn't say there is anything terribly complicated about Christianity. People will argue about whether Jesus is God or not, but there is nothing about Christianity so far that you would call complicated. But when you ask: where is God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, to recall Matthew 16. 13-19, then things get complicated. Every church claims to lead people to heaven. No church claims that it is a false church which leads people to perdition. But it defies common sense to think every church is God's True Church. If you were to ask Christians from around the world to make lists which explain how people locate God's True Church, then the most popular choice for God's True Church would be the Roman Catholic Church, followed by the Russian Orthodox Church, followed by the Anglican church, followed by...

So, there is enormous disagreement. If you asked Christians from round the world – and a Christian is a person who says Jesus is God, the 3rd Person in a Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - if a person doesn't accept Psalm 2, Isaiah 9. 6, John 1. 1-14, Matthew 1. 23, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 then he is not a Christian – if you asked Christians from round the world if Jesus is God then you would get universal agreement that Jesus is God. But when you ask the same people to explain to you how one find's God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, then you will not find universal agreement. The Christian world is balkanized into thousands of different sects. John 6. 53-55 tells us that you must take communion in order to attain heaven and escape perdition. And in 1 Corinthians 11. 27 St. Paul tells us that it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. This is where Christianity becomes very complex, because it is not clear what is an unworthy manner and what isn't. What do you do with men who rape little kids but they claim they have repented? Do you give them the bread and the wine at some time? Do you keep them excommunicated forever? In the first 3 centuries of Christianity Christians were generally non-violent. But beginning in the 4th century, the typical Christian might not have been a murderous thug, but he celebrated holy communion with people who were murderous thugs. Henry Charles Lea wrote in his 'A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages' (Macmillan, 1922),

`We have only to look upon the atrocities of the criminal law of the Middle Ages to see how pitiless men were in dealing with each other. The wheel, the caldron of boiling oil, burning alive, burying alive, flaying alive, tearing apart with wild horses, were the ordinary expedients by which the criminal jurist sought to deter crime by frightful examples...An Anglo-Saxon law punishes a female slave convicted of theft by making eighty other female slaves each bring three pieces of wood and burn her to death....In the Customs of Arques, granted by the Abbey of St. Bertin in 1231, there is a provision that, if a thief have a concubine who is his accomplice, she is to be buried alive...In France women were customarily burned or buried alive for simple felonies, and Jews were hung by the feet between two savage dogs, while men were boiled to death for coining. In Milan Italian ingenuity exhausted itself in devising deaths of lingering torture for criminals of all descriptions. The Carolina, or criminal code of Charles V., issued in 1530, is a hideous catalogue of blinding, mutilation, tearing with hot pincers, burning alive, and breaking on the wheel...As recently as 1706, in Hanover, a pastor named Zacharie Georg Flagge was burned alive for coining...So careless were the legislators of human suffering in general that, in England, to cut out a man's tongue, or to pluck out his eyes with malice prepence, was not made a felony until the fifteenth century, in a criminal law so severe that, even in the reign of Elizabeth, the robbing of a hawk's nest was similarly a felony; and as recently as 1833 a child of nine was sentenced to be hanged for breaking a patched pane of glass and stealing twopence worth of paint [this sentence was commuted]...It has seemed to me however, that a sensible increase in the severity of punishment is traceable after the thirteenth century, and I am inclined to attribute this to the influence exercised by the Inquisition over the criminal jurisprudence.'

Ordinary Christians celebrated holy communion with evil barbaric Christians for century after century. 1 Corinthians 11. 27 says it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. So, if you are celebrating communion with people who make no secret that they are evil, you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, a terrible sin according to 1 Corinthians 11. 27.

Revelation 22. 18-19 warns people that curses will befall those who add to or subtract from the Book of Revelation. But you are permitted to speculate upon its meaning. Rome says a saint goes immediately into the presence of God upon death. The Book of Revelation says the dead sleep until the Last Judgment, which is far in the future, after the Second Coming, after the Millennium. The Bible says only God is perfect. Rome says Mary is also perfect. On the one hand Rome claims that Rome does not worship Mary, but if the Bible is correct in saying only God is perfect, and since Rome says the Bible is trustworthy, and since Rome says Mary is perfect, Rome says Mary never committed a single sin, Rome implicitly teaches that Mary is God. Rome explicitly teaches that Mary is not God, but implicitly Rome teaches that Mary is God. The Bible says Jesus had brothers and sister. Rome says it is a heresy, a mortal sin that leads offending souls straight to perdition to teach the `heresy' that Mary was not ever-Virgin. Rome called the Inquisition the `Holy Office' for centuries. If the Inquisition was evil in the eyes of God then it is a sacrilege to call the Inquisition a `Holy Office.' The Dogma of Papal Infallibility damns those who reject that Dogma. Well, if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome leads people to heaven, then the Dogma of Papal Infallibility makes sense. But if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome leads people to perdition...

Anyway, it is easy to imagine Roman Catholics insisting that a person would have to be rather satanic if he was to say that the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of the beast from Revelation 13 and 14. And, suppose these Catholics are right. Suppose that is a satanic heresy to say or imply the Catholic crucifix is the image of the beast mentioned in Revelation 13 and 14. Suppose Rome is God's True Church. Suppose Rome leads people to heaven and leads no one to perdition. Suppose the Roman Catholic crucifix is sacred to the Creator of the Universe, because God says so, and because God says the Roman Catholic Church is His True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, the Church which leads people to heaven and which leads no one to perdition. If this is true then it is stupid and satanic to rebel against God's True Church, Rome. We are delusional for having these Senates and Parliaments and Houses of Representatives, we are brainless fools whenever we accept a Supreme Court decision which contradicts the will of God's True Church, the Church of Rome, if in fact the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church. Rome is the only government we need if Rome is God's True Church. To elevate some human organization which leads people to perdition, some Senate or Parliament which rebels against God's True Church, Rome, is just brainless idiocy. It make no sense to ever rebel against God and God's True Church! How can you expect to attain heaven and escape perdition if you rebel against God and God's True Church? Of course of course if the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church, if Rome has fallen into heresy and therefore Rome leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven when in fact Rome leads people to perdition, is the image of a lie. And if the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of a lie, the image of a beastly false version of Jesus, then the image of the beast from Revelation 13 and 14 comes to mind when we consider the Roman Catholic crucifix.

The cross either symbolizes no evil, because God says it is sacred, or else the cross symbolizes some evil, because God says so.

Lord Acton told us in his essay `Human Sacrifice,'

`And yet, long after the last victim had fallen in honour of the sun-god of the Aztecs, the civilised nations of Christian Europe continued to wage wholesale destruction...Protestants and Catholics, clergy and laity, vied with each other for two hundred years to provide victims, and every refinement of legal ingenuity and torture was used in order to increase their number. In 1591, at Nördligen, a girl was tortured twenty-three times before she confessed...Three years later, in the same town, a woman suffered torture fifty-six times without confessing she was a witch...In the north of Italy, the great jurist Alciatus saw 100 witches burnt on one day...In England alone, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, the victims of this superstition amounted to 30,000. Yet, from the appearance of Spee's Cautio in 1631 to the burning of the last witch in 1783, all sensible men were persuaded that the victims were innocent of the crime for which they suffered intolerable torments and an agonizing death. But those who hunted them out with cunning perseverance, and the inflexible judges who never spared their lives, firmly believed that their execution was pleasing in the sight of God, and that their sin could not be forgiven by men.'

Jules Michelet writes in his `La Sorcière' (tran. by A.R. Allinson, Lyle Stuart Inc.),

`It was the very same year that Urbain Grandier was burned, and all France was talking of nothing else but the devils of Loudun...A certain Anne of the Nativity was introduced into the convent...Anne declared she saw the Devil standing stark naked by Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore she had seen Anne at the Witches' Sabbath, along with the Lady Superior, the Mother Delegate, and the Mother of the Novices...Madeleine, condemned without a hearing, is to be degraded, and examined to discover on her body the satanic sign-manual. Her veil and robe are torn off her wretched body...ready to pry into her very vitals to find excuse to send her to the stake. The Sisters would entrust to no hands but their own this cruel search, in itself a terrible punishment. These virgin nuns, in the guise of matrons, verified her condition, whether pregnant or no, then shaved her in every part of her person, and pricking her with needles, driving them deep in the quivering flesh, sought if there was any spot insensible to pain, as the devil's mark is bound to be. But every stab hurt; failing the crowning triumph of proving her a Witch, at any rate they had the satisfaction of gloating over her tears and cries of agony...Beneath a subterranean gallery was a cellar at a lower level still, beneath the cellar a dungeon where the prisoner lay rotting in damp and darkness...She suffered both from pain and from her filthy condition, lying as she did in her own excrements. The perpetual darkness was disturbed by the dreadful scampering of hungry rats, the object of much terror in prisons, as they will sometimes gnaw off the helpless prisoners' noses and ears...She was seized with a heartfelt, wild desire for death. She swallowed spiders, - she merely vomited, without further bad effects...Putting her hand on an old blunt knife, she tried hard to cut her throat, - but could not succeed. Next, choosing a softer place, her belly, she forced the iron into her... For four whole hours she worked, and writhed and bled...She became a woman once more, and alas! desirable still, a temptation for her gaolers, brutal fellows of the Bishop's household, who, in spite of the horrors of the place, the unhealthy and unclean condition of the wretched creature, would come to take their pleasure of her, deeming any outrage permissible on a Witch. An angel came to her succour, so she declared. She defended herself both from men and rats...Witch-burnings are still common everywhere in the eighteenth century. Spain, in a single reign, that of Philip V., burns 1600 persons, even burning a witch as late as 1782...Rome burns still, on the sly, it is true, in the furnaces and cellars of the Inquisition. "But doubtless France at any rate is more humane?" - France is inconsistent. In 1718 a wizard was burned at Bordeaux. I am not here speaking of executions the people carried out on their own account. A hundred years ago, in a village of Provence, an old woman, to whom a landowner refused an alms, flew into a passion and said, "You will be dead to-morrow!" He had a stroke and died. The whole village, - not the poor peasants only, but the most respectable inhabitants, - gathered in a crowd, seized the old woman and put her on a pile of vine-cuttings, where she was burned alive. The Parlement made a pretence of inquiry, but no one was punished. To the present day the people of the village in question are called woman-burners (brulo-fenno) by their neighbors...Lorraine was swept by a dreadful contagion, as it were, of Sorcerers and Visionaries. The populace, driven to despair by the everlasting depredations of marching armies and marauding bands, had long ceased to pray to any deity but the Devil. Many villages, in their terror, distracted between two horrors, the sorcerers on the one side and the judges on the other, longed, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, speaks truth, to quit their lands and all they possessed and fly to another country....A beggar-girl of seventeen, Little Murgin, as she was called (Margarita), who had found in Sorcery a profitable speculation...had been in the habit of bringing children and offering them to the Devil...She both terrified and diverted the judges, twisting them round her little finger and leading them whither she pleased like a pair of dummies. They actually entrusted this vicious, irresponsible, passionate girl with the grim task of searching the bodies of young women and boys for the signs of the spot where Satan had put his mark. The place was recognized by the fact of its being insensible to pain, so that needles could be driven into it without extracting a cry from the victim. A surgeon tortured the old women, Margarita the younger ones, who were called as witnesses...An odious consummation truly, - that this brazen-bowed creature, thus made absolute mistress of the fate and fortune of these unhappy beings, should go pricking them with needles at her pleasure, and might adjudge, if such were her caprice, any one of their bleeding bodies to a cruel death!...Denunciations came pouring down like hail. All the women of the countryside came filing in unceasingly to lay accusations one against the other. Eventually the very children were brought and made to give incriminating evidence against their own mothers.'

If no church under the sign of the cross is God's True Church, if every church under the sign of the cross is lost in heresy and leads people to perdition, this wouldn't prove the cross is no good; the cross might be sacred to God in this scenario, but if every church under the cross leads people to perdition then every church under the cross is seriously corrupted in one way or another. Celebrating communion with pro-choicers, celebrating communion with Sabbath violators, celebrating communion with people who take God's name in vain, with people who commit simony, with people who sell the True Faith, putting price tags on Bibles and on books which teach Christianity, celebrating communion with pro-gay-marriage people, celebrating communion with adulterers, with fornicators, with covetous people, with heretics, with people guilty of sacrilege etc., etc.

If just one church under the cross, perhaps more than one but if at least one church under the cross leads people to heaven, because it has not fallen away from the True Faith, and is God's True Church, then you can trust that Church when it says the cross is sacred to God.

But, if every church under the cross leads people to perdition, if no church under the cross is God's True Church, well, again, this doesn't prove the cross is evil in the eyes of God.

Case 1 says the cross symbolizes no evil. It is sacred to God. It is a sacrilege in Case 1 to say the cross symbolizes evil.

Case 2 says the cross symbolizes some evil. It is a sacrilege to say that things which are evil in God's sight are sacred. If Case 2 is true you commit sacrilege if you say the cross is sacred to God. If Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, then it is natural to speculate that the cross is the seal of God which saves one from torments when it is on one's forehead, recall Revelation 9. But if Case 2 is true, if God says the cross is evil, then you don't want the mark of a cross on your forehead as Revelation 14. 11 mentions eternal hellfire for those with an evil mark on their foreheads.

If a church tells you the cross is sacred and tells you that you have nothing to fear if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead, but then you end up burning in hell forever because you put the cross on your forehead, then it was a worthless evil church which leads people to perdition which gave you the bad advice which led you to burn in hell forever. God's True Church would never lead anyone to burn in hell forever! But some worthless false deluded church that leads people to perdition would do that to you.

The evils perpetrated by people carrying crosses over the centuries are either reflected in the cross, or else they are not reflected in the cross. The cross either symbolizes no evil or else it symbolizes some evil. I'm saying the cross of Christ mentioned in Galatians 6. 14 and Philippians 3. 18 is sacred, but this cross of Christ is a spiritual thing. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred. What about material crosses? Recall God is sacred but material images of God are violations of the 2nd Commandment. The Nazis perpetrated evil for a few years and we say the Nazi swastika reflects that evil. The people under the sign of the cross perpetrated evil for century after century.

Yes, the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture is sacred, because Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but what about these material crosses? Do they reflect the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses? Or are they sacred and holy? One might argue that a certain church is God's True Church, therefore you can trust that church when it says the cross is sacred to God. This is fine logic if in fact that church is God's True Church. If in fact it is God's True Church then we don't need any government besides God's True Church. It would also be evil to disregard God's True Church and elevate some human government above God's True Church. Of course, if some church claims to be God's True Church, but if it is in fact a false church, one that leads souls to perdition, then who wants that sort of worthless church for their government?

If the prophecies of Revelation 18 come to pass – economic collapse and famine – and if some angel tells you to put the mark of a cross on your forehead, or to put the mark of something other than the cross on your forehead, because he claims he has spoken to God and he says that God says that that mark will save you from the torments mentioned in Revelation 9, then you have to weigh the probabilities. Just how sure can you be that that angel is an angel from heaven and not some angel from hell? During the Apocalypse, you'll want to make sure you know the difference between angels from hell and angels from heaven! And how does one do this? So much rests on the following logic. Is it sound or unsound? The scriptures tell us, in so many words, that Antichrist and his followers have some sort of evil mark on their foreheads or right hands. So, if you don't have any mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand, no crosses, no anything, then you will never be shipped off to eternal hell for the sin of having an evil mark on your forehead or right hand.

I threw together a playlist on You Tube called `The NBA on NBC to Catching Fire – Poison Fog'. It gives sort of a Picture of Babylon. There's lots of pop culture stuff. Plus lots of political clips. It's always tempting to click on some thumbnail having a pretty girl. I found some interesting clips of Aubrey Plaza, Summer Glau and Stassi Schroeder and others this way. One clip of Stassi – she's a star on Vanderpump Rules, ex-star now after she got herself into some trouble – has her going into Home Depot where she's looking to buy some paint to use on the walls at her place. Anyway, it's sort of interesting how the lighting in this Home Depot really accentuates her eyes and features. She looks really great. So, it's sort of weird how on `Vanderpump Rules' the lighting is OK for her, just OK, but you wouldn't say it is anything special. But the lighting in some Home Depot is perfect for her, makes her look really gorgeous. I remember watching some video somewhere about Joan Crawford and to get her best looks on film the film makers had to be very careful to use a soft light and direct at her face from only certain angles.

So, the playlists include serious stuff and not so serious stuff. A set of what you might call serious clips involves riots between Trump fans and the Anti-Trumpers, and then we have some clips on Greta Thunberg and Climate Change. She's all about pushing the world to take very drastic actions very swiftly in order to save the world from Global Warming. Of course most of the world pays her lip service and says she's wonderful, courageous etc., etc., but the vast majority of these people have zero intention to actually implement the changes Greta wants. This pertains to Christianity because we have 2 big options with Climate Change / Global Warming / the Green New Deal must be implemented immediately: 1) all this is true and you're a liar if you say it is a lie, and your lie will inflict immense suffering on billions of people, and, 2) these things are lies which will inflict enormous suffering on the world. These are just commie, anti-Capitalist lies that will spell the economic ruin of nations and billions of people.

Presently, what most people do, is that they adopt a cynical virtue signaling strategy whereby they announce in public that Climate Change is very real, but then they don't do anything to combat Climate Change. They continue to drive cars, they don't switch to bicycles, they continue to take trips via jet airplanes etc., etc.

The politicians find it expedient to agree with Greta, to tell her she's wonderful, bright, courageous etc., but then they also find it expedient to do next to nothing in terms of actually taking drastic immediate action to save the planet, which they claim is quickly being destroyed, which I suppose infuriates Greta. The clips on You Tube from scientists who try to explain the issue are incredibly dull and are basically unwatchable. There was a very good clip from Stephan Molyneux, a 12-minute thing which did a great job of explaining the science behind the whole issue. But You Tube censored all of his videos. The clips from lefties accusing righties of being idiots on Climate Change, and the clips of righties accusing lefties of being brainless morons are at least watchable.

The playlist has lots of Trump vs. Anti-Trump fury. Lots of clips on sexual assault in the USA military. Why does the USA have so many psychos in its armed forces? Why can't we get them out? What are the politicians thinking? Of course they are thinking: how can I win the most votes? If some soldier has to die in a war it's better if some worthless sexual psychopathic soldier dies rather than a good American, so putting all of your vilest citizens in the army and navy where they will be killed off in wars makes some sense, but then, on the other hand, you hate to see so many good people in the armed forces being raped on a regular basis in the US military, and while it make sense for a nation to have its sexual predator psychos killed off in wars, just how many more wars is the USA planning to have?

What about US military intervention in Venezuela? Good idea or bad idea? Would that be a Christian action or an Anti-Christian action? Jimmy Dore has lots of interesting clips saying the sanctions by greedy Western nations on Venezuela are causing all the suffering down there. Who do you believe? Who do you trust? Can you trust the US government? Can you trust the main stream media?

To teach Christianity you have to know where to draw the line between things which are Anti-Christian and things which are not Anti-Christian. Some of this stuff gets super remedial. I have a clip of Brown Eyed Girls' _Abracadabra_ , and you're being asked, in unspoken language, what about the way they swing their hips, anything Anti-Christian here? And then I have lots of other clips of K-pop, J-pop and C-pop acts. Obviously lots of these girls aren't Christians but, for instance, suppose a porn magazine is doing a spread on some girl, you really don't need to know if the girl is a Christian or a Buddhist or an Agnostic etc., to know if posing nude for some magazine is Anti-Christian or not. Well of course there's nothing difficult about seeing that producing pornography is Anti-Christian, but not all k-pop dancing is Anti-Christian. Some is, some isn't. Suppose a church gives the bread and the wine to people who are doing Anti-Christian things. Then it stands to reason that that church is celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. And 1 Corinthians 11. 27 says this is a terrible sin. We know the True Church won't be celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, so if some church is celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, then it must be a false church not God's True Church.

Some General Complaints against Christianity might be categorized as follows:

1. Promises, Promises.

John 15. 7 has Jesus saying, `If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, then you will ask for what you wish and it will be granted to you.' You can imagine a Christian turning Atheist is his prayers go unanswered. If one is praying earnestly for God to save a dying relative, a mother dying perhaps of cancer, but the Lord's Prayer tells us to pray for God's will to be done. So if Christ's words abide in you then you will seek God's will not your own will.

2) Absurd or Not So Absurd Scriptures.

Atheists don't like scriptures which seem absurd: a talking serpent in the garden of Eden, a talking donkey, the account of Noah's Ark, the suggestion that the earth was created in 6 days around 6,000 years ago, the miracles performed by God through Moses and Aaron etc. My advice is to treat those accounts which you find too far-fetched to believe as literal historical fact as parables. Jesus taught in parables – fictions which teach spiritual truths. And he told His disciples He was speaking in parables but He didn't tell most of His listeners that he was giving them fictions which contained spiritual truth. What does it really matter if the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is literal truth or a parable which teaches the truth? The account is all about suffering, no end of suffering, no end of hell that you will suffer if you disobey God. One was ordered to not eat the forbidden fruit, the order was disobeyed, and the result is no end of suffering for humanity. As long as that message is true, then what does it matter if the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is literal truth or if it is a parable which teaches the truth? You have the ten wise virgins and the ten foolish virgins. What does it matter if these virgins never actually existed? As long as the parable teaches the truth then that's all that matters. So it is rather nonsensical to argue that since the Bible presents far-fetched stories, therefore the Bible must be a fraud.

3) Slavery.

Critics say the New Testament supports slavery, supports evil, therefore these critics say Christianity is false and evil. Evil Christians have perverted Christianity and have said Christianity supports slavery but this is a lie. It's true St. Paul and St. Peter told slaves to obey their masters but what were they supposed to say? If they told the slaves to rebel the Romans would have tortured the rebels to death. If they told Christians to free their slaves, well, in the ancient world, the idea of free labor was still far in the future. Labor was performed by slaves in the ancient world. There were no corporations, no Wal-Marts, no temp agencies to give jobs to freed slaves. You weren't doing a slave any favors if you told him to get off your property and go find employment at some other place. To support a family a freed slave could become a prostitute, or a gladiator, or he could serve in the Roman Army – which was often just a position which required you to act like a brigand – none of these occupations can be done by Christians, because they are all Anti-Christian occupations: they all lead one to perdition. The best St. Peter and St. Paul could do was tell the masters to be fair and not abusive to the slaves. Now the African slave trade was something quite different than the slavery that St. Peter and St. Paul were facing. The African slave trade was simply evil perpetrated by evil Christians, albeit it was also Christians, and Non-Christians, who ended the African slave trade.

4) The Contention that Men Have Authority over Women. St. Paul said he did not permit a woman to have authority over a man. But St. Paul would also have told Christians to obey a Queen as long as she wasn't giving Anti-Christian orders: ordering people to worship her image, ordering people to murder for her, steal for her etc. St. Paul would have told slaves of a Christian woman to obey her. In the Christian system one is either a heretic or else one teaches the True Faith correctly. St. Paul never would have said a woman must obey a man even if he is a heretic. Take the Roman Catholic Church for example. Rome has a male-only clergy. Now if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome leads people to heaven, then it would be crazy for a woman to throw herself into hell by rebelling against God's True Church, it would be crazy to throw her chance for eternal life in paradise away merely because Rome doesn't allow for female priests and bishops. And if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, then it's crazy for a woman to want to be a priestess in a false church which leads people to perdition.

A person is either a heretic or else she teaches the True Faith correctly. If a person is a heretic she has no authority in the Church which Christ founded on a rock, in God's True Church, the Bride of Christ. Why would you want to obey someone who will lead you to eternal perdition? If a woman teaches the True Faith correctly, then it is evil to rebel against her.

Apropos of people who are led to perdition because they worship false and beastly gods, recall the multi-headed beast described in Revelation 13. 1-8,

`THEN I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns...Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion...And all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshipped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war against him?....It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life.'

Suppose you worship Allah. Well if Allah is a false god, and if Islam is a false religion which leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then Allah and Islam are rather beastly. Suppose you worship a god who says the Mormon Church is the True Church. But if the True God says Mormonism is a heresy which drags souls down to perdition, then you worship a false and beastly sort of god. The Roman Catholics worship a god who says the Roman Catholic Church is the Church which Christ founded on a rock. But if the True God says Rome is a false church which leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then the Roman Catholics worship a beastly sort of false god. I mean if a false god cheats you out of heaven and drags you down to perdition – that is terribly evil and beastly. If you worship a god who says the cross is sacred, but it the True God say the cross is evil, if the True God says you commit sacrilege when you say the cross is sacred, then you worship a false god, and you don't know the True God – 2 Thess 1. 8 – hellfire for those who do not know God and who do not obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, let's suppose you are a Protestant minister, and let's suppose a Catholic kid visits you and he asks you: do I need to renounce the Roman Catholic Church in order to attain heaven and escape perdition. You got to answer either Yes or No. If you say No, if you tell the Catholic kid that he doesn't have to renounce the Roman Catholic Church, then the kid might say something like: What you are telling me is the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, and so what I need to do is always obey God's True Church and I will go to heaven.' So then the kid goes into a long dissertation on his issues with Rome: ` The Bible says Jesus had brothers and sisters. Rome says it is a heresy that leads people straight to perdition to say Mary was not ever-Virgin. Rome says Mary is perfect: she never committed a single sin during her life, and she was conceived free of original sin. The Bible say only God is perfect. So, if Mary is perfect, and if only God is perfect, then the Roman Catholic Church teaches that Mary is...Explicitly Rome says Mary is not God and not to be worshipped as God, but implicitly, Rome certainly seems to be teaching that Mary is Divine. The Dogma of Papal Infallibility damns all who reject that Dogma. Protestants reject that Dogma. So, if Rome is God's True Church, and if you will always go to heaven if you always obey God's True Church, but if you might go to hell if you rebel against God's True Church, then it is insanity to reject the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. Just accept it and you can lose. If you rebel against God's True Church, if you reject the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, because you don't like how it damns all who reject that Dogma, then you are risking hellfire by rebelling against God's True Church. Well, either Rome is God's True Church or else Rome isn't God's True Church. If Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false Church which leads people to perdition not to heaven, then you become like the Devil when you tell some kid that he can attain heaven and escape perdition if he remains in the Roman Catholic Church, because you are leading that kid away from heaven and to perdition with your advice that he needn't renounce the Roman Catholic Church, in the event that Rome is a false Church not the True Church. Rome contradicts the Book of Revelation because Rome says, upon death, the soul of a saint goes immediately into the presence of God. The Book of Revelation says both the elect and the damned sleep until the Last Judgment, recall Revelation 20. 12-15, and the Last Judgment transpires far in the future, after the Second Coming of Christ, after Armageddon, after the Millennium, after the final revolt of Satan. Revelation 22. 18-19 tell us about curses upon those who reject or alter the Book of Revelation. Rome alters the Book of Revelation. In Galatians 1. 8-12 St. Paul says he learned his doctrine directly from Christ and even an angel from hell is damned if he alters this doctrine. St. Paul says a bishop must be a man of one wife. Rome says a bishop must be a man of no wife. The founders of Mormonism said a bishop may be a man of multiple wives. Roman Catholics say the real Virgin Mary appeared at Lourdes and Fatima and they insist the real Virgin Mary supports Roman Catholicism. Protestants tell Catholics to reread 1Timothy 4. 1-3, which deals with deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. What was `Mary's' message at Fatima? Well, the apparition wants the world consecrated to her `Sacred Heart.' Is this what the gospel teaches? Suppose you are a Protestant missionary. Does the New Testament tell to preach the message that all people must be consecrated to Mary's Sacred Heart? Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ best summarized by saying: Be Consecrated to Mary's Sacred Heart? Obviously, we have a dilemma with 2 possible solutions that jump right out at you. If the mother of Jesus actually did show up at Lourdes and Fatima, then...But if a deceiving spirit masquerading as Mary showed up at Lourdes in France and at Fatima in Portugal, then...

Probably the most conspicuous way that the Protestants are crazy is when they insist they are saved, even though they rebel against one or more of the 10 Commandments, or when they rebel against a clear teaching in the New Testament, such as 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, or 2 Thess 1. 8, or Galatians 1. 8-12, or 1 Corinthians 11. 27. Under the New Law, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one might claim to have True Faith but if one is a murderer, or a thief, or an idolater, or an adulterer, or a Sabbath violator etc., then one is deluded if one claims to have True Faith. And then so many Protestant churches celebrate the Eucharist with anyone who asks to partake. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. 27 that it is a terrible sin to celebrate the Eucharist in an unworthy manner. Protestant churches give the bread and the wine to pro-choicers, to pro-gay marriage people, to fornicators, adulterers, Sabbath violators etc., etc. Protestants inherited lots of evil traditions from the Catholics. Take the issue of putting price tags on Bibles, or putting price tags on books which teach the Christian faith. Protestant tradition says it is OK to sell books which teach the Christian faith, but it is insane to think Matthew, Mark, Luke and John sold their gospels to make a profit. This is simony. Simony, along with violating the Sabbath Day, and giving communion to pro-choicers are the 3 most blatant ways that Protestants trample on the True Faith. Protestants say they profess John 3. 16, and they declare themselves to be saved, declare themselves saints destined for heaven, but they trample on the scriptures. The Bible takes a very hard line against divorce, likening a man who marries after a divorce to an adulterer. The Bible also takes a very hard line against celebrating communion with adulterers. You find lots of Christians who say God is pro-choice. But let's suppose the Christians who say that God hates the pro-choice philosophy are correct. Let's assume that the premise: God hates the pro-choice philosophy is a true premise. Now, from this true premise, would it be sane to conclude that a Christian celebrates communion in a worthy manner when he celebrates communion with people who make no secret that they are pro-choice? And what do no end of Protestant Churches do, even Conservative Protestant Churches, but celebrate communion with pro-choicers? What happens is that someone tells these Protestants that they only need to profess what is written in John 3. 16 in order to be saved. And so they profess John 3. 16, but they completely ignore 1 Corinthians 11. 27.

So, to review. Don't put price tags on Bibles or on any book that teaches Christianity. Simony. Mortal sin. Puts you on the road to Perdition. Watch out for evil traditions that trample on the New Testament.

To review, there is no end of confusion surrounding Matthew 16. 13-19, which, again, deals with God's True Church. For example, let us suppose the Roman Catholic Church leads people to Heaven. Let us suppose the Gates of Hell HAVE NOT prevailed against Rome. Let us suppose that that Rome is God's True Church. So, logic and common sense tell us the following: It Is Idiotic to Risk Going to Hell by Rebelling Against God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church. And yet, what do millions upon millions of Roman Catholics do but rebel against the Roman Catholic Church? They reject Rome's teachings on abortion, on homosexuality, on contraception, on lots and lots of subjects.

Yes, Yes, we know that if Rome is a false church, we know that if Rome is not God's True Church, we know that if the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome and if Rome leads people away from heaven and straight to perdition, then it is very right to rebel against Rome. But things still get complicated because if Rome does lead people to perdition then this doesn't mean Rome is wrong about everything Rome teaches. Rome might be right about 90% of the things that Rome teaches even if Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition. But if you accept the premise that Rome is God's True Church, if you say that one will always be led to heaven if one always obeys God's True Church, and if you say that one is risking eternal hell if one rebels against God's True Church, and then if you go on to say that it is sometimes wise to rebel against God's True Church, then, you seem like a person who could use a long long rest in a quiet asylum, a long long rest in a quiet institution where you can recover your sanity. The key attribute of God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, is not that she never makes any mistakes. The key attribute is that the Bride of Christ always leads people to heaven and she never leads anyone to perdition, and whatever mistakes she makes are not mistakes which will drag anyone down to perdition. So you can't lose if you always obey God's True Church, but you can lose, you can be led to hell if you rebel against God's True Church, so it would be insane to...

Of course we can find Protestants who will say that Protestant Church X leads people to heaven, who will say that Protestant Church X is the Church which Christ founded on a rock, and yet these same Protestants will proceed to rebel against the Church which they claim is God's True Church. The habit of people rebelling against a church, of a church which they say in one breath is a church which leads people to heaven, which is God's True Church, but then, in the next breath, these same people will insist it is sometimes right to rebel against God's True Church, is one of the most startling features of the world. If you will always go to heaven and will never go to hell if you always obey God's True Church, but if you very well might go to eternal hell if your rebel against God's True Church, then, obviously, it is insanity, to ever rebel against the Church which you say is God's True Church. This is so simple and easy to understand that any child can understand it! You'd have to be under the power of Satan to fail to understand something this obvious! And yet so many millions of adults can't seem to understand it. This is because so many millions of adults are driven by powerful desires rather than by common sense. If a Catholic or Protestant politician is driven by intense craving and immense desire to win elections, and if the only way for that politician to win elections is by adopting, in public, positions on various issues which rebel against the official positions of the Church which that politician says is God's True Church, then his intense desire to get elected might well triumph over sanity, logic and common sense. I recall reading, roughly 30 years ago, a passage in Paul Johnson's `A History of Christianity' where he says the Jehovah's Witness were the only Christian church in Nazi Germany that consistently resisted the Nazis, whereas the Protestant ministers lent their support to Hitler and his regime because he allowed them to keep their titles of Reverend, Pastor etc. So you see how the desire for worldly status led those Protestant ministers to support Hitler and his regime. And of course the Jehovah's Witnesses are not actually Christians, as they insist Jesus is not God, but this is a separate issue. We're interested in observing how intense desires lead Christians to trample on common sense, and, in fact, descend into madness. You know, to claim to be a minister of Christ, but to support Adolph Hitler, a man who really didn't conceal from the public his most controversial opinions, aims and intentions - well that looks a lot like raving insanity. Or, to phrase it another way, we want to know how Satan uses intense but more or less normal human desires to manipulate people into rebelling against God and God's True Church, thus leading them away from heaven and to perdition.

We're looking for God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19. You have to admit it sounds a little crazy to say that some little Protestant sect and only that little Protestant sect is the Church which Christ founded on a rock. And yet to deny the existence of a True Church is to reject Christianity. Let me explain. John 14. 23-26,

`Jesus answered him and said unto him, if a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not my sayings...But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.'

John 14. 23-26 is similar to Jerome's famous observation: `Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ'. If one accepts John 14. 23-26, then one will keep Christ's words, such as the words He spoke in Matthew 16. 13-19,

`When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the son of Man, am? So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" And Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and earth, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.'

Jesus says in John 15. 6,

`If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.'

If one abides in Christ then one is in the True Church.

Revelation 20. 12-15 - `And I saw the dead, small and great standing before God...and the dead were judged according to their works...And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.'

If your name is written in the Book of Life then you are in the True Church. If your name is not written in the Book of Life then you are not in the True Church.

The True Church is not a cathedral or any sort of building. It is a collection of people, a collection of saints, who teach doctrines which lead souls to heaven, and who do not teach a single doctrine which leads souls to perdition.

The saints in the True Church are not perfect and sinless. Only God is perfect. And the True Church can teach errors. The key attribute of the True Church is that she leads souls to heaven and she never leads anyone to perdition. Whatever mistakes the True Church makes are minor – or at least these mistakes don't lead anyone to perdition. If a church leads souls to perdition then it can't possibly be the True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock.

We also have the words of St. Paul in Ephesians 4. 4-6,

`There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.'

In St. Paul's terminology this phrase - `there is one body' - means there is only one True Church. Note Ephesians 5. 30, where St. Paul says of the Church and Christ,

`For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.'

Matthew 7. 13-16 indicates the True Church is rather exclusive,

`Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits...'

Christ told us at the Last Supper, Matthew 26. 28: `This cup is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins'. The first mention of a new covenant, of a New Law to amend the Old Law, the Mosaic Law, is found in Jeremiah 31. 31-34:

`Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which My covenant they broke... but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, sayeth the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'

The new covenant is just another term for: The True Faith, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the New Law, the Divine Law etc. If you have the new covenant written on your heart, then you are in the True Church.

A recent scandal hitting the Roman Catholic Church pertained to the way that Roman Catholic bishops - who are said to be the successors to the Apostles - dealt with pedophile and the homosexual priests. 80% of the abuse was against adolescents; hence most of the abuse was perpetrated by homosexual priests not by pedophile priests. This distinction is important because the Liberal Press does not want to blame homosexuals for the abuse; the Liberal Press wants to push acceptance of homosexuality, so the Liberal Press distorts the truth by placing all blame on pedophile priests, because the Liberal Press has an agenda in promoting acceptance of homosexuality, an agenda saying: you are a small-minded bigot if you think homosexuality is a mortal sin which leads souls to hell. The topic of homosexuality is complicated by the fact that you have to teach people the truth, and so you have to explain sodomy, have to explain what it is, and you have to explain how there is a difference between two guys hugging each other and two guys sodomizing each other, and who wants to get into all these nasty details? But you have to get into some nasty details if you are going to understand the subjects of damnation and sin and eternal hell and sodomy etc. In any event, some Roman Catholic bishops, by shuffling perpetrators from one parish to another - trying to conceal from the public the sins of these perpetrators - to spare the Roman Catholic Church some embarrassment - exposed lots of kids to lots of sexual abuse. One scenario says the Roman Catholic Church was God's True Church in 1950, for instance, but, by 2013, Rome had fallen away from the True Faith, and is no longer God's True Church, because of the recent scandal. When you look for evidence saying the Roman Catholic Church has fallen away from the True Faith and is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock you might start with the 4th century, not the 16th century, the time of the Protestant Reformation, and not the 20th century. The 4th century is when Catholics under the sign of the cross began perpetrating evil on a massive scale. Some rich Christians trampled on some poor Christians before the 4th century, and there were always people like Judas calling themselves Christians, but in the 4th century the Catholic kings and Catholic nobles, with the blessing of the Catholic priests, began to crush the Catholic peasants on a massive scale. The Roman Empire was run by pagans in the 3rd century. It was run by people under the sign of the cross in the 4th century. One makes a very big mistake if one thinks these people running the Roman Empire in the 4th century under the sign of the cross were wonderfully benevolent people! Well of course not every person under the sign of the cross in the 4th century was a monster. But Catholic priests began celebrating communion, began giving the bread and the wine, to evil people: to evil kings, to evil nobles, to evil henchmen of evil kings and evil nobles, in the 4th century. And 1 Corinthians 11. 27 tells us it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. The laws of the Roman Empire under the sign of the cross followed after the brutal pagan example, not after the humane precepts of Christ. Christ articulated some ferocious punishments in the afterlife, but He told people to be gentle and loving and forgiving in this life! The New Testament commands us to love God and love our neighbors, to love even our enemies. But the people under the sign of the cross who were running the Roman Empire from the 4th century onwards were as brutal and as grasping in this life as the pagans had been. Slaves were burned alive for minor crimes, or for no crime at all; people had molten lead poured down their throats for minor infractions; peasants were crucified by nobles looking to steal the gold belonging to those peasants; people were tortured in the most hideous ways on the evidence of slanderers; and all of these evil laws and punishments were administered by Christian magistrates with the blessing of the Christian clergy. Catholic kings, kings who received communion with Catholic priests and with Catholic laymen, told the Jews they could either convert to Catholicism or they could have their eyes torn out. When good people celebrate communion with evil people they both celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. Christ said in John 6. 53-55 that we must celebrate communion in order to attain heaven and to escape perdition. And 1 Corinthians 11. 27 tells us that we must celebrate communion in a worthy manner to attain heaven and to escape perdition. And when you are celebrating communion with some king who just got done tearing the eye out of Jews...

So, if the Church of Rome has always remained God's True Church during all of these centuries of anti-Semitism and slavery, during all these centuries when the kings and nobles under the sign of the cross crushed the poor, during all of these centuries full of papal dungeons and inquisitional tortures, then, why would one think the Church of Rome fell away and ceased to be God's True Church in the 20th century, merely because of some 20th century scandal?

But if the Catholic Church fell away from the True Faith a long time ago...

If one has the Divine Law written on one's heart then one will not commit sacrilege. An example of sacrilege is saying that evil things are holy, or saying that holy things are evil.

The Roman Catholic Church says you commit blasphemy and sacrilege if you speak evil of someone that Rome has canonized, that is, someone whom Rome has declared a saint – and a saint is someone who attains heaven and escapes perdition.

Will Durant wrote in `The Reformation' (p. 731):

"In 1451 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, one of the most enlightened men of the fifteenth century, enforced the wearing of badges by the Jews under his jurisdiction. Two years later John of Capistrano began his missions, as legate of Pope Nicholas V, in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Poland. His powerful sermons accused the Jews of killing children and desecrating the Host -charges which popes had branded as murderous superstitions. Urged on by this "scourge of the Jews," the dukes of Bavaria drove all Hebrews from their duchy. Bishop Godfrey of Wurzburg, who had given them full privileges in Franconia, now banished them, and in town after town Jews were arrested, and debts due them were annulled. At Breslau several Jews were jailed on Capistrano's demand; he himself supervised the tortures that wrung from some of them whatever he bade them confess; on the basis of these confessions forty Jews were burned at the stake (June 2, 1453). The remaining Jews were banished, but their children were taken from them and baptized by force. Capistrano was canonized in 1690."

What about this contention that the pro-choice position is evil and anti-Christian? Those of us who are pro-lifers are actually really pretty Liberal, don't you think? We don't agitate for women who have abortions to be punished. We don't even agitate for laws which give them slaps on the wrist. We simply want the government to shut down abortion clinics and save babies from being murdered. You can decide for yourself if abortion is something which is evil and if it is something which should be made illegal. But if you determine that the pro-choice position is evil and anti-Christian, and if you are celebrating communion in an unworthy manner by celebrating communion with people who make no secret that they are pro-choice, then you are indeed celebrating communion in an unworthy manner, and so you are indeed on the road to perdition, and you are delusional if you think you are on the road to heaven. Search on You Tube and my playlist the NBA on NBC to Catching Fire – Poison Fog will pop up. It deals with contentious issues: Pro-lifers vs. Pro-choicers, Israelis vs. Palestinians, Democrats vs. Republicans, blacks vs. whites fighting on the subways of New York, blacks vs. Asians fighting in beauty parlors, hot girls fighting on Bravos _Vanderpump Rules_ etc. The producers of these women in prison movies know that audiences will pay movie to watch hot girls in conflict with each other. _Stuck_! is a pretty good movie in this genre but I couldn't find a clip of it on You tube which does it justice. The whole playlist sort of charts some of the boundaries between things which are Not-Anti-Christian and things which are Anti-Christian. Like there's a clip of _Abracadabra_ from the Brown Eyed Girls, and they sort of swing their hips in a way many would say is Anti-Christian...I have a clip of _Sweet Hitchhiker,_ a song from Credence Clearwater Revival, and the clip has some interesting choreography in it. I would have to say that while the clip is not quite porn it still has to be classified as Anti-Christian, even though it wouldn't need all that many changes to it to make it something which is Not-Anti-Christian. There's a clip of Aubrey Plaza getting drunk and threatening to kill some people. I wouldn't classify that clip as anti-Christian. The producers of the TV show, `Parks and Recreation' are not telling people to get drunk and go kill people. They are just creating a little drama. I think it is always anti-Christian to take God's name in vain, in real life or in movies. You can see why a director would want actors playing soldiers getting shot up in a war to use strong language. Nevertheless I think it's always a big mistake to bring God's name into the dialogue unless it is used reverently. There are lots of clips on You Tube documenting the Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict / hate. I found tons of interesting clips on You Tube from a show called `The Sarah Connor Chronicles.' It was pulled by Fox after 2 seasons. They must have gotten complaints. It's not Anti-Christian for a TV show to, sort of, play around with the theme of a machine and a human being falling in love. It's obviously Anti-Christian if a human being marries a machine, or fornicates with a machine. But it might not be Anti-Christian if a TV show deals with the theme of love between humans and machines. It all depends on how the TV show goes about its treatment of that theme.

Christians are waiting for these 3 angels mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11 to show up. We're also waiting for the Antichrist to arrive. These events precede the Second Coming of Christ. The Second Coming is sort of anti-climactic. It is really just a big slaughter. There's no suspense as to which side wins the battle. Christ returns and ships the Antichrist and his followers off to eternal hellfire.

Concerning the mark of the beast, Revelation 14. 11 is quite clear: if you have this mark of the beast on your forehead or right hand, then you burn in hell forever. Revelation 9 deals with a seal of God which, when this seal is on ones forehead, saves one from the torments described in Revelation 9.

Either the cross is sacred in the eyes of God, and so the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are irrelevant in judging the cross, or else the cross is not sacred in the eyes of God, and so the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are relevant in judging the cross. The cross either symbolizes no evil or else the cross symbolizes some evil. And again, if one has the Divine Law written on ones heart, recall Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34, then one will not commit sacrilege, one will not say that things which God says are sacred are evil; and one won't say that things which God says are evil are sacred. Charles Mackay wrote in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London, 1841),

`John Baptist Cibo, elected to the papacy in 1485, under the designation Innocent VIII., was sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and launched forth his terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated bull of 1488, he called the nations of Europe to the rescue of the Church of Christ upon earth, imperilled by the arts of Satan, and set forth the horrors that had reached his ears; how that numbers of both sexes had intercourse with the infernal fiends; how by their sorceries they afflicted both man and beast; how they blighted the marriage-bed, destroyed the births of women and the increase of cattle: and how they blasted the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, and the herbs of the field. In order that criminals so atrocious might no longer pollute the earth, he appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with apostolic power to convict and punish. It was now that the Witch Mania properly so called, may be said to have commenced. Immediately a class of men sprang up in Europe, who made it the sole business of their lives to discover and burn witches. Sprenger, in Germany, was the most celebrated of these national scourges. In his notorious work, the Malleus Maleficarum, he laid down a regular form of trial, and appointed a course of examination by which the inquisitors in other countries might best discover the guilty. The questions, which were always enforced by torture, were of the most absurd and disgusting nature...Cumanus, in Italy, burned forty-one poor women in one province alone; and Sprenger, in Germany, burned a number which can never be ascertained correctly, but which, it is agreed on all hands, amounted to more than five hundred in a year...For fear the zeal of the enemies of Satan should cool, successive popes appointed new commissions. One was appointed by Alexander VI. in 1494, another by Leo X. in 1521, and a third by Adrian VI. in 1522. They were all armed with the same powers to hunt out and destroy, and executed their fearful functions but too rigidly. In Geneva alone five hundred persons were burned in the years 1515 and 1516, under the title of Protestant witches...in the year 1524 no less than a thousand persons suffered death for witchcraft in the district of Como...Henri Boguet, a witch-finder, who styled himself "The Grand Judge of Witches for the Territory of St. Claude," drew up a code for the guidance of all persons engaged in the witch-trials, consisting of seventy articles, quite as cruel as the code of Bodinus. In this document he affirms, that a mere suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the suspected person...Who, when he hears that this diabolical doctrine was the universally received opinion of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities can wonder that thousands upon thousands of unhappy persons should be brought to the stake? that Cologne should for many years burn its three hundred witches annually? district of Bamberg its four hundred? Nuremberg, Geneva, Paris, Toulouse, Lyons, and other cities, their two hundred?...In 1595, an old woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being invited to share the sports of the country people on a day of public rejoicing, was heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed through the fields toward a hill, where she was lost sight of. A violent thunder-storm arose about two hours afterwards, which wet the dancers to the skin, and did considerable damage to the plantations. This woman, suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned, and accused of having raised the storm, by filling a hole with wine, and stirring it about with a stick. She was tortured till she confessed, and was burned alive the next evening...They never burned anybody till he confessed; and if one course of torture would not suffice, their patience was not exhausted, and they tried him again and again, even to the twentieth time.'

We read on pp. 118-123 of H. R. Trevor-Roper's The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (Harper, 1956) that with the crime of witchcraft being declared a crimen exceptum by Pope Innocent VIII. in 1468, the use of torture had papal sanction to be employed against those accused of witchcraft. Torture was deemed necessary to obtain convictions, and very feeble suspicion was enough to initiate the use of torture. As it was highly unlikely that an investigator would find a written pact with the devil, or a pot of human limbs, or a supply of toads, etc., less incriminating evidence, such as an inability to shed tears, or the inability to sink in water, or the presence of a wart, or a calloused part of skin which wouldn't bleed when pricked, became evidence sufficient to initiate torture, so as to secure confessions and testimony against `accomplices.' Trevor-Roper lists the various instruments of suffering: various devices which crushed the fingers and toes; the Spanish Boot which broke shin-bones; the self-explanatory `Bed of Nails.' There was also much driving of needles under finger-nails.

Christianity is tough to paraphrase. The problem with encapsulating Christianity with John 3. 16, which basically says you will attain heaven and escape perdition if you believe in Jesus, is that Muslims will say that they believe in Jesus, and Jehovah's Witnesses will say that they too believe in Jesus. The Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses believe in Jesus in the sense that they both believe Jesus is a prophet, they both even believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but they both also believe that Jesus is just a human being, and they both say it is a terrible blasphemy to worship Jesus as God. Christians are divided into no end of sects and factions but all Christians believe that Jesus is God. If you don't believe Jesus is God you are not a Christian, not if we define a Christian as a person who says God, the Creator of the Universe, is a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and Jesus is the Divine Son. If, in order to be a Christian, you must be a person who says the scriptures which tell us Jesus is God are true, then...

Some people say you only have to profess what is written in John 3. 16 and you will be saved. But if you paraphrase Christianity by saying that you only need to read John 3. 16 and then you can just go ahead the scriptures which say Jesus is God, and go ahead and ignore the scriptures which pertain to hellfire, and go ahead and ignore the scriptures which say there is a True Church terribly worthless paraphrase of Christianity. Only a terribly confused sort of Christian would tell you to just read John 3. 16 and then go ahead and ignore John 1. 1-14 and John 15. 6 and Acts 26. 13-18 and 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, and ignore John 14. 23-26, and ignore Matthew 16. 13-19, and ignore Matthew 25. 31-46, and ignore John 6. 53-55, and ignore 1 Corinthians 11. 27, and ignore the scriptures which say Jesus is God – John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 etc. We're been over pretty thoroughly the logic which says it is insanity for one to rebel against the church which he insists is the True Church. And things get a little complicated because if one determines that Church X is a false church, that it is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, and so it leads people to perdition not to heaven, then one wants to know if God will have mercy on some of the people in that church. One is always hearing of kids being murdered at young ages, long before their religious beliefs matured, and so you might want to insist that God will certainly have mercy on some kid, who, though he or she was in a false church, will nevertheless be raised up to heaven, as god will certainly have mercy on some poor little kid who was murdered. It's always best to not turn speculations into dogmas. You don't want to get on a slippery slope where you are saying doctrine is unimportant because every charitable and decent soul goes to heaven, regardless if they are Buddhists, Hindus. I mean if you start with the premise that John 1. 1-14 is true, if Jesus is the Creator of the Universe, it would be super stupid to say it is wise to ignore John 15. 6, and ignore 2 Thess 1. 8., and ignore Revelation 20. 12-15. Again, John 15. 6 says those who don't abide in Christ are like sticks which are gathered up and tossed into the flames. Revelation 20. 12-15, 2 Thess 1. 8, Matthew 25. 31-46 more or less say the same thing as John 15. 6. Revelation 2. 9 has Jesus saying the Jews are a synagogue of satan. Jesus forgave the Jews for the crucifixion, but you see, we have a Case 1 and a Case 2. Case 1 says Jesus is not God. Case 1 says Christianity leads people away from heaven and drags them down to perdition. If Case 1 is true then Christianity is satanic, and non-Christians are wise to reject Christianity. Case 2 says Jesus is God. Case 2 says you can trust what God is saying in John 15. 6, and in Matthew 25. 31-46. You can trust what is written in Revelation 20. 12-15. If every non-Christian religion in the world leads people away from heaven and straight to perdition then every non-Christian religion in the world is evil, satanic. A religion might be filled with very nice people – perhaps very nice incompetent and delusional people – but if their religion leads people away from heaven and drags them down to perdition, then that religion is evil, satanic. Moving right along with encapsulating Christianity, Galatians 1. 8-12 says St. Paul learned his doctrine directly from Christ and even an angel from heaven is accursed if he alters these doctrines. Acts 26. 13-18 describes the conversion of St. Paul. He is given a mission from God to turn the people away from the power of satan and to the power of God. So, if you believe that Jesus is God, if you are a Christian, if you believe what is written in Galatians 1. 8 and Acts 26. 13-18, then it would make no sense to reject what St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10,

`Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor _the_ covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.'

So, you see, if a Christians was to say that God is OK with homosexuality, then this Christian would be saying that 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 is untrustworthy. And if 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 is untrustworthy then Acts 26. 13-18 is probably also untrustworthy. And if you can't trust Acts 26. 13-18 why would you be able to trust the scriptures which say Jesus is God? And all of Christianity is invalid if John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 etc., are falsehoods. So, homosexual activists will say that Christians don't need to support homosexuality but they must tolerate gay marriage. To tolerate an action, in the legal sense, means to not pass legislation forbidding that action. A Christian reason for opposing gay marriage is due to the fact that if gay marriage became legal then Protestant and Catholic public servants would be required to marry gays, and this would violate their religious belief. If you believe gay marriage is an evil which leads people to perdition, and if the State orders you to perform gay marriage ceremonies, orders you to either perform them of else you will lose your job, well you can see how Hate is created. The gays are angry that people will not support them, and Christians are angry that the State is firing Christians and injecting hardship into their lives for upholding the Christian religion. Even if public servants are not fired for refusing to perform gay marriages, Christian lawmakers refuses to pass legislation enacting gay marriage, on the grounds that gay marriage is a sacrilege, and they don't care to pass legislation enshrining a sacrilege. The Christian reasoning that gay marriage is a sacrilege runs as follows. Ordinary marriage is a sacrament, it is something which confers grace, it is something which leads people to heaven. Illegal sex, so to speak, fornication, leads offenders to perdition. We just got done reading that in 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10. The sacrament of marriage transforms illegal sex into legal sex. But gay marriage doesn't transform sodomy into something legal in the eyes of God. Sodomy is a sin which leads offenders to perdition regardless if the offenders have or don't have a gay marriage license from a church or from the State. So, if a lawmaker was to make a law legalizing gay marriage, he would, from the Christian perspective, be committing a sacrilege, he would be taking something sacred in the eyes of God, marriage, and twist it into something unholy in the eyes of God, thus putting himself on the road to perdition.

Christianity says Christ will return in a Second Coming. But before this happens the Antichrist will be revealed - 2 Thess 2. And these 3 angels from heaven - Revelation 14. 6-11 - also precede the Second Coming of Christ, so they will be revealed. Revelation 18 is a prophesy involving famine and economic collapse, and that prophesy will come to pass prior to the Second Coming. So, we Christians are sort of waiting around, waiting for some interesting things to happen, trying to use our time wisely as we wait around of course, trying, you know, to not just exist, to not just live a listless sort of life, waiting aimlessly, drifting with no sense of purpose, making no progress in a spiritual sense, wandering in vain daydreams and idle reveries...

Anyway, to review matters about the Antichrist and these 3 angels from heaven, Revelation 14. 6-11, how exactly do you tell the difference between an angel from hell and an angel from heaven? I mean, if an angel from hell is sufficiently cunning and is adept at imposture - 2 Corinthians 11. 13-15 says satan masquerades as an angel of light and his ministers masquerade as ministers of righteousness - then you would have to be an expert at recognizing lies, especially religious lies, heresies. If, for instance a person says that all you need to know to attain heaven and to escape perdition is this: obey the Roman Catholic Church, because Rome is God's True Church, and Rome will always lead you to heaven, then you have to decide if that is sound or unsound advice.

So, if one is on the road to heaven, then there is no reason for him to change anything. But if one is on the road to perdition and not on the road to heaven, if a person is lost in heresy, then he must change some things, and he must change some things before it is too late to change some things, you know, he must change some things before he dies, or else he'll end up where people on the road to perdition end up.

Recall Revelation 20. 12-15 deals with the Last Judgment. Ones name is either written in the Book of Life or else it's not written in the Book of Life, and if it's not then one has to find a way to get it written there, or else...

Anyway, people confusing the evil traditions of men with the commandments of God is probably the biggest problem in religion.

The sign of the cross either reflects no evil or else it reflects some evil. If the cross symbolizes no evil, if God says the cross is sacred, then it is a sacrilege to say the cross symbolizes some evil. And if the cross is sacred to God, then it stands to reason the cross is probably the seal of God we read about in Revelation 9, and if you must put the mark of a cross on your forehead to escape the torments described in Revelation 9...

So, the cross either symbolizes no evil or else it symbolizes some evil.

Now if God says the cross symbolizes some evil, then it is a sacrilege to say the cross is sacred. It is sacrilege to say that evil things are sacred. If God says the cross is evil then you don't want the mark of a cross on your forehead. Revelation 14. 11 mentions eternal torment in eternal hell for those having an evil mark on their foreheads.

Again, 2 Thess 2 deals with the Antichrist and delusion. I'm trying to push the idea that you can't distinguish an angel from hell from an angel from heaven unless you are a great expert on religion. And to be a great expert you need the new covenant, the Divine Law, written on your heart. Protestants say you get the new covenant written on your heart when you read and obey the New Testament. Some Old Testament laws are still binding on Christians. Can't steal. Can't murder. Can't covet. Don't have graven images. Don't be an adulterer. Obey the Sabbath and keep it holy. All of the 10 Commandments are still binding. Other laws like stoning adulteresses, executing homosexuals, executing Sabbath violators are not enforced. They are in abeyance. The Mosaic Law is an eternal law in the sense that it is on the books, so to speak, forever, but parts of it are no longer enforced under the new covenant. No more sacrificing animals on a temple in Jerusalem. The heart of a Christian is the temple of God under the New Law.

Again 2 Thess 2 deals with the Antichrist and strong delusion, deals with a man of sin / son of perdition who sits in the holy place. As we saw, Christianity says a Christian is the temple of God - 1 Corinthians 3. 16, Matthew 26. 28, Jeremiah 31. 31-34, Ezekiel 36. 24-28 etc. So, if the Antichrist was to write satanic heresy on the hearts of Christians, even if he was to write 99% truth and 1% satanic heresy on Christian hearts, then he would still be writing satanic heresy on Christian hearts – and Christian hearts are the temples of God, so the Antichrist would sitting in the holy place, so to speak, and the temple in Jerusalem would not need to be rebuilt in order for the prophesy of 2 Thess 2 to be fulfilled.

If one is convinced one is in a church which leads people to heaven then one will be convinced that one has no reason to change, no reason to look for a different church. If you ask a Christian if he has the Divine Law written on his heart, the Divine Law / new covenant mentioned by Christ at the Last Supper, and mentioned in Jeremiah 31. 31-34, then he will say YES! If he was to say NO! then he would be saying he is a false Christian, he would be saying he is a lost soul on the road to perdition. Why would a Christian want to say he is heading straight to eternal perdition? If a person is convinced he has the Divine Law inscribed on his heart, if he is convinced that he is on the road to heaven, convinced that his church upholds the True Faith, then he will be convinced that he and his church have no reason to change. If you're on the road to heaven then it is perilous to change, because by changing something you risk putting yourself on the road to perdition, if in fact you're already on the road to heaven. So, if a person is convinced he has the Divine Law written on his heart, convinced he is on the road to heaven, but if he is deluded, if in fact he is on a road leading him straight to eternal perdition, because he is lost in heresy, because he is deluded and does not have the Divine Law written on his heart, though he insists he does, then, how does this problem get fixed? Like I say, there are these 3 angels from heaven, recall Revelation 14. 6-11...

My other books on Christianity have looked at great length at Premise / Conclusion issues. What I mean by this is, suppose you start with the premise that Psalm 2 is true (this scripture implies the Son is God), and if you then include a second premise that says you can trust what you read in Isaiah 9. 6 (this scripture explicitly calls the Son `almighty God), and if, furthermore, you also include some more premises, premises which say you can trust the New Testament scriptures which tell us Jesus is God, recall scriptures such as John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, then, once you accept all these premises, then you quite effortlessly come to the conclusion that you can trust what God / Jesus is saying in hellfire scriptures like John 15. 6, Matthew 25. 31-46 and Luke 16. 19-31. You won't trust these hellfire scriptures if you think Jesus is a fraud. But if you trust the scriptures that say Jesus is God, then you will trust what God / Jesus is saying when he is talking about hellfire. It just makes no sense to say that though Jesus is God you just can't trust what God / Jesus is saying in hellfire scriptures like John 15. 6 and Matthew 25. 31-46.

Revelation 20. 12-15 says you get tossed into a lake of fire if your name is not written in the Book of Life. Now perhaps God will take some or many of the damned out of the lake of fire, and perhaps God will put them some place in perdition where they can be reasonably comfortable. But the scriptures seem very clear in saying that once you are cast into the lake of fire then you will never gain admittance into heaven.

Of course the non-Christians don't accept the Christian hellfire scriptures. The non-Christians certainly don't accept the scriptures which say Jesus is God, though the Jews accept Psalm 2 and Isaiah 9. 6, or at least many Jews do. We've been over in my other books the sin of blasphemy. You see, if Jesus is God then the non-Christians are guilty of blasphemy because they say Jesus is a false god and a bogus deity. They might say Jesus was a nice guy and a good but they definitely do not worship Him as the Creator of the Universe, and they consider it preposterous to see Him as God, therefore they see Him as a false god. Of course if Jesus is a false God then it is blasphemy to say He is God, which is what we Christians do. Recall the Old Testament scripture of Malachi 4. 1 mentions God setting the wicked, like wicked blasphemers, on fire. The Muslims will point to hellfire scriptures in the Koran, and will insist it is blasphemy to worship Jesus as God, as the Muslims are convinced that Allah is God. The Muslims say Jesus is the Messiah but they say the Messiah is a human being, certainly not God. The Muslims insist you can trust the hellfire scriptures in the Koran, and insist Allah is God, and insist it is blasphemy to say Jesus is God. But we Christians say it is blasphemy to call Allah God. Allah is a false god. The True god is a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is what we Christians say. Even if you don't accept the New Testament, Psalm 2 and Isaiah 9. 6 clearly indicate that the Messiah, the Divine Son, is God.

Anyway, I'm a Christian, I'm pushing the concept that you can trust the scriptures which tell us Jesus is God, and so you can also trust what God / Jesus is saying in the hellfire scriptures. Eventually we arrive at Matthew 16. 13-19, the famous scripture where God / Jesus tells us that He has founded His Church on a rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. You first want to avoid making a botch of things when you assess the Roman Catholic Church. You have to determine if Rome is God's True Church or if Rome is not God's True Church. My other books on Christianity go into great detail on the more controversial teachings of Roman Catholicism. The Dogma of Papal Infallibility says you are anathema – accursed, damned – if you reject that Dogma. So, if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome is the Bride of Christ which leads people to heaven, then you don't want to reject that the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. But if Rome is a false church which is lost in heresy and therefore leads people to perdition, then you don't want to be a Roman Catholic. Rome teaches that Mary is perfect and sinless. Rome doesn't teach that Mary is God or that she must be worshipped, but Rome does say that Mary was conceived free of sin and Rome teaches she never committed a single sin. The Bible says only God is perfect but Rome says Mary is perfect also. There are really no end of controversial doctrines taught by Rome. For centuries Rome has called the Inquisition the `Holy Office'. It's a sacrilege to declare evil things to be holy. Well, of course, Roman Catholics insist that Rome is God's True Church, and if God's True Church wants to declare Mary to be sinless and perfect, and if God's True Church wants to call the Inquisition the Holy Office, then what's the problem here? There's no sacrilege here, say the Roman Catholics! This makes perfect sense if in fact Rome is God's True Church. But it makes no sense at all if Rome is a false church which leads people to eternal perdition.

The Roman Catholic Church says you are a blasphemer if you direct abusive language at anyone canonized as a saint by Rome. Will Durant wrote in `The Reformation' (p. 731):

"In 1451 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, one of the most enlightened men of the fifteenth century, enforced the wearing of badges by the Jews under his jurisdiction. Two years later John of Capistrano began his missions, as legate of Pope Nicholas V, in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Poland. His powerful sermons accused the Jews of killing children and desecrating the Host -charges which popes had branded as murderous superstitions. Urged on by this "scourge of the Jews," the dukes of Bavaria drove all Hebrews from their duchy. Bishop Godfrey of Wurzburg, who had given them full privileges in Franconia, now banished them, and in town after town Jews were arrested, and debts due them were annulled. At Breslau several Jews were jailed on Capistrano's demand; he himself supervised the tortures that wrung from some of them whatever he bade them confess; on the basis of these confessions forty Jews were burned at the stake (June 2, 1453). The remaining Jews were banished, but their children were taken from them and baptized by force. Capistrano was canonized in 1690."

Abram Leon Sachar, a former president of Brandeis University, wrote in A History of the Jews (Knopf, 1960):

`This time the villain of the piece is the papal legate John of Capistrano, a Franciscan monk whose persecuting zeal earned him the unenviable title of "Scourge of the Jews."...Wherever he went, thousands...were carried away by his immense sincerity, his ferocious energy. Riots were common in Germany and Slavic lands after his tongue had lashed heretics and Jews...In Breslau a Bernadine chapel was built with Jewish money after nearly the whole community had been burnt alive for blasphemy...So went the tale of woe decade after decade, endlessly. Four hundred years had now passed since the hideous nightmare had begun. Hounded by successions of crusaders...Even sunny Spain was beginning to use the thumb-screw and the torch...Jews turned to their Bibles and prayer-books, scanning the tear-stained pages in vain for the consolation which the living world denied them...While France and England, Germany and Austria ransacked chambers of horror to discover new torments...In Seville several thousand were butchered...The riots spread like a plague...About seventy cities of Old Castile were thus devastated and a trail of broken homes and broken hearts was left in the wake of the bloody hooligans...The fertile province of Valencia, the prosperous seaport of Barcelona, even the islands off the coast of Spain, were all swept by the ferocity of the persecutors. After three months the orgy ended, with thousands of Jewish lives snuffed out and tens of thousands of forced baptisms.'

If the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, then it makes no sense to have these secular governments which lead people to perdition. If the Roman Catholic Church leads people to heaven because it is God's True Church, then who needs these preposterous Executive branches, Senates, Parliaments, Kings, and Supreme Courts? If a person will always be led to heaven if he always obey God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church, then it makes no sense to be governed by some anti-Christian, anti-Catholic government which only drags people down to eternal perdition. But, on the other hand, if the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false church which leads people to eternal perdition, then how do we get Roman Catholics to wise up and see that their church is a false church that will lead them straight to eternal perdition?

Let's all assume, though some will only accept it hypothetically, that you can trust John 1. 1-14 (Jesus is God) and therefore you can trust what God is saying in John 6. 53-55 – you must celebrate holy communion in order to attain heaven and to escape perdition. Let's also accept Acts 26. 13-19 as true. In this scripture we read that God has given St. Paul a mission to turn people from the power of Satan to the power of God. So, since St. Paul has been given a mission from God we can trust what St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11. 27. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 11. 27 that it is a terrible sin to celebrate holy communion in an unworthy manner. So we have to determine what is celebrating holy communion in a worthy manner, and what is celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. So, toward this end, I threw together a playlist on You Tube called `The NBA on NBC to Catching Fire – Poison Fog.' About a third of the way through the roughly 1,100 clips are some clips which deal with abortion. The first clip deals with a doctor who performed over one thousand abortions before he converted to the pro-life cause. Those of us on the pro-life side like to be very accommodating to ex-pro-choicers, because we want to make it enticing for them to convert to the pro-life side, because if we make it arduous for them to convert then, it stands to reason, this will dissuade them from converting, and this will strengthen the pro-choice side. But if an abortionist is tearing the limbs off of a baby on Tuesday, and then if he converts to the pro-life cause on Wednesday, then, given what you read in 1 Corinthians 11. 27, it doesn't make any sense to be in a big hurry to given him the bread and the wine on Sunday. I mean, take that BTK killer for an example. He was a deacon in a Lutheran church. Rader, I think his name was. BTK comes from Bind, Torture, Kill – which is what this Lutheran deacon would do to his victims. Obviously if you are taking holy communion with a guy who is a serial killer, but you don't know that he is a serial killer, then you can't be accused of celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. But if you know that a guy is a serial killer, and if you knowingly celebrate holy communion with a serial killer, then of course you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. So, on the one hand we don't want to lay too big of a guilt trip on abortionists and pro-choicers, because we want to entice them to come over to the pro-life side, but then we also don't want to be in too big of a hurry to give the bread and the wine to ex-abortionists.

We want to comfort the ex-pro-choicers and reassure them that God loves them, even though they were in the clutches of satan when they were on the pro-choice / baby killing side, when they were blinded by evil pro-choice propaganda etc. We want to stress the seriousness of the evil of abortion, but we also don't want to lay too big of a guilt trip on ex-pro-choicers. It hurts the pro-life cause when you lay too big of a guilt trip on people. But then, on the other hand, you also don't want to be celebrating communion in an unworthy manner by giving the bread and the wine to people who were murdering babies last Tuesday.

In this playlist I have on You Tube there are some videos of girls singing and dancing in a sexy way. There's a line that divides dancing that is anti-Christian from dancing that is not anti-Christian. No doubt there's a lot of subjectivity, but sometimes it's easy to recognize anti-Christian dancing. But in terms of celebrating the Eucharist, well, suppose a girl is dancing in an anti-Christian way on Monday, and then suppose on Tuesday she determines that she wants to be a good Christian and so she promises to give up the dirty dancing. Then you might wait a week or two before celebrating holy communion with her. I suppose you might give her the bread and the wine 5 days after she promises to be a good Christian and promises to stop with the anti-Christian dancing. I don't think you have to put her on probation for 10 weeks to make her prove she's a good Christian before you decide to share the bread and the wine with her. If you refuse to share the bread and the wine with a girl, because you have decided she must prove she's a good Christian who hasn't been doing any dirty dancing for at least 10 weeks, but if you give the bread and the wine to an abortionist 10 days after he was tearing babies limb from limb, well, that sort of Eucharistic system seems preposterous and unworthy.

We have no end of confusing legal issues moving in the orbit of 1 Corinthians 11. 27. Suppose the evidence says that Daniel Holdsclaw was put into prison by a manifestly corrupt legal system in Oklahoma. If so, and if you are celebrating communion with people who uphold the manifestly corrupt legal system in Oklahoma, then you put yourself on the road to eternal perdition, because you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, you see.

Or recall the Central Park 5 controversy. If you read Ann Coulter and John Perazzo you are led to believe that all 5 of those guys are vile monsters guilty of very serious crimes. All 5 of them confessed to very serious crimes. So, how likely is it that all 5 of them are all perfectly innocent? Perhaps all 5 of them are guilty of terrible crimes? Or perhaps the evidence plainly says that 1 of them is innocent but 4 of them are guilty as hell. Or perhaps the evidence plainly says that 1 is innocent, 3 might be innocent, and 1 is guilty as hell. Well, you have to look at the evidence, because you don't want to be celebrating holy communion with people who take an evil or satanic view of that evidence, because then you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, and that puts you on the road to eternal perdition.

Suppose you are saying that all 5 of the Central Park 5 are exonerated, or suppose you are saying all 5 are guilty as hell, well, either way, suppose the evidence clearly shows that your opinion is an evil, vile, satanic opinion, or suppose the evidence shows that you have a perfectly sound opinion about the Central Park 5, but suppose you are celebrating communion with people who openly push an evil satanic opinion, then it stands to reason that you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner.

Liberals say you have to be an especially stupid sort of moron to vote for Donald Trump. Even many Republicans are Never-Trumpers. Obviously, if you are an Evangelical or a Catholic who sees abortion as satanic evil, then you will vote for Donald Trump over any foul satanic pro-choicer, and you will look at Liberals as delusional – never call people stupid if you want to persuade them to your opinion – call them lost, delusional, misguided etc. - if they are so lost that they can't understand something as simple as the Christian reasons for voting for Donald Trump. Trump promised to get pro-life people like Justice Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court. Therefore it was smart for pro-lifers to vote for Trump. Let us assume Christianity is true and abortion is a satanic evil. So, given this premise, you would think that even Liberals lost in the labyrinths of delusional Liberalism ought to be able to understand why good Christians, people who say abortion is evil, would vote for Donald Trump, even though Trump is less than apostolic, and is sort of worldly, and is not exactly what you would call super super saintly.

Now even if you are smart enough to be a pro-lifer, even if you are smart enough to see that the pro-choice side is vile, evil, satanic etc., etc., you still have to be smart enough to understand that if you are celebrating holy communion with pro-choicers, if you are celebrating holy communion with people who support Satanic evil, then you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, and so you are on the road to perdition. You are not going to heaven if you are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner by celebrating holy communion with people who push satanic evil. You might try rereading 1 Corinthians 11. 27, and John 15. 6, and 2 Thess 1. 8, and Revelation 20. 12-15 etc., etc.

Of course the delusional pro-choicers say they are not supporting evil. Suppose you got a pro-choicer who says that he trusts John 1. 1-14, and he says that he trusts what he reads in John 14. 23-26 and John 15. 6, and he says that he trusts what he reads in Acts 26. 13-18, and Galatians 1. 8-12, and he says he trusts 2 Thess 1. 8, and says he trusts what he reads in Revelation 20. 12-15, and yet he insists God is pro-choice. How do you reach someone that lost? When a person is so lost as to say Christianity is compatible with the pro-choice philosophy, that's about as lost as you can get, I should think. A person would have to be delusional to think the Christian scriptures support the pro-choice position. And no doubt, no doubt at all, a pro-lifer would have to be delusional as well if he thinks it is OK to celebrate holy communion with pro-choicers.

It's true that the pro-life position is a little complicated. I mean the pro-life position demands that the State step in and enforce laws to protect the lives of the unborn. These laws might range from very strict to very lenient, mere slaps on the wrist. It stands to reason if you are celebrating communion with people who advocate for super harsh pro-life laws, or with people who push for super lenient pro-life laws, then you will put yourself on the road to eternal perdition for celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner.

Let's turn to the Roman Catholic crucifix. There's also a Russian Orthodox crucifix, and an Eastern Orthodox crucifix and an Anglican crucifix. I'm saying get rid of all of them. Let's look at the Roman Catholic crucifix. You start by asking: is the Roman Catholic Church God's True Church, the Church which God / Jesus founded on a rock?

Either it is or it isn't.

Some issues with the Roman Catholic Church: The scriptures say that only God is sinless. Rome says that Mary is perfect and sinless. The scriptures say Jesus had brothers and sisters. Rome says it is heresy, a sin which leads to perdition, to say Mary was not ever Virgin. Rome calls the Inquisition the 'Holy Office.' But, obviously, the Inquisition was evil, and it is a sacrilege, a sin which leads to perdition, to say that evil things are holy.

There are lots more issues with Rome. But everything boils down to 2 alternatives: Rome is either God's True Church or else Rome is not God's True Church.

So, if Rome is God's True Church then just obey Rome in all things and Rome will lead you to heaven. But if you rebel against God's True Church then you might certainly go to hell. So, always obey the Roman Catholic Church if Rome is God's True Church. The Dogma of Papal Infallibility says that all who reject that Dogma are anathema - they are accursed, damned. So, profess the truth of that Dogma, don't rebel against Rome, if Rome is God's True Church. If Rome is God's True Church then it is very stupid and evil to risk hell by having these Senates and Parliaments, Executive and Judicial branches, all of which rebel against Rome. The Roman Catholic Church is the only government we need if Rome leads people to heaven, if Rome is God's True Church. If you say it is preposterous to have the Roman Catholic Church govern the USA, if you say it is idiocy to always obey Rome, I share that opinion with you. But it would make perfect sense to want Rome to govern the whole world if Rome leads people to heaven, if Rome is indeed God's True Church. Of course if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false church which leads people away from heaven and drags them down to eternal perdition, then it makes no sense to want the Roman Catholic Church to govern the world.

If Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false church, if Rome leads people away from heaven and drags them down to perdition, how do we rescue these poor lost deluded Catholics being led to the slaughter by their false church? Of course it would make no sense for them to convert from one false church to yet another false church. Obviously you have to locate God's True Church.

The Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Roman Catholic version of Jesus, a version who says Rome leads people to heaven. If the True God / True Jesus says Rome is lost in heresy and leads people to perdition, if the True God says Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, then an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven is a lie, a false version of God / Jesus. If the crucifix is an image of a lie, if it is the image of a false god, then the image of the beast, Revelation 14. 11, comes to mind.

So, if the True God says Rome is the True Church which leads people to heaven, then there is nothing with the Roman Catholic crucifix, and the Protestants need to stop rebelling against God's True Church, Rome.

But if the True God / True Jesus says Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, then the Roman Catholic crucifix, an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, is an image of a lie, an image of a false version of Jesus, an image of a false god. And Revelation 14 deals with people worshipping an evil image, the evil image of a false god presumably \- the image of the beast.

Revelation 14. 11 mentions people who have an evil mark on their foreheads burning in hell forever and ever.

So, it is perfectly obvious to everyone that if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand then you will never be shipped off to burn in hell forever.

But then some people will say that the cross is the holiest symbol in the universe, and they will say you are an evil liar if you say otherwise, and these people will say that during the great tribulation – see Revelation 18 – you want to put the mark of a cross on your forehead, because the cross is the seal of God, and when the seal of God is on your forehead it will save you from the torments described in Revelation 9.

All of my books push the idea that the scriptures which say the cross of Christ is sacred – Galatians 6. 14, Philippians 3. 18 etc. - mean that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but they don't mean that a material cross, the physical cross, is sacred. The Nazis perpetrated evil for a few years and as a result we say the Nazi swastika reflects that evil. Obviously, if God says the cross is the holiest symbol in the universe then it is a blasphemy to say the cross reflects evil. But I just don't think it is all that farfetched to think Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but material crosses are not sacred to God.

No end of evils were perpetrated for century after century by people under the sign of the cross. The so-called good Christians celebrated the Eucharist in an unworthy manner for century after century when they failed to excommunicate the evil Christians, recall 1 Corinthians 11. 27 says that's a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. So both the so-called good Christians under the cross went to perdition right along with the evil Christians.

So, we have a Case 1 and a Case 2. Case 1 says the cross is sacred to God. Case 2 says the cross is not sacred to God. Case 1 says the cross symbolizes no evil. Case 2 says the cross symbolizes some evil. Case 1 says the cross is the seal of God which protects you from the torments described in Revelation 9. But the cross has to be on your forehead to protect you from those torments.

So, if Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, then, when the Antichrist arrives, the Antichrist might be saying the cross is evil, might be saying the cross is the mark of the beast, saying you will burn in hell forever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead. See, if the cross is sacred to God, then the Antichrist will try to persuade you that the cross is evil.

But if Case 2 is true, if the cross is not sacred to God, if the cross symbolizes some evil, then you have to expect the Antichrist will be saying the cross is sacred. The Antichrist will be trying to get you to put the mark of a cross on your forehead. Perhaps he will be saying the cross is the seal of God which saves you from the torments mentioned in Revelation 9 provided the cross is on your forehead. But if Case 2 is true, if the cross symbolizes some evil, then you don't want the cross on your forehead. Again Revelation 14. 11 mentions that people who have an evil mark on their foreheads or right hands will burn in hell forever and ever.

Obviously, if the cross is the mark of the beast then every church under the sign of the cross leads people to perdition. If some church tells you the cross is sacred and nothing bad will happen to you if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead, and then if you end up burning in hell forever, then, obviously, it wasn't God's True Church which led you to burn in hell forever and ever, rather it was some worthless false church which leads people to perdition which gave you the bad advice which led you to burn in hell forever.

So, to review, the cross either symbolizes no evil or else it symbolizes some evil. Case 2 says the cross symbolizes some evil. If Case 2 is true it's natural for Christians to suspect the cross is the mark of the beast. But if Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, then it is natural for Christians to think the cross is the seal of God which saves one from the torments described in Revelation 9.

If just one church under the sign of the cross leads people to heaven, perhaps more than one but if at least one church under the sign of the cross, among all these thousands, leads people to heaven, because it is God's True Church, then you can trust that Church when it says the cross is sacred to God. And if the cross is the seal of God, well, we've been over the info about the seal of God and the torments of Revelation 9. But if every church under the sign of the cross leads people to perdition, if no church under the sign of the cross is God's True Church, recall Matthew 16. 13-19, then this doesn't prove the cross is evil, but, nevertheless, if every church under the sign of the cross leads people to perdition, well, why might this be?

Obviously, for one reason, 1 John 5. 3 says you must obey the commandments to love God. But Christians are always violating the Sabbath. They are always breaking other commandments. Look at Matthew 25. 31-46, John 14. 23-26, Acts 2. 44, Acts 4. 32, 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, 1 Corinthians 11. 27, Galatians 1. 8-12, Revelation 18. 23, Revelation 22. 18-19....

All of my books on Christianity can be summarized in 3 bullet points. These might be called the ABCs of Christianity.

A) Jesus is God

B) Get rid of the cross and the crucifix

C) Don't celebrate communion in an unworthy manner

If you can't trust the scriptures which tell us Jesus is God then you would have to conclude Christianity is a false religion. But those of us who are Christians insist you can trust John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 etc. Again, all of these tell us Jesus is God, the Divine Son who is the Creator of the Universe along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Once you accept the premise that Jesus is God then it makes no sense to reject what God tells us in scriptures like John 6. 53-55 (you must take communion to attain heaven), John 14. 23-26 (those who love Jesus keep His words, those who don't love Jesus don't keep His words), John 15. 6 (hellfire for those who don't abide in Christ), Matthew 16. 13-19 (God founded His True Church on a rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against it) etc. Hellfire scriptures like John 15. 6, Matthew 25. 31-46, 2 Thess 1. 8 and Revelation 20. 12-15 are easier to sell to people if you tell them that those scriptures don't say that the damned are tortured forever in hell. The damned are sent to eternal perdition but it's all speculation as to how long one swims in the lake of fire. Revelation 20. 12-15 is very clear in saying ones name is either written in the Book of Life or else it isn't. If your name is written in the Book of Life then you go to heaven. If your name is not written in the Book of Life then you get tossed into a lake of fire. And how long do you stay in the lake of fire? Some theologians insist God can't be a God of love if He tortures minor sorts of sinners, like adulterers, in fire forever and ever. That makes sense to me. Other theologians say that once you get tossed into the lake of fire you are tortured there forever. I don't like that interpretation of John 15. 6, 2 Thess 1. 8, Matthew 25. 31-46 and Revelation 20. 12-15 etc.

As we saw earlier, Malachi 4. 1 has the LORD saying the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the proud and wicked people will be set on fire. So you don't want to make a slip up with your religion. Suppose you say Jesus is a false god, when in fact Jesus is the True God...Or suppose you say Islam is the True Religion when in fact Islam is a big lie...

I realize lots of readers will say Malachi 4. 1 is voodoo. I'm just trying to explain Christianity! We have simple stuff and we have complicated stuff. You don't want to descend into wicked blasphemy by saying Jesus is a bogus Deity if Jesus is God. And you don't want to say Jesus is God if the True God says it is a wicked blasphemy to say Jesus is God.

Now let us suppose the Creator of the Universe considers the cross to be the most sacred symbol in the universe. Yes, suppose God says the cross is the holiest symbol in the universe. So, if someone comes along and tries to convince you that the cross is evil, and suppose he drops hints saying the cross is the mark of the beast, drops hints saying you will be tortured in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead, and let's suppose you believe these evil lies, then, you have to ask yourself: what will happen to you, if you commit sacrilege with the cross, if you say the holiest symbol in the universe is an evil symbol. Well, you would have to think you will burn in hell, perhaps for a very long time. And suppose the Creator of the Universe says the cross is the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9. Suppose the Creator of the Universe wants you to put the mark of cross on your forehead, because if you don't put the mark of a cross on your forehead you will suffer the tortures described in Revelation 9.

But then, on the other hand, if God says the cross symbolizes some evil, if God says you will be tortured in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand, because the cross is the mark of the beast...

We know that one can't possibly be tortured in hell forever and ever for the sin of having an evil mark on his forehead if he has no mark whatsoever on his forehead or right hand

So, this 2nd point of mine – Get rid of the cross and the crucifix – is simple in the sense that we only have 2 options with both the cross and the crucifix. You either keep the cross or you get rid of it. You either keep the crucifix or else you get rid of it.

If the cross is sacred to God then you commit sacrilege and put yourself on the road to perdition if you say the cross symbolizes some evil. But if God says the cross symbolizes some evil, then you commit sacrilege and so you put yourself on the road to perdition if you say the cross is sacred to God.

St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11. 27 that it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. So, if you're celebrating communion with an evil murderer then it stands to reason that you are celebrating communion in an unworthy manner, and are guilty of a terrible sin. Gibbon writes of the 4th century Catholic Emperor Valentinian and his judges,

`They easily discovered, that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated, by the Imperial court, according to the number of executions that were furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal; but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained by perjury, or procured by torture, to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution; the audacious informer, whose falsehood was detected, retired with impunity, but the wretched victim, who discovered his real or pretended accomplices, was seldom permitted to receive the price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia, the young, and the aged, were dragged in chains to the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers, expired in ignominious and cruel tortures...The expressions which issued the most readily from the mouth of the emperor of the West were, `Strike off his head;' `Burn him alive;' `Let him be beaten with clubs till he expires;'....He could behold with calm satisfaction the convulsive agonies of torture and death; he reserved his friendship for those faithful servants whose temper was the most congenial to his own. The merit of Maximin, who had slaughtered the noblest families of Rome, was rewarded with the royal approbation, and the praefecture of Gaul. Two fierce and enormous bears, distinguished by the appellations of Innocence and Mica Aurea, could alone deserve to share the favor of Maximin. The cages of those trusty guards were always placed near the bed-chamber of Valentinian, who frequently amused his eyes with the grateful spectacle of seeing them tear and devour the bleeding limbs of the malefactors who were abandoned to their rage.'

Everything is simple in the sense that we are not confronted with a million confusing alternatives. We only have to choose the correct choice from 2 choices: 1) the cross reflects no evil, or else, 2) The cross reflects some evil.

Abram Leon Sachar, a former president of Brandeis University, wrote in A History of the Jews (Knopf, 1960):

`This time the villain of the piece is the papal legate John of Capistrano, a Franciscan monk whose persecuting zeal earne him the unenviable title of "Scourge of the Jews."...Wherever he went, thousands...were carried away by his immense sincerity, his ferocious energy. Riots were common in Germany and Slavic lands after his tongue had lashed heretics and Jews...In Breslau a Bernadine chapel was built with Jewish money after nearly the whole community had been burnt alive for blasphemy...So went the tale of woe decade after decade, endlessly. Four hundred years had now passed since the hideous nightmare had begun. Hounded by successions of crusaders...Even sunny Spain was beginning to use the thumb-screw and the torch...Jews turned to their Bibles and prayer-books, scanning the tear-stained pages in vain for the consolation which the living world denied them...While France and England, Germany and Austria ransacked chambers of horror to discover new torments...In Seville several thousand were butchered...The riots spread like a plague...About seventy cities of Old Castile were thus devastated and a trail of broken homes and broken hearts was left in the wake of the bloody hooligans...The fertile province of Valencia, the prosperous seaport of Barcelona, even the islands off the coast of Spain, were all swept by the ferocity of the persecutors. After three months the orgy ended, with thousands of Jewish lives snuffed out and tens of thousands of forced baptisms.'

So, either these evils are not reflected in the cross, because God says the cross is sacred, or else these evils are reflected in the cross. We have a Case 1 and a Case 2.

We also have a different Case 1 and Case 2. Case 1 says the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, recall Matthew 16. 13-19. Case 2 says Rome is a false church not the True Church. Case 1 says the gates of hell have not prevailed against Rome. So, if Case 1 is true, then, if you could just have enough sense to always obey Rome, God's True Church, you are assured of heaven. But if you rebel against Rome, such as by refusing to venerate John of Capistrano, if you rebel against God's True Church, well, it just make no sense to say that you will escape perdition and you will attain heaven if you rebel against God's True Church.

Case 2 says the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church. Case 2 says Rome has fallen away from the True Faith, has fallen into heresy, and therefore Rome leads people to perdition. The gates of hell have prevailed against the Roman Catholic Church. So, if you are a Roman Catholic you must renounce Rome before Rome drags you down to eternal perdition.

Now if Case 1 is true, if Rome is God's True Church, then the smart thing to do is to always obey God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church. You will go to heaven if you always obey God's True Church, you see. Rome wants you to venerate Capistrano as a saint, so just venerate him as a saint. If you always obey God's True Church then you will go to heaven and will escape hell. But if you rebel against God's True Church then you will most likely go to hell. Yes, most likely.

Now, on the other hand, if Case 2 is true, if Rome is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, if the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome, if Rome is lost in heresy, if Rome is not the Bride of Christ, then Rome leads people to perdition not to heaven, so, in Case 2, you don't want to be a Roman Catholic. In Case 1 you want to always obey Rome. But if Case 2 is true then you don't want to be a Roman Catholic.

Not every Christian was an evil murderer, but for century after century ordinary Christians celebrated holy communion with evil murderers. 1 Corinthians 11. 27 says it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. Of course churches such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church insist they have always been God's True Church; they insist they have never strayed into satanic heresy; they insist they have always led people to heaven. We have millions of people who, in one breath, will tell you that the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, the True Church which leads people to heaven, the True Church which leads no one to perdition, but then these millions will, in the next breath, proceed to rebel against the church they claim is God's True Church. Talk about lost in delusion! If you will always be led to heaven if you obey Church X, but if you might go to hell if you rebel against Church X, such as by rejecting one or more of its official doctrines, then it seems so insane, so delusional, to rebel against Church X. 2 Thess 2 not only deals with the Antichrist but it also deals with strong delusion.

To review the simple stuff first. Those of us who are Christians – a Christian is a person who says Jesus is God, the Divine Son - are commanded to love God and love our neighbors, and love even our enemies. 1 John 5. 3 says you must obey the commandments in order to love God. John 14. 23-26 says those who love Christ keep His words and those who don't love Christ don't keep His words. Matthew 16. 13-19 is very clear that there is a True Church, that is, there is a collection of people who lead themselves and other people to heaven. Obviously, Non-Christians insist Matthew 16. 13-19 is a falsehood, but if Matthew 16. 13-19 is true, as we Christians insist it is true, then there are some complicated issues pertaining to finding God's True Church. Those of us who are Christians must try to persuade Non-Christians that it is wise for them to convert to Christianity. But in order for us to persuade them we must first explain Christianity, and Christianity becomes complicated in matters pertaining to the True Church. The True Church is comprised of human beings, of saints, and even the saints in the True Church are imperfect – only God is perfect and sinless, though the Catholics say Mary is perfect and sinless. So, on the one hand, you can't expect the True Church, comprised of human beings, to be perfect. But how much sin and evil can a church perpetrate before it ceases to be the True Church? Where do you draw the line? This is where Christianity gets confusing.

Christianity definitely has a simple side. Much of Christianity is super simple to understand. Everyone knows we are waiting for Christ's Second Coming. But before Jesus returns the Antichrist - aka the man of sin / son of perdition - must be revealed. 2 Thess 2 is very clear this happens prior to the Second Coming of Christ. And Revelation 14. 6-11 mentions 3 angels from heaven showing up. It's easy to imagine that lost and confused people might be tricked into believing an angel from hell is an angel from heaven, and vice versa. The Antichrist might push the True Faith for the most part, aside for a few things. If the Antichrist pushes 90% legit Christianity, and 10% satanic evil, then you have to be sharp enough to embrace the 90% which is legit and sharp enough to reject the 10% which is satanic evil, so that you don't end up in hell.

Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34 tell us in so many words that the True Faith is simple enough to be written on the hearts of even the least of God's people. There is the obvious easy stuff. Again, Christ commanded us to love God and to love our neighbors and even our enemies. To love God you must obey the Commandments, recall 1 John 5. 3. Simple enough so far. But, again, Christianity becomes complicated in matters relating to the True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, recall Matthew 16. 13-19. Choose any church you want to choose. You should either obey it completely because it is God's True Church, and you risk perdition if you rebel against God's True Church, so obey it completely, or else you should reject that church completely, because it is not God's True Church, it is a false church. But how do you really know for certain if some church is a false church or if it is the True Church? We certainly know there is something crazy about a person if at one moment he is insisting that some church is God's True Church, and then the next moment he is rebelling against this church that he insists is God's True Church.

Christians have enough trouble managing the simple stuff, e.g., remembering that to love God you must obey the commandments. Look how so many Christians have fallen into the evil tradition of violating the Sabbath, or violating other commandments: the one against covetousness, the one against taking God's name in vain, e.g., saying OMG etc. You see a lot of `OMFG' online. That's very blasphemous. We live in a rather evil world! Even among the pious there are no end of misguided Christians who think you are preaching the heresy of 'salvation through works' when you are merely saying that the scriptures say that to love God you must obey the commandments, 1 John 5. 3. It's like these people have never read 2 Thess 1. 8, or 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, or Revelation 20. 12-15 etc. The reason why so many Christians labor, and buy or sell on the Sabbath, is because some preacher led them to believe that since salvation is through faith and not through works then it is OK to go ahead and violate the Sabbath. So, that's one example of the blind leading the blind.

Jeremiah 31. 31-34 tells us that even the least of God's people can understand the Divine Law. John 6. 53-55 is simple enough in telling us you must take communion to attain heaven and escape perdition. And 1 Corinthians 11. 27 is simple enough in telling us that it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. But to know if you are celebrating communion in a worthy manner or not requires you to be an expert on the abortion issue, and an expert on the gay marriage issue, and an expert on lots and lots of other issues. For example, suppose God says the pro-choice position is evil. Then you desecrate the sacrament of holy communion when you take communion with pro-choicers, with people who make no secret that they support evil. The New Testament tells us to obey the secular authorities, but only up to a point. If the secular authorities order you to crucify Christ, then you rebel against the secular authorities. We know the apostles refused to obey the emperor when ordered to worship the image of the emperor. If a modern ruler orders millions of soldiers into battle, orders them to throw themselves toward machine guns, or if a ruler orders you to drop nuclear bombs on cities - well, there are lots of scenarios where you have to decide if what you are doing is anti-Christian. You don't want to do anything anti-Christian that will lead you away from heaven and straight to perdition.

We can follow the transition from the super simple things in Christianity to the confusing complicated aspects quite easily. As for the easy material: Psalm 2 (the Son is begotten of the Father), Isaiah 9. 6 (the Son is Almighty God), John 1. 1-14 (Jesus is God), 1 Timothy 3. 16 (Jesus is God), John 14. 23-26 (to love Christ you must keep His words), John 15. 6 (those who do not abide in Christ are like sticks which are gathered up and tossed into the flames), Matthew 16. 13-19 (Jesus founded His Church on a rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against it), Matthew 25. 31-46 (pertains to hellfire), 2 Thess 1. 8 (pertains to hellfire), 2 Thess 2 (the Antichrist revealed before the Second Coming of Christ, 2 Thess 2 also deals with strong delusion) etc., are controversial scriptures, but they are simple to understand. Christianity gets complicated when you have to determine if you are on the road to perdition because you are committing sacrilege by celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. Again, John 6. 53-55 tells us one must take communion to escape perdition, and 1 Corinthians 11. 27 tells us it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. You might assume it is a sacrilege to defile the sacrament of holy communion by taking communion with slanderers. The word 'slanderer' in ancient Greek corresponds to our word 'devil.' Look at all the hate and slander on social media surrounding thousands of various controversies. It's not always easy to know who is guilty and who is the innocent victim of slanderers, so confining ourselves to domestic controversy, suppose you catch your wife reading smut, or suppose you catch her looking at porn, you catch her right in the act, so she can't lie and say you didn't catch her looking at porn, and then suppose you take communion with her later that week. Did you commit sacrilege by celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, by celebrating communion with someone guilty of a mortal sin? Or suppose some serial killer claims to have found religion, perhaps he has been reading the Bible while in prison, and suppose he wants to celebrate the Eucharist with the prison chaplain. If a guy was murdering people last month, but this month he claims he has renounced evil, and he asks you to celebrate holy communion with him, well, you're left to decide if that would be a sacrilege, if that would be celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. Or suppose you had been laboring on the Sabbath day. If so then you are guilty of violating the Commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. Would it then be a sacrilege for you to take holy communion on the next Sabbath? Naturally one would like to consult the True Church, the Bride of Christ, on these sorts of complicated issues. But there's a complicated problem here. You first need to find the True Church in order to consult the True Church. Of course every church claims to lead people to heaven. But if you have clear evidence that a church celebrates the Eucharist in an unworthy manner then you have to suspect that church leads people to perdition not to heaven.

If you have the Divine Law written on your heart, recall Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34, then you ought to know how to avoid committing sacrilege. Suppose you are committing sacrilege with the cross or the crucifix. It makes no sense to say that someone who commits sacrilege with the cross or the crucifix has the Divine Law written on his heart. A sacrilege, for example, would be declaring to be evil things which God says are sacred, or declaring to be sacred things which God says are evil.

I repeat lots of remedial info in my books, repeat it over and over and over and over. I don't know how often I repeat the logic that runs as follows: the Roman Catholic Church is either, 1) God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19, the Bride of Christ, and therefore Rome, the Bride of Christ, leads people to heaven, and therefore we should all obey Rome, God's True Church, and none of us should be stupid, and risk hell, by rebelling against God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church - you don't attain heaven and escape perdition by rebelling against God's True Church, the Bride of Christ! - or else - 2) The Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church: the Roman Catholic Church is not the Bride of Christ, and so Rome is a false church not the True Church, and so Rome leads people to perdition.

There's no sane reason to have any government other than the Vatican if Rome leads people to heaven, if Rome is God's True Church, the Bride of Christ. If there is a conflict between the Vatican and some government on earth, then you side with the Vatican. It is simply insane to rebel against Rome if Rome is God's True Church.

Of course, of course, if Rome is a false church not God's True Church, if Rome is not the Bride of Christ, if Rome leads people to perdition, then how do you persuade Catholics to see sense and renounce Rome before Rome drags them down to eternal perdition?

People always say the Temple in Jerusalem must be rebuilt in order for the prophesy of 2 Thess 2 to be fulfilled. 2 Thess 2 says the Antichrist will sit in the holy place. Recalling Jeremiah 31. 31-34 (God writes His new covenant on the hearts of His people) and 1 Corinthians 3. 16 (the heart of a Christian is the temple of God) my theory is the Antichrist will write satanic evil on the hearts of nominal Christians - on the hearts of people are Christians but they are not True Christians - they are not saints - a saint is a person who attains heaven and escapes perdition - not every Christian is a saint! A Christian is simply a person who embraces John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16, scriptures which tell us Jesus is God. The Unitarians and the Jehovah's Witnesses are not Christians. But merely being a Christian does not make one a saint, does not make one a True Christian. In any event, if the Antichrist writes satanic evil on the hearts of nominal Christians - True Christians have the Divine Law written on their hearts therefore it is impossible for the Antichrist to write satanic evil on the hearts of True Christians - then, perhaps, the Antichrist will sit in the temple, in the holy place. If so, then the temple in Jerusalem needn't be rebuilt in order for the prophesy of 2 Thess 2 to come to pass.

Christianity is very Liberal in the sense that you can live in sin for years and years and your sins are forgiven once you repent. But Christianity is very harsh toward those who never repent, recall Matthew 5, Matthew 25. 31-46, Luke 13. 3, John 15. 6, 2 Thess 1. 8, Revelation 20. 12-15, Acts 26. 13-18, 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, Ephesians 5. 5 etc. This is the easy stuff, the simple stuff.

A lot of Christians believe that once you read and profess John 3. 16 then you're saved, and they believe that nothing you do after that profession will prevent you from being saved. This sort of insanity is founded on the desire to make $$$. Churches have discovered that they make much less money when they excommunicate people, and they make much more money when they excommunicate no one, when they give the bread and the wine to everyone who wants to partake. Excommunicating people is very bad for a church's cash flow, very bad for business.

Again, we're waiting for the Antichrist to arrive. Again, 2 Thess 2 is very clear in saying this happens before the Second Coming.

And we're waiting for these 3 angels from heaven arrive, recall Revelation 14. 6-11.

When the prophesies contained in Revelation 18 come to pass - economic destruction, famine etc. - then it will be easier for Non-Christians to focus on the evidence for Christianity. Non-Christians say Christianity is a false religion which leads people away from heaven and to perdition. But when the Antichrist / the 3 angels from heaven show up, when the prophesies of Revelation 18 come to pass, then the Non-Christians will see powerful evidence favoring Christianity. They will then understand that they must renounce their false religions, and they must embrace Jesus, they must convert to Christianity, to attain heaven and to escape perdition.

Of course the Non-Christians don't want to convert to the Antichrist's religion. They don't want to convert from one heresy which leads to perdition to yet another heresy which leads people to perdition.

No doubt these 3 angels from heaven, Revelation 14. 6-11, will guide people to the True Faith and the True Church.

While waiting for the Apocalypse to arrive, one might try to make an accurate judgment of the Roman Catholic Church. Is Rome the Bride of Christ? Is Rome not the Bride of Christ? Does Rome lead people to heaven because Rome is God's True Church? Does Rome lead people to perdition because Rome is not God's True Church, is not the Bride of Christ?

Now if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome leads people to heaven, then it would be stupid for anyone to risk hell by rebelling against the Roman Catholic Church. So, obviously, everyone on earth should obey the Vatican if Rome is God's True Church. Indeed it is satanic to rebel against Rome if Rome is God's True Church.

But, on the other hand, if Rome is not the Bride of Christ, if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a false church which drags people down to eternal perdition, then every Roman Catholic must renounce Rome before Rome drags them down to perdition.

Try also to make an accurate judgment of the Russian Orthodox Church. What do you think? Bride of Christ or not the Bride of Christ? Leads people to heaven or leads people to perdition?

And try to make an accurate judgment of the Church of England. We know everyone on earth should obey the Church of England if the Church of England is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, the Bride of Christ.

But, on the other hand, if the Church of England is not God's True Church, if the Church of England a false church which leads people to perdition, then no one on earth should be a member of the Church of England.

Matthew 16. 13-19 is really quite specific. The Bride of Christ, God's True Church, the Church which leads people to heaven, must exist somewhere in the world. We just have to find this Bride of Christ.

You don't want to commit sacrilege with the cross and the crucifix or anything else.

All of my religious books focus on the great tribulation which precedes the Second Coming of Christ, see Revelation 18. Revelation 14. 6-11 mentions 3 angels from heaven showing up. 2 Thess 2 deals with the Antichrist. And again 2 Thess 2 specifically says the man of sin / son of perdition, aka the Antichrist, will be revealed prior to the Second Coming. There is really no way to distinguish an angel from hell from an angel from heaven unless one can tell the difference between heresy and the True Faith. Recall 2 Corinthians 11. 13-15 says Satan masquerades as an angel of light.

All of my religious books push the idea that Christianity is true, Jesus is God, the Christian scriptures are trustworthy etc., etc., nevertheless, the people under the sign of the cross fell away from the True Faith in a big way in the 4th century. From the 4th century onwards there is no end of torture and judicial murder being perpetrated by Christians \- by emperors, kings, nobles, their henchmen etc. This is a new phenomenon in the world: Christians using brutality to attain power and to retain power. An emperor often comes to power the way a gangster comes to power. His soldiers eliminate the soldiers of some other gangsters. I suppose _The Godfather_ is the most famous movie about Christian gangsters, but the innovation of gangland methods perpetrated by people carrying crosses began a long time ago, in the 4th century. Of course most Christians throughout the centuries were just ordinary people, not evil murderers. Jesus tells us in John 6. 53-55, "At this, the Jews began to argue among themselves, `How can this man give us His flesh to eat?' So Jesus said to them, `Truly, Truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Many, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day....'"

We Christians are supposed to have the new covenant / Divine Law written on our hearts. Recall Christ said at the Last Supper, Matthew 26. 28, `This cup is My blood of the new covenant...' Turning to Jeremiah 31. 31-34 we read that God will write the new covenant / Divine Law on the hearts of His people. The new covenant must be fairly simple because Jeremiah 31. 31-34 says even the least of God's people will be able to understand this new covenant, also known as the New Law / the Divine Law / the True Faith / the Gospel of Jesus Christ etc. Suppose you're trying to teach Christianity to a kid. If you have the Divine Law / True Faith written on your heart then you will not teach sacrilege or heresy to that kid. You're not going to lead that kid to eternal perdition if you have the new covenant written on your heart. But society puts so much pressure on us that we have to watch out that we don't succumb to the pressure. If you succumb to the pressure you might lead the kid to perdition. I mean, suppose you are a Protestant minister and suppose a Catholic kid comes to your office and asks you if he must renounce the Roman Catholic Church in order to escape perdition and attain salvation. If you tell the Catholic kid that he must renounce the Roman Catholic Church, because Rome is not God's True Church, not the Church which Christ which Christ founded on a rock, and therefore Rome is a false church, a false church lost in heresy, a false church which leads people away from heaven and straight to perdition, if you say all that to the Catholic kid, then the Catholic parents of the Catholic kid might show up at your office, and they might direct some angry words at you, like - `keep away from our kid you satanic Protestant bastard!'

But then, on the other hand, if the Protestant minister tells the Catholic kid that he will attain heaven and will escape perdition if he remains in the Roman Catholic Church, then the Catholic kid will take this to mean that Rome is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, and if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome always leads people to heaven and never leads anyone to perdition, then it would be stupid for anyone to risk hellfire by rebelling against God's True Church, Rome; therefore, one would be wise to always obey God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church. But if Protestants hear a Protestant minister telling people that they are fools if they refuse to obey the Roman Catholic Church, because Rome is God's True Church, then these Protestants will insist that that Protestant minister has gone insane. Protestants tend to think that a Protestant minister would have to be whacked out of his mind if he insists it is wise to always obey the Roman Catholic Church.

So, on the one hand, if a Protestant minister tells Catholics to renounce Rome, because Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, then he will get bitched at by various people. But then, one the other hand, if the Protestant minister tells people that the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, and therefore your best strategy to attain heaven and to escape perdition is to always obey God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church, then other people will bitch at him.

If we accept the premise that Christianity is true, if we say that everyone trust what Jesus said in Matthew 16. 13-19, that He founded His Church upon a rock, and the gates of hell will not prevail against this Church, then, it stands to reason that, either, 1) the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, and so Rome leads people to heaven, and so we all should obey Rome, God's True Church, because we would be foolish to risk hellfire by rebelling against God's True Church, Rome, or else, 2) the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church: Rome is a false church: Rome is lost in heresy; Rome would be God's True Church if Rome wasn't lost in heresy, but Rome is lost in heresy, and so Rome is a false Church not the True Church, and therefore Rome leads people away from heaven and to perdition.

Christ told us at the Last Supper, Matthew 26. 28: `This cup is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins'. The first mention of a new covenant, of a New Law to amend the Old Law, the Mosaic Law, is found in Jeremiah 31. 31-34:

`Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which My covenant they broke... but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, sayeth the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'

The new covenant is just another term for: The True Faith, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the New Law, the Divine Law etc. If you have the new covenant written on your heart, then you are in the True Church.

A Christian is under lots of pressure to insist that he has the new covenant written one his heart, because, if in fact he does have it written there then he is a True Christian, and so he is on the road to heaven; but if a person claims to be a True Christian, claims to have the new covenant written on his heart, but is deluded and doesn't have the new covenant written on his heart, then he is a false Christian not a True Christian, and you must be a True Christian to attain heaven and escape perdition. So, we Christians are under lots of pressure to insist that we have the Divine Law written on our hearts; we are under lots of pressure to say we are on the road to heaven and not on the road to perdition. But, you know how it goes: a person can claim to have the Divine Law written on his heart, a person can claim to be a True Christian on the road to heaven, but a claim is one thing and proof is something else. Obviously, a person can claim to be a True Christian, can claim to have the Divine Law written on his heart, but if he can't even teach Christianity to a kid without leading that kid into sacrilege and heresy, then that person is delusional when he claims to be a True Christian.

The cross either symbolizes no evil or else it symbolizes some evil. Case 1 says the cross symbolizes no evil. Case 2 says the cross symbolizes some evil. I'm particularly interested in the scenario where the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture is sacred – see Philippians 3. 18 and Galatians 6. 14 – but material crosses are evil. I mean, suppose a kid draws a picture of God with a crayon, and suppose the kid declares that his picture of God is sacred. Well, we know that God is sacred, but merely because some kid orders you to bow down to his `sacred' picture of God, this doesn't actually prove that you are a satanic if you refuse to bow down to his picture of God. You might argue that God is sacred but graven images of God are evil. You might quote the Second Commandment to the kid.

Of course Non-Christians will say that the cross is the symbol of a false religion. But I'm a Christian so that option doesn't interest me. I'm of the opinion that the cross is evil. I'm saying that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred but also saying that all of the evil perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses is reflected in the material cross, rather as the evil of the Nazis is reflected in the Nazi swastika. I'm saying that the sacred cross of Christ mentioned in the scriptures is indeed sacred, but this cross of Christ is a spiritual thing not a material thing. It's the same logic that says God is sacred but graven images of God are evil violations of the 2nd Commandment. Most Christians would say that I descend into sacrilege and mortal sin by saying the cross reflects evil. Suppose they are right, suppose God says material crosses are sacred and holy, then what are the logical conclusions to be drawn from this? Well, if the cross symbolizes no evil, if the cross is sacred to God, then you would tend to think the cross might be the seal of God mentioned Revelation 9. Revelation 9 mentions people being tortured, being tortured for months and months, if they do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

So, to review, the cross either symbolizes no evil or else the cross symbolizes some evil. If the cross symbolizes no evil then perhaps the cross is this seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9. But if the cross symbolizes some evil then you have to wonder if the cross is the mark of the beast. Revelation 14. 11 says those with an evil mark on their foreheads burn in hell forever.

All of my religious books push the idea that the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are reflected in the cross. I'm pushing the idea that the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture is sacred in the sense that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but material crosses are not sacred. If we look to the future and try to speculate upon the Great Tribulation then various scenarios come to mind. The Book of Revelation is very clear in saying the damned will put an evil mark on their foreheads or right hands and this mark will be a visible mark. But the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9 is somewhat ambiguous. Will it be a visible symbol that the saints place on their own foreheads with their own hands? Or will it be an invisible symbol that God Himself places on the foreheads of His saints? We have 2 scenarios which seem sort of easy to figure out. Recall that when the Antichrist is on earth, when 2 Thess 2 comes to pass, and when these 3 angels from heaven are on earth, when Revelation 14. 6-11 comes to pass, there will be powerful forces directing the inhabitants of the earth toward one of 2 factions, Faction 1 – the followers of the Antichrist, and Faction 2 – the followers of these 3 angels from heaven.

Really, the only reason to put a mark on your forehead during the Great Tribulation is because you are very strongly convinced it is the seal of God which will protect you from the torments described in Revelation 9. If you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand, then you will never be shipped off to burn in eternal hellfire for having an evil mark on your forehead or right hand. But, if you are convinced that some mark is sacred to God, if you are strongly convinced it is the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9, the seal of God which saves one from months of torment, then you will be strongly inclined to put that mark on your forehead. Perhaps you are hearing from people, people you consider to be trustworthy – perhaps they claim to be prophets or prophetesses – perhaps they claim to speak to God – perhaps they claim to be saints in God's True Church – perhaps they insist they have the Divine Law inscribed on their hearts etc., – anyway these people that you trust are telling you that God wants you to put a specific symbol on your forehead, because this symbol is the seal of God mentioned in Revelation 9, and this symbol will save you from the torment described in Revelation 9, the torment given to those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. But, part of you is wondering if the Devil might have deceived these people. You're also wondering that, perhaps, they are speaking the truth. You're wondering that perhaps you will be tormented forever in hell if you put that mark on your forehead, because it's the mark of the beast, but then you're also wondering if you will suffer the torments described in Revelation 9 if you don't put that symbol on your forehead, because it is indeed the seal of God.

Obviously, if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand then you will never be shipped off to burn in eternal hell for having the mark of the beast on your forehead or right hand. So, during the Great Tribulation, that logic gives one a very powerful inducement to never put any sort of mark on your forehead or right hand. In the Great Tribulation, when the Antichrist is on the earth, when these 3 angels from heaven, Revelation 14. 6-11, have arrived.

In the Great Tribulation, recall Revelation 18, the world sort of resembles the world of _The Hunger Games_ in the Great Tribulation. Apropos of whether the cross symbolizes no evil, or whether it symbolizes some evil, Guido Kisch writes in his `The Jews in Medieval Germany' (The University of Chicago Press, 1949):

`It is well known in the history of criminal law that, beginning in the late Middle Ages and up to the seventeenth century, punishments were imposed on the Jews which differed considerably from those fixed by law and applied to Christian delinquents. They intensified the medieval system of penalties, cruel enough as it was. The motives of ridicule and degradation received especial emphasis, when hanged on the gallows, for instance, a Jew was suspended by the feet, instead of the neck. It became customary to string up two vicious dogs by their hind legs beside him, to make the punishment more ignominious and painful...In some provinces a Jewish thief hanged by the neck would have a Jews' hat filled with boiling pitch placed on his head...transgressions of similar prohibitions such as that against appearance in public on Good Friday, reviling the Christian religion, or engaging in conversionist activities, besides subjecting them to the appropriate penalties, deprived them of protection under the penal law which was otherwise guaranteed. As every Christian was bound to sacrifice his life for his faith if it were dishonorably attacked, so would he be acquitted in case he slew a Jew, heretic, or heathen in active defense of his faith. The general principle is thus pointed out in the Regulae juris, J155: "No Jew shall defame our Law. If he did so and were found guilty, he should be burnt." Regulae juris, J164: No Jew shall convert a Christian if he values his life." Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) renewed for medieval Christendom the old prohibition of the Christian Roman Empire against forced baptism of Jews. Once a Jew was baptised, however, even if by force, he had to remain faithful to Christianity, according to canon law...Be it even that they have been compelled to receive baptism, yet they shall remain steadfast in their Christian faith. This is so because no one can be deprived of baptism once received...It was Pope Innocent III who, in his letter to the archbishop of Arles in 1201, clearly stated that even those who under direct or indirect compulsion had accepted baptism had become members of the church and thus were to be compelled to the observance of the Christian faith...In 1267, relapse into Judaism was, in fact, explicitly equated with heresy by Pope Clement IV...This was done only after the foundation of the Papal Inquisition which brought all violations of the faith before its tribunals.'

Benzion Netanyahu – he's the late father of the current Prime Minister of Israel, and also the father of the lone Israeli soldier killed in the raid on Entebbe to free the Jewish hostages – Professor Netanyahu tells us in _The Origins of the Inquisition_ (Random House, 1995) that a plot was hatched by the Spanish authorities to slanderously accuse Jews and Marranos (Jewish Christians) of using black magic in a scheme to murder Christians and to destroy the `Holy Office,' the Inquisition, which Pope Sixtus IV. had sanctioned in Spain in 1480. The Spanish plot depicted the Jews uttering satanic incantations over the heart of a kidnapped Christian child, and above a stolen, consecrated host. The Jews, so the slander ran, crucified the child in a Black Mass. Jews were to be arrested and tortured by the Spanish authorities until they confessed to a crime they never committed. These confessions would then be published throughout Spain, and, with the image of Jews torturing a Christian child to enrage all of Spain, mobs could be counted on to be driven into a murderous frenzy against the Jews. Thus the Spanish authorities would be given a pretext to protect the Jews by driving them from Spain, as the Spanish Crown wanted to be seen as the protector of innocent Jews. Such was the plot behind the Holy Child of La Guardia, which indeed was put into action. Jews were arrested and tortured. When the confessions were not forthcoming, more excruciating torturers were applied until the confessions were forthcoming. In Avila (11.14.1491) five Jews and six Jewish Christians were condemned for desecrating the Host and torturing a Christian child to death in an effort to secure the aid of Satan to murder Christians and to put an end to the Inquisition. The Spanish authorities executed these innocent people by tearing the flesh off their bodies with red-hot pincers.

Suppose some angel shows up and he's all about pushing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or suppose some angel shows up and he's all about pushing the Jehovah's Witnesses, or suppose he is all about pushing the Roman Catholic Church as the Church which Christ founded on a rock, then you have to determine if he is an angel from hell who leads people to hell, or if he is an angel from heaven who leads people to heaven.

In order to distinguish an angel from heaven from an angel from hell you have to know the difference between sound doctrine and heresy. Suppose the Antichrist shows up and he's pushing 99% sound doctrine and 1% satanic heresy, and suppose this 1% satanic heresy is enough to lead people straight to hell if they accept that satanic heresy. You have to be able to recognize and accept the 99% which is sound, and recognize and reject the 1% which is satanic heresy.

Again, those of us who are Christians are waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, but before this happens 2 Thessalonians 2 is quite specific in saying the man of sin / son of perdition, aka The Antichrist, will be revealed. Daniel 12. 1 tells us the Jews will be delivered during a time of enormous and unprecedented trouble on earth when the archangel Michael shows up. Revelation 14. 6-11 tell us, in so many words, that 3 angels from heaven will show up on earth prior to Christ's Second Coming. All of my religious books push the idea that one will not be able to tell the difference between and angel from hell and an angel from heaven if one can't tell the difference between heresy and the True Faith.

In giving a paraphrase of Christianity you're always in danger of getting lost on long tangents. For instance, Malachi 4. 1 has the LORD saying,

`The day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the proud and wicked people will be set on fire...'

If Malachi 4. 1 is true then why would you say Malachi 3. 5 is false? Malachi 3. 5 has the LORD saying,

"Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts."

And of course everything gets rather complicated from this info, assuming Malachi 4. 1 and Malachi 3. 5 are perfectly true. Must Israel admit aliens who are pledged to destroy Israel? Does that make any sense? In the USA it would be easy enough to say every alien who is not a rapist or murderer or some such vicious criminal ought to be given asylum in the USA – still assuming Malachi 3. 5 and Malachi 4. 1 are true – but our laws and tax structure are so oppressive. The rich know how to evade crushing taxation. The poor have no money to be taxed. But the middle class can be crushed by taxation. If you own a restaurant that is struggling to survive, and if you are hit with more and more taxes to pay for the welfare payments of millions of new immigrants, then how is justice being served to you? How is making you destitute in accord with Christianity?

All of my religious books try to break issues down into 2 options. Malachi 4. 1 says the day is coming when the LORD will set the proud and wicked people on fire. So, Malachi 4. 1 is either true or else it is false. John 1. 1-14 says, in so many words that Jesus created the universe. If John 1. 1-14 is true then why would you reject what Jesus / God is saying in John 15. 6 – those who don't abide in God / Jesus are like sticks given to the flames?

The End
