jesus – Changing from glory to glory

FEASTING ON THE FLOCK

At the Last Supper, while the bread and Cup were still making their rounds, Jesus shocked his disciples by announcing that one of them was going to betray him. I can picture them putting their hand to their chests and pleading their innocence, “Is it I, Lord? while indignantly looking around the table and casting a suspicious eye at their fellow comrades. But while the taste of bread and wine was still fresh in their mouths, they quickly pivoted from identifying the backstabbing snitch to a more personal concern: Who among them was the greatest?

The other disciples were indignant, not because they thought the timing inappropriate, what with their Master about to go to the Cross and all, but probably because they hadn’t thought of it first and didn’t want the others to get the drop on them. Jesus responded by giving them a powerful kingdom truth on leadership: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them…But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” You can just hear the air squeaking out of their ego-inflated heads, especially Peter’s. He had to assume he had the inside track, seeing how that no less than Jesus himself once publicly honored him as a rock-solid leader, not withstanding the fact that shortly afterwards Jesus called him Satan.

This was radical teaching, as those who ruled in those days were usually ruthless tyrants. The only thing they were familiar with serving was serving up someone’s severed head on a platter. But as in everything else in Christ’s kingdom, practicing godly, righteous leadership, to use Dallas Willard’s illustration, would be like trying to fly an airplane right side up in an upside-down world.

As a former pastor of some twenty-five years, I’ve witnessed the fact that most people can’t handle being promoted. And for many years, that also included me. It changes people, and too often not in a good way. Like few things in life, promotion reveals what’s inside a man. The newly promoted Bible study leader or newly minted assistant pastor can suddenly take on an aura of superiority and expect others to acknowledge their newfound status, and they can even become indignant when they don’t. This new leader can begin to see himself as smarter and above the rest of the herd. Why? Because he’s suddenly wiser and smarter? No, but because his position convinces him that he is. And as long as he sees himself in such an amplified light, his pride limits his future usefulness and retards any further personal maturity. He has become his position; this is now his identity, and rare is the person who can avoid this trap.

In such cases, with all the drama of their elevated status, the purpose for such a promotion is lost, which is, as Paul put it, “To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” He said nothing about leadership embellishing one’s personal reputation or shoring up one’s self-esteem. Nor did he mention anything about gratifying one’s need for affirmation or cementing one’s personal legacy.

I came to Christ out of the 1970s “Jesus people movement,” and appropriately, I wasn’t converted in a church service or in a massive evangelistic crusade. I didn’t even recite the Roman Road to salvation prayer, but like the Apostle Paul, I met Christ one-on-one on a desert road. I wasn’t walking on my way to Damascus, but rather, I was hitchhiking on my way to Tucson. Nor did I see a blinding light or hear a booming Voice from heaven, knocking me to the ground. However, under the scorching, bright Arizona sun, I was staggered back a few steps by a sharp pain that hit me in the chest. And though I was only twenty-seven years old, the thought that I could die out there scared me enough to consider my eternal destiny. I was no Bible scholar, but my Catholic upbringing taught me about heaven and hell, and in my current spiritual state, I determined that I would probably be going to the latter.

Alarmed by the prospect of fire and brimstone, I walked off the road, dropped my hundred-pound backpack, and fell to my knees under a scrubby mesquite tree. I lifted my hands to heaven, and not being in the habit of praying, I simply called out to God and began repenting of everything I could think of, including my childhood involvement in burning down a neighbor’s garage. (To our relief, the adults blamed the fire on “spontaneous combustion,” which my playmates and I quickly agreed to). When I was finished confessing, I felt different, lighter. I knew something had happened, but to make sure this was God, I challenged him to prove it by having the next car that went by stop and give me a ride. It was a valid test, because for the last few hours, there had been very few cars, and none apparently wanted to pick up someone who looked like the front cover of a Jethro Tull album.

I stood up, and as I strapped on my backpack and turned back to the road, I saw a psychedelic, flower-powered Volkswagen van. In the searing, desert heat, the kind that causes a mirage of simmering air to appear just above the surface, I thought the van might be a drug-induced hallucination, because it wasn’t coming down the road normally, but it was backing towards me in reverse. As I continued peering through the wavering air at the slowly backing van, I saw the side door slide open and a bearded man wildly gesturing for me to get in. Sitting in the back beside a washtub full of iced beers, the driver turned around and said to me, “We passed you by about five minutes ago, but something told me to go back and get you.”

A few weeks later, God led me to a church full of young people just like myself, not one of those old, stuffy, religious places where any sign of life had long since been suffocated out of it. In those rustic, early days, the young pastors preferred being called “brothers.” Most of us new believers traded our pot highs for Jesus highs, Gospel rock bands played evangelistic concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, and I preached my first altar call barefoot. We were tongue-talking, wide-eyed, Jesus freaks, and anyone outside the church building was an eligible target for conversion. Sermons were served up three times a week, and we eagerly tithed from our minimum wage jobs. Sunday mornings quickly filled up with “Jesus people” weddings, honeymoons were celebrated at Bible conferences, and babies began filling up the nurseries.

But over time, those innocent days slowly hardened into a more structured organization, where “brothers” now insisted on being called “pastors,” and anyone who didn’t make that smooth transition was eyed suspiciously. The preachers began developing a unique ability to turn any text in the Bible into a three-point scolding message on why we weren’t good enough, that we “hadn’t arrived,” and if we just did more good works for the church and answered a few more altar calls, God might finally be happy with us. Or, to paraphrase John Burke, “You’re bad, God is mad, try harder.”

Pastors began lording it over the congregants, and terms like “headship” became the most prominent doctrine. The lines became increasingly blurred between being led by the Holy Spirit and pastoral submission, and to disagree with a pastor was to disagree with God, enabling pastors to subtly displace the position that Christ was supposed to have in our hearts to the point of making them objects of idolatry. Once, I was called out in a public assembly and given a “prophetic message” that I had a “wandering spirit” and reprimanded with the words, “You think it’s just about you and Jesus” (I thought that was the goal), which meant that the pastor felt I wasn’t sufficiently under his control.

Years later, when my family and I were almost murdered in an armed home invasion in Johannesburg, South Africa, it was strongly inferred by a pastor that we were at least partially responsible because we weren’t sufficiently submitted to our headship. On another occasion, my teenage daughter was grabbed by the arm, spun around, and rebuked by a pastor for not attending a prayer meeting. And worse, of the thirty-some witnesses twenty feet away, no one “saw a thing.” It had become that kind of place.

One popular phrase used to keep the flock in line was, “God has an address,” which meant that if you wanted to hear from God and maintain your salvation, you needed to stay in the church body that “God planted you in.” If you chose to uproot yourself for another church, you were warned that you’d probably end up divorced, lose your salvation, your mind, and forever be employed as a Walmart greeter or flipping burgers at McDonald’s. “Would you like that with fries?” was one of the thinly veiled threats about what would happen to you if you left that group. When I returned to America with my family after being missionaries in South Africa for eight years, we wanted to come back into the international headquarters church rather than our sending church. This was such a major transgression to them that I was banned from ministry for a full year, publicly humiliated along with my family, including my wife and three daughters, who helped build up our South African tent church, and overnight, I was reduced from being an African missionary to working as a bread and ice cream vendor. At least I avoided Walmart and McDonald’s.

Another control tactic they employed was a technique called “keystroke logging” or “keyboard capturing.” This was a creepy method of spying on you by candidly downloading a program into your computer that enabled them to monitor everything you typed on your keyboard, including reading all your emails in real time as you were writing them. If this technique of unauthorized surveillance were employed in the secular workforce, there would be lawsuits, but this type of invasion of privacy was deemed warranted to keep people in line.

What began as a grass-roots, spontaneous move of God eventually morphed into a well-ordered system of heavy shepherding, where pastors began acting more like Old Testament kings than New Testament shepherds. Most had lost sight of the purpose that God had elevated them to church leadership in the first place: “To equip and build up the body of Christ.” Instead of feeding the flock, these types of leaders feasted on them to bolster their need for significance and undergird their insecurities by controlling others. Instead of them modeling the attitude of John the Baptist: “He must increase, and I must decrease,” the opposite began prevailing, where Jesus was decreased and the pastor’s influence increased in their narcissistic compulsion to dominate. These control issues wouldn’t allow those under them to grow beyond their leaders, like raising a child but never allowing them to grow past their sixteenth birthday, because if they did, the pastors might lose their influence over them, and they would become more dependent on Jesus than them.

It was a similar experience in my youth as a Catholic, before I became a biblical Christian. I remember our priest telling us that we shouldn’t read the Bible on our own, because without the priest to interpret it for us, we couldn’t understand it. The priest must have known that if people began reading the Bible for themselves, they would become less dependent on Catholicism and more on the Bible. And they would have been right.

God’s Word is meant to be a direct lifeline from God to the believer. It doesn’t need to be filtered through any man’s personal agenda or tailored to conform to some denominational interpretation. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit, not by man, and as Paul insisted, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation,” and woe to anyone who has the pride to think that somehow they’re the exception. It’s the divine manna from heaven, not to be added to or subtracted from, flowing directly from the heart of God to feed, nourish, and build up the saints in Christ. Since the Holy Spirit is the Author of the Word, He is also the Illuminator of the Word. Only pride and an elevated sense of self-importance would make any man believe he could do it better. John wrote, “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and He lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know.” Thank God for the many preachers who simply preach the Word and let the Holy Spirit do its work, rather than twisting it to fit their own particular agenda.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “desire the pure milk of the Word,” the unadulterated Word of God. We don’t need a mediator. “We have one mediator between God and men, that is, the man Christ Jesus.” No priest, no pastor, no elder, no bishop or pope has the right to get in between God’s Word and the believer and put their own personal spin on it. When believers hear the Word of God preached, they should be Bereans and not just assume everything they hear is the gospel truth. Once, I heard preached from the pulpit that Samson had gone to hell because he committed suicide. Wow, who would have thought that one of the “Heroes of Faith” had gone to hell? Okay, that’s an easy one, but it’s not healthy to just sit there like an undiscerning SpongeBob and not respectfully challenge things we believe are unbiblical. The Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Paul warned against those who “preach with selfish ambition.” He could have ruled with an iron fist. He could have made it all about himself, proudly listing his credentials and demanding allegiance. Instead, he said he would rather perish himself than see his fellow Jews be lost. He wrote, “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources, he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19).

Any sermon preached on the above text, especially considering its uplifting theme, would not have conformed with my former group’s unique perspective, and thus would have violated what they called the “fellowship pattern,” which meant every sermon needed to align with their peculiar exegesis. And though my former church organization was extremely evangelistic and believed in all the gifts of the Spirit, they were sorely lacking in the fruits of the Spirit, especially humility and love. In the three decades I spent with them, I don’t remember hearing a single sermon on the love and grace of God or an encouraging sermon on who we were in Christ. It wasn’t that kind of place. Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Jesus had a “meek and humble heart,” which is to say that those trained by Him would have the same qualities. Unfortunately, disciples in the above group became as proud as their pastors who trained them.

This is what Ezekiel warned about in chapter 34: “Woe to the shepherds who have become feeders of themselves and not their flocks.” These kinds of shepherds feast on the flock for the purpose of gratifying their own appetite for self-importance and to shore up their own personal insecurities. Ezekiel said these shepherds eat the finest food while the flock starves for spiritual nourishment that would build them up and encourage them. He chastised those shepherds for “ruling them with force and harshness.” Jude added, “These are…shepherds feeding themselves…they promise people refreshment and truth, but leave them spiritually dry.” They keep their people feeling condemned and dependent on them, while addicting them to keep returning for more of the same in hopes of finally feeling accepted.

Jesus is the role model for spiritual leadership. If anyone could have lorded it over His followers, it was Him. But instead, He washed their feet. He could have demanded His rights as the Son of God, but instead He went to the cross. Jesus put Himself in a lower position than those who would follow Him. He once compared his leadership to a mother hen gathering his chicks to himself to shelter and nurture them, and it was said of Him that “a bruised reed he would not break.” He asked, “Who was greater, the one who reclines at the table or one who serves? But I came as one who serves,” placing his disciples in the position of those who recline at the table. That Jesus Himself would place Himself in the position of a servant says that any spiritual leader should do the same, unless they feel they are greater than Jesus. Peter wrote, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight…not domineering over those in your charge for personal gain.” In other words, not lording over them for the sake of one’s personal self-aggrandizement.

All this to say that though I may not know everything there is to know about healthy church leadership, I do know what isn’t.

THE POPE

No blog on Catholicism would be complete without a critique of the pope. And what better time than after one who just passed away? I mean, if I’m going to take flack for my views on Catholicism, why not make it count? I wasn’t planning on this topic, but when a Christian radio presenter recently asked the goofy question, “What can we learn from Lent?” as if he was having a theological discussion with C.S. Lewis, and now with Pope Francis’s death and all the world’s attention focused on it as if Christ Himself has been re-crucified, as a former Catholic and now as a born again Christian, I feel compelled to state my case.

Among die-hard Catholics, I’ve heard it often repeated as if reciting a holy mantra, “I was born a Catholic and I’ll die a Catholic.” I’ve also heard it said that the Catholic Church has changed since I was a young alter boy in the early 1960s while attending Our Lady of Victory Catholic School. But if they’re the “one true church,” as they claim, then why do they feel the need to keep changing? Back in those days, it was open heresy to recite the Mass in anything other than Christ’s original language, which everyone knows was Latin, right? But there has been other more serious changes as well, like shifting to more of a “social justice” and an “environmental justice” gospel and advocating for open borders. On this latter issue, note the Vatican has some of the most serious walls on the planet, and anyone who would dare to intrude would be swiftly dealt with.

Throughout the years, the “Mother Church” has changed its views on other issues as well. One of their more bizarre changes came in reference to Limbo, like purgatory, another fictional place between heaven and hell where one is sent who isn’t good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell. They used to teach that Limbo was a place where unbaptized babies go when they died, sort of like an infant purgatory. Now, they believe these babies no longer go to Limbo but are allowed to go straight to heaven, although even so they aren’t allowed to have full communion with God, so I’m supposing it’s like being confined to heaven’s nursery with no toys to play with. But all these changes create an insurmountable problem for them: if Catholics believe the pope to be infallible, which they still do, then how can one pope declare certain theologies and practices to be true, and then another come along later and declare something different? You can’t have it both ways.

The central credibility of Catholicism hinges on the office of the pope. According to their theology, the current pope comprises an unbroken succession going all the way back to the Apostle Peter. But the glaring problem with that is that Peter wasn’t a pope. Just because he outran John to the Lord’s tomb on Resurrection Sunday doesn’t make it so. And neither was Linus the second pope. Even Charlie Brown could tell you that. In fact, scholars such as Francis A. Sullivan claim that the Church of Rome was led by a college of presbyters rather than by a single man for at least the first three centuries. If we had to make a case for a leader of the 1st-century church, it would either be the Apostle Paul, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, or James, who was the leader of the Church at Jerusalem.

The supposed unblemished papal succession had a few other holes in it as well. For instance, there was a time when two popes reigned at the same time, and so the “Holy See” had dueling popes. And once there was even a woman who cross-dressed as a man, and so there was a female pope, Pope Joan. So, you see the problem with that.

The claim that Peter was the first pope originated from a misinterpretation of a teaching Jesus had with His disciples in Mathew 16. Jesus asked them who they believe He was. Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the living God.” Jesus commended Peter for his response, saying “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.” Then, he continued, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

Catholics use this Scripture to teach that Jesus was building His church on Peter, a mere man. If so, then we’d have to believe that the Father’s plan for mankind’s redemption was to send his only Son to this earth, and after He was rejected by the same people He came to save, and then after being tortured and killed in the most gruesome possible way imaginable, and then after rising from the dead He left the entire future of His Church on the shoulders of a single, mortal man. Sorry, but no mere man could shoulder that kind of responsibility. What Jesus was actually saying was that He was building His Church on the rock foundation of Peter’s confession that “Jesus was the Christ, the living God.”

How could He build His Church on anything less? I thank God my salvation isn’t dependent on the faithfulness and character of the Apostle Peter, who for all his good, wasn’t very infallible when he once denied before a mere servant girl that he even knew who Jesus was. And not just once, but three times. This same Peter, who when Jesus needed him the most in the Garden of Gethsemane, kept nodding off, and when he welded the sword to defend his Master from the mob, only manage to lop off an ear. And not to embarrass him unnecessarily, but who can forget the fact that on one occasion, after the Lord of the Universe had just declared His eternal purpose of laying down His life for the redemption of the world, Peter openly rebuked him for it. No, I thank God my salvation depends solely on the rock foundation of the shed Blood on Calvary’s cross, a foundation that knows no human weakness or frailty

And speaking of having a problem with the whole pope thing, the late Pope Francis acted more like a woke politician than a biblical spiritual leader. In direct opposition to Scripture, he repeatedly gave his blessing to same-sex couples. It’s contained in a doctrine entitled Fiducia Supplicans, which, by the way, the newly elected pope has also given his blessing to. Francis once posed with a Muslim and a Buddhist leader and declared that there was more than one way to the Father and salvation. He even claimed that unrepentant atheists will also be in heaven, and he didn’t believe in a literal hell.

And if that’s not enough to doubt the pope’s biblical credentials, it gets worse. Francis once brought back a retired cardinal who was a known pedophile to be one of his advisors in the Vatican. And it gets worse yet: You might want to cover little ears for this one, even some big ears. In a well-documented incident, Francis once watched as two cardinals in the Vatican bowed with their faces to the ground in front of two large, nude women statues. The statues represented Mother Earth, and afterwards, Francis walked over and blessed the statues. If Francis had been anyone other than a pope, no one would even consider him to be a Christian at all. But then God is no respecter of persons; whether one is a street-sweeper or a pastor or a janitor or even a pope, these things matter nothing to God.

Now here’s the real problem with all this pope business. A genuine Catholic doesn’t have the option to disagree with the pope on anything having to do with doctrine or practice, because according to Catholic theology, any laws or doctrines the pope declares, even if they directly conflict with Scripture, must stand as infallible. That means according to Catholic dogma, whatever the pope binds on earth is bound in heaven, which would give him more authority even then God and His Word.

Though the pope is recognized as the head of the Catholic Church, he is not the head of the Christian church, nor does he in any way represent it. If the Apostle Peter was never the head of the Church and the pope is also not the head of the Church, then who is? According to the Bible, that would be Jesus. Colossians1:18 says it well: “And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” No man, no pope, no angel nor any other created being can usurp the authority and override the truth of the New Testament, and to follow such false leaders would be like the blind leading the blind.

Why is this business about the pope so important? Because if you can prove that Peter wasn’t the first pope, the whole foundation of Catholicism crumbles. And I for one would love to see it crumble so that millions of precious souls bound by this false religion could be set free to know the freedom and forgiveness of the living God.

Since beginning this blog, the Catholic cardinals are busy with their conclave in electing Francis’s replacement. One cardinal expressed his concern about the succession and has called upon the “Virgin Mother of God” to guide them. (Few of us believers realize that God has a mother. Who knew?) Another cardinal named Burke has been openly critical of Francis’s beliefs and has sought the guidance of Our Lady of Guadeloupe in selecting the next “Bishop of Rome.” But how can Cardinal Burke openly disagree with any pope if the pope is supposed to be infallible?

Some are hoping for an African pope, sort of like Americans were excited about having their first black president, so racism is important to some in this selection. Some are saying they hope for a more conservative pope this time, admitting that Francis was very liberal. And that presents another problem. When it comes to the divine truth of the Word of God, there is no liberal or conservative viewpoint, and the color of one’s skin or one’s cultural heritage should be irrelevant. How is this not merely political? All that should matter, if indeed the pope is to represent Jesus Christ and His Word, is whether he is biblical or not?

Now, they’ve just elected the first American pope, Cardinal Robert Prevost, who has taken on the title of Pope Leo XIV. It was known that Francis wanted Leo to replace him, as he has similar views as the former pope. During Francis’s twelve year reign he ordained 108 cardinals, giving them a total of 133, so over 80% of the cardinals who voted for Leo were put in place by Francis himself. So, some might say that Francis stacked the deck. And apparently it worked: white smoke for Leo and on we go.

I was asked if I believe Pope Francis is in heaven? I don’t know, only God knows. I know this: if I believed that there will be unrepentant atheists in heaven and one could attain heaven outside of coming through Jesus Christ, as Francis has said on numerous occasions, I would not expect one day to be with all the saints in Glory, nor would I expect anyone else who possessed such anti-biblical beliefs to be there either. And speaking of saints. I’ve heard there is already a move to canonize Pope Francis, as if any religious organization could make someone a saint. Only Jesus can make someone a saint, and they are made so as soon as they repent of their sins and receive God’s free gift of salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church is front and center in End Times Bible prophecy, but not in a good way. In the Book of Revelations chapter 17, the Apostle John saw a vision of a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads which represents seven mountains. Not coincidentally, Rome is known as “a city that sits on seven hills”. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones, signifying her incredible wealth as being one of the richest organizations in the world. She is holding a golden chalice full of the “filthiness of her fornications.” Fornication is often used in the Bible to represent spiritual adultery, as she is guilty of misrepresenting the Word of God to fit her own beliefs. She represents a religious system that is the counterfeit bride of Christ and is the leader of the End Times apostate church. This is the conglomeration of all the false religions of the world that will remain after the true Church has been raptured and will be instrumental in promoting worldwide worship of the Antichrist.

Now, Pope Leo XIV has performed his first Mass in St. Peter’s Square. Besides Catholics and Christians, it was attended by representatives from the Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, and Hindu faiths. Leo’s first homily centered on the theme of unity and harmony in the faith, marking him as an ideal candidate to be the End Times pope, one that would embrace all the religions of the world. The Apostle Paul warned that in the End Times there will be those who declare, “Peace, peace.” But it will be a false peace, because soon afterwords, sudden destruction will come upon this unrepentant world and they will be caught as in a trap. There will be no genuine, lasting peace until the Prince of Peace suddenly intervenes into this wicked, God-defying world and makes all things new.

The purpose of this blog is not to castigate individual Catholics; I believe some are genuine Christians who will one day make heaven their home, not because of their religion, but in spite of it. For most, Catholicism is a stumbling block to salvation. That is why in the Book of Revelations chapter 18 God warns through the Apostle John to “get out of her my people.” He is admonishing believers to separate themselves from the corrupt influences of the world and its false religions to avoid sharing in her sins and soon-coming plagues. I believe we’re living in the end of the End Times where God is on the move to wrap things up before his soon-coming return to take His bride to heaven. I pray that everyone reading this will be included in that Glorious Day.

LENT

The other day I heard a presenter on a Christian radio program ask the question, “What can we learn from Lent?” I can answer that question straight up. In fact, this ought to be a slam dunk for any genuine, biblical Christian. What can we learn from Lent? One thing we will not be able to learn from Lent is where to locate it in the Bible. That’s because it’s not there. The term comes from the Roman Catholic Church, not Christian theology, so I’m not sure why this Christian radio presenter was asking this question to Christians in the first place. Perhaps he’s not aware that there was a Protestant Reformation, which for many good reasons, was a full-throated protest against the religion of Rome.

Now, before you think I’m just going off on an anti-Catholic rant, well, I guess I am somewhat, but hear me out. As a former Catholic raised up in a very serious Catholic home—I was an alter boy and spent my first eight years of schooling taught by Franciscan nuns at Our Lady of Victory Catholic School, I feel well qualified to speak on the subject. And now, for almost fifty years I’ve been a born again Christian, so I’ve got the credentials to speak about both religions. Right out of the box, they are not the same thing, not even close. Like other false religions we as Westerners are familiar with such as Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, they may use some of the same biblical lingo, but they have nothing to do with biblical Christianity. And just to be clear, yes, I believe such people can be saved, but their salvation would be in spite of their false religion, not because of it. I’ve personally known Catholics I believe are sincere Christians, doing the best with what they know, and thank God for all of that; God looks on the heart and judges us according to what we know, not on what we don’t.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me continue. The Roman Catholic season of Lent focuses on a time of prayer, fasting, and reflection beginning six weeks before Easter. Most scholars that I’ve read believe it originated following the Council of Nicea in 325 AD., which was also the beginning of several other unbiblical practices and doctrines such as the pope, the perpetual Virgin Mary (after the virgin birth of Jesus, Mary had at least six more children fathered by Joseph), and confession of sins to a priest. On that subject, after confessing one’s sins to a priest, he then assigns a penance consisting of saying a number of prayers by rote, such as the Our Fathers and Hail Marys depending on the severity of one’s sins. For instance, if one’s sins were particularly serious, you might be required to recite five of each of these prayers in order to be absolved. If your sins were of a lesser degree, a lesser number of those rote prayers would be necessary in order to be forgiven. Sins are categorized as “venial” sins, easily pardonable, and “mortal” sins, such as missing Mass on a Sunday or a holy day of obligation or if you committed a murder. If mortal sins are not confessed before death, they would send you to hell. I know, it’s a lot to keep track of. And the real kicker about this latter doctrine is that the priest then has the power and authority to forgive the penitent’s sins, a power only God Himself has, unless that priest also lived a perfect life on earth, and then died and rose again from the grave. If not, that priest doesn’t even have the power to forgive his own sins.

But back to Lent. Pope Gregory finally regularized the practice of Lent to begin about forty days before Easter on Ash Wednesday, another mysterious, non-biblical practice. Some historians claim the forty days originated from the fact that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, though His fast had nothing to do with His eventual Resurrection but was in preparation for His ministry. While some Protestants continue to observe Lent even after the Protestant Reformation, such as the Lutherans, most other groups such as the Calvinists condemned the Lenten practice as being a “tradition of man” and a works-based vanity that “promotes a false zeal, replete with superstition and that it is considered more a practice of mortification for its own sake than an actual contrition for sin.”

Reformation leaders like Luther, Calvin, and many others condemned other practices of Catholicism as well, including the selling of indulgences, purgatory, transubstantiation (believing the communion host and wine is the actual body and blood of Jesus and not mere symbols), and the idea that departed saints, especially Mary, can intercede from heaven for people on the earth. And that by offering up a Mass for a departed loved one, it could pave the way to get them out of purgatory sooner (purgatory being a place between heaven and hell where departed souls go who aren’t good enough to go to heaven but not bad enough to go to hell). So, you see how far these things depart from the Bible. Later, Charles Spurgeon summed up the evangelical view of Lent by saying, “It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men, as to observe the ordinances of the Lord. We ask concerning every rite and rubric, ‘Is this a law of the God of Jacob?’ and if it be not clearly so, it is of no authority with us, who walk in Christian liberty.”

I know that sounds harsh, but from a biblical perspective, there is nothing of what I said that isn’t sound. Whether it’s the Mormons teaching their followers that they can become a god and inhabit their own planet one day, or the JW’s standing on a busy street corner earning their salvation by pushing their belief that Jesus was a small god not the real God, or the Catholic Church elevating Mary to a position of interceding for us before God, these are all heresies and do not provide a path to salvation, which can only be obtained as a free gift from the shed Blood of Jesus Christ, who has already paid for our sins on the cross. As the saying goes, “You are free to have your own opinions, but you are not free to have your own facts.”

As a young Catholic, the only thing I learned from those days was that Franciscan nuns were very scary for a young, sensitive little boy, but I also remember learning that there was a heaven and a hell. Many years after leaving the Catholic religion, this knowledge of heaven and hell was instrumental in bringing me to Christ, fearing I was on my way to hell, which at the time, I was, so I will give them that. One other thing I learned from those days was that Catholics were discouraged from reading the Bible for themselves, and we were told that we couldn’t understand the Bible without the priest interpreting it for us. This, I believe, is the reason that most Catholics are illiterate when it comes to the Word of God. Although having Bible teachers and authors can be very beneficial in understanding Scripture, ultimately, believers are responsible to dig into the Word, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, discover for themselves what God is saying to them. No one should ever put any man or woman between them and God or His Word.

And not to pile on here, but the Roman Catholic Church did more to stymie the life of the Early Church than anything else in the devil’s arsenal. From its inception, it ushered in a thousand years of spiritual darkness. It’s not called the Dark Ages for nothing. Romanism, or as the early American settlers referred to it as Popery, was practically banished from early America. The early settlers did all they could to discourage them from immigrating here and mixing with biblical Christianity, and for good reason, because when they did they helped to bastardize the Word of God.

Roman Catholicism, like all false religions, is a works-based religion, and like all other works-based religions you never know when you’ve done enough to earn heaven. That’s because heaven can’t be earned, no matter how many good works one does. Works-based religions are slavery, slavery to a man-made system of beliefs. I know. I came out of Catholicism and also a works-based Christian cult. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ as set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Paul was speaking to people who were under the law of Moses, to which the Pharisees of that day added thousands of their own rules. And if you’re in a works-based religion, you have to follow it perfectly, which of course, no one can accomplish. Only Jesus lived a perfect life on this earth so we could be saved by his free gift of grace, simply by repenting and turning to him for our salvation.

It’s a big deal to preach the truth according to God’s Word. Paul said, “If anyone comes preaching to you another gospel other than what you received from us, let him be accursed (forever damned). And just in case someone missed it, he said the same thing again. Because if you preach a false gospel, you not only condemn yourself, but also all those who follow your teachings. And those who lead others astray will have an even greater condemnation. Paul also wrote that if someone was leading you back under the Law, or legalism, or back to a works-based religion, let him be emasculated. His words, not mine. Jesus once told His disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” The leaven He was speaking of was the leaven of religious false doctrine mixing with the Gospel truth and thereby polluting it. Jesus said that those who lead children (innocent, childlike believers) astray, that “it would be better for him that a millstone be hung around their necks and to be drowned in the sea.”

Someone might say that I’m not sounding very loving. Actually, I believe I’m tame compared to the Apostle Paul. I never used the words “emasculated” or “accursed.” Would you prefer a soft lie or a hard truth? Should I be guilty of “tickling one’s ears,” just telling people what they want to hear? When it comes to one’s eternal dwelling place, I hope you would choose the hard truth. Because that is what real love is all about.