 
Rock Island

Published by Bill Etem at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Bill Etem

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Cover art by Dora Gonzales

Rock Island

The general idea in this book is to paraphrase Chapter 1 of `Constitutional History of the Western World.' I want to produce a little book which is quick and easy to read, something one can skim through in an hour or two. Chapter 1 of that book begins with the following:

`All of my religious books push Christianity, push the doctrine that Jesus is God, the Divine Son. In order for Christianity to be true the Christian prophesies will have to come true. 2 Thess 2 says the man of sin / son of perdition will be revealed prior to the Second Coming of Christ. The Antichrist will have to show up in order for Christianity to be trustworthy. Revelation 14. 6-11 says 3 angels from heaven will show up. Revelation 14. 6-11 will have to come true for Christianity to be vindicated. Revelation 18 prophesies a great tribulation on earth. All these prophesies must come true in order for Christianity to be true. I'm pushing a theory which says the great tribulation, see Revelation 18, is all about issues with the cross and the crucifix. On one side you have God's side. On the other side is the Devil's side. One side says the crucifix is the image of the beast mentioned in Revelation 14. 11. The other side says the crucifix is an image of the True Jesus / True God. One side says the cross is the mark of the beast, says you will burn in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. The other side says the cross is not only sacred to God but it is the sacred seal of God which saves one from the torments described in Revelation 9, provided the cross / seal of God is on your forehead.'

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.'

You can't get anywhere in Christianity if you can't make an accurate judgment of the Roman Catholic Church. I mean, is Rome God's True Church or not? Is Rome God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the True Church which leads people to heaven? Or is Rome a false church which leads people to perdition?

In Revelation 2. 9 Jesus said He knew the blasphemy those who say they are Jews but who are a synagogue of Satan. If Jesus is God, then those who blaspheme God and say he is a false god would qualify as a synagogue of Satan. On the other hand if Jesus is not God, if Jesus is a false god, then it is blasphemy to say Jesus is God. Those of us who are Christians say Jesus is God. Recall Malachi 4. 1. This 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, if you lead people into sacrilege and blasphemy on the issue of Jesus...

You can make the same sort of argument with the Christian churches. Suppose a church claims it leads people to heaven. Suppose it claims it is God's True Church. But if that church is in fact a false church, if it is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, if it is a church which leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then that church is satanic.

I make a distinction between the Roman Catholic crucifix and the other sorts: the Eastern Orthodox crucifix, the Anglican crucifix etc. What does the Roman Catholic crucifix symbolize? Well it is an image of a Roman Catholic version of Jesus on the cross. A Roman Catholic version of Jesus is a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, because Rome teaches and upholds the True Faith, and because Rome is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock. You wouldn't say the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Protestant version of Jesus. You wouldn't say it is an image of a Mormon version of Jesus, a version of Jesus who says the Mormon Church is God's True Church. No, the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Roman Catholic version of Jesus, a version who says the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, who says the Roman Catholic Church upholds the True Faith and leads people to heaven.

We are especially interested in what the True Jesus / True God says. We have two especially interesting cases in regards to the Roman Catholic crucifix.

Case 1 - The True Jesus / the True God says Rome leads people to heaven, because Rome upholds the True Faith. This is Case 1. There is nothing wrong with the Roman Catholic crucifix if Case 1 is true. I mean, if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome upholds the True Faith, if Rome has not fallen into heresy, if Rome leads people to heaven, then you have to assume Rome is absolutely right when Rome says the Roman Catholic crucifix is sacred and holy.

In Case 2, the True Jesus / True God says the Roman Catholic Church leads people to perdition. In Case 2 the True God / True Jesus say Rome has fallen away from the True Faith, and Rome is simply not God's True Church, so Rome is a false church, and false churches lead people away from heaven and to perdition. So Rome is a satanic church, if Case 2 is true. If Case 2 is true, if the True God / True Jesus says the Roman Catholic Church leads people to perdition, then an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven - which is what the Roman Catholic crucifix is - is an image of a false god. And false gods are beastly because they lead people away from heaven and drag them down to perdition. The Book of Revelation mentions people worshipping the image of the beast. Well, if the True God says Rome has fallen away from the True Faith, if the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome, and therefore the True God / True Jesus says Rome leads people to perdition, then, the Roman Catholic crucifix – which is the image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven - is the image of a false version of Jesus, hence it's the image of a false god, the image of a beastly false god who leads people to perdition, hence Revelation 13 and 14 come to mind – recall the image of the beast.

And of course many would say it is satanic to say the Roman Catholic Church crucifix is evil, would say it is evil to speculate it is the image of the beast. But can these people recognize what is satanic or are they clueless?

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."

Rome says all good Christians must venerate Capistrano as a saint. But if God says it is evil to venerate Capistrano as a saint, if God says Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition...

To review, the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a version of Jesus who says: `Rome is God's True Church. Obey God's True Church. If God's True Church, Rome, orders you to venerate Capistrano as a saint, then don't rebel against God's True Church. You will go to hell if you rebel against God's True Church.

But if the True God / True Jesus says Rome is a false church which leads people away from heaven and to perdition...

Is there any evidence to suggest Christians under the cross fell away from the True Faith many centuries ago. Is there any evidence to suggest the Roman Catholic Church is a false church, and is not God's True Church. Again, 1 Corthinthians 11. 27-29 says you drink damnation into your soul if you celebrate holy communion in an unworthy manner. Christians under the cross celebrated holy communion with evil people for century after century. Paul Johnson reminds us in _A History of Christianity_ ,

`Tertullian broke with the Church [Rome] when Calixtus of Rome determined that the church had the power to grant remission of sins after baptism, even serious sins like adultery or apostasy...Julian claims Catholics slaughtered "heretics" with state military support. Whole communities were butchered...in the 5th century there were over 100 statutes against heresy. The state now attacked heresy as it had once attacked Christianity...Jerome describes horrible tortures inflicted on a woman accused of adultery [inflicted by the Catholic-State]. In the late 4th century there was despotism in Christendom. The rack and red-hot plates were used. Ammianus gives many instances of torture...the Inquisition was born...Spain was staging pogroms of Jews by the time Augustine became a bishop...Inquisition: anonymous informers, accusations of personal enemies allowed, no right of defending council...Possession of scriptures in any language forbidden...from 1080 onward there were many instances of the Pope, councils and Bishops forbidding the Bible to laymen...people burned for reading the Bible...Erasmus saw 200 prisoners of war broken on the wheel at Utrech, on orders of the Bishop...Justinian Code: provided basis for persecution of dissenters...Protestants adopted the Justinian Code as well...Lutherans and Calvinists just as intolerant as Catholics...Counter-Reformation embodied no reform. It's sole effect was to stamp out Protestant "error"...It is a tragic but recurrent feature of Christianity that the eager pursuit of reform tends to produce a ruthlessness in dealing with obstacles to it which brings the whole moral superstructure crashing down in ruins...The Gregorian papacy, so zealous for virtue, fathered some of the worst crimes of the Middle Ages...mass burnings of Protestants in Spain 1559-1562...Spanish Inquisition was self-sustaining. It confiscated the property of the condemned...women 70-90 years old were tortured...young girls tortured...witch-hunting couldn't survive without torture...witch-hunting had papal sanction to use torture...Luther burned "witches"...Calvinists very fierce...Loyola popularized witch-hunting...Loyola not an anti-Semite...Vicious cycle: torture produced accusations -more torture, more accusations...The Philosophes ransacked the past to expose...evil.'

Paul Johnson writes in `A History of Christianity', p. 273,

`In the West, the clergy had begun to assert an exclusive interpretive, indeed custodial, right to the Bible as early as the ninth century; and from about 1080 there had been frequent instances of the Pope, councils and bishops forbidding not only vernacular translations but any reading at all, by laymen, of the Bible taken as a whole...attempts to scrutinize the Bible became proof presumptive of heresy - a man or woman might burn [at the stake] for it alone.'

Rome admits she can make some mistakes but Rome insists that the True God / True Jesus says that Rome has always remained God's True Church. Rome insists that the True God wants people to always obey Rome / God's True Church. If Rome / God's True Church orders you to not read the Bible, and then if you rebel against Rome / God's True Church and read the Bible, and then Rome / God's True Church burns you at the stake, then this is all quite logical and correct if Rome is God's True Church. But if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is a satanic church which leads people to hell...

So, if the True God says Rome is a false church, a satanic church, an evil church which leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then do you get how the Roman Catholic crucifix – which is the image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven – is the image of a lie? If the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of a lie, then the image of the beast from Revelation 13 and 14 comes to mind.

If you say it is satanic to say or imply the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of the beast, see Revelation 14. 11, let's look at some other things which pertain to satanism which might interest you.

The term `Moriscos' refers both to people who sought to renounce their Catholic baptism so that they might convert to Islam and worship Allah, as well as to loyal Catholics who were only accused of wanting to convert to Islam. The terms is analogous to the term `Marranos' which comprehends both Jews who wanted to renounce their Catholic baptisms (which were often forced baptisms) so as to return to Judaism, as well as baptized Jews who were loyal Catholics but were accused of being disloyal.

Dr. Lea wrote in his `The Moriscos of Spain':

`There doubtless is some truth in the assertion that the terror of the Inquisition was less for the Moriscos than for Spaniards, since the former when punished were naturally regarded by their fellows as martyrs and were consequently held in high esteem. It was for them an honor to appear on the scaffold of an auto de fe...There is a story of a woman who, when the san benito was put on her, asked for another for her child, as the weather was cold...When, after the fall of the Roman Empire, heresy first became the subject of systematic persecution in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, confiscation was one of the penalties decreed for it under the canon law and princes who did not enforce this vigorously were threatened with the censures of the Church. The monarch who profited by the spoliation of his subjects could therefore, strictly speaking, not forego it without papal authorization, leading at times to some curious and intricate questions...In the case of Bartolomé Sanchez, who appeared in the Toledo auto de fe of 1597, cleanliness was regarded as a suspicious circumstance - doubtless from the Moorish habit of bathing - and though he overcame the torture he was finally brought to confess and was punished with three years in the galleys, perpetual prison and confiscation. Miguel Caneete, a gardener, for washing himself in the fields while at work, was tried in 1606; there was nothing else against him but he was tortured without success and his case was suspended.'

Dr. Lea also writes in `The Moriscos of Spain' (GreenwoodPress, 1968),

`They came to be known by the name of Mudéjares - the corruption of Mudegelin, an opprobrious term bestowed upon them by the Moors...No forcible conversion was allowed, but only persuasion, and the convert had all the rights of the Old Christians save eligibility to holy orders; he was never to be insulted but was to be held in honor...The Church, in fact, had long regarded with disfavor the careless indifference which led Alfonso VI. to style himself imperador de los dos cultos - which was satisfied to allow subject Moors to enjoy their religion in peace. When, in 1212, Alfonso IX., at the head of a crusade, won the great victory of Las Navas de Tolosa and advanced to Ubeda, where 70,000 Moors had taken refuge, they offered to become Mudéjares and to pay him a ransom of a million doblas. He accepted the terms but the clerical chiefs of the crusade, Rodrigo of Toledo and Arnaud of Narbonne, forced him to withdraw his assent, with the result that, after some further negotiation, the Moors were all massacred except such as were reserved as slaves. In a similar spirit Innocent IV., in 1248, ordered Jayme I. of Aragon to permit no Moors, save as slaves, to reside in the Balearic Isles...In 1266 Clement IV. returned to the charge in a brief urging upon him the expulsion of all Saracens from the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon. The pope told him that his reputation would suffer greatly if in view of temporal profit he should permit such opprobrium of God, such infection of Christendom as is caused by the horrible cohabitation of Moors and Christians, while by expelling them he would fulfill his vow to God, close the mouths of his detractors and show his zeal for the faith...Hernado de Talavera, the saintly Archbishop of Grenada used to say `They ought to adopt our faith and we ought to adopt their morals.'...There were no beggars among them, for they took affectionate care of their own poor and orphans...In short, they constituted the most desirable population that any land could possess...To the conscientious medieval churchman, however, any friendship with the infidel was the denial of Christ; the infidel was not to be forcibly converted, but it was a duty to lay upon him such burdens that he would seek relief in conversion. Accordingly the toleration and conciliation, which were the basis of the Spanish policy, were vigorously opposed in Rome...The Church was succeeding in gradually awakening the spirit of intolerance, but its progress was slow...the final policy of expulsion was suggested, in 1337, by Arnaldo, Archbishop of Tarragona, in a letter to Benedict XII, imploring the pope to order the King of Aragon to adopt it...the resistance of the nobles might be overcome by empowering them to seize and sell the persons and property of the Moors, as public enemies and infidels, while the money thus obtained would be serviceable for the defense of the kingdom - an inhuman proposition which we shall see officially approved by the Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...Morerías and Juderías were ordered to be established everywhere, surrounded by a wall having only one gate; any one who within eight days after notice should not have settled therein forfeited all his property, with personal punishment at the king's pleasure, while severe penalties were provided for Christian women entering the forbidden precincts. It was easier to enact than to enforce such laws and in 1480 Ferdinand and Isabella state that this had been neglected, wherefore they renewed it, allowing two years for the establishment of these Ghettos after which any Jew or Moor dwelling outside of them was subjected to the prescribed penalties and no Christian woman should be found within them. Under Ferdinand and Isabella laws were no longer neglected and these were enforced with their accustomed vigor...In 1598 the Venetian envoy, Agostino Nani, writes that expulsion is considered too prejudicial, as it would depopulate the land; that sometimes the idea has been entertained of a Sicilian Vespers [genocide], at others the castration of all male infants, and the former measure was advocated by Gomez Davila of Toledo in a long memorial addressed to Philip III...Hideous as was this project, it was resolved upon at one time and came near being attempted. In 1581, when Philip II. was in Lisbon, regulating his newly acquired kingdom of Portugal, a junta of his chief counselors, including the duke of Alva, the Count of Chinchon and Juan de Idiaquez, concluded to send the Moriscos to sea and scuttle the vessels...A variant of this was the proposition, in 1590, that the Inquisition should proceed against all the Moriscos of the crown of Castile, without sparing the life of a single one...Not much more humane was the suggestion of Archbishop Ribera to enslave all the males of proper age and send them to the galleys or to the mines of the Indies...Ferocious and inhuman as were all these projects, they evoked no scruples of conscience. Theologians there were in plenty to prove that they were in accord with the canons. By baptism the Moriscos had become Christians; as such they were subject to the laws of the Church, and as heretics and apostates they had incurred the death penalty...Even more outspoken was Fray Bleda, who proved by irrefragable authorities that the Moriscos could all be massacred in a single day...Bleda's work was...pronounced free from error, and Clement VII. read it with pleasure at the suggestion of his confessor, Cardinal Baronius. In the midst of all these conflicting projects the idea of expulsion gradually forged to the front...the last year of Philip's life. His end came at last, September 13, 1598...consumed by gout, strangled with asthma, for almost two months he lay near motionless and with but enough of life to render him capable of suffering. Covered with tumors and abscesses, which when opened continued to discharge till the stench in the death-chamber could not be overcome by the strongest perfumes, the long-drawn agony was greater than any of his executioners had invented for the torture-chamber...No spectre of Cazalla or Carranza, of Montigny or Egmont came to disturb the serenity of his conscience...When once this resolution was reached the Moriscos lost no time in converting into coin whatever movables they possessed. The land became a universal fair...The troops marched out to meet them and escort them to the galleys, which was necessary to protect them from the robbers who flocked thither...While thus all proper effort was made to smooth the path of the exiles it was impossible to restrain the savage greed of the Old Christians...They sallied forth in squads, robbing and often murdering all whom they encountered. Fonseca tells us that in going from Valencia to San Mateo he saw the roads full of dead Moriscos...It was a massacre rather than a battle...the well-armed Spaniards, who mowed them down, and, when they broke and fled, slaughtered them without sparing women and children. Three thousand Moriscos lay dead...The great mass of the insurgents found refuge on the top of the mountain, where they could get neither food nor water...gave themselves up...in numbers of which the estimates vary from 11,000 to 22,000, so starved with hunger, thirst and cold that even the soldiery were moved to compassion, although this did not prevent their stealing numbers of women and children and selling them as slaves. Mexia granted them their lives and escorted them to the port of embarkation...The estimates of the number of exiles vary greatly...Navarrete speaks of 2,000,000 Jews and 3,000,000 Moriscos having been at various times expelled from Spain...No computation, that I am aware of, has been attempted of the number of children taken from their parents and retained...The fate of the exiles was deplorable. Torn from their homes without time to prepare for the new and strange life before them, and stripped of most of their property, at best their suffering was terrible, but man's inhumanity multiplied it tenfold. In whatever direction they turned they were exposed to spoliation or worse. While the voyage to Africa, in the royal ships, was doubtless safe enough, the masters of the private vessels which they chartered had no scruples in robbing and murdering them...The Moslems of Tetuan were not so tolerant, and it adds a new horror to the whole unhappy business to learn that there the Christian Moriscos who were firm in their religion were lapidated or put to death in other ways for refusing to enter the mosques. The Church which had impelled them to martyrdom, however, took no steps to canonize these obscure victims.'

The Roman Catholic Church insists she has always been God's True Church, even when Rome was employing the Inquisition to compel obedience to Rome. Rome has always insisted that the True God / True Jesus says Rome has always been God's True Church. Rome says that the True God / True Jesus and says it is evil to rebel against Rome / God's True Church, even when Rome / God's True Church was using cruel tortures on people. This is who the True God / True Jesus is, according to Rome. The Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome has always been God's True Church.

But if the True God / True Jesus says that Rome is not God's True Church, if the True God / True Jesus say Rome is a false church, a false church which leads people away from heaven and to perdition, then that is indeed what the True God / True Jesus says.

You want to know the True God, recall 2 Thess 1. 8 – hellfire for those who do not know God and who do not obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 2 Thess 1. 8 is more or less a re-statement of John 15. 6, which is very much like Matthew 25. 31-46, which is like Revelation 20. 12-15, which is like Malachi 4.1 etc.

So, to review some more, the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, because Rome is God's True Church.

But if the True God / True Jesus says Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, a satanic church which claims to lead people to heaven but in fact drags people down to eternal perdition, then the Roman Catholic crucifix – which is an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome is God's True Church – an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven – is the image of a lie, the image of an evil false version of the True Jesus. And so the image of the beast from Revelation 13 and 14 comes to mind if the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of an evil lie.

And of course one can make similar arguments against the Eastern Orthodox crucifix, the Russian Orthodox crucifix, the Anglican crucifix etc.

This section runs you through some arguments which say Christianity is true, but not every church you encounter is God's True Church. God's True Church leads people to heaven. False churches lead people to perdition. That's just what false churches do, whereas God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19, leads people to heaven. It may be that some people who are lost in false churches enter heaven, by a special decree of Divine Mercy, so to speak, but, generally speaking, if you are divorced from God's True Church then you are damned. If some little kid dies young, before he has a chance to find the True Faith and the True Church, then perhaps...

Suppose an adult leads a little kid into sacrilege, suppose an adult leads a little kid away from heaven and to perdition, then Christians tend to agree this adult will be damned. I mean, it is not as if the New Testament is crammed with scriptures which say you can teach sacrilege to little kids and still go to heaven.

We don't want to be too distracted in this section by non-Christians who insist Christianity is a false religion. We don't want to get lost in a maze of confusing assertions coming from people who reject John 1. 1-14, Matthew 1. 23, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 – all of these scriptures say that Jesus is God. The Muslims say it is blasphemy to say Jesus is God. The Muslims say you're damned to hell if you reject Allah and Islam. The Jews say it is blaspmemy and sacrilege to say Jesus is God. We don't want to be distracted by these anti-Christian assertions. Those of us who are Christians insist Christianity is true, and we don't need to hear any blasphemies from non-Christians who say Christianity is a lie, who say Jesus is a false god not the True God.

Now, therefore, since Jesus is God, you can trust what God / Jesus is saying in John 6. 53-55 (you must take communion to attain heaven and escape perdition), and you can trust what God / Jesus is saying in John 15. 6, Matthew 25. 31-46 – these are some famous hellfire scriptures.

Ultimately some Christian prophesies must come true in order for Christianity to be conclusively proven true. The Antichrist will have to show up. 2 Thess 2 tells us the man of sin / son of perdition / aka the Antichrist will be revealed prior to the Second Coming of Christ. If 2 Thess 2 never comes true, then this tells us that Christianity can't be trusted. But if the prophesy of 2 Thess 2 does come true, then this is conclusive evidence in favor of Christianity.

Revelation 14. 6-11 tells us 3 angels from heaven will show up prior to the Second Coming. If this prophesy never comes true then there are big problems with Christianity. But if this prophesy comes true then Christianity is vindicated.

In regards to the cross, just as it is with the crucifix, we have 2 Cases to consider.

Case 1 says the cross is sacred in the eyes of God. Case 1 says you are guilty of sacrilege if you say the cross is a symbol of evil. If you are guilty of sacrilege then you must repent, or else you will go to hell.

Case 2 says the cross is evil in the eyes of God. Case 2 says you are guilty of sacrilege if you say the cross is sacred, as it is sacrilege to say evil things are sacred, and the cross is evil, so it is sacrilege, a mortal sin, a sin which leads one straight to perdition, to say the cross is sacred.

The basic idea behind Case 2, from the Christian perspective, is that while the sacred cross of Christ mentioned in scriptures is indeed sacred, this cross of Christ is a spiritual thing not anything material. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but the actual cross that Christ was crucified on, the pagan instrument of torture, is not at all sacred in the eyes of God. And material crosses, which are material representations of the cross Christ was crucified on, are evil, not sacred, in Case 2.

In Case 1 material crosses are sacred to God.

But in Case 2 crosses are evil in the eyes of God. They are evil in the same way the Nazi swastika is evil. The Nazis perpetrated evil for a few years and as a result we say the Nazis swastika reflects the evil perpetrated by the Nazis. The people under the sign of the cross perpetrated evil for century after century, and the cross reflects this evil. It is like if a kid draws a picture of God and tells you to bow down before his picture of God, on the logic that since God is sacred, his material representation of God is also sacred. You might tell the kid that his drawing of God is evil, because, while God is sacred, his drawing is evil because it violates the 2nd Commandment. So, while Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, a material representation of the spiritual cross of Christ is not sacred.

Case 1 says the cross is sacred to God and you will go to hell if you commit sacrilege and say the cross is evil. Case 1 says that when the Antichrist shows up he will try to convince people that the cross is evil, will try to persuade people to get rid of the cross.

Case 2 says that when the Antichrist shows up he will try to persuade people that the evil cross is the sacred seal of God, the seal which protects one from the torments described in Revelation 9.

Case 1 says the cross is the seal of God, and you need this seal of God on your forehead in order to escape the torments described in Revelation.

Case 2 says the cross is the mark of the beast, and one burns in hell forever and ever if one has the mark of the beast on his forehead, Revelation 14. 11. Case 2 says all of the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people under the cross are reflected in the cross.

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.'

Case 1 says that whatever evils were perpetrated over the centuries by people under the cross, all of these evils are divorced from the cross, because the cross is sacred in the eyes of God.

Case 2 says the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture is something spiritual and sacred. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred. But material crosses are not sacred. All of the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are reflected in the cross, and so the cross is evil. Christ and the apostles never used the cross as their symbol. They never said material crosses are sacred.

We know that if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or your right hand, then you will never be shipped off to eternal hell for the sin of having the mark of the beast on your forehead or right hand. The New Testament is quite clear: the Antichrist and his followers have an evil mark on their foreheads or right hands.

Case 1: A person might say he will never put any sort of mark on his forehead or right hand, a person might insist he will never follow the Antichrist, but as soon as one starts to think the cross is evil, as soon as one begins flirting with blasphemy and sacrilege, with betrayal of Christ and Christianity, then one is embarking down the same path that Judas took: one is making oneself vulnerable to Satanic possession, recall Luke 22. 3, `Then Satan entered Judas.' And once one is possessed by the Devil, then all of one's previous promises to never put any sort of mark on one's forehead or right head are worthless promises.

Case 2: it's just insanity to ever put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. It is the easiest thing in the world to prove that immense evil was perpetrated for century after century by people under the sign of the cross. A person has to be a brainless idiot if he can't understand something as simple as: Don't put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand! You'll burn in hell forever and ever if you do that. Suppose some `prophet' tells you that he has spoken to God, and he says God says that you must put some sort of mark on your forehead to escape the torments described in Revelation 9. And what if the Devil, masquerading as God, has deceived your so-called prophet? Recall 1 Peter 5. 8 `the devil, your great enemy, walks about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.' In some ways, don't you think, Satan and the Antichrist are not just evil, but they are really quite brainless and idiotic? You have to be a huge brainless idiot to live your life in such a way that a benevolent Deity finds it necessary to torture you in hell forever and ever. Nevertheless, Case 2 says it is stupid to ever put a mark on your forehead or right hand. God will mark you with the seal of God, don't try to do it yourself! Don't listen to these false prophets who claim to speak with God!

The above was all part of Case 2.

Case 1 says: Be prepared to put the sacred cross on your forehead. It's the seal of God which protects one from the torments described in Revelation 9. It may be that God will use one of his holy priests to direct people to put the mark of the cross, but we already know the cross is sacred. Once you start thinking the cross is evil then Devil has got you in his clutches. Once you start thinking the cross is the mark of the beast, then you are akin to Judas when Satan possessed him, Luke 22. 3 If you refuse to put the seal of God / the cross on your forehead, if you are too far sunk in evil to recognize the holy cross as holy, if you are too much of a devil-possessed Judas to embrace the cross, then you deserve the torment that you will get.

Case 2: You'll burn in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. The cross is evil!

Notice that if Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, and is the seal of God which protects one from months of torment, then you want to do and say whatever you can to persuade people to put the mark of a cross / the seal of God on their foreheads, to save them from the torments described in Revelation 9. You do what is necessary to save people.

But if Case 2 is truth, if the cross is evil, if the cross is the mark of the beast, then you do and say whatever works to persuade people to not put the mark of a cross on their foreheads or right hands. You do whatever it takes to save them from eternal hellfire.

So, if a kid asks you how he can attain heaven and escape perdition, but if you steer that kid into evil sacrilege on the issue of the cross, if you lead that kid toword hell, then you're also leading yourself to hell, even though you might not have any evil marks on your forehead or right hand.

And if you can't lead a kid away from hell and to heaven, then you most definitely don't have any Divine Law written on your heart, to recall Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34. If you don't have the Divine Law written on your heart then you're not a legit Christian. If you are not a legit Christian then you will go to perdition, unless something changes, and you become a legit Christian.

Christianity has its simple parts and its complex parts. Christianity has lots of hellfire scriptures. You don't want to commit sacrilege, such as with the cross and the crucifix, or with anything else. This is some of the simplest material.

The scriptures which describe St. Paul's authority are simple to understand – see for example Acts 26. 13-18 and Galatians 1. 8-12. 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 is very simple and easy to understand. John 6. 53-55 is simple – Jesus tells us in so many words that if you want to go to heaven then you must take holy communion. John 14. 23-26 and Revelation 22. 18-19 are both easy to understand. 1 John 5. 3 is easy to understand.

But 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 is much more difficult to understand. This scripture says you drink damnation into your soul if you celebrate holy communion in an unworthy manner. And it gets very complicated when you try to determine what is an unworthy manner and what isn't. We'll look at 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 a little later

The upshot of Jeremiah 31. 31-34 and Matthew 26. 28 is that even the least of God's people can have Christianity written on his heart. So, essentially, Christianity can't be all that complex if even the least of God's people can have Christianity inscribed on his heart. I know it might offend people if I say retarded people are the least of God's people. Whether they are or aren't, the upshot of Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34 is that if you are pushing a very complicated version of Christianity then you are pushing a falsehood.

I might mention 5 general complaints against Christianity from non-Christians:

1) The Old Testament says the Mosaic Law is an eternal law. How then will there be a New Law?

2) Christianity says Jesus is God, so, Christianity says you are a blasphemer if you say Jesus is not God.

3) St. Paul and St. Peter seem to support slavery.

4) St. Paul says he does not permit a woman to have authority over men.

5) The hellfire scriptures certainly seem to mean lots of nice non-Christians will burn in hell.

Regarding 1 - Jeremiah 31. 31-34, was written by a Jew not by any Gentiles. Jeremiah 31. 31-34 says there will be a new covenant. The old covenant will be an eternal law in the sense that it will be eternally remembered. Ezekiel 20. 25 says God gave the children of Israel bad laws because He was angry with their rebelliousness. It's no use saying every law in the Mosaic Law was a good law. The blood sacrifice of animals is not good. Under the Old Covenant Sabbath violators were to be executed, homosexuals were to be executed, kids who cursed their parents were to be executed etc.

2 – Psalm 2 and Isaiah 9. 6 support the doctrine that the Son is God. It's not as if the New Testament scriptures which tell us the Son is God don't have any support from the Old Testament

3) St. Peter and St. Paul didn't say slavery was a good thing, but they couldn't advise slaves to rebel against their masters, as the Romans would have tortured the rebelling slaves to death. Labor was performed by slaves in the ancient world. There were no jobs available for slaves who ran away from their chains, aside from the Roman army, the gladiatorial arenas and prostitution. These aren't fit occupations for a Christian. All a Christian slave could do was endure servitude patiently. It's insane to argue that St. Peter and St. Paul would have supported the African slave trade. They wanted Christians to obey pagan or Christian rulers as long as these rulers didn't command Christians to do anything anti-Christian, anything evil. Pagan rulers ordered Christians to worship the images of pagan emperors, and Christians rightly disobeyed, and were unjustly martyred.

4) Obviously if a man is a heretic and if a woman, or a 7-year-girl for that matter, understands the True Faith, then the female is certainly permitted to correct the male. Perhaps St. Paul had excellent reasons for wanting to keep women out of the clergy. For example, Acts 26. 13-19 and Galatians 1. 8-12 tell us St. Paul derives his authority directly from Christ. Why would Christ want to keep women out of the clergy? Well, if Jesus knows the clergy will become corrupt, then He has a reason to keep women out of the clergy. Women are the main defenders of little children, and it would be best for the kid if his mom was not a priestess in some corrupt church. St. Paul prophesied that fierce wolves would enter the flock – Acts 20. 29-31. Recall also 2 Corinthians 11. 13-15. Suppose a Church which forbids women to become priests is God's True Church, and therefore it leads people to heaven, because it is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19. It would make no sense for women to rebel against God's True Church, and put themselves on the road to perdition, by rebelling against the teachings of God's True Church. And if this church is not God's True Church, if it is a false church, and false churches lead people to perdition, then why would any sensible woman want to be a priestess in some worthless church which leads people to perdition?

5) It's true that Christianity has lots of hellfire scriptures, but most of these are rather ambiguous, in that they don't specifically say God will not take the damned out of the fire, at some time. I'm not dogmatic, but I do tend to assume that the typical non-Christian will be transferred out of the fire at some point.

Christianity gets a little complicated in that there is quite a bit to remember. James 1. 26 says your religion is useless, that is it won't help you attain heaven and escape perdition, if you don't bridle your tongue. Reviling people is one of the sins mentions in 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 which leads to perdition. John 6. 53-55 says you must take holy communion to attain heaven and escape perdition. I spend loots of time in my books on 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29. It says you drink damnation into your soul if you celebrate holy communion in an unworthy manner. So check and double check to make sure you're not celebrating holy communion with Sabbath violators, with people who take God's name in vain etc., etc. Lots to remember, but nothing all that complicated.

Christ commanded us to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Simple enough, but then John 14. 23-26 says you must keep Christ's words or else you don't love Christ, and Christ spoke quite a few words. 1 John 5. 3 tells us one must keep the commandments to love God. St. Paul was strong against covetousness, which he saw as idolatry. But the commandment against covetousness might be the most difficult of the commandments to recognize. We know what adultery is, and we know what bearing false witness is, and we know what taking God's name in vain is, and we know what it means to violate the Sabbath, and these are tough enough to enforce. But is every rich man a covetous man? What exactly do you have to do to be guilty of covetousness. Revelation 18. 23 likens merchants to idolaters, evidently on the logic that merchants use advertising to stir up covetousness in people, and again St. Paul says covetousness is idolatry. But then, on the other hand, merchants might say they must use advertising to stay in business and to keep their families from starving. In any event there's quite a bit to keep in mind. Galatians 1. 8-12 mentions damnation for those who twist his teachings. Revelation 22. 18-19 mentions curses on those who alter the Book of Revelation.

The most glaringly obvious problem with Christianity is that there is supposed to be only one True Church. Matthew 16. 13-19 and Ephesians 4. 4-5 tell us there is one body, one True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock – and yet there are thousands of churches in the world wwhich have conflicting and confusing doctrines.

We're looking for God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, the True Church which leads people to heaven. You don't want a false church because false churches lead people to perdition. Recall Revelation 2. 9 where Christ likened the Jews to a synagogue of Satan. Well, if Jesus is God, and since the Jews reject Jesus and Christianity, then the Jews lead people away from heaven and to perdition, and that is a satanic thing to do. The same sort of logic applies to Christians. Suppose only the Roman Catholic Church leads people to heaven, suppose the Eastern Orthodox and the Baptists and the Methodists etc., etc., lead people to perdition, suppose they are false churches. Then the Eastern Orthodox, and the Baptists and the Methodists etc., etc., are agents of satan, because they lead people away from heaven and to perdition. One can invent no end of scenarios with this theme. Perhaps Rome leads people away from heaven and straight to eternal perdition. This would make the Roman Catholic Church a satanic sort of church. If Rome is no good, this doesn't mean the Russian Orthodox church is any better. It doesn't prove the Church of England is God's True Church.

If Christianity is something which can be written on the hearts of even the least of God's people, then the least of God's people will have to be able to locate the Church which Christ founded on a rock. How is someone, such as a mentally retarded person, or even someone who is not retarded, supposed to locate God's True Church amid these thousands of churches which claim they lead people to heaven?

2 Thess 2 says the Antichrist will be revealed prior to the Second Coming of Christ. And Revelation 14. 6-11 says 3 angels from heaven will show up prior to the Second Coming. Revelation 18 deals with the Great Tribulation.

So, when the Antichrist shows up, and when these 3 angels from heaven show up, when the Great Tribulation arrives, then instead of having to find God's True Church amid thousands of churches, we will only have to choose between 2 main churches. There will be the church run by the Antichrist – a very satanic church indeed – and there will be the Church pushed by these 3 angels from heaven, mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11, and this will be God's True Church.

I list the cross and the crucifix under the category of simple issues, because one either keeps the cross or one gets rid of it, same with the crucifix. Not too complicated.

But the abortion issue, and how it pertains to 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 is a complex issue. Recall 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 tells us one drinks damnation into his soul if he celebrates holy communion in an unworthy manner. So, if a doctor comes straight from a clinic where he was killing babies, and if he broadcasts this fact to the congregation, and then if the congregation proceeds to celebrate holy communion with the doctor, then the congregation drinks damnation into their souls, because they are celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner. The abortion issue asks one to determine what sort of laws, in regards to abortion, are evil and anti-Christian, and what sort of abortion laws are consistent with Christianity. What sort of penalties and prison terms should be given to mothers and abortion clinic staff for offenses committed during the 3rd trimester? the 2nd trimester? the 1st trimester? In the USA the pro-lifers are very accommodating to the pro-choicers, for political reasons. If every pro-lifer clamored for tough pro-life laws then the Democrats would win more elections, and the Republicans would lose more. But if God says you will go to eternal perdition if you celebrate holy communion with pro-choicers as well as with pro-lifers who want the wrong sort of pro-life laws, then you will indeed go to eternal perdition.

To simplify the abortion issue one might look to the future. The 3 angels from heaven mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11 will no doubt have opinions on the abortion issue. The Antichrist will probably have an opinion on the abortion issue. Ezekiel 36. 24-36 says that, eventually, the Jews will be filled with the Spirit of God. These Jews who will be filled with the Spirit of God will know what sort of abortion laws are required. Of course, every Christian claims he has the new covenant / Divine Law written on his heart, recall Jeremiah 31. 31-34 and Matthew 26. 28. But Christians are divided and subdivided into thousands of conflicting sects. If every Christian actually had the Divine Law written on his heart wouldn't we all belong to the same Church? But some Christians are pro-choice, and some are pro-life, and nearly every church gives holy communion to pro-choicers.

This book was a work of fiction originally. Long story short, Rock Island, IL is not far from Atalissa, IA. To review the Atalissa case, 21 Texas men with very low IQs were shipped up to Iowa, not all that long ago, and were essentially kept in slavery for decade after decade, until they were rescued a few years ago. They lived in a vile stinking filthy old bunk house which was once a school. When the social workers raided the bunk house they found rodent droppings everywhere, and the roaches were so thick the retarded men had to hold their hands over their dinner plates to keep the roaches from falling into their food. The place just stank like the worst hellhole you could ever imagine. The men had turkey blood and turkey guts on their bodies, in their clothes, in their sheets and blankets and mattresses etc. They had been slaving away for years at a Turkey slaughtering plant, but their employers, after all the deductions were made, were only giving them $65 per week. The overseer, when he felt discipline was required, would not let them watch TV, and he would chain them to their beds, and would load them with weights; he would make them hold on to a pole for long periods of time; he would abuse them verbally; he would abuse them physically. One guy tried to escape, but, with his limited mental capacity, he ended up freezing to death in the arctic-like Iowa winter

The Atalissa case is like something out of the Middle Ages, only it happened in the heartland just a few years ago. Atalissa a parable of sorts. You see, people trapped in false churches and false religions, trapped in things which will lead them to perdition, are somewhat like the retarded men trapped in slavery in the 20th century, in the USA.

We've also been over Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34, you know, we've been over how Christianity is supposed to be something which is simple enough and concise enough to be written on the hearts of even the least of God's people. We know precepts such as: BE GOOD, and FORGIVE PEOPLE THEIR TRESPASSES AGAINST YOU SO GOD WILL FORGIVE YOUR TRESPASSES etc., etc., are all quite simple. Acts 26. 13-18 is simple. Galatians 1. 8-10 is simple. 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 is simple.

But we are still confronted with thousands of different churches, and there is only supposed to be one True Church. And you don't want to drink damnation into your soul by taking holy communion in a false church. So we have to find the True Church.

When the Antichrist shows up, recall 2 Thess 2 says this happens prior to the Second Coming of Christ, and when the 3 angels from heaven show up, recall Revelation 14. 6-11, then thousands of false churches will vanish, and 2 big churches will emerge. One will be a satanic church run by the Antichrist, and the other Church, pushed by the 3 angels from heaven, will be God's True Church.

So much depends on not making a botch of things with 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29. You don't want to drink damnation into your soul by celebrating holy communion in an unworthy manner, by celebrating holy communion with people who need to be excommunicated. So often Christians are terrible at excommunicating people who need to be excommunicated. So often, over the centuries, evil wars were waged by people who should have been excommunicated rather than lauded as kings, nobles, presidents etc.

Churchill informed us exactly what the Christians were doing to each other in World War 1:

'All the horrors of all the ages were brought together...neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win...Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals - often of a greater scale and of longer duration...The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas...Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected on their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered often slowly in the dark recesses of the sea...Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.'

Regarding the New Law to amend the Old Law, the Mosaic Law, recall 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, Christianity, 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; 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. For example, if one 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, when he claims to have the Divine Law written on his heart. You have to use some common sense when trying to determine if a Christian has God's New Law written on his heart.

Let's look at some Christians from previous centuries. 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.'

All of my religious books push the idea that while the Christian scriptures are trustworthy, nevertheless, the people under the cross fell away from the True Faith in the 4th century. Before the 4th century Christians didn't murder and torture people, or if they did they were excommunicated for doing so. 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 was a new phenomenon in the world: Christians using brutal violence to attain power and to retain it. An emperor often comes to power the way a gangster comes to power. His soldiers eliminate the soldiers of other gangsters. Of course most Christians throughout the centuries were just ordinary people, not gangsters, not evil murderers. But they celebrated holy communion with 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 Man, 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....'"

St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 that you drink damnation into your soul if you celebrate holy 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 drinking damnation into your soul.

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.'

A huge problem confronting Christian Churches under the sign of the cross is that they do a terrible job excommunicating people who need to be excommunicated. In 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 St. Paul tells us, as you might recall, that one drinks damnation into one's soul if one celebrates communion in an unworthy manner. You see God wants the world to be a better place, and you make the world a better place when you excommunicate people who are doing evil anti-Christian things, and keep them excommunicated until they repent, and stop doing the evil anti-Christian things. If you give the bread and the wine, and if you continue to mingle and socialize with people who do evil anti-Christian things, well, you make the world an evil hellhole, and you drink damnation into your soul. I mean, when you celebrate communion with people who make no secret of their anti-Christian ways, then, it stands to reason, that you are celebrating communion in an unworthy manner. The history of Western Civilization is largely the history of ordinary Christians taking communion with evil kings and with evil nobles and with other evil people for century after century. What is the main evidence saying Christians, ordinary Christians who were not vicious murderers, who were not conspicuously evil, fell away from the True Faith? It is the fact that they celebrated holy communion for century after with people who did not hide the fact that they perpetrated evil. Most Christians in the Middles Ages were not monsters who enjoyed torturing people to death. Most Christians didn't take delight in stringing up Jews so that they would be mauled by savage dogs etc. But the good Christians celebrated communion with the evil Christians, with people who made no secret of their evil actions, hence, both the good Christians and the evil Christians celebrated communion in an unworthy manner, so they all fell away from the True Faith, they all drank damnation into their souls.

The Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Roman Catholic version of Jesus. A Roman Catholic version of Jesus is a version of Jesus who says the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, a version of Jesus who says the Roman Catholic Church leads people to heaven. I think that the premise which says: The Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a version of Jesus who says the Roman Catholic Church is the True Church and Rome leads people to heaven is a perfectly sound premise. I don't see how it makes any sense to say that the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a version of Mormon Jesus who says the Mormon Church is God's True Church. It doesn't make any sense to say that the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Lutheran version of Jesus, a Lutheran version who says Rome is a false church that leads people to perdition, but, the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is God's True Church. OK, so, if the True God says the Roman Catholic Church is the True Church, if the True God says Rome leads people to heaven, then there is nothing wrong with the Roman Catholic crucifix. If Rome is God's True Church then you can trust Rome when Rome says the crucifix is sacred to God. But if the True God says the Roman Catholic Church is not the True Church, not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, if the True God says Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition, not to heaven, then the Roman Catholic crucifix, the image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, is the image of a lie, the image of a false version of Jesus, provided the True God / True Jesus says Rome leads people to perdition....

So, if the True God says the Roman Catholic Church is a false church which leads people to perdition, if the Roman Catholic crucifix is the image of a lie, then it becomes a suspect for this image of the beast, recall Revelation 13 and 14. The True Jesus is certainly not the beast. But a false version of Jesus is beastly. So, if the True God says Rome is God's True Church then it's a satanic blasphemy to drop hints saying the Roman Catholic crucifix is this image of the beast mentioned in Revelation 13 and 14. But, on the other hand, if the True God / True Jesus says the Roman Catholic Church is a false church which leads people to perdition, then the Roman Catholic crucifix, the image of a version of Jesus was says Rome leads people to heaven, is an image of a false version of Jesus, the image of a false god, and false gods are beastly because they lead people away from heaven and to perdition.

God's True Church leads people to heaven. False churches lead people to perdition. That's just what false churches do, whereas God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19, leads people to heaven. It may be that some people who are lost in false churches enter heaven, by a special decree of Divine Mercy, so to speak, but, generally speaking, if you are divorced from God's True Church then you are damned. If some little kid dies young, before he has a chance to find the True Faith and the True Church, then perhaps...

Suppose an adult leads a little kid into sacrilege, suppose an adult leads a little kid away from heaven and to perdition, then Christians tend to agree this adult will be damned. I mean, it is not as if the New Testament is crammed with scriptures which say you can teach sacrilege to little kids and still go to heaven.

John 1. 1-14, Matthew 1. 23, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16 etc., tell us that Jesus is God. The Muslims say it is blasphemy to say Jesus is God. The Muslims say you're damned to hell if you reject Allah and Islam. The Jews say it is blasphemy and sacrilege to say Jesus is God. We don't want to be distracted by these anti-Christian assertions. Those of us who are Christians insist Christianity is true, and we don't need to hear any blasphemies from non-Christians who say Christianity is a lie. Now, therefore, since Jesus is God, you can trust what God / Jesus is saying in John 6. 53-55 (you must take communion to attain heaven and escape perdition), and you can trust what God / Jesus is saying in John 15. 6, Matthew 25. 31-46 – these are some famous hellfire scriptures.

Ultimately some Christian prophesies must come true in order for Christianity to be conclusively proven true. The Antichrist will have to show up. 2 Thess 2 tells us the man of sin / son of perdition / aka the Antichrist will be revealed prior to the Second Coming of Christ. If 2 Thess 2 never comes true, then this tells us that Christianity can't be trusted. But if the prophesy of 2 Thess 2 does come true, then this is conclusive evidence in favor of Christianity.

Revelation 14. 6-11 tells us 3 angels from heaven will show up prior to the Second Coming. If this prophesy never comes true then there are big problems with Christianity. But if this prophesy comes true then Christianity is vindicated.

From the Christian perspective, we have 2 Cases / 2 Scenarios to consider.

Case 1 says the cross is sacred in the eyes of God. Case 1 says you are guilty of sacrilege if you say the cross is a symbol of evil. If you are guilty of sacrilege then you must repent, or else you will go to hell

Case 2 says the cross is evil in the eyes of God. Case 2 says you are guilty of sacrilege if you say the cross is sacred, as it is sacrilege to say evil things are sacred, and the cross is evil, so it is sacrilege, a mortal sin, a sin which leads one straight to perdition, to say the cross is sacred.

The basic idea behind Case 2 is that while the sacred cross of Christ mentioned in scriptures is indeed sacred, this cross of Christ is a spiritual thing not anything material. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but the actual cross that Christ was crucified on, the pagan instrument of torture, is not at all sacred in the eyes of God. And material crosses, which are material representations of the cross Christ was crucified on, are evil, not sacred, in Case 2.

In Case 1 material crosses are sacred to God.

But in Case 2 crosses are evil in the eyes of God. They are evil in the same way the Nazi swastika is evil. The Nazis perpetrated evil for a few years and as a result we say the Nazis swastika reflects the evil perpetrated by the Nazis. The people under the sign of the cross perpetrated evil for century after century, and the cross reflects this evil. It like if a kid draws a picture of God and tells you to bow down before his picture of God, on the logic that since God is sacred, his material representation of God is also sacred. You might tell the kid that his drawing of God is evil, because, while God is sacred, his drawing is evil because it violates the 2nd Commandment.

Case 1 says the cross is sacred to God and you will go to hell if you commit sacrilege and say the cross is evil. Case 1 says that when the Antichrist shows up he will try to convince people that the cross is evil, will try to persuade people to get rid of the cross.

Case 2 says that when the Antichrist shows up he will try to persuade people that the evil cross is the sacred seal of God, the seal which protects one from the torments described in Revelation 9.

Case 1 says the cross is the seal of God, and you need this seal of God on your forehead in order to escape the torments described in Revelation.

Case 2 says the cross is the mark of the beast, and one burns in hell forever and ever if one has the mark of the beast on his forehead, Revelation 14. 11.

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.'

Case 1 says that whatever evils were perpetrated over the centuries by people under the cross, all of these evils are divorced from the cross, because the cross is sacred in the eyes of God.

Case 2 says the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture is something spiritual and sacred. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred. But material crosses are not sacred. All of the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are reflected in the cross, and so the cross is evil. Christ and the apostles never used the cross as their symbol. They never said material crosses are sacred.

We know that if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or your right hand, then you will never be shipped off to eternal hell for the sin of having the mark of the beast on your forehead or right hand. The New Testament is quite clear: the Antichrist and his followers have an evil mark on their foreheads or right hands.

Case 1: A person might say he will never put any sort of mark on his forehead or right hand, a person might insist he will never follow the Antichrist, but as soon as one starts to think the cross is evil, as soon as one begins flirting with blasphemy and sacrilege, with betrayal of Christ and Christianity, then one is embarking down the same path that Judas took: one is making oneself vulnerable to Satanic possession, recall Luke 22. 3, `Then Satan entered Judas.' And once one is possessed by the Devil, then all of one's previous promises to never put any sort of mark on one's forehead or right head are worthless promises.

Case 2: it's just stupid to ever put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. It is the easiest thing in the world to prove that immense evil was perpetrated for century after century by people under the sign of the cross. A person has to be a brainless idiot if he can't understand something as simple as: Don't put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand! You'll burn in hell forever and ever if you do that. Suppose some `prophet' tells you that he has spoken to God, and he says God says that you must put some sort of mark on your forehead to escape the torments described in Revelation 9. And what if the Devil, masquerading as God, has deceived your so-called prophet? Recall 1 Peter 5. 8 `the devil, your great enemy, walks about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.' In some ways, don't you think, Satan and the Antichrist are not just evil, but they are really quite brainless and idiotic? You have to be a huge brainless idiot to live your life in such a way that a benevolent Deity finds it necessary to torture you in hell forever and ever. Nevertheless, Case 2 says it is stupid to ever put a mark on your forehead or right hand. God will mark you with the seal of God, don't try to do it yourself! Don't listen to these false prophets who claim to speak with God!

The above was all part of Case 2.

Case 1 says: Be prepared to put the sacred cross on your forehead. It's the seal of God which protects one from the torments described in Revelation 9. It may be that God will use one of his holy priests to direct people to put the mark of the cross, but we already know the cross is sacred. Once you start thinking the cross is evil then Devil has got you in his clutches. Once you start thinking the cross is the mark of the beast, then you are akin to Judas when Satan possessed him, Luke 22. 3 If you refuse to put the seal of God / the cross on your forehead, if you are too far sunk in evil to recognize the holy cross as holy, if you are too much of a devil-possessed Judas to embrace the cross, then you deserve the torment that you will get.

Case 2: You'll burn in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. The cross is evil!

Notice that if Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, and is the seal of God which protects one from months of torment, then you want to do and say whatever you can to persuade people to put the mark of a cross / the seal of God on their foreheads, to save them from the torments described in Revelation 9. You do what is necessary to save people.

But if Case 2 is truth, if the cross is evil, if the cross is the mark of the beast, then you do and say whatever works to persuade people to not put the mark of a cross on their foreheads or right hands. You do whatever it takes to save them from eternal hellfire.

So, if a kid asks you how he can attain heaven and escape perdition, but if you steer that kid into evil sacrilege on the issue of the cross, if you lead that kid toword hell, then you're also leading yourself to hell, even though you might not have any evil marks on your forehead or right hand.

And if you can't lead a kid away from hell and to heaven, then you most definitely don't have any Divine Law written on your heart, to recall Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34. If you don't have the Divine Law written on your heart then you're not a legit Christian. If you are not a legit Christian then you will go to perdition, unless something changes, and you become a legit Christian.

Most Christians in the Middle Ages were not evil monsters who delighted in torturing people to death. Nevertheless, they held communion with such evil people, and therefore they celebrated the Eucharist in an unworthy manner, a terrible sin, recall 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29.

The Dogma of Papal Infallibility says you are anathema – damned, accursed – if you reject that Dogma. If Rome is God's True Church, then this makes sense. But if Rome is not God's True Church, then Rome is a false church, and false churches lead people to perdition. My books present lots of details from historians saying various churches under the sign of the cross perpetrated evil for centuries and centuries. This puts me in a bind because I don't want to convince people that they have committed an unforgiveable sin, and yet I also want to get my points across about these false churches. The Roman Catholic Church has said for centuries that the Holy Spirit guides the Roman Catholic Church. But if you can prove for a fact that the Roman Catholic Church perpetrates evil, then it looks like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, an unforgiveable sin, to say that the Holy Spirit guides the Roman Catholic Church. The same logic can be can be used against the Eastern Orthodox Church, or any church, like a Protestant church. Let me read you something. Charles Austin Beard writes in `The Rise of the American Civilization',

`Under skillful management the cultivation of rice and indigo was soon introduced, and the basis of economic prosperity quickly laid, with the aid of a labor supply drawn from Africa. To protect masters against violence, a drastic code was adopted prescribing whipping, branding, ear clipping, castration, and death for various offenses; but the consolations of the Christian faith were not withheld, for the law, while denying the right of manumission, expressly authorized baptism.'

`Crevecoeur, our Thoreau of the 18th century, writes in `Letters from an American Farmer' of these frightful punishments used to maintain order and discipline in a civilization founded upon slave labor.

`The following scene will I hope account for these melancholy reflections, and apologise for the gloomy thoughts with which I have filled this letter: my mind is, and always has been, oppressed since I became a witness to it. I was not long since invited to dine with a planter who lived three miles from where he then resided. In order to avoid the heat of the sun, I resolved to go on foot, sheltered in a small path, leading through a pleasant wood. I was leisurely travelling along...when all at once I felt the air strongly agitated, though the day was perfectly calm and sultry. I immediately cast my eyes toward the cleared ground, from which I was but a small distance, in order to see whether it was not occasioned by a shower; when at that instant a sound resembling a deep rough voice, uttered, as I thought, a few inarticulate monosyllables. Alarmed and surprised, I precipitately looked all round, when I perceived at about six rods distance something resembling a cage, suspended to the limbs of a tree; all the branches of which appeared covered with large birds of prey, fluttering about, and anxiously endeavoring to perch on the cage. Actuated by an involuntary motion of my hands, more than by any design of my mind, I fired at them; they all flew to a short distance, with a most hideous noise: when, horrid to think and painful to repeat, I perceived a negro, suspended in the cage, and left there to expire! I shudder when I recollect that the birds had already picked out his eyes, his cheek bones were bare; his arms had been attacked in several places, and his body seemed covered with a multitude of wounds. From the edges of the hollow sockets and from the lacerations with which he was disfigured, the blood slowly dropped, and tinged the ground beneath. No sooner were the birds flown, than swarms of insects covered the whole body of this unfortunate wretch, eager to feed on his mangled flesh and to drink his blood. I found myself suddenly arrested by the power of affright and terror; my nerves were convulsed; I trembled, I stood motionless, involuntarily contemplating the fate of this negro, in all its dismal latitude. The living spectre, though deprived of his eyes, could still distinctly hear, and in his uncouth dialect begged me to give him some water to allay his thirst. Humanity herself would have recoiled back with horror; she would have balanced whether to lessen such reliefless distress, or mercifully with one blow to end this dreadful scene of agonising torture! Had I had a ball in my gun, I certainly should have despatched him; but finding myself unable to perform so kind an office, I sought, though trembling, to relieve him as well as I could. A shell ready fixed to a pole, which had been used by some negroes, presented itself to me; I filled it with water, and with trembling hands I guided it to the quivering lips of the wretched sufferer. Urged by the irresistible power of thirst, he endeavored to meet it, as he instinctively guessed its approach by the noise it made in passing through the bars of the cage. "Tanká, you white man, tanká you, put a some poison and give me."

"How long have you been hanging there?" I asked him.

"Two days, and me no die; the birds, the birds; aaah me!"

Oppressed with the reflections which this shocking spectacle afforded me, I mustered strength enough to walk away, and soon reached the house at which I intended to dine. There I heard that the reason for this slave being thus punished, was on account of his having killed the overseer of the plantation. They told me that the laws of self-preservation rendered such executions necessary; and supported the doctrine of slavery with arguments generally made use of to justify the practice; with the repetition of which I shall not trouble you at present. Adieu.'

A Christian is under a lot of pressure to insist that his heart only has 100% Divine Law written on it, and his heart is not 99% Divine Law and 1% satanic heresy, and certainly not 1% Divine Law and 99% satanic heresy. Even if you have only 1% satanic heresy written on your heart that's more than enough to put you on the road to perdition. But if a Christian insists that his heart is 100% Divine Law and 0% satanic heresy, then he pushing himself as a great great great authority, he is saying, in so many words, that he teaches religion with the authority of the Creator of the Universe.

It's easy enough to quote the scriptures. How difficult is it to see that Ezekiel 36. 24-28 supports Zionism? I explained all this elsewhere, explained how Christianity says you're damned if you reject Zionism: If you reject Zionism you reject Ezekiel 36. 24-28, if you reject Ezekiel 24-28 you will also reject Jeremiah 31. 31-34. If you reject Jeremiah 31. 31-34 you reject Matthew 26. 28. If you reject Matthew 26. 28 then Christianity says you're damned. Simple stuff. But there are all sorts of tricky issues involving law and politics and good and evil where it is really hard to be infallible. Of course, it doesn't really matter if you make minor mistakes. You just don't want to make any big mistakes which involves heresy, big mistakes which put you on the road to perdition.

Recall that foolishness is included in Jesus' list of sins in Mark 7. 20-22,

`"What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.'

Paul Johnson writes in `A History of Christianity,'

'Tertullian broke with the Church [Rome] when Calixtus of Rome determined that the church had the power to grant remission of sins after baptism, even serious sins like adultery or apostasy...Julian claims Catholics slaughtered "heretics" with state military support. Whole communities were butchered...in the 5th century there were over 100 statutes against heresy. The state now attacked heresy as it had once attacked Christianity...Jerome describes horrible tortures inflicted on a woman accused of adultery [inflicted by the Catholic-State]. In the late 4th century there was despotism in Christendom. The rack and red-hot plates were used. Ammianus gives many instances of torture...the Inquisition was born...Spain was staging pogroms of Jews by the time Augustine became a bishop...Inquisition: anonymous informers, accusations of personal enemies allowed, no right of defending council...Possession of scriptures in any language forbidden...from 1080 onward there were many instances of the Pope, councils and Bishops forbidding the Bible to laymen...people burned for reading the Bible...

The following is from `Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829,' Pocket University - Doubleday, written by Robert Walsh, an Irish clergyman active in the English Society for the Abolition of Slavery:

"She was a very broad-decked ship, with a mainmast, schooner-rigged, and behind her foremast was that large formidable gun, which turned on a broad circle of iron, on deck, and which enabled her to act as a pirate, if her slaving speculation had failed. She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males, and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close together, that there was no possibility of lying down, or at all changing their position, by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of different individuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with their owners' marks of different forms...These were impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference...`burnt with the red-hot iron.' Over the hatchway stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave- driver of the ship, and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it...But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram...The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odour so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water...the poor beings were all turned up together...517 fellow-creatures of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. They came swarming up, like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern...On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying for a short time the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs toward it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows, could restrain them; they shrieked, and struggled, and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it...On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt water. All the slaves on board perished!...When the poor creatures were ordered down again, several of them came, and pressed their heads against our knees, with looks of the greatest anguish, at the prospect of returning to the horrid place of suffering below. It was not surprising that they should have endured much sickness and loss of life, in their short passage. They had sailed from the coast of Africa on the 7th of May, and had been out but seventeen days, and they had thrown overboard no less than fifty-five, who had died of dysentery and other complaints, in that space of time, though they left the coast in good health...It was dark when we separated, and the last parting sounds we heard from the unhallowed ship, were the cries and the shrieks of the slaves."

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.'

The Roman Catholics stray into blasphemy and sacrilege when they say the Inquisition is holy - Catholics call it the Holy Office. It is an unholy office. It's sacrilege to call evil things holy and it's sacrilege to call holy things evil.

On the first page of 'A Tale of Two Cities' Charles Dickens gives us an example of an abuse which led to the French Revolution,

`France, less favored on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and the trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.'

Dickens once tarried in Avignon and wrote of what he saw in his 'Sketches of Italy.' He described to us one of the torture chambers in the Palace of the Popes. There was a painting of the Good Samaritan on the wall right by the iron spikes, which were heated red-hot. The victims of the Inquisition were impaled on the red-hot spikes.

Tocqueville told us in 'The Ancien Regime and the Revolution:'

`Nothing is better for imbuing modesty in philosophers and statesman than the history of our Revolution. Never was an event so momentous and of such ancient causes, so inevitable, and yet so unforeseen.'

Apropos of Tocqueville's theme - the blindness of philosophers and statesmen - as well as our themes concerning the evils under the sign of the cross, Frederic Harrison informed us in 'The Meaning of History' (Macmillian, 1896):

`Take a rapid survey of France in the closing year of the Monarchy. She had not recovered from the desolation of the long wars of Louis XIV., the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the banishment of the Protestants, the monstrous extravagance of Versailles and the corrupt system which was there concentrated. The entire authority was practically absorbed by the Crown, whilst the most incredible confusion and disorganization reigned throughout the administration. A network of incoherent authorities crossed, recrossed, and embarrassed each other throughout the forty provinces. The law, the customs, the organization of the provinces, differed from each other. Throughout them existed thousands of hereditary offices without responsibility, and sinecures cynically created for the sole purpose of being sold. The administration of justice was as completely incoherent as the public service. Each province, and often each district, city, or town, had special tribunals with peculiar powers of its own and anomalous methods of jurisdiction. There were nearly four hundred different codes of customary law. There were civil tribunals, military tribunals, commercial tribunals, exchequer tribunals, ecclesiastical tribunals, and manorial tribunals. A vast number of special causes could only be heard in special courts: a vast body of privileged persons could only be sued before special judges. If civil justice was in a state of barbarous complication and confusion, criminal justice was even more barbarous. Preliminary torture before trial, mutilation, ferocious punishments, a lingering death by torment, a penal code which had death or bodily mutilation in every page, were dealt out freely to the accused without the protection of counsel, the right of appeal, or even a public statement of the sentence. For ecclesiastical offenses, and these were a wide and vague field, the punishment was burning alive. Loss of the tongue, of eyes, of limbs, and breaking on the wheel, were common punishments for very moderate crimes. Madame Roland tells us how the summer night was made hideous by the yells of wretches dying by inches after the torture of the wheel. With this state of justice there went systematic corruption in the judges, bribery of officials from the highest to the lowest, and an infinite series of exactions and delays in trial. To all but the rich and the privileged, a civil cause portended ruin, a criminal accusation was a risk of torture and death...Just before the Revolution the total taxation of all kinds amounted to some sixty millions sterling. Of this not more than half was spent in the public service. The rest was the plunder of the privileged, in various degrees, from king to the mistress's lackey. This enormous taxation was paid mainly by the non-privileged, who were less than twenty-six millions. The nobles, the clergy, were exempt from property-tax, though they held between them more than one half of the entire land of France...Twelve thousand prelates and dignified clergy had a revenue of more than two millions sterling. Four millions more was divided amongst some 60,000 minor priests. Altogether the privileged orders, having hereditary rank or ecclesiastical office, numbered more than 200,000 persons. Besides these, some 50,000 families were entitled to hereditary office of a judicial sort, who formed the `nobility of the robe.'...About a fifth of the soil of France was in mortmain, the inalienable property of the Church. Nearly half of the soil was held in big estates, and was tilled on the métayer system. About one-third of it was the property of the peasant. But though the property of the peasant, it was bound, as he was bound, by an endless list of restrictions. In the Middle Ages each fief had been a kingdom in itself; each lord a petty king; the government, the taxation, the regulation of each fief, was practically the national government, the public taxation, and the social institutions. But in France, whilst the national authority had passed from the lord of the fief to the national Crown, the legal privileges, the personal and local exemptions, were preserved intact. The peasant remained for many practical purposes a serf, even whilst he owned his own farm. A series of dues were payable to the lord; personal services were still exacted; special rights were in full vigour. The peasant, proprietor as he was, still delved the lord's land, carted his produce, paid his local dues, made his roads. All this had to be done without payment, as corvee or forced labour tax. The peasants were in the position of a people during a most oppressive state of siege, when a foreign army is in occupation of a country. The foreign army was the privileged order. Everything and everyone outside of this order was the subject of oppressive requisition. The lord paid no taxes on his lands, was not answerable to the ordinary tribunals, was practically exempt from the criminal law, had the sole right of sporting, could alone serve as an officer in the army, could alone aspire to any office under the Crown...There were tolls on bridges, on ferries, on paths, on fairs, on markets. There were rights of warren, rights of pigeon-houses, of chase, and fishing. There were dues payable on the birth of an heir, on marriage, on the acquisition of new property by the lord, dues payable for fire, for the passage of a flock, for pasture, for wood. The peasant was compelled to bring his corn to be ground in the lord's mill, to crush his grapes at the lord's wine-press, to suffer his crops to be devoured by the lord's game and pigeons. A heavy fine was payable on sale or transfer of the property; on every side were due quit-rents, rent-charges, fines, dues in money and in kind, which could not be commuted and could not be redeemed. After the lord's dues came those of the Church, the tithes payable in kind, and other dues and exactions of the spiritual army. And even this was but the domestic side of the picture. After the lord and the Church came the king's officers, the king's taxes, the king's requisitions, with all the multiform oppression, corruption, and peculation of the farmers of the revenue and the intendants of the province. Under this manifold congeries of more than Turkish misrule, it was not surprising that agriculture was ruined and the country became desolate. A fearful picture of that desolation has been drawn for us by our economist, Arthur Young, in 1787, 1788, 1789. Every one is familiar with the dreadful passages wherein he speaks of haggard men and women wearily tilling the soil, sustained on black bread, roots, and water, and living in smoky hovels without windows; of the wilderness presented by the estates of absentee grandees; of the infinite tolls, dues, taxes, and impositions, of the cruel punishments on smugglers, on the dealers in contraband salt, on poachers, and deserters. It was not surprising that famines were incessant, that the revenue decreased, and that France was sinking into the decrepitude of an Eastern absolutism. `For years,' said d'Argenson, `I have watched the ruin increasing. Men around me are now starving like flies, or eating grass'...This state of things was only peculiar to France by reason of the vast area over which it extended, of the systematic scale on which it was worked, and the intense concentration of the evil. In substance it was common to Europe. It was the universal legacy of the feudal system, and the general corruption of hereditary government. In England, four great crises, that of 1540, 1648, 1688, and 1714, had largely got rid of these evils. But they existed in even greater intensity in Ireland and partly in Scotland; they flourished in the East of Europe in full force; the corruption of government was as great in the South of Europe. The profligacy of Louis XV. was hardly worse in spirit, though it was more disgusting than that of Charles II. The feudalism of Germany and Austria was quite as barbarous as that of France. And in Italy and Spain the Church was more intolerant, more depraved, and more powerful...Schoolboys in France can repeat the historic passage about the woman near Mars-la-Tour, aged twenty-eight, but so bent and furrowed and hardened by labour that she looked sixty or seventy, as she groaned out: `Sir, the taxes and the dues are crushing us to death!'

There's so much important info to remember with Ezekiel 36. 24-28, especially the part about Zionism and God putting His Spirit into the Jews, And don't forget about 1 Peter 5. 8, which, of course, says the devil walks about like a roaring lion looking to devour people, and of course of course, you don't want to forget about Jeremiah 31. 31-34, which says that God will write His New Law on the hearts of His people. You don't want some false law written on your heart. False laws will lead you to perdition. And don't forget about Malachi 4. 1, you know, the part about a day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud and wicked people will be set on fire. I didn't mention Luke 22. 3 too often. It seems sort of superfluous, or very over the top, to keep reminding people to not be like Judas and to not become possessed by the Devil.

There's quite a bit to remember! Don't forget Romans 1. 24-27. Don't forget about John 14. 23-26, Galatians 1. 8-12, Acts 26. 13-18, Revelation 22. 18-19 etc. Don't forget that part about how you want to make certain that you are not teaching sacrilege in regards to the cross and the crucifix. If you are a good Christian, if you have the New Law written on your heart – don't forget about Matthew 26. 28 and Jeremiah 31. 31-34 – if you have the Divine Law written on your heart then you will certainly be able to lead other people to heaven and not to perdition. Suppose you were to lead a kid into sacrilege, on the issue of the cross and the crucifix, well, obviously, that's no way to attain heaven and escape perdition. So, you want to make sure you know how to avoid sacrilege with the cross and the crucifix. A general rule in avoiding sacrilege is this: Don't declare that evil things are sacred to God, and don't declare that things which are sacred in the eyes of God are evil.

You first have to decide if Jesus is God or not. If you determine Jesus is God then the next thing you have to do is locate the Church which Jesus / God founded on a rock, recall Matthew 16. 13-19. The True Church leads people to heaven. False churches lead people to eternal perdition. Now, of course, if the cross is evil then then don't look for God's True Church among churches which say the cross is sacred. Those are false churches. However, if the cross is sacred to God, then look for God's True Church among those churches which embrace the cross. So, this is pretty simple and straight forward. I'm saying the cross is evil, but I like to explain things in a way which give people all their options. I just think that's a more persuasive way to argue.

Ezekiel 36. 24-28 supports Zionism. You might have a group of people who are in perfect agreement on the cross and the crucifix, and they might all agree or almost agree on which Church is God's True Church, but they might disagree very greatly on how long you keep various people excommunicated. I mean, suppose you have a self-proclaimed Christian, and let's suppose this Christian is not committing sacrilege, and looks to be a good Christian, but let's suppose he or she has some really nasty sins on their record, such as a horrific murder, on their rap sheet. How long do you keep such a person excommunicated after they have repented? Recall Ezekiel 36. 24-28 and these converted Jews who have the Spirit of God within them. Of course many Gentiles will have the Spirit of God within them too, but, nevertheless, Jeremiah 31. 31-34 and Ezekiel 36. 24-28 and Isaiah 59. 20-21 are specifically addressed from God to the Jews. No doubt these converted Jews will speak with great clout when they render judgments on issues pertaining to excommunication.

And we've been over how it is that non-Christians say Christianity is a big lie, whereas Christians insist Christianity is the True Faith which leads people to heaven. Ultimately the Christian prophesies will have to come true in order for Christianity to be vindicated. The Antichrist will have to show up or else the New Testament is untrustworthy. And these 3 angels from heaven mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11 will have to show up sooner or later. The Antichrist might be some sort of Christian or he might be a non-Christian. He might start out preaching 100% pure truth, but then he will change and will slip in some satanic lies, or he might start off, right from the beginning, mixing truth with satanic lies. And we've been over the logic which says that if you have no mark whatsoever on your forehead or right hand then you will never be shipped off to eternal hell for the sin of having an evil mark on your forehead or right hand. We've been over Revelation 9 and Revelation 14. 11, 2 Corinthians 11. 13-15, 1 Peter 5. 8, Acts 26. 13-18, Galatians 1. 8-12, 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, John 1. 1-14, Colossians 2. 8-10, 1 Timothy 3. 16, Matthew 16. 13-19 etc.

And don't forget that Romans 14. 12 tells us that everyone will stand before God and everyone will have to give an accounting of himself or herself to the Creator of the Universe. You'll want to be at your best for your big interview! One strategy to use for your interview with God is to make sure you can handle the simplest parts of Christianity, you know, 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10 etc. And don't forget to locate God's True Church. Merely because you are not fornicating and not committing sacrilege with the cross and the crucifix, and merely because you are right on a hundred other issues, doesn't mean you have found God's True Church! You might be correct on most issues, but if you have embraced some satanic lies in regards to some other issues, then you will end up in perdition. Don't take holy communion with Sabbath violators, with people who take God's name in vain, with pro-choicers, with pro-gay-marriage people, with people who sell the True Faith to make a profit – Christian bookstores are guilty of simony. Christ and the apostles didn't put price tags on Bibles and on their gospels / epistles. Don't be fooled by false delusional Christians who follow evil traditions which trample on the teachings of the New Testament.

As we saw at the beginning of this book, in order for Christianity to be true the Christian prophesies will have to come true. 2 Thess 2 says the man of sin / son of perdition will be revealed prior to the Second Coming of Christ. The Antichrist will have to show up in order for Christianity to be trustworthy. Revelation 14. 6-11 says 3 angels from heaven will show up. Revelation 14. 6-11 will have to come true for Christianity to be vindicated. Revelation 18 prophesies a great tribulation on earth. All these prophesies must come true in order for Christianity to be true. I'm pushing a theory which says the great tribulation, see Revelation 18, is all about issues with the cross and the crucifix. On one side you have God's side. On the other side is the Devil's side. One side says the crucifix is the image of the beast mentioned in Revelation 14. 11. The other side says the crucifix is an image of the True Jesus / True God. One side says the cross is the mark of the beast, says you will burn in hell forever and ever if you put the mark of a cross on your forehead or right hand. The other side says the cross is not only sacred to God but it is the sacred seal of God which saves one from the torments described in Revelation 9, provided the cross / seal of God is on your forehead.

Now if there is at least one church under the cross which leads people to heaven, if at least one Church under the cross is God's True Church, then you can trust that Church when it says the cross is sacred. But if every church under the cross is a false church, if every church under the cross leads people away from heaven and to perdition...

So, to wrap this up, be sure to find God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock. This is a group of people who lead other people to heaven. Don't succumb to some false church! A false church is a group of people who claim they lead people to heaven but they actually lead people to eternal perdition.

The End
